“What's your name?” the tall guard asked.
“Laura Walsh.” She hoped they wouldn't recognize her. In actuality, she wasn't that well-known yet and had little to worry about.
“Wait here, Ms. Walsh,” the stocky guard said as they took a cautious step away from the undercover group, with sudden concern over the virus they might be carrying.
Laura could hear them talking among themselves, while she flashed reassuring looks at Phil and John, who seemed patently uncomfortable. She tried her best to hear the guards but could only make out a few sentences.
“Well, they're already here. Best to get them inside with the others.”
“Hold on,” the stocky guard said, pulling out a walkie-talkie. He pressed the button on its side and spoke into the receiver. “We got some patient out here of a Doctor Hansen who says that she's sick.” After some chatter over the radio, the guard approached her, keeping a careful distance.
“What symptoms have you been showing?”
Laura looked at her group, hesitant, then back to the guard. “Um, high temperature, fever.”
He looked back at her skeptically. “Any muscle pains or vomiting?”
“My friend Phil vomited earlier,” she said.
All the guards collectively took a further step back.
“Okay, okay, go in there. Dr. Hansen or a medical representative will meet up with you shortly.”
The guards parted and opened a path for Laura and her crew to enter the hospital. “Thank you,” she said.
They walked through the double doors and entered the lobby. There were lines of patients in the hallway that led to different hospital rooms. There were elderly people, adult men and women, stoic-faced yet projecting fear. A multitude of hospital personnel dressed in full biohazard gear moved around with purpose.
The first floor had been altered to resemble a mass in-processing station for the sick. Many of the attendants wore HAZMAT suits with “CDC” printed on the back. Other personnel wore standard protective gear, complete with N95 respirators. It was hard to tell how many local, state, or federal agencies had converged on the hospital.
Instructions were blaring over the intercoms, telling patients where to stand and what examination procedures to follow. The place was moving like a slow assembly line. All patients were wearing simple respiratory masks over their faces, and Laura and her team were immediately handed some masks, given clipboards, and told to get in line near an armed military guard wearing a gas mask.
“I don't like this,” John said. “I don't like this one bit.”
“Me either,” Phil added.
“We're going to be okay,” Laura said. “Trust me.”
The constant coughing of people waiting in the halls was unsettling. It was now completely dark outside, and the moon glistened in the night sky.
Laura's heart raced with anticipation, knowing that they were getting actual footage of official quarantine procedures. She shuddered to think that it was all related to Ebola. How could such a thing be possible? Who was in charge? And where was Dr. Hansen? Just as soon as the questions came to her, a man in white coveralls, a mask, and a face-shield came jogging over to their position at the end of one of the lines.
“Laura!” his muffled voice said.
Startled, she jumped and then looked over at him, curious.
“It's me, Dr. Hansen,” he said.
“Dr. Hansen, hello!” She extended her hand, but he backed away.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I just received the page.”
“Why haven't you been answering your phone?”
Dr. Hansen kept his distance. She could see only his eyes. “You shouldn't have come here. This is not the place to be unless you're sick. Why did you tell the guards outside that you were sick?”
“Because I came here to speak to you. To find out what's going on.”
“I can't discuss that,” he said in a decisive tone.
John and Phil looked at each other with concern from behind their respiratory masks.
“You told me on the phone—”
Dr. Hansen cut her off. “That was then. Now it's a completely different story. It's a clusterfuck here, and I'll be lucky if I can get home to my family in the next week or two. You have no idea what we're dealing with. There's twenty different agencies here all trying to take control of this thing.”
“Where is Sergeant Shields?” Laura asked.
Dr. Hansen stopped and looked at her with a ghostly expression in his eyes.
“Where is he?” she demanded. “What the hell have they done to this hospital? How many people do they have in quarantine?” she continued.
“Shields is dead,” Dr. Hansen said. “He didn't make it.”
Laura went silent in shock.
“This Ebola strain is like nothing we've seen yet in thirty years. Antibiotics aren't working, and our serums are having little effect. We're trying our best to contain the damn thing, but it's like it's fighting us. Laura, listen to me. They're not going to let you leave. You need to go through the process now like everyone else. You and your friends might still have a chance of getting out of here.”
Laura had trouble understanding the words coming out of his mouth. Her eyes glazed over as if she were turning into a porcelain doll.
“Laura, are you listening to me?” Dr. Hansen continued.
She took a careful step back and looked at her news team. “Run!” she shouted, sprinting back to the front entrance. John and Phil stood frozen and were slow to react. One of the armed guards immediately took notice and held up his rife, aiming right for Laura's back as she fled.
In the chaos, she saw her only chance to escape. She stayed low and ran for the secondary exit, abandoned in the commotion by its guards. Her feet raced against the tile as the door got closer with each frenzied step.
“Stop!” the guard’s muffled voice shouted.
John looked over at the guard and lunged at him, grabbing the rifle just as he fired. The shots incited more panic as the people screamed and hit the ground to take cover. The shots hit the glass of the front double doors, narrowly missing Laura. The guard jerked his rifle out of John's grip and knocked him to the ground.
