by JE Gurley
Things had returned to normal when he went to the office to photocopy the photograph. The floor where Walters had died had been moped clean of his blood, but for just a second, Kyle saw Walters’ body lying there. He wiped the vision away with the palm of his hand. He made a couple of dozen copies of the photograph and scribbled his cell phone number and his name at the bottom of each one. Commandeering a jeep by the ruse of saying he was acting for the general, he left the airport.
His mind was still groggy and he shouldn’t have been driving, but there was no other traffic on the streets. In fact, the city was a graveyard. Most of the smoke had dissipated, but its absence revealed a city blackened by fires and devoid of life. It reminded him of a Civil War photograph he had seen of Richmond after the Evacuation of 1865, chimneys standing like rows of sentries and walls that enclosed only rubble. A few stray dogs and cats wandered the empty streets. Fat buzzards and flocks of blackbirds filled the sky. He shuddered as he thought of what they were feasting on. He passed through numerous army checkpoints that gave him only a cursory glance and noticed armed squads exploring buildings block by block in search of zombies.
The same thing was happening in other major cities. Despite all nature could throw at them, mankind was slowly regaining control, but at a heavy price. Millions were dead, tens of thousands missing or homeless. It would be months before enough vaccine was available for everyone. The country was scarred, but a scab was forming over the wound. Like most wounds, it would slowly heal. He wasn’t as sure about his own scars.
His first visit was to the Jackson Memorial Hospital near the civic center. He needn’t have bothered. The hospital and the civic center were both gone, razed by the fires. Next, he tried the FEMA facility Charles Hadley Park near 46th Street. Forty large tents surrounded by double-layered chain link fencing held nearly eight hundred people. He spent over an hour passing through each tent, searching for Ricardo’s face among the survivors. He questioned evacuees at random. He spoke to nurses and doctors with no results. No one had seen him.
He visited all five remaining FEMA facilities, showing Ricardo’s photo to anyone who would look at it. He tried the surviving area hospitals with no better results. He left copies of the photo everywhere he went. By day’s end, he was beginning to think that he would not be able to keep his promise to Rita. Finding her husband wouldn’t erase Walters’ death, but it would help move the balance of karma a little more in his direction.
Defeated and exhausted by the day’s lack of results, he returned to the airport to face Rita. He wouldn’t give up, but his hopes diminished. His concern rose when he couldn’t find her in her room. No one seemed to know what had happened to her. He sought out the general. Willows met him at the door and ushered him in.
“Thanks for saving my life, Bane. Shame about Walters.”
Kyle suppressed a wince. “Yeah. It could’ve been any of us.”
“So right. It’s something we’ll have to live with for awhile. What’s on your mind?”
“Rita Hernandez, one of the evacuees, is missing. Do you know anything about it?”
Willows smiled. “Sometimes in all this heartache and misery, a little ray of hope breaks through. It seems your photo safari paid off. Mrs. Hernandez’s husband was found at a hospital south of here. He was unconscious when he was brought in almost a week ago. He’s been there under a John Doe ever since. A nurse saw your photo of him when she came on duty. I sent Mrs. Hernandez and her son to his side a few hours ago. They said his prognosis was good.”
Kyle was stunned. Relief flooded over him. Ricardo was alive. He, Rita, and their child were together. With all the destruction and loss of life, the reunion of a small family didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it mattered to him a great deal.
“I’m glad.”
“It happened only because you care, son,” the general said. “Mrs. Hernandez told me what you had done for her.”
Kyle didn’t know what to say. “I … I promised her.”
The general’s face grew serious. “Doctor Henry tells me you’ve been impossible to live with these past few days, something about losing your identity. If you were one of my soldiers, I would tell you to buck up and do your duty, but you’re not. In all honesty, you’ve done far more than your duty. All I can offer you is some sage advice. You may have doubts about yourself, but no one whose life you’ve touched has any doubts about you. Doctor Henry sets a great store by you. I think she’s smitten. If I were you, I wouldn’t let her get away.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Now go clean up. You look like shit.”
