The captain sighed heavily. “Who wants to live forever?”
Season 2, Episode 3
This Plague of Days
Robert Chazz Chute
Season 2
Episode 3
Evil can be crammed behind the mild mask of any face.
*
Get comfortable with ambiguity. It’s not all laid out for you at once because it wasn’t just Walt Whitman who contained multitudes. We’re all a bundle of contradictions. Look at the chasm between what anyone says and does. Bring saying and doing together? Then you’ve got a demigod walking the earth.
*
Animals work on instincts. They do horrible things. They kill their food with their faces. However, they are innocent. They aren’t choosing. But pair up intellect with any killer and you have real Evil.
~ Notes from The Last Cafe
*
I have no words;
My voice is in my sword.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Ploys and traps, poisons and scandals
Desi, Captain Paul and Dr. Sinjin-Smythe crowded shoulder to shoulder, their faces bathed pale in the glow of the computer screen. The virologist replayed the recording of the attack. Dr. Merritt’s short trip through the glass wall at the rear of the room was impressive.
Considering Merritt had almost blown him up, Sinjin-Smythe couldn’t find much sympathy for his boss. However, he did feel terror that the virus was out of the lab. Whatever Wiggins had become with this new Alpha version of the virus, it terrified them all. When they took a break from studying the recording, each man realized that his sweaty back was pressed hard into his chair.
There was little new information to be gleaned, only more mystery. Sinjin-Smythe froze the image. “That kid,” the virologist said. He tapped the screen with his index finger as if he could make the boy turn so his face was visible. “Who the bloody hell is the kid who set Wiggins free? They can’t be that low on personnel, surely?”
“That’s not Lt. Wiggins anymore,” Captain Paul said. “Whatever he is now, the Americans better bloody kill it before whatever it’s got spreads to the locals.”
Sinjin-Smythe drank more of the 12-year-old Glenfiddich the captain had offered him. “Viruses are tricky things. So hard to contain. They’re trying to stay alive and perpetuate themselves the same way we do.”
“How do you mean?” Desi asked.
“Nature designed some viruses to be killers. They’re so determined, they kill themselves when their host dies.”
Desi took a drink of the whiskey. “It’s a dirty world.”
“That’s just it,” the virologist replied. “If you’ll permit me a bit of poetic license. Viruses play the long game. They think globally and act locally. Put a bacterium in a stressful environment? It doesn’t die. It becomes an endospore, goes dormant, and waits.”
“You’ve lost me, Doctor,” Captain Paul said.
“I’m saying that, between bacteria and viruses, we’re suffused in germs, on our skin, in our guts, in our eyelashes. If an alien race scanned the planet, they’d say Earth belongs to the microscopic with a tiny infestation of humans who won’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom! It’s amazing this plague didn’t start sooner. I’ve been saying we’re overdue for a world flu pandemic for years. And now this…”
“You’re drunk,” Desi said.
“Not nearly enough.”
Desi leaned closer. “What about our other problem? How could a container ship with plague aboard get through the blockade? Surely your Marines would have spotted a thousand raging zombies in the hold?”
Captain Paul’s jaw clenched and, for a brief moment, he looked annoyed. “Wiggins reported he searched the Gaian Commander. All was well until he got sick aboard the Lusty. They radioed the password. We couldn’t stop them. In fact, we were extra cautious. With the password alone, we could have let them pass.”
“Oh, yes, the bloody password,” Desi said. “‘Prometheus’. What’s that about exactly?”
Sinjin-Smythe looked miserable and exhausted. “I can guess what the terrorists did.” He couldn’t bring himself to name Shiva. “They’ve had a long time to plan. To finance something this big, all they had to do was be the backup plan for rich people in case of a catastrophe. If I needed a ship to escape Europe under these circumstances, I’d make sure I had plenty of important and rich people on board. Parliamentarians, royalty, bankers — ”
“So, as always, what’s bad for the working class isn’t supposed to touch our betters,” Desi said. “End of the world and still business as usual.”
