Influenza: Viral Virulence

by Ohliger, Steven

  “What the…!” Liz started.

  “These guys aren’t army,” Michael said quickly as he rapidly put the truck into reverse. “They’re most probably local militia who have gotten their hands on army uniforms and a jeep.” Looking over his shoulder out the back window, Michael sped backward. Glancing out the front windshield, he saw the black truck’s brakes light up. “If they get us to their ‘processing center,’ they’ll take all of our supplies. Then, Jeffrey and I will most likely be killed and you girls enslaved. I should have seen it sooner.”

  “The wrong-sized clothes…” Liz started.

  “The wrong uniform…” Jeffrey added.

  “The frightened girl in the house…” Lorie said grimly.

  “And the black monster truck they’re riding in,” Michael finished. “Definitely not regulation. Even I know that. It’s all wrong.”

  “It could be just coincidence,” Liz said, suddenly afraid.

  “Is that a coincidence?” Michael asked. They had just backed up to the interstate ramp. He pointed out his window at the pile of cars blocking the ramp.

  Liz gasped. “That’s Rick’s car!” she exclaimed.

  Sure enough, a red Mustang was among the tangle of vehicles on the ramp. Small, black dots marred the bright red paint job. They were bullet holes.

  “Where’s Rick?” Liz cried.

  “Probably dead,” Michael said matter-of-factly. He was suddenly glad Lorie had convinced him to pick the two siblings up. If Liz hadn’t been in the car, he and Lorie would have been naively following the other truck to their deaths.

  Again, Liz was taken aback by Michael’s bluntness.

  “But,” Lorie turned and said, “I wouldn’t shed much of a tear for him. Remember, he left you two to die.”

  “Watch out!” Jeffrey called out from the backseat. “They’re gaining on us!”

  Indeed, as Michael turned his attention away from the road behind them, he could see that the monster black truck was getting closer. The truck’s lights flashed them.

  “Right,” Michael said sarcastically. “We’re not going to stop for you.” He continued backing his truck. He knew he should have turned the truck around. They couldn’t make much speed this way, but he was also afraid that if he took the time to turn around, then Handley and Sealy would be on top of them in moments.

  “How are we going to get on the interstate?” Liz asked from the backseat. “They have the ramp completely blocked off.”

  “Easy fix,” Michael reassured them as he backed the truck under the overpass they had just driven through minutes ago. They were once again looking up at the message, “The End is HERE.”

  “But what if they really are army?” Lorie asked.

  “Then, they shouldn’t pursue us,” Michael said. “We pose no threat to them or their city. We haven’t done anything wrong. We just want to go home.”

  Glancing to his left, Michael put the truck back into drive and inadvertently squealed the tires as he sped up the interstate northbound exit ramp. Going the opposite direction of normal traffic, Michael successfully drove onto I-75 and started heading south on the wrong side of the interstate. Multiple red signs blared, “Wrong Way.”

  He watched in his rearview mirror as the black truck turned on the ramp behind them and continued pursuing them.

  “They’re still behind us,” Jeffrey said with panic.

  “Yes, I see them,” Michael acknowledged, pressing down on the accelerator.

  There were a few abandoned cars on the interstate facing north, and since Michael was traveling south in the northbound lanes, it looked odd. It was as if they were paddling upstream against the flowing current.

  As soon as he spotted one of the emergency-vehicle turnaround places on the median, which the police loved to use to sit and catch people speeding, he swung the truck through and was no longer disobeying the traffic laws. At least now he wouldn’t get a ticket for going the wrong way down the interstate.

  Handley and Sealy followed.

  Out on the open interstate, Michael pressed his truck as fast as it would go. The needle started approaching 110 mph. But no matter how fast he raced south, the black truck was steadily gaining on them. Even though his truck was an eight-cylinder powerhouse, they could not outrun the other truck, since his vehicle was weighted down with four human passengers, one dog, and lots of supplies and personal belongings.

  Looking apprehensively out the back window, Liz cried, “What are we going to do? They’re going to catch us!”

