“With everything down,” I said after a moment’s silence. “I can’t think of any real way to see if any of the rest of the world is still talking.”
Estelle nodded, then said, “I’m hoping that the CDC might still have some line on the outside world.” She left unspoken the shared thought that it was entirely possible no one was left there, either.
“Might be nice to know if help is coming,” I observed. Of course, it might not be help, but I would have expected to see the enemy already. Unless they were waiting out the virus’ half-life or something.
“That’s a big if,” Estelle said, then reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Thank you for this, Henry. As a doctor, I want to hold on to any hope that I can, but there aren’t any guarantees with something that has so many unknowns.”
I glanced back at the kid sleeping behind me and nodded. “I understand, doc. Still, if there’s anything I can possibly do, I’ll do it.”
“You and Jackie are doing quite a bit,” Estelle said, leaning her head back against the headrest. “Have you been together long?”
“A few days, now,” I admitted. “I met her while I was trying to find someone alive. We were checking out the same hospital, in fact.”
The doctor laughed softly and gave me a sidelong look. “She showed me where you had a lot of the pharmaceuticals. Rather looked like you grabbed everything you could, and the manual was a nice topper.”
“It was right there, and I had no idea what most of those things were used for,” I said, shrugging. She sounded amused, rather than reproachful, and probably understood that neither of us was addicts of any sort. “We haven’t even had a chance to sort through that mess.”
“Once we get back, I’ll help,” Estelle said. “I know my way around a dispensary.”
“Cool, thanks,” I said. Up ahead, the sign for the Newnan exit drew closer. I tapped the brake and let off the gas to coast down the exit ramp. “Time to make another call.”
“I’ll check on Tommy,” the doctor said.
I just nodded and turned my attention to the radio while it powered up. After a minute or so, I took the microphone, clicked send, and said, “Atlanta one to Homestead, do you copy?”
There was a moment of silence, during which my heart sped up significantly. Then Jackie responded, “Loud and clear, Atlanta one. How goes the trip? Over.”
“So far so good,” I looked questioningly at Estelle, and she shrugged. “No change. Over.”
“Better than the alternative,” Jackie sent back. “Poop Machine is fed again and changed again. Pick up some more diapers on your way back. Lots of them. Maybe roomfuls. Over.”
I laughed softly and shook my head, then replied, “Will do, Homestead. Anything else you need? Over.”
“I can think of a few things, but they’ll wait till you’re back, Atlanta one. Get your ass back on the road. Over.”
“Acknowledged, Homestead,” I returned with a broad grin. “Over and out.”
“Does that girl have anything else on her mind?” the doctor asked as we settled back into my truck.
“I couldn’t say,” I said with a smirk and a shrug of my shoulders. “I mean, I can’t really complain…” Then I trailed off, blushing a bit. Here I was admitting something really private to another woman that I’d barely just met.
Estelle laughed softly and reached over to pat me on the shoulder. “I’m a doctor, dear,” she told me. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard.”
“I was in the Army, doc,” I said. “You might be surprised.”
“True, true,” she admitted, nodding. “I wasn’t being accusatory or anything like that. To be quite honest, I don’t blame the girl.”
“She really is something special, I think,” I said. “In a good way: smart, cagey as hell, fit, and good-looking to boot. I feel like I won the lottery.”
“Maybe you did,” Estelle said with a sly smile. “Maybe you did.”
I nodded and gazed off along the empty road ahead. There was something I was missing, and I mostly just didn’t want to think about it right now.
“I can get us into Atlanta,” I said. “But I don’t know where the CDC campus is.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, turning her attention back to the sleeping boy. “I can guide you. I even have my key card.”
“So, do you have different colors for different clearances, like in video games?” I asked.
“They just have our names and pictures,” Estelle scoffed. “Don’t believe everything you see in Resident Evil or The Walking Dead.”
“Damn, the doctor knows her pop culture,” I exclaimed, grinning.
“All that and more,” she said. “You don’t deal with a giant pack of medical nerds without learning a few things. Some of it even sticks.”
“Jackie tossed out the idea of getting a D&D game started,” I offered. “You’d be welcome. The kid, too, once he’s well.”
“I might be willing to try that,” Estelle said. “Some of the staff at the CDC played occasionally, but I never thought to join them.”
“It was something to do on post for me during downtime. Apparently, she played in college.” I smiled to myself. Yeah, I really had lucked out running into Jackie.
“How long will you be able to stay in Atlanta?” the doctor asked quietly.
“As long as you need me to, I guess,” I replied. “If everything’s cool, I can run back and forth. I might as well use the gas while it’s still good. There are things we really need to finish up at the farm, too.”
The air started to pick up an odd haze as we drew nearer to the city, and there was an acrid tang with each breath. I switched over to recirculated air in the cab, but it didn’t quite get rid of the smell. Tommy started to cough a bit more but didn’t fully awaken.
“This ain’t good,” I muttered.
“No,” Estelle agreed. “What could it be?”
“Fire,” I replied. “Probably chemical or something.” Thinking about it, I'd smelled something like this before in Afghanistan in the aftermath of a firefight: burning vehicles.
