by JE Gurley
Susan dropped her fork in shock. It clattered off the table onto the tile floor. “My God, yes! St. Paul had a higher mortality rate than even Chicago. I don’t know about, ah, reanimations. We don’t have any reliable information of that.”
“I’ll bet Samuels can provide some,” Erin said, her voice harsh.
“Mr. Samuels isn’t the devil, Erin. He has a tough job to do. I don’t think he likes it very much.”
“He enjoys the power,” Erin insisted. “I’ve seen men like him. They thrive on power like a drug.”
Susan was unconvinced. “His eyes are haunted.”
“Why are you defending him?” Erin spat at her friend. Samuels’ charm and good looks might have won over Susan, young and impressionable, but her opinion of him had not changed. “He won’t let us out of here.”
Susan lowered her head, and spoke so softly that Erin had to strain to hear. “I don’t want to leave. I’m frightened.”
Erin realized that she had been ignoring the concerns of her colleagues. Her anger at Medford’s sudden and useless death had been driving her for two days. She had not allowed fear to creep in. Susan was not like that. She had a boyfriend, a life outside the CDC. The horror of what might be happening to people she knew, repulsed her so badly that captivity seemed a viable option.
“I’m sorry, Susan. Sometimes, I forget to be human.”
“You’re human enough, Erin. You’re just alone.”
Alone, she thought. Yes, I’m alone, but am I lonely? She had dated a few times in college and since graduating, but none of her relationships had lasted very long. Her work, her career, took precedence. Nothing else seemed to matter as much as getting to the top. While she was away at college, her parents had died in an automobile accident. She had no siblings, no close relatives. Her professors became her in abstentia parents. She sought their approval just as she had her parents.
Dave Cuthbert entered the room bearing a tray with two glasses of orange juice. “You need to drink this.”
Susan turned up her nose. “Why? I don’t like orange juice.”
“Samuels said it contained a cocktail of vitamins and enzymes to boost our immune systems.”
“Where did he get it?” Erin asked, eying the juice suspiciously.
“It was developed by the army for soldiers in the field.”
Erin waved away the glass that Cuthbert offered her. “Set it down. I’ll drink it later.” Then she noticed the expression on Cuthbert’s face. “What?”
“He said I was to make certain everyone drank their juice.”
“I’ll take this up with Samuels,” she shot at him.
“Oh, just drink the damn juice,” Susan snapped at her. She turned up her glass and downed the entire contents. “If I can stomach the stuff, you can.”
Erin hesitated a moment longer, but drank her juice. It was bitter, but she swallowed it and slammed the empty glass down on the table. Maybe Samuels just wanted them to remain as healthy as possible. After watching Medford’s shocking death, so did she. Chagrined, Cuthbert left. She rose from her seat and disposed of her untouched dinner in the trash. Standing in front of the large window that faced Atlanta’s skyline, she saw columns of dark smoke rising above the skyscrapers and high-rise buildings downtown and further north in Midtown where she lived. Clifton Road that fronted CDC headquarters was unnaturally quiet and hardly any traffic plied the nearby streets. It was as if someone had declared a holiday and everyone was at home grilling burgers and hotdogs in the backyards, except she doubted the smoke she saw came from over-cooked burgers. The chaos was already starting.
Encircled by the multi-laned Interstate 285, bisected by I-20 and crossed like an X by I-75 and I-85, Atlanta would have seemed the perfect example for effective quarantine containment. Closing down the airports, the MARTA rail system, and barricading the three Interstates and the highway bridges crossing I-285 would reduce travel to foot traffic; much more easily managed. Confining the disease to the urban areas would cause more deaths in the denser population, but reduce the spread of the disease to outlying rural areas. To save Georgia, Atlanta must die. Atlanta had earned the nickname the Phoenix City, rising once before from the ashes, after Sherman’s victorious March to the Sea during the Civil War. She feared it might not rise so quickly this time. It took people to rebuild a city.
She turned to Susan. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Samuels’ people had provided beds in some of the unused downstairs offices. They had installed a cot in her office at her request to remain near the labs.
Susan pushed her plate aside. “How can I sleep?” she said. “I know I’ll have nightmares.”
However, she rose, left the break room and headed toward the elevators. Erin felt the first twinges of exhaustion herself, but like her friend, doubted sleep would be welcoming. She wandered the corridors of the deserted labs, enjoying the solitude and the sense of peace it produced. Few people were working now. Most were either eating dinner in the cafeteria downstairs or had gone to dorm rooms to sleep, or barring sleep, at least rest. With the lights dimmed and most of the lab equipment idle, it appeared they had all given up hope and gone home. Her sense of peace and the silence would not last. None of them would be going home, not for a while. From the way things were going, some might not have homes to which they could return or family to welcome them back.
In his speech to them, Samuels had not mentioned Medford’s death or proposed how long they might be sequestered. Sequestered, she mused. A strange choice of words. A jury was sequestered. Were they the jury locked in a room to determine mankind’s fate? It was too much responsibility for her or her people. They would work diligently searching for an effective vaccine or a cure, but she refused to choose who received the drug and who didn’t. Let Samuels decide. He might be able to reduce it to a neat graph or a series of numbers, pick a city and say you live or you die. Not her. That was too much to ask of anyone.
