Within a couple months, they had married. While Ernie’s wife had moved to be with him in Lansing, where he was working at the time, she had made him promise that someday they’d move up north and buy a little cottage on a lake. It had never happened. Her life had been cut short, several years earlier, by a sudden heart attack; a shock to everybody, including her doctor. Ernie had been devastated but he had kept working to keep his mind occupied. His kids had eventually moved north as their mother had always wanted to do, but Ernie just wasn’t ready to face a retirement alone. For ten years, he had been telling them that he wanted to work one more year.
“Guess I’d better get back to work. Can’t let these youngsters see me slacking.”
Keith laughed at that, knowing that as soon as the kids left to do something else, Ernie would find a place for a nap.
As he watched the old man walk away, Keith began to think about his own family. Cell phone coverage was sporadic at best, but he’d finally gotten through to his two sisters. They were both safe for the moment but they were worried about their little brother being stuck in the city. He had assured them that he was in a safe place, but he also made sure they both knew exactly how serious the outbreak was in Lansing. He gave them as much advice as possible on how to prepare in case it hit their areas.
Shanelle was another story. Keith had finally reached his estranged wife. She was trapped in her apartment building but some of the tenants had gotten together and had cleared off a couple floors. They were pooling their food, though she had told Keith they didn’t have enough to last long. They planned to try to get to the other floors soon and she had promised to keep him posted. He had told her that the military was bringing survivors in to the hospital, and she had agreed to talk to her neighbors about trying to get to the roof. For the moment, she was safe but Keith wondered how long that would last.
~*~
Nick Doune had not heard from his wife, nor had he attempted to reach her. In fact, thoughts of her had scarcely crossed his mind. He was busy with his lab and was trying to learn as much as possible about the cause of the plague. Without a microscope, he was unable to examine anything on a cellular level so he spent a lot of time watching the infected from a second floor window through binoculars and taking notes. He desperately wanted a specimen that he could dissect, but the others had been squeamish about allowing him to bring in a ‘live’ one to study. Instead, samples were taken from the infected in the parking lot when possible. Nick improvised with the resources available, but he began to think more and more about making a trip to his lab to retrieve equipment. He finally approached Snake with the idea one morning.
Snake thought about the doctor’s request for a second.
“My guys said the last trip to the hardware store got pretty hairy, but if you think that crap may help us to figure this out, there’s no time like the present. It’s only going to get worse.”
“I’d have to go along,” Doune said, not trusting a bunch of bikers with his fragile equipment. “We’d need at least two people to carry the heavier things and then I could box up the fragile items.”
“You’re not going to have much time to pack, Dr. Doom,” Snake said sarcastically. “If the excursion to the hardware was any indication, we’ll be doing more shooting than anything. Imagine a wounded fish swimming in a pool infested with slow moving sharks. We’ll be the fish, maybe the only fish out there, so we’ll be very popular. Still want to go?”
“Of course,” Doune said, ignoring the barbs. He looked forward to observing the infected a little closer from the safety of the vehicles. “The lab should be secure. It’s enclosed by a cinder block wall with a heavy-duty gate, so once we get inside we should be able to take our time loading up. A moving van or large rental truck would be perfect.”
“We used a linen truck to haul the cinder block,” Snake informed him. “It’s about the size of a small moving van. There’s already a bunch of sheets and blankets in the back that you can use for packing your precious equipment.”
Snake tried to hide his disdain for Dr. Doune, who reminded him of his CO in Viet Nam. To Snake, Doune seemed like the type of person that would sacrifice anything and anyone for the mission without remorse. His CO had caught a ‘stray’ bullet and Snake was hoping history wouldn’t repeat itself.
Nick sighed. “Worm . . . excuse me, Snake, I am trying to find a cure for this outbreak. It’s not like I’m asking for help to get a flat screen TV or, God forbid, a video game console. Without my equipment, I don’t have a chance of finding a cure or creating a vaccine.”
While the statement was true, Doune knew it was unlikely he’d ever find a cure. He was no virologist and while he had an adequate knowledge of viruses, bacteria and bacteriophages, they were not his specialty. That wouldn’t keep him from trying but his desire to research the virus stemmed more from his passion to learn than it did from finding a cure to save the world.
Snake grinned, showing the gap where two of his teeth used to be. Looking up, he prayed aloud, “Lord, forgive me for what is going through my head right now.” He turned to the doctor.
“Well dude, if we’re going to go, let’s do it now,” he said, walking toward the door.
Autumn approached Dr. Doune with a look of concern.
“If you get bit, can we experiment on you?”
“Of course,” he said. “I agreed to donate my brain to science but most of the people that would know what to do with it are probably already dead.”
He turned to leave with Snake, who was carrying a bat along with his gun. Doune noticed an assortment of other odd weapons as they got ready to leave. One man had a hockey stick while another carried a crowbar. There was also a sledge hammer and he saw a couple of machetes. Some of the men even had metal poles that had been fashioned into pikes.
