Medora: A Zombie Novel (5 page)

“Dave, I told
you, we have called them, but they haven't come yet. We don't know where they are. Look, we have all seen what's going on here and we have already tried everything we can, so stop yelling at everybody.”

Keith flipped his phone out from his jacket pocket and dialed 911. The phone rang for twenty seconds with no answer.

A voice finally picked up, “911, what is your emergency?”

“Hi, I called early about a woman in the office building on 28
th
avenue and…”

“Yes
sir, we are aware of that situation. You should only call once for an emergency. We can't be holding up the line.”

“
Yes, I know, but it's been a half an hour and no one has showed up and she is in a serious condition. She is incredibly sick and needs to get to a hospital immediately.”

“Sir, our call volume at the moment is beyond our maximum capacity. We have sent out an ambulance
, but you must wait. I'm sorry, but it's all we can do under the circumstances.” She spoke hastily, trying to dissuade him from responding.

“What circumstances?”

“Thank you, sir, the ambulance will arrive shorty.” She hung up the phone.

Keith just stared at his phone. “
Man, something is tying up the phone systems and the ambulances. Can someone turn on the news? Does anyone know anything about this?” Keith spoke out loud to his coworkers who were scattered randomly around the offices.

Hess started moving towards the
receptionist’s desk where a television was mounted on the wall. “Yeah, we can check out the TV in the foyer.” A flood of people started to congregate around the TV.

Keith turned to Dave, “Can you stay here and watch Janice?” Keith felt odd making the request,
as if he wasn't asking him to watch over a sick person but a danger trying to be kept under control like a forest fire.

The TV was switched to a news
station, which showed a street in the Bronx with eight ambulances parked down the length of it. A news reporter was standing in front of one of the ambulances talking into a microphone.

“...
The unprecedented volume of calls for emergency assistance has resulted in a citywide gridlock of ambulances and an overflow of hospital outpatient clinics. The flu season has hit early this year with more cases than ever reported. Many hospitals have reported symptoms of vomiting, fever, nausea and some bleeding. At this point, it is unsure what guidelines the Mayor might set forth for the city, but we anticipate hearing from him in just a few minutes. We have been told he will be appearing in a news conference in regards to this recent outbreak of the flu...” An anchorman in the news studio broke in over the news reporter’s voice.

“Jan, have the hospitals given any instructions to patients that are coming in for the sickness in light of the large volume of patients right now?”

The news reporter clutched her ear in her hand and responded, “There have been no official reports from any hospital in the city but you can see from this shot... if we can get a change over...” The screen changed to the view of a hospital on a busy street corner. A crowd of people was coming out of the entrance and led down to the end of the street. There was a vague semblance of an actual line, but people were crowding one another to get better access to the doors. The crowds had blocked the entrance to the emergency ambulance entrance, forcing ambulances to park in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. “Things are really getting hectic at this hospital. It doesn't look like any care is being given in a timely order. We expect to hear a citywide statement shortly from the Mayor on how to better manage this situation.”

The abrupt silence that fell on the employees as they watched the news report began to build into immediate tension
. It wasn't the kind of tension one feels with common stress like attempting to finish a project under a deadline or trying to get your kids to quieten down in a restaurant. This tension was a quiet dark fear that starts to build in someone’s stomach when they witness an event that they fear might quickly get beyond their control. Like suddenly watching the water level of the ocean sinking out beyond the shore in prelude to a tsunami. A small distinguished fear in the employees was growing, which perhaps went unspeakable to relinquish the sudden onset of the reality of the situation.

Without speaking, Keith moved towards the windows of the building and peered downward into the streets. He saw traffic jams and swiftly moving foot traffic. The
anxiety in his stomach began to diminish, because it looked like the normal operating streets of downtown.

The office looked at him, knowing why he went to the window. “
Well, it looks pretty normal out there, normal traffic. Hopefully, we won't have too much trouble getting home today.” They continued to look at him as if he were going to give further instructions. Instead, he pulled out his phone and called his wife.

She picked up on the other line, “Hey, what's up?”

