“Liam my young friend, I think it is safe to say no one here is fighting much of any disease.”
Yep, that's just wonderful.
4
Since they carried very little, there wasn't much effort required to settle in for the night. Victoria was still very protective of Grandma's food and water, but risked doling out more to her in the near-darkness of the interior. Liam was watching Victoria and noticed she took none for herself.
Liam had a short nap sitting under the tree earlier in the day so he wasn't yet ready to settle in for the night. He asked Victoria to keep an eye on Grandma while he went to look for answers.
The first stop was the candy shop.
There was just enough light that he could get around all the people on the floor of the open room. There were many more people crowded in there than he initially thought. Other than a few coughs and a baby crying, most people had chosen to remain silent as they waited for...who knows. It was unnatural. But Liam figured nothing like this had ever happened before, not even close, so no one really knew how to act or what to expect next.
The medical folks were still standing where he'd seen them earlier. Others were sitting around a couple of small tables, but Liam was shocked to see what they were doing.
Getting drunk.
“Hey. Excuse me. Can I come in?”
A young looking man with suit pants, a white shirt, and a horrible tie was among those standing at the door and motioned him in.
“Come on in friend.” He saluted Liam with a bottle of beer. Others in the group did the same. It did not inspire confidence.
“Ummm. Thank you.”
They pushed out a chair for him to sit, which he did. He felt very uncomfortable with all the eyes on him, and the room fell suddenly quiet. He decided to get it over with.
“I just arrived here with my grandma and a friend. I'm tired as hell but I'm trying to find someone with answers.”
“Grandma huh? Was that the old lady you were pushing in that wheelchair earlier? I saw you guys come in.”
“Yeah, that's her. She's been through a lot but we're safe for now.”
“I don't know how safe we are.” A slight chuckle, “How old is she? She looks to be about a hundred!”
“One hundred and four to be exact!” Liam was very proud of the fact, though he really couldn't explain why, once it had come out of his mouth. If she was a lot younger their escape would probably have gone a lot smoother.
“I was wondering if you could tell me what's going on? I mean with the plague.”
Everyone at the tables looked around at each other, as if deciding who would answer him. It was the man with ugly tie who spoke up first, and Liam noticed he downed a good portion of his beer before starting his reply.
“I'm Douglas Hayes from the CDC.” He waited for a few seconds to let that sink in, then he continued, “and you are?”
“Liam Peters.”
“OK Liam, I know what you're thinking right now—'big shot CDC guy who has all the answers' but I'm sorry to disappoint you. I know very little about what's happening outside this room...I'm more of a middle manager,” he waved his hand as if presenting his colleagues and said, “we are all more or less middle managers.”
He pointed to a plain-looking red-headed woman and said her role was to scout out locations for constructing tents and generators as part of the advanced team dedicated to St. Louis. Another person was responsible for shipping the equipment from Atlanta. He went around the room, assigning roles to them all—roles which definitely were more logistical in nature than medical.
The only person even remotely connected to information turned out to be a middle-aged Indian-looking “IT support person.” She called herself April.
Mr. Hayes gave her the floor.
She had a British accent which Liam found fascinating, “I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing for sure, as I've been telling my friends all day. But the CDC isn't very tight with email or internal file security—I know that probably sounds crazy—and I've been able to glean some information by looking—accidentally—at some critical correspondence inside the agency.” She gave a nervous laugh as she drained the final portion of her beer.
“The main lesson I learned is that this plague has caught everyone off guard, including the CDC. I've hacked into the accounts for people all across the chain of command, and it is always the same—emails full of confusion, anger, and impotence.”
Douglas continued, “anyway, we were sent here as part of an advanced team that was supposed to get the jump on the plague in a city that hadn't already succumbed. Most of the East Coast is already gone. St. Louis was deemed far enough west that our bosses thought it would provide good intel on how it spreads, and hopefully offer help in mitigating that spread. They were able to get us out here, but with the breakdown of transportation networks they weren't able to get our gear here, and no one knows whether the medical teams ever departed Atlanta.”
“We got here late yesterday afternoon and have been waiting ever since. None of our cell phones work reliably anymore, but earlier today they were working well enough, and we got no response from anyone in our chain of command back east.”
“So now we are sitting here drinking beer, waiting for the double-E train Doomsday Bug to roll through the city and make our jobs obsolete—”
Victoria walked in the door just as the words were said. Her response, standing next to Liam, was to make the sign of the cross—signifying she was praying in the face of such bad news.
Hayes, seeing this, went on, “—and that won't help I'm afraid. You won't find god, religion, whatever, in the cities anymore. At least those on the East Coast. This is it folks, the end of mankind.”
Victoria was unperturbed. “Then we need prayer more than ever.”
Hayes chortled, then seemed to recompose himself. “We'll see, won't we?”
