by Roger Hayden
“What kind of research? Who have they told?”
“Nobody. Just a group of scientists and students know about it so far. It's genius!”
Dr. Robbins looked around the room, held the phone receiver close, and spoke quietly. “Wait, wait, wait. What are we talking about here? Is this some kind of drug?”
“It's a cure. We're close!” Chen paused. “I mean, we're almost there. But there are some hurdles we're going to need your help with, that's what Dr. Crosby said.”
“Chen, where are you? Where is your department?”
“We work in an underground lab, biochemistry department at Emory. You're only, what, like a few miles away? You need to come here fast!”
Dr. Robbin could feel his heart racing. He looked around the office again.
“Okay,” he said into the phone. “I'll be there. Don't tell anyone else about this.”
He hung up the phone and ran out of the office, leaving his boxes behind.
Outbreak: Carson City
Two Months Later
It had been a long and challenging two months without power, and Greg and Veronica had done their best to adjust. Despite the loss of electricity, they were immensely relieved that she recovered without issue. Always cautionary, Greg had kept her in quarantine over a week. After her stint in quarantine ended, they soon found themselves back to the normal hunker-down routine of remaining in the house and maintaining a low-key presence.
As the months passed, they ate, exercised, played cards, talked, and looked forward to a day when it would all be over. Veronica was an avid reader and had already gone through all of Greg’s books. Their relationship remained amicable. They slept in separate rooms and tried to keep conversations from getting too personal. It was, however, a challenge for both of them. Sometimes they had to just stay out of each other’s way. Other times they would hang out in the living room together and talk to avoid isolating themselves from each other. There was a slight tension in the air, even with them being friends. Some things were just there and couldn’t be gotten rid of.
Veronica felt safe with Greg, and she trusted him, but there was still a lot that she didn't know. There was a past that he would not reveal, except in small increments from time to time. She witnessed the way he killed the home invaders with such stunning ease. She wondered about his past, but did not fear him, even though it was clear that he was no ordinary prepper. When pressed, Greg told her that the less she knew about his past, the better. Not for him, but for her. She felt it to be a cop-out.
“Don't you think it's important that we know all there is to know about each other?” she asked.
“Feel free to divulge all that you want,” Greg said back.
And that was the way it went most of the time. She had her instincts, and if she suspected him of being truly dangerous, she would never have gone to his house in the first place. From what she gathered, he used to work for some kind of agency. Spy work. Something like that. Whether it was the CIA or a private firm, she didn't know, and he would not say. All she knew was that she was stuck with Greg, for better or for worse, until the Ebola outbreak subsided. It was no picnic, though they were surviving.
Hunkering down in a house without power was a strange enough experience, but Greg seemed prepared for any eventuality. It fascinated her. To cope with the poor quality of water from the tap, he had a portable filtration system that cleansed the water so they could use it to take showers or baths. His stock of potable water in the garage was a godsend.
There was no shortage of food, flashlights, glow sticks, kerosene lanterns, or batteries either. For a while, things were quiet, and they often sat in the peaceful silence of the living room with a single candle dimly illuminating the room, thinking of the loss of the third member of their prepper team, Captain. Greg would tell Veronica stories about when Captain was a puppy and the funny things he did.
“One time, when he was a pup, he was so excited to see me, I asked him if he wanted to go outside, and he ran so fast to the back door that he hit it head first. He had forgotten to wait for me to open the door.”
Veronica laughed until they fell back to their own thoughts.
“I miss him,” she said.
“Me too.”
After a few weeks of hunkering down, it wasn't long before the water stopped working in the house altogether, further complicating their problems. Greg always had the tub filled with water just for that reason. They would have to rethink daily hygiene routines and other matters. Greg showed her how they could still use the toilet even without running water. She had never considered the option before. They went into his bathroom with Greg carrying one of the buckets of water he had filled up before the water stopped running.
He opened the back tank of the toilet. The tank water was half full.
“As long as you have the availability of water and a working septic tank, you'll still be able to flush. See?”
He filled the tank up then poured the rest in the bowl. With both areas full, he pushed the handle, and the toilet sucked the water down.
“Now, I'm only going to show you that once because we need to conserve water.”
Veronica found herself oddly fascinated.
“I had no idea,” she said.
“We just need to conserve all the bucket water that we have. Minimize bathroom and shower time. That's the only way we're going to make it, or at least be able to be around each other.”
Veronica laughed. “What about when we run out of non-potable water?”
“To the living room,” Greg said. “I have something to show you.”
She followed him to the living room. He suddenly turned around and went into his room.
“Wait here,” he said.
She took a seat on the couch and heard some movement in the bedroom but couldn't tell what he was doing. He emerged carrying a five-gallon bucket that appeared to have a toilet seat on it. In the bucket was a black trash bag. The mere sight of the whole design caused her to burst out laughing. “What...is that?”
Greg set the bucket down in the middle of the living room floor. “This…is a portable toilet. Waste goes in, then you take it outside and dump it.”
