H10N1

by M. R. Cornelius

  Judith cut thick slices from a loaf of zucchini cornbread on the table and opened a jar of honey with the comb still floating in the golden syrup. Rick gobbled up a hunk of the bread with one hand while the other hand reached for another.

  “Better get a slice, Taeya,” Judith said, “before piggy here eats it all.”

  Seeing that Judith was right, Taeya reached past Rick for her own slice. Then she sat at the table, drizzled honey over the moist bread, and took a big bite. It was divine.

  Tenting his fingers, Devin pressed for more news from the outside world.

  “Haven’t you heard? There is no outside world,” Rick said, his mouth full.

  “That’s what we gathered. We used to hike down to Holly Grove for supplies,” Devin said. “Then things got weird. And it wasn’t because people were getting sick. I guess we were too isolated for that. But folks lost their jobs, no one was buying crops, supplies weren’t coming in, the power was on the fritz most of the time.

  “Then Mooney, the old man who ran the general store, got shot in the back because he wouldn’t give somebody credit for food. The folks in town took sides. Some said Mooney was right to refuse, others said he should have shown some compassion. They started taking pot shots at each other. Last time we went down, there were dead people laying in their yards, rotting.”

  Taeya nodded. “That sounds familiar.”

  “Mooney’s store was completely gutted,” Devin said. “Even the shelving was gone. We poked around some of the houses. They were stockpiled with his goods.”

  Judith came back to the table. “Myra Danbury was probably eighty years old, but her spare bedroom was stacked with tampons and baby formula. Figure that one out.”

  Taeya shook her head. “I guess she got there too late for the bagels and steaks.”

  “We’ve been through five or six states, and every store has been looted,” Rick said.

  “So it’s bad all over?” Devin asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” Rick reached over and poured himself another shot. “People got sick so fast that the hospitals couldn’t keep up with the dying. Nine-one-one systems crapped out the first week. People actually rioted outside the hospitals, demanding to be let in.”

  “Which was foolish,” Taeya interjected, “because they were already filled to capacity with the dying.”

  “So they opened school gymnasiums and sports arenas.”

  “Which ultimately became giant holding facilities for corpses,” Taeya said, “waiting to be cremated to keep the virus from spreading.”

  “That’s when some bozos decided to dispose of the dearly departed on their own homemade pyres in the backyard.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Judith banged a big pot in the sink and pumped water into it. “How have humans survived this long?”

  “Good question.” Rick tossed back his shot. He glanced over at Taeya’s empty glass and poured her one. She ignored his nod to drink up.

  “So, are there still bodies rotting out there?” Judith asked.

  “Not as many as there were.” Taeya hesitated before filling them in on the gruesome details. “Once the power went out, the government had no reason to fear the media attention. Drivers donned HAZMAT suits and hauled bodies to large incinerators on flatbed trucks.”

  Devin choked on his drink. He turned to Rick. “Is that what you were doing?”

  Rick assured him he had loftier responsibilities than hauling corpses.

  Devin slurped a whole slice of tomato into his mouth. “How did this whole flu business get so out of hand in the first place? I thought the CDC was on top of it.”

  “First of all,” Taeya slathered honey on another slice of bread, “you can’t blame this on the CDC. No one was prepared for what happened. Not the World Health Organization, not the government or the military. We had a game plan, but the North Koreans changed the rules.”

  She glanced from face to face to see if they’d let it go at that. But even Rick was waiting for more. Or he was too drunk to organize an argument. Taeya gulped down her shot of moonshine and continued.

  “From what we gathered early on, this whole pandemic was orchestrated. The virus was released in major cities worldwide, simultaneously. We believe as many as twelve, including Tokyo, L.A., Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Moscow. Five days later, the virus was everywhere.”

  “Jesus. What was the point?” Devin asked.

  “All the super powers were vying for superiority. Then, as you may recall, world leaders insisted North Korea get rid of their nuclear arms. Remember all those sanctions? And the U.N. peacekeepers that scoured the country looking for hidden sites? Did they really think the Koreans would just give up?”

