Pestilence: A Medical Thriller

by Victor Methos

  The situation was so absurd that she questioned if they should be there at all. But as Duncan had pointed out, the risk of death was worth the reward of a cure. Maybe he was right, but they were still dealing with one unknown by instituting another.

  She pulled out the syringe, threw it into a biohazard bin sitting next to them, and leaned back in the chair as Duncan slapped a cotton ball and a Band-Aid on the woman’s arm.

  “So is that all? Can I go home now?”

  “I don’t know,” Samantha said. “Where are you staying?”

  “They got these, well, I don’t know what you’d call them. Communes, I guess. They got these communes set up, and they have cots for us. And we’re just supposed to sleep out there. But I wanna go home. I need my medications, and they said they was gonna go get ’em, but they never did.”

  Duncan rose. “We’ll let you know.”

  He led her outside, where a line of at least a hundred people had formed.

  Getting through everyone took several hours because more truckloads of people showed up. They had been told, Samantha was informed, that if they submitted to the shot, they could go home in two days.

  Samantha was cleaning the site of the injection with alcohol for a teenage girl, who asked, “So where did the sickness come from?”

  “The sickness?” Samantha asked.

  “That’s what they call it. The sickness. Where’d it come from?”

  “Well,” she said, preparing the syringe, “sometimes nature just throws viruses at us. They pop up, do a lot of damage, and then disappear.” She thrust the needle into the girl’s arm. “There was a flu in 1918 that killed almost a million people and then just disappeared. It came and went. And sometimes these things are released accidentally by people that are studying them. And other times, we have no idea where they come from.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “Yeah,” she said, taking off her surgical mask. “It is. You’re done. Leave the Band-Aid on at least an hour.”

  “Thanks.”

  When the girl had left, Sam stepped outside into the night air and stretched her back. She glanced up to the moon as Duncan came out and sat on one of the steps of the trailer. He leaned back on his elbows. “Where you staying tonight?”

  “I didn’t even think about it. I was hoping at Jane’s in-laws’ house.”

  “We can probably get a ride down there, unless they’ve already been rounded up.”

  Sam pulled out her cell phone and saw she had a voice mail. She turned the sound on and listened to it.

  “Sam, Clyde Olsen. Your sister is being held at one of our facilities. If you want to visit her, you can. I’ve given you clearance. She’s at facility One-Nine-Two-Two. It’s in Rustic Canyon. Give me a text when you’re done with the vaccinations, and I’ll send a jeep up to drive you.”

  She hung up and texted back the number, stating that they were done and needed a ride. She got a text back. Okay. Nothing else.

  “What is it?” Duncan asked.

  “My sister’s being held at one of their facilities.”

  “Are they going to let you see her?”

  “Yeah, Clyde said he’s cleared me.”

  He got up and stretched his arms over his head. “Sam, are you sure you want to see her locked in a cage?”

  “What else am I supposed to do? Bury my head in the sand?”

  “She’s going to be fine. This… thing just needs to get sorted out.”

  “Sorted out by who, Duncan? How many people know what’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She tapped the cell phone against her chin. “I need to figure out a way to get her out of this state. Is there anything you can do?”

  “I can take one person on a flight with me, not two. And especially not a family with kids.”

  She started to say something, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of helicopter blades hovering above them.

  29

  The air was warm and tasted like salt so close to the ocean. The palm trees on the side of the interstate were swaying lightly with the breeze, but Howie Burke couldn’t enjoy the view because of the noise—rumbling diesel engines and choppers thumping in the air.

  The jeep he was driving had a top, but no doors. He had searched it and found no uniforms, so he never rode along with other trucks or jeeps. He always stayed behind, hoping they wouldn’t bother checking to see who was driving.

  Though the interstate had a fair amount of military traffic, it was nothing compared to the usual everyday traffic of any highway in Los Angeles, and he was making extraordinary time. And it didn’t hurt that no traffic cops or Highway Patrol officers were anywhere in sight. Within twenty minutes, he was in Malibu.

  He stopped somewhere near the beach, close enough that he saw the twirling barbed wire on the top of the cage. They had added more cots and fences, but they were guarded by fewer troops, towers, and military vehicles. They were stretched thin and clearly hadn’t planned for the influx of people.

  No one was on the street, and Howie turned the jeep off and got out. He was perhaps a block from the entrance to the cage. Walking through the night air in a dead silence was one of the most chilling experiences he had ever had. Something about a forced quiet over an entire section of the biggest city in the world was unnerving—not something he had ever thought he would experience.

  As he drew near, he saw the layout well. Of the three towers in the immediate vicinity, only one was guarded, and the soldier was leaning back with his rifle sitting next to him. He was staring blankly over the city and would glance down occasionally at the people lying on the cots, covered with gray blankets even though it was probably eighty degrees.

  Howie waited behind a cluster of palm trees. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to do. Even though there were only about five guards anywhere near the fence, that was five too many. He was no fighter or soldier.

  He tried to spot Jessica through the fence, but the floodlights had been dimmed, and all he saw were indistinct bumps lying on cots.

