The Amygdala Syndrome (Book 1): Unstable

by Hunt, Jack

  “I intend to,” Devan said with a smile on his face. One of the military trucks was parked close to the building, close enough that if they made their way down a thick drainpipe at the side they could launch themselves on top of the canvas roof. From there they would slide down, hide beneath it and time their mad dash to the cafeteria building. Nick was the first to go down. Devan and Callie watched him as he descended and dropped down to the truck. When he hit the top, it gave way a little then bounced like a soft bed. He waited there flat on his face for a minute or two before giving them the thumbs-up. Callie was next. Once she landed, Devan wasn’t that far behind.

  As he was scaling down the pipe, Nick heard several soldiers talking to one another. They emerged from a side door. He couldn’t shout, or even whistle, all he could do was grit his teeth and hope to God Devan heard them.

  “We’re leaving in fifteen to collect supplies. The colonel wants to keep them here until FEMA runs its tests on the kids.”

  Nick eyed them, then Devan. Fortunately Devan had heard them and had frozen in place. He was literally above their heads, clutching hold of the black pipe. If they looked up they would spot him. One of them took out a cigarette and lit it. “That kid who was shot. I didn’t sign up for that.”

  “The day you entered boot camp you signed away your rights. Now just do your job and shut up.”

  Another soldier joined them outside to have a smoke. All any of them could do was remain still and quiet and hope to God they went back inside. If they stayed outside, it was over. Nick looked at Devan and stared back and got this smile on his face, the same kind he got when he was about to do something real stupid.

  “Hey assholes!” Devan yelled.

  Nick’s jaw dropped as he watched Devan scale back up the pipe like a monkey. The soldiers looked up and two of them rushed inside while the other attempted to scale up the pipe. That was their cue. As much as Nick didn’t want to leave him there, they had no choice. He knew what he’d done. He’d given himself up so they could escape as the chances of them being able to run across that parking lot without being spotted were slim to none. Nick nudged Callie and they climbed over the side out of view of the soldier and dropped to the ground. They rolled underneath for a second just to reassess the situation. One of the soldiers had now scaled up the pipe, and they could hear him shouting for Devan to stop. They knew it was now or never. Quickly they scrambled out and sprinted across the lot, slipped down the side of the cafeteria, entered Murphy Street and began running west as fast as they could. They would have to go three blocks before they could go south to Coffield Park.

  Nick clutched Callie’s hand as they dashed through house yards and took a shortcut to get to the park. All the while Nick kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to be pursued by cops or soldiers, but no one followed them.

  He could only hope that Devan got away.

  Brody and Gottman arrived at the Alpine City Police Department on Sul Ross Avenue to find even more military vehicles on site. Brody parked in front of a low-slung building next to a black-and-white. He only had one goal in mind and that was to speak to Chief Westlake. They entered the building which was absent of all police officers barring two, one at the front desk and another on the phone. It wasn’t a large department and only had eleven officers for a town of six thousand.

  “Hey Maise, the chief in?” Gottman asked the gal at the front desk. She thumbed over her shoulder and put her head down. Gottman led the way taking them through a series of corridors down to a large office at the corner of the building. He knocked once before opening the door. Inside was Chief Paul Westlake, and across from him was a large, overbearing man dressed in full military regalia.

  “Ah, Gottman, come in.”

  “Hi Paul,” Brody said as he walked in. He eyed the military bigwig and closed the door behind him. “We were hoping to speak with you in private.”

  “I was just about to leave,” the stranger said, rising from his chair, putting his cap on and turning to Westlake. “Remember what I said.”

  “Understood,” Westlake replied.

  “Gentlemen,” the stranger said before leaving.

  As soon as the door was closed, Gottman unleashed. “Chief, what the hell is going on?”

  He leaned back in his seat. “It’s out of my hands. They are here to stay until they have investigated an outbreak.”

  “An outbreak?” Brody asked.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And who was that?”

  “Major Tim Brown from the USAMRIID.”

  “The what?” Gottman spluttered.

  “The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.”

  Both of them stared back at him with a look of shock.

  “Um, Brody, your wife is at the hospital and they’ve quarantined it. They are also preventing anyone from leaving the town until they have isolated, and tested each and every resident.”

  “But my son is back in Marfa.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Brody regretted entering now. He should have figured this was going to happen. What other reason would they have checkpoints at the exit of the town? He pulled out his phone and tried to make a few calls, one to his son and the other to Jenna.

  “Don’t bother. They’ve shut it down.”

  He glanced up at Westlake and then looked at his phone.

  There was no signal.

  Chapter 9

  He’d given those bastards one hell of a run for their money. They certainly earned their wages that afternoon. Although Devan was pissed that he hadn’t managed to escape with the others, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that he’d stuck his neck out on the line. He felt like a real American hero, the kind his grandfather used to talk about. He’d told him countless stories of what it was like in Vietnam and some of the heroic acts of soldiers. Well, all that heroism, and puffed-up attitude, soon vanished when they nabbed him running across the football field. Yep, he’d managed to actually outrun the idiot who chased him on the roof, then zip by four more soldiers on the ground and another two on his way over to the field. Had it not been for the rubber bullet that hit him in the shoulder he was positive he would have escaped.

