Immune

by Jacqueline Druga

  “We don’t know that.”

  Paul laughed in ridicule. “Then explain how it’s everywhere.”

  “Mother Nature is unpredictable. You know that. Just because they say the markings are not consistent with anything they’ve seen, doesn’t mean it’s weaponized.”

  “Then what? Alien?” Paul asked sarcastically. “I know that’s what you think.”

  “It’s doesn’t have to be little green men to be alien. This could just be biology that attached itself to a space craft. I told you, with the crafts landing on meteors, anything can happen. They return to the atmosphere, they carry the samples—”

  “Enough. Whatever it is doesn’t matter.” Paul waved out his hand. “They lied. They said it wasn’t weaponized, they said it wasn’t a problem. They said it was an incident of a blip on the map in South America. Look what happened overnight. We are two of thirty people that know what is going on and that’s only because your uncle is the head of the CDC. Thank you for telling me by the way.” Paul looked up when Ed brought the eggroll. “And man, does this look good.”

  Ed asked Madeline, “Do you want anything?”

  “Sure, lord knows when I’ll get Chinese again. I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

  “Maddy, listen,” Paul leaned against the table. “We have no idea if we’ll get it, be susceptible or immune. It hits that fast. Pass the duck sauce please.”

  Madeline moved the container his way. “So you’re running to the hills.”

  “Yes, I am. Not ashamed to say I am hiding out. There won’t be a cure for this thing. We’ll have to wait and see if it can burn out.”

  “Why not stay? We are emergency management.”

  “What are we gonna manage?” Paul asked. “How are we going to manage any emergency in Pittsburgh? This isn’t any other outbreak, where it starts and flowers out like pollen. This thing hits and it happens all at once. It’s very science fiction if you ask me.” He shook the salt over his food. “I just want to go before it gets here. Because if I wait, I’ll be screwed.”

  “Well, then you’re screwed.” Madeline offered a fake smile to Ed when he delivered her egg roll. “You can’t leave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… by tonight you won’t get out of the city, let alone across the border. First reported case, the museum. Two security guards and three EMS are now infected. It’s here,” she said. “Pass the duck sauce.”

  <><><><>

  Los Angeles, CA

  Max Ryker could barely walk. His entire being ached with every step and he was a man in good physical condition. The whole time he went through the airport he kept looking over his shoulder, watching for the police. He had never been so nervous going through TSA.

  They kept looking at him. Max didn’t blame them.

  He wasn’t breaking any laws for boarding a plane, he had permission from his probation officer to visit his mother in New York.

  It was what happened the night before that worried Max.

  It was a repeat of history, a repeat of what sent him to jail in the first place. Max always was a hot head. Not even ten years in the service helped that. When he returned, he was more volatile, especially after his tours of duty.

  One night, while out with his girlfriend at a bar, he got into a fight with another man, and in a fit of rage that he didn’t understand, Max beat the man to death. The courts were lenient; defense claimed he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and was sentenced to ten months.

  Max served all ten months and was in his fourth month of his three year probation term.

  He had stayed out of trouble, worked a job, and all was good. He was excited to see his mom, and had gone out for a drink. A local place that didn’t mention Max was ever there. Of course, that was a violation of his probation.

  It was right before the bar closed that it happened.

  Several times he told the bartender about the man falling asleep at the bar. The bartender waved Max off. Then two men woke the sleeping man and Max didn’t see the start of it, but the sleeping man went ballistic.

  Because he didn’t want to get involved, Max stayed back. The bartender tried to break it up, to no avail, the fight continued.

  Max had decided it was time for him to go and he finished his beer amidst the three man fight. By the time Max made it across the bar, as if fighting were contagious, the desire to engage spread to everyone. More were involved, fists flailed, people leapt on others, some screamed. It was insane. Almost out the door, Max saw two of the men attack the only woman in the bar.

  What the fuck? Max thought. At that point, the woman, defenseless, screamed and Max intervened.

  Not that he was a big guy, but Max wasn’t small. The ‘fighters’ seemed to want nothing to do with him, so it was an easy task. He tossed one of the men from the bleeding woman, and before Max could reach to help her up, the man flung himself back toward the woman. When Max turned to block him, the man opened his mouth and plunged his teeth into Max’s side, gnawing against the ribcage.

  Max saw black when the pain hit and once again, he lost it on the man. The man stopped responding. No one noticed, everyone was fighting.

  That was when Max took off, certain that the police would catch up to him before he boarded that plane.

  They didn’t.

  The only thing that eased his mind was the news report about rioting. Perhaps the bar fight was dismissed as that.

  Max just wanted to get to New York.

  He upgraded at check in, stating he was in a motorcycle accident on the way there and wanted to be comfortable. They asked if he needed medical attention. Max declined, stating he only needed to wash up, have a drink, and relax.

  And he did need to wash up. He still had blood on his shoes from people and lord knew what else. He was one of the first to board the plane.

  Once on the plane, he squeezed into the tiny bathroom and did his best to wash up. Lifting his shirt, he finally took a look at his chest wound.

