by Tom Abrahams
“It’s only over the top if it’s not killing your family.”
“Maybe.”
“The illness begins with a fever, a headache, and weakness, quickly deteriorating into pneumonia. If medication isn’t administered within the first twenty-four hours, the mortality rate is an astonishing ninety-five percent.”
Marcus sat up in bed. “That’s scary.”
“In camps like this, an airborne illness is the worst kind…”
Marcus reached for his iPad at the side of his bed and tapped open the browser. “What did he say the name of the disease was?”
“It’s pneumonia,” said Sylvia.
“No. What kind of pneumonia?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rewind it.”
Sylvia rewound the report to the beginning of the reporter’s introduction. The woman on the screen was sitting on the news set with a large graphic behind her emblazoned with the words A New Plague? She hit play.
“…bacterial strain scientists have isolated to Yersinia pestis. It’s airborne…”
“Yersinia pestis,” Marcus said and typed the words into his tablet. His lips moved as he read through the results, his eyes widening with every finger scroll.
“What is it?” Sylvia paused the television again. “What does it say?”
“It says it really is the plague,” Marcus answered. “It’s the pneumonic plague, a bacterial pneumonia spread by rats and fleas. There is no vaccine, but fast treatment of it with ampicillin or tetracycline usually knocks it out.”
“The reporter said fast treatment works.”
“Still…”
“Still what?”
Marcus clicked off the iPad. “There are so many of those refugee camps over there. Five or six in Turkmenistan, another half dozen in Afghanistan, which is crazy. Who wants to flee to Afghanistan, right? That’s how bad it is in Iran. And that’s not counting the countless hordes who’ve left Syria and are living in slums outside its borders. Then there’s the Ukrainians. They’ve fled Russian control and have gone north to temporary shelters in Belarus or headed west into Moldova, where hundreds of thousands are living in tent cities there.”
Sylvia leaned into Marcus and put her hand on his chest. “What does all of that have to do with pneumonia? Belarus is nowhere near Turkmenistan.”
“All of these places have volunteer doctors,” said Marcus. “They hop from one hot spot to the next, doing good, getting medicine and supplies to those who need it.”
“And?”
“And all it takes is one of these do-gooders to get infected in one bacteria-laden camp and, without knowing he or she is sick, carry it to the next one.”
“Spreading it.”
“Yes.”
“That is scary,” Sylvia said. “I mean, I knew it was scary. That’s why I was interested in watching the report. But now, knowing it’s even scarier—”
“You wished you hadn’t watched it?”
She gently stroked his face. “No. I’m glad you watched it with me.”
“Me too.”
“You don’t think it’ll get this far, though, do you?”
Marcus took his wife’s hand and pulled it around his neck, rolling onto his side to face her. “I wish I could say no. But I can’t. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’ve never thought a catastrophe might happen. I just wondered when it would.”
CHAPTER 7
OCTOBER 13, 2037, 11:30 AM
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS
Lola nodded at a pair of photographs stuck to the kitchen refrigerator. “What was your son’s name?”
Battle was washing dishes and she was drying them. He looked over his shoulder toward the fridge. “Wesson.” He turned back to the sink and squeezed the suds from a sponge. “Wes for short.”
She opened a cabinet and slid a plate on top of a stack. “Why Wesson?”
“Two reasons. It’s my wife’s maiden name. And I’ve always like Smith & Wesson.”
“It’s a nice name.”
“Thanks.”
“What was your wife’s name?”
“Sylvia.” He handed her another dish and filled a cup with water.
“Pretty name.”
“Thanks.” He handed her the cup. “We need to get going. We’ve wasted too much time.”
“Eating?”
“They’re coming back. I need to be ready. And as long as you’re here, you need to be ready. You can help me.”
“Fine.” She put the cup in the cabinet and closed the door. “What are we doing?”
“Follow me.” Battle dried his hands on a dish towel and led Lola from the kitchen back to the front entry hall.
“I’m going to run you through the basics of how we’re set up here. You don’t need to know everything, but I’ll run you through the basics in case they attack, we get separated, and I need your help.”
“Okay.”
Battle stepped to the wall next to the front door. “These switches are critical. They control power to the house. Typically, I’m running on solar. That’s this switch. If the solar drains too low, the power flips to natural gas. Generators power up within thirty seconds and everything goes back to normal.”
Lola looked at Battle as if he were speaking Persian. “You don’t get your power from the Cartel?”
“No.”
“Everybody gets their power from the Cartel. They control the grid.”
“I’m on my own,” he explained. “I haven’t been on the grid in years. I’m solar with a natural gas backup.”
“What about water? Don’t you have to pay them for your water?”
“I’m on a well. My septic system is okay. I have three tanks. One is full. I also collect rainwater in a cistern to irrigate the garden out back.”
“Internet?”
“I don’t have it. I was on satellite. I stopped paying for it right after my family—I disconnected it. I don’t need to know what’s going on beyond my land. It takes away from my focus.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I had no idea…”
“What?”
“That anyone was living like this. Clearly the Cartel didn’t either. What do you do for food, other than the garden?”
