by Emma Castle
Nightmares had to end eventually…didn’t they?
November 2019
Caroline was trapped.
She stood in line at the Chicago O’Hare airport, trying to find out why her flight home to Joplin, Missouri, was canceled. All around her people were shuffling in lines or were camped out in the uncomfortable rows of connected airport waiting area seats. The man behind her coughed, and she winced. If she got a cold now, she would be super pissed. She’d spent the last week practically bathing in hand sanitizer at work to keep from picking up the illnesses her boss usually brought. Her advertising firm sometimes felt like a petri dish of bacteria and viruses.
Her boss, Jill, had three kids ages three, five and nine, which meant at least two or three times a year Jill became what was jokingly called by her coworkers a carrier for the “super cold” that her kids picked up at school. Caroline tended to catch them most because she worked in a small cubicle just outside Jill’s corner office. Close proximity to the boss did her in every time.
“Passengers of flight 1502 to New York, we’re sorry to inform you that the flight has been canceled. All flights to and from LaGuardia are grounded until further notice. Please see your gate attendant to schedule a new flight.” The employee who made the announcement sounded mildly stressed. Carolyn didn’t blame her. Dozens of flights had been delayed or canceled in the last three hours, and people were getting restless.
The woman in front of Caroline turned to face her.
“LaGuardia’s closed? You suppose they had a terrorist issue?” The woman slung her Prada purse over her shoulder and peeked around at the other passengers nearby.
“Could be.” Caroline set her heavy backpack down, placing her feet on either side of it while she stretched her neck. This line wasn’t moving at all, and she’d pinch a nerve in her neck if she had her backpack on for another ten minutes.
“I’ll google it.” The woman began to type on her phone. Caroline was sure the news wouldn’t report anything about a terrorist threat until it was dealt with and everyone was safe.
The woman cleared her throat, tucked a strand of hair that was threaded with silver behind her ears, and the color drained from her face. “Oh…”
Caroline leaned forward, worry starting to form knots in her gut. “What is it?”
“Um…” The woman scrolled down on her phone, her lips moving slightly as she silently read the article. She slowly raised her head, her gaze sweeping the somewhat cantankerous crowd of people around them.
Caroline reached out and touched the woman’s arm, trying to get her attention. “Is it bad?” The touch seemed to electrify the woman. She pulled away from Caroline, grabbed her bag and purse, and abruptly left the line at the gate. She practically sprinted down the terminal and vanished.
“So much for airport camaraderie,” Caroline muttered, but her chest was tight with worry. The woman was clearly spooked by something.
Caroline inched forward in the line, nudging her backpack forward with her boot before she retrieved her own cell phone so she could look up LaGuardia on the internet. The headline that jumped out on the first page of results startled her:
Man on Paris Flight Collapses at LaGuardia Airport. Signs of Infectious Virus Reported.
She read further on, seeing that the terminal was closed and a medical team had been brought in to examine the man. The passengers at the terminal were currently quarantined. Caroline scrolled past some annoying pop-up ads about kitchen utensils. The rest of the article discussed how the airport was going to close down the other terminals, and all flights would soon be grounded. There were no comments as to what the virus was.
Maybe it was Ebola? The 2014 scare had been a little frightening. A girl who worked with Caroline had been on a cruise with a nurse who had treated an Ebola victim in Dallas. The nurse had then gone on her vacation. Once it was revealed she was on a cruise ship, the CDC had contacted the ship and requested the nurse quarantine herself inside her room. The entire ship panicked, but the cruise company offered free drinks and when that didn’t work, a full refund to all passengers. The Ebola scare ultimately calmed down and seemed to be neutralized, at least in the United States.
Caroline wondered if the man in New York who had fallen ill had come from Sierra Leone, Ghana, or South Africa. It shouldn’t be cause for concern, though. They’d stopped him from getting on another flight, so he shouldn’t have infected anyone, right? Unless…
Caroline didn’t want to think about “unless,” but her brain couldn’t stop itself.
What if it was already too late? What if he had met and touched a bunch of other passengers on his flight, and then they had boarded planes an hour or so before this man collapsed? Those other people could be going anywhere.
The terminal suddenly seemed very stifling. The man behind her coughed again, and Caroline fought to banish a wave of panic.
“Next!” the gate attendant called, Caroline rushed forward, desperate to get away from the man behind her.
“Name?” the woman asked.
“Caroline Kelly.”
“Headed to Joplin?” the attendant asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay…” The attendant perused her screen for available flights. The PA crackled, and the voice from earlier came on over the sound system.
“Code Bravo. Repeat, Code Bravo. Employees, please make your stations ready.”
The woman behind the blue-and-white striped counter froze for a split second. Then she very calmly looked up at Caroline.
“I’m so sorry. The terminal is going to be shutting down. Please find a seat nearby. We’ll be making an announcement soon.” The attendant placed a Closed sign next to her post and hurried down the crowded terminal to an office about fifty feet away.
“Hey, what the hell?” the man behind her snapped.
