Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  “They’re on the bridge, colonel!” Rick shouted.

  “Please! You’re supposed to help us!” came the final plea of the uninfected man with a long forgotten baseball cap, who now crawled on his hands and knees seventy-five yards away.

  “Sir! You’ve gotta give the order!” The lieutenant colonel, eyes twitching, stared back at Rick, but appeared not to see him. “Now, sir!”

  The Guardsman took a deep breath before emerging from his daze. “All right! Listen up! We hold this bridge! We stand our ground! On my command, I’m going to order you to fire at will!” There was an inordinately long pause during which the next words seemed several times to stick in the civilian/soldier’s throat. “On… On my…” He gulped. “On my command! Commence…firing!”

  What should have been a fusillade of automatic weapons was only a sporadic few shots aimed by riflemen who could single out targets in the more distant Infected crowd through the panicked and scattering Uninfecteds in between.

  “Colonel!” Rick shouted.

  The National Guard officer proceeded from gunner to gunner, climbing atop Humvees or squeezing between patrol cars to put an arm around each man in turn, speaking urgently into his ear and slapping him on the back or the helmet. One-by-one, the machine guns began to rattle. The gunners grimaced from what must surely be moral agony. Some Uninfecteds crawled across the pavement toward the railings; others writhed; still others lay unmoving in expanding puddles. The man with the baseball cap lay splayed on the pavement in the unnatural position of the dead. As more guns fired with ever greater abandon, more Uninfecteds spun and twisted on their way to the pavement, which attested to the violence of their tragic end.

  Isabel threw up, but no one noticed. She pressed index fingers against her throbbing ears. In that relative silence, and after one more retch, she looked up to see the now solid mass of Infecteds—arms pumping, hands rigid and talonlike, faces frozen in bare-toothed sneers, eyes wide and unblinking—on the dead run up the bridge straight toward them. Gone was any hesitation from the troops or the cops. All could now clearly see the approach of certain death. Machine gunners slewed their blazing heavy weapons across the first rank, then the second, then the third. Flame burst from a female police officer’s shotgun. She pumped and fired, pumped and fired, again and again, before pausing to reload awkwardly and hurriedly while trembling, lower lip quivering. Highway patrolmen held pistols in two shaking hands and emptied magazine after magazine. And yet the mob of howling Infecteds continued to close.

  Rick and the Army soldiers in their detail crouched behind the cars and Humvees and fired straight into the crowd. But it took Isabel seeing Brandon—slack-jawed and paralyzed by the shock of the unfolding massacre—to realize what she had to do. She leaned over the hood of a patrol car, wincing at the tumult that now scraped at her unprotected eardrums, and raised her rifle to her shoulder. Long gone were the poor Uninfecteds caught in the middle. All Isabel saw now were crazed Infecteds intent on disemboweling her.

  Isabel flicked the selector switch up, not all the way forward, just as Rick had shown her, and generally aimed at the onrushing mob. But when she squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. The thing should be ready to shoot. She looked at the switch beside the trigger guard. It was set to Semi, not Safe or Auto. She pulled harder. Bam! She had no idea whether she had hit anyone, but couldn’t imagine how she could’ve missed. Bam! This time, she saw a young woman near the front rank of Infecteds fall. Bam! A boy with a brick in his hand took two steps before collapsing. Please forgive me! she prayed silently—Bam!—sickened by what she was doing and trying to swallow the bile that rose again to scald her throat.

  The few orange barrels that remained upright at the quarantine line were toppled in unison. One hundred yards away! Bam! Everyone around her fired their weapons, even Brandon. The air stank of steely smoke. Bam! A heavy rain of brass shell casings cascaded off the roofs of the Humvees. Bam! She crunched cartridges underfoot with every redirection of her aim. Bam! The roar of weapons, now continuous, drowned out all other noise and blended with a ringing sound in her ears like a rock concert.

