She moved closer to him, nose to nose, and spoke in a whisper, making sure he would read the anger in her eyes.
“Don’t you dare,” Janet said. “Self-pity doesn’t fit you. You kept all these people alive last night. And we’re all looking to you for more of the same. If you dare to turn pussy on us now, I’ll kick your ass from here to California.”
That got her a smile.
It’s a start.
“So, man up, and get with the program, big guy,” she said. “These folks here are scared. And you’re the sheriff. It’s your job to get them out of this. What’s the plan?”
As she’d known it would, her barbs were enough to sting him into action. The sheriff looked her in the eye, kissed her full on the mouth, and turned to face the room.
“You all know who’s out there,” he said, loud enough for all to hear. “And you all know we ain’t got much time for feds in this neck of the woods. But Doc here says that they know what they’re doing, so we’ll let them do their job. But I want you all to be ready to move fast if we need to. If another collapse starts, I want to be able to get out of its way. Are you with me on that?”
Everyone seemed to agree, and the arrival of the CDC had calmed some of those who seemed a little anxious. But there were many that only managed blank stares, and some had even gone back to sleep.
Janet was reminded of film of disaster victims; blank stares, bandages, and a siege mentality.
And that’s just what we are now. Victims. Maybe later we’ll be survivors. But I’ve got a feeling there’s a way to go yet before then.
* * *
“So what now?” Charlie asked. He poured himself another beer as he spoke, but Big Bill took it off him before he could start in on it and downed almost half of it in a single gulp.
“Now, you and I get some breakfast sorted out for these folks. It might be a long day, and a while before we get a square meal inside us. There’ll be plenty of time for drinking later.”
“Is that a promise?” Charlie said with a smile, but he gave the sheriff another salute, and followed as Janet and Bill went back through to the kitchen and checked out the contents of the store cupboards.
It was obvious they were not equipped for a long stay. The coffee at hand was enough for a couple of days, but by the time everyone had a breakfast the bread, milk and eggs would be mostly gone. The sheriff looked worried.
“I hope these CDC folks have a plan for feeding us, or moving us out, or both.”
They rustled up a rudimentary breakfast of eggs and the last of a chunk of baloney, with as much coffee and toast as they could muster, and fed everyone that felt like eating. To Janet’s dismay some of the folks didn’t leave their seats, just sat, staring listlessly into space.
They’re close to giving up. It’s just too much for them to handle.
After eating, some of the more mobile of the patients started to get agitated again.
“Come on, Bill. Do something,” one of them said.
And Ellen Simmons, despite her ordeal of the night before, seemed to be getting back her spunk.
“If you don’t get something moving, I will,” she said to the sheriff.
Bill didn’t answer, but Charlie laughed at her, which didn’t help matters any.
“Go right ahead, Ellen. You got three folks killed last night. Want to try for more this time?”
Janet was afraid that Ellen might indeed march out the door and start making demands of the CDC, but it was a scenario they didn’t have to worry about just yet, for before the woman could decide one way or the other, the CDC announced they were ready to begin.
* * *
It started with a knock on the door, so polite that Janet almost laughed out loud.
“Invite them in,” Charlie shouted. “We can make some lunch and have a nice chat.”
Bill answered the door. Two men, both of them carrying automatic rifles, stood outside.
“We’re ready for you in the main trailer,” one said. “One at a time, please.”
“And what if we’re not ready for you?” Bill asked. He got no reply, but both men tightened their grips on their weapons.
“We’re ready for you,” the other man said, his intent clear.
“And I don’t suppose you’re about to tell us what you’re ready for?” Bill asked.
“Just some simple tests. No one will come to any harm.”
Bill laughed in their faces.
“You ain’t been paying much attention, have you, boy?”
Janet saw the man’s grip tighten on his weapon.
This could get ugly.
She stepped forward to Bill’s side.
“I’ll go first,” she said.
Bill shook his head.
“You’re needed here,” Bill replied. “The wounded are looking to you…”
“Which is why I have to go first,” she said. “I need to show them there’s nothing to worry about.”
Bill wasn’t happy with her decision, but she knew he’d see the sense of it. And she had another reason for going first. She hoped she would be able to reason with the CDC scientific and medical staff, and get them to investigate the more outlandish of the previous night’s events.
As it turned out, she was only partially successful.
* * *
The two suited men escorted her the short distance across the parking area.
She saw three other suited figures inside the parked school bus, obviously taking samples and readings. She didn’t get a chance for a closer look as they led her into the largest trailer of the three that had come up the road. One of her guards motioned that she should get inside. She stepped up into what proved to a laboratory a modest town doctor could only dream of having access to. Even a cursory examination of the gleaming surfaces and the kit that sat on them told her that many millions of dollars had been spent just in this one trailer.
Another suited figure was inside waiting for her.
“Come and sit down, Doctor,” a soft female voice said. “This won’t take long.”
