The Doomsday Infection

by Lamport, Martin

  “He’s teasing,” said Sheila. “A little cockpit humor.”

  “I do not care for this sort of joke,” said the Asian man.

  “I mean,” continued Luke. “It’s like a car with an up and down stick.” He smirked.

  The Asian man eyed him worryingly. “I thought you were telling me earlier that you flew?”

  “I do fly - hang-gliders.” He noticed the Asian man’s face drop. “It’s the same principle, left, right, up and down, finding thermals. Oh, and I did have one flying lesson in a Piper Cherokee.”

  “One lesson! We are going to die. We are in the hands of a lunatic,” the Asian muttered. “One lesson?” he then mumbled a silent prayer.

  The radio crackled into life. “This is Air Traffic Control. Flight 416 please respond?”

  Luke smiled inwardly at his early efforts to get air traffic control to believe that a civilian was flying the airplane and that the pilot and crew were dead.

  Sheila took charge of the radio. “Flight 416 responding, go ahead.”

  “We’re going to need you to adjust some controls, and get used to the feel of the airplane.” Luke followed the instructions and the aircraft started to slow, and consequently lowered in the sky.

  “Stand by, 416 . . . we need to get the sick to hospital. Can you estimate the number of the dead and dying?”

  Sheila answered. “Approximately three hundred.”

  “Could you repeat that flight 416?” asked the air traffic controller.

  “That’s three, zero, zero, passengers and crew dead. That’s three hundred,” she said. “Maybe more.”

  “OK, you have priority. Runway 27 has been cleared for you. However we do have a problem, they is another flight right in front of you. You’re both on the same heading, you have priority, but we have lost radio contact with them. We have them on radar and you are practically on top of each other.”

  Luke glanced from the cockpit, scanning the dark outside but could not detect the nearby hazardous airplane. “Negative - nothing in sight.”

  “We’ll keep you informed. What is your speed and altitude?”

  Luke scanned the relevant dials. “Altitude three hundred feet. Airspeed two hundred knots.”

  “You’re flight instructions will follow shortly. The autopilot will bring you in. You’re doing just fine, flight 416. These planes genuinely do fly themselves, you know. Sit tight and we’ll be talking again shortly.”

  Sheila pointed to the lights of the Miami skyline in the distance giving him comfort, he was tantalizingly close to home, and smiled, finally having a glimmer of hope, when he saw a massive ball of flames as the preceding airline crashed into the sea several miles short of the city.

  Sheila cried out in alarm, and Luke patted the back of her hand, then as the ATC read out instructions, he made the corresponding procedures and acknowledged the action with them. He stared dumbfounded at the burning wreck, unable to speak.

  The Asian man cleared his throat, and tapped a monitor, “I’ve noticed that since they have changed our altitude that we are veering off the pre-arranged flight path to the airport.” Luke glanced at the monitor and saw that the diagram of the aircraft was now far lower than the predetermined course that would safely land them at the airport. The Asian man nervously asked, “You don’t think . . . ?” He pointed at the burning wreck ahead, unable to vocalize his thoughts fully.

  Sheila finished the question. “. . . That they would deliberately ditch us into the ocean, rather than have us crash into any of the tower blocks of downtown Miami?” She arched an eyebrow. “Hmm, let me see, an airplane with three survivors, or the likelihood that we take out a large section of downtown Miami?” she said sardonically. “What do you think, Luke?”

  He answered by pushing forward on the thrusters and the engines responded smoothly, the nose of the craft lifted as they gained height.

  The ATC were on it in a flash. “Flight 416 we’ve noted a difference in your altitude. Please respond?”

  Sheila went to acknowledge, when Luke cut her off. “I don’t think so, do you?”

  22:00 PM

  The heat sapped Sophie’s energy. She could only imagine how the sergeant was coping in his hazmat suit.

  “What else?” asked the sergeant as the jeep zipped along the freeway unhindered as they had the entire northbound freeway to themselves.

