The Doomsday Infection (21 page)

Once again, the navy launch swerved to avoid a collision. “We’re the US nav
y and these deranged carriers are making fools of us,” Matthers cursed.

“I thought they’re meant to be dying?” said Chan.

“They’ll be dead soon enough,” he said determinedly.

Further down the river Luke dropped Sophie off at the water’s edge. He pointed the speedboat back the way they had come, quickly tied the throttle on, and as it leapt into power he bailed over the side and swam to the edge, where Sophie helped him out.

The speedboat hurtled back down the river. “Go, go,” Sophie urged it onwards, desperately hoping that it would meet its target. She bit her lip and watched as the naval launch rounded the bend in the river.  The searchlight caught the moving speedboat and locked on, but within moments the speedboat crashed into a powerboat moored against a private jetty and both vessels exploded, sending thick black clouds of smoke into the night.

The navy launch slowed, and went
as close as it dared, circling the burning wrecks. “Did you see ‘em?” Matthers asked.

“It was all too fast, but if I had to make a guess I’d say it was empty.” Chen a
nswered.

“That’s what
I figured. It was too neat. They were heading the wrong way, and did nothing to slow down or swerve,” he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Nice try darkies! You’ll have to try harder than that!” he turned the launch around.

Jake puttered his boat up to where Luke an
d Sophie were on the lawn of a plantation style mansion. Sophie and Luke stood and started towards the building. 

“You’ll never make it to the house,” Jake said, keeping an eye on the navel launch, which turned a large arc. “Wait here. I’ll act as a decoy.” He spun the steering wheel. “Trust me.”

“You must be joking,” Sophie scoffed.

“I owe you,” Jake said. He turned and saw the navy launch hammering down upon them. “And I’m sorry . . .”

Luke stared at him blankly, “For what, man?”

“This,” he turned an arc
, opened up the throttle and targeted the naval vessel.

“No!” Luke yelled after him.

Jake aimed at the navy patrol who had no time to avoid the collision. “Oh, shit . . .” muttered Chen, when he saw the inevitable crash.

Jake grinned in deep satisfaction, he gritted his teeth, thinking of his redemption as h
e rammed them mid-ship, rupturing the fuel line and the ensuing explosion sent them sky high.

CHAPTER 30

DAY FOUR

MONDAY JULY 4
th

09:00 AM

Sophie stretched in the luxurious king-sized bed of the plantation mansion. She heard Luke in the shower and smiled to herself. He had broken into the house the night before after their near death experience with the navy patrol and Jake’s ultimate sacrifice – at least he came good in the end, she thought.

She smiled because Luke felt about her
as she felt about him, but she had to stop herself from making future plans, as right now they were living for the moment, and there might not be a future.

She found some clean clothes in a walk-in closet
, selected a cool, flowing linen summer dress and went downstairs to the hotel-sized kitchen. She looked through the cupboards, opened the fridge, took out the milk, sniffed it and decided that it was fine. She turned on the stove delighted to find that the gas was still connected. She thought she would rustle up breakfast and realized that she was famished. She hadn’t eaten since . . . she couldn’t remember when. She wracked her brain and realized it was close to twenty-four hours. Had it been only two days since she awoke at the hospital to all this chaos?

She sighed and thought about what had happened over the last two days, the world, as she knew it
, was over, and the government – her government, had ordered the population of southern Florida to be exterminated. Unbelievable, yet a fact. She’d seen it with her own eyes and had herself been seconds away from death. Yet, right now, she was cooking breakfast for her new boyfriend. What a crazy world!

She thought of Luke and smiled. She tried not to but couldn’t help herself. She shouldn’t be having these thoughts, the chances of them surviving the slaught
er was slim, but still. . . .

“That smells good,” Luke said, entering the luxurious kitchen dressed from head to toe in white cotton.

“Wow, look at you, don’t you scrub up good,” she teased.

“Not so bad yourself.” H
e pecked her on the cheek, and sat at the table, smiling at their seemingly ordinary, everyday domesticity. “Man, this kitchen is bigger than my apartment.”

“There’s a room there just full of food, it’s like a mini-mart, we could live here for a year before it’d run out, and we have gas for cooking.”

“Yeah, they have their own propane gas-tanks I noticed ‘em last night.” He gazed around the spectacular kitchen and let out a low whistle, “Man, I could get used to this.” He smiled as she put a fried breakfast in front of him. “Hey, why don’t we?” he said.

“Why don’t we what?” she asked.

