End Days Super Boxset (78 page)

Other vehicles stopped or swerved out of the way, narrowly avoiding the crash. For a moment, the scene was pure pandemonium as the smoking Camry spun on its roof, its passenger side heavily damaged. The blue truck sat motionless in the middle of the intersection with its front end smashed and its horn blaring incessantly. The Buick fared a little better, and idled to the corner with minor front-end damage. None of the drivers had gotten out of their vehicles yet. There was little movement overall, as other vehicles at the intersection had stopped with drivers and passengers wide-eyed and fixated on the accident.

Greg pulled his van to the side and jumped out to approach the scene. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do, but his instincts had kicked in nonetheless. The driver of the Camry, a panicky middle-aged man in a business suit, was hanging upside down, trying to unfasten himself.

He dropped to the ceiling and crawled out of the car through the open window. A woman was hanging in the passenger seat, moaning and appearing to be semi-conscious. The driver of the Buick remained in the vehicle, and Greg could see why. She was an elderly woman with gray, curly hair and was clearly shaken up. The man in the blue truck stumbled out of the driver's side, covering his bloody face with his hands.

Greg ran to the rolled-over Camry first, as the smoke billowing from underneath the engine concerned him. The Camry's horn finally faded out just as police and ambulance sirens sounded in the distance. The dazed Camry driver tried to stand up in his delirious state and nearly fell back onto the glass-covered pavement. Greg caught the man just in time.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The man's dark sunglasses were cracked and slanted on his face. “My wife,” he said. “We need to get to the hospital.” He pushed past Greg to get to his wife. She was hanging upside down in her seat, unconscious.

The driver of the truck, a big, round man in a football jersey, seemed dazed too, and squinted through the blood covering his face from a wound on his forehead. More people began to gather around as the emergency responders neared. Greg, however, seemed to be the only person actively doing anything.

He knelt to the ground and saw the woman still hanging there as her husband stood at her door, trying to get it open. The potent smells of gasoline and smoke were in the air, and he saw some quick electrical sparks ignite inside the engine's hood. It didn't look good.

“We need to get to the hospital. She's pregnant!” the man shouted. It appeared he was still in shock and had little idea of what was really going on.

Greg crawled into the driver's side and saw the woman hanging with her arms in the air, touching the ceiling. The car was filling with smoke by the second. “What's her name?” he shouted.

The man knelt down beside Greg and peered in the car. “Oh God! What happened?”

“Her name!”

“E-Evelyn!”

Greg crawled along the ceiling, across glass, loose change, and debris, trying to see if he could squeeze through to the passenger side and pull the woman out. The car's middle console acted as a barricade, preventing him from going any farther. The smoke was getting increasingly thicker.

“Evelyn!” he called out. He could see the woman's protruding, pregnant stomach under her shirt. She looked ready to burst. He placed his hand on her shoulder and shook her. “Evelyn, we need to get you out of here. Wake up!”

She gave no response. Greg crawled out and told the man to go around to the other side. “I can't get through, we've got to try her door!”

The man still seemed unsure of what to do. Greg ran around to the passenger-side door and immediately pulled on the handle. The door had been crushed in and was jammed completely; however, the window was still intact.

“Shit!” Greg said. He kicked the window to no avail.

“What do we do?” the man asked.

Greg jumped up. “Wait here,” he said, running to his van. An ambulance and two police cars pulled up with their sirens blaring. The paramedics rushed out and went immediately to the Camry, a tad overwhelmed by the scene. A firetruck sounded from around the block. Traffic on all sides of the intersection was at a confused halt. The disastrous crash had garnered the attention of onlookers in and outside of every nearby shop. The elderly woman was still in her car with the airbag against her face. The bloody-faced man tried to assess the damage to his car and was plenty stunned himself.

Greg swung open the back doors to his van and pulled out a small emergency roadside kit, resembling a tool box. He slammed the doors shut and ran back to the Camry, where the paramedics were trying to open the passenger-side door.

