The Last Blade Of Grass (14 page)

Eleven hours and forty three minutes after the first injection of Zeus in Medford, Oregon, the biting sickness reaches Grants Pass, Oregon.

A man named George Romero managed to bring his sick wife to the hospital in Grants Pass. He had been trapped for three hours in his bedroom as his wife clawed and banged against the door trying to get in at him. He finally managed the courage to open the door and quickly subdue her with a heavy comforter. He tied her as securely as possible and placed her in their car in an attempt to get her help at one of the local hospitals.

His attempts to reach the hospitals were blocked by mad rioters and other people that seemed to have the same sickness she had.
Probably some extreme form of rabies
, he thought to himself, as he madly weaved through the wrecked and abandoned cars on the road.

Twice he hit people with his car who walked out in front of him, as he tried to escape the city, and get his wife to a hospital somewhere else. He stopped and wanted to help, but couldn’t get himself to exit the car to check on the injured. With each event, when he tried to open the door to check on the people, they grabbed onto the car and tried to get at him. He saw they had the illness, the same thing his wife has, and he couldn’t do anything for them. His wife was much smaller than the two people he hit, it took everything he had to keep her under control, and that was with a comforter.

He looked for police through his cars windows and kept hitting the keys on his phone, amazed that it still wasn’t working. He finally decided to move on seeking help for his wife outside of Medford.

When he finally makes it to Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass, he is overwhelmed with joy that he has made it to safety. He can finally get his wife help. As he drives up, however, he sees the entrance is blocked off by the police, and they are checking the cars and drivers.
They must have heard about me hitting those two people in Medford and just driving off
.

It doesn’t matter what happens to me, I have to get her help
, he thinks as he pulls up to the checkpoint and rolls down the window. The police see the damage and blood on the car, and Mr. Romero yells to them, “It was an accident, but I need help with my wife, she’s in the back.”

“Sir, you hit someone?” the police officer asks, pointing at the hood of the car.

“Yes, but there were no police around, and my phone isn’t working, I came straight here after it happened.”

“All right, sir, you drive up to the emergency entrance there.” And the officer points the way to let the illness in.

The police had received word from Sheriff Barns of Medford that the illness was spreading and deadly. They managed to block off access to the hospital and were screening everyone arriving to look for signs of bites or the disease. They didn’t find anyone yet. Mr. Romero is the first person to escape Medford with an infected loved one. No one that gets infected is able to make it to Grants Pass for help on their own, they turn too quickly. So Mr. Romero is the first bringing a case through the line, and this isn’t what they are expecting or prepared to look for.

“This guy can go through—he has a car accident victim in his car,” the officer tells the others at the roadblock behind him. Mr. Romero doesn’t bother correcting the police officer. His only concern is getting his wife the help she needs. He doesn’t know what the officers are looking for and has no idea what this sickness is. All he knows is she was bitten and went wild, and the people at the hospital must know what to do.

When he drives up to the doors of the emergency room, two people come out and stop at his car’s bloody and dented hood. “It was an accident. I hit somebody. My wife is in the back,” he says as he gets out and walks them over to the door. When he opens the car, the doctor and nurse from emergency stare at each other for a second in surprise.

Working in the emergency room for many years, they have seen quite a few things. What this image shows them isn’t a car accident victim, it is an attempted murder. The look the doctor and nurse exchange with each other says the same thing. This man tried to kill his wife. No one wraps a blanket over the head and body of an accident victim and ties them up with curtains.

The nurse heads back to the hospital door to get an officer to arrest Mr. Romero, while the doctor works at untying Mrs. Romero in the back seat, so he can get an idea how bad her injuries are.
She isn’t yelling or crying out in pain, so she might be drugged and disoriented
, he thinks as he unties her.

The police officer walks up and sees the body being untied in the back seat, as the nurse described and grabs Mr. Romero, telling him, “You’re under arrest.”