  Bam! Isabel fired now without thinking. Bam! Without feeling. Bam! Like an Infected. Bam! She aimed right at “center mass,” as Rick had instructed. Bam! Right at the middle of their chests. And at eighty yards away, more often than not, she saw through her small scope that she hit her target. Bam! Not a human being. A bull’s eye. Bam! A thing that had to be stopped. Bam! Not a girl whose every sprinted stride kicked at her long purple skirt—Bam!—until her jaw exploded in mist. Not a paunchy man with a full beard whose round granny glasses—Bam!—flew from his face as his momentum was halted by the bullet to his abdomen. Not a white-haired woman in a hockey jersey—Bam!—who staggered forward a few steps despite losing a quarter of her cranium. Or a little boy with a multicolored cast on his forearm—Bam!—whose left leg went all floppy at the femur before he collapsed. Tears finally flooded her vision. Now, she fired at a roiling, amorphous blur that was impossible to miss at fifty yards and closing.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  When her magazine was empty after thirty rounds were fired, the nearest Infecteds still on their feet were over a hundred yards beyond the imaginary line where the orange barrels lay on their sides. They were struggling to keep their footing on the slippery concrete, some waist-deep in the carnage of still writhing bodies.

  Despite no order having been given, the fire quickly abated. The tolling of the bells in Isabel’s deadened ears filled the unsettling silence that followed. She looked up at the machine gunner atop the Humvee next to her. Heat shimmered off his blazing hot barrel. The man behind it slumped so low she feared he was wounded. And he was, she realized, but not physically. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but his jaw drooped, loose with horror and, possibly, guilt.

  Little by little, her hearing returned. The bridge was covered in the dead and dying. A mere few hundred Infecteds retreated down the causeway on the run, the spell of the vastly diminished crowd broken. The only sounds came from the few surviving Uninfecteds. There were groans, the whine of a child, a faint call for aid from somewhere, and some splashing in the river. “Jonathon!” a woman cried out hoarsely. “Jon, he-e-elp!” That set Isabel’s tears off again, and this time they wouldn’t stop. She tried to regain control, but couldn’t, letting her empty rifle dangle from its straps as she doubled over, grabbed her knees, and sobbed. At least she wasn’t alone. She fought shame but looked around and saw male soldiers, here and there, wiping the tears from their faces.

  Do your fucking job! she cursed silently, willing herself to look up and survey the carnage on which she would have to report to the Pentagon. The vast majority of the wounded were Infecteds, but they made not a single sound. Not a moan, or a plea, or a wail. They would die without any of the emotional distress of the similarly bullet-riddled Uninfecteds, who would rage and sob all the way to the oblivion awaiting them.

  “Cease fire!” came the unnecessary command from the exhausted-sounding National Guard colonel. “Safeties on!” Rick clicked the selector switches to Safe on both Isabel and Brandon’s rifles. Infecteds stumbled off the Vermont highway into the woods on the far shore. Many were wounded, but none were helped by anyone else. A blanket of the dead and dying, in places several deep, covered almost every square foot of roadway. Bright ski jackets. Dull work shirts. Red lumberjack flannel. An elbow rose, but the wounded woman couldn’t lift herself. Thousands of bodies that were quickly falling still.

  The cool, fresh air caught several times as Isabel struggled to fill her fluttery lungs. The pretty foliage on the far bank still danced in the wind. Puffy white clouds skittered across the pale blue sky. A flock of small black birds practiced their choreography, taking no notice of the insignificant events on the bridge below. Beneath Isabel’s feet were countless huge, blackened, and spent machine gun and smaller yellowish rifle car
tridges, alongside comparatively tiny brass casings from pistols, smoking red plastic shotgun shells, and a half a dozen puddles of vomit.

  Rick slipped on the casings as he returned to Isabel. “You okay?”

  She didn’t know how to reply. Was she? Okay? What did that even mean? “I… I…” She couldn’t compose an answer until she swallowed the burning reflux. She then raised her empty rifle and managed to ask, “How do I reload this?”

