She continued, “When they attack, they bite and attack people, but not to eat; even though we have had reports of some cannibalism, this is the exception rather than the rule. They only attack animals to eat, and let me tell you, they tear them apart. What has been observed is if a lot of infected attack someone en masse, then they do tear the person or persons apart. We believe that this is unintentional because they seem to be trying to infect other people. A lot of reports of individual infected just biting someone then leaving them alone. Yet, at other times, they will eat the entire person. Yes, I said eat.
“I have been on the team to try to map out the virus, and I can say for certain, this virus did not come from nature. It looks like someone spliced a lot of viruses and genes from different animals together to come up with this nightmare. Whoever made this had a lot of backing; no terrorist could do this, only a government or large cooperation with lots of resources available to pour money into a project like this. It had to take years to put this virus together. The only thing I can say that is good about it is that it only spreads by contact, and it must be put directly into the body. We have several reports of troops getting splashed in the eyes with bodily fluids and succumbing to the virus. Direct UV light will kill it, and it does not last long outside of the body.” She sat back in her chair looking at the group on her computer. “Any questions so far?”
Debbie spoke first, “So there is no vaccine being developed?”
“Debbie, it would take years just to map it, and none of the anti-viral drugs we have tried do anything,” Stephanie told her.
“Can you kill them?” asked Nancy, with her body shaking.
“Yes, the brain has to be destroyed. That is the only thing so far we have found that stops them permanently. But if just the brain is dead, the heart still beats. Down the hall not a hundred feet from me there is a fucking head sitting on an exam table that is still animated or whatever you want to call it. The head will follow a person with its eyes, and if you put your hand near its mouth, it tries to bite. One of the lab technicians even fed it a rat. It ate the rat even though it’s just a head. It chewed it up, swallowing it, and the pieces just came out on the table. I have only been on the genetic mapping team so far, but I am getting some more information later tonight,” Stephanie told them of the nightmare that had been unleashed on the world.
“Have you heard from your family, Steph?” asked Debbie. All of Stephanie’s family lived in Boston and the surrounding area.
“I have not heard anything from anyone in my family. I have tried to call everyone and got no answers,” she said with tears running down her face.
“Stephanie, do you think you can make it here to us?” Debbie asked.
She nodded her head, crying. “Thank you Debbie. Atlanta is falling fast. There were reports that we were dropping bombs on New York and Brooklyn. I’m scared because I thought I had nowhere to go. I would have to stay in this hell hole until the infected got to us or Homeland Security detained everyone here for something. They are making up the laws as they go.”
“Stephanie, you are part of this family and have been for years. You are always welcome here no matter what. If we could, we would come and get you, but Mike and Bruce were called into the hospital so it’s just us here. You will have to make it to us. Is that possible, Steph?” Debbie asked.
“They went into the hospital?” she gasped. “Tell them to come home; hospitals are where the virus hits first.”
“Sweetie, they will come home as soon as they can. You know yourself that those two are big badasses. Now about you,” Debbie said.
“I still have the Tahoe, and I put the extra gas tank in like they told me so I can drive a little over nine hundred miles before I need more fuel. I picked up my bug out bag Saturday, the last time I went home, and it has my pistol in it,” she replied. Her bug out bag was just a backpack loaded with food, water, ammo, extra clothes and other essential items that could be grabbed quickly in an emergency.
“Do you think the authorities will let you pass through the roadblocks?” Nancy asked.
“If they do not put out an APB for me when I leave, then my CDC badge should get me through without much trouble. Right now, the CDC can pretty much go where we please,” Stephanie said, drying her tears on her face, knowing she had somewhere and a family to escape to.
“We need to start wrapping this up before someone starts getting suspicious if they are monitoring you,” Jake said.
“Steph, when can you leave?” Debbie asked.
“I can be out of here by midnight, Debbie,” she told her.
“It’s only six hundred miles and should only take you ten to twelve hours. Don’t stop for anyone unless it’s a checkpoint. If you have to, run them over or shoot them be they infected or not. Only stop where it’s safe. Don’t eat or sleep, just come home to us, Steph,” Debbie told her.
“I will leave at midnight and see you guys tomorrow. I love you guys,” she told them.
“We love you too, Steph. Hold on, Jake wants to say something,” Debbie told her.
“Stephanie, there is another program called ‘crap’ on the flash drive. As soon as you are off, open it and click ‘run.’ It will erase the program and all your contacts on this computer. Be careful, Stephanie. We will be waiting for you,” Jake said.
