Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) (6 page)

6

Samantha waited a beat, lost in thought, before continuing. “Sneaking out of the parking garage wasn’t difficult. All the infected were up in the parking lot outside or in the building itself. Under cover of darkness, we ran up the ramp into the open street and then down the sidewalk. Our car was gone, but we thought we might be able to convince a military patrol to give us a ride to the airport.

“The streets had an eerie calm to them
, or maybe they appeared calm because of the chaos we’d just seen. You could hear every piece of trash flutter in the breeze, every cricket, every plane that drifted by overhead, and there were a lot of planes, both military and civilian.

“As I watched Jessica, I considered telling her about our infection
—that the virus was dormant inside us but that when it was triggered, it would turn us into one of those… things. I knew she would want me to—she’d want the truth—but I just couldn’t do it. So little of her childhood remained that I didn’t want to take anything that was left by telling her that, so I didn’t tell her. I didn’t even discuss it with Luther. I didn’t ask him how long the antibody test indicated I’d been infected. In South America, during the initial outbreak, I dealt with a canister that I believed at the time had released the smallpox virus. The canister later showed no
Variola
. But as we walked down the darkened streets, I knew then what had been in the canister: the real plague, the one meant to bring the world to its knees. That left the question of why I hadn’t displayed symptoms yet but Eric and Ryan had. I wondered if I had received a more docile and slow-moving version of the virus, one that took years to incubate rather than months. And that made me wonder which form Jessica had.

“ ‘The detonations,’ Luther said, ‘the green clouds. You told me once that
Variola
could be turned into a mist. Is that what they did? Turned it into a mist to be carried on the breeze?’

“
I shook my head, making sure I took a couple of steps away from Jessica so she couldn’t hear what I said, and I spoke quietly. ‘No, that’s not what they did. They did turn it into a mist, but not for the breeze. They wanted it to be carried in the clouds. Once in liquid form,
Variola
can be carried by clouds. They shot gallons of it high in the air, and it was caught in the clouds and transported around the world.’

“
He shook his head, staring at the sidewalk, which was cracked and dotted with litter. ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Just amazing, the planning this all took.’

“Down the road a way
s, we heard an engine. We ducked into a yard until it was obvious that the vehicle was a military patrol. I ran out into the road and held my arms up. The vehicle, a Humvee, slowed and then stopped. I ran over to the man in the driver’s seat. ‘I’m Dr. Samantha Bower with the Centers for Disease Control. Our facilities have been overrun with the infected. We need transportation to the airport for—’

“
The soldier stopped me. ‘Ma’am, that’s a negative. We got a situation just outside the airport, and all units have been called in.’ I looked at Jessica and Luther, who were out on the sidewalk now.

“
‘Can you take us as far as you can?’

“
He considered it for a moment, and I could tell he wanted to say no, but he caught a glimpse of Jessica and swore under his breath. ‘Get in.’

“We piled into the Humvee and drove down the residential street before linking to the interstate. Once there, we took a bridge that gave us a view of the city. Fires raged across the cityscape, entire buildings engulfed. Black streams of smoke billowed into the sky, darker than the night. ‘What happened?’ I said to Luther. He stared at a skyscraper that was burning from the ground up and shook his head.

“ ‘I have no idea.’

“The airport, or just about a mile outside of the airport, was cordoned off. Up about two hundred yards, I could see the front line. We were witnessing a battle
—one of the first major battles in a new type of war. The street had been narrowed with vehicles and sandbags, leaving a kill zone in the center. Soldiers were set up behind the sandbags, with others with large rifles posted in the empty buildings on either side of the street. Tanks flanked the soldiers, and green helicopters hovered in the skies like crows in the night. It was all for one purpose: to kill as many infected as they could. And there didn’t seem to be any end to the supply.

“They rushed in through the kill zone by the hundreds.
After being mowed down by the soldiers’ weapons, most just got back up and kept running. It took complete devastation of the body to get them to stop. I could hear the soldiers shouting. They were asking the same kinds of questions we were asking: ‘Why don’t they attack each other? How are they so strong?’