  “Well,” she started, thinking best to keep the murdering armed thug busy. “With the Black Death, the symptoms include high fever, aching limbs, darkening of the skin, like we saw with your colleague, swelling of the lymph nodes, swelling of the glands in the neck, under the armpits and around the groin. Buboes develop and burst, you get ring like marks on the skin, then the blood coagulates, and of course towards the end even urine can thicken and even turn black.”

  “Sweet Jesus . . .” he muttered under his breath.

  As Sophie watched the convoy of military vehicles heading in the opposite direction, she thought back to how the original plague had wiped out entire villages overnight. How incredible, she thought, that a village population would retire for the night relatively healthy, maybe the odd sniffle or sneeze, come morning they would all be dead. The law at the time being if there was a known infection in the household the citizens were to self-quarantine and mark their door with a red cross to warn neighbors of their plight and potentially avoid the same fate. However, the contagion was too strong, and the ever-present black rat spread the disease from house to house, as the bacterium Yesinia Pestis was present in the fleas upon their backs and in turn infected the human occupants. London of the mid 1600s suffered especially badly; the timber framed Tudor houses were made of wattle, a mixture of straw and manure, easy for rats or fleas to pass through into the jammed together houses.

  Sanitation in London city was a trough carrying effluence running down the center of the street, where residents would throw their slops; chamber pots full of urine and excrement, from the upper story overhang, often splashing the pedestrians below. The Tudor architecture did not help, with the overhang, often only at arms’ reach from their opposite neighbor. The inhabitants would keep their livestock inside their homes with them; the horses, donkeys, and sometimes pigs, were stabled below on the ground floor, their straw a perfect breeding ground for the numerous rats.

  The city of London employed folk to collect the diseased corpses on handcarts, they would ring a bell and holler the notorious chant. “Bring out your dead!” Where the residents, should they be fortunate enough to have survived the night, would pay six-pence to the collector, gladly, to distance themselves from the virus-ridden corpse.

  Nevertheless, whatever measures the elders took the death toll kept rising. The municipal cemeteries could no longer cope and with the bodies mounting the elders commissioned the digging of mass graves outside the city walls, where the carcasses were buried en masse, with no time for the sensitivities of a proper burial for the recently bereaved to attend.

  However, even these mass pits could not cope, as thousands upon thousands died each night. Eventually the plague pits could not cope and they would dump the corpses in a heap outside the city walls. The piles grew so high that highwaymen could hide behind them before leaping out on the few travelers brave enough to venture from the city only to be robbed, by a villain with a cry of; “Stand and deliver!”

  “Ma’am,” said the sergeant bringing Sophie back to the present, “Why is it spreading so fast?”

  “It’s interesting, actually, because I think we are also dealing with a new strain made up partly from a septicemic plague which attacks the blood and pneumonic, which attacks the lungs, which is particularly worrying as pneumonic makes the virus airborne.”

  “These buboes, you mentioned, the swellings, what happens to them?” he asked her timidly.

  “They burst and then death follows swiftly . . . why?” However, his violent sneeze answered the question, and she regarded him with wide-eyed terror.

  “Aw, fuck, one has just burst un
der my arm. I’ve got it!” He yanked on the brake and rested his head on the steering wheel. “Why me?”

  “Did you remove your helmet?” she asked, horrified to be so close to a victim, yet still feeling sorry for him.

  “Briefly, at the rest-stop. These suits are so damned hot and what with the freak weather we’ve been having, I was boiling.” His shoulders shook as he cried in self-pity.

  “Let’s get you to the compound they’ll surely help,” Sophie suggested.

  He removed his helmet and looked at his reflection in the side-view mirror. “Dammit, look!” he screamed. “I’m turning black!”

  She regarded him sadly, not knowing how to comfort the dying man. She patted his hand but it felt like a useless gesture.

  “Level with me, doc, how long have I got?”

  “It’s impossible to say,” she answered weakly.

  “Days, hours, minutes? Please, the truth.”

  “Each person is different, but I would say a few hours. I’m sorry . . . .”

