The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here (22 page)

May 22
nd
, Friday, 4:17 pm PDT.

Amber Hoskins was sitting quietly on the lawn furniture that Mary had set up in the garage with her knees pulled up to her chest. She had washed up and had bandaged her feet and the worst of the lesions. She was wearing a hoodie and a pair of Mary’s sweatpants and was wrapped in a blanket. Even though the day was quite warm, she felt cold. She had almost no body fat remaining but part of her chill stemmed from the sense of foreboding she was feeling. With each passing hour she heard the voices in her head less and less, but her own narrative was taking over, filling her thoughts with all the dark images she had seen and imagined.

Her dark ramblings were interrupted by Fiona, the Strickland’s fourteen year old daughter. She had opened the door in the garage and walked to within ten feet of Amber.

“Hi,” said Fiona quietly.

“Hi yourself,” said Amber. “You probably shouldn’t get any closer to me until we know if I am cured or not.”

“I know,” said Fiona. “Mom told me.”

“So ….. did you have something to say?” asked Amber as the silence drew out.

“You seemed lonely,” said Fiona as she sat down cross-legged on the floor with the effortless grace only the young possess. “We don’t get to go out much anymore and I was bored. Do you play cards or anything?”

“Not so much,” said Amber warming to Fiona’s charm. “We probably shouldn’t exchange cards anyway, that infection thing again.”

“Yeah, you are probably right,” said Fiona sighing. “So do you like that policeman friend of Daddy’s?”

“So what if I do?” said Amber smiling.

“He is nice,” said Fiona. “He helped both my parents with law things. Are you going to marry him?”

The abruptness of the question caught here off guard. She hadn’t thought about anything further in the future than how to survive the next ten minutes for the last week. Thinking about a life with Chris was new, novel, and pleasant.

“Maybe,” said Amber after a moment’s thought.

“Do you worry about him?” asked Fiona. “I worry about my Dad when he goes out like this. Mom said that Dad is really smart and won’t get himself into too much trouble but I can’t help it. I know Mom sometimes cries when she thinks she is alone.”

“I worry about him all the time,” said Amber. “But I know that Chris wouldn’t be happy if he was hiding and not trying to protect people. He is a sheep dog by nature.”

“You are too you know,” said Fiona. “Dad told us about putting your car between the mob and that man. That was brave.”

“Maybe just stupid,” said Amber with a shrug. “Say if you will move the pieces for me and I tell you where to move, I bet we could play checkers.”

“I’d rather play chess,” said Fiona.

“Awesome,” said Amber.

May 22
nd
, Friday, 5:52 pm PDT.

Chad was drinking a cup of cold coffee with shaky hands in the Kennewick Police Station and trying to calm down. The rally point was the parking lot of that station which was a block from the high school. 

When he and Chris had arrived there, the few dispatchers and supervisors left in the building were trying to keep the lot open as they had been following what was happening on the radio. A pitched battle was already underway as infected that had been hiding in homes came out and started toward the high school. As the police cruisers used for the bug out began to come in, infected from the high school and from the surrounding homes followed them.

More infected from the high school had also followed the biggest threat, Chris’s snow plow, back to the rally point so they didn’t help much. The lot was small so they could only do a couple of passes with the plow, cleaning out the infected before the plow struck an abandoned car and was stuck fast.

Chad and Chris had exited the plow and expended the little pistol ammo they had left entering the police station. In the end, the butt of Chad’s shotgun and Chris’s baton were all that got them in.

Casualties were high. There was no one left at all from Serenity 4, the north side team, ten soldiers and police in all, stationed directly opposite Chad’s position on the north side of the building. Sergeant Ingram got Serenity 1 out and was going over to help Serenity 4, the last anyone saw of him. Lieutenant Miller made it out but it every other team had lost at least one member, save Chad’s. Everybody was low on ammunition by this point and very tired. They had barred the doors with furniture and were just waiting.

Chris came over to where Chad was sitting and handed him six shotgun shells.

“It was all I could scrounge,” said Chris by way of apology. “There was no .45 anywhere.”

“I appreciate it,” said Chad as he loaded the shells into his shotgun.

“Chad, I have a favor to ask,” said Chris as he sat down. “With Amber at your place, I was wondering if I could, like, move in to help take care of her? I would pull my own weight. I have a good quantity of survival supplies and I am well armed.”

