Bag Men

by Jackson, Silas

  It was some kind of horn or siren, amplified over a PA system. Not a sustained wail, just a quick blast that quickly decayed. A tone signaling an announcement.

  “Attention,” a male voice began over the PA system. “A vector of VHV has been identified in the Residential District. An emergency vetting of local residents will begin immediately to assess the extent of public exposure and prevent possible outbreak.” The voice wasn’t overwhelmingly loud from Jeff’s vantage point—if it was in the Residential District, he considered, it was about five miles away. Close up, it must have been deafening.

  “Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest emergency medical station. They are being set up throughout the district. Bureau of Public Health officials are patrolling. Please comply with their requests, and let them help you get to the closest medical station if you have any difficulties.”

  Jeff shut the window. The voice continued to speak, but it was muffled enough that he could no longer follow the announcement. Shit. Shit. He shook his head, and tried to think of anyone he knew in the Residential District who would be affected by the emergency. He remembered his friends Tom and Jen. They lived there. Jesus, I hope they don’t have too hard a time with all the chaos. I know these emergency vetting cluster-fucks are a huge pain to deal with. I saw Tom, what, like six weeks ago? He was complaining about headaches. Jesus. This’ll give him a headache. Poor guy.

  Jeff shivered uncontrollably. “I don’t think it’s a fever,” he mumbled to himself, feeling his own forehead. “I might be dehydrated. Too much damn caffeine.” He walked to his kitchen sink and dumped the contents of his cup. I need a week off, he thought. Outside, the PA droned in the distance.

  Steve Bradford

  Residential District, Old Sacramento.

  December 10th, 2069

  Steve sat up in bed when he heard the alarm klaxon. Abbie looked at him from the other side of the bed, surprised and confused by the sudden blaring sound. Steve knew his cellphone was about to ring.

  “That can’t be good,” Abbie said. The official-sounding voice began to speak, announcing the discovery of a VHV vector in the district. Her eyes widened.

  “Oh my god,” she breathed. Jumping out of bed, she gathered up her clothes and started to dress. Steve’s cellphone rang, right on cue.

  “Don’t worry,” Steve said to Abbie, pausing to reassure her before answering the call. “Identifying a vector doesn’t necessarily mean a wider outbreak. The fact that they found the carrier probably means it won’t go any further.”

  Abbie nodded to him, slipping her sweater over her head and shooting him a pained smile. “I’m not panicking,” she said. “But I want to go check on my family.”

  “Of course,” Steve said. His phone was still ringing—it said Sgt. Lillian Morgenstern above the accept and decline buttons. “I’ll see you later,” he called to Abbie, pressing “accept” before the call went to voicemail.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Lilly’s voice said as he raised the phone to his ear.

  “Not at all,” Steve said.

  “Are you at home? You probably heard the announcement already, so you know the situation. The vectors were a married couple named Thomas and Jennifer Carlyle. The man is deceased. The woman is contained, awaiting disposal. I hate to call you in on your time off, but the vetting is getting underway and it’s all hands on deck.”

  “I understand,” Steve said, reaching with his left hand to grab his pants off the bed post. “I’m on my way…”

  Lilian Morgenstern

  Residential District, Old Sacramento

  December 11th, 2069

  The vetting began at 4:45 PM, and wasn’t concluded until 12:26 AM the following day, when census records showed that all 2,574 citizens in the Residential District had been accounted for. In the end, 47 citizens had been separated for state quarantine as a precaution against possible VHV exposure. 2 uncooperative citizens had been restrained by BPH agents for blood-testing, and it was determined they were virus carriers. They had already turned—they were bagged for incineration. All told, the reach of the virus during this outbreak had not been severe, and by the end of the vetting the danger had been contained.