He glanced in the mirror behind the general’s desk. He did look like shit.
19
July 20, Dodge Island, Miami, FL –
Almost three weeks had passed since the initial outbreak. As Marli had predicted, fewer cases of infection were reported each day, but Walters’ strange conversion had her puzzled. Had the ineffective vaccine caused him to retain some part of his personality, or had the Cordyceps fungus mutated? As far as the general was concerned it was a moot point. To Kyle, it was a bad omen. The medical center the military had established on Dodge Island had immunized over sixty thousand people so far. Another twenty thousand waited for fresh batches of vaccine to arrive. Less than one hundred thousand survivors in a city of two-and-a half million was a staggering death toll, but when compared to the countless dead of the other cities that had suffered through the plague, it was a mere pittance. Kyle didn’t know how other cities of the world fared, but doubted they had done much better.
Ginson was gone. Walters’ death had almost devastated him, but he refused to buckle under. He had volunteered for duty in Des Moines, trying to leave Miami far behind him. His parting with Kyle had been civil, but Kyle couldn’t help detecting some animosity seething just below Ginson’s composure. Kyle understood the sergeant’s dilemma. He had killed the last survivor of Ginson’s original squad. Now Ginson was utterly alone. He might not blame Kyle, but he still held him responsible. In a way, he was. His volunteering to test the new vaccine in his eagerness to rescue Rita had prompted Ginson and Walters to do so as well. It had failed Walters, perhaps even contributed to his death. Ginson felt survivor’s guilt. Perhaps they all did to a degree. He hoped Ginson forgave him in time, as he was still trying to forgive himself.
Kyle was no longer a detective. That part of his past was gone. He had resigned SIS. There would continue to be crimes. Not all the survivors were good people. The criminals would always be around, but there was less opportunity for crime. There might not be a need for detectives, but the city would always need cops, and Dodge Island was back under civilian authority. The rest of the city, what was left of it, would have to wait. The survivors of the Cordyceps Plague needed time to rebuild, but first they had to rebuild themselves. Lives were devastated, families torn apart. There was nothing as fragile as the human psyche, but nothing so resilient. Ghosts from the past would haunt them forever. The trick was to allow the ghosts to walk among them in peace.
His own ghosts were held at bay by Marli’s love, and his growing love for her. It was a healing process for both of them, but one at which he took great delight. Rita’s reunion with her husband Ricardo had been one small step in the healing process. Theirs was just one family in millions, but he had been a part in making it happen. Small recompense for those who had not survived, but it sufficed for him. Saving just one family was enough to make it all worthwhile. Building another with Marli would be icing on the cake.
To everyone concerned, the Cordyceps Plague was over, yet the small tight knot deep in Kyle’s stomach would not go away. If nature could unleash one plague, well why not another, more deadly one? As he walked his beat along the boulevard, watching the people of Dodge Island going about their daily lives, he worried that it had all been too much too soon. Plagues, like crime, happened when least expected. He remembered an old adage from his youth – You can’t trust Mother Nature.
He watched another helicopter fly by overhead with its load of refugees destined for the relocation center. Their coming and going had become a routine affair, but this helicopter drew his attention when it seemed to jerk in the air as it hovered over the landing pad in front of the decontamination area.
“Rookie pilot,” he muttered.
Some instinct made him glance twice as the chopper finally settled gently onto the tarmac. Instead of quickly disgorging its normal load of cowed people huddled together for company, the chopper sat on the field, rotors spinning, its doors curiously closed. A soldier eager to get the chopper back into the air rushed to open the door. As he slid the door slid open, half a dozen zombies erupted from the chopper. To his surprise, several of them were carrying weapons. One creature landed on the hapless soldier and began pounding his head on the tarmac. The others spread across the field. Kyle drew his Glock at the sound of the first screams. Cordyceps was rising again.
