Desolation (4 page)

5
J
erri made her way underneath the scorching sun and walked
through a row of tents that smelled like feces and sour milk.
A woman she passed tripped and dropped a basket of laundry she
had hung out to dry.

A passing FEMA police officer walked up to the woman and
reached a hand down to help her up. He smiled a genuine smile. His eyes
were soft and kind, a rarity.

“Get away from me!” she snapped, terrified by his presence. “I
didn’t do anything so don’t you dare touch me you fascist!” The woman
scurried to her feet and ran away, leaving her laundry behind on the
ground.

The officer could have arrested the woman for her insolence.
Instead, his expression sunk. He looked stung by her reaction. He lowered
his hand and walked away.

Nearby onlookers crawled out of their tents and quickly
rummaged through the woman’s scattered laundry.

As the police officer walked past Jerri, she noticed that the glint
of kindness in his eyes had dimmed. With time she was sure it'd be gone
completely. Yet another apathetic soul would be born.

Jerri made her way through the alleyway and finally arrived at the
medical barrack.

The medical barrack sat near the housing dorms. Despite the vast
number of people inside the camp, not many people made use of the
medical facilities. Most people who were admitted died. Staph infections
and malpractice were rampant. It was hard to find a quality doctor after
the viral outbreak wiped out most of the population. As a result, FEMA
gave the doctor title out a little too liberally.

Old advertisements for Acexa were plastered outside on the
building. Jerri found that moronic given Acexa’s side-effects. The
salvation that Acexa promised cost countless lives. People thought that
the vaccine would protect them from the initial outbreak.

The government’s attempt at a vaccine, Acexa, did its intended
job admirably for a few days… but then something changed. A mutation.
It started turning the hosts into cannibalistic ghouls, reanimated husks of
their former selves. By the time what remained of the government tried to
recall the drug from the market, it was too late; Acexa had been
distributed everywhere. Even after society was destroyed, millions of
crates of unused Acexa remain, somewhere, sitting in desolated hospitals
and abandoned Red Cross shelters.

Jerri closed her eyes and looked away. Acexa saved her parents
from PT-12, but that salvation came with a heavier price. Even after a
year, the scars were too fresh and she didn’t want to cry. It was never
smart to show weakness in the camp.

She pressed the button next to the medical sally port and the
door slid open.

 

“
Attention. Please stand in the center with your arms above your head. Do
not move during the decontamination process.
”

Jerri stood with her arms folded across her chest.
The red light flashed.
The shower head made a noise but nothing came out of it.

“
You are now clear to exit the sally port. Let your skin air dry. Thank you
for your cooperation.
”

 

Jerri gripped her stomach and acted like she was in agony, ready
to put on a show for the medical staff.

 

The light flashed green and the opposite door opened.
Jerri groaned in pain and stepped inside, expecting to get greeted
by a receptionist who would make her fill out a bunch of silly forms.

Instead, Jerri found herself standing alone in a cramped freezing
lobby. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. A single abandoned desk sat
against the wall. The lights were dim and the ceiling tiles were badly water
damaged. A large moldy poster hung above the desk:

A door sat on each side of the unmanned desk. One door led into
the dark recesses of the patient wing and the other led into the
administrative hall.

“Hello, is anybody working here?” Jerri called out, still gripping
her stomach.

 

The only sound that greeted her was the sound of water dripping
somewhere in the ceiling.

Since she had no need for theatrics, Jerri stopped feigning her
illness and walked towards the administrative hall. She pushed opened the
door and stared down the hall in disbelief.

Most of the overhead lights were dark and the rest flickered as
they struggled to maintain their duty. The tiled ceiling was sagging, moldy,
and was dripping. Muddy water had collected in large puddles along the
floor and peeled away the wallpaper from the walls. The offices that lined
the hall were abandoned and their contents had been picked clean; even
the brass nameplates had been pried off of the office doors.

As Jerri walked down the hallway, sloshing through the polluted
puddles, she spotted a door that read ‘Staff Lounge’.

 

She knocked on the door.

“Is anybody in there?” she called. After no response, she opened
the door and stepped into the dark room. As soon as she entered, the
room’s automated lights powered on and sent hundreds of roaches
scattering into the room’s dark crevasses. Garbage was piled up in the
corners. A sofa with exposed springs sat pushed against the wall, littered
with magazines from the old world. A grime encrusted microwave sat in
the room’s kitchenette above a sink stacked high with filthy dishes.

Jerri backed out of the room with her hands covering her mouth,
stifling a gag. If she had any food in her stomach she surely would have
vomited. Every fiber of her being wanted to turn and run out of the
building but her devotion to her friend prevented her from doing so.
Krystal was her closest friend in the camp and she refused to leave
without even trying to help. In the new world, a simple sinus infection or
other complications from something like the flu could be deadly. She
needed to at least find some antibiotics for Krystal.

Jerri kept walking down the hall until she came to a door adorned
with the Homeland Security logo. The sign on the door read ‘Medical
Surplus’. It had a small window in the center and was locked by a
biometric hand scanner.

