HOT ZONE: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller (The Zulu Virus Chronicles Book 1)
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It also provided an additional layer of anonymity to his “unofficial” travels. NevoTech would have to conduct some serious surveillance and private investigative work to figure out where he had vacationed this week. Landing field records were spotty at best, especially at the fields he utilized. He paid in cash for everything, not that he had incurred many expenses. Mainly fuel. Piecing together this puzzle would be an expensive effort, not that he put it past his employer. They had a lot riding on his research.
NevoTech’s stock price had been in a steady decline prior to the announcement that the company would take the lead in developing several prophylactic, boosterable treatments and vaccines for the most pressing bioweapons threats. Once the new vaccine direction was announced, profit projections skyrocketed, floating in the high tens of billions of dollars and bringing the stock price with it. The bioweapons-related field represented a new era of blockbuster drugs, with guaranteed government contracts and an unlimited public demand. All the more reason to take measures like a private aircraft to ensure the secrecy of his travels—and job security.
Chapter Five
David Olson turned his pickup truck onto the main road that cut through Highland Ridge, eager to sink into his well-worn recliner later tonight and watch the Cubs game. As much as he mourned packing up their gear and saying goodbye to the idyllic lakeside campsite, by the time he’d hiked three-quarters of the way back to the parking lot, his mind became focused on one thing: heaving that monstrosity of a backpack into the pickup bed and getting back to the comforts of home. His son had felt the same way.
The mind had a funny way of shifting gears. One minute you couldn’t get enough of nature. The next you couldn’t stand another minute of it. Same thing had happened on their Florida trips back when he was married. Nobody wanted the last night to end. They always enjoyed a few happy hour cocktails beachside, followed by a leisurely sunset dinner. A late night walk in the sand to dip their feet in the ocean one last time. They’d practically have to drag Josh back to the hotel room. The next morning, it was back to reality—everybody looking forward to getting home.
Unfortunately, with both of them tired after the long hike out of the forest, initial enthusiasm for the campus visit idea pretty much died on the short drive to Bloomington. Stuffing themselves at the Steak ’n Shake near the College Mall killed it completely. Neither of them felt like exploring the university on shaky legs and full stomachs, so they bypassed the university and beat most of Indianapolis’s rush-hour traffic. They hit a few backups northwest of the city on Interstate 465, but managed to get to their turnoff before the masses escaped from work.
“What do you feel like for dinner?” said David.
“Pizza,” said Josh. “Definitely pizza.”
“Pizza it is. I’ll order us a loaded with cheesy bread for the Cubs game.”
“Two orders of the cheesy bread?” said Josh. “With blue cheese dressing.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said David. “I need to run out to Kroger after we offload the gear and clean up. Grab some groceries for the rest of the weekend. You want omelets for breakfast?”
“That’d be great, Dad. Maybe some hash browns?”
“Patties or the shredded kind? Or home fries?” said David.
“Uhhhh…”
“I’ll get both, and some cheddar cheese to melt over them.”
“Awesome!”
“Just don’t tell your mother,” said David.
His ex-wife had been on a bit of a healthy-eating kick for the past year, declaring war on carbohydrates, cheese and sugar. Rather than push back against her requests to honor their son’s forced diet changes, he politely agreed to do his best at the house. When they were out at a restaurant, all bets were off. He wasn’t about to play menu police with his boy. Pizza and cheese-smothered hash browns hardly qualified as “doing his best,” but he’d been informed by Josh that, “Mom occasionally falls off the cheese wagon.” As far as David was concerned, his son had more than earned the right to eat whatever he wanted after spending more than a week in the woods.
“What about some nachos? They’d go great with the game,” said Josh.
“Now you’re pushing it,” said David. “Plus you can get those tomorrow night at the movies.”
“Sweet,” said Josh as David turned the pickup onto their cul-de-sac.
Their two-story, red brick and vinyl siding home became visible as soon as he completed the turn. Two houses from the end of the long cul-de-sac, he was tucked away nicely in a quiet, friendly neighborhood, with protected forestland behind his house. Protected by town zoning laws that required a strict percentage of “green space” in all of the neighborhood developments. Unless a tornado knocked the trees down, a possibility in central Indiana, the forest wasn’t going anywhere. A good thing, because he valued the privacy it gave him, as most cops did.
“Looks like the grass took a hit,” said Josh.
“Yeah. I kind of expected as much,” said David. “Great weather for camping. Not so great for the lawn.”
He’d set the sprinklers up and soak the ground off and on over the next week, hoping for the best. Worst-case scenario—his lawn got a three-week jump start on browning. The rest of the lawns in the neighborhood would join his shortly. Late June and July were hot and dry around here.
David drove just past his house and stopped, backing his truck into the driveway, as close as possible to the garage without hitting it.
“Another successful camping trip, buddy,” he said, patting him on the shoulder.
“It was a good one, Dad,” said Josh. “Maybe we could get the kayaks up next year. We can skirt the edge of the lake and pull in at designated camping areas. Day hike from the sites.”
