Escape the Virus

by Ryan Westfield

  There were no reasons any more. No motivations.

  None of that mattered.

  What mattered was that they were alive. Some of them, at least.

  “We've got to get upstairs,” said Judy. “The door won't hold for long. It's already off its hinges. It's just furniture at this point...”

  “You think there are a lot of them?”

  “By the sound of it.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Doesn't matter. It's just all violence at this point. They'll kill us. There are no reasons any more.”

  “Come on. We can hold them off at the staircase... it's narrow...”

  “Mia!” said Jamie, suddenly remembering Mia. “I've got to get Mia.”

  “Hurry,” hissed Matt. “Judy, you head upstairs. I'll wait by the door.” He was whispering, clearly not wanting to risk that possibility that the enemy would overhear him. “I'll take the first one out... then I'll hightail it up the stairs with you...”

  “The second one will get you. It's not safe.”

  “The whole situation isn't safe. Trust me, I got this.”

  “If we lose you, we're going to die.”

  “We might already be dead. Remember the virus.”

  Jamie had her gun in her hand. She was out of earshot of the conversation now. She was rushing through the hallways of the house.

  The pounding on the front door was intense. Incredibly intense. It sounded almost as if someone was pounding something right on her own skull. That's how loud and intense it was in the darkness.

  She felt nothing but fear. No hope. Nothing good remained.

  “Mia!” she called out, reaching the top of the stairs. She didn't care if anyone heard her. It didn't matter. “Mia!” she yelled.

  There was no answer.

  Shit. She'd have to head downstairs.

  She shone the light. Took her first step.

  There was air coming in. A cool night breeze. What had happened? Why was air coming in?

  She went down the stairs as quickly as she could.

  At the bottom, she let out a scream.

  A scream of fear. Surprise. Horror.

  Her flashlight beam had found Mia's bloodied body.

  “Mia!”

  She rushed to her friend and roommate. Got her arms around here. Pulled her close.

  The body was still warm. But there was no pulse.

  Mia was dead.

  “Mia...”

  It must have been that man who'd broken in. He'd killed her. He'd shot her.

  Suddenly realizing that she might not be alone, Jamie started shining the flashlight around the basement, jerking it around fanatically, following the beam of light with her gun.

  There was no one else there.

  Just her dead roommate.

  Her flashlight beam found the shelves that had the supplies on it.

  Something had happened to the supplies. Someone had torn into the bags. Thrown them everywhere. Scattered rice all across the floor. Semi-liquid coconut oil flooded the floor, a huge oily mess.

  It was a complete mess.

  On closer examination, Jamie found that all the food had been destroyed.

  “You ripped up all the packages, Mia?” said Jamie, speaking to her dead roommate. She felt anger rising in her chest. “What the hell? Were you that messed up, or did you just not want us to survive?”

  For all Jamie knew, it wasn't going to matter. The pounding on the front door was audible even down here in the basement.

  She needed to get back upstairs. And quick.

  Who knew how long that door would hold out.

  And while it wasn't possible to get a straight shot to the door from the staircase, one had to walk by the front door in order to get up the staircase.

  If that front door broke before Jamie made it upstairs, then she could just forget about trying to get upstairs.

  She turned on her heel and darted up the stairs.

  She made her way through the hallways, racing so fast that occasionally she slipped and her body slammed into a wall. She ignore the pain and kept going, as fast as she could.

  “Get upstairs,” hissed Matt, barely whispering the words.

  He was there near the door. Gun in both hands.

  He'd dropped a flashlight in a corner. Some of the ambient light shone on the door.

  The furniture that had been piled up behind the door was in complete disarray. It had been moved quite far.

  The door was about to open. About to simply fall away, revealing dangerous invaders.

  She wanted to stay. She wanted to help Matt.

  But fear got to her. Fear of messing up Matt's plan. Fear of getting in the way. Fear of not being able to do what she had to do, like what had just happened with Damian.

  Why hadn't she been able to shoot him?

  She should have done it.

  She needed to have done it.

  She was weak.

  And she felt weak as she darted up the stairs.

  “In here,” hissed Judy, a light appearing down the hallway.

  Jamie didn't need to be told twice. She dashed through the open doorway, nearly tripping over Judy's leg.

  Jamie stumbled, but recovered her balance, just as a gunshot echoed from downstairs.

  One shot.

  Then another.

  Then a third.

  Then silence.

  Jamie's heart was pounding. It was all she could hear. Her ears were ringing.

  She looked over at Judy, trying to read her expression.

  Had the shot been from Matt? From the invader?

  25

  Matt

  The furniture had moved. The door had opened.

  Or more accurately, the door had simply fallen away from the frame.

  A torso had come through, arms and legs seeming to follow.

  Matt didn't try to make sense of it. He'd just pulled the trigger. His plan had been simple. All he'd had to do was stick to it.

  A body had fallen away.

  Only to be replaced with another.

  Matt sent two bullets into the second body.

  But, as he did so, a third and fourth person had made their way through the open door.

