After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus

by Archer, Simon

  “Outbreak’s pretty much over,” I said, keeping my hands visible.

  “The child might be contagious,” Estelle said. “Right now, he’s infected by an active strain.”

  “Well, shit,” Angie said. “You’re the ranking member of the staff, doctor, so I’ll run ahead to report in. I don’t think anyone is going to like it, but we’ll see and hope.”

  “That’s about the best I can expect,” the doctor said with a nod. “We’ll go around to the special intake doors.”

  “Of course. See you in a few.” With those words, the soldier was gone, double-timing off towards one of the buildings.

  “It’s always good to know someone in charge,” I commented offhandedly as I started the truck up again. “Where are these special intake doors?”

  Estelle smiled faintly and pointed. “Main building, back side. Drive past the museum entrance to circle the building.”

  I scanned the area as I followed the doctor’s instructions. It seemed really weird to me that SOCOM would have assigned someone to the CDC, but maybe that was just a bit of paranoia talking. Maybe I should have paid more attention to how things operated with regard to secure sites like this, but I never was assigned to any of them.

  Hell, maybe I should have watched more of The Walking Dead. I’d heard they had an episode or two that dealt with this exact complex. I really had no idea how accurate any of the depictions of the place were in the shows and stuff, but I reckoned I was about to find out. I pulled the truck around to the back, which looked like an ambulance bay, following Estelle’s directions.

  A few moments after we stopped, two people in hazmat suits opened the doors and trundled out to us with a rolling gurney.

  “Doctor White,” the lead one, a man, greeted her. “Welcome back. Did you survive the illness, or manage to avoid contracting it?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Robert,” she said dryly. “I survived it, so I intend to donate a bit of my blood for science.”

  “Robert, huh?” I said with a nod and a faint smirk. “I’m Henry Forrest. The kid in the back seat is Tommy Flint, and he’s who you’re picking up.”

  “Right, right,” said the other CDC person. This one was female. “Let’s get him inside and into a room, and we’re going to have to insist on decontaminating all three of you.”

  I bristled a little. Decontamination, to me, meant stripping naked and having my clothes burned while I got hosed off by some asshole in protective gear. Estelle reached over and put a hand on my shoulder before I opened my mouth.

  “It’s standard procedure, Henry,” she said gently. “It’s not what you’re probably used to, either.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Let’s get the kid inside.”

  I opened the door and carefully scooped the sick boy from the bench seat before moving him to the gurney. “He’s going to have to be isolated from everyone who hasn’t survived, won’t he?” I asked, not liking the idea of the kid being alone, or waking up surrounded by people in hazard suits.

  “I’ll be there,” Estelle said. “And so will you.”

  I nodded. “Let me test the radio while you get him situated, then come out and get me.”

  She nodded and turned to the others, then motioned for them to get moving. I watched them go and went to set up the radio. It wasn’t long before Angie, the guard, joined me.

  “Short wave?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “It was the only way I could think of to keep contact with home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  Nosy girl, I thought, then gestured off to the southwest. “Opelika.”

  “Thank you for bringing the Doctor back, sir,” she said.

  “No need to call me sir, specialist,” I joked. “I work for a living.”

  Angie laughed and eyed me through her protective gear. “Military?”

  “Former Army,” I answered. “Was a specialist, myself. 91-B.”

  “Your tag says you’re a Purple Heart recipient,” Angie observed. “What happened?”

  “Long story,” I replied with a faint grin. “Best told over a cold beer and hot food.”

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance,” she said with a shrug. “If the doctors clear you, of course. Anyway, sorry to keep you from making your call. I’ll go wait by the doors and escort you in once you’re done.”

  “Thanks,” I said, nodding and giving her a faint smile. “I won’t be too long, I don’t think.”