“
Luther sat in the Humvee like a blind man who’d just been given sight. His mouth was open and he didn’t blink. ‘Do you think they’ve retained memory?’ he asked. The damaged prefrontal cortex has nothing to do with memory.

“
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

“We were quickly ushered out of the Humvee and
ran over to the first terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson. The sound of rolling tanks echoed, and people were barking commands. The soldiers wore body armor and helmets. I didn’t understand why. Their enemies didn’t have guns. They stood right in the way of the rampaging hordes. The military just wasn’t prepared. They thought this would be Iraq or Afghanistan. But the enemy they were fighting didn’t care how many of them died, they couldn’t be frightened, and they wouldn’t stop, no matter what. I even saw a few of the infected that’d had their legs blown off or had been cut in half at the waist by rifle fire still crawling toward the soldiers before they bled to death.

“The planes leaving the airport filled the night air with the roar of their engines. I
quickly recognized these weren’t normal flights. These were escape rafts from a sinking ship. Only two planes remained by the time we ran into the terminal. The crowds of people took my breath away. They were smashed in like cattle, but even cattle seemed to have a sense of decency to the other cattle. There, I saw full-grown men kick little girls to get ahead of them in line. I saw the young injuring the old, the strong injuring the weak, the smart injuring the dumb… anyone with any type of advantage was using it now to harm everyone else around them.

“The poor clerks at the counter were shouting, trying to calm everyone down. Explaining to them that there was only so much room on the planes and that not everybody would be allowed to board. I don’t know who
fired the first shot, whether it was one of the airport police or one of the potential passengers, but I know that after that first one, a series of back and forth started. We ducked low and headed for the escalators as the sound of gunfire filled the airport and the crowds ran. But they weren’t running away, they were running toward the gates and the last two planes.

“To take three spots on that plane would mean three other people wouldn’t be able to leave. That didn’t sit well with me, considering how many families were there. But Luther told me, ‘You can’t think that way anymore. You can’t think about
their survival or the survival of your friends. Look around you, Sam. This is the end of the world. You have to think about the survival of your species. And right now, you have the best chance of developing something that can stop this madness. You have to survive.’ I don’t know if I believed the part about me being the best chance to develop a vaccine or a cure, or even to find one that had already been developed, but I knew I had a better chance than anyone else at that airport. In terms of survival of the species, I had to get on one of those planes.

“The gates were guarded by several airport police, all with their guns drawn. You should have seen these men. Barely in their twenties, shaking, their faces pale with fright. They looked like kids in Halloween costumes. I don’t think they ever expected for a second that they would have to draw
their weapons. We ran to the first one, a young kid probably no more than nineteen. He swung his gun around at us and shouted, ‘Don’t come any closer!’

“I held up my hands. Slowly, I reached down to the lanyard around my neck that held my identification from the CDC. I held it up. ‘My name is Dr. Samantha Bower with the Centers for Disease Control. I’m a virologist. I’m studying this outbreak and trying to find a vaccine. I need to get on one of those planes and get out of the city.’

“He glanced around but didn’t budge. ‘You’re lying,’ he shouted. ‘You’re all lying!’

“ ‘This is my identification. Look at it. It has a watermark
. It can’t be forged. This man next to me is a physician as well. He’s helping me find a way to stop this.’ I paused. ‘I know you have family somewhere, family you’re worried about. I’m trying to help them, too. The only way to stop this is if someone finds a vaccine. Otherwise, our entire species will become like
them
.’

“The boy swallowed and looked down
at Jessica. ‘Who’s she?’

“
I placed my hands on her shoulders. ‘My daughter.’ He stood there a long time, his gun aimed at us. The crowds grew more restless. Even with guns, the police wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long.

“
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Back there, now. Now, go!’

“We ran. I clutched Jessica’s arm
, and we ran past the two officers in front of the gate then one of the airline employees. The crowds behind us became enraged. I could hear their roars. Shots were fired, and people screamed… but I didn’t look back.”