  Jeffrey then said, “Sealy is leaning out the window and pointing his assault rifle at us!”

  Michael’s mind raced with his options. If he stopped the truck, they were all dead. If he continued to race down the interstate at this speed, an accident was inevitable. Either he would lose control at this speed, or Handley would try to run them off the road. And glancing in the mirror, he saw Sealy aiming his gun at them.

  They were in the middle of farm country. The interstate was completely straight and flat. The black truck was now so close that all Michael could see in his rearview mirror was the truck’s blaring headlights.

  Up ahead, he saw a small car, an older-model Volkswagen Bug, blocking their lane. At their current speed, they were approaching the car rapidly.

  “Hold on!” Michael shouted.

  Michael didn’t slow down, and he didn’t change lanes to go around the Bug.

  “What are you doing?” Lorie said with fright.

  He was bearing down on the Volkswagen with Handley right on his tail. He was going to crash. Everyone in the truck started to scream. He realized he was screaming too. At the very last second, he twisted the wheel sharply to the left and then held his breath.

  There was a horrible crash as they collided with the Volkswagen. It was the loudest noise Michael had ever heard. It was louder than the crash of the lightning bolt that had hit a tree next to his house last summer. Metal scraped against metal, and Michael knew his life was over. Any second and he expected to be thrown through the fractured windshield and deposited in an unidentifiable mess of body parts yards from the remains of his truck.

  But none of that happened. The truck was still intact, and he fought the wheel to keep it from rolling off the road. Unbelievably, they had barely cleared the rear bumper of the Volkswagen by a mere inch.

  The deafening sound of metal on metal occurred as Handley, who had not been able to see the disabled vehicle, did not have enough time to react and evade the Volkswagen. Handley and Sealy slammed into the rear of the Volkswagen. At that insane speed, their black truck flipped multiple times after impact and rolled over into the embankment, throwing parts in every direction. It was over for both Handley and Sealy, or whoever they were. Sealy was instantly propelled through the front windshield of the truck and decapitated by the glass. Handley’s rib cage connected with the steering column and collapsed, crushing both his heart and lungs.

  Everyone stared wordlessly out the back window as what remained of Handley’s black truck finally rolled to a stop. Pieces of truck and Volkswagen littered the interstate. It wasn’t even discernible which metal part belonged to which vehicle.

  Michael drove for five more miles until he noticed Lorie looking at his hands. Taking his eyes off the road, Michael glanced down and saw that his hands on the steering wheel were visibly shaking.

  Finding a good spot along the side of the road, he slowed to a stop and turned off the engine.

  “I need a little break,” Michael said to the rest of the passengers. “Jeffrey, if you don’t mind, could you take Sandy to the grass over there to pee?”

  “Sure,” Jeffrey said, rubbing the top of Sandy’s head.

  “Just stay within eyesight,” Liz warned.

  They all got out of the car, and Michael grabbed the rifle just in case. By himself, he walked on unsteady legs over to the side of the road, down the embankment, then about halfway up a little hill. There, he sat heavily on the grass facing the interstate with the rifle r
esting on his lap. He felt as if his whole body were violently shaking, and he could not seem to get it under control. He didn’t know if it was the adrenaline racing through his bloodstream, stress, or the fact that he had just barely escaped death’s grip. Mentally, he felt weak. He felt as though he were fading away like a ghost. His thoughts were confused and unfocused.

  Watching up and down the road, Michael tried to calm himself and regain control.

  Lorie and Liz got some water out of the truck. Lorie glanced at Michael but decided that it was best to leave him alone for the moment. Jeffrey and Sandy returned, and the dog gladly lapped up some water that Lorie poured in her bowl. After a few minutes, she got another bottle of water and started to make her way toward Michael.

  Michael watched her from his perch on the side of the road. He was thankful they were together right now. If there was one woman at the end of days that he would most prefer to be next to, it was her. Like a comforting angel, she seemed to glide up the hill. Drawing near, Michael was once again stunned by how beautiful she was. She offered him the water.

