The Lazarus Impact (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

By mid morning Sheryl gets an emergency call on her cell phone from Debbie that the winds shifted and a plume of nasty debris wafted over the west part of town. A grey dust cloud lingers there while their kids are out playing football. She can barely hear anything with all the interference on the line.

“What debris plume?” she asks as warning sirens start to reel up outside.

“Do you live under a rock?” Debbie replies, promptly hanging up.

“I don’t have time for your attitude, bitch,” she says to the dial tone.

When the sirens stop she calls her husband. Voicemail again. “Who the hell works on Christmas and can’t answer the damn phone?” she asks herself aloud on the message she leaves. Between getting the kids ready, cleaning the dishes, sweeping up the dog hair, wrapping gifts, putting away the mess of toy crap the kids left in the den, and starting to prepare for Christmas dinner, she has no idea what’s been going on outside the house or out in the real world. If she did, she forgot, or she tuned it out, or she was too busy to let it sink in.

The meteor thing?
Her face contorts with incredulity. She tries to turn on the television to check the news but there’s no power. Then she realizes that she might have put the kids in danger by letting them leave the house earlier. “Sure, go out and play,” she told them when they asked, thankful to get them out of her hair for a few hours in the morning while she got everything ready.
I love my boys, but I hate Christmas break
.

She grabs the keys to the minivan and steps outside. She sees the dark mass of debris looming over the distant horizon at the end of her street. The neighbors are scattered, running all over the place. Jim and Nancy scurry into their house with water, food, and bags of groceries. Paul and his family are leaving their house, getting into an SUV packed full with belongings. The new guy next door is sealing and boarding up his windows and doors.

“You better get out of here, Sheryl!” Paul yells out as he rolls by slowly in front of her house. “Get your family and get out of here. That stuff is blowing this way!”

Sheryl speeds off in the minivan, ignoring stop signs and dodging frantic traffic at every turn. The congestion infuriates her.
Come on you fucks!
It’s chaos, anarchy. The sirens blare again, and every kind of emergency vehicle races up and down Main Street in a panic. She crosses when it’s safe, blowing the red light. She zooms to the football field, where she sees that the debris has passed. It has blown onward, to the outskirts of town, leaving behind a dusting of soot on the ground in its wake. But more is on the way, much more. She can see it coming.

“Get in!” she yells to her kids. Bobby Junior is ten, and Stephen just turned eight last Friday. They are everything to Sheryl. They give her the love and affection she needs, since her husband is never around.
He’s married to his work more than me
.
Pathetic
.
I’m neglected, abandoned, and alone
.
But not when I’m with my boys
.
The boys love me
... And they’re doubled over in a coughing bout. “Get in! There’s more of that dust coming!” They catch their breath and jump into the back of the minivan. “You guys okay?” she asks. There’s no reply. “BJ? Steve-O? Answer me. Are you guys okay?” Sheryl looks at them through the rearview mirror. They’re exhausted.

“I can still taste it,” BJ says, his eyes rolling back in his head. Stephen begins to cough.

Sheryl’s eyes bounce back and forth between them in the rearview, ignoring the road as she drives. Sirens and screamingly loud emergency vehicles fill her ears again. Blood spurts out from Stephen’s mouth. She turns her head to face him. “Steve-O, what’s the matter?” Her voice shakes.

“Mom, look out!” BJ yells with everything left in him as they drive through the red light at the intersection of Main Street.

An ambulance screeches its wheels. Smoke and brake dust spit up from the wheel wells as it broadsides Sheryl's minivan at a high speed. Both vehicles flip and tumble, and they eventually slide to a scraping stop.

CHAPTER 5

The coughing subsided somewhat, but Wolf still tastes that lingering smell in the back of his throat. His chest feels burned and tender on the inside, and his lungs are labored in breathing. He leaves the crew at the motel and checks himself into the nearest emergency room, which is minimally staffed on Christmas Day and only partially powered up by emergency generators.
The staff recognizes me
. They whisper to each other with star-lit eyes, and all the nurses blush at his gruff handsomeness.

“I can see you, Mr. Camden,” a stout, dark curly haired doctor says. “I’m Dr. Vogel.” The two shake hands and walk down the hallway to a room. “My sons love your show, you know.”

“Aye, thanks mate. I’ll sign them some autographs before I leave, eh?” Wolf says, removing his shirt.

“That’d be great.” Dr. Vogel listens to Wolf’s breathing through the stethoscope, wincing in confusion. “Your breathing is normal, just slow,” he says.