Keith realized that the only reason he called her was to try to sense panic in her voice, as if knowing her mood would help him to determine the current psychological state of the entire city. He felt an enormous amount of relief to hear her nonchalant voice on the line.

“
Hey, I just wanted to see if everything was okay with you.”

“
Yeah, everything's fine here. The carpet guys are here and they’re making so much noise downstairs that I can barely think up here.”

“Have you seen the news? There
are a lot of people sick in the city and... Janice here... something happened to her. I don't think she will make it.”

“What? What are you talking about? What happened to her?”

“She just got really sick all of a sudden and her face and arms have boils and blisters all over. It's bad, really bad. No one knows what to do and we can't get an ambulance here because the entire city seems to be sick.” He stopped there before he mentioned that Janice was also caged in a conference room.

“Jeez, that is horrible.
”

“Yeah.
Well, Dave and I will make it back sometime. I still don't know what we're going to do about Janice, but we can't just leave her here without help. I'll call you in an hour. You should call the school and make sure everything's okay with Jayne. Call me if anything happens.”

“Okay, I will.
Love you.”

Kei
th made his way back to the conference room and couldn't see Janice in the darkness of her confines. Dave saw him walking over to him.

“Hey, we got to
go, man. We should get out of here. Things are not looking good in the city. Jared left with some people already. We should go.”

“What do you think we are going to do about Janice? We can't just leave her locked up in that
room. We have to wait for an ambulance. Just stop panicking. We’re going to be fine.”

“People don't get sick like this. This is major. This is a big deal. Hospitals don't overflow like
that. Have you ever seen it like this? You know you haven't. I don't want to get caught in a damn quarantine. We need to get out of Manhattan.” Dave was purposely speaking in a soft yell.

“
Fine, then go, I'll take to train, but I'm not leaving yet.”

Dave hated his quick response. He knew he couldn't leave knowing the Keith was staying behind when he himself was taking off like seamen jumping overboard.
The boldness of his opposition made Dave forget about the people rushing out of the office to catch the subway, or going to hospitals to see how a loved one was doing. Keith's simple defiance had created boldness within him and he knew he couldn't leave now.

He breathed heavily and sank into a chair. “Okay, we'll wait.”

Dr. Stark's leg hurt. He had sat crumpled up in the last seat on a coach plane bound for D.C. For four hours, his right leg was jammed between the chair in front of him and the wall of the hull. Even now, while sitting in a plush leather chair, he could feel the tenseness of the muscles and the shooting rhythmic spasms down his hamstring. He gently massaged it and looked over the vast conference table where thirty people were seated. He heard a few of them introduce themselves when he walked in, but didn’t’ remember any of them. There were various researchers and other physicians present.

The room was filled with noises of paper shuffling and muffled conversations interjected by more audible sentences that caught Stark's
ear, like, “No, no those details were not released to the media,” and “...the radius of reoccurrence would be slower, much slower than an initial site...”, “... Newark, Annapolis, and Boston are already sending supplies with more health care providers...” Amidst the conversation, a small man in a suit stood up with a glass of water and cleared his throat. His subtle gesture to silence the room had little effect.

“Ladies and gentleman, we are going to get started with a briefing from Dr. Lou
Beckfield about the current volume overflow happening in the New York area.” After the room quietened down, he turned to a tall man with small shoulders and a stern jaw who stood up from his slouched position in his chair.

“I don't know how many of you have been informed of the details of the current situation in the New York
area, so that's why I'm here, to get you caught up. What you're seeing on the news has only come from media sources and not from any official report issued by this or any other department of the government. As it stands, every hospital in Manhattan and most of the boroughs are operating way beyond their maximum capacity in terms of patient volume, staff and medical supplies. The streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn are becoming chaotic. Riot police have already been set up all over the city, especially in those areas with the highest volumes of patients. The Mayor, along with some of us here in D.C. has already coordinated with eight cities in the surrounding area for supplies, physicians, Life Flights, etcetera. All of that has arrived or is en route.” He stopped to rub his fingers over his eyes.

