The Scourge (Book 1): Unprepared

by Abrahams, Tom

  He plucked a paper towel from the dispenser to his right, then another, and dried his hands. The cheap industrial paper was rough against his skin. He crumpled the sheets into a ball and tossed it into the wall-mounted stainless-steel trash bin.

  The trembling had migrated into his arms, into his chest. His stomach lurched and a thin line of acid crept up his throat before he swallowed it.

  Mike turned to face the mirror again and planted his hands on the counter. It was cold against his palms. He locked his elbows and mustered the strength to confront what was bothering him. Only part of it was what he’d witnessed in the conference room, what he’d experienced. Only part of it was watching a woman convulse and bleed and drop unconscious, paramedics checking for a pulse and finding none. Of shouts about CPR and defibrillators. That was only part of it.

  The other part, the slice of the pie that was harder to swallow and was the sour that made him want to vomit, was the knowledge he’d been exposed. As afraid as he was for Ashley Pomerantz, Mike Crenshaw was afraid for himself.

  This disease, if that was what Ashley had contracted, was for real. It was unforgiving. It was violent. It was life-altering, if not life-ending. He believed the conference room fifty yards from him was a new ground zero for it.

  He’d told a paramedic or emergency medical technician—he didn’t know the difference—he believed Ashley had traveled out of the country. The medic—a young woman with broad shoulders, a strong jaw, and a brass nameplate that read SANDERS—had taken notes.

  “What countries? How do you know?” she’d asked without looking up from a notepad pulled from the hip pocket of her dark blue pants.

  “Prague,” Mike had said. “I mean Czech Republic. It’s on her social media. There are pictures. Plus she told me.”

  “When did she go?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  Sanders nodded and scribbled. “Anything else you can tell me? Is she a drinker? Drug user? Prescription or otherwise?”

  Mike shrugged. Sanders looked up, eyebrows arched.

  “Sorry,” he said. His eyes were on her, but he wasn’t looking at her. He’d already drifted elsewhere.

  Sanders frowned. “Sorry, what?”

  Mike blinked back to focus. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  Her expression softened. “Look, I know this is tough. But anything you can tell me will help. Do you know about what, if any, drugs she used?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t,” he said, wishing he did. “I think she drank occasionally. Socially, you know. I don’t know about drugs.”

  A sympathetic smile flashed on Sander’s face and disappeared. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Do you know whom we should call? Next of kin? Boyfriend? Anyone?”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t know. It might be on her phone. Or our boss would know. I think he has files with emergency contacts, that sort of thing. We all had to fill out forms when we got hired.”

  “Her purse and phone went in the ambulance,” said Sanders. “Where’s your boss?”

  Mike glanced around the conference room. It was empty aside from the two of them, aside from the bloodstains. Through the glass, he saw Hank Swami leaning against a desk, his hands stuffed deep into his thin cut pants. His trim fit shirt was untucked and he’d rolled up his sleeves. The shirt strained against his biceps. His sallow face gave him the appearance of someone who’d recently puked.

  Mike pointed at him. “That’s him. His name is Hank Swami. He was in the room when Ashley…when she…”

  “I got it,” Sanders said. “Thanks. I’ll go talk to him.”

  She left him alone in the conference room and went straight to Hank. Mike watched them through the glass. Hank stood up straight. He adjusted his belt, tugging on his pants self-consciously, and ran his hands along the sides of his head as if smoothing his hair.

  Mike could tell Hank wasn’t primping. He was moving his hands, adjusting his stance, shifting his weight as nervous movements. Hank had been the one who’d called them into work on a weekend.

  After a minute of unsuccessfully trying to read their lips as they spoke, Mike moved from the conference room and trudged toward the men’s room. His legs were a strange combination of heavy and weak. Each step was as if he had to pull his feet from thick mud.

  Before he turned into the alcove that held the entrances to both restrooms, Mike glanced back at Hank and Sanders. His boss was crying. He wiped the tears from his face. Mike was pretty sure he saw Hank apologize over and over again. It was almost as unnerving as what had happened in the conference room.