“I feel weak. I breathed in this smoke, or steam that came up from one of the small meteors. It had a strange smell, like burning plastic. I didn’t get much of it in me, but it managed to keep me coughing for a few hours. I can still taste it in the back of my throat.”

“Could be the smell from the heated meteorite, whatever substances are in it might mimic those plastic smells. The symptoms, the coughing, could just be some irritation from whatever you breathed in,” Dr. Vogel says as he puts on a breather mask and some long rubber gloves.

“What’s all that for?” Wolf asks. “Am I contagious?”

“Doubt it. It’s just old habit. I used to do research at the CDC.”

“Level with me, doc. I breathed in a bit of foreign substance and within half a day I feel like I’ve had emphysema for a decade,” Wolf pleads. “I’ve had almost every kind of exotic bug there is out there. Whatever is happening to me is aggressive.”

“I won’t know anything until I run some tests, and some of the tests are going to take a while because I have to send them out to a lab, like for the blood work. I don’t even know if these labs are up and running, given the meteor impact. Most likely what you’ve got is just some smoke inhalation, like what a firefighter might deal with,” he says, muffled through the mask. “But better safe than sorry. We’ll run the whole gamut. I’ll draw some blood, you’ll pee in a cup. But first, a throat culture.”

Wolf opens wide. Dr. Vogel swabs the back of his throat and rubs the cotton tip around a pink Petrie dish. Next he draws some blood into a test tube, and then Wolf fills up a cup of urine in the bathroom. Finally he hands Wolf a wide glass jar. “I need you to cough into this for me. Try to get some of that garbage up from your lungs. I don’t need wads of spit or anything, just some moisture that comes from deeper in the lung.”

“Right,” Wolf says. He does as he was instructed.

Dr. Vogel quickly seals the jar. “I’ll be back in a bit. Sit tight,” he says over his shoulder as he whisks out of the room with all of his samples.

Wolf’s heart races from the forced coughing. He’s in top shape for a 40 year old and is well known for running a marathon every month since his 20s. But expending that small amount of energy to cough makes him feel like he just ran wind sprints in his rugby drills. He puts his shirt back on, lies back, and tries to calm himself.
What the hell is happening to me? I wish we had more time to get further west last night, to my trusted doctors in LA
.

He had just crossed back over the police barricade when the big one hit. His crew stole him away in a speeding SUV outfitted with the latest weather chasing and sky mapping equipment. The roads were getting crowded when they made it to the air strip and their customized private jet. All the major airports in the northeast were already shut down, so anyone with a pilot’s license was trying to get airborne and far away before the FAA grounded everything else. It was fortunate they didn't fly into one of the main airports when they came to film the meteors. They drove the truck right into the cargo hold of the jet and took off within minutes, ignoring the line of other small biplanes trying to lift off on the runway ahead of them.

They were only about 30 minutes out, heading west, when they were grounded. It was like 9/11 all over again; the sky was empty. The meteor shower kept raining down debris, and if even the smallest of rocks were to hit a plane in flight it could rip through the fuselage, change cabin pressure dramatically, and cause a crash. The nearest air strip with room for them to land was a small crop duster run, still just a few hours driving distance from the impact zone. There was barely enough room to come to a full stop. They rolled off the edge of the runway and into the tree line, damaging the landing gear and one of the wings, but all that mattered to Wolf was that they were on the other side of the meteor, upwind.

Dr. Vogel returns to Wolf's room. “The culture will take some time if there's anything to grow, but I did see something strange under the microscope when I swabbed the jar. This isn’t the best place to study this kind of thing. Come with me,” he says.

Wolf follows the doctor through a maze of hallways to another room. Wolf steps inside and Dr. Vogel closes the door behind him, locking it from the outside.
You’ve got to be joking
. Wolf pounds on the door. His icy, dagger-like blue eyes pierce Dr. Vogel through the small, cross-hatched window at face level on the door.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Vogel says. “Until I know more I’m going to have to contact the CDC and lock you down. There’s plenty of food and water in the back there; I just brought it in.”

Wolf ignores the doctor, and tries to ram the door with his shoulder, but he soon becomes tired, drawn out. He sits down in the corner to catch his breath. “Fucking crazy Americans,” he utters between gasps.
Right mad wankers
.

CHAPTER 6

A headache wakes Brandon in the darkness. The back of his hair is wet. He touches it and knows right away.
It’s blood
. He remembers falling. On his hands and knees he crawls to where he put the flashlight and batteries. Stupidly, they are each still in their plastic packaging. He manages to find and open them. With the push of a button there is light. It’s eerily quiet in the shelter without his computer or electronics buzzing. He remembers he was about to go get his parents and bring them down. He runs over to the hatch, hurdling stacks of supplies, but when he gets to the top of the ladder he stops.
Fallout
.

