The Scourge (Book 1): Unprepared Read online

“Stop doing what?”

  “Correcting people’s grammar. That might be why you have trouble finding a woman to go out with.”

  “With whom to—” Mike stopped himself and smirked. “That was on purpose, wasn’t it?”

  Brice flashed a broad grin. “Yeah. Besides, I think we have bigger fish to fry than whether or not I end a sentence in a preposition.”

  Mike shrugged. “Sorry. It’s a bad habit. I was an English major.”

  The Jeep inched forward. The SUV in front of them tapped its brakes, its lights strobing red. Brice laughed.

  “What’s funny?” asked Mike.

  “English major,” said Brice. “I never knew that about you. I thought my degree was useless.”

  “What did you major in?”

  Brice raised an eyebrow again. “In what did I major?”

  “Funny.”

  “Health management.”

  “And you’re in sales?”

  “Dude,” said Brice, “you go where the job is. I couldn’t get a job managing anything, let alone people’s health, so I got into sales. I’m good at it. People like me.”

  Mike pressed his turn signal. He needed to turn left, across two lanes of solid, bumper-to-bumper traffic. The signal flashed quickly in the dash. He needed a new bulb he hadn’t bought or installed. He was pretty sure the rear signal worked. He thought. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and, from the corner this vision, saw Brice flip down the visor, flip open the mirror, and rake his fingers through his hair.

  People did like Brice. There was something endearing about his douchiness. As much as Mike privately condescended to Brice’s affinity for all things shiny and expensive, he secretly wished he were a little more like him. Then Ashley might have been interested. He might have a better list, make more money, drive a car that didn’t need a new turn signal.

  A woman in a brown station wagon motioned for Mike to cut across her lane of traffic. He waved thank you to the rare show of kindness amidst the controlled chaos of Lake Mary Boulevard, let his foot off the brake, and idled in front of her. He waved at the car in the second lane and forced a smile to cut in front of it too. Then he pushed on the gas and darted into the drive that wound to the parking lot for the complex of buildings that housed the radio station. They passed a gas station that shared the driveway with the complex. A large piece of cardboard was affixed with silver duct tape to the pole underneath its sign. The uneven lettering was drawn in green marker: “OUT OF GAS AND BOTTLED H2O”

  The parking lot was as congested as the street. Mike circled it twice. No spots.

  Brice pointed toward the edge of the lot. “Park on the grass. Nobody’s going to care today.”

  Mike jumped the low curb and parked on the grass. The Jeep rattled like an old man clearing his throat.

  “You need a new Jeep,” said Brice. “This one’s on its last leg.”

  Mike climbed from his seat and shut the door behind him. He met Brice at the back of the Jeep and they walked together toward the building closest to them.

  “I can’t afford it,” said Mike. “Plus, I’m attached to it. It’s been good to me. It’s got new tires.”

  “It smells like mildew on the inside,” said Brice. “And it vibrates like a bed in a cheap hotel room.”

  “I doubt you’ve ever been in a cheap hotel room.”

  Brice swiped his key card at a magnetic lock to the side of the building’s front door. Its red light flashed green and the door clicked. He held it open and gestured to Mike like a doorman paid to do the job. “You’d be surprised where I’ve stayed. You ever been to Mardi Gras? Stayed in Slidell because you couldn’t get a room in New Orleans? Paid for twenty-four hours up front because the hotel charges by the hour? No refunds after ten minutes?”

  Mike led Brice through the plain tile lobby of the building and pressed the key at the bank of twin elevators at its center. He tapped the button a couple of times even after it was lit.

  He sighed. “Can’t say I have. But I’m guessing you have.”

  Brice grinned. “Duuude.” He drew the word out like a surfer in Cocoa Beach. “I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. At least the parts of it I can remember.”

  The elevator chimed and the stainless doors swooshed open. They stepped in and Mike pressed the button for the second floor. The doors closed.

  “Lots of hard cider at Mardi Gras?” asked Mike. Now he was the one smiling.

