In a strange sort of dreamscape, they then passed into what almost looked like a normal part of the country. It happened in a blink, without any sort of military or police presence. If anything, it reminded Paul of driving through the city and slowly leaving the tall buildings and traffic behind as the pastures and forests of rural America presented itself. To him, it seemed like one moment the road was mostly empty, populated with only the occasional stranded car, and everything seemed dead and just one mile later, things were almost normal again.
They passed a large, open pasture with cows grazing about. Some of them were dead but the number of living ones far outweighed the dead ones.
“I wonder why the virus isn’t as lethal to animals,” Olivia said.
“No clue,” Paul said. “This thing does have characteristic of the flu. And I know the human fu certainly doesn’t affect most animals.”
“Have you seen the dogs trotting around here and there along our way?”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “They seem to be like the cows…a few dead, but mostly alive.”
Not knowing what it meant or where to take the conversation next, they both let the topic die. The state continued to roll out around them and there were portions of the journey that felt very close to just a normal roadtrip. The fact that they also now had a means to charge their phones made it feel like the real world again. The simple sight of his phone plugged into the truck’s charging port made a world of difference to Paul, though he was troubled to learn that he had apparently become a little more dependent on a charged cell phone than he had thought.
In the small town of Hankersville, they passed by a small gas station where about six cars were parked end to end, vying for position at one of the two pumps. It was almost surreal to see that there were actual people standing by the cars. Two of them were screaming at one another while the others seemed to be perfectly happy strapped into their cars.
“When’s the last time we saw more than one person?” Olivia asked, blinking in surprise at the sight.
“New York,” Paul said. He eyed the gas gauge on the dash and saw that they had a quarter of a tank remaining. He only toyed with the idea of stopping to fill up for a brief moment. He wasn’t going to get out of the truck unless absolutely necessary—not for his safety, but in the hope of getting Olivia and Joyce to somewhere that was safe. And parking behind two shouting people at a gas pump in the midst of a pandemic that was wrecking the country did not seem like a wise move.
Olivia apparently saw him eyeing the gauge. “Do we have enough to get to where we’re going?”
“I think so,” Paul answered. “If the roads remain this clear, it shouldn’t take us any more than an hour and a half.”
“Does he know we’re coming?” Olivia asked.
“No. I didn’t call because…well, to be honest, I don’t have his number.”
“So, you really don’t even know if he’s still…”
She stopped herself, perhaps realizing that she was about to suggest that the only real plan they had may not pan out the way he was hoping—that his grandfather may have already fallen to the Blood Fever virus.
“No clue. I spoke to him about six months ago, on the phone. As for the virus…if the living people bickering back at those gas pumps is any indication, I think there’s a good chance he might still be alive.”
“Where is his house, exactly?”
“Tucked away on an isolated mountainside. He’s always been something of a recluse. It got worse once my parents both died.”
“We goin’ to the mountains?” Joyce asked sleepily from the position in the center of the seat. She’d looked half-asleep for the last few minutes but perked up at the mention of mountains.
“That’s right,” Paul said. “We’re going to visit my grandpa. He’s a cranky old man, but I think he’ll like you just fine.”
“Is he old?” Joyce asked.
“Joyce!” Olivia said. “That’s not very nice.”
Paul chuckled, nodding as he looked over to Joyce. “I believe he’s eighty-eight years old. Maybe eighty-nine. I’m not sure.”
“How much longer?” Joyce asked.
“Not too long,” Paul said. He glanced to the digital clock on the dashboard and saw that it was nearing 4:00 in the afternoon. “You know…if you take a nap, we’ll be there before you know it.”
Joyce nodded and though she did not close her eyes, she leaned against Olivia and let out a deep sigh. Olivia frowned and put her arm around her. She couldn’t even imagine how much work Joyce was going to have to do to overcome all of this—if this ever actually came to an end.
Now that they had broached some vaguely personal questions, she wanted to ask Paul more questions about himself—not only to get to know him but to pass the time and try to at least pretend things were normal, even if for just a little while. Where was he originally from? How had his parents passed away? She was sure this would lead to similar reciprocal questions, which she typically tried to avoid. Besides, in the midst of all that was going on, who wanted to hear a depressing story about a little girl whose mother had abandoned her family for a younger man and was then completely parentless when her father had died at fourteen? Who wanted to hear about the girl who’d lived with her grandparents for the end of her high school years, making it to college just one week before her grandfather died in a car accident and three years before her grandmother died of breast cancer?
Part of her wanted to talk about it, almost hoping Paul would ask these questions just so she could get it all out. But with Joyce slowly falling towards a nap, she figured silence was a better idea for the moment. So she sat there, watching the more rural stretches of West Virginia roll along at her side. Further ahead, she could see the rise in the land that she supposed led them to the distant mountains ahead to the west.
