Red Death: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (4 page)

The next morning, Tara decided to call Mary with what they’d seen. She picked up on the second ring.

“Mary, I’m getting scared. A huge line of military trucks went by at four in the morning. I counted sixty-seven after I got up to look out, and they’d been going past a while before I got to the window.”

“Oh, no,” Mary worried. “I just heard from our neighbor Anna down at the end of the street. She ran to the store early this morning. Two soldiers were outside the entrance holding a little radar-gun looking thing pointed at each person’s head before they went in! She said they stopped one guy, and someone in a spacesuit led him around the corner, behind the store. She didn’t know where.”

“Oh, dear God.” Tara hung up and stood there in a daze.
It’s on. They’re checking for fever.

To her it felt like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting, waiting.
It’s you who’s waiting, Tara, that’s why it seems that way.
She walked into the kitchen and stood staring at the cans in the pantry. She felt very protective over them somehow. She really wanted to laugh at her foolishness, but couldn’t.

Deep down, she knew there wasn’t enough to sustain them for long. Not nearly long
enough
anyway. Before the media went quiet on the stories about Ebola, they’d been reporting a maximum 21 days from Ebola exposure to symptoms. But Tara did some research and read about a few people showing symptoms at 30 days and beyond. So ideally, she and Lee needed enough food to last them through the initial “die off,” and maybe the second wave too.  That was a long time.  Even if the average case showed symptoms by 21 days, the second wave would be 42 days.

The WHO and CDC’s rules originally claimed two 21 day quarantine periods without a new case meant the outbreak was over. So, she and Lee needed 42 days of food in a best case scenario. However, Tara thought 60 days was probably more like it, to really be safe.

Sixty days. We’re gonna run out long before that.
She stared into the stacked rows of cans uneasily.
We need enough to be able to bug out for six months.
I’d feel better if we had that much. That’s 180 days of food.
At three cans of food each per day, that was 1,080 cans!

They
didn’t
have that much. If they were careful, maybe they could go a month. Tara’s dark sense of humor kicked in again.
Well
,
I’ve been meaning to lose some weight.

She walked to the window and looked out. It was October now, and leaves were falling. Their yard was a long one, surrounded by trees and bordered by an alley in back. A squirrel scampered across the grass, and another one ran down a tree trunk to meet it.
I wonder if we can eat the squirrels. Monkeys and bats carry Ebola. They know that for sure. And maybe dogs, that’s why they took Marla’s, I bet. Would boiling meat kill the virus, if the squirrels carried it? And what about rabbits? We have food sources right in our own yard, if things get bad enough.
The squirrels raced around obliviously, unaware of their impending nutritional status.

Just then, her cell phone rang. It was Mary.

“It’s almost dark. I want to go look over across the gravel pit at the old Kmart store down the road. Will you two go with me later on? I think we need to go on foot, so as not to draw their attention. By the way, my friend Anna went out again, and when she got back, someone had broken in and ransacked her house. Worst thing is they stole almost all her food! She’d been stockpiling for a while, like us. So, I don’t know what to think!”

The thought of break-ins in the neighborhood freaked Tara out. “Oh no! I sure hope it’s not a trend, because none of these homes are very secure. Yeah, I’d like to go see what’s going on down at Kmart too. Call me in two hours.”

She hung up and told Lee what Mary wanted to do. Surprisingly, he was game and wanted to go as well. Tara told him about the break-in just a few houses down, and the fact that they stole food. Lee didn’t say anything, but she could tell this disturbed him. It definitely disturbed her.

Lee went off to the basement to finish his ongoing organization project. Tara stood in the kitchen thinking. The terrible feeling that she hadn’t thought of everything nagged at her.

A sudden noise from the church building on the other side of their house made her jump, and she backed away from where she stood near the window.
Someone’s out there!

Chapter 4

The thin, wavy glass pane between Tara and God knew what, struck terror into her heart. She couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
It’s not safe in here, really. We have a little food—just enough for somebody to take from us.
She glanced up at the tall window, then over at the back door with its large glass opening. Panic nearly stopped her breath.
This house is full of ways in, all over the ground floor! We have to get them covered.
She peered out at the church and parsonage again but could see no threat.
Maybe it was just squirrels on the roof. They’re thick out there this year.

But Tara still walked through the downstairs of the big old house, counting.
Eleven windows and doors! Twelve if you count the basement landing, more if you count the basement windows. Oh, my God.

She could hear Lee still tinkering somewhere in the basement. “Lee, come up here!” Tara called. “Hurry,” she added, as she heard him slowly moving up the stairs.
There’s no way he’s going to go for this, but I have to try.

Tara grabbed his arm. “We need to cover the windows. I heard something over at the church. You know the parsonage has been empty for almost a year, so no one should be there, anywhere. Maybe it’s a squirrel on the roof, but someone could be breaking in looking for stuff.

“Tara, calm down, what are you talking about?”

“Look!” she pointed at the back door, then at the window over the sink, then toward the pantry where the large window looked out over their backyard.

“What?” asked Lee, baffled.

“The windows! They’re everywhere.” Tara pulled him toward the pantry. She took his hand and placed it on the thin glass. “Is this really all you want between us and some thug looking for food?” Tara finally saw recognition dawn on Lee’s face.

“It’s coming, Lee. I just know it is. All those dreams I keep having, it’s a warning. The military trucks, the grates on big box stores, it’s all a warning. And if I’m wrong, if I’m being a fool, I will not say a word when you make fun of me for the rest of our lives, but I don’t think I’m wrong. Not this time.”

There
had
been other times. When the twin towers were destroyed, Tara bought a few prepper supplies, which still moldered on her basement shelf, along with the inherited supply from her mom. But ever since, fear simmered in her heart and Tara thought of it now as the fear that had groomed her for this. Was this anxiety really just preparing her for Ebola, for the end of the world?

“