  Brice pinched the bridge of his nose. “Too soon. I’m still feeling it.”

  “It was the vodka,” said Mike.

  Brice nodded. “Definitely the vodka.”

  The elevator doors opened to a wide space that served as the lobby for the radio station. The receptionist, Donna, sat behind a waist-high desk emblazoned with the station’s call letters and frequency. She was engrossed in whatever was on her computer screen and didn’t notice her coworkers when they stepped past her. Her hands were over her mouth, elbows planted on the desk. Her eyes were wide, pupils large, soaking in whatever was on the display.

  Mike waved at her. “Hey, Donna. You okay?”

  She blinked as if brought back to the moment and turned. She tried out a weak smile that flattened as quickly as it appeared. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost, or a thousand of them. “Hi, guys. Sorry, I’m just… I…it’s…have you seen this?”

  She pivoted the monitor on its stand. The images playing out on the screen resembled scenes from low-budget disaster movies. Mike half-expected to see a radioactive dinosaur emerge and swat its way through the smoke and carnage.

  “Where is that?” asked Brice.

  “Athens,” said Donna. “And it’s the same in Istanbul.”

  Mike tried to make sense of what he was seeing. “Are those people?”

  Donna nodded blankly, her eyes glossed with tears. She covered her mouth, muffling a gasp.

  “Is it the plague?” asked Brice.

  Donna nodded again. Tears rolled from her eyes, and her chin quivered. She pulled her trembling hands from her face. “They say it’s coming here,” she said in a quavering voice. “That it’s already here.”

  Brice studied the unreal images glowing on the screen. He swallowed. His face went ashen. “That can’t be. It can’t be.”

  Mike studied the video. He took in the center of the screen first. Then he tried to make sense of the bottom left. Then the top right. It was a live feed from Athens. It was already Saturday night in the Greek capital. The flames glowed orange against the black, distorting the video at the edges of the large fires. The smoke pouring from them made the night appear even blacker. In the distance, through the drifts of smoke, the illuminated ruins of the Acropolis stood atop the Parthenon at the city’s center.

  “They’re burning bodies in the streets,” said Donna. “They’re piling them up and burning them in the streets.”

  She was right. People in bright yellow protective suits, their faces obscured by the dim light and their air-filter-equipped hoods, carried limp bodies from the backs of trucks, heaving them onto growing piles of other presumably dead bodies. Then they lit them. The glow strobed at first, throbbing against the base of the piles. Then the flames spread into large towering pyres.

  Mike clenched his jaw. His chest felt heavy and a wave of nausea swelled in his gut. It was half a world away, but it felt closer. Donna said it was coming here, that it was already here. Planes stopped. Stores were stripped clean. Gas stations went dry.

  The door next to the reception desk clicked open and swung into the lobby. A tall, broad-chested man with heavily gelled salt-and-pepper hair stood in the opening. He held one hand on the frame and the other on the door, like he was trying to push them apart with his strength. The effect was amplified by the way-too-tight trim-fit knit shirt the man wore tucked into his pleated khakis.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “glad you’re here. Let’s get to work.”

  Donna turned back to her screen and planted her elbows on the desk. Mike and Brice thanked
her and followed Hank Swami into the office.

  Hank led with the confident stride of an alpha male. His broad shoulders were back, his arms swung away from his sides, his steps long and purposeful. He gave the impression when he walked that he always knew where he was going.

  He was a tough but fair boss. As the general sales manager for the station, he was in charge of everything income related. Hank shook his wrist, a habit that powered the perpetual motion of his Omega stainless-steel watch.

  He half turned as they walked past one of three studios and back toward the sales offices—they called it the bull pen. “Hey,” he said to both of them, though he only looked at Brice, “we get enough done today and I may give you guys Monday off. We can let this whole virus thing blow over and hit the ground running on Tuesday. Get off to a good fourth-quarter start. I’ve got a lead on two new accounts. Might toss them your way.”

  “Me or Mike?” asked Brice.

  “Both of you,” he said. “There’s enough to go around. Am I right?”