Caroline turned, picked up her backpack, and tried to get around him. He coughed right in her face. She wiped her face with her sleeve, trying not to freak out. Maybe they were closing the terminal for some other reason. She went straight to the bathroom to wash her hands and pulled out a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer. She applied the sanitizer to her hands so she could smear the sanitizer around on her face.
Maybe I’m just being super paranoid.
But she wasn’t. Two hours later, the man who’d been behind her in line collapsed, and everyone at Chicago O’Hare was trapped. The man who had fallen ill had come in on a flight from LaGuardia. When he was carried away on a stretcher, the paramedics wore masks and thick gloves. Police officers, also wearing masks, blocked anyone from leaving after they had removed the ill man. Caroline had collapsed in a corner, clutching her backpack, and pulled out her phone to call home. Her older sister, Natalie, answered.
“Caro, what the hell? Shouldn’t you be on a plane?”
“Yeah, I should.” She sighed, the sound a little shaky. “Is Mom or Dad there?”
“Uh-huh. What’s going on, sis? You sound funny.” Natalie, her older sister by four years, always knew when something was up with her.
“Well, they closed down O’Hare. I’m stuck here.” She tried not to let her sister hear the fear that was radiating inside her.
“What do you mean, stuck? They won’t let you leave?”
“Yeah. No one can leave. A man got sick, and they shut everything down.”
“Caro. Wait…” Her sister paused, her voice lowering on the phone. “Is this connected to the man at LaGuardia? Rick saw it on the news. He and Dad have been glued to the TV all morning.” Natalie’s husband was a news junkie like their father.
“I think so, but I’m not positive. They’re not telling us much.”
“Oh God, Caro, this is so scary. I’ll have Rick figure out what’s going on. He has a friend that works in airport security in Kansas City. He might be able to learn what’s happening up in Chicago.”
“Don’t let Mom and Dad freak out, okay? Once I have a chance to leave, I’ll rent a car and drive.” That was assu
ming they’d let her leave the airport…and right now that felt like a really big if.
“Sure, got it. We’ll be waiting. I can’t wait for you to meet Ellie. You’re going to love her.”
Ellie, her sister’s baby, had been born two months ago, and Caroline hadn’t been able to leave work to fly to Missouri and see the new addition to the family.
“Can’t wait,” she said, her throat tightening as she fought off a fresh wave of anxiety.
Everything was going to be okay…wasn’t it?
Caroline woke as the last bits of the dream faded around her. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her head felt foggy, and for a moment she didn’t remember where she was or how she’d fallen asleep. She was warm, not toasty, but she wasn’t really cold. Not like she had been in a long time. It was dark, and when she shifted, she felt a pillow, an honest-to-God pillow behind her head. She moved her hands, which were tucked beneath the thick fleece blanket. She was lying on something soft, and she could hear the cold wind whistling from outside. She wasn’t sleeping outside?
She struggled to sit up and bit her lip as pain shot up her leg. Just like that, the memories from the grocery store came rushing back. Blood pounded in her ears as she turned her head and saw a man lying in bed beside her. His body was more shadow than anything else in the dim moonlight coming through the wide windows opposite the bed.
Oh God, he had drugged her and probably brought her here and raped her. She touched her clothes. Her jeans and shirt were still on. Had he put her clothes back on after assaulting her? Surely that would have taken too much effort.
Her wounded ankle felt cold, so she carefully pulled the blankets back and saw something blue and damp wrapped around her ankle. Some kind of compress. The man had treated it?
Caroline was confused. Why had he tried to help her? No one did that anymore. The kind people, the ones who thought of others, were long dead. They had been the first to go because they had rushed to help the sick or stop the looters. She’d seen many of them killed on the news, either by the disease or by other people who thought they needed to kill to survive. Now only the immune who were violent and tough survived, at least so far as she could tell. But she ran into so few survivors these days, and the ones she did meet scared her. There had to be good people still left in the world. Statistically it had to be possible, right?
I’m not tough, just immune. She had been inches from the man who died in O’Hare. He’d coughed right into her face, and yet she was fine. The employee who had worked the desk had been rushed from the airport only two hours into the lockdown. That was how the world ended.
She’d never heard where the man from Paris had caught it, or if it originated from China like the CDC said. The CDC hadn’t revealed any information, assuming they even knew. Not that it mattered now. Hydra-1 was unstoppable except to a small portion of the population. Caroline tried not to think about that most days, but now she was facing it. She was more alone than ever, despite the shadowy stranger lying beside her in bed. She curled her arms around her body, hugging herself as she tried to dream of better days. But all she could see was the bearded face of the man next to her, and she worried about her future and the future of the other survivors.
Chapter 3
@CDC: We have confirmed that the virus in Beijing has spread to Shanghai and New Delhi. Two WHO workers did not properly dispose of their working clothes and have carried the virus out of Beijing. The CDC and the WHO are trying to trace all movements of these two individuals in order to determine where the virus may spread. Sign up for alerts on Hydra-1 via our website.
