The Scourge (Book 1): Unprepared Page 6

  “I don’t know,” said the operator. “It could be thirty to sixty.”

  “Thirty seconds?”

  “Thirty minutes to an hour,” said the operator.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t stay on that long.”

  Mike gave the operator his name and cell phone number. He told her to call back if she needed him. He was going to help Ashley.

  Brice walked into the room as Mike ended the call. He held two Styrofoam coffee cups, one in each hand.

  “Hot water from the coffee maker,” he said. “Best I could do.”

  Mike waved him past Hank and toward Ashley.

  Brice hesitated. “I don’t know, dude. She’s sick. If she’s got the plague, I don’t—”

  “You’re already exposed,” said Mike. “Just help her.”

  Brice glanced at Hank, who stood frozen at the head of the table. The boss was chewing on his lower lip. He looked as sallow as Ashley.

  Mike worked his way around the opposite end of the table and eased next to Ashley. He sat down and put his hand on her back. Her blouse was soaked with sweat. She jerked at the touch, sat up, and looked at Mike.

  He barely recognized the apparition staring at him. Her eyes were glazed with confusion and pain. Her face was painted with blood and snot.

  “It’s okay,” Mike said to her, not sure if she could understand him. “I called 911. An ambulance is on its way.”

  Brice was on the other side. He reached down and put the cups of hot water on the table in front of Ashley. Then he took two deliberate steps back.

  Steam curled from the cups, twisting into the air and evaporating. Ashley tried to lift her head. Then her eyes fluttered, rolled back so that only the dingy whites were visible, and she collapsed. Her forehead banged into the desk and her body slumped to the floor.

  CHAPTER 5

  OCTOBER 2, 2032

  SCOURGE +/- 0 DAYS

  ORLANDO, FLORIDA

  Kandy Belman rubbed her eyes and tried focusing on the screen in front of her. She adjusted the headset on her ears and tapped the space bar on her laptop. The interview, displayed in a small box on the right side of her computer screen, played. It was the beginning of the interview, the informal part before the questions began.

  The subject, a doctor at Orlando Regional Medical Center, was making small talk. The camera zoomed in and out. The focus softened and sharpened. The audio level went up and down.

  Off-screen, Kandy heard her own voice. “Could you give me your name and spell it for me? It’s the easiest question I’ll ask today.”

  The doctor on-screen flashed a smile. He looked directly into the lens. “I’m Dr. Chuck Moffatt. Chuck is the conventional spelling. Moffatt is spelled M-O-F-F-A-T-T.”

  “And your job?” asked Kandy. “Your speciality?”

  “I’m a pulmonary specialist, a pulmonologist,” Moffatt replied, “with a keen interest in infectious diseases. I work here at ORMC and am an adjunct professor at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine.”

  “You should look at me,” she said on the video. She was off camera. “Ignore the lens. It’ll look better.”

  Kandy tapped the space bar and paused the video. She rubbed her eyes again and checked her watch. “I’m getting too old for this crap,” she mumbled.

  She was getting too old for it. Kandy was the grande dame of television reporters in Orlando. She’d been around since the late nineties. Now in her mid-fifties, she worked twice as hard to look half as good as the twentysomethings who populated Central Florida’s news stations.

  She drove herself around town, carried her own camera, shot the interviews, asked the questions, wrote the stories, picked the sound bites, and edited everything into a nice one-minute-and-thirty-second clip. Then she’d rewrite the story for the station’s website, post versions of it to every social media platform in existence, and then go live for either a web stream or a scheduled newscast. Kandy also worked weekends.

  No longer was she the up-and-coming star who broke every big story from Ocala to Cocoa Beach or the grizzled veteran with an enviable Rolodex of contacts in every walk of life. Now she was merely grizzled and broken.

  But she needed the job. It was her life as much as it was her vocation, so she adapted. She became what they called a multimedia journalist, a fancy way of saying she carried her own gear and worked by herself.

  Long gone were the days of two- or three-people crews. No producers or engineers in the field for Kandy. She was a one-woman band, and this Saturday, she was working a local story about the growing threat of the pneumonic plague called the Scourge.

  Her producer, a kid less than half her age, had sent her to the hospital to interview an expert and grab some man-on-the-street sound bites about people’s “concerns or fears.” Kandy long believed man-on-the-street interviews, or MOS as they were commonly called in the business, were the refuge of the uninspired. Nobody cared what anybody thought about anything. It was a waste of time and web space. But she did what she was told.

  Now she was sitting in her compact SUV in the semicircle driveway in front of ORMC, transcribing the sound from those interviews so she could edit them into her story. She wanted a nap. She’d stayed up too late the night before.

  The reason for her insomnia was still in her apartment. He was waiting for her. He was a good-looking man with good credit and no wedding ring—a rare combination on any of the dating apps she’d used. This was their ninth date, and it wasn’t over yet. That was a rarity.

  Kandy was tired of men. They were needy or condescending or liars. So many of them were liars. Few of them could handle a woman who made her own money, paid her own bills, and handled her own business. Add that she was a fixture on local television who drew stares everywhere she went, and finding a lasting relationship was as likely as her news director assigning anyone to cover life-impacting issues at city hall rather than the pedophile du jour or the latest pit bull attack.

