by Gwynn White
“Grandma, huh? Was that the old lady you were pushing in that wheelchair? I saw you guys come in.”
“Yeah, that's her. She's been through a lot, but we're safe for now.”
“I don't know how safe we are.” A slight chuckle, “How old is she? She looks to be about a hundred!”
“One hundred and four, to be exact.” He was proud of the fact, though he really couldn't explain why once it had come out of his mouth. If she were a lot younger, their escape would probably have gone a lot smoother.
“I was wondering if you could tell me what's going on? I mean, with the plague.”
Everyone at the tables looked around at each other as if deciding who would answer him. It was the man with the ugly tie who spoke up first, and Liam noticed he downed a good portion of his beer before starting.
“I'm Douglas Hayes from the CDC.” He waited for a few seconds to let that sink in. “And you are?”
“Liam Peters.”
“OK, Liam, I know what you're thinking right now, 'big-shot CDC guy who has all the answers,' but I'm sorry to disappoint you. I know very little about what's happening outside this room. I'm more of a middle manager,” he waved his hand as if presenting his colleagues and said, “We're all more or less middle managers.”
He pointed to a plain-looking, red-headed woman and said her role was to scout out locations for constructing tents and generators as part of the advanced team dedicated to St. Louis. Another person was responsible for shipping the equipment from Atlanta. He went around the room, assigning roles to them all—roles that were more logistical in nature than medical.
The only person even remotely connected to medical information turned out to be a middle-aged, Indian-looking “IT support person.”
Hayes gave her the floor.
“Hello, Liam. I'm April.” She had a British accent, which Liam found fascinating, “I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing for sure, as I've been telling my friends all day. The CDC isn't very tight with email or internal file security—I know that probably sounds crazy—and I've been able to glean some information by looking—accidentally—at some critical correspondence inside the agency.” She gave a nervous laugh as she drained the final portion of her beer.
“The main lesson I learned is that this plague has caught everyone off guard, including the CDC. I've hacked into the accounts for people all across the chain of command, and it's always the same—emails full of confusion, anger, and impotence.”
Hayes continued, “Anyway, we were sent here as part of an advanced team that was supposed to get the jump on the plague in a city that hadn't already succumbed. Most of the East Coast is already gone. St. Louis was deemed far enough west that our bosses thought it would provide good intel on how the disease spreads and hopefully offer help in mitigating that spread. They were able to get us out here but, with the breakdown of transportation networks, they weren't able to get our gear here, and no one knows whether the medical teams ever departed Atlanta. The US military seems to have commandeered everything that flies.
“We got here late yesterday afternoon and have been waiting ever since. None of our cell phones work reliably anymore, but earlier today they were functioning well enough, and we got no response from anyone in our chain of command.”
“So now we're sitting here drinking beer, spilling our guts to whoever walks through that door, waiting for the double-E Doomsday Bug to roll through the city and make our jobs obsolete—”
Victoria walked in the door just in time to hear April’s last sentence. Her response, standing next to Liam, was to make the sign of the cross.
Hayes, seeing this, went on, “That won't help, I'm afraid. You won't find god, religion, whatever, in the cities anymore. At least those on the East Coast. This is it, folks, the end of humanity.”
Victoria was unperturbed. “Then we need prayer more than ever.”
Hayes chortled, then seemed to recompose himself. “We'll see, won't we?”
In the face of such bad news, Liam didn't know what to say. He'd read enough to appreciate the moral dilemma of whether God was present when such evil was consuming the world, but that was only in books or in the movies. In the real world, it was a lot more ambiguous. He admitted to himself he couldn't visualize entire cities of zombies. All of it gone? Did the intoxicated people in this room really represent the final, best efforts of the government? His dad always mocked government ineptitude, but these guys were caricatures of the theme. Everyone might die because they did nothing.
“So, do you know anything about the plague itself? What caused it?”
“Dunno.”
“Where it's from?”
“Dunno.”
“Can anyone survive it?”
“Dunno. Hey, kid, don't you get it? We don't know anything.”
“But you said you had access to secret network files and all that. Surely there has to be something valuable in there?”
The IT woman spoke up, “That's just it. There were no files. Lots of emails looking for guidance, but very little actionable intelligence and almost no files relating to this outbreak anywhere in the system. Absolutely nothing about patient zero—the source of the whole thing.”
“I don't get it. What are you saying?”
“I'm saying—we're saying—the CDC not only doesn't have any clues about the origin of this disease but as best we can tell, it didn't have any idea the bug existed until it had already scoured through most of the East Coast. We were caught totally and utterly flat-footed.”
He felt mad more than anything else. He expected to glean some clues on how to save Grandma, and instead he was told that the one group in charge of solving this hadn't even deployed their researchers to start researching.
“So you guys are pretty much useless now?” he said with more sarcasm than he intended.
Hayes' eyes went cold. He glared at Liam for just a second before laughing it off. “Whoa there, partner! We did the best we could. We made it here. We did our jobs. Everyone else dropped the ball.”
