Apokalypsis Book One

by Kate Morris

  “Wow, that sounds like a lot to keep track off,” he remarked.

  “Not really. It’s all written on the whiteboard. We just have to be careful and pay attention to their food schedules, or we could make them sick.”

  “Sick? From food?”

  “Yes, horses can colic. It happens all too frequently. Not around here but other barns. For being such big animals, they have a highly sensitive gastrointestinal system. Ready?”

  “Absolutely,” he said with a full, disarming smile.

  Jane frowned and handed him Tiger’s container. Then she grabbed Queenie’s. She showed him which feed was which and where the supplements were kept and how to measure them all out. When they had the first ten horses’ feed containers full, she took another wheelbarrow over to the hay that was stored on pallets on the concrete. It smelled minty and clean. Mrs. Goddard bought the best hay around, normally first cutting alfalfa. It was trucked in on a semi and unloaded with a pallet jack. However, it still had to be handled once inside the barn. She was glad the full-time handyman did it most of the time.

  Jane told him, “Each horse gets one flake of hay.”

  “What’s a flake?”

  “See how it kinda’ comes apart like a slice of bread? That’s a flake. They get one in the morning and one at night. Unless they aren’t turned out like in the muddy season in the spring or now. Then they get two at night.”

  “Got it. So, we need twenty flakes.”

  She teased, “You really are good at math.”

  He chuckled and loaded twenty flakes onto the wheelbarrow until it was stacked taller than Jane.

  “I’ll get this one,” he volunteered.

  His sweater was covered in hay bits, but he didn’t seem to mind and wasn’t throwing a hissy fit over getting dirty. Most of his friends seemed like they would have.

  “Thanks,” she said and carted the other wheelbarrow ahead of him. “Now, we just dump grain in the buckets mounted in their stalls and take the hay to the back of the stall and toss it up over and into their racks.”

  “Got it.”

  “Just shut the stall door behind you,” she said with a knowing smile. “Some of them are pretty ornery. Especially Tiger. He’ll escape and go to the first open stall he can find and grab a few bites of whatever is in there. Their name tags are on the stall doors. That way we can keep track of their food schedules and what each horse should get.”

  The horses nickered and neighed in anticipation of the evening meal. It always made her smile. They were like little kids, really. About forty minutes later, and without any mishaps, they had all twenty-one horses fed. Then it was time to water. Most of the horses were turned out today for a little while, so their water buckets were full already. Only a few of the horses who weren’t turned out needed water. They got it done very quickly. Having help certainly made the work go faster. Jane usually worked over an hour each night just doing their feedings, sometimes longer if she had to retrieve them from the field and get them stalled.

  “Connor would love this place,” he commented as they finished filling the last bucket. Then he wound the hose back up and hung it near the hydrant.

  “You should bring him over for lessons,” she said. “Mrs. Goddard has three trainers who give lessons. He could start on Jessup- he’s a small Haflinger pony.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll talk to my mom before she leaves town again.”

  “She’s still home?”

  “Yeah, but her job requires her to travel a lot. She’s usually gone two or three days a week and home on the weekends. Unless, of course, she has to be somewhere first thing Monday morning. Then she leaves on Sunday night. Her schedule’s pretty hectic.”

  “Oh, that must suck,” she said, feeling sorry for him.

  “Yeah, it pretty much does,” he admitted and looked away for a second. “What else do you need to do?”

  “That’s it. I just need to wait for them to eat and make sure everyone’s okay. Then I shut everything off and get to leave.”

  “How long does it take for them to eat?”

  “Usually close to an hour. We’ve got some geriatrics in the group, who take a while,” she joked.

  “Geeze, I guess so.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I just sit in the hay and do my homework most of the time. Or broom out the aisles, but I did that earlier.”

  He nodded, his face showing a strange amount of concern about something.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s just a lot of work, hard work,” he remarked.

  She laughed once and said, “Yeah, well, that’s why they pay people to do it.”

  He nodded and offered a grin.

  “Did you bring your tablet?”

  “Oh, yeah, I did,” he said and retrieved his bag where he left it near the grain station.

  “We can sit over here,” she said, leading him to the stack of hay.

  Roman handed her his bag and pulled down a bale from the stack. Then he offered her a seat and sat right next to her. The wood and metal wind chimes on the front porch near the office clinked and clanked as the wind outside picked up. She could hear leaves rustling against the metal barn wall behind them. It sounded like they were about to get hit with another thunderstorm.

  He turned on his tablet and pulled up the video. It was the same man interviewing presumably the same doctor as he did before. He was still concealed behind a screen and had his voice altered by electronics.

  “We’ve seen a progression in the disease,” the doctor explained to the host. “We think it might be mutating.”

  “Mutating? So soon?”

  “Yes, sir,” the doctor said. “It’s highly unusual for five weeks into a pandemic for the disease to so quickly know that we’re trying to target it and for it to transform into something impenetrable by our new vaccine. It’s watching us as closely as we’re watching it.”

