Affliction Z: Abandoned Hope (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) (3 page)

It was also the bunker’s bug out room. Where else could they
go?

Sean had equipped the bunker with a cell phone antenna
extender. He pulled out his cell and saw that he had a message.

Please let it be Kathy
, he thought.

He accessed his voice mail and listened to the message. It
wasn’t his wife. Instead, the message had been left by Barbara, his wife’s best
friend. She sounded frantic and scared. In her message she said that she was on
her way over to Sean’s house. He double-checked the time of her call, realizing
it had come in fifteen minutes earlier. She’d be there in ten minutes or so
based on the traffic he’d observed a half-hour earlier.

The decision he had to make turned his stomach. Adding a
possible fourth person to the bunker would alter everything. The food stores
would dwindle that much faster. Power consumption might be greater, taxing the
solar energy system. He’d also have one more person he’d be responsible for.
Sean sat down at the computer and brought up the security system. At that
moment, Barbara’s Toyota pulled up to the house. She got out, opened the back
door and leaned in. A couple seconds later she emerged with a suitcase. Her
dog, Marley, jumped out after her, and they headed toward the front door.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Sean said. He wanted to ignore the
message. But now that would be impossible.

“Is that Barb?” Emma asked.

He knew there was no way he could let Barbara leave now.
“Emma, I want you to go into that room there.” He pointed to the door on the
right. “You stay there until I get back. Okay?”

She kept her brave face on and said, “Okay.”

Sean waited until his daughter had closed the door to her
room. Then, he left the bunker armed with his M9 and a heavy-duty flashlight.
He retraced his steps through the passage to the garage. At the final door, he
took his time, listening for any movement in the garage. There appeared to be
none. He quickly and quietly slipped through the garage into the hallway that
led to the kitchen. There, he found Barbara and Marley waiting. She was a
couple years younger than Sean. When Barbara and Kathy stood next to each
other, they looked like sisters. Sean had always found her attractive. He also
found her to be annoying at times. She had vacationed with Sean and his family
one time. By the end of the trip, he avoided her.

For six months.

She jumped when she noticed him standing behind her.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Dried tear tracks lined her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I had
nowhere to go, Sean.”

He holstered his M9 and reached for her, pulling her into an
embrace. After she’d calmed, he said, “I don’t have any dog food.” He reached
down and patted the dog, a pit bull mix.

She looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got two bags there. That
should last him four months.”

Sean nodded. “Okay, he can stay.” He didn’t mind the dog. In
fact, he figured Marley might be helpful to have around as a last defense alarm
system. They had the ability to pick up on things that people and technology
couldn’t.

“Is Emma in the bunker?”

Sean clenched his jaw as anger scratched to the surface.

“Kathy told me once,” she said.

“Who’ve you told?”

“No one,” she said. “I promise.”

“Not even Billy?”

Billy was her ex-husband. He’d split four years ago. They’d
never had kids, and aside from Billy, Barbara had no other family.

“She told me after he left, and you know I haven’t talked to
him since.”

“Got everything you need out of your car?”

She nodded.

“Okay. Go to the garage.” He went to the front door and
locked it. Then he did the same with the door off the kitchen that led to the
back. He met Barbara in the garage and proceeded to lead her through the same
procedure he and Emma had gone through an hour earlier. Sean carried Marley
over his shoulder as he descended the ladder to the second corridor.

After Sean secured the passage, Barbara asked, “Where’s
Kathy now?”

“In the air, I hope.”

“Is she coming home?”

“I told her to go to Charleston.”

“West Virginia?”

“South Carolina.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got an old friend there who has a setup like this,
only bigger. After things blow over, we’re going to head there as well.”

“After what blows over?”

Sean stopped and switched on his light. He shined it on
Barbara. The shadows highlighted her curves and he swore she looked exactly
like Kathy at that moment.

“Sean? What’s going on?”

“Let’s wait and see. If things go the way I think they are
going to, I’ll fill you in.”

Inside the bunker, Sean called out for Emma. The girl
emerged from her room and ran to Barbara. They wrapped their arms around one
another. Sean grabbed Barbara’s suitcase and took it to his room.

