The Journal: Crimson Skies: (The Journal Book 3)

by Deborah D. Moore

  Denise rushed him with the razor sharp knife. He side stepped her easily, grabbed her wrist, and disarmed her.

  Mark was right behind the colonel and fell to his knees to cover me with his own body. He quickly cut the tape to free me and I sank into his embrace, my face bleeding all over his pale blue shirt.

  “She’s insane! She killed Kathy with an overdose of morphine!” I sobbed into Mark’s chest.

  “You’re bleeding again,” Mark observed. The gauze covering my new stitches was turning a bright red to match my blouse where I was dripping more crimson blood.

  “She squeezed my arm, and then cut me!”

  “What a bitch,” Mark glared at Dr. Streiner, who was now handcuffed to a very burly MP. “Come with me to the nurse’s station and I’ll fix it, and then we’re going home.”

  At the nurse’s station, Mark washed my cuts with chilled saline, and then butterflied the one on my cheek closed.

  “The one on your chin I’m afraid will take some stitches.”

  He had such sadness in his eyes I thought Streiner might be right, and the scars would offend him. He asked the nurse to get him a hypo to numb the skin and a number 00 dissolving suture.

  “I’m going to put in a sub-dermal woven stitch. The scar will never show.” And he kissed the other side of my mouth. I realized that Streiner was wrong, very wrong, and so was I. Mark was not the kind of man that would let a scar detract from his feelings.

  CHAPTER 9

  August 22

  “Ms. Smeth, I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you,” Colonel Andrews apologized. “The city is in chaos with a new outbreak of this deadly flu, and I’ve been busier than a one armed paper hanger. However, we do need to finish up some loose ends. Kathy’s body will be released from the morgue this afternoon, and I’m assuming you would like to take care of the burial.”

  “Yes, of course.” I let out a long, controlled breath. “I’ll have Jason dig another grave with the township backhoe.”

  “Better make that two,” he said gently. “Yesterday we found Pastor Carolyn sleeping on a park bench. The coroner said she died peacefully.”

  A quiet sob slipped out from me.

  “I will bring them to you myself,” he offered.

  ~~~

  It was a short funeral, as Kathy would have preferred, and I know Carolyn was with her God now and didn’t care. Carolyn was buried with her congregation and Kathy was laid to rest next to her husband in the new cemetery that was once the township baseball field. Eric said the Lord’s Prayer while leaning heavily on his walking staff, and I found that in spite of all the misery and heartache I’ve had to deal with, I still had more tears to shed.

  ~~~

  “I didn’t know your friends very well, Allexa, but I did admire their spunk, both of them. Because I feel a great deal of responsibility for these deaths, I took the liberty of providing for a modest wake,” Colonel Andrews said, leaning against the hearse he drove that was now parked in front of my house. “Plus, I’d like to bring you up to date on all the events.”

  From the front seat he retrieved a large, heavy cardboard box and handed it to Jason, while he carried a pizza warming box into the house. The colonel and the ten members of our little settlement gathered around the kitchen table and nibbled away at the four extra-large pizzas. To my surprise, the heavy brown box contained several bottles of liquor and wine.

  “I wasn’t sure what everyone preferred so I opted for a variety,” he said, setting a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table, then a bottle of Gray Goose, Captain Morgan Private Stock and Famous Grouse, along with two bottles of red wine and two of white.

  Karen was quick to get the glasses down off the rack and poured herself two fingers of the whiskey. I handed her the bowl of ice cubes, and she plunked one into her glass and sighed.

  “First, let me say I share your grief. You lost some good people.” Colonel Andrews took a sip of his vodka on the rocks. “I move around a lot and consequently don’t get to make many friends.” He looked over at me and Mark. “I feel that you’ve become my friends, and I hope in time you will feel the same.”

  “I will admit, Colonel, I was unsure of you to begin with, but yes, I think we can be friends,” I said.

  “Thank you, and please, call me Jim,” he said, settling into one of the wooden chairs. “Now I can tell you that I had my suspicions about Streiner and had bugged the hospital room, and if I had any idea that she was homicidal, I would never have left her alone in that room with Kathy. I definitely underestimated how unbalanced she was. Please forgive me.”

  “What’s to become of her?” Mark asked, tightening his arm around me.

  “She’s made it easy for us. She had a second hypodermic hidden in her smock that was perhaps meant for you, Allexa.” I shivered, remembering the scalpel. “While she was handcuffed to a chair waiting for transport to the jail, she injected herself with enough morphine to kill two people. By keeping her hand concealed in her pocket, no one knew what she was doing until it was too late. It must have taken her a lot to force that needle through several layers of clothing and into her thigh.”

  “Dr. Streiner is dead?” Mark gasped. “What a waste. She was an excellent surgeon.”

  “Mark,” I asked gently, hoping he would understand why I needed to know, “you worked closely with her, did you have any idea that Dr. Streiner was insane?”

