by Barry Napier
“This will likely be the last sample for a while. If we—”
“I said no. The only way you’re going to get more blood from me is by letting me see Olivia and Joyce and then giving me some answers.”
“What sort of answers?”
“For starters, why you need the blood. You’re trying to figure out why we haven’t gotten sick, right? Is that it?”
“In a very roundabout way, yes. You know how fast this virus moves. It kills the victims so fast that it’s pretty much impossible to properly study it. But if we can study the blood of those who are immune to it, as well as a few other factors, we may be able to stop it.”
“If that’s the case, why are men like Ramsey and Hinkley marching around here with guns? Seems a little threatening.”
“You want honesty?” Jolly asked.
Paul nodded. He was usually pretty good about reading people and from what he could tell, Jolly was a straight shooter. Paul wouldn’t go so far as to say he trusted the man, but he’d take his word over that of Hinkley or Ramsey any day.
“The military is sort of running the show. The assumption is that with the virus and the explosions, the country is under some sort of biological attack. And with the rate people are dying, you can imagine how eager they are to form a response. They’re sort of babysitting the medical teams at these little camps because they want to make an informed decision before going off across the ocean somewhere to start World War Three.”
“And what about Olivia and Joyce?” Paul asked. “I still haven’t seen them.”
“That’s not my call. You have my word on that. If it were up to me, you’d be bunking together. I know you don’t want to hear it, but let’s face it: it’s the military. You’ve been a bit of a hothead, so they aren’t going to just give you what you want. They know you want to see them, to know they’re okay. They’re going to keep that one thing away from you until you start being a team player.”
The rage that surged through Paul felt good. He actually let it run free through him for a moment. He gave the emotion its moment and then did his best to go back to something resembling a calm state.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell you what. You get Hinkley to march in here and apologize for nearly caving in my chest, and I’ll be a good boy. No more problems.”
Jolly frowned and looked at his little blood-taking kit. “That’s not going to be possible.”
“Seems like a small price for my compliance, right?”
“It’s not going to happen because Hinkley is dead. He caught the virus sometime around midnight and was dead by 1:15 in the morning.” Jolly let this news settle before adding: “He wasn’t the only one. We can now confirm that the virus is fully present in Ohio. Cleveland, as we speak, is quickly descending into the same conditions we saw in New York.”
“It’s here?” Paul said, astonished. “The virus?”
“Yes.”
“What about Ramsey?” Paul asked.
“Last I heard, he’s fine. I imagine he’ll be in to see you sooner rather than later.”
“So why not relocate? Why not pack up your little camp and go somewhere else if you knew it was coming?”
“Because of this,” Jolly said, tapping at the sleeve of his suit. “It may not look like it, but these suits are top of the line. We’re talking about tech that only some of the most advanced hospitals in the world are starting to implement. These suits and systems have a triple layer of backups. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I’m told they’re even more impenetrable than the suits the astronauts going up to the ISS use. Hinkley was safe, did all the things he was supposed to do. The best guess we can come up with is that he caught it when he removed the suit to shower out at our little barracks just off the property. Fourteen others died within six hours and we know that six of them also showered in that same time span.”
Paul wasn’t sure what to say. He almost wanted to apologize, to tell Jolly that he was sorry for the loss of his peer. But it wouldn’t have been genuine. Instead, he did the next best thing: he freely offered his arm.
“How much longer am I supposed to endure this?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know,” Jolly said, already swabbing the offered arm. “Again, I’m just doing my job—taking orders. But I’ll tell Ramsey that you gave this sample without any issue. I’ll even tell him you seemed taken aback at the news of Hinkley’s death. I think maybe then he’ll let you, Olivia, and Joyce get back together.”
Paul nodded his thanks as Dr. Jolly did his work. “So what do you guys really know about the virus?” Paul asked, wincing at the little prick as Jolly stuck his arm.
“Quite a bit, actually,” Jolly said. “And you’d think that would be enough to stop it right? At its core, it seems pretty standard and simple. It presents itself as a very severe case of the flu, and the symptoms are easy to identify. From what we can tell, the first symptom is an overwhelming fatigue that usually causes dizziness and headaches. After that—and usually no more than five minutes after that—the nausea and fever kick in at roughly the same time. The nausea evolves into the stomach just shutting down in a way I’ve never seen. The vomiting is very forceful and violent. I’ve done some research that indicates some people die because they end up with brain hemorrhages from the force of it. But really, from what I can tell, it’s the fever that is doing the most damage.”
Jolly capped off his first vial of blood and started to draw more into his second. He gave Paul a cautious glance, as if making sure he was still going to be cooperative. As he continued to draw blood, he went on with his findings.
