by Lundy, W. J.
“I’ll figure one out. You’re not coming with me?”
“If I do, they’ll lock down my access if they get pissed off. You might need me to break you out.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Leonard.”
He led her to a staff elevator and swiped his card. The door opened, and they stepped in. He swiped his card through another reader and pressed two buttons. The doors slid shut, and they rode up to the third floor.
“Here’s where I get out,” Leonard said. “Good luck.”
He stepped out of the elevator, and the doors slid shut again. The elevator continued its upward journey and Sarah felt butterflies in her stomach, and not only from the motion of the lift.
The doors opened on a sterile white hallway. Sarah walked out and looked left and right. To the right, she saw a central desk and several soldiers around it. Beyond that, she saw a pair of soldiers guarding a room, one standing on either side of the doorway.
“What are you doing on my floor?”
She turned to face a soldier with the name “Duckett” on his uniform. The insignia on his shoulder told her he was a sergeant.
You’re getting better with this Army stuff, she thought.
“Sergeant Duckett, I need to see a patient named Washburn. I have information about his family, and the Brass wants to make sure he gets it. They think it’ll help with his morale and all that.”
Duckett squinted at her. “What Brass?”
She bluffed, “I don’t know, could be MacFarlane for all I know. My NCO told me to deliver a message. He didn’t tell me who ordered him to deliver it.”
“Give me the message. I’ll see he gets it.”
“Negative. I have to report back on this. Can’t do that if I don’t deliver the message myself.”
“And you are?”
She searched her memory for the name she used on the sign in sheet downstairs. “Melanie Gibson, First Civilian Division.”
“Must be an important message if they’re sending civvies,” he said, the sarcasm heavy in his voice.
“I’m used to it, Sergeant. We do a lot of the running around while you regulars run the show. It’s the order of things these days.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. Look, can I just get this done? It’s not like he’s a flight risk like that Ram guy. I want to get back to base.”
Duckett looked taken aback that she knew details about the other patients in Alpha Wing. “How’d you know about Ram?”
She gambled and nodded toward the guarded room. “You have him under guard. He’s shitting in a bedpan from what I hear, because you won’t even let him up to use the bathroom. Do you think Command isn’t getting updates on what’s going on here?”
“Dr. Sanjay must be updating them,” he mused.
“I suppose so. I’ve heard that name tossed around a lot lately, but I’m not in the room all the time, you know? Can I go?”
Duckett relented. “Yeah, come with me.”
He led her down the hall to a room a few doors down from the one Ram, the escape artist, was staying behind.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me this is for his ears only,” Duckett grunted.
“You’d suppose right.”
“Okay. Five minutes, no more. And then I want you off my floor, you understand?”
“Yes, Sergeant. Thank you.”
He opened the door and walked into the room in front of Sarah. “Hey, Jack, you have a visitor. Melanie Gibson. She’s got info about your family. I’ll give you guys five minutes, okay?”
Jack looked confused, but responded with “Yeah, Duckett. Thanks.”
Sarah waited until Duckett left the room before she rushed to Jack’s side. She was shocked to see a plastic barrier surrounding his bed. Hazmat suits hung in the corner.
Jack saw her eying the suits. “Don’t bother. By the time you get it on, Duckett will be in here to escort you out. It’s so good to see you, Sarah—I mean, Melanie. Gibson was it? Mel Gibson? Nice one. I thought I’d never get to see you again.”
She shrugged. “No one gets my movie-based jokes around here. How are you doing? Do they think they can cure you?”
“I’m not convinced they’re trying. They’ve drawn more blood than I think is safe to take in two weeks. They feed me well so that I can make more for them, and I get some exercise time. Honestly, it feels like I’m in prison.”
She noticed for the first time that restraints held his wrists to the bed rails. “Why are you restrained?”
“I, um, started scratching at my scalp. I think it was just nervous behavior, but because of everything, they didn’t want to take chances. It’s frustrating because I can’t change the channel on the TV, and they’re playing this stuff on a loop. This is like the fifth time I’ve seen this stupid Judge Judy episode about this STUPID ROTTWEILER!” Jack shouted the last part, more than spoke it. He leaned forward and wrestled his hands against the restraints. The pillow behind his head was streaked with blood.
The sight of the blood shook Sarah, but she still tried to calm him down. “Easy, Jack. I don’t like that show either, but don’t hurt yourself over it.”
“I’m sorry. I get angry really easy lately.” He seemed genuinely puzzled by that behavior change. “I don’t know whether it’s the stuff they’ve been injecting me with, or if I’m going stir crazy, but everything seems to be on my last nerve all of a sudden.”
“What are they injecting you with?” Sarah asked. “You said they weren’t trying to cure you; they were taking blood, not injecting you with anything.”
“Maybe it’s both? They won’t tell me what it is. They just say it will help with the urges.”
“What urges?”
Jacks face grew sad. “It’s so good to see you, Sarah. I thought I’d never get to see you again.”
“Jack, I…” she started, but a knock at the door stopped her. Duckett stuck his head in the room.