  I watched her move away. She was alert and had her weapon ready. This was not, in my experience, peacetime behavior. I had questions, and I’d likely have to press to get the answers. Likely, my hope that it wouldn’t take long for Estelle and the other doctors to take care of Tommy was a futile one, but I had to hold on to it. Still, I wanted to get back to Jackie and the farm as soon as I could.

  “Atlanta one to Homestead, do you copy?” I said into the microphone.

  Once again, a few minutes passed in silence, then a clatter and crackle came over the speaker before Jackie spoke. “Been a while, Atlanta one. How goes? Over.”

  “We had to double back to get some masks,” I replied. “The airport was on fire. Over.”

  “Come again?” Jackie exclaimed in surprise, forgetting to say ‘over.’

  “Long story,” I said for the second or third time that day. “But we’re here at the CDC, and there are more survivors. Doctors and a soldier. Over.”

  “Good,” she responded after a short silence. “Will you be back soon? Over.”

  “As soon as things look better with Tommy. Something seems off, and I don’t know if I want to leave Estelle and the kid by themselves. Over.”

  “Henry the hero,” Jackie said. “Watch your six, soldier. Over.”

  “Will do, Jackie,” I said, using her real name. “I miss you already. Over.”

  “I miss you, too, and so do the kids. Over and out.”

  The radio went silent, and I sat staring at it for a long moment before I raised my head and looked around. Angie waited near the doors, alert, with her weapon ready and at rest. She held the attitude of a posted guard in a hostile region. I wondered what that meant. Did they have hostile animals in the area or hostile survivors? The former, I pretty much expected. The latter, though, was a real danger.

  I tucked away the radio, turned off the Dodge, got out, and locked it before walking over to where the guard waited.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I replied.

  She gave me a once over, and I suspected her gaze lingered at the pistol on my belt, but she said nothing, just clicked the ‘send’ on her own radio a couple of times and led me inside. The hallway was austere, with a large set of double doors secured by a key reader dead ahead about thirty feet on. I gave her a questioning look.

  “Someone will be along to escort you to decontamination in a few minutes,” Angie explained. “Doctor White will meet you there. She’s helping get the kid situated in one of the ICU rooms.”

  I nodded slowly, and as she turned to head back outside, I asked, “What’s the danger?”

  The soldier looked back at me, and her shoulders slumped a bit. “I wish I could say it was just wild dogs or escaped zoo animals,” she said. “But we’ve had a couple of attempts to enter by armed men. It might be the same guy, but I couldn’t be sure, and the director wanted to keep an armed watch. So far, I’ve been a good deterrent.”

  “These men were hostile?” I asked.

  “They were armed, and they certainly weren’t selling cookies,” she joked. “I’ve warned them off three times now. No shots have been fired, fortunately.”

  “If they show up again, I’d like to see them, if nothing else. Y’all are helping with Tommy, so I’d like to offer my assistance with, well, whatever you might need.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, falling back into formal practice. “I will convey your desire to help to the director.”

  “Thank you, specialist,” I said, straightened,
and gave her my best Army salute. “Stay safe.”

  “Will do,” she said, returning the salute. “You owe me a story, a beer, and a hot meal.”

  23

  The decontamination area was a lot different from I expected. There was a basket for clothes, but no place for my holster and pistol. Rather than make a fuss, I sat down on one of the benches, fully dressed, and waited for one of the doctors to show up.

  Thankfully, Estelle walked in after about ten or fifteen minutes and gave me a wan smile.

  “Before you ask,” she said. “Tommy is resting comfortably. I went ahead and treated him with steroids and a general antiviral. They’re taking a chest x-ray, nasal swabs, and some blood.”

  She had a bandage near the crook of her elbow as well, and my eyes fell on it, then went back to her face.

  “You gave a sample, too,” I said. “Do you need one from me?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “And a nasal swab. We can detect this pathogen, but it’s very easy to misidentify.” Then she paused. “Do you want more of the explanation, or is that enough information for you?”

  “I think that’s good for now,” I told her. “Who’s taking the samples from me?”

