He pulled the RV over the median and around the corpses. Then he continued down the interstate, but what they saw was no different. Corpses rotted in the sun while birds, coyotes, and dogs tore at them. He kept driving, following the speed limit, and then grasping how pointless that seemed, he sped up to seventy-five and barreled toward his home as if that were their safe house and none of this would be real if they could get there.
The inner city was even worse. Bodies lay in the gutter like trash, and cars had run through convenience stores, wrapped around light poles, and flipped upside down. He didn’t see anyone out.
Rick’s home was up on a hill overlooking the city. To get there he had to go through Laurel Canyon, and he rolled down his windows so he could smell the eucalyptus leaves. The wind hit his face and made him feel better. He glanced in his rearview, and both his children were sitting attentively on the bed, neither of them speaking. Their eyes were glued to the windows, and he knew they were scanning for more dead bodies.
Pulling into their driveway, he stopped and put on the parking brake. None of them moved. Rick turned to them, and they exchanged glances.
“Why don’t you guys stay here a minute,” he said. “Just while I check out the house.”
He walked outside and shut the door behind him. The bright sun was hot on his face, and he scanned his home, a five-bedroom built right on a cliff over the canyon, then walked to it.
61
Samantha woke to the sound of ringing. She checked her cell phone, but the batteries were long dead, and she realized her home phone was ringing.
Jessica was still asleep, her head nestled comfortably underneath Sam’s arm. Samantha calmly lifted her arm and rose from the couch. She didn’t know what time it was, but bright sunshine was coming through all the windows. A note from her mother’s nurse was on the coffee table, letting her know that her mother had been fed and changed and that she hadn’t wanted to wake Sam. It also asked who the girl was and said that she was adorable.
Samantha walked to the phone in the kitchen and answered it. “This is Samantha.”
“Samantha, I didn’t know if you’d made it back. This is Freddy.”
Her boss—he was the person in the entire world she least wanted to talk to. “What do you need, Freddy?”
“Um, well, I don’t know what to say. I heard about Duncan. Olsen called me and let me know. I’m sorry. I know you two were friends.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. Well, um, what I was calling about was that I was wondering when you were going to come in next.”
“Come in to the office?”
“Well, yeah. This is an enormously important time, Sam. We’ve had four detonations, and all have come back as—”
“We had four detonations?” she asked, shocked. She remembered Olsen mentioning that to her, but in her medicated state, it had passed through without the recognition it deserved.
“Oh, well, yeah. I thought you’d heard.”
“I’ll be right down.”
62
Rick stood at his open front door. He didn’t move until he heard the door creak in the wind that was blowing through the trees and shrubbery. Walking in, his mouth was dry, and his heart was pounding. He was physically weak and thought, So this is what being really terrified feels like?
His gun was upstairs. He walked through the kitchen and into the living room. As he was heading up the stairs, a breeze wafted in, and he saw that the balcony doors were open.
Taking one step at a time, careful not to make them creak, he got to the second floor and glanced down both sides of the hallway before turning into the master bedroom. A framed photo of his wife was on the nightstand. He stared at it a moment and then went to the closet. Up on the top shelf was his 12 gauge. He took down that and a box of ammo. Then he loaded the weapon and cocked it before turning around.
Rick walked back down to the living room. He crossed the carpet, stopping for a moment to listen, and then was about to head out to his kids when he saw something off the balcony—a plume of smoke, several, in fact.
He walked out and slid open the screen. Standing on the balcony, he saw Los Angeles before him, but it didn’t resemble any city he’d seen. Fires raged across the city. Some were small patches that produced light, gray smoke, and others were sizeable infernos the length of football fields that discharged a black fog. The streets were clogged with motionless cars, and most shocking of all, he didn’t see a single live person. Bodies were everywhere, dotting the landscape like ants over rotting food. Many wore military uniforms.
He heard something in the sky and looked up to see a chopper heading toward downtown. The machine was veering off course, weaving in the air as though it had a drunk driver, far too close to the ground. It squealed as it neared the city and banked downward into a building. A boom and an explosion accompanied it as it slammed into a tower and shattered.
Though Rick was miles away, he flinched. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a smoldering heap of stone and steel where the chopper and fragments of the building had hit the sidewalk.
Rick turned and ran to the RV, grabbing some food and storage water on his way. He ran back to the house twice more, with his kids asking him what was going on, and loaded up as many supplies as he could.
“Dad, what’s going on?” his son asked.
He jumped into the driver’s seat. “We’re getting the hell out of California.”
63
Samantha rushed to CDC headquarters. She had asked her nurse to come in early and left her mother and Jessica in her care.
The city was buzzing with activity, and the freeways were packed. Many people had filled their cars to the brim with sleeping bags, clothing, water, and food. A handful of policemen were out, but nowhere near what would be required if all these people decided to start breaking into the closed stores.
