by Jack Hunt
“No, Ella, right now the high-risk areas are crowded subways and Greyhound buses. There is hardly any ventilation and you damn well aren’t going to be able to stay six feet away from other riders. All it would take is for one infected passenger to sneeze or cough, and that shit could be carried in the air.”
She groaned. “Well, you know the roads aren’t going to be much better. I’ll be lucky if I can make it back there in seven or eight hours.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth, and that’s if riots don’t break out in small towns along the way. It’s insane down here at the moment.”
“Look, okay, I don’t like the idea of this one bit, but right now if you know for sure that these guys aren’t infected or a threat, then I would say go with them. Just keep me updated. Phone me every half an hour.”
She wasn’t sure whether to tell him or not but decided to anyway. “If they are infected, then so am I because I used a phone belonging to one of them.”
She heard her father gasp. “Oh Ella—”
“I know. I know. It slipped my mind. I’m not like you, Dad, I don’t think about harmful bacteria every second of my day. People use other people’s phones.”
“Not in my world they don’t.”
“Well you don’t have any friends, besides Sal.”
It was true but as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted saying them. He hadn’t coped well with her mother leaving him and then having Ella leave for college was the final nail in the coffin. There was silence on the other end.
“Just keep me updated.”
The phone clicked and she felt even worse. Though she had only suffered a fractured wrist, a mild concussion and a few minor bumps and bruises, that didn’t mean she could move fast. She was certain she had pulled or torn a muscle in her leg as she found herself hobbling over to the washroom to splash some cold water on her face.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Gabriel stuck his head in and tapped his fingers against the door. “You ready to go?”
She tore off some paper towel and dried off. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.” Everything she owned had been destroyed in the crash. It had all gone up in flames. All she had now were the clothes on her back. As she made her way out of the room, one of the nurses spotted her.
“Hey, you can’t be up and around. You need to rest.”
“I’m done resting, I’m leaving.”
“Well at least let me get the doctor to give you one last look over.”
“And hang around for an hour or two until he shows up? No thanks.”
They couldn’t hold her. She made her way down to the front desk, collected her phone and checked out. Before leaving she passed a room where a medical orderly was loading up a cart with fresh hospital gowns, sanitizer, black plastic bags and other items to restock the rooms. She noticed a box of masks. They were the typical surgery mask, not really effective but better than nothing. She snagged them up, tucked them under her jacket along with a handful of surgery gloves and kept on walking.
“You in the habit of taking things that don’t belong to you?” Gabriel asked.
“If it means surviving this, you bet.”
He grinned. In the meantime, she pulled her top up over her face as people walked by coughing. Gabriel and Tyrell did the same at the urging of Ella. Outside they made it over to a black 4 x 4 truck. Once inside she still didn’t feel safe. How could she? Even though they had helped her, she still didn’t know them and besides the risk of contracting the virus, she was thinking of all the other things that could go wrong.
“I need to drop by the university and pick up my belongings before we head out,” Tyrell said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ella said slipping onto the passenger side seat. The floor was covered in a few beer cans, educational books and a bag.
“It’s not far from here. Won’t take us longer than ten minutes.”
Gabriel tried to reassure her. “It’s fine. We’ll be in and out. You can stay in the truck if you like.”
She fought the urge to argue and decided to let it slide. It was Tyrell’s vehicle and he was the one offering the lift. As they pulled out of the parking lot, they noticed even more people showing up at the hospital and she had to wonder if they had just got out in time. If they hadn’t, they would know for sure in under twenty-four hours.
CHARLIE WALKER SAT in front of multiple screens that showed video footage of the rooms, halls and grounds of the St. John’s University campus. As a public safety officer, he was three hours into his shift and already beginning to feel the effects of the previous night. He’d been out with the boys and his head was now throbbing. Still, his job was a breeze compared to his last one working for the New York Police Department. After twenty years as a cop, he’d retired and did security part-time to earn some extra green. At fifty-two, he wasn’t getting any younger, and his pension only stretched so far.
His radio crackled and Jimmy Faro, another security guard, came on the line. For the most part their job consisted of patrolling the campus, helping students and issuing emergency notifications to all students and staff if anything bad happened on campus.
“Charlie, we’re getting a lot of students worried about what’s going in Manhattan.”
“Like I said, just tell them to stay inside for now and those who have to leave, give them fair warning that they won’t be allowed back on campus if they leave.”
“Well that’s the thing, I have a line of cars at the gate here that want in.”
“And?”
“They all say they haven’t been anywhere near Manhattan.”
“You wearing your mask and gloves?”
“Shit, I forgot.”
“Jimmy, what did I tell you? Your safety comes first. You are no good to the campus if you are ill.” Charlie glanced down at the New York Times that had a front-page piece on a potential quarantine breach.
