The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here

by Rounds, Mark

  “Heather and the kids are gone Paul,” said Chad as he backed away slowly. His pistol was in his hand but down by his side. Connor had come around the other side of the truck. He hadn’t been carrying a weapon but had picked up Heather’s son Jason’s aluminum baseball bat.

  “Hey Connor, easy with that bat,” said Paul as he turned to face Connor.

  “Just loading it up Mr. McKennsey, along with all of Jason’s other stuff.”

  “Where is my son?” said Paul.

  “Not here!” said Connor who took two steps back and brought the bat up in front of himself.

  Chad brought the .45 up into a combat stance. This time, it was cocked and locked. He flicked the safety off.

  “Paul, leave now,” said Chad in what he hoped was a command voice. “You are sick and contagious. The best thing for all of us is for you to just go away.”

  “But, I need help,” said Paul looking lost. “Amanda … bit me. I thought she was just being kinky but it really hurt. I tried to take care of her but she threw me out. She threw me out of my own house! Then her friends showed up. They were druggies and worse and they were all sick. I left and went to a friend’s house, couch surfing you know, but I got … well you know, so they, they threw me out.”

  “Paul, there is no cure,” said Chad. “Please go away. I will shoot you if I have to.”

  “Chad, we’ve been friends for years! How could you shoot me?!”

  Chad was backing towards the door of the condo, but he really wasn’t ready to shoot a friend yet. The next sound he heard was the action of a Winchester Model 94 lever action rifle seating a cartridge into the chamber. A quick glance back confirmed that Heather had stepped into the doorway and was effectively blocking entry into the condo.

  “Chad may not shoot you,” said Heather as she aimed her rifle at Paul’s head, “but I sure as hell will.”

  “Heather! Sweetheart!” said Paul but Heather cut him off.

  “Don’t you dare ‘sweetheart’ me you two timing worm. Not after you and that lawyer friend of yours took nearly everything I owned, threatened to have me declared an unfit mother to get me to cave-in, and then you promptly forgot the kid’s birthdays, Christmas gifts, and sports events. They missed you, even Jason cried when you didn’t show up for his soccer games. So Git! Run! I don’t ever want to see your face again!”

  Paul looked uncertain, confused, and then stepped forward with open arms, trying to embrace Heather.

  He took a single step and then grew another eye in the middle of his forehead. The 30-30 slug carried all the way through and carried a sizeable piece of Paul’s skull out the back. Heather pumped two more rounds into him before he hit the ground still looking confused, but the first one had done the job.

  Mary came up from behind as Heather started to sob, took the rifle and safed it, setting it aside as she gathered Heather into her arms.

  Connor, who had moved out of the line of fire once Heather had appeared, was behind the truck being noisily sick.

  Chad opened his cell phone and called 911. It rang for a very long time until someone answered.

  “Benton Country 911, what’s the emergency?” said a much harried sounding dispatcher.

  “Paul McKennsey has been shot,” said Chad and gave the address.

  “Is he infected and was he threatening?”

  “Yes, we tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t leave. He came at his wife and she shot him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Look, I am working three other shootings right now. I need to be on the phone with them. All our patrol cars are out. I can’t say when someone will be there, but someone will. Don’t touch the body.”

  With that, the dispatcher cut the connection.

  Chad looked over at his wife who had Heather in her arms and was comforting here. She mouthed “Stay out for a bit” as she guided Heather back into the house.

  Chad looked over at Connor who was white-faced but standing again.

  “Son, the cops won’t be here for a while. Let’s you and I finish loading. I want to be out of here before dark.”

  May 21st, Thursday, 9:41 pm PDT.

  Special Agent Macklin was boarding the charted Cessna Citation X+ executive jet. The only way he had been able to bribe his way on was with large amounts of money from his expense account plus the almost unheard of clearance for the plane to fly direct to College Park Airport, just outside of Washington DC. Even then, the only reason the pilot had gone along with the idea was because he was from Virginia and had been grounded at the Tri-Cities Airport for the last two weeks.

  The owners of the jet, wine aficionados who had recently discovered Washington and Oregon wines, were ensconced in their wine country getaway home south of Sunnyside and were not planning to leave. They had given the pilot permission to find a way home if he could. The pilot had been staying at the Red Lion Inn but there was no food in the restaurant as of yesterday and few members of the staff were coming to work. On top of that, many of the rooms were being filled by squatters and the infected so he was motivated to leave.

  He wasn’t sure what his employers had meant when they said that he would be “stuck there” but given their past history, he was willing to bet it would be unpleasant.

  Chapter 12

  May 22nd, Friday, 07:54am PDT.

  Chris was making the rounds of the security posts at the high school. When he was a kid, he had read about a place in England, Bethlem Royal Hospital, popularly called Bedlam. The last three days had given him an appreciation of what that place must have been like.

  The number of patients had skyrocketed from forty the first day to five hundred the second day. The third day had doubled that and the next day had been worse yet. There had been another hundred or more today and it wasn’t even eight am. All told, there were over two thousand patients with varying stages of the disease and the number of caregivers dropped every day as some decided that they needed to be home with their families more than they needed the paycheck.

