Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

  Corkie nodded.

  “Well, shoot one of the SOBs. Maybe they’ll think twice if they know we’re armed. After all, they’ve already got the supplies.”

  Corkie pulled out the pistol, a six-shot revolver. “Only trouble is I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with this thing.”

  “Then let me get out of the way first.” Diana moved behind him. “Fire when ready.”

  He brought the pistol up, stuck his tongue out in concentration and fired. There were two yells, one from the man on the rope, who dropped like a stone onto the rocks below and lay still. The other came from Corkie.

  “Are you hit?” Diana yelled.

  “No. I bit my damn tongue!” He stared at the body lying on the ground. “I hit him,” he said in astonishment.

  “Damn straight!” Diana clapped him on the back. “Fire a couple more.”

  Corkie unleashed several more shots. He didn’t repeat his lucky shot, but the men withdrew into the cave. Meanwhile, Lee worked his way through the rocks to the body and relieved the man of his rifle and ammunition. Now they had two firearms.

  After half an hour, it appeared the men had lost interest in them, as Diana had predicted. Cautiously, they moved farther down the rocky draw. If their predicament had been precarious before, it was now worse. They had only limited food and water, an armed party at their backs, and nowhere to go. Still, they were no worse off than half a billion other people in China, Diana thought morosely. Maybe better. At least they weren’t sick—yet.

  The car was finished—out of fuel. Logan left it by the side of the road, where it had plenty of company. Yet for every derelict automobile he passed, he’d yet to see a living human being. He estimated that if he could make twenty miles a day, he had two long days of hiking ahead of him before he reached the family group site.

  He carried a large canteen strapped over one shoulder and an AK-47 over the other, along with extra ammunition. He intended to avoid people at all costs but was prepared to kill if necessary to keep any diseased individuals from getting too close. They’d be doomed anyway, and a quick death might actually be a blessing to them. More important, as far as he was concerned, was that the fate of Diana and the others rested in his hands. He didn’t intend to let them down.

  He also carried Marcia’s satellite phone. There’d been quite a discussion over whether they should risk its loss if Logan were to fail. Without it, they’d be completely cut off from the rest of the world. It was hard to imagine how they could be more isolated than they already were, but the phone represented contact—the only way they could ever learn the outcome of the epidemic. But without the phone, the likelihood that Logan could find Diana and the others would be all but hopeless.

  The first morning he kept away from the highway, out on the bleak plains. It soon became clear, however, that there was no one around. Perhaps the great migrations had already passed by, or maybe most people had succumbed to the sickness. He returned to the road, which enabled him to make much better time.

  At one point, late in the afternoon of the first day, he spotted a large number of vultures circling in the next valley. He climbed the intervening hill and cautiously peered over the top. What he saw made his heart go cold. A small stream ran through the valley and along both sides of it lay thousands of bodies. He couldn’t be sure how long they’d been dead, but many of the corpses were already deteriorating in the rapid manner dictated by the disease. Men, women, and children were strewn about in total disarray, as though the sickness had somehow caught up to all these people at once, wiping them out quickly.

  He continued on soberly, not wanting to think that what had happened to all those thousands might very well have already happened to Diana and her group. He camped only when exhaustion overcame him, at nearly ten in the evening. He didn’t risk a fire and ate a cold dinner of smoked meat the monks had given him, washed down with a few mouthfuls of water.

  He made good time the next day and by mid-afternoon was approaching the Tarim site. He’d intended to search the site to see if there was anything he could use. There might be a vehicle that had been left behind, perhaps with a few gallons of gas in the tank. The chances were good that no looters would bother traveling all the way to the end of a dead-end road.

  But when he topped the last rise and stared down at the site, he froze. At least fifty people were lying about the campsite. At first he thought they were dead like the others, but then he saw movement. They were lethargic, perhaps starving, perhaps ill. As he stared at them, a cry went up. He’d been spotted. Several men rose weakly to their feet and began to stagger toward him, hands out, obviously beseeching him for help.

