by L. T. Ryan
It was also the bunker’s bug out room. Where else could they go?
Sean had equipped the bunker with a cell phone antenna extender. He pulled out his cell and saw that he had a message.
Please let it be Kathy, he thought.
He accessed his voice mail and listened to the message. It wasn’t his wife. Instead, the message had been left by Barbara, his wife’s best friend. She sounded frantic and scared. In her message she said that she was on her way over to Sean’s house. He double-checked the time of her call, realizing it had come in fifteen minutes earlier. She’d be there in ten minutes or so based on the traffic he’d observed a half-hour earlier.
The decision he had to make turned his stomach. Adding a possible fourth person to the bunker would alter everything. The food stores would dwindle that much faster. Power consumption might be greater, taxing the solar energy system. He’d also have one more person he’d be responsible for. Sean sat down at the computer and brought up the security system. At that moment, Barbara’s Toyota pulled up to the house. She got out, opened the back door and leaned in. A couple seconds later she emerged with a suitcase. Her dog, Marley, jumped out after her, and they headed toward the front door.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Sean said. He wanted to ignore the message. But now that would be impossible.
“Is that Barb?” Emma asked.
He knew there was no way he could let Barbara leave now. “Emma, I want you to go into that room there.” He pointed to the door on the right. “You stay there until I get back. Okay?”
She kept her brave face on and said, “Okay.”
Sean waited until his daughter had closed the door to her room. Then, he left the bunker armed with his M9 and a heavy-duty flashlight. He retraced his steps through the passage to the garage. At the final door, he took his time, listening for any movement in the garage. There appeared to be none. He quickly and quietly slipped through the garage into the hallway that led to the kitchen. There, he found Barbara and Marley waiting. She was a couple years younger than Sean. When Barbara and Kathy stood next to each other, they looked like sisters. Sean had always found her attractive. He also found her to be annoying at times. She had vacationed with Sean and his family one time. By the end of the trip, he avoided her.
For six months.
She jumped when she noticed him standing behind her.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Dried tear tracks lined her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I had nowhere to go, Sean.”
He holstered his M9 and reached for her, pulling her into an embrace. After she’d calmed, he said, “I don’t have any dog food.” He reached down and patted the dog, a pit bull mix.
She looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got two bags there. That should last him four months.”
Sean nodded. “Okay, he can stay.” He didn’t mind the dog. In fact, he figured Marley might be helpful to have around as a last defense alarm system. They had the ability to pick up on things that people and technology couldn’t.
“Is Emma in the bunker?”
Sean clenched his jaw as anger scratched to the surface.
“Kathy told me once,” she said.
“Who’ve you told?”
“No one,” she said. “I promise.”
“Not even Billy?”
Billy was her ex-husband. He’d split four years ago. They’d never had kids, and aside from Billy, Barbara had no other family.
“She told me after he left, and you know I haven’t talked to him since.”
“Got everything you need out of your car?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Go to the garage.” He went to the front door and locked it. Then he did the same with the door off the kitchen that led to the back. He met Barbara in the garage and proceeded to lead her through the same procedure he and Emma had gone through an hour earlier. Sean carried Marley over his shoulder as he descended the ladder to the second corridor.
After Sean secured the passage, Barbara asked, “Where’s Kathy now?”
“In the air, I hope.”
“Is she coming home?”
“I told her to go to Charleston.”
“West Virginia?”
“South Carolina.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got an old friend there who has a setup like this, only bigger. After things blow over, we’re going to head there as well.”
“After what blows over?”
Sean stopped and switched on his light. He shined it on Barbara. The shadows highlighted her curves and he swore she looked exactly like Kathy at that moment.
“Sean? What’s going on?”
“Let’s wait and see. If things go the way I think they are going to, I’ll fill you in.”
Inside the bunker, Sean called out for Emma. The girl emerged from her room and ran to Barbara. They wrapped their arms around one another. Sean grabbed Barbara’s suitcase and took it to his room.
“You’ll stay in here,” he said.
“Where will you sleep?” she asked.
“On the couch.”
“Dad, why don’t you take my room? I can bunk with Barb.”
Over the years, Sean had updated Emma’s room to suit her tastes. Princess posters gave way to horses and puppies. Eventually those were replaced by popular boy bands. Only in recent months had he removed her One Direction poster and put up those of a few of her favorite bands. Groups like Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie. The room was suited for her, and to her. He wouldn’t even fit on the bed comfortably.
“No,” he said. “You stay in your room. Barbara can have mine. Once your Mom gets here, she’ll bunk with Barb.”
Barbara glanced at Sean. He shook his head slightly. Emma would hear the truth about her mother when the woman was safe in Turk’s compound.
Emma began to protest. Barbara joined in. He held up his hand and instructed them to leave him alone for a while. The two went into one room, leaving Sean to himself. He fell onto the couch and turned on the TV. Marley climbed up and lay down next to him. He scanned through the channels while scratching the dog’s head.