  At 12:45 AM, BPH physicians and workers were packing the tables, canopies and instruments from the emergency medical stations into the backs of ambulances to be taken away; armed agents were still patrolling the streets, but not in response to any imminent threat. Lilly, walking down the main street, starting to realize how tired and hungry she was in the aftermath of the long, busy day, watched the blue-coated teams of BPH personnel as they worked to break down the vetting stations. They talked amongst themselves, working as quickly as possible to get everything done and go home to sleep. Lilly felt for them. I don't want to be here anymore, she thought, cracking a tiny smile at her own whininess.

  Somewhere down the dark road, she heard loud, slurred voices and shuffling feet. Dashing around the side of a building to get line-of-sight towards the source of the disturbance, she saw a group of about a eight men and women clustered together in the street, walking slowly and drunkenly. Their voices echoed against the sides of buildings as they shouted and groaned. Fuck! What is this? Sweat was beading on Lilly’s forehead reactively as her parasympathetic nervous system kicked her into survival mode; she reached for her radio to order reinforcements, then suddenly realized what she was seeing. They’re drunk, she thought with relief. She sighed deeply and lowered her AR rifle. She was looking at a group of young adults—primarily male, but with a few women mixed in. They were starting to laugh raucously, and a few of them had started singing The Undead Body, a satirical song, popular among tacky, insensitive assholes who couldn’t understand the world around them. It was set to the tune of Civil War-era John Brown’s Body.

  “My eyes have seen the horror of the coming of the horde,” four young men sang in an awful, off-key attempt at a Barbershop Quartet harmony. “They’re trampling down the garden where Aunt Ethyl plants her gourds; They’re eating Grandpa Calvin as he runs for his old sword! The horror marches on!” The girls in the group shrieked with piercing laughter; two of the singers trailed off into drunken whooping and cackling, as the other two increased their volume and belted out the chorus together. “Gory, gory what a helluva way to die! Gory, gory what a helluva way to die! Gory, gory what a helluva way to die—the nightmare marches on!”

  “Well, it seems they’ve imbibed,” a dry voice said beside Lilly. She looked over to see Steve Bradford holding his rifle in relaxed arms, standing at her side in the street ahead of the shambling column. The kids were fairly far off and weren’t aware of the two agents yet. But their shouting and laughter was getting closer.

  “I don’t blame them, after going through all that,” Lilly said. “I could use a drink myself.” Steve chuckled. “I’ll buy you one,” he said. “You earned it with the workday you just put in.”

  “We all earned a drink,” Lilly said. “But the workday isn’t done. It’s past curfew. These kids really need to get off the street.”

  “Makes sense that whoever wrote that song borrowed a tune from another era of mass casualties,” Steve mused. Lilly took a moment to realize he was talking about the melody of John Brown’s Body.

  “Yeah, it’s really poetic,” she said sarcastically. “Let’s get these ass-hats indoors to sleep it off.”

  Jeffrey Eckman

  Radio Complex, New Sacramento

  December 24th, 2069

  Jeff had been suffering frequent migraines for weeks. Frequent? No, constant. The dull throb was always there—some days it burned brighter and, bringing on a constellation of other symptoms from joint-ache to sensitivity to light, it left him feeling weak and crippled. But even at times when he felt comparatively normal, the pain was still there in the background, like a long-burning, low-grade fever was eating him up inside. He hadn’t told anyone. During the time he was too weak to go to work, he told his supervisors that he
had the flu. That’s probably what it was, anyway. I’m not lying, he thought to himself on those days, hanging up the phone after calling in sick. He wasn’t withholding the truth—he told them he had the flu, and he probably really did. And the most severe flare up of symptoms had passed in a couple days, anyway. So he went back to work.

  “How are you doing, Shippy?” Alan used Jeff’s old nickname. Neither of them could remember where or why the moniker had started. “I heard you had the flu. That sucks. My wife and I had it this time last year. I remember those long nights where we basically took turns sleeping on the bathroom floor.”