  This sent a shiver through Jane. “Five weeks? I thought this just started.”

  “I think it just started here in America,” Roman said, pausing the video. “Or maybe not. Maybe it just hasn’t been covered by the news. The CDC may not want to cause a panic. Maybe our government’s covering all this up so people don’t freak out.”

  She nodded, and Roman pressed the play button again.

  “What does that mean to the public, Doctor?” the host asked.

  “Nothing good, I’m afraid,” he said. “We almost had it defeated with this vaccine. It took us time to go through trials, but after forty-one tries, we got it right. We saw an improvement in preventing…”

  “Preventing?” the host interrupted. “What about those who are already sick? If this is just a vaccine, how would you treat the ones who are already infected? Would the vaccine work for them, too?”

  There was a long pause. “No. I’m sorry to say that the vaccine will not cure those who are already infected. It doesn’t even matter. Now that the sickness has mutated, we can no longer use the vaccine anyway. It’s useless, worthless.”

  “So, if you figured out one, you’ll figure out another, right?”

  “I’m not so sure. We aren’t having any luck. The other time, we knew what to do, how to go about growing samples, how to contain the strain and manufacture the vaccine. This time is different. We’re getting impossible readings from this new strain. It’s faster, deadlier.”

  “Doctor, how many have died from this new strain? Do you even know?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “These numbers are likely low because we don’t have a clear count from countries who will not cooperate with us.”

  “Understandable.”

  “What we do know is that worldwide we have a count of nearly thirty thousand. In the United States? Two thousand four hundred and twelve.”

  “Thirteen,” Jane said, causing Roman to stop the recording again.

  “Thirteen? What do you mean?”

  Jane ran a hand through her hair. She finally turned to look directly at Roman and sa
id, “I know of one more, so it makes the number two thousand four hundred and thirteen. Hector died.”

  “What? Oh, my God, Jane,” he said. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I know you really liked him.”

  “They wouldn’t even let his wife say goodbye,” she said. “How terrible is that?”

  “What do you know about his condition?”

  “Very little,” she spoke softly. “Just that his fevers spiked out of control, and he fell into a coma and didn’t wake up again.”

  “When did this happen?”

  She sighed, “Last week.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just been trying to…”

  When she didn’t answer, he did so for her, “Ignore me?”

  She didn’t want to admit it, so she looked away. It wasn’t just about ignoring him. She was also trying to process all of this and not panic at what it could mean.

  “I talked to Randall’s mother today,” he said, causing her to look back at him again. “I left third period and went to the hospital. She’s been there the whole time. They still aren’t telling her much. She said they’re talking about moving him to the Cleveland Clinic.”

  Jane nodded as an owl outside offered up its nocturnal song. She didn’t care for owls. They were creepy with their twisty heads and glowing yellow eyes.

  Roman pressed play again.

  The doctor went on to say that he thought people were in danger. That people should not be going out in public if they didn’t need to. That the CDC should own up to this and tell the people the truth.

  The host asked, “The violent behavior, is that gone in the second strain?”

  “No, it’s actually worse. The patient becomes completely unable to understand reasoning. The frontal lobe is the only part of the brain where we pick up activity on neuroimaging or CAT scans. The parts of the brain that contain emotion, feelings, we’re getting nothing. It seems they grow sequentially more violent, less capable of functioning as a normal human being.”

  “Like a zombie,” the host said to the camera, playing it up, attempting a joke.

  The doctor failed to find it funny, “No, sir, not a zombie. We don’t see them trying to eat people. They aren’t the dead reanimated. They seem bent on violence and their own survival. They don’t fall into the coma, either. They go straight from stage one, which is the fever stage, to violent and erratic behavior next.”

  “Interesting. And how long does that transformation occur?

  The doctor behind the shadowy screen rubbed his forehead before saying, “Less than forty-eight hours. Then the odd, erratic behavioral traits seem to subside as the fever wears off, and they function on some other sort of sub-human level. Violent, unable to reason, most unable to form words or thoughts, complete a sentence. This isn’t going to be controlled.”

  “How so?”

  He went on to say, “In India alone, there were over fifteen hundred cases reported so far. Every single one is the new strain. Taken there by businessmen traveling to the region is what we’re surmising. As a matter of fact, with international travel, this disease could be spread to potentially every country and island on this earth within another month. I don’t see it taking longer than that. And we have no way of stopping it. This disease, this sickness is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

  “Everyone is calling it a flu. Would that be an accurate term to use, Doctor?”

  “It’s definitely an infectious disease. Labeling a monster like this with something as simple as a common flu is too simplistic for my taste.”

  “But other sicknesses like the flu have mutated before. Remember back in 2024 the flu killed almost a hundred thousand people during a two-year period.”