If she wanted to get inside she’d have to break the lock.
Jerri walked to the window and looked inside. Her expression
sunk in horror at the sight.

The room was barren with the exception of a box of bandages.
She had no idea that the medical situation was so dire.

She backed away from the door and walked back to the lobby,
shaking her head.

 

A sense of despair settled in on her as she headed towards the
sally port.

An idea struck her.
She stopped and turned towards the patient wing door.

It was a long shot, but it was her only hope of procuring some
supplies for her friend.

Jerri cautiously opened the patient wing door. The stench of
defecation, mildew, and stale air immediately wafted against her face and
made her throw her hands over her nose and mouth.

The patient wing consisted of a wide hallway with hospital beds
lining the walls. The water-rotted ceiling had collapsed in most places and
all of the medical monitoring equipment was gone. Most of the overhead
lights were dead and the nurses’ station in the center of the hall was
abandoned. The hospital beds were stripped bare and the few that weren’t
stripped had withering corpses on them covered in flies. Some of the
bodies weakly moved when she opened the door and looked at her with
pleading eyes but most of the bodies lay motionless and were already
firmly fastened in death’s icy clutch.

At the end of the hall, Jerri spotted a man in nursing scrubs
huddled near the edge of one of the beds holding a needle. He slipped the
syringe into his arm and gasped with pleasure, nodding to himself.

“…hello?” Jerri called out. Her hand slowly slid into her pocket
and grabbed hold of the switchblade.

The man startled and quickly dropped the needle. He stood and
turned towards her, almost stumbling backwards in his self-medicated
stupor.

“Now, just stay calm,” the man stammered. A string of saliva
hung from his lower lip, and he held his twitching hands out towards
Jerri, palms facing her. “This isn’t what it looks like, I swear…”

Jerri’s eyes trailed down to the needle on the floor and the small
vial of morphine on the bed. Multiple empty vials were scattered across
the floor. The idiot probably exhausted most of the camp’s supply on his
addiction.

A look of revulsion washed over Jerri’s face.
Drug abuse was a crime punishable by death in the camp.
“Just… let me explain,” the man said as she stepped towards her.
Jerri turned and ran.
She darted through the lobby to the exit.
The sally port’s steel door was sealed shut.
She pressed the button to open the door, terrified.

“
Stand by
,” a crackled metallic male voice announced overhead,
“
Hydraulic depressurization in progress. One moment please.
”

 

The sally port door made a grinding noise and hissed.
The man in the nursing scrubs emerged from the patient wing
and ran towards Jerri, almost tripping over his own feet.

“Just stop and let me explain!” the man shouted.
“
Depressurization is complete. Thank you for your patience.
”
The sally port door slid open.
“Leave me alone!” she shouted.

She tried to run inside the sally port but the man grabbed her
shirt and tried to pull her back.

 

Jerri drew her switchblade and spun around, screaming. She
flicked the blade open mid-air and swept it across the man’s face.
The man let out an anguished cry and let her go. He clutched his
gashed left cheek as blood ran out from between his fingers.
She stumbled into the sally port and quickly pressed the red
button.

“You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!” he cried. Just as he reached out
for her, the door slid shut and narrowly missed crushing his hand. He
pounded against the door with his closed fists, screaming.

“
Attention. Please stand in the center with your arms above your head. Do
not move during the decontamination process.
”

Jerri stood in the middle of the sally port, shaking, tears running
down her face. Her heart felt like it was going to beat out though her
ribcage.
The shower head made a noise but nothing came out.

Jerri quickly wiped away her tears, wiped the blood off of her
switchblade, and concealed her weapon. She took a deep breath and put
on a false sense of composure.

It was not good to show weakness in the camp.

 

“
You are now clear to exit the sally port. Let your skin air dry. Thank you
for your cooperation.
”

 

Jerri hastily dried her face and calmly walked back towards her
dorm.

 

Hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop her hands from trembling.
6

O
n her way back to her dorm she walked past four FEMA
officers holding animal snares. They looked tired and vastly outnumbered
by the sea of haggard pedestrians milling past them. A few people hidden
in the crowd shouted obscenities at the officers.

The public was outraged over the disappearance of the dogs and
cats but didn’t complain when there was meat served in the chow hall.

Three of the officers kept their faces stern as they scanned the
area for animals, but the fourth officer clearly looked hurt by the insults;
naturally the jeers became directed mostly toward the officer they hurt the
most.

People, Jerri noticed, always seemed able to sense and hone in on
the vulnerable ones.

It depressed her to see what the camp had become. When things
first started, the camp operated orderly and everyone worked together to
protect the community from their common enemy. Now that the
infection was gone, the Acexa reanimates stayed away from the camps and
kept near the big cities, and marauder sightings became less common the
community started to pick itself apart.

Jerri was embarrassed at what society had been reduced to.

After walking for miles through a maze of tents and trash
underneath the desert sun, she finally arrived at her dorm and pressed the
red button to enter.

The sally port door made an awful grinding noise and started to
vibrate.