Janet couldn’t see much of the woman’s face through the visor, just blue eyes and a thin nose.
“And who might you be?”
“I’m Dr. Mullins. You’ve met the general, he’s in charge of the security side of things. I’ve been landed with making sense of the science.”
“I can help you there,” Janet started. “You need to check down in the mines and…”
Mullins put up a hand.
“We can’t act on anything you might tell us,” she said. “Your perceptions can’t be trusted in this kind of situation. As a doctor you know that?”
“But this is important…”
“And I’m sure you believe it. But last night we heard stories of Bigfoot, aliens, witches, ghosts, zombies, chupacabra and gremlins. All you’d be doing is adding another delusion to those we’ve already heard.”
The import of what had just been said hit Janet just as she was about to complain.
“Last night? You talked to other townspeople?”
“Some,” Mullins said. “We’ve managed to rescue a few people. They’ve all suffered some kind of breakdown, leaving them all with severe delusions. I suspect some kind of hallucinogen to be involved, given just how outlandish the stories seem.”
“Those stories have a hint of truth to them if you’d only…”
The doctor sighed.
“Please. Just let me do my job?”
Janet started to reply, then thought better of it, seeing the futility of even trying. She let the scientist get on with it. Over the next twenty minutes she gave blood, stool, skin, urine, and hair samples. Small patches of material were snipped off her clothes, soil was scraped from the soles of her shoes, and no notice whatsoever was taken of anything she had to say.
“Just promise me that you’ll keep an open mind,” she said to Mullins once all of the prodding, poking and jabbing was done.
“That’s also my job,” the scientist said. �
�Trust me, we’ll get to the bottom of this quickly. In the meantime, we’ll assess your wounded as they come in. We’ll quarantine any we think need more treatment than you can give them. Tell them not to worry. All of our equipment is state-of-the-art, and all of us have been trained specifically for situations like this.”
I doubt there have ever been any other situations like this one.
“And the collapses?” Janet asked. “How do they fit into these situations you’ve been trained for?”
Even through the protective visor, Janet saw the first flicker of worry in the scientist’s eyes.
“We have geologists looking into it,” she said. “They’re probably down there in one of the holes right now.”
Down there, and if I’m right, in mortal peril. But I’ll never get this woman to believe it. Not until she sees it for herself.
Janet decided to try a different tack.
“Would it be possible to see the quarantine area? If I see you’re looking after folks properly, it’ll make it easier for me to sell the idea on to those in the bar.”
Mullins nodded.
“I can see the sense in that,” she said. She turned her head inside her helmet and activated a comms device with her tongue.
They’ve got communications. So at least something is still working, somewhere.
She spoke too softly for Janet to hear, but the answer wasn’t long in coming.
“The general has given me the go-ahead,” the scientist said. “I’ll take you over there now. We’ll have to be quick…he gave me five minutes. But that should be more than enough time to put your mind at ease.”
It did anything but put her at ease. Mullins led them to a large field tent. The last time Janet had seen anything like it in size had been on a visit to a circus as a teenager. But there was little fun to be had here. Suited and hooded figures moved between rows of beds. There were over fifty patients, in varying degrees of mobility. Janet knew some of them to speak to, and recognized others by sight. But they all had one thing in common; the same blank stare that Janet knew all too well from the bar, the stare of victims.
She scanned the faces hopefully, but found none from the convoy that had been lost in the road collapse.
“Where are the rest?” she asked, scaring herself with the hitch in her voice and the tears that threatened to come. Seeing just how few had made it through the night finally made her realize the scale of what had unfolded. Her knees went weak and she staggered, having to use one of the camp beds to prevent her from falling.
Mullins was as her side immediately, and Janet heard both concern and fear in her voice.
She thinks I’ve been infected.
Janet managed to stand up, stiffened her back, and wiped the tears aside.
“Where are the rest?” she asked again, more insistent this time.
“This is all,” Mullins confirmed. “Apart from those of you in the bar, and the ones the general had stopped at the barricade.”
“Stopped? That’s a good word for it. Murdered is a better one.”
The scientist said nothing.
She disagrees with the general, on at least that point. That might be useful to keep in mind for later.
“Have you seen enough?” Mullins asked seconds later.
Janet nodded. The patients were being treated well enough. But she’d also seen the armed guards at all of the exits, and the tension in the men carrying the weapons.
There might be more folks getting stopped before the day is out.
15
Fred came awake with a start. He and the girl, Sarah, had slumped together, each of them keeping the other upright. She slept through his wakening.
And I didn’t dream, so that’s a bonus.
He looked down at the top of the girl’s head, at her mop of blonde hair. Although asleep, she still held his arm in a tight grip, and as he moved to change position her grip tightened, then loosened slightly when it was obvious he wasn’t trying to move away.
I don’t even know this girl.