Sam listened to NPR, and they were discussing the detonations. Contact had been cut off to Manhattan, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Washington, D.C. Rumors of multiple blasts in Pakistan, China, and all over Europe were circulating. But communications had been disrupted, and getting information was difficult. The internet, it seemed, was down worldwide.
She cut through a field and looped around a business park, avoiding the mess of traffic, and arrived at the CDC in about half an hour.
As she was stepping out of her car, she received the phone call she had been waiting for. “This is Samantha.”
“Clyde Olsen, Sam. It’s done. Your sister and her family are in Elko, Nevada.”
She sighed, all the tension and pain leaving her body. The only remnant was a soft emotional mess. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Figure out how to stop this thing. That’s how you can thank me.”
By the time she arrived at the CDC, the building was on lockdown, and she had to input a security code at the door. The door hissed and locked behind her. The building was nearly empty. She ran up to Freddy’s office but didn’t find anyone there. A conference room next door had four people in it; she stepped inside.
“There she is,” Freddy said. “Dr. Bower, we were just discussing the potential spread of the pathogen. Please have a seat.”
Samantha sat and waited for Freddy to begin speaking again. Up on the whiteboard was a rough drawing of the world. Small X’s were written on certain spots.
“Reports are few and far between,” Freddy said, taking off his glasses and mopping them with a small white cloth. “But it appears the pathogen can’t be contained. We’re getting reports from people leaving DC that entire city blocks are filled with the dead or dying. Apparently, it’s mutated, and its incubation period has dropped from several days to several hours.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Samantha said.
“Why not?”
“That’s too quick a mutation. Although the pathogen mutates faster than anything I’ve ever seen, it couldn’t mutate that quickly. This is a different strand. Something we haven’t seen before
.”
“How do you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Well, I guess, at this point, we’ll take anything.” Freddy pointed to two men sitting to Samantha’s right. “As far as I know, we don’t have any infected in Atlanta yet. See if you two can get some samples from any of the cities, and let’s test Sam’s theory.”
Freddy turned back to the whiteboard and discussed contingency plans, spread ratios, and infectious grid patterns. Sam was barely listening. She knew exactly what everyone in that room was already thinking: it was too late. Too many people in a grid that was too wide had been infected.
The virus would spread from city to city, slowly at first, perhaps over the course of a week. Then the speed of the infections would increase exponentially until it hit a tipping point. The tipping point in an infection pattern was that exact moment when we went from a society with infected to a society of infected, that point when the death of the species was certain. It takes approximately twelve to fifteen years for a human being to produce an offspring that can then breed—an enormous amount of time, biologically speaking. That was too slow to repopulate the species after the devastation of an extinction-level event.
Most of humanity would be infected within the first three months, and the only ones who wouldn’t be were the ones who could get out of the cities in time.
Samantha’s head hurt. She put her hand over her eyes and rubbed her temples. “This is pointless.”
Freddy stopped and turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“It’s out, Freddy. We can’t slow it. We can’t plan for it. The only thing we can do is hold on and wait until it runs its course.” She glanced around the room. “We’re not stopping it at this point. We’re trying to survive.”
64
The building was the tallest one in Miami: the Four Seasons Hotel. Hank Kraski had rented the top suite.
The palatial suite had a bed that appeared to have been made for ten people and a hot tub outside on the massive balcony. Chilled champagne and fresh lobster sat on the table. The suite was exactly the way he had asked.
He sat on the balcony, viewing the city below and the mass of ocean beyond it. He had loved Miami when he was a kid. He could go there and hock stolen baseball cards, packages of gum, or anything he and his friends could get their hands on. Such a shame that it had to be destroyed.
Though it wouldn’t be destroyed in the sense that it would be blown apart, but that the people were going to be eliminated. And without the people, there were no maintenance crews to keep the city running smoothly. Nature would need only a few weeks to reclaim what humans had taken.
Hank thought back to his childhood in Florida. He’d been happy with his Polish family that owned a restaurant in downtown Miami. The city had been different then, though, and a small-business owner could thrive without having to take massive loans from predatory banks just to stay afloat. Such a waste of talent, he thought. The little guys would get swallowed up or have to work for the big guys, and the consumers suffered. He didn’t blame the banks, though. He blamed the government dollars that kept them buoyant when they should have sunk.
But never, in a million years, could he have guessed that he would end up being one of the few people on earth who would survive to rebuild. The new society would be better. It would be more efficient, and the aristocracy would no longer rule the poor. That was why he had such great admiration for the virus. It saw no race, religion, economic status, or fame. The virus was lethal equally and had no regard for anything or anyone. It was… perfect.
His cell phone rang, and he answered. “This is Kraski.”
“It’s done. They’ll be arriving within a few hours.”
The line went dead. He placed the phone in his pocket and got the bottle of champagne before returning to the balcony. But, glancing over at the clear waters of the hot tub, he felt the urge to splash around. He stripped down and got in.