She turned at the sound of footsteps behind her, wondering who was intruding on her brief respite from reality. She frowned when she saw it was Samuels. If he noticed her reaction to him, his face did not reveal it. His cold mask of indifference was still in place. However, this time his eyes belied his carefully honed façade. Erin felt her heart tighten as she recognized the fear in them.
“Quiet, isn’t it?” he said. He walked past her to look out the window. “Here, I mean. Not the city.”
She forced herself to remain neutral, but could not hide the catch in her voice. “What’s happening out there?”
He lowered his head. In his reflection in the glass, she could see his closed eyes. “We’re losing the city.”
“Losing? What do you mean?”
He turned to face her. A pillow of flame from a nearby building illuminated his mouth while shadowing his eyes. The dull thud of an explosion quickly followed, rattling the window. Erin ignored it and she stared at Samuels’ lips, wondering how they would feel pressed against hers. She shook her head to dismiss such thoughts. She had no time for romance, especially with Samuels.
“Zombies are roaming the streets. Fires are sweeping though the city, turning entire neighborhoods into glowing embers. The zombies are attacking and killing people who were driven from their homes by the flames. It’s carnage out there.”
“What about the army?”
A brief, cruel smile flickered across his lips. “What army? Most of them have fled or have died of the flu. A great number of them are now zombies themselves. Thank God, they don’t remember how to fire their weapons. We’re on our own. Oh, there are still pockets of resistance – National Guard, neighborhood militias, a few squads of soldiers cut off from their command – but at the rate the flu is spreading, those that don’t succumb directly from disease, still don’t stand a chance. Eventually, the flames or starvation will force them out of hiding right into that hellish horde of living dead.”
His news was too much to take. Erin covered her face with her hands and sobbed. She heard Samuels take
a hesitant step toward her, perhaps to comfort her, but he stopped short. She was glad. It helped her keep her distance from him. A shoulder to cry on would be nice, but it would make her look weak and she would not allow him to see her as weak. She wiped her eyes and looked at him.
“Lyle died. All the monitors said he was dead. How did he come back to life as an animal?”
Samuels sighed, “I’m no scientist, but my best theory is that the virus rewires the medulla oblongata somehow. When the dead reawaken, heartbeat and respiration are very low, barely noticeable, but since most of the brain is dead, they need little oxygen. They can die, but feel no pain and even a direct shot to the heart won’t drop them for several minutes. You have to destroy the hindbrain.”
Erin shook her head. “It sounds like something from a horror movie. We need more time for a vaccine. We knew nothing about this. I think the last vaccine . . .”
Samuels raised his hand to stop her. “I’ve been ordered to evacuate your people by helicopter. The army has set up a facility in Colorado where you can continue your work.”
She blinked and stared at him through a haze of tears. “Evacuate? We can’t leave. All our equipment . . .”
“Will be waiting for you in Colorado.” He stepped farther away from the widow so she could see his entire face. It did not look as cold as before. In fact, what might have been a smile creased his mouth. “Do you like skiing?”
“What?” The sudden switch in topics confused her. “Snow skiing? I’ve never tried.”
“The lab is near a ski slope. I used to go there in the winter when I was young. It’s a beautiful place. Maybe I could teach you.”
For a second, her heart fluttered at the attention he was giving her. In that brief moment, she imagined him with his arms around her, a roaring fireplace, and a glass of wine. Then, reality crashed back down. “I hardly think we’ll have time for ski lessons. People are dying.”
Her harsh rebuke did not faze him. “They’ll die anyway. My orders are to facilitate your research any way I can, but I don’t hold much hope for a solution. Do you?”
His comment stung her. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t bother. We have to beat this.”
He nodded slowly, but she knew there was no agreement in it.
“Do you suggest we simply give up?” she cried.
His considered her question before replying, “No. Giving up is too easy.”
The stillness of the room only heightened the uncomfortable silence that fell between them, increasing the degree of tension she felt. She didn’t know why such a man as Samuels would attract her. Did the possibility of death compel her to seek someone with which she could find comfort in her last days? She knew she would find no comfort with Samuels. He might not love his job, but he would never shirk his duty, his responsibility. She realized his offer of a skiing lesson had been for her benefit, to release her anxiety, not his, to get her mind off the disaster around them, and she felt a moment of shame.
“When do we leave?” she asked, breaking the silence, if not the tension.
Samuels frowned and glanced out the window just as she heard the sound of approaching helicopters. “Now,” he answered.
Erin surveyed the darkened office and the silent equipment behind the glass screen in the clean room. The CDC had been her home for four years. Most of the equipment was there, because she had fought tooth and nail for the appropriations. To leave it behind, perhaps for it to wind up destroyed troubled her. “I have two lab coats and two changes of clothing,” she replied. She knew it sounded silly, but it was how she felt – unprepared.