  Chapter 3

  THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 39, 2100 GMT (5:00 p.m. Local)

  “Good-bye, old life,” Noah Miller heard his fifteen-year-old daughter Chloe say as they pulled off the state highway onto the ridgeline-hugging road that led up to the Old Place. Her mother Natalie had spent their last evening at home fashioning Chloe’s now shorn blond hair into a trendy look. Noah had then found his wife sitting at her vanity, staring into the mirror at her own short blond hair, brush in hand, sobbing.

  After Isabel’s dramatic heliborne departure from their front lawn, Noah and his family’s trip down to the Shenandoah Valley from McLean had been unusual, but blessedly uneventful. On their way to the Interstate, they had passed a police officer, shotgun propped on his hip, talking to a man behind the shattered glass windows of a small community bank branch. Then two buildings that were still burning while a single fire truck sprayed water onto a third. Then a cluster of young people brazenly drinking alcohol in the parking lot by the smashed door of a liquor store.

  The Interstate itself was a parking lot, and people weren’t ceding an inch. Noah engaged in a honking war and practically had to force the front fender of his huge SUV into the solid lane of traffic. The angry driver who followed him soon forgave the affront and became their neighbor for the next several hours.

  But the farther they got from D.C., the freer the traffic flowed and the more normal life seemed, although the roadsides were now apparently permanently dotted with encampments of refugees from somewhere up north. Noah spent his time torturing himself with visions of finding their mountain refuge picked clean by workers he had insanely trusted to finish the job and leave. As the silent nightmare in his mind evolved, he imagined catching the workers in the act of looting their things, and them killing his whole family.

  Just before the last bend at the top of the ridge road, Noah slowed to a stop.

  “What is it?” his wife asked from the passenger seat beside him.

  “I just wanna check it out. Give me a sec.” He exited the SUV with his rifle.

  Noah carefully made his way up the road. He looked back to see thirteen-year-old Jacob protruding from the sunroof, rifle raised. Natalie made Chloe take off her headphones and pay attention, which earned his wife a devastating eye roll. Noah peered over a dirt embankment. The house was still. The workers’ trucks were gone.

  He parked, led them up to the house, and held his breath as he unlocked the front door. The place was in perfect order. All their supplies were right where they had left them.

  “Awww,” he heard Natalie say. Noah joined her at the dining room table. She held a bottle of red wine with a bow on it and handed the note to Noah. “I hope you enjoy your new home,” the contractor had written. “Please keep us in your prayers.”

  “What a nice man,” Natalie said before she got busy cooking dinner.

  Noah chided himself for so quickly losing all faith in humanity. The kids unloaded the SUVs. Noah went to the barn. Their house was off the grid. While the sun was shining, the rooftop solar panels were still producing surplus power as indicated by the needle that danced on the positive side of the battery’s meter. But after they finished unloading the SUV and darkness fell, the needle sank to the left hand, negative side. The windmill still turned, but they were using more power than they produced. That began Noah’s obsessive checking of the batteries every hour. He walked the fence line, locked the front gate, and agitated the chickens that had been delivered right on schedule. He grabbed the red handle in the barn that electrified the fence and pulled it down with a mechanical clunk to the “On” notch. The needle jumped more firmly toward the negative side, but the batteries’ charges remained solid. The propane-powered generators never had to kick in.

  “Dad! Dinner!” Chloe called from the front porch.

  When Noah saw the plentiful quantities of food on the table, he thought Natalie had overdone it. They needed to ration. But it was delicious, and while Natalie supervised Jacob’s washing of dishes—by hand, their son was aghast to discover—Noah was pleased to see Chloe collecting every uneaten morsel of food and refrigerating it.

  After one last look out into the quiet, cool night air—tranquil despite what Noah knew was happening in New England, Canada, Europe, and Asia—the family settled around the lone big-screen television. They could receive two nearby broadcast stations—one well, one with ghosting. Both had local takes on the pandemic. Protestations by sheriffs, mayors, and clinic administrators that they were fully prepared. Rumors and eyewitness accounts of strangers, many armed, collecting amid ramshackle shelters constructed out of tarps and tents alongside highways, and official warnings against confrontations with them.