“The highest fever we’re getting reports of is just over one hundred and seven—which is flirting with being hyperpyrexia. Most people are dying by the time it hits one hundred and six. In most cases, in a normal world, someone in good health can recover from a fever of under one hundred and six or so. But two things are happening with this virus: first, by the time the fever starts rising, the body is exhausted from the fatigue and the vomiting so it does very little to fight against it; second, the fever climbs so quickly that it’s basically frying the brain. It causes strokes, convulsions and, in a few cases I’ve seen, just an absolute override of the body’s nervous system.”
“I thought a fever was the body’s response to fighting off a virus,” Paul said.
“It is. But in this case, the body is fighting so hard and the fever is escalating to such heights so quickly, it’s often the cause of death.”
It was easy for Paul to picture this because he’d seen its progression with his grandfather. He ruminated on the speed of it for the hour or so early in the morning, just before dawn, when he’d stood by his grandfather as he died. He hated that it felt so fuzzy and distant. “Is there any hope at all for a cure?” Paul asked. “A vaccine of some kind?”
“Maybe. We’re still trying to map the virus out, honestly. The things that are stumping us are the way it affects the stomach, how the fever is able to climb so quickly, and how it’s able to kill so swiftly. In most cases, it’s right under an hour…from healthy, to infected, to dead. And that’s pretty much unheard of. So even if we do come up with a vaccine, the tricky bit is to find a way to administer it so that it starts fighting the virus before it’s too late.” He finished up the second vial and then pulled out a bandage. “As you might imagine, it’s incredibly hard to test such things on the infected when they die so quickly.”
“Is anyone even remotely close to finding a way to stop it?”
“Not here,” Jolly said, applying the bandage to Paul’s arm. In the way he applied the bandage and from the weight of his words, Paul could tell just how tired the man truly was. “And from what I can tell, no one else is having luck, either.”
“Where did it come from?” Paul said. “I know there was chatter before all the media went down that the blast in New York started it, which makes me think it’s manmade and was let loose on purpose.”
Jolly frowned and shook his head. “I hate to pla
y this card on you,” he said, “but that’s classified. With the way things are going right now, I’d probably be executed for revealing that sort of information.”
Paul’s first instinct was to argue. But Jolly had revealed more than enough information to allow Paul to trust him. The fact that Hinkley was now dead also struck Paul in an odd way. He realized that Jolly was, in fact, only doing his job. Not only that, he was doing it amid pressure from the military and in the face of a horrific pandemic.
“Level with me,” Paul said. There was no bass in his voice, no demand. “When will we get out of here?”
“Soon, I think. Of course, you’ll have a big decision to make. The world is quickly dying out there. I know there are some government facilities being quickly organized through a few uninfected areas of the country—and parts that haven’t been blown all to hell. If I were you, I’d opt for one of those places. I’d imagine there’s one somewhere in Minneapolis, so you could still get Joyce to her father.”
Paul nodded, but he was still clinging to one particular thing Jolly had said. “You said there were parts that had been blown to hell. Has there been anywhere other than Richmond?”
Jolly nodded grimly. “Louisville, Kentucky. The same sort of explosion that took out Richmond.”
“When?” Paul asked, the horror of the situation slowly sinking in.
“From everything I’ve seen, it was exactly six hours after Richmond. To the second.”
“My God, but why?” Paul asked. There was desperation in his voice and it scared him. He thought of what the streets of New York had looked like and tried to envision that over every mile of the country. It was haunting, but all too real to imagine.
Jolly shrugged and said, “I’m just here to figure out this virus. And between you and me, I think there’s a better chance of that happening than understanding the evil of the human heart.”
With that comment hanging in the air, Jolly exited the room. Paul looked to the opened door—the door that only opened one way and essentially had him trapped—and also found himself thinking long and hard about the very same evil Jolly had mentioned.
***
Olivia had been napping when she heard the hydraulic hum of the door being opened. She didn’t bother sitting up. She was too tired, too depressed, and too disoriented. Joyce was laying down behind her, preferring to feel the security of being contained between Olivia and the wall of the room. As far as Olivia could tell, the door had not woken the girl up.
Olivia watched as one suited person entered the room. She looked through the plastic face shield and recognized the stern face of Dr. Chen. Olivia waited for Samantha to also come through, but it was just Chen today. Chen closed the door and stood there for a moment, looking at them. She did not have a medical kit of any kind on her. Instead, she was carrying a very small red cooler. Olivia recognized it because it was the same sort of cooler Samantha had carried when she’d brought them their two meals so far.
Chen set the cooler on the floor and looked to Olivia. For a moment, Olivia thought the woman was going to simply leave—that she was just going to drop the food off and make her exit. After a few moments of awkward silence, Chen sat down on the floor. She looked at the few books Joyce had been reading with something like dull amusement, and then turned her attention to Olivia.
“I don’t understand,” Chen said. She had a very mild Asian accent and her voice was much softer than her very hard-looking face suggested. She sounded somewhere between frustrated and confused.
“Don’t understand what?” Olivia asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.