  “Thanks,” he said, gratefully taking the bottle from her. As he unscrewed the cap and took a drink, he realized how parched his throat was. The water felt cold and soothing.

  Lorie sat down beside him.

  “I hope it isn’t all this way,” Michael said.

  “All what way?” Lorie asked.

  “You know,” Michael started. “That only the bad people are left; that there are no good people remaining.”

  “Nah,” Lorie said. “The good are still out there. They’re just hunkering down, waiting for things to settle.”

  “Maybe if they wait long enough, all the bad people will end up killing each other.”

  “That would be nice,” Lorie agreed.

  Michael looked down the road as it disappeared into the distance. “You know we came really close to dying back there.”

  Lorie sighed. “Yeah, I know. I was scared to death. In fact, I would want to die rather than be captured and held as a sex slave for some Neanderthal men. But I trust you to take care of us. We all do,” she said, nodding toward the siblings and Sandy. “And so far, you have taken care of us. Look! I don’t have a scratch on me.”

  Michael took another drink of water. Lorie was having a calming effect on him. It was either the water or Lorie, but he started to feel a little more normal. His hands weren’t shaking, and his legs weren’t quivering. He felt more…solid.

  Finishing his bottle of water, Michael got to his feet. Looking at Lorie, he asked, “Ready?”

  Standing beside him, Lorie said, “You bet. I want to get as far away from Lima as we can.”

  They walked back down the embankment and rejoined the others. Packing everyone into the truck, Michael walked around to the driver’s side. As he passed by the back window, he noticed two bullet holes in the frame just inches from the window. Sealy must have gotten a few rounds off, and by the looks of it, if the bullets had been two to three inches to the right, either Jeffrey or Michael would have been dead. Shaking off his realization of just how narrowly they had escaped death once again, Michael got behind the wheel with a little more confidence. Maybe, just maybe, they might make it. He put the truck in gear and rolled out onto the interstate, heading south, toward home.

  Having made this journey many times over the past few years, Michael knew there were no major cities between Lima and Dayton. There weren’t even any small towns. It was mostly just flat, boring farmland until the outskirts of the city. Dayton itself wasn’t a large city, but Michael didn’t know what was lying in wait for them. He would take one step at a time. For now, he would concentrate on the first leg of the journey—getting to Dayton. At the posted speed limit of sixty-five miles per hour, the trip usually took about an hour and fifteen minutes.

  However, for safety reasons, Michael tried to maintain the truck speed around forty-five miles per hour by setting the cruise control. He wanted to go faster, but with unexpected obstacles springing up in front of them, such as abandoned cars and trash in the middle of the freeway, he reluctantly kept the truck speed down. His foot would hover over the brake pedal as they went around a curb or crested a small hill, just in case there was some obstruction ahead that they couldn’t see.

  “Why are all these cars left empty in the middle of the freeway?” Jeffrey asked from the backseat as Michael drove around an old Buick sitting abandoned in the middle lane.

  “I think some of them just simply ran out of gas,” Michael replied. “Since most gas stations are either out of gas or have no power, people probably drove, hoping they’d have enough to get where they wanted to go.”

  “Or maybe they just drove until they ran out,” Lorie added.

  “Wouldn’t it be cool if we ran into a Ferrari out of gas? I’d be sure to bring that car home with me,” Jeffrey said excitedly.

  “Good luck with that,” Michael said, smiling at his naïveté.

  They didn’t see a living soul for the first hour and a half. The freeway was as empty and bleak as a desert. The only movement they saw was the swaying of trees on the wayside and the rippling of fields of wheat in the breeze. Drawing nearer to Dayton, they began to see more vehicles stopped in the road. At times, Michael had to weave the truck in between abandoned cars like he was driving through some sort of obstacle course.