  There was nothing he could do, and avoiding them was an absolute necessity. With a heavy heart, he turned away, giving the Tarim site a wide berth.

  He began to climb the low hills toward the family group. Two hours more brought him to the site of Dr. Kessler’s great discovery. Now forgotten in the horrors that had overtaken China, the ancient family had already begun to return to the desert, the sands beginning their inexorable march back across the bodies. He wondered if anyone else would ever attempt to uncover them again. It didn’t seem likely.

  The site was sobering. It appeared to have been thoroughly looted of anything of value. The thievery was so systematic and complete that Logan felt it must have been done by still-healthy people. Nervously checking the horizon, he moved quickly through the devastated camp and began to climb a steep crag beyond. From the top, he had a panoramic view of the surrounding valleys that were pockmarked with caves. It was a perfect place for anyone to hole up and he quickly knelt down behind some rocks to avoid being seen.

  Taking out the satellite phone, he attempted to call the sat-phone in Diana’s possession. He tried for two hours, but raised only static. He wondered if the satellites had succumbed to lack of maintenance in the tumultuous world around them. He packed up and trudged a mile to still another ridge-top and tried again.

  This time, after just twenty minutes, he got an answer. He could scarcely believe it as Diana’s sweet voice filled his head.

  “Oh, Eric! My God, is it really you? Where are you?”

  “I’m close. In the hills beyond the family group. Can you direct me to you?”

  There was silence for a moment, and Logan thought he’d lost the connection. But then she was back. “What are you doing here? Eric—are you well-hidden?”

  He hesitated. She sounded worried. “I’ve come to take you all back with me to a place of safety,” he said.

  “Is there any such place in this nightmare world?” she asked, then quickly added, “Listen, Eric. There’s a group of well-armed men in the vicinity. They chased us away from our supplies. They don’t seem to be sick and I don’t know what equipment they have, but they could be listening to us or trying to make out your location.”

  “Okay. Understood. I won’t stay on long. But you have to tell me how to find you—we’ve got to risk it.”

  They quickly exchanged landmarks and realized they were very close. After a twenty-minute hike, Logan found them, located in a rocky hollow.

  Diana ran out to meet him when he appeared, leaping into his arms and smothering him with kisses, which he returned with equal fervor.

  “Oh my God! I thought I’d never see you again,” she said over and over.

  “I promised I’d find you.”

  “I know. I know you did. And I believed you’d try. But the world has gone mad since then.” She kissed him long and hard again and felt that same tingling in her toes she’d felt the first time.

  When he could detach himself, Logan’s gaze swept the rest of the group.

  “Is everyone here?”

  “Yes,” said Diana. “We haven’t lost a soul. Everyone’s been so good—so determined. But we need a real leader and now we’ve got one. What are we going to do?”

  He realized then how young they all were. While they appeared to have held up well, the group’s experience with any sort of
survival situation was nonexistent. They gathered around as Logan explained everything that had happened since he’d left. He never let go of Diana’s hand the entire time. They were stunned to learn the epidemic had gone worldwide, information Marcia had learned via the satellite phone. In turn, Diana told him of her experiences with Huang, her escape, and of their contact with the thousands of fleeing Chinese, not yet sick.

  “You’ve come a long way,” one of the young graduate students said uneasily. “How can you be sure you haven’t been exposed to the disease?”

  “We don’t know what level of exposure is required to contract the sickness,” said Logan. “For that reason, it’s best to avoid any contact at all. I never came closer than a hundred yards to anyone who was sick. But there are no guarantees. Too little is known about the epidemic. There may be a period when people who’ve been exposed are carriers, showing no symptoms. So even contact with seemingly healthy people is probably not wise.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Diana, “then we may all have been exposed when Lee and I met with the large group that was moving down below.”

