Dawn of a New Day (14 page)
Authors: Nick Mariano
Just as things were starting to improve and it appeared that everyone was coming to grips with the super virus and that the pharmaceutical companies would meet the demand for the new vaccine, the worst happened in the United States. It was a sunny Fall day in California when a Magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit San Francisco. It was early morning and the quake equaled the devastating “Great Quake” that hit that city in 1906. Fifty per cent of the city was damaged from the quake and resulting fires. The quake’s epicenter was located near San Francisco and tremors caused by displacements in the San Andreas Fault could be felt from Oregon to Nevada. Initial deaths were registered at about 2,000, with several hundred or thousand injured. Rumbling could be felt at the Hoover Dam, which suffered some minor cracks but no reported structural damage. The Golden Gate Bridge could be seen swaying as morning commuters made their way into the city. Scientists had always predicted another major earthquake in the Bay Area and even theorized that such an earthquake could topple some of the major skyscrapers in the city, cause Hoover Dam to split open and flood the surrounding areas producing a tsunami type event that would wash across the Golden Gate Bridge. Fortunately none of these predictions came true. Several recent motion pictures also depicted such events and now that become a reality.
The Governor declared a state of emergency and the President declared California a disaster area and ordered a massive relief effort started. The one big snag in getting aid to California was the fact that most of the needed supplies, people and aircraft were located on the East Coast. Both the Governor and President worried that someone, who might have been recently infected, might board an aircraft and bring the super virus to the West Coast, which had stayed infection free so far. Even if everyone was thoroughly screened, there was no guarantee an infected person would not reach California. Massive screening would also hold up the relief effort for days, if not weeks. A decision had to be made, and made fast. Could the government risk bringing the virus out west? After much consternation it was finally decided that once everyone was inoculated against the virus using the new, and still experimental vaccine, the aid mission would begin. In the meantime, military bases on the West Coast, mid-west states and Hawaii, would begin immediate support to the disaster.
As the days progressed, the news from San Francisco and surrounding areas grew grim. Power had been knocked out in a twenty-five mile radius of the city and rescue efforts after dark became a challenge. Some water supplies and other utilities, such as cell phone service, were also disrupted and many areas both in the city and on the outskirts had only intermittent water and phone service. Water had to be boiled or treated before use to protect against any contaminates that might have gotten into the main supplies.
On Day Three following the quake the first major air support effort from the East Coast got underway. The skies were filled with large transport planes from nearly every military base on the East Coast. Fire and Rescue personnel from the East Coast caught rides on the transports. Harold Stilwell was a rescue specialist from a small fire station in North Carolina and he and his squad sat quietly in the back of a C-130 transport as the plane took off for its seven-hour flight to the west coast. Harold had been busy lately and, although everyone at the firehouse was told to get their inoculation of the new vaccine before deployment, he just hadn’t gotten around to it. He told the Captain that he had gotten his shot; otherwise they wouldn’t have taken him on the flight. He thought to himself that he hadn’t come in contact with any infectee, that was for sure. After work he went back home to his farm on the outskirts of Wilmington and tended to farm chores, like milking the few cows he had and feeding the dozen chickens that he kept. No, there was no way he had come in contact with an infectee.
After four hours of flying, Harold started to get a sore throat but figured it was just from breathing all that recycled air on the military plane. Hell, they didn’t have all those modern day filtering systems like the commercial flights. Only three hours to go.
Harold Stilwell was exhausted and his throat was killing him by the time the C-130 landed at an airstrip outside of San Francisco. He was starting to get a bit of a chill and felt a little irritable but he thought it was just from sitting all this time on the plane and having the other crewmembers bust his balls about nothing in particular. Toward the end of the flight people started to wonder why Harold was coughing so much but he said it was just his allergies and his meds were in his bag that got put into the cargo hold. A good night’s sleep and he’d be good as new tomorrow. Nightfall was rapidly approaching and the crew was taken to a local shelter and told to rest up, as tomorrow would be the start of a busy day. Harold was glad they were finally there and that he could sleep for a while. The shelter was crowded with fire crews from all over the East Coast, and although it was hard to get to sleep, Harold managed to doze off for about six hours before he woke up. Instead of feeling rested and relaxed, he felt even more irritable and his throat was killing him. He also had some aches and pains but thought it was from sitting for seven hours in a military web type seat on the C-130. When the rest of his team awoke they also complained of sore throats but agreed with Harold it was from all that unfiltered air on the aircraft.
Later that morning Harold and his team headed out and began their rescue efforts throughout the San Francisco area. Harold was feeling pretty bad that morning but working took his mind off the sore throat and aching muscles throughout his body. His team members were all coughing too but everyone discounted their problems to the long plane ride and poor air circulation in the plane. The team worked on into the night but eventually it got too dark to safely carry out any further rescue efforts. They returned to local shelter to rest up for another day tomorrow.
Harold went directly to bed when he got back. He could barely stand and the aches and pains were getting worse by the hour. He awoke in the early morning hours and when he went to the restroom to relieve himself he saw that his urine was a dark brown color. He also noticed that he had some blotches on his face and when he opened his shirt, the worst was realized. He had read enough about the super virus to know he was in the latter stages of the disease. How he got it was beyond his grasp but now he was afraid that when the authorities saw him, he would be shot or taken away and disposed of. He also thought back and knew that he shouldn’t have lied about getting his vaccine shot, as that may have saved him from this. He slowly moved back to his sleeping area, grabbed his coat and left the building.