  They arrived at the outskirts of the city of Dayton around midafternoon. The number of broken-down cars increased in the northbound lane. Again, people must have been trying to escape the city, but as to where they might be headed, Michael and the rest had no idea. They had passed nothing of interest on their journey south. Fortunately, the southbound lane leading into the city was still clear of any major traffic jams. Apparently, no one had been eager to travel into the city. They had all been trying to get out. Between the virus and marauders, the cities had become death traps.

  It was Lorie who first spotted the group of eight people. With the increase in wrecked or abandoned vehicles, Michael had to drop the speed of the truck even lower in order to navigate around the obstacles. As he drove around a broken-down Honda, he saw the overturned eighteen-wheeler ahead. The big truck had jackknifed and was now lying across the southbound lane of I-75, blocking both lanes.

  Michael braked to get a better look at what lay ahead.

  Studying the wreck from her vantage point, Lorie said, “I think there’s enough room to get around on the right side. You may have to go off the road and down the grass a little. But it looks clear.”

  “Well, it’s no good on the left side,” Michael said. “The cab of the eighteen-wheeler has completely blocked that side of the road and is pinned against the concrete divider. On the other side of the divider, the median slopes down too much. If I try to go down that slope, I run the risk of rolling the truck. The only other option is to backtrack to a place that has an emergency turnaround and try the other side of the freeway.”

  He didn’t feel like going back, so he steered the truck over to the right. As Lorie had said, there seemed to be plenty of room to go around. Michael eased the truck off the black pavement, and they bumped and rolled across the uneven terrain. The truck tilted to the right as he drove across the slope. But soon enough, they were back on the asphalt as Michael angled the truck around the eighteen-wheeler.

  “Michael, look!” Lorie said, pointing over to his left.

  Michael followed her finger and looked over at the northbound lane. He immediately saw movement. A group of eight weary people were walking along the freeway breakdown lane heading north. There were men and women of varying ages in the group, and they each had packs loaded on their backs. Rolls of sleeping backs were tied to the bottom of each backpack.

  The leader in front lifted his head and took notice of Michael’s truck. The tired man slowly raised his hand in greeting. Hesitantly, Michael responded and raised his hand back. The man dropped his head back down and continued leading the group north. A few people behind him looked up at Michae
l’s truck and then, like their leader, continued on their way.

  “I wonder where they’re heading,” Liz said from the backseat directly behind Michael.

  “There’s nothing back the way we came,” Michael observed. “It’s just miles and miles of farmland and pasture.”

  “Maybe one of them knows of a farm that has food and safe refuge,” Jeffrey suggested.

  “That’s the only thing I can think of. There’s not even a town located between here and Lima.” Michael let the truck roll slowly forward while watching the group trudge onward.

  “There may be some town back there that’s not located right on I-75. It may be a few miles off of the actual interstate,” Lorie suggested.

  “We could ask them,” Jeffrey offered.

  “Or we could ask them about the conditions in Dayton,” Liz said. “They must know, since they just came from there.”

  Michael watched the group of travelers in his side mirror. “Unfortunately, the median is too steep to get to their side of the freeway, and I don’t think we can afford the time to try to find a way to get over to them. It would sure be nice to know what we’re driving into before we get there.”

  Jeffrey leaned forward in his seat. “Except for that group of people, we haven’t seen anyone else. Just how many people do you think are still alive?”

  “It’s hard to say without any news broadcasts,” Michael said, and then he continued thoughtfully. “I would have to guess from what news we did see before everything went black that about eighty percent of the population caught the flu virus. Of that group of infected people, the death rate may be as high as ninety-five percent. Unfortunately, most people who caught the flu died.”

  “Eighty percent of the population is gone?” Liz gasped.

  Michael continued. “After that it’s just a guessing game. I assume that people who needed continuous medical care, like dialysis patients, hospitalized patients, and people in nursing homes were some of the first nonflu fatalities. Then, when people who require medications for their asthma, blood pressure, diabetes, or other chronic illnesses run out of their current prescription medications, they will die. That is, unless they can get access to a pharmacy. But I suspect, from seeing what happened to our little pharmacy in town, that most stores have been broken into and ransacked already.”