Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 2): Fractured Paradise

by Wohlrab, Jeff

  Doctors tried to minimize the fluid pressure while flooding the body with as many red blood cells as possible to keep organs from shutting down from hypoxia. Once that happened, a flu sufferer’s survival was measured in minutes, not hours. Oxygen had become so important during the beginning of the pandemic hospitals had reached out to non-medical sources for more.

  Gas and welding supply stores were recruited, even SCUBA shops for enriched oxygen tanks containing NITROX. The 32% oxygen wasn’t much better than the 21% in the atmosphere, but oxygen was so critical they’d pressed those tanks into service. A few less ethical owners had been discovered providing regular compressed air instead of NITROX, almost certainly dooming the patients to whom it had been provided. Those shops went up in flames soon after as families retaliated against them.

  In the end, she wasn’t sure how much it helped. Most patients died from the virus no matter what they tried. It was one of the frustrations of practicing medicine. She chose to say practicing, because nobody had it completely figured out yet. Some people would survive against all odds, others would succumb to the virus even when they seemed to be recovering. The human body has a tremendous defense system, and medicine seemed to only augment what was going to happen anyway, not reverse it.

  She had already noticed the pulse rates for all three of her patients rising and the 02 levels dropping as their bodies tried to keep organs oxygenated. Jensen had only been gone for a few hours, but she found herself stepping outside frequently in hopes she’d see him and Jessica returning. The disease was progressing, and in her experience, it ramped up quickly once it reached a certain point. After that, it became more difficult to treat and almost impossible to survive.

  Emmy seemed to be doing the worst so far. Her saturation levels were dropping, and she had a nasty wet cough. Daniel had been the first to start showing symptoms, but his respiratory difficulties hadn’t surfaced until later. Her chief concern with him was dehydration. He’d had serious bouts with vomiting and diarrhea while they were in Ayersville and during the trip back to the mountain. He’d lost a lot of fluids and wasn’t having much luck keeping anything down.

  Dylan’s cough was still dry and unproductive. His lungs seemed to be holding up pretty well and his 02 levels were still well within norms. She was most hopeful about him. It seemed as though his body was fighting off the virus and helping to keep his lungs mostly clear. Sheila considered that a promising sign.

  She heard the radio crackle to life outside the door. Dave was sitting out there with his bolt action rifle in his lap, waiting for the Jensen and Jessica to return. She couldn’t hear what was said, but it gave her hope they’d be returning with the gear. She quickly stepped outside into the fresh air and slight breeze. Inside, she felt a little bit like she herself was suffocating.

  It may have just been memories of when she had fallen ill herself. She was surprised at first when she hadn’t become ill, even after treating patients for days. Sheila had begun to hope she was somehow immune or that her sterilization techniques were somehow protecting her, but she’d gotten sick, too. She’d been a patient in her own medical facility for eight days before she started to recover. As a doctor, she’d been the recipient of the best care and pure oxygen. Anything less and she might have died.

  Though she barely went home during those days, she’d passed the sickness on to her boyfriend, Jerry. She’d thought she was going to lose him several times. After the nuclear attacks, she’d stopped going to the hospital. She’d gone with Jerry and Ed when they joined Jensen and Daniel to drive up to this mountaintop and perceived safety. It was the mountaintop property Jerry had bought a few years before.

  She was thinking about Jerry when she saw Jensen’s tub climb slowly into view. Jerry’s survival had seemed almost miraculous. Sheila had watched as he fought off the virus, sleeping upright in a chair to try to keep his airways as clear as possible. If he tried to lie down, he was overcome by coughing fits that threated to overcome him. For almost a week, he sat upright 24 hours a day. She would have to try that with her current patients. It was as low tech as it got, but she was willing to try almost anything except essential oils and positive thoughts.

  The hatches in the tub popped open, first the left, then the right. Then she saw Jensen raise the cockpit, which was hinged at the rear, and climb out. He slammed everything closed and stretched after his time in the uncomfortable seat. He gave Sheila a wide smile and loudly said, “Plan B!”

