Endemic Rise of the Plague (20 page)

Seated in his office, James studied the town below from the extravagant glass wall behind his desk. He has always loved the view from his office. The coastline can be seen on both sides of town for about a mile. Two seas of lush green tree tops are found from this view, just two of the many parks that are situated in the coastal town he had called home for the last seventeen years. Just beyond Angora is the downtown area. The buildings in the
historical district have never restored. James treasured the old-time feeling to them. While he appreciated technology and sleek, modern design, there had always been something about those antique buildings that had a special place in his heart. Beyond the downtown area, there are a few office buildings and many homes sprawled out across the land. It’s a hodge-podge of old buildings, newer ones and freshly built structures. But of all the buildings old and new, Angora is the tallest, and James’ office is on the top floor. Though he would never say it aloud, it made him feel superior to the other businessmen in the community, having the most substantial and lucrative company in the county.

This view ordinarily gave him a feeling of confidence and tranquility, but it simply did not have the same appeal today. After hearing siren after siren last night, police, ambulance and fire trucks had been scattered out in different directions
of the downtown and midtown areas. Now, there were no more sirens, as James feared the worst for the meager emergency forces of Port Steward. Across the horizon, there were too many clouds of smoke lingering in the skyline to count. The serum had produced all of this. Those four little shots created this entire panorama view before him.
I have this under control.

He pressed the
Reception
button on his phone. “Amy, I need you to arrange a helicopter evacuation of the faculty,” James said, opening his date book.

“Yes sir, effective immediately?” She asked.

“Yes, without delay. Consult the standard operating procedure in the operations binder on the bookshelf. It contains all the necessary details. I am charging you with this responsibility—own it. I am available for consulting only. If you have questions, review the manual first, consult me secondary. You need to keep me in the loop if there are any hiccups along the way. This operation must be swift and efficient.”

“I’m on it sir,” she replied.

He pressed the release button on the phone. Looking at a number written in his datebook, James dialed it.

“Colonel Kennedy Channing,” the voice answered.

“Colonel, James Meadows here, of Angora Laboratories,” James announced.

“James, what can I do for you? My hands are pretty full at the moment,” Colonel stressed.

“Then I won’t monopolized too much of your time. I just wanted to confirm the deadline for our helicopter evacuation,” James said.

“Just as long as you keep your gates sealed as discussed, you have until twenty-three hundred hours. We have a unit set up in Blue Falls ready to examine all staff upon arrival. Do note, that unless we are able to bring order to Port Steward by that time, the city will be sterilized at midnight tonight,” he said.

“Do you think you may have it under control by then?” James asked in a fatherly voice.

“Hell no!
It’s chaos out here. Our men are having a hard enough time securing the perimeter, let alone trying to maintain any kind of order. If it’s not the diseased, then it’s the looters, or the rioters. I’ve just ordered the closure of the border which means we will be implementing a full quarantine. No one else in or out, we just don’t have the manpower or the medical staff to clear anymore civilians. If you ask me, Port Steward is spent. But we have our orders and midnight is the magic number,” Colonel replied.

Having spent nine of the last eleven years as a special consultant for the United States Department of Defense regarding biogenetics, James was well versed in an assortment of military protocols. While a city-wide quarantine was quite new to him, he
felt confident that it would be like most anything these days—being all about connections. Who you are and who you knew far outweighed the rights of the many. This world is—as it has always been, about money and power. James thought about the ignorant people that he encountered almost daily, that believed love and family is the key to happiness.
Please, the key to happiness is getting what you want and the way to do that is through money and power. How could anyone who lives a life of squalor and poverty achieve any level of happiness?
Revolted by the thought, James felt no remorse for those who would not be permitted to leave The Port—their troubles would soon be over. All that really mattered to him was the colonel’s assurance that he and his faculty would be permitted to leave.

“Do you know what method will be used?” James probed.

“Listen James, I am doing you a solid by letting you evac your people. Let’s not push it, alright. You just get yourself, and your people out by eleven, or you’ll get to see the method firsthand.”

“I understand. Eleven o’clock, we’ll be gone hours before that. Thank you,” James hung up.

Looking in his datebook, he scribbled 11pm in his book for today’s date, and underlined it three times. Not bad, he thought, dropping the pen on the adjacent page.

Beneath the pen, written on yesterday’s date
, a note had been written,
4:15pm—Dr. Edward Stanton’s Retirement Party.

