The Salvation Plague | Book 1 |The Turning

by Masters, A. L.

  When the broccoli finished steaming, she dumped it on a plate with a small baked chicken breast and a little pile of yellow rice. She made up a weeks’ worth of meals every Sunday and even though she always complained about it at the time, during the week she was always thankful she had done it.

  They didn’t have much food growing up, and her mom always had to plan each meal carefully. That was back before meal planning became a huge conscious thing like it is now with endless cookbooks, containers, and Pinterest. Her mom never relied on state assistance, she was too proud. Anna wished she had sometimes, maybe she wouldn’t have been so stressed.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten sick.

  The rest of her family was all dead or in jail. Technically only her father was in jail. Her mom, who had raised her alone, died of breast cancer when she was only nineteen. She left behind just enough money to help pay for Anna’s college.

  Anna’s dad was a dead beat who had murdered someone for drugs about twenty years ago. He went to prison when she was just a little kid and they never heard from him again. No big loss there. She chewed a piece of broccoli. Needs salt.

  Her grandparents had all passed away. She truly had nobody on this earth except her co-workers, and even they were a bit iffy. Most of the Sales Team —as opposed to the general sales department that she and Jared belonged to— were a bit stuck up. The ones who weren’t were just too busy to socialize and she didn’t really have much in common with them anyway.

  There were a few good people at the office that she liked. Jared, of course. Jill, the receptionist was quirky and fun to be around, but she was a temporary worker and flighty, and Anna knew she would be moving on to a different job soon.

  Juan, one of the newer members of the sales team, was a good guy. His wife cooked awesome meals and he sometime brought extras to work for everyone. They had two boys at home. Anna and Juan sometimes talked at lunch. His stories about his wife and sons made her ache for a family of her own.

  All this thinking was starting to get her depressed and she decided that she had enough for today. It was Monday and she didn’t usually drink any wine during the week, but tonight she made an exception. She took a small glass of Cabernet to her bedroom and quickly showered and got ready for bed. She flipped on the T.V. to an old sitcom that she enjoyed. She sipped her wine, relaxed, and tried to get her mind off her loneliness.

  At five in the morning, the T.V. was still on, though the volume was lowered. A news alert woke her groggily and she fumbled for the remote. She clicked off the set and went back to sleep. She missed the special report journalists broadcasted in Siberia.

  ◆◆◆

  “Someone stole my popcorn!” Darla called out to the entire office. The heavy accusation settled, dampening the usual flurry of activity. Darla making loud accusations wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary.

  Anna looked up from her work and scooted her chair out to the main walkthrough. Jared and all the others were doing the same. They were like prairie dogs popping out of their little dens. Darla was standing at the front of the room, near reception, and all eyes were on her livid face. Anna settled her features into a mask of polite concern. It was hard because she knew Jared was staring at her right now, an exaggerated look of horror on his handsome face.

  She knew him too well.

  She glanced back tentatively and suppressed a laugh.

  ‘Oh no!’ he mimed.

  Yep, she was right.

  “I keep expecting Mr. Hubbard to call me in about it,” she whispered. “It’s like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.”

  “No swearing in the office, Anna,” Mr. Hubbard said as he trundled past them with his briefcase. Her co-workers nearby turned to her with censuring looks.

  She looked at Jared with open-mouthed shock. Jared widened his eyes in amusement and shrugged. “Watch your filthy mouth!” he murmured to her behind Hubbard’s back.

  “But I didn’t…” She trailed off when she realized Mr. Hubbard was gone.

  She huffed and focused back on Darla’s tirade.

  “I’m going to security, and I’m going to go over the camera footage from yesterday. I will find the thief. This is despicable!” Darla pressed a hand to her large, heaving chest and scanned the room. Anna kept up her sympathetic face for another moment.

  “There is no security footage in this section of the building,” Jared said from behind her.

  “Then why are those up in the ceiling, Mr. Smarty Pants?” Darla said sarcastically, pointing at the black lenses strategically positioned around the room.

  “My God, you must be right! Carry on,” Jared said, waving his permission for her to continue her diatribe against the nefarious popcorn thief.

  His statement to Darla almost caused her to lose her composure, but she managed to reign in the giggles at the very last second. Then she realized what exactly those cameras meant for them.

  Anna’s heart jumped a bit. She didn’t consider the cameras yesterday. In fact, she forgot all about them. What the hell was she thinking? As Darla continued raving to the rapt office workers, Anna turned to Jared worriedly. He shook his head slightly and leaned forward.

  She leaned toward him, and he whispered, “They don’t work. They’re just a deterrent.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, worry wrinkling her forehead.

  “Absolutely. The only ones that work are in the warehouse, the storeroom, and the parking lots.” He looked a bit smug with his knowledge.

  “So, I guess that rules out makeout sessions in the storeroom?”

  “Not if you enjoy being watched and recorded for posterity. However, I would strongly urge you to consider the break room closet instead. It’s much more private. And there’s a folding chair.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she deadpanned.

