The crowd assembled around the stage were chatting among themselves, some tired, some bored, and some afraid. The perpetrators entered the square from a nearby building with several armed men walking behind them. Aaron and Judy held hands and walked with their heads high just as the crowd went silent with curiosity. Plenty of people knew the couple, but no one knew what they had done.
They were known as a nice, normal family, who, like many others, had spent the past few months trying to survive and adjust to life at Base 42. Once the couple was on stage, Bill Hodder walked out of the same building flanked by guards. The crowd cheered his arrival, though some remained motionless and silent.
Bill took the stage as the applause died down. Aaron and Judy stood nervously behind him as an armed man tied their hands behind their backs. Bill had changed from his casual T-shirt and jeans into desert-tan military fatigues. Although he was no soldier, the uniform gave him a look of authority. He wore dark aviator glasses that completely shielded his eyes.
Blindfolds were placed over each of the couple’s faces. Panicked and fear-stricken, they both began to shake. Judy slumped forward slightly, as if she might fall. Neither of them had any idea what was going to happen to them. They were aware of Bill’s strict code, but they didn’t think they had done anything wrong. By keeping their daughter’s illness a secret, they weren’t hurting anyone. Bill, however, saw things differently.
“People of the new world,” Bill said loudly and raised his arms in the air. “We have certain responsibilities to ourselves and to each other. One of those is ensuring that we help each other stay alive. And in order to do so, all of you are aware of this base’s rules in regard to reporting an illness or signs of virus infection.” He stopped and looked back at the couple. Judy was sobbing quietly as Aaron’s lips moved. He appeared to be praying. On the platform, Bill walked closer to the crowd and continued.
“When those rules are violated, it puts all of our lives at risk. We’ve fought so hard to get this base Ebola free, and why risk it with the actions of two irresponsible young parents? It’s unconscionable that they would put their own needs ahead of the safety of others, and I am appalled and saddened that it has now come to this.”
Bill nodded to Santos, standing on stage, who then stepped forward and proceeded to read from a document.
“Aaron and Judy Russell, you are hereby charged with violating section 1.4 B of the disclosure act, including but not limited to, hiding two infected individuals in your quarters and not informing authorities of Base 42 of their condition. This offense greatly puts the entire base at risk of an outbreak, and it is the opinion of this committee that you have committed a heinous offense, not only against yourselves and your children, but against the entire community.”
Bill held up his arm, signaling Santos to stop. “All right, that’s enough.” He took another step forward and looked out into the crowd through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. “Without law, we are nothing. Without rule, we are nothing. It doesn’t matter how long we stay hidden behind these walls; nothing will work unless there’s a system in place.”
The crowd hung on to his every word. It was hard to tell where their sensibilities lay due to their silence, but there were no outright objections. Judy’s sobs grew louder, catching Bill’s attention. He turned to her and then back to the crowd.
“Justice, however, must always be fair. That is why I’m giving the Russells a choice regarding their fate. I’m going to ask both of them, right here and now, who was responsible for not reporting that their children had contracted the Ebola virus.”
“We didn’t think they had Ebola!” Judy shouted, stunning the crowd. “Our daughter was sick. We all get sick. But it wasn’t Ebola!” She began to struggle, trying to get out of the grip of one of the guards holding her by the wrists.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Bill said. “Which one of you is responsible?”
Judy screamed for help and mercy from the crowd. No one said or did anything in response.
“I am,” Aaron blurted out.
Bill stopped speaking and turned to face Aaron. “Speak up, Mr. Russell. Please, speak up.”
“I said it was my fault. My wife didn’t do a thing. It was completely my idea!” he cried.
Bill thought to himself. He signaled one of his men to approach Judy. The enforcer came over and pulled out a pistol, causing her to scream just as she felt the metal press against her head.
“No, please! Don’t do it. It was all me!” Aaron pleaded.
“Is this true?” Bill said, leaning closer to Judy. Her blindfold was soaked from sweat and tears. Her breathing had quickened, and her face was flushed. She could barely talk.
“Well, is it?” Bill asked.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t his idea. It was mine. I insisted on keeping her there because I knew what would happen to her. I was scared. Don’t listen to my husband, I’m the one who suggested it, and I’m the one who insisted on it, even though we knew it was wrong.”
“That’s not true!” Aaron said. “Judy, please. Don’t do this.”
Bill signaled with a jerk of his head toward Aaron. His enforcer strode over, put the gun against Aaron’s head, and pulled the trigger. The blast silenced the crowd completely. Aaron fell to the ground the moment the side of his head split open. Judy screamed, thinking for a moment that it was she who had been shot. She called out Aaron’s name but got no response. There was a collective gasp in the crowd, but no protest.
“What did you do to him?” she shouted, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge the blindfold.
“The sentence has been carried out,” Bill said, looking out to the crowd. “That is all. Go back to your quarters and look at your work logs for the day.”
The crowd grumbled and slowly began to disperse, looking utterly defeated. The guard behind Judy had to hold her up as her legs gave way and she could no longer stand. Bill approached her and quietly spoke in her ear.