  “I will,” she replied with another faint smile. “Then we both need to decontaminate and go wait in the isolation rooms near the ICU.”

  “Isolation rooms, huh?” I didn’t like the sound of that, but we’d be close to the kid in the ICU.

  “It’s to keep the whole facility from getting contaminated while the others run their tests and make sure we aren’t carriers,” she said.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said. “I just don’t like it.”

  “If it matters, there’s no talk of disarming you,” she informed me. “We’ve got some wipes you can use on your gun and holster.”

  “Wipes?” I said in disbelief. “That kills this thing?”

  “Bleach kills damn near everything,” Estelle replied with a laugh. “You’ll probably have to oil it again, right?”

  “I’d prefer that. There’s a cleaning kit in the glove box of my truck,” I replied. “Apparently, they’ve seen another survivor around, but Angie sees that individual as a hostile.”

  “Robert and Gwen said something about that,” Estelle mused and let out a sigh. “I want to apologize for them, too, by the way. They really have no idea how to deal with you, or me being back.”

  “I reckon they could apologize for themselves and not be assholes,” I grumbled. “An introduction and a friendly handshake would go a long way to mending this particular fence.”

  “We’ll try that, once you and I go through decon,” she said with a soft laugh. “First, though, I’ve got to get those samples from you. So if you don’t mind, Henry, have a seat over there while I get the kit.”

  I let out a long-suffering sigh and settled into a chair with a built-in armrest. Anyone who’d ever had blood drawn for analysis knew what these were for. Estelle got her phlebotomy and swab kits, returned, and efficiently performed the gathering of samples. For a doctor, she wasn’t half-bad at doing the blood draw.

  “That it?” I asked after stifling a sneeze from the swab. My nose itched, and I rubbed it slowly and sniffled.

  “Sure is,” she said, stood, and went to a metal panel in the wall. “I’m afraid all the clothes we have are scrubs, at least until our stuff can get run through the wash.”

  “That’ll look pretty stupid,” I observed. “A gun-belt and scrubs.” Then I just shook my head, resigned. “Whatever gets Tommy the help he needs.”

  She secured the samples in the opening behind the panel and turned back to me. “You do understand why we need to do this, right?”

  “I do, doc,” I replied with a faint smile. “None of these folks survived the disease quite the same way we did. They avoided it by being in a secure facility and observing protocols. Hell, I rather doubt any of them have been off the campus since it all began.”

  “You’d win that bet,” Estelle said with a slight chuckle as she returned and led me through some doors into a room with a line of showers along the wall. Each was separated by a shoulder-high tiled partition.

  “Well,” I commented. “This brings back memories.”

  She laughed again and pointed to a plastic bin. “Clothes there, soldier. They’ll be washed and returned to you later today. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Not sure scrubs will help me with the ladies.”

  Estelle snorted, then matter-of-factly started to undress. She pulled a set of green hospital garments from a cabinet along with a towel, chose a shower, and headed for it while I couldn’t help but gawk a little.

  The doctor was fit. She had all the right curves and pretty obviously worked out before everything went bad.

  “If you’re done staring, Henry,” Estelle called over the sound of the shower. “You might want to scrub down. The soap kills pretty much everything, so be liberal and scrub off a layer of skin.”

  I blushed a bit and tore my eyes away. Estelle was a more mature beauty than Jackie, but that wasn’t a problem for my hormones. It was all I could do to hide a growing hard-on as I stripped and headed into the shower myself.

  The almost blistering hot water helped a bit, though a cold shower would have been better. I did as I was told and scrubbed every inch of my mostly lean frame with the provided soap. It had a strong, antiseptic smell, but that was to be expected.

  Later, dressed in the scrubs and light hospital slippers, gun belt around my hips, I followed Estelle deeper into the building until we eventually reached the intensive care unit. There were only a few rooms here since the CDC mostly supported outside hospitals and focused on research and containment.