  When Noah switched to satellite and a brilliant digital picture filled the screen, there were cheers. “Oh, I love that movie. Stop!” Chloe said, but Noah ignored her and settled on CNBC, eliciting his daughter’s groan. “I’m si-i-ick of the news.”

  “…including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, and Miami.”

  “It’s spread all the way there?” Natalie asked in alarm.

  But the story wasn’t about the arrival of SED—Severe Encephalopathic Disease—but about the looting and panic that preceded it. There were no reported cases of Pandoravirus horribilis yet outside Vermont. “Stores have been receiving their last shipments of food and are being emptied by frenzied shoppers. The National Guard is setting up centers for the emergency distribution of food and water, but civil unrest is hampering authorities’ efforts.”

  In Philadelphia, straight lines of police faced off against ragged masses of rioters many times their number. Arcing trails of tear gas flew into crowds and back at cops. Fires spread unchecked in the distance as the news helicopter’s camera panned back.

  Breaking news interrupted other breaking news. The anchorman introduced a woman calling from her home outside Burlington, Vermont. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” the caller whispered. “I hear you.”

  “Please tell our viewers what you see.”

  “They’re outside,” her caller replied softly. “There are police cars under a streetlamp at the corner, and they’re meeting with them there. Please send help. They’re everywhere!”

  The journalist at the anchor desk was slow on the uptake. “I’m sorry, but didn’t you say the police were already there?”

  “The police are infected. Everybody has turned! They’re meeting. Getting ready for something. They’ve got guns!”

  “Are you saying that everybody you’re seeing on your street has turned?”

  “Everybody who survived,” the woman said. “Ambulances have been removing bodies from our neighbors’ houses. When the EMTs came up to my door this afternoon, I looked through the peephole and their eyes were black! They’re not even wearing those masks and other getup anymore. I’m the only one left! Please, please, please send help!”

  The anchorman asked, “So people who have turned are going back to their old jobs? The police? The EMTs?”

  The distraught woman on the phone ignored his question. “They’re coming up to the houses! They’re knocking on doors! Oh-my-God! Oh-my-God! Please send help, right now!” She gave her address, twice, then blurted out, “There’s shooting!”

  “The police are shooting?” the anchorman asked. “The Infecteds are shooting?”

  “No!” The caller was hyperventilating. “Two doors up. The Crens
haws, I think. Somebody inside shot one of the cops. The cops are shooting back. At the Crenshaws!”

  “For our viewers who just joined, we have a caller on the line who’s trapped in a quarantined zone in Burlington, Vermont. She reports that Infecteds who have turned have gone back to their jobs as police and medical personnel and are now going house-to-house in her neighborhood.”

  “They broke into the Crenshaws’ house! Oh, God! There’s a whole bunch of them. Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! They’re going to the house next door to me!”

  “Maybe you…need to get to safety?”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go! Please help!” More quietly now, the woman said, “My neighbors, the McDonalds, are on the porch talking to the police. Nobody’s wearing a mask or anything. And they just shook hands! With the Infecteds! The McDonalds must’ve caught it too! They’re going back inside!”

  The woman was whispering, so the anchorman repeated what she said for viewers. “So your neighbors have turned, and they shook hands with the infected police?”

  “They’re coming up to my door!” the woman said urgently. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

  The woman didn’t respond to the next few questions, but you could still hear the quivering, whispered Lord’s Prayer above the pounding on the door. “I’m in the closet.” There was a loud crash, and a whimper, and, “They’re inside. They’re inside my house!” Despite long periods of silence, the anchorman listened with his face a mask of concern, almost as if he and the viewers were hiding in the closet with the woman. All at once, the woman shouted, “No! Please! Get back! No! No-o-o!” There was rustling. A brief struggle. The phone must have been dropped. The woman’s pleas disappeared into the distance.

  A man’s voice came clearly over the line. “Hello?”

  The stunned anchorman took a moment before replying, “Hello? Who is this?”