The Reaper Virus

by Nathan Barnes

  A stop by the pharmaceutical aisle seemed like a good idea as well. I was buying shit from everywhere else in the store, so why not? I grabbed a couple of two-packs of the basics; things like: Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, Benadryl, multi-vitamins, Naproxen, cold medicine, etc. Our house was pretty well stocked on first aid, due to the two young kids and a clumsy dad. Injuries over the years had supplied us with a free clinic’s worth of supplies, so I only grabbed a few extra packages of first-aid needs.

  The food I picked up wasn’t anything memorable. Most of it you could eat without preparation or water if needed - just to get some food in you. All of it was pretty compact and had a disturbingly long shelf life. Including regular perishable food and the less savory items I picked up, we would be good for two months or so. If we somehow got completely cut off and had to ration, it could be stretched longer. I didn’t see that ever happening, but it’s good to be prepared for the worst. In the back of my head I rationalized it all by saying I’d have plenty to donate to the food bank in a couple of months.

  Blame all the apocalyptic books I’ve read, but I tried to focus on supplies for the long haul. I bought a lot – much more than I probably should have. In retrospect, I wish I had bought more.

  Sarah was pissed I spent so much money and got some “unnecessary items”. That was alright; I could pay the minimum balance on the credit cards for a month or two (or four).

  Chapter 2

  Preparation and Mutation

  Day Three.

  November 12th – 0253 hours:

  The news was saying some more weird shit about the R32PR virus. They now believe it was based in the blood, in a similar way to HIV. Official reports were claiming that over the life of the virus and its various mutations something like ninety-thousand had died around the world as a result of infection. What was weird was what they were saying about the people who had become infected more recently. They said the R32PR virus did something in the circulatory system that caused a darkening and thickening of the blood. Advanced cases showed signs of where arteries and veins were very visible on the outside of the skin. Picture seeing someone’s veins outlined over their body. None of the pictures online were very good quality, but it still looked like some sick, miserable people.

  I assumed people suffering from this advanced stage of R32PR were at a point of no return, but the media seemed to be going out of their way to not say it. I’m guessing that’s so they didn’t fuel any underlying panic in the masses. Panic had already ensued though. The last time I remembered such a generalized feeling of paranoia and panic was right after the 9/11 attacks.

  If there was any bright side to the new headlines, it was that fewer cases were turning up. Could we be past the worst already? The new symptoms sounded like something out of a nightmare, but apparently only like three to four out of ten infected were showing the black vein phenomenon. That, combined with the fact that fewer and fewer new cases were showing up, could mean that the virus had run its course. Sure, it also implied that those showing the new symptoms were probably going to join the death count, but it could stop there if we were lucky.

  The CDC announced that they didn’t believe the virus had mutated again, but rather that it had reached the end of a “maturation cycle”. Maybe it was over after all? I was just thankful no one in my family had gotten sick since this madness began.

  * * *

  0600 hours:

  About an hour before, one of our officers had to use deadly force for the first time in over five years. We weren’t always privy to the whole picture of an incident from our isolated dispatchers’ cave, so here’s what information I could collect: a student was walking home and cut through an alley when some homeless guy jumped out and attacked him. A bike officer was nearby and heard the kid screaming. The officer was yelling at the guy to back down when he charged at him or something. I don’t know how many shots were fired but the homeless guy eventually stopped. The kid was pretty messed up but alive. Richmond Ambulance rushed him off to the ER before onlookers arrived.

  * * *

  0640 hours:

  I was a little freaked out. My buddy Lance was the second or third unit to respond to the scene. I only saw him briefly before they rushed him and the other officers into a debriefing of the events. My initial intent was just to make sure he was alright, but then I saw his expression. All he said was that the homeless guy was infected, covered in black veins, and that the officer that fired the shots had fired a lot of shots. Lance said that he was rolling up on the scene when he heard like eight to ten shots. There was only one guy – a sick old guy – and our agency uses forty caliber bullets so fewer shots needed to be fired in order to convince a person to stand down. How was that right? Lance is a trustworthy source; we go all the way back to the academy. I had never seen him shaken like that. He did a tour in Iraq and didn’t ever look like that. I was sure this would be all over the news; I know the last officer involved shooting was the talk of the town for days.

  Rather than going home, that was motivation enough to go to the Home Depot for some more supplies. There was an undeniable pit in my stomach that things were about to change for the worse.

  * * *

  1415 hours:

  My trip to Home Depot was a short one. I didn’t have time to think much about what I might need and didn’t want to be overly impulsive. After the crazy night I was also very ready to be home. It’s funny when something really bad happens on our shift, we go home just wanting to hug our families. My demeanor is normally that of a kid in a candy store while I’m at a hardware store, but that morning I just wanted to go home and be with Sarah, Maddox, and Calise.