  Now he stood in front of the mirror wondering what he should do next. If he was exposed to the Scourge, all of the reports he’d seen and read told him it was a death sentence. There was no cure.

  Did he go about his life, what was left of it, as if nothing was wrong? Did he go to his desk and finish his reports? Should he get back in his car and go straight home? Was he better to stop by a gas station or dollar store and hope their shelves still held old supplies of dusty nonperishables?

  He stood there, all of these questions running through his head, with no answers. Mike understood he was unprepared for this. Never in his life had he given credence to the idea that the end was coming someday soon.

  Sure, he’d sat through the cable shows that warned of apocalyptic flooding, fires, volcanoes, or other natural disasters. He’d seen documentaries both for and against climate change and its world-altering effects. Mike had even binge-watched apocalyptic movies that showed cities underwater or populations morphing into zombies. Governments fell, people abandoned Earth in favor of spaceships, nuclear bombs shifted the balances of power and created tribal wars in desert wastelands. None of it seemed real—not the news, not the documentaries, and not the television dramas.

  So he didn’t believe he needed to be ready. Mike could barely pay the rent, the car payment, and sometimes the bar tab. He wasn’t about to buy a backpack to use as some sort of bug-out bag, or water-filtration straws, knives, guns, ammo, stores of cash, or multi-tools. All of that stuff showed up in his social media timelines after he’d made the mistake of clicking on a story about the growing preparedness community in Texas. For the next month, every native advertisement tried to sell him something to save him from the end of the world.

  He should have at least kept some extra cash in his apartment. That way, if things went south and the banks shut down, he’d have some way to pay for necessities.

  The bank.

  That was where he’d start and he didn’t even need his car. There was one with a twenty-four-hour automatic teller machine two blocks from the station. He decided he’d go there.

  If nothing else, Mike knew that going to the bank would make him feel like he was doing something proactive. He had to do something. Wallowing in his fear wouldn’t accomplish anything. He nodded at himself in the mirror and steeled himself for the trek.

  When he pulled on the men’s room handle to leave, he almost ran into Brice. The two stepped back and apologized to each other.

  “Dude,” said Brice, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. How long have you been in here?”

  Mike stepped from the restroom and into the alcove. Brice backed up to accommodate him and folded his arms across his chest.

  “I dunno,” Mike said. “I just had to splash some water on my face, clear my head.”

  “Everybody is freaking out,” said Brice. “I mean. Freaking. Out.”

  Brice was wide-eyed. His hair was matted at the temples from sweat. There were white balls of dried spit at the corners of his mouth.

  “Why?” asked Mike.

  Brice crinkled his brow. “Why?” he asked incredulously. “Why? Why what? Why are people freaking out? You’re kidding me, right?”

  Mike, who’d somehow found a detached calm, shook his head. He realized his heart rate was slower and the throbbing at his temples had dissipated. He looked Brice square in the eyes, holding his jittery attention.
“I’m not kidding,” he said and started counting on his fingers. “Which thing is freaking out people? Is it that the Scourge is everywhere? That the roads are a nightmare? That our colleague just had some sort of seizure and collapsed?”

  Brice’s expression flattened and his jaw went slack. “I don’t know. All of it? Nobody here knows what to do or where to go.”

  Mike nodded and took a step to move past his friend. Brice grabbed his arm and stopped him. “What are you going to do? Where are you going?”

  “I need money,” said Mike. “I’m going to the bank.”

  Brice smiled broadly, as if he’d had an epiphany. “Great idea.”

  He let go of Mike’s arm and reached into his back pocket. From it, he pulled a sleek stainless wallet the size of a business-card holder. He flipped it over to reveal a money clip on its back side. There was cash. Brice thumbed it from the clip and counted it. “I’ve got twenty-nine dollars. That’s not going to be enough, is it?”