“Not a bad idea. Never thought of that,” said David. “We could probably haul more supplies that way. Set up a base, and then move on. I like it. If you want, we can take the kayaks out to Eagle Creek Reservoir tomorrow. Spend a few hours paddling around.”
“I’d be up for that,” said Josh.
“Great. We can head out after breakfast,” said David, pressing the garage door opener.
While his son offloaded their packs, David made his rounds through the house. His brief yet thorough exploration served two purposes. First, to make sure the house hadn’t sustained any obvious damage during their absence. Overflowed toilets. Broken washing machine hoses. Animal infestations. Dead sump pump. Whatever the home-owner fates might have decided to randomly throw at him while he wasn’t here. Second, to ensure that nobody had broken into the house—and decided to wait for him.
As a veteran Westfield police officer, he’d sent enough criminals to prison over the years to keep him constantly looking over his shoulder. His professional life had only caught up with him once, when the brother of a recently incarcerated meth-cooker took a few swings at him with an aluminum baseball bat outside Starbucks.
Fortunately for everyone involved, the kid was blind drunk, his home-run swings missing wildly from start to finish. On top of that, half of David’s shift had been inside the coffee shop at the time, easily overpowering the guy without much of a fight. How the dude had missed the three squad cars parked in a row behind him baffled everyone. Maybe he didn’t care, which was why David checked every door and ground-floor window for signs of forced entry, and looked in every closet before fully relaxing at the end of a shift.
Finishing his quick tour of the ground and second floors, he turned his attention to the basement. He’d taken special precautions with the basement, since the space offered a lot of hiding places, especially the unfinished areas he used for storage. The door leading to the basement had a deadbolt that could be locked and unlocked from both sides, but only with a key. It sounded a bit Hannibal Lecterish to have a lock on the outside, but it gave him peace of mind that nobody could break in through one of the full-sized, sunken window wells in the basement and get upstairs. Likewise, nobody could break in up here and slink into the basement to hide.
The house felt a little stuffy, so he adjusted the thermostat, hearing the air-conditioning unit kick in outside. Always a good sign, too. So far everything still appeared to work! Aside from moving some sprinklers around, he could kick back with his son and enjoy the rest of the weekend. Walking into the kitchen, his hopes for a low key last few days of vacation faltered. The LED message box on his answering machine blinked FULL. Shit. He’d never come home to a full message box before.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and powered it. The device had been powered down since he left the house with his son over a week ago, one of his nonnegotiable vacation procedures. The department and his ex-wife had pressed the panic button one too many times over the past several years, cutting a planned vacation or long weekend short. He’d solved that problem by turning off his phone. It was amazing how nobody had a crisis when they knew his personal LoJack system had been disabled.
When his cell phone grabbed the nearest cell tower signal, it buzzed for several seconds as text message and voicemail notifications filled the screen. Shit. Every number was a Westfield PD extension or a personal cell number from an officer on the force. The calls and messages had started yesterday morning. Something big must be up.
With his son still cleaning the tent and rinsing their camping tools, he decided to break protocol and give the station a call. If there were a true emergency, he’d feel terrible not pitching in. David pressed speed dial for the duty sergeant.
“This is Sergeant Jackson. David?”
“I just got back with my son from camping, Sergeant. Saw a ton of messages.”
“Shoot. I hate to ask while you’re still on vacation, David, but we’re down a few officers in each shift. Some kind of flu virus or something going around. Pretty bad from what we’ve heard.”
“Food poisoning?” said David. “A bad batch of meat at Del Rayo on any given day could take out half the department.”
Jackson laughed. “No kidding. Take my ass out for sure. No. It’s definitely not your garden-variety bug. The hospitals in Indy are slammed, and their PD is struggling with absences. Way worse than us. The hospitals in the northern suburbs are starting to fill up, too. I could really use your help to fill at least one of the shifts.”
“How soon?”
“As soon as you can get in,” said Jackson.
“How many officers are out?”
“Twelve,” said Jackson. “I really wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“That’s more than a few. Let me call my ex. She mentioned heading out of town with her boyfriend at some point this week. If she’s around and doesn’t have a problem with me cutting my time with Josh short, I’ll get over to the station ASAP.”
“Thanks, David. Let me know as soon as you hear so I can start working on a duty roster that keeps people off double shifts.”
“I’ll be in touch soon,” said David, ending the call.
Damn. He wished he hadn’t turned on his phone. The thought of giving up two days with his son didn’t sit well. The thought of calling his ex and asking her to take Joshua back early, knowing that she wouldn’t give him time back in the future, made him feel resentful.
“Stop it,” he mumbled to himself.
He couldn’t let this ruin what had been an exceptional week with his son. Two days wasn’t the end of the world, nor would it make a dent in his relationship with Joshua. If anything, he could still order pizza and cheesy bread…even make nachos, and enjoy the Cubs game with his son before bringing him to his mother. Jackson would have to settle for him showing up later tonight.