  She started toward the back of the trailer but could already see the big white machines inside through the horizontal openings in the cattle trailer. It looked like exactly what she’d asked for.

  Even better, she saw cardboard boxes containing antiviral drugs and IV bags. Upon closer inspection, some of them were dextrose solutions and others were saline. That was perfect. If her patients couldn’t hold down food or fluids, she could use both to help maintain their hydration, electrolytes, and carbohydrates. She swung around and hugged Jensen. “This is perfect. Thank you.”

  Sheila realized quickly that he didn’t return her hug and looked uncomfortable. She took a step back, wondering if she’d offended him somehow, but his eyes weren’t on her, they were on Jessica. She glared at him as he held up his hands in supplication. Sheila’s eyes went wide, “Oh no, not like that!” She turned to Jessica, “Not like that!” She looked horror-stricken. That was enough to get Jensen off the hook, but he was going to have to step lightly for a while.

  He tried to defuse the situation by diverting attention back to the contents of the trailer. “Jessica grabbed an extra ventilator just in case there’s a problem with any of these.” He was sure to give Jess credit for something immediately, hoping to smooth her ruffled feathers. Despite her small frame and innocent looks, Jessica was what he’d consider an alpha female, and it wouldn’t do to cross her.

  He didn’t look directly at her, but he sensed her relaxing a bit. Sheila started through the boxes but stopped abruptly when she came to the syringes. “Where did you get these?” She slipped on a purple nitrile glove and picked one up. She held up the syringe for both Jensen and Jessica to see. “Were these at the CDC site?”

  Jensen nodded. “Yeah, they were in the tent with the antivirals. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Sheila answered cautiously. “Nothing’s wrong, but this doesn’t make sense. These are vaccinations. There’s no point in vaccinating someone who’s already sick, even if it did work.” Sheila was silent for a few moments. She seemed to forget about her patients inside. “I’d like to see this place.”

  An involuntary shudder went through Jensen’s body at the thought of going back. Sheila’s strange reaction only added to his underlying discomfort about the still sheets hanging in the athletic center and the straps dangling from the metal arms of the hospital beds. “Let’s get this stuff in to take care of your patients for now. We’ll figure out how to get you back there later.”

  He picked up a box of what he thought were antivirals and carried them into the kitchen. As he did so, Jensen looked over at the three patients lying in beds in the living room. They were mostly still, but the stillness was disturbed by hacking coughs every few minutes. He remembered that feeling of struggling to breathe. He’d rather spend a day back in the athletic facility being chased by zombies than go through that again.

  His days of illness sort of ran together in Jensen’s mind. He remembered coughing so much he thought he’d broken his ribs. His chest hurt. His lungs rattled. Many times, he’d coughed to the point of vomiting, but there was nothing in his stomach to expel. Those fits left him exhausted and light-headed. But he’d pulled through. He was hoping for a miracle for those three. It would take a miracle.

  Jensen had seen enough news reports to know the antivirals couldn’t cure his friends. It was just another thing which could help give them a fighting chance. The antivirals, along with IV fluids and vitamins, would only help the body do what it could against the pandemic virus; they wouldn’t have much imp
act on the virus itself. That was up to the immune system.

  Outside, he found Sheila carrying in bags full of clear liquids and tangles of clear tubing. “I’m going to get their IVs started right now. Get the antivirals inside, we’ll do that next.”

  She hurried past him into the cabin and laid bags on each of the beds while she found more alcohol pads to disinfect their skin. It didn’t take her long to have fluid dripping into their veins. “Do you have anything called peramivir? It should be a liquid.”

  Jensen had concentrated on the pills, which he recognized as probably antivirals. He hadn’t thought to check for liquids. “Let me check.” He returned to the cattle trailer to search. The ventilators stood in a loose circle like weary livestock. He ignored them for the moment; they wouldn’t be necessary until later, if at all.

  After searching through boxes, he found the small bottles and brought them back inside. He watched as Sheila expertly injected the clear liquid into the IVs very slowly, just a small amount at a time. Once finished, she took the pills out of their packaging and convinced each of her patients to down some with a small sip of water.