“It appears from throat swabs taken six days ago in the New York area that a variation of the H5N1 flu is what has caused the high patient volumes. It is the opinion of the institution that I represent that a random mutation in one strain has caused a particular resistance to standard
vaccinations, which has caused high virulence in the immediate population. It will require three doses of three separate vaccinations that have already been tested and administered in a Vietnam outbreak of the same virus that occurred twenty years ago. We have determined that a minor change in the dosage and drug content has eradicated the new mutated virus in vitro in the lab. Without getting into too much of the specifics of the medicine involved, I'll be more direct. The challenge that we present to you and your respective committees is providing the funds, manufacturing and distribution of the vaccines within four days. We have estimated that, within this time period, we can maintain the virus in reasonable city boundaries with no quarantine, given that the public is informed on certain preventative measures.”

A hand shot up. “Do we have an estimate on fatalities?”

“At this point, it is extremely difficult to do any sort of analysis on patient death outcomes in these hospitals, due to high patient volume. At this time, I cannot give any estimate on fatalities, nor whether this flu strain has even caused any fatalities. Having said that, we don't expect this flu to be particularly fatal only that it is highly contagious.”

“How are other city functions being affected?
Traffic, shipping, businesses?”

“I'm
sorry, I don't know those specifics. That’s why we have...” Beckfield glanced over his glasses around the room and then focused on a person sitting directly across from him, “Ah, Jason Straus, the Deputy Mayor of New York.” He motioned to the man, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Straus.”

Straus stood up as a man before a board of trustees about to break bad stock news to them. He looked like a polished businessman with an expensive suit
that shone in certain angles of the light. He had an air about him that suggested he should always have a cigar between his fingers and a drink in the other hand.

“Ladies and Gentleman, the Mayor has decided to declare a state of emergency in New York City given that the flu has spread and has increased patient volume by a factor of seven in a little over
six hours. This unprecedented outbreak of illness has the city’s hospitals ill prepared. Within the next few hours, we will undergo the process of clearing all major roads of traffic and we will be setting guidelines for all citizens in regard to the illness. Dr. Beckfield will be in charge of the public health announcements. We have coordinated with law enforcement at least to double the police presence in the city. As more physicians and healthcare providers arrive from surrounding states we are coordinating with, the city council is setting up makeshift medical facilities that will be placed all over the city. As of yet, no official statement has been made from the Mayor's office to the public but we expect that to be issued within the hour.”

He glanced down at his watch and continued speaking. Stark sat in his chair massaging his
leg, completely perplexed. He had no idea why he was there. He looked over at the only man who wasn't intently listening to the Deputy Mayor, flipping through some papers from a manila folder lying on the table in front of him. He read the papers as if he were leisurely brushing up on business documents in his private office. He seemed not to be listening nor reacting to a single word that was being spoken, which contrasted with the piqued faces and dead silence in the room.

After the meeting
adjourned, Stark walked slowly down the hallway outside of the conference room. He felt someone briskly grab his arm from behind and quickly spun his head around. It was the man who was carelessly flipping through papers during the meeting. “Hello, Dr. Stark.”

“Oh, hello...”

“I'm Larry Rambert. I talked to you over the phone.”

“Oh, yes of
course, Secretary Rambert. I saw you in the meeting.”

“I hope the flight was okay
. I know it was rushed. Were you able to pack everything you needed on time? If not, I'm more than happy to get you some toiletries.”

“No, no everything is fine.” Stark stared at
Rambert, completely bewildered by his own presence in Washington, unable to understand why this man was still asking him about his flight. Sensing that Stark was growing weary of the formalities, Rambert finally changed the subject.

“I know you're probably wondering why you're
here, given that what you just heard in that conference room has nothing to do with any research or clinical experience that you have. Would you mind taking a ride with me?”

“Well, I flew out here,
so I might as well.” He forced a small laugh.

Stark followed him to a black car with darkly tinted windows. As the driver began to pull aw
ay, Rambert cleared his throat. “Dr. Stark, I want you to forget about everything you heard in the meeting, every single bit, except about how there's a bunch of sick people in New York. That part is very true.”