  “No point in worrying about spilt milk. We’ll continue on in the best way we can. We’ve got a long hike ahead of us. In the best of conditions, it will take three to four days to reach the monastery. We’ll have to stay vigilant and avoid contact with others on the road. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll find transport of some kind to speed us along—but I wouldn’t count on it . . .”

  A loud cracking sound boomed through the valley and the rock beside Logan whined with the ricochet of a bullet. Everyone jumped and dove for cover as more shots rang out, spitting against the boulders all around them.

  Diana squirmed over beside Logan and lifted her head, peering up at the ridgeline. Seven or eight men were clambering down the hillside toward them, their weapons spurting fire as they came.

  “It’s the band that stole our supplies,” she said. “They must have been tracking us all this time.”

  Logan nodded calmly beside her. “They don’t seem terribly concerned about return fire, do they?”

  “We only had Corkie’s pistol. He got off a lucky shot with it, but they must not have even bothered to try to recover their friend’s body and weapon. They must think we haven’t any rifles or we would have used them.”

  “Time to disabuse them of that fact.” He peered over the rock at the men. They were spread out in a line, several yards between them, but weren’t making any great effort to use cover, counting on their constant fire to keep their targets pinned down.

  “I’ll give them a few more yards.” He stared at the men intently. “They don’t look sick, do they?”

  “No, and I hope they aren’t because we’ve been exposed to them through the body of the man Corkie shot and the rifle we took.”

  “All right.” Logan stood up in full view and calmly sprayed the approaching men with witheringly accurate fire from the AK-47. The attackers barely had a chance to look surprised before they were all dead. It was the most efficient killing Diana had ever seen, and as a reporter she’d seen a few military actions around the world. She stared at Logan with a mixture of pride and horror.

  He met her eyes and said, grimly. “It’s a new world, Diana. Kill or be killed. If you don’t adapt to it, you won’t survive.”

  She nodded soberly. From now on, everything would be different.

  “All right. I’ll do a quick check to make sure no one’s faking. Then I want each of you to secure one of their rifles. You’ve already been exposed to these people so there’s no point in not taking their weapons.”

  “Logan!” Diana sat up suddenly, her eyes bright.

  He turned to look at her.

  “They’ve got motorcycles! At the bottom of the next ridge—at least eight or ten of them.”

  His eyes grew wide. This was a huge stroke of luck. With the bikes, provided there was enough fuel, they could return to the monastery in three or four hours instead of the same number of days. In a world full of chaos and disaster, perhaps they were finally due for one small piece of good fortune.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CONTINENTAL FLIGHT 444 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles was an hour out from the coast when Captain Jonathon Hayes, a thirty-two-year veteran pilot, checked his fuel levels.

  “That tailwind saved us a lot of fuel,” he said to his co-pilot. “We’re making good time. Pass that on to the passengers. Tell them we should arrive forty minutes early.”

  Co-pilot Martin Savage made the announcement, then settled back. This was his first crossing of the Pacific, and he couldn’t believe how long and boring the flight was. “I miss my transcontinental flights. At least there was something to see down there besides whales.”

  Captain Hayes laughed. “That would be some monster whale to be visible from thirty-five thousand feet. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Boredom is the mother’s milk of this business. After thirty-two years I can tell you, the same old routine is what you want. The alternative might be more entertaining, but only if it doesn’t kill you.”

  One of the stewardesses came onto the flight deck. “Sir, there’s something strange going on with the passengers.”

  “What’s up, Jennifer?”

  “Well, I don’t quite know. We’ve got at least twenty or so who’ve asked for painkillers, saying they have awful headaches. One elderly man passed out and there are long lines for all the bathrooms.”

  The co-pilot whistled. “Sounds like some sort of food poisoning. We’d better call it in and ask for a medical detail when we reach LAX.”

  The captain spoke into his radio. “LAX, this is Continental flight 444 out of Hong Kong. We estimate arrival forty minutes early due to tailwinds. Request medical assistance upon arrival. We appear to have some sort of food poisoning on board.”