  Jeff tried to smile. Sometimes he wanted to tell someone he didn’t feel right. Occasionally, he wanted to mention that he had skipped the vet. But every time he thought about saying those words aloud, he experienced a deep, visceral revulsion—automatic physical refusal to follow the impulse, like he would experience if he tried to jump from a high ledge. He didn’t say anything to Alan besides, “I feel a lot better now. It ran its course. Just had to let it run its course.”

  “Well, glad you’re back with us in the land of the living,” Alan joked. Shippy forced another smile, and glanced at a pair of scissors with a bright blue plastic handle on a table, just out of reach from his seat at the radio dials. Alan is breathing, he thought. If I just grabbed those scissors and stabbed, he would stop breathing. It’s weird how simple it is. This hit him like a divine revelation. An exhilarating, heady expansion of his view of the world and his place in it. And the revelation revolted him beyond words. His right hand shot up to shade his eyes and rub his temples.

  “Something the matter?” Alan asked, seeing Jeff gritting his teeth.

  “Nothing,” Jeff replied. “Just a headache.”

  “You sure you’re feeling well enough to be at work?” Alan asked. “If you get me sick, I’ll be pissed.”

  “I’m just dehydrated,” Jeff said, shrugging. “Too much caffeine.” He picked up the bottle of water that had replaced his usual coffee cup and took a long draw from it.

  What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. The headache was flaring up worse than ever, from background throb into a splitting pain through his entire skull. He felt as if he couldn’t take his hand away from his eyes, or the light would cut through his brain and kill him. And the one droning thought kept running on and on—I could just stab Alan and he would stop living. That’s so weird. That’s amazing.

  The thought was still revolting, but he couldn't make it go away. Like a very hungry man in front of a pie, who can’t keep himself from thinking about eating it. He couldn’t keep himself from being drawn to it.

  “I’m only half here. I don’t know where the other half is.” Alan stared hard at Jeff, surprised by the sudden dull pain in his voice. He had taken his hand away from his eyes, and Alan saw that they were incredibly bloodshot.

  “Holy hell,” Alan said. “Forget a day off, you look like you need a doctor.”

  “I just need to give in,” Shippy said. “If I give in, the headache will stop. That’s all it is. It’s tension. I’ve been trying so hard…”

  “You’re scaring me a little, buddy,” Alan joked, but there was some truth in it. Jeff didn’t look or sound right. He rose shakily from his chair and turned his back on Alan.

  “Do you need me to call an ambulance—” Alan started to ask, but Shippy whirled around towards him and plunged a pair of scissors into his chest. He didn’t scream anything articulate as he stood there, looking down at the light blue plastic handles sticking out under his shirt collar. Just a long, confused wail. He saw a cheerful rivulet of blood running through the fabric. He fell backwards and was quiet.

  Jeff didn’t think about how strange it was anymore, how easily a man could be killed. He was beyond that thought. A shudder of relief ran through his body, as his headache dissipated and he could finally breath easily again.

  He had only been half there, and didn’t know where the other half was. But now the second half had joined the first. He was somewhere else, but he was whole.

  Steve Bradford

  Residential District, Old Sacramento.

  December 25th, 2069

  “He was definitely killed between six PM and midnight,” Keith McCarthy, a Sacramento Police Department investigator, told Steve. They stood across the room from a corpse, macerating in a pool of blood. The body hadn’t been removed yet because a SAC BPH technician in full Hazmat coveralls was still in the process of testing the blood for indicators of VHV exposure. The two men watching kept their distance from the corpse until it was cleared.

  “He clocked in at six, and his relief showed up at midnight to sign him out and take the next shift,” Keith continued. “So obviously he died in that timeframe. The question is, did the radio man on duty with him do this, or did someone else come in and surprise them both.”

  Steve looked at the body, identified as Alan Cunningham, married, without children, lying across the brown linoleum floor of the office below the radio tower. A pair of scissors had been driven through his heart.