“We’ll provide everything you need.”
Does that include courage? She asked herself.
6
Renda Beth Kilmer stared through the mesh fence at the armed soldiers patrolling the perimeter of the camp. Her hands squeezed the cold wire as if she were choking her captors, for captors they were, no matter what they called themselves. The coil of razor wire topping the ten-foot high fence made the compound a prison and not a ‘quarantine facility’ as they called it. Above the compound, armed helicopters circled the area, black vultures waiting for a death. Armored vehicles blocked the road on each side of the camp. For two long weeks, she had languished in the gray limbo of what the residents were calling, ‘Hotel Hell’ outside Marana’s airport.
Along with twenty others, she had arrived in the back of an army truck, ignominiously herded in like cattle under the threatening gaze of heavily armed soldiers. The reason for her visit to Oro Valley Medical Center was her monthly check up on the progress of her chemotherapy for breast cancer. However, it drew no sympathy from the disinterested soldiers and her pleas for an explanation received no replies from the harried officers. Upon reaching the camp, biohazard-suited attendants stripped them of their clothing and personal possessions, raced them through a communal shower, and handed them each a dull gray, one-piece jumper with cloth shoes to wear, like scenes from WWII concentration camps. Most humiliating of all, they had shorn her long blonde hair. She had cried while watching the curls drop to the ground at her feet.
The wire dug furrows in her palm. She released the fence and stepped back, watching her fellow ‘patients’ milling about the common grounds. Her home, a twelve-foot long trailer that she shared with three other women, sat in a double row with a hundred others, indistinguishable from one another except for the number ‘66’ emblazoned above the door in red paint. Since she had arrived, biohazard-suited medical personnel had transferred two of her ill roommates to the large building nestled within its own net of razor wire fences. No one knew what became of those who entered the building, but to her knowledge, none had returned to the camp. An ominous queue of sealed army trucks came and went from the far side of the building, spawning frightening rumors which she only half believed.
She was not sick, at least not from the flu. Her cough’s origin was the medicine her physician had prescribed, yet they would not allow her to contact him to verify this. The seemingly blatant disregard for the Bill of Rights disheartened her. She chuckled sadly at the thought of contacting her congressman. So far, she had even spoken to anyone not wearing the ubiquitous gray jumpsuits. Hers fit poorly. She had rolled the pants legs up to avoid stepping on them, but the sleeves still got in her way.
“Not the kind of thing I would wear to a club,” she said aloud.
One man, she could not tell his age since everyone she had met looked older than their years, glanced up at her and scowled; then resumed his slow pacing with bowed head.
“If I stay here much longer I’ll be just like him,” she groaned. She grabbed the fence and shook it, making the razor wire sing. “Let me out!” she cried.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
She spun around with a curse on her lips, thinking it the man that had just passed. Instead, a tall man with bright green eyes confronted her.
“Excuse me,” she said with just a touch of venom in her voice.
He nodded toward the soldiers, two of whom had stopped walking and stared at her. “The fence. They don’t like us rattling our cage.”
Renda grew annoyed at the man’s presumption. “Why should I give a damn about what they think?”
He shrugged. “They have the guns. I’ve seen healthy people who protest too loudly taken to the Tombs.”
She placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head slightly to one side. Here was another crazy person, she thought. Best humor him. “The what?”
“The big building. I call it the Tombs.”
“Why?”
“Because no one that goes in comes out.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three weeks. I was crossing the border from Mexico. Bastards took my rifle.” He spit on the ground to display his anger.
“Mexico? Are you one of the illegals massing at the border?” She had heard about the latest Mexican revolution and the thousands trying to cross the border. He didn’t look Mexican, even with his dark tan.
“Why did they grab you?”
He shrugged, “I didn’t cooperate when they wanted me to. I’m like that.”
“Why are we here?” She had avoided asking anyone that question for two weeks, but now it rushed out of her. No one else in the compound seemed to care. They had given up hope. She hadn’t.
The man stepped closer. She backed against the fence, uncomfortable with intimate contact, especially with strangers. Seeing this, he backed up two steps and grinned.
“The world’s going to hell,” he said. “FEMA’s callin’ the shots now, them and the good ‘ole US Army, only the US don’t stand for ‘us’ anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve declared Martial Law. The military’s taken over. This flu bug ain’t just making folks sick; it’s killing them by the tens of thousands.” His eyes bored into hers with an intensity that frightened her.
“I know about Asia,” she replied.
He threw up his hands. “Screw Asia! I’m talkin’ ‘bout here, America.”
She swallowed. “Here? That’s impossible.”
“You’d think, but it’s happening.”
“What can we do?”
He looked around, leaned in close and nudged her with his elbow. “You stay close, and just be ready when I give the word. I’ve got some friends on the outside that ain’t got a big love for what’s happening. They’re getting ready to spring me from of this little mouse trap.”
She was incredulous. “Against the US Army?”
“Haw,” he chuckled. “These green recruits? They don’t know their asshole from their elbow. At the first sign of opposition, they’ll fall down and piss themselves.”
