Night Zero

by Rob Horner

  No, think about a car and nothing else.

  She’d walked around the side of the hospital after stumbling out the emergency doors, and now she was near the front, where the small visitor’s lot was empty and only a single streetlamp was visible. Where could she go? Where could she find a rental car place at this time of morning?

  How would she pay for it?

  When they dimmed the lights and left her alone, her purse had been on the floor beside the plastic visitor’s chair. She hadn’t had it on her shoulder when she wandered out of the room. If she was going to rent a car and go looking for Austin, she needed her purse.

  Her new focus established, a temporary safety net against the fall into depression that awaited, Carolyn turned back to the hospital entrance.

  The only warning Jesse Franks had before Ragan attacked was the sound of her seat belt unbuckling followed by the whisper-zip of the soft shoulder strap sliding back into its housing.

  They’d been traveling for two hours and all he’d gotten out of the little girl was her first name. He assumed they’d left a family member behind and the desertion bothered her, or else that she’d been traumatized by the violence in the airport and was still trying to process everything. Jesse understood. He was still trying to process a scenario that made no sense no matter how you looked at it.

  What could drive a group of normal people into such behavior?

  Confusion and fear were both understandable motivators for a little mob action, but no mob he’d ever seen looked like that. If they’d pushed forward toward the exit, shouting angry questions at the EMTs, that would have been understandable.

  But what they did, rushing at each other, clawing, biting…it was something out of a horror show like The Walking Dead, except those people weren’t dead and they sure as hell weren’t walking.

  He half-turned to speak, to caution her that she needed to stay seated and buckled up. The flying might be smooth now, but that could change in an instant. Small planes responded to changes in air currents with a lot more vigor than larger vessels. He saw a flash of motion out of the corner of his eye and ducked instinctively, turning his head and putting the full body of the chair between himself and her. She slammed into the back of the chair and rebounded back onto her seat, letting loose a grunt of frustration.

  Jesse whipped his head around for a visual and saw her rising again, hands out, pretty face twisted in a snarl of rage. Something looked off about one of her arms, a wrinkling that reminded him of an old lady’s, but he didn’t have time to look closer. He twisted around again as she came back in, this time angling between the front seats.

  “Ragan, stop!” he shouted, but she didn’t. Her hands—what the hell’s wrong with her left hand?—each grasped a side of the front seats and she pulled herself through, leading with her head, mouth open and lips peeled back.

  Jesse shifted to the left as her face came in. He heard the distinct click of her teeth as they missed his right shoulder by inches.

  Thank God we don’t have five-point restraints anymore.

  Another wordless shriek heralded a second lunge. She got her shoulders through the gap in the front seats this time and there was nowhere for him to go. Freedom to move doesn’t mean room to move. Releasing the yoke, Jesse got his right arm up and pushed out, fear of being bitten warring with a burning need not to hurt the girl if it could be avoided. His palm found purchase on her forehead and he locked his arm.

  “Stop this! You’re going to get us killed!”

  Desperately, he scanned the cockpit—gauges, yoke, Oh Shit pouch by the door—but didn’t see anything that could distract the crazed girl. The night sky was dark around them, but there were lights on the horizon. Oklahoma City, he thought. If I can make it there, maybe I can get her some help.

  Then there were hands on his arm. She’d released the chairs and had a hold of him with both hands. She pulled down. His hand slid over her face and she caught his fingers in her mouth.

  She bit down.

  Exquisite pain burst to life in his hand, that gut-clenching, sphincter-tightening pain that only the nerve endings can produce. It precludes thought and drives out reason.

  There was a flashlight in the Oh Shit bag, something he wouldn’t have considered using thirty seconds ago but which had become his only recourse.

  The pain lessened for a split second, then returned, a second fire started before the first was out.

  She’s fucking chewing on me!

  He stretched out for the Oh Shit bag, fumbling for the pocket along the interior of the plane down by his left foot.

  He couldn’t reach it.

  He strained, and she resisted, pulling back like she was the world’s biggest puppy and his hand was the rope in a game of tug of war. His breath came in harsh gasps, heart trip-hammering in his chest. He’d passed kidney stones and broken his leg in a motorcycle accident, and this pain trumped all of that.

  The pressure eased again, and he pulled. She didn’t let go, but her upper body had to move forward to keep his fingers between her teeth, giving him another two or three inches of reach. His left hand fumbled in the pouch as her teeth clenched again. There was a sick sliding sensation in addition to the pain, like her tongue was savoring his fingers, or like…

  The pain magnified as she moved his fingers to the side of her mouth, bringing her molars to bear. Something split in his hand. He felt the skin pop! Then came a grinding, crushing pain as she worked to reduce his fingertips to bone dust.

  His left hand grasped the cold metal shaft of the flashlight and he grabbed, twisted, and swung all in the same motion, not even sure where he hit her, just swinging to try to stop the pain. Screaming, Jesse swung again, hearing the glass lens crack as the light hit home a second time. The pain in his hand remained, so he swung a third time, not knowing if she was hurt, no longer caring if he hurt her, just knowing that her face was still there, still close to him, and her hands were still on his wrist and her teeth were still clenched. He reared back and swung a fourth time, and his hand was released.

