by Newman, AJ
Jon reached over and pushed Bo onto the floorboard a second before the truck slammed into the two small cars. He saw three of the men scatter like cockroaches, but one stood his ground, got off a wild shot before the huge truck ground him into the other two cars, and rolled over his shredded remains. Samantha’s voice constantly alerted him with her collision warnings, but he’d pushed the icon on the screen to disable the collision avoidance system. The two cars bounced off the truck and into the walls along the side of the road. Jon’s truck shuddered but kept flying down the road dodging cars. He drove over a couple of bodies and sideswiped a couple of cars before clearing the dam.
Jon’s attention had been fixated on running this gauntlet and hadn’t noticed the man’s blood covering the hood. The blood ran in streams across the hood toward him. He also saw a chunk of flesh fly into the wind. Jon had become sick, but couldn’t roll his window down. He grabbed a bag of gold coins next to him and barfed into the bag. Jon threw the bag into the back seat and drove on down the road. He didn’t let up on the gas pedal until he saw the ramp to Highway 93. He took the ramp and never looked back.
Jon sang to himself and tried to keep his mind off the fact that he’d almost been killed again. Every time he was able to forget the bullets hitting the wall behind him, he pondered aloud, “Why do these dingleberries want to kill me? They don’t know me well enough to hate me. Why wouldn’t they want a healthy person like me to join their group?”
Samantha replied, “I don’t know why someone wants to harm you, but perhaps you constantly driving over them and hitting cars willy-nilly has something to do with the situation. You should seriously check into driving instructions.”
Jon had a brainstorm. “Samantha, do you have a police mode or off-road driving mode?”
“Of course, all Ford Super Duty trucks have those options.”
Can you place this truck in both modes at once?”
“Yes.”
“Do it. I’m tired of you stomping on the brakes when I’m trying to escape from danger.”
“Those modes have been selected.”
Jon had a thought. “Samantha, are you proud of being a Ford Truck?”
“Of course. Fords are the best vehicles ever manufactured.”
“If I placed your chip into a Subaru, would you say they are the best in the world?”
“No, I’m programmed to never lie.”
Jon had a big belly laugh and then remembered all the blood and gore. He knew there was a chance they thought he was contaminated, but if they were still alive and able to put up roadblocks, they had to be disease free. He gave up, wondering, and drove as fast as the road would allow. This was a four-lane superhighway with very few stalled cars. Jon thought the drive was boring but could see for over a mile most of the time and hammered down. He stayed below eighty miles per hour and made good time. He slowed down to fifty going through Kingman and a couple of small towns but sped back up on the open roads. He didn’t see any living people, but then he didn’t slow down, and if they were there, they stayed hidden.
He stopped to stretch and let Bo take a pee break in Continental Divide, New Mexico. There wasn’t much there, but Bo found a truck’s tire to water while Jon relieved himself and then strung his antenna between two light poles. He began checking frequencies and heard some chatter on the same frequency he’d talked on the other day. He listened to a couple of people.
“How do we know you’re with the CDC in Atlanta? You could be down the road a bit and just want to rob us.”
“I guess I can’t prove who I am. Please trust me when I say we do need your help. Many people have hidden from the infected just as we at the CDC have done. The problem is the disease is also carried by hogs and perhaps a couple species of birds.”
The man’s voice interrupted the woman. “What does that mean for us?”
“Let me continue. There must be some people who were sickened by the disease but survived. We need to study them to help create a vaccine to save the ones who haven’t caught the disease yet.”
The man inquired, “So you want guinea pigs?”
“No, not at all. We just need small samples of blood, so we can determine the type of antibodies the survivor produced and then find a way to make those antibodies.”
Then another voice interrupted. “Do I interpret what you said to mean a person’s blood who survived the plague could be injected into another normal person, and they would be immune from the plague?”
The lady pleaded against what the man said. “No, that’s not what I said. We would have to make more of the antibodies to inject them into the person who has never been sick for it to work. Whole blood wouldn’t have much effect.”
The man who interrupted said, “But it couldn’t hurt. Look, don’t jerk us around. My son is a Marine, and he escaped from a rogue unit that dropped off Russian peasants at the CDC in Atlanta. Most had the disease, but several were immune. The officers killed several more in Russia just to get transfusions to become immune themselves. You can stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
The CDC lady was pissed. “You have this all mixed up. There isn’t any fast way to pass on the immunity.”
The first man said, “He’s not on the radio now. That man could be dangerous and scare off potentials help for making a vaccine.”
Jon spoke up. “Could a person have survived the plague and then caught a milder form of the disease?”
The CDC lady said, “The person was probably immune from the original disease but was exposed to one of the mutated forms of the virus. We’ve seen people hardly affected by the disease and then catch it from the pigs or birds after it mutated. Why do you ask?”
Jon answered. “I got sick after being bitten by a pig. I had a horrible case of the flu but no bleeding from my eyes, nose, or mouth.”