He didn't want to let them off the hook but knew he was being unfair.
“Sorry. I meant did anyone get out to study the disease?”
“Oh yeah, lots of teams went to the East Coast. Some even went out the front door of the CDC headquarters into greater Atlanta as it succumbed. But everything happened so fast there was no time to make any headway against it.”
“There are no reports in the system. I've looked. Teams go out and never report back in.” April looked disappointed as if she had spent a lot of energy on this task.
He turned around to leave. Obviously, he wasn't going to learn anything from this group. But something occurred to him as he was saying goodbye.
“Oh, one more thing. This is my conspiracy-theory father talking, but is there any way someone could have deleted all the files in your system? Could that be why there's no data?” He laughed a little, indicating his belief it was a crazy thing to suggest.
The room became very quiet. He sensed the change in attitude.
Douglas stood up, pulled at his tie, and looked around at his colleagues.
“Congratulations, my smart-ass friend. It took us twenty-four hours to figure that out.”
The implications were obvious and stunning.
“So you're saying that not only is the CDC not fixing this disease, but it may have had a hand in causing it?
Hayes answered as he walked deeper into the room, away from Liam. “Maybe they didn't cause it, but if anyone there knew who did, it's been purged. Why do you think we're just sitting around drinking?”
Looking at Victoria, he saw her once again making the sign of the cross.
He thought about mimicking her, but the moment passed.
He and Victoria returned to Grandma and told her what they had learned in his discussion with the “experts” on the disease. Grandma was nearly asleep, so she didn't say much. Victoria shared her thoughts too. They both talked in whispers so as not to wake anyone else—
or scare them.
“They said the entire East Coast was gone. Wow. Wouldn't we have heard something on the news about massive plagues in all those cities? Did they mention Denver before I came in?”
“I should have asked them about Denver. Sorry.”
“It's OK,” she replied in an upbeat manner.
“So. Would we have heard about all the sick people on the East Coast? I don't know. I don't watch the news, so I can't say whether there were clues about what was really going on or when this started. Maybe they thought it was just the flu—not E-Ebola? A bad run of the generic flu wouldn't be big news, would it?”
“Probably not. But that reminds me of a story,” Victoria said as she looked around. “I thought this was a tall tale when I heard it, but after what you just told me, it may hold some truth. Back at Washington University where I started my internship, we heard this rumor.”
She again looked around, like it was going to sound crazy.
“One dark and stormy night,” she said with scary-sounding voice, followed by a laugh. “Isn't that how all horror tales start?”
“Just tell me!” he whisper-shouted.
“Eesh. Where's your sense of drama?” she stuck her tongue out at him. “Any-hoo, these two policemen were stationed outside the morgue of the research department at my school. They said no one was allowed to go in or come out. They supposedly got called in with a report of mischief inside the morgue. They figured it was students pranking the nurse on duty with the old 'he ain't really dead bit' but when they got there, they found several corpses really were 'alive' and there were no interns yanking the strings. They pulled back the sheets and found each of them thrashing around in their restraints, despite having the most grievous wounds you can imagine. The rumor said the cops ran out of the morgue, shut the door, and gave the order to seal it. Everyone else was pushed off the floor. The next day the morgue was completely vacant, but otherwise open for business. That's why nobody believed it could have been true.”
Victoria finished her story, and the pair sat in the darkness of the cavernous chamber in silence.
“How long ago do you think that happened?” he eventually asked.
“I heard that well before the sirens. A week, maybe?”
“So in that period, the plague must have exploded on the East Coast, it may have been starting here in Missouri, and it was all hidden from view. That doesn't seem possible to me.”
“Me either. But seeing infected people walking around has changed my perspective on a lot of things.” Victoria laughed quietly. “I still don't believe the morgue story, though. Sick? yes. Look like they're dead? Maybe. Morgue dead? No way.”
Despite her attempts at humor, her story scared him.
“Let's get some sleep and maybe tomorrow things will look a little better,” he added.
Both settled uncomfortably onto the concrete floor, leaning against the hard wall. He offered his backpack to Victoria as a makeshift pillow. She accepted his gift readily and returned the favor by suggesting they lay near each other so they could each share the cushion—on opposite sides. It still wasn't much more comfortable, but it made him infinitely happier.
Thirty minutes later, as he was nearly asleep, a “crump” sound coming from outside jolted him awake. Several cops snoozing on the far side of the room jumped up, ran to the exit doors and out into the main crowd under the Arch. Fussy babies and coughing from the disturbed survivors sprawled on the floor got louder with the excitement. He intended to stay awake and discover what they found out there, but the day caught up with him, and he drifted to sleep. His final thought was of the CDC folks.
“Why do you think we're drinking?” Hayes had said. He thought he understood his meaning, but it jumped out at him in his half-sleep. Maybe they weren't drinking because they were afraid their bosses had scrubbed the records. Maybe they were drinking because they knew what was in the records that had been scrubbed?
