No Easy Hope - 01 (6 page)

“What did Aegis do when they found out?” I asked.

“They didn’t. I told them I left the truck out in the desert after it ran out of gas, and made my way back to civilization on foot. I was only about fifty miles from Kandahar, so it wasn’t that difficult of a story to believe. They asked me what happened to the cargo, and I told them that I didn’t know. I guess they figured the Taliban found it. Either way, they never traced it back to me.”

“How much was it worth?”

“I walked away with about seven million and some change.”

I whistled. “Not bad for a day’s work.”

“The way I see it, the fuckers owed me at least that much after everything I did for them. I considered it a severance package.”

“And how long was it from then until you left Aegis and bought my cabin from me?”

“About six months, give or take.”

“And all this time you never thought to tell me about any of this?”

Gabe smiled and shrugged. “You never asked.”

Chapter 2

Outbreak

A year later, when the proverbial shit hit the fan, I was at my home near Charlotte sitting on the couch and flipping through the HD sports channels. My cell phone started buzzing on the coffee table.  I picked it up, and saw Gabe’s number on the display.

“Hey Gabe, what’s going on man?”

“Are you near a television?” he replied.

“Uh, yeah, I’m watching TV right now. Why?”

“There is something very bad happening down in Atlanta right now. Have you caught any of the news today?”

“No, I’ve been watching stuff I recorded. What’s going on?”

“Turn on CNN, Eric. It’s happening.”

Those words brought an abrupt, screeching halt to the last good day I would have for a very long time.  I felt like someone had just kicked me in the gut. I didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Eric, you still there?”

My voiced squeezed its way out of my clenched throat

“I’m still here, just give me a minute.”

I put down my cell phone and leaned forward on the couch.
Calm down, man
. I thought to myself.
Maybe he’s wrong; maybe it’s not that bad. Just turn on the damn news and see what’s going on
. I took a few deep breaths and reached for the remote. I noticed that my hand was shaking as I picked it up.

I was wrong. It was that bad.

I turned the channel to CNN. Anderson Cooper was mid sentence talking about a large riot that had broken out in downtown Atlanta.

“…any information about the cause of these riots?”  A graphic appeared on the screen announcing the name of a reporter from CNN’s Atlanta office. She was at the scene of the incident and speaking live via phone to the news studio.

“We don’t have any information at this time about what caused this outbreak of violence, but we do know that it started in downtown Atlanta and has spread outward from there. Police have established barricades outside the riot zone on all of the streets that access the downtown area.  Authorities are trying to keep the activity from spreading to other areas of the city. We should have a video feed available in just a few moments.”

Anderson’s grave voice toned in, “Alright folks, we’re going to take a quick break. Hopefully when we return, we’ll have a video feed from Atlanta so that we can get a more accurate assessment of events unfolding there. Please stay with us.” As the network went to commercial, I picked the phone back up.

“Gabe, they’re talking about a riot. How bad can that be?” I asked.

“You know what’s in Atlanta, right?” he replied.

“Coca Cola and fat people?”

“Do I sound like I’m in the mood for fucking jokes, Eric?” Gabe nearly shouted. “I’m talking about the goddamn Center for Disease Control, and my former employer.”

“Okay, okay, sorry dude. Don’t flip out on me. What do you think happened?” I asked.

Gabe didn’t reply for a moment. I could hear him breathing on the other line as he considered what to say next.

“Fuck it.” He snapped. “I think something that the CDC lab rats used to call the Reanimation Phage has broken out in Atlanta. If it has, and I think I’m right on this one, then all of North and South America is pretty much fucked. Maybe even the rest of the world.”

“Okay,” I said, “first of all, what the hell is a Reanimation Page, and why is it about to destroy two continents?”

“Phage, not Page, dumbass.” Gabe replied crossly. “I’ve had to fight it a few times and it’s worse than anything you can imagine. This thing getting loose in a heavily populated area is a disaster. It’s my worst nightmare come to life.”

My level of anxiety went from an eight on a scale of ten to about a sixteen.

“Jesus Christ. What is this thing? And why do you think it’s causing trouble in Atlanta?” I asked.

“I got a call from a former co-worker of mine just before the news outlets caught wind of what’s going on down there. He had just put a bullet in his best friend’s head, and bugged out of the city. He said it was definitely Red Plague. That’s what the strike teams used to call it. Whenever my team went up against this thing, it was always a desperate, running fight, and we lost a lot of people to the infected. If this thing is loose in Atlanta, then shit is about to get real dangerous, real fast.”

My mind was reeling. Red Plague? Reanimation Phage? What the fuck is a phage? I was about to ask Gabe what in the hell he was talking about when Anderson Cooper came back on the air.

“Okay folks, we’ve managed to establish a live video feed on the ground in Atlanta at the scene of the riot.” Anderson’s eyes were wide, and his skin had gone as pale as his prematurely gray hair. To his credit, he managed to keep his voice level.

“I need to warn the viewers at home that some of the images you are about to see are extremely graphic and violent. If you have any young children watching this with you, please use discretion before allowing them to see footage we’re about to air. Again, the footage your about to see is extremely graphic, and may not be suitable for some viewers. ”

The broadcast cut to a pretty blond reporter standing in front of a police barricade. There were emergency vehicles, police cars, and dozens of cops running around behind her with a few high-ranking police officers barking out orders at everyone. I could see that most of the officers had taken up defensive positions behind the cars with their weapons aimed at a large crowd of people approaching in the distance. Tall buildings and storefronts lined the cordoned off street. It looked like they were somewhere on the outskirts of downtown Atlanta.