“Time’s up, Gibson. Let’s go,” he commanded.
Jack smiled again. “Gibson,” he said. “I like that name.”
“You take care, Jack,” Sarah replied, not wanting to say anything more familiar with Duckett listening from the doorway.
As she left the room and followed Duckett back to the elevator, her emotions were roiling inside. Jack was slipping away. Right after his outburst, he seemed…different. And he wasn’t acting. The bloody streaks, the anger, the restraints, it could only mean one thing. The disease was progressing. She mumbled some words of thanks to Duckett before getting on the elevator and riding back to the lobby level.
She replayed that last part in her head, the part when he repeated that it was good to see her. He said it when she asked about the “urges” he was having. He was changing the subject. Was he saying goodbye? She wasn’t sure, but she had a good idea what urges he was having, and it broke her heart.
Sarah found a medic that was going back to Fort Bliss and caught a ride with him. She held herself together until she got back to her bunk, and then she lay down and cried.
49
Georgetown, Washington, DC
April 15th
“Washington, DC is under a mandatory evacuation order,” the mayor’s voice intoned from the blank television screen.
The networks had stopped broadcasting live video coverage two weeks ago. Then, for the next two days, it was a live voice, but no video—only a picture of the DC Metro area with concentric rings of red emanating from just south of Dupont Circle. Sidney had determined, more or less, that her hypothesis of the hospitals being ground zero in the capital was correct.
Finally, last night, a twenty-minute recorded message replaced the reporters’ voices. The mayor’s message had not deviated from the original one they’d heard when the broadcast first downgraded. Everyone was ordered out of DC, to go south to Atlanta, if possible, or north to New York City. Assurances were made that proper safeguards would be taken to keep the infection quarantined, but it was up to the individual citizens to make it to t
he quarantine zones. No mention was ever made of the military or of their response. It was as if they didn’t even exist.
Outside, the infected continued to roam the streets. It wasn’t the large mob that Sidney had seen at her apartment building, but there were enough of them that she and Lincoln didn’t feel like risking an escape at the moment, so they decided to wait things out at his place for a couple of weeks. They had enough food, and two weeks would allow enough time for the quarantine zones to be established and hopefully free up some of the traffic on the roads.
The power was still on, for now, so they could get Internet access and watch movies. They spent a lot of time having sex, whether it was from boredom, frustration, or some other reason, Sidney didn’t know. Her overwhelming desire for physical intimacy on the day she’d faced the infected had faded away, but she still felt the urge, so she usually initiated things with her partner, who, she’d determined, was not as smart and funny as she’d initially thought him to be.
Sure, he could carry on a conversation if she led it, so Lincoln wasn’t an absolute blockhead, but if he’d ever had an original idea, he sure as hell didn’t share it with her.
She glanced up from the notebook that she was scribbling on, using her cell phone to map their route to Atlanta. Lincoln sat on the couch, checking news websites like she’d directed him to do. She felt bad that she’d just thought of him as an idiot; that wasn’t fair to the guy. He’d accepted her into his home and was sharing his food with her—food that he wouldn’t have had if she hadn’t devised a plan for him to go get food while she went for the survival supplies, but the point was moot.
On a positive note, Rick James had actually taken a liking to Lincoln. The cat followed him everywhere he went and preferred to sit with him on the couch than with her at the table, which was understandable since his chairs were hardwood.
She returned to her mapping project and after a few more minutes, she stood and carried the notebook over to where Lincoln sat. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how we should go to get down to Atlanta,” she said. “It’s not the most direct route and will add about two or three hours if we’re driving, probably a couple of days if we’re unlucky enough to be walking.”
He looked at her scribbled notes, then back at her. “Why isn’t it the most direct route? Wouldn’t that be the safest?”
Sidney shrugged. “Maybe?” she said questioningly. “But it will probably be the most congested too. The most direct route from DC—and don’t forget about the rest of the East Coast south of the capital—is 95 south to Richmond and then take 85 southwest all the way into Atlanta.” She flipped the notebook page back to the previous page, pointing at that information.
“It’s the most direct route, with almost no chance of getting lost,” she continued. “But it goes through Richmond, the Raleigh-Durham area, Charlotte, and a bunch of other medium-to-large towns along the way. There could be groups of infected, criminals, gangs, thieves.” She pointed to the large frowny-face she’d drawn in the upper corner of the page along with the short list of negatives to the route. “I think the odds of us running into some bad shit are much less if we stay clear of cities with large hospitals and big airports.”
Before it became a recorded message, the news had confirmed her earlier fears about the infected traveling around the country by air before they got sick. They hid their symptoms and injuries, and then traveled all over the place, only to succumb to the illness anyway. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the big airports.
Except that Atlanta has one of the biggest airports in the world, a little voice in the back of her mind kept saying.
“Okay, so what’s the other way?” Lincoln asked.
She turned back to the page she’d been working on moments before. “We head west on 66, out to 81, then take that south. We’ll be between substantial mountains, following the natural flow of the land. Then, in Knoxville—which is the only big town along this route—81 becomes 40, so we stay on the same road until the highway splits about fifteen miles out of Knoxville and then we take 75 South. About twenty-five miles after that, we go due south on Tennessee-30. We’ll go into the Chattahoochee National Forest and approach Atlanta from the north.”