  Howie thought briefly about ramming the jeep through the fence, but the guards might open fire and hit Jessica. Staring at the two entrances again, he was wondering if he could get into the back one when he heard something behind him.

  Turning around, he saw a man in a military uniform holding a rifle. He was playing on his phone and not paying attention; he hadn’t seen him.

  Howie moved first. He jumped on the guard, taking him down to the ground. They were both around the same weight with similar builds, and neither of them could get an advantage. Howie had his hands wrapped around the rifle, and the man was grunting as he tried to push him off.

  Just don’t yell, Howie thought. Please don’t yell.

  The guardsman twisted the rifle around, and it smacked Howie in the eye, slamming that eye closed. He tried to swing again, and Howie lurched back. The rifle missed his face by only inches. Howie then got on top of the rifle, his hands spread evenly on it, and pushed his bodyweight down. The rifle pressed against the guardsman’s throat, strangling him.

  The guardsman tried yelling, but the rifle was pressed so hard into his windpipe that just a squeak came out of him. He was pushing against the rifle, but didn’t have good leverage, and soon, his hands weren’t a factor. Howie was pressing with everything he had, his shoulders straining, veins sticking out in his forearms.

  The guardsman tried kicking up with his legs to get enough momentum to throw Howie off, but he couldn’t do it. He tried one last time to twist the rifle away from his throat. Instead, it got a better angle on the windpipe. Within a few moments, he’d passed out.

  Howie lifted the rifle in the air, aiming the butt at the man’s head. He could crush it with enough blows, and the man wouldn’t even feel any pain. Howie pictured himself doing that. But it didn’t happen. As alien as this situation was, he couldn’t do something so out of character.

  Moving quickly, he took the guardsman’s uniform and dumped h
is own clothes in the bushes. The uniform was slightly smaller and was tucked too snugly in the crotch. The name sewn into the uniform over the chest said Sanders. Howie took the rifle and jogged over to the entrance of the cage.

  30

  The helicopter, a dull green with gray splotches, touched down not far from where Samantha was standing. She watched as two men came out, ducking their heads low, though they couldn’t possibly have touched the rotating blades unless they jumped. One of them was Clyde Olsen.

  “Tell me you didn’t go through that entire batch of vaccines?” he said, coming up to them.

  “Isn’t that the point?” Duncan asked.

  His face contorted as if he’d eaten something sour. “The vaccines were… ineffective. We had inoculated a group about five hours before you’d arrived… They’re beginning to show symptoms.”

  “Symptoms?” Sam said angrily.

  “It was a risk we had to take, and they were fully informed. They chose to take it.”

  “They shouldn’t be displaying symptoms for at least a day,” Duncan said.

  “It’s… The damn thing is mutating so fast, we can’t keep up. Its incubation period has gone from seventy-two hours down to four.”

  “We have to get these people quarantined,” Sam said.

  “Already taken care of. I… uh, about the vaccines… One of the groups… I don’t quite know how to say this.”

  Samantha’s stomach was in knots. He didn’t have to say it. She already knew. Her sister had been one of the ones inoculated.

  The jeep came not long after Olsen had left. He’d asked that they come with him in the chopper, but Sam had refused, and Duncan stayed with her. She was going to visit her sister, no matter what—even through a plastic barrier.

  When the jeep arrived, the driver was a young woman in a beige uniform. Samantha and Duncan climbed in, and she spun it around, then headed through Los Angeles.

  “Sorry I was late,” she said. “We were quarantining a new part of the city, and I had to help. It’s chaos that first hour.”

  The driver took the interstate and then the back roads. The route took them away from downtown and farther up into the hills, near hiking and biking trails. Trees surrounded them, and the air was cool and crisp. Worry gnawed at Samantha’s guts as Duncan was slowly dozing off. His eyes would shut and then dart open. Sam saw him pinching himself to try to stay awake, sticking his head out the window to let the wind hit him, and shifting positions, but nothing seemed to work.

  Soon, Samantha saw what they had come for, and it terrified her.

  The fence was about twelve feet high and tipped with looping barbed wire with makeshift towers around the perimeter. At the entrance sat a guard at a desk. Inside were hundreds and hundreds of cots with gray blankets. Men and women were separated by a partition but could still see and talk to one another through it.

  As far as she could tell, it was a concentration camp.

  “How did you decide who to bring here?” Sam asked.

  The woman replied, “They started with certain parts of the city, like Beverly Hills and Malibu, and then we’re kind of getting the rest of the city. We should have everywhere in like a day or something.”

  She hopped out of the jeep, but Duncan and Sam didn’t move.

  He said, “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  Sam didn’t respond. The only thought in her mind was that her sister was in that place, tucked away like some rat waiting to be experimented on in a university laboratory. And on top of that, she had just injected live viruses into over a hundred people. The staggering repercussions made her feel nauseated. But she couldn’t think about that. She had to focus on her sister; she could wallow in guilt later.

  She got out of the jeep and followed the woman, who led her to the entrance. All the guards were wearing surgical masks.

  The one at the entrance turned to the woman. “Who’s this?”

  “They need to see one of the quarantined. What was her name?”

  “Jane Bower is her maiden name, but she’d likely be under Jane Gates.”