  I grabbed some basics for home repair. A variety of lumber pieces made it into the cart too. My only impulse buy was a mini crowbar. I’ve always kind of wanted one. It was a heavy little bastard – looked like it could tear its way through most doors. I joked with Sarah that if all else failed, the crowbar would allow me to fall back on a career as a burglar. She didn’t find my misplaced attempt at humor as enjoyable as I did.

  Naturally, I didn’t sleep for long. It’s fair to say that I’d been a little restless from the moment those shots were fired earlier that morning. What I needed to do was go and talk to my dad about all this. Dad had always been able to take a step back from panic to analyze a bad situation. That, combined with his tendency to remain notoriously level-headed while interpreting world events, made him a great person to consult when those world events were crashing down on our doorstep. If Maddox and Calise were in my shoes I hope they would be able to approach me the same way. My parents lived close by, only like ten minutes away if you made all the traffic lights. I was planning to take the kids over that day for a visit so I could seek the comforts of fatherly wisdom.

  * * *

  2305 hours:

  As soon as I arrived at work I scoured the internet for what was said about that morning’s incident. Local news barely mentioned it! All that was said was that a shooting occurred earlier that morning. Shootings happened every day in Richmond, so it didn’t come across as newsworthy. I know university media relations was great at keeping the bad stuff away from the press, but when an officer was involved in the shooting? Surely it should have made a little more of an impact than that?

  * * *

  Day Four.

  November 13th – 0003 hours:

  That damned pit in my stomach had become quite the nuisance. It only got worse after I talked with my dad. He was worried too, more worried than I’d ever seen him actually. Evidently he had read a lot of the same stuff I had and came to pretty much the same conclusion. As far as the virus was concerned, things were certainly going to get much worse before it got better. This was merely the calm before the storm… or rather that’s what my dad and I thought.

  Two years before, he and my mom bought a horse farm with about thirty acres a couple of miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway in Carroll County, Virginia. Why they bought a damned horse farm was anyone’s gue
ss, especially seeing as there weren’t any horses. Mom said it was so that the little guest house and other buildings on the property would give us the flexibility to vacation there. The truth was she wanted to move there when they retired. All the seclusion and privacy that the property offered made it an ideal place for them to enjoy some quiet in their elder years.

  That summer they planned on staying there for a couple of months to kind of test the feasibility of living there. They took a car filled with supplies every time they drove there, and by that time it was fairly well stocked – made sense why my parents were heading there. Dad’s hope was that the R32PR virus would run its course and life would return to some semblance of normalcy. If not... well, my dad had never had much patience for traffic. I wasn’t at all surprised he would choose for them to head over there early, before many other people tried to skip town.

  Mom tried to convince us to pack up and join them. I explained to her that I was “essential personnel” and couldn’t really leave town on a whim. Only way I could get her to settle down was to promise that if things really went to hell, we would head to the farm.

  I would have loved to go with them, but right then I thought our best asset in all this was through gaining more information, something I had more access to than the average person. I had an internet’s worth of information to search and pissed off idiots on the phone.

  For whatever reason, I passed my dad one of those two-way radios. I thought it would be good to have a worst-case scenario fallback for communication if the need arose. Call me paranoid if you wish, but I tended to listen to my gut feeling and my gut was telling me to be prepared. Perhaps it was the police training that gave me that instinctual characteristic, who knows? I just knew I had to give my dad one of those two-way radios.

  * * *

  0349 hours:

  Who would have thought eight hours a night in front of a computer would yield something useful? Reported by the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), the German Press Agency and translated by some poor bastard at the Associated Press:

  The Bonn Institute of Virology at the University of Bonn Medical Centre, one of the largest Medical Virology facilities in Germany, is currently devoting a large percentage of its resources to solving the current global pandemic. A confidential informant from within the Institute revealed the latest development:

  “It is our suspicion that the R32PR virus has gone through yet another mutation. The hope of the global community had previously been that the virus had reached a point of maturation, thus allowing laboratories to make progress in battling the pandemic. Medical institutions around the world have reported a similar evolution in symptoms from the afflicted. Infected patients experience an increased severity of previous symptoms. A violent behavioral shift in the infected is also becoming a common trend. Whether this is a result of increased adrenaline or a new symptom of some kind, I can only speculate. A perplexing darkening of the blood has also become common in approximately thirty to forty percent of cases. Patients in advanced stages look quite… different. The virus appears to alter the blood, causing much of their circulatory system to become clearly visible from the outside. We are currently partnering with other laboratories in the United Kingdom, Spain, and United States in making the official announcement, but this new evidence indicates that we are now dealing with the R33PR strain of this virus.”