Captain Paul stood. “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Walsh. Most of my betters are dead from the first wave of plague. That’s why a captain is running this task force instead of an admiral.”
“No offense meant, Captain. But I’m sure the doctor is on the right track. Some animals are more equal than others and we were always at war with Oceania. My achin’ arse.”
“You would have preferred everyone stay in Ireland and Britain?” Paul said. “No one should get away? Odd sentiments since, without Prometheus, you wouldn’t be sitting here safe and warm on my ship.”
“That, I’ll grant you,” the policeman replied evenly. “But when I escape from hell, sir, I like a nice safe place to run to. Every hell should have a heaven.”
“And you shall have it, Mr. Walsh,” Paul said. “They got past the SBS and us, but we have a last line of defense. Lieutenant!”Another officer appeared at the door to the Captain’s quarters. “Mr. Lombardy, have the navigator plot the Gaian Commander’s course and speed, double check it yourself and find me the sub closest to its projected position. I need a submarine within 160 km of the target. If they aren’t that close, they are to get that close. I’ll be on the bridge in a moment. Have the sub commander on the channel by the time I arrive.” Paul dismissed the officer with a sharp salute.
“Are you going to board Gaian Commander again, Captain?” The doctor’s forehead furrowed. Before he blurted the question, he’d already guessed the answer. “She is on that ship, but she’s carrying my child, too. Maybe she has information about the rest of the terrorist network. With a plot this all-encompassing, there must be many — ”
“Finish your glasses, gentlemen. When you’re ready, my aide is in the outer office. He will escort you to your quarters until I can find a way to get you…well, the Speedway encampment isn’t secure at the moment. Until the Yanks sort themselves out, we’ll have to decide what we’re to do with you and your friends.” Captain Paul paused at the door. “I am not sorry about the terrorist named Shiva. I do pity your unborn child, Doctor. I’m sorry.”
Desi watched him go before reaching for the bottle and pouring another drink, one for Sinjin-Smythe and one for himself. “He didn’t sound sorry, did he?”
“He lost a man.”
“You’ve lost a wife and child.”
“I think there’s an excellent chance we’ve already lost. Everything.”
Desi stared at his hands for a long time before he spoke again. When he did, he looked haunted. “Craig, did you pick out what the boy said to Wiggins, just before he set him free?”
Sinjin-Smythe took his time answering. “I thought I might. Did you manage to read the white-eyed monster’s lips when the boy let him go?”
“May have.”
Sinjin-Smythe smiled despite himself. “I think the boy said, ‘Emancipator.’ With the fight and the screaming, it could have been half a dozen words, I suppose, but when I saw what Wiggins mouthed to him, it fits in an insane sort of way.”
The Garda officer nodded gravely and grinned. “I couldn’t believe it, but I thought your Sutr-Alpha Zombie actually said, ‘Abraham Lincoln.’”
“Desi, do me a favor while we’re still at a working computer. Look up Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros.” The doctor told Desi how he thought the words should be spelled. After a few attempts, the answer appeared on the screen.
“What’s that tell you?” Desi sa
id. “I don’t get it.”
“I’m not sure.”
“It must be about Shiva, isn’t it?”
“I worry it’s about us. Maybe it’s about how we got to this sad state of affairs.”
“Then we’ll do the only reasonable thing,” Desi said. “Let’s drink and drain the rest of our host’s excellent bottle of Glenfiddich and ponder, ‘Every madman thinks everyone else is insane.’”
Death and disease, mires and mangles
Iris, in classical mythology, is goddess of the rainbow. She was the messenger of the gods. To Jaimie Spencer, messenger from a killer virus named Sutr, all the colors of the rainbow were quickly draining from the refugee camp.
Below him, the many thousands crammed into the Indianapolis Speedway glowed in the dark, but only with shades of crimson and yellow now. The rainbow of human experience fled. The reds were degrees of anger, from irritation to rage. The furious auras would flare and then bleed to bright yellow as the terror spread out. The predator was in the pit of the camp, spreading the virus, a rabid wolf among the flock.