“On the plane, I could see that most of the seats were taken
, but there were some empty ones. These quickly filled with employees of the airlines. No announcements came, nothing letting us know where we were going or how long the flight would be. The engines just started, and we pulled onto the landing strip and took off. The fires were more visible now, dotting the darkness below. I glanced around at the passengers. They weren’t just some random cross-section of society. These were blue bloods; the wealthy. I could tell from the shoes, the purses, the watches, and the suits. I had no doubt that people had been bribed to allow them on. I could hardly complain, as I’d used influence to secure my place as well, but it didn’t seem right that money could save your life. Maybe it always had, and maybe it was a naïve view to think money wouldn’t be the determining factor. I don’t know.

“ ‘Any idea where we’re going?’ Luther asked one of the passengers in front of us.

“The man, without turning around, said, ‘JFK. And then the fuck outta the country.’ I looked at Jessica, her face coated in sweat, her hair messy with bits of dirt and soot. She looked like the survivor of some natural disaster you see afterward on television, interviewed by the media and asked ridiculous questions like, ‘How do you feel?’ I placed my arm around her and leaned my cheek against her head. For some reason, the man’s statement that he was getting out of the country seemed to make sense right then. I didn’t even consider that the rest of the world was even worse off than we were.”

7

A glass of water sounded divine right about now, but Mitchell didn’t want to run downstairs to fetch it. The
Miami heat in the summer was something else, particularly for someone who was born in Alaska. Mitchell glanced down at Sam’s drink. It would take a gun to his head to make him take a sip of that, considering Sam’s infection. Just this, sitting across from her, was something he could only do because he didn’t have a choice.

“I’m really interested in what happened in Siberia. How did you find the people that developed the virus?”
he said.

“
It wasn’t in Siberia. After landing in JFK, we had the option of taking a flight out of the United States. New York was disintegrating, but much slower than Atlanta. New York had already been through a major tragedy and had emergency response teams, logistics panels, and communication hubs set up. Emergency hospitals and quick-response crews were seemingly always on call. When the word came that the virus had spread to the East Coast, they were ready. But no amount of preparation could get them truly ready for what they were going to face. There was nowhere in North America with more people per square foot, crammed into a tighter space, than New York City. When the dormant virus finished its incubation period, millions were affected, millions that took to the streets.

“The military did the best it could. It choked off major streets and used snipers and helicopters for the majority of the fighting. In fact
, the military was so successful at first that the civilian government thought cutting resources to the military and increasing resources for civilian protection centers wasn’t entirely inappropriate. Of course, the powerful, those with influence, filled the protection centers, cutting everyone else off. The military couldn’t even fully equip the teams it had. It seemed martial law didn’t mean martial law. The military still had commanders beholden to people in the civilian government and did what they were told.

“They just didn’t see what was coming. They didn’t think. The dormant virus had
infected the military, too. When its dormancy ended, an already-depleted military lost more than half of its force to the virus. Squadrons fighting in the streets would suddenly have to defend themselves from those in their own ranks. They would be fighting the infected and have to turn around and fire at their comrades. On top of that, no one knew who was in charge. The military said it was, the civilian government at the state level said it was, and the federal government claimed it was issuing orders directly to the states. Directions weren’t followed, and regional military commanders began making their own decisions. In some regions, where they abandoned their body armor and traditional military fighting tactics, they did well. In other places, where they tried to stand toe to toe with the infected and just overpower them, they failed. Huge numbers of soldiers were lost to nothing more than their commanders refusing to recognize that they were facing a superior force, a force that didn’t care if it lost. One of the generals told me that the winner of any fight is the one with the most to lose. But he didn’t understand that the infected didn’t think that way. They
couldn’t
think that way. They just didn’t care about the outcome or themselves. The winner of any fight isn’t the one with the most to lose, it’s the one with the least to lose.

“At JFK, we landed and got off the plane into a hub of raging death
, not at all what I expected. The infected had attacked and the marines dug themselves in. Wave after wave of the infected, screaming, mostly nude, like some dark force from our nightmares, hit the marines’ position over and over and over. The marines fought to the last bullet, and when no ammunition was left, they used knives and fists, trying to stab and beat the infected to death. That was another thing that wasn’t planned well—ammunition. Everyone had a weapon, but not everyone had enough ammunition to actually use it against hordes of infected. We jumped into a transport, which was just a city bus used to move people away from the airport. People were rushing to get there, and as soon as they did, they’d have to wait in line to be rushed away. The marines couldn’t hold the position for much longer, and as our bus left JFK, I saw them overrun.

