“I promise. We wound down the surgical ward. We ship the last few patients out in the morning. A news reporter hit by shrapnel is the only new in-take and only because the paramedics said he was losing too much blood. He’s quiet as a lamb under heavy sedation and we’re re-directing the walk-ins to other hospitals.”
“If you’re sure?”
“We’re only taking in life or death cases.”
“You might get the overspill from the riots,” said the Janitor.
Sophie sighed. “Not riots again.”
“It’s the heat, I’m telling you,” the Janitor chuckled and meandered away.
“The rioters will be re-directed,” Juliet told Sophie. “Off you go. Besides, I don’t think you’re fully recovered. So go have a good night’s sleep.”
Sophie yawned and dropped onto the cot in the bedroom reserved for the doctors’ on duty to use when they got a chance to nap. She thought about the baby again, and thought she might take a look at the coroner’s report. There was something not entirely right about the incident. She massaged her aching neck still stiff from the neck-brace she’d had to endure for several weeks after the crash. She lay down on top of the bedding and was asleep in seconds.
CHAPTER 4
DAY ONE
FRIDAY JULY 1st
8:00 AM
Sophie awoke slowly and stretched. She glanced at the bedside clock and sat bolt upright, surprised to find that it was eight in the morning already. Why had no one woken her as per her instructions? She should be on duty. Perhaps, under the circumstances, no one noticed her absence.
She jumped from the bed, still clothed from the night before and hurried from the room. Her heels clicked down the cavernous corridor, which made her notice the exceptional quiet, none of the usual hustle and bustle of hospital life. She stopped and looked around. There should be noise. There should be lots of noise in the hospital. Too much noise usually, in fact, close to bedlam. Yet this morning not even a whisper. Not even the incessant messages bing-bonging over the tannoy system.
Nothing.
She marched briskly toward ER and with a sense of foreboding; she pushed the double doors open. Immediately she spotted small bodies on two separate gurneys. Judging by their size, she assumed they were children. She pulled back the cloth covering the first body and stood back in surprise to see the top half of a man, cut cleanly though the middle. She pulled back the next cover to see his lower torso and legs.
She went to the outpatients department and found the receptionist fallen behind the counter. She knew before she got to her that she was dead. She checked her neck as a procedure, noting the dried blood around her ears, nose and eyes.
08.10 AM
Luke Spencer stirred in his hospital bed. He took in the surroundings of the hospital ward and sat up fast, which he instantly regretted as his head pounded worse than any hangover he could remember. He noticed his arm in a sling. His other arm had a catheter and a blood bag hanging on a metal stand next to his bed. Slowly the events of the night before came back to him, then quietly. “Maaan . . .”
He turned to the patient on the next bed. “Pst! Hey!” He waited for a reply for a moment. “Hey, buddy?”
He sat up cautiously and rummaged in the locker next to his bed, found his Hawaiian shorts, and slipped them on along with his flip-flops. He moved towards the neighboring bed dragging the squeaky metal stand with him.
The man was asleep on his side. Luke shook him gently. “Hey, man, where is everyone?” He rolled him over, and reeled, as he stared into the dead man’s blood-shot eyes and bloodied nostrils. “Nurse!”
He looked around the ward in disbelief. All the other patients were dead. They all appeared to have died during the night of the same disease, he took in dark ringed pustules, and oozing boils. Then the stench hit him, his knees buckled and he gagged at the overpowering smell. “Nurse!” He shouted, wandering from bed to bed touching the ice-cold flesh of each body just to be sure. “Where the hell is everyone? Nurse!”
He entered the corridor highly attuned to the stillness. “Hello, can anyone hear me. Hello?” He felt vulnerable dressed in his pale blue hospital gown, Hawaiian shorts and flip-flops. He dragged the squeaking metal stand behind him. He pushed open each ward door, most were empty. Luke gulped down his fear and never wanting to miss a story gave a closer look to each of the remaining patients, but quickly determined, disappointingly, that it was not the work of a mass murderer.
They had all died of the same disease and bizarrely, they were all African-American. What were the odds? In his layman terms he presumed some sort of communicable disease, had killed them. Then why had he not succumbed? Did the fact the victims were all African-American have something to do with it. Could it be a rare bacterium that killed one race more swiftly than another? He vaguely remembered hearing that some drug cure for malaria had the adverse effect on the African-American soldiers out in Korea. He thought through the script of his next broadcast, which reminded him that he needed to find Kenny his cameraman. He felt like he had been hit with a brick as he remembered a glimpse of Kenny injured just before he passed out.
He pushed open a heavy rubber door to the vast kitchen and stepped back revolted as a stocky black rat shot through the gap in the door with a high-pitched squeal. “More rats!”
08:30 AM
Sophie could not believe it. Every single one of her colleagues had died during the night. She checked the symptoms and slowly one virus pushed its way to the forefront. She found it hard to contemplate the thought. If correct in her diagnosis - although she hoped upon hope that she was wrong – it could mean a pandemic of biblical proportions. She had heard the sneezes last night, not thought much of it, putting it down to summer colds. She had heard from colleagues that they were turning away patients with the aches and pains associated with flu-like symptoms, but she now realized what this could also be - she stopped short, she could not even say the name of the disease - not even to herself.
