Cough (7 page)

Order of importance. What to worry about most? No matter what hit his list as top priority in way of concern, Stokes was horrified. His heart beat out of control, he screamed internally and panicked. Something he rarely did.

He saw the accident and knew it wasn’t good. Was Emir alive? Charles? The people on the street or those in the store? His mind raced faster than his legs, but with each pounding step he couldn’t help but think of the world’s deadliest biological weapon that was in the SUV packed in a case no sturdier than a six pack beer carrier.

The small, no name, one stop light town was instantly transformed into a war zone.

While Emir’s SUV didn’t hit any other cars, he did hit pedestrians. The bodies of four people were strewn across the road. The fallen telephone pole landed on the car. And the store front of the Dollar something or other was completely demolished. What of the people inside. The unaware shoppers?

Stokes could see the blinking lights of Emir’s SUV inside the store. The tail lights glowed brightly through the dust of the wreckage. People raced to help. But who would Stokes help first?

He had to focus on the store. On Emir and Charles. Just as he crossed the street, Stokes learned what become of Charles. He was thrown from the vehicle. His body lay on its side a half a block from the smashed store. Was it Charles? Was it really him? He couldn’t be sure, and changing his direction, Stokes ran to him.

A group had gathered around him.

“
Is he alive?”
some asked, standing over Charles.

“Yeah. He is. Barely. Someone call 911.”

There was blood, lots of it and Charles didn’t look good. The request to call for emergency services seemed ridiculous to Stokes. At that point, the local police probably heard the crash.

After seeing that Charles was tended to, Stokes raced toward the store.

More than finding out the fate of Emir, he had to find out what happened to the virus he was carrying.

The force of the impact shook the store. It felt like an earthquake causing Macy to lose her footing. Left foot behind right, she stumbled back and fell backwards to the tile floor. For the few seconds that felt like an hour, items toppled on her, ceiling tiles fell. She felt the hit of every items that banged against her. When it stopped, legs weakened, she stood.

Macy was in the fog for a moment. Confused and scared. Her face felt wet and she wondered if the sprinkler system dripped on her. Wiping her face, she glance down to her fingers.

Blood.

She was bleeding. Just as she saw the blood, she saw the bright sunlight that burst through the dark store. Lifting her eyes, she saw the destroyed store front and the SUV that flew inside and landed in the front register area.

Her heart plunged to her stomach and she ran forward.

“Oh, God. Thomas!”

Stokes hesitated in shock when he stepped through the crumbled store front.

“Anyone.” A man shouted. “If you are able to help. Please! Lend a hand. We need help.”

People cried and screamed. The front end registers were smashed. Items were strewn across the store and there was blood. Lots of blood.

“Thomas!” he heard a woman call. “Thomas please.”

Stokes could hear the desperation in her voice, but he focused on the SUV.

A computer register was on the floor by the back end of the upside down vehicle. Near it a severed arm.

It was ironic. When he saw that, another man shouted. “Someone give me a hand. I have to lift this.”

Panic. The single word to describe the scene was panic, the second was chaos.

He stumbled over the debris to the driver’s side door.

Emir was still strapped in his seat. Blood dripped steadily onto the interior roof.

“Emir,” Stokes squatted down. “Emir.” He reached inside trying to feel if he were alive. The second he touched Emir’s neck, Emir opened his eyes.

“Find it,” Emir struggled to speak. His face bunched up in pain. “Find it.”

Stokes nodded. He knew what Emir referenced. Find it. But where?

“Thomas!” Macy screamed out, then stopped when she reached the front end. The sight of the smashed check outlines threw her into a heart wrenching frenzy.

Carts were smashed, bodies were on top of each other. So much blood.

God, please, she begged in her mind, please let him be alive.

They had been at register three and Macy made her way there. She heard the pleas for help, but couldn’t stop to aid anyone. Not until she knew the fate of her son.

Seeing the third checkout line didn’t help. It was right dab center of where the SUV landed.

There was nothing but bodies. Smashed bodies, under carts, under ceiling tiles and the remains of the checkout counter. Macy screamed out, a deep long cry when she spotted that patriotic bag she tossed in her cart. It was covered in blood. Desperate, Macy dove to the floor. Lifeless arms and legs stuck out of the wreckage. Nothing recognizable until she started tossing away items to dig through the debris. With each item she tossed she prayed harder and then froze.

