Aftermath

by Mark Lukens

  “The Spanish influenza, then,” Scott said. He looked at Kate, like something had just clicked in his mind. “What about the things you’ve been teaching? The Sixth Extinction?”

  Kate had been lecturing recently on the Sixth Extinction. She’d been working on a book about it, and some of what she’d been studying had leaked over into her lectures: the mass extinction of animals and plants around the world, whole species wiped out within a few years. Some of the extinctions had been blamed on fungi and pathogens, some blamed on man’s encroachment into nature, but some of the extinctions still had no real explanation.

  “What if this is an extinction of some kind?” Scott asked, horrified. “Or part of it. What if we’re part of an extinction right now?”

  Kate felt her stomach drop just at the thought of it. Before she could answer, a voice squawked from the intercom high up on the wall. “Attention students and faculty. Classes have been canceled until further notice. Repeat. All classes and practices have been canceled for the rest of the week and next week until further notice. Please leave the premises immediately. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Classes have been canceled? Kate’s heart jumped and her skin grew suddenly clammy.

  Her nine students wasted no time getting their books and bags together and then leaving the classroom.

  “It’s really happening,” Scott said more to himself than to anyone else as he left.

  Kate got her stuff together, shoving a few books and her laptop down into her bag and zipping it up. She looked around, making sure everything was turned off, then she turned out the lights and left the classroom.

  She met Rita and Tarik in the break room. Both looked wired, like they’d drunk a pot of coffee each.

  “Where are you going to go?” Rita asked Kate.

  Kate didn’t have an answer for her—she hadn’t really thought about it. “Home, I guess.” Was there somewhere else they should go? “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. A lot of people are trying to leave the city. Leave the coast. I heard rumors about a gigantic asteroid coming that’s going to hit the Atlantic Ocean. I think a lot of people are trying to get away from the coast.”

  Kate hadn’t heard anything about an asteroid coming. She was sure Alex would have found something about it on the dark web. But no, the things he’d found—an airborne plague—were much scarier than an asteroid.

  “I don’t think we should leave the city just yet,” Tarik said. “We all need to go home and stay there. Don’t interact with anyone unless you can help it.”

  “I need to go to the store,” Rita said. “I didn’t stock up on anything.”

  “Me either,” Kate said.

  Tarik sighed. “You need to go and get what you can, and then go home. Lock all of your windows and doors. Tape plastic over your windows. Tape around your doors. Seal up anywhere that leads outside.”

  “All of the plastic and tape in the stores are probably gone now,” Rita said.

  “I’ve got some in the storeroom,” Tarik said, nodding at Kate and Rita to follow him. “I hid some.”

  The halls were emptier than Kate had ever seen them at this time of day. Most of the students and about half of the faculty hadn’t even shown up today.

  “What’s this about the Ripper Plague?” Kate asked as they hurried down the hallway. “My students were talking about it. One of my students looked up some kind of video on the dark web.”

  Tarik stopped and nodded, looking at her gravely. “It’s some kind of plague.”

  “Like a rabies virus?”

  “Oh God,” Rita said, her hands to her mouth.

  Tarik nodded. “It acts a lot like rabies. Turns its victims into raging lunatics. They rip other animals and people apart. And eat them. Some reporters are calling them rippers.”

  Rita’s eyes were wide; she looked like she was either on the verge of puking or passing out.

  “It’s no joke,” Tarik said. “The best thing is not to expose yourself to the air, or to other people, not until the CDC and the government get a handle on this.”

  “How long will that take?” Rita asked.

  Tarik just shrugged.

  They got to the storeroom the science department used. Tarik unlocked the door and entered, Kate and Rita right behind him. He went to work, gathering items from the shelves. He brought back a few large rolls of plastic and three boxes of latex gloves and two boxes of dust masks back to the table, setting them down. “Take a roll of plastic with you. And a box of gloves and some of the masks.” He looked back at the metal shelves. “We need goggles and tape, too.” He was back down the aisles, searching.

  Rita’s cell phone rang. She plucked it out of her pocket like she couldn’t believe it was actually working. “Marty?” she said into the phone. “What?” She looked at Kate, pulling her phone away from her ear for a few seconds. “He said his office got shut down today.” She was listening again. “Slow down, Marty. I can’t understand everything you’re saying. There’s a lot of static.”

  Tarik was back with a few rolls of duct tape in one hand and three pairs of goggles in his other hand, holding them by the elastic straps.

  Kate unzipped her bag and pulled her laptop out, opening it up. She rotated it toward Tarik. “You said there’s a plague. You can find proof of that?”

  He nodded as he set the tape and goggles down on the table next to the rolls of plastic. “The information’s been mostly suppressed so far, but the truth is getting out everywhere. There are a lot of articles and videos on the dark web.”

  “Can you get me to the dark web?”

  Tarik looked hesitant for just a second, and then he went to work on Kate’s computer, clicking keys rapidly. He turned the screen back toward her. A video was playing.

  Rita walked away, her phone up to her right ear, a finger in her left ear so she could hear her husband better.