Snake noticed the curious looks that Doune was giving his men, and he said, “We use these weapons when we have to be quiet. Guns tend to draw crowds.”
Doune nodded and stepped outside. He had expected fresh air and the acrid stench of smoke hit him hard. There was human flesh burning; he could smell it. The smoke wasn’t just from the bodies that had been burned, though. Half the city looked like it was in flames and Doune wondered if it would spread to the hospital.
Shots rang out as someone picked off the undead that were wandering the parking lot.
“We may end up with a bigger problem than the infected if that’s possible,” Doune said. “I have the feeling that the fire department is no longer on call, and if these fires spread, we could be trapped.”
“Yeah,” Snake agreed, “I don’t think we’ll be getting any services any time soon. If the fires spread, we’re going to have to try to fight them as well as possible or we’re going to have to run. We ought to talk to Jack about it and get a plan in place.”
“I have no idea what sort of equipment we have to deal with a fire or any other disaster for that matter,” Doune said. “It’s funny how many things you take for granted.”
“Speaking of that, the fuel in our generator should last a couple weeks, but when the power grid goes out, we’ll only have a short time before the city water tank runs out with no pumps to refill it. My guys grabbed some barrels from the hardware store to catch rain water off the roof, just in case.”
“Good thinking,” Doune said.
“C’mon boys,” Snake said. “We’re taking another field trip.”
~*^*~
~23~
Doune glanced at the wall on his way to the truck.
“How long will it take to finish the wall?” he asked Snake as they climbed into the cab.
Six bikers with rifles climbed on top of the truck.
“Should be done tomorrow. We had a little setback after Eric drove through it the other day, but it’s almost done now. Now we just need a gate.”
They had to stop several times while four of the men climbed down off the truck and either pushed a stalled vehicle off the road, or put it in neutral so Snake coul
d push it with the truck. The other two were kept busy shooting from their perch atop the truck. It was eerily evident that theirs was the only moving vehicle on the road.
The devastation of the city shocked Nick, though he would not show it. He had expected to see battles in the streets, people fleeing and fighting for their lives, but what they were witnessing was the aftermath of such a conflict. It was already over and the city had the look and feel of a post-apocalyptic war zone. The only movement on the streets seemed to be the infected lumbering about, arms outstretched as they grasped for the truck as it passed by. He wondered just how many other survivors there were, holed up in their homes or in places like the hospital. How many of them would survive the next few weeks? Would the sovereignty of man come to an end or would the survivors triumph and rebuild their world? Survival in such a place would not be easy and would not be pleasant, though it would be better than the alternative.
They finally reached the edge of the city and made their way toward Nick’s lab on the outskirts of town. The number of infected had dropped as they’d moved into areas of the city that were less densely populated, but there were still enough to be a problem. Doune watched as the snipers on the truck took out one after another of the infected. Killing the brain seemed to be the only way to put them down, he noticed. Until now, he had refused to even entertain the word “zombie” except in jest, but he had to wonder if there might be some truth to it. His analytical mind told him that it was impossible to reanimate the dead, but he was seeing things with his own eyes that had no other explanation; a man with most of his body eaten away, a woman with her head twisted around almost backwards. Doune remained silent as he studied the infected, but he was beginning to accept that the people he was seeing truly were the reanimated dead.
When they approached the lab, Snake was glad to see that it was just as the doctor had described it. A large metal gate spanned the driveway and an eight foot high masonry wall lined the property.
“Like your privacy, don’t you, Doc?” Snake asked sarcastically.
“The tight security is essential in keeping my research secure as well as safeguarding my equipment. I devote more time to research than to surgery and I am quite protective of my lab and everything in it.”
“Don’t suppose you have a gate opener with you?”
“Key card,” Nick said, holding up the piece of plastic that was hanging around his neck.
He handed it to Snake as they approached the gate. “Just wave it at the scanner,” he told the biker.
Snake lifted the card and waved it back and forth at the gate post, not sure where the scanner was.
As Nick waited for the gate to open, he looked around. It appeared that the city power was still on but once that failed, the generator would kick in. Perhaps it would be best to disable it for now and turn off the computers. His current experiments didn’t require any power and he was afraid that the sound of the generator would draw attention to the lab once the grid failed.
“Anyone in there we might be surprising? Maid? Assistants?” Snake asked.
“No,” Doune said. “I don’t allow anybody in the building when I am not here to supervise. Secrets can be stolen, mistakes can be made.”
The lab had an apartment upstairs where he stayed almost as often as he did at his home, a huge place a few miles outside of town. He wondered briefly if his wife had survived. Their house was not in a populated area and it did have a fence around it, so she might have made it. Then again, the woman seemed to spend most of her time shopping, so the odds were good that she had been in the city when disaster had struck. If she were alive and at home, they had a basement full of food and a pool full of water outside. She could get by for a while, though he would probably have to check on her eventually. Odds were likely that she was dead and that thought didn’t bother him as much as it should have. He’d never loved her. He had simply needed a wife to bring along to functions and to run the household while he worked. She had wanted a man that could support her shopping habits, so they had both gotten their wishes. Still, he knew that others would expect him to worry about her.