“And just how was I going to keep you away?” said Chad with a smile. “Seriously though, we could use another able bodied adult in our … group …. clan … tribe or whatever you want to call it. I’d probably better clear it with my wife and the other folks but yeah, you’re in.” 

Just then the lights came on in the station. Everyone was still flabbergasted when Chad’s cell phone rang.

“I probably need to take this,” said Chad.

Chris nodded and Chad answered the phone.

“This is Dr. Jurgen, am I catching you at a bad time?” said Chad’s boss.

All Chad could do was laugh.

“Yes sir, you could say that,” said Chad after the giggles wound down. “I just spent most of the afternoon trying to keep the patients in the Kennewick High School from spilling out into the general population and now I am trapped in the Kennewick Police Station with a thousand or more howling infected outside. I have had better days.”

“Chad, I need you to get control and talk to me for a bit,” said Dr. Jurgen. “There is power again and some of the cell towers are working. We have heard about your problem, though I didn’t know you were there. The National Guard is sending a platoon of Strykers to get you out of there. I hate like hell to ask this but we need you. We are going to have a meeting tomorrow morning. We need a new projection and policy recommendations for the State Government. The Federal government is focused on what is happening on the east coast and so we are kind of on our own out here in the west.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” said Chad. “My family is at home and there are thousands for infected roaming the streets.”

“There were only a couple thousand all told in the high school,” said an incredulous Dr. Jurgen. “And a few hundred more in the hospital. I was told the folks holding the containment for the high school, you and your friends apparently, must have killed several hundred.”

“Sir, the reason we couldn’t contain them was that we were attacked from behind,” said Chad quietly. “Infected who were being hidden or hiding themselves and had not been quarantined, came at us from all sides. We didn’t stand a chance once that happened.”

“But it was illegal,” said Dr. Jurgen incredulously. “There were laws broadcast when martial law was enacted. All the infected had to be turned in.”

“They are out there, none the less,” said Chad tiredly. “So when is the meeting? If I can get an escort, I’ll show up.”

“It will be at 9:30 in the conference room,” said Dr. Jurgen. “There will be doughnuts.”

At that, Chad lost it and began to laugh hysterically. Chris took the phone and shut it down.

May 22
nd
, Friday, 7:06 pm PDT.

The arrival of the Strykers was anti-climactic. By the time they had arrived, most of the infected had wandered off, looking to feed. Under the watchful eye of the troops in the Strykers, they were able to dislodge the snow plow and go find Chris’s police cruiser.

“Well, it has a few more dents,” said Chris walking around the car.

Chris unlocked the door and got in and started the car.

“It still runs,” said Chris with a smile. “Need a lift home?”

“Sounds good,” said Chad. “Can we go by someplace on the way? I’d like to check on something. Do you know where Vincent’s Garage is?”

It was not far from the high school and within five minutes they drove into the parking lot. Chad, feeling sheepish, went to the main door and knocked. He didn’t expect anyone to be there after hours, especially mere blocks away from the worst outbreak of violence that the Tri-Cities had ever seen, but to his surprise, the door opened and there was Pete, the owner, head mechanic, and all around factotum for the garage.

“Hi Chad, I would have called but the phones aren’t working,” said Pete. “Come on in, I have something to show you.”

Chad waved Chris in and together they went to the last stall in the shop. Pete pulled off the tarp that was covering Chad’s 1968 Camaro. The bullet holes had all been repaired as had the damage to the front end. All the glass had been replaced and it looked like there had been a new coat of wax.

“Pete, I don’t know what to say,” said Chad. “I figured that rebuilding an old hotrod would be the last thing on your agenda.”

“Chad, I am sixty-seven years old,” said Pete. “All I have ever done is work on cars and I can repair anything with an internal combustion engine in it. No matter how hard times get, there will always engines to fix. I won’t starve.

“But I am also an artist. My medium is cars and you know I love the old Detroit iron the best. I got the feeling that it’s going to be a long time before anyone has the money or the time to care about old beauties like this, so I fixed it in the evenings while I still had customers and now, because I really don’t have a lot else to do.”

“Well what do I owe you for all this work?” asked Chad nervously. He wasn’t sure that it would be right to take funds from the common coffers for his obsession.

“This one is on the house,” said Chet smiling a sad wistful smile. “My wife was getting after me to come home and stay home. We are doing alright with the kids and grandkids gathered around out on the weed patch I call a farm. I have taken most of my portable tools and spares home. If I hadn’t heard from you in the next couple of days, I was going to lock it in the shop and hope your car came to no harm, but now I can give it back to you. Enjoy it while you can, I sure did while I fixed it this one last time.”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Chad scrambling for words.