“The door is jammed,” the young male paramedic said.

His female counterpart came around to try to help, but they couldn’t get it opened.

“I've got something that will help,” Greg said, breathing hard from the run. The paramedics looked at him curiously as he set the kit onto the ground. He opened it and revealed a tool unlike anything they had seen before. It was a relatively inexpensive, all-in-one seatbelt cutter and window breaker emergency escape tool.

“We don't have much time,” Greg said, moving to the window. “And you might wanna step back.”

He placed the spring-loaded tip of the escape tool
against the window, pushed the trigger, and the window shattered. Smoke rushed out, nearly engulfing them, and the paramedics managed to cut the woman’s seatbelt and carefully pull her from the car. The man finally came to his senses just as the medics placed his wife on a wheeled gurney. Within moments of the paramedics moving her away from the car, the fire department showed up with a large tow truck following behind. The electrical sparks continued, and flames began to shoot from the engine.

The man followed the paramedics with his wife as they put an oxygen mask over her dirty face. “She was going into contractions! Please help her!” The paramedics urged the man to remain calm and step back as they loaded his wife into the ambulance.

Greg urged the police and other onlookers to stay away from the Camry, as the flames grew in strength and continued to spread. In moments, firemen swarmed the scene and extinguished the fire with ten-pound canisters of thick coolant. Greg ran over to the Buick and tapped on the window, causing the elderly driver to look up. Her door was locked, and the window was locked as well. He used the emergency escape tool once again and shattered the window with one push of the spring-loaded tip. Upon impact, the glass fell apart in sections as if imploding. Pieces of glass fell onto the woman, and Greg was quick to brush them off.

“Ma'am? Ma'am, are you okay?”

She looked up at him.

“It's all right,” Greg said. “You've been in an accident, but everything is going to be okay.”

She nodded knowingly, and Greg reached inside and slowly opened the door. “Let's get you out of there,” Greg said, taking her hand.

“Hey, just what do you think you're doing?” one of the police officers asked, approaching.

“I'm trying to help. Think you can give me a hand?” Greg answered.

The police officer grumbled and joined Greg in assisting the woman out of her damaged car.

Greg talked softly to the elderly woman, who was still lost in space. “I'm Greg. What's your name?”

“Reba,” she said.

“Reba, how are you feeling? Do you need medical attention?”

“My knees hurt,” the woman said.

“Wait here with this officer, and I'll go get someone,” Greg said. He ran off, leaving her to the officer’s questions.

“What is your age? How do you feel? License and registration, please.”

Her legs shook as her long, checkered dress fluttered in the wind.

Before long, the emergency responders had gotten everything under control. Reba, the elderly woman, was placed into the same ambulance as Evelyn, who had finally regained consciousness. Though she hadn't gone into labor yet, the paramedics were concerned by her irregular contractions. Her husband was irate with concern about the accident, blissfully unaware that his running the red light was the primary cause. In his haste to get his wife to the hospital, he hadn’t even seen the lights change. The police had their hands full with cleanup and had to call another tow truck to help remove all the vehicles.

The bloody-faced man refused to go to the hospital and insisted that he was fine after they bandaged his face. He thought his vehicle was fine, and just wanted to go home.

“Look, I'm fine, okay? My truck's fine. It's a little smashed up, but the guy cut out right in front me. We'll work it all out with the insurance company.”

The police noticed something a little off about the man and asked him to submit to an alcohol test.

The man was beside himself. “Are you kidding me? I'm not the one who ran the fucking red light!”

Near the ambulance, the Camry man was in the middle of an argument of his own with the paramedics. Apparently there wasn't enough room for him to ride in the ambulance with his wife.

“I need to be there for my wife, especially if she goes into labor!” he shouted.

“Sir, you can get a ride with one of the officers if need be,” the female paramedic said.

