by J. L. ROBB
Melissa wasn’t going to make it, as Jeff sat on the horn of the dark-gray GTR. What the GTR had in speed, the horn lacked in decibels; and Melissa did not hear the horn.
Palms now sweating all over the new, leather steering wheel, Jeff ever so briefly wondered if Melissa was listening to her iPod head phones, something he used to constantly complain about when they were married.
As a runner, Melissa thought nothing of inserting her state-of-the-art “Ear Buds,” iPod’s latest earphone technology, and heading out on a six-mile run. Jeff wasn’t much of a runner but would often follow her in the car to make sure some whacko didn’t grab her, sneak up from behind, though of course no sneaking would be necessary. She would never hear the stalker-killer, because she was listening to Beethoven on V103’s Classic Favorites.
Today Jeff didn’t have to worry about a serial killer sneaking up on Melissa, because the Charlotte-Atlanta Superliner was about to take care of that fate. Melissa’s new Ear Buds did a great job of blocking out external sound, just like the advertisement stated, and she never heard the Superliner’s horn either.
The Superliner engineer must have seen that the green Range Rover had no intention of stopping, not realizing Beethoven’s Symphony #5 was about to reach climax. The engineer’s P5 horn system was loud, but it could have been louder except for the federal government’s regulation limiting the decibel level at 110, not a lot louder than a leaf blower.
By now Jeff was at full sweat mode; and apparently Melissa had noticed the dark-gray sports car following her and accelerated, leaving Jeff in the dust on Water Works Road.
When the locomotive of Amtrak’s finest slammed into the Range Rover, it was simply a matter of physics from that point on. Hitting Melissa broadside in the driver’s side, Melissa was relishing the last few seconds of her most favorite symphony as the flagship of the Rover line burst into a wedge of bright-orange flame as it traveled down the tracks, forming a horizontal cross-bar, similar to the crucifix she had just seen in the Passion Play, wrapped around the front of the massive engine, molded to the engine’s outer structure as tightly as OJ Simpson’s glove that didn’t fit.
The emergency braking system, already activated by the engineer, stopped the train about a half-mile down the track, Range Rover still wrapped around what had been the shiny, silverish engine, only now it was charbroiled, along with the Range Rover.
Jeff pulled off the road, knowing in his heart and mind what was to be, when a propane tank Melissa had picked up for the grill, exploded with a mighty blast and fire storm, flames leaping higher than the adjacent Sugar Hill water tower.
The ringing didn’t register at first, Jeff running toward the conflagration that had been Melissa, the ex-wife he still loved with all his heart, only now his heart was empty.
The second ring stopped Jeff in mid-stride as he rolled over in his king-sized bed, grabbed the landline phone, dropped it, found it and answered.
“Jeff, are you awake? I know it’s early buddy, but I forgot to call you back yesterday. It was a hell of a day at Goddard is all I can say. Jeff, are you there? It’s Chad.”
Jeff didn’t recognize his friend’s voice at first as his heart raced and the sweat continued to pour from his skin.
“Jeff? Wake up man. What’s wrong?” Chad heard the phone drop.
“Chad? I’m sorry Chad.” Jeff now waking, he slowly realized that the frightening scenario he had just experienced was only a dream. And he was happy that it was a dream, for he could not bear to lose Melissa, or Audry. He couldn’t even remember if Audry was in the Range Rover.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I just had the worst dream of my life, it was way too real. What’s up?”
“I’m flying into Atlanta. Can you pick me up?”
Jeff, still having a little trouble concentrating, was shaken by his near-reality dream, wondering why he hadn’t been concerned that Melissa’s new husband might have been in the Rover. He hoped, but didn’t pray, that it wasn’t a premonition of some kind. He had those sometimes.
“Chad, please. Please don’t get me in that Atlanta after- Easter weekend traffic. It’s bad enough normally. Can’t you just take MARTA? I’ll pay the three bucks if you’re broke.”