End of Book 1
Read on for a free sample of The Thetis Plague: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller by Mark Onspaugh
Chapter 1.
Tom Meyers’s first clue that something was very wrong was the girl in the quad.
He and Dez were headed back to the house for lunch, and they were making their way across the lawn bordered by Powell Library and Royce Hall.
Finals were looming, but all Tom could think about was Taylor Bennett, a tall and shapely theater arts major who sat behind him in Art 110: History of Baroque Art.
“Meyers,” Dez said, “if you’re so hung up on this woman, ask her to the party next weekend.”
“I’m not sure she’s the frat type,” Tom said.
Dez shook his head. “You do have an amazing array of excuses when it comes to not asking the ladies out.”
“Bite me,” Tom said.
Dez began counting off on his fingers. “Wrong religion – never confirmed, by the way – too rich, too good looking, too icy, not enough time, not enough privacy…”
Tom was about to tell Dez to take his comprehensive list and shove it, when he noticed her.
She was a pretty girl. Korean, maybe, with long black hair and an athletic build. She had been walking almost hesitantly across the grass and now came to a halt, staring into space.
Tom thought he might see if she was lost, although it was pretty late in the quarter for someone to be confused. Still, it was a big campus and the maps they gave out at orientation weren’t worth shit.
“Bro, are you there?” Dez asked, but Tom was making a beeline for the confused girl.
A big dude in a hockey jersey cut him off, and Tom could hear Hockey Boy starting to ask her if she needed directions, and then he hesitated.
Tom noticed now that the girl had small reddish spots all over her face. Measles? Jesus, she shouldn’t be walking around campus – measles could really mess you up if you were an adult.
“Hexagram,” the girl said, “Needle ketchup Halloween crystal.”
She punctuated this stream of nonsense with a coughing fit, and Tom saw a large wad of phlegm catch Hockey Boy in the face. The jock cried out in revulsion and staggered back, yelling, “Bitch, fuck!” He wiped at his face frantically and then vomited on the grass.
The girl looked at Tom, and with horror, he saw that the whites of her eyes were bright crimson, as if filled with blood.
“Lettuce baby,” she said quietly, “Tornado paprika battery wipe.”
With that, she turned and lurched across the lawn, pausing once to cough on two women and a man sitting on a bench. They protested, but she moved on, unperturbed, heading for Janss Steps.
“Drugs,” Dez said, shaking his head.
“Did you see her face?” Tom asked. “It almost looked like she had the measles or something. Maybe we should help her.”
“Call the cops,” Dez said. “If she’s infectious, you don’t want to get near her… Unless you never want to have kids, that is.”
“That’s mumps, you moron.”
“Whatev, faen, let’s go – it’s grilled cheese day and this Mexwegian needs his full complement of trans fats and refined wheat.” Dez, whose full name was David Lukas Fernandez, looked very Mexican, but his mother was from Stavanger, Norway, something he honored by cursing in Norwegian whenever possible.
Tom and Dez continued toward Bruin Walk and the route that would take them back to the house. Tom glanced back once and saw the girl pause again on the sidewalk near Janss Steps. A girl on a bicycle was talking to her.
They emerged from the tree-lined walk and headed past Pauley Pavilion toward the frat. The sun was bright and there were some spectacular girls in shorts or short skirts heading to campus. Dez smiled at each, and he was sometimes rewarded with a smile in return. He was a big guy, handsome, if somewhat overweight, a fact that never undermined his confidence. He stopped to chat up a redhead in a Misfits tee shirt and shorts, while Tom thought of Taylor Bennett. In his mind, she was thrilled to go to the party with him, and he spun out various scenarios where that date led to sweet and gentle sex (after an urgent and clothes-ripping first time), and the beginning of their lives together.
Tom was smiling a dreamy smile when Dez smacked him on the back of the head.