  “Insane? No. But I did see right off that she was unbalanced. There is something you need to understand about doctors in general, myself included. We all have egos that surpass the average person. I would say that comes from the education we’ve gained and the knowledge of what we are capable of doing. That ego, though, varies greatly in each physician, depending on their own background and self-image. Personally, my medical ego has been humbled enough that I have a decent grasp on reality; at least I’d like to think so. Plus I had loving parents that raised me well, and I’ve always had a firm confidence in my sexuality. Denise Streiner, on the other hand, had a very poor self-image of herself as a woman, so her whole being became focused as a doctor which resulted in her personality being… top heavy, so to speak. She used that side of herself to get whatever she wanted, and when she couldn’t get it, or rather couldn’t get me, her reality started to slip. It was only a matter of time until her shell cracked, and that happened when she was faced with prison and her license being stripped from her. Her entire identity was being a doctor. With that gone, she was nothing,” Mark replied, settling back with a glass of scotch on the rocks.

  “What other news do you have you can share, Jim?” I prodded, wanting to get my thoughts away from that insane doctor, while absently fingering the itchy stiches where she had cut me. “Anything on the relocation center?”

  “Ah, yes. I fired everyone and re-staffed it with military personnel. At the same time, we moved all the unattached men to a different location, the single women to another, and the families stayed at the arena. I think things will run much smoother now, and I am keeping a close eye on it. The military really is here to help. Rape and abuse is not part of our agenda.” He took another sip of Gray Goose. “Oh, and you will be pleased to know that Tom White is now back in his office. He’s really quite efficient.”

  “That’s great. I’ll have to give him a call. Thank you, Jim, it seems you are getting things turned back around,” I said.

  “Mr. White also asked me to deliver a message to you. He said the offer still stands. Does that mean anything to you, Allexa?”

  “Yes, it does,” I laughed. “He offered me a job as his assistant. Each time he asks, I turn him down,” I added when I felt Mark tense beside me.

  “I see. Well, even without you, I’ve no doubt Tom will get that office running smoothly again. Now if we can just get a handle on this new virus. It keeps cropping up every four or five months, and the medical examiner’s office is so short staffed they can’t get ahead. It’s the same one that’s been around, with slight mutations each time. It’s s
till attacking the very young, the very old or those with suppressed immune systems, which seems to be a growing sector from the limited diets lately.”

  “What’s the incubation timetable?” Mark asked.

  “Quick, maybe twelve hours, sometimes longer; it depends on the person.”

  “Wow that is quick. Mortality rate?”

  Jim hesitated. “About seventy-five percent. There are some with a natural immunity, and there’s no rhyme or reason behind that. There have been a few that have recovered, but that’s small in numbers.”

  “Has it been verified how it’s spread?”

  “That’s the tricky part. It seems the delivery varies. It’s airborne, yet it can also be transmitted by touch, so multiple methods of protection are being observed.”

  “I guess we all stay out of Marquette now,” I murmured.

  “What’s going to happen to Marlow?” Eric asked.

  Colonel Andrews looked at Eric with a weighty gaze, noting there was no rank attached to Marlow’s name, and then took sip of his drink. “Hank Marlow is sitting in a jail cell, waiting for his court martial. I assure you, the trial will be just as swift as the one for his minions. He will then be executed for treason.” Another sip. “Much of our breakthrough came from that soldier you captured, Ken Krause. It seems Marlow filled him and a handful of others with a great deal of propaganda regarding Moose Creek and your group in particular, Allexa. Krause was told you were a band of terrorists bent on taking over Marquette, and that you had slaughtered a convoy of humanitarians bringing Moose Creek much needed aid last winter.”

  That revelation left everyone speechless.

  “When I explained to him the truth behind the lies, he actually wept, and he sends his deepest apologies. I can’t fault him for following orders, so I’m sending him back to Virginia,” the colonel finished. “I wish I could kill Marlow twice for all the sorrow he’s caused, but one execution will have to do.”

  The colonel went back to his vehicle and pulled a heavy box from the back seat. “I almost forgot, here are those books you were interested in, Doctor.”

  “Books?”

  “The ones on animals. I had someone familiar with the University library get as many books on veterinary medicine and animal physiology as he could find. Hope they’re useful.”

  Mark’s eyes glowed as he accepted the box.

  It was late in the evening when everyone left, and the artificial darkness hung like a dirty curtain in the approaching dusk.

  CHAPTER 10

  August 23

  The next earthquake to rock the nation hit around noon and was felt all the way up the East Coast. The Florida Keys, precarious as they were, were the first to go. Aerial videos taken by a tourist on a plane ride out of Marathon Key captured the swaying Seven Mile Bridge as the pylons buckled and collapsed, snapping the long concrete bridge into several pieces and sending afternoon travelers to the bottom of the blue-green ocean.

  The speculation for now is that movement from the Puerto Rico Trench was responsible for dislocating the delicate subterranean structure that held Florida afloat.

  “Picture, if you will, a two-story dollhouse made of toothpicks, and someone bumped the table,” one seismologist explained. “Florida sits on a bed of coral, and coral is porous and therefore fragile. One nudge of the table could easily push it off its foundation.”