  Phil was back at her place. He was a nice distraction from the mundane. Sure, he lived south of Daytona Beach along the coast, and that was a haul, but he was worth the distance. He was exciting.

  On their first date he’d taken her to a shooting range. It was the first time she’d ever fired a gun. She liked it. They’d gone twice more since then and he’d told her she was getting pretty good. They’d gone deep-sea fishing on a charter from Port Canaveral, catching their limit of kingfish. He’d filleted them, grilled them, and served her a beautiful dinner. He’d taken her bowling, which was her choice, and they’d gone to see a couple of chick flicks. Also her choice. Those movies were a test for him, even if he didn’t know it. Any man who would go watch a predictable romantic comedy with her, and pay for it, was a good man. Phil was a good man. As far as she could tell after nine dates, anyhow.

  He was kind, sweet, and he appreciated her physique. He took his time and made sure she had as much fun as he did. That was rare. When she’d woken up, he’d already made coffee and toasted cinnamon Pop-Tarts. He was different. Wasn’t he different?

  Her toes curled in her shoes at the thought of him. A smile crept across her face. She sighed and picked up her phone from the center console. Fingers dancing across the display, she dialed his number and put him on speakerphone. Phil picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, you,” he said, his voice purring. “I was wondering when you might call.”

  Kandy’s face flushed. “Sorry, I’ve been working. You?”

  “Sitting on your sofa watching the cable news coverage of this plague thing. It doesn’t seem real.”

  Her eyes flitted toward the emergency entrance to the hospital. Another couple moved toward the sliding glass doors. The woman was the sick one this time. A man had his arm draped across her hunched back, helping her along.

  “No,” she said, “it doesn’t.”

  “What time you think you’ll be back?”

  “
I have a live shot at six. Then I should be on my way. I can bring my station truck home. That way I don’t have to go back to the station.”

  “Sounds great,” he said. He inhaled, like he was about to say something else but didn’t.

  “What?” Kandy prompted.

  “Nothing,” said Phil. “Well, that’s not true. It’s just that…”

  “Just what?”

  Kandy thought about what came next. He was married. Or this was getting too serious too fast. She didn’t consider it serious, but a man would think she did. Her stomach sank. She was bothered by the dread in her gut more than by what she assumed Phil was about to unload. Did she feel something for this guy?

  “I don’t do this,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Stay over,” he said. “Hang out at someone’s house while they’re not there. It’s a big step.”

  “And?” The one-word question sounded as harsh as she intended.

  “I like it.”

  The words hung there for a second. Kandy wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. If she had, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. That wasn’t true. But she wasn’t ready to admit that to herself. Nine dates was only nine dates.

  Then again, it was four hundred percent longer than most of her relationships. Nine dates was an eternity. Kandy tried to picture his ring finger. It was empty. There were no tan lines or indentions.

  “Oh,” she said. Nothing else came to mind.

  Phil chuckled, a nervous laugh. Then he did a poor imitation of Kandy, pretending that she’d responded with more than apparent ambivalence.

  “Wow, Phil,” he said, “that’s fantastic. I like it too. By the way, that Pop-Tart was delicious this morning.”

  Kandy smiled. “Sorry,” she said, realizing it was the second time she’d apologized since calling him. That was unlike her too. “I’m not good at this,” she offered as an olive branch. “I like you, Phil. I’m glad you stayed over. I hope you’re there when I get back.”

  “If I’m not and your television is gone, it wasn’t me who took it.”

  Kandy affected a flirty tone, sensing the seriousness of the conversation had passed. “Is that so?”

  “If you’re out of Pop-Tarts, though…”

  She laughed again. Phil was funny. And sweet. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

  “Great,” he said. “And, Kandy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I seriously didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  “I know.”

  “About the Pop-Tarts,” he added. “There are still four left.”

  Kandy groaned. He wasn’t as funny as he thought he was. All men wanted to be funny. It was their thing. They needed to feel as though they could make a woman laugh; at least the ones who actually tried to be likable were the ones who tried to be funny.

  “I’ll make dinner when you get back,” he said. “I’m even better with a grilled cheese than I am with a toaster pastry, and I can heat up frozen French fries with the best of them.”

  “With bacon?”

  “The fries or the sandwich?”

  “Either,” she said. “Both.”

  “Got it. Be careful out there.”

  Kandy told him she was eager to see him and she hung up. There was work to do. She pressed the space bar. The doctor started talking.

  “So the real concern with this infection,” said Dr. Moffatt, “is the speed with which it’s spreading. Yersinia pestis is a particularly nasty bacteria regardless, and this strain appears to be remarkably aggressive, right?”

  “We’re hearing some call this the plague,” said Kandy off-screen. “Is that accurate?”

  “Yes,” said Moffatt.

  “Why?”

  “The bacteria is spread a few different ways. One is through the bite from a rat flea. Another is from the fecal matter of an infected rat. A third method of transmission is through the air. We believe this outbreak began in the refugee camps in Ukraine and Syria.”