“Your blood tests show nothing out of the ordinary. I have even compared it to my own and with a few minor discrepancies, I see nothing that would point to why you are immune to this virus. When comparing your blood to the girl’s there are no stark similarities that we can focus on, no glaring beacon of immunity that we can center our studies on.” She sighed here and repeated: “I don’t understand.”
Olivia slowly sat up on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake Joyce. “Where’s Samantha?”
“Dead.” She said it as if it were really no big deal, like they were talking about nothing more consequential than the weather or some new movie. “For about three or four hours now. The virus showed up in Ohio about ten hours ago and it came right through here. About twenty or so of the people stationed here are dead.”
“How?” Olivia asked. “Don’t the suits protect you?”
Chen shrugged. “They seem to. But we can’t keep them on every second of every day. The suits do their job…but we aren’t so sure staying holed up in a house or shelter will do the trick. I so badly want to take this thing off but…”
She didn’t finish the thought. She took a deep breath which, confined inside the suit, sounded like wind stirring through a cave.
“How much longer will we be here?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know. It isn’t up to me. From what we can tell—and this is some very rough math—there seems to be maybe one out of every eighty thousand that might be immune to this. But really, that’s a very rough estimation. It’s probably closer to one hundred thousand. In other words, you’re rare.”
“But there are others here, right?”
“A few,” Chen said. “There were three more when you got here. Now, there is only a single one. One killed himself and the other was shot when he tried to escape.”
Olivia looked to Joyce, wincing at mention of suicide and people being shot. But she was still snoozing peacefully.
“Why would he be shot?” Olivia asked. “That seems a little extreme.”
“Again, I don’t make the rules. I just draw the blood and run the labs. And because we’re all dropping like flies, I guess I now deliver your meals.”
“Where’s Paul? The man we arrived with?”
“Still here. I understand he’s being a little difficult, but he’s still here.”
“I want to see him.”
“All I can do is pass that on,” Chen said.
“Well, do you know if they’ve tried getting in touch with Joyce’s father?”
Chen angled her neck a bit, looking beyond Olivia and to the still-sleeping girl by the wall. “I don’t know. I’d be surprised if they did. It would not be important to them. But I do know that things in Minneapolis are going well. People are being quarantined well and from what I gather, it’s been mostly peaceful. If her father was in Minnesota when things went bad and he was unable to get out, he may be in better shape than any of us could be.”
That said, Chen got back to her feet and seemed to reposition herself. It looked like she had just stood up from the bench and was about to go out to play in the big game. She started for the door and did not turn when Olivia called out to her.
“Wait,” Olivia said. “Can you at least tell me where—”
But Chen was already opening the door, tapping her keycard against it. For a split second, Olivia realized that Chen had no intention of turning back towards her. Olivia wondered if she could attack the doctor from behind and escape. It was an enticing thought, but she recalled what the place had looked like when they’d arrived. All of those vehicles and armed soldiers. Even if they were starting to get wiped out by the virus, Olivia simply had no way of knowing what the grounds were like.
So she decided to simply sit there and watch the door close. After a while, she pulled the cooler to her and opened it. Inside were two sandwiches, two apples, a large bag of chips, two bottles of water. Olivia took out one of the apples, but she did not eat it. She held it for a moment as she lay back down next to Joyce, as if trying to remember the sort of world such a simple little treasure had come from.
Chapter 15
Ray Rutger was eating a very dry ham and cheese on wheat when the massive fight broke out in the Philadelphia International Airport. He was eating it in the same gate he’d originally been sitting in when all the flights were cancelled. He wasn’t sure why he kept going back t
o the same place. A sense of security, maybe? Was it just his way of trying to keep some sense of a routine in the midst of a world gone crazy? He wasn’t sure, and he supposed none of it really mattered—especially after the fight started.
Ray didn’t see the brawl start, but he heard it. One moment, it had been the same quiet desperation of people starting to feel more trapped than rescued, and the next there was cursing and screaming. It was coming from the right, in the direction of the On the Border that was no longer serving food, and the little electronics shop with mobile phone cases and over-priced headphones. When he got to his feet, he could just barely see the edge of the skirmish, but it was clear that it was quite serious. From what Ray could see, there were easily ten or fifteen people involved in it and as they fought and scrambled and screamed, several of the armed military men came running toward the fight.
He'd heard the phrase “nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd” before and he watched as it was proven accurate. People came rushing from all directions to see what was happening. Some were uttering curses, some were crying, and some wore looks of frustration and anger; this was the look of people that wanted something to let their frustrations out on. It was seeing the expressions on some of the people that were running to fight, anxious for it, that clued Ray in to the fact that this was going to be bad. A certain unnamable pressure had been stirring in the airport since the military had arrived and he felt certain that it was about to pop. Much like a shaken bottle of soda, Ray was starting to feel like the top might pop right off of this place.
It was a feeling that amplified tenfold when a woman from near the fighting screamed out at the top of her lungs. Everything changed in an instant after that, and before Ray could even think of how to respond, the entire airport descended into utter chaos in a single breath.
