Dub’s thumbs hovered over the screen, twitching as he considered how best to respond. Then he tapped away at the screen.
Okay. Keri will be in my room when you get here. See you then. Update me with your progress. I’ll let her know you’re coming.
He hit send and cycled to the series of texts from Michael’s mother. There were two longer messages. They weren’t any less disturbing than Bob Monk’s.
I’m not sure why you’re telling me this, Dub. This is not funny. I know that you boys think games like this are hilarious. I don’t think they’re hilarious. I think it’s awful. I’m not playing your game. You tell Michael to text me immediately. Your mother would be very disappointed in you, Dub. Shame on you.
That was the first message. The second one was sent ten minutes later.
So you’re ignoring me now? Have Michael text me, please. I’ve tried calling him and can’t get through. I’ve texted and he isn’t responding. You’re all sick. This is sick. Have my son get in touch with me immediately.
Dub sighed and slumped his sore shoulders. On some level he understood why both parents were behaving the way they were. It didn’t seem real. Not in a text message. Not when they couldn’t see the misery worn by the person delivering the horrible news or hear the depth of angst in his voice.
He imagined he wouldn’t believe the news either. He would be in denial. He would doubt the veracity of the news he couldn’t independently confirm. He didn’t blame them. He was there in the room with both of them as they died, and he couldn’t accept it. How could they?
He pressed the screen to open a text box so he could respond to Mrs. Turner. He wiped his nose with the back of one hand and then typed the reply. He started to explain the truth, how he wasn’t lying, wasn’t playing a game, and her son was dead. He started to explain how he’d tried to save him and the awful way in which Michael had taken his last agonized breath. Then he held the delete key and started over.
Okay. Sorry. Michael is in our room.
Dub slid the phone into his pocket and emerged from the bathroom. Barker and Gem were standing at Michael’s bed. Barker was actually perched on the edge of his bunk, leaning over the railing at Michael’s head.
Dub moved closer and noticed they’d pulled the sheet over Michael’s head. Gem was muttering something to herself. She was praying.
Barker stepped down and turned to Dub. “We should do the same for Keri,” he said. “I mean, you should do it.”
Dub nodded. He stepped across the room and climbed up onto the top bunk. He positioned himself next to her body and fought the swelling emotion aching to consume him again. He steeled himself and untangled the soiled sheet from her body. His hands brushed against her skin. It was cold and didn’t feel at all like her. It was foreign. It was alien.
Dub took as deep a breath as his lungs would allow and draped the sheet across her body. It ballooned over her and then drifted slowly into a form-defining shroud atop her. He pressed his hand onto her leg and prayed.
“I love you,” he said, his voice trembling.
He climbed down to the floor. He ran his hands through his hair and eyed the others. “We getting out of here?”
Gem nodded. “I think it’s a good idea. We could go to my house.”
“Your house?” asked Dub.
“She lives in Thousand Oaks,” said Barker. “I mean, her parents do.”
“Then why aren’t you already home?” asked Dub.
Gem shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a big deal at first. Then I got sick. Now I’m better. Probably time to go home.”
“Why didn’t your parents come get you when you got sick?” asked Dub.
“They’re out of the country,” she said. “Anniversary trip on a cruise of New Zealand and Australia. I can’t get a hold of them except for a couple of emails here and there.”
Dub sat down in his chair. His legs thanked him. “How do we get to your house?”
“Not sure,” she said. “We can figure that out. Maybe Uber?”
“Ride-sharing is suspended,” said Dub. “So is all public transportation.”
“We could take bird scooters,” she said. “They’re everywhere. People leave them all over the place.”
Dub leaned on the back of the chair. He raised an eyebrow. “Scooters?”
Gem frowned. “You have a better idea?”
Dub glanced at Barker and back to Gem. “No.”
“Let’s pack up some stuff and head out,” said Gem. “You guys have backpacks, right?”
“Yeah,” said Barker. “I know Michael’s got some LED flashlights in his desk. We could take those.”
“I think there are earthquake packs down in the dorm office,” said Dub.
“Why don’t we load you two up with everything we think we’ll need here,” Gem suggested. “Then I can carry a couple of the quake packs.”
They spent the next few minutes silently rummaging through the room, searching for anything and everything they might need on their trek north to Gem’s parents’ house. Phone chargers, batteries, dry food, bottles of water, tape, pens, extra T-shirts and socks and belts.
Dub even fished three empty tea bottles out of the trash, cleaned them with shampoo in the bathroom sink, and refilled them with water. He took a bar of soap too.
Once they’d stuffed the packs, the three of them stood looking at each other. They were ready to go, but not ready to go. Dub adjusted the straps on his shoulders and motioned toward Keri and Michael.
“We should tag them,” he said.
Barker’s brow furrowed. “Tag them?”
“Yeah. Leave something that tells people who they are, how to get ahold of their families. We might not be coming back here before this is over.”
“Good idea,” said Gem. She walked over to the printer perched on top of a dresser and pulled three pieces of paper from the tray. She leaned over Barker’s desk and scribbled on the paper. She looked up from the desk, the pen hovering over the papers. “What are their last names and phone numbers?”