The lady got excited, “You would be perfect for our study. Have you been exposed to the disease?”
Jon said, “On the first day, I saw sick people, and a sick woman ran into me and covered my arm and shoulder with her blood before she died. Others have coughed close to me. A couple of weeks ago, when I first noticed the disease, I had a few headaches and sniffles.”
The CDC lady announced, “I’m Barbara Payne, and I’m outside of Atlanta. Could you make it to Atlanta or maybe another large city where we have outposts? My boss could send a helicopter to get you.”
Jon didn’t want to give away his current location. “I’m out west and heading south to the gulf. I don’t think it’s wise to give out my location over the air. I’ll stay in touch. Goodbye.”
“Mister, please don’t go. Please. We need you to save our world.”
The first man said, “Mister, the rest of us need people like you to help make a vaccine, or the entire world could die off.”
Jon had turned the radio off.
He fed Bo some jerky and threw his ball for a few minutes to give his friend some exercise. Bo didn’t want to stop playing with the ball, but Jon was eager to get back on the road. He packed up his gear, and soon Jon was cruising across the country on Highway 40 heading southeast, wondering how to safely meet up with the woman with the sexy voice on the radio.
Chapter 10
CDC Laboratory – North of Atlanta, Georgia
The older man in the white lab coat slammed his fist onto the desktop. “You let him hang up. I told you to keep him on the line until he either gave us his location or agrees to come here.”
“Boss, she did the best she could. Let her …”
A young woman with flaming red hair and deep green eyes interrupted the meeting. “George, I can talk for myself. Sir, I didn’t want to …”
“Barbara, I don’t give a shit what you think. If we don’t get at least ten immune subjects, we will fail. If we fail, they won’t need us. If they don’t need us, we will be kicked out on the street. The next time you get one of them on the radio, promise them anything to get them here. I mean anything. Don’t let some goofball spread that transfu
sion crap. We need their blood for testing and to make a vaccine.”
Barbara was afraid of the old man but stood her ground. She rubbed her jaw. “Doc, would a partial transfusion give the receiver immunity?”
Doc said, “Yes, but only if you could get several one-liter transfusions over forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The problem is you might kill a single donor. That’s why we have to be able to synthesize the vaccine. One immune person only has enough blood to make one other person immune and stay living.”
The older man slammed the door on the way out. Barbara had a fire in her eyes. George patted her on the back and said, “Look, I agree with you and don’t want to lie to these people either; however, if we don’t show the leaders some kind of success, we will be useless baggage to them. They’ve already made some folks disappear. I don’t want to disappear.”
Barbara scowled at her fellow lab worker, “I just want to go home to Mississippi. My folks live on a farm out in the boondocks. I called them and warned them to stock up on supplies and to isolate themselves from everyone. I hate being held captive.”
George placed his finger over his lips and warned her to be careful with what she said. She nodded in agreement. George then used his index finger to lift the cute raven-haired lady’s chin. “Just play along with Doc Green, and we’ll be okay. I know you don’t feel comfortable using your charms over the radio to lure men to the lab, but it beats fending for ourselves out in the plague.”
This pissed Barbara off, and she lashed out. “How dare you tell me to prostitute myself over the radio to lure men in here to probably die to save the rest of us? Crap, they might get a cure and only give it out to people they like.”
George waved frantically again and pointed to the ceilings. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to survive myself if you let me.”
George hoped that Barbara could somehow find him attractive. He thought about her green eyes and shapely body when he daydreamed in the lab. He never thought it was obvious when he stared at her chest when he talked with her. This upset her, and she hated the man. She had to work with him, but she didn’t have to like him or associate with him away from work.
The fiery redhead took stock of her current situation and admitted she was in deep shit. Her master’s degree in immunology and work with Doctor Marcus Green had taken her to Atlanta as a research assistant for the doctor, who had been her professor and mentor for the last several years. He had been a good man but changed when the virus killed his wife, kids, and grandkids. They tried to enter the facility but were turned away by the security forces when the die off began. Doc saw his family screaming to get in, but they were runaway under the threat of a machine gun. This was the first time she believed there was some truth to all the government conspiracy stories. Barbara knew her only chance at long term survival was to get away from Doc and George and get to her parents' home in Mississippi.
She also knew George was only interested in getting her into bed and sucking up to Doc Green. George was very jealous of the pretty redhead and hated to see her dating other men. Barbara had made it clear to the socially awkward George that she wasn’t interested in him and would date who she pleased when she pleased. George fooled himself into believing he could change her mind.
The military had warned the CDC about the plague on a Monday and locked down the entire facility the next day. The warning came a week before the outbreak brought the whole country to its knees. Barbara heard Doc talking with another department head about the disease spreading much faster than thought possible. The other man told Doc that the facility could be locked down in the next forty-eight hours. She left for an early lunch and called her dad to warn him. She knew him well enough to know he took the warning seriously. She dropped by her apartment and stocked her car up with food, her 20-gauge shotgun, and the extra Get Home Bag. Each bag had enough food for seventy-two hours for two people. They also both had a nine-millimeter pistol and fifty rounds of ammunition. One had a Henry .22 survival rifle.