The cool night air was no solace as the Spencer family rushed out through the shattered window. They found themselves in a VIP box, looking down on the track. In a corner of the box, Dr. Daniel Merritt sat against a wall in a pool of his blood. His hand was at his neck, trying to stem the flow from a pumping artery.
Jaimie and Theo went to the rail. Under fruitless searchlights, they watched the ripples and shivers spread through the crowds.
Theo quoted Shakespeare in a solemn tone, “He was a thing of blood, whose every motion was timed with dying cries.” He pulled his son away from the gruesome sights below.
“He didn’t bite me!” Merritt said. “Wiggins didn’t bite me. I’m not infected! This is from glass, I swear!”
“Yeah, you look great,” Anna said.
“Get help!”
“Or you’ll hang my mother?” Anna followed Jack and Theo over a dividing wall into the next VIP box. Jaimie bent over the doctor and put Merritt’s tie up to his ruined neck.
Merritt took the suggestion and put the cloth tight against the wound. His other hand slipped around Jaimie’s wrist. “Stay!”
Jaimie considered a moment, but when he looked over his shoulder, his father beckoned. The boy turned back to Dr. Merritt. “Woof!” he said, and pulled away.
Merritt’s key card got them into the next suite. From the scattered supplies and boxes of wine, the room had obviously been taken over by an officer with access to luxuries.
An alarm sounded far away. The klaxon got quieter by the minute as the Spencers ran down the length of Tower Plaza, searching for an exit.
“Something…what’s happening out there?” Jack asked. “That alarm — ”
Anna cut her off. “It’s not the alarm, Mom! The alarm is getting drowned out by screams!”
Their sneakers squeaked on the tile floor as they stopped short at the top floor’s exit. The key card Jack had stolen from Dr. Merritt beeped twice but did not pop the door’s electronic lock.
“We have to go back,” Jack said.
“Through checkpoints and toward the camp? I don’t think so.” Anna ran back down the corridor and returned with a red fire extinguisher. She used it as a sledge hammer on the door’s knob. It came away in three swings, but the door was still locked.
When she tried hammering the door, they heard footsteps on the metal stairs beyond the exit. Soon, two soldiers wearing n95 masks burst through. “What are you doing?”
Jack stepped in front of her daughter. “Dr. Merritt is injured badly!”
“You can save him, if you hurry!” Anna said. “He’s bleeding from the neck! He got thrown through a glass wall by that…” By what? Words escaped her. The patient had been a sailor in the Royal Navy. The man’s name had been Wiggins.
“The infection has changed,” Theo said. “Wiggins is something else now.”
Jaimie had been told he was different all his life. He felt sorry for Mr. Wiggins.
One soldier turned to the other. “I’ll go check out the doctor and call for a medic. You stay on this door and send this bunch back out to the civvie pit. No one leaves the yard. We keep containment and control.”
The soldier stiffened. He was broad across the shoulders and tight through the abdomen, his body a V. “Containment and control, sir!” the soldier echoed with a dead stare.
“See that?” Theo said. “There are all kinds of zombies.”
The first soldier gave a curt nod to the guard and raced toward Merritt’s office.
“You heard the man, folks.” The soldier had no rifle, but he put a hand on his holster. “Go back the way you came and proceed to Checkpoint Charlie.”
Jaimie was astonished and fascinated. The man expected compliance based on the costume he wore. His voice had no authority and he hadn’t unholstered his weapon.
If he had pulled his weapon, he might have had a chance to shoot Anna before she sprayed the fire extinguisher in his eyes, driving him back. If not for his arrogance and sense of entitlement, his sister would have failed to get them through the exit door. She struck the soldier in the crotch once and drove him to his knees with two more hard swings to his skull. He dropped to the floor beside the broken doorknob.
“Lots of pushups, but not one exercise to strengthen your face,” Anna said.