Harold staggered into the night and as he walked through the darkness he began to feel irritable and like he wanted to kick someone’s ass for no apparent reason. After walking about forty-five minutes he encountered a man walking his dog. Before Harold knew what was happening, he had attacked the man and was biting him all over his face and arms. The man screamed out in pain and once his dog got free from his grip, he turned and began to attack Harold. The noise got the attention of a nearby policeman who was patrolling what was left of a park on the outskirts of the city. When he responded to the sounds he found a man kneeling over another, and from what he could see, eating parts of the second man’s face. A dog was nearby barking and lunging at the kneeling man. Although the patrolman had never seen one of the “walking dead” he was fairly sure that was what he was encountering. He wondered how the infectee had gotten here. Up until a week ago, California had been infection free from the deadly disease ravishing the East Coast and Asia. Without hesitation, the young officer withdrew his semi-automatic pistol and shouted for the kneeling man to stop what he was doing, standup and move away from the second man. The man turned toward him and rose slowly. When he turned, the officer’s flashlight revealed a face covered with blood and black and blue sores on both his face and arms. That was all he needed to make a decision and before the man could even begin to move toward him, the officer fired three well-placed shots into the man’s head.
Meanwhile, back at the shelter, Harold’s crew was beginning to get up from an uneasy night’s sleep. Most of the men were still coughing and some had begun to develop aches and pains and bruising on their arms, however, it appeared that the vaccine they had received prior to departure was holding its own and that the virus was not progressing much beyond the flu stage of the disease. They nonetheless reported themselves to the authorities and were placed into an isolation area for further observation. They also wondered what had happened to Harold, as he was nowhere to be seen when they awoke.
The police officer called in the shooting and possible encounter with an infectee and CDC teams and authorities rapidly responded to the scene. The officer had tried to catch the dead man’s dog but he ran off into the night. The officer figured the dog would either find his way home or that someone would gather him up later. He had never heard about how a virus organism could do an Antigenic Shift from a person to an animal and then back to a person. He was also unaware that the dog had bitten the apparent infectee several times before he arrived and that the virus was already streaming through its veins.
Toto was the name of the dog that had tried to save his master without success. He had bitten the attacker several times trying to stop him from hurting his master and could still taste the blood in his mouth. Unbeknownst to Toto and California authorities, the super virus was now streaming through his veins. The virus wouldn’t turn loving Toto into a zombie dog or a dog that had the urge to attack everyone he saw, but it would leave itself in Toto’s fecal matter whenever he went. That fecal matter would then dry up and fly through the air, spreading the deadly virus to whoever was unlucky enough to pass through that area. Birds would also eat from Toto’s deposits and spread the virus. Once the virus got going it would spread like wildfire much like the plague had done in the Middle Ages.
When the CDC and authorities arrived at the scene they find the missing firefighter, Harold Stilwell, dead from multiple gunshots to the head and a yet unidentified man with multiple bit wounds to his face and arms. The responding police officer told them how he had stumbled across the scene and why he had finally shot the attacker. What the officer failed to tell the authorities was that there had also been a dog at the scene who had attacked the person responsible for the attack and that the dog had run away. With or without this information the CDC decided that an inoculation program had to get underway immediately in California since if there was one infectee, there could be others. They did not yet know that Stilwell had been staying at a local shelter along with over one hundred other fire and rescue people, some of whom had not been inoculated against the deadly virus. By the time they determined who Stilwell was and where he had come from, some of the people from the shelter were already experiencing sore throats and spreading the virus throughout areas they were working in. Stilwell’s crew, however, was staying well despite some minor flu symptoms. It appeared that the counter virus vaccine developed by Fort Detrick was doing what it was supposed to do. It also appeared that no one knew that Toto was excreting the virus as he traveled through the ruins of the city.
The CDC team found out that the rest of Stilwell’s team was already in isolation at a nearby medical facility. When they checked in on them they found that all the men were suffering from flu symptoms, however, none of them had progressed to any of the latter stages that involved substantial changes caused by the plague and rabies viruses. A few of the men had some bruising on their arms and legs but the virus wasn’t developing lesions or sores on them. They also were still rational and none felt sudden urges to lash out at anyone. All had been inoculated with the new vaccine about three days before they departed the East Coast. A quick check of the shelter where they were staying revealed that about three quarters of the men at the shelter had also been inoculated prior to their deployment. Unfortunately the other twenty five per cent were firemen from the California area and none had been vaccinated against the virus. Teams were quickly mobilized in an effort to find those not vaccinated and get them into some sort of isolation facility as soon as possible so that if they were infected, the virus wouldn’t be spread any further. Most thought it was already too late to stop a major breakout of the virus. This aspect, plus the disaster that had already taken place, could paralyze California for months, if not years.
The CDC team notified their headquarters in Atlanta and Fort Detrick about the new developments in California, including the apparent success of the newly developed vaccine. They requested as much of a supply as was available for immediate inoculation of those workers within a ten-mile radius of that morning’s incident. The team then received the bad news that there were extremely limited supplies available as the massive inoculation program-taking place on the East Coast and in Asia and Europe was rapidly depleting supplies. Pharmaceutical companies had already informed the authorities that it could be several weeks before additional supplies would be available because of the limited amount of resources they currently had. Things weren’t looking good for a fast recovery in California.