  The bite mark was huge and it looked as if a chunk was missing from him. He grabbed some towels, wet them down, and placed them over his injury. Surely, he’d get an infection. Hating to do so, Max knew he’d need to see a doctor when he landed. A human bite was nothing to mess with. Although other than being achy, Max felt fine. He wasn’t sick or fevered, and the injury didn’t show signs of infection, it just looked raw.

  His face wasn’t all that pretty either, scratched and abraded. Max was a mess.

  It was apparent to everyone, including the captain. While in the bathroom, he heard the captain instruct the attendant to ‘keep an eye on that passenger, he may be trouble’.

  Max hoped it was someone else, but knew better,

  Sore and tired, Max found his seat. He accepted the preflight glass of champagne and after downing it, covered up with a blanket, closed his eyes, and hoped that he drew no more attention to himself.

  Three – Beginning

  Pittsburgh, PA

  Typically, Myron was not oblivious to things around him. Especially when it came to the Game Shop. It opened at ten, closed at nine, and was the ‘go to’ place for used video games. Myron worked at one of eight in the city.

  He worked at the one in a mall south of the city. He thought maybe it was just a bad day when the other employees called off of work, that, along with the manager phoning in sick. After calling his grandmother and regretfully telling her he wouldn’t be home to take her to temple, Myron dreaded running the busy store alone.

  But it wasn’t busy.

  They didn’t have a customer all day. In fact, he saw about three people in the mall. When he went to get his lunch at the food court only two of the places were open and they seemed more engrossed in chatting about the slow day than making him food.

  Just before five PM, mall security dropped by and informed him the mall was closing. When Myron asked why, the guard called him an idiot and kept on walking.

  What had he missed?

  Myron was far from
an idiot, and he knew he actually had missed something. Some event of sorts had caused people not to leave their homes.

  There wasn’t any television playing in the video store and Myron wasn’t a fan of social media or the internet, so he didn’t have one of those fancy phones.

  His only option was to forgo playing his music in the car on the way home and listen to the radio to find out what might be going on.

  After locking up the store, Myron headed to his car. It was the last one in the parking lot. Sirens filled the air, people drove like maniacs down the road, all going somewhere.

  Myron didn’t live that far from the mall. His first floor apartment was two miles away in a suburb, located half a block from the tiny town square. A place called Mount Hallow.

  Myron loved his location, he could walk to the ice cream store or get a pizza. It was a great little neighborhood.

  After leaving the parking lot and merging into traffic, Myron turned on the radio. There wasn’t any music. In fact, several of the stations were just dead air.

  The ones that were on were hard to decipher. No one filled in the blanks.

  Myron got bits and pieces of debates. He listened while driving, fearful of getting into an accident. Everyone was in such a hurry, cars were colliding left and right, causing more traffic jams.

  “No one knows. No one is saying,” a DJ said.

  “They did know. It’s been in South America for how long? It had to reach here.”

  “I have to disagree. This is fast moving. One person turns to two, two into four and so on.”

  “Then it has to be a biological weapon. It’s not just here, it’s everywhere. It just popped up. Nothing in nature moves that fast.”

  “That we know of.”

  Myron slowed down for the light to take his right turn. He started to fill in the blanks himself. Some sort of illness, an outbreak, based on that South American mystery virus from the previous year. That was what he guessed.

  “They’re saying it’s like a rabies.”

  “It’s not rabies. It’s something that hits the brain, but it’s not rabies. You have to be alive to have rabies. I hear these people are dead.”

  “Really?” Myron spoke out loud in disbelief. “Seriously? Come on. Dead?” He lifted his foot from the gas and quickly slammed the brake when a man walked between his car and the one ahead of him.

  About to blow the horn, Myron froze when he looked more closely at the man. He walked oddly, almost robotic with his jagged movements. He turned his head and looked at Myron. Myron’s heart raced. The man was pasty white, his mouth bleeding around the lips, and his eyes didn’t focus. The man tipped his jaw and snapped several times at the air quickly, before finding another focus and running for the car next to Myron.

  He lunged on the vehicle, slamming his hand against the windshield and pounding relentlessly.

  “Oh shit,” Myron uttered.

  Though he wasn’t convinced the bleeding and psychotic man was dead, he did realize it was something he didn’t want to be around and understood right then and there the reason for the panic. With a greater focus on getting home and making sure his grandmother was all right, Myron drove faster.

  It didn’t take him long to get to his neighborhood, and Myron saw things on the way home he wished he didn’t. People fighting, attacking each other, pulling men and women from cars. He was too scared to stop and help.

  His quaint little town square was blocked off with abandoned cars and so were any roads to go around. So Myron, like many others, had to abandon his car. At the start of the town square it was two blocks to his apartment.

  He could make it.

  Manbag draped over his head, Myron moved quickly through the cars. Nothing much was happening in his neighborhood, and he didn’t see the violence there, which was a good sign.

  He paused before his building, which was a huge old house converted into individual units. Out on the sidewalk was a huge pool of blood.