John and Phil looked at each other and then made the decision to run, while the masked guard fumbled with his weapon.
They sprinted off to the exit, where glass was hanging down in large shards. The shocked and concerned bystanders in the lobby watched as the two men tried to escape, but were helpless to do anything about it. The guard held his rifle up and again yelled for them to stop. He fired two shots, one of them hitting John directly in the back, dropping him instantly. Onlookers, horrified, cried out. The other shot missed Phil as he ran outside, only to be tackled by a guard and thrown to the ground. Dr. Hansen stood backed up against the wall, shocked, as a SWAT team swarmed the lobby.
“Please remain calm!” one of them shouted to the crowd. John's lifeless, blood-soaked body lay motionless on the glass-covered floor near the exit. “There is no reason to be upset,” the officer continued.
The SWAT team ran to John and quickly threw a sheet over him as the other guards brought Phil back in, struggling to break away. A HAZMAT team seemingly came out of nowhere, lifted John onto a gurney, and wheeled him away. With the lobby in pure pandemonium, the SWAT team then rushed outside to follow Laura.
She ran like never before, sheer panic and terror pushing her adrenaline to uncharted levels. Suddenly a light was shining in her direction. Guards had spotted her and were hot on her trail. She raced across the parking lot, knowing that the van was locked and she didn't have the key. She continued past the bushes and into the nearest road leading away from the hospital.
The officers were close but not close enough to prevent her from flagging down vehicles as they passed her by. Finally, a small truck stopped, and she ran to the driver’s side window. The driver, an elderly man with a ball cap, glasses, and wearing suspenders rolled down his windows.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
From the parking lot, the police were closing in on foot. Dizzy and out of breath, Laura could hardly speak. She examined the kindly-looking man. He reminded her of her grandfather.
“I need ride,” she said.
“You in some kind of trouble?” he said, noticing the horde of police running toward them.
“Please! Just get me out of here.”
The man nodded, and Laura ran to other side and jumped in.
“Go fast. Hurry!” she said.
The man grew nervous but floored the truck anyway, past the hospital and her pursuers. The security guards at the door called for backup on their radios. It was a red alert, an egregious breach of security, and the department would spare no effort at finding her.
Inside the lobby, the mediating officer continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, we do apologize for this unpleasant incident. Please understand that we're here for your protection and that of others.”
The guard who had shot John stood aside, not saying a word. He knew he would have to answer for what he had done the moment his supervisor had put his hand on his shoulder. They made him relinquish his weapon and then led him away to face the worst reprimand of his life, not just for shooting an unarmed man, but also for letting the woman get away.
The crowd was still tense and afraid as the guard continued to try to calm them. Phil was taken immediately upstairs to a quarantine room that operated as a holding cell. They pushed him inside and closed and locked the door. There was a single chair up against the wall of the otherwise empty and sterile room.
Phil clutched his chest and felt the camera. Such a device could make him a marked man. He looked around the room, trying to understand how he had come to be there, and exactly what had just happened. It seemed unreal. John was dead, and Laura was gone. Now it was just him in a tiny room with no answers and little to hold onto but fear.
Approaching Doomsday
Earlier that evening, Greg had finally met Veronica for coffee as promised. However, he had little interest in sitting around and shooting the breeze. What he had seen at the hospital propelled him to action, but out of courtesy, he decided to meet with Veronica anyway. His work van sped into the parking lot of the local coffee house called “Brewster's Beans.”
Greg jumped out of his van after parking it and took a deep breath to regain his composure. He looked at the traffic moving as usual on the main street—the quiet and secure buildings and shops, the mountains in the distance—all the while wondering if a deadly epidemic was even possible in this day and age. He adjusted his work hat and walked around from the back of the faded red building, with its artistic mural, to the front entrance.
There was a moderate crowd of twenty-somethings inside, sitting around small tables and typing away on their laptops. Potted plants dotted the area, along with book shelves, and light jazz played over the speakers. It was a little after 5:30, and Greg scanned the room for Veronica. He saw her in the corner next to a large window overlooking the front patio. She looked up, and they made eye contact. Greg forewent the coffee counter and walked straight over to Veronica's table, visibly shaken but trying to put on his best face.
“It's about time you showed up. I almost forgot what it's like to be stood up,” she said jokingly.
“Sorry about that,” Greg said, standing at the table.
“Have a seat, Mr. Punctuality,” she said, signaling to the empty chair across from her.
Greg nodded, pulled out the chair, and sat, tapping his fingers on the small circular table.
“Aren't you going to get something?” she asked.
Greg turned around to look at the counter. There was a line. He turned back to Veronica, nearly stammering. “Uh, yeah. Maybe. In a minute.”
She studied him with her light gray eyes. He looked worn, tired, and fidgety. His distracted behavior was like nothing she had seen before. “Are you okay?” she asked, leaning in.
Greg took his work hat off. Light chatter and laughter filled the room, coming from the young people at other tables. He put his hat on his knees and placed his palms flat on the table.