“Your husband was lying, Mrs. Russell. I believed you. You made a mistake, but at least you were honest about it. And that’s why you’re still alive.”
Bill waved to the guard, and he dragged her off the platform as she cried out in anguish. Aaron was on the ground on his knees, slumped over. Bill looked to Santos.
“Keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s okay. We don’t want another damn suicide.”
“We might have jumped to conclusions about the son. Maybe he’s all right after all,” Santos said.
Bill shrugged. “Why take a chance? That’s what I say anyway.” They vacated the platform as two men placed Aaron’s body onto a stretcher and carried it away to the truck that would take it to the burn pit.
Outbreak: Carson City
Two Months Earlier
Before Base 42 became what it did, and following the initial outbreak, the virus had ravaged one particular neighborhood in Carson City, Nevada. Within this neighborhood lived Greg Atkins, a prepper who decided to weather the outbreak by hunkering down in his two-bedroom home. He had spent considerable time preparing for a potential outbreak after it was reported that a hometown soldier, Sergeant Timothy Shields, was being treated at the nearby Carson Tahoe hospital for Ebola.
Sergeant Shields reportedly contracted Ebola overseas in Liberia toward the end of his humanitarian mission under Operation United Assistance. However, he wasn't the only soldier to return home with the disease; there were also reported cases in Tampa, Florida; Dallas, Texas; and Los Angeles, California.
How the disease spread so quickly, the experts couldn't say. It was a different kind of Ebola strain—something much more lethal and fast-moving. At times, it even seemed cunning, and as the numbers of cases dropped in West Africa, they seemed to rise with lethal force in the United States.
Greg's life before the outbreak was one of routine. He worked as an installation technician for a home security company called Red Light Security, and he regularly prepped. The lethal quality of the disease had taken even him
by surprise as he had already been preparing for an economic collapse. As a result of the Ebola threat, he had slightly modified his prepping tactics. He began to stock up on protective equipment and supplies. He put a plan in place to stay put with enough food, water, and hygienic materials to last for six months.
He was a tall man, just a little under six feet, with short, dirty-blond hair and light-brown eyes. His typical goatee had grown into a full-fledged beard over the weeks. He had thick arms and fast legs and was generally in pretty good shape. Nearing his forties, however, he had slowed down some. But he did everything to keep in reasonable shape with his weights, jump rope, and other exercise equipment.
Since the outbreak, simply maintaining the house was enough exercise. He had conducted a deep-clean on his house using all sorts of cleaners and bleach. He had sealed his windows and doors with duct tape. He had constructed security trip wires around his house to alert him of intruders. He had done all of this as the virus continued to spread. His windows to the outside world were the television, the Internet, and the radio. Thankfully those things still worked, but he knew that with a full-fledged outbreak on the horizon, things would continue to change for the worse.
The neighborhood had turned into a ghost town of sorts—evacuated to some degree. His hunkering down began the very night the government placed a travel ban outside city limits, urging residents to seek refuge at quarantine centers. Hospitals had been overwhelmed, and off-site quarantine centers began to spring up in remote areas. It became difficult to go anywhere once a state of emergency was declared by the governor.
His dutiful neighbors had followed instructions to relocate to quarantine centers, but Greg wasn't going to travel anywhere. He would sit and he would wait, though he wasn't alone in his prepping. He had his loyal German shepherd, Captain, by his side, and his friend, Veronica, who like him, clearly understood the threat they faced. Veronica had tried to flee the city, only to be turned away at a checkpoint. With nowhere else to go, she found herself with Greg, who happily took her in.
But it wasn't long before a group of criminal opportunists stalked the neighborhood and broke into random homes in hot pursuit of a big score. Greg had fended them off the best he could, but things didn't go as smoothly as he had hoped. The home invasion had changed everything. The house was damaged, Veronica was injured, and Captain was dead.
***
Greg was outside in his backyard, where a dark golden sky of dusk clouds blocked the drooping sun. He could hear crickets in the woods beyond his privacy fence, but there was little else going on. Gone were the bustling sounds of the neighborhood: kids playing in the street, neighbors driving home from work, and dogs barking back and forth. It was eerily quiet but peaceful. However, dread wasn’t far from his mind.
Greg could only imagine what was happening everywhere else. The panic, the despair, and the grotesque consequences that Ebola left in its wake. In Carson City, everything had started small, so small that no one seemed too concerned about the first Ebola patient, or the infected nurse who looked after him, or half of the hospital staff who soon also became infected. Then the spread exploded and things became serious.
As Greg patted the dirt with his shovel, a sickening feeling tore at him. It was the feeling of true loss, something he was familiar with but hadn't faced in quite a while. Burying his own dead had been the worst of it. He hoped that Captain’s death was the exception, not the rule to the way things were. He tossed the shovel onto the ground and took a moment to get his thoughts together.
The thugs and ex-convicts who had tried to break into his house had taken something from him that could never be replaced. He had fought back and killed them all. He promised himself that as long as they were hunkering down, he would never let it happen like that again. But he also believed that another run-in with ruthless predators could not be prevented. The Ebola crisis had brought the best and the worst out of everyone.