“You’ll stay in here,” he said.

“Where will you sleep?” she asked.

“On the couch.”

“Dad, why don’t you take my room? I can bunk with Barb.”

Over the years, Sean had updated Emma’s room to suit her
tastes. Princess posters gave way to horses and puppies. Eventually those were
replaced by popular boy bands. Only in recent months had he removed her One
Direction poster and put up those of a few of her favorite bands. Groups like
Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie. The room was suited for her, and to her. He
wouldn’t even fit on the bed comfortably.

“No,” he said. “You stay in your room. Barbara can have
mine. Once your Mom gets here, she’ll bunk with Barb.”

Barbara glanced at Sean. He shook his head slightly. Emma
would hear the truth about her mother when the woman was safe in Turk’s compound.

Emma began to protest. Barbara joined in. He held up his
hand and instructed them to leave him alone for a while. The two went into one
room, leaving Sean to himself. He fell onto the couch and turned on the TV.
Marley climbed up and lay down next to him. He scanned through the channels
while scratching the dog’s head.

He settled on a news report and turned up the volume. Over
the course of the next five minutes he discovered that things weren’t as bad as
he feared.

They were worse.

The news had hit. Everyone was aware. It didn’t appear that
it had sunk in, though.

Throughout Chicago O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 3, people
milled about in a state of slow confusion like sheep herded by a Border Collie.
Occasionally, someone would break away from the group to stop and stare at a
television screen. Unlike in Seattle, whoever ran the show at O’Hare had no
qualms about showing the end of the world. The first reports of people
afflicted with the sickness in the U.S. were trickling in. Hospitals in New
York, Boston and Atlanta had seen an influx of patients. Kathy figured an
epidemic was about to unfold, considering only a fraction of the sick take the
time to visit the emergency room.

Kathy remained seated next to the check-in desk for her
flight to Cincinnati despite a bladder that seemed ready to burst. She feared
that if she left her position, the plane might board in a hurry, leaving her
stranded in Chicago, where she knew not a soul.

She pulled her cell phone from her purse and attempted to
call Sean for the hundredth time. She cursed under her breath at the familiar
fast busy tones. For a few brief seconds she had enough of a signal for her
phone to tell her there were messages waiting. By the time she dialed into her
mailbox, the signal had been lost.

Who had called? Sean? What had he said? What if her parents
had called to tell her that one or both of them were sick?

Her stomach felt as though someone had twisted it and tied
it in a half-dozen knots.

She glanced at her watch. When would they begin boarding the
flight? It was due to depart in a half-hour, yet no one manned the check-in
desk, and the door to the jetway remained sealed. Could the pilot or one of the
flight crew have been affected? Or perhaps someone on the previous flight,
rendering the plane unusable?

All around her, people coughed and sniffled. She saw tired
faces, bloodshot eyes and hunched over bodies. Parents clung to their children,
fear written across their faces.

She thought to keep a tissue to her mouth and nose. Would
that filter the air? She could have kicked herself for tuning Sean out during
his survivalist rants. He probably told her how to survive a situation like
this ten times or more, but she never made it through an entire lesson.

Take it minute-by-minute, she told herself. She had to
remain aware of everything that occurred around her. In a situation like this,
things were fluid and could change at any moment. Large worried crowds, such as
the one she found herself in, taxed the available security force. That provided
those with ulterior motives an opportunity. She knew that they were all sitting
ducks if someone chose to take advantage of them.

She passed the next several minutes playing Sudoku on her
phone. That still worked at least.

A voice came over the intercom. It mentioned her gate. She
looked up at the pale-faced young woman behind the counter. Kathy recalled
seeing her at one of the other gates. As the news of what was happening rolled
out, the airline employees must have decided to call it quits and take care of
themselves. She didn’t blame them.

Regular boarding procedures were tossed. The woman opened
the door and then told everyone to line up and get on board. Boarding passes
were inspected, but seat assignments were ignored. There was one flight attendant
on board, and she didn’t seem all that interested in doing her job. Was the
cockpit properly manned? Kathy knew the question would haunt her for the
duration of the seventy-minute flight.

