The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart

by Harrison, William Hale

  “Great. Is there any indication that this thing is starting to taper off?”

  “Quite the contrary, sir. It seems to be accelerating.”

  “And do we have any idea what percent who are infected actually turn? Who die from this?”

  The head of USAMRIID looked at the Sec/HHS uncomfortably. She nodded.

  “Sir,” she said, “At this point we really can’t say. The way this thing is able to hide from the body’s immune system, we really don’t know who’s carrying them and who isn’t, because we can’t develop an antibody test. However, if you consider only the people who show symptoms, it might be as high as 100 percent. The one thing I can tell you is, the spores are still out there, and people are still breathing them in.”

  Sec/Nav leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hand over her face. “Oh man. We are so screwed.”

  Pasteur Institute, Paris, France

  April 25th

  Dr. Eilene Renaud gripped the scalpel and swiftly but expertly made an incision starting above the left ear, across the forehead, over the right ear, and down toward the back of the head. She tipped the head to one side and continued the incision, passing over the gaping bullet wound at the base of the skull. Tipping the skull in the other direction, she completed the incision by joining it to where she had begun.

  A droplet of sweat dripped down her forehead and itched slightly, but of course she was unable to scratch it in her bulky racal suit. She shook her head vigorously to dislodge it and resumed her work.

  She grabbed the scalp firmly at the font edge and pulled. It tore away with a ripping sound that always reminded her of Velcro. The scalp came away cleanly and she set it aside, then she picked up a rotating bone saw and deftly followed the path of her incision around the skull, careful as always not to cut too deep to avoid the possibility of damaging any tissue underneath. She stuck a flat bladed instrument similar to a chisel into the thin gap left by the saw blade and twisted. The top half of the skull came off with a pop, exposing the brain inside.

  The sight was revolting. Instead of a healthy pink, this brain had already shrunken to about three quarters of its normal size and was an ugly mottled blue-gray. A normal brain is soft and somewhat spongy. This one felt much firmer, like boiled cauliflower. She pulled the brain forward and used a scalpel to sever the optic nerves and several others holding the brain in place. Then she made a cut through the tentorium ceribelli, which is a tough membrane that holds the cerebellum to the occipital bone at the base of the skull. With a quick movement of her hand she severed the top of the spinal cord and the brain came free.

  She set it on the scale next to her and weighed it. Her assistant, Claude, moved in and carefully photographed it at several angles. The entire autopsy was being videotaped of course, but she wanted close up shots of the parasite in action.

  She removed the brain from the scale. With another longer scalpel she made a deft cut, beginning under the front of the brain, up the middle between the two lobes and down the back. With a tug, she pulled the two halves of the brain apart, exposing an object about the size of her thumb. It was a deep bluish gray, and reminded her of a long skinny grape, a very unhealthy brain stem.

  “There you are,” she said. She bagged it, labeled it, and set it on a metal tray in an open drawer nearby. Using her elbow, she pressed a large button near the drawer and it slid into the wall. The sample, she knew, would be taken down the hall where it would be cut into razor thin sections and examined under a microscope.

  She checked the computer monitor hanging near the stainless steel autopsy table. The body, a man’s, was the last of a family of seven—his mother and a teenage son, plus a wife and three small children. The mother, the son and the man had all turned about the same time and attacked and killed the woman and the three children.

  “Rene,” she said to the room, “please bring up the intake files on the last seven patients. Slowly. I want to check each one of them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a disembodied voice answered. One by one the files popped up on the screen.

  “Rene, please call Dr. LeDuc and have him meet me in the conference room in twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes later, she sat in the brightly lit conference room with Dr. Henri LeDuc, a short, slight, bearded man with thick glasses and a look of keen intelligence. She turned toward the monitor on the wall and brought up each of the seven photos of the deceased family in turn. “The mother and the husband are both from Algeria. The son is from a previous marriage, also from Algeria. But the wife is Somali. And all three of the children of course have her genes.”

