Read Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Online

Authors: Victor Methos

Tags: #Thrillers, #Medical, #Retail, #Suspense, #Fiction

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BOOK: Pestilence: A Medical Thriller
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11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At midnight, Howie said goodnight to Sandy and then checked on his daughter. She was asleep in bed, with her earbuds still blaring music. He walked over and gently turned off the iPod and removed the earbuds. She stirred, and her hand went over his. Its softness reminded him of when she was much younger. When she was frightened, she would crawl in between him and her mother without saying a word, hoping they wouldn’t wake up and kick her out to her own room.

Her sneaking into bed
woke Howie every time, but he never said anything.

A pain
shot through his gut, and he didn’t know why. He left his hand there for a moment before pulling away. He went upstairs to his bedroom and showered to rinse off the hot-tub chlorine, then changed into gym shorts and a T-shirt.

He lay on top of the covers,
staring at the ceiling a long time, and found himself drifting off to sleep, but the thought of his daughter continued to intrude on his peace. He exhaled and closed his eyes. Before long, his thoughts dimmed, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

 

 

Howie
wasn’t sure what woke him, but he knew the sounds instantly once he was awake: men shouting and metal grinding on metal. He thought some neighbors were drunk and out causing trouble, but the noises were so loud, and there were so many men shouting, that unless the entire neighborhood was outside right then, it couldn’t have been that.

He went downstairs
, to the window in the living room. Looking out, he saw something he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Hum
vees were rolling down the street, interspersed with jeeps. Both were painted in camo browns and beige. Soldiers were there, too, or what he guessed were soldiers. They were knocking on every door, and if the door didn’t open quickly enough, they kicked it down.

So many soldiers were crowded into the streets that it looked like a concert or a football game going on right outside his house.
They were dragging people out in their pajamas, and some only had on underwear. One of his neighbors was hauled out of his house and thrown into a military truck.

Someone pounded on his front door.
His heart seemed to stop, and he stared at the door as if it were something from another planet.

“National Guard, open the door
!”

The door upstairs opened
, and his daughter came down. “Who is that?”

Just as the words left her lips
, the door exploded inward. His alarm went off as three National Guardsmen stormed in while Jessica was screaming. They grabbed him by the arms, but he didn’t fight until one of them grabbed his daughter.

All three were wearing slim gas masks.

He pulled his arms away and swung at one, connecting with his jaw and sending him back. Then he felt an explosive force against the back of his head, and he was out.

 

 

T
he bouncing brought him around as the military truck rattled down the interstate. Howie came to and looked around. He was lying flat on his back. People were crammed into the truck on seats that lined the truck bed. Next to him, Jessica sat on Sandy’s lap.


Howie,” Sandy said. She slipped Jessica off and bent over him. “Don’t move. You took a nasty blow to the head.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Lay back. Take it easy. Let me look at your head.” She reached back and then brought out her fingers. “It’s not bleeding. How do you feel?”

His head pounded so hard it was giving him a migraine.
Slowly, he sat up. The other people on the truck looked terrified and weren’t talking. Behind them on the interstate was a line of Humvees, jeeps, and trucks. Several choppers, maybe as many as a dozen, flew above them.

“Sandy, what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know.”

The ride was slow
because the interstate was bumper to bumper with military vehicles. Civilian cars, which were empty, many of them with their doors open, were pulled over to the side of the road. He looked back to the cabin of the truck and saw a glass partition between him and the single guardsman who was driving.

Howie
pounded on the glass, but the driver didn’t turn around.

“Sit down,” someone sa
id. Howie turned to him. A middle-aged man in a tank top and boxer shorts caught his glare. “They’ll put you out with tranqs if they see you getting upset. They did that to me. Sit down.”


Who are these people?”

“Army and National Guard. Now sit down before they
tranq all of us.”

Howie
squeezed in between Sandy and the woman next to her. He was dizzy from the blow to his head, and when he glanced down, he noticed for the first time that he was in gym shorts.