In the face of such bad news, Liam didn't know what to say. He'd read enough to appreciate the moral dilemma of whether God was present when such evil was consuming the world, but that was only in books or in the movies. In the real world it was a lot more ambiguous. He admitted to himself he couldn't visualize entire cities of zombies. What of all those people? Did these intoxicated people really represent the final, best efforts of the government? His dad always mocked government ineptitude, but these guys were caricatures of the theme. Everyone might die because they did nothing.
Did they have any answers at all?
“So do you know anything about the plague itself? What caused it?”
“Dunno.”
“Where is it from?”
“Dunno.”
“Can anyone survive it?”
“Dunno. Hey kid, don't you get it? We don't know anything.”
“But you said you had access to secret network files and all that. Surely there has to be something valuable in there?”
The IT woman spoke up, “That's just it. There were no files. Lots of emails looking for guidance, but very little actionable intelligence and almost no files relating to this outbreak anywhere in the system. Absolutely nothing about patient zero—the source of the whole thing.”
“I don't get it. What are you saying?”
“I'm saying—we're saying—the CDC not only doesn't have any clues about the origin of this disease, but as best we can tell it didn't have any idea it existed until it had already scoured through most of the East Coast. We were caught totally and utterly flat footed.”
Liam felt mad more than anything else. He expected to glean some clues on how to save Grandma and instead he was told that the one group in charge of solving this hadn't even deployed their researchers to start researching.
“So you guys are essentially worthless?” Liam couldn't help himself.
Hayes' eyes went cold. He glared at Liam for just a second before laughing it off, “Whoa there partner! We did the best we could.”
Liam didn't want to let them off the hook, but knew he was being unfair.
&
nbsp; “So did any of your teams get out to study the disease?”
“Oh yeah, lots of teams went to the East Coast. Some teams even went out the front door of the CDC headquarters into Atlanta as it succumbed. But everything happened so fast there was no time to make any headway against it.”
“There are no reports in the system. I've looked. Teams go out and never report back in.” April looked disappointed, as if she had spent a lot of energy on this task.
Liam turned around to leave, as he obviously wasn't going to learn anything from this group. But something occurred to him as he was saying goodbye.
“Oh one more thing. This is my conspiracy theory father talking, but is there any way someone could have deleted all the files in your system? Could that be why there is no data on this?” He laughed a little, indicating his belief it was a crazy thing to suggest.
The room became very quiet. Liam sensed the change in attitude. Did he say the wrong thing?
Douglas stood up, pulled at his tie, and looked around at his colleagues.
“Congratulations my smart-ass friend. It took us 24 hours to figure that out.”
The implications were obvious and stunning.
“So you're saying that not only is the CDC not fixing this disease, but it may have had a hand in causing it?
Hayes answered as he walked deeper into the room, away from Liam, “Why do you think we're just sitting around drinking?”
Looking at Victoria, he saw her once again making the sign of the cross.
He thought about mimicking her, but the moment passed.
5
Liam and Victoria returned to Grandma and told her what they had learned in his discussion with the “experts” on the disease. Grandma was nearly asleep so she didn't say much. Victoria shared her thoughts too, though they both were talking in whispers so as not to wake anyone else – or scare them.
“They said the entire East Coast was gone. Wow. Wouldn't we have heard something on the news about massive plagues in all those cities? Did they mention Denver before I came in?”
“I should have asked them about Denver. Sorry. Would we have heard about all the sick people on the East Coast? I don't know. I don't watch the news, so I can't say whether there were clues about what was really going on. Maybe they thought it was just the flu or something? That wouldn't be big news, even if it was pretty bad. Would it?” Victoria, for her part, had no better idea on what had happened, but she did share one story she gleaned from her brief time back at the medical school.
“This story didn't make sense when I heard it, but after what you just told me I think I can see some truth to it. One of my friends had a class about a week ago where a nurse practitioner told a story she swore was true. She said another friend of hers in Boston was working late one night when she had to go to the morgue to deliver—well you can guess. Anyway, she got there only to find several police officers cordoning off the door to the morgue, stating that no one was allowed to go inside or come out. When pressed, the police officer said they got called in with a report of mischief inside the morgue. They figured it was students pranking the nurse on duty with the old “he ain't really dead bit” but when they got there they found several corpses really were “alive” and there were no interns pulling the strings. They pulled back the sheets from over the deceased and found each of them thrashing around in their restraints despite having the most grievous wounds you can imagine. My friend said they ran out of the morgue, shut the door, and gave the order to seal it. Everyone else was pushed off the floor and nothing was ever heard about it again. The next day the morgue was completely empty, but otherwise open for business.”
Victoria finished her story and the pair sat in the darkness of the cavernous chamber in silence.
“Did your friend say how long ago that happened?”
“I didn't think to ask, but we talk almost every week and she didn't mention it the previous week, so I have to assume it happened anywhere from a week to two weeks ago.”
“So in that time period the plague must have exploded on the East Coast and it was hidden from view. That doesn’t seem possible to me.”
“Me either. But seeing dead people walking around has changed my perspective on a lot of things.”