  He winked at her and scooted slowly back into his cubicle. She blew out a deep breath and got back to work. At least Darla’s ranting wasn’t nearly as distracting as the burnt popcorn smell, and Mr. Hubbard would put a stop to it soon with a couple of placating pats on the back.

  Pretty sure the entire office was grateful for their little sabotage mission yesterday.

  ◆◆◆

  At lunch, Anna sat with Jared at their usual table. She noticed that the microwave had an out of order sign on the front, likely placed there by a very irate Darla —if the enraged handwriting was any indication— who was at this moment seated nearby staring morosely at her special, empty popcorn bowl. She had made do with pouring in a couple of bags of snack sized chips from the vending machine, but it didn’t look like she was getting nearly as much enjoyment from them.

  It almost made Anna feel guilty. Almost, but not quite.

  Anna went back to eating, not really feeling much like socializing today. Usually, Jared had some funny story to tell, but today he was strangely silent. He had been since Darla’s outburst this morning. It wasn’t like him, and she wondered if he was worried about something else. Or maybe he was coming down with something?

  Jared and Anna both startled when the T.V. on the wall suddenly turned on, loudly blaring the news alert to the mostly unoccupied break room. Jared grinned a bit at their skittishness and they turned in their chairs to watch whatever the news people thought was worthy of an alert. They seemed to make everything an alert these days, and now it mostly meant nothing.

  “What the hell?” Jared said, and leaned closer to watch. There was a map of the world on the screen and the commentators were discussing it.

  “Was there some kind of attack?” Anna asked him. Part of Russia had a red bullseye covering it, along with Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. Other areas were outlined in yellow.

  “…appears to be spreading rapidly, though scientists on the project say that there is no cause for alarm. Symptoms have been reported in several major countries, including Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, and England. There is no word yet on how fast the symptoms appear after exposure. Docto
rs on scene in the most affected countries say they are unsure if the spread is airborne, but that fevers usually appear within hours. They are attempting to identify Patient Zero at this time, and are awaiting the first full recovery…”

  Anna looked at Jared in shock. He was still staring at the screen with a strange look on his face. Fear? She didn’t know for sure, but she did know that she didn’t like it, not at all.

  “What’s all this?” Mr. Hubbard said, coming into the break room, probably alerted by the loud volume of the alert. When Anna turned around, she noticed the rest of the employees trickling in behind him.

  “Some kind of illness. It’s spreading,” Jared said. “Really fast.”

  “Oh, some kind of flu thing?”

  Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the screen. The news crew showed a familiar scene, a building partially burned in the distance. Anna recognized it immediately as the lab that had supposedly exploded in Russia. This was not good.

  Anna noticed Mr. Hubbard’s assistant, Madeline, had crept up close to him and was clutching the back of his suit jacket fearfully. She was a real bitch usually. She thought that because she was his assistant, that she was also second-in-command. It wasn’t true, but Mr. Hubbard seemed to be particularly fond of Madeline, and let her dictate to a lot of the employees. This caused the sales team to have a particular grudge against her.

  Anna was sure that Madeline and Mr. Hubbard were having an affair, it was obvious after she caught sight of lipstick on Mr. Hubbard’s neck before. When she told Jared, he seemed shocked that she hadn’t noticed it before. Anna didn’t really care one way or the other what they did, she just wanted to do her job and collect her paycheck.

  After the alert ended and the commentators turned to a less alarming topic, everyone left to return to their desks. Work doesn’t stop just because some kind of disease was spreading overseas apparently.

  ◆◆◆

  Later, as she was sitting at her desk, a Post-It note came tumbling down onto her keyboard. She uncrumpled the neon green ball and read Jared’s note.

  Check your email

  She logged in to her work email and opened the message from Jared.

  TO: ANNA COLLINS

  FROM: JARED CARSON

  RE: The Post-It Note

  No, check your other email, Collins. This isn’t a secure mode of communication. The enemy must never receive intel because we got lax on security.

  Loose lips sink ships.

  P.S. Do you have any sandwich left?

  ~J-Dog

  She logged out and quickly logged into her personal email, even though she wasn’t technically supposed to on company time.

  TO: ANNA COLLINS

  FROM: JARED CARSON

  RE: News

  Check this out.

  And get back to me about that sandwich.

  ~J-Dog

  There, at the top, was a link.

  She sighed loud enough that Jared could hear it and know she was not amused.

  She clicked it, hoping it was work appropriate. Jared had been known to anonymously send inappropriate links to some of the sales team, but he had never pranked her like that.

  When the webpage came up, her brow wrinkled, and her heart rate accelerated. “What is this?” she whispered to herself as she scanned the article.

  It was some sort of foreign news story, choppy from being translated by the browser. The more she read, the more concerned she started to feel. High fevers, blood that wouldn’t clot, gangrenous limbs…it was horrifying, and that was putting it mildly.

  She spent another quarter hour browsing the web for more information. News coming from foreign countries mostly reiterated what the commentators had been discussing earlier on T.V., but some…some told a different story.

  Another Post-It landed in a crumpled heap on her desk. She opened it, expecting some explanation or theory about the link he sent her.

  She should have known better.