Greg went back inside his house through the back door, where he had recently patched up a bullet hole. There were other repairs to be made in the house: the front door frame, the broken living room window, and several holes in the ceiling from the spray of shotgun pellets were all just some of the damage caused by the home invaders. Greg was making progress though and hoped to have his house re-secured for hunkering as quickly as he could move.
There were, however, other problems that he could no longer ignore. The power was going out intermittently; little blackouts here and there with no reasoning why. He noticed the quality of the water declining as well, with a glass of tap water displaying a brownish tint. These were things he would have to consider. There was also Veronica in quarantine, and his dog, Captain, dead and buried in the backyard.
He had Veronica resting in the garage, sealed off from the rest of the house, and was monitoring her for signs of Ebola. She had gotten a pretty nasty cut from one of the intruders before Greg blasted the man away with his own shotgun. Unfortunately, the man was infected, and his blood had gotten all over Veronica.
When it happened, Greg had run inside, leading Veronica to the shower, where she got out of her cut HAZMAT suit. Later, he gave her antibiotics and placed disinfectant over the wound on her stomach. The garage had been turned into a quarantine station where Veronica was under surveillance for signs and symptoms of Ebola.
Now, three nights later, it was time to check on Veronica again, but first, Greg toured the house to reassess his overall hunker-down status. The television was on, and the near-hysterical news reports had become commonplace. The news media were blaming a fellow journalist, a woman reporter, for spreading the disease after she escaped quarantine at the hospital and reentered the general population. She was yet to be found, heightening panic around the city and prompting calls for curfews, travel bans, and quarantines.
The male anchor continued:
“…In a hasty attempt to contain the disease, local officials have placed strict travel limits throughout the city. This includes the implementation of martial law and the containment of residents within the city.
“Other residents, in nearby towns or neighborhoods, have voluntarily and involuntarily been relocated to quarantine stations jointly run by health officials and military personnel. The Nevada National Guard is said to be overwhelmed, as are hospitals, schools, and recreational centers in the area being used for the treatment and isolation of infected and non-infected patients.
“Keeping the two separated has been a struggle for local and state officials. Such extreme measures have proved controversial throughout the nation as many public officials and celebrities have spoken out against quarantine measures in Nevada. Senate Majority Leader, Louis McCarthy, gave a blistering speech on the Senate floor, criticizing the White House's response. White House Press Secretary Josh Johnson said that the President is 'committed to fighting the disease, and will do what he needs to do to contain the outbreak.’
“The CDC has also presented new guidelines to the public addressing the spread of Ebola. Their research into this particularly contagious and lethal strain of Ebola is that it can spread through sweat, mucus, and skin particles, along with bodily fluid contact. They adamantly maintain, however, that the disease cannot be spread through the air. CDC Director Theodore Robbins has said that the airborne travel of the disease is 'biologically impossible.'
“Regardless, massive skepticism exists among many about the CDC's research, with some accusing the agency of underestimating the disease. There are currently 25,000 cases reported and 9,898 reported deaths, making this the largest and deadliest epidemic to ever hit the United States. Greater concerns stretch across all infected areas from the southeast to the west coast, and as Americans battle this unprecedented crisis, many influential religious leaders have declared it—the end times.”
As unsettling as the news was, Greg pushed on with his tasks. The bodies of the five intruders were no longer in sight. He had buried them days ago while carefully practicing decontamination measures whenever he
was going from outside to inside his house. He wore his HAZMAT suit outside and changed into his disposable protective garments when checking on Veronica in the garage. He had been going on little sleep and felt like he might just collapse, and if he were lucky, sleep and wake up when the entire nightmare was over.
He inventoried the food supply in the kitchen. There was little left in the refrigerator as he was expecting a permanent power outage any day and was using that food first. The pantry was stocked with a variety of canned and preserved foods. He inventoried the hall closet, where the medical and first-aid supplies were stored.
He inventoried the weapons and ammunition stored in his room. Many rounds had been expended warding off the home invaders. He finished his assessment for the day and looked around the house. Everything was back to where it should be.
***
Greg eagerly anticipated assessing Veronica's condition. She had been physically and emotionally drained from the attack but showed no outright signs of infection. Greg pulled the disposable gowns from the medical supply storage and geared up.
In the living room, a table next to the couch had a small tray with Veronica's meal. Greg had cooked some beef ravioli with a side of mashed potatoes. He picked up the tray, wearing full protective equipment, and opened the door leading into his garage, and now, makeshift quarantine zone. He hoped for the life of him that her condition had improved. He knocked and slowly opened the door after he heard her say, “Come in.”
The garage was dimly lit, and all the additional supplies were covered with tarp and tied down. Captain's purple ball sat on the concrete ground in the middle of the garage, and Greg's heart immediately seized upon seeing it. Losing his dog was going to be tougher than he had imagined.
An upright air filter machine was humming in the corner, and Veronica was lying on a bed Greg had pulled in from the guest bedroom, enclosed within hanging plastic sheets on all sides.
End Days Super Boxset Page 88