Cough

COUGH

By

Jacqueline Druga

COUGH

By Jacqueline Druga

Copyright 2015 by Jacqueline Druga

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Thank you so much to Kira and Shona for your help with this book.

The only thing more daunting than going to the Breyer’s Market on a Saturday morning was going on a Saturday afternoon. That wasn’t Macy Anderson’s original plan, yet there she was standing in line at the deli, her eyes shifting from the number in her hand to the digital countdown, then to her watch. Any longer in that store, her son Clay would be late for his Little League game.

It was par for course. She got up early enough, but after realizing it was Breyer’s big pre-holiday sale, she opted for not dragging the kids with her. Her elderly neighbor Lila offered to keep an eye on them, only if Macy picked her up some of that deli ham they had on sale. After waiting on Lila’s list, which of course was more than just ham, Macy finally headed into town.

There were other stores. She could have driven the ten miles to Big Bear Grocer, but Breyer’s Independence Day Hoopla was too good to pass up. It wasn’t just the Big Bang Bologna and Ham sale, it was the Meat Mash Slash. Anything that went on the grill was cut in price.

One day.

The Saturday before the Fourth of July.

Breyer’s Market the family owned store with the quirky sale names was jammed packed. Not only were there no spots in the small lot or on the street, but traffic was unreal. The parade committee was placing personalized tribute to veteran flags on every light post. Littlefield was small, Macy didn’t think there were that many veterans, let alone enough to mark every single telephone or light pole. Nor did she think there were that many people in Littlefield to cause such a massive jam at Breyer’s.

Her deli number was sixty-five and the digital countdown was on forty. What made matters worse was that it wasn’t her first time in line. When she arrived and saw the deli line, Macy thought she would be smart. She took a number and went for her other items. Figuring she’d get her shopping down before they called her number. She was wrong. When she returned, she had missed it by three.

Macy grabbed another number.

She kept looking down to it, too as if it would suddenly change.

“Aren’t you just the lucky one,” the deeper, yet smooth male voice laced with a thick country accent spoke just beyond her right ear. “Number sixty-five. And here I thought I was hitting the lottery with eighty-nine.”

Macy glanced to him to pass on a polite smile and she felt her insides jolt a little. She didn’t know his name, but the stranger scared her. He was new in town. A drifter who arrived just a couple days earlier. No one knew why and when he was questioned by Chief Wells about what brought him to Littlefield, he merely stated he was hanging around to see if anything big happened.

He looked a little insane to her. Probably was. Nothing big ever happened in Littlefield, unless he was counting Breyer’s annual sale.

Pretty much everyone knew everything, and no one knew the stranger. He stood out. His light brown hair, while not long, was shaggy and in dire need of a cut. The scruff on his face was so bad it hid a lot of his face. The drifter was thin and probably needed a bath.

Why her? Why was he standing by her?

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you twenty-five dollars for that number.”

Again Macy smiled politely. “No, I’m in a hurry.”

“Suit yourself, that twenty-five will buy a lot of bologna.”

Macy just wanted to move away. She started to inch to her left, but was already shoulder to shoulder with another person. A woman. She sneezed.

“Bless you,” Macy said.

The woman nodded and then coughed.

Swell, Macy thought, I’m stuck between the drifter and a sick person.

Her direction for escape was limited.

“Fifty,” he then said, “I’ll give you fifty.”

Macy laughed. There was no way that stranger had fifty dollars on him. He was trying to con her out of her deli number.

“Fifty-three,” The deli worker announced.

Another cough.

That one was from behind her.

Her phone beeped. She had a message, probably Lila wondering where she was. She reached blindly into her purse for her phone.

“
Three trucks
,” a woman behind her said.
“All military.”

Cough. Cough.

Macy paused to eavesdrop.

“You sure?”
another asked.

“Positive. Rolled right through town. Right now. Strange.”

Macy grabbed her phone.

Cough. Cough. Cough.

A male voice entered their conversation. “I saw them too. But they were stopped before town. They didn’t roll through.”

“What’s going …?” Cough. Cough.

“You okay?”

“Just a tickle in my throat.”

“Me, too.”

Macy glanced down to her phone. The message was from Lila. It read: “Everything ok in town?” As she was about to reply, a hundred dollar bill waved in front of her face.

“Last chance. Last offer. One hundred.”

The money was there. Right before her eyes and it wasn’t as if she didn’t need that money. Just as Macy was about to say, “Sold.” Another cough rang out. This one deep and choking.

It was so distinctive that even the drifter paused and looked outward with some alarm.

Then it began.

It was as if every person in that deli line began to cough and choke. Louder, stronger, multitudes of coughs. It sounded like an orchestra of barking.

Macy’s eyes widened. She looked around, trying to figure out what was happening. She bumped into someone as she backup. That person never noticed … they coughed.

The deli workers choked and cough. Macy spun around. Shoppers leaned into carts, dropped their baskets.

