Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) (9 page)

“When the sun hung above us in the sky, Jason took a step away from the bags. He lifted his pistol and said to the few men that were helping him, ‘Move the bags.’ The men hesitated a moment and then did as he had asked. Several of t
he ips were outside the doors, and Jason fired at each one, one at a time. They collapsed like bowling pins. He opened the doors and stepped outside. Only a handful of them were still functional, and they were so out of it they didn’t even seem to notice him. He hopped back on the bus and gathered his one black bag and motioned that it was time to go. I grabbed Jessica and Luther and followed him out. We quickly left the bus and walked up the road. One of the ips tried to follow us, an overweight man in a velour suit, and Luther said, ‘Shoot him.’

“Jason shook his head. ‘Why waste the bullet?’

The town was four miles away and the sun so hot that my neck began to burn within minutes. I knew it would be a long, difficult walk.

10

Mitchell swallowed when Samantha finished speaking and then looked at his digital recorder. He had two gigs of memory, plenty to capture the entire tale, but not much battery power left. He turned off the recorder and pulled out some fresh batteries.

“If it’s a
ll right with you,” Samantha said, “I’m going to grab something to eat.”

“Sure, yeah. If you could get me a bottle of water
, that’d be great.”

When she was gone, Mitchell leaned back in the seat and watched the sun in the sky. As a kid, he remembered seeing on a show, maybe
Reading Rainbow
or something like that, that the sun had about ten million years of energy left. After that, it would die down and eventually go supernova. That bit of knowledge had haunted him his entire life. He knew he’d be long dead, but just the thought that humanity wouldn’t live on, that in ten million years there’d be nothing in the solar system but cold rocks, filled him with dread. He remembered thinking about that a lot, so much that he stopped paying attention in school and began devising ways that humanity could potentially survive.

Samantha placed a bottle of water on the table, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he mumbled, “Thank you.” He turned the digital recorder back on while she
took a bite of her sandwich. “The town was Clover, Wyoming, right?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

“Tell me what happened there.”

She took another bite, chewed, and then wiped her lips with a napkin before finishing the drink in front of her. “The walk was terrible. Jason had managed to smuggle a few bottled waters off the bus
, but I could’ve drunk those in one sitting. So we sipped. And the heat barreled down on us. I don’t think it would’ve been as bad if we were someplace safe, but every sound I heard, every stone that happened to roll from the wind or brush that moved, was an infected ready to rush out at us. We walked in the center of the road, and the road heated up so much I thought the soles of my shoes would melt. It was the most anxious time in my life.

“ ‘Have you seen any of the reports from
other countries?’ I asked Jason, more to occupy my mind than anything else. He looked down, the sweat rolling off his face and splashing in small droplets on the black tar, where it would evaporate in a couple of seconds. He glanced at Jessica and I said, ‘It’s okay.’

“ ‘The democracies were the hardest hit. The dictatorships probably could’ve taken steps to prevent the spread, but dictators don’t really car
e about the population. Most of the warlords in the African subcontinent used the virus’s spread as a chance to strengthen their regimes. In Cameroon, the president for life, because they don’t call themselves kings, declared that the virus was an invention by Europe, Israel, and the United States to wipe out the sovereign people in Africa and replace them with puppet regimes. Without education or access to outside materials, people believed him and rallied to his side. When the US dropped aid over the hardest-hit areas, the people burned it, thinking it was a ploy to spread the infection further. The next week, we still dropped aid. People burned the goods we sent them and we still sent more, because it’s easier than going through the process of cancelling the aid. That’s why the infected overran the military. For the majority of the military, thinking outside the box isn’t a favored trait. The people who
do
think that way usually aren’t given commands. It’s the people who follow the orthodoxy who rise in the ranks and command our armies. That’s why we’ll never have a Hannibal or Alexander the Great.’

“He paused a moment, either lost in thought or
catching his breath. That was something else that you would never have guessed about the desert: the heat made it unbearable to breathe. The air seemed much harder to suck down, as it was less oxygenated. Jason stopped and took a sip of his water before speaking again.