“Okay, I will see you tomorrow. Until then,” Stephanie said, shutting down the connection.
“Why did you want her to erase her computer?” Nancy asked Jake.
“If they are truly monitoring everyone there then after she leaves they might look at her computer to see who it connected with. The ‘crap’ program will erase our computer address from its files. Without that, all they know from server records is she downloaded a porn video,” Jake informed her.
“You are your father’s child, always trying to cover all possibilities,” Nancy said, kissing him on the head.
“Okay, everybody, let’s get to bed. Matt, you have to relieve Steve at 1 a.m., and Mary, you have to relieve Danny in mission control,” Debbie gave out assignments to everyone.
Everyone walked out of mission control to their respective rooms. Before they went into their rooms, Nancy stopped Debbie. “How are we going to tell the boys?” Nancy asked.
“I’m going to text message the highlights of the conversation to both of them and hope they can leave,” Debbie said.
“Okay, if you get anything back, let me know,” Nancy pleaded.
“You know I will. Let’s get some rest,” Debbie said, hugging Nancy and walking into her room.
Debbie had to send a brief overture of the conversation, and it took three messages to send the whole thing to both Bruce and Mike. As she lay in bed, she said a prayer for Mike, Bruce, and Stephanie, asking for their safe return home. Then she curled up and cried herself to sleep, wishing Bruce were beside her.
Chapter 22
It was 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning as Bruce was in the ambulance bay waiting on another gunshot. This was number twenty-seven since they reported for work. When it arrived, they grabbed the stretcher heading into the trauma bay. The Shreveport police officer that was in the ER with the last one said there were at least three times that many, but most died before the ambulance crews could get there moving from one firefight to the next. The officer also reported that there were over two dozen fires burning throughout Shreveport and Bossier, but not much could be done about them. The hardcore looting started right after midnight, and that’s when the flood started to come in.
At five that morning, the police brought a truck driver in who had a bite on his forearm. Bruce and Mike had gotten Debbie’s text a little before midnight, and both ran to the lounge saying they needed a piss break. They discussed just leaving, but in the last few hours, a lot of military troops had shown up and sealed off the hospital. Everyone entering had to be searched for weapons and any kind of bite or scratch had to be explained. No one was allowed to leave unless the captain in charge granted permission. So they dec
ided to wait it out for a better time to make their escape. After discussing the text message, Bruce texted back that they were okay and that Congo was here. At the end of his message he put, “I will keep my promise to my little love see you soon.”
They soon found out why the military was there. The truck driver who had been brought in earlier succumbed to the Congo virus a little after he was placed in a room. He had been on a monitor; they saw he had no heartbeat on the monitor while watching the bluish tint on his skin darken. Then a blip showed on the monitor at about six beats per minutes. The man just sat up and went crazy trying to attack anyone, but the soldiers had placed him in plastic handcuffs then they took him to the med school. The smell that came off the man made several sick. Mike and Bruce learned later that they had just put him in the auditorium, sealing the doors. The rest of the infected that had shown up later that morning, they took up to a balcony above the auditorium and just dropped them in. The captain in charge of the soldiers was a short man with a Napoleon complex, and he was always in the ER bossing people around. Bruce did not like him because he did not take well to being bossed around, especially by an idiot. He had seen his type in the military and in life. When they got power, they had to let everyone know it, and the more power they had, the more dangerous they got.
Bruce and Mike found themselves at the ambulance bay again, neither knowing what day it was. They only knew that it was dark outside when the captain walked up and ordered both of them back. His men would make sure it was clear of infection then he would allow them to bring the patient in. Bruce was about to say something to the captain when Mike stepped on his foot, shaking his head. He whispered to Bruce it was not worth it and let’s just keep on going. When the ambulance arrived, the soldiers with the captain went and looked at the person on the stretcher, examining him for bites. One of the paramedics asked the captain to hurry; the man had been shot in the chest and leg. The captain looked up at the paramedic and informed him that if he interfered with him again, the paramedic would be detained. After the captain let the patient be rolled in, the trauma team started their work. After stabilizing the man as best they could, they rolled him upstairs to the operating room.
The university had sixteen operating rooms on two separate floors. Usually only two were used for trauma, but for the last three days all rooms were going around the clock. All the floors were full, and there was no place to put patients anymore. Anyone who could be moved was placed in the hallway. The ER had thirty-eight patients on life support, but they were only cleared for ten at a time, and still patients came in. A nurse was only supposed to have two critical patients at a time and no other patients. Every nurse in the ER had at least three and still had to see more patients. The fighting in the waiting room came to a stop when the military showed up. If you caused a disturbance, you were detained. Nobody knew where you went when you were detained, only that no one could contact you or know your location. Rumors abounded, from them just shooting you to them just throwing you in a cell and forgetting about you.