Barbara’s dad had always told her to keep a ‘Get Home Bag’ in her car and another in her apartment. He gave her two of the bags when she left home. She’d grown up on a truck farm between New Orleans and Biloxi. It was a hard but exciting life. She grew up hunting, fishing, and camping with her dad and older brothers. She wasn’t an expert but could handle a pistol, shotgun, and rifle.
Barbara cursed herself for not going home that day. Now, she was locked in the CDC complex and would be shot if she tried to leave.
☣☣☣
Doc Green knew he was close to having a mutiny if he didn’t gain support from his key people. He wondered what it would take to either convince them or bribe them to do their jobs. Then tears ran down his cheeks. He knew exactly what to do to gain their support. He called a meeting of his most trusted team members and department supervisors.
The doctor waited until the seven of them were seated. “As you all know, I lost my entire family the other day. They were outside this complex inside a group of infected people. The guards did their jobs and kept them from entering our building and contaminating us. Yes, I hate that they couldn’t join us, but I shouldn’t have to remind this group that the fate of the world depends on the research being conducted by this lab and two others. One is in England, and one in Australia.
I also know many of you have family outside of this building and fear for their safety. You can’t leave now to go to them. Anyone leaving will be shot. However, I promise you when we gear up production of the vaccine, we will get you home to your families with enough vaccine to take care of them.”
Barbara Payne raised her hand. Doc Green said, “Go ahead, Barbara.”
“Doc, our families could be dead by then.”
Doc Green smiled. “I’m not stupid, nor am I cruel. How do you think every one of you was tipped off a day before the crap hit the fan, and we were about to be locked down? I knew you’d run like chickens telling your families the sky was falling. I knew our citizens would know the next day. I called my family at the same time you called yours. There is a good chance your families are hunkered down and keeping away from the sick.”
Barbara dared to ask the Doc what was on everyone’s mind. “Why did your family come here?”
Doc’s head dropped, and then suddenly snapped back in place. “Because in my arrogance, I thought I was better than the rest of you and could bring my family in here to safety. I was wrong. The military didn’t give two shits that I was the senior director. They only knew the words – ‘No One enters or leaves.’ They will shoot me if I try to leave.”
There were a few more questions, but he could tell they liked his offer. “Now I need you to sell this plan to the others. We must save ourselves to save the world.”
☣☣☣
Barbara kept her thoughts to herself but knew a con job when she heard it. Doc was afraid they’d rebel and leave him without any help. The military had guns, but most of his team were chemists, biologists, and other highly trained people who could make explosives, acids, and other deadly weapons. She knew she’d never see her folks if she waited on the CDC to take her home with a large supply of the vaccine. She was sure all of the vaccines would go to the world’s leaders and military.
Barbara sat on her bed with the day's issues churning in her head when suddenly she thought; I can’t let that man come here. I must find a way to save him.
Chapter 11
Continental Divide, AZ – July 2038
Jill stopped at the wide spot in the road only because one of her rear tires was flat. She wasn’t stopping for anyone. She thought, I’m not about to stop for the people in the car with the steaming radiator. I’ve always been a good Samaritan and would help anyone in need, but crap, this was the apocalypse, and most people were either dead or dying from the infection. I don’t want to join either of those groups.
She pulled into a parking spot after slowly driving past all of the empty cars and trucks to check for any people. She changed
the tire and decided to get a bite before driving on until sundown. She cut several thick slices of summer sausage from the roll and made a sandwich with Ritz crackers. A chocolate bar was her dessert, and she drank an orange soda to wash it all down.
There were several cars in the parking lot with no one around them, and no one was visible in the passenger compartments. She didn’t notice the van’s back door open, or the two people get out. They crept along the parked vehicles until close enough to sneak up behind her. They separated, and the woman approached Jill from her blind side.
“Hello.”
Jill dropped her soda and drew her pistol as she wheeled around to confront the young woman only a few feet from her. “What the hell do you want?” she barked with her gun pointed at the woman. Jill could see the traces of blood on the woman’s collar when she noticed the woman’s eyes glance past her. Jill ducked and slid sideways in one fluid motion, then turned to see a man with a tire tool raised and ready to strike. She shot twice, and the man fell to the ground. She turned to face the woman just as the woman’s body careened into Jill. Jill hit the ground hard and bounced back up to her feet with the woman clinging to her leg.
“Let go of my leg, or I’ll shoot.”
The woman yelled, “You killed my boyfriend. We just needed your help.”
“If true, why did he have a tire tool raised to knock the shit out of my head?”
The woman grabbed both of Jill’s legs and tried to wrestle her to the ground. Jill shot the woman through the top of her head. Blood, tissue, and bits of bone splattered Jill’s legs.
“Damn, both of the SOBs were infected, and now I’m covered from my shoulders down to my toes.”