by Penn Gates
The Geezer Quest
World After Geezer: Year Two
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Copyright © 2021 by Penn Gates
Published in the United States of America by the author.
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author.
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This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover design by A.M. Clyne
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For more information about the author, visit www.InOurWriteMinds.com
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1: November Is When Things Die
CHAPTER 2: Hide n’ Seek
CHAPTER 3: It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over
CHAPTER 4: The Rescue Squad
CHAPTER 5: Damage Control
CHAPTER 6: A Whole New Level Of Crazy
CHAPTER 7: Difficult Decisions
CHAPTER 8: Night Terrors
CHAPTER 9: All That’s Left
CHAPTER 10: Sudden Change Of Plans
CHAPTER 11: Cabin Fever
CHAPTER 12: Found And Lost
CHAPTER 13: Second Chances
CHAPTER 14: Failure To Communicate
CHAPTER 15: Rescue Party
CHAPTER 16: Losing Blood
CHAPTER 17: Another Chance
CHAPTER 18: Dry Rot On The Family Tree
CHAPTER 19: Plenty Misunderstanding To Go Around
CHAPTER 20: Rats In The Pantry
CHAPTER 21: Game Called On Account Of Injury
CHAPTER 22: Free At Last
CHAPTER 23: Burn, Baby, Burn
CHAPTER 24: Lost
CHAPTER 25: The Unlikeliest of Places
CHAPTER 26: Home Sweet Home
CHAPTER 27: SOS
CHAPTER 28: Dreams In Pieces
CHAPTER 29: Romance Isn’t Dead After All
CHAPTER 30: Let Me Introduce You
CHAPTER 31: Testing, Testing
CHAPTER 32: It’s a Plan
CHAPTER 33: Beginnings And Endings
CHAPTER 34: Somewhere South Of Mason Dixon
CHAPTER 35: Squealing And Healing
CHAPTER 36: Link By Link
CHAPTER 37: Kick The Doctor Down The Road
CHAPTER 38: Prophet Motive
CHAPTER 39: The Last Mile
CHAPTER 40: Inside The Mother Ship
CHAPTER 41: Wait And See
CHAPTER 42: The Risk Factor
CHAPTER 43: Cold Storage
CHAPTER 44: Running Away Toward Something
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This sequel began because I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave the world after Geezer. But what would happen next? Logically, there would be some sort of effort made to find a defense against the Gaza virus. It would have to be an expert in the field who went looking, and somehow that expert would learn about St Clair farm and the ‘senior survivor’ who lived there.
In short, I had an idea - what they call in the film industry a pitch - which was a departure for me. I usually start a novel with a high level plot and main characters already in my head. This time I was playing Blindman’s Bluff. If not for the steady support and unwavering honesty of my writing buddy and daughter, A.M. Clyne, I might have hit delete multiple times and abandoned Geezer world. She is also the talented creator of the cover art. Thank you, A.M., for everything you do.
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
- Vladimir Nabokov
CHAPTER 1: November Is When Things Die
Three Rivers Hospital
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A sour miasma of fever sweat and terror hangs over the ER like toxic fumes. Doctor Lisa Terrell stumbles down a hall lined with too many gurneys, all of them occupied by victims of the mysterious killer virus. She’s been on her feet for 36 hours, and she wonders how much longer she can keep going.
There are no more sedatives or tranquilizers to calm the manic energy of stage one Gaza virus, and hard pressed medical personnel have resorted to old-fashioned methods. One patient’s desperate attempts to break free from the restraints cause the gurney on which she lies to inch across the tile floor.
“Oh God, please, don’t let me die!” the sick woman gurgles through the phlegm in the back of her throat. The rest of her words are lost in a spasm of coughing.
The woman’s frenzied energy is atypical in the terminal phase, which compromises the respiratory system. But not unheard of, Lisa thinks wearily. Maybe fear fuels one last burst of energy as life struggles against death.
Some idiot has been sloppy - or maybe just exhausted - and failed to lock the wheels of the gurney. Lisa stoops quickly to fix it, but when she stands up again, a wave of dizziness washes over her. She pushes her unruly red hair out of her eyes. How many mistakes had she made without knowing it? How much longer can she stay on her feet?
This virus began by targeting the middle-aged and the elderly, but recently Lisa has observed a sharp increase of patients who are just a few years older than she is. For a moment she feels cold sweat trickle from her armpits. She’s thirty-one years old. Maybe Geezer - as the twitter-sphere has been quick to dub it - is working its way from oldest to youngest.
“Does it really matter whether I die from exhaustion or the virus?” she mutters to herself.
Lisa reaches for the agitated woman’s chart: Fifty-six. A couple of weeks ago that would have been the lower end of the victim demographic. Now it’s somewhere in the middle. She lifts the woman’s wrist to take her pulse. It’s erratic, and she’s burning with fever. Who brought her in - and why hadn’t they stayed with her?
“I don’t have time for this,” the patient groans, suddenly sounding coherent.
Lisa forces herself to focus on the human being and not just the disease that’s killing her. She’s trim and fit. Hands nicely manicured. Expensive clothes. She looks like a professional woman who has somehow gotten trampled in a stampede.