She couldn't stop laughing. “Why not just dig a hole in the backyard?”
“Veronica, I'm appalled that you would even suggest that,” Greg said jokingly, “We're still civilized beings, are we not?”
“Good point,” she said, catching her breath.
Greg took the bucket back into his room. “We may have to start using it to conserve water, so be ready,” he said as his voice trailed down the hall.
“What else do you have back there that you haven't shown me?” she asked.
“A prepper never reveals all his secrets.”
“Fair enough, Greg. You're a regular man of mystery.”
“That's how I like it,” he said from his bedroom.
Two months from the day they began hunkering down, Greg woke up early to surprise Veronica with a special coffee brew he had been saving; French Vanilla. He was proud that they had made it so far. Hopefully only a few more weeks to go, he said to himself in the kitchen. A single ray of light beamed through the kitchen window, providing Greg with just the amount of light that he needed. On the counter sat a camper coffee pot. He boiled some water over the stove after lighting one of the burners with a match. He poured the water into the pot and began to brew the coffee.
While waiting, he set a crank-operated emergency radio on the counter and turned it on. He was eager to get the latest reports, and the broadcasts seemed more dire with each passing week. He turned the knob, and at first heard only pops and crackles. He stopped turning the dial when he heard the static-filled voice of a news reporter. How much worse can it possibly get out there? Greg thought as he waited for the latest dreaded news.
“The President has issued a round of sweeping executive orders in an attempt to contain the deadliest outbreak in American history. Congress has also appropriated an unprece
dented three-trillion-dollar emergency aid package, with most funds going to stem the Ebola outbreak in California. Travel bans have been placed in effect in Florida, Texas, Nevada, and California, respectively. In addition, key areas have been closed off and quarantined with heavy military presence in and around cities where the outbreak originated.
“The CDC has resoundingly approved these measures, saying that containment is the only way to prevent further outbreaks. Nonetheless, the nation is outraged, and civil disorder, mass protests, and rioting have occurred in major cities from across the nation, as close to a million people are said to be missing, quarantined, or deceased. Many have now coined the disease the ‘Ebola Super-virus,’ a more lethal and contagious mutation of the original Ebola strain.
“Among other sweeping changes, the President has ordered all returning troops from West Africa to immediately be placed in quarantine at the US National Institute of Health located in Bethesda, Maryland. Growing fears from returning troops have led to panic and upheaval, with many of those service members in hiding for fear of their lives. Perhaps most damaging for the administration is the question many are asking as officials attempt to contain the disease: Was it all too late?”
The coffee had a few minutes to go, so Greg paced out to the darkened living room. He had long replaced the plywood on the window on the left to cover the broken window on the right. It only made sense. Now his spy window was on the left, and it was there that he saw a man standing and looking inside. He was a man of average height and build, back-lit by the sun. He was in the process of cupping his hand against the window and peering in.
Greg froze in place as a chill ran up his back. For one split second they made eye contact, and the man immediately backed away. Not wanting to take any chances, Greg stormed off to his room to grab his rifle. He snatched it from the side of his nightstand and ran back out into the living room. The man was no longer at the window. Greg ran to it and looked out. There was no one in sight.
Discovered
John Elliot ran from Greg’s neighborhood as if bloodhounds were on his trail. He had always been fast on his feet, which was one of the main reasons the men and women of Worthington Pines, a distant gated community, had chosen him as their scout. After seeing no sign of anyone running after him, John slowed to a walking pace and continued the five-mile walk back home. His community was full of people who proudly defied the government order to report to a quarantine station. They stayed in their homes, hoping and waiting for the crisis to be over, just as Greg was doing, only they hadn’t prepared and were running out of the basics.
Worthington Pines had banded together to survive but found themselves alone, without power and running water and with a dwindling food supply. Something had to be done. Some thirty-five families in all tried to come up with a solution. When it was suggested that they report to the quarantine stations as mandated by the state, fears of Ebola eliminated any such idea. But they would still have to do something. They had to venture out, but they couldn’t go as a group and draw the unwanted attention from the government and their enforcers.
They needed someone to scout the area and find others who might assist them. Someone to check the stores and other locations where they could get supplies. John, one of the resident bachelors of the community, agreed to take on the task. Taking a vehicle was considered too risky, lest he be exposed, so the journey would have to be taken on foot. John selflessly agreed to do it and became something of a hero to the community.
Greg’s neighborhood was the farthest John had ventured yet, and while on his journey, he saw incredibly unspeakable things that he knew would stay with him. He came across a body on the road of someone who looked like a vagrant. The man was lying face down in the pavement, and blood had seeped through his tattered clothing—from open sores. John could only see the scraggly hair on the man’s head and the bloody pool of vomit he was lying in. He had all the indications of an infected person, and John kept his distance. He pressed the surgical mask against his nose and mouth.