  “Hopefully that helps.” Sheila felt as though she should explain. “I gave them two different antivirals which should help keep the virus from spreading. They attach to the infected cells and help to keep the virus from getting out and infecting new cells. Unfortunately, they don’t really have any effect on the virus itself.” She sighed. “We don’t have anything that directly fights viruses yet. They’re not living, and they mutate so rapidly we can’t keep up.”

  “That’s probably what started all of this. The strains they used must have mutated in the eggs while they were replicating. It could have been one of the strains. Hell, it could even have been something in the eggs that caused this. Maybe there was a strain of avian flu that mixed with the ones they were trying to build. We’ll never know.”

  She gazed around her small cabin clinic. The most recent temperatures and blood pressures could still be read on the monitors, 103.7, 102.5, 104.3. Dylan’s was the lowest. So far, he seemed to be the least affected. She wanted to try to cool Emmy down though. Her fever had climbed high and fast.

  Sheila went to the freezer to grab more ice. “Could you hand me a towel?” When Jensen complied, she wrapped ice cubes in the towel and placed it under the back of Emmy’s neck.

  Jensen haltingly asked, “How high can it get before it causes brain damage?” Sheila had heard that question many times. She knew the answer. “It won’t. Fevers can’t get high enough to cause brain damage. You’d almost have to microwave the brain to hurt it that way.”

  She looked back toward her patients, as though searching for an answer. “We just have to help their bodies fight off the attack. Their lymphocytes will either stop the virus or not. There’s not a lot we can do.” She turned to Jensen, “Let’s get those machines cleaned up and get them in here. We may need them before too much longer.”

  Chapter 22

  Jensen poured over the agricultural books they’d retrieved from the university. He didn’t know exactly when they needed to plant, but he was sure the time was rapidly arriving. His phone had stopped showing him the correct date, but he knew it was sometime in March. Based on the United States Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness Zone maps, he felt certain they were in zone 7a or 7b. He was frustrated that he couldn’t zoom in on the small map in the textbook to be sure.

  He compared the zones to the even smaller map on the back of a package of heirloom carrots. Jensen had absolutely no idea what heirloom meant as far as carrots went. He didn’t imagine they were handed down from generation to generation. They were also non-GMO. To be honest, he would have preferred genetically modified organisms if they would grow better. Jensen wanted carrots the size of his head if he could get them. They were going to need food eventually.

  Jensen was worried. They didn’t have fertilizer, they didn’t have mulch, they didn’t have irrigation, and they didn’t have any idea how to grow crops. Of their 10-member group, only Emmy knew anything about plants, and she was a florist. They couldn’t eat flowers. They needed corn, grain, potatoes, things they could store for the winter.

  The former cav officer was pretty sure root vegetables, grains, and corn were the way to go. Things like tomatoes and cucumbers rotted pretty quickly. Maybe they could find a way to grind down some of the grains to make their own flour or find a big freezer to store meat. Brent was a hunter. He could probably find them some steaks out there somewhere.

  Better yet, he wanted to fill the cattle trailer with actual cattle, maybe some chickens. He liked eggs. It was one of the few things he could cook. Mix them together, put them in a pan, cook until they weren’t runny. Voila. Food. Hard boiling was less successful. Sometimes they weren’t completely cooked and sometimes they ended up with a green surface on the yolks. Either way though, they were edible.

  Off in the distance, he could see flashes through the trees as Dave walked around. He seemed to have a lot of energy lately. Jensen was tired. He was having trouble concentrating on the textbook. It didn’t help that he’d never really liked school. It also didn’t help that they only had five people to stand guard. Dylan, Daniel, and Emmy were sick, Sheila was caring for them, and Abby refused to leave Dylan’s side for more than a minute.

  That only left Jensen, Jessica, Dave, Brent, and Marcy to keep watch. He hadn’t slept well in the few days since they’d returned from the college. The return to campus had resurrected images of Todd bleeding out in his arms from sniper fire. For some reason, he pictured him coming back as a zombie among the sheets in the athletic center. He didn’t know why. Maybe video games, maybe movies.