“I was in bed,” Sandy said, “and two men ran into my room. I started screaming
, and they pulled me out of bed and threw a sweatshirt at me that was on the floor. They pulled me out and stuck me here. When I got in, Jessica was standing over you, and you were unconscious.”

“Is it a terrorist attack?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell us anything.”

The road smoothed
, and the truck turned off at an exit near the beach. It rode right out onto the sand and stopped. Several guardsmen came and unlatched the back, then shouted for them to get off. Slowly, they climbed out of the truck.

Howie
put his arm around Jessica and whispered, “Stay behind me.”

He
climbed off and waited for his daughter. Two guardsmen were escorting them around the truck when Howie saw why they had brought them there.

Built right on the sand was a massive fence with barbed wire around the top. Two towers were
arranged around it, and inside the perimeter, green canvas tents were set up down the beach as far as he could see.

This was
a camp.

Someone
pushed him from behind and told him to keep moving. He held tightly to Jessica as they walked with the crowds. The people were surprisingly docile. The fight in them had been spent. Now they were in unfamiliar territory and at the mercy of men with guns.

Beyond
the gates, a guardsman with glasses stood at the front. He glanced up at them. “Men to the right. Women to the left.”

“No,
Howie, don’t let me go there,” Jessica said.

“Please,”
Howie said. “She’s my daughter.”

The man pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and looked them over. “Fine. But she’s your
responsibility. We will not be held for anything that happens to her.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Just keep moving.”

Howie
nodded, and they were led to the right, down a gated path that opened up onto a section of beach. He saw nothing but tents, cots, and men. Most of them were standing around talking, but a few had already lain down on the cots or gone inside the tents to sleep.

His daughter was holding his leg
tightly, and he glanced down, then put his arm around her.

12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Samantha sat on top of that hill for several minutes. She could just go about her life
as if nothing were wrong and wait for her sister to contact her. That would probably be best. She had her mother to look after, and the nurses could only do so much. But it wasn’t like Jane to not contact her; whatever the government planned to do had already begun.

She bit her thumbnail as she stood up
. She paced for a moment before pulling out her phone.

She tried
to book a flight to LAX or John Wayne in Orange County, but no airline would allow her credit card payment to go through. She kept getting an error message and being redirected to the main site. Flights must have been cut off. She checked the clock on her phone, then dialed Duncan’s number.

“Hey,” he said, out of breath.

“Hey. What’re you doing?”

“Elliptical. What’s up?”

“Sorry. I know you hate people interrupting your workout.”

“No biggie.”

“So, you get access to military flights, don’t you?”


Sure, all military employees do.”

“Could you book passage for someone else?”

“Only if I went with them. Why?” A pause. “Oh. Oh no, you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“She’s in trouble, Duncan. I know it.”

“Sam, it’s not going to be like that. At least, I don’t think. She should be fine. They just want to make sure people are safe. And besides, you haven’t heard anything on the news yet, right?”

“It won’t be on the news this time. In Oahu
, they made it public, and the virus still made it to the mainland. They’re going to keep it as quiet as possible.”

“Well
, I haven’t heard anything, and there’re at least twenty high-ranking army guys in my building.”

“Duncan, I know she’s in trouble.”

“Well, look, we’ll book a flight out there on Southwest or something, and—”

“You can’t book a flight. You can’t call anyone. All the communication lines are down.”

“What? Hold on a sec.” He paused again, much longer this time. “That’s weird,” he finally said when he got back on.

“I have to get out there.”

“Why? What could you even do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve dealt with this virus before
, and—”

“And it almost got you killed.”

Flashes entered her mind of a man inside her home—flashes of pain, motion, and blood. The trauma hadn’t fully settled in yet, and it still stung as if it had happened just the day before. She suddenly grew uneasy, and her finger traced the outline of the mace in her pocket.

“I know. But I need to get out there.”

Duncan mumbled something under his breath and then said, “Fine. I’ll get us passage tomorrow on the next plane going out.”

“I’d like to go tonight. Right now.”

“Why?”