He couldn't decide which scenario was worse.
10
Touristy Stuff
“ATTENTION PLEASE! ATTENTION!”
The booming voice of a police officer on the other side of the subterranean room shocked Liam, Victoria, and Grandma awake. He yelled a few more times and waited until he was sure everyone in the place was awake, with eyes on him.
Liam stole a glance back at the candy store and wasn't surprised to see it was pitch black inside, and none of the CDC people were stirring. He wasn't familiar with the concept of a hangover but did know that rough mornings followed late-night partying.
Or they just up and ran.
He tried to laugh that off, but it had struck a chord of truth.
The officer began his announcement.
“Thank you, everyone. Good morning. I'm Captain Osborne of the Missouri Highway Patrol. I'll get right to it. Last night, we almost lost the entire park. The cordon many of you saw coming in has been pulled back. We were able to stabilize the lines as we made them shorter, and we were also assisted by a few military units, including one tank and several Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Vehicles. As of this morning, the lines are holding. That's the good news.”
Many voices shouted questions.
“I'm not done!”
That checked the anarchy. He paced as he continued.
“The bad news will take me much longer, I'm afraid. First, there are more infected than we ever imagined. Since we still don't know how this thing is spreading or why these infected citizens keep attacking the healthy, we can't take chances. We have no choice but to keep killing them. I'm sorry if that bothers some of you. It's our reality. That said, it's entirely possible we'll all run out of ammo before we can kill the whole city.”
He inserted a laugh but soldiered on.
“Second, even though a few military units showed up, they came of their own volition and are probably classified as deserters from the main force sitting over in Illinois. They may have saved our bacon last night, but no one is coming to save theirs. Third, the military guys said they had orders to prevent anyone from crossing the river. They intend to keep the disease on this side and will use lethal force on anyone trying to cross back to them—not even their own men can go back.”
The small crowd started to pepper him with questions, but he took a deep breath, and bellowed, “So. Where does that leave us?”
The gallery quieted.
“I'm sure you know that my fellow law enforcement officers, my brothers and sisters you all passed as you came into the park, have been trying to keep this place secure from the infected victims, so we all have a chance of getting help and get the hell out of this mess. Our families are here, same as yours, and same as those people up top we're trying to protect. But now it looks as though no help will be coming.”
Rather than noise, the captain got perfect silence. The room had deflated. Liam felt it too.
“We lost many men and women last night. Even though we held them off, and improved our lines, the endgame is that unless we fight our way out of here we're going to be trapped.”
Osborne paused a little too long, and the crowd finally exploded with questions, thinking he was done.
“Hold up! Let me finish. Our plan is to start organizing civilians for a breakout. We know there are plenty of men and women with weapons up top, and we think our only chance of escape with some sort of organization is to make those citizens aware of the impending collapse. To that end, I need some healthy volunteers. We are woefully short on manpower. You'd really be critical to helping the police, but you are ultimately helping yourself get clear of the infected assailants out there. We're gonna get out of here. Just give us time.”
He and Victoria looked at each other, then at Grandma. She nodded back.
They ran without looking back, wanting to make a difference.
They waited in a line of eight or nine others. There were a couple of young people besides themselves, but most volunteers were quite a bit older, and few looked overly athletic. Everyone could carry
and use a radio, however, which was the only condition for volunteering. Some more people dropped in behind them as the captain gave assignments to those in front.
The volunteers ahead were given radios and moved off individually with officers waiting in the wings.
When it was their turn, he and Victoria stood shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Ah, finally someone who looks like they can handle some touristy stuff. I take it you two are together?”
“We aren't together-together, but we are together,” Victoria said at the same time he replied, “Oh, it's not like that.” They looked at each other in a bemused fashion, to which the no-nonsense captain said, “Fair enough. I think it would be best to have you both go together for this task, though. Would that be OK?”
Both gave a too-quick affirmation.
“Step over to Officer Jenkins to my left,” he said with humor, “and she'll get you squared away. Thanks in advance for doing a tough job.”
As they stepped out of line, he overheard the captain say “They're a cute couple,” to one of his aides. He wasn't about to ask if Victoria heard him.
He had no chance to think about what just happened because Jenkins took them deeper into the area dedicated to the police force and their families. She talked at an insane rate as if she were on caffeine or speed or something.
“Thank you both for doing this. Here's a radio. You'll need that to report back. I see you don't have the most comfortable shoes on. We'll try to find you a pair of sneakers. And ... ”
She babbled on for a full minute and he didn't understand nine words out of ten. He caught some points about guns and tactical deployments and one or two lines about the failed power situation. He wanted to stop her for clarification, but one look at her eyes told him she probably didn't remember what she'd just said. They walked along next to her as she led them down a long hallway to a metal door that was propped open. She handed Victoria a radio, which she said was on the proper frequency. After a quick lesson on how to use it, she tossed a flashlight to him, saying they would definitely need it. She said goodbye and started running back up the hallway.