  Mike wasn’t sure they’d be at work on Monday or Tuesday or the following week or month. If they were burning bodies in Athens and Istanbul, how long before it happened in Paris, London, New York, Washington, DC, or Orlando?

  They wove their way through the bull pen, a maze of high-walled cubicles, to the conference room. The room, which had floor-to-ceiling seamless glass panels that shone into the bull pen, was decorated with a long black Lucite table with matching black ergonomic chairs around it. There were large flat-panel televisions mounted to the walls at opposite ends of the table. They were off. Mike took out his phone and navigated through his notifications. He had turned them off for two hours, not wanting the distraction while he worked.

  Hank pushed open the glass door with his forearm and motioned for Brice and Mike to enter the room. Others already worked on laptops. One of them was Ashley Pomerantz. What was she doing here? She was sick. There was a plague.

  Mike stopped at the door and used his thumb to point toward the bull pen. He tried not to look at Ashley. “Do we have to be in here?” he asked. “Can’t I just work at my desk?”

  Hank smirked. “It’ll go faster if we’re in here together. We’ll stay on task that way. Anyone has questions, they’ve got resources right there to help.”

  “My laptop’s at my desk,” said Mike.

  Hank shrugged. “Go grab it.”

  Mike hesitated. He gestured toward Ashley and lowered his voice. “Should she be here? She’s sick.”

  “It’s a cold. If you’re thinking it’s this plague thing, it’s not. Go get your computer. Get to work. Finish up. Go home.”

  Although Mike wanted to question why they were being forced to work with someone who was sick in the middle of an impending crisis fueled by sick people, he didn’t.

  Brice took a seat across from Ashley. He spoke to Mike. “Hey, could you grab mine too, please?”

  Mike sighed. “All right.” He backed away from the door and spun around to get the computers.

  He did not want to deal with Ashley, and it wasn’t even because she was sick and shouldn’t be there or because she’d canceled on him again. It was because he’d ignored her calls for help. Sure, she was using him. But he didn’t like feeling as though he’d given her a reason not to like him. Or better yet, a reason to like him even less than she apparently did already.

  Mike cursed himself for caring what she thought. Then he cursed himself for always caring what others thought of him. He needed approval from places he’d never find it. That was an issue. He was working on it.

  He grabbed Brice’s laptop first and took the charger too. Then he unplugged his laptop and tucked it under his arm. He didn’t take the plug. A dying laptop was a good excuse to leave the collective and work alone.

  Ashley ignored him when he sat down next to Brice. Her nose was running. Her face was flushed, her glassy eyes puffy and framed with dark circles. She coughed twice into the crook of her arm.

  Mike thought she looked horrible. That was, she looked horrible for Ashley Pomerantz. Even with an apparent fever she was a ten. He was still a seven.

  Brice flipped open his laptop and logged in to the bookkeeping software the sales department used to keep track of sales, payments, and debts yet to be collected. Mike did the same. He tried not glancing at Ashley, but the more he thought about not doing it, the more he was compelled to look at her. Why was she here?

  Every time she shifted in her seat or moved to blow her nose, Mike quickly averted his eyes. Finally, he decided to tackle the elephant in the room. He waved at her.

  “Hey, Ashley,” he said. “How are you feeling? I’m sorry about not getting back to you. I didn’t see your texts until this morning.”

  She stared through him, expressionless. Then her nose twitched and she sniffed. “I called you too,” she said. “You didn’t answer.”

  Mike shrugged. He could feel Brice watching him. Everyone was watching him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  She coughed loudly in her hands. The hack was wet, laced with whatever was infecting her lungs. The color drained from her face as she worked to catch her breath.

  Mike scooted back from the table and looked around the room. Everyone was staring, but they weren’t looking at him. They were wide-eyed and slack-jawed with their attention fully on Ashley.

  The sick woman pulled her hands away from her mouth and sucked in a raspy, ragged breath. She tried clearing her throat. Then she appeared to notice the silence, the stares. Her eyes darted around the room.