Clementine.

Her frail hand poked out of the carnage, and the removal of a few more items exposed her face. Her eyes were open, wide and void of life.

Where was her son?

“Thomas!” She screamed out her loudest. “Thomas!”

“Mommy!”

Thomas?

The sound of her sounds voice came from behind her.

“Mom.”

It came from her gut, she felt it roll from the pit of her stomach through her chest. A release and she gurgled out a cry of gratefulness. Stumbling to a stand, Macy turned around.

Thomas stood there. Unharmed.

She lunged for him and grasped her child tightly to her chest. “Oh my God. You’re alive.”

“Clementine.” He cried as he gabbed on to his mother.

“I know, baby.”

“She saw it. She told me to run. I did, Mommy. I did.”

Upon his words, Macy clutched tighter to her son. So many were hurt, dead, but Macy couldn’t do anything else at that moment but hold her child. Hold him in deep appreciation, because it was nothing short of a miracle that he had survived.

The sack.

Stokes had to find the sack containing the twelve vials of the virus. It was more imperative than anything else he could do. If he had to save lives at the moment, he was doing so.

Finding that sack meant saving lives.

Emir died. Not five seconds after he told Stokes to find it, his eyes went blank. Stokes supposed he looked like some sort of looter, frantically searching through the SUV. If asked, he would have to tell. But everyone was too engrossed with all the injured to pay attention to what he was doing. Not only did he have to find that sack, he had to call headquarters to tell them, He only hoped when he did call, he reported that he secured the virus.

The search of the SUV bred nothing. It wasn’t inside, the smashed windows were an exit for it. But where. It could have flown anywhere. Like Charles it could be on the street. Or it could be in the store somewhere. Stokes not only hoped he’d find it, but hoped he found it intact. That was the important factor.

After searching the interior of the SUV, he stood.

Think. Think,

Store first or street. Where would it be?

He looked around the destroyed bargain store. More than likely, like Charles, the sack flew out of the vehicle long it slammed into the store. Deciding to check the street, Stokes turned to leave the store and that was when he realized the search was over.

Just as he walked by the back end of the SUV, he saw the strap to the case. It was twisted around the rear passenger tire. He felt a sense of hope until he pulled on the strap and freed the sack.

Every ounce of his being just dropped to the floor. Stokes wanted to collapse. The sack had been tossed somehow from the SUV and in the course of the vehicles path of destruction, the sack latched on to the rear tire. It was lodged in the rear well. Not only was the sack destroyed, but the vials that were inside were crushed. The caps on the most of the vials were off.

Stokes felt sickened. Right then and there, holding that destroyed sack, he dropped to the floor back against the wrecked SUV.

He looked around.

If the town of Littlefield thought they were hurt by the traffic accident, they were in for a big surprise in a few days. The SUV that hit that Dollar Barn was nothing compared to what would hit their town in seventy-two hours.

Did he cry? Stokes felt as if he did. That feeling of an overheated face, swollen with emotions. It was a second, a moment, one that rang through his being, resonating a sense of fear and helplessness. More than anything, his head repeatedly screamed ‘It’s over’.

Stokes was a strong man, at least he believed he was. An enigma too many, no one really knew him, because Stokes was a closed door.

He chased viruses his whole life in one way or another. He truly believed for some reason, he was meant to watch them. To protect against them. He wasn’t a doctor or in the medical field, yet fate kept throwing deadly viruses his way.

When Stokes was nine, his mother died of the measles after contracting them on a trip to the West Coast. An eradicated childhood illness took her life. His father, a nurse who worked with Doctors without Borders, contracted Ebola and died when Stokes was in basic training.

For the eight years he was in the service, most was served as a guard at Fort Detrick’s Biomedical Facility. He actually knew Charles Kimble, but he never recognized Stokes. Maybe it was because Stokes didn’t wear the high and tight and working undercover, he was thinner and of course older. He had been undercover for a while. Since EC175 went missing. Before that it was the one and only time in his life, he wasn’t anywhere near a virus. His job with the FBI had him doing background checks on those who worked with and entered priority labs at the Centers for Disease Control. Then he was in the Middle East for several years following leads on underground labs. Finally, he transferred to a nice cozy desk job, chasing paper trails on bank fraud. Then he was called in when EC175 went missing. From there he was undercover. Looking more like a reformed meth addict then the highly trained enforcement officer he was.