“We need to get out of here,” the drifter said, grabbing her arm.

Macy couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop looking at everything that happened. People fought to catch their breath, half bent over, grabbing their chests.

Was it a chemical attack? Gas leak?

Quickly, Macy pulled from the stranger and lifted her shirt over her nose. Not that her tee shirt would be any protective measure, but it was better than nothing. All she knew was that she had to get out of the store.

The coughing stopped.

The only sound in that store were the confused stifled cries of those unaffected.

She turned once more to charge out and instead slammed right into a man. He grabbed her arms, looked at her. His face was splotched and purple, his nose bled and bloody tears rolled from his eyes.

He opened his mouth as if trying to speak then choked hard. Blood shot from his mouth and onto the shirt that covered her nose.

Macy screamed and the man fell to the floor.

“Come on,” the drifter tugged her.

Her feet were cemented to the floor in horror. All around her, those who coughed, those who choked simply just dropped to the ground.

Some shook and convulsed, some didn’t move.

People screamed, cried out and fought to leave the store. Her heart raced and her face felt flushed. Suddenly everything seemed to be spinning, her ears filled with rushing blood.

“Hey.”

The scene before grew blurred and as if through tunnel vision.

“Hey you.”

Bang.

The loud, jolting sound of a car crash, snapped Macy out of it.

Suddenly, screeching tires, crashes and bangs carried into the store. It was a domino effect. One right after another. Bang. Bang. Crash.

It was enough. The sudden onset of massive traffic accident outside along with the calls from the drifter, snapped Macy out of it.

“This way,” he said. “Come on.” He squeezed her through people.

It wasn’t easy. People in the store were scared, confused, like Macy. They may have been in the store a thousand times, but at that moment, no one knew which way to turn.

All around were moans of the ill, cries out for help.

Finally, Macy kept going.

Until she arrived at the entrance to the store. Just inside the automatic doors, Thomas Holden lay on the floor, his hands retracted inward toward his body, legs straight forward as his body shook and a pinkish fluid shot from his mouth with every jarring jerk of his head.

“Help … help me,” he struggled to call out.

Macy stopped and reached down.

“No, don’t.” The drifter yanked her away. “Leave him.”

“But …”

“Leave him.”

Macy didn’t want to leave him, she felt bad. It was her son’s Little League coach. But she knew she had to get out of that store.

They did.

They made it out.

But they weren’t home free.

It wasn’t any better outside.

Main Street was one massive pile up. Cars and trucks had collided everywhere. Fifty or sixty cars all smashed into another. Horns beeped continuously, car alarms sounded off, people called out. Then two low flying military helicopters cut through the sounds of pandemonium and buried the noise of everything as they flew overhead and straight out of town.

The drifter let go of Macy’s arm and was at a standstill peering up to the sky.

Macy’s shoulders bounced as she fought to catch her breath. “Oh my God,” she said and turned to the drifter. “What’s happening?”

The tuna fish salad sandwich sounded good and would hit the spot, but he didn’t know how long it sat in the vending machine. He didn’t recall when they refilled and rotated the food last. Then again, Charles Kimble rarely paid attention to the vending machine attendants. He did, however pay attention to the maintenance man who absolutely drove him nuts.

Conrad Pletcher was a thirty-something born and bred Texan. He talked like one, but to Charles, he didn’t look the part. He was unkempt, smelled of either hand sanitizer or alcohol and wore his hair often in a half up, half down man bun. Conrad tried to act macho, on that front the Texan in him came out and Charles wouldn’t be surprised if somehow he carried a gun in that cleaning cart. He even claimed to have a tough nickname.

“Call me Stokes, not Conrad,” he said.

Charles refused to do it, especially since Conrad insisted on calling him ‘Charlie’. No one called him Charlie, not even his parents.

But that was just Conrad and the reason Charles avoided him. Snarky conversation, sarcastic comments, and he was always around. He seemed to work every shift that Charles did. In fact, when Conrad started, Charles insisted that he was a spy for Animal Welfare, but after speaking to him, he realized that Conrad just wasn’t smart enough to be undercover.

He wasn’t ‘new’ per say, Conrad Pletcher had been there nearly a year, Charles lost count. But compared to Charles who had been with SAT since the facility opened, Conrad was an infant employee.

Charles was the top dog, the big deal, the hope for the future. The man to work on things no one else could. He was actively recruited to join SAT upon his retirement from the service.

And what did he have to show for it. Aside from being stressed over recent work developments, he had to wait for his lunch.

Three times Charles had gone back to the third floor employee lunch room, each time opting to wait until Conrad was finished. He didn’t want to get into a conversation with him. Finally the last trip, a gnawing hunger in his gut, Conrad was leaving the break room.

“Put those yellow signs up for you, Charlie,” Conrad said. “So don’t slip and fall. Don’t need the top dog science guy to break a hip. That happens at your age.”