“Why don’t we stay here? This house has got everything we need to ride out the Black Death.” He waved his arms around expansively.    

“We have to get to
Quinn Martell. He’s the only one that can help. He’ll know what to do. But we can’t communicate with him in the normal way.”

“The army are transmitting though,” he said.

“They’ll have their own wave length.”

“What if we find a set, find the right wave-length?” he suggested.

“They’ll scan the airwaves, and they can pin-point illegal transmissions.”

“What else, Morse code?”

“Do you know Morse code?” she asked.

“No.”

“Nor me. How would we send it? And to whom?”

The only way we can be sure to get a message to him is to deliver it ourselves. We must escape the zone. It’s imperative that his team of experts use us
as live specimens, and find a cure.”

“How do you know they haven’t?” Luke said. “How do you know that they are not working on a cure for us now?”

“Because that’s not how this government works. Their mission will be to contain the situation, destroy the carriers, and
then
they’ll work on a cure. We’ve seen with our own eyes that they mean to massacre us all, they’re not making checks to see if anyone is healthy or could possibly hold a clue to a cure. They’re slaughtering everyone.” She paused for a moment. “I know this is not what Quinn Martell wants. He and the late President were all for survival, all be it in refugee camps, but a proper controlled, methodical check of the population.”

“Well, President Burgess is dead and President Parker is all gung ho with a
, ‘shoot on sight’ campaign.”

“But that’s morally repugnant, he and General Malloy must be stopped, the world has to know what is g
oing on down here in Florida,” she said.

“But it’s in the world’s interest to contain the virus to Florida, they will be aiding the government in any way they can, because if this
disease got aboard, well. . . ”

She paced the kitchen. “So, countries that have been at each other’s throats for decades suddenly join forces to prevent this infection spreading? Incredible, all the multibillions these countries spend each year on weaponry to annihilate each other - money that is more than enough to save every starving child in the world, by the way - are now helping each other?” She shook her head in bewilderment. “It’s incredibl
e that billions of dollars have been poured into creating germ-warfare, and this country has been brought to its knees by a bacterium that has been around for centuries.”

“I once did an in-depth report on germ-warfare, but the bosses sat on it. Didn’t
think the American public was able to face the possibility of a chemical attack. They deemed it OK for families to watch the evening news, with rapes, murders and famine in far off countries, but mention foreign or domestic capabilities of germ-warfare and they practically fainted at the notion.”

“Well, all major countries in the world have signed treaties to claim that they are not developing chemical weapons, but it did not stop the US using Napal
m or Agent Orange in Vietnam.”

“Shameful,” Luke agreed.

Sophie continued. “All the major players in the First World War had signed treaties not to use chemical weapons, but all sides used mustard gas, which their gas masks did little to help as it could be absorbed through the skin.” She gazed from the picture window down across the lawn to the river. “A spectacularly stupid weapon as it relied too heavily on wind direction at the beginning, and the powers that be regularly gassed their own troops.”

Luke leaned against the large oak table in the vast kitchen. “This is happening to the richest country in the world, with
one of the largest armies, and unlimited resources, yet even I can see that they can’t patrol southern Florida forever.” He joined her at the window. “Say we make up one percent of the population, they’ll still be up to five thousand unaffected people trying to escape, and you can treble that with the infected that have some resilience. They can’t catch us all. They will have to come up with a plan.”

Her eyes widened. “Like what?”

“Poison the water supply?”

“Most people
drink bottle water and there’s a plentiful supply of that.”

“Gas maybe, but again they would have to cover every square inch of Florida to be a
bsolutely sure . . . or . . .” His face clouded over.

“What? What is it?” she asked with trepidation.

“We need to get to Quinn Martell fast.” He marched from the kitchen. “Let’s see what sort of vehicles they have in the garage.”

“Why, where are we going?”

“The only certain place we know there is a link to the outside world.”

“Where?”

“The late President’s compound.”

Luke walked amongst the beautiful c
ars, the Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches, with admiration. Sophie asked, “How are we going to get there without being caught?”

“We’ll go as far
as we can through the Seminole Reservation like you did and keep to tree-covered areas as far as possible - to avoid the drones and spy-planes.” His eyes lit up as they fell on the perfect vehicle. “Ah, we have a winner.”

Sophie cast her eyes over to Luke past the Ferrari, past the Rolls-Royce, the
limousine, and her face dropped. “Oh.” She scrunched her eyes. “what is it?” She asked staring at the old, mud covered motorcycle.

