Here We Stand (Book 1): Infected (Surviving The Evacuation) (9 page)

Chapter 8 - Resettlement

Overpeck County Park, New Jersey

“Were you on your way to a meeting?” Helena asked.

“What?” Tom had been thinking about the events of the night, breaking them down, trying to extract the meaning behind them. Helena had almost been forgotten.

“Your suit,” she said. “It’s not exactly practical for a trip like this.”

“I… uh…” For once, the lies that usually came so easily eluded him.

“Or was it a job interview?” she asked. He sensed she didn’t really care about the answer, but was seeking the normality of conversation as a defense against an abnormal situation.

“I’m an analyst,” he said. “I crunch numbers and try to find the hidden meanings.” That seemed safe enough.

“Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed. “I’m a teacher,” she said.

“You mentioned it.”

“I like kids. Hate the bureaucracy, but I like kids, and they like me. I think that’s the trick to being a good teacher. Trent didn’t get that.”

“He’s the guy who took your boat?” Tom asked.

“Tammy’s boat,” Helena corrected. “It was her husband’s. He was a trader. Bought it when he retired. Got cancer a month later. Died a year after that. Never took it out of the marina. Tammy didn’t want to sell it because it was his dream, you see. Hers and his, to take it and sail off to the Caribbean. Said I could live on the boat, but it was her way of stopping me from quitting. She knew I was thinking about it. I mean, I liked the children, but there are nice kids everywhere. Schools, too.”

“You didn’t want to be a teacher?” he asked.

“Who gets to be what they want? Trent thought the kids had to be scared. That was his strategy. Fear. I didn’t like him, but… I warned him. You heard me, right?” There was desperation in her voice.

“Yeah. I heard you.”

She lapsed into silence, and he didn’t try to fill it.

A few minutes later, a truck overtook them. The back was closed, and Tom wondered if it contained soldiers, or those who’d failed the cursory medical exam. He flexed his hand. He’d not noticed until he was pulling his jacket back on, but there was a jagged cut along his forearm caused by flying debris on the bridge. The blood had mixed with the dust to form a paste over the wound, obscuring it from view. The white-coated soldier had missed it. How many other wounds had been missed, and how many of the injured were infected?

A path had been cleared down the interstate, but like in Manhattan, it was full of abandoned vehicles. A few had their windows smashed. In most of those, there was a corpse, the head blown apart. Maybe they
had
controlled the outbreak. It was possible, wasn’t it?

“There’s people,” Helena said, pointing to a building overlooking the highway. Tom didn’t care. He focused on the road, following it as the route took them off the interstate and down into the suburbs. Here the side roads were blocked. More faces were visible, these blank and expressionless.

A helicopter buzzed overhead. It looked like a civilian model. Did it belong to a news agency? Was the image of this last, desperate band of refugees being broadcast across the nation? He turned his head down until the chopper had gone away.

Step after weary step, he walked. One foot in front of the other, each step getting shorter, each breath more ragged, until the yards became miles and they reached the reception center.

He’d been expecting the hasty order of a FEMA camp, but this was distinctly civilian. It was clear there had been a plan, but also that too many people had arrived for it to be properly deployed. Tents had collapsed or been dismantled. The only activity was outside those marked with a bright red cross. Military vehicles dotted the park, usually with soldiers nearby. Their bored expressions were the only reassurance amidst the chaotic disorder.

A man in a heavy black coat broke off from a slightly larger group of soldiers and came to greet them.

“Welcome,” he said. “I’m Rabbi David Cohen. You are the last, and you are just in time. Does anyone require immediate medical attention?”

No one moved.

“Good,” the rabbi said, “because we are about to leave.”

“To go where?” Helena asked.

“Home,” the rabbi said. “A curfew is being established. Everyone is to go home and stay there. You’ll do the same.”

“Our homes are over there,” a woman said, gesturing to the east.