She looked down at the body of her dear friend, Juliet Miller, who had all the tale tell signs; the blood from nostrils, blood from her eyes, blood from her ears and from the foul odor she could smell, from the rectum. She saw burst, swollen buboes from under her arms and around her groin. Sophie shuddered as she thought of the suffering her friend must have gone through; the pain-racked sneezing, the aching of the swollen lymph glands, the pus-filled swellings in the armpits and groin, the blistering boils, the blackening of the skin, and most horrifically, in Juliet’s case, the skin over her cheek bones had torn, while she was still alive.
__________
The rat stopped in the corridor and looked back at Luke. He watched the rodent who in turn watched him. The rat twitched his nose sizing him up. Luke thought of another story he could file on the hospital’s health standards, when he recalled that the hospital was closing down anyhow. “Hey, Mickey, which way?” he asked. The rat scurried off along the corridor. “OK, let’s go.”
Sophie turned startled as she heard the squeaking. The sound made the hairs stand up on her neck, an eerie scary sound. She did not spook on a usual day, but this was anything but a usual day. She headed out into the corridor. She saw the rat and screamed.
Luke jumped out of his skin. Sophie saw his movement and screamed again. He collapsed against the wall holding his heart. He finally got his breath back and said; “What’s up, Doc?”
She went to reply, when the corridor plunged into darkness.
12.25 PM
The Miami-Dade Health Authority has several hospitals in the predominately poor districts, one being the Good Samaritan hospital situated on Sandbank Island. The hospital building was to undergo transformation into exorbitantly expensive beachfront condominiums. The remaining stores were soon to have an upgrade to meet the wants and needs of the up market condo dwellers, but at present catered to the tourists who flocked to the island primarily for the long sandy beach, and the man-made coral reef out in the ocean that produced the rollers that in tu
rn brought in the surfers.
One road led onto the island crossed by a cantilever bridge, one of many that cross the rivers and canals of Southern Florida, that opened to let tall boats pass, but in this case were opened to stop anyone getting on or off the island and currently being guarded by armed soldiers.
“Goddamn it!” said Luke when he spotted the soldiers.
“Can’t we wave to them, get them to lower the bridge to let us cross?” Sophie asked.
“I figure they’re protecting the mainland from us. They could’ve come over here, looked for survivors, even helping the survivors. Instead, they raise the bridge and put on an armed guard. Call me paranoid but I think they suspect a chemical attack or something.” He nodded across the stretch of water. “Look, they’re wearing gas-masks, whatever’s happened over here, you and I are immune. You’d figure that they would want to study us to discover what the disease is.”
“I know what it is,” she said.
Luke did not hear. “Or, most likely they’ll suspect us of the chemical attack. And Homeland Security can detain us, without lawyers for as long as they like. I don’t know about you, but I have a healthy distrust of the military.”
“The gas-masks won’t do them any good.”
“Why, what is it?”
“You’d laugh,” she said.
“Try me.”
She started to tell him then changed her mind. “Maybe later.”
“We’d better get under cover they’ve probably got a drone up there looking for movement.” Luke sauntered down the road in his hospital gown and flip-flops dragging the metal stand behind as if he did not have a care in the world. The sun beat down upon them, sapping their strength. The heat haze made the street shimmer. Luke gazed around at the abandoned parked vehicles, some with drivers dead behind the wheel. The virus had clearly gotten outside.
He entered a diner, “Let’s grab a drink, while I think of a brilliant idea to get us off the island,” he said. She looked heavenward, then followed him in.
The stifling heat inside the diner hit them immediately. “Man, it’s hot.”
“The AC’s off.” She pointed to stationary fans.
“I guess they’ve turned the power off to the island.”
“Can they do that?” she asked in surprise.
“Sure. My cell phone ain’t got a signal, yet the mast is on top of the hospital.” He told her. “They’ve crippled it somehow. So, we can’t get off the island, or let anyone know what’s going on.”
He went behind the counter, and tripped over the body of the owner. He popped open two Cokes from the cold shelf. He callously used the corpse for extra height, to reach an upper shelf. He passed a candy bar to her and had one for himself. “Breakfast.”
“What are you standing on?” Sophie asked, not wanting to know the answer.
“Erm, nothing,” he looked down guiltily at the corpse.
“Let me take your catheter out.” She withdrew the needle from the back of his hand, detaching him from the annoying squeaky stand.
A notion struck him and he asked her. “How come all the patients where African- Americans?”
“They weren’t.”
“Well, everyone I saw had black skin.”
“That’s one of the symptoms. In fact, that is why it is called; The Black –“
“Kenny!” he said suddenly. “My camera-man? How is he? I have a vague memory of him being injured?”
“I’m sorry, the gentleman admitted the same time as you did not make it.”
“Did he die from wounds or the disease?”
“He most definitely died from his wounds.” She told him remembering the two halves of his body.
“And you couldn’t . . . ?” he mimed sewing.