—Centers for Disease Control Twitter Feed
November 16, 2019
* * *
Caroline couldn’t escape in the morning. Her ankle wouldn’t let her, nor would her body. After that shelf collapsed on her, everything hurt. Each little move forced her to groan, but she couldn’t stay in bed next to that…mountain man. Any movement she made where she put weight on her ankle shot pain straight up the rest of her leg. She valiantly attempted several times to get away from the bed. Each time she crumpled, the mountain man’s strong arms lifted her up and carried her back to bed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he murmured as he settled her back onto her side of the bed and covered her with blankets.
“Then let me go.”
“No.” He sighed and closed his eyes again. “Now go back to sleep. You need to rest your body after that fall.”
By the time morning sunlight was streaming through the windows, she had given up. She lay in bed, feeling the heat of the sun on her face, trying to make sense of what had happened. After her last attempt to escape, the man seemed to realize she was done with her efforts and had risen from bed and left her alone to sleep a little longer, but she was too nervous.
She could hear soft domestic sounds from the kitchen downstairs, the murmur of water moving through pipes in the walls, the occasional bang of pots or pans. And then she heard something else. Music.
Caroline stared at the ceiling, mystified. Music. How was that possible?
Determined to get to the source of the noise, she got out of the bed again, but this time she gave her predicament some thought. She hopped on one leg, using the wall for support. Silly, yes, but far less agonizing. She reached a short stairway that had one small landing before the stairs turned perpendicular. She scooted down the steps on her bottom with her bad leg aloft, careful not to bump her ankle. When she reached the bottom, she slowly started to limp toward the kitchen. She froze when she caught sight of her mysterious mountain man in the early sunlight.
He was just as tall as she remembered. Well over six feet and muscled. He was built like a rock, with broad shoulders that led down to a narrow waist and hips. He wore jeans and a gray sweater with the sleeves rolled up. He should not have looked sexy to her, not under these circumstances, but there was something about the way the sun hit his arms and how his muscles flexed that made her want to reach out and touch him.
On the counter he was cooking something in a pot on a small camping stove. A delicious smell rolled through the kitchen toward her. She focused on his face. The noble profile was somewhat hidden by the scruff of his beard, but she could see he was totally gorgeous. Caroline swallowed hard. Damn, did her captor have to be completely hot as hell?
Beside the stove, a smartphone sat on the counter, connected to a battery pack and a portable speaker. She’d had lost hers when she’d had to give up her last bag.
The sound of 70s rock ’n’ roll came through the phone’s speaker. After months of silence, the music sounded like heaven. She’d thought she’d never hear any of it again, the drums, the harmonic voices, the guitar riffs. Who would compose music now that the human race was drawing its last breath?
Her lips trembled as she listened to the sounds, emotions riding through her like a summer storm. Whoever this man was, he had brought music back to her world.
“Stay right there,” the man said. She jolted, unaware that he had known she was in the room.
“I”
“I’m going to carry you to the couch.” He looked at her and then waved toward a nook with two couches set perpendicular to each other with a large ottoman in between. He paused in front of her, and she swallowed hard at his massive size and how small and fragile he made her feel. She wasn’t all that short, but she’d never been aware of anyone like she was of him and his towering height right now. His eyes were just as dark as before. Dark pools of rich brown that seemed to draw in the light rather than reflect it. Her skin flushed with heat as his gaze swept slowly over her, taking her in.
Then, without a word, he scooped her up carefully and carried her over to one of the couches and laid her down on it. Then he covered her with a blanket.
“Stay. I’ve got eggs cooking and some fruit.” He returned to the kitchen, leaving her to gaze after him open mouthed. She’d just been ordered to stay like some border collie. A second later, the rest of his words caught up to her.
He removed two white china plates from the cupboards and scooped eggs out of the pot on his burner onto one plate. Then he poured peaches onto it and brought it over to her, handing her a fork as well.
“I have two chickens down in the basement. They have been laying decent eggs. It’s cold enough that I can leave them outside in a basket to keep them cool. The peaches… Well, the previous owners were quite the canners. The basement has a stockroom of pickled vegetables and canned fruits. Part of the reason I chose this place.”
The man explained this all with barely a hint of emotion before he returned to the kitchen, where he began brewing coffee.
Caroline took a bite of the eggs, and after that first glorious swallow she burst into tears. She couldn’t help herself; the sudden burst of taste had made her realize that the food was real. This wasn’t some weird dream where a handsome man rescued her and cooked her delicious food. This was reality. He was by her side in an instant, kneeling down by the couch as he set her plate on the ottoman.
“What’s the matter?” Worry was evident in his gruff tone.
It took her several moments to collect herself. “I haven’t…had real food in weeks. It’s all blurred together. Music…I never thought I’d hear songs again. It’s too much. I…” She wiped her eyes and looked out the window.
By the creek, three deer wandered along the grass, dodging patches of snow as they nibbled on bushes and trees. There were two does and one fawn, old enough that the white spots were starting to fade on its coat. She watched their stately, delicate prancing walks as they studied the branches in the garden for something to eat.
The man started to stand. “We could use some venison.”
Caroline caught his wrist, marveling at the strength she could feel in his arm.