  They were like ants. Like insects who didn't seem to care if they lived or died. They just kept coming. Like a plague. Like some horrible infestation.

  This was the weak point in Matt's plan. Why had he believed that he'd be able to make it upstairs?

  He'd only had time to half turn around, before someone was mere feet away from him.

  He'd never make it up the stairs, let alone anywhere near it.

  Something swung towards Matt's head. Matt pulled the trigger, but there wasn't time to aim.

  The bullet went somewhere. Not into his attacker.

  Matt's ears were ringing.

  Matt ducked down.

  He saw a flash from the object swinging at him. A flash of light reflecting off the metal from the flashlight he'd tossed on the floor.

  It was a metal baseball bat.

  It missed his head, but smashed into his shoulder.

  Hard.

  Pain flared through him.

  Matt grabbed the bat with one hand, yanking it as hard as he could.

  But the other man was stronger, pulling the bat back and away from Matt. It slipped through his hand.

  The bat was coming back at him.

  There were more people in the doorway. More people coming in. How many of them were there?

  Matt's arm didn't seem to be working right. The pain was too much. Something had happened to more than just his shoulder.

  Hard to aim his gun.

  But he shifted his body, getting the muzzle of the Glock so that it lined up with the body.

  Squeezed the trigger.

  The Glock kicked.

  More of a roar in his ears.

  Matt didn't wait to see what happened. He turned on his heel.

  Dashed towards the stairs.

  He did
n't think he'd make it. There were too many of them. Pouring through the door like water.

  But he got to the first step. Foot on it. Then the second.

  Dashed up the stairs.

  A hand grabbed him. A strong hand with a good grip.

  Matt twisted and turned, got out of the grip.

  He'd never pushed himself so hard in his life.

  He could barely see. Nothing but a tunnel of dim light in front of him.

  Nothing in his awareness except the steps.

  He was practically on all fours, climbing the staircase like an animal, with the Glock held against his palm.

  Noise behind him. Grunts and growls. A scream of pain heard somehow above the roar in his ears.

  In front of him, there was a sudden flash of light. Another gunshot ripping through the air. The sound intense. Brutal, even.

  He'd seen a muzzle flash. Right in front of him.

  How was he still alive?

  His mind didn't understand what had happened.

  Another flash of light.

  It seemed as if he was deaf now. A dull roar of what felt like silence washed through his skull.

  He could barely see.

  His vision was washed out.

  Something grabbed his ankle. Grabbed on tight.

  Impossible to shake the grip. He kicked his leg. No use. The hand clung to him.

  He was getting dragged down. Pulled back down the steps.

  They'd tear him limb from limb if they got him. They'd bash his skull in.

  At least he'd gotten a couple of them.

  26

  Judy

  Judy had realized Matt wasn't going to make it. She'd dashed to the head of the stairs, where she'd stood in a good stance, waiting, arms outstretched, finger on the trigger.

  Matt was climbing the stairs like an animal. Good. It gave her a chance to shoot down and over his head.

  She took the opportunity.

  Pulled the trigger.

  Kept pulling it.

  Kept the gun in a good grip.

  She knew what she was doing. She knew how to keep it steady through the kickback. She knew what to expect.

  She was surprised at herself. She felt nothing as she emptied her gun methodically, as she pumped bullets into the invaders.

  No emotion at all. Nothing but quiet, calm triumph that echoed through her.

  She shone her flashlight down over the staircase, the eerie path of white light illuminating all in a grisly, hyper-realistic way.

  They were dead. All of them.

  Sure, a couple of bodies twitched.

  There were still some grunts of pain. But they barely sounded human.

  Stretching down the stairs, there were bodies. And there was blood.

  At the bottom of the stairs, it was a pile of furniture, the door, and more bodies. More blood. A tangle of limbs. Some vomit. Some guts.

  Judy, for some reason, felt a calm wash over her. A strange sort of violent calm.

  Her son was dead. She remembered that. There was nothing she could do to undo that. It was just a fact.

  “Matt,” she said, stretching her hand down to Matt, who was at her feet, below her on the staircase. “Come on. It's over.”

  Matt looked up at her, the flashlight in his eyes, casting strange shadows on his face.

  He took her hand, and she helped pull him to the top of the stairs.

  He stood there on the landing, turning his head around, looking at the bodies.

  “It's over,” she said again. “The ones that aren't dead have fled. We killed too many of them... they got scared.”

  But Matt didn't seem to hear her. Either he was in a state of mild shock or his hearing wasn't working from all the gunfire.

  It was over.

  All over.

  For now, at least.

  It was hard to understand. Hard to wrap her mind around what had happened.

  She ended up staying there, at the top of the stairs, looking down at the front door with her flashlight trained on it, trained on the bodies.

  She and Matt stayed like that until the sun came up and a new day had started.

  The hours of the night had left a lot of time for reflection, and it seemed as if her son's life flashed before her eyes as she sat there in the darkness, staring at the corpses. Memories of him as a little boy, as a middle-schooler. Memories of his prom. Memories of his first job after school. Memories of him failing out of college for the first time.