He settled on a news report and turned up the volume. Over the course of the next five minutes he discovered that things weren’t as bad as he feared.
They were worse.
Chapter 4
The news had hit. Everyone was aware. It didn’t appear that it had sunk in, though.
Throughout Chicago O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 3, people milled about in a state of slow confusion like sheep herded by a Border Collie. Occasionally, someone would break away from the group to stop and stare at a television screen. Unlike in Seattle, whoever ran the show at O’Hare had no qualms about showing the end of the world. The first reports of people afflicted with the sickness in the U.S. were trickling in. Hospitals in New York, Boston and Atlanta had seen an influx of patients. Kathy figured an epidemic was about to unfold, considering only a fraction of the sick take the time to visit the emergency room.
Kathy remained seated next to the check-in desk for her flight to Cincinnati despite a bladder that seemed ready to burst. She feared that if she left her position, the plane might board in a hurry, leaving her stranded in Chicago, where she knew not a soul.
She pulled her cell phone from her purse and attempted to call Sean for the hundredth time. She cursed under her breath at the familiar fast busy tones. For a few brief seconds she had enough of a signal for her phone to tell her there were messages waiting. By the time she dialed into her mailbox, the signal had been lost.
Who had called? Sean? What had he said? What if her parents had called to tell her that one or both of them were sick?
Her stomach felt as though someone had twisted it and tied it in a half-dozen knots.
She glanced at her watch. When would they begin boarding the flight? It was due to depart in a half-hour, yet no one manned the check-in desk, and the door to the jetway remained sealed. Could the pilot or one of the flight crew have b
een affected? Or perhaps someone on the previous flight, rendering the plane unusable?
All around her, people coughed and sniffled. She saw tired faces, bloodshot eyes and hunched over bodies. Parents clung to their children, fear written across their faces.
She thought to keep a tissue to her mouth and nose. Would that filter the air? She could have kicked herself for tuning Sean out during his survivalist rants. He probably told her how to survive a situation like this ten times or more, but she never made it through an entire lesson.
Take it minute-by-minute, she told herself. She had to remain aware of everything that occurred around her. In a situation like this, things were fluid and could change at any moment. Large worried crowds, such as the one she found herself in, taxed the available security force. That provided those with ulterior motives an opportunity. She knew that they were all sitting ducks if someone chose to take advantage of them.
She passed the next several minutes playing Sudoku on her phone. That still worked at least.
A voice came over the intercom. It mentioned her gate. She looked up at the pale-faced young woman behind the counter. Kathy recalled seeing her at one of the other gates. As the news of what was happening rolled out, the airline employees must have decided to call it quits and take care of themselves. She didn’t blame them.
Regular boarding procedures were tossed. The woman opened the door and then told everyone to line up and get on board. Boarding passes were inspected, but seat assignments were ignored. There was one flight attendant on board, and she didn’t seem all that interested in doing her job. Was the cockpit properly manned? Kathy knew the question would haunt her for the duration of the seventy-minute flight.
A nervous hum rose above the engine noise. Kathy rose and walked toward the restrooms. She saw several groups of people bunched together, seemingly staring at one person in the group’s cell phone.
No better time to ignore the rules than at the beginning of the end of the world, she thought.
Of course, she soon realized that people could have been using tablet devices connected to the plane’s wireless internet. Why hadn’t she packed her iPad? Then she remembered that Wi-Fi was not offered on this flight.
Inside the restroom, she pulled out her cell phone. It had a signal. She thought about calling Sean, but decided to check her messages. The first message had come from her husband. It was a warning about what was occurring. He instructed her to fly to Charleston, South Carolina where she was to meet Turk. There were four more messages, all from her boss, wondering where she had disappeared to. The last message came in around nine a.m., Pacific Time. She ended the call, and then dialed Sean’s number. Placing the phone to the side of her head, she waited anxiously for it to ring. After a long pause and a low clicking sound, she heard the familiar sound of a call connecting. After six rings, the call connected to Sean’s voice mail.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I just got your message. I’m in the air right now, on my way from Chicago to Cincinnati. I’m supposed to fly to Roanoke from there, but I’ll try to get that changed to Charleston while I have cell service. If anything has changed, call me as soon as you can. Give my love to Emma. Hope to see you two soon. Love you.”
She stared at the screen for a few moments before pressing the end call icon. Someone knocked on the door, disrupting her concentration.
“Just a minute,” she said.
The person on the other side mumbled something indecipherable.
Kathy pulled up the phone’s web browser. It opened on her homepage. She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the browser and opened an air travel booking application. Within seconds she found a flight from Cincinnati to Charleston, South Carolina. She booked the flight and paid with her credit card. She decided against canceling her flight to Roanoke. If she later found out that Sean had remained behind, she wanted to be with him.