Dub gave her the information and she resumed writing. She capped the pen and dropped it onto the desk.
She instructed Barker to turn around and she unzipped the small compartment on the back of his pack. She fished out the tape and ripped off three pieces with her teeth, sticking them to her shirt while replacing the roll in the pack.
She taped the pieces of paper, one at a time, to the top side rails of the bunks. The third piece she held in her hand. “This one’s for the door.”
Dub read both pieces of paper. Gem’s handwriting was large and loopy, and he half expected to see the I’s dotted with hearts. But it was easily legible and served the purpose. The placards offered his friends’ names, when they’d died, and the phone numbers for their parents.
Dub nodded his approval to Gem, and she offered a twitch of a smile. The three of them moved to the door, walked through it, and she peeled the last piece of tape from her shirt. She stuck the last piece of paper to the door, running her index finger along the tape to make sure it stuck.
There are two dead people inside this room.
They are our friends. Please take care of them.
Their names and contact information are with them.
God bless their souls.
“Thank you,” Dub said.
Gem nodded curtly. “You’re welcome.”
Dub led the trio through the hall of horrors, again thankful that his sense of smell was impaired. The odor of rotting flesh was pungent enough to cut through the mucus clogging his sinuses. He swallowed hard and tried to hold his breath as they sidestepped the seven bodies that littered the corridor between their room and the large open area near the study room, trash room, and elevators.
Dub recognized all of them. Four men, three women. He knew their names, their hometowns. His eyes watered as he passed the last of them. Reaching the elevator bank, he bent over at his waist, his hands on his knees, and exhaled loudly.
Barker lean
ed against the wall. What little color he’d had left in his face had drained.
Even Gem appeared rattled from the brief trip through the minefield. Her hands were on her hips, her cheeks puffed out, her lips puckered. She let the air from her cheeks, stepped to the elevators, and punched the call button. “That was worse the second time,” she said. “And I swear there were more bodies this time.”
“If this is an indication of what’s to come, I’m not sure I can handle it,” said Dub. “I mean, I don’t know if my stomach can handle it. I’m not one hundred percent.”
“It’ll be better when we get outside,” said Gem. “Trust me.”
The elevator chimed and the door retracted. They rode down to the first floor silently, the gentle rumble of the elevator car serving as the only noise. It slowed and hissed to a stop, the door opened, and they stepped into the main lobby of the dorm building.
Across from the elevators was the building’s residential office. The door was open, and along one wall was a row of red emergency backpacks.
They weren’t truly earthquake packs, as Gem had called them, but that was why they were there. She grabbed two of the packs and unzipped them to check their contents.
Inside she found a flashlight, batteries, first aid materials, shampoo and liquid soap, duct tape, tissues, and a surgical mask. It was a three-day survival kit for a single person. With two of them amongst the three friends, Gem told the men she figured they had more than enough for the trip to Thousand Oaks. It was a thirty-five-mile trek. If they had scooters, they might be able to do it in four or five hours. On foot, it would take them three times as long, especially if they stayed off the major road and used Backbone Trail as their primary route. Given how all three of them were still in the final stages of illness, it could be longer than that.
They adjusted their gear and looked at each other, checking their readiness. Dub sensed the others shared his sense of dread, desperation, and concern.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 10
DAY 14
Pacific Palisades, California
Gilda took the key from Betty, the operational secretary, and thanked her. She backed away from Betty’s desk inside the entrance to the bunker and spun around. She took a couple of steps to a door and, in a fluid set of movements, slid the key into the lock, turned it, swung open the door, and removed the key. She returned the key to Betty, thanked her again, and walked through the door. She closed it behind her and an electronic hum filled the space.
Like the rest of the OASIS, the room was lit by sconces evenly spaced along the walls, and she walked for a short distance along a shallow rise in elevation. At the end of the corridor, it opened into a large rectangular room that resembled a command center. There were tables decorated with maps and diagrams. There were electronic consoles connected by wires, which ran along the walls and ceiling in a web. Sitting around the desks and at the consoles were Doc and Victor.
“Decided to join us?” asked Victor. He pulled headphones from his ears and draped the set around his neck.
Gilda feigned a smile. “You know I can’t stay away from the hub,” she said, taking her seat at the table. “Especially when there’s work to do.”
The room was warmer than the rest of the OASIS. Despite their best efforts to ventilate it, the heat from the electronics collected in the space. There were large fans whirring against the backs of the machines, helping to keep them as cool as possible.
Doc typed something into his console and then asked Gilda, “How’d you sleep?”
“Not great. The headaches are worse.”
“I’ve got some prescription analgesics I could give you,” he offered. His fingers were still poised above his keyboard. “Would that help?”
“Yes. The over-the-counter stuff isn’t working.”
The headaches were only part of the issue when it came to Gilda’s insomnia. She’d been having vivid nightmares when she did manage to fall asleep. They felt more like past experiences than they did dreams, and in every single one the world was irrevocably altered by some catastrophic event. She saw fire, ice, famine, and a southern California that didn’t remotely resemble the place she’d long called home.