  Mike started walking toward the lobby. “I don’t know. How much is enough? I’m going to withdraw whatever my bank will let me take out.”

  Brice was on his heels, hyper-focused on this new task. “I thought you were broke.”

  Mike ignored this. He didn’t need a reminder. Hopefully he had a couple of hundred to spare, but he couldn’t remember the last time he checked his balance. He pulled his phone from his pocket and used his shoulder to open the door that led from the sales offices and into the lobby.

  Donna was gone. Her computer was off.

  With his thumb, Mike navigated to the banking app on his phone. The app identified his face and opened. His balance was displayed on the screen in all of its depressing glory.

  The elevator doors opened and Brice stepped into the car first. He pushed the button for the first floor and the doors closed.

  “It’s quiet in here,” said Brice before the elevator chimed and the doors opened again. “I never realized how quiet it was in the elevator.”

  Mike shoved his phone into his pocket and led Brice through the front door of the building and into the parking lot. Brice kept pace.

  The fresh air felt good on Mike’s face. It was somehow cooler outside than in the building. There was a breeze drifting from the east and the humidity was low. He started to take a deep breath but stopped himself, worried that the air might be contaminated. He exhaled and silently berated himself for being paranoid.

  But is it paranoia? he thought as the two of them crossed the parking lot. If breathing the air could kill him, he wasn’t paranoid at all. Mike tried to push the thoughts from his mind. He needed to do what Brice was doing; focus on a single task at a time. How was it, his dad used to joke, that one about how one would eat an elephant? The answer was one bite at a time.

  Mike turned to his left and glanced toward the Interstate. I-4 was busy with traffic, the endless parade of cars, SUVs, and eighteen-wheelers a familiar sight. He stopped walking, closed his eyes, and listened to the rumble and whoosh of the passing motorists, finding comfort in it. That surprised Mike. I-4 was the bane of every Central Floridian’s existence. It was the only true corridor through the city and its north and south suburbs, and it was a mess. Even on a Saturday, the flow of traffic was constant.

  “What are you doing?” asked Brice.

  “Listening,” Mike replied.

  “To what?”

  “Nothing. I’m just trying not to freak out.” He emphasized the last two words with a wave of his hands, drawing a flash of a grin from Brice.

  Mike tried to regulate his breathing as they reached the edge of the building. They turned the corner. He pointed to a large hedge of Ligustrums that had grown tall enough to form a four-foot barrier between their parking lot and that of the bank next door. The hedge was planted in between narrow strips of thick St. Augustine grass, interrupted every ten feet or so by the wide trunks of foxtail palms.

  “I’m going to use the drive-thru ATM,” he said. “Hopefully there’s not a line.”

  To the left, the traffic on Lake Mary Boulevard was at a standstill. Frustrated drivers yelled from open windows, honked horns, and revved their engines.

  They walked closer to the boulevard as they neared the hedge. There was a gap close to the driveway that led from the street into the bank’s parking lot. The strong, noxious odor of car exhaust made Mike take shorter, shallower breaths. This was poison he could smell.

  Brice motioned to the drive-thru on the back side of the single-story stucco and Spanish tile roofed building. The bank’s name and emblem were the only decoration on the otherwise bland facade. “We might be in luck,” he said. “No line.”

  There wasn’t a single car in the parking lot. Mike stopped walking again, spun around, and faced the busy, gridlocked street.

  “What?” asked Brice. He was already several steps ahead of Mike on his way to the automatic teller.

  “It’s weird,” said Mike. “Nobody’s thought to get money yet?”

  “I think they’re all worried about food and water,” said Brice. “And masks. I saw surgical masks are, like, impossible to get. Even online you can’t get them.”

  Mike moved toward the bank. “Where’d you see that?”

  “I heard it, actually. Before she left, Donna was talking with one of the DJs outside the bathrooms. One of them said they tried to order them and couldn’t.”

  They walked along the back side of the building, following the yellow lines that designated the trio of drive-thru service lanes. There were two ATMs. Brice took the one in the middle. Mike took the one against the building.

