He wondered fleetingly what the owners did, or had done, to afford such a Marin County beauty, and then he decided it didn’t matter. They were gone, and he was here, and that was all he needed at the moment. He felt strangely peaceful.
Of course, he knew his sense of contentment would fade along with the morphine, but he chose not to think about that, because his tranquility seemed interesting and appropriate, deserved through some odd happenstance of selection, where he had been chosen and others had not, a benefit of random genetics that he alone seemed to have inherited.
He flipped over onto his stomach and let the sun warm his bare back. His clothes lay in a pile by the lounge chair next to a bottle of coconut-scented sunscreen. He inhaled and exhaled, the heady tropical aroma stirring something in his groin.
Too bad the sexy nurse with the big tits had died. He wondered dreamily if he could find another woman. He hadn’t come across any live people so far.
He figured the house’s owners had fled before DRYP had really taken off, because the house was orderly, with no sign of death. He found snack foods and dried pasta in the enormous walk-in pantry, a staggering amount really, given the recent food shortages. Carson had helped himself, washing down water crackers and sardines with half a bottle of Opus One cabernet.
Now, he found himself half-drunk and pleasantly sleepy, able to think drowsily about important topics like population bottlenecks and genetic drift.
He was pretty sure the US was entering a population bottleneck, because DRYP was killing so efficiently. What he couldn’t figure out was the size of the bottleneck because he had no idea what was happening in the rest of the country. He did leisurely calculations in his head. How many people would survive with a 95% case fatality rate? How many with 99%?
Carson flipped over like a well-done pancake as he contemplated the one human bottleneck with which he was familiar, a die-off triggered by a massive volcanic eruption 75,000 years earlier. The resulting climate change that had led to the Toba Catastrophe bottleneck was only theoretical, but the idea of an ice age that reduced the human population on earth to somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 individuals had always intrigued him.
What will come of this? Carson wondered. Certainly, the drastic hit to the gene pool would reduce genetic variation, which meant that remaining humans might not have the genetic ability to adapt to new selection pressures like climate change or food shortages. After all, if everyone was dead, who would grow the food?
No, on some level, Carson realized that he was living in a globally historic moment, because surely no species had altered the earth as much as humans had, and now, with so many fewer humans, what would happen to the earth and the species as a whole?
A sudden loneliness pierced his happy shell. He didn’t want to be alone for the rest of his life. He’d like to find another person to prove that this bottleneck was maybe not so narrow. That meant he had to get up and start looking, which meant he had to leave his newfound haven, but he wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.
He reached a hand down for the bottle of cabernet and slugged some wine, feeling the pleasant expansion of taste on his tongue.
No, there’d be time enough for looking later, after he rested up some, after everyone finished dying. Then, he could figure out the size of the bottleneck. Then, he could figure out the magnitude of the challenge.
Sleep pushed in on him. Contented and headache-free, he accepted eagerly, his eyes falling closed, his body soaking up the gentle Northern California sun.
“Wake up, Susan. Wake up!”
Someone shook Susan’s shoulder. She turned away with a groan and buried her face in the truck’s upholstered backrest.
The shaking didn’t stop. “Susan, come on! Something’s happening with him!”
Reluctantly, Susan opened her eyes. Every muscle in her body ached. Her eyes felt crusted shut. She had no idea where she was.
And then, it came back to her. Etta stood at the truck’s open door, her hand poised to shake Susan again.
“Don’t,” Susan croaked. She took a deep, miserable breath and resigned herself to being awake, even as every cell in her body screamed for sleep.
“He’s babbling and rolling all over,” Etta said anxiously. “I’m afraid he’s going to roll off the towels.”
“Don’t let him.” Susan hardly recognized her own voice. It sounded so hoarse, as though her vocal cords had dried out and no longer vibrated correctly. She swallowed and rubbed the back of her forearm against her eyes. She was lying in the cab of an old farm truck. She couldn’t even remember climbing into the damn thing.
Susan sat up painfully and forced her eyes to focus. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Sometime in the afternoon.”
Susan looked down at her watch. “He needs another dose of antibiotics.” She sighed and climbed out of the truck. The air reeked of cow manure and Susan’s body odor. She glanced down at her blood-crusted, sweat-stained scrubs with distaste. “At least he’s moaning again. The silence was starting to worry me.”
The man stopped as soon as he heard her voice. He peered up, his eyes locked on Susan’s face. “You,” he said.
His eyes burned intently, but when she reached to touch his forehead, she was astounded to find it cool. “Yes, me. I’ve got to give you more antibiotics. Do you think you can hold still?”
He turned away, babbling things that made no sense, a mishmash of words thrown together in meaningless sentences.
She walked to the vet’s office to get her supplies. One more dose, and they’d have to go. There was no running water at the stock farm, and the longer she, Etta, and the man went without water and food, the weaker and more vulnerable to illness they became. She thought guiltily about the cattle locked in their lots, moving about fretfully, their restless moos plaintive in the air. But there was nothing she could do about them. She had her hands full.
She managed to get the second dose into him by kneeling on his hand. Again she gave him a rudimentary IV bolus of saline, and again her hands were covered with blood. But she had managed it better this time, with less blood spilled, in a more efficient manner.