“Quit dreamin’, Romeo! I smell butter-soaked bread and cheese!”
Tom swung at him and Dez avoided the blow easily.
“Asshole,” Tom said without malice.
“That’s MisterAsshole to you, jævel,” Dez said, walking on to the house.
“Why can’t you swear in American? What the hell does that mean again?”
“Look it up, you lazy jævel,” said Dez with mock disdain.
Tom demonstrated some choice American swearing, and Dez laughed and applauded.
By the time they reached Zeta Alpha Rho, Tom had forgotten the girl in the quad.
Chapter 2.
By that afternoon, the Reagan UCLA Med Center had four cases of what the press called “Mystery Measles.” Students were advised to report to the hospital immediately if they were running a fever, had any unexplained rashes, or had difficulty in speaking. Naturally, this brought in dozens of cases of summer colds, hives, exam-related anxiety, and even some cases of acne. The Med Center tried to refine its warning but the damage was done. Precious time was lost in getting data on actual cases of the disease.
While Tom was staring at Taylor during a lecture about Caravaggio, the girl he had seen on the quad seemed to be making a remarkable recovery at the nearby Med Center.
The girl, whose name was Angela Sook, woke with clear skin and a clear head. She told doctors that she had little memory of the past three days, not since her family had returned from a trip to Castaic Lake, near the Angeles Crest Forest.
Then, her eyes widened, and she died.
Attempts were made to revive Angela, but all attempts were unsuccessful. Her family was informed, while a little over a mile away, Tom tried to “run into” Taylor before she got to her next class. However, she was swept up in a group of laughing girls and Tom felt too shy to try and talk to her under those circumstances.
While Tom was telling his tale of woe to his friends Dez, and Steve Newkirk at the Terrace Food Court, Angela was transferred to the Pathology Lab for further tests.
The two pathologists attending her wore gloves and facemasks, but those were no help when she suddenly sat up on the table and tore out their throats.
Similar scenes were being played out in hospitals, hotels and airports across the country, and on planes bound for all corners of the globe…
***
Tom’s big break came when he chanced on Taylor sitting in the quad, reading a book on Elizabethan England.
He almost passed her by. The sun was shining on her hair, and there was a slight smile on her lips. She looked radiant, almost ethereal to him, and he waxed poetic for a moment, thinking her like some Elfin maid from Tolkien.
Guess that makes me a troll, he thought.
He could almost hear what Dez and Newkirk wou
ld say. Why was he so freaking hard on himself? And he loved stories about ordinary people finding their courage and winning the day – was he going to be a coward in his own life?
Was he?
“History?” he asked her.
She looked at him, not quite recognizing him.
“I’m in your art history class,” he said.
Recognition dawned on her face, and then she smiled. “No, I just like the period. I’m supposed to write a short historical drama for my film class, and I was thinking of something about Elizabeth.”
At this point, he would normally choke, nerves preventing him from carrying on the simplest conversation. However, he had seen something in Kerckhoff Hall that was actually relevant.
“Did you know that there’s a display of Elizabethan costumes and props in Kerckhoff?”
She shook her head. “I don’t get to South Campus much.”
“It’s tied in with that series ‘The Tudors’, on Showtime? Apparently, some grad students were involved somehow.”
She nodded, and he sensed his window was closing. He had to act, to be decisive.
“You know, I was thinking of going there, now.”
“Were you?” she asked, teasingly.
“Yeah, and I was thinking you might want to check it out, maybe get some coffee? Kerckhoff has a pretty cool coffeehouse.”
She smiled and nodded. Taylor gathered up her books and they made their way south. En route, he saw Dez, who grinned and gave him a surreptitious “thumbs up.”
Tom was so happy he didn’t even hear the sirens.
It was an exceptionally beautiful day on campus, not too hot, the sky dotted with a few wisps of clouds. People lingered on the path or rushed to class. As usual, the university was a hive of motion and conversation.