  Bending to take her casserole out of the oven, Judith shook her head. “What a waste.”

  Taeya jerked a thumb toward Rick. “According to Professor DeAngelo here, this is a good thing. Nature’s way of weeding out the weak and infirm.”

  Judith dished a big scoop of corn pudding onto Rick’s plate. “Did you really say that?”

  “Hey,” Devin jumped in. “Maybe he’s right. Cull out the herd.” The guys bumped knuckles.

  “Morons,” Judith muttered.

  “I don’t get it, though,” Devin said. “How do body aches and fever kill so many people?”

  “You don’t really want details, do you?” Taeya pointed her fork at her food.

  Judith chuckled. “You think you’re going to ruin his appetite? Come on, enlighten us.”

  “Well…” Taeya laid down her fork. “ Basically, the virus attacks the respiratory system, but it can develop into complications like pneumonia, where the lungs fill with fluid and the patient dies of suffocation. Or it can affect the digestive system, causing vomiting and diarrhea, and the patient becomes dehydrated and dies. During the 1918 outbreak, people were coughing up blood, even bleeding from their ears and nose.”

  “Hang on now,” Rick said. “I’ve never even heard of this 1918 epidemic.”

  “A lot of people haven’t,” she said. “It came just as World War One was ending. I guess history books are geared more towards military victories than human suffering.” Neither Devin nor Judith seemed to take offense at her dig at the military.

  “Here’s a little factoid for you,” she continued. “Sixteen million died in the war. Fifty million died worldwide from the pandemic.”

  “You’re kidding.” Rick clunked his fork on his plate.

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I never kid about death. More people died in that first year than in the four years of the Black Plague.”

  Devin scraped the last bite of food off his plate and shoved it in his mouth. “So if you knew so much about that pandemic, why couldn’t you stop this one?”

  “Like I said, the Koreans changed the rules.” She propped her elbows on the table and folded her hands. “Every year, the CDC gears up for the type of flu we think will hit. Avian flu, swine flu. Remember when it was the fad to call it H1N1? Pharmaceutical companies develop vaccines and anti-viral medication to treat and control that particular virus.”

  Reaching over to the pan, Devin scooped out the rest of the corn pudding. “So the vaccine we had was worthless.”

  “Exactly,” Taeya nodded. “Now consider the viral shedding that took place. You’ve got the usual human-to-human spread—coughing, touching hands. That can occur for up to seven days before symptoms appear. And keep in mind that a virus can survive on a non-porous surface, like steel or plastic, for up to forty-eight hours.”

  Hooking his fork onto the edge of the pan, Rick slid it over in front of him and picked at the last few morsels of casserole clinging to the sides.

  “More good news,” Taeya said. “A virus can survive up to twenty-four hours after the host is dead. In colder climates, the survival rate can be as high as six days.”

  “So millions of people are dropping like flies,” Judith said, “and we don’t have a cure.”

  “That’s about it.” Taeya caught Rick eyeing her plate. She aimed her
fork at him. “People were dying almost immediately. Our workforce was seriously depleted. We had no one to run our power stations or water treatment plants.”

  “No one to pick food and process it into handy little boxes for us,” Judith added. She scraped the last bite of food off her plate, ate it, then slowly dragged her fork back out of her mouth. “I wonder how many people are still alive?”

  Devin picked up his plate and carried it to the sink. “I wonder what percentage of the living are the same assholes who got the world in the fucked-up state we were in before this pandemic hit?”

  He came back to the table and poured yet another round. How many did that make for Taeya? She’d lost count.

  “I wonder how many people died that never even got the flu,” Rick chimed in. “You had your little riot in Holly Grove, but you should have seen the people slaughtering each other in New York.”

  A depressing image popped into Taeya’s head. “One of the last newscasts I saw on television was of the riots in California. Some farmers had cornered a man who was stealing tomatoes from a field. They literally clubbed him to death over a basket of produce.”