He decided that he would watch the end of the world from there.
65
Ngo Chon stood in the glass corridor at the CDC in Atlanta, observing the parking lot as he sipped tea out of a mug that had a saying on the side: Epidemiologists do it disease free.
The CDC. When he was younger, he had dreamed about working there. After medical school, he completed a doctorate and then realized he didn’t want to go into the world yet, so he completed another. By the time he got out of school at age thirty-nine, he thought he would be the most educated person at the CDC. He was shocked to find that at least half a dozen people had more degrees than he did, some of them from more prestigious schools.
But he’d outlasted them all. They transferred around, always vying for that position that would bolster their resumes. No matter how much they protested that they had purer motives, it was always about the resume with career academics and scientists. The CV determined the quality of the person.
Chon knew the opposite was probably true. The more crap on the CV, the more likely the person had never done anything new or interesting. Anyone who came up with some interesting theory or project devoted all their time to that one thing. Only when people aimlessly drifted did the CV commence building to the sky, like a nerdy Tower of Babel.
He finished his tea and then headed up to the level four biosafety labs. They were in the most secure facility in the United States, at least that the public knew about—and with good reason. Over a hundred unknown, absolutely lethal hot viruses were frozen in a refrigerated walk-in room on that level. Every so often, a man or woman working for some unknown military unit or spy agency would be flown in to USAMRIID in Maryland. They were typically dead at that point, but he knew of a few live ones. But once they passed, their blood and tissues were analyzed, and if an unknown hot virus was discovered, it went to a freezer on BS4 in Atlanta—even though most CDC employees didn’t realize it. USAMRIID also kept the unknown pathogens in BS4 freezers. A room of nightmares was right under their noses, and only a handful of doctors knew about it.
He scrubbed down and checked his suit before negatively pressurizing it and heading into the labs. The room was a cacophony of monkey howls from the twenty or so primates stacked in cages against the wall. Four were lying motionless in pools of blood. They had been injected with black pox—Agent X—less than forty-eight hours ago as a vaccine. The weakened virus husks had flooded their bodies, initiating an immune response that had apparently gone nowhere.
Chon stood frozen, staring at the corpses. Clever little bastard.
Samantha thought about staying in her office and finishing up a few of her other cases, but that seemed so pointless as to almost be laughable. A sample of the new strand of Agent X had been flown in and its identity had been confirmed: black pox with a slight mutation that was likely responsible for its hyper-incubation period.
Instead of working in the office, she went to the BS4 labs, stripped and showered, and then put on her suit. She spent a good five minutes searching for tears in the suit before filling it with negative pressure from an air hose connected to the wall. She entered the lab through the decontamination chamber.
Ngo Chon stood there, watching over about twenty specimens of primates, everything from small squirrel monkeys to hundred-and-fifty-pound chimps. Chon didn’t notice her and was standing as still as glass, watching the primates.
“No luck?” she asked.
He shook his head in his suit. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s not smallpox. With SP, we could vaccinate within a few days and still have positive effects. This thing takes hold in a day. It shuts down the immune system first, uses it to replicate itself. Then it begins attacking healthy cells.” He turned to her. “It knows where our defenses are and uses them against us. It’s really quite… beautiful in how ferocious it is.”
“What progress have we made on a vaccine?”
“Almost none. The virus destroys itself if it’s weakened or damaged in any way. Like a self-destruct button, I guess.”
She approached one o
f the cages and stared at a spider monkey that was lying on its side, its breathing heavy as its hands trembled.
It reminded her of the last case of smallpox she had ever seen. Officially, the last known case had occurred in Africa in 1977, but the World Health Organization and the CDC knew that wasn’t true. Several cases had been reported in western Africa and parts of South America. But the virus had died out so quickly, the organizations didn’t want to raise public alarm.
Sam had gone to Congo during the last outbreak in 2002. A twelve-year-old boy had infected and killed his entire family. She remembered the boy lying much like the monkey was, on his side, a blank expression over his still face as his hands trembled. His skin was coated with pustules that resembled oatmeal.
Smallpox.
“Ngo, how genetically similar is Agent X and its progeny to small pox? Would you say around ninety-nine percent?”
“Yeah, somewhere around there. Why?”
She took a step back. “Because I think I know how to make a vaccine.”
66
Six days later, the weakened poxvirus sat in a syringe on her desk as Samantha stared out the window. Requests for aid were coming in from all over the country, but the Centers for Disease Control could provide almost none. The impact was so large that the best they could do was send teams of specialists out with military personnel to assess the damage. But the military wasn’t there to heal; they were there to prevent.
In almost every major American city, an order had gone out for isolation. No one was to have contact with anyone else. No school, no work, no church, and no recreational activities. The only way to prevent infection was to avoid exposure to the virus. The hope was that, eventually, the infected would die off.
Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Page 18