“I already asked!” the man yelled. “They're directing traffic right now.”

Traffic was building on all sides of the intersection, and the police were doing their best to control it.

Greg took his traffic kit, and after giving the police a statement, he noticed the Camry man making a scene near the ambulance—enough so that he was gaining the attention of nearby officers. Greg sighed and looked at his watch. It seemed to him there was only one choice to make before the situation got out of control.

“Sir,” Greg said, approaching the man. Both the female paramedic and the man swung around as the ambulance idled. Only moments ago, they had put Reba and Evelyn inside.

Greg continued. “I'll take you to the hospital.”

“What?” the man asked, confused.

“I said, I'll give you a ride. Come on, let's go.”

The paramedic patted the man on the shoulder. “I'd take him up on the offer,” she said. “But we have to get your wife to the hospital.” With that, she opened the back doors to the ambulance, jumped inside, and closed them. The ambulance's sirens sounded as it hurried off, leaving Greg and the man in the dust.

The man looked at Greg with a sad look of remorse.

“Gee, I'm sorry I got so worked up. You're the guy who helped my wife.”

Greg stuck his hand out. “Name's Greg.”

“Trevor,” the man said, shaking his hand.

“Follow me, Trevor,” Greg said, walking toward his van.

Just as quickly as it had happened, the crash scene was nearly cleaned up, with only some debris remaining in the middle of the intersection. They got into Greg's
Red Light Home Security
van and drove off in haste, hoping to reach Carson Tahoe hospital before any other misfortunes intruded.

At the CDC Headquarters in Druid Hills, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, the phones were abuzz. There was an unusual amount of movement within the offices on the various floors of the large and secretive building. The latest US Ebola cases couldn't have come at a worse time for the agency, as they were in the process of launching an ambitious public relations campaign to celebrate the end of Ebola in West Africa. The agency had felt vindicated by their success in battling the disease thus far.

It had been a rough year for the CDC, but the progress made in West Africa was an encouraging sign that they were on the right path, despite their detractors in the media and elsewhere. No one knew this better than the CDC director, Dr. Theodore Robbins.

He had been director for the past three years, and explaining the agency's role while spearheading an enormous public relations campaign to defend their response was like nothing he had experienced in his entire career as health advisor and disease expert.

It had angered Dr. Robbins that their successes in West Africa were not getting the coverage they deserved. Instead, the media turned critical again, admonishing the agency for the lack of oversight involving returning military service members and medical personnel from West Africa.

“We're not responsible for military policy!” the director shouted during his morning briefing. “How can we possibly be blamed for this?”

Dr. Robbins sat at the head of a large round table with a group of administrators flanking him. The blinds in the rooms were drawn and the lights were off, all but the light of an overhead projector displaying a PowerPoint slideshow of charts and graphs.

He flipped through his files, clearly flustered by the direction the meeting had already taken. Projected on the screen were a series of infographics and illustrations that detailed the “facts” of Ebola as dictated by the CDC. Dr. Robbins had insisted on personally approving all communications and media following the scrutiny the agency had faced over the past year. Now they were dealing with an even larger public relations fiasco: the spread of Ebola in the US.

His assistant director, Ronald Taylor, a true bureaucrat with a slight paunch under his suit and a shiny bald head, adjusted his glasses while thumbing over his notes. The other administrators awkwardly glanced down at their folders, trying not to make eye contact with Dr. Robbins. Though he wouldn't express it, he felt that the White House was stealing the CDC's moment to shine. They should have been commended for containing the outbreak in West Africa, not condemned for the failures of other departments to properly screen returning personnel.

To Dr. Robbins's right, Taylor leaned in closer while tapping his file on the glass table. “The reason the CDC is getting hit now is because the personnel who have contracted Ebola are directly linked to our humanitarian operations in West Africa.”

“I understand that,” Dr. Robbins said. “But we don't know how any of them were infected or what procedures they did or didn't adhere to.”