He took that assignment as a sign that the powers that be found it to be his calling and duty to deal with viruses and germs. To protect and serve the public in a different way.

But right there, sitting on the floor of the crushed Dollar Barn at the ass end of an overturned SUV, Stokes knew he had failed.

Did he make the right decision to let Emir and Charles take the virus to destroy it? To arrive at the facility with only the antidote? Or was it already too late, and Aldus had already done the damage. Whatever the case, Aldus didn’t release the virus in Littlefield ….he did. Maybe not directly, maybe not on purpose, but by letting them drive it, Stokes was just as responsible.

“Hey,” The deep, husky voice called out.

Suddenly the sounds buried in the background as he wallowed in fear and pity came forefront. People crying, screaming, others yelling out in warning.

“Hey.”

Stokes looked up. A brawny, shadowy figure stood above him. The sun from outside the store blasting behind him.

“You okay? Hurt?”

“No, I’m … I’m fine. I just slipped.”

The huge hand extended down and helped him to stand. When Stokes did, he was closer to seeing the name badge of ‘Wells’ than being eye to eye with the law enforcement officer.

“Thanks,” said Stokes.

“You good enough to help out here?” Wells asked. “We can use some help.” Wells glanced to the ceiling. “Don’t think this structure is too stable.”

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely,” Stokes said. “I came in to help, I just … lost my balance.”

“We’ll be careful.” Wells swatted his arm. “Don’t know where to tell you to start, just start anywhere.”

“Got it.” Stokes nodded.

He had to get it together despite what was going on, he had to lend a hand, do what he could. He wished he could do more to help. Just as he had that thought he spotted it. It balanced between the roof of the hatch and the rubble surrounding the SUV.

The jet air injector vaccine gun. The same one Emir used on him. It hadn’t ejected. In fact, Stokes forgot about it.

It looked fine and miraculously, the remaining serum was still in the unbroken well. How that happened, Stokes didn’t know. But it was there. Stokes reached down, grabbed it, placed it in the back waist of his pants, pulled his shirt over to cover it, and moved forward to help.

“Mommy, you’re bleeding.” Thomas said.

Macy reached up to her forehead. She felt the oozing wetness that ran across her brow. But she didn’t feel any pain. Certainly after the adrenaline eased and slowed down, she would feel whatever injury she sustained.

“I’m fine. Really. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“My arm is sore, I fell on it.” He showed her his arm.

Macy reached down to examine and realized it was too dark. “We need to get …”

“If you can move!” Chief Wells shouted. “You need to get out of the store. It isn’t stable. A support beam is done. Please make your way out.”

Macy recognized the Chief’s voice, she couldn’t see him. So many people were in the store. It was hard to distinguish who was calling out for help and who was calling
to
help.

“Let’s go,” Macy grabbed Thomas’ hand. “We’ll look at your arm outside.”

Two steps into leading her son, a ceiling tile down fell before them and a split second later, like a snake, a wire whipped their way. It made a high whirling sound and it cut through the roof.

“Watch out!” someone shouted.

That was all Macy heard, another ceiling tile came down on her knocking her to the ground.

“Mom!”

“I’m here …” Macy shouted from beneath the ceiling rubble. It was a foam suspended ceiling, the tiles themselves were enough to hurt her. The force of the fall knocked her off her feet.

She felt the tiles lift from her. It took a few minutes.

“Hold on,” it was Wells’ voice. “I’m getting you.”

Macy felt the dust in her eyes, it burned, and it also caused her to choke. Finally she was free.

“Macy, you okay?” Wells asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

Wells nearly lifted her to her feet.

“Thomas,” she spoke rushed and panicked.

“He’s good. We were able to snatch him out of the way. You we couldn’t...” Wells shrugged. “Sorry.”

“That’s ok, as long as he’s fine.” She brushed off and coughed. “Where is he?”

“I had someone carry him out. Can you make it? I can ….”

“No. I got it.” She placed her hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

“Thomas will be right out front.”

Again, she nodded her thanks. She still didn’t feel any pain, but she certainly could feel her pounding heart and burning eyes. It made it hard to see in the already dark store. Yet, she forged forward. Stepping over the spilled canned goods, toppled carts, fallen ceiling, and injured, Macy made her way to and out the wide open front of the Dollar Barn store.