  The bump was recorded at 7.8 on the Richter scale, followed an hour later by a powerful aftershock. The 8.2 aftershock that hit Florida was recorded at 1:15 in the afternoon and quickly downgraded to an 8.0. In the process, everything from Fort Lauderdale to Naples and south of Alligator Alley was now covered with several feet of seawater, putting half of the Everglades completely underwater. News-crew helicopters recorded a mass stampede of alligators, large snakes, panthers, and other wildlife heading for drier land. In Miami, the only buildings visible were those over four stories tall, which included most of the vacation hotels along the Atlantic. Rescue efforts were underway for those lucky enough to have been in or made it to the upper floors. The resulting fast moving tsunami wiped the crowded beaches clean on what was a clear and sunny day. There had been no estimates on the death toll.

  ~~~

  I turned the television off and we sat there watching the glow of the plasma screen fade. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

  “Do you believe in God, Mark?”

  “I was raised within a church, so my belief is there, yes. However, it’s hard to comprehend how a merciful being would allow such merciless things to happen.” He tightened his hold on me, and shuddered into my neck. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, we’ve been married all of three weeks and though we have known of each other for four months, I really don’t know much about you, or you about me.”

  “True, but I know you’re a good person, Allexa. You’ve got strong morals and a deep sense of right and wrong, all of which you’ve passed on to those young men across the street. How you did that on your own makes you a remarkable woman. And the most important thing I know is that I love you.” He smiled and kissed me gently. I sighed and snuggled closer.

  “Do you believe in God?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know, Mark. I did at one time, but I have such doubts now,” I answered honestly. “There are so many beautiful things on this planet that it’s hard not to want some greater Being to thank. Yet…” I hesitated, “yet I believe most bad things that happen are a result of our own fault. Why would a creator of such beautiful things destroy what He’s built? What would be the purpose?

  “All of these horrific earthquakes and disasters in the past year can’t be just natural happenings can they? Did man trigger these events with fracking and mining and nuclear testing? I think for some it’s easier to have a belief in God so there’s someone to blame for the bad things. It’s typical human arrogance to not take responsibility for our actions.

  “It took me a long time to come to terms with myself and my responsibilities with this life I have. If I do something wrong or that causes pain, I accept that, even if only to myself. I don’t shift the blame onto anyone if indeed it was something I did. And that’s what I believe is at the core: someone has done something at some point in time to set off a chain reaction. I think when I got to that understanding is when I lost faith. There was no one left to blame, or to thank, except myself or another human, not some mystical unseen entity.”

  “Then you don’t think it’s only Mother Nature rebelling?”

  “Giving credence to a Mother Nature is acknowledging yet another entity that has more control than you do. It’s like blaming Mother Nature for wiping out your house with a flood, and then rebuilding on the same flood plain, only to get wiped out again. Blame Mother Nature instead of moving to a safer place. So no, Mother Nature isn’t rebelling; the Earth is reacting not acting. Rebelling is a conscious act. When someone cuts a tree down, is the tree rebelling by falling on them? No, the person either cut the tree wrong, or failed to get out of the way.”

  JOURNAL ENTRY: August 25

  The aftershocks continue. The most recent was a 7.5, and with the subterranean infrastructure already shattered, the damage was the worse yet. From Orlando to Tampa Bay a rift has formed five miles wide, closing off any overland relief efforts for the devastated lower half of Florida. There is no solid ground for helicopters to land on and all rescues are now done by boat. The airboats that once populated only the Everglades are currently the main mode of transportation between the smatterings of tiny islands that now exist. The trapped population has turned near vicious in their quest for a spot on any passing boat, often capsizing the vessels of several good Samaritans and spilling their frightened human cargo into the muddy, predator infested waters.

  With more than fifty percent of Florida uninhabitable now and covered with varying depths of saltwater, the fresh water mammals, reptiles, and avian life have all fled to higher ground looking for a new habitat and… food.

  The exodus of the mass an
d aging population of Florida into Georgia and Alabama is now creating an overload on services and supplies in those states. The movement of people from the West Coast to the eastern side of the Continental Divide continues to overwhelm the government agencies in the Midwest. The only states not being invaded by our own population are those with extreme winter weather.

  For as difficult as our lives are now, I continue to be thankful for where we live.

  CHAPTER 11

  September 1

  “Allexa, I want to keep you updated on this virus,” Tom White said when I answered my phone that was ringing with ‘The Hall of the Mountain King’ dirge. Was it really only ten months ago I got that call from Liz Anderson with the same ring tone?

  “Colonel Andrews said it was getting worse, Tom.”

  “Yes, it’s like a ghost town here. Of course, with the price of gas, there’s little traffic anyway.” I could hear the familiar shuffle of papers and smiled to myself, thinking of more normal times. “The hospital is triaging in the lobby, there’s so many. There’s little they can do except keep everyone as comfortable as possible. They either fight it and live, or fight it and die.”

  “Where are they putting everyone?”

  He sighed, loudly. “The elderly that come in are moved one floor up. The mortality rate is really high with anyone over sixty-five, almost ninety percent. That floor has the most service elevators available for… body removal. Children have the next floor to accommodate parents staying with them. The parents are often sick and given a bed too. The staff is trying to keep families together, it makes for easier identification.”