  She tried to shake the memories, but she didn't know whether they'd ever leave her.

  And she didn't think that she wanted to leave the memories behind anyway.

  With the sun up, Judy, Matt, and Jamie sat together in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was the room that Damian had been staying in. His things were still all over the floor. Somehow, it didn't bother Judy. Instead, it comforted her.

  “Mia's dead,” said Jamie, her voice sounding hollow.

  Judy didn't know what to say. She just felt more of that hollow feeling that came up when she thought of her son.

  Matt didn't know what to say either apparently. He just started nodding, a strange look in his eyes.

  “She destroyed all the food,” added Jamie. “She tore up the packages. I think she was just too messed up on the drugs... she didn't know what she was doing...”

  “We still have the food in the freezer and refrigerator... some in the kitchen,” said Judy.

  “The power's out,” said Matt. And it was. They'd tested it, and it was definitely off. And cell phone service was down as well. “The food isn't going to last that long.”

  “I don't know if we can stay here anyway,” said Judy. “That front door's not going to work for us. It's not going to keep anyone out, no matter how much furniture we pile up in front of it.”

  “I might be able to get it back on its hinges,” said Matt. “Or attach it there somehow, but I think the real question is more about whether or not staying here is a good idea at all, even if we have a functioning door and plenty of food.”

  “Which we don't,” said Jamie.

  “Right.”

  “What are you thinking, Matt?” said Judy.

  “I'm thinking that it's not a good time to be in the city,” said Matt. “New Mexico is one of the least populated states in the country, but that's a meaningless statistic when you're in a city. It's just as densely populated here as a city in New Jersey... there are plenty of people here... plenty of people that are going crazy from stress... plenty of people willing to commit violence to get what they think they need...”

  “So what are you saying? Where are we going to go if it's not here...?”

  “Head out towards Santa Fe,” said Matt. “There's plenty of open land between here and there... plenty of hills to get lost in...”

  “But how will we survive?” said Jamie, her voice seeming to fill with terror at the thought of being out in nature, out in the natural world.

  “We'll have to figure it out,” said Matt. “There are animals to kill and eat... gas stations along the way to take supplies from... I think our chances are better out there than here... It's only going to get worse...”

  “But isn't everyone going to die off?” said Jamie. “From the virus? You said it yourself, I thought. In a couple days' times, more than half the city is going to be dead.”

  “Yeah,” said Matt. “But the people who remain alive are going to be the nastiest, the most violent, the most vicious, the most brutal....”

  “In short, the people that are going to pose the biggest threat to us, right?” said Jamie.

  “Yeah,” said Matt, nodding. “Judy, what do you think?”

  “I think you're right,” said Judy, taking her time and choosing her words carefully. “It's going to be tough to get out of the city. It's going to be an escape. But we've got to do it. If yesterday has taught me anything, it's that we're not going to last a week here in this house, or even in this city...”

  “Right,” said Matt, nodding
. “I'd say we have about a fifty-fifty shot of making it out of the city and getting into the high desert... If we can do that, we've got a unique opportunity... if we were somewhere else in the country, then we wouldn't have anywhere to go... we shouldn't stand a chance.”

  “What do you think is happening all over the country?” said Jamie, speaking in a low, hushed voice.

  Matt shrugged. “Probably the same thing as here. No point in worrying about it. If the National Guard comes in on their white horses, though, I'm not going to be complaining. But I'm also not going to hold my breath...”

  “All right,” said Judy. “We'll leave today, if we can. We'll take my car.”

  “We might have to walk,” said Matt. “For all we know, the streets are still jam-packed with cars... nothing but cars wall to wall...”

  “We'll take my car as far as we can then,” said Judy. “And we'll plan to walk. Now I may be old but don't worry about me. I can keep up with you two...”

  “There's one thing we're forgetting,” said Matt, his voice somber.

  “What?” There was anxiety in Jamie's voice.

  “The virus,” said Matt. “All our plans are well and good, but if we've been contaminated, we're dead.”

  There was silence on the landing.

  Dead silence.

  Jamie broke it first. After about a full minute. “You think we got contaminated?”

  Matt shrugged. “One of us might have,” he said. “I was in pretty close proximity to those guys downstairs... if I was going to get it, I'd have it by now. And unfortunately that'd mean that you two have it as well.... I don't think our chances are good...”

  “What should we do then?”

  Jamie seemed almost beside herself.

  Judy, on the other hand, didn't feel much of anything at all. Maybe it was having been through the shock of losing her son already. Maybe she'd been expecting something like this all along, in the back of her mind.

  “If one or two of us have it,” said Judy. “The other might not yet have it... In all the commotion, I guess we'd forgotten about the risk...”

  “It'd be pretty hard to keep everything just the right way,” said Matt. “The risk of contamination wasn't our biggest concern... not with ten men trying to break into the house... We did what we could. I was thinking about the possibility of us breaking off and waiting out the time in three separate rooms, but realistically...”