  Her face squeezed with confusion, her brow knitted, and she formed the first questioning word on her lips. She looked down and saw the spray of bright red blood on her hands, on the table in front of her, on the edges of her computer screen.

  Ashley’s mouth pressed flat. Her wide eyes flooded with tears as she stared at her trembling hands. She gasped. That started another fit. Her cheeks puffed as she tried to hold back the blood. She couldn’t.

  Everyone at the table sat still. Nobody moved. It was as if they were frozen by their fear. Mike pushed back and stood. He looked around the room at the shock-induced ineptitude.

  “Call an ambulance,” he said to nobody in particular. Without waiting for a response, he picked up his own phone and dialed 911.

  He took another step back from the table, almost tripping over his chair, and pressed his phone to his ear. There was a clicking sound and a recorded voice that dispassionately announced: “Due to an unusually high volume of calls, all operators are busy. Please hold.”

  Mike pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the screen to be sure he’d dialed the right number. He had. Again he put the phone to his ear.

  “…are busy. Please hold.”

  A series of clicks followed the message. Then a single ring and a live operator answered.

  Ashley was still coughing, gasping for air between hacks. Nobody helped her. Hank was dumbstruck at the far end of the conference room, his hands flat against his laptop keyboard.

  “911,” said the emergency operator. “Do you need police, ambulance, or fire?”

  “Ambulance,” said Mike. “I’ve got—”

  “Slow down,” said the operator. “We’ll get there. I’m showing an address on Lake Mary Boulevard. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Mike tried not looking at Ashley, at the blood, at her convulsing body. She couldn’t catch her breath. It was horrible to watch. He pressed his free hand against his other ear to block the noise. Nobody else moved. Nobody tried to help her.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” said the operator. In the background, Mike could hear the voices of other operators, fingers clicking on keyboards. There was the sound of radios squelching and various pitched tones.

  “A woman is sick,” he said, his voice trembling. “She’s coughing up blood. She’s… I dunno…having a seizure.”

  “A seizure?”

  “I dunno,” said Mike. “She’s shaking. It might be from t
he coughing. She can’t catch her breath. There’s blood everywhere.”

  The operator was typing, her keyboard clacking. In the background, radios chirped.

  “Hello?” asked Mike. “Are you—”

  “Hang with me, sir,” said the operator. “Stay on the line. I’m getting someone to you.”

  “Can we do anything?” said Mike.

  Ashley was turning gray. Her eyes bulged. The sales rep who’d been sitting next to her had rolled away.

  “Try to give her some warm water,” said the operator. “If she can drink it, that might help.”

  “Why is she coughing up blood?” asked Mike. “Is it the plague?”

  The operator stopped typing. A scratching sound signaled the woman adjusting the microphone at her face. “It could be. It could be bronchitis. It could be a vascular issue. It could be cancer. Does she have cancer?”

  “No,” Mike said, more roughly than he intended, “she doesn’t have cancer.”

  Mike turned to Brice. His friend was sitting stiffly in his chair, eyes fixed on Ashley like an alien was about to burst from her chest.

  “Brice,” said Mike, “can you get her some warm water?”

  Brice looked at Mike blankly. “What?”

  “Water,” said Mike. “Get Ashley some water.”

  Brice nodded absently and got up from his seat. He clung to the glass wall of the conference room until he’d slid out the door. Everybody else in the room except Hank took the cue and left the room.

  Hank stood at the door with his arms folded across his chest, rubbing his elbows with his thumbs.

  Ashley stopped coughing and started wheezing. Her head was on the table. A pool of pink mucus drooled from her open mouth onto the surface.

  “I have an ambulance en route,” said the operator. “Can you stay on the line with me?”

  “How long?” asked Mike.

  The others in the office, despite being selfish cowards, were probably smart for having left. If this was the plague, he was likely exposed. If that was the case, leaving now didn’t matter. He might as well help his sick colleague.

  “Until the ambulance arrives, if that’s possible.”

  “No,” Mike said. “How long until the ambulance gets here?”