“He was sliced in two.”
“Damn.”
She put her hand on top of his in sympathy, and left it a moment too long and felt embarrassed. She quickly changed the subject. “So, have you had a brilliant idea yet?”
“I have, as it happens.”
“What?”
“Can you Scuba-dive?”
14.00 PM
Quinn Martell, the silver-haired Surgeon General, replaced the telephone on his desk and pondered the facts he had received from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He leaned his elbows on his leather-topped desk and steepled his fingers below his chin, as he decided his next course of action. Apparently, the entire staff and patients of a Miami hospital had died overnight. The information had been shaky to say the least. Luckily, the local police acted quickly and sealed off the island as the disease spread to the nearby retail outlets.
Normally disease control was a civilian matter, but the CDC had decided that the scale of the outbreak needed swift action and had called in the military to seal off the island and therefore the spread, but they did not have any notion of what the disease was, or indeed if it was even a disease. He stood and paced the office, caught his reflection in a mirror and ran his hand through his silver gray hair. A hospital was a deadly place for infections, sure, but it could be as likely a chemical spill of some sort, or even a combination of chemicals had reacted and made a deadly vapor.
If that had happened, it would have dissipated and blown out to sea. He hoped that to be the case. Sad as it would be for the deceased and their relatives, but nowhere near as disastrous as a deliberate act of terrorism. He’d feared an attack for some time. It would be relatively simple to knock up a batch of something potent. You could easily find instructions to make deadly potions on the internet.
Why anyone went to the trouble of inventing a chemical weapon, when there were so many virus’s without antidotes in the world. He shut his mind to the thought. That would be his worst fear, a pandemic without a cure. That was why the CDC and the World Health Organization based in Geneva constantly monitored international outbreaks.
The top of his list would be a natural virus, Ebola or SARS, God forbid. The US could count itself lucky when it came to illnesses. When even today, one to two million people worldwide still die every year from malaria. Not forgetting influenza, that still had a habit of spreading around the globe culling the population in great numbers.
He contemplated phoning President Burgess currently convalescing at his summer residence in Florida, not that the public knew the truth of his condition. As far as they were aware, he was suffering from a nasty bout of pneumonia. A select group knew that he’d had a heart attack - a big one - and that he was laid up and strapped to machines that kept him alive. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke to his secretary, “Get me the President.”
__________
14:30 PM
President Burgess’s beachside mansion stood north of Palm Beach on the east coast of Florida surrounded by the glamorous homes of the rich and famous. The President’s summer compound had the protection of the ocean on one side and high walls on the other. Regular military patrols guarded the gates and grounds. President James Burgess sat in his bed wired to the ever-present machinery.
He recognized the number showing on the screen of his i-pad and connected excitedly. “Quinn, old buddy, how the devil are you?” the President said overjoyed to see the face of his old Harvard roommate on the screen.
Although both men were busy practically twenty-four hours a day they still managed to get in the odd round of golf when they could. However, he knew that he would not be calling to catch up, and knew it must be serious. “What’s the reason for this unexpected pleasure?”
“There’s been an incident down in Miami, Jim.”
“The riot, I saw it on TV.”
“Not the riot. This has the potential to be far, far worse.”
The President noted his friend’s hesitancy, and prompted. “Go on.”
“We might have an outbreak.”
“Where?”
“It’s concentrated at a hospital on a stretch of land off the coast.”
“Why hasn’t anyone told me?”
“Homeland
security got wind of it and sat on it,” Quinn told him.
“Homeland security?” the President said. He sat upright in his bed and one of the monitors started to ping rapidly. “Why?”
“They think it’s a terrorist attack.”
“Either way, no one’s told me.”
“Hamilton Parker knows, I understand.”
“The Vice President? Why tell the VP and not me?”
“He led us to believe he’s unofficially running the country due to your incapacity.”
“Watch him for me, would you? He’s one slippery sonofabitch. Terrorists or not, I should be told. I’m still the goddamned President, for Christ’s sake!” His face turned bright red. He clutched his heart and flopped back on the bed.
21.10 PM
“It’s better to leave it until nightfall,” Luke said. “Because the scuba-gear makes bubbles, and they’ll be harder to see in the dark.” They entered Big Benny’s Sporting Goods Store. The store’s inventory mainly catered towards surfers, with the odd harpoon gun, and some diving paraphernalia. Luke picked up the harpoon gun and loaded it. “We might need this.”
Sophie regarded the scuba gear. “I’m not so sure, I’ve never done this before, aren’t there rules, I mean, aren’t you meant to have lessons?”
“The river’s only ten foot deep. We’ll simply walk along the bottom unseen.”
“That IS brilliant.”
He beamed. “I told ya,” he said and poked through the stock and found them a scuba-tank kit each. “You put this in your mouth,” he told her, showing her the breathing apparatus. “Breathe in and out and that’s all there is to it.”
A wild-eyed man leaped up from his hiding place behind the counter and pointed a flare-gun at them. “Freeze motherfuckers!” He motioned for Luke to put the harpoon-gun down on the counter.
The Doomsday Infection Page 3