  Now he found himself chewing grass, and a mouthful of dirt. The pain was excruciating. He was sure they’d shot him for real. Without knowing what it felt like to be shot, he could only assume the worst. Yet before he could tell if there was any blood, two of them piled on top of him and one dug a knee into his back while the other zip tied him.

  “That was a stupid move, kid.”

  “Yeah, but I outran you assholes. Uncle Sam would be real disappointed.”

  “Shut the hell up and get up.”

  “And to think they spend thousands of dollars on training you buffoons, only to get outrun by a seventeen-year-old.” Devan laughed in between wincing in pain as they strong-armed him to his feet and forced him back to the school. One of them got on the radio.

  “We got him.” The soldier turned to him. “Any others out here?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, just me.”

  Devan looked off towards the cafeteria, wondering where they were now. He thought about his father and hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid. This wasn’t like the end of the world. It was a bump in the road, a mere hurdle that he would again jump over. There was no chance in hell they were keeping him locked hp.

  Pushed on, he grimaced in pain and one of the soldiers told him to stop whining like a bitch. “It was just a rubber bullet. You were lucky we didn’t shoot you with the real thing.”

  “Yeah. Like the guy you shot earlier.”

  “That was a rubber bullet, asshole.”

  “Yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night,” Devan muttered.

  They led him back through a set of double doors, down a hallway and into the gymnasium. That’s when he got a better view of the situation. All the students had been crammed in there, most had filled up the bleachers, the rest were
sitting on their butts while soldiers dotted around the room kept their rifles trained on them. He groaned inwardly. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.

  They cut his zip tie and shoved him to the ground.

  “Hey!” Mr. Harper said, sticking up for him. His protest was quickly silenced with a rifle barrel to his face. All he could do now was hope for the best but expect the worst.

  Out of breath, Nick and Callie made their way down Mesa Street, taking cover every so often behind vehicles as military trucks rolled by. The place was swarming with them. After a few more minutes of running, they spotted Devan’s father’s Chevy. He’d parked it just off the road, up the side of the baseball diamond. Double-timing it they hurried over, startling Emerick and Angela as they came up behind the truck and slammed into it.

  “Nick. Thank God. I thought you…” Emerick looked out his window and scanned the terrain behind them. “Where is Devan?”

  Still trying to get his breath, Nick hopped in and Angela passed him a bottle of water.

  “Nick!”

  “Emerick, give them a second to catch their breaths.”

  Nick chugged down the water like he was putting out an internal fire, and then handed it to Callie who did the same. After, he told him. It was like watching a balloon lose all its air. Emerick’s shoulder dropped and he got this faraway look in his eyes. “If he hadn’t done that there was a chance we wouldn’t have got away.”

  “Yeah. That’s my boy.”

  “What’s going on?” Callie asked, hoping they might have answers.

  “That’s what we’d like to know. Did you see anything, hear anything at the school?” Angela said, filling in for Emerick who looked too distraught to speak.

  “Nothing,” she replied.

  “I heard something,” Nick chimed in. All of them looked at him. “I mean besides gunshots, I heard one of the soldiers say that they were keeping everyone at the school until FEMA ran tests on them. One of them also mentioned killing a student. I don’t know if there is any truth to that but I did hear a gunshot.”

  Angela squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Oh my God, this can’t be happening. FEMA? What the hell are they doing in Marfa?”

  Emerick ran two hands over his face. “It’s pretty obvious. This has to be some kind of outbreak. Tests. FEMA. Soldiers taking away people who came in contact with Tim on the road. We’re looking at something infectious.”

  “Like the flu?”

  He shook his head. “No, something is different about this.” He turned in his seat. “Nick, did any of the students act differently? Out of character?”

  Before he could reply, Callie piped up. “Well, yeah, Toby Winters before he…” she trailed off and then continued. “He was acting strange like he was in a dazed state or frozen almost. Then when I clicked my fingers near him he acted as if he was scared. I mean really scared.”

  “That was before he jumped off the building,” Nick said.

  “Jumped off the school?” Angela asked.

  He nodded. “He wasn’t the only one. There was some kid who cut off his hand in the bleachers. He did it on purpose. I mean, who the hell does that kind of shit?”

  “People infected with something, or suffering from something.” Emerick jammed the gearstick into gear.

  “Where we heading?” Nick asked

  “To my place. I need to collect some supplies, and gear up.”

  Nick glanced at Callie, fearing the worst.

  Daniel Sorenson had worked for the CDC for close to nine years as an epidemiologist and in all his time investigating diseases, he’d never seen anything like this. The report had been sent over by Colonel Lynch twelve hours ago and he’d gone over with it a fine-tooth comb, reading the study that was done on the now deceased soldiers and the scientists’ theories on the breach. Similar to the CDC, the USAMRIID ran its own experiments with different virus strains, and although they said they were in compliance with the CDC and the WHO, he knew better. The CDC was only called in when they had screwed up, and this was a major one.