  Kate turned the sound down on her computer so Rita could hear her husband on the phone, but then she watched the video that was playing. A young man with shoulder-length blond hair was staring into the camera, speaking. He wore an old T-shirt and baggy shorts. He looked like a surfer.

  “You’re not getting the whole story from our government and news agencies,” the kid in the video said. “The government is trying to cover up the truth. But they can’t cover it up much longer. The truth is going to get out, and people are going to find out about it. There’s a disease spreading, a disease that’s turning people into raving lunatics.”

  The surfer was replaced by footage of a man attacking an older couple walking down the street. The video was shot in the daytime and it was shaky. It looked like it had been taken from a cell phone. The man, the ripper, came from the right side of the frame, a blur of movement, pouncing on the older man first. The couple tried to fight back, but the ripper clawed at the man, tearing at him, stabbing him with what looked like a snapped-off piece of a chair leg. The woman screamed, beating at the ripper, trying to pull him off of her husband. Then the video went black.

  Another video replaced that one. This one had been shot at night and looked like it had been filmed from a balcony two or three stories up. A voice narrated in hushed whispers: “Hold on. Here they come now.”

  Kate saw five people roaming the darkness below the balcony, just shadows at first, until they were revealed in a splash of light from a streetlamp. All five of them stopped. They looked like a pack of wild dogs, all of their movements synchronized. They were frozen for just a moment in the light, like they had either spotted or heard prey. Then they were off, all of them running.

  “You see that?” the narrator whispered. “Those are rippers. They’re on the hunt.”

  Another video showed police battling people at night during a riot, beating down people with batons. Shots were fired in the distance. Above them, a helicopter roared through the night air. The cell phone camera followed the helicopter for just a moment, then it panned back down to the riot.

  “Th
ey’re rounding people up,” the surfer said as the video of the riot turned into another video of police shoving handcuffed men and women into large military trucks with canvas tops. One cop whacked a man in the back of his legs with his baton because the man wasn’t moving fast enough. “What are they rounding people up for?” the narrator asked. “Detaining them? For what? Where are they taking them?”

  Kate looked at Tarik, turning the sound on her laptop down even more. “You think this is true?”

  He just stared at her.

  “A rabies virus? That’s not even possible, is it? It can’t be transmitted through the air.”

  “I talked to Ken,” Tarik said.

  Ken was a professor of microbiology in the science department. She nodded at him to go on.

  “He said a mutated rabies virus could be possible. There’s little chance of it occurring naturally, but it could be bioengineered.”

  Kate felt her blood run cold. “You mean like a bioweapon? You’re serious?” She thought of religious zealots having a bioweapon like that. Kate knew a lot about religious fundamentalists—she’d been raised by them. She often wondered if some of her personality traits (self-reliance and self-discipline, which probably bordered on obsession/compulsion) had formed from those years around her family and their commune. She was sure her atheism had come from being around her parents and siblings.

  “I’m not saying that’s what it is,” Tarik said. “I’m just saying it seems to be the most likely answer.”

  Rita hung up her cell phone and slipped it back down into her pocket. She looked pale, like she’d just received a cancer diagnosis over the phone.

  “What is it?” Kate asked her.

  “Marty’s friend is a cop. He said things are starting to get out of control. He said they’re trying to keep things from the public, but there is definitely some kind of plague out there.”

  Tarik sighed and shook his head. He looked at Kate. “We should all go home. Take the plastic and the tape. Seal up your doors and windows. Don’t stop and get anything at the stores. Don’t interact with other people. If you do, wear these.” He picked up the box of gloves and the dust masks.

  Kate wondered if a dust mask would really keep the virus out, but she didn’t argue with Tarik. The dust masks and gloves were better than nothing.

  CHAPTER 4

  After Kate left the university, passing easily through the police checkpoint this time, she drove by the supermarket. She knew she didn’t have much food and water at home. It had been a while since she’d been grocery shopping. She had waited until she was off the campus before she pulled over and slipped on a pair of latex gloves and donned a dust mask—she didn’t want to wear the mask and gloves when she had to drive back through the police checkpoint out of the school.

  But she wore them now as she drove down the street. Many of the stores were closed, some even boarded up, some of the windows broken. There were lines at the gas stations, cars stretching out to the street. There were lines at one of the grocery stores. Trash and debris littered the streets. There were abandoned cars and trucks on the sides of the roads, and quite a few wrecks clogging traffic up. Many of the intersections had cops in riot gear directing traffic, and there were other cops standing guard in front of side roads they had closed down. Helicopters flew overhead every so often, and once Kate had heard what sounded like fighter jets roaring by.

  She had to drive around a blocked-up intersection, a smaller intersection that wasn’t being controlled by a police officer. The traffic lights were blinking and there was a car stopped right in the middle of the intersection. The driver of the parked car was hanging out of the open window, yelling a string of words that didn’t make any sense as Kate drove past. But it wasn’t the gibberish that made Kate’s skin crawl; it was the expression on the man’s face, not only the rage but the blankness in his eyes, like he wasn’t really there anymore.