  One of the other doctors, Robert, I presumed, met us in the hall, still wearing his canary-yellow hazmat suit. He stuck out a gloved hand.

  “Doctor Bob Finley,” he said to me. “Sorry for being so brusque outside.”

  “No worries,” I said, then shook his hand. It would have been better without the glove, but I was still a potential ball of viral death, and I understood. “Henry Forrest, out of Opelika. Former US Army.”

  “You’ve spoken with Angela Powers, yes?” he asked.

  “If you mean Angie, the soldier outside, then yes,” I told him. “She mentioned a hostile survivor.”

  Estelle broke in at that point. “I’m going to check on Tommy while the two of you talk.”

  “His O2 levels seem to be up a bit,” Bob offered to her retreating back. “And the X-rays are with his chart.”

  Once the door closed, the man turned back to me. “There’s a fellow who shows up outside the gates and yells at us every now and then. He blames the CDC for unleashing a plague on humanity, yadda-yadda. Angela is concerned because he sports military hardware and drives a big surplus truck, a deuce-and-a-half, or something. So far, he hasn’t done anything more than yell, but he might be building up for an attack or something.”

  I shook my head and sighed. Even in the aftermath of a devastating plague, there were still crazy people. My thoughts drifted back to Jackie and baby Irene back on the farm, and I scowled. This was a problem, but only if Tommy didn’t get better quickly.

  “Have y’all had any luck contacting anyone else?” I asked.

  “A little,” doctor Bob replied. “Come with me.” He motioned for me to follow and didn’t wait before turning and heading off down another nondescript hallway.

  I followed, and we ended up in a waiting room of sorts. Bob took a seat, and after a moment, I did as well.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware, but basically every country in the world does work with and communicate with us. Usually, this is in the form of cellular communication, etcetera, but we do have some direct satellite links. Right now, we know the satellites are working, and we’ve managed to reach three groups worldwide.”

  He sighed. I stayed silent for a long moment, then he said, “Fuck it,” and removed his helmet with a hiss of air. “I s
uspect that so long as you aren’t coughing or trying to kiss me, I’m probably okay, and that damn thing is stuffy as hell.”

  “I’ll keep my virus to myself, doctor,” I said. “Don’t you worry.”

  He rolled his eyes. Bob Finley wasn’t a young man, nor was he old. He was balding, with very dark brown hair and blue eyes, a thin face, and wore a haggard expression like a badge of honor.

  “I imagine the others will be contacting us shortly to say that you and Estelle are clean. The child, however, is most likely not, so we’ll need to keep safety procedures in place for those of us who didn’t survive infection.” He looked me in the eyes and smiled sadly. “I hope you understand.”

  “I do,” I said. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

  “We will,” he nodded vigorously. “We most definitely will.”

  “By the way, doc,” I said with a smile of my own. “Nice to actually meet you face to face.”

  “Sure,” he said with a chuckle. “Anyway, we have contact with posts in Australia, Poland, and Ethiopia. Pretty much everyone else isn’t answering, so we figure they’re casualties. I can confirm that there’s nothing left of nearly every government in the world, and I suspect that probably fewer than a hundred thousand people or so survived worldwide. It might even be less, but there are some significant and fairly isolated populations that may have avoided infection.”

  “Do you know anything about where this bug came from?” I asked. The sheer scope of Robert’s estimate made me feel numb. The numbers of dead were incomprehensible, and I’d seen some of them first hand.

  “The first case in the United States seems to have originated in New York City. At least, that’s where the first reported death occurred. Cold-like symptoms spread across the country like wildfire, far faster than any of our usual models predicted, which makes me suspect multiple points of entry, multiple ‘patient zeroes’ if you will.”

  “At the same time, we started getting reports of an unprecedented upsurge in cold symptoms abroad. Very suspicious, if you ask me. I don’t want to say that this was probably an engineered pandemic, but the signs really do point that way.”