  “Yes, a hundred thousand people would be a drop in the bucket compared to this new sickness. And it’s not treatable like the flu. For certain strains of the flu, we’d treat with anti-virals or antibiotics for others. This didn’t respond to any of those drugs. We’ve even tried treating it with herbal remedies with zero positive results.”

  “So, for laymen’s terms, what are people in the medical world calling this?”

  “RF1 and now with the more dangerous and deadlier new strain, RF2.”

  “What do those initials stand for?”

  The doctor paused before saying, “I can’t reveal that. It would expose my identity. You may eventually learn without my help anyway if this continues and the origins become revealed.”

  “And these infected people are violent toward other humans, uncaring, unfeeling?”

  “Yes, absolutely. They are violent towards animals, humans, anything that steps in their path. As I was explaining about India, they reported many deaths as a result of the infected attacking them. Africa is far worse.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “We’ve also had similar situations in Europe, Africa, and here in the United States, but the police reports here are listing the homicides as domestic violence since the three incidents were the infected persons attacking their own family members.”

  “Dear God,” the host said.

  “He very well may be our only hope soon,” the doctor commented. “As a scientist, I’m not a particularly religious person, but I would recommend praying.”

  “What’s being done for these people who are infected with RF2?”

  “Quarantine,” he answered. “We’re keeping them locked up in cells. It becomes increasingly difficult to communicate with them. They…they seem incapable of speech and reasoning. It’s as if ten thousand serial killers have all come out of the closet and are trying to murder the masses. We can’t reason with them. Their eyes. You can tell because of their eyes.”

  Jane swallowed hard and tried not to think about the reciprocity of his summary. Family member turning on family member. It was too much to comprehend. The bloodshot eyes she and Roman had witnessed. Rampant serial killers bent on murdering everyone sent a shiver straight into her core.

  “So, what is our government here in the United States doing about all this?”

  “Today there was a meeting with Homeland Security.”

  “Why? What would Homeland Security have to do with any of this? This is being taken care of by the CDC, by your people there.”

  “They’re looking at it as domestic terrorism.”

  “Do you think that’s what this is? Something started here on purpose, a virus released, perhaps?”

  “I don’t think it was started here. No.”

  The host frowned, “Do you think it was something started somewhere else on purpose?”

  After a long pause that Jane mistook as the machine cutting out, the doctor finally said, “Yes. I believe this is a weaponized disease gone bad. Nobody in their right mind would release something like this. Nobody would have any way of knowing if they had immunity. We don’t know if anyone will be immune. This is all just too risky. But I do believe it was manmade.”

  They wrapped up the interview a few seconds later, and Roman shut off his tablet.

  Jane ran her hands up and down her arms. Perhaps she should’ve worn a coat after all.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Do you think Hector and Randall and Mr. Hawkins all have this?”

  She shook her head but not because she disagreed with him. She was just too stunned to know what to say or how to react. Roman nodded.

  “I know. I do, too. And it sounds like if they don’t get this under control soon that we could all be infected within the next month or two.”

  “No, no way,” she said. “There’s no way that will happen.”

  “I feel like we should be doing something, ya’ know?”

  “Like what? Curing diseases? Paying closer attention in Biology last year?”

  He smiled and said, “Yeah, no kidding. But I meant something more along the lines of getting prepared for it if it’s going to come here.”

  “It already is here if Randall, his girlfriend, Mr. Hawkin
s, and Hector all have it. Dez said a few other students and some of the faculty have it now, too.”

  “And those are just the patients we know. There has to be more.”

  She nodded and felt her throat constrict. This was too much. “Dez said a couple more from her volleyball team, too. But, hey, I still think the doctors will figure this all out,” she said with hope.

  “Are you trying to convince yourself or me?” he asked, making her a little mad.

  “We can’t just go by this guy on the kook network. He might not even be a doctor. Did you ever think of that?” she asked and stood. She paced in front of him. Then Roman stood, too.

  “Yes, I did,” he said, his temper also rising. “But we’ve got evidence, Jane. You know we do. People around us are getting sick with some weird shit, and nobody seems to know anything. Their families aren’t allowed to visit them in the hospitals. They’re being kept in isolation. Doctors aren’t giving anyone answers and are wearing hazmat suits to treat them, and now your friend from the restaurant is dead. Who’s next? I asked about Mr. Hawkins while I was there, too. You know what they told me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing, so I talked to his wife, who was in the waiting room on that floor. She said they won’t let her see him and won’t tell her anything about his condition.”

  “This is crazy,” she stated.

  “I know,” he said quietly and nodded.

  Jane walked away to check on the horses. Roman walked beside her.

  “What do you think will happen if this really does get as bad as that doctor was saying?” she asked him.

  “Not sure. I think in some situations, the government would declare martial law,” he said.

  She shook her head, “Like where the military comes in?”

  “Yeah,” he said and leaned back against a stall door as she checked the horses in their vicinity. “It could get to that.”

  “What would they do?”