  “Roger, 444. How many are affected?”

  “Perhaps thirty or so, maybe more. Symptoms so far include headache, possible diarrhea, one man passed out.”

  There was a lengthy pause. Then, “Flight 444, this is LAX. You are ordered to turn back to your point of origin.”

  “What the hell?” The captain, co-pilot and stewardess all exchanged shocked looks.

  “LAX, this is 444. Please repeat instructions.”

  “444, this is LAX. You cannot land here. Recommend you return to place of origin.”

  “LAX, what the hell are you talking about? We’re out of Hong Kong and a little over an hour from your airport. We don’t have enough fuel to return to our starting point.”

  Again there was a delay. A different voice came on. “Flight 444, please describe symptoms of your passengers.”

  Captain Hayes repeated the symptoms. Jennifer opened the cockpit door to return to her duties. They could hear sounds of commotion outside. Another stewardess came rushing forward.

  “Captain, the passengers are acting strangely. Several fights have broken out. We can’t control them.”

  The captain took his headphones off and got up. “I’ll go take a look.” To his copilot, he said, “See if you can figure out what the hell they want us to do at LAX. Ask for an alternative airport, San Diego, hell, Mexico City if need be. We only have a couple of hours of fuel left.”

  He left the cockpit and followed Jennifer back to the first-class section, where a scuffle was going on. It wouldn’t be the first one he’d dealt with. A marathon runner and teetotaler, he’d complained for years that too much liquor was served on the flights.

  “Hey! What’s going on here? Everyone stop and return to your seats.”

  There was a momentary lull, then the fight began anew, as though nothing had been said. The captain stared in disbelief at the people in first-class. The well-dressed and usually dignified crowd seemed to have turned into a raging group of maniacs. Half a dozen men were now fighting each other. One woman was screaming as another man had crawled on top of her, actually attempting to rape her.

  Captain Hayes pulled the man off the woman and spun him a
round, preparing to strike him. The face he saw stopped his fist in mid-air. The man was clearly deranged. Spittle foamed at the edge of his mouth and his eyes were wild. The captain pushed him to one side and fought his way back to the regular seating section.

  Here, there was even less order. Three of the aircrew were attempting to break up a melee in the back of the plane. Unaffected passengers sat cringing in their seats, unable to comprehend what was happening. One man in the middle of the aisle was actually trying to open the door to the plane by pulling down the emergency escape lever. Captain Hayes rushed over and flung the man away from the door. He went tumbling to the floor and stayed there, moaning.

  Hayes took one last look around the battleground of his plane, turned and fought his way back to the flight deck. He entered and closed the door behind him, making sure it had locked automatically. Then he took out a key, opened a sealed drawer and removed a pistol. He placed it on the control panel in front of him.

  His second-in-command’s eyes grew wide. “What’s going on?”

  Captain Hayes didn’t answer. Instead, he put his headphones back on.

  “LAX, this is Flight 444. What the hell is happening to my passengers?”

  “444, listen to me carefully. This is the Chief Medical Officer at LAX. We believe you are carrying passengers infected with the epidemic that is now raging in China. We don’t know much about it, except that it often begins with the symptoms you are describing and, as far as we know, is always fatal.”

  The two flight officers stared at each other.

  “Holy Mother of God,” said the copilot.

  “LAX, please advise another airport where we can land,” said the captain. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and there was the beginning of a dull throb between his eyes.

  “Sorry, 444. No other airport in North America will accept you. All air traffic has been suspended. You need to return to point of origin.”

  “For Christ’s sake, LAX! We have no fuel! If we turn around we’ll go down in the middle of the Pacific.”

  There was a sudden whooshing sound and the plane banked sharply. Throughout the cabin, oxygen masks hung suspended above the seats. Jennifer, punching the coded entry buttons on the cockpit door, pushed into the cabin and barely managed to slam the door shut in front of a maelstrom of crazed passengers.