  “So what are you suggesting? An inherited immunity, on the mother’s side?”

  “I think the possibility exists. Of course it could be a coincidence, but I think it’s something that bears further research at least.”

  “I agree.” He squinted his eyes shut and stroked his beard, a sign that she knew indicated he was lost in thought.

  “Our sample size is far too small here. I’m going to reach out to the WHO, the CDC in America, the NIID in Tokyo and some others. If there is such a thing as inherited immunity, we need to find it and see if it can be replicated in others.” He beamed at her, and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Good catch, Eilene!”

  Wheaton, Illinois

  April 28th

  Dan Booth finished reading the papers in front of him and sighed. According to the charging document, a woman at a Target store had grown irate at a store cashier and began shouting and becoming abusive. A man behind her pulled out a pistol and shot her through the head. He claimed to investigating officers that he “thought she was turning.” They’d been married for 27 years.

  Dan was tall, like his brother Jack, both nudging 6’2’. Unlike Jack he was slim and wiry. When he was younger he did a lot of CrossFit, but with a demanding job and two little girls he found he didn’t have much time for it or, really, the interest. He now worked out three times a week over lunch hour at the huge fitness center right down the street, mostly cardio and some weights, at least when he wasn’t in trial. At 35 he still had a full head of sandy blond hair, inherited from his mom. His dad’s male-pattern-baldness hadn’t shown up, at least not yet, although his hairline seemed to be receding slightly.

  One of eighteen assistant state attorneys at the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office, Dan oversaw felony prosecutions. He had started working there straight out of law school at Northwestern, and at first it was all scut work: answering phone calls, retrieving court documents, even fetching coffee. However, he’d been a standout on his college debate team and a star at moot court in law school, and he quickly separated himself from the pack. Two years ago he’d been made Head of Felony Prosecutions. There had been some calls from private law firms looking for a hot young litigator, but long before he ever applied to law school he knew he wanted to be a prosecutor. He’d been to lunch several times lately with some of the guys from the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago and last time they met, Rob Connelly, the Assistant DA in charge of Criminal Prosecutions, had stopped by the table and said, “Been hearing some great things about you, Dan. I think we need to talk.”

  He’d gone home to Terry that night elated. The US Attorney’s office! He’d always dreamed of being a federal prosecutor, going up against the really big bad guys and their high-powered lawyers, and it had suddenly seemed a real possibility. Three days later the Makoko video hit the internet and the whole world tilted sideways. His dad had gotten himself kicked out of India, and his Uncle Owen, tough SOB that he was, started talking about aliens and whooping cranes, and people were going crazy.

  He carried two phones, one for office business, and the other was his personal number, which he seldom gave out. His personal phone chimed; a text from Uncle Owen. Owen was definitely not a texter. “DAN. IMPORTANT. WATCH NOW. Terry’s a star.” A video accompanied the text. It was apparently taken by someone sitting in their
car, which was clearly stuck in traffic. Dan hit Play and the action started. You could see a naked man, apparently Infected, running between the stopped cars. He was pounding on the windows, obviously trying to get at the people inside. Dan watched as he ran up to a silver minivan and began to bang on it.

  He frowned. “Hey, that looks like—” when the driver’s window erupted in a spray of glass and the thing’s head snapped back. Its legs gave out, and it tumbled to the pavement. It began to crawl in the direction of the camera, when the van door opened and a woman got out with a gun in her hand. It was Terry, dressed smartly in a business suit. She took a step toward the Infected and shot it in the back of the head. The video stopped as the bullet began to exit in a bulge below the thing’s left eye. It advanced a frame at a time and you could see the cheek erupt and gore splatter toward the ground. Then it went back to normal speed, and the thing pitched forward on its face. He watched as Terry calmly lowered the gun and got back into the van.

  He immediately called his wife, but the call went straight to voicemail. He called Uncle Owen. Instead of saying hello, Owen answered the phone with, “Heck of a video, isn’t it? Been up twelve minutes and it already has … wow, 23,000 views.”