When Jeff moved to Atlanta from Charleston, S.C., MARTA was the new transportation concept to reduce the legendary Atlanta traffic. That was in the late seventies, and Maynard Jackson was mayor of Georgia’s capital city, modern not by design but because the “Old Atlanta” had burned to the ground, thanks to General William Tecumseh Sherman, September 2, 1864.
Atlanta was rebuilt on top of the Old Atlanta and now stood as a jewel on the horizon of Southern cosmopolitanism, modern buildings and gorgeous large trees, not the water oaks with hanging Spanish moss like those in Savannah and Charleston, but nice none-the-less, adorned her streets with flowers and spring pollen galore.
“What does MARTA mean?” Jeff asked the taxi driver, a Liberian according to the ID plaque mounted on the front dash.
“Moving Africans Rapidly through Atlanta,” the driver said, emotionless; so Jeff didn’t really quite understand what he had just heard.
“What? I know it doesn’t stand for that?” The black driver laughed out loud.
“I am just kidding, monsieur. It’s a joke around here, told by the white people. We still think it’s funny, and mostly true, I have to admit myself.”
Jeff liked the accent, maybe even more than he liked the Island accents of the Caribbean and Bahamas. He didn’t like the comment however and knew, had the Liberian thought about his ancestors, their suffering and indignities, he might not be joking about MARTA. Jeff wondered if the driver even knew that Liberia was born out of the African geography, purely for the freed slaves who wanted to go back home, but didn’t know or remember where home was.
“So what does it really mean?” Jeff asked again.
“Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority, or something like that,” and Martin the Liberian laughed again.
One thing for sure, MARTA had not worked, because Atlanta traffic was worse than ever. Chad interrupted Jeff’s thoughts.
“OK, if you don’t want to personally pick up your old friend, let me rephrase that, your long-time friend, then I will do the MARTA thing. I should land about 4:30 this afternoon.”
“When you get on the train, call me. I’ll head to the Dunwoody Station and will meet you at the front entrance, not the side.”
Jeff hated the side entrance, because he would have to park his new GTR and walk to the entry; and that would invite the door-ding demon to leave his mark. Seemed to Jeff that some folks just lived to let their kids slam the door into your brand-spanking-new car. It never failed.
“Okie dokie, I’ll call. We have a lot to talk about?” Chad was upbeat, maybe, or nervous, though Jeff had known Chad Myers for years and had never seen the guy nervous, except one time years ago, about anything.
“Like what?”
“Well, like your flash in the sky that no one saw? Or the huge flare headed our way in less than three days? Or the newly discovered, soon-to-be Near-Earth ‘Objet,’ also headed our way?”
“Objet?” Jeff liked the way Chad could segue from English to French. “What kind of ‘objet?’”
“Like the kind of object we have not seen before, very stealth-like, maybe composed of graphite because there isn’t a lot of reflectivity, and very large.”
“Great!” Just what we need, Jeff thought, a broken worldwide economy and now a killer, desolation-driven asteroid headed for Earth. Super.
“You are always the bearer of bad news, my friend. I will see you this afternoon, and you have a lot of nerve expecting me to drive to Hartsfield- Jackson Airport in four-thirty traffic!”
“Jeff, don’t forget to bring some ladies with you. Have you told all the girls in Atlanta that I’m coming to town?”
“Not yet Chad. I just don’t want all those women driving by my house all day, looking for Wild Willy
Briggs! We would end up with a bunch of cat fights in the middle of Sugarloaf Parkway.”
Like his friendship with The Admiral, Jeff’s friendship with Chad went back a long way, since the Navy days. Chad was unusual in several ways, but one thing especially unique was Chad’s ability to actually see the wind, wind-intensity varying by color.
“The colors are almost transparent,” Chad would later explain.
While stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, Chad Myers, Bill Briggs and Jeff met at the Officer’s Club one evening after stopping a bar fight, something that happened a lot more than one would think, in an officer’s club.
Jeff had a bloody nose and suturable lip after the fight, though he kept saying, “You should see the other guys.”