  He pulled himself together. “Ma’am you must continue to the President’s summer residence. It’s imperative to the nation. You can drive. The GPS will take you right to the door.” He handed her the papers. “Show these documents to the guards, you’ll have no trouble.” He flicked a brisk salute.

  “Are you not coming?” she asked worried for her safety.

  “I feel I might be a hindrance on this mission, ma’am.” He handed her his sidearm, “I’ll keep the rifle. You take the pistol. Do you know how to use it?” She shook her head. “Well, it’s easy enough, I’ve taken off the safety, anyone gives you any trouble, aim at the center of their body mass.” He placed his hand on his chest. “Here, and pull the trigger.”

  She started the engine without any further argument. “Good luck.”

  “Doctor, is it going to hurt . . . I mean, more than it already does, because, you know.” He indicated his rifle. “If it’s going to be agony, then. . .” He mimed shooting himself in the mouth.

  She weighed up telling him the truth or not and thought there had been enough lying. “I won’t lie to you, the pain will be unbearable.”

  “Thank you for being so candid. Is there -” He sneezed violently and black blood gushed from both nostrils. “Goddamn it. Is there anything else I should look out for?”

  Again, she wrestled with her conscience. “Does your skin feel tight anywhere?”

  “It does, now that you mention it, my cheeks feel tight. Why?”

  “It can rip open . . . while you’re still alive.”

  As she spoke, he rubbed his hand against his cheek causing the fragile skin to tear. He screamed in agony as the torn skin exposed the muscle and bone below. He doubled over in pain and vomited a puddle of black-colored vomit.

  She watched in open-mouthed horror as his other cheek slowly tore open. He screeched and scrambled with his rifle, but no matter what he tried, the barrel was too long to enter his mouth. “Shoot me!” he yelled at her.

  She turned the trembling pistol towards the soldier who lay prone on the street. “Do it,” he begged, then convulsed, sneezing black blood.

  She pointed the gun at him, but could not pull the trigger. “I, I . . . can’t.” she trembled.

  He rose up on his knees, and pointed at his heart. “Aim here. You must.” He howled in tortured pain. “Please.”

  She pointed the gun at him in a two-handed grip, but once more she turned away unable to take a human life no matter how much pain they were in. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.”

  He cried out in anguish as the skin on his chin tore open. “For the love of god have mercy! Kill me!”

  Sophie steeled her resolve, aimed, but then lowered the weapon. . . .

  CHAPTER 11

  23:00 PM

  At the radar station aboard the aircraft carrier USS Thomas Jefferson the Boeing 777 Flight 416 returning to Miami blipped on the radar screen monitored by the signalmen, who calculated its position ten miles from shore, five minutes from landing. Commander Roscoe leaned over intensely staring at the blip on the radar monitor. He bellowed into an internal phone, red-faced in anger at the young gunner at the other end of the line who disobeyed him. “That is an order! Fire the missile, now!”

  Gunner Lofthouse operating the surface-to-air Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missile trembled and shook his head. “I can’t do it, Sir, that’s an American civilian airplane, I will not murder Americans in cold blood!”

  “I’m coming down there and if you haven’t blasted that aircraft to kingdom come I will shoot you, then I’ll shoot it down myself. Is that clear?”

  The young gunner visibly paled. His colleague said. “You should do it. We’ve been given an order.”

  “Then the order is wrong. Maybe it’s a trick?” squeaked Gunner Lofthouse, as his mouth dried up, knowing he’d ruined his career and would spend many years in a brig, but still he could not bring himself to fire on fellow Americans.

  “They are no longer American they are a cargo of death, carrying the Bubonic Plague. Our task is to remove them from American soil. You should follow your orders,” urged his colleague as other sailors crammed into the small metal room. They could not believe their ears, firstly to hear that they were firing on a civilian American aircraft and secondly that gunner Lofthouse had disobeyed a direct order.