“So what do you want me to do?”
It was decisions like this that pissed him off. Those above him had given him strict orders not to let anyone who lived on campus back in. It hadn’t been the first time he had to send out an emergency notification to all students. Over the years they had to deal with severe weather, an active shooter and a year ago, a hazardous spill. It was an administrative nightmare but one he took seriously. Students weren’t only relying on him, parents were and with the amount of illness that was passed around the campus in any given month, trying to determine who had the virus and what was just a common cold wasn’t his or the university’s job. He followed protocol and right now he had to follow orders.
“Don’t let them in.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, easier said than done, boss. These assholes are driving further down the road and trying another access point or are parking along the perimeter and darting into the residences. We already have four guys trying to locate some of these idiots.”
“Shit!”
He knew trying to keep them out was going to be challenging. They only had so many public safety officers. There was one on each of the six access gates and the rest were on patrol.
His eyes scanned the screens. “You got an ID on those who got in?”
“Negative.”
“Really?”
“Charlie, have you been down here? Have you seen how many damn students there are? My hands are full.”
“Okay, look, just handle it. Do your job.”
“What do think I’m doing?” Jimmy muttered.
He continued to scan through video. In the control room with him were two officers. With a hundred-acre campus and student residences to cover, there were a lot of screens to stare at.
“Charlie, take a look at this.”
Stan pointed to a kid running down a corridor in the Century Hall residence building. He looked as if he was drunk. He stumbled against a trashcan and struggled to keep upright.
“Another drunk?”
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“I don’t know. I’ll get one of the guys to check it out.”
He switched channels and put a call into Robert Nolan who was on the east side, and the closest.
“Nolan, you want to check out a kid down corridor B, level one.”
“Sure.”
“Oh and Nolan, use caution.”
“You got it.”
Nolan was two corridors over. Charlie shook his head as he watched him amble along as though he was on a Sunday stroll. “You want to speed it up, Nolan?”
“Ah, put a sock in it. It’s probably just some kid high on marijuana.”
That had become the norm for them. Only once had they needed to call an ambulance and that was because the idiot kid had mixed whatever he had smoked with some narcotic. Charlie watched as Nolan made his way down to the kid. The kid was slumped up against the side of the trashcan. Charlie saw Nolan stop a few feet away and then he saw him backing up slowly. The kid on the ground wasn’t moving now.
The radio crackled. “Call an ambulance.”
Charlie didn’t even think twice, he instantly got patched through to emergency services. They were trained with basic CPR but that was it.
“Speak to me, Nolan, what have we got?”
“Um.” He heard him swallow. “He’s got blood coming out of his eyes and nose.”
“Shit.”
IT TOOK them the better part of twenty minutes to get over to the campus and then they had spent another ten sitting behind a line of six vehicles that were trying to get in but were being held up by some beefy security guard.
“What’s he saying?” Gabriel asked.
Tyrell brought his window down and stuck part of his head out.
“He’s having an argument with the guy. Telling him he has to go back.”
“Why?”
“Pretty obvious,” Ella said. “They’ve probably been instructed to put the place on lockdown.”
“Nah, they only do that if there is a shooter or weather.”
“I’m telling you. They are going to be taking precautions with all this sickness going around.”
They watched as the security guard went from one vehicle to the next. When he reached theirs, Ella noticed he was wearing a mask.
“Sorry, guys, we are not letting anyone else in.”
“No one?”
He shook his head.
“But I need to get my stuff. I’m leaving,” Tyrell said.
“You are going to have to come back, I’ve been instructed to not let anyone in. Sorry.”
He motioned with his hand which way they were to go. Tyrell revved the engine and the guard gave him a stern look, like if he wanted to try his patience, he was going to lose.
Tyrell waited a few more seconds, huffed and slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Screw this, I’m going to head over to 168th Street, near the baseball diamond and head across from there.”
He brought the truck around and headed west on Grand Central Parkway Service Road and north on 168th.
“What residence hall are you in?”
“Century Hall.”
“YOU BETTER BE WEARING your mask,” Charlie reminded Nolan who had got close to check on the boy’s pulse. It was the same all the time with his crew. When it came to anything else, like weather changes, fire, power outages or even a shooter on campus, they carried all the necessary equipment but carrying sterile gloves, everyone seemed to forget. He even had to give a few of them warnings.
“Charlie, he’s still alive but he’s got a slow pulse.”
“Did you hear me, Nolan?”
“Fuck, this is bad. What the hell has happened?”
Charlie was watching the screen intently, but Nolan’s back was to the camera. He couldn’t see what was going on. One second he was hunched over, the next reeling back and swiping at his face with his hand.
“Charlie. Oh shit. I’ve got blood on me.”
“Stay right there. Don’t move. Don’t go near anyone.”
“I’m going to get a first-aid kit.”