Chad had to admit, the four other guys looked a lot worse, having started the fight with a few racist comments toward not only Blacks but also Hispanics, something that Jeff had not considered officer-like and was eager to let the butt-heads know better as he presented Etiquette 101 with a solid-right to the solar plexus of one bigot, only to have the other three butt-heads jump on him. Bill Briggs and Chad Myers had come to his rescue.
Jeff had always been a pretty good fighter, having boxed a few rounds in Officer’s Candidate School and having a little redneck in his genetic makeup. He was, however, not good enough to take on four drunk soldiers who were not conscious of pain.
Bill (William), Chad and Jeff became friends that night and began hanging out together almost nightly, chasing the girls like all good sailors do.
Yokosuka had plenty to do and lots of pretty little Japanese ladies, maybe not quite ladies, hanging around anything Navy, hoping for marriage to an American soldier, sailor, marine; made no difference. Yokosuka was good duty, the largest U.S. Naval base in the overseas world and the centerpiece of the Pacific Fleet, but it was not known for its nightlife, at least in the sixties.
The most active local bar was Tommy’s Bar & Grill and was frequented by sailors and marines, which of course led to an abundance of fighting. Jeff, Chad and Bill were a part of that group, not usually the fighters, just the drinkers.
One evening after leaving at closing time, on the walk back to Jeff’s car, a 1966 bright- orange Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, all three laughing at how ugly the car was, Chad stopped in his tracks and looked west. The night was dark, though not moonless, and quiet as a mouse.
“We gotta get the hell out of Dodge,” was all Chad said, scanning for places to get out of Dodge and in to. Jeff would remember years later this night, the only time he had ever seen Chad Myers in an anxious state-of-mind.
Bill and Jeff looked at each other in confusion, not knowing what Chad was talking about as Chad’s eyes continued their scan of surrounding structures. There were no sounds, not even night birds or the crickets, which was highly unusual.
“There’s a wind storm coming, take my word for it. Follow me.” And Chad took off, heading back to Tommy’s Bar & Grill, Jeff and Bill in hot pursuit.
CHAPTER FOUR
Samarra Russell was rushing, she was always rushing, into the Dunwoody Starbucks, her regular morning routine. Dressed in black jeans and a conservative, pink tank-top, at least as conservative as a tank-top can be and still be a tank-top, she grabbed the Emory Times from the Starbucks news rack, a new and widely circulated newspaper about the goings-on at the CDC and Emory University. Spotting Jeff Ross by the front window, Jeff who was normally reading one of the three newspapers that he read daily, she noted that he was staring out the window in somewhat of a daze.
“Am I interrupting anything?” she asked as she sat down at Jeff’s small round table that was barely adequate for one small person; but Samarra was a small person, about five-foot one and a size two, max.
“Hey Samarra! No, not at all.” He slid the extra chair from beneath the table. “Now my day is off to a great start!”
He was glad Samarra interrupted his thoughts about the disaster the week before, the pretty, young Muslim student who he could not save, in spite of all the medical training he received in the Navy as a member of a SEAL team. She was dead when he lifted her from the floor, killed by a four-inch hailstone that plummeted from the darkness of the sky last week and through the shattered windows of the Georgia State Astronomy Lab.
Jeff had great respect for Samarra Aziz Russell, a Pakistani Jew with dual citizenship in Pakistan and the United States, which was somewhat of an anomaly. There weren’t many Jews living in Pakistan now, probably less than two hundred or so.
When Israel became a country-of-its-own again, in nineteen forty-eight, nearly two thousand years after the Romans burned Jerusalem to the ground and shipped all the Jews out to faraway lands, Israel reacquired some, but not all, of her original borders from the time of King David’s and Solomon’s kingdom.
The two thousand Jews in 1948 Pakistan came under constant, violent attacks; and the few synagogues that remained were burned. Most Jews left Pakistan, migrating to Israel, the United States and England.
“So how are things at the CDC? No new plagues to worry about, I hope?” Jeff asked, admiring as he always did, Samarra’s unusual beauty, the olive skin of a Semite and the blackest hair a woman could have.