“Veronica, there's some things I need to tell you, but I don't want you to overreact.”
She looked at him with a raised brow and a bit of skepticism. “What's wrong?”
Greg took a deep breath and then held his hands out in a pleading gesture. “I don't know. That's the thing. I don't know how to explain it, but the timing is right. It all makes sense when you think about it.”
He seemed to be rambling, and she was having trouble keeping up with him. She took a sip from her latte’s Styrofoam cup and set it back down. She then suddenly and unexpectedly placed her right hand over his, looking into his eyes. “Take your time, Greg. Just tell me what happened.”
From what she suspected, he had just had a crazy day at work, but his eyes indicated more. He was dazed, seemingly lost in space. With the touch of her hand, however, he seemed to focus.
“There was an accident. A traffic accident.”
She instinctively removed her hand and covered her mouth. “Oh no, are you okay?”
“Just...listen...” Greg said slowly.
“The accident isn't important. It happened in front of me. I took one of the drivers to the hospital because there was no room in the ambulance.”
“No room?” Veronica said almost too loudly, drawing looks from some of the other patrons.
Greg slightly held up the palm of his hand, signaling her to lower her voice. “Anyway. We got to the hospital, and it's just like I expected. The outbreak of the disease is much worse than they're saying. The hospital is packed, and it looks like a militarized zone. It's spreading fast, and I don't think they have any idea what to do about it.”
Veronica wasn't sure what to say. She leaned in closer. “You're talking about Ebola?”
“Yes. I mean, I've heard of containment before, but where did all those people come from? They were hidden away on the third floor. The lobby was at overcapacity. Sick people were everywhere. Their eyes were red—I kid you not, the whites of their eyes had turned red. This can mean only one thing: Ebola is spreading at a faster rate than they can contend with.”
Veronica thought to herself for a moment then responded. “I don't know how that's possible. They just recently ended the outbreak in West Africa. There's no way Ebola could spread that easily, especially here.”
“I knew this would happen,” Greg said, disregarding her doubts. He looked directly into her eyes. “This is what I've been prepping for, and it's right on our doorstep. You know plenty about this. I know you've read the books. There has to be some explanation of why it's spreading so quickly and easily.”
“Typically, diseases can only spread through two ways,” Veronica said. “Airborne or direct contact. There is no evidence to date that Ebola can be spread by coughing or sneezing.”
“I know that's what they say,” he said, but he sounded doubtful. “The thing is, however it's spreading, it's spreading. The first seventy-two hours of any outbreak are the most crucial, and we've got to act. I've got everything I need at my place, and I'm going to hunker down.”
“For seventy-two hours?” Veronica asked.
“That's right. Maybe longer.” A barista girl suddenly approached Greg and asked him if he wanted anything. He declined, and she nodded and went to the next table. The room was filled with smiling, apathetic faces, blissfully unaware of what was taking place at the hospital only ten miles away. Greg looked around, leaned in closely, and spoke in a hushed voice. “I want to help you, Veronica. I want to make sure that you'll be okay.”
Veronica shrugged, confused.
“That's why I want to share some of my supplies with you. Where do you live?”
“In an apartment complex with two roommates. I mean, they're in Paris right now. I wanted to go, but I didn't have the money—”
Greg interrupted her. “No, that's not going to work. You need to ge
t out of the city, at least for a couple of days.”
Veronica laughed. “I can't just leave like that.”
Greg slammed his fist on the table, gaining looks from across the room. “You don't have a choice. Please, just let me help you. This thing might go full pandemic, and once it does, it'll be too late for you. Who do you know that lives out of the city?”
“My—my Aunt Tilda,” she nervously answered.
“Take a sick day. Take three days, and if there's nothing to report, you should be fine.”
“Greg, I don't know. This all sounds so crazy.”
He looked genuinely scared, for himself and for her. “Please,” he said. “Just give it a chance. We'll stop by your apartment first so you can pack some things.”
Veronica nodded. “How much should I pack?”
“For at least a week, maybe longer.”
They left the coffee shop in a hurry without looking back. Veronica was confused and overwhelmed, but she trusted Greg. She had never seen him so intense, although she knew little about him outside of the bookstore. One thing was certain, she didn't expect her evening to end up like it did. Her blue two-door Volvo was parked in the back near Greg's work van. They hurried through the lot and to his van as she held her cell phone, scrolling through the news headlines.
There were conflicting stories of reporters being ejected from the hospital grounds due to quarantine protocol, and CDC briefings which urged calmness and restraint. The government assured the media that routine cautionary measures had been put into place, and nothing out of the ordinary was occurring at any of the hospitals treating American Ebola patients. The news was comforting, almost as if Greg had been exaggerating.
Greg followed Veronica in his van, as she drove to her apartment to pack. Her old high-rise building was a welcome sight, and she contemplated telling Greg that she had changed her mind and decided to call it a night. But an epidemic was nothing to gamble with, despite the inconveniences. She parked in the street outside her building and went up into her apartment as Greg waited in his van, idling behind her.
End Days Super Boxset Page 82