  As he turned back to look at the cabin, he saw Brent walk into the shed to grab a shovel. Jensen felt like he’d been kicked. Someone hadn’t made it. He slid the small pack of carrot seeds into the textbook as a bookmark and started down the hill. Brent saw him coming and stood to wait, leaning slightly on the spade. “Grab another one?” Brent indicated the shovels in the shed. Jensen nodded before asking “Who?”

  He really hoped it wasn’t Daniel, but his friend was in serious trouble. Like the other two, he had been placed on a ventilator. After helping to intubate them, Jensen had left the cabin and not gone back in again. It had been a fight, especially with Daniel. He hadn’t been super cooperative. They didn’t have any drugs to put him into a coma-like state, only some mild sedatives from the vet office back in Lincolnton.

  They would live or die on their own. There was nothing more he could do to help. Jensen didn’t want to get in Sheila’s way, and he certainly didn’t want to be in the room as the three struggled for life. Perhaps only two now.

  Brent looked at him sadly. “Emmy’s gone.”

  Jensen felt guilt at his feeling of relief. He’d just been thinking of Emmy and he liked her, but he was happy Daniel was still fighting.

  Jensen sighed heavily. Somehow, he was even more tired now than he had been a few minutes ago. He suddenly felt an irrational anger toward Aaron, who had brought the virus onto their mountain and killed one of them. Emmy had been in the car with him and probably had a heavier viral load than the others to start. The antivirals and IVs hadn’t been enough.

  “Let’s do it, then.” He grabbed a shovel and followed Brent toward the edge of the clearing where 19 graves were still visible. They had erected crude crosses at the heads of all of them with only names. They didn’t know when they were born, only when they’d died. This would be the 20th in this line of resting places. There were three more up the hill.

  It felt criminal to lay all of these people to rest for no reason. They’d survived flu, nuclear attacks, and fire, but had been felled by marauders looking for women to kidnap. The most recent one, Montana, had been killed by Jensen when he attacked Daniel. Montana had blamed him for his husband’s death. Jed was buried midway down the line. Jensen reflected on that; they should have been buried together. Now they were digging a grave for Emmy, kill
ed by the flu which had started all of this.

  It should have died out by now. It didn’t make sense that the flu could still be killing after several months. They should have been safe on the mountain, but Aaron had come and brought the virus to them. Aaron was dead now.

  “Hey, Brent. Any chance we can go back to Aaron’s?”

  Brent looked at him quizzically, he didn’t know what it was about digging a grave for Emmy that had made Jensen want to go to Aaron’s.

  “Well, he had a bakery, right? He should have a lot of flour. We’re going to need it.”

  Brent nodded. That made sense, and Jensen was right. They were going to need those supplies: flour, sugar, yeast, probably baking powder. Bread packed a lot of calories and dry flour would last virtually forever. He also wanted to go back to bury Aaron and Sasha. They were still lying in their bed together, covered by a large comforter. “Yeah, we’ll go back.”

  Jensen dug the tip of his spade into the earth. The surface had dried out after the last rain, but it was still moist beneath. It took the two of them hours to dig Emmy’s grave. Beneath the topsoil, the reddish colored clay below resisted their efforts. It was hard not to feel like Georgia was actively trying to harm them. He knew it was silly, but he was seriously starting to dislike the entire state.

  Jensen picked Emmy’s body up from the small bed, trying not to catch Abby’s eyes as he did so. Emmy’s death had profoundly affected the young woman. It wasn’t so much that she was attached to Emmy, but it made the possibility of Dylan dying seem even more real. The two had been virtually inseparable since they came to the mountain, just as they were now.

  He saw how strongly Abby was gripping Dylan’s hand as she sat by his bedside. He was flushed and sweating. His eyes were terrified. Behind Abby, Jensen could see the most recent vital stats. Dylan’s fever had skyrocketed to almost 105 and his blood pressure was 150 over 110. His body was locked in a battle with the virus, but it appeared to be losing ground.