  Kandy pressed the space bar and finished typing the sound bite into her computer. She noted the embedded time code at the beginning of his response and at the end of it. She typed the total run time of the bite beneath the transcription, moved the cursor to the video playback portion of the screen, and hit the space bar again.

  “Yersinia pestis causes the plague regardless of the transmission method,” said Moffatt. “There are three primary forms of plague. One is bubonic. Another is septicemic. The third is what we’re seeing here. It’s pneumonic, right?”

  “How do you stop it?” asked Kandy on the recording.

  “Although sunlight and dry conditions can kill the bacteria, the bacterium can often live in those conditions for up to an hour. It’s not like you shine a light on it and you’ve killed it. This appears to be an airborne version of the threat, so it’s dangerous. Very dangerous. Also, we believe there’s now a viral component to this. Viruses don’t react to external conditions in the same fashion as bacteria. To be honest, this is a new strain. It’s mutating. We don’t know what to expect.”

  “So what do our viewers need to know?” asked Kandy. “What can they do to keep themselves safe?”

  The doctor paused. His features hardened as he appeared to consider the question and formulate an answer. He started to raise his hands then stuffed them into the pockets of his white lab coat. His jaw clenched and flexed.

  “Not much,” he said. “Stay away from crowds. Lock yourself in a room. Turn off your air conditioning. Keep your windows closed. Wash your hands. I can’t emphasize that enough.”

  Kandy hit the space bar, pausing the video. She finished typing the response. She read it several times and rewound the last answer again.

  “Lock yourself in a room. Turn off your air conditioning. Keep your windows closed.”

  She made note of the time code and let the interview play. She reached over and pressed a button in the center of the dash to turn off the air conditioning, then hit the recirculate button.

  “Anything else?” Kandy asked on the video. “What about symptoms? Early signs?”

  “So…” said the doctor.

  Kandy had noticed that smart people, or people who thought they were smart, often began their responses with the word so. They also ended explanations with a rhetorical right? It was a subconscious condescension.

  “The incubation on this strain appears to be up to a week,” said the doctor. “That means you could be infected for a period of time before you know it, right? So when you experience flu-like symptoms, tightness or a heavy sensation in your chest, you need to get to your physician or local hospital.”

  “What about medication?” asked Kandy. “Can you take something as a preventative? If you think you might have been exposed?”

  “There’s no prophylactic for this. And we’ve not found an effective antibiotic. This appears to be a drug-resistant strain. Add to that the viral component and you’re either strong enough to survive it or you’re not. We do not have enough ventilators. We don’t have enough masks, enough gloves. Not for what this is capable of doing.”

  “Who is the most vulnerable?” asked Kandy. “The young and the old?”

  Moffatt nodded. “Yes, and those with already compromised immune systems. But I will say we’ve seen children survive this without infection. It’s the damnedest thing. Their families are exposed, exhibit symptoms, present with the illness, even die, and some young children are fine.”

  “Why is that?” asked Kandy.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” asked Kandy.

  She found this to be the most effective question she could ask in an interview. It was always her last question, and the interview subjects gave their best answers.

  The doctor closed his eyes for a second and curled his lips inside his mouth. He visibly inhaled and held his breath, slowly exhaled, as if blowing out lungs full of cigarette smoke, and he turned toward the camera.

&nbs
p; “Pray,” he said. “Even if you’re not a religious person, I suggest you pray. It can’t hurt. This looks to me like the end of the world as we know it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  OCTOBER 2, 2032

  SCOURGE +/- 0 DAYS

  LAKE MARY, FLORIDA

  Mike stood in the men’s room, staring into the mirror. The hot water was running, as it had been for several minutes, and the bottom half of the mirror was fogged with steam.

  He held his hand under the soap dispenser and it spit foam into his palm. Again. He lathered his hands and rubbed the soap across the backs of his hands, in between his fingers, and up his wrists. Once they were washed clean, he repeated the process.

  They weren’t dirty anymore, but he couldn’t help himself. Mike looked into his own eyes and triggered another dollop of foam into his palm. He’d always wondered how he’d react to an emergency. Would he be someone who’d jump into action, or would he be one of the bystanders who watched and did nothing?

  He’d found out, as Ashley unraveled in front of him, he was the former. He had acted. He didn’t hesitate. Others, including his friend Brice, had either stood by or they’d left the room.

  There was little comfort in the revelation as he ran his hands under the water again. The steam fogged half of the mirror now.

  Despite looking at himself, studying his own face, Mike didn’t see his reflection. He saw Ashley helpless on the floor. He saw her body convulsing. He could smell the blood. Mike had no idea blood had an odor. It did. Somehow, it did.

  He let the water wash over his hands. It was hot and stung his skin, which he’d rubbed to the point of irritation. Mike looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He didn’t feel the heat of the water or sense the tenderness of his flesh. He focused on the shaking, the remnants of the horrible excitement in the conference room.

  The adrenaline had long left his body. His knees jittered, his neck ached, and he was suddenly exhausted.

  Mike withdrew his hands from the water, shook the excess into the narrow porcelain sink, and turned off the faucet. He cupped his face in his hands, absorbed the warmth, and then ran his fingers through his hair to dampen it.