After spending the morning sorting out the logistics and getting the product safely to the customer, Bryce decided it was time to take a break.
Bryce rarely had time to take a lunch break, so today he would take advantage of it. Usually, he ate lunch at his desk and kept on working.
Today, however, he wanted to take a look at the El Centro story and see if there had been any updates since he had last heard anything.
Bryce walked to the kitchen area and grabbed his lunch out of the refrigerator. On the way back to his desk, he snuck a Coke out of the mini-fridge in his boss’s office. It put a smile on his face as he covertly snatched his prize and slipped out of the office.
Sneaking stuff out of the fridge was a little game that he played with his boss. His boss was a real ball-buster, but he had a playful side too. They would constantly give each other hell and play practical jokes on each other. It was one of the parts that made Bryce really enjoy his job.
The constant shit talking and hard time giving made him think back to his time in the active military. Some of the best times in his life came from spending time with his men at the various posts he had been at during his time in the service. Now, he only got to spend one weekend a month with his boys, which sometimes was just not enough.
The last group of men he had the pleasure of serving with at Fort Huachuca, while he was still active, had been some of the best. Bryce held the rank of sergeant and he was in charge of a small group of men who shared the duties that were assigned to him. They were an amazing group of soldiers and he loved the camaraderie that they shared together.
The camaraderie in his current position made him feel the same way. He enjoyed the rowdy cross banter on Friday afternoons and the hazing of new employees. The environment at this office was the main reason he stayed in his current position. Arizona Sanitary Supply had its ups and downs, but the environment was the best part. The small staff and office enabled the team to create a real unit cohesion that he could only find in the military. The team that he worked with all knew each other’s personality traits and were able to work together very efficiently. This unit cohesion as the military would call it, enabled the company to keep a relatively low overhead, but still get all of the work completed.
After his brain drifted back to the real world, Bryce settled back in at his desk. He pulled his MacBook Air out of his backpack and opened the screen. He spent a couple minutes checking his personal emails and after he found nothing, he opened up his Internet browser.
He flipped through the thirty or so tabs that he had open until he found the one he was looking for: News.
Bryce scrolled through the latest news articles, until he found what he was looking for, the quarantined hospital in El Centro.
There were dozens of news outlets reporting from the situation. Bryce had missed quite a bit since he had first heard the story on his drive in.
He found an article on a popular news site and played the embedded video.
The video anchor began;
Breaking news in El Centro, California. Mystery illness spreads across hospital.
In El Centro, the scene is grim. What at one point was a few illegal immigrants in quarantine in a wing of the hospital has now turned into mass hysteria. The entire hospital is locked down and nobody is allowed to enter or exit. The CDC has arrived and they are constructing a large containment unit tent to enclose the small rural hospital. It appears that the entire hospital is being quarantined to keep the mystery illness from spreading further.
Authorities are not giving us much to go off of, but what we do know is that one of the undocumented immigrants under quarantine has died. Details also emerged that this particular patient was a child. The authorities told us that shortly after the child died, he suddenly awoke and attacked nearby doctors and nurses. They attempted to subdue the patient, at which point multiple officers were attacked and killed by a second patient, who was later identified as the child’s mother. They then had to use lethal force to stop both patients.
Details past that are very limited, but we will update everyone as soon as we have more information.
Bryce wasn’t sure what to think of this news report from El Centro. It seemed like the situation had deteriorated by the hour, and it began to worry him. The scariest part of the whole thing for Bryce was that the story sounded more like Dawn of the Dead than the “Swine Flu.”
Bryce saved some of the other articles for reading later and put his laptop to sleep. He stowed it back in his bag and turned around in his cubicle to get back to work.
He spent the rest of the afternoon grinding through the day, as he waited for the time to pass. In the back of his mind, he kept thinking about El Centro. The situation there was just too weird for him to comprehend. Why would the authorities even leak to the press the so-called reanimation of the patients? It made no sense to Bryce. Normally something like this would be swept under the rug or played off as something like a meth addiction or bath salts trip.
The day crawled by for Bryce. He didn’t even notice much when his boss and coworkers tried to goad him into the normal games of tomfoolery. He simply laughed off their jabs and let them leave his office defeated.
Finally, the time came to head home. Bryce filled his water bottle for the journey home, went to the bathroom, and said goodbye to everyone in the office. He grabbed his backpack, headed out to his car and hopped in. He started his car and turned onto the road that he took to merge onto the highway. While he was waiting at the stoplight right before the highway, he turned on the talk radio station again.
When he tuned in, the radio host was in mid-sentence, “…the CDC has just confirmed that the entire hospital has been contaminated. They are reporting there are too many infected patients in the hospital to risk going inside again. They are formulating a plan to try and rescue any non-infected people at this time, but have no timeframe on when they will be able to do that.”
