by Hart Johnson
Shit. Sarah put her head in her hands.
“Are you okay?”
“I will be. I just really want this not to be happening,” Sarah said.
“He only squeaked when I asked about needing anything. I could barely understand him.”
“We have to go.” Sarah stood to grab her things.
“I tried to convince him. He said no.”
“You don't know all Grant's weaknesses.” Sarah could convince him to let them come.
Sid grinned, picking up her own purse. “Atta girl.”
Sarah picked up her phone and called Grant. Sid was right. He did sound like death.
“Shut up, Grant. We're coming.”
“No.” His hoarse whisper nevertheless had force. “Don't want you to get it.”
“But you need someone to take care of you.”
“Ricky and me...” His voice fell off and she couldn't understand him, so she hung up and she and Sid went to her car. They picked up Thai soup at a take-out place. Thai restaurants were all over Portland, but this one was famous for a soup that had both chicken broth and ginger—two of the more healing things Sarah could think of.
When they got to the apartment they found parking, which was nice. In fact, the normally busy restaurant neighborhood was nearly deserted. But the easy parking was quickly counteracted by the locked building and their unwillingness to make two sick men climb down and then up three flights just to let them in. They buzzed first floor neighbors until they finally found one at home. Thankfully, she knew Ricky and Grant and was sympathetic to friends bringing soup to sick men. She let them in.
It took ten minutes of knocking to bring Grant to the door, but he still wouldn't let them in. It sounded like he slid down the door on the other side.
“I don't want to expose you.”
“Geez, Grant, just let us bring in the soup we brought,” Sid said.
“Leave it. I'll get it.”
Sarah tried to think of a compromise. She was too experienced with Grant's stubbornness to think they'd change his mind, but maybe there was a middle ground. “We'll leave it if you shove your key under the door so we can come back again tomorrow without bugging the neighbors.”
It seemed to take a long time for him to think that through, but finally a small packet with an alcohol-covered swab came under the door.
“What's this for?” Sid asked, but Sarah knew. Sterilization.
“Open it,” Grant said. “Use it to pick up and clean off the key before you touch it. And promise you'll wear a mask if you use it,” he said.
“Okay,” Sid said.
“Swear it!”
“Done,” Sarah said.
The key came through then and Sarah wiped it down with the alcohol before putting it on her key ring. “Okay, don't forget the soup is here.”
“I'll get it when I see you leave the building.”
Sarah knew he'd wait, too. He was more stubborn than she'd ever be, and she was no slouch at stubbornness. “We're going. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too, Nursikins. Love you, Scoop.”
Sid wiped her eyes on the way down the stairs. “He hasn't called me that for years. After I lost my job at the Oregonian, the nickname smarted. He never picked it up again when I finally got my freelance legs under me.”
‘Nursikins’ gave Sarah her own pang for how free and easy things had been back then—the three of them, young professionals in a new city. None of them was attached and they'd counted on each other for everything. She hoped there was some miracle that would make them able to all count on each other again, but it wasn't looking so good.
“Grant has it?” David asked when they got home.
Sarah turned to David and felt her eyes sting. “I'm not getting the shot.”
“I know, honey. I wouldn't want you to.”
“But we can't afford to live here if I don't have a job.”
“Probably it's just a few weeks and they'll have a better vaccine out. You can explain your fears and if you don't get that job back, you can get another one. Nurses are always needed.”
“But with crap hours. I don't want to start over.” Sarah had hated her years of nights.
“It's not worth it,” David said. “I mean, I know it's a small number, but we've heard too many cases of getting it after the vaccine and no cases of not getting it after the vaccine.”
“One,” Sid said.
Instead of asking what Sid meant, she asked for hope. “No luck reaching your brother?”
“Not yet.”
Sid tried him again, then took her laptop up to her room. Sarah followed her and stood in Sid's doorway as Sid dug for an address book, then used her computer access to dial what Sarah figured was Jeff''s house phone. She thought Sid was calling through the computer for her benefit, so they could both hear.
It was answered with a groan.
“Jeff?” Sid said.
“Nuh.”
“Pierre?”
“Yuh.”
He sounded worse than Grant did.
“Pierre, this is Sidney. Jeff's sister. Do you have the flu?”
“Yuh.”
“Is Jeff there? Does he have it?”
“Nuh.”
Sarah looked at her and Sid shrugged. She'd asked a double question and they didn't know which one he'd answered. “He's not there?”
“Nuh.”
“I can't get him at work.”
“Luckdun.”
“Luckdun? Oh! Lockdown? For the virus?”
“Yuh.”
“Holy crap! They locked the CDC down?”
He mumbled something incoherent. An explanation of some sort, but Sarah could tell it was wearing him out to talk. Sid let him go.
“Take care of yourself. Wait! Did you have the vaccine?”
“Nuh.”
“Okay—that's helpful. Thank you!”
She hung up and took a deep breath.
“What, exactly, does a lockdown at the CDC mean?” Sarah asked.
“It can't be good news. I wonder if this is confidential. Pierre probably only told me because he was delirious.”