“Or testicles,” Theo added.
The Spencers escaped down the stairwell, turned left, and made their way toward the parking lot. They would have been stopped by dozens of other soldiers, but the screams from the camp swallowed the sirens. The soldiers were too busy to stop one family. The riot was already out of control.
Sporadic gunfire cracked the night. Soldiers ran toward the chaos.
“What’s happening? We shouldn’t have — ” Before Anna could finish her thought, machine guns opened up, echoing off the Speedway’s walls. Then more guns fired and the screams of the refugees rose to an aria of terror.
Two explosions boomed and rattled through the building they’d just escaped.
A fresh spike of screams followed the explosions’ thunder, but the answering howls of rage from the newly infected climbed higher than fear could reach.
* * *
“Keep moving, son!” Theo said. “The riot’s in full swing!”
Pandemonium let loose on a bat’s wing, Jaimie thought, reaching for a comforting rhyme. Words with many vowels usually brought him peace.
The word ‘pandemonium’ failed to calm him, however. ‘Pandemonium’ tasted like bile and the word ‘demon’ squatted and burned through its middle. The rising point of the letter d felt like the tip of a blade, less than an inch from his eyes.
“They’ll stampede the exits!” Jack puffed, almost out of breath. “When the sun comes up, there will be mounds of bodies at the gates. Everyone will try to get out at once. Between the guns and the trampled…what have we done? What have we done?”
Jaimie watched his mother’s anguish grow.
“It’s not your fault, Jaimie,” his father told him. “Merritt didn’t know what he was dealing with. What happened would have happened one way or another. You know what Wiggins is doing now.”
Jaimie did know and he wasn’t sure that he had not done wrong. He’d seen the perfection of Wiggins’ purpose. If everyone was as single-minded as the prisoner he’d freed, everyone could have everything they wanted.
* * *
The predator, like a wolf in a chicken coop, ran and dodged amongst the tents and milling crowds, biting and clawing the refugees. The sounds rising behind him were not merely those of the terrified and the wounded and the dying.
More than fear rose from the camp. Wiggins was a whirling, rogue lion on a rampage. The numbers of those boiling over with perfect, crimson hunger grew.
Each person Wiggins infected — every man, woman and child — turned into another predator within one minute. The infection spread like a cyclone, building strength as it swirled through the camp, d
oubling each minute. With each attack, Wiggins added to his forces.
As mothers rushed to their children, their children turned and snapped their milk teeth, tasting blood for the first time. The mothers turned on their husbands and sisters and brothers. The storm front of the virus grew stronger, claiming more and more in its wake. As good Samaritans swooped in to bandage the wounds of the fallen, packs became tribes and tribes of predators — primal, fast, sentient, and starving — transformed into an army of things so pure, they became a force of nature.
Men with guns cannot fight the wind.
* * *
Jaimie’s eyes shifted to Theo. His father beckoned him to follow through the dark shapes of cars and trucks. He wished he could understand his father’s contradictions. Theo, the atheist who talked of a Gateway to the Spirit World. The man who confessed to killing a friend as a child and looked to his mute son for forgiveness when he found no sign of mercy in the stars. Theo said he didn’t believe in God. He believed in nature and the vague demands of poetic justice.
Jaimie did not understand what his father meant by poetic justice. The closest he could come was an obsession with symmetry. Perhaps he’d have to read more poetry before he could understand.
In the symphony of anger, hunger and anguish rising behind him in a tower of pain, Jaimie heard it: Vox populi vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The Latin expression was a simple political sentiment, but Jaimie had a new interpretation now. Amid merciless screams, God is Rage.
Jaimie ran to the van and lay in his seat with his head in his father’s lap. The boy pressed his palms against his ears hard. The pressure caused pain, but he needed silence before he could find solace. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for fear and exhaustion to blur into sleep. The lieutenant from Kansas City was chasing them and now Wiggins and his starving army would chase them, too.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 44