“Let's get some sleep and maybe tomorrow things will look a little better.”
Both settled uncomfortably onto the concrete floor, leaning against the hard wall. Liam offered his backpack to Victoria as a makeshift pillow. She accepted his gift readily, but a minute later she returned the favor by suggesting they lay near each other so they could each share the cushion—on opposite sides. It still wasn't much more comfortable, but it made Liam infinitely happier.
Thirty minutes later, nearly asleep, Liam heard and felt a “crump” sound coming from outside. An explosion? Several cops had been sleeping on the far side of the room, and they ran up to the exit doors and went out into the main crowd under the Arch. Fussy babies and coughing from the disturbed survivors sprawled on the floor amped up in the commotion. Liam intended to stay awake and discover what they found out there, but the day caught up with him and he fell asleep. His final thought was of the CDC folks.
“Why do you think we are drinking?” Hayes had said. He thought he understood his meaning, but it jumped out at him in his half-sleep. Maybe they weren't drinking because they were afraid their bosses had scrubbed the records. Maybe they were drinking because they knew what was in the records which had been scrubbed?”
He couldn't decide which scenario was worse.
Chapter 10: Touristy Stuff
Liam, Victoria and Grandma were all shocked awake at first light by the booming voice of one of the police officers on the other side of the large space.
“ATTENTION PLEASE! ATTENTION!”
He yelled a few more times and waited until he was sure everyone in the place was awake with eyes on him.
While everyone focused their attention on the loud officer, Liam stole a glance back toward the candy store and wasn't surprised to see it was pitch black inside and none of the CDC people were awake. Liam wasn't entirely familiar with the concept of a hangover, but did know that rough mornings followed late night partying.
Or they just up and ran.
He tried to laugh that off, but it had struck a chord of truth.
The officer began his announcement.
“Thank you everyone. Good morning. I'm captain Osborne of the Missouri Highway Patrol. I'll get right to it. Last night we almost lost the entire park. The cordon many of you saw on the outskirts of the grassy area under the Arch has been pulled back inside the park. We were able to stabilize the lines as we made them shorter, and we were also assisted by several military units, including one tank and several Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Vehicles. As of this morning the lines are holding. That's the good news.”
He paced a bit as he spoke.
“The bad news will take me much longer I'm afraid. First, there are more infected than we ever imagined. Even as our lines consolidated we could see the sick increasing in strength down many of the roads surrounding this park. Since we still don't know how this thing is spreading, or if these infected citizens are alive anymore, we can't take chances letting anyone in. We have no choice but to keep killing them. That said, it is entirely possible we'll all run out of ammo before we can kill them all. Secondly, even though a few military units showed up, they made it clear they were both volunteers and probably classified as deserters from the main force sitting over in Illinois. They may have saved our bacon last night, but no one is coming to save theirs. Third, the military guys said they had orders to prevent anyone from crossing the river. They intend to keep the disease on this side and will use lethal force on anyone trying to cross back to them—their own men included.”
He took a deep breath. “So. Where does that leave us?”
“You might not be aware that my fellow law enforcement officers, my brothers and sisters you all passed as you came into the park, have been
trying to keep this place secure from the infected victims so that we all have a chance of getting help by the Feds and get the hell out of this mess. Our families are here. Same as yours, and same as those people up top we are trying to protect. But now it looks as though no help will be coming.”
The room was deflating.
“We lost many men and women last night. Even though we held them off, and improved our lines, the endgame is that unless we fight our way out of here we are going to be trapped.”
Osborne paused a little too long and the crowd in the room exploded with questions, thinking he was done.
“HOLD UP!” He controlled the room again in an impressively short time.
“Let me finish. Our plan is to start organizing civilians for a breakout. We know there are plenty of men and women with weapons out there, and we think our only chance of escape with some sort of organization is to make those citizens aware of the impending collapse. To that end I need some healthy volunteers for some tasks we need done. We are woefully short on manpower. You'd really be critical to helping the police units up top, but you are ultimately helping yourself from the infected assailants out there.”
Liam and Victoria looked at each other, then at Grandma. She shook her head in the affirmative.
They took off without looking back, wanting to make a difference.
2
The pair waited in a line of eight or nine other people. There were a couple youngsters besides themselves, but most volunteers were quite a bit older and few looked overly athletic. Everyone could carry and use a radio however, which was the only condition for volunteering. Some more people dropped in behind them as the line shrunk.
Liam noticed the people ahead of him in line were given radios and then moved off individually with other officers waiting in the wings.
When it was their turn Liam and Victoria stood together, making it clear they were a team.
“Ah, finally someone who looks like they can handle some touristy stuff. I take it you two are together?”
They both stumbled on that answer.
“We aren't together together, but we are together,” was spoken at the same time as “Oh its not like that.” Liam and Victoria both looked at each other in a bemused fashion, to which the no-nonsense captain said, “fair enough. I think it would be best to have you both go together for this task though. Would that be OK?”
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens Page 13