“None of us do,” Lisa answers, finding a last little bit of energy to respond. “Yet here we are.” She tries to smile. “You look like a fighter. Don’t give up.”
The woman’s eyes glitter feverishly from dark, sunken sockets. “5K marathon,” she gasps. “Run long, live long—” She thrashes her head from side to side, sliding back into delirium. “Run-long, live-long. Runlong, livelong, runlonglivelong—” The words come faster and faster, her head rolling back and forth so violently Lisa is afraid she might snap her own neck. “—runlonglivelong, runlonglivelong!”
Suddenly, it seems vitally important that this woman - one among thousands - knows she’s not alone in the last minutes of her life. Lisa squeezes her hand gently. “I’m here,” she whispers. “It’s all right - just relax now. The pain is almost over.”
“Fix it, doctor.” the dying woman gasps, sounding lucid. “Find a way—” She begins to cough again and blood erupts from her mouth in a fountain.
Lisa glances at her watch and notices dispassionately the crimson droplets on its face. She methodically logs the time of death on the chart and then sits staring at the lifeless body. This had been an elegant woman, not unlike her own mother. She feels a spasm of grief. Her mother died last week in Boston while she was here in Pittsburgh taking care of strangers. Who had held her hand? She resolves this patient will have some dignity in death. She reaches over and closes her eyes bef
ore gently wiping the bloody foam from around her mouth.
The lids fly open, revealing lifeless, staring eyes. “Find a way to fix it!” the corpse screams, and Lisa is spattered with her blood.
Lisa jerks awake. She’d sunk to her knees at some point and fallen asleep, her head resting on the gurney. How long has she been out?
A loud voice cuts through her fog. “Find a way to fix it, Baxter, you fucking asshole! Or do you want me to handle that, too?”
Lisa can see nothing through the red curtain of her curls. She shoves her long hair away from her face and looks around for the source of the commotion. Or is she still dreaming? She knows hallucinations are a symptom of sleep deprivation.
“Do you know where Dr. Terrell is - the CDC guy?” The soldier who stands looking down at her wears a worried frown years older than the rest of his young, good-looking face.
“I’m Dr. Terrell,” she mumbles. “Dr. Lisa Terrell.”
“A lady doctor?” another man in uniform smirks.
“Shut the fuck up, Diggs!” The first soldier - who seems to be in charge - frowns even harder. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Now you know who I am,” Lisa says irritably as she gropes in her lab coat pocket for a rubber band. “Who are you? And what do you want? I’m kind of busy.” She pulls her disobedient hair away from her face and binds it into a pony tail.
“I’m Corporal Holden - with the Army National Guard.” He reaches into the breast pocket of his fatigues. “I was ordered to find you and deliver this.” He extends a wrinkled piece of paper.
Lisa can’t read the black specks which seem to jostle against each other on the paper like bacteria under a microscope. She closes her eyes and rubs them.
“Do you have glasses somewhere, ma’am? Maybe I can find ‘em for you.” Holden’s face struggles to keep from replacing his official frown with a smirk.
“You’re a real funny guy, corporal,” Lisa snaps. “Sadly, I’m not in the mood for a laugh at the moment.”
Holden’s scowl is firmly back in place when he answers. “Sorry, ma’am. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Do you honestly think anything could at this point?” Lisa asks incredulously.
Holden colors. “I guess not. Sorry.”
She finds herself staring down at what looks like an official-looking document, in spite of its grubby appearance. She still can’t read the fine print, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to admit it to this smart ass.
Lisa rattles the paper in his direction. “What’s all this about? And give me the short version - please.”
“It’s orders, ma’am - military orders. The Army National Guard is - well, they’re drafting you into service. They need your expertise.”
Lisa gestures at the gurney-filled hallway. “In case you haven’t noticed, my expertise isn’t doing much good. I doubt a change of scenery is going to improve my numbers.”
The corporal shrugs. “They’ve finally decided to quarantine the city, ma’am - but if you ask me, it’s kinda like locking the barn door after the horse gets loose.” He pauses. “They want the CDC in charge of it - and as far as I can tell, you’re it.”
“I agree with your assessment of the situation. Go back and tell them I refused,” Lisa retorts. She looks around the ER. “I may not be able to save these poor people, but I can ease their suffering until they die.”
“Can’t do that, ma’am.” Holden tells her firmly. “In the military, we all follow orders, whether we agree with them or not - and now you do, too.”
Lisa’s eyes narrow. “It’s not happening. I’m not leaving this hospital.”
“OK, let’s try this another way,” Corporal Holden snaps. “For all intents and purposes, the only law left is martial law.” He glares at her. “So you can come with us and try to help some other way - or I’ll arrest you, and you can sit it out in a cell. Either way - you’re not staying here.”
“Listen, you - you storm trooper! This is still the United States of America, and I’m a citizen. You can’t—”
Holden turns while she’s still speaking. “Marcelli! Get over here and take this woman into custody!”