Sid searched on the internet while Sarah stood watching her, feeling like a broken appliance. Sid didn't seem to be having much luck. Finally, when she'd tried a number of options, she leaned back. “I'm not finding anything about the CDC or what they're doing. Certainly nothing about a lockdown. Where the hell is this information?”
1.8. Matt Jacobs:
Tallahassee, Florida
Dead Men Can Multiply
The headquarters of the Kraken made the headquarters of Eagle Corp look like the fucking Pentagon. There was a biker bar in Tallahassee, and if you went past the bathroom to a broom closet, there was a flight of stairs at the back that led to a locked door. If you knew the fuse box next to it was actually an access pad and intercom, you didn't need a key—provided somebody inside knew who you were and believed you had any business being there.
Matt had done a handful of jobs with men from Kraken in the last few years. Enough that one of his two remaining friends, Brian Craig, worked for them, along with a dozen friendly acquaintances.
He drank a beer at the bar for the sake of appearances, and then headed toward the bathroom. When he was sure nobody was watching, he ducked down the passage and into the closet with the staircase. Inside the fuse box he pushed the red button that should have been the intercom. Nobody answered.
He and Craig had gotten drunk together once while they waited to be picked up from an assassination attempt in Pakistan. The target hadn't been there, and since he and Craig weren't in direct danger, they'd been low priority for retrieval. They'd both sworn about being low-priority soldiers, but Matt figured Craig was as content to have the down-time as he was.
While they waited, they'd joked about things they thought would never matter, including their commanders' quirks, which for Craig included a passcode te
ndency based on the board game Monopoly. The man had memory issues, but figured if they rounded the board, a new property every month, along with the price to get a number into the formula, people with bad memories or who had been away for a while could figure it out.
Two years ago, plus or minus a month, they'd been at St. Charles Place. Matt pulled out his phone to look the damn thing up, because he'd never remember all the properties. Two years ago was twenty-four months, and there were twenty-eight properties. That left him at Reading Railroad at two-hundred dollars if it was exactly two years, which it probably wasn't. He tried Reading200 first, with and without capitalization, but had no luck, so he jumped back to Baltic60.
It caused the door to buzz and he edged it open, taking out his weapon as he did.
There was no noise, so he pushed in further, flipping on the lights. The place looked like a haz-mat lab. Somebody here must have managed to get word to someone official that everyone was sick and dying and they'd called in the pros to come test what it was and clean up the place. Everything that had been here the last time he had was gone, replaced by a sterile table with lab equipment and a notebook.
Matt scanned the room continuously, but when he reached the table, he thumbed the book to see what it could tell him. It listed the various hazards that might have made the crew so sick. All negative. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved that nobody had poisoned them, or more concerned that they hadn't figured out what the hell this was. It had wiped out two full teams of mercenaries without a trace. There was nothing more he could learn here, since they'd been so thorough in cleaning the place out, so he decided to try to find his friend. There was always a chance he'd survived.
Brian Craig was nowhere to be found, but at least he didn't seem to be dead in his apartment. Matt broke in to make sure—no sign of him. He could hold out a little hope. Not a lot, though. It seemed the life expectancy in his field was running low.
Having given up on Brian, Matt tried to call his brother next, first by landline, then cell, and finally with the satellite phone he'd left with him. He cursed Paxton's lack of cable while he waited. He had no way of knowing if any of this was even going on in Atlanta where Teddy was. In all likelihood, Teddy was passed out somewhere and would get back to him. If not, he'd gather the supplies he needed and drive up there himself. But first he wanted to check out Camp Blanding. It was the only way to know if this was about mercenary targets, or fighting men more broadly.
He was getting tired of driving this same stretch of 10W, and driving to Camp Blanding gave Matt flashbacks. When he'd been discharged from the Army he'd been sort of lost for a while, not sure what to do with his life. He'd debated joining the National Guard, something he could do at the same camp where he'd done his initial Army training. He wanted to just keep his hands in the action. Then he discovered he could make good money as a mercenary. He was too shell-shocked and damaged to have a wife and family—he was no Dwayne Paxton. So why not keep doing the work, but for more money?
He was an adventure junkie, a thrill-seeker, and a one-night stand. It wasn't that he didn't want a woman in his life, but nobody deserved to be strapped to his baggage, least of all somebody he actually cared about.
Matt pulled off of 10 toward Camp Blanding and stopped for a sandwich. If the last few days were any indication, he was probably going to lose his appetite shortly, and it was better to have been fortified beforehand.
The base was quiet on approach. Too quiet, considering what could be seen from the road was a museum normally open to the public. It was closed. He parked in front of it anyway, walking around to give the base a closer look. He would have expected drills or companies or vehicles—something moving around out there, but there was nothing. Nobody on the lake. Nobody in the sky. Nobody to stop him from poking around, though he shouted to make himself known as he went—better not to surprise anybody who might be armed.
Finally a man came out of the back of a garage with a wrench in his hand. “Can I help you?”