“I was hoping that I might see my wife’s car here,” he said with a forced sigh. “This place is more secure than our home and she knows it. I haven’t been able to reach her by phone.”
There was something insincere in the doctor’s voice. Snake was surprised to hear that the man was married. He pegged the doctor as someone who was not only hard to get along with, but also someone who didn’t have the time to nurture a marriage, at least a successful one. He rubbed his beard in thought. “If your place isn’t far, maybe we could take a side trip and see if she’s there.” He was sure Dr. Doune would find an excuse to decline his offer, but he had to ask, anyway.
The offer caught Nick off-guard. The last thing he wanted to do was to risk his life and his equipment to go rescue his wife. If she had somehow managed to stay alive, he certainly didn’t need to have her running around the hospital making demands of him. All these thoughts rushed through his mind in a matter of seconds. He pretended to be considering it before finally shaking his head.
“It’s five miles outside of town,” he said. “She just might be safer there than we’ll be in the city. We maintain a sufficient supply of food and water at the house, too.”
“Suit yourself,” Snake shrugged, not surprised by the doctor’s answer.
Once they were through the gate, it closed again, and Nick looked back to make sure that none of the infected had followed.
“There is a service bay over there,” he pointed to a driveway that led back behind the building. Once they rounded the corner, he said, “If we back the truck up to that door, we can easily load the equipment.”
Snake backed into the service bay and his men jumped off the truck.
“Careful with his stuff,” Snake advised his men. “Dr. Doom here just may end up being the only thing between us and some severe jungle rot.”
Doune used the key pad to unlock an entry door outside the loading bay. Once he went inside and raised the roll-up door to the loading dock, he went to an inner door that required him to key in a different set of numbers. He was glad to see that everything in the lab seemed to be untouched, though he wasn’t surprised since the gate outside had obviously not been breached. He showed the men the large, fairly sturdy pieces of equipment that they could take first. While they set to work on their task, he wrapped padding around a few of the fragile pieces and began to box up the smaller equipment along with his personal computer and the hard drives from some of the others. It would have been easier to do research at the lab, but the building probably wasn’t as safe as the hospital and there was also the issue of collecting subjects to study. That was something he didn’t want to do himself.
It was a shame that the microscopes had been destroyed at the hospital, but even if they hadn’t been broken, they were old and inadequate for the research he was doing. Had he been working at one of the larger hospitals he would have probably had access to a state-of-the-art lab. Unfortunately, he had done his time at the larger hospitals and it hadn’t worked out well. There was too much scrutiny and too much red tape. St. Mary’s was a small hospital and Doune helped to bring in money. Well-known in the world of brain surgery, he had no problems getting donations for the hospital as long as he wasn’t the one asking for it, since his bedside manner left something to be desired. He was often asked to come to the fundraisers but he wasn’t allowed to say much, which suited him just fine. He felt it ridiculous that he should have to waste his valuable time begging for money, but that was the way the game was played. He donated his hour or two to the tedious fundraisers and brought in money to the hospital, enabling him to continue his research without much interference. Had it not worked that way, he never would have bothered with such a small hospital.
Snake started loading boxes, making sure that his men were being careful. The linens proved useful for buffering and the equipment was tightly packed together.
If they had to plow through more of the dead on the way back and the ride got bumpy, the equipment would need to survive. Snake was sure that if Dr. Doune had to choose between the bikers and the equipment, Snake’s men didn’t have a chance. Still, he couldn’t think of anyone more up to the task than the doctor.
Snake looked into the sky. It looked surreal. The smoke from the fires had painted it a reddish brown and seemed to mingle with the tiny droplets of rain that fell to the ground and gathered into serpentine streams of rust. Snake thought about the passage in the Book of Revelations where it was foretold that, in the end days, the waters would turn to blood. He wondered if biblical prophecy was being fulfilled before his eyes; if this was the beginning of the end.
Nick had noticed the color of the sky, too, but not in a philosophical way. His first thoughts were to analyze the color and try to determine what, exactly, they were breathing. The fires could become a problem if they were to spread. Not only did they have to worry about the flames and smoke reaching the hospital, but there were chemical plants in the area. The air could quickly turn deadly if the plants were to catch fire. He closed his eyes and sniffed the air. Plastic, he thought, and human flesh. There were other scents that he couldn’t quite discern, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He grabbed an almost-full box of N95 respirator masks that he kept on hand. They wouldn’t help much, but they were better than nothing. As he looked at the sky again, he began to wonder if the hospital might turn out to be a death trap. It was something to discuss with the others but for the moment, it would have to do.
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