  A few National Guard medics and other medical technicians had come on board but the growth in the number of patients had driven them all to distraction. Patients were only being fed twice a day despite their ravening hunger. Sedatives were being rationed as they were running out and now used only for the most violent so there was a constant din of screams and pleadings for care or release. Sanitation was primitive at best and the place stank of urine and vomit. Every day, there were patients who had died. They had made a preliminary investigation of the first few. The causes of death were generally dehydration, strangulation from restraints, and traumatic injury from the thrashing and spasming that came on in the end stages of the disease. Now, they had lost forty or more just last night and it was all they could do to get them hauled away.

  His security detail had been augmented by a squad of National Guard troops and a couple of retired state troopers. In spite of his best efforts, four patients had been shot, three fatally and one officer had been bitten. While he was not yet symptomatic, he was put on leave and was under observation in a classroom not far from where Chris was standing.

  Chris was dog tired. His quarters were on site and with the noise, there was no sleep. Whatever time he had free, he spent in Amber’s room. It was no longer her private room as she now shared her room with five other female patients. Surprisingly, the reading aloud had gone on. The other female patients wanted to hear the story and even though they were becoming more and more involved with the disease, the gentle voice and the engaging story tended to calm them. Experiments were tried in other wards with books on CD over the public address system, but it seemed that only a live reader had an impact so in some of the smaller rooms, family members might read to calm the patients.

  Chris had also made sure that Amber was fed as often as he could. Lately, that meant that he was giving her most of the food he was given as well as whatever he was able to con out of the army types who now ran the cafeteria. It see
med to be working. It could be his imagination, but her fever was down and she seemed to be more lucid. He had grabbed a can of Spam when nobody was looking and after he finished his rounds, he took it back and shared it among the women in Amber’s room. She was being stubborn and wouldn’t accept extra food so he had used the subterfuge that he was supplementing everyone’s food.

  It was shift change so he had a couple of hours to read to Amber. After she went to sleep he could crash for a few hours of rest and maybe, if the earplugs worked, some sleep.

  “How are you feeling today?” asked Chris in the most upbeat voice he could manage. “I got some Spam from the cafeteria.”

  “If it’s Ok with you,” said Amber, “I’d rather not. When I was a kid, my grandmother would make Spam with pineapple like they used to show on the labels and the smell of it still makes me gag.”

  This brought Chris up short. In the last three days, Amber had eaten everything from canned lima beans to instant vanilla pudding. His conversations with Chad said that reduced appetite was an early sign of remission.

  “Sure, I hate the stuff myself,” said Chris as he cut up the contents of the can and passed it around to the other females in the room. He was careful, using a different plastic fork for each of the women who ranged in age from 19 to 45. At that, one of them chomped down on the fork and wouldn’t let it go. Chris just left it and used another.

  “So are you up for a little more of The Hobbit?”

  “Chris, I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you think I am crazy.”

  “I don’t think …”

  “No, let me finish. I don’t want you to think I am crazy because I have been these last few days. But lately, the voices in my head have begun to die down. I feel better; maybe even good. But I still hear things. Some of these things I hear are indescribably evil; others are almost like orders or compulsions. Something bad is going to happen today. You have to get me out of here! The voices said they are coming for me and that I shouldn’t hide. What should I do?”

  Chris was about to speak when the women in the room with them, who had been quiet up till that moment began to moan and thrash against their restraints. One of the patients in Amber’s room was a quiet, petite, twenty-three year old school teacher named Courtney who had been the most lucid and articulate of the group other than Amber and the most interested in the story Chris was reading. Without warning Courtney began to contort her body to grab at Amber.

  “Noooooooo,” wailed Courtney. “They come, they come, and we must be ready!”

  Chris looked at Amber; there was real fear in her eyes.

  “No, Chris, please get me out of here!” screamed Amber. “I can’t wait for them. What they want is … wrong!”

  Chris hesitated. He wanted to help her but he had seen too many cases where an infected patient had a moment of lucidity and convinced a friend or a family member that they could be released. It all too often resulted in a shooting or another person bitten and infected.

  “Chris, if you can’t let me go, I understand,” said Amber suddenly calm. “But if you have to keep me restrained, shoot me. I will not be a party to what they want. I have been a cop too long. Let me go or shoot me, but don’t leave me here!”

  Chris made a snap decision. He grabbed his Leatherman that he kept on his belt and used the saw blade to start cutting Amber’s restraints. It was slow going and Courtney was able to get a hand partially free and was able to grasp the radio on Chris’s web belt. He smacked her hand away with his baton and finished the job faster than he thought possible.

  Amber was unsteady on her feet. Her once athletic frame looked frail and gaunt but she was game and broke for the door. Her hospital gown was somewhat revealing. Chris saw several lesions but they all appeared to be healing. He could only dare hope that she was getting better. Chris grabbed a sheet and his jacket as they headed for the door and wrapped her in the sheet.

  Out in the hall, they both could hear the patients throughout the building began to howl and scream. Before Chris had thought the noise was painful, but now it sounded coordinated and truly dreadful. Care givers and family members were running out of all the exits.