Charles merely cleared his throat and said, “Thank you.” While thinking the entire time, ‘yeah, yeah, go scrub a commode you dumb hick.’

Charlie.

Charles huffed out.

Did he look like a Charlie? A ‘Charlie’ was down to earth, worn out blue jeans, tee shirt and hit kicker boots. A Charles as more of a snob. Not that Charles himself was a snob, but he certainly didn’t look like a Charlie.

Charles was middle aged, looked it, acted it. He was every day normal on the nerdy side of style. He supposed back in his military days he looked ‘hot’ a doctor and retired major in the US Army. He spent almost all of his time at Fort Detrick, buried far below the surface in a lab and known to many as the widow maker. He could create a deadly germ that no one could survive. But he never did so without having the antidote or cure.

If he couldn’t cure it he destroyed it.

Except this time.

That’s why he needed lunch. He had to stop.

His current project was driving his blood pressure sky high.

The choices in the vending machine weren’t helping matters. Some looked good but none appeared fresh.

He heard the jingle of keys and fearful it was Conrad, Charles used the glass of the machine as a mirror and looked at the reflection. The thin man, average height. Charles could see the white shirt and dark hair.

Emir his assistant had walked up behind him.

“Playing the lottery, I see,” Emir said. “You gamble eating that food.”

“I realize that, but I am starving and sending you for takeout is not an option.” Charles placed his money in the machine and made his selection.

“Tuna? That would be my last choice.”

“Yes, well, if I die you know what to do with EC175.”

“I don’t believe even you know what to do with EC175.”

Charles smiled and lifted his tuna sandwich. “True.”

He liked Emir. The young scientist was in his mid-twenties, soft spoken and brilliant. He had been with SAT for a year and since he arrived about the same time as EC175, it was just as much Emir’s pet project as it was Charles.

There were times Charles felt bad for Emir, especially in the early days the young man got a bad rap because of his heritage. People were suspicious of him because of his skin color even though he got his degree from Harvard. Perhaps that was why Charles let him in on so much.

Emir was an asset. He also, like Charles wasn’t married and that opened up the freedom to put in long hours.

“I saw Stokes as I came this way,” Emir said. “Did you have a nice conversation?”

Charles groaned. “If you’re joking you are not funny.”

“You’re kind of rough on the guy.”

“Have you had a conversation with him? His annoying.”

“He’s funny.”

“You’re young, your tolerance is better.” Clutching his sandwich, Charles walked form the lunch room.

“Not eating here?”

“No. What brought you chasing after me?”

“You were gone awhile. I was worried.”

“Thank you. I was just taking extra long because I was avoiding Conrad.” Charles stooped before the elevator. Once it arrived he pressed S3.

“We’re not going to the lab?”

“Not yet. I just want to peek in on our friends.”

“We were just here two hours ago.”

“Every second counts. You know that. Hence why we’re here on the weekend.”

The elevator door opened and Charles stepped out first. He knew right then and there it was a good idea to go to floor S3 because as soon as they stepped off, he saw Conrad with that cleaning cart getting ready to go into Lab Nine.

“Stop.” Charles raced down the hall. “Stop.”

“I have to clean in here. It needs cleaned.” Conrad said. “What’s the big deal? We always clean in here.”

“Don’t you read?” Charles asked and pointed to the door. “The sign says stay out.”

“I didn’t think it meant the cleaning crew. Supervisor would have said something.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t. But it does. It includes clean up.”

“It’ll start to smell really bad if we don’t go in there and …”

“That’s fine,” Charles said. “We’ll handle it, if need be. At least for a few days.”

“Suit yourself,” Conrad replied. “Less on my plate.”

Slowly e moved back from the door and as he pushed the cart away, he never took his eyes off of Charles.

Once out of earshot, Charles turned to Emir. “That is why I don’t trust him. He stares at me.”

“You just behaved strangely.”

“How else am I supposed to behave?” With a shaking hand he pointed at the door. “You and I change these locks. Today. We’ll go to Home Depot or something.”

“Charles …”

“No.” Shaking his head, Charles entered into the next room.

“You really think …”

“I don’t know.” Charles turned on the lights. It was small room, more like a monitoring station. Above a counter with computers was a glass observation wall. “That’s why we play it safe.”

“What if Stokes says something?” Emir asked.

“He won’t. Why would he?” Charles placed his hands on the counter and leaned toward the observation window.

Emir stood behind him and lifted a clipboard. “You need the speaker on?”

“Yes, let me hear them.”

Reaching around Charles, Emir flipped a switch. It was quite and calm, normal sounds came from the room. It was relatively quiet for a room full of chimpanzees

Charles took in the view of the room as a whole, then lifted his eyes to the monitors watching each chimp for a few moments.

“Charles, it’s been over twelve hours.”

“It’s not enough time.”

“Research shows …”

“My gut says it’s not enough time.”

“They look great, healthy.”

Charles nodded, eyes forward. “Yes. Let’s hope it stays that way.”