On occasion, they would see another car on the road, though for the most part it seemed that nearly everyone had chosen to stay inside. Shortly after Joyce fell asleep, breathing shallowly against Olivia, Paul scanned news stations at low volume, hoping to get a better picture of what was happening. Olivia assumed he was feeling the same very fleeting sense of hope in seeing casual traffic on the roads—not to mention a total absence of dead bodies.
The news did seem to explain why this was, though there were brutal undertones to it. One station—on the AM dial because the FM dial was filled with static or canned music—featured two men arguing in a panicked sort of frenzy. Paul left it there for a while and they both listened to the men shouting at low volume.
“…a decision that is not going to make everyone happy. Our governor, just like every other governor along the east coast and now Texas, would look like a fool if he went against the mandated order to shelter in place. Never before has a President had to make such a choice, where so many people have already died and—”
“But what about those people that need to go to the hospital?” the other man interrupted. “You’ve seen the reports out of Virginia, right? People trying to go out for emergency grocery runs before the Blood Fire virus gets to them are being stopped by police and turned back home. Any argument and you’re arrested. That violates—”
“Look at New York! An entire city, more than seven million people, gone in less than twenty-four hours. And we still know nothing about this virus other than it has a mortality rate of nearly one hundred percent! You catch it, you’re dead within an hour. So yes, I think the President and the governors have to make these decisions. You can whine about your freedoms later, if you’re still alive.”
“That’s a foolish and dangerous precedent to—”
Paul turned the station and found a much more soothing voice, that of a grandmotherly sort of woman. Any other time, Olivia might fear such a voice would put her to sleep. But now, it was exactly what she needed.
“…is that we just don’t know how to stop it. We know it’s highly contagious, and for the most part it seems that the mandatory shelter-in-place order seems to be
working. So far, there have been around eight thousand confirmed cases in West Virginia but they have all been isolated, and the patients have been taken to an undisclosed military location. It is the first such experiment since the Blood Fire virus came upon the country less than three days ago and for now, it appears to be working. As for the recent explosion and outbreaks near Fort Worth, Texas, there is currently a full-scale investigation into the explosion, as government officials are sifting through the police communications from the small town of Destiny Ridge, trying to make sense of what happened. How did the bomb get there? How big was the explosion? Is the explosion the carrier for the virus, as some suspect was the case in New York City? We can—”
Paul killed the radio and looked to Olivia. “Sorry. If you need to hear more, we can keep listening. But I think I’ve had enough.”
“No, I’m good,” she said softly. Beside her, Joyce shifted against her arm. She looked to her phone, which she had started charging as soon as Paul’s got a full battery. She saw the empty service indicators but couldn’t help but try Joyce’s father. She pulled up his number—the last number to have called her phone—but it, of course, did not go through.
“I’ll be honest,” Paul said, taking her mind off of that particular defeat. “This talk of a shelter-in-place order has me worried. I agree with it one hundred percent, but if we’re stopped by police, it could get bad.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen a single police car since back at that accident, before we got the truck.”
“Same here,” Paul said.
“That seems bad, right?”
Paul shrugged. “I’d imagine they’re being spread out to the larger cities. As far as I know, there’s no protocol for this sort of thing. Something like this—something that has blindsided the entire country and kills so fast—I’d think local governments have no real say. I’d almost be willing to bet that police departments in smaller communities are getting orders to forget about small populations and focus on bigger cities. Keep people in and keep others from getting in. Anything they can do to prevent the spread.”
Olivia nodded; she hadn’t thought of it in those terms before, but it made a very dark sort of sense. When something of this magnitude was dropped in the collective lap of the nation, hard decisions needed to be made. And it looked like that might mean sacrificing a handful of lives to make sure larger populations could be saved.
Three days ago, it wasn’t like this, she thought as she looked out of the window, the mountains slowly getting closer. All of this…it took less than three days. And if that’s the case, what might another three days bring?
***
Brownstone was barely a town at all. The only reason anyone knew where it was located was because it was just a short drive away from Seneca Rocks, a popular camping and travel destination for diehard fans of outdoors activities. In getting to the Brownstone town limits, Paul had maneuvered the truck up about seven miles of winding mountain road. The change in the air pressure caused his ears to pop. He noticed Joyce shifting uncomfortably beside Olivia and wondered if her ears were popping mid-nap.
He had been expecting a tinge of nostalgia to take over when he came upon the familiar turns that would take him to his grandfather’s house. As he guided the truck, his eyes and even his hands seemed to lock in and realize where he was, but that nostalgia kick did not come. He supposed it was the worry, the unknown of what he might find when he reached the cabin.
But it was also what he saw as he drove into the small town. It actually wasn’t much of a town at all. Brownstone consisted of a general store with two gas pumps in the parking lot, a post office, and a storefront that dealt in fresh meat and produce. Despite that, Brownstone looked like a booming metropolis as Paul brought the truck closer to the center of town. The two lane road was backed up and blocked off with cars. Angry drivers were slamming on their horns and screaming from their open windows. Further up ahead, about fifty yards further down the road, Paul could see four police cars and at least ten officers. One had his gun drawn, looking nervously at the line of traffic.