  __________

  Commander Roscoe’s ramrod straight figure filled the doorway, there was an audible intake of breath as the men shrank away from him. “Bring that plane down, now! You shoot down that goddamn aircraft before it reaches land, I command you!”

  The gunner turned puce but shook his head, defiantly. “Negative Commander.”

  “You follow my order, or suffer the consequences.” He unclipped his firearm to emphasize the point and glared at him menacingly.

  “Then, you’re gonna have to shoot me, bec -”

  The gunshot echoed around the small chamber. Gunner Lofthouse slumped over dead, blood arcing from the small hole in his temple.

  The commander turned to the others. “Move this piece of shit - quick!” the sailors stood frozen in shock for a long moment, then jolted into action and swiftly pulled gunner Lofthouse’s corpse clear. Commander Roscoe jumped into the vacant seat and noted perversely that it was still warm. He spun around, locked onto flight 416 and took aim. . . .

  CHAPTER 12

  23:15 PM

  “Flight 416, please respond.” The air traffic controller kept up his monotonous appeal.

  “We’re still too high, you’re going to kill us all,” said the Asian man, in a state of panic, as he broke into a sweat.

  Luke ignored the comment and tried to concentrate, feeling the stiffness in the steering column. “If I go much lower we won’t see the runway.”

  “You need to lose height, look at the monitor.”

  Luke threw a quick glance at the screen and saw that they were indeed too high. “Sheila would you read off the dial to me?” Luke asked.

  “Airspeed, one hundred and ninety knots,” she said.

  Too fast, he cursed to himself, pulling back on the yoke to correct the path of descent dropping the nose of the Boeing 777 significantly losing height rapidly, the four enormous engines screamed in protest, but they were descending much too quickly. A warning buzzer filled the cockpit alarming him greatly, putting fraught nerves even further on edge. “Airspeed. Airspeed. Airspeed,” it repeated continually. He grimaced and fought with the controls to level out the giant beast.

  “We are all going to die!” screamed the Asian.

  “We ain’t gonna die,” said Luke calmly, but silently cursing the idiot. He smiled confidently at Sheila to reassure her of their safety, when another looped taped message kicked in, continually informing them that they were going to stall.

  23:20 PM

  “Shit,” said Commander Roscoe removing his finger from the trigger. “We’re too late. That airplane would explode over the city now.” He leaped from his seat went outside and kick
ed the corpse of gunner Lofthouse. “Look, what you’ve done, you piece of shit. You’ve only gone and lost me my promotion, entirely right too, in my opinion. What sort of commander am I, if I can’t get my subordinates to follow simple instructions. Maybe I’ve been too soft.” He saw a look pass between the men as if this was anything but the truth. Most were staring in disbelief at the corpse of their comrade and friend. “Well,” he said, pointing at the carcass of the gunner. “You can see what I think of sailors disobeying my commands. Am I clear on this?” he snarled at the assembled men. They muttered quietly. “I said, ‘do I make myself clear?’”

  “Crystal, sir,” they said loudly in unison.

  “We’ve got a few minutes before the next airplane is over land. We’re going to shoot this bastard down and this time they’ll be no mistakes.”

  23:25 PM

  “Full flaps,” Luke said more to himself and he carried out the action. Almost immediately, a synthesized voice filled the cockpit, “Airspeed! Airspeed!” Luke took evasive action, corrected the speed, making the electronic voice stop.

  He took a deep breath, as he averted another disaster. He pulled back calmly on the yoke until the noise stopped and then continued a gently, controlled descent.

  Sheila said, “I’ve done this flight hundreds, if not, thousands of times. I know where the runway is, you’ll see it any moment.”

  “You get us to the runway, baby, and I’ll land it.”

  The Asian man spoke urgently. “Lose more speed! Lose more speed!” He tapped the monitor plotting their course. “Otherwise you are going to overshoot the runway and kill us!”

  Luke rolled his eyes, took a swift glance at the monitor to confirm what the man had said and gently pulled back on the yoke having a feel for the controls, he made small adjustments and the airplane responded smoothly.