“Yes, I know, I’m sorry,” he says, thinking he is being arrested for the hit and runs.

Doctor Jackson, the physician on the scene, has been a doctor for twelve years. He has been in emergency work his whole career. He has been married for eight years to another doctor at this same hospital. He enjoys bicycling and dancing. His wife is three months pregnant with their first child.

Mrs. Romero bites into Dr. Jackson’s neck once he lifts the comforter off of her head. He falls back out of the car and hits the ground. Only a gurgling sound comes from the hole in his throat. Mrs. Romero steps over the dying doctor and starts to spread the disease.

Chapter Six

Fall Isolation

I wake up in a strange yet familiar room. I’ll have to get used to living at the ranch now. I guess that is true for everyone. Most of the people that were at the meeting last night chose to stay here. It was too big of a risk for most of them to head out into the darkness to try and find people they know, especially those that had their immediate families here with them already.

The morning is filled with chaotic buzzing movement of many more people than I am used to interacting with. The kids are having a great time playing with each other and are busy running in and out of the house, presumably to play with some of the animals. Simone spots the concern on my face as I watch them running out the door, and says, “There are people standing guard. The kids are feeding the goats and chickens.”

“We’ll have to do a good job explaining to everyone that no children should go off on their own. In fact, even adults should travel in pairs. If just one person gets bitten walking alone on the ranch, then we’re all dead.”

“I’ll speak to everyone. You need to eat something quick and meet Arthur by the trucks.”

I’m not feeling hungry, so I just grab two pieces of toast off the table in the kitchen, and walk out the door. Stepping out into the morning air, I see that the Earth is still unconcerned with the troubles of man. Cool air tingles the hair on my neck, and a bright sun in the clear blue sky kisses my face with warmth.

I guess it is ego or arrogance that makes me think the world should care what happens to us. I never stop to consider the enduring nature of things when a cat catches a bird, and I doubt other birds consider their smallness in the scheme of things when they see each other getting eaten. Still, I am surprised that the morning seems like just another morning after witnessing the horrors of yesterday.

Today will be a day of running for supplies and checking for friends and relatives. If luck stands with us, then we will either get most of the building supplies today, or we will be able to safely retrieve things for at least the next few days.

What I would love more than anything would be for everyone to run up to me, start laughing, and call me Chicken Little. Even seeing what I saw in Medford last night, I want nothing more than to be told that I’m an overreacting fear monger, and the worst is over. For now though, it seems our interpretation of the events is true at least in that everything is still off: television, phones, and radio. Electricity is still working, so that isn’t an issue for the modes of communication that are out.

We’ll all head out to our respective destinations, guns loaded and ready, hoping to find people we love and items we’ll need to survive.

*

It’s the third day after moving to the ranch. The best news came the first day when Randy Langford returned with his son, Matthew, and Matthew’s family. They had arrived the night of the collapse at Randy’s house for a surprise visit, unaware of everything going on, or where his parents were. The reunion of their family was the only heartfelt highlight over the last few days. No other family members for anyone have arrived since that first day, and we just discovered it is now too dangerous for us to leave the compound and venture into the towns. The disease has spread everywhere that we can easily reach by car or truck.

We did have a few more arrivals of friends and strangers. The first day when Matthew Langford arrived, we also welcomed Brian and Melissa Carpenter. The Carpenter’s were finishing their vacation by staying on the property next to mine, which belongs to Brian’s father, Clyde.

Clyde is also a prepper and did some combat training with a group at my property. He told Brian to come to his land or mine if there were any type of upheaval, so it was an easy decision for them to join us until his father gets back. They drove over to our place with their truck pulling a beautiful new fifth-wheel trailer they had been breaking in over the summer. Unfortunately, Clyde and Brian’s mom, Barbara, are on the road in an R.V. somewhere in the U.S., and Melissa’s parents, brother, and sister are in central California.