The reporter was looking into the camera adjusting her hair.

“Are we on?” She asked.  At some unseen signal off camera, she went into reporter mode and began describing the scene unfolding behind her. I muted the television as she started talking.

“Gabe, dude, what the hell are you talking about? What the fuck is the Red Plague? Why did your friend shoot somebody? What the hell is going on?” My voice got louder with each question that I asked.

“Eric, I don’t have time to explain everything right now.  How are you as far as supplies for your shelter?”

“Why do you ask? Damnit, man, tell me what’s going on.”

Cold fingers of dread started to work their way into my stomach.  Ever since Gabriel told me about his work with Aegis, I worried that one of the deadly diseases he had fought to contain might get loose. What little he told me about it had been enough to keep me awake at night for weeks after our discussion.

“Look Eric, I’m going to tell you some things that are going to sound pretty crazy. Hold off on your usual smart ass remarks, and just listen.” Gabe said.

 “Okay, I’m listening. Just so you know, you are seriously freaking me out right now.”

“Good. If I’m right, then you need to be scared. We all do. Okay, first of all….hey, are you still watching the news?”

Without realizing it, I had started pacing the room and was standing near the kitchen entrance. It’s something I do when I’m nervous. I turned around and went back to the living room. What I saw on the TV nearly made me drop the phone.

The television was still on mute, but the blond reporter was obviously distressed and shouting at the camera. I grabbed the remote and turned the volume back on. The sound of gunfire, and lots of it, made it impossible to hear what she was trying to say. She mouthed something unintelligible and pointed in the opposite direction of where the camera was aiming. The camera quickly panned around to the police barricade. The crowd of people had reached the police cruisers and emergency vehicles lined up across the street. The officers behind the barricade were firing non-lethal beanbag rounds from their shotguns. The bags bounced harmlessly off the people approaching the barrier and fell to the ground. The people that the bags hit didn’t seem to notice the impacts or feel any effect from them.  They just kept moving forward, shuffling along as a single mass. There was something wrong with the way they walked. Their movements were jerky and spasmodic. Many of them held their arms out in front of them as if trying to grasp at something. That was when I noticed the blood.

Most of the people in the camera shot had clearly suffered terrible wounds. A morbidly obese woman at the front of the crowd had a huge chunk of her throat and face missing. Her teeth and the muscles of her neck were visible through the ragged tears where her skin used to be. Her face, what was left of it, and the faces of the people around her had the strangest expression I had ever seen. Their eyes were blood red and wide open, their expressions slack, yet somehow menacing.

The crowd started pushing its way through the barricade. I don’t mean over, or around, but actually
through
the barricade. The mass of humanity pushing on the vehicles in front of them was so powerful that it was moving the rear ends of the cars forward toward the police. As crazy as it is, I remember thinking to myself: That kind of makes sense. The engine is in the front, so the rear end should move first.

The force of the mob pushing against the barricade crushed and maimed the people at the front, but they did not cry out or even seem to be aware of what was happening to them. They kept reaching forward trying to get to the police officers who were desperately emptying their shotguns at point blank range. A voice near the camera shouted, “Fuck this shit!”

The camera panned over to one of the cops as he dropped his shotgun and pulled his sidearm. He took aim and fired round after round into the chest of the person in front of him. Blood sprayed from the man’s chest, and his body jerked with the impacts, but he did not go down. He just kept pushing forward as though nothing had happened. The sound of the blond reporter’s screaming became loud enough to be audible over the cacophony of gunfire. An older looking cop with a bald pate and a protruding belly turned around and began shouting at the reporter and her crew.

“Run! Just run! Get the hell out of here!”

As he turned back around a little old lady, who weighed maybe a quarter of what the large cop weighed, grabbed him by the shirt and started pulling herself toward him. Her were lips pulled back over her yellow teeth in a hideous snarl. The cop dropped his shotgun and tried to push her away. The woman kept pulling, and after a few seconds of struggle, she lunged toward the cop’s throat. She made it about as far as his chest and bit into him, right through his uniform. She pulled her head back, and bloody strips of flesh and cloth peeled from the cop’s chest dangling from between her clenched teeth. Gore poured down her chin, staining the lower half of her face a dark shade of red.

The cop let out a high-pitched scream of agony as blood poured in great spurting gouts down the front of his shirt. He pushed against the woman’s throat with one big hand and finally managed to create some space between the two of them. With his other hand, he pulled his sidearm. He put the barrel of the gun on the old woman’s forehead, right between her eyes, and pulled the trigger. The bullet, as well as about a pound of brain matter and bone, exited the back of her head in a red spray. The old woman collapsed to the ground in a limp heap of bloody flesh. The man behind her, who was missing most of the skin and muscle on his arms, reached out toward the officer and tried to grab him. The cop staggered backward and did exactly what all of those poor bastards should have done from the very beginning. He turned around and ran as fast as his legs would carry him, one hand pressed over the bleeding wound on his chest, and whimpering “ohgodohgodohgodwhat the FUCK!” as he fled.