Paul started to wonder what the hell was going on but then saw the small trailers on the backs of a few of the vehicles in front of him. Apparently, many others had the same idea as he’d had: running to higher ground in the hopes that they could avoid the virus.
As he continued to look ahead, he watched as one of the cops finished speaking to the driver of the car closest to their barricade of police cars. The officer then turned to one of the police cars and gave a nod. Someone in one of the cars backed up just enough to let the car through and then instantly pulled it back into position. In the three seconds it took him to close the space off, the next car in line tried to zoom forward to get through. The car nearly hit the cop that had been speaking to the previous driver. Paul watched as the cop went for his gun and yelled at the driver.
Paul tried to think quickly but he simply did not know the area well enough to come up with an alternate route—not that it mattered, because even as the thought crossed his mind, another car pulled in behind him, adding to the line of stalled traffic. He looked back up to the increasingly stressed officers and then over to Olivia.
“You okay if I get out for a minute?” he asked.
“Sure. We’ll just have the doors locked.”
“Yes, do that. This shouldn’t take very long.”
As he studied the scene, he was very aware of his holstered Glock. He almost wished it was concealed, not wanting to cause any undue stress or tension. If these already tense policeman saw a man getting out of his truck with a gun, there was no telling how they might react. He took another moment to read the scene before he opened the door and stepped out of the truck. The moment he closed the door behind him, he heard Olivia lock the doors.
He also heard an urgent and nearly hoarse voice from somewhere ahead. “Sir, get back into your truck right now!”
Paul located the officer that had yelled this to him. He locked eyes with him and slowly raised his hands in the air. “I need a word, please. I’m also a cop…off duty, as you can see.”
The cop seemed to consider this for a moment and then said something quietly to an older-looking officer beside him. “Advance slowly, sir, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Paul did as asked, walking forward among the cars and getting horrible flashbacks of trekking through New York. He kept his hands in the air even as some of the people he passed sneered at him from within their cars. A middle-aged woman sitting in a car with two toddlers yelled something particularly nasty at him.
When he was about two car-lengths away from the line of cops, the one that had shouted at him did so again. “Are you with local PD?” the man asked. He’d probably been sent from elsewhere, the police forces likely scrambled and stretched thin.
“New York City,” Paul said.
“The hell you say,” the older cop said.
“No, I’m serious. You’re more than welcome to check my badge and ID. My ID is in my back pocket. Badge is back in the truck, in a bag.”
“So why are you out here?” the younger policeman asked. A few feet away, the officer that seemed to be leading the charge allowed another car to go through. The next one in line immediately pulled up to take its space.
“And how the hell did you make it out?” the older cop asked.
“With great difficulty,” Paul said. “Look, I don’t expect any favors, but I’ve got a woman and a four year-old kid back in my truck. I’m headed to my grandfather’s house, a mile or two further up the road. Can you tell me what it’s like from here on back? Has the virus…”
“No sign of the virus around here,” the younger cop said. “But that’s why we’re going through all of this…to make sure it stays that way. Too many people think it’s a good idea to run for the mountains to escape it.”
“I’d really like to get to my grandfather’s as soon as possible,” Paul said. “Is there anything I can do to h—”
“You sick? You or your passengers?” the older cop asked.
“No. We were all there when it got really ugly and I don’t know how…but no. We’re not sick.”
“Well, we’ll do what we can to see to it that you get to—”
“Holy God,” a shaky voice said, interrupting him.
Paul and every one of the cops turned to the policeman that was speaking to the driver of the car at the front of the line. The cop was backing up, his face a mask of horror. Through the terrified O of his mouth, he managed to say: “Sick. I’ve got a sick one here…”
As if to prove this, the sound of retching came from inside the car—an older model SUV. At the sound, Paul saw several of the cops go for their guns. Any other time, it would have seemed like a severe reaction but right now, it seemed pretty accurate. He felt his own hand hovering over towards his holster.
“Roll your window up!” one of the cops said.
“Please,” the driver said in a shouted sort of weeping. Paul could not see the driver, but it sounded like a younger man. “Please help.”
But he was ignored. The police were scrambling like madmen, some with their guns now drawn and others running for cover within their cars. It was quite clear that they had not been sent out here with any sort of plan.
“Stand down, guys,” Paul said, his voice not quite as loud as he intended. “Stand down, already! It’s…”
But he stopped here, realizing that he had nearly said: “It’s too late.”
To Paul’s horror, the car door opened. For just a moment, the flurried motion of the cops came to a stop and everything on the thin mountain road went eerily quiet. The driver stepped out of the car, holding himself up by the car door. The red hue of his face and the sweat streaks along his brow and hair was yet another reminder of Paul’s escape from New York and for one dreadful moment, he prayed that the cops would just shoot the poor bastard.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 24