  In the rush to get Amber out of harm’s way, they almost ran down Corporal Howard, Chris’s number two.

  “Are you sure boss?” said Howard looking from Amber to Chris and back.

  “I haven’t got time to explain but I need to get her out of here. She is in remission and once that happens, they vanish. I have to get her somewhere safe.”

  “Where did you get that little factoid?”

  “Dr. Chad Strickland, you know, the Dead Head.”

  “Well it’s a cinch this place isn’t safe. Listen to that.”

  They could hear screams and the breaking of furniture and other, more gruesome sounds.

  “Look, I didn’t see you and I don’t know from nothing,” said Howard. “Get her out of here, but come back. Somebody has to keep a lid on this and I don’t have the horsepower.”

  With that Howard ran off, shotgun at the ready. Chris hustled Amber out into the parking lot. The gravel hurt her bare and swollen feet but she didn’t complain. They got to his cruiser and he put her in the driver’s seat. He handed her the keys and had her start the car. The radio was screaming with pleas for help from the folks inside the building.

  Chris was torn. He very much wanted to drive her to a safe place and hide from all the mayhem but he knew he would rue the day he left fellow officers in a tough spot when he could help.

  He thought for a split second and then handed Amber his Glock handgun.

  “Stay down and cover up, ok?” said Chris and Amber started to protest. “You are in no shape to help and you would be surely shot as one of the infected so stay here. Hang around for a bit but if I don’t come out in say an hour or if you hear me on the radio telling you to run, head to the Stricklands’. He is the one of the guys who interviewed us, remember?”

  “I won’t leave you to be killed!” said Amber.

  “I won’t be. All we need to do is keep the lid on here long enough to get the National Guard in here. But if they find you in the car, they will shoot you. If it looks like I can’t drive you out quickly enough, we can meet there. Tell Chad that you are in remission. He will take care of you.”

  “Where does this Strickland character live?”

  Chris quickly programmed the GPS in the car with the address.

  “Remember, go there and tell Chad you are in remission. You remember him right?”

  “I love you!” said Amber and then she looked embarrassed. “I just had to say it in case I never saw you again. You have to do this, I know, so go, be a hero. Then come back to me.”

  Chris moved to embrace Amber but she retreated.

  “No, Chris,” she said sadly. “We think I am in remission but I could still be contagious or worse. The last thing it the world I want is for you to get this … thing!”

  “Damn, I love you too,” said Chris backing off. “I didn’t realize it until right now, but I’ll be back and we will make up for lost time!”

  Chris popped the trunk lid of his cruiser and took out his AR-15 with the extra ammo he kept back there. He was pretty sure he was going to need it. Before he lost his nerve, he slammed the trunk and then the car door, blew Amber a kiss. He headed back toward the school at a run while using his radio.

  “Howard, what is the situation in there?” said Chris.

  He was so engrossed in trying to get a handle on the tactical situation that he didn’t see Amber’s tears as she covered up and tried to make herself as small as she could in the foot well of the cruiser.

  May 22nd, Friday, 08:47am PDT.

  Phil Laumer was in his office trying to get some work done. With the layoffs and furloughs, he was all the IT staff that Battelle had left in the Tri-Cities. Thankfully, there were less than fifty people left working and all of them in his building. He was trying to review log data from internet traffic but there was little to
look at and all of it was routine, research scientists looking up references, maps, a few reports from other agencies, and personal e-mails.

  Phil leaned back to stretch his neck with his coffee cup in hand. The company had stopped providing free coffee on Thursday when they had run out, but Phil had his own private stash. It was instant and not very good but it would do to keep him functional for a few days. He worried what would happen when that ran out. His wife had been after him to cut back, maybe it wouldn’t be an issue anymore as her last shopping trip had been a bust with no coffee and very little food.

  The alert manager in HP Openview suddenly started beeping like mad. Phil clicked on the alert and found that someone was doing a very aggressive port scan on their firewall. Most probes were rejected. However some were coming from trusted governmental sources and they were getting some packets through. Without thinking, Phil hit the shut down for the internet connection, but it was already too late. The proxy server was compromised and a port was opened. In the few seconds that the net connection was open, a logic bomb was down loaded into the system.

  Phil called Herb Burnside who was coordinating security for the much reduced lab.

  “Herb, we got a problem,” said Phil as he isolated the most recent backup.

  “What do you have Phil?”

  “Someone used a bot net to scan all of our ports then they slipped a Trojan into the proxy server from a trusted box. They had maybe thirty seconds to download something onto our network. I think it’s a logic bomb based on the fact that my alert manager looks like a Christmas tree.”

  “Phil, slow down and speak English.”

  Phil rolled his eyes.

  “The blue smoke is coming out of the magic boxes.”

  “Funny, what should we do?”

  “I have isolated the backup,” said Phil as he started shutting down servers, “but this is rapidly infecting everything. I am in the process of shutting down the network as I am talking to you. We are probably going to have to reformat everything and restore to a known good copy. Probably lose a day’s work, maybe more.”