  The man scanned a list on an iPad. “Okay, she’s here. I got a note that says her sister’s coming to visit her. I guess that’s you.”

  He stood up and unlocked a gate on the women’s side. He pressed a button on the PA system. “Jane Bower or Jane Gates to the front entrance.”

  They waited a few moments, and no one came forward. He repeated into the device, “Jane Bower or Jane Gates to the front entrance now.”

  Another few minutes passed, and still, nothing.

  “She ain’t here,” the guardsman said.

  “General Olsen told me she was.”

  The guardsman scanned the iPad again. “Oh, here she is. She’s on my list of people that have been shipped out.”

  “Shipped out where?”

  “Quarantine.”

  “You have people in cages, and you don’t think that’s quarantine?”

  “I mean like real quarantine. With no one else around them.”

  “Where is that?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”

  “General Olsen gave me specific permission to see my sister, and I want to see her now.”

  “Well, that’s fine, but I ain’t gonna be the one to tell you where she is. Go ask General Olsen.”

  31

  Kyle Levitt had joined the National Guard when he was eighteen years old. The recruiter at his school had been a cool guy named Dave. He drove a Viper and would show up to the school with his sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular arms, and Kyle saw the way the girls stared at him.

  Kyle had planned on becoming a veterinarian, but one meeting with Dave had changed his mind.

  “Vets don’t get no pussy,” Dave had told him.

  Instead of discussing it with his parents, Kyle had prayed about it and decided that the Lord wanted him to join the National Guard. He had even had a dream telling him something like that. He thought, as Dave had promised, he would be fighting for God and country against Bin Laden. But when he was shipped off to Iraq for his first tour in 2006, he didn’t see Bin Laden. He saw peasants fighting not only the terrorists, but the coalition soldiers, as well.

  He’d had several close calls in Iraq. One stuck more than the others; an IED had gone off about four feet from the vehicle he was riding in. The Humvee in front of them was blown to hell, and so much shrapnel flew off that some of it burst through their windshield and hit him in the face. Luckily, he hadn’t taken any permanent damage other than a scar on his cheek.

  As Kyle walked the perimeter of the huge fence, what the guardsmen had named the Cage, he felt as though he were back in Iraq, on patrol, ensuring the enemy combatants weren’t attempting to escape from custody.

  But he wasn’t in Iraq. He was twenty-five miles from where he had grown up in Santa Monica. And the people inside the cage weren’t enemy combatants; they were Americans.

  Some of the other soldiers fell into their roles perfectly and treated the Americans no differently from the Iraqis they had dealt with. As far as they were concerned, they followed orders, and nothing else mattered. But for Kyle, it was more complicated. He felt for these people, and his entire family was in this city. Would they be rounded up, too? Would he be expected to guard his own family with a rifle pointed at their heads?

  Fuck that, he thought. He would go AWOL first and take his family with him.

  But something more concerning was beginning to happen. He’d been coughing for about a day, and the night before, he’d had a fever and diarrhea. He was still hot and couldn’t stop sweating. He had dumped ice water over his head, but that didn’t feel like it did anything. A few minutes later, he would be burning up again.

  His stomach convulsed, and he felt his bowels let loose. He ran to a row of nearby bushes and vomited. The vomit was clear and black, but something like dark oatmeal came up with it. The fluid spattered over the bushes and didn’t seem to stop until it decided it was done.

  T
he vomiting alleviated the pain in his guts for a few minutes, and then the tight, aching pain returned and he had to vomit again.

  He walked to the front entrance, where his buddy Mark was stationed.

  “You all right, man?” Mark asked.

  “No. I gotta go.”

  “Where?”

  “Barracks, man. I’m not feelin’ hot. Flu or somethin’.”

  Mark glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “That ain’t no damn flu, you fucking idiot. Tell me you didn’t take off your mask when you was dealin’ with these folks.”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so… I can’t remember.”

  Mark peered at a group of other soldiers near a tower. “Get outta here, now. I’ll cover for you. Just take a jeep and go, and don’t come back until you feel better. And you ain’t goin’ near the barracks, you hear me? You go straight to the med tent.”

  “Thanks.”

  He found a jeep with the keys in the ignition. He wasn’t supposed to commandeer a vehicle without permission, but Mark, who was his superior, had just given him what sounded like permission. Even though Mark probably didn’t rank high enough to give permission like that, it didn’t matter. Kyle could barely stand.

  He drove off the camp and took the side streets rather than the 405 or the PCH. The streets were empty, and it felt eerie, like the zombie apocalypse he was always afraid of as a child.

  He drove for at least half an hour and kept feeling worse. In that short span of time, he’d had to stop three times to vomit, and he had grown certain, considering that he hadn’t eaten or drank anything for four hours, that he was vomiting pure blood.

  Driving into Burbank, a part of the city that wasn’t quarantined yet, he found a hotel on one of the streets leading to downtown. He parked in front and didn’t move for a long time, closing his eyes and tilting his face up to the sky. He turned the jeep back on and pulled away. His mind was hazy, and he wasn’t sure where he was going or what he was doing.