“ ‘My father was in Korea during the war,’ he said. ‘There was this hill the commanders wanted taken. He advised against it.
They were in a good position to just wait. The hill was surrounded and the Reds couldn’t get food or water up there. But the commanders wanted it now. So they ordered them to charge the hill. The soldiers were picked off like flies from higher ground. If they had just waited a few weeks, the Reds would’ve surrendered. My father was the one who told me people thinking outside the box aren’t promoted.’

“ ‘But you still went into the military,’ I said.

“ ‘Yeah,’ he said, looking down the road. ‘Had nowhere else to go. I think that’s the town.’

“Just out maybe a mile
, I saw what looked like a mirage, mall structures surrounded by glimmering water. As we neared, the water began to shrink and I could make out the individual buildings much better.

“ ‘China’s doing the worst,’ Jason said. ‘They denied the existence of the virus for so long
that everyone was caught by surprise. Beijing was devastated. We’re talkin’ 90 percent loss of human life in a city of almost twelve million. It was a… nightmare. Rivers of blood flowed in the streets, and the screams filled the air morning until night. I was only there for one day on a transport through the city, but I can still hear the screaming, like it came from the earth itself.’ He paused. ‘I saw a man trying to dangle off a bridge, hang there with a rope wrapped around his waist so they couldn’t get to him. Running wasn’t an option. During the first day or two after the infection takes over, especially if they stay hydrated, ips can run about as fast as the fastest humans could. So the only option in Beijing was to hide. This guy got underneath the bridge and thought he was safe, and the ips grabbed the rope and pulled him up. I saw his face when they started doing it as I rode by. It was just utter shock, complete disbelief. Before I could look away, he unfastened the rope and fell about four hundred feet onto the rocky shore of a river below.’

“I took a moment before speaking. Mostly because I was sucking breath so hard
that speaking came with real effort. ‘I think we can wait them out,’ I said. ‘They dehydrate so quickly, if we starve them of any fluid, I think we can wait them out. Even if they learn, or remember, to drink water, they’ll just bleed to death.’

“Jason shook his head. ‘I don’t think they bleed to death. I don’t know why or how, but I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s the hydration, but I think they can survive without blood in their bodies
, at least for a short time.’

“Luther said, ‘That’s impossible.’

“Jason looked at him and then away. ‘You say that a lot for someone caught in the apocalypse.’

“When we arrived at the town, I was surprised how quaint it was. Like a town from a Western movie
, with shops on both sides of the main street going through town and homes on the outskirts. About the most welcoming thing I saw was an ice cream shop, but the doors and windows had been boarded up. Didn’t stop me from looking through the cracks, just to make sure, but it looked like the store had been abandoned for a while. In fact, the entire town was empty. We searched every store, every home, and every car in the street or in garages. No one was there.

“And it hadn’t been four miles. Based on the time we left the bus to the time we arrived at the town, I esti
mated that we’d walked about six miles. Still not an impossible feat, but in that blistering heat, it felt like a hundred miles. I sat down on a porch and took off my shoes, just resting, when I realized something. We hadn’t asked anyone on the bus to come with us, and no one had followed. I don’t think it was intentional, at least not for me, but it just never crossed our minds to get everyone else to come with us. They had been prepared to watch us die last night, and I think a clear line had been drawn in the sand between us and them, so we went our separate ways. I never did learn what happened to them, whether they made it out or not, but it still haunts me.

“ ‘So?’ Luther said, sarcasm dripping from his voice, ‘What now
, fearless leader?’

“Jason opened the door to the shop I sat in front of.
It was a small grocery with no more than five aisles, all the shelves empty, but with a few boxes of crackers or cookies, and bags of chips that had fallen on the floor. It appeared someone had left in a hurry and tried to pack as much as they could as fast as they could. I forced myself up and into the store with him. I grabbed the first box of cookies I saw and took a bite; they weren’t stale and had at least another year before expiring. I took the box out to Jessica and handed it to her. She dug into them like a man lost in a desert who’d just came across a Gatorade and mumbled, ‘Hank blue,’ with a mouthful of cookie.