  The girl collapsed into the space between the front and back seats.

  Sobbing, Jesse cradled his right hand while setting the flashlight between his legs. Part of him was scared to death that he’d seriously hurt little Ragan, but a greater part was concerned with protecting himself in case she attacked again. Looking down, he saw ragged tears in the tips of his index and middle finger, blood flowing freely onto his pants. The lights on the horizon looked no closer now than they had before…

  Of course not, it’s only been a few seconds since you last looked.

  …but he began lowering his altitude in preparation for landing.

  A quick look showed Ragan still on the floor, but it was too dark to tell how badly she was hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “Just stay down long enough for me to land. We’ll figure this out.”

  He reached for the radio.

  As Austin Wallace drove up the Interstate, the world drifted in and out of focus. Time flowed on, but it was disjointed. Sometimes he remembered only that he needed to go north, but not why. At other times, he was acutely conscious of the need to get to a conference—something about teaching politicians how to vomit history and shit science—but didn’t remember where it was or when it was supposed to happen.

  The ache in his stomach returned at the same time that the Mazda began to shudder more frequently and forcefully. It was a crawly, crampy feeling, like a huge gas bubble working its way through the many twists and turns, but he knew it wasn’t just gas that was going to come roaring down the final stretch. The discomfort sharpened his focus for the first time in over an hour. He saw the sign for the next exit, 68, and experienced a sense of Holy shit, how did that happen? He’d been so disconnected that he’d overshot the exit for his hotel by almost twenty miles.

  He slowed the borrowed car—not stolen, borrowed, thank you very much—and eased into the looping right turn of the exit ramp. The engine gave a lur
ch as the speed dropped, and suddenly the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal meant nothing. The engine revved, but the car’s speed continued to diminish. Panicking, he guided the vehicle to the left of the exit ramp, stopping with the driver’s side of the car off the road and in the weeds. He moved the gearshift lever up and down, watching the little indicator on the dashboard go from P to R to N to D, but nothing moved no matter which gear he was in.

  Guess the transmission gave out.

  He fumbled for the hood release, gave it a tug that sent a warning stab through his guts, then climbed out of the vehicle.

  As soon as he cleared the car, his bowels locked down, sending a pain through his middle that couldn’t have hurt worse if it was a sword stabbed all the way through.

  Gasping, desperate, Austin yanked his shorts down for the third time since leaving Atlanta, and the world blew away as everything he’d ever eaten tried to pour out of him.

  An unknown amount of time later, he woke to discover his pants back in place, and the Interstate nowhere nearby. He was on a residential street, passing from one streetlamp to another, just walking.

  And that was all right.

  He was heading north, just where he needed to go.

  He had a reservation for a Filet O’ Ear to get to, and an EMT and a nurse to infect.

  So much to do.

  Chapter 21

  Well, that could have gone worse, Dr. Lowman thought, rising from his place behind the desk and pacing the small office he’d inherited from Dr. Johnson. At least I still have enough ass to sit on.

  The only bright spot, if you could call it that, in the conversation with the President had been the interruption of Dr. Riggs, reporting the unknown body in the destroyed lab belonged to one Michael Robertson, longtime activist for hire, wanted in connection with a half-dozen attacks on lab facilities throughout the country, and known associate of the former doctor who espoused the tenuous link between vaccinations and ADHD, autism, and a dozen other mental disorders. That brightness came with more bad news as Mr. Fields rushed in with an updated list of assaults that showed a marked increase over what he’d reported just an hour before.

  “Looks like we can take that one off the FBI’s list,” the President quipped.

  “We’ll need to investigate how he learned about the lab,” someone said. Dr. Lowman wasn’t sure who’d spoken. The conference was audio-only, and in a room full of men, the only voice he recognized was the president’s, and only then because the man was constantly being audio-clipped on television and radio, saying the most outlandish things. To be fair, what the media played was generally a fragment of a sentence taken out of context to show the president in the worst possible light, but that was still his fault. When you know someone’s got you in the crosshairs, don’t give them ammunition.

  “What about the reports of assaults?” a deeper voice asked. Greg thought it might be the National Security Advisor. “We’re fielding a lot of calls about family members attacking each other.”

  “We’re having trouble confirming the actual number of casualties,” another voice complained. “We’ll receive an initial notification from a hospital that they are being inundated with patients having similar complaints, but when we call back for more details, we can’t get through.”

  A few other voices spoke up, gruff and soft, high-pitched and low, talking over each other rather than listening.

  If this is what the President has to sit through all day, it’s no wonder nothing gets done in Washington.

  “Yes, yes,” the President said, speaking over the others, “I’m sure everyone is doing a great job, a fantastic job, including our Mr. Greg on the phone. And I have every confidence that you’ll all continue to do great jobs. What I want to hear are some details on how you’re going to do them. Mr. Richards? Go.”

  That would be Homeland Security.