“Then just say thanks,” said Pete, “and one time, as you leave, just for me, line up the wheels and nail it. I doubt I will hear a big V-8 like that wind up like that anytime soon.”

May 23
rd
, Saturday, 9:25am PDT.

Chad was sitting in his seat at the conference table. He was wearing his tactical vest and openly carrying his .45. In his office, his shotgun was locked in a filing cabinet in his office. He was not the only one that was armed; the only alarming part was how quickly it had become common place.

“I am glad you could all make it,” said Dr. Jurgen to the eight people in the room. This was all that was left of the GIS and Epidemiology research group and two of the people at the table, Herb Burnside and Clinton Taylor weren’t even research scientists. 

“I can’t tell you,” continued Dr. Jurgen, “when or even if this group will ever be reconvened again. Travel has become unsafe and the need for our work is dwindling. We have one last charge by the Governor of the State of Washington and General Buckley. They would like for us to make some policy recommendations. It is recognized now that the government was too slow in activating the quarantine. Every metropolitan area in the US and now around the world has significant infection rates.

“It appears in the first few days of the Plague, which is what it is being called now, someone was actively spreading the contagion overseas.”

“Do we know who?” asked Dr. Helen Campbell who was an epidemiologist originally from the Mayo Clinic.

“It is unclear,” said Dr. Jurgen, “who would have motivation to do this. There has been some speculation that it might be Middle East terrorists or, given the fact that it seems to have originated in the US, some locally grown terrorist group. The resources required would mean though that whoever did this was pretty well funded. As we suspected, a couple of new designer drugs have hit the street in the last couple of months. One, called ‘Slash’ tends to make users more susceptible and another called, ‘White Heaven’ is actually carrying an ensporated version of the disease. It apparently remained dormant for some time.”

“How has the disease spread so quickly outside the US?” asked Sherman Comnick, an ethicist for the Department of Health.

  “Because of poor public health policies and the low cost of ‘White Heaven’ in particular,” answered Dr. Jurgen, “in places like Africa and some parts of Asia, it has become far more prevalent than here. Indeed, there have been no communications from Lagos, Nigeria in the last twenty-four hours.

“What we are tasked with is a frank appraisal of the current situation and suggestions for future actions.

“There have been a couple of new developments that might impact your discussions. The first is that Terry Grieb and the military doctors at Madigan Army Hospital have discovered a chemical test that is ninety nine percent reliable for the disease. It is even effective in non-symptomatic cases. There are some interesting proteins in your blood plasma that go missing when the infection occurs. They have isolated the pathogen at the CDC and the test is proving very accurate. Some test kits have been constructed. If the remaining manufacturing base allows, more will be produced.

“The second thing is that there have been a number of remissions in the last few days. Dr. Riley’s group discovered one of the first cases and like many of them, the patient that they were made aware of vanished before he could be studied in any detail. There have been others since. All have vanished or been abducted.”

“How is this possible?” asked Dr. Riley. “I thought the word went out after our trip to Ft. Lewis that they should be protected.”

“It seems that every health care facility in the US is full to bursting,” responded Dr. Jurgen, “and watching one patient who didn’t seem to need much care wasn’t a priority. In the one case where steps were taken, the current problems we had with the infrastructure attack we experienced were nationwide. The confusion allowed for an abduction attempt to be successful.”

Chad was secretly concerned over that point. It appeared that Amber had been pulled out of the high school in the nick of time. The ramifications of her staying with his family concerned him.

“About these infrastructure attacks,” said Herb, “someone seems to be behind them and someone is surely selling these drugs. Phil Laumer, Our local network guru, said it wasn’t an accident but a coordinated attack. Who is doing this?”

“Frankly, Herb,” said Dr Jurgen, “I was going to ask you. But leave that for the time being. What policy objectives should we be looking at?”

“The first one is obvious,” said Clinton, “the quarantine is broken. It has been thwarted by a prolonged attack and stalled by our own government stooges. There are lots of resources deployed and people being put at risk for no reason.”

“I agree,” said Chad. “Quarantine is dead. We need to redeploy those resources and protect safe havens, much the way Ft. Lewis is set up.”

“How will that go over with those outside the safe zones?” asked Dr. Sherman Comnick. “And what are the political ramifications of that policy?”