“It’s going to be chaotic at first
, and there won’t be any precedents. It’d be good just in case we need to pull some strings to get back out.”

“Get back out? What do you think’s happening there, Sam?”

“I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling about it.”

13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Howie
sat on a cot with his daughter lying down behind him. She was listening to her iPod and falling asleep. Kids seemed to have an amazing ability to sleep through almost anything. He glanced at her and then back out over the men. An uncomfortable thought came over him. She was the only female he’d seen on this side of the fence.

Guards walked the
perimeter and were stationed on makeshift towers that seemed to be rising higher as time went on. But the crowds were so dense, they weren’t able to pay attention to everything.

The man in the cot across from him was also sitting down and nervously rubbing his hands together. He smiled at
Howie. “You ever been through something like this?”

“No,”
Howie said. “I don’t even really know what
this
is.”

“I was
talkin’ to some o’ the other guys, and they said it had to do with the sickness.”

“What sickness?”

“That flu or whatever that was in Hawaii some time back. You remember when they had to shut down the airport and all that?”

He did remember hearing something about it on NPR. But the public was so jumpy that anything unusual would set off a panic
, so he hadn’t paid attention to it. Avian flu, one of the most ridiculously docile viruses in history, had caused an enormous panic that triggered a drop in commodity and stock prices as people were anticipating Armageddon-like devastation. And of course, nothing happened. He had thought the virus they were reporting on in Hawaii had been something similar and that some doctor working for the government would come out and say it was nothing.

“I do remember that,” he said. “What does this have to do with it?”

“It’s here, man. At least, that’s what they say. That it’s on the mainland, and they’re closin’ off California.”

“The entire state? That’s impossible. The border’s hundreds of miles long.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. That’s just what they sayin’.”

Lighting was sparse
, but out of nowhere, the entire beach was engulfed with illumination. Massive floodlights connected to generators turned on. The lighting was harsh and felt like the sun. A crowd entered both the men’s and the women’s sides, and couples spoke to each other through the chain-link fence, calming crying spouses and children.

“This is monstrous,”
Howie said. “They can’t do this.”

“Already did it, man. It’s done.” He put out his hand. “I’m Mike
, by the way.”


Howie.”

“Well,
Howie, I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but this is about the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. Damn near shit my pants when them guardsmen broke inta my house.”

Howie
glanced around the space. He recognized only two ways to get out: the entrance he had come through and an entrance at the back that was sealed with a massive steel lock. Howie rose and said, “Mike, keep an eye on her for a second, would you?”

“No problem.”

He walked past Mike and across the sand to the other entrance. A floodlight was directly on it, so he didn’t go near. The lock was at least five inches thick. Howie glanced back to make sure Jessica was all right, and Mike was sitting in the sand next to her, anxiously glancing around at the other men who were pouring in.

“Keep moving.”

Howie turned around and saw a guardsman staring at him through the fence. “Excuse me?”

“I said
, keep moving. We don’t want any guests near the entrances.”

“Guests? Is that what we are?
’Cause I certainly don’t feel like a guest.”

A crowd
of several men was gathering behind him, some shouting things. Others stood quietly by and eyed the guardsman. The guard seemed to notice, and he puffed out his chest, a steely resolve in his eyes.

“I said
, get back,” he shouted, pulling the semi-automatic rifle strapped to his back.

“What are you going to
do? Shoot us?” Howie asked. “For what? Why are we even here?”

“I won’t ask you again
. Get back!”

“I want a lawyer,”
Howie said.

The men behind him were shouting
, and several guardsmen had run over. The first one bit his lip, glanced around, and opened the door. When the lock was off, Howie rushed in, several guardsmen behind him. Howie thought he might be arrested, but the guardsman raised his rifle, and he realized that wasn’t what was going on.

The butt of the rifle hit his nose so hard
that he flew off his feet. Men were shouting, and fists were flying before he heard shots and screaming. As he tried to get up, a guardsman slammed his rifle into him, and he fell back to the sand, staring up at the moonlit sky through a fog.

BOOK: Pestilence: A Medical Thriller
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