“It looked
like a tsunami flowing over the marines and taking them with it. A few stragglers tried to run and were quickly swallowed up. Some stood and fought and were taken down like ants. I saw one marine slam the butt of his rifle into the jaw of an infected, a woman, and her jaw snapped off, but she didn’t stop. She leapt on top of him, attempting to bite into his face, but without her lower jaw, all she could do was pour blood down his throat from the wound—torrents of blood, right down his throat. I knew that not everyone would die from an attack by the infected. Many of them would become infected themselves.

“ ‘They don’t die,’ Jessica said, panic in her voice. I put my arm around her as the bus sped down the interstate and away from the airport.

“ ‘No, they’ll die,’ I said. “The human body can only survive about a week without water. They’re not getting any water. Eventually, they’ll all die of dehydration.’

“A man seated across from us said, ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ The man had light black skin and green eyes. He wore jeans and a green army jacket, the handle of a pistol visible underneath the jacket. ‘I’ve seen the way they kill,’ he
said. ‘They don’t just tear apart the flesh. They drink the blood, too, a lot of it. Most of it’s thrown up, but they’re learning. They’re trying to retain as much as they can… they’re trying to survive.’

“
I held Jessica closer to me and Luther said, ‘That’s impossible.’

“The man shook his head. ‘I wish it was.’ The name
on the breast of his jacket said JASON S. He turned his face toward the window and didn’t speak for a long time. Neither did we. Everyone on the bus just watched the passing city out the windows. The fires had begun to burn across New York, too, just like in Atlanta. I didn’t know how they started, but I later learned that the military had been given orders to burn the bodies of the infected. Sometimes, if there was an enormous number of dead in a building, they would just light the building on fire rather than drag the bodies out to a ditch or the middle of the street. Each fire I saw filled me with anxiety, and they kept increasing, more and more suddenly flaring up in the darkness. I imagined that’s what oil fields that had caught fire looked like.

“ ‘You know a lot about this disease
, considering how new it is,’ Luther said to Jason. ‘Like, you’ve seen them up close.’

“
Jason frowned and looked at us. ‘I have. The outbreak is only new here. It’s been happening in parts of South America for almost two weeks, in regions of Western Africa for almost a month.’

“
Luther shook his head and said, ‘I haven’t heard anything about that.’

“ ‘That’s because you’re not reading the right news.
We hear and see what they want us to hear and see. You think some drunk slut in Hollywood is news? They want us distracted. Not paying attention. Bread and circuses distracted the Romans two millennia ago, and it hasn’t changed that much since, just different bread and different circuses.’

“Luther watched him a moment. ‘You’ve been there?’

“Jason nodded. ‘Yeah, man. I been there. I was there in the beginning when we went into the Congo and found entire villages torn apart. Piles of limbs stacked up like firewood. The villagers didn’t know what it was. They thought their relatives were possessed. They’d lock ’em up and then bring in the shamans to exorcise the devils. Second they opened the door, the ips would grab ’em, tear into ’em.”

“ ‘Ips?’ Luther asked.

“Jason nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s what we called ’em. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it meant Infected Persons, something like that.’ Jason paused before saying, ‘They didn’t tell us what we were heading into. Our orders were to take out terrorist cells that were using violence to force the relocation of the native population. That’s what they told us. I thought we’d be fighting Congolese guerillas. That first time we saw the ips, they were running out of the jungle. They sprinted right into our gunfire, even the kids. I had to fire at a boy maybe nine years old, maybe younger. I blew off part of his head and you could see his brains, just, like, exposed. He kept comin’ at me. I had to put eight rounds into him before he went down, and even then he wasn’t dead. I was firing at center mass and it just didn’t do anything to stop them. And the screams… that’s the part of it that wakes me up at night, the screamin’. They don’t sound like human beings. And you’d be in the jungle, in the thick of trees and vines, and you’d just hear that screamin’ from all directions and you wouldn’t know where to fire. And they’d hit you like a tornado, and you’d hear your own men crying when they got pulled into the jungle… and then the screaming would stop.’ Jason swallowed before continuing. ‘Ten squads went in, Special Forces… Delta Force, SEALs, Force Recon…Ten went into the jungle and only one came out, my squad, with just me and one other man. That’s when I knew it was over. There was no stoppin’ it.’