  She tossed back her shot of moonshine, then stared into the empty glass. “That one incident seemed to sum up this whole mess. All these emotions were whirling and colliding. Pain over the loss of loved ones. Fear of who might get sick next. Panic over how long they could survive. Rage at the helplessness of the situation.”

  Her drunken philosophical rambling caused her a moment’s embarrassment. But Rick reached over, took her hand in his, and brushed his lips lightly over the top.

  “Then that vortex of pain and rage touched down and destroyed us,” he murmured.

  Taeya stared at Rick as if seeing him for the first time. Maybe it was the moonshine. Or Devin’s cash crop. Whatever it was, Rick was a different man out here in the wilderness.

  Once the sun set, Judith lit candles made from beeswax. Water had been heated, dishes washed and stacked to drain. The foursome was back at the kitchen table, and Devin was pouring shots again. The air was thick from the pipe of marijuana being passed around.

  “So, Taeya,” he said, “what do you think of our farm? Did Judith give you any tips for the Biosphere?”

  “Believe me, it would take years to learn everything Judith knows.”

  “And I guess you saw the goats. Too bad Gwendolyn isn’t still around.”

  Twisting her head to the side, Taeya shot Rick a little smirk. “Judith said you and the pig were pretty tight.”

  Rick glared at Judith, then took Taeya’s hand, pressed it to his chest, and raised a hand like a Boy Scout. “I swear I didn’t know the pig was a minor.”

  She laughed and bipped his chin with her finger. Good Lord, for an instant there, she almost thought about kissing him. She needed to stop drinking.

  “You know this whole Biosphere business is like a dream come true,” Judith sighed. “It’s like being offered a seat on the shuttle or spending a year on the space station.”

  Really? Taeya hadn’t thought of it quite that way. A giggle squeezed out as she imagined herself floating in space. Then she realized she was drunk.

  Taeya stumbled through the dark to the outhouse, the beam from her flashlight bouncing unsteadily across the ground. Dear Lord, she hadn’t been this inebriated in years. When she caught her head sinking onto Rick’s shoulder, she knew it was time to get moving and sober up.

  Once she plopped down on the wooden toilet seat, she cradled her head in her hands to stop the spinning. Closing her eyes, she blew out a boozy breath. She would be in no shape to get up early and head for Arizona. Was that Rick’s plan all along?

  A ripple of anger got her to her feet, but too fast.

  Leaning against the wall of the outhouse for support, she fastened her jeans, then tottered out. She was going to sober up, get some sleep and keep to her schedule. She sealed her resolve with a firm nod, and almost lost her balance.

  First, the sobering up. Maybe she would walk to the van, get a change of clothes, a couple Advil for in the morning. That was a start.

  The erratic flashlight beam made her stomach quake so she turned it off. But then she tripped on a root and went sprawling into pine straw.

  She giggled as she wobbled back to her feet. Thank God Rick couldn’t see her like this. He’d be merciless, or worse, he might try to take advantage of her. And she was so drunk, she might let him.

  She picked pine straw out of her hair as she continued up the path. At the driver’s door, she slumped against her shoulder, swiped the key card and punched in the four-digit code. The light blinked red.

  “Rats!”

  She swiped again, typed, and waited. Red.

  “Oh, come on!” she whined.

  On her third attempt she got the door open. The overhead light nearly blinded her. Squinting one eye shut, she reached up to the steering wheel and pulled.

  Then, as though she had somehow developed super strength, her body flew up and over the driver’s seat. She landed in a heap on the passenger side. How in the world—

  A man she’d never seen before leaped into the van. Before she could react, he yanked her off the seat, threw her face down onto the van floor, and drove a knee into her back.

  Typically, an attacker expects predictable behavior from his victim: she might fight back, or try to flee, or become hysterical. But Taeya did none of those things. She fought the impulse to struggle, and willed herself to go limp.