“No. I repeat, stay where you are.”
He watched as Nolan dropped his radio on the floor and hauled himself up and started making his way down the corridor.
“Oh, he is so fired. Hold the fort, I’m going over there.”
THIRTEEN
Frank couldn’t believe his ears. The president declared a state of emergency and was preparing to implement martial law? He’d set up his computer to one side of him with multiple websites open and his TV was on giving him the scoop on what was happening across the country. He sipped at a glass of bourbon, his eyes darting back and forth from a live stream online to the news channel.
To some, quarantining people must have seemed like overkill. In the minds of the public, it must have seemed as if this had just erupted a few days ago, but that wasn’t the case. Before the CDC issued a statement to the media, or before someone leaked it, it had to have been going on for at least a week or two. That was always the way the CDC worked. They didn’t issue statements without good reason. They weren’t in the business of causing mass hysteria or panic. Everything they did was controlled, assessed, and multiple officials would have been involved in the decision process.
Martial law? As outlandish as it sounded, Frank remembered something like that had happened back in 2013 after the Boston Marathon bombings. After a bomb had injured over two hundred people and killed three, and the fugitives had escaped, the authorities were frantic to hunt them down. That’s when heavily armed law enforcement locked down Watertown. Everyone received an automated phone message that warned them about the danger and instructed them not to leave their homes. Quickly but surely police started setting up blockades on different streets. It wasn’t long before SWAT and the National Guard began showing up with high-powered rifles, helicopters flew overhead and authorities began going where they pleased without any permission.
They tried to paint it as being voluntary but it wasn’t, most of the families in that town were under house arrest. It didn’t take long before Twitter was ablaze with video recorded by residents showing the military ordering people to come out of their homes and then zip tying them. They began arresting and interrogating people, some even said they weren’t read their Miranda rights. All rights went out the window.
There was even talk about guns being seized from residents.
The crazy part about it all was the aftermath. There was outrage by locals over their rights being trampled. And though people demanded answers about what constitutional authority allowed them to place anyone under house arrest, no clear answer was given.
Yet Frank was all too familiar with what the government could or couldn’t do. He knew that if push came to shove and martial law was declared, all constitutional freedoms and liberties would be suspended and civilians would no longer have civil rights. It had occurred back in the Civil War when Lincoln violated the Constitution and in many ways suspended it by imprisoning citizens without cause or trial, closing courts using force, raising troops without the consent of Congress and shutting down newspapers that spoke out against it.
From the standpoint of the government it made sense. In the event of a national emergency in which people might riot, loot and even kill, they would need to take charge of the situation and collect firearms from people. In their mind, bearing arms was not a right, it was a privilege. Of course, many people would say it was their right, but there really weren’t any rights. Most of the civil rights that people thought they had were just there to give people the illusion that they were in control but the reality was, they weren’t.
Frank thought about what Butch had said a few months back when he was visiting his store. He’d said that his family and many of his prepper buddies buried their weapons in polymer containers underground because they knew that if martial law was ever declared, that would be the first thing they would try to control and take. And he damn well wasn’t going to have anyone tell him what he could do. He’d shown him the c
ontainers and had tried to sell him one. They were called vault gun storage tubes. They used polymer to avoid detection. The key was to store it in an area of land that wouldn’t erode. To avoid moisture causing the gun to rust, it was also important to paint it with some Cosmoline rust preventative. Burying it down four feet would prevent a good majority of metal detectors from finding it. Frank had considered it at the time, now he wished he had bought one.
“Things are getting bad.”
Frank spun around to see Sal.
“Sal, what did I say about coming in here?”
Sal shook his head. “Relax, I’m wearing my mask, I’m covered from head to toe. I really don’t think the idea of us being out in your conservatory is going to be much help.”
“I know it would help me sleep better.”
“I think we would know by now.”
“Twenty-four hours, Sal. Remember. You might not show anything for fifteen and then boom, you start coughing like a banshee.”
“Look, I’ll stay ten feet away from you, how about that? That’s four more than I need to.”
“Six, ten, it doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if that virus can travel further. I mean look at this.”
Frank turned back to the news and flicked through the channels. Nearly every one was reporting problems.
“This is spreading faster than you think. Kate already said the CDC fucked up. They don’t have this contained, Sal. Those quarantine areas might have initially been set up in response to the threat but they are just there now to give people the illusion that they have this in the bag. They don’t. They never got all of the two hundred people that were on that plane. Sure, they have issued statements about patient zero and that they have traced those that came in contact with him but there is no information being put out about a cure or that this is one hundred percent airtight. How do they contain that which doesn’t show up for at least fifteen to seventeen hours? Not everyone is immediately going to go to the doctor or hospital once they get a cough or fever. So now you have even more people out there. But you want to know the real danger to all of this? Money.”