Battle rubbed his eyes in frustration. “I’ll get to that. Let me finish with the power source controls.”
Lola raised her arms in surrender. “Fine.”
“This switch over here shuts off all power. Don’t touch that one.”
Battle handed her an umbrella to use as a cane as they walked, not having the patience for her measured limp. He opened the front door and led Lola from the main house, the gravel crunching under their feet as they followed the path around the left side of the main house to the barn. He swung open the doors and ushered her inside.
He closed the doors behind them and planted his hands on his hips. “You said the Cartel controls power.”
Her eyes on the massive shelves against the back wall of the barn, Lola answered, “Yes.”
“So the infrastructure is in place—water, power, television, Internet?”
“Mostly. Power and water are expensive and can be intermittent. The power goes off a lot, in fact. Television is limited. It’s all reruns and messages from the Cartel, no commercials. And the Internet is filtered.”
“What do you mean?”
“Google doesn’t work. There’s something blocking it. I don’t know. But you can use it to pay bills to the Cartel. Stuff like that.”
“What happened to the government?”
“The Cartel is the government.”
Battle let that sink in.
In the days after the Scourge, the government had collapsed, leaving a power vacuum? A criminal element had clearly taken over and essentially grabbed power from the surviving people, subjugating them or enslaving them. This was Hell.
“Who exactly is the Cartel?”
Lola turned her attenti
on from the shelves. “I don’t know how to answer that. They’re just…they’re the Cartel.”
“Is it drug lords who filtered north? Biker gangs? Mafia? Who are they?”
“I guess all of the above? I really don’t know. I only know you’re either in the Cartel, you pay the Cartel, or you owe the Cartel. That’s it, really.”
Though Battle didn’t like that answer, asking the question again wouldn’t get him closer to understanding what and who it was he’d unwittingly alerted to his existence. He walked Lola toward the shelves.
“This is the stockpile.” He waved at the vast floor-to-ceiling racks, trying to suppress a grin. “I’ve got maybe another eight or nine years’ worth of supplies.”
“That long?”
“I planned for three to four years,” he said, walking along the racks. “When my household shrank to one, that extended my supply.”
“How long did it take you to collect it?”
“Years. That said, we have to protect this. Without it, life becomes much tougher.”
He pointed out the freezers and then led her across the barn to the armory wall. Lola trailed behind him, looking up at the high beams, taking in the size of the barn.
“Why did you do all of this?” she asked. “You couldn’t have known the Scourge was coming.”
He stopped and turned to face her. “I knew something was coming. A plague, a nuclear attack, zombie invasion, something… I’m cynical enough to know you can’t give man anything nice without him breaking it. It was only a matter of time.”
“You got lucky. You were paranoid.”
“I was prepared, not paranoid. And I wouldn’t call this lucky. I prepped. I planned. I prepped some more. And the only reason you’re alive is because of that simple fact.”
“Point taken,” she said, lowering her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Apology accepted. Let’s move on. Do you know how to fire a weapon?”
“Yes. Well, kinda. I’ve shot a .22 at a shooting range before. I took archery at summer camp when I was a little girl.”
Battle nodded his approval. “Good. That helps.”
He opened the doors to the twenty-foot cabin and revealed the weaponry he’d stashed for a moment like the one he imagined was coming before the sun rose again.
Lola’s eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hands. “Holy mother—”
“Yeah,” Battle cut in. “This is what will keep us safe.”
***
OCTOBER 13, 2037, NOON
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
ABILENE, TEXAS
“I don’t think you should take everybody tonight,” Salomon Pico said. He was standing over a crudely drawn map of Mad Max’s property. At least it was as close to a map as he could gather from the little time he’d spent there in the dark. Queho and the other posse bosses stood around him while he explained what little he knew.
Queho looked at him. “Why not? What’s wrong with attacking him tonight? It gives him less time to prepare.”
“He’s already prepared, Queho,” Pico said without looking his posse boss directly in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter how much time we give him.”
Queho shifted from his club foot to his good one. “Go on…”
“I think we should start by testing his defenses,” Pico said. “I assume he’s expecting us. I would be expecting us. If we hit him with everything tonight, we get one shot. But if we poke at him tonight, we find out what he’s got going on. Then we go at him again tomorrow night with better information.”
Queho ran his fingers along the cartoonish sketch on the table. “You surprise me, Pico. I wouldn’t have pegged you for smart. But what you’re suggesting, this idea of yours, it’s smart. I like it.”
Pico stood a little taller, lifting his chin. “I think—”
“You already told us what you think,” Queho cut in. “I’d stop while you’re ahead.”
“How many men, how many horses?” asked one of the other bosses, a tall, heavyset man named Rudabaugh who was called “Rud”. “And we takin’ any trucks?”
“Six of each,” Queho said. “No trucks. We can’t spare the gas.”
Gasoline was the one commodity the Cartel couldn’t control in bulk. Despite a large concentration of refineries along the Gulf Coast and wet gas wells in the shale plays, they didn’t have the manpower or skill to operate either on a large scale. Gasoline was, therefore, at a premium.
