“This,” Doctor White said, “is Jeremy Franklin, our newest hire before everything went south.”
Freckles smiled and rose, offering a hand that I shook. He actually had a decent grip and a dry palm which I hadn’t expected.
“Nice to meet you, Mister Forrest,” he said. “Thanks for bringing Estelle back to us.”
“Just glad I could,” I said and looked over at the women.
“You’ve met Angie,” Estelle indicated the young soldier who bounced to her feet and offered her hand as well.
“Yep,” I said, shaking her hand as well. “Though I can’t say I’ve seen her outside of protective gear, and I’m glad she’s not pointing her weapon at me.”
Angie laughed, and I swear she winked at me.
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said.
“Last but certainly not least, Gwendolyn Markovski, our forensic specialist,” Doctor White indicated the last woman.
She was small-framed, shorter than Angela, and likely two-thirds of the soldier’s weight. Her hair was black and long, but braided neatly, while her eyes were a bright, grass green. A faint smile touched her full, red lips, and she stood and offered me a hand as well.
I took it gently, almost afraid to break her. Her grip surprised me, and it must have shown in my face because she grinned.
“Surprise.” She beamed. “I might look like a pixie, but…” Her voice dropped, and she whispered. “Black belt in BJJ.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said with a grin of my own as she let go of my hand. Her fingers had slid right into all the pressure points I knew, and a few I didn’t. Scrappy. My estimate of the survivability of this group went up a few more notches. “What about the other guard type, Blake?”
“Someone needs to stand guard while I’m on break, sir,” Angie said. “He’s outside. You’ll get a chance to meet him later.”
“Good enough,” I replied. “Now what did I say about calling me sir?”
“Not to,” she grinned. “Sir.”
I decided to ignore that and took a seat in one of the empty chairs around the table.
“So what’s to eat?” I asked, eyes drifting over the empty and mostly empty plates in front of the others.
“Hash browns,” Jeremy spoke up. “With sausage and egg.”
“In the pot over there,” Gwen pointed to the hot line.
“Serve yourself, I reckon,” I said, and looked to Estelle. “Have a seat, doctor. I’ll get you a plate or a bowl or whatever.”
With that, I rose and headed behind the counter. A “thank you, Henry” followed me.
Not long afterward, we all sat around the table, and I listened while the CDC folks talked shop about what they’d found in regard to Tommy, and their continuing experiments on the few samples of the pathogen that they’d secured before locking down the facility with a skeleton crew. Why more people hadn’t chosen to remain, I had no idea, but maybe they had wanted to spend time with their families or something.
Nothing from their conversations indicated that they’d had any prior knowledge of the disease, and they’d set out, along with their comrades abroad, to contain and treat, as per their mission.
Angie sat quietly and listened, much like I was until Finley, at last, looked our way.
“As you may have guessed,” he said. “We may be stuck in here due to a variable vector pathogen that we are barely beginning to understand. Both Estelle and Henry have been exposed, infected, survived, and show no remaining sign of the virus.”
“Are we sure of our detection methods?” Jeremy wanted to know.
“My own team isolated the virus in Montgomery,” Estelle chimed in. “It shows positive on tests for influenza, and presents like the common cold.”
“Other teams reported the same,” Robert added. “Before they went dark.”
“This thing still bothers me,” Gwen said, looking down at her short, perfectly manicured nails. “No one observed its entire cycle.”
“Well, actually,” I said. “I can tell you when I first thought I had a cold, about how long until it went into a full-blown flu, and when I woke up to…” I waved a hand towards the entrance. “This.”
“I can do that as well,” Doctor White added. “Perhaps between the two of us, we can help you assemble a life-cycle?”
“I would appreciate that,” Gwen said. “All of our contacts so far have been with isolated enclaves and electronic conversations with hospitals before they were overwhelmed…”
My thoughts went back to the first day and the hospital waiting room where I’d met Jackie. Overwhelmed was an understatement, in my opinion.
“You said you needed samples to gauge the safety of the outside for you,” I said, looking over at Bob. “Have you got that list for me?”
“I do, in fact, and we’re all willing to trust your judgment on supplies,” he replied. “If you’re still willing to go.”
“I am,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve got immunity, apparently, so nothing to really worry about.”
“Except for the grumpy old man,” Angie spoke up.
“You won’t be alone,” Estelle said firmly. “I’ve already been infected and survived as well, and you could probably use someone to watch your back.”
“Thanks,” I said, the idea of protesting never crossing my mind. An extra pair of eyes and someone who knew the necessary methods and protocols for taking Bob’s samples would be a perfect addition.
Robert and Jeremy both opened their mouths at almost the same time, but Estelle silenced them with a look that I was glad not to receive.
“You know we have no choice,” she said, looking from one of them to the other. “So save it.”
“Preach it, sister,” Angie said with a grin.
Robert sighed and slumped back in his chair.
“Anyone else want to don protective gear and come along?” I asked. “I can probably take one more in my truck.”
“How soon do you need to go?” Angela asked.
“The sooner, the better,” I admitted. “I really need to get back home.”
