O-Negative: Extinction (31 page)

He looked back for a moment at the convoy of vehicles travelling behind him in the lead land cruiser.  Their 200 man patchwork army had now been joined by an array of other vehicles and behind them he knew came an even longer caravan of camel drawn carts and wagons.  These additions to their convoy held a mixture of Saudi Arabian men, women and children.  These were the other survivors they’d come across along route 65 - the road they now travelled.  There had been survivors from other races as well, notably Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Filipinos – a legacy of all those who had previously been employed in the country.  Much as these other races wanted to join his particular convoy he had largely refused them.  The exception to this rule being those men who looked young and fit enough to fight were allowed to join them.  These he had tasked Tahnoon, newly promoted to Major, to form into a non-Saudi infantry unit.  His men were uneasy about this, speculating about whether arming non-Saudi’s was a good idea but his instinct was that they might need them over the coming weeks and he’d much rather have them fighting for him than against him.

For the rest of the non-Saudi’s they had left provisions and promises but this was all they could do.  Fortunately they were in a position to be generous given they had more than enough food, tents and blankets.  The desert base had been provisioned to feed and look after 5,000 men for a year and most of the food was in dried or vacuum packed form.   Before they’d left they’d stripped the base bare and loaded the supplies into large HGV transport trucks.  They hadn’t dispensed with all the heavy equipment these trucks had previously been used to ship around and had retained a number of artillery pieces and a couple of tanks on the largest load haulers.  Most of this heavy weaponry however had been left at the base so they could take as many perishable supplies as possible.

Despite his wish to gather the remaining Saudi Arabian’s to his desert convoy when they passed through larger places like Al Qurayyat a significant number of people had decided to stay where they were.  Groups of survivors preferring to believe the ‘government’ would soon sort things out and ‘get things back to how they were before’.  It was difficult for him to comprehend how they thought there was still any functioning government left, or that the country could ever be the same again but if they wanted to stay put he couldn’t stop them.  They didn’t seem to realise that over 95% of the population had been wiped out in one fell swoop.

When he had first woken after falling unconscious Lieutenant Karim had informed him that they could no longer contact the Saudi forces commanded by Colonel Faris.  This did not surprise him.  He’d immediately assumed that Faris and most of his men were dead.  Though he suspected most had been killed by the expansion of the silvery creatures’ defensive boundary he took the decision to proceed into Jordan in order to attempt to join up with whatever of Faris’s forces remained.   After 2 days on route 65 they reached an unmanned border crossing point and had proceeded to take route 40 up towards Amman.  Faris and his men had been stationed at the military base at Sahab 10 miles outside of the city. 

When they got to Sahab any living Jordanian forces were long gone, there was however evidence of a number of mass graves.  Corporal Razib was now commanding what remained of Colonel Faris’s forces – 189 men and 10 women.  The women had mostly been part of specialist signals and medical corps.  He wasn’t sure he approved but obviously the Saudi Army had been attempting some form of modernisation process with regards to women serving that he had been unaware of.  It was Corporal Razib who’d informed him that those Jordanian forces that survived the onslaught of silvery creatures had been recalled into the centre of Amman in an attempt to get bodies off the street and prevent looting.

He had already seen the evidence of what the silvery creatures left behind.  They hadn’t yet come to a town that hadn’t been almost entirely wiped out – bodies left to rot on the street while rats pulled at their decaying flesh.  In a way it was this realisation that everywhere within at least a 1000 miles had been hit by the silvery creatures that decided their current destination.  Rather than head due north to Amman he and his officer had discussed a number of possibilities including making their way to the Gulf and trying to find or commander a boat to take them to some less effected destination .  Unfortunately to get to the Gulf they would have had to travel through a 1000 miles of desert – and they just didn’t have the fuel or water to do this.  Though they had plenty of food the base had still been re-provisioned with fuel and water once a month.  The appearance of the black tower had of course stopped all this.  So the decision was to head North West.  There were a series of springs and oases along this route as well as a number of towns where they would be able to obtain fuel and water for the increasingly large caravan now snaking its way behind them like a giant python.

What the enlisted men didn’t know was that he and a few of his senior team, Sergeant Jaris Major Tahnoon and Lieutenant Karim, had been able to make contact with the Turkish army.  They reported that the second purge appeared to have halted somewhere in northern Syria and Iraq.  Of course this meant that the cities of Baghdad, Beirut, Amman and Damascus had now also been wiped out.  The Turks who had so far been unaffected by the silvery creatures had formed a large O negative division – they were cagy about exactly how many men but he knew it couldn’t be more than 10,000 and quite possibly less.  Despite his suggestion that this unit be thrown into battle against the black structure in the Arabian desert the Turks had decided that this was of no interest to them strategically – they had instead decided the time was ripe to take back the lands they had previously held under the Ottoman empire.  Their first target being the most obvious – Jerusalem.  Apparently Israeli forces had been wiped out almost to a man.  The Jews having even less of their population with the requisite O Rh D negative blood type than the Arabs.  It had also been suggested that if he and his remaining men wished to find a safe haven in Turkey then they would first need to prove their worth by helping the Turks retake their historic Empire. This meant they were now on the road to Jerusalem.