  “Is she okay? Where is she? Where are the kids? What’s going on—”

  “Relax, son. I have the kids at your place. Terry called me right after it happened and asked me to pick up Hannah and be here when Lainey got off the bus. Everything is fine.”

  He grabbed his coat and headed down the aisle toward the front door. He passed a group of people huddled around a monitor on someone’s desk. A few of them were wearing masks, but most weren’t. When the word got out that the spores were already everywhere and too small to be stopped by them, most people had simply stopped wearing them. Companies around the world were now pumping out effective masks, but they were going to the military and first responders first. And “important” people, meaning high-ranking government employees and anyone with enough pull, or money, to get one.

  A young man in shirtsleeves exclaimed, “Whoa, sick! Play it again.”

  Darlene Carter, a longtime friend and fellow prosecutor, noticed Dan walking by and said, “Dan, isn’t that—”

  “Yes it is. I’m leaving. Tell John I’ll check in with him later.” John was the State’s Attorney and a good friend as well.

  “Will do. If you need anything...”

  “Thanks. Thanks, Darlene.”

  When he arrived at home, he came around the corner hoping to see his wife’s minivan, but instead his uncle’s old fire-engine red Ford Explorer sat in the driveway. Dan felt a lump of worry form in the pit of his stomach. Terry was always home by now. She’d arranged with her employer to handle their online marketing from the office most of the day and from home the last couple of hours, so she could pick up Hannah from day care and be home when Lainey got off the school bus. In truth she didn’t get much work done those hours with the girls home, but the company didn’t mind. She was extremely good at her job. Since her hiring as Online Marketing Director two years earlier, their website business was up an astonishing 38 percent. Her bonus last Christmas had been huge.

  He walked into the living room and found three-year-old Hannah curled up in Owen’s lap, watching cartoons and eating goldfish crackers. Lainey lay on the floor using Tank as a pillow, with her feet up on Sonny’s back. The dogs adored her. The girls both smiled brightly when they saw him. Hannah ran to him and he scooped her up in a big hug, while Lainey said, “Hi Daddy!” and went back to watching TV.

  He gave Hannah a kiss and handed her back to Owen, and bent to collect another one from Lainey and give the big dogs a quick pat. “Uncle Owen, have you heard anything from Terry? I tried her phone but I couldn’t get through.”

  “She’s fine, Dan. She should be along soon. Hey Hannah, let your poor old uncle up so I can go talk to Daddy.” He stood up and when he did, Tank and Sonny raised their heads with an “Are we leaving?” expression. “Stay, boys,” he said and they settled down again.

  He gestured for Dan to follow him into the next room to their computer. “Terry’s a big hit on YouTube. It’s all over Facebook too.” He moved the mouse and the computer screen came to life. It showed Terry’s YouTube video.

  Uncle Owen refreshed the screen. “213,000 views in a little over an hour. Your wife’s a big hit on YouTube.”

  Dan shook his head. “Wow.”

  “Is that the Smith & Wesson Airlite I gave her?” The lightweight S&W is the perfect purse gun, Owen thought. It’s fourteen ounces fully loaded and feels like a toy, but it has no slide to mess with and a safety that you can flick off easily with your thumb. It’s chambered for .357, but he’d loaded Terry’s with .38 Specials, and the old man made sure they were Speer Gold Dot Hollow-points, his favorite brand in that caliber. They drilled deep and made a big hole, which was all you could ask from a bullet. “Those .38 Specials sure make an impression, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, she really likes that gun.” A week before Dan had persuaded her to start carrying the gun in her purse. She already knew how to handle one. In the Booth family, shooting was a family sport. Concealed carry laws were largely being ignored now, as infections were cropping up around Chicago. There had been a couple hundred so far, and it seemed like there were two or three a day now.

  Dan looked at his watch. It was 4:30. “Do you know where she is?”