“We have coaches that will take you to somewhere nearby,” the rabbi said with a weary but disarming smile. “Think of someone you know who lives within twenty miles of here. Family, friends, co-workers, anyone who might be willing to share their roof. The destinations of the buses are taped to their windows. Find the one going closest, give the driver the address, and you’ll be taken there.”

“And if we don’t know the address?” a man asked. “It’s my secretary. She lives in Fort Lee, but I don’t know where.”

“There are police officers by the buses, they can find the addresses for you,” the rabbi said.

“And if we don’t know anyone nearby?” Helena asked.

“No one?” the rabbi asked. “No friends, no co-workers, no family?”

“I have a sister,” Helena said. “But she’s in Canada.”

“Canada? There’s a bus leaving for the border. If you hurry, you can catch it. Be quick.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks. Um…” She turned to Tom. “Bye, I guess.”

“Good luck.”

Tom watched her go. She ran a few steps, then walked, then sped up as the prospect of missing the bus added urgency, then slowed again as exhaustion overtook her. Others followed until only Tom and the rabbi were left.

“You don’t know of anyone nearby?” the rabbi asked.

“Nowhere a bus can reach. Did many people come through here?”

“I’m not sure,” the rabbi said. “The colonel was establishing order when we arrived, separating out the infected from the sick, and telling others to find shelter.”

“Infected? You mean bitten?” he asked.

“Sadly, yes. There were a lot. I’m glad for the colonel’s presence. I don’t think I could have done what was needed.”

“Which colonel?” Tom asked.

“LeGrande. He’s…” The rabbi turned toward the group of soldiers he’d been talking with. The group had begun to disperse. “Well, he was over there somewhere.”

“This wasn’t organized by the governor or a general?” Tom asked.

“No one has been able to reach the governor,” the rabbi said. “At least as far as I know, but honestly, I don’t know very much. I was in the synagogue, trying to think of some way I could help when the colonel came in. He is in my congregation, you see. He asked that I organize the evacuation and resettlement of all these refugees. It had to be done quickly, and so it has been. He requisitioned the school buses, then the civic ones, and then the coaches. I don’t know how, except that a rifle usually carries an argument when the uniform can’t.”

“He’s not regular army?” Tom asked.

“Retired. Forty years in the Marine Corps. The soldiers you see – and sailors and Air Force – they’re National Guard, or on leave. The colonel lives over there.” The rabbi waved to the east.

“Where’s the official response?” Tom asked. “Where are the police? They pulled them out of Manhattan, so where are they?”

The rabbi gave a weak smile. “That’s what I want to know. The news says the Army has been deployed. I don’t know where.”

“What about the bridge? The naval blockade? Who ordered that?”

“An admiral. I don’t know which. The colonel informed me that it was going to happen. His words were that we were doing all we could, and it wasn’t going to be enough. He was right, of course.”

“So you destroyed the bridge.”

“Look around you,” the rabbi said. “We threw this together expecting the full weight of the government to take over. Even if they had…” He sighed. “It is a miserable truth that sometimes you have to cut out the infection. Yet, it is equally true that amputation doesn’t always stop the disease. We have done what we can. Now we must get off the streets. This is the only way the infection will be stopped. You should think of someone who lives nearby. If you can’t, there’s a shelter at the synagogue. It’s the blue bus. It’ll be the last to leave, but we will be leaving in three hours. No later.”

“I have an old friend who lives a couple of miles from here. He’ll put me up,” Tom lied. “Is there somewhere I can sit down for a bit? I’ve been on my feet all night.”

“There are cots in some of the tents, if you can find one still standing,” the rabbi said. “But don’t stay here long. It truly isn’t safe.”

Tom nodded his thanks and went to look for somewhere more secluded. His body was tired, but his brain was leaping. Someone else might have put his suspicions down to shock and paranoia, but he knew a conspiracy
did
exist. There were plans to deal with a viral outbreak in New York. They’d not been put into place. The removal of police, the lack of any military or federal deployment; it all suggested that someone had actively sabotaged the relief effort.