“Life!” Matt joked. The man didn't seem amused so Matt explained himself. “I served six years. A tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. I currently work with a United States contractor and have discovered that two units, mine and one of a buddy of mine, have been decimated. I'm just trying to see what's going on.”
The man wiped a bandanna across his forehead and stuck the wrench in his back pocket. “I'm currently a civilian, but I work here—my wife is deployed, thank God. Flu spread through here like wildfire.”
“Flu? You sure?”
“That's what the doctors say. Said. Most of them are gone, too. Is there a reason I should think otherwise?”
“It's hitting the military harder than civilians. I just...” Matt checked either way, not sure who he was worried might be eavesdropping. “I was thinking terrorists.”
The man's eyes popped. “Overseas units have all been healthy. Shouldn't they have been hit even harder—easier to get to?”
Matt shrugged. It was a good point. “You didn't get it.”
“Just got back from a family thing. I must have missed the germs.”
“So who's in charge here?”
“Nobody around. A couple officers were called to some meeting to figure out what to do, but nearly all the enlisted and about half the civilians who work here are gone. Dead or left.”
“Does that strike you as odd, that the civilians weren't hit as hard?”
“Weren't staying in the barracks, I guess.”
Matt thought it was more complicated than that. Or less complicated, depending how you looked at it. But this man still seemed to have hive-think, so questioning him wasn't going to do any good. Whatever the case, Matt had learned what he came to learn. The military was dying like they'd been targeted. Something was up and his baby brother was the best person he could think of to solve a question like that.
1.9. Nathan Drake:
Boulder, Colorado
What Do Zombies and Nurses Have in Common?
The Zombie Apocalypse response team was scheduled to start Saturday morning, which meant the Zombie Apocalypse really had to get underway Friday night. By morning there had to be enough saturation of danger that there was a crisis to solve.
This was the fun part.
A team of Zombie-makers hit a few frat parties, a few dorm parties, and the student union. They gave out enough make-up to each 'infected undergrad' to infect three friends. They also got a red washable marker for them to mark people 'whose brains they'd eaten' (and so were, for all practical purposes, dead and not reanimated). Students were asked to limit this feeding frenzy to one person per hour. They could also add the food coloring to food and water to 'contaminate those sources.'
To balance the infection, and to approximate real life citizens with knowledge or resources, they distributed black markers to put an X on the head of any zombie that had been neutralized with any toy gun, or full beheading by sword. All people were on the honor system, but it seemed like the people enlisted thought it was fun and were willing to play.
Once critical infection had been achieved, the PhD cohort met at Catacombs, a campus bar, to celebrate. Nathan had to admit it was a hoot to watch in action, especially when a pair of zombies came in and started infecting patrons.
He overheard, “Oh, just kill us. We need to wait for some people,” from the table behind them and two of his classmates put squirt guns on the table to show that they were armed, so the zombies moved back near the pool tables to seek prey.
By the next morning, campus did indeed look like the Zombie Apocalypse was in motion and the MPH students were sent out to assess and troubleshoot. Had they been paying attention, MPH teams were also supposed to have stored supplies and worked out evacuation routes and safe spaces, so some of the teams jumped in ready to start saving people, but most floundered, learning the price paid for failing to be prepared.
The PhD students took it in turns to advise and evaluate how they were doing. By noon prospects seemed pretty ho
peless, though once formal containment efforts began around one, the tide started to turn.
Nathan liked being at command central. It gave him the chance to take the pulse of all of it, to mentor students in what to do, and to watch the effects of various preparations and reactions. It was tiring, though, even in this farce of a scenario. He gave Shana the swing shift so he could sleep for a few hours and come back to do the Saturday overnight shift.
When he returned at midnight, Shana was frowning at a campus map.
“There's something at the hospital,” she said as Nathan came in.
“Hospital? We aren't supposed to interrupt them.”
“It's in the rules, but what portion of kids do you think read everything? And Nathan? That's life, remember? You can put all the protocols in place, but how many epidemics follow human-made rules? Too bad there wasn't money for better prizes,” she said. “Then they'd follow the rules.”
Infected students were supposed to register online—that was how they qualified for prizes—and registering included agreeing to the rules. Nathan ran his hand through his hair.
“Those rule-breakers will make this thing spread faster, too,” Shana said, grinning.
“Also like life?” he asked, and she nodded. Registering also made for an enforced 'incubation period'. They'd always known only a certain portion of participants would go through all the steps. That was part of the lesson that would be taught after the fact—collecting the information from various sources to triangulate and try to measure what really happened.
“Science follows all the rules until you throw people into the mix,” Shana said.
“Can we put somebody at the hospital to make sure we don't disrupt them?” he asked.
“Can you go? I can cover here for another hour or two, but I'm on my bike.”
“Done.” Nathan hated to babysit, but they were trying to run lean overnight, so the people working already had jobs to do. And he knew his way around the hospital, so he was probably the most efficient person to go.
He drove to Boulder Community Hospital and didn't see anything to do with zombies. He walked around the outside, even peeking into the ER waiting room. It was swamped, but he couldn't see any zombie nonsense.