She nodded and let out a sigh before shaking her head. “I can’t, but I can loan you my rifle.”
“No need,” I told her. “I have munitions if necessary.”
“I’ll do it,” Gwen said. “I need to get out of the lab and this goddamned place for at least a little while.”
“Happy to have you,” I said and finished the last of my hash browns. They’d gone cold, but I didn’t care. Whoever had cooked them used just the right amount of spices and managed to get them crisped perfectly along with peppers and onions. That reminded me that we really needed to prepare for some planting back at the farm, once the weather began to head into spring. Fresh veggies would be hard to come by soon.
I pushed back from the table and rose to my feet, then stretched and rolled my neck, wincing a little at the popping of my vertebrae.
“Alright, ramblers,” I said. “Let’s get rambling. Meet me out back at the truck in fifteen with whatever you think you need. I don’t see any reason to draw this out.”
“I’ll get the sample kits,” Estelle said.
“And I’ll go get into the encounter suit,” Gwen added with a laugh. “Fifteen minutes should be good for that.”
I headed back to my room and got my jacket. All the rest of my hardware was in the truck, except for my pistol. After that, I went on out back using the key card Estelle slipped me shortly after we’d been decontaminated. On the way, I passed by the ICU to look in on the kid. He was sleeping peacefully, hooked up to oxygen and an I.V. A secondary antibiotic drip sat beneath the usual saline. I watched him for a minute, his thin chest rising and falling slowly beneath the blanket.
The CDC doctors had done their job and done it well. I nodded my silent approval and headed on out. My Dodge sat where I’d parked her after we offloaded Tommy, and I gave it a quick check, cranking it up with a roar and rumble. I still had a half-tank of gas, which I’d prefer to top off before re
turning to the farm.
I double-checked the weapons I’d stashed in the truck; one of the Remington 870 pump shotguns from Dick’s, along with the Howa 6.5 Creedmore hunting rifle, and a pair of pistols from my own collection. One of these was a large, Colt .44 magnum revolver, scoped and equipped with an extended barrel for range and accuracy. The other was a Glock G19. I had two magazines each for the Glock and my Les Baer Custom .45, as well as fifty round boxes of .44 magnum, .45 ACP, 9mm, 6.5 Creedmore, and 12-gauge 00 buckshot.
Unless we ended up in an extended firefight, which I didn’t expect, we should have all the firepower we needed. There was always that chance, though, especially with a possibly crazy survivor watching the CDC.
Hopefully, he’d just leave us alone. I didn’t like the idea of hurting a man who’d made it through this disease and its aftermath, but I would if I had to.
26
Maybe it was too early for the crazy guy, or maybe he just wasn’t interested that morning, but we made it out of the gate and headed south, towards the higher density sections of Atlanta. Estelle assured me that we’d find a grocery where we could load up on canned and dry goods, hopefully. Anything in the produce and other frozen or refrigerated sections was probably shot, though.
Neither of the two female doctors had any problem taking a weapon, either. Gwen had the Glock, and Estelle cradled the Remington. They’d adapted faster than the men back at the CDC, aside from Philip.
We met him briefly during our drive to the gate. Like Angie had been, he was swaddled in protective gear. I exchanged a salute with him and drove on after he reported no sign of the man in the surplus military truck.
“Air, ground, water, animal, plant, and what else?” I asked as I drove. Estelle had summarized the samples that they needed to ensure that the folks who hadn’t survived the initial round of infection wouldn’t have anything to worry about if they left the confines of the CDC unprotected.
“As disturbing as it might sound,” Gwendolyn answered. “I’d like to try to get a sample from one of the human corpses.”
“Won’t they be all…?” I didn’t say ‘squishy,’ although I thought it.
“It’s been cold enough that decay might have been delayed somewhat,” she replied. “Still, most pathogens leave some kind of indicator.”
“Little virus corpses,” Estelle threw in, and both of them laughed.
I just shook my head. This was a lot like the morbid humor our EOD guys had. It wasn’t my thing to laugh about my imminent mortality, although I had long ago settled my peace.
“Okay, so we didn’t have any sign of the disease left, but you can track it in the body of someone that’s been dead for two weeks?” I asked.
“With some of the tools we have,” Gwen asserted with a nod of her head. “We can.”
I reckoned I shouldn’t be surprised by that. Medical technology had grown by leaps and bounds, driven in part by the need to put soldiers back together from injuries received in the long-running Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.
“Damn,” I said. “Okay. I have to admit that I’m impressed by that. Where do y’all want to go first?”
“We might as well start with the worst,” Estelle said. “Let’s pick a house.”
It was better than a hospital, probably, and there was a chance we’d be able to get all of our samples in a single spot. I turned off down a side street and eventually navigated us into a neighborhood before parking in front of a random house.
We sat and watched the place for a few minutes in complete silence.
“Why do I feel like I’m in a zombie movie?” Gwen asked suddenly. “Almost everyone is dead. There are no shamblers or rage zombies. Let’s just go and do this.”