The first deaths were put down to an unusually severe outbreak of flu; but when the body count began to rise people realised there must be more to this than a simple spike in flu infections.  The health services tried to isolate their existing patients but within a few days services were overwhelmed and no new cases were being accepted.  This lead to ugly scenes of people trying to force their way into hospitals while being pushed back by policemen in riot gear.  The government issued a public health advisory notice across terrestrial television and radio telling people who became ill to stay inside so as not to infect others but it was too late.  The infection rates had reached pandemic levels and the only hope of stopping it seemed to be with a vaccine.  As with the apparent immunity to the silvery crab like creatures those with O Rh D Negative blood didn’t seem to catch the disease.   

Given her contacts with the ‘New Confederacy Group’, or NCG for short as she had begun referring to it, she’d had access to all the latest information.  As soon as the ‘flu epidemic’ looked like it could be something more serious Chad had ordered her to lock down her Pharmaceutical facility on the outskirts of Houston.  He’d already locked down his own ‘operations centre’, as soon as David reported the government had instigated their ‘survival protocol policy’.  As a result none of the leadership team other than herself had been effected so far.  She had also been down to be in Chad’s bunker but the day he’d ordered the lock down she’d been out of town passing a message to David.  Ironically the message had been that maybe it might be time for him to leave Washington and come back to the South.  She’d had to go in person to tell him this as the events in the Western US had pretty much knocked out the satellite and mobile phone networks.  Landlines were still holding up but security conscious Chad wanted the message delivered face to face.  Even the landlines were predicted to fail shortly as engineers succumbed to the mystery illness or simply failed to show up at work.

Despite being outside of ‘facility one’ she had maintained contact with Chad through the shortwave radio he’d installed across the various institutions and bases he controlled.  It had been a couple of weeks since he’d contacted her and told her to retreat to the lab, which should be shut off from any outside contact.  Fortunately this was relatively simply to put in place as the facility had been built to make sure the animals couldn’t get out and the animal rights protestors in.  So far so good and they hadn’t experienced any problems with this.  Pharmaceutical labs not being number one on the list of buildings to raid when food was getting short.  Because she was O Rh D Negative she didn’t have the same level of fear that most of her staff had but there was no doubt in her mind that there was a sense of urgency to the work they were doing in attempting to find a vaccine. 

Given her qualifications were relatively minor compared with most of her team (a basic pharmacy degree from the University of Arkansas), she wasn’t able to provide much technical assistance to the finding of a vaccine.  However she was working hard to keep the building running smoothly – mainly sorting out sleeping, eating and toileting arrangements.  Some of Chad’s army associates were keeping her up to speed with what was going on in the outside world but she didn’t share much of this information with her staff.  In summary the world was going to pot and they’d all be lucky to survive the next few weeks - she didn’t think this message would help with morale so she peddled the line that the government was doing all it could to coordinate emergency aid and devote its own resources to finding a vaccine.

Some of the staff despite the obvious dangers pushed to be let out, or insanely, given they were mostly trained scientists, for their potentially infected families to be let in.  In the end she’d the two members of the lab security team Eddy and Mack ‘reassign’ the most vocal staff members in the basement.  Not ideal, but she didn’t have a lot of choice.  As she sat at her desk working out how long their food supplies would last (probably not much longer) she wondered how the people she knew were faring on the outside.  Her own close family consisted of her older sister who was married to Chad and was safely tucked away with their grown up children in the house bunker.  She wasn’t close to her relatives on her mother’s side and hadn’t seen them in years, those on her father’s side were more familiar to her but mostly lived in San Diego and so were in all likelihood dead.  The friends she had here in Houston were probably running around like blue arsed flies.  She hoped some would have the sense to hole up while the mystery illness ran its course.  As to the people she knew up in Washington she had no idea.  David had told her that he’d leave as soon as he could but not the same evening she was flying out.  He was awaiting Megan’s return from New York where she’d gone to visit her mother and wasn’t going to leave without his new fiancé.  Unfortunately shortly after Tessa’s flight left for Houston the government had grounded all air traffic in an attempt to slow the progression of the pandemic.  So if David was going to get out of Washington it wasn’t going to be by air.  At least he had a better chance than most as he too was also O Rh D Negative.  She wasn’t so sure about Megan though.

Two days later she’d just decided to call a facility meeting and set out what their situation actually was when the shortwave radio in her office burst into life.  Someone was trying to call her from the Cinco Ranch bunker.