  Mike fished into his wallet and pulled out his phone. He opened his app, tapped a QR code, and held it up to a camera on the side of the ATM. The screen on the ATM changed colors, and Mike’s initials and photograph appeared on the display. Then an androgynous voice greeted him.

  “Hello,” it said in an artificially friendly sort of way. “Thank you for being a loyal customer. How might we assist you today?”

  Mike chuckled. He wasn’t a customer. This wasn’t his bank. “Withdrawal.”

  “You’d like to make a withdrawal,” confirmed the voice. “Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Eighty dollars,” he said. That would leave him with five dollars and seventeen cents in his account.

  “From which account?”

  Behind him, the same voice was asking the same questions of Brice. He was asking for a lot more money than Mike had.

  “Checking.”

  “You’d like to use your checking account. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Mike missed the days of tapping icons on the screen. It was so much faster. But with facial and voice recognition built into the machines to prevent theft these days, what should take a few seconds could take several minutes.

  The screen dissolved into a series of landscapes while the machine worked: a sunset on the beach, snowcapped peaks, a river in a green valley. Behind him, Mike heard the ATM ask Brice to confirm he wanted to withdraw cash from his checking account.

  The green valley dissolved into an underwater vista that featured colorful fish and a swaying sea anemone. Then the machine gave him bad news.

  “We cannot dispense any cash at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your loyalty. Have a wonderful day.”

  No sooner had the machine shifted to its home screen than the same message played on Brice’s ATM. Brice cursed aloud and began the process again.

  “Don’t waste your time, Brice. It’s not going to work. Mine told me the same thing.”

  He crossed the twin yellow lines that framed the center lane of drive-thru traffic and stood against the ATM opposite Brice. His friend looked up at him. The resolve was gone. The worry and lack of clarity was back.

  “Look,” said Mike, trying to keep focus, “there’s an ATM inside the pharmacy next door. We could try there.”

  Brice checked over his shou
lder in the direction of the shopping center adjacent to the bank parking lot. He nodded in agreement.

  The two of them walked past the bank, across another grass esplanade, and into a wide parking lot that separated a long U-shaped strip mall from Lake Mary Boulevard. Brice was moving quickly, almost race-walking. Mike let him stay ahead and didn’t bother keeping up.

  His phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket. On the screen was a news icon displaying twenty-nine notifications. He forgot he’d turned off the notifications when he went to work.

  “Open news,” he said into his phone.

  The screen shifted and revealed a string of headlines from local and national outlets. Mike thumbed through them as he walked, alternating glances between his screen and where he was walking. A swipe of his thumb and a cursory check of the headlines told him all of the updates were Scourge related.

  SCOURGE KILLS 26 IN NY

  PLANE ARRIVES FROM GERMANY WITH 3 DEAD, A DOZEN SICK

  LOCAL GOVERNMENTS CONSIDER CURFEWS, MARTIAL LAW

  NYSE, CBOT, FTSE, CHINESE MARKETS, CLOSED MONDAY

  TOILET PAPER, HAND SANITIZER, MASKS IN SHORT SUPPLY

  PRESIDENT TO ADDRESS NATION TONIGHT

  “OUR WORST FEARS COME TRUE”—WHO DIRECTOR GENERAL

  LIVE UPDATE: ORMC EXPERTS DISCUSS EPIDEMIC

  Mike hovered his thumb over the first headline. He was about to tap it when Brice called to him, interrupting his train of thought.

  “You coming?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Was checking the news.”

  Brice slowed to let Mike catch up with him as they navigated their way through the cars packing the strip center’s parking lot. “What’s it say?”

  “Not anything good.”

  They squeezed between two large pickup trucks the drivers had parked too close to one another. Mike ducked under one of the oversized side-view mirrors.

  “Like what?” Brice asked.

  “A lot of people are dead already,” said Mike, sliding past an abandoned shopping cart. “Stock markets are going to be closed on Monday.”