  “She called me a few minutes after it happened. She asked me to pick up Hannah and be here for Lainey, which I was happy to do. She said the cops wanted her to come to the station to make a statement.”

  “She went? And she didn’t call me? Unbelievable!” As a prosecutor, Dan well knew what any decent lawyer could tell you. If you ever did anything that anyone could construe as being in the slightest bit illegal, never talk to the cops without a lawyer present.

  “Relax. She already called Darius and he was going to meet her at the station. She said she didn’t want to get you involved because she didn’t want the cops to think you were big-footing the case.” Darius Whitehall was a close friend and neighbor. His daughter Kiesha and Lainey were best friends. He was also a very competent criminal attorney.

  Dan tried to call her again, but it went right to voicemail. They heard the front door open. Both girls screamed “Mommy!” and ran to the door.

  Owen called out, “Hey! It’s Annie Oakley!”

  Dan hurried to the front door and hugged his wife. “Babe! Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just a little shook, I guess.” she said, smiling wanly. She looked tired, and walked like she was carrying a great weight. He put his arm around and he steered her toward the living room.

  She lowered her voice and asked him, “Who’s Annie Oakley?”

  They had pizza for dinner, which was a hit with the kids. After they were put to bed, Terry finally turned her phone on. There were 33 voicemails and 92 texts. The police had released her name about an hour before, and everyone was reaching out to her. All the networks, including the cable channels, wanted to speak with her. There was a nice text from her boss telling her to take a few days off if she needed it. Neighbors and friends offered support.

  Dan called the state’s attorney’s cell phone and the call went to voicemail. “Hey John,” he said. “It’s Dan. You probably heard about Terry and the shooting already. We’re going to take a day or two off and help her deal with it. If you need me for anything, I’ll be at home. Thanks.”

  Terry’s phone rang and it was Jack. That one she answered. “Hey, Jack-Jack, how are you? Oh, you saw it too? Me? I’m fine. No really. I probably won’t get a lot of sleep tonight, but I’ll be okay… No Jack, honestly. I know, you have to ask, but honestly no interviews. I really don’t want that… I’m sure you didn’t. Just tell them I’m a total biyatch and I refuse... Really? Oh that’s great! When? Love you too, Jack.” She hung up. “The news people at Reuters hav
e been all over him about getting an interview. He also says he’s coming back to Chicago, probably tomorrow. On assignment.”

  The doorbell rang and light flooded the foyer. Owen got up and looked out the living room window. “Looks like a news crew. I’ll get rid of ‘em.”

  He opened the door. A woman with amazingly white teeth and a bright red pants suit thrust a microphone in his face. “Hi, I’m Amanda Tandy with Eyewitness News. I’d like to speak with Terry Booth. Is she here?” She tried to peer around him into the house.

  “Mandy Tandy? Man, what kind of parent would do that to a child?”

  She frowned at him for a split second, and then she was all smiles again. “Please, I really need to speak to Terry.”

  “Terry? Terry Booth? She doesn’t live here anymore. They moved about two weeks ago.”

  She faltered for a moment. “Then who are you?”

  “Me? I’m the guy telling you to leave.”

  She glanced over at the driveway where Terry’s van sat, a fist-sized hole in the driver’s side window. “Sir, I can see that’s her car—”

  “Look, sweetheart, I’m trying to be nice to you. She’s had a rough day and she doesn’t feel like talking, okay? Now vamoose.”

  He went to shut the door but she thrust her microphone in his face. “Sir!” she demanded. “The public has a right to know--”

  “Take your capped teeth and your fake tits and get off the property. Now.”

  The cameraman, a big guy in a Blackhawks windbreaker, scowled fiercely and said, “Now look here, asshole...”

  “Boys!” he said sharply, and suddenly there were two heads next to his thighs. “Pass Auf!” Both the dogs swiveled their eyes to the woman and bared their teeth. Tank emitted a low rumbling growl.