David leaned against the refrigerator and dialed Joshua’s mom, secretly hoping that she was out of town. In that case, there was no way he could take a shift. He wasn’t going to leave his son alone at home overnight and risk losing visitation privileges to fill a shift he was under no contract obligation to fill. Only a declared state of emergency was grounds for recalling officers from vacation. A little flu bug hardly qualified.
When the call went to voicemail, he left a quick message explaining the situation. After that, he searched through his contacts list for alternate numbers and repeated the message on her home phone and work line. That was it. He’d done his part. The ball was in his ex-wife’s court now. He’d take a shower and knock out the grocery run so he could maximize the time with his son, if forces conspired to put him in a patrol car later tonight.
Chapter Six
Dr. Hale paused outside the ER conference room door long enough to catch the gist of the conversation. She wondered how her bruised face might alter the discussion. Additional police officers had been permanently stationed in the emergency room after the attack that nearly killed her, but with an increasing number of patients exhibiting aggressive behavior, it was only a matter of time before someone was seriously injured again. The guy wearing the tracksuit lay in the hospital’s critical care unit, still unresponsive after twenty-four hours. Lauren had been moments away from joining him. She felt lucky to walk away from the same rampage with a mild concussion, splitting headache and two severely bruised ribs.
The room calmed when she entered, before breaking into a round of clapping and applause. The noise aggravated her pounding head, but she smiled through it, not wanting to dampen the one light moment her colleagues had probably experienced all day.
“The karate kid is back,” said Dr. Cabrera, patting her on the shoulder.
“What did I miss?” she said.
“What didn’t you miss?” he said. “Things are getting worse out there—and in here.”
Dr. Zachary Wu, head of the ER department, quieted the group of doctors and nurses that had been packed into the small room.
“Dr. Hale, welcome back,” he said, barely pausing long enough to sound sincere. “We have five minutes. Let’s make them count.”
“I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade here,” said Dr. Jeff Owens, one of the ER’s most experienced doctors. “But the current situation is unsustainable. Frankly, what we’re doing here no longer falls under our mission. And now they want to pull back some of the police?”
Dr. Hale interrupted. “I thought they added police.”
“They did, but the police department has its own staffing issues. Half of them are sick,” said Dr. Wu. “They don’t have enough officers to patrol the streets let alone guard the hospitals.”
“Babysitting these patients is not our job,” said Dr. Owens. “We wouldn’t need this kind of police protection if we moved infected patients out of our beds. With the ER slammed like this, we’re barely mission capable.”
“That’s the hospital’s call,” said Wu.
“Then we need to have a heart-to-heart with hospital administration,” said Owens. “Because we’re caught in a perpetually worsening cycle here. Most of our beds are occupied by these mystery virus patients, who require constant observation by our security staff and the police. What are we looking at now? One out of ten patients getting aggressive?”
“At least,” said Dr. Cabrera. “It seems to be getting worse.”
“On top of that, we have patients exhibiting symptoms of advanced neurological damage!” said Dr. Owens.
“What?” said Lauren. “What do you mean?”
She vividly recalled the two patients sitting upright in the ER waiting room, seemingly oblivious to the raging lunatic that had cleared the rest of the patients from their seats. Something hadn’t been right with them, but they’d gone unnoticed until the room emptied. Then there had been the guy curled up into a fetal ball on the floor, nowhere close to the rampage. Strange behavior for sure.
“While you were out of the ER, w
e started to see some unusual symptoms in an increasing number of patients. Seizures in particular. A lot of speech pattern disruptions, too. Some memory loss,” said Dr. Wu.
“Sounds like encephalitis,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” said Dr. Cabrera.
“Or meningitis,” she said.
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Cabrera. “Leave it to the resident to put two and two together.”
“Can’t be encephalitis,” protested Dr. Owen. “Not in these numbers.”
“I agree,” said Dr. Wu. “This is something entirely different. Something nobody’s seen.”
“Have we sent any of the patients to radiology? An MRI would show swelling,” said Dr. Cabrera.
“A polymerase chain reaction test of cerebrospinal fluid would be conclusive,” said Hale.
“I thought you were studying emergency medicine?” said Cabrera.
“I’m interested in a pediatric emergency medicine fellowship,” she said, suddenly very aware that the entire room was focused on her.
“We’re not doing spinal taps,” said Dr. Wu.
“Damn right we’re not,” said Dr. Owen. “We can send some patients on to radiology. Bring an anesthesiologist down for the spinal taps.”
“All of the attending physicians can do a spinal tap,” said Cabrera.
“Not anymore. This group is shot,” said Dr. Owen. “How much sleep have you logged in the past forty-eight hours?”
Dr. Cabrera started to calculate the number.
“The answer to that question is not even fucking close to enough to mess with the spine,” stated Dr. Owens. “And I don’t anticipate any of us getting any sleep soon. We’ve lost three doctors and six nurses from the overall rotation already.”
“Lost?” said Dr. Hale.
Dr. Wu grimaced and shook his head. “Some just disappeared. Slipped away when nobody was looking. The others are sick. Same symptoms. Dr. Edwards is strapped to a bed in the psych wing. We didn’t want to keep him here.”