The vagrant wasn’t the only person in his path. There was a car that had crashed into a street light. The driver, a young man, had gone through the windshield and was lying on the grass. The female passenger was hunched over the dashboard, with blackish-red open sores that had long crusted over.
Her body looked as if her internal organs had burst out. Keeping a careful distance, John peered into the open car as a swarm of flies buzzed around her bloated corpse.
John felt a chill and kept moving. He tried to stay low, keeping to back roads and walking along the sides of neighborhood streets, searching for signs of life. There had to be someone somewhere who had stayed behind, like the people of Worthington Pines had.
It was stunning to not see a car on the road, as if he were walking on a deserted movie set. Walking among dead bodies in the open was a considerable risk, and for this reason, he wore his surgical mask, long-sleeved shirt, pants, and gloves. If other people were going to risk any kind of journey outside their gated community, they would need real protective gear.
He walked past several homes that appeared to be vacated. A moving vehicle was not to be seen anywhere; another street, another body. It soon became routine as the noxious smell of death, both potent and unsettling, filled the air.
How on earth could bodies simply have been left in open view? It confounded John and made him worry for his own safety as well. He was witnessing the impossible.
The nearest grocery store was closed with a sign that said, “Closed until further notice” on one glass panel and a hand-drawn note on the other that said, “We have nothing left. Store is empty.” The store itself was protected with a long, rolling gate, which was locked in the middle. He wandered to a gas station across the street. It was closed as well. John figured that most people had either gone into the city or the assigned quarantine facilities. Worthington Pines, however, was on the far outskirts of the city, and the neighborhoods he ventured into didn’t bring him much hope.
As he came to Greg’s street, Antelope Drive, he saw more of the same: empty houses and lack of activity. A plane flew overhead, and John looked into the sky, wondering how anyone could just fly over such suffering and death. He wanted to shoot a flare into the sky or assemble the trashcans on the curb of the street into an SOS message—anything that would get the attention of the plane so that it would land on the street and take him away. But the plane continued to fly across the blue sky, leaving a smoke trail in its wake.
After hours of traveling on foot, he had become bolder in his techniques. He began going up to houses and looking in the windows, sometimes even knocking on doors. He was growing desperate; as desperate as the community that had sent him venturing out into the great unknown. He was less afraid, but he also realized that frightened people hiding in their homes did irrational things, like shoot men who walked on their property.
Reality was not lost on him, but he trudged on with determination down the asphalt pavement of the neighborhood of nice-looking homes and barren lawns, now mostly patches of grass and dirt. Some lawns were nicer than others, but the arid climate and lack of water made them impossible to maintain. Lawn care was no longer a priority as well.
He approached a cul-de-sac at the end of the road, and it appeared that the homes there had already been pillaged. There were open doors and smashed windows in every house on the circle except for one. The home on the farthest corner had plywood panels boarding up the windows. The sight of the house piqued his curiosity, and he approached the yard with caution. Something about the place seemed different; it was the only house on the cul-de-sac that hadn’t been broken into. There was a sign near the front door that said “Beware of Dog” and another one that said “Owner is Armed and Dangerous.”
This person means business, he thought.
Instead of directly approaching the front door and knocking, he decided to take a step back and investigate. There were obviously people inside the home, or so he believed. He trail
ed back to the house across the street, went inside through the open door, and looked around.
There was no food in the house other than some stale crackers and a bag of flour in the pantry. He took them anyway and watched the boarded-up house from inside. An hour passed, and there was no movement on the street. No one walked out, and the one window in the front without plywood boarded over it had a thick black curtain concealing any activity going on inside. John knew—come nightfall—that he would have to go closer and investigate.
He sat in the empty house until sundown, looking through a photo scrapbook sitting on the living room table. The pictures showed an old married couple who looked to be in their sixties on vacation in Hawaii. They wore tropical clothes, their skin red from the sun, and were smiling and laughing in every photo. John wondered where they were now, or if they were even still alive. He closed the scrapbook, set it back on the table, and left the house, carefully approaching the neighboring driveway.
He walked carefully and quietly while looking to see if anyone was watching through the window in the front. At any moment, he was prepared for someone to open the front door and charge after him. His body burned with anxiety the moment his shoes stepped onto the driveway. There was a big white van parked next to a blue two-door Volvo. His instincts led him to the garage door. He pressed his head against the glossy brown paint listened.
There was barely audible sound coming from behind the door. He could hear a man’s voice followed by a woman’s and felt a jolt of excitement and anticipation. Then he heard laughter. There were indeed people in there, and they sounded friendly enough, but John wasn’t going to take any chances.
Why were they in the garage? he wondered.
He listened, trying to make out their conversation, but it was too difficult to decipher. Then he heard what sounded like someone getting up and leaving the room. Panic seized him, and John quickly walked back to the driveway and past the front of the house, unsure of what to do. Maybe he could talk to the people, reason with them, and ask for assistance. He wasn’t ready for that step yet, and he ran back to the house of the old couple, where stale crackers awaited him.