By ten o’clock that night, no one in the ER had gotten any sleep for at least twenty-four hours, and some were awake over forty hours straight. Staff started to just collapse from exhaustion; one minute they were doing something, the next they were on the floor. The other doctors and nurses would pick them up and place them in a chair until they woke up and went right back to work. Bruce and Mike were at twenty-eight hours, and they knew they had at least that much left in them. The staff ate MREs that the soldiers brought in for them. They would open one whenever they got a chance to grab a bite. It always seemed like they were getting ambulances in with gunshots, stab wounds, and car wrecks. The last few did have gunshots but were also bitten and were taken away by the captain and his men. Later that night, a university officer was helping Bruce put another intern in a chair after he had collapsed. That’s when the officer told Bruce that the captain had caught several nurses trying to leave the hospital and go home. When his men tried to detain them, one took off running. That’s when the captain pulled out his pistol and shot her in the back. He sat there while she bled out and died then he let his men throw her body into a truck. The officer had been on the roof and seen the whole thing. When he told his superior what he had seen, he was told to forget it before he was shot or, worse, thrown in the auditorium.
This made Bruce’s blood run cold. He knew the captain was an asshole, but a cold-blooded murderer was just too much. He and Mike kept on working for what seemed like an eternity, and while he was walking back to his desk, he saw Mike sprawled on top of it and a resident lying on the floor. It was Angela Bennit, the third-year ER resident that he had high hopes for. Angela and her husband were stuck here in the hospital, and their sixteen-month-old son was in the boardroom, where child care had been set up. Both Bruce and Mike had forced her off the floor to go and check on her son Cade about every five to six hours. It was the last time she had been that she said several soldiers were outside the room where the kids were staying and would only allow a few parents in at a time. That information made Bruce start to worry that they would use the kids to force compliance from the parents. Angela said that there were over fifty kids being watched by the hospital so their parents could report for this mass casualty event. Then Bruce heard from one of the maintenance staff that the captain had his men throw one of the administrators into the auditorium with the infected when he complained about the treatment of his staff. After hearing this, Bruce knew it was time to go. If they stayed here much longer, they were going to die.
Gunshots could be heard all around the hospital at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes the soldiers were shooting infected because they were just getting tired of rounding them up. Then other times it was gangs shooting at them. It had been several hours since Bruce had seen any police in the ER other than the university officers. When he stopped one to ask why, he told Bruce it was a full-scale war out there. The military was forcing people into camps at both of the arenas and the football stadium, and the gangs were running everything that a cop was not standing on. When Bruce asked him if all the military was acting like the captain here, he said no but they had received reports of police in outlying areas doing the same thing. They were running the area around them like they were kings. Bruce thanked him and went to find Mike. He was still lying on the desk when Bruce woke him up.
“Mike, I need your head in the game, brother,” Bruce said.
Mike sat up and looked around. “What day is it?” he asked; the hours had lost meaning.
“It’s Friday, 10:30 in the morning,” Bruce said, looking at his watch.
“Holy shit, how long was I out?” Mike asked.
“About three hours, but we have to talk now,” Bruce said.
As Mike sat up, Bruce relayed all the information he had come across. That was when Mike told him that the military had effectively closed off Shreveport and Bossier. There were roadblocks on all roads coming into town. He told Bruce that he had talked to one of the sergeants while he was sewing his arm up after he’d cut it on some glass. The sergeant had been very talkative and gave him a lot of information until he asked about the captain. The only thing he did say was don’t piss him off. The president had declared the whole country under martial law, and the ranking officer on scene had total authority. Bruce had actually thought about shooting the son of a bitch, but too many of the other troops were getting off on this power trip. They were getting to boss around doctors and the police, and nothing could be done to them.
When Mike asked the sergeant about the violence outside, he said it was happening just like everywhere else. The gangs and predators were out in force, raping and killing anything that they wanted to. Our society had bred those who thought they were entitled to whatever they wanted. It was not even the infected that was the problem right now, but in a few more days they would be. Sure, there were several thousand scattered throughout the city and maybe double that of people who had been exposed, but there were tens of
thousands pieces of shit out there. At least the infected were stupid and did not ambush you and break into a house to rape and kill. The infected, you knew what you were against, but the gangs and scavengers were evil to an art form.
Blue Plague The Fall Page 17