The second day was another good day for additions to our ranch. A couple, Timothy Weyland and Dianne Blount from Iowa, were found and rescued from a minor car accident on the highway. They had been camping by the ocean near Crescent City in California, and drove up Redwood Highway to Grants Pass, initially hoping to go up to Portland, but Grants Pass was in chaos already, and there were wrecks and abandoned vehicles blocking I-5 North.

They had to head east toward Medford and got in an accident just east of Rogue River, when a man walked onto the highway in front of them, causing Timothy to brake and swerve into an abandoned vehicle. They only hit the other car slightly, but the airbag deployment killed the car, and then they were trapped in it by a group of infected, until Randy, Matthew, and Joshua happened by on a supply run. Seven infected were killed to remove the couple from their car, and it was the first killing that any of those people had to do or see.

The other new arrivals came that morning while I was out picking up more supplies from the Langford lumber yard. Daniel Palmer, a Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy, showed up with five other people; his girlfriend, Jessica Dixon, and her sister, Ashley; his father, Michael, mother, Jennifer, and his sister, Megan. He was sent here by Sheriff Carl Barns after things had completely collapsed and the Sheriff’s office was overrun.

Daniel spent the rest of the day after having to abandon the sheriff’s office getting to his girlfriend, and her sister, and taking them to temporary safety at his parents place. They left in the early morning while it was still dark to head here to the ranch.

Today, the third day out isn’t turning out to be a good day. The disease has made its way into our closest town, Rogue River, so we are now going to be locked down on the ranch once we get back. We were driving into town but have stopped on the road just on the outskirt. There is smoke coming up from different parts of Rogue River, and we know what it means. After talking it over we have decided to head in and drive around if we can, hoping things might not be so bad yet, or that we might drive through and rescue some survivors.

We have a convoy of three vehicles; two pickups and a flatbed, and we’re turning the vehicles around to drive in on a small dirt road called Laurel Street that turns into 3rd Street. If there are any survivors that can make it to us, they can jump into the back of any of the trucks without any of us inside the cabs being at great risk.

I personally doubt that we will be able to do much for anyone here, but I understand the need to at least try. This is a smaller community and most of the people know each other, if not personally, then by acquaintance in shopping at a store or gassing up at the gas station. But with smoke from several fires visible in parts of the town, I know it is lost. None of the people with this group were in Medford with me three days ago, so they really don’t know what might be out there. I think it’s better that they see for themselves.

The paved portion of 3rd Street is just ahead, and I can already see the infected. They are everywhere, just wandering around in the streets. The scene doesn’t look like fresh carnage though, so the infection must have arrived here yesterday. Maybe sometime after our last supply run at 2 p.m., or maybe even while we were still here. I’ll never know.

Our group has stopped, and some of the people from the back two trucks have stepped out of the cabs to look ahead. The noise from our vehicles is already starting to attract the infected this way. I open my door, and yell back to everyone, “Get back in the trucks, we’re going to have to turn around and head back to the ranch”

The trucks start backing up to turn when we hear a woman screaming. She is running at us from the backdoor of a house on Nugget Drive, just off of 3
rd
, about 100 to 150 yards away. She is screaming, “Help me,” at us and is attracting a much larger group of the infected to stumble after her and toward us. It is easy to see she is injured and most likely bitten. Her blouse is soaked with blood on the left side from some kind of shoulder wound, and she looks pale white, either from terror, or blood loss.

Our three trucks are all too close to easily maneuver, especially the large flatbed at the back. I feel like an idiot for letting ourselves get jammed up in such a way, but I am at least thankful we weren’t next to the houses yet. Those tight neighborhood roads would have made getting the trucks turned around a very slow action. As it is, the injured woman manages to reach the lead truck I’m in and jump on the hood before we can turn the truck around.

Samantha is behind the wheel and screams when the woman jumps on the hood. Conner and I both flinch back, as if she might continue her motion, and come through the windshield at us.

The woman on the hood grabs hold of the windshield wipers, and yells, “Go, go, go! Get me out of here!”