Electric or hybrid vehicles weren’t a much better option. The hybrid vehicles still required gasoline. Both they and the electric cars required a reliable source of electricity for charging. That didn’t exist in post-Scourge Cartel territory. Add to that the lack of maintenance and accelerated battery degradation from the Texas heat, and electric vehicles became obsolete. Most were cannibalized and melted at some of the high-temperature aluminum recycling plants that dotted the state. The lithium was used in making concrete when possible. Much of the metal product was repurposed for ammunition. All of it was subject to a functional power grid.
Hydrogen cars were just becoming popular when the Scourge took hold. Refueling stations were few and far between, as were reliable repair shops. The H-cars were even more obsolete than hybrids and electrics.
As a result, horses became the primary mode of transportation. The roads were mostly devoid of motorized traffic. Motorcycles were a distant second, behind the horses in popularity, and only the wealthiest of the Cartel hierarchy could afford them. The Cartel used cars and trucks for transporting goods and not much else.
“What about a motorcycle or two?” Rudabaugh pressed. “They could help with reconnaissance and speed things up for us.”
“No,” Queho answered. “We have directives not to use gas. It’s too tight right now. This isn’t important enough to take up the chain.”
Rudabaugh tipped his hat back on his head. “You mean you don’t want the brass knowing about this. That’s why you don’t want to ask.”
Queho licked his teeth. “Six men. Six horses. That’s the team.”
“They wouldn’t like it.” Rudabaugh took a step toward Queho and leaned on the table, his hands flat on the map. “Your team lost the girl and got themselves killed. Who’s got their guns now? Mad Max? Sounds like you’re a triple loser, Queho. And why you’re in charge of this miss—”
Pow!
Queho, having had enough of the criticism, pulled his six-shooter and, in one seamless move, grabbed Rudabaugh’s wrist with one hand and used the other to jam the barrel into the back of his right hand before firing a slug through it.
Rudabaugh screamed and jumped back, grabbing his injured hand. “What the—why the—you mother—I’m gonna—” He stumbled backward, the pain burning through his hand and arm apparently rendering him unable to complete a thought. The momentum of his girth tipped him too far and he fell over the chair behind him.
While everyone else at the table stood in stunned silence, frozen in disbelief, Pico rushed to Rudabaugh’s side. He knelt down to help the bleeding posse boss, but got a boot to his chest and fell back, hitting his head on the floor.
Queho stood over the two men and holstered his pistol. “Don’t help Rud, Pico. You’re not as smart as I just gave you credit for. This fat loser challenged me, your boss, and you’re gonna help him? Go get me a beer.”
Pico scooted backward on the floor until he was clear of Queho’s reach. He scrambled to his feet and shuffled off to the bar, rubbing the back of his head.
“You believe that guy?” Queho said to Rudabaugh. He bent at his waist and put his hands on his hips. “Dude runs from a fight at Mad Max’s but jumps to help you? Stupid.”
Rudabaugh was sweating profusely and breathing through his mouth. He pushed himself straight against the wall, his legs still tangled with the chair. His hand was cradled in his ample lap.
Queho kicked his leg. “As for you, Rud, don’t confuse your rank with my authority. You may be a posse boss, same as me, but you ain
’t got the power I got. I’m in charge. You question me again, it won’t be your hand I make you see through. Got it?”
Rudabaugh grunted in between heavy, spittle-laden breaths. He started rocking back and forth against the wall.
Queho kicked his leg a little harder. “Got it, Rud? Don’t make me ask again.”
“I got it,” Rudabaugh spat without looking up at Queho. “I got it.”
“Good. Now get that hand fixed. You’re leading the posse tonight.”
CHAPTER 8
OCTOBER 22, 2032, 5:00 PM
SCOURGE +20 DAYS
EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS
Marcus was on the speakerphone in his home office. He was having trouble understanding his wife. She sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Slow down. Where are you?”
“I’m in town,” she said. “Abilene is a mess.”
“What do you mean?” Marcus spun in his swivel chair and opened the browser on his laptop. “Computer,” he said, “show me Abilene Newspaper.”
“First I went to the pediatrician,” she said. “Wes had a well-check appointment today.”
“And?”
“And they turned us away. They had too many unscheduled patients show up. They’re three days behind schedule, so I’ve got to come back here Tuesday.”
“Did they say why?” There was nothing obvious on the paper’s home page.
“Vaccinations. They said they were overwhelmed with people demanding vaccinations. Then I went to the grocery store. There’s barely anything on the shelves. Nothing. And the lines are ridiculous everywhere; gas stations, banks, the hospital parking lot is packed. I’ve never seen it like this, Marcus. And what’s worse is…”
Marcus tuned Sylvia out as she explained the most frightening part of what she’d encountered. He was focused on the link he’d found under the business section.
ABILENE REGIONAL MEDICAL PREPS FOR PLAGUE, HIRES HELP
Abilene—It’s a scene from a disaster film. Inside ARMC, the Key City’s largest medical facility, administrators and healthcare workers are scrambling ahead of what they worry could be a local outbreak of the illness dubbed “The Scourge”.