  Late last night he’d kissed his wife of twenty-six years goodbye and caught a red-eye flight out of Chicago. Fortunately he didn’t have any kids so he only had his wife to worry about. When he touched down at Midland Airport in Texas he was so exhausted he put his head down for a couple of hours in the back of a cab on the journey into Alpine. Even though the military had stressed the urgency of the matter, he needed to be awake enough to be able to handle it, and as of late he hadn’t been getting much sleep due to a new virus that the CDC was studying that had the potential to wipe out millions if it wasn’t properly stored or escaped the lab. He thought back to the accidental exposure of dozens of workers to anthrax in 2014 and some of the protocols that were not followed by lab workers. It was at that time he recalled vials of deadly smallpox being found in cardboard boxes in an unsecured refrigerator at a campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It was proof of how easily something so deadly could get out of hand.

  Now arriving in Alpine he could tell from the immense military presence that this was more serious than he’d anticipated. He’d been told to head to the hospital and to be ready to begin testing subjects. Colonel Lynch wasn’t even there to greet him when he arrived. He was escorted through a series of corridors that had been cleared of patients and led into an onsite lab where they had arranged to have everything he needed. Several army doctors and pathologists were on hand as were soldiers to watch over them for their own protection.

  It was one thing to read about the problem in a report, another to see a live test subject, one that had been exposed to the virus. While they had shared their theories on how it had escaped the lab, no one was any closer to understanding how it had spread from one person to the next because when their test had been conducted on the nine soldiers, each of them had been injected with the sample. Still, his job wasn’t to figure out how it had transferred, instead his task was to find a cure, and find out if anyone was immune to it.

  It was an arduous task that he thought he was up to dealing with until two soldiers brought in the first patient infected with what they were calling amygdala syndrome. The USAMRIID referred to it as that, as it affected the specific part of the brain that tackled the fight-or-flight survival instinct in humans. It was associated with many responses in the human body, specifically fear, arousal, autonomic responses, emotional, hormonal and even memory. Under the right conditions the amygdala would work to a person’s advantage but if a disease affected it, the repercussions could be devastating.

  The dark-haired, five-foot-four woman with ocean-blue eyes fought the soldiers every step of the way as they wrestled to bring her in. Once she was restrained to a chair for general observation, he took her through a series of blood, saliva, visual and hearing tests while he spoke into his phone to record what he was seeing.

  All he’d been told was that she was fine twelve hours ago.

  “On the surface, it appears she is suffering from a severe form of Urbach-Wiethe disease. There is a thickening of the skin and mucous membranes but also redness to the eyes. Would like to see what she looked like twelve hours ago.”

  Once he had conducted his observations, he handed her off to another doctor who would perform a brain scan that would allow them to get a better idea of what was happening. All the military had said was they were working on a new form of drug that would control fear and anxiety. And while the reports of incidents both within the military and in the public had demonstrated that people were showing signs of fearlessness, there was also an increase in anger. It was almost like they were going through a metamorphosis, which was causing subjects to become unstable. The question was, what kind of change was occurring and why had the drug failed?

  Out of the nine soldiers who were dead, six had died from gunshot wounds from the military trying to control them, the other three had died of natural causes. Sorenson looked at the report again. Blood seeped from eyes, nose and ears, and after seventy-two hours, their hearts stopp
ed from what they could determine was the release of adrenaline in their system. Essentially, causing a cardiac arrest.

  Eight more patients were brought in, each one with different symptoms and reactions to him. Some reared back from him in a petrified state, others looked frozen, and others were belligerent, aggressive and trying to lash out.

  As the day wore on he began to see some of the doctors and nurses in the hospital, those who had treated patients but weren’t exhibiting any signs of infection.

  They next patient was a nurse. He glanced down at the clipboard in front of him and looked at her. She was a good-looking woman, five-six in stature, athletic, early forties, shoulder-length dark hair, oval face with green eyes. Unlike the last one she was compliant and dressed in scrubs.

  “Jenna Jackson?”

  “That’s right,” she said yanking her arm away from an officer and then telling him she could take a seat by herself.

  “You work here at the hospital.”

  “Worked. Yes. Until the military strong-armed their way in.”

  “You’ve been in contact with several test subjects who are exhibiting flu-like symptoms: headaches, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, fever. Yes?”

  “I’m a nurse, what do you think?”

  He looked up from his clipboard and smiled. He understood why she was pissed. He would be if he were in the same position. The military would have told them very little about the disease, which would have led to frustration, confusion and eventually anger. He brought out a light and shone it in her eyes. “That’s good. Thank you,” he said, acknowledging that she was behaving well. “I was looking through the list of patients you have seen over the past twenty-four hours, two of them are exhibiting symptoms and yet you don’t appear to be any worse for wear. You’re either lucky or you might be of further use.”

  “Further use?”

  He studied her expression. Instead of answering that he said, “We want to run some blood tests, a quick MRI scan, and you should be good to go back.”