“Have you been outside lately Sherman?” said Chad caustically. “Most folks are cowering at home, trying to find enough to eat without getting the disease themselves. It will go over like a fart in church. We are not talking about a popularity contest; we are looking at the survival of our nation and perhaps our civilization.”

“We do not have the luxury,” said Dr. Jurgen quietly, “or the time to shout at one another. We need to have a discussion about how to enable the maximum number of people to survive. Politics don’t matter anymore.”

“As I was saying,” said Clinton, trying to put things back on track, “is that the quarantine is dead; we need to redeploy what resources we have while we still have some control. Chad, you were with the police and National Guard yesterday, how many of them are left out there?”

“What I heard was largely anecdotal,” said Chad, “but the police I spoke to said more and more of their colleagues were calling in sick or just not coming in to work. Say thirty percent were not available. They have also lost folks to the disease.

“The National Guard folks I talked to had higher casualties but they also had the same issues with folks deciding to stay home and take of their own.” 

“Any other data items we should know?” asked Dr. Jurgen.

“That’s a serious issue,” said Dr. Campbell. “The data we get is all like what Chad has reported, anecdotal. Getting real information is impossible.”

“Anything else,” said Dr. Jurgen.

“Well, there is something else the police were talking about and we need to talk about,” said Chad. “Some have said that there is a rumor that there has been or will be an order issued that the infected are to be shot on sight. Again no data but the rumor is that in some areas on the east coast and down south that it is already happening.”

“It’s not a rumor,” said Dr. Riley. “I suspected it would come, just not so soon.”

“You know,” said Sherman, “a shoot on sight order will inevitably mean that uninfected people in the wrong place at the wrong time will be shot.”

“Worse than that,” said Herb quietly, “some folks will see this as an opportunity settle old scores. It will be worse than the wild west.”

“It’s as if someone out there was planning the end of civilization as we know it,” said Chad.

There was a long silence after that. 

“Is there really anything that we can say that makes a difference now?” asked Chad hopelessly.

“I suspect that the Federal Government doesn’t matter much beyond the reach of their guns,” said Dr. Jurgen. “General Buckley is far more important to our local well-being. Under the circumstances, I think we should give him our best. It would be the best thing to do.”

“So recapping,” said Dr. Riley, “the quarantine is dead. All forces should be redeployed to protect relatively unscathed enclaves like Fort Lewis.”

“Concentration of resources, food rationing, using food collection points as places to apprehend the infected, all follow from that construct,” said Chad morosely. “But I won’t sign anything that says shoot on sight is recommended … even though I know it may be required.”

Chad was lost for a moment thinking about Heather’s husband Paul, and how there was no way to talk him into leaving, about how, when his son was confronted with an infected classmate, there was no way to avoid violence, about the man he had shot while trying to run away in his Camaro, about his own actions at the high school. He had shot more than a few but … Chad’s thoughts were interrupted by Herb Burnside.

“Chad, despite all the things you have had to do, you are at heart a truly gentle man,” said Herb kindly. “How about if we say that we recognize the necessity of such an order?”

“OK,” said Chad weakly.

“We have a few more items that we need to clear up before we adjourn,” said Dr. Riley.

May 23
rd
, Saturday, 1:17 pm PDT.

The meeting had gone on longer than anyone had anticipated. Part of their reticence to leave was that this meeting signified the end of their modern, safe life as researchers, part was the realization that they were leaving a group of friends and acquaintances that they might never see again. 

In the end they crafted a memo that they sent to General Buckley and the Governor, not knowing if it would ever be read. By way of a severance package, as the last people working at Battelle, each got a kit to test for the Plague. The supplies would last for at least thirty tests and then could be resupplied at any pharmacy, if you could find one.

After Chad got out of the Chris’s patrol car at home and headed for the door he realized that there was something he had to do. He went back to the car and pulled out the Plague Detection Kit from the back seat.

“Chris,” said Chad, “this may seem weird, but I need a blood sample from Amber.”

“Might I ask why?” said Chris, who had driven Chad home was surprised as Chad had not talked at all on the ride home. “Amber is all weirded out about needles and such after her stay in the hospital. I can't say as I blame her much.”

“I got a kit at work that can tell whether or not she is in remission,” said Chad. “If she is going to blend in, we need to know it. She can't spend forever living on lawn furniture in the garage.”

“It wouldn't be fair to you guys either,” said Chris pensively. “No, we have to know.”