  His heart jumped to his throat and all he could think of was his poor defenseless grandmother. Even though he didn’t see any of the ill people around, clearly there were signs they had been there.

  He rushed through the main door, hurrying up the steps.

  Myron’s apartment was immediately there on the left and he reached for the door. When he did, it opened, an arm reached out, grabbed Myron, and yanked him in.

  “Bubby, thank God!” Myron’s grandmother slammed the door. She held a cast iron frying pan. “Help me barricade this and the windows. This is insane. Some sort of germ has everyone going nuts. It happened so quickly.”

  Myron hurriedly moved the bookshelf in front of the front door. There was nothing he could do about the windows but pull the blinds. He’d figure something out when he took a moment to breathe.

  “You’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, Bubby. It’s been harrowing. Mr. Stevens took a leap from the third floor to get to some man outside.”

  Myron looked out the window. “I don’t see the bodies.”

  “Oh, they took off running. Here.” She handed him the frying pan. “Take over. I need some sherry.”

  When Myron took the frying pan he noticed the blood on it. “Gram? Why is this bloody?”

  “Don’t ask. It’s not my fault. That crazy girl across the hall came in here trying to get me. Luckily, I was frying fish. I hit her. I need a drink.” His grandmother walked into the other room. “Bubby, put on the news, see what they’re saying.”

  Myron’s head spun. He had been so removed from everything it was hard to comprehend. His grandmother especially. She recited the events as if she were recounting an episode of Dancing with Greatness.

  Myron walked to the television and did as his grandmother requested. It was a good idea to look for the news, get informed. Myron would be able to process and make a plan much better if he knew exactly what he was dealing with.

  At that moment, he was still in shock.

  <><><><>

  Earlier in the day Paul had planned to finish his Chinese food, go home, pack, and drive north, but curiosity got the best of him. He couldn’t resist.

  Right after his lunch, Madeline got the call that the Emergency Team was summoned to the museum. Most of the infected had been cleared, but some still remained.

  With reports of infection springing up everywhere, there weren’t any CDC or WHO teams going out. It was left up to each individual city.

  Paul knew Pittsburgh was lucky. Back in the day, the CDC had divisions in Atlanta and Vermont only, but over the decades, Pittsburgh had earned its own office, so the CDC was going to be there as well. That let Paul know that more than likely, there wouldn’t be too many mishaps. Plus, he would get information. Even though Madeline confided in him the information shared with her by her uncle, hearing it and reading it on paper was different than actually seeing it. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it appeared.

  Although Paul couldn’t speak of other towns, his city emptied out. Most of the traffic was outside in the suburbs. Paul experienced that when he left the restaurant. He couldn’t figure out where everyone was going. He realized some were going home for the day, but those with packed cars? Where did they think they could run? Unless, like Paul, they were aware of safe zones.

  An entire three block radius around the museum had been shut down. Small fires erupted and a lot of vandalism had occurred at nearby businesses. Windows were busted, and merchandise was strewn to the street.

  Paul suited up. While doing so, he conveyed to Madeline how it sickened him to see the looting and how people were taking advantage of a bad situation.

  “It’s wasn’t looters, Paul,” she replied. “The infected are just violent. The ones who catch the bug go through a flu-like phase, but those who are secondary infected are in a rage within one minute to an hour.”

  “How many from the museum?”

  “Most,” she said as they walked in. “We know it’s airborne and blood borne.”

  The museum swarmed with
health officials and they walked straight until they arrived at the dinosaur section.

  “Our last remaining ill,” Madeline pointed to the long window. It opened to a lab, where workers would dust bones and so forth as a means of entertainment for the visitors.

  The one worker inside spotted them and raced full speed to the window.

  Paul jumped back.

  The infected man pounced against the glass, gnawing at it, scratching it. Paul stepped closer to get a look. He needed to see what an ‘infected’ looked like. The appearance of death, white and pale. The man had no injuries other than what was self inflicted.

  Even though the infected man was on the other side, Paul heard it.

  “What is that noise? Why does he sound like he is snoring? That’s loud.”

  Madeline shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s the only sure sign that they aren’t dead. Their airways seemed constricted.”

  “Or his tongue is swollen.”

  Madeline stepped closer and the infected man wearing the name tag, ‘Mark’ slammed against the window again.

  “Did you get a look?” Paul asked.

  “It does look swollen.”

  “That would explain the breathing.”

  Mark backed up and ran to the window again.

  “That window will not hold,” Paul said.

  “We’re sending people in there.”

  “Anyone unaccounted for?” Paul asked.

  “One worker, she left early. But she left after the first victim collapsed.”

  “How is she?”

  “Well, she’s fine. That was several hours ago. Last we talked she wasn’t showing symptoms. She said the reason for leaving was because two of her family members were ill.”

  Paul groaned. “Did she go near the victim?”

  “No, but was in the same room.” Madeline said. “Infection spread is fast. The scariest aspect of this is the ability to spread via indirect contact. Any surface, object, holds the virus.”

  “If she did go near the victim, get any blood on her at all, she was a walking weapon.”