We both peered off into the distance and quickly realized that the distant, low dark cloud was not something. No, it was smoke from an immense fire. Perhaps it was only the aftermath, but I was concerned the air would quickly become tainted even more than it was.
I slowed the truck and pulled to a halt on the side of the interstate. “We need to go back,” I said slowly. “At least back to Newnan. There’s got to be a surplus shop with gas masks or something.”
“Definitely,” Estelle agreed as Tommy coughed again. “Please hurry.”
“On it,” I said and swung the truck back around. There was no point in crossing all the way over into the Southbound lanes, not with the road empty of travelers. Soon, the air cleared a bit, and it wasn’t much further back to Newnan.
“I’m not sure if there is a military surplus in Newnan,” I admitted as we pulled to a stop at the head of the on-ramp. “But we can fake it with the better-quality work masks from the hardware stores at least long enough to get past whatever caught fire.”
“If you think that’ll work,” Estelle said. “Let’s just get those. We’re already losing time.”
Tommy coughed again, and it sounded wetter than it had before. I glanced back at the kid, and he mouthed something I didn’t quite catch. In addition, I fancied I saw a gleam of blood on his lips.
“Right,” I muttered, then took off. I could see both a Lowe’s and a Home Depot sign from where the truck sat.
The Lowe’s was the closer of the two, so I pulled right up to the main entrance and hopped out.
“Wait with him,” I said, probably unnecessarily, to Estelle, left the vehicle running, and walked up to the glass and steel doors with the heavy crowbar from behind my seats. It took a minute’s work to break the lock on the doors and pry them open, and I set off into the dark interior, heading for the hardware and paint sections.
In about five minutes, I re
turned to the car with several chemical valved safety masks and all the packs of filters I could find. I kept two packs for each of us and put the rest into my toolboxes, then rejoined Estelle and Tommy in the cab of the truck. We spent the next few minutes unpacking the masks with the help of a razor knife and affixing the filters. We could go ahead and wear the masks, open, until we started to smell the acrid stink of whatever was burning, then seal them up.
“Think he can handle this by himself?” I asked Estelle as I drove back towards I-85.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s responsive, but barely. It’s probably best if I do it for him.” There was a brief pause. “In fact, I should probably sit in the back with him, Henry. Do you mind pulling over for a moment?”
“Not at all,” I said, and suited actions to words, stopping the truck on the side of the road out of habit.
The doctor quickly moved to the back seat and closed her door. She started getting the kid outfitted while I started up again. I couldn’t help but think this had turned into more of a race against time than she’d admitted at the beginning. Still, the trip had to put more stress on Tommy than being back at the farm. It was too bad that we needed to get him to either the CDC campus or one of the main Atlanta hospitals and hope Doctor White could cobble together a minor miracle.
Of course, there was always a chance the boy’s immune system could fight off the disease by itself, but it wasn’t looking good so far.
Once again, we reached a point where the air began to take on a haze from the smoke of whatever was burning. We’d certainly know that soon enough, as ahead, the smoke thickened. It wasn’t enough to block my vision fully, but it was strong, and there was a greasy feel to it that got in, even through the truck’s cabin filter.
Finally, we saw it. The Atlanta airport was burning. Planes, the building itself, even the runway in spots. It wasn’t a recent fire, though, but it had been free to burn and spread for a while. Fortunately, the complex was separate from nearby neighborhoods, so the damage was relatively confined.
Still, it was an amazing and terrifying sight.
“Good lord,” Estelle murmured, her voice slightly muffled by the mask. “I hope the rest of the city isn’t like this.”
“I don’t think it is,” I said, accelerating to as fast as I thought was safe. Our vision wasn’t impaired that much, and we could breathe with the filters, but I didn’t want to spend any more time in the smoke cloud than we had to. “I wonder if this was just accidental, or if some survivor with a death wish or fire fixation set it.”
“I hope it was an accident,” she said after a minute. “The thought of a destructive survivor is rather frightening.”
I just nodded. We hadn’t told her about the gas station, or the half-imagined brake lights, or the missing semi. Right now, Estelle needed to focus on Tommy, and I needed to get us to the CDC, no matter what.
Surprisingly or not, some blackened bits of debris made it to the interstate. I had to brake hard and swerve to dodge the first piece which was almost the size of a small car, but low enough to the ground I had nearly missed seeing it in the haze. Tommy and Estelle got thrown around a bit, and I called out, “Sorry!”
After that, it was almost like threading a needle to work my way through the small field of smoldering parts and ruin that just about blocked the path near the point where I-85 went under one of the runways. The shadow brought a small reprieve, but the smoke was thicker. I dropped speed and kept going, keeping my eyes peeled.
Meanwhile, Estelle squirmed around in her seat so she could take Tommy’s hand and hold it reassuringly through the few nerve-wracking minutes it took to navigate through the fields of debris and the thick haze. Our filters strained against the stink of the smoke, and my eyes watered.
Over the sound of the Dodge’s engine and the road noise, I heard Tommy whimper softly, and I clenched my teeth with resolve. Nothing was going to stand in my way now.
Nothing.