She’d awaken every night and every morning bathed in sweat, convinced she was sick with the bacterial illness now called TBE. She’d jump from her bed to take her temperature. It was always normal. It was the only thing normal right now. Everything else was twisted and backwards. The world above and outside was dying. TBE had spread to nine states, Canada, Mexico, and El Salvador. It could be more than that now. She hadn’t received an update in eight hours. The projections they’d seen had it covering much of the globe within another seventy-two hours.
Gilda considered for the first time it might not be worth surviving the end of the world as she knew it. It might have been better to be up above with the sick, coughing, and bleeding to death. Being down here in a hole was getting old fast. She felt helpless and cowardly.
She wasn’t doing anything to fix what was happening up there, she was hiding. She’d come to understand why the waitress, Claudia, was so conflicted about being saved.
“You with us, Gilda?” Victor asked. His eyebrows were arched with genuine concern. “You okay?”
Gilda shook free of the daydream that consumed her thoughts and nodded. “Sorry. It’s my head, that’s all.”
“I’ll make sure you get the meds tonight…at dinner,” said Doc. “I’d do it now, but, you know, we’ve got things to do.”
“Thanks,” said Gilda. “I do appreciate it.”
Victor eyed a digital clock at the far end of the room. The red numbers displayed the hour, minute, second, and tenth of a second. “Are we ready, then?” he asked. “We’re running a couple of minutes late.”
Doc nodded and picked up a headset from the table in front of him. Gilda did the same.
Victor pulled his headphones onto his ears, adjusting them for comfort, and spoke into the tabletop microphone in front of him. “This is K6VWV calling K6WVW. Do you copy me, K6WVW?”
There was static but no reply. He tried again, no response.
“You think they’ve skipped out since we’re late?” asked Doc.
“We’re only three minutes behind the scheduled contact time,” Victor replied. “They’ll wait five at least.”
He called again, using their radio call sign and that of their intended partner. That partner didn’t answer.
Victor eyed the clock again. “I’m trying the sat phone. Stand by.”
Gilda’s headset was connected to Victor’s and Doc’s. In it, she could hear both Victor’s transmissions and whatever communication came from the other end of the line. Her mic and Doc’s, however, were localized. Both she and Doc could communicate with each other and Victor, but the receiver couldn’t hear anyone but Victor.
The system allowed the three of them to discuss appropriate responses without the caller on the other end hearing their deliberations. Victor spoke for the group once they’d arrived at the appropriate response. Victor had designed it himself when he’d built the hub from scratch. It had taken years to collect the equipment, build in redundancies with backup equipment, power, fiber, and install it. It was his pride and joy.
Gilda heard the familiar but odd tones of the satellite phone dialing. The ring warbled once, twice, and then someone answered.
“Is this Victor?” asked a man’s voice.
“It is,” he said. “We tried the radio. You weren’t there.”
“We’ve got a problem with it. Not sure where that problem is, and we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Not going to get fixed.”
“Understood,” said Victor. “Sat phone from here on out?”
“Affirmative. However long that might be.”
“How’s it going up there?” asked Victor. “Is it as bad as it appears? Worse than our call two days ago?”
“Affirmative,” he said with an audible exhale. “It’
s a circus, a bloody, anarchical circus.”
Victor glanced at Gilda and Doc, his face wrinkled with concern.
“What does he mean?” asked Gilda.
Victor keyed the mic. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s out of control. There are riots on the streets now. People aren’t responding well to martial law, and Cal Guard is ill equipped to handle such mass insurrection.”
“How does it compare?” asked Doc.
Victor took his hand off the transmit bar at the base of the desktop microphone. “Compare to what?”
Doc’s brow was furrowed, as if he was surprised Victor didn’t understand his question. “The…other times,” he clarified.
Victor glanced at Gilda. “Should I ask that?”
Gilda wasn’t sure. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to know the answer, she wondered if it was appropriate to know the answer. She shook her head with a shrug. “Whatever you think,” she said to Victor. “I’m not sure it’ll do any good, but either way I’m fine with it.”
“You there?” asked the voice on the other end of the line. “Can you hear me?”
Victor keyed the mic. “Yes, we’re here. Could you tell us how this compares to the other times?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. After a few seconds, Victor started to press the mic bar again, his mouth already open to speak, when the man on the other end of the line responded.
“This is the worst. Of everything we’ve seen, none of it has been on this scale. Even a nuclear attack is more narrowly focused than a disease that’s spreading even faster than the SIR model would indicate.”
“SIR?” asked Victor.
“It’s a differential equation model that calculates the spread of a disease. This TBE is unlike anything epidemiologists have ever recorded.”
“We’re stuck,” said Victor. “We need to stay here.”
“Yes. For the duration. As you know from our agreements and the studies you’ve done previously, some group must survive every iteration. Nothing can be an extinction-level event. If that happens…”
The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction Page 13