“Facility 1 to Facility 5 are you receiving over?” Most of the conversations were held in this rather formal manner.  Chad was vaguely concerned about local groups who might be monitoring the airwaves as a means to locating food resources but he was much more concerned about government entities tracking both secured and unsecured conversations over shortwave radio.  At this point in time he didn’t want to reveal the NCG identity or the level of resources it had at its disposal.  He especially didn’t want to give away any names or information that could potentially compromise their locations.

She picked up the microphone and replied in kind.  “Facility 5 receiving over”.

“Status report requested over”.

“No further progress to report.  Food shortages now critical.  Foraging expedition necessary within two days over”.

“Understood.  Leader 1 has asked us to pass on that there are some reports coming in from the United Kingdom indicating success utilising O neg blood transfusions over.”

She sighed in frustration.  Her team had already investigated this right at the beginning of their confinement.  “Team already tried unsuccessfully.  Please provide further details of UK procedures over”.

“Success using human test subjects.  Animal test subjects result in negative results over.”

“Is it being suggested that we use human volunteers to test this hypothesis over?”

There was a pause before the next statement came over the radio “Affirmative human patients should be utilised…ideally volunteers…over”.

So the operator at the other end had been told to let her know that they wanted her to move to a sort of do or die type scenario.  “Does Facility 1 understand that I have 15 people here of which only two are O negative?  Can you confirm that you want me to instigate a human testing programme, which may well result in the death of those non O neg staff over?”

“Confirmed.  Facility One over and out”.

The first two transfusions didn’t work.  Neither had the patients been ‘volunteers’.  No one had wanted to be the guinea pig – she couldn’t blame them.  Everyone knew it was a desperate last measure and every monkey, mouse and rabbit that they’d tried O neg transfusions on previously had died.  In the end she’d made an executive decision and told Mack and Eddy to bring up the two staffers they’d locked up in the basement.  She basically told them that they were going to give them temporary immunity, enough to get some food for the facility and, if they could find them in time, their families whom they could bring back to the lab.  The downside she explained was that they would need to be back to base within three hours for a further transfusion, or the disease would take hold.  This was of course a lie.  She had no idea whether the transfusion would work nor whether there was a time period over which further transfusions would be required. 

The first patient, Roger Galvestan, who’d previously worked as the administration manager returned after three hours.  As requested he brought food - a large number of cans he found in one of the houses in the district where his family lived.  His family however were all dead. He described how they were all gathered together in their living room huddled around a small transistor radio the battery of which had long since died.  Roger was allowed back into the facility but only into a specially set up isolation tent.  She’d then donned one of the chemical protection suits they had and as one of only two people immune to the disease administered the second blood transfusion herself.  Despite all this he’d been dead by morning.  The same afternoon one of the lab technicians fell ill.  It looked like despite their precautions the disease had been able to penetrate the facility.  This time the lab technician Tracey Chapman had been given a transfusion and pushed out the back door on to a sort of paved ‘smoking area’.  They’d provided her with a couple of blankets and asked her to stay close to the windows so they could monitor her.  Tracey did exactly as she was asked but she still died nonetheless.

Brian Macintosh approached her after she’d learnt the news from Mack the senior guard.  “Tessa I think we may have run out of time.  I can feel my own throat beginning to swell and Graham has started coughing.  I don’t think the blood transfusion option is going to work – I don’t know what they’re doing in the UK but whatever it is we’re not replicating it here.”

“Oh God Brian I don’t know what to say, it just seems so unfair.  To have survived the landings and to have survived the initial onslaught of the virus only for you and everyone else to die in front of me?  Is there nothing else you can try?”

“I don’t think so Tessa.  Graham is talking about transfusing O neg blood plasma as opposed to blood and we’ll give that a go in the next 45 minutes or so.  We’ll probably give to everyone excluding you and Eddy but O neg blood plasma transfusions are normally a no no for anyone who isn’t themselves O negative.  I think we’re all pretty much resigned to this being a last hurrah I’m afraid.”  He leaned over and gave her a hug before saying. “Best of luck to you - catch you up there in a few years hey?”

With a wry smile he raised one hand to indicate goodbye and turned to go back into the main lab where the others were gathering.  She waved Mack after Brian.  “You better go Mack.  Looks like a last ditch attempt.”

“Alright Tessa, I’m on my way.  At least we all got a couple more weeks than everyone else huh?  Give my best to Chad and the boys if you see them.  Sayonara amigo”. He clasped Eddy’s arm before releasing his colleague’s grip and following Brian into the lab.

Eddy had tears streaming down his face.  She went over and hugged him more because she needed it than because she wanted to comfort him.  “C’mon Eddy” she said through her own tears “let’s give them some space to deal with this on their own.  There’s nothing we can do now.  We’ll check on them in the morning.”  Her expectation as they turned to retreat up the stairs to the office area was that all they would find in the morning would be lifeless bodies.

“Ok Tess.  Jesus.  We should be glad that we’ve survived but instead I want to scream and scream.  It going to be a pretty messed up world out there – how many people are going to make it through this do you think?”