With that, she took one of the sample kits, got out of the truck, and started for the house. Estelle and I scrambled to follow. The small woman moved rather surprisingly fast in what she called her encounter suit, a variant on the yellow hazmat suits the others wore. It was a dark green, fit a bit tighter, and had a hood with a full-face visor. In addition to a rather significant oxygen tank, it had a pair of filter canisters mounted to either side of the faceplate.
The door to the house was locked, so I did the manly thing and kicked it in. There’s a trick to this that the right people will teach you when you’re training in urban warfare. All of us that did any fieldwork at all in my unit had to take the course. It was all about keeping alert and the proper way to clear a room with a rifle or a grenade, but it also taught us the weaknesses of the average door.
If you kick one in the right place, just above or beneath the doorknob where the lock is, something will usually give. That something could be the door, the lock, or the doorjamb. In the case of this door, the jamb splintered in, and the door flew open and banged against the foyer wall.
“Not quiet,” Gwen observed, “but effective.”
Silence filled the house as we moved in, checking each room in turn. We quickly found the family that once lived here, two kids and the parents. All of them were remarkably well-preserved.
“Odd,” the forensic doctor said, then looked at me. “See if you and Estelle can find a pet or something.”
“We can take samples from the houseplants and the bedroom air, too,” Doctor White said.
“While you do that,” I offered. “I’ll check the garage. This place seems safe enough.”
“And we’re all armed, anyway,” Gwen said.
We all had headlamps and flashlights, too, but the house was reasonably well lit by the light filtering in through many windows. The garage, though, was dark and stank of shit and rot. What was left of the rat nibbled corpse of some family pet lay in a rotting mound near the garage doors.
Of course, I got the nasty one. It was weird, though, how the human corpses all seemed to be half-preserved in some way. Did the virus do something to them after they died, or had it killed off a majority of their internal bacteria first?
That was for the doctors to figure out. I just took a look at the dead critter and went back into the main house.
“Estelle,” I called. “We’ve got some sort of animal dead in the garage, but it’s a mess. If you’re busy, I can probably scrape some bits into a jar for you.”
She stuck her head out of a room down the hall, and I caught a blast of light to the face. Covering my eyes, I swore softly.
“That’s kind of gross, Henry,” she said. “But yeah, there’s a kit in the living room. Take it and get us some hair and flesh, if you think there’s no way to do a blood draw.”
“There’s no way,” I said flatly. “This is two-week-old rat-nibbled roadkill, pretty much.”
“Ew!” Gwen said from deeper in the house.
Estelle made a face and shook her head.
“Just… do what you can,” she said before disappearing back into the room.
I sighed and went to get the kit. At least there were gloves in it.
About a half-hour later, samples acquired, we piled into the truck and set off once more, this time looking for a grocery store or something. It was still fairly early morning, and one of the rare clear days for this time of year. The sun was bright in the eastern sky as it crept towards its apex.
“The degree of preservation was astonishing,” Gwen was saying to Estelle while I drove. “It almost seemed like natural mummification.”
“All of the cases I’ve seen,” Estelle said. “Experienced a great deal of bleeding and dehydration. Maybe this is some side effect of the virus, sort of like how Ebola spreads, in part, through seizures and the release of blood and other fluids.”
“But how would partial mummification help it spread?” Markovski asked. “That part just makes no sense.”
“I didn’t witness any seizures in patients before I lost consciousness, myself,” Estelle said with a frown, then looked over at me. “You said you went to bed, right?”
“I did, and I don’t remember any sign of thrashing, just a lot of blood around my mouth and nose,” I replied
. “My face was stuck to the pillow with it.”
“This is fascinating,” Gwen said, as much to herself and anyone else. “I can’t wait to get back with these samples.”
“Just don’t infect yourself,” Estelle warned. “We don’t know if you’re immune or not.”
“Even if I’m not,” the other doctor mused. “Just isolate me and observe the progress of the disease.”
“How about,” I interjected. “We don’t go that way. Look around, Gwen. If this thing just sprang up and died off, it took most of the human race with it. There’s no one left to save.”
She sighed and leaned her head back, looking uncomfortable as hell in the encounter suit.
“I know,” she said after a long silence. “But if it’s still out there, we need to figure out how to cure it, or else some of us are going to be stuck indoors for the rest of our lives, which basically means until the power runs out.”
Gwen shook her head, gear rattling. “I am not ready to accept that end,” she said firmly. “Giving up is just not a thing I do.”
I nodded and smiled faintly.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Any of you that aren’t interested in sticking around here can come out to my farm in Opelika. It’ll be a lot more physical work than mental, but Jackie and I had planned out a nice little homestead with food, water, and we were working on power when I ran across Doctor White.”
“Definitely not a bastion of theoretical or research science,” Estelle said with a broad smile. “But cutting edge for a post-apocalyptic settlement.”
“You mean,” Gwen laughed. “Baths?”
“And more,” I replied. “The area’s close enough to civilization to take advantage of what’s leftover, but far enough out to allow for space to farm and raise livestock.”
“Medical supplies aren’t going to last forever, either,” Estelle said. “We need to start getting back to basics.”
After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus Page 18