“N
ear the cooler, bottles of beer, water, and soda littered the floor. I bent down and got a bottle of water. I knew I had to drink slowly, to sip the water, because when the body is in dehydration mode, taking in too much fluid too quickly causes vomiting. It was hard to resist, and I still chugged half the bottle before pulling it away and setting it down. A bag of chips lay on the floor near me and I reached over and ripped them open, knowing full well they would make me thirstier. ‘They abandoned the town,’ I said to Jason as he searched behind the counter for something. ‘Looks like in a hurry.’

“ ‘Maybe. They could all be dead, too.’ He found what he had been looking for
: a shotgun. The black weapon looked heavy, but Jason twirled it in his fingers before he grabbed a box of shells from underneath the counter. He loaded the weapon and laid it on the counter. ‘Why would they leave a shotgun?’ he said more to himself than to me.

“ ‘They might not have had room,’ I offered. The explanation was ludicrous, I know, but right then I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to accept this gift of a place with food, water
, and bathrooms without having to question it. Jason didn’t seem to feel the same way. He picked up the shotgun and walked into the back, searching from room to room. When he was satisfied no one was hiding from us, he came back out and sat on a stool behind the counter, his attention outside, on Luther. ‘What do you know about him?’ he asked.

“ ‘Luther? He’s one of the
top researchers I know, focused his entire career on the limbic system, the part of our brains that deals with instincts and basic body functions, the part we share with other vertebrates. We met in medical school. Why?’

“ ‘Somethin’s off about that guy. He dislikes me a little too much for not knowing me. What’s he been doing the past few years?’

“I didn’t understand where he was going with this, but it made me uncomfortable, as if he was gathering data on him or something. ‘What’s with all the questions?’ I said. ‘You can’t stand the guy one second, and now you want to know everything about him?’

“ ‘I like to know my enemies.’

“I couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of Luther as someone’s, anyone’s enemy was so absurd that I couldn’t even picture it. He was a pacifist by nature, and I was certain he’d never even raised his voice at anybody, but having said that, I thought it made his behavior around Jason odd. Why did he so passionately dislike him without even knowing him? More than distrust had to be at play. Distrust wouldn’t make you hate a person right off the bat. ‘I think—’

“Before I had a chance to finish my thought, a scream
came from outside. Jason and I looked at each other just a fraction of a second before Jason grabbed the shotgun and ran out. I followed him. I knew that scream. It was Jessica’s.

“
Jason came out with the shotgun ready to fire, and I had picked up a pair of scissors from the counter. Jessica and Luther stood under the awning and pointed to a man ambling toward the store. He wore mostly gray, with a ski mask or something similar wrapped around his face. As he got closer, I could see it was a scarf, and he used it to shield his face from the harsh winds that picked up sand and debris. The man looked up, and his eyes caught ours. He froze a moment, just a second, and then began walking again. When he was within a dozen or so feet, Jason lifted the muzzle of the shotgun and pointed it at the man ‘Think that’s far enough, partner.’

“
The man stood in front of us, maybe ten feet away, the desert wind whipping sand against his clothing, which consisted of a long overcoat and gloves even though it must’ve been nearly a hundred degrees. The man raised his hands slowly and peeled away the scarf around his face. He was Asian, probably Chinese, with ruddy cheeks and cracking lips.

“ ‘Do you have any water?’ he
asked in accented English.

“ ‘Who are you?’ Jason asked.

“The man sighed, as though the effort of speaking drained him, and he tossed his gloves and overcoat on the ground, sat down cross-legged, and his eyes dropped to the ground in pure exhaustion. I thought he might pass out right then, but he kept himself upright. ‘My name is Shui. I am not infected. I need water. Please.’

“I went back inside and got a bottle of water. Jason
clearly wanted to protest when I came back out. We didn’t have an endless supply of water, and giving some to a stranger who we didn’t
know
wasn’t infected seemed like a waste. But I didn’t care. I’d lost almost everything else. I didn’t want to lose my humanity, too. I tossed him the bottle and he ripped it open and drank nearly half before he capped it again and stuffed it into a pocket of his overcoat. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly.