by JD Dutra
“So far we’re implementing it successfully, Sir, it happens shortly after they get to the camps,” said Secretary Valdez. “The medical staff just tells them it’s for their benefit as its part of a health boost cocktail as directed by the Health Department. The fact they aren’t aware of the chip’s existence has made our job a lot easier. The tracking system that goes along with it is fantastic, we can pinpoint someone’s location within two feet of where they are.”
“Very good,” said Barry, “If any of them get out of line, our drones can find them anywhere in the world.”
The Director of the Center for Disease Control, a balding man in his 60’s, tensed up in his chair immediately.
“What can the CDC tell us about all of this, Dr. Collins?” Barry asked.
“What we’ve learned about this pandemic in the last ten days is that it first appeared in Africa as a local disease. We’ve been analyzing samples of the organisms for over a week now and it is a new type of virus which constantly changes its protein structure so people can never produce antibodies to stop it. The curious thing is the velocity of this virus in that it multiplies faster than anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Mr. President, in the worst scenario it can take a person from being perfectly healthy to having an organ failure or heart attack in a matter of hours, and in the process it flourishes onto the person’s skin and bodily fluids in extremely high concentrations to add to the risk of contamination. Some people do take longer to die and thereby lies one of the most critical problems. The most powerful feature is that it lodges itself in the lungs and every time an infected person exhales, they are breathing out a cloud of the virus that can live for several days. This virus is incredibly resistant to living outside the host, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“How would you explain the healthy people?” Barry asked, more to keep appearances for the people around him than for his own curiosity.
“The tests on the people who are naturally resistant to the virus are inconclusive, for some reason this new virus can’t attach to their cells. The virus fails to penetrate them and change them from within into a copy of the virus itself, it just lingers in a person’s body without multiplying so it never does them any harm. They would just feel normal, like us in this room.”
Barry nodded slowly, realizing what the Doctor just said didn’t match anything Lamar had told him.
“I thought maybe we naturally produced a special antibody to fight this virus off? Something a vaccine can be made out of?” Asked Barry, trying to clarify the doubt in his mind.
“That is incorrect, my team has tested hundreds of subjects and none of them has an antibody that can fight off this virus. What happens is that the virus enters a person’s body, but it fails to attach to a healthy cell and multiply. However, that doesn’t mean these people are out of harm’s way since no one, as far as I know, is immune to the amount of diseases the millions of unburied corpses will bring.”
The last few words from the Doctor’s lips felt like needle stings inside Barry’s ears, his dark eyes were staring into nothingness, wondering what this all meant.
Why would Lamar lie to me?
“I’d like you to test me personally Doctor Collins,” said Barry.
“Of course, Mr. President. All we need is a blood sample.”
“If anyone here wants to get tested by Dr. Collins’ team just let him know. Would that be alright, Doctor?”
“Of course,” the old man replied with a polite smile.
“Let’s take a five minute break, when we come back we’ll go over our foreign policy agenda,” said Barry before sliding his chair away from the table, others did the same or turned to one another to speak.
Barry stood up, walked to one of the sound proof phone booths inside The Situation Room, which were originally designed so that his personnel or foreigners could have a private line to speak sensitive information without being overheard by the people in the room.
He dialed Lamar’s number. Two, three rings went by, and nothing. Lamar had always picked up the phone, even late at night during the last seven years, even if it was to tell Barry he’d call him right back. Barry tried again, the phone rang, and no one came on the line. He tried a third time with the same result.
He dialed a different set of numbers, seconds later a woman’s voice came on the line.
“Robyn?”
“Yes, Barry?” Came the annoyed reply.
“How are the kids?”
“Barry Jr. is in bed with a fever, Latoya is fine.”
The tone in Barry’s voice changed from tensed to alarmed.
“And you didn’t think to call me? What if —”
“Calm down, Barry,” she interrupted. “I already had the White House doctor and his assistant check him, they said it is nothing.”
Barry’s heart began to race and once more he felt totally alone. He trusted no one.
If they do this to me, I’ll blow everything up.
Chapter 34
Phoenix Suburbs, Arizona
Sunday, October 25th, 2020
5:51 P.M.
After leaving Daniel Cross in the violent and diseased hands of Whitey the day before, Nathan drove to a hotel near his home, checked in using a different identity, one he had bought years ago on the streets. He had nothing but the clothes on his body, his work laptop, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, his 1911 pistol and a full mind.
That afternoon, Nathan felt like everything was collapsing around him. His marriage, career and country, everything he had tried so much to keep together had now run through his fingers like water in the Chihuahuan desert’s sands.
After one too many shots of whiskey he called his wife and asked about his girls, they were still feverish but they were asleep. An argument soon followed and Nathan told her about his trip to the Tent City Jail, laughing while he told his scheme of delivering Daniel into Whitey’s hands. He asked her how she could cheat on him twice, but she had no explanation besides weeping.
The alcohol had also loosened his tongue about Chad and Nathan told her the details of how he tracked him down days after he got a confession out of her. He found Chad’s home address, kidnapped him from his bachelor pad then made him dig his own grave out in the desert before knocking him unconscious into the hole. That was the first time he had buried someone alive. He made sure to point out that the mouth that had been on her was now full of sand, rocks and maggots, but Daniel’s mouth would be filled with something even more repulsive.
Later on he didn’t remember what Isabella said to him after that or even if she was still listening. All he remembered was the feeling of relief when everything he had against her was finally thrown in her face.
Sometime after the talk with his wife ended, he tried to call his boss Tom, but there was no answer. The thought of his last mission having something to do with the mysterious deaths that ravaged the country was too much to bear, but then again this was a worldwide phenomenon. Maybe the bloody desert rocks and the finger was just a coincidence. He went into a dark place inside his mind, which he could only get to when fueled by alcohol, and the desire to find out exactly what happened faded from his mind for the rest of the evening.
He was exhausted from his days walking in the desert plus his body was unaccustomed to hard drinking, and after doing so through most of the night, he felt ill by the time the sun started coming up. Nathan collapsed asleep and when he woke up it was late in the afternoon, he had a pounding headache and absolutely no answers.
After catching up with the news he finally got dressed, putting on the same pair of black tactical pants and polo shirt he wore the day before. He knew that the modern day plague, as it was being called, had consumed many if not most of the people in Arizona. He had been inside his hotel room for almost 24 hours, but he had no idea what kind of world waited for him outside the walls. He wished he could have used his work laptop to do research but he didn’t want his web activity or his location to be known. The rep
orts everywhere from the mainstream news channels to social media indicated the contamination and death happened, in most cases, in the space of just a few hours. Whatever was causing it was in the air itself, people said you could taste it and in the greater Phoenix area of 4.5 million people, there was no hiding from it.
He thought about the faces he saw at the State Fair, no doubt the great majority of those people would already be dead and then he thought of his daughters and about how he was too busy being angry at his wife to be the father they needed him to be. He wished his wife were right, that somehow the fever his girls had was just mild food poisoning.
He finally left the room and found the hotel was strangely deserted. No staff or other guests were out in the lobby when he came down. He walked outside and the sun was hidden behind thick white clouds. He looked up and realized no airplanes were flying above, but there was a sickening smell of decomposition in the air, it was heavy and left a sweet and foul taste in his mouth.
He got into his car, a brand new black Audi, and tried dialing his wife on her cell and home phone, there was no answer. He fastened his seat belt and adjusted his conceal carry weapon. The image of him sticking the gun to the side of his head came to him as a faint memory.
Did I really do that while I was drunk last night?
He turned the car on and made his way home, he was just three miles away. The streets were deserted and only a handful of cars moved slowly in the distance here and there. Most businesses were closed, a few had their doors open but there was no one coming or going. There was a car parked in the middle of the road, the people inside of it either asleep or more likely dead.
He drove into his neighborhood and realized that normally the kids would be everywhere, playing basketball, riding their bikes and scooters, but today house after house had their windows shut and their curtains drawn, and the putrid smell hung heavy in the air around his own street.
He pulled up onto the driveway, walked up to the front door of his home and when he opened it, the unmistakable smell of rotting meat stirred his gag reflexes, he instantly opened his mouth to breathe through it. He knew someone had died in his own home, his heart immediately began to pound inside his chest. There was an unsettling quietness in there, saved for the faint sound of a TV show coming from somewhere in the house, it was evening but none of the lights were on. He looked around and everything was just like he’d last seen it. The same dishes in the sink, his oldest daughter’s homework and pencils on the kitchen table, and some play dough next to it, arranged into a shape he couldn’t recognize, no doubt by his precious little daughter.
“Isabella? It’s me,” Nathan said but the words bounced off the walls and no answer came.
“Girls?”
There was no sound of feet or movement. Nathan pulled out his gun and held it out in the ready fire position, his muscular arms extended in front of him. He began to walk briskly from one corner to another, trying not to make a sound, he cleared the living room first, then the dining room and the guest restroom. His girls’ bedroom was empty and now he was close enough to hear the sound of the TV coming from his bedroom. His oldest daughter’s favorite cartoon was on. The room’s windows and curtains had been shut, the room was in total and complete darkness save for the bright glow of the large screen TV on the bedroom wall. He eased into the room, rapidly clearing it, and that’s when saw his wife lying in bed in between his daughters. Neither of them moved or made a sound.
With a trembling hand he turned on the light and the air escaped his lungs when he saw their faces. There was dried vomit mixed with blood everywhere, his oldest daughter’s face was barely recognizable, her skin was greenish-blue, her eyes had sunk into her skull and there was a dried yellow secretion on the corners of her eyes. Her bright blue eyes had no life in them, they stared wide open in the direction of the TV. He placed a hand on her forehead, she was cold. He brushed her eyelids shut as tears began to fall down his cheeks.
He leaned over the bed to touch his little Emily, her temperature was colder than her sister’s as she lay motionless, she’d probably died in her sleep. When he finally looked at his wife, he realize she had lost all her beauty. Her color was different than the girls, she was pale but there was moisture on her forehead. He touched her and her eyes flashed open.