  * * *

  0444 hours:

  I knew it was only a matter of time before an official announcement from the CDC was released. They were pretty quick on getting this out after Germany’s findings. I was curious to see how the general public reacted.

  Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), released the following official statement in reference to the current global pandemic.

  “New evidence suggests that the R32PR virus has undergone another substantial mutation. This conclusion has been backed by an unprecedented partnership in laboratories worldwide. More than half of those afflicted by the R32PR virus have begun exhibiting new, often dramatic, symptoms. We have labeled the new strain the R33PR virus. All symptoms of the R33PR strain are still being investigated. Death tolls have increased, but primarily in those possibly infected with this new mutation. It should be noted that this does NOT change day to day life. Doctors around the world are working to solve this situation before it escalates. However frustrating as this all may be, the good news is that new infections appear to be leveling off. There are fewer new cases being reported to medical agencies, even with an increased awareness of R32PR symptoms. Also, it may not be encouraging, but it must be noted that the R33PR mutation is only being documented in patients previously diagnosed with the R32PR virus. We will continue to update the public as necessary with any new developments.”

  I’d read over his statement several times trying to decide whether this was good news. I found it curious that he didn’t go into any detail about the new symptoms. Crazy looking sick people who were prone to violent behavior? I’d like to think that was worth noting.

  The homeless guy who attacked that kid was infected. Sure, the public didn’t know that, but I did. I kept trying to find out how the hippie kid was doing. My efforts had been in vain.

  * * *

  0611 hours:

  More calls were coming in for disorderly or violent patients at the hospital. These were common issues for our officers in the area of the hospital but not with this frequency. It was starting to feel like every other time the phone rang there was a nurse desperate to get help restraining a patient. The entire area around the emergency room had been permeated with hysteria.

  Walking by the commanders’ office, I overheard the Sergeant and Corporal saying something about nurses having to restrain and isolate R33PR infected patients. Not sure what that was about.

  I thought I might make another trip to Home Depot and pick up some more wood to maybe board up the windows if we needed to. Sarah would never let me hear the end of it if we came back home to find looters got into the house. I didn’t want to give her ammunition in every argument we have for the rest of our lives.

  * * *

  1300 hours:

  Another day with little sleep; there was just too much on my mind.

  Maddox was asking questions about all the sick people. Calise was a little too young to worry about it. All I could tell them was not to worry, that some people were getting sick, but I was sure everything would be okay. I wasn’t fond of feeling like I was lying to my kids, but sensing the concern in their busy little minds I followed it with, “Don’t worry, Daddy would never let anything happen to you guys or to Mommy.”

  I had never been more certain about something I’ve said in my life.

  I was going to try and take it easy for the rest of the afternoon. It’d be great to play with the kids and try to put them at ease.

  * * *

  1710 hours:

  Mom called to let us know they made it to the farm safely. She said traffic was heavier than usual but not as bad as Dad expected it to be. A five and a half hour drive took them seven and a half hours. Again, she pushed for us to join them.

  Evidently Dad had indeed stocked the place really well. There was a general store a couple of miles away from there, but something told me it was less than extravagant and would only hold the bare essentials. His goal was to make it so they could get away without having to make trips to civilization for supplies. Dad had never been a fan of the general public.

  Originally I was going to take a nap before work, but instead decided that I’d stay up to watch the national news. I wondered when the president was going to make a speech about all of this, like he did when the H1N1 blew up. I remembered him labeling it a “national emergency.” Swine flu didn’t scare me. This, however, scared the shit out of me.

  I had to try and take my mind off things by spending time with the family. Maddox had designed some L
ego cities that he needed my help to construct. Calise thought all the furniture in her doll house needed new paint jobs. These were little tasks that belonged in our normal lives. I was thrilled to do something normal instead of focusing on the abnormalities that had become so prevalent.

  Chapter 3

  Corrosive Revelation

  Day Five.

  November 14th – 0055 hours:

  It was club night, typically one of our busiest nights of the week. Our police station was centered between two clubs, both of which provided unending business for our agency. On a good night, hours after officers broke up the predictable fights there was usually enough O.C. pepper spray in the air to clear out your sinuses, even from inside our office. I didn’t see many people lined up outside the club entrance, which was directly across from the parking deck. I’d love to blame the lack of future arrestees on the unusually cold night, but I had a feeling it was because I was not the only one who saw the news.