Shadow and haze gave way to light and clearer air as we emerged from beneath the overpass. There was more shit on the road for me to evade, and I took it as carefully as I could. Speed was for when the road was clear.
Soon enough, we were past the danger and barreling northwards. “Any early directions?” I asked.
“You can take 85 on through town to the North Druid Hills exit,” Estelle replied. “Or 285 around to the Stone Mountain Freeway. It doesn’t matter much, I don’t think.”
“I’ll stick to 85, then,” I said. “If it starts looking dicey, we can adjust accordingly.”
“That works for me,” she said, keeping her eyes on the boy in the back seat. He looked to be sleeping again, which was good.
I focused my attention on the road ahead and dropped the hammer a little. Everything looked clear for now, so we might as well make up a little for lost time.
22
After the excitement of the still-burning ruin of the Atlanta airport, the ride into the downtown canyons was almost disappointing. We saw a few wrecked cars and some tractor-trailers. The owners, I suspected, had kept pushing on until they’d passed out and died behind the wheel.
That was a morbid thought. At least most people seemed to have stayed off the roads, unlike every apocalypse movie or TV show that had the roads blocked with shoulder-to-shoulder cars.
If this was the end of the world, it was a lot quieter than I’d ever imagined. I glanced over at Estelle for a moment, saw she was still awkwardly tending to the kid, and returned my focus to the highway ahead. I-85 to Druid Hills sounded like the least complicated route to me, so that’s how we went. All the electronic billboards were dark, but the skyscrapers almost seemed like they were open for business.
We merged onto 75/85 and rumbled by Georgia Tech. Everything was so still and quiet that I couldn’t help but feel nervous. It was like the calm before the storm, but the storm never happened, which made me even tenser.
The constant edge of adrenaline reminded me of my time in Afghanistan, when we’d gone out with infantry on vehicle recovery missions. In fact, I half expected gunfire to erupt at any moment, and when it didn’t, that just made my brain work overtime imagining scenario after scenario.
Outside of the airport, we saw no further fires, although there was evidence of older ones, maybe dating back to the day after I woke up. Fortunately, nothing required us to take a detour.
I braked and exited at North Druid Hills. Estelle turned back around and started paying attention to direct me. The area was eerily quiet, I thought, although several dogs of various sizes watched us from a street corner as we drove by.
That made me wonder how quickly they’d gone feral, or if they even had. Most of them did bear healing injuries, it looked like, and I couldn’t help but scowl as we drove past.
“Poor things,” Estelle said quietly. “They’ll survive us, I guess, but it’s going to be rough for a while.”
“Yeah,” I said, eyes tracking the nearby environment. “Makes me wonder about the area around the zoo and whether or not any of those animals made it out.”
“I can’t say I’d be surprised if they did, or if someone survived long enough to let them out,” she mused.
“Or a survivor did,” I added.
“Yeah,” her voice trailed off. “You’ve tensed up a few times during this trip, Henry. Kind of makes me wonder if you’re hiding something.”
“I’m not very good at it if I am,” I said, then pulled onto Clifton. “Remembering the war, mostly. The airport and the emptiness brought back bad memories.”
From where we were, we could see the glass and steel and brick of the CDC building. Estelle reached into the pocket of her ever-present lab coat and held out a key card to me.
“I can sympathize, I think,” she said as I took the key. “We’ll see if the lights are on at the gate. Take the next turn and follow the driveway around.”
I nodded slowly as my heartbeat quickened. This was kind of a make-or-break moment. If the complex stil
l had power, then maybe, just maybe, there were people there who could help Tommy.
We could really use a change of luck, and maybe, just maybe, this was it. I pulled to a stop in front of the gate which was closed. The light on the card reader glowed amber, or maybe it was a trick of the light. I tapped the card to the sensor, the light went green, and the gate began to creak slowly open.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
Estelle just grinned and bounced a little in her seat as I accelerated slowly forward. We passed through the gate, and it began easing shut behind us. Suddenly, from ahead of us, a figure in military camouflage, carrying what looked to me to be a FN-SCAR-H, popped up from behind cover and took aim. A strong, female voice shouted loud enough to be heard over the engine of the Dodge through my open window.
“Stop the vehicle and keep your hands where I can see them!”
I did as I was told and put my hands on the wheel after turning the truck off. There was no way I’d risk a shootout with the kid and Estelle in the car. Estelle did the same as the figure moved in a careful circle to peer into the driver’s side of the truck at me. She wore a full hazard mask as well as the military gear, and everything she had was in tip-top shape.
“You used an ID to get through the gate,” the guard said flatly. “Show it to me.”
“Angie?” Dr. White said from beside me, leaning into the other woman’s field of view. “Is that you?”
“Dr. Estelle White?” the person who must have been Angie whatever asked after a moment’s pause. “Everyone thought you’d… been lost.”
“I proved immune, as did my friend Henry here,” Estelle said. “Could we park? I’ve got an emergency patient in the back, and we’ll need a hazmat and containment team at the minimum. I’ll be treating the boy myself.”
“We don’t really have teams, ma’am,” Angie said. “Not anymore. There’s maybe five of us, and we’ve kept a strict no-contact since the outbreak worsened.”
After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus Page 15