A nervous hum rose above the engine noise. Kathy rose and
walked toward the restrooms. She saw several groups of people bunched together,
seemingly staring at one person in the group’s cell phone.

No better time to ignore the rules than at the beginning
of the end of the world
, she thought.

Of course, she soon realized that people could have been
using tablet devices connected to the plane’s wireless internet. Why hadn’t she
packed her iPad? Then she remembered that Wi-Fi was not offered on this flight.

Inside the restroom, she pulled out her cell phone. It had a
signal. She thought about calling Sean, but decided to check her messages. The
first message had come from her husband. It was a warning about what was
occurring. He instructed her to fly to Charleston, South Carolina where she was
to meet Turk. There were four more messages, all from her boss, wondering where
she had disappeared to. The last message came in around nine a.m., Pacific
Time. She ended the call, and then dialed Sean’s number. Placing the phone to
the side of her head, she waited anxiously for it to ring. After a long pause
and a low clicking sound, she heard the familiar sound of a call connecting.
After six rings, the call connected to Sean’s voice mail.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I just got your message. I’m in
the air right now, on my way from Chicago to Cincinnati. I’m supposed to fly to
Roanoke from there, but I’ll try to get that changed to Charleston while I have
cell service. If anything has changed, call me as soon as you can. Give my love
to Emma. Hope to see you two soon. Love you.”

She stared at the screen for a few moments before pressing
the
end call
icon. Someone knocked on the door, disrupting her
concentration.

“Just a minute,” she said.

The person on the other side mumbled something
indecipherable.

Kathy pulled up the phone’s web browser. It opened on her
homepage. She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the browser and opened an
air travel booking application. Within seconds she found a flight from
Cincinnati to Charleston, South Carolina. She booked the flight and paid with
her credit card. She decided against canceling her flight to Roanoke. If she
later found out that Sean had remained behind, she wanted to be with him.

She flushed the toilet, washed her hands and opened the
bathroom door. An older man stood in the aisle. He offered a tepid smile. She
thought he looked scared, as did most people on the plane. He brushed past her
and slammed the door shut. The muffled sounds of the guy losing his lunch could
be heard a moment later.

Kathy walked back to her seat. She felt like she was living
in a dream. In no way did the events of the day make sense. Things like that
just didn’t happen in real life. In a book or a movie, sure. She’d watched lots
of them as a kid. She even enjoyed watching some of the newer shows on her
computer at work. Sean couldn’t handle them, so they were forbidden at home.

She collapsed into her seat, exhausted. She wanted to make
one more call to Sean. Her phone would not cooperate, though. The signal was
gone and nothing happened when she dialed. No fast busy. No endless ringing.
Not even a trace of static.

The plane dropped for what felt like a few hundred feet. As
the angle of their trajectory turned downward, Kathy glanced out of her window
and saw an air control tower, and what she figured were two runways. She wasn’t
all that surprised that the pilot had begun his descent without saying
anything. He hadn’t spoken once throughout the flight.

Looking around, she saw other travelers buckling their seat
belts. She did the same. Their descent seemed rushed. The normal care taken by
airline captains had been thrown out the window. This pilot only had landing
the plane as quickly as possible on his mind. Perhaps he had another flight to
catch, or maybe he lived in the area and needed to get home. The plane hit the
runway with the usual screeching and bouncing. They rapidly slowed down to what
felt like a crawl after an hour of five hundred miles per hour.

The window next to Kathy afforded her a view of the
terminal. She spotted the empty spot outside of a gate where a jetway extended
out.

The pilot butted the front of the plane next to it. The
flight attendant wasted no time opening the door while the pilot waited behind
her. Together, they exited the plane without so much as a wave to the
passengers on board.

One man stood and commented that he’d never fly the airline
again. A few people laughed. Kathy knew that the irony was not lost on any of
them. As the laughter faded, she rose to the tips of her toes while standing in
the aisle to get a view past the end of jetway. The frantic scene unfolding
beyond the gate told her that something was wrong.