As to whom, it had to be Farley and his cabal. They’d seen this chaos and decided to take advantage of it. They would let the virus spread and… what? Try to seize power?

He looked around, made sure he was alone, and then took out the tablet and plugged in the sat-phone. He stared at the screen and hesitated, unsure what to do first. Find out whether the infection was spreading unchecked, he decided. That was done quickly, and with depressing results.
He found the recording of a man calling home. He’d been on a sales trip to New York, and visited a mall to pick up some gifts for his kids. It was the same mall that had been featured in the news. The man had been bitten, but he’d reached his car, and been able to drive away. Somehow, it had taken five hours before he’d died. All that time, he’d been speaking to his wife on the phone. The conversation ended in a choking cough. The traffic cameras told the rest of the story. He’d reached Hagerstown in Maryland, crashing at an intersection. He died. As the first responders arrived to help, he came back. The zombie attacked and…

“And so it spreads.”

Who the man was, and why his calls were being monitored, didn’t matter. The key detail was five hours. Tom had seen footage of people who’d been bitten and then turned almost immediately. But five hours? He glanced at the jagged cut running down his arm.

“There’s enough to worry about without
that
,” he muttered, and that footage didn’t confirm how far the virus had spread. The algorithm trawling through social media was proving unreliable. Everyone in the world was talking about zombies, and a lot were claiming to have seen them in places it surely wasn’t possible. Germany, Korea, India, France… and then he saw the video and knew that the algorithm
was
reliable. A gendarme had been attacked on the Champs-Élysées. From the look of it, the whole world had seen. The virus was everywhere.

“How did it spread so far and so fast?” The answer was obvious, and took only a few minutes to confirm. The airports had remained open until mid-afternoon. It looked like any plane with fuel had departed. He suspected it was the diplomatic flights that were to blame. Dozens of them had taken off around the time those images of the zombies attacking people were spreading across social media. Two had been heading to Britain.

“Bill…”

Tom tapped out a message to Bill Wright. There was no response from him, nor had there been any reply to the messages he’d sent the previous day.

“Find those passengers. Isolate the planes,” he muttered as he tapped in a number he knew by heart. His finger hovered over the dial-button, but he hesitated in pressing it. The only times he’d ever spoken to Bill, he’d disguised his voice. It wasn’t that there was any way the man might recognize it, but Tom had needed that artificial separation as a barrier against saying something he knew he’d regret. The time for subterfuge had long since passed, and he had to know that Bill was alive. He pressed the screen. The number dialed. The phone rang. And rang.

“Yes?” a woman finally answered.

“Hi,” Tom said. “I’m trying to reach Bill Wright.”

“I… I’m sorry, who is this?”

“It’s an old friend. To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Jenny Knight. I’m a nurse at St Thomas’s Hospital.”

“Is Bill okay?” Tom asked, unable to keep the concern from his voice.

“He’s broken his leg. It’s a compound fracture. He’s sedated, but he’ll be fine. You’re American, aren’t you? Are you calling from the States? What’s going on over there?”

“It’s on the news, is it?”

“A terrorist attack, that’s what they’re saying. It doesn’t look—” The woman stopped. “Who shall I say called?”

Tom hung up, frustrated. If Bill was sedated, then there was no way of getting a warning to the British prime minister. Nor did he have someone who had access to the computing power needed to sort through all the information being gathered. There was another reason for his flush of concern, one he didn’t want to think of, and nothing that he could do anything about here, on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

The rabbi and colonel were correct. Isolation was key. They needed to copy that strategy across the nation. No, across the world. Get everyone inside, clear the streets, then the houses, the towns, the cities, the countries. Every last one. It would be a Herculean task, and the death toll was inconceivable. However, the apocalyptic alternative was too easily imagined. He had to speak to Max.