So I know now she isn’t infected.

I can tell Samantha is ready to floor the accelerator and make the lady fall off, so I reach across Conner, grab Samantha’s arm, and yell, “She isn’t infected! Let’s just get out of here.”

I don’t actually know if the woman isn’t infected, but she isn’t acting infected. She was running, and she is yelling for us to help her and not to stop. She doesn’t look right, though. She must have lost a tremendous amount of blood. Looking at her through the window you can see that some of the blood on her is dried, and more is still coming out.

Samantha drives us back down the road a bit, and we stop long enough for the woman to get off of the hood and climb into the pickup bed. All of the vehicles backtrack east on Wards Creek Road a couple miles, and we pulled over to speak with the woman and check on her wound.

“Kim. My name is Kim,” she says through a weak exhaustion.

“What happened?” Jason Anderson asks, walking up with a first aid kit.

Kim starts sobbing, and through the weeping, says, “My husband attacked me. Yesterday evening the rioting started in Rogue River. Neither of us understood what was happening. This is a small town, we all know each other, but people started attacking each other in the streets when we were at the store. We went home quickly. We still thought it was just rioting until this morning at five. We heard someone trying to break into our garage. My husband, Jim, went out with his revolver to scare them off, but he got attacked. He came back in with blood on his arm and a scratch on his face, and slammed the front door behind him.”

“I got bit, that guy bit me,” was all he kept saying, and he made it into the bathroom before he collapsed. I was right there with him, and he started convulsing. I thought he was having a heart attack or something, and I grabbed him to keep him from shaking worse, but then he stopped and bit me.”

Jason is applying pressure to the hole in her shoulder, with a bandage, but when she says she was bitten, we all step back.

“How long ago did he bite you?” I ask from a few feet away, with my right hand gripping my sidearm in its holster.

“It was 5:14 a.m. I remember looking at the clock after trying to call 911. The phone lines were still down, but I didn’t remember right away why I couldn’t get through. I was thinking maybe 911 was closed and looked at the phone.

I look at the time on my watch. “So he bit you almost five hours ago?” I ask.

She is able to reply,
Yes
, but then passes out. I’m not sure what to think. Is she immune? Will she still turn violent and try to attack? Is she contagious and just a carrier?

“What do we do with her?” someone asks.

“Let’s tie her up and take her back to the ranch,” I say. “I don’t really know what her situation is, so be careful,” I add and draw my gun aiming it at her head while they secure her arms and legs. “I remember the letter from the internet saying there was a six hour time frame from injection of that Zeus Drug to the fever. We need to watch her and see if she turns violent like everyone else that is bitten. Gag her too.”

“Eddie, should we risk taking her back?” Conner asks.

“Absolutely!” his wife Samantha exclaims. “This woman could be immune! We need Simone to look at her. We should get her wound dressed before we head back to stop the bleeding.”

I’m not so thrilled at the prospect of this woman being immune. I like the idea that maybe not everyone will get violent when infected, but we aren’t doctors, or disease specialists. There isn’t anything we can do with someone that has immunity but congratulate them and hope that we are all immune if we ever get bitten.

*

“Kim has died,” Simone tells us as she walks into the house with Michael Palmer, one of our new arrivals from yesterday. Michael was an EMT with the fire department until two days ago, so he and Simone are our resident medical experts.

“Did she turn?” I ask.

“No. At least we don’t know. The fever hit right at the six hour mark, but she died before the fever was finished. She was just too weak from her extensive blood loss to make it through such a severe temperature. Her pulse was extremely weak when you brought her here.”

“I’m sorry she died,” I say. Unfortunately, no one on the ranch knew this woman. We only know her as Kim.

While we were waiting to find out Kim’s prognosis, most of us were in the living room discussing what we saw. Now we are all facing each other in silence. I hate feeling defeated like this, so I offer, “Should we try another trip into Rogue River?” I ask the question with sincerity but receive very shocked faces in return.