She rinsed some of the blood from her fingers with the saline solution, aware that the man had stopped babbling and was looking at her again with that queer, intense stare. She felt like they were linked, the intimacy of his blood on her skin stirring something within her. She held his stare for a moment, knowing that it was an empty one, that he would have no memory of it later.
Then she stood up and went to the vet’s office to fill a box with the remaining medical supplies. She carried it to the farm truck and threw it in back. She went to the Oldsmobile next, grabbing the empty thermos and her doctor’s bag out of the back. These, too, she threw in the bed of the truck.
“What are you doing?” Etta asked.
“Your car is out of gas.” Susan opened the passenger side door. “Let me help you up.”
“What about him?” She gestured at the man. He’d fallen asleep.
“He’s coming, too.” Susan gave the old lady a boost onto the long bench seat.
“Where?”
“In the back.” Susan closed the door and went back to the driver’s side. She climbed up into the cab. The key was already in the ignition. Susan turned it, and the truck’s engine started with a grumbling roar. Satisfied, she turned the engine off again.
“They just leave the keys in the ignition?” Etta asked incredulously.
Susan smiled, for the first time in days. “You don’t know much about farms, do you?”
Getting the man in the back of the truck was much harder than Susan anticipated. He wasn’t an enormous man, but he was utterly unable to help her. In fact, he moved around irrationally, forcing her to fight him into the bed of the pickup.
When she finally managed to manhandle him into the truck bed, she knelt at his side. She opened his shirt again to check the dressing, careful not to touch anywhere close to the wound. She knew he
r hands were dangerously contaminated.
The dressing was intact, soaked with lightly bloody fluid, but nothing like the nasty dressing from before. It will have to hold, she thought. Until the next stop, wherever that might be.
He was looking at her again, his eyes intent and bright within their sunken sockets. She almost thought he could see her, that his mind might be recording this, his memory intact.
“Don’t move. Stay right where you are,” she said, closing up his shirt and rising stiffly to her feet.
She hopped to the ground, circled to the driver’s side, and turned the ignition key. The truck again rumbled to life. The San Joaquin Valley sun beat down through the windshield, heating the cab’s interior. Susan glanced at the gas gauge uneasily. Half a tank. She had no idea how much gas that was or how far it would take them. It’d be best to conserve fuel, but she also knew she needed to run the air conditioner. Etta was already sagging in the heat. Not to mention the poor man lying exposed in the bed of the truck.
“Couldn’t we have taken the Oldsmobile? Siphoned the gas?” Etta asked.
Susan rolled down her window, leaning her head out while she backed the pickup out of the barn. “This is a diesel truck, Etta.”
Susan turned the big truck in the barnyard and stopped near one of the cattle pens.
“What’s wrong?” asked Etta.
“One more thing to do,” Susan said as she hopped out of the cab. She crossed the gravel driveway to the gate and undid the simple chain. She swung the gate wide open, hooking it in place.
“Yah,” she shouted at the cattle. They didn’t move.
“Yah,” she shouted one more time. The cattle regarded her balefully, their broad faces turned to her with seeming dislike.
Susan gazed above them to the rolling, light-brown hills around them. She wasn’t sure if there was any water out here. Well water and canal water serviced this section of the valley, but neither would be any use to the cattle. She doubted there was a lake or river anywhere within miles. Without irrigation, this part of the valley was little more than a desert.
Susan shrugged regretfully. Without people, they would die soon.
But then again, she thought, as she turned back to the truck, this is a feedlot. Even before DRYP, the cattle were doomed.
Sixty
“They don’t call us much anymore, do they?” Harry felt the faint stirrings of a buzz. He looked down at the Styrofoam cup in his hand and swirled its contents. “This is some good shit, huh?”
“You’re drunk,” said Ann, but she didn’t sound angry. She poured some of the fifteen-year-old scotch into her own Styrofoam cup before offering the bottle to the officer. He shook his head.
Ann shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She turned back to Harry. They sat together at the small, round table, the two laptops and telephone shoved to the side. She gestured at the center monitor. “They’ve been meeting nonstop for hours.”
After Heger’s last transmission they had turned the monitor back to the President’s Mount Weather videoconference. Although the audio portion of the meetings was no longer being transmitted, the video gave them some sense of reassurance. It meant the government was still functioning, at least on some level.
“I don’t think they’re meeting about plague management,” Harry said dryly. He sprawled in his chair, his lean legs stretched out in the crowded space so that they almost touched Ann’s. His respirator mask was pulled up on his forehead.
“I imagine they’re planning for the post-pandemic world.”
Harry gave her a dubious look. “And we’re not included?” It troubled him that they were no longer recipients of the audio feed.
“Apparently not.” Ann glanced at the soldier standing at stiff attention by the isolation room’s reinforced door. She lowered her voice a fraction and leaned toward Harry. “There are many things they’ve got to figure out that don’t involve us.”
Harry looked at her inquiringly. The scotch softened his mood, and he watched the familiar lines of her face, trying to read her state of mind.