  “I…uh…yes,” Richards stammered. “The complaints are far ranging in the southeast—Georgia, as expected, eastern Alabama and southern Tennessee. Then they move into parts of Kentucky and West Virginia. North and South Carolina took the brunt of the air flow coverage, with northern Florida getting grazed. There have been a handful of calls from Tallahassee. More concerning is the spread into Virginia, Mr. President. As of this morning, we haven’t been able to raise anyone in the western and southern parts of the state. We’re getting nothing back from the Sentara systems in Virginia Beach and Richmond is troubling in the number of calls they’ve made today. We’ve got feelers out to George Washington University Hospital and the V.A. Medical Center, but all they’re reporting right now is a bad G.I. bug.”

  Dr. Lowman didn’t like that at all.

  “Okay, well if it’s blowing that hard and that far, what about England?” the President asked.

  Greg smiled. The man might be a genius at business negotiations, but he obviously didn’t understand weather patterns or particulate drift.

  A different voice answered, gruff and no-nonsense. “Heathrow reports detaining one of our planes on the runway. They wanted to quarantine it, but the…um…passengers escaped.”

  “How do passengers escape from a plane?” the President asked.

  “We assume they used the emergency exits,” the same voice answered patiently. “The reports get strange after that. The passengers are apparently disoriented, as if they’re all hallucinating. They attack anyone who approaches them.”

  “They brought weapons? Are they hijackers?”

  “No, sir. They’re attacking with their hands and teeth. London is pissed at trying to provide detention for over a hundred passengers and will want to speak to someone about reimbursing them for the cost of the medical services they’ve had to provide for their security personnel.”

  “What kind of injuries are we talking about? Bites and scratches? I’ll talk to the Prime Minister later, see if we can work something out.”

  “Dr. Lowman,” a soft voice said into the silence. “Is there any correlation between these outbreaks of violence and the released particles?”

  “That’s Davis Miller,” the President said for Greg’s benefit.

  Davis Miller, personal advisor to the President and, as the media liked to claim, the man really running the country.

  Aside from delivering the report on the explosion itself, and the genetically combined microbes it released, this was the part Greg had been most worried about. He had the maps from Mr. Fields, hastily-scribbled-on pieces of transparent plastic meant to be laid over one another to show trends in different colors. With the authority of the CDC behind him, Dennis and his staff culled airport flight paths and called the FAA looking for diversions. He then dug into new sources from areas where the aircraft were diverted to, as well as made general inquiries to other facilities, both in the diversion locations and near intended destinations.

  The results were on the table in front of him, gastrointestinal complaints clustered in the southeast, but spreading out from Georgia in a concentric band that jumped in hour-distance increments, with each farther band showing fewer cases. The only known cases in the last band were in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California. The next to last band included New York City’s La Guardia airport and DC’s Reagan International.

  Overlaying the intestinal complaints was the clear film showing assaults. Dennis had not had time to cull these reports to separate out the typical number of incidences based on the location, so there was possible inflation in the numbers. Regardless, the last sheet was damning. Everywhere a plane landed, aggressive attacks exploded, out stripping the number of C. difficile reports by an order of magnitude. They didn’t remain isolated, either, but continued to spread.

  “At this time, it is safe to assume there is a high communicability of the…is it bacterial or viral at this point?” Miller asked.

  “It has to be the viral carrier transmitting just the aggressive aspect, since there aren’t enough reports of abdominal complaints beyond the southeast and the isolated locations where infected
passengers may have disembarked from aircraft,” Dr. Lowman answered. “I’m sorry I can’t be more precise. We’re dealing with a bug that was never meant to see the light of day, a layover in a journey from inception to—”

  “Spare us the flowery imagery, Dr. Lowman,” Miller said, his voice still soft but carrying a sharp edge. “You can’t put the yolk back in a broken egg, no matter whose fault it is that the egg got broken. Well, this egg is truly fucking shattered, and what we need to worry about now is first containing it, and then cleaning it up.”

  “I need to call my kids,” someone muttered. Lowman wasn’t sure, but he thought that was the President’s voice.

  “Containment may not be an option,” the gruff voice said. “If it’s made it to all four corners of our country and across the pond…”

  “Containment in this case means protecting as many as we can,” Miller said. “To that end, I suggest we move operations to the PEOC and establish an admissions list based on symptom presentation and immunity status.”

  “We believe type O blood is immune to the bacteria,” Lowman said.

  “Yes, you said that. But only O-negative is completely safe, right?”

  “So we believe. But again, that was based on mid-trial testing that—”

  “Yes, yes, we know,” Miller said.

  “I’m O-negative,” the President announced.

  “Yes, quite. Dr. Lowman, I think it would be best if you and--Dr. Matthis, was it?--joined us.”

  “Me?” Lowman asked.

  “Yes, come to the East Wing loading area. The Secret Service will have your names on the list.”

  There wasn’t a communal good-bye. There was that last comment, and then dead silence on the phone. Dr. Lowman had the distinct feeling that he’d been dismissed from a meeting that was going to continue after he’d left.

  And now he paced. He’d put the call out for Dr. Matthis to return, and then worried how long he should wait. What should he bring to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center? Other than television shows like Designated Survivor, and movies like Olympus Has Fallen, he didn’t know much about the not-so-secret bunker under the White House where high-level officials retreated during periods of national emergency.