  Where’s the sandwich??

  She gritted her teeth and pulled a neon pink note from the dispenser.

  There is NO sandwich!!!

  She loudly clicked her Bic, threw it back into the cup and kind of half-slung, half-tossed the note over the top. She didn’t wad it up enough, so it paused at the top of the partition before lazily fluttering down and disappearing into his cubicle.

  “You need to work on your note-tossing finesse, A-Dog,” he said as he rolled himself around the cubicle wall.

  “Since when do we call ourselves J-Dog and A-Dog?” she asks before he rolls back to his desk.

  He looks at his watch. “Since about 13:09 o’clock. Why? You don’t like your codename?”

  “13:09 o’clock? And I haven’t even thought about my codename. I didn’t even know I had one!” she said skeptically.

  “It’s military time, and you didn’t have one until 13:09 o’clock.” He pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows slightly, daring her to contradict him.

  “Will you stop it with the 13:09 o’clock?! You weren’t ever in the military! Just say 1:09 like a normal person.” She turned back to her desk.

  She twisted around to ask him about the creepy link he sent her, but he was already gone. She huffed, but she wanted to know, so she got up and walked around the partition. Plastic rattled in his hand. He was eating cheap ramen noodles raw.

  “What the hell are you eating, Jared?”

  “Codename, please,” he said, taking another crunchy bite.

  “Jared?” Her tone changed and he must have heard it, because he turned around and gave her his full attention, all joking aside.

  “What?”

  “Do you think it’s real?” She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice, because she wasn’t a weak person, or easily scared.

  He swallowed and looked serious before letting out a breath, “I don’t know. But if it is, then it’s bad.”

  Chapter Three

  Watchful Waiting

  Over the next several days, the newly spreading contagion seemed to be the top story on every single channel. Many programs had simply stopped broadcasting in favor of twenty-four-hour coverage of the rapidly developing global health situation. Anna didn’t let on to Jared or anyone else, but she started to feel a little wary of traveling to and from the office. The rapid spread of the illness worried her. She knew it was most likely already in the country. It could even be here in town.

  People hadn’t yet begun to panic, though there was some chaos in other countries. Rapidly emptying shelves in stores, medication shortages, hospital bed shortages…it was all beginning over there, and she knew it was only a matter of time before it came here too.

  Everyone at the office was strangely on edge. Everyone was relying on everyone else for new news or for answers. Theories abounded and rumors spread like wildfire. Browser tabs closed quickly as co-workers walked past, in the fear that Mr. Hubbard would catch them browsing instead of working. The break room television, usually set to a sports channel, now only showed nonstop news coverage. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something, like a gathering storm about to break.

  On the third day, something did.

  “Anna! Hey, come here. You have to see this!” Jared called to her from the hallway. Anna was on her fifteen-minute break and was just leaving the ladies’ room.

  Jared was standing in the break room, watching the news. When she came in, he pulled a chair out in front of him, and she sat down. He leaned his hands on the back of her chair and they watched. She was trying not to let his nearness affect her. This was a serious situation, after all.

  “There’s a teenage girl in Russia that beat it. They’re saying she is completely over it,” Jared leaned down and said in a low voice, close to her ear. He wasn’t looking at her though. His eyes were riveted on the screen.

  “Maybe it isn’t as bad as we thought then? Like the link you sent me?” she whispered back.

  “Hopefully not.”

  Anna watched the screen as a gurney was
pushed by two medical personnel. They were wearing biohazard suits, as was the girl. She gave a thumbs up to the cameras and Anna felt herself smile. If she could beat whatever this was in just three or four days, then it wasn’t that serious. She felt a huge relief, some of the palpable tension around them all loosened.

  “I bet they’re just talking extra precautions. She seems okay,” Mr. Hubbard said to nobody in particular, gesturing toward the television. “This means that I expect you all to get back to normal. No more internet browsing during work hours! And whoever keeps sending me anonymous emails with links to conspiracy theory websites needs to stop!”

  Jared looked down at me with a comically innocent expression. “What?” he mouthed silently.

  ◆◆◆

  By midafternoon, the office had a more festive, relaxed atmosphere. It was remarkable how the recovery of a girl in Russia could affect the mood of a small office in the United States.

  That evening after work, she went to the grocery store without worrying too much about catching anything. She still used the antibacterial wipes on her cart handle though, something she always did. The new flu thing may not be much to worry about, but the regular flu still made rounds and she wasn’t keen to spend several days throwing up.

  The shelves here looked fine, which meant people must be getting back to normal or not have taken the news too seriously. She felt a little silly at herself for being so wrapped up in it these past few days. She consoled herself by remembering that it wasn’t just her. It was her whole office.

  She got her usual meal prepping ingredients, plus splurged on some extras. She hated shopping and her pantry was looking a little bare, so she went a little over budget to restock it. Maybe “little” was an understatement. She picked up at least a month’s worth of extra groceries and other necessities. Her mother had always kept at least a week’s supply of food on hand, usually more like a month’s supply. For her, just one person, that was totally doable on her salary. As she checked out, she knew her mother would have approved.