Brandon fishes around for the AM/FM radio and loads some batteries into it when he finds it. He spins the knobs slowly. Static. He finds that the reception is better the closer he is to the walls, and as he climbs up the ladder toward the surface. Finally he hears something; a dissonant but familiar tone. The emergency broadcast system. He turns up the volume so that the eerie and ominous sound fills the bunker. Suddenly it stops. There is nothing, and the silence is so loud it’s deafening.
Dead air
.
The world has ended
. He half smiles at the thought, but in the back of his head there is fear.

“THIS IS NOT A TEST.” The voice booms and startles him. He lowers the volume. “This is a recording of the emergency broadcast system. All those east of Ohio and north of Washington DC are advised to shelter in place. All others should move as far south and west as possible. The debris plume resulting from the meteor impacts in the northeast is considered extremely hazardous. Those in the affected area should seal their windows and doors, remain inside and rely on air filtration systems whenever possible.” The message repeats. He plays around with the knobs but he only finds the same message on all the other channels that have a signal, AM and FM alike. He shuts the radio.

It’s dead silent in the bunker. Brandon wants to start up the generator and get his shelter powered up, but down there it’s safe, and the air is filtered through vents. He convinces himself to try his luck topside.
It’ll only be for a minute, and I have a gas mask incase the debris cloud is thick
.
If it isn’t too hectic out there, I can try to get mom and dad too, and sack the house for supplies
. He struggles to open the hatch. There’s something sitting on top, obstructing it, preventing it from opening. He pushes with all his might until something heavy rolls off from on top of the hatch. He shudders when he sees a lifeless arm tumble and flop to the grass on one side.
A body
. Once it rolls out of the way he quickly pops up from the bunker and shuts the hatch door. He looks down with a double take. There are two bodies; his parents. Grief sweeps over him in a rush. The excitement of the apocalypse turns to fear and sadness. He weeps in his white, elephant trunk style, Cold War era gas mask. He checks their pulses at the wrist. He can’t feel anything. He looks around in a panic to see his house severely damaged. A wall is caved in, exposing the living room on one side. The roof has been pelted with debris, making holes into the attic. Sheets of shingles and siding have blown off, lying scattered across the grass, and a huge oak tree has fallen onto the cars, flattening them like pancakes. The shed is pretty banged up too, but it still stands.
The generator is safe
.

He drags his parents aside, near the edge of the woods adjacent to the property. He speaks a few solemn words under his breath, things he memorized in Sunday school. He wants to bury them, but he’s afraid of lingering topside for too long.
I have to press on
.
I have to force myself to be strong, independent
.
It’s the apocalypse
.
It’s what I wanted, right?

The air is still as he heads for the shed. An unearthly black dust covers much of the property. He takes an erratic zigzag pattern, avoiding the debris like it’s hot lava. It’s from the impact cloud, and he doesn’t want to drag any of it back into the shelter. His years spent reading science fiction comic books make him extra cautious. This strange soot is poisonous, and he assumes the worst of all possible scenarios if he contacts it. He imagines his skin burning to the bone, or the debris dissolving his shoes or clothes, getting to his body and liquefying it into green ooze, or turning him into some bloodthirsty mutant. But his parents are physically intact, in one piece. He shakes everything from his thoughts.
This is what I’ve prepared for
.
I can do this
.

Brandon opens the lock to the generator with the combination he remembered. With a few draining tugs of the pull-start engine it rumbles to a rattling hum. He checks his fuel supply; he will have to ration it carefully, and attempt to get more if he plans to hole up at the bunker for an extended period of time. The closest gas station is about five miles away.

Eager to try to contact Apocalypta with his computer and electronics powered up, and frightened of the mysterious debris, he hurriedly turns back to the hatch. But he notices something on the way. The bodies; his parents are gone. He spins his head in all directions. His breathing frantically quickens with his heartbeat in tow. They are nowhere to be seen.
Were they still alive? No
.
I checked
. The panic consumes him. His overactive comic book imagination kicks in when he hears a light rustling in the woods behind him. Something moves among the trees within the lengthening early evening shadows.
Alien abduction?
...
Zombies
.

Freaked out, he whips open the hatch, kicks off his sneakers, and scurries back down into the fully lit and buzzing shelter, hoping he didn’t track in any toxic dust.
If they’re alive they will knock
. He reassures himself again and again. He cries, thinking of his parents.