The color drained out of Bryce’s face and he knew that this was serious. During the course of his time in the military he had seen how fast viruses could spread in the military barracks. He was also forced to sit through hours of pointless slideshows as Army medics ingrained in them the importance of hygiene and virus control. Bryce knew that if the infection spread that quickly, they would be in a world of hurt if it made it outside that hospital.
Part of Bryce thought to himself, they should just burn the fucker down.
He knew that it was horrible to think of killing all of those people, but sometimes in order to save the body it was necessary to cut off the site of infection.
He also knew that in order to stop this infection, disease, or whatever it was, they needed to do something fast. Unfortunately, it was against human nature to do anything fast, and that was what Bryce was worried about.
Bryce decided that he didn’t want to hear anything else about El Centro for the rest of the ride, so he changed the stereo over to his iPhone and turned on his Pandora station once again. After flipping through a few songs, a song he knew by Imagine Dragons came on. He settled back and enjoyed the song as he drove down the highway.
He pulled into his driveway exactly fifty-two minutes after leaving the office and praised himself for the record time. As soon as he opened the door to enter his home his wife immediately greeted him. Instead of having a smile and a hug for him, she had a somber look on her face.
“You need to come see this,” she said.
Bryce walked into the living room following his wife and found the TV turned on. What he saw on the screen made his eyes immediately go wide with fear.
Chapter Five
El Centro, California
Joseph awoke from what seemed like an endless slumber. His brain felt fuzzy, like waking up after an all-night bender. He had the strangest feeling, like he was in someone else’s body. He couldn’t help but think that something was wrong.
He looked around the room and the room swirled as his vision blurred.
Then
it hit him like a ton of bricks. He was starving. Suddenly, the world disappeared from his mind and only the aching pains in his stomach remained. He had to eat something, and he had to eat something now.
He tried to get off the table but his limbs wouldn’t function correctly. He fell off the table and hit his head on the cold hospital floor, which jarred his head back hard enough to hit it a second time. There was no pain, no recognition of the wound that caused his head to seep blood all over the floor.
After he struggled to get back up, he was able to continue walking in search of food to cure his hunger.
He shuffled down the hallways, because that’s all his feet would do. Soon there were others like him walking through the hallways as well. They congregated around Joseph and collectively they marched down the hallways.
Then, the sound of gunfire erupted down a hall to his left. Like a dinner bell, the sound awoke a feral need; the urge to satisfy his hunger.
The others must have had the same urge, because in unison they swung their bodies toward the gunfire and started walking toward the sound.
At the end of the hallway, others joined Joseph, and they grouped up together to push through a small doorway. They bumped into each other and rubbed shoulders, scraping through the small gap.
After Joseph finally made it through the gap, he was met with gunfire from an El Centro police officer. The rounds struck him in the shoulder and torso, but the as the bullets ripped through his flesh he continued toward the police office as he was focused only on his next meal. The sight of food sent his mind into frenzy and he picked up the pace, so that he would be the first to claim the prize.
The next three gunshots struck him in chest and one clipped the side of his neck. As his neck wound slowly bled down his body, the feel of the warm blood only enraged him further. He closed the gap between himself and his meal, his jaws opened wide and a feral groan escaped, which made his prey shiver in fear.
Joseph could smell the fear on the police officer as he closed the gap, and quickly overtook him.
He took the first bite out of the police officer, which severed his prey’s jugular and sprayed blood into Joseph’s mouth. Joseph tasted the warm blood and felt the hunger start to subside. He took another large bite out of the man’s neck as the other hospital patients and staff caught up to him.
Joseph couldn’t hear the gargling sound that the dying police officer made over the moans of the others as they gorged themselves on the wonderful meal that Joseph had captured.
After they had completely ravaged the police officer, Joseph’s hunger returned. It seemed to be never ending, and he knew that he had to find the next meal, and he had to find it soon. The others must have had the same need, because soon they were moving again in unison.
Together, they flowed toward the entrance to the hospital, where they could hear the noise that came from outside the building.
When Joseph arrived at the entrance he found that the way had been blocked, but he put all of his weight into the door. Soon others joined him, and collectively they pushed into the door.
Joseph knew that it would only be a matter of time. A matter of time until the doorframe buckled, a matter of time until they were free, and a matter of time before he would have his next meal.
Chapter Six
Pinal County, Arizona
Bryce stared at the television. There was a scene of hysteria on the screen. Bryce was not sure what the hell had happened, so he used his DVR to rewind the feed. He pressed play when the scene changed to center on the hospital. The doors of the hospital burst open and hundreds of people crashed through the small entryway at the same time.
They surged toward the police and CDC vehicles parked out front of the hospital. Like a tsunami, they rushed toward the police vehicles. It took the police a second or two to figure out what was happening. Since the police force in the small city consisted of less than a hundred officers, and since some had already been infected, the officers did not stand a chance.