A short young man, with a prominent nose and beautiful dark eyes, steps between Corporal Holden and the doctor. He has a bundle clutched in his arms.
“Ma’am,” he says placatingly. “I brought some fatigues for you - and a coat.” He seems genuinely concerned for her welfare. “Come on. Let’s go see if they fit.”
Lisa finds herself nodding. She’s too exhausted to fight any more - or to do much analytical thinking, for that matter. They can drag her anywhere they want to. It’s probably not going to do them much good.
CORPORAL HOLDEN MAKES it as far as the basement of the courthouse where the damn CDC doctor has made the records room her headquarters. He sags against the block wall of the long, dark hallway. While she’s been drawing quarantine lines on maps, he and his men have been holding those lines. The horror of the past 36 hours comes crashing down on him all at once, pushing him to the floor. It takes an act of will not to howl like a dog, but he can’t control the tears that leak from his eyes. Images flash through his mind, one after another - faces contorted with fear and exhaustion breaking out of the panicked crowd, dashing towards the barriers. Most of them were on the long end of 30 and knew they were living on borrowed time. Some were younger, just trying to escape a city exploding in violence.
Orders from Command had been shoot to kill. No exceptions. He’d taken a big chance by protesting - refuse an order these days and you might be the one who got shot. The captain had glared at him, then taken a deep breath and said wearily, “Corporal, we don’t know who’s infected in that mob. We’re trying to keep this thing from spreading - if that’s even possible at this point. I don’t like it any more than you do, but - we’re in unknown territory here. Nothing close to this has ever fucking happened before.”
At the other end of the hall, Lisa is perched on a stool at a high table littered with maps of all kinds - road maps, platt maps, diagrams of sewer lines beneath the city. I’m a scientist, not a cartographer, she thinks angrily as she pushes the top layer out of her way. There’s a wealth of information here - which is supposed to help her shut down any possible routes out of the city - but none of it tells her the one thing she really wants - that would be an X marking the spot where Patient Zero fell ill and a clear line showing the path and speed of Geezer. It’s always important to know the direction in which the pandemic is spreading so health officials can get in front of this thing. Or is it already too late? The thought makes her shiver.
She reaches for coffee grown cold hours ago and gulps it down. It tastes absolutely awful, but isn’t that what medicine is supposed to taste like? At least in the days before a spoonful of sugar became the norm. She feels her stomach burn as the coffee hits it, and puts her head down on her arms until the artificial energy of the caffeine kicks in.
While she waits, she wonders where FEMA is, and that makes her wonder again just how widespread this pandemic is. She hasn’t seen, heard, or read any news for - she’s not sure how long. She only knows she’s been buried in this basement for what seems like days and days. The only person she’s talked to in all that time is the National Guard corporal who appears periodically for fresh instructions on quarantine lines. Sometimes he remembers to bring food.
She lifts her head and squints at the map of metropolitan Pittsburgh which she has just been using as a pillow. She rummages in the pile of paper she’d carelessly shoved aside. She’d better have the new quarantine lines handy if the corporal shows up. Panic flutters its wings and begins pecking at her. What if something has happened to the only person who knows she’s down here? How long will she sit here waiting?
Before she thinks better of it, she grabs her backpack and stuffs a grid of the city into it, along with a road map of Pennsylvania and another of the eastern United States. The omniscience of a cell phone is useless without power. Preparing to go old s
chool is just common sense. She rummages through a few desks and finds blank notebooks - and lots of pens and pencils.
Out in the hall, Holden finally pulls himself together and mops at his face with his sleeve. The one fact that keeps him going is that he’s saved his men from the soul-killing guilt of shooting civilians by doing it himself. He struggles to his feet and reaches for the wall as his legs almost buckle beneath him again. How long since he’s had anything to eat or drink? He needs fuel - food, coffee, drugs - anything to keep him going. He heads toward the lurid red of the emergency lighting spilling out of an open door at the end of the corridor. Hang tough, he tells himself. You’ve gotta keep control of the situation.
The doctor is pulling on her coat, a bulging backpack at her feet. Her red hair, backlit by the emergency lighting, looks like it’s on fire.
“Good,” Holden says, stepping into the pool of bloody light. “You’re packed and ready to go. We move out at 0100 hours.”
She looks confused for a second, then belligerent. “Not until you tell me where you’re going.” She stops talking as she stares at him with concern. “Slow down for a minute,” she says. “I think there’s some cold coffee in the pot - it’s horrible, but the super power of caffeine still gets the job done.”
He shakes his head. “I’m way past that. I need something illegal.”
“I’m fresh out of amphetamines,” she says. “In fact, I don’t even have my medical bag with me.”
Holden sinks into a chair. “Coffee, then.”
Again, there’s that moment of hesitation before she pours a cup and brings it back to him. “Where is it you’re going?” she asks as she sets it in front of him.
“They want to throw everything they have at the east coast,” he mutters. “All hell has broken loose.” He takes a sip of coffee and makes a face. “You weren’t kidding about this mud.” He tosses down the rest like it’s a shot of whiskey. “And it’s where we’re going. You’re in the Army National Guard now, whether you want to be nor not.”