“So the rest of it wasn't true.”

“I know you've never worked in Washington, so just do me a favor and don't worry about what's true right now. Have you ever been to Medora, North Dakota? Ever heard of it?”

“No, sounds small.”

“Very. Look, I'm taking you to a very special facility and I'm giving you an enormous amount of resources at your disposal. There is a sickness in New York but it is not the H3N whatever flu that they were talking about in there. It’s much, much worse than that.”

“How do you know
that, if the outbreak only started this morning?”

“I told you to forget about everything you heard in that meeting. Before I go on with any further explanation, I need to hear more about your work in the UK with CJD. Tell me about more about the actual mechanism of the disease that you proposed.”

Stark leaned downward and rubbed his eyes in his hands. He felt tired and tense at the same time. He bent his head to one side until there was a pop in his neck, and then he focused on Rambert’s face. “Well, what exactly do you want to know?”

“Did you ever know if it was bacteria or a virus?”

“You would think that that would be an easy question to answer, but it’s not.”

“How so?”

“There was an enormous amount of dispute amongst the researchers about what was actually causing the disease but no one could agree.”

“Why not?”

“Dr. Crimmel, one of the researchers from the pharmaceutical company insisted it was caused by prions, a protein that would build up in the brain. Prions are transmitted through bad meat but I never once found any evidence of prions in the brain samples of those that had died and neither did Dr. Crimmel. Everyone from the pharmaceutical company agreed with Crimmel and everyone else at the hospital, including myself, disagreed.”

“Why was there a division?”

“I always assumed that Crimmel was covering something up. A lot of the sick patients had been receiving treatment already from Dr. Crimmel and his company. There was something going on that they didn’t want to talk about.”

“So what caused the disease?”

“It was not a virus or bacteria that I’m familiar with. I ran thousands of blood cultures and nothing ever grew. I performed blood tests for every known pathogen and came up with nothing. If it was a pathogen, it was a ghost. And it was one hell of a ghost.”

“How so?”

“When these people became infected their different tissues no longer relied on each other. Some organs didn't need the heart anymore because they had become completely anaerobic. Other tissues no longer needed the intestines because they didn't need a break down of normal metabolites. Other tissues would simply start to digest surrounding cells for nutrients. Some body systems just died but the person continued to live. I could never prove it because I didn't have time, but I had a patient who was living for four days without his liver functioning. Only the organ systems that could become self sufficient survived.”

“And
you think it was a pathogen that did this?”

“
Probably. The problem was that none of the patients survived long enough for adequate research to be done and most of the bodies were cremated immediately. I was lucky to do a few autopsies, but once Crimmel found out I was doing them, he kicked me out of the morgue.”

The car pulled up to a building complex and rode past a guarded entrance. Stark followed
Rambert through an enormous labyrinth of security doors and armed guards as they traveled down long elevators and vast hallways throughout the building. Stark was mesmerized by the various departments and hidden wings that were contained within the building. Rambert took him to a small room with one table and two chairs sitting opposite from one another at the table. There was a one-inch stack of papers with a pen resting on top.

“You have one hour to read those documents and sign them. In any
case, if you decide to not sign, I'll have a plane waiting for you.”

Stark looked over at the desk and scoffed. “What if I have questions about what I'm signing? Can I ask you?”

Rambert held the handle of the door in his palm, and said, “No, you cannot.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.

Stark began a meticulous investigation of the papers, but began to become weary of the paperwork. He felt a slight nausea in his
stomach, not from sickness, but excitement. His mind was dazzled with the potential of testing his long forgotten theories and he wondered at the mystery of the epidemic in New York. Rambert was smart not to explain anything until he signed all his legal rights away. A scientist can never resist the approach of a new horizon of discovery that is shrouded in a veil of mystery. Stark quickly scribbled his signature on dozens of confidentiality pages without reading and went out in the hall to find Rambert. He was leaning against the wall casually eating an apple knowing that it would not take the full hour.

Rambert
took the stack of papers and shoved them into a manila folder. “I think you're ready for the show.”