  “And there’s no evidence of a struggle,” Steve observed, “so you’re thinking it’s more likely that his coworker suddenly turned on him? A third person jumping two men might get the first one unawares, but I would expect to see a huge mess, if the attacker also managed to kill or abduct the other guy.”

  Keith nodded. “Exactly. It’s entirely possible that his coworker Jeff Eckman was out of the room at the time and that’s why we’re not seeing traces of a second confrontation here, but I have officers checking the surrounding area for any signs of struggle elsewhere. I think we’ll have that possibility ruled out soon. The initial impression I got here is that one man suddenly turned on the other and killed him in cold blood. Obviously, it’s possible that this was just run of the mill murder. But possibly it was something else. That’s why I called you guys.”

  Steve wrinkled his brow. “Yes,” he said. “It looks like VHV. We could have a Sleeper unconfined in this area.”

  Keith had the kind of face that looked angry when serious. He gave further details, frowning as if he strongly disapproved of it all. “Eckman clocked in right along with Cunningham. So he killed Cunningham any time after six, during their shift. The next team showed up for their shift and found the body around midnight. The killer has had at minimum an hour head-start getting away, but possibly up to eight hours, depending on when exactly this happened.”

  The BPH tech stood up across the room, and signaled to Steve that the test was positive—protein formations in the blood indicated exposure to VHV. They were definitely dealing with an infected man who had turned, killing his coworker. And now he had been loose in the heart of the Technology Park for possibly several hours. At least it’s late, Steve thought to himself, looking at his watch. 1:20 AM. Well past curfew, so for hours there hasn’t been anyone in the streets for him to potentially expose.

  “Fucking Christmas day,” Steve said to Keith, “and this guy is taken from his wife. And he was exposed to VHV—so she can’t even see his body. It has to be incinerated, and the ashes kept by the government for controlled disposal.”

  “She can’t have the ashes?” Keith asked. Like most people outside the medical community and BPH, he didn’t have extremely detailed knowledge of the virus.

  “No, she can’t,” Steve said, shaking his head. “She can’t be exposed to them. If she buried him, deadly material could leach through the soil or into groundwater. And if she decided to scatter them, it would be an airborne bioweapon.”

  Keith was obviously confused, so Steve explained. “Exposure to VHV causes various proteins in the body to be mis-folded in specific ways. That’s what we test for during vetting—mis-folded proteins indicating exposure. Decades ago, disruption of protein synthesis was part of how the virus wasted and killed the host. In its modern form, the effect on proteins is a vestigial feature of the infection—it’s less severe than it was, but still detectable. Eventually it l
eads to problems in the host body. Tumors and kidney shut-down. It puts an expiration-date on Sleepers, but by then the virus has already been passed on. Being exposed to the mis-folded proteins themselves is dangerous. They propagate mis-folded protein states in healthy organisms, like a prion disease, and they aren’t always neutralized by incineration—even at temperatures upwards of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. This man’s ashes could kill his wife and others. We can’t even give her the closure of burying him.”

  Lilian Morgenstern

  Side Streets, New Sacramento

  December 25th, 2069

  The Bureau of Public Health quickly mobilized in force. Motor vehicles weren’t a common sight in the streets of Sacramento, but within an hour of the discovery of VHV in the radio-office the Technology Park was patrolled by a dozen BPH trucks, searchlights sweeping over doorways and probing into alleys. It was hours after curfew—the streets were deserted. The lights turned up nothing living, apart from occasional raccoons and opossums.

  Lilly pulled her cellphone from her pocket—out of habit, she checked the bars to see if she had signal before placing her call. She did, of course—on the outskirts of the Tech Park, she was very near a tower, and could count on coverage. Cellphones were a luxury for government officials only. There were far too few operational cell towers currently in service to accommodate a higher volume of calls being made and received. Cells were only for official use, facilitating rapid contact between operatives around Sacramento. The general public was limited to landlines and two-way radios for contact with other parts of the city.