The walk down the hallway of Lynn’s house seemed endless, yet it
remained such a short distance. Roxy held her wound tightly. Her bite was at the halfway point from her neck to her shoulder on the back side. The hallway walls were wallpapered in an awful light blue and red design, faded with time and covered with a thick layer of nicotine. Lynn’s house reeked of cigarette smoke. The smoky scent lingered in the air as if suspended mid-air by the overwhelming heat contained within the home, leaving the air with a sticky feel to it. Roxy could sense Lynn’s eyes all over her and the ladies as they walked through the stifling house. Each time Roxy looked in Lynn’s direction, Lynn would deliver look of repulsion.

“How long have you lived here?” Roxy tried being friendly, turning back toward Lynn
with a gracious smile.

“Ten years,” Lynn said abruptly.

Yeah, and probably smoked about a pack a day, every day of the ten years
. Ordinarily, Roxy would have regretted that pessimistic thought immediately, but she felt different now, as if something had changed her. She knew that she would die soon and that Dave would take care of the rest. But it wasn’t as if she were biting crazy right now. While she understood Lynn’s hostility, she still resented it. As they approached the door to the spare bedroom, Roxy noticed the master bedroom across the hall.

Mattie opened the door for her, a
regretful look on his face. Their eyes met just for a moment, before Mattie’s eyes shifted downward. Roxy walked through the door without uttering a word, her dogs trailing just behind. Dave shook Mattie’s hand in the doorway, while clutching Roxy’s duffle bag in the other hand.

“Thanks Mattie, I appreciate it. I’ll make sure that it’s all taken care of so that she doesn’t hurt anyone in this house,” Dave whispered. He accepted a first aid kit and a handgun from Mattie, tucking the gun in his waistband at the arch of his back.

“Here are some trash bags. Maybe you can lay these out on the floor, so you don’t make a mess of the place when you shoot her,” Lynn said crudely putting a roll of black garbage bags in Dave’s hand.

“Lynn! Get out into the front room for Christ’s sake! You’re a cold hearted woman,” Mattie said, flashing a look of apology as he closed Dave inside the room.

Roxy looked out the curtain-less, water stained window. A bluebird bathed in a swooshing hose sprinkler on the neighboring lawn. The sprinkler seemed incredibly loud, yet it laid on the grass about thirty feet away or so.
This house must be poorly insulated. How do they even sleep at night, when you can hear everything outside?
It looked like a perfect morning just beyond the boundaries of her prison. That’s when it really hit home for her—that she stood in a prison. This room would be the last place that she would ever go. The tacky wallpaper and shag carpet, the stained quilt on the bed, these would be the last things that she would see before she died.

“Roxy, come here and let me bandage your shoulder,” Dave said, jolting her out of her trance of
self-pity.

“Do you think that’
s such a great idea?” Roxy turned and faced him, “I don’t want you to get infected.”

“Well, as long as you promise not to bite, I think I should be okay,” he smiled.

“I promise.”

Roxy thought again at what a handsome smile Dave
had. His eyes twinkled, while his whole face lit up as he smiled. She plopped down on the floor, sitting cross legged with her back to him. She recoiled in pain as she pulled the shoulder strap of her tank top off her shoulder. The ladies excitedly pranced around her, now that she had come down to their level. After all of thirty seconds, they calmed down, settling on the carpet in front of her.

Dave sat in one of two run-down chairs that were next to a small, round, wooden table—a few feet from the door. Pulling out gauze pads and waterproof tape from the first aid kit, he set them on the table. Passing her a few moist towelettes
, to wipe her bloody hands, he put on a pair of latex gloves and wiped Roxy’s shoulder with a peroxide soaked towelette. She arched her back, squeezing her shoulder blades together as the wound sizzled in pain.

“I have to clean it first,” he said tossing the
towelette in the wastebasket beside the table.

“I know,” she said through
tightly closed lips, as she wiped her hands and fingers clean. “Before you wrap it up, is there a mirror? I want to see how bad it is.”

“No, there isn’t a mirror. Roxy it’s really not that bad. You don’t need to see it,” Dave tore off a piece of tape.

“Wait,” she raised her hand for him to stop. “You’re a bad liar. Ask Mattie if they have a mirror.”

“Fine.
Give me your cell phone, I’ll take a picture. Besides you would need two mirrors to see it back here.” Dave said extending his hand over her right shoulder.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her cell phone and handed it to Dave. She heard the fake sounding click of the camera in her phone. Dave’s arm felt icy when it brushed by her shoulder as he handed the phone back. Her skin tingled at his touch, a strange sensation surging from the point
where his arm grazed her flesh—running up to her neck, making her hair stand as goose bumps appeared on the surface of her skin. She turned the phone over without looking at it. She thought for a moment that maybe she didn’t want to see it after all.