  It confused her assailant. In fact, he raised one of her hands and let it flop back onto the floor. Then with his knee still pinning her down, he said, “Tony. Do you copy?”

  “Roger that,” a voice said over some sort of two-way radio.

  “I’ve got the key card,” the assailant said. “The black-haired woman brought it right out here for me.”

  “The Mexican chick?” the voice asked.

  “Affirmative,” the assailant said.

  “What about the other targets?”

  “Hold your positions. Just make sure they all stay inside the house. I got me a little side project that’ll take a few minutes.”

  Taeya heard a chuckle over the radio. “Save some for me.”

  “Roger, that. There’s plenty to go around.”

  Clicking off the radio, he laid it on top of a box. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered to himself, “Plenty to go around.”

  His knee eased off Taeya’s back and slid down so that he was straddling her torso. Her heart raced. Holding her eyes shut, she blew a breath slowly out of her nose to calm herself. She had to concentrate on her options here. But then he shoved both hands under her chest, cupped her breasts and squeezed hard. Taeya couldn’t stop her body from tensing, and that reflex gave her away. Now, it was time to fight.

  Grabbing his hands with hers, she bucked and rolled, driving an elbow toward his groin as he tumbled over. She hit thigh muscle instead, but managed to at least leverage herself away from him. Twisting again, she pushed up, and for the split second that he was off-balance, she got to her knees and managed to get one foot on the floor. The gun cabinet was five steps away. Her Beretta was right behind her, in the door pocket beside the seat. But her assailant was blocking that option. It had to be the gun cabinet.

  She was nearly to her feet when he leaped onto her and drove her back down. His weight knocked the breath out of her. And this time, she was firmly pinned.

  He rested his chin on her shoulder and said, “Latino women are always fighters. I kinda like that.” Then he scooted closer and licked her cheek.

  She jerked her head up and banged his face, but it wasn’t much of a blow.

  He caught one of her flailing hands, then the other. While holding her wrists with one of his hands, he wrapped a zip tie around and slid it tight. The plastic cut into her skin. She focused on that pain to keep panic from taking over.

  The gun cabinet was no longer an option. She had to get out of the van. The ripping of fabric momentarily distracted her. She felt he
r tee shirt fall open. Her assailant used some of the material to gag her mouth. Then he eased his weight up, tucked a hand into the waistband of her jeans, and jerked her onto her knees. The side of her face scraped across the floor.

  Time was running out. She sensed him crouched behind her; heard the clink of his belt buckle. When he reached under her belly to unsnap her jeans, she dropped her bottom to her calves, like the child’s pose in yoga. Then using her thighs to push upward, she rose with a sharp jerk and drove her head back again. This time she felt a crunch.

  She didn’t expect to do any real damage, but he did let go of her pants to clutch his nose. She rolled again, and this time she drew her foot back and kicked full force into his crotch.

  He tumbled to his side with a groan.

  Staggering to her feet, she lurched for the driver’s seat, wriggled past the steering wheel, and plummeted headfirst. Her shoulder slammed into the ground, dead branches scraped skin from her face, but she didn’t have time to deal with the pain. Inside, she could hear her assailant stomp toward the door.

  She ran.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “No, no, no!” Rick yelled. “Now listen again.”

  With a spoon in each hand, he tapped out the song’s beat on the drinking glasses in front of him.

  Devin shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before.”

  Throwing the spoons on the table, Rick sighed. “It’s the Suicide Spiders ‘Tits ‘n Tats’.”

  “No way!” Devin hooted. “That goes bum-badda-bum-bum—”

  “That’s what I was playing!”

  Judith patted the table. “Hey, hasn’t Taeya been gone a long time?”

  “Jesus,” Devin snickered. “I hope she didn’t fall in.”

  Rick tried to remember where she’d gone, but it wasn’t coming to him. “Where is she?”

  “You moron,” Judith slurred. “She went to the outhouse.”

  “Oh, yeah.” As Rick nodded, his whole body began to weave. He stopped before it got out of control.