“This will be our salvation, the BMW 1200 GS, one of the most powerful dirt bikes ever made, we can go off-road, through water, everywhere our pursuers can’t.” He smiled broadly but she seemed unconvinced. He cocked his leg over, kick-started it and revved the engine. “Jump on.” She appeared reticent, but eventually clambered onto the back, Luke open the throttle and they shot from the garage, into the scorching hot sun.  

He pulled a wheelie, fighting to get control of the powerful beast, as the off-road motorcycle ploughed across the beautifully manicured lawn, down to the river, where the wreckage of the naval vessel still smoldered, and onto the tow-path and away.

“Can you slow down?” she asked as the motorcycle bounced over a protruding tree root, that shook her bones and jarred her teeth.

“Not yet, we need to put some distance from the mansion.”

“How so?”

“I thought I’d set a decoy.”

“What did you do?” But before Luke could reply a massive explosion answered her question. She glanced back to see the mansion on fire and chunks of debris falling down into the river beside them.

“I left the gas taps on, rigged a cigarette lighter in another room, so when eventually the gas met the flame - ka-boom!”

“How do you know how
to do these things?”

“I did an in-depth report on Militia and guerrilla warfare,” he
said with a smirk. “Who knew one day it would save my life.”

Sophie watched in awe as a plume of black smoke billowed up into the heavens and
the glorious plantation mansion burned with a ferocity she did not expect. The flames caught the nearby tinder–dry trees alight and flames from the trees licked the clear blue sky.

She was about to look away when something caught her eye, in the distance a black dot appeared, but within moments the dot had
become an army helicopter circling the burning mansion. She tapped Luke on the shoulder and pointed. He saw the chopper and his shoulders sagged. “That was quick! Still, it will keep ‘em busy for some time. Maybe we should do some more. Get them thinking that a band of vigilantes are striking back. Tie up more troops and confuse them. What do you think?”

“Sure let’s do it.”

He grinned and drove the motorcycle up a well-worn path from the river into a trailer park. He saw the devastation the Bubonic Plague had caused in the tight-knit neighborhood environment, the Happy Pines Trailer Park, as its welcoming sign announced, was anything but happy. It appeared the Black Death had spread like wildfire amongst the community. The inhabitants had crawled outside to die in the fresh air rather than stay inside the stifling metal tombs. Luke could only imagine what the incessant heat inside the steel boxes must have been like. Even now in the early morning, the tops of the trailers shimmered, distorting the tree line as heat rose from the sheet metal.

He parked the dirt bike and he and Sophie walked
amongst the dead in the hope they might find someone alive. Luke shook his head at each corpse, detecting from afar that they had passed away. In the distance, they could see dogs and rats fighting over the carcass of an elderly person.

As Luke and Sophie entered each trailer, they tried to ignore the darkened remains of the occupants. The boil-ridden bodies of children upset Sophie greatly and the putrid smell of death made her gag. She took a couple of silk scarves from a dresser and handed one to Luke who gratefully copied her and tied it over his nose. He quickly turned the gas taps on the stove, and then closed the door of the rancid smelling trailer
s, to fill each one with the explosive gas.

Sophie tried the door of a double trailer, but she found it locked, “Don’t worry,” said Luke. “They’ll be a chain reaction that’ll catch all these babies alight.”

When he finished, Luke wheeled the dirt bike near to the river ready for a quick getaway. He used the kick-start to fire the engine, entered the last trailer evidently occupied by potheads. The stoners were dead on the floor, and the trailer littered with their drug paraphernalia, including a fruit-bowl full of disposable lighters. Luke helped himself to a liberal amount of the cigarette lighters, taped one open so the flame burned continually, set the gas jets of the stove and closed the trailer door slowly so as not to put the flame out.

Sophie stood with her hands up with dust whipping up all around her as Luke left the trailer. He heard rather than saw the helicopter above. “Put your hands up!” instructed a metallic sounding voice from the chopper’s loud hailer. “Do not move!” Luke slowly raised his hands and signaled with his eyes for Sophie to move as far from the trailer as possible. He shuffled backward as did sh
e. “I said stay where you are!”

“Get ready to run
to the river,” Luke said. “I’ll ride the bike the other way draw their fire.”

Inside the chopper, the four man crew watched them shuffle back, “Do they
really think they can outrun a chopper?” the gunner chuckled at the absurdity. “Go on, let them try, it’ll be more sporting.” He cocked the M-16 side-mounted machine-gun and pulled back on the handle of the sliding door. “I’ll put ten bullets in each of them before they hit the floor, any bets?”