Ignorance is bliss, but either way I’ll be dead soon enough, so what does it matter?

She felt Dave put the last of the tape over the gauze and heard him pull off the gloves, toss them and the excess bloody, gauze pads in the trash. He began putting the supplies back in the first aid kit. With a deep breath, she turned over the phone and looked at it.

Feeling as if she may vomit right then,
she immediately exited the screen, the photo saving automatically. Her view of the image lasted only a moment, but the picture haunted her. Handing the phone back to Dave, she buried her face in her hands, the picture unable to leave her mind. The top and bottom teeth marks had been clearly visible. The surrounding area glowed a fiery red, she knew what an infection looked like and this was already, definitely infected. The edges of the skin were black, like the skin had been charred and a fair sized piece of her shoulder was missing, leaving a crater of bloody tissue exposed.

Shuffling to the bed,
she sat on the edge, her mind spinning in disbelief of how things had gone so wrong, so fast. Roxy wanted so overwhelmingly to find her family, and now she knew that she would never again see them. She would never again see anyone. She would never see the sun rise or the moon light up the night sky. She wouldn’t see rain or snow or the beach again. Fire and animosity welled up inside her. Feeling a surge of strength, as if she could break her way right through the wall of the rickety old house, she realized that she needed to calm down. After taking several deep, controlled breaths, she looked down at the ladies and patted the bed. The dogs gently crept up on the bed, uncertain if they were actually allowed to get up there. Roxy began to caress her dogs with both hands. Rogue rolled over, and she rubbed her belly, as tears began drizzling down her cheeks.

“Roxy,” Dave said softly,
intruding on the moment she shared with her dogs. “I’m going to find your family and make sure they’re safe. I’ll take good care of the ladies, I promise.”

Roxy nodded. She wanted to say so much to Dave right then, but the knot in her throat wouldn’t allow it. Whenever she
felt distraught and on the verge of tears, the moment she tried to speak, she would break into sobs. Roxy usually had a firm handle on dealing with grief, always trying to prepare herself for the worst happening, so that if it did, it wouldn’t be such a hard blow. But she never saw this coming. She hated that she couldn’t say what she felt to Dave. She wanted to thank him. Thank him for finding her in the park, for finding a place for them to stay, for keeping her safe, and for being such a great, fast friend. She could only nod, as she squeezed her eyes closed and the tears flowed down her face.

Dave came over to the bed and sat beside her. He wrapped his massive arms around her and pulled her close. “I’ll be here for you, for the rest of your life, Roxy.”

She sighed, cracking a brief smile, slightly pulling out of Dave’s embrace. Their eyes locking for only a moment, Roxy felt alive with electricity as she carefully studied his arresting features. His dark, soulful eyes, his strong jaw line with sprigs of stubble blossoming on his chin and cheeks, the way his lips curved into a grin—all captivated her. Dave leaned forward and gently kissed her cheek, before drawing back, his eyes meeting hers once again.

“You know, last night, in Mattie’s shop, I could have sworn that you had the most beautiful brown eyes. But now, in this light, I can see that they are actually hazel. They’re really stunning,” Dave smiled.

“Hazel? No… my eyes are brown, you were right the first time,” she grinned, looking at him slightly confused.

“Maybe hazel-brown—but they are definitely not just brown. They are a dark green, surrounding a small circle of light brown,” Dave said inspecting her eyes and pointing to them.

“I’ve had them my whole life, and they’re not green. Where—” she began softly.

A knock sounded at the door. “Dave it’s me, can I come in?” Mattie shouted from outside the room.

Roxy nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Dave slowly withdrew from their embrace and made his way across the tiny room in two strides to open the door.

“Mind if I come in for a while? I think if I stay out here with Edgar any longer, I may kill him, myself.” Mattie asked.

“Come in,” Roxy croaked, trying to force a fake smile on her swollen, feeling face.

“Edgar’s out there talking
,” Mattie said. “About how he went to the liquor store this morning and ran into some girl on a dirt bike. He says that he was trying to help her but she got spooked and left him, and those two weirdoes chased him home. What a moron…He knew we were coming and couldn’t wait until we got here? I tell you what, if I was a young lady and I ran into Edgar, I’d be scared of him too. I just can’t listen to him anymore.”

Mattie sat in one of the chairs at the small table, while Dave took a seat in the adjacent chair.

“Can I get you anything to eat darlin’? Lynn’s a real good cook, she’ll whip you up just about anything want,” Mattie offered a look of sympathy. “Sorry ‘bout earlier, Lynn isn’t the friendliest with strangers.”

“Thanks Mattie,” Roxy chuckled a little between sniffles. “I’m good.”