She gestured at the various heads on the screen with her cup. “That’s the Secretary of Agriculture.” She pointed to the man next to him. “He’s the Secretary of Transportation. I’m not sure who the woman next to him is. But they’re probably meeting about food supplies, if I had to guess.”
One of the laptops emitted a two-toned beep. Harry glanced at it in surprise. Although email had failed for the rest of the country, the government internet services remained intact. He pulled the laptop over and pushed a button on the keyboard.
“It’s from Heger,” he said, his eyes scanning the screen.
“What is it?” Ann leaned over Harry’s shoulder.
“It’s the data he promised.” Harry scanned the enormous file, which contained results from numerous animal experiments, chemical formulations, vaccination results, and spread patterns. It also contained a smaller file called “PLASMID.” Harry opened it.
“What is it?”
Harry looked at the screen, puzzled. “It’s a genomic map.”
“Is it the DRYP plasmid?”
“Yes.” Harry punched another key and the screen changed to a similar map. He went very still. He flipped between the two maps, looking for similarities. There was no doubt about it. The two plasmids were nearly identical.
“What is it?” Ann asked.
Harry flipped back. “This is the DRYP plasmid.” He hit a key and put his finger on the screen. “And this is a plasmid from Francisella tularensis.”
Disbelief washed across Ann’s face. “They’re the same?”
Harry knew what she was thinking. Francisella tularensis was a favored bioweapons bacterium.
Harry checked again. “Yes.”
“DRYP was engineered,” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Harry bleakly. “This is all man-made.”
Susan knew the California Aqueduct ran through the patchwork farmlands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, but after driving two hours along country roads, she’d almost given up on finding it. It was only when the truck crested a low hill topped with almond trees that suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the wide concrete channel appeared.
“Water, Susan!” Etta cried.
Susan stared in wonder at the sparkling blue water flowing serenely down the huge canal. “I thought we’d never find it!” she said.
A wave of giddiness washed through her. She grabbed the thermos, lurched out of the truck to the aqueduct’s edge, and then stopped herself. Although the water’s surface was placid, the current beneath was dangerously swift. With great care, she inched down the steep concrete sides and dunked the thermos. She then very carefully backed up again.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Etta called.
Susan guzzled for what seemed like forever. Water dripped down her chin onto her scrub top. “You mean the water quality? Or the fact that I just drank a gallon?” she asked, grinning.
Although Susan had been joking, Etta had a point. The aqueduct water hadn’t been treated, but Susan doubted they’d find clean water elsewhere. The orchards and fields looked like they hadn’t been irrigated in weeks, and without power, no domestic supply would be available, either. She eased herself back down the concrete side, filled the thermos again, and then climbed back up the bank.
“I don’t think we have any other choice,” she said, handing Etta the metal container. When the old lady finished, Susan used the remaining water to rinse the dirt and blood from her hands. She went to the aqueduct again and splashed water on her face and neck.
The man was no longer delirious when she brought the thermos to him. She could see it in the way his eyes followed her as she climbed into the truck’s bed.
“Do you want some water?” she asked.
He answered through cracked lips. “Please.”
With one hand, she lifted his head to drink. With the other, she gently held the thermos to his lips. His Adam’s apple worked jerkily as he dran
k. When he finished, he asked, “Where am I?”
She looked out across the thick silver-green rows of almond trees that stretched outward from the canal. “Somewhere in the western San Joaquin Valley. Near Lost Hills, I think,” she said. She placed herself between him and the sun so that he could look at her without squinting, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He stared straight upwards, a frown of confusion on his face.
Worry and a strange tenderness filled her. The skin beneath his ragged beard blazed with sunburn, and deep cadaverous hollows ran beneath his cheekbones. In any other time, a man as sick as him would be in an intensive care unit, but here he was in the back of a farm truck, too weak to do anything more than turn his head. She wetted the last remaining clean towel and wiped the dirt from his ravaged face with great care. When he didn’t protest, she wrapped the damp towel around his head in a makeshift turban.
He looked like a weather-beaten nomad that had been in the desert too long. “Hang in there, buddy,” she said softly. “I’ll get you to safety as soon as I can.”
Digging the trench for Nesbitt’s grave exhausted Mack. He sagged against his shovel, a bone-deep ache in his limbs.
“Fucking buzzards,” he muttered, glancing upwards at the birds circling lazily overhead. He jabbed the shovel into the freshly turned dirt, left it standing upright, and then trudged back to the living room, where Jeremy’s tarp-wrapped body lay on the couch. Mack tried not to gag at the sight of body fluids leaking onto the floor.
God. How would he ever get through it? His fatigue felt oceanic, as heavy and endless as any he had ever known.
With grim determination, he dragged Jeremy’s corpse outside. He shoveled enough dirt to cover the tarp, but no more. When the last of the blue polyethylene disappeared, he let the shovel fall to the ground and returned to the house. He veered down the hallway to his bedroom, where he stripped down to his underwear and fell on the bed. He was too tired to do anything else. Every inch of his body begged for the merciful oblivion of sleep.
DRYP Trilogy | Book 1 | DRYP [The Final Pandemic] Page 41