“Nathan…” She said through a raspy, dry throat.
“Isabella…” He caressed the side of her face, all anger towards her gone from him. Her skin was burning with fever and her lips were lightly stained with the blood she’d coughed up. There was a yellow pasty substance in her eyes, so much of it, he picked up a tissue from a box on the nightstand and lightly cleaned them. Once she was breathtakingly beautiful, stunning, but now she looked like an animated cadaver. She looked like she would pass away any moment now, there was no use taking her anywhere or calling for any help that would likely never come. It was at that point that something deep in his gut told him that he really had something to do with this illness that had killed his own family.
He tried to fight it with logic, rationalize the fact that this was a worldwide infestation, but the nagging guilt was like a heavy boulder that crushed all air out of his lungs.
“I’m so sorry, Isabella… for everything,” he said before sitting on the edge of the bed next to his older daughter’s body.
“Me too, Nathan… I love you,” she said before coughing in pain, and a fresh layer of dark blood coated the inside of her mouth.
“I love you too… So much,” he said while tears poured from him like they never had before.
“Hold me,” she said, attempting a smile, and as he looked into her eyes and he knew she understood that she would die soon. He lay next to her on his stomach, with one arm seeking to embrace all three of them. The guilt of his absence and the remorse for not devoting more of his time to them caused the worst pain he had ever felt. He was shaking with agony.
He cried over them, sometimes with his eyes shut, other times while looking into their faces. After a while, Isabella’s face suddenly stiffened, her eyes half shut. He sat up and placed two fingers on the side of her throat. There was no pulse.
“Isabella?” He said before lightly shaking her, he kneeled on the bed and tried to massage her heart, but the softness of the bed only made her body bounce and blood began to seep from her mouth with every push.
She’s gone.
He sat on the bed, wailing in pain, looking at his family and wishing he could take everything back, hating himself for not choosing a lifestyle that gave him more time with them. He stayed with his girls in the room for what it seemed like an eternity. His hand went to his gun and he felt the weight of it in his hand, his mind wondering about how he had taken so many lives with a gun before and maybe that was a good way to go. In a second all the pain would vanish and, if there were Heaven and Hell, maybe he’d get a visit from his family again while he burned for all he did.
It seems so easy.
He checked his gun’s chamber, there was a round there, a hollow point .45 bullet. He inhaled deeply, weighing his options. He tried to clear his mind and began raising the gun to his head, but suddenly there was a loud knock on his front door.
He tried to ignore the pounding on his front door but something told him to go and see who that was. Still holding his loaded gun with one hand, he tried to walk without making any sound as the knocks on his door got louder. He got to his living room, pulled back a curtain of a window next to the door just slightly to look at who was standing by his front door. Once he saw the man on the other side, the sadness in his heart was immediately replaced tenfold by a wild frenzy.
He flung his door open and his gun was already pointed at the man’s head, the rush to pull the trigger was so overwhelming it made him shake with anger, but he needed answers. The tan man looked terminally ill and he was holding himself up with hands on either side of the front door’s frame.
“Good evening… Nathan,” said Nazeer with a mix of worry and anxiety on his voice
.
“Show me your hands right now!” Nathan screamed with glaring eyes, doing everything possible not to kill his visitor where he stood. Nazeer was dressed in khaki shorts and a tight fitting polo shirt, he was sweating and his smell was nauseating.
Slowly two thin, bony hands let go from the sides of the door, and went up in the air. On the left hand, where his small finger should’ve been, there was a blackened stump of flesh and bone oozing with pus.
“You bastard! What have you done?” Nathan screamed while shaking with anger.
“What have we done… Nathan,” said Nazeer with fear and something else in his voice.
“How the hell did you find my home?”
“What would be the only way that made sense for me to find your exact address Nathan Greene?” Nazeer said with an accented voice not to mock him but to try to sink understanding into his mind. “I was supposed to kill you, but I’ve come to realize I need you alive…”
“Turn around!” Said Nathan, still not believing who was at his door.
“You do not look sick, as I suspected,” said Nazeer, who now had his eyes to the street, his back to the front door. He heard Nathan locking it.
“Shut your mouth and walk! We are going for a ride,” said Nathan.
The street was deserted and night was falling as Nazeer began to walk slowly, the sound of keys and the lock of a car door disengaging filled the silence between the two men. An expensive looking Audi in Nathan’s driveway came to life.
“Get in, on the front passenger side.”
“I don’t have much time, you must listen to me Nathan.” “I will get the answers I need out of you,” Nathan said while Nazeer pulled the latch of the door open, he slowly sat down on the comfortable front passenger seat, his hands still chest high where Nathan could see them.
“Open the glove compartment, get the handcuffs in there and lock one of your wrists.”
Nazeer was silent now and simply did as he was told.
“Loop the empty handcuff through the armrest handle on the door, then lock your other wrist with it. Do it right or I’ll put you through plenty more pain —”