She flushed the toilet, washed her hands and opened the bathroom door. An older man stood in the aisle. He offered a tepid smile. She thought he looked scared, as did most people on the plane. He brushed past her and slammed the door shut. The muffled sounds of the guy losing his lunch could be heard a moment later.
Kathy walked back to her seat. She felt like she was living in a dream. In no way did the events of the day make sense. Things like that just didn’t happen in real life. In a book or a movie, sure. She’d watched lots of them as a kid. She even enjoyed watching some of the newer shows on her computer at work. Sean couldn’t handle them, so they were forbidden at home.
She collapsed into her seat, exhausted. She wanted to make one more call to Sean. Her phone would not cooperate, though. The signal was gone and nothing happened when she dialed. No fast busy. No endless ringing. Not even a trace of static.
The plane dropped for what felt like a few hundred feet. As the angle of their trajectory turned downward, Kathy glanced out of her window and saw an air control tower, and what she figured were two runways. She wasn’t all that surprised that the pilot had begun his descent without saying anything. He hadn’t spoken once throughout the flight.
Looking around, she saw other travelers buckling their seat belts. She did the same. Their descent seemed rushed. The normal care taken by airline captains had been thrown out the window. This pilot only had landing the plane as quickly as possible on his mind. Perhaps he had another flight to catch, or maybe he lived in the area and needed to get home. The plane hit the runway with the usual screeching and bouncing. They rapidly slowed down to what felt like a crawl after an hour of five hundred miles per hour.
The window next to Kathy afforded her a view of the terminal. She spotted the empty spot outside of a gate where a jetway extended out.
The pilot butted the front of the plane next to it. The flight attendant wasted no time opening the door while the pilot waited behind her. Together, they exited the plane without so much as a wave to the passengers on board.
One man stood and commented that he’d never fly the airline again. A few people laughed. Kathy knew that the irony was not lost on any of them. As the laughter faded, she rose to the tips of her toes while standing in the aisle to get a view past the end of jetway. The frantic scene unfolding beyond the gate told her that something was wrong.
Chapter 5
Turk knelt next to the Suburban and checked the tire pressure of the front driver’s side wheel. He wanted it a touch under factory recommendation in case they had to head off-road. Anything was possible today.
The news of the outbreak had come as no surprise. He’d remained clued in. It had been one of his conditions for remaining off the grid as far as the government was concerned. In exchange for his exile, he received updates on the virus that had slowly been spreading for most of the last decade. Entire populations had been annihilated, yet the news never picked up on it. No one seemed to care when a small African village or tribe vanished.
What did surprise Turk was how fast the virus broke out in the States. He knew it wouldn’t be long until it hit Charleston. Being out now was a risk. His only salvation was the small vial of antidote that had been provided to him six years ago.
Another condition in his agreement with the government.
He replaced the caps on all four tires and then topped off the gas tank. His brother emerged from the convenience store, aiming his M4 at the register.
“Don’t bother calling the cops,” Marcus said. “They won’t come.”
Turk shook his head at his little brother. “What the hell, Marcus? I gave you cash.”
Marcus had always been the crazy one in the family. Considering Turk had spent twenty years as a SEAL, that spoke volumes. While Turk had been infiltrating hostile areas in an effort to keep his country safe, Marcus had spent time behind bars for everything from robbery to attempted murder. But he was loyal, and that was what Turk needed surrounding him at this time.
When it came down to it, Marcus would do anything Turk asked, even if it meant taking a life.
“Get
in the car,” Turk said, opening the driver’s door.
“Ain’t like there’s anyone to bust us,” Marcus said.
“Just shut up for a while.” He’d always said his little brother would never grow up. And now, it didn’t matter.
Turk fired up the big V-8 engine and pulled out of the gas station parking lot. Traffic was lighter than he had expected. Charleston wasn’t a small town. It wouldn’t be mistaken for a sprawling metropolis either. Still, he’d thought that more people would be on the road, coming or going, than he saw.
He avoided the interstate, instead taking back roads toward the airport. This was the only trip he planned on making. In all, he planned on five people arriving, including Sean’s wife, Kathy. He’d never met the woman, although Sean had told him plenty about her years ago. From what Turk recalled, she was tough and resilient. She’d be an asset in his community, not a liability. He’d have welcomed her either way. Anything for an old friend.
Turk turned into an area designated as the cell phone waiting lot. There, people could sit and wait for the person they were picking up to call them and let them know they were standing outside the airport.
Charleston’s airport was small, consisting of only a couple gates. Large rocking chairs sat in the lobby in front of an expansive window that overlooked the runway. Turk had come to appreciate the quaintness of the airport during his travels. He’d often sit down in one of those rockers for fifteen minutes after a return flight home.
“Airport’s up there,” Marcus said.
Turk nodded. “I know.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Waiting and watching.”
“Why don’t we go to the airport?”
“You are aware of what has happened today, right? You remember the stuff I’ve been preparing you for? It’s occurring now. You want to run up to the front doors, be my guest. I’m waiting right here.”