“The White House wants answers,” a skinny blond woman with glasses interjected from the other side of the table.

“I'm aware of what they want, Martha,” Dr. Robbins said.

“That's not all of it,” Taylor added. “They want the agency back in the spotlight. HHS wants us to take the lead.”

“You mean they want us to take the blame,” Dr. Robbins said.

“You know as well as I that we're going to take the hit on this one,” Taylor said.

Suddenly, Dr. Robbins pounded the table with his fist, startling everyone in the room. He knew the less he toed the line, the greater the chances of being replaced, which would be an embarrassing blow to their fragile public relations campaign. He also knew that Taylor was vying for his position.

One of the other administrators, seated near the end of the table, spoke up. He had a head of thick white hair and large glasses that magnified his eyes. “If I may suggest, sir, we should give the HHS a little pushback. Just enough to say that we're not going to take the hit on this alone.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dr. Robbins noticed his assistant director studying him carefully and guessed he was waiting for him to say the wrong thing.

“Dr. Gretchen, you know that I serve at the behest of the president, and there's little wiggle room in that regard. We will do whatever we can to stay on top and in front of this thing. Now let's move on.”

Dr. Robbins then reopened the briefing file and put his reading glasses on. “We currently have twenty-two confirmed cases of Ebola throughout the United States. The patients are being carefully monitored and treated. And we know that an experimental treatment drug X is still in production and has yet to get approval from the FDA. This agency will therefore make urgent recommendations that hospitals across the country administer mandatory anti-Ebola vaccinations due to the current outbreak.”

Dr. Robbins flipped the file folder closed and slowly took off his glasses. “If we’re going to get front and center on this outbreak, this is what we’ll need: a large presence at the hospitals in question, cooperation with local and state officials, and support from local law enforcement. We’ll need more funding and a larger budget. And lastly, we’ll need to inform the public without inciting panic.”

The blond woman, Martha, spoke up as soon as Dr. Robbins finished. “On that note, sir, I think we should go over the communications resources we have on the screen.” He nodded at her to continue. As she spoke, her attention went from the projection screen to her notes, and back to Dr. Robbins.

“With the recent outbreak in the US, there has been a growing movement among many disease specialists—some who work in this very building—to re-examine the fundamental pathogen of this disease and reassess its spread.”

“We can't very well come out and tell the public that we're ‘reassessing' everything we know about Ebola,” Taylor blurted out, clearly annoyed.

Martha looked at him with indifference. “Perhaps you're aware of a hospital in Nevada, one of many right now, struggling with a potential outbreak.”

“Yes, I've heard of it,” Taylor said.

“Carson Tahoe, to be precise,” Martha said. “In the past forty-eight hours, four staff members have reported high fevers, loss of appetite, and muscle pain. The family of the soldier initially admitted has also reported symptoms, and they are being held in the quarantine ward.”

“It's very simple,” Taylor said. “Someone fucked up. Someone administering the screening process let the infected soldier reenter the country. The solider did not monitor his own symptoms like he was supposed to. The hospital personnel, evidently, have not been following the right procedures. If you ask me, glaring mistakes were made all around.”

Dr. Robbins held his hand the air. “Enough. Obviously we have a serious matter on our hands, and this is what I want.” He stopped and placed his palms flat on the table.

“I want a detailed report of exactly how many people are infected and at what hospitals. I want an assessment of the realistic threat these outbreaks are to the general public. I want an assessment of the size, range, and scope of our response teams. I need this report to be as detailed as possible, so I can share it with the president this afternoon, starting with this Carson Tahoe hospital in Nevada.” Dr. Robbins stopped and looked around the room.

The group at the table confirmed they understood.

“Great, let's get moving on this, people,” Dr. Robbins said, standing up. Everyone stood, and then people began shuffling out of the conference room and into the hall, with a sense of urgency evident in their every step.