“
Jason’s eyes ran down to my chest and made me uncomfortable until I realized he was staring at my lanyard. ‘You with the CDC?’ he asked. I nodded, and he said, ‘What’re you doing up here?’ I looked at Luther, who had his gaze fixed on Jason. Something was happening between the two men, but I didn’t know what. Almost like some sort of challenge.

‘Same as you,’ Luther said, ‘running.’

“A moment passed between them where neither spoke. Jason finally said, ‘I figured you guys ran for the hills. I saw some people with the CDC trying to collect samples from the ips at the airport. They were some of the first ones killed.’ I glanced at Jessica, who stared at the fires in the city around us. ‘So?’ Jason said. ‘Do you have a vaccine or not?’

“Luther said, ‘Why would you think we have a vaccine?’
Jason quickly looked around, making certain no one was paying attention to us. Everybody on the bus was so focused on themselves that I don’t think they cared what anyone else spoke about.

‘That’s the rumor,’
Jason said quietly. ‘That y’all have a vaccine and just haven’t gone public with it yet.’

“
I shook my head. I’d heard these rumors my entire career at the CDC. That HIV had been cured, but the drug companies had bought us off so we wouldn’t release it. That cancer was avoidable, but we didn’t want to release the research on prevention because too many industries relied on the ‘cures’ they peddled. Any time people feared something, they needed to blame someone else for their fear.

“ ‘If we had a vaccine,’
I said, ‘I wouldn’t be on this bus.’

“
Something about him made me uncomfortable, the way he wouldn’t blink, maybe, and I looked out the window rather than keep eye contact. But the city wasn’t much better, not for a few hours, until we got upstate and away from major population centers. The buildings turned to barns, and soon we were surrounded by forests rather than skyscrapers. Traffic clogged the roads there. No one knew where to go. Every talking head on television told them something contradicting the last talking head. MSNBC said to run to the cities. Fox News told them to get to the country. CNN told everyone to stay where they were and that government rescue operations were underway.”

Samantha grinned and shook her head, taking a sip of the drink before taking off her sunglasses and
putting them on the table. “There were no government rescue operations. The government was as clueless as everyone else. We were fighting an enemy who didn’t care about morals or standards, who didn’t care about harm to themselves, who had no problem wiping out civilian populations. Our government didn’t know what to do. They were still thinking in terms of the old world, the pre–T-Zero-Event world. Politicians fought just so opponents across the aisle couldn’t get something done. But the rest of the world was changing. Generals disobeyed the president because he hadn’t served in the military, and they didn’t respect him. States tried to assert their authority over the federal government as much as they could. The governors of several states even declared their states would be seceding from the Union. All federal programs were shut down. The governor of Arizona said that illegal immigrants carried the virus over onto US soil, and he used people’s fear as leverage to build a wall. That’s how the Rio Grande Wall began construction, a nineteen-hundred-mile wall with armed guards every two hundred yards, at a price tag of only five billion dollars. The ips, a term I began using after meeting Jason Shafi, were killing us in our own homes, and the government cared about whether Mexicans sneaked across the border.

“Driving near Albany, New York, we saw a line of people
, handcuffed, with blindfolds over their eyes. It was just like that, too, like you see in the cartoons, when Bugs Bunny is almost executed and then saves himself. The only things missing were the cigarettes dangling from their mouths. We stopped near them. The military checkpoint couldn’t let us pass until they verified the identities of everyone onboard. I don’t know why they cared who we were; maybe they thought terrorist groups were attempting to take advantage of the chaos and attempting further attacks. Maybe they’d bought the Arizona governor’s line that illegal immigrants had spread the virus and were rounding up everyone without proper ID. I don’t know. But they made us sit there for almost half an hour. So I had a good view of the line of people.