“Nope, nothing to worry about, other than swine flu, Ebola, AIDS, MRSA, Hepatitis C, the missing smallpox cultures. Should I go on?”
Samarra Russell was Director of Research of Communicable Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, located just up the street from Emory University Hospital and Research Center. She was a scholar of exotic diseases from the most remote parts of the planet. With double PhD’s in biochemistry and cellular microbiology, Samarra had been with the CDC for ten years. She was blessed, not only with her beauty, a head-turner to say the least, but also with her substantial brain tissue and one hundred forty IQ. She and Jeff became friends after meeting at a Mensa function in Los Angeles seven years earlier.
Jeff controlled his physical admiration for Samarra, placing it in the purely platonic file of his brain. Not long after meeting her in Los Angeles, he met her husband, who he grew to like tremendously.
Samarra was happily married to Jack Russell, not the terrier but a United States Senator from Cumming, Georgia. Jack was on the Military Finance Committee and was keenly interested in the application of nanotechnology in the military spying environment. The United States and Israel had jointly developed nanotech spybots, flying cameras the size of the ordinary housefly and would soon have spybots the weight and size of an anopheles mosquito, nearly invisible.
At 31, Samarra was twenty-three years younger than Jack. It was his second marriage, and everyone knew he had his “arm charm,” that she married him for his money. They had been wrong however, as she refused to give up her career. She loved working with communicable diseases. In a way, she and Jack both loved working with small, microscopic bugs, just one of their many commonalities.
“Hadn’t heard about any missing smallpox cultures.” Jeff knew that couldn’t be good. “From the CDC?”
“No, thankfully, though in the whole scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. It’s missing from USAMRID at Ft. Detrick, Maryland; so it’s been hush-hush. You did not hear this from me.” She smiled, but it was a concerned smile.
Jeff knew a little about the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRID), the only U.S. Department of Defense laboratory equipped to study extremely hazardous viruses at biosafety level 4. Staffed by military and civilian researchers, groundbreaking knowledge of smallpox and anthrax viruses, primarily because of military weapon applications, led to unprecedented security after the anthrax attacks following 9/11.
“How in the world could someone steal smallpox from USAMRID?” Jeff asked the question in disbelief, because of the security.
“Not sure, but it happened. The amount that is missing is undisclosed, but rumor has it….” her voice trailing off to a whisper.
“Let me explain the lethality of smallpox, are you in
terested?”
Jeff shook his head to the affirmative.
“Smallpox emerged in the human population, possibly as early as 10,000 B.C. and killed about 450,000 Europeans a year in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Smallpox was responsible for a third of all blindness at that time, caused by corneal ulceration; and eighty percent of infected children died a hideous death.
“During the twentieth century, smallpox is credited with three hundred million deaths, or more, and in the 1950s there were an estimated fifty million cases a year.
“A vaccine was developed by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796 after he observed that milkmaids who acquired the cowpox virus did not get smallpox. A world-wide vaccination campaign was launched, and smallpox became the first and only human infectious disease to be completely eradicated. At least it was completely eradicated until recently when several cases were reported in Africa and India.
“Because of the extreme pain and suffering caused by the smallpox virus, and the boil-like pustules that form on the face and in the mouth, many immunologists believe this was the disease that befell Job.”
“Who?” Jeff didn’t know Job.
“Job! You know, as in the Book of Job in the Old Testament? Helloooo, anybody home?” Samarra knew that Jeff, a member of the high-IQ Mensa organization, had to know about the Book of Job.
“You know, and I guess I’m wondering why sometimes, I’ve never read the Old Testament, or the New Testament for that matter, at least all of it, or even most of it.”
They had never really discussed religion, but Samarra was surprised.
“Well Mr. Mensa, you should read it! It will add to your literary knowledge and better your life. I have to go, or I’m going to be late for my staff meeting.”
And as quickly as she appeared, Samarra kissed Jeff on the cheek and rushed out the door. Jeff returned to the paper he had been reading before losing his thoughts to the young Muslim girl he couldn’t save.