180 Days and Counting... Series Box Set books 1 - 3

by B. R. Paulson

  Cady searched Bailey’s expression for any hint at lies, but she seemed sincere and Cady couldn’t focus on being mad while she worked to figure out what was happening.

  She nodded slowly, releasing her grasp on Bailey with shaking fingers. “What about the neighbors between us? Did you see them?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.” Bailey rubbed her upper bicep where her mother’s fingers had dug in. She shook her head. “No idea on them. The woman with the children has been gone for the month of January. I’m not sure if she’s home now or not.”

  “Okay, tomorrow we’re going to move Scott’s chickens to our coop so we don’t have to leave the property. I’ve been monitoring the news and so far, there’s only reports of a renewed flu season.” Cady placed both hands on her face and rubbed downward. “I’m sorry I acted like that Bailey. I… He just messaged me and said the timeline has changed.”

  “Is it longer out? We have more time?” Bailey’s eyes widened with hope.

  Telling her the change in status was going to be worse than Cady had counted on. “No. We only have three days. Less, if we don’t count evenings.” Cady couldn’t count the night. She had to only count on the days. He’d said three days were left to choose. That was all she had to cling to.

  Scott was gone and she had to resign herself to the fact that even if he did make it back, he had to be off limits for her and Bailey. He’d be a carrier and she had no idea what that would mean at that point.

  “Come on, let’s get something to eat. It’s my turn to beat you at Monopoly tonight.” Cady playfully wrapped her arm around Bailey’s shoulders and redirected her toward the kitchen. She pushed off what the significance of a new deadline meant. Hopefully, Bailey didn’t think anything had changed. As far as she was concerned, the property was the only place they could be.

  At the mention of the game, Bailey groaned. “Is it possible to say I’m already sick of games?”

  “No, it’s not. We’ve only opened three of them. Did you see how full that end room is of them? I got everything, even the Pie in the Face one you wanted to try last Christmas.” Cady wiggled her eyebrows. She shoved the ominous changes to the back of her mind. She didn’t want to think about the end anymore. At least for the night.