She tapped the page once more to her rapid sketch of Atlanta and the ring road around it. “As an added benefit, the airport is way over here on the other side of the city.”
“Okay, so how long are we talking about here?” Lincoln asked.
“It’s only about twelve hours of driving—if there’s no congestion.”
“And if we run out of gas or the roads are impassable?”
Sidney sighed and said, “The app says it’s two hundred and forty-six hours by foot.”
“So, what is that?” he said. “Ten or eleven days? That’s not too bad.”
She shook her head. “That’s straight through. It doesn’t include rest breaks or sleep, so you could easily double that, and it gets pretty steep in the Chattahoochee.”
He smiled at her and scratched her cat’s head. “Yeah, but we’re not going to run out of gas; and if we do, there will be somebody who can offer us a ride.”
“Ass, gas, or grass. Nobody rides for free,” Sidney murmured, repeating a line she’d heard many times during her years in the Peace Corps.
“What’s that?”
“It means that nobody is gonna do something for us out of the kindness of their hearts. They’re going to want gas or supplies, or sexual favors, for their help.”
“No. This is America. We—”
She laughed at him. “I know life over here in Georgetown was different than over where I live—and I’m not even in a bad part of DC—but come on. You can’t be that sheltered, Linc.”
“I’m not sheltered.”
“You just tried to say that people would help us because Americans are inherently altruistic. That’s pretty naïve.”
“I didn’t—” He stopped. “Dammit, do they train you at law school to catalogue on every detail in a conversation and pick apart the bit that you don’t agree with?”
Sidney laughed. “No. Actually, they don’t train you to that. I’m just a good listener, and I call bullshit when something doesn’t make sense.”
She turned sideways on the couch, crossing her legs underneath her. “So it’s agreed that we’ll go the back route?”
“Agreed? We didn’t even discuss it. You came over here and told me your plan,” he replied.
“Yeah. So we agree, right?” she continued.
“Uh, I guess? I mean, I’m not happy about taking the longer route, but if you think it may be safer, then why not? It’s only a couple of extra hours.”
Sidney nodded, not bothering to correct him. It could easily stretch into several extra days if the car she’d taken from the dead man ran out of gas. With everyone from the East Coast south of DC on the road to Atlanta at the same time, the gas stations would quickly run out of fuel. Once that happened, they were on their own.
The next two weeks went by without much excitement, except for two minor incidents that happened on the same day.
The eighth day after Lincoln and Sidney had holed up at his house, the trash was overflowing and beginning to smell, what with the wrappers the steak had been in and all the empty cans, so Lincoln had decided to take it out. Neither of them thought it was a particularly good thing to do, but they couldn’t stand the smell anymore. Every time Sidney went near the bags tied up at the back door, she wanted to vomit.
There were three bags of garbage. Lincoln was going to sneak them out into the front yard, drop them by the fence and be back inside within two minutes. It didn’t go as planned.
The front yard was empty, and there wasn’t any sight of the infected anywhere nearby. When Lincoln opened the door, he rushed out and caught the trash bag on a corner of the porch railing. The bag ripped, sending cans clattering loudly to the wooden porch and the cement walkway below.
Screams of rage began almost immediately, and Lincoln dr
opped the other bag, scrambling up the steps, over more of the cans. Much to Sidney’s dismay, he slammed the door and locked it.
The infected swarmed the house—or at least it felt that way to Sidney as she stood huddled in the bathroom with a kitchen knife for protection. In reality, it was probably only a few of them, beating on the side of the house and doors. One of them managed to break a window that was six feet off the ground.
To both of their credit, neither of them uttered a sound when the window broke. If they had, that probably would have been the end of them. Instead, they ended up staying in the bathroom for several hours until darkness fell.
Then the power went out, and the little nightlight that they’d had for illumination went dark. The infected outside howled in rage and confusion as the streets went completely dark.
Not long after that, the things outside left, but Lincoln and Sydney stayed in the bathroom, taking turns alternating between sleeping in the bathtub and staying awake, listening for the sounds of something inside the house.
The next morning, they cleared the house carefully. The broken window in the spare bedroom had dried blood pooled in the windowsill where the infected had obviously cut itself deeply. Sidney cautioned Lincoln not to touch the blood as he lifted the mattress off the room’s small twin bed and placed it against the window. Then he maneuvered the bedframe behind the mattress to keep it in place. The last thing they did was lock the bedroom door handle before closing it behind themselves. It wouldn’t stop a determined insane person, but it would give them a little more time to formulate their defense.
That was nine days ago. They’d gone through all of the fresh food within a few days of the power going out and were through about a third of their canned and shelf-stable foods. Sidney stood in the kitchen on weak legs as she surveyed the pantry. She’d been sick this morning, thankfully just throwing up mostly water since she hadn’t eaten anything for more than twelve hours. They couldn’t afford for her to throw up the food.