  The next supermarket Kate came to was packed. But she decided to park and give it a try. She locked her BMW up and walked quickly to the store, shoving her gloved hands down in her coat pockets and keeping her head down. She was wearing dress shoes with low block heels, not the best shoes if she needed to run. Her heart was thumping as she got closer to the entrance doors. Her head was feeling light and the world seemed to tilt just a little. It felt like a cold sweat was going to break out at any moment under her clothing. She was actually trembling. She’d never experienced a panic attack before, and she wondered if this was what one felt like.

  The inside of the store was a wreck. The shopping carts were crammed together, a few tipped over. She grabbed a cart and entered the store. For just a second she stopped in her tracks. It seemed like over half of the goods on the shelves were gone and people were throwing the last of the items into their carts. There were a lot of people in the aisles, but most of the people were lined up at the few cash registers that were open.

  For a moment Kate debated whether she should turn around and leave. She knew she didn’t have a lot of food and drinks at home, but she started to irrationally think that she could make them stretch if she had to.

  But then she felt panic rising inside of her as a couple raced passed her with their shopping cart, nearly running into her.

  She had to do this. She had to get something in her cart. She felt a little foolish at first wearing her dust mask and latex gloves, but she noticed that quite a few other people were wearing dust masks and gloves. One couple wore cloths tied around their faces, and one older man dressed in fatigues wore an actual gas mask that looked like something from the 1950s.

  Kate went up and down the aisles, trying her best to get around the people. She reached in around people, grabbing cans and boxes of food, six-packs of drinks in whatever flavor was left. She didn’t even bother with the freezer or refrigerated section. She went to the household supplies aisle and grabbed some toilet paper and paper towels, a few rolls of plastic wrap in case she didn’t have enough plastic sheeting that Tarik had given her. She added a few rolls of tape to her cart.

  Her head was spinning; she wasn’t even sure what she was grabbing. There was no order or thought to the things she was selecting, and her mind felt dizzy. She could see herself passing out right in the middle of an aisle, other shoppers moving around her like river water around a rock. An older woman was coughing and then hacking. She wasn’t wearing any kind of mask. Kate turned her cart around.

  It was time to go.

  Kate hurried to the checkout with what she had and got in line.

  It took almost an hour for her to get to the cash register where a teenaged boy was working the register as best he could. A manager was floating around, helping the cashiers, many of whom didn’t look too experienced at their job.

  When she was outside again, Kate felt a little better. She pushed her cart down the aisle to her BMW. She wondered if someone had broken into her SUV and stole her roll of plastic and tape, but the windows weren’t broken. She popped the hatch in the back with the button on her key fob as she got closer.

  A black helicopter roared by overhead, only a few hundred feet above her. Kate felt the vibrations thrumming through her bones. The chopper seemed to be going toward downtown. At least Kate had bought a house in a more rural area. She had fallen in love with the neighborhood immediately, with the acres of wooded lots, the houses far apart. She had hated the long commute to the university, but now she was glad she was farther away from the city.

  Kate had only gotten half of her bags into the back of her SUV when she heard a man yelling at her. She turned around and saw the man approaching. He was young, maybe early twenties. His head was shaved nearly bald and he had tattoos all over his muscular neck and forearms. He wore a Carolina Panthers jersey and baggy jeans that looked ready to fall off of him.

  “Hey,” the man said. “Go back.”

  Kate felt her skin crawling. She thought about closing the hatch on her SUV and abandoning the rest of the groceries. She would just jump into her vehicle
and drive away. This guy probably just wanted her groceries anyway.

  But she didn’t abandon her bags of food and drinks—she had worked too hard to get them. She started shoving the bags in as fast as she could. One of the plastic bags ripped and cans and juice boxes fell out among the other bags, one of the cans rolled out of the back of her SUV and dropped down onto the pavement with a thud, then rolled away.

  “Things are . . . bad moon in the sky,” the man yelled as he got closer.

  “Oh God,” Kate moaned, not looking at the man, trying to pretend that he wasn’t talking to her. Maybe if she ignored him, he would go away and leave her alone.

  “Hey!” the man yelled again.

  Kate didn’t even bother with the last two bags. She finally looked at the man. He was right across the aisle now, standing in front of an older Kia, one hand shoved down into the pockets of his baggy jeans.

  Did he have a gun?

  She didn’t want to wait around to find out. She shut the hatchback on her SUV.

  “Bad moon on you!” the man yelled and bolted across the street at her.

  The man wasn’t making any sense. In her mind, Kate saw the videos Tarik had shown her in the storeroom, the videos of the rippers attacking people, the ones hunting in the night like a pack of wolves.

  Was this man a ripper? Was he infected?

  Kate knew she wasn’t going to be able to get to the driver’s door before the man caught her. Why had she taken the time to load more of her groceries? If she had just abandoned them right away, she would be in her vehicle right now, protected behind steel and glass. The spot in front of her was blocked with another vehicle, so she couldn’t drive forward, but she was pretty sure she would have backed up right into this man if he was threatening her; she was pretty sure she could run him over if she had to.

  But it was too late now. Too late to run. The only thing she could think of to do was to push the cart at the man. There were still two plastic bags of groceries inside; maybe that’s what the man wanted, maybe he would go for the bags instead of her.