  Bailey and Cady would cling to the few days of normalcy they had left.

  ~~~

  The next night Cady sat with Bailey on the couch and turned on the local news which was followed by world news. They hadn’t needed a fire in the woodstove in a couple weeks. Cady tossed half of a blanket toward Bailey. They didn’t need a fire, but the extra warmth from the lap blanket wouldn’t be turned down either.

  “The medical community is stunned by the resurgence of the flu this season. Cases are doubling and tripling overnight. Two deaths were reported early this morning in Nevada in relation to the flu. Please, stay home, if you’re experiencing any of the following; fever, aches or body aches, rash on the skin, muscle spasms, and nausea. If you have a combination of these or even one or two, please go to your local doctor.” The brunette turned to her co-anchor. “What’s going on with the weather, Jennifer?”

  Cady pressed mute on the remote and looked to Bailey with narrowed eyes. “What are you thinking?” That had to be what it was. The mention of deaths already had to mean the influx of bodies was just around the corner.

  Bailey sighed, tucking her hands beneath her thighs. She shook her hair out of her face and then met Cady’s questioning gaze. “I think… I don’t know. Are you sure there’s nothing we can do? We just keep sitting here, waiting?”

  “Yeah, we wait as long as we need to.” Cady shook her head, regretful to tell her daughter they couldn’t help anyone. “I mean, what are we supposed to do, Bailey? If we can survive this, then maybe others can, too, and we can help the survivors.” But Cady’s tone lacked conviction. She had no doubt that Jackson had figured out a way to increase the mortality rate. She just couldn’t figure out how.

  “Mom, people are going to die out there. More than two, right?” Bailey caught her breath then plowed on. “Fix this, Mom. I’m serious.” She blinked back tears, brushing away the ones that escaped.

  “What would you have me do?” Cady watched Bailey with incredulous eyes, her jack slack.

  “I don’t know… Can you do anything?” Bailey looked at her mom with hope and despair. She didn’t seem to want to process the fact that Cady was powerless – at least to save the world. There was nothing she could do to help the world’s suffering at that point, but she was certain she wasn’t going to let her daughter die from the flu. Not while she had the vaccine in the fridge.

  She could save her daughter. At least her daughter.

  Cady reached across the small space between them, her decision was made. She just had to get Bailey to agree to it. Right then wasn’t the time to try. “There’s nothing I can do but cause widespread panic. Most of the people won’t even believe me. I don’t have all of the information yet. I’ve been researching the virus strains we talked about before, but nothing is standing out. I think he said something about it being attached to the varicella pox, but I can’t find the email thread to verify that.” She had found the thread, but they’d only talked back and forth about which strains would be the deadliest – smallpox always came out on top as best killer virus.

  Bailey wrinkled her forehead. “Varicella. You said it was like chickenpox?”

  “Right, like that.” Cady was moderately proud that she could finally say she’d done something right with her daughter. The science talk was sinking in.

  “So, you know what’s going on, but you can’t do anything. Is this what’s called a catch twenty-two?” Bailey bit her lower lip and nodded as she tried to make sense of the crazy her mom was a part of.

  Good luck with that one, Bailey. Cady shook her head, blinking back the tears. “I’m so sorry, Bailey.” There were so many things that Jackson had taken away from her daughter – marriage, college, high school graduation, a normal dating experience… dinner at the Davenport. Stupid things that all rounded out a happy life.

  Jackson had thrust fear, insecurity, and death into her life and Cady couldn’t control it. But she could at least give her the vaccine that would hopefully keep Bailey free from having to worry about suffering from the virus.

  “I can see it’s not your fault, Mom.” But Bailey’s sadness overshadowed her normally perky attitude. Did she really know it wasn’t Cady’s fault?

  Cady could feel the energy-draining expectations as they wended themselves from Bailey to cover Cady with a fog-like presence.

  She was letting Bailey down which hurt but didn’t hurt as much as failing to protect her daughter from a creep like Jackson. No matter what she did, she couldn’t keep Bailey unscathed from the mania Jackson had spread.

  Chapter 22

  The shipment waited to leave the Portland International Airport in a group of pallets uncovered on the side of the hangar. As the forklift operator worked to load each pallet into the back of the truck, his phone jangled in his pocket. He glanced around, anxious to keep his phone call out of his boss’s notice. Working the steering wheel with one hand, he answered the phone, not paying attention to where he was going with the tongs of the lift.

  Something startled him, and he jerked his hand to the right. The pointed tip of the right tong drove through the pallet on the far side of the group. Cutting through the layers of plastic wrap and more, the entire contents seemed to bulge to the side with the jerk of the lift as he struggled to pull out and not knock the shipment over.

  “Sunava…” The man parked the lift and leaned back, pulling his hat off his head and putting it back on, adjusting it as he sighed. “Great.” He would have to go clear back to the office to get some duct tape to fix the package. He was behind as it was. The truck was supposed to leave for Seattle the next morning.

  Raindrops plopped on his forehead and he gasped. Nothing was going to get done with rain drenching everything. He couldn’t let his f
orklift get wet. Nothing was worse than leaving out the equipment. He glanced furtively at the box, grateful for the excuse to not fix the box and for being behind, but also ashamed that he wasn’t going to fix the mistake. If he had to, he’d explain he had to get the lift into the hangar.

  His boss would understand that.

  He pulled the tong from the box, no longer worried about further damage and he turned the vehicle around and disappeared toward the open doors as the rain began to come faster and faster.

  No one saw the plastic that had been ripped flutter from the package and the torn cardboard flap open in the wind. The rain poured down on the scene, unwavering in its goal to make sure Portland lived up to its reputation. Sheets of water fell from the sky with insistence.

  Plastic atop the box caved under the weight of the water gathering on it, bending in as it was no longer supported by the strength of the edge that was punctured. The crease in the cardboard and plastic created a funnel of sorts and dumped the rain into the hole.

  Inside the pallet, millions of fragrance cards lay unpackaged in the box. The virus exposed to the air as soon as it was opened. Water soaked into the pamphlets, running down the glossy images and across the scented swaths. As if following a predetermined course, the water found its way to the rip in the side of the cardboard, the rivulet becoming more and more water as it gathered together and streamed out of the box to join more water on the blacktop.

  The virus filled the water, joining the rest of the rain as it ran together toward the drains that ran along the edges of the parking lot on the other side of the grouping of boxes just past the fenced perimeter.

  Before it got to the first drain, the rain river had to pass over the dip in the crosswalk from the long-term parking to the terminals. The water slowed as it was stretched across a large dipped area, able to pass over without being too deep.