But in a way, he did. He’d saved her life. And, although she didn’t know it, she’d probably saved his, or at least stopped him from going crazy, just by being there beside him. At least she had stopped him thinking about another blonde, and another mop of hair, the last sight as she fell away into the blackness.
Black thoughts tried to creep back in. He managed to move enough that he was able to get a smoke out of his pocket and light up without disturbing the girl any further, and the everyday act of getting the cigarette lit and going was enough to calm his mind, for a time at least.
The girl moaned and snuggled closer when he leaned forward to flick some ash off his smoke. He fought off a sudden urge to pet her hair again. Now that it was full morning, and the authorities, such as they were, were parked outside, Fred felt slightly better with his current lot in life. That was improved further when the sheriff put a fresh mug of coffee in his hand and sat beside him.
“Give us one of them smokes, lad,” the big man said.
Fred checked to make sure the sheriff wasn’t joking.
“You ain’t no smoker, Big Bill.”
“Not since I was your age,” the sheriff replied. “But today’s special. It won’t count.” The big man said the last with a grin, and Fred was surprised to find that he was grinning back. He passed the sheriff a smoke and lit him up. They sucked smoke in silence, before the big man leaned in and whispered.
“You saw something out back, didn’t you?” he said.
Fred didn’t speak, couldn’t get words to form.
“I saw it in your face,” Bill said. “You saw something, right enough.”
And there it was, just behind his eyes if he wanted to look, the old miner shuffling forward.
Fred is dead.
“Was it another demon?” the sheriff whispered.
Fred thought about that for a bit before answering.
“You know what, Sheriff? I think that’s exactly what it was.”
* * *
Doc came back seconds later, and Fred was amused to see the sheriff grind out his cigarette on her blind side and wave the smoke itself away with the back of his hand before turning.
“Your turn, Bill,” Doc said. “And best leave the cigarettes here. It’s a no smoking lab over there.”
Bill grinned ruefully and gave Doc a peck on the cheek before leaving to join the armed men outside the door.
“So, what’s up, Doc?” Charlie said, and got a laugh from most of those present which defused the tension that had been growing.
“They seem to know what they’re doing,” Doc said. “And there’s some other folks from town over there in the big tent. We weren’t the only ones to get out.”
That statement caused a flurry of questions, about friends and family, that Doc was hard-pressed to answer. Some folks expressed a desire to move to the quarantine area, even after hearing Doc’s misgivings. As Fred expected, Ellen Simmons wasn’t one of them.
“I will not be held prisoner in my own town,” she said, and looked around for support. Charlie gave her a mock salute from behind the bar, but that was the only answer she got, and she sat back down, a look of thunder on her face.
The sheriff came back not long after that.
Charlie surprised Fred by volunteering to go next. “Maybe they’ll give me something for this headache,” he said, pointing at the vivid wound on his scalp. “The booze stopped having any effect a while back.”
Fred was further surprised to find himself fretting while the older man was gone, a gnawing worry sitting in his stomach that was only allayed when Charlie sauntered back in fifteen minutes later.
“Next!” he shouted.
One of the more seriously wounded went next, having to be helped by the guards in a slow shuffle to the trailer. He didn’t come back. The guards walked across the parking bay ten minutes later and rapped on the door.
“He decided to go to quarantine,” one of them said. “Who’s next?”
The morning passed slowly. Fred felt no compunction to move, and Sarah showed no sign of waking up. He held her close, checking every so often that she was all right, and watched the people leave for their checkups. Some came back, some didn’t. Fred guessed they’d either been chosen, or even volunteered, for quarantine.
Ellen Simmons had other ideas, and after half a dozen had failed to return, she couldn’t keep herself quiet any longer.
“It’s a death panel, I’m telling you. We’ll never see any of them again; they’ll be dead and buried before you can say Jack Robinson.”
Charlie said it before Fred could.
“Ellen, if you don’t stop your mouth from running off, someone’s going to stop it for you.”
The woman was about to reply, but she chose that moment to look Charlie in the eye. There was something there she hadn’t expected, something Fred hadn’t seen before in the older man. There was a steely resolve, a certainty.
The soldier he used to be is even stronger this morning.
Fred was suddenly glad to be on Charlie’s side of the fence. The face he’d looked into wasn’t a man he wanted to mess with. It seemed Ellen Simmons had the same thought. She went quiet again.
The day wore on.
Finally there was no one else left who needed to get checked up.
“I already gave,” Ellen Simmons said dryly when Doc looked at her.
“Your turn,” Doc said to Fred.
He shook Sarah awake. There was a moment of panic in her eyes; then she looked up at Fred and smiled. Something melted in Fred’s chest, and he held her tight.
“The government men want to have a look at us,” Fred said. She stiffened at that, but he lifted her face up and looked her in the eye. “I ain’t going to let anyone harm you. That’s a promise. And I’ll be with you the whole time. That’s another promise.”
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