The first one of the officers went down in the initial wave of infected people. He was never seen on camera again. Unfortunately, it was too late for the other officers as well. They pulled out their weapons in a feeble attempt to stop the infected from washing over them, but their service weapons did not even slow them down.
The news crew recording the event retreated back to their news van. The cameraman recording the events let his camera aim at the ground as he ran for his life, and his legs were shown frantically running.
The news crew made it back to their news van and jumped in. The cameraman pointed his camera out the back window of the vehicle, just as the sea of infected hit the vehicle.
The van tried to lurch forward, but got stuck in the flow of infected. The infected started hammering on the walls of the van, tilting it back and forth. The large extended antennas on top of the van made it very top-heavy, causing the vehicle to sway. The momentum caused the large van to come down on one side, which caused the cameraman to lose his balance and sent the camera to the floor of the van. The camera recorded the scene as glass shattered and sprayed the occupants.
Someone screamed in the background, and out of nowhere, a man who appeared to be the cameraman was dragged in front of the camera and pulled out the back window of the van, into the sea of infected.
His screams went on for a few seconds, before someone at the news station cut back to the studio.
On the screen now was a news anchor. His face was bright red and he was staring at the screen in front of him. He was clearly unable to speak, and took a big gulp of water instead.
The producer must have made another quick decision, because instead of waiting for the anchor to get a hold of himself, they cut to a static image of their logo.
Bryce and Victoria stood and stared at the TV in shock for a minute or two. Neither of them was sure what to say or do.
Their son Trystan instead broke the awkward silence.
“Mama, whats wrong,” Trystan said to his mother.
Victoria looked down at her son and patted him on the head.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetie, it’s just a sad show,” she lied.
After a few minutes, the news anchor came back on the screen, and he had collected himself.
“Folks, as you witnessed, the situation in El Centro is quickly deteriorating. I have just learned that the California National Guard has been called in to contain the situation. We are unsure of the timeframe on their arrival, but an official from El Centro has a statement to give,” the news anchor says.
A pre-recorded audio-only clip played on the television:
“At this time, we are declaring a state of emergency in El Centro. We are urging all residents to stay inside their homes, lock their doors, and wait for help to arrive. The governor has mobilized the National Guard and help is on the way. If you see these infected people trying to enter your home, please do not engage them unless they make it inside. At that point, do whatever it takes to protect yourself and your families.”
In the background, while the audio clip was playing, there were sounds of gunfire, explosions, and screaming. It sounded like chaos had overtaken the city of El Centro.
Bryce could only imagine what it was like. He seriously did not want to envision the situation.
After the audio clip played, the news anchor came back on the screen and said, “Just to recap what the El Centro official said, the Governor of California has also issued a statement asking residents to stay inside their homes, and not leave the city.”
Bryce knew what this meant, because he could read between the lines. They were trying to quarantine the entire city. Since the quarantine had failed at the hospital, it was time to circle the wagons and try and keep it inside El Centro.
The problem with that plan was that the city sprawled out across an entire valley in the middle of the desert. More than forty thousand people lived just inside the city limits and well over one hundred thousand people lived in the valley surroundin
g El Centro.
This problem would not be contained in El Centro. That much Bryce was sure of. He started to seriously consider creating an exit strategy. He hated to think like that, but it was wise to have a plan B just in case the shit really hit the fan.
Bryce need to put a plan together using the knowledge the Army medics had taught him about how to prepare for a viral outbreak, just in case this virus, bacteria, or whatever it was got out of control. Bryce had to be ready for anything, and he planned on being ready for the worst, because from what he had seen of this outbreak thus far, this could very well be the worst.
Chapter Seven
Pinal County, Arizona
Bryce turned off the TV at this point, and told his wife that they did not need to see any more. He said he needed some time to think and figure out what they were going to do.
“What do you mean, what we’re going to do?” Victoria asked him.
“We need to start thinking about getting the fuck out of here. If this thing spreads outside of El Centro there is going to be massive fallout,” Bryce quickly told her.
Not quite understanding what he meant, she added, “Well what do you think is going to happen, Bryce?”
“I’m not sure, babe, but I think that we need to be prepared for the worst. Disease outbreaks are nothing to joke about, and the way that it turns these people into animals so quickly frankly scares the shit out of me,” Bryce told his wife.
Victoria looked at him with concern. She knew that he wouldn’t make a big deal out of something unless there was need for concern. She just nodded her head at him and gave him a big hug. She let him go, gathered up Trystan and headed into the bedroom to leave Bryce alone.
He walked to his office and sat down at the computer. He spent some time wandering around the Internet aimlessly. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but he knew he needed to find a place to go if this outbreak got any worse.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 3