  The virus ran unfettered through the cool rain.

  A large group of people walked over the crossing, each stepping into the infected water and tracking the virus on their shoes and lower legs.

  They quickly reached the security area where they had to remove their shoes and place them in plastic bins for scanning. Each of them reacted differently to touching damp shoe tops and wet sides. One man turned his shoes upside down so as not to leave any mud in the bins.

  No one else was as conscientious.

  It didn’t matter, as the germs came into contact with the bins, they attached themselves to the sides, spreading as was their nature. The bins weren’t washed as they were reused over and over, being touched by multiple shoes and carried and handled by multiple bare fingers.

  The only ones in gloves were the security guards. But they weren’t protected as they rubbed at their chins, eyes, and noses, touched a computer button that someone without gloves used, pushed their hair out of their eyes, and helped a woman who dropped her bag.

  No one was immune. They were all carriers and many of them got onto planes headed for other parts of the country… some final destinations were all over the world.

  The rain had delivered the virus.

  Jackson’s time table couldn’t be further out of his control.

  Chapter 23

  Jackson

  Jackson checked his watch. Judging by the digital display, Cady had only two days left before the virus would have spread across the continent. According to Jackson’s math, introducing the virus in his hometown had shortened the time span to the viability of the vaccine.

  Time was passing inexorably slower than it should be and somehow faster than acceptable all at once.

  If Cady didn’t take the vaccine, it wouldn’t give her body enough time to create antibodies to block against the virus when the virus reached her on the air. It wouldn’t matter if she went around people or not. The disease would be spread by the wind and Cady wouldn’t be able to hide from it.

  No one would.

  Unless his science was wrong. He’d hoped so much to mimic the avian flu by making it spreadable through airborne droplets, but that still required a visible contact. The flaw in Jackson’s planning involved his inability to test the wind and see just how viable his disease was in all of the uses he desired.

  As long as he got his mortality rate up as high as possible, Jackson would settle for less favorable transmission means. None of it mattered anyway, once the cure got out there, he’d have even more of what he desired.

  He checked his watch once more as he entered a clinic on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. He’d been driving along the main highways, dropping sample cards at small town stores along the way.

  The hospital should have very few mentions of an unidentifiable sickness going around. Maybe, just maybe, the pamphlets had gotten out. He just wanted to see one person sick that he could attribute to CJ180d. Just one. Was that too much to ask?

  The doors slid open silently and Jackson walked through to the lobby. He just wanted to see if they’d heard anything. The disease shouldn’t have spread very far or very fast just yet. There should be only rumors of a horrible flu coming.

  But on the outskirts of Portland, the small urgent care/hospital looked like an overflowing big city clinic with gurneys lining the hallways and belabored doctors and nurses rushing from room to room.

  IV lines ran from bags on poles and some patients sat in chairs, holding their own bags like a juice pouch.

  Approaching the desk, Jackson looked around, smiling at the receptionist. “Hi, I-"

  A pencil tucked behind her right ear, the woman thrust a finger at a stack of clipboards. “Fill out the top two and sign the last three. HIPAA and our practices are on the last pages. Wait time is two hours. If that’s not fast enough or you have an emergency, you can go downtown, but their wait is closer to four hours.” She arched her eyebrows at Jackson, tapping the stack again. “That’s being optimistic.”

  He nodded, grabbing a clipboard and turning as he studied the waiting room a little closer. One, lone, empty seat was next to a man holding his head and leaning forward.

  Jackson hid his sneer as he crossed the lobby and sat beside the man. After a few minutes, he leaned over and pointed with the Bic pen toward the rest of the people in the waiting room and spilling out from the triage rooms. Even the breakroom stood with its doors open and people using tables, chairs, and two on the floor to rest and wait. “What do you think happened? Everyone have food poisoning?” He turned innocent eyes on the man.

  “Naw, man, it’s supposed to be some form of chickenpox that’s spreading. They’re saying it’s highly contagious and showing signs after three days.” The man lifted his head slowly, revealing several missing teeth and the ones still in his mouth were stained and chipped.

  Three days? No. It was supposed to be seven to ten. His disease must not have made it up that far. Dang it, maybe someone else had a virus they’d released. Three days? That was fast. He’d tried to shorten the incubation period but that had seemed to decrease the mortality rate, so he’d quit messing with it. The fact that it probably wasn’t his decreased his interest in the topic. He’d never be able to weed out a patient that was sick with his disease from that mess. “Oh? Is there a rash?”

  “Psh, stupid anti-vaxxers. Now the virus has evolved and the whole world is going to get it.” He lowered his voice to a rough whisper. “I’ve heard whispers out of Seattle that it’s closely related to smallpox, but no one has confirmed that yet.” He nodded toward a group of women with perspiration shining on their foreheads. “This is why you vaccinated. I’m safe, though. I’ve been vaxxed. I won’t get it. I’m only in here for a kidney infection. I get them all the time.” He rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Blame that on my genetics you know?”

  A thrill split across Jackson’s skin. Had his CJ180d evolved on its own? He was so proud of the virus as if it were his child. His own creation. Jackson glanced at the man. “What if it is smallpox?” He wanted to tell the man there was no way he was vaccinated for smallpox or for CJ180d, but he kept that to h
imself.

  The man laughed, reaching out and patting Jackson’s arm. “Oh, buddy. No, you’re not very smart, are you? Smallpox was eradicated from the face of the earth. Let’s not get crazy.” He shook his head, juggling the IV bag hooked to his arm into the other hand and shifting to the other hip.

  Jackson wanted to be there when the man got the virus – he had most likely already contracted it – and tell him that smallpox wasn’t gone from the earth. It was in fact in many compounds across the world, held in tenuous storage just waiting for the electricity to go out. Jackson nodded carefully as if he agreed with the man, but turned to put the unsigned papers back.

  No one knew what was going on. In a couple weeks when the final phase was released, it would be too soon for them to save anyone.

  The cure would destroy the rest.

  As Jackson left the building and headed toward his Jeep, he couldn’t help wondering if Cady would take the vaccine or give it to her daughter. Or neither? She didn’t have much time.

  No one did.

  No one could survive except who Jackson had chosen.

  He would be the new god of that world and he would have no one to worship him.

  Chapter 24

  Jessica

  Jessica smiled at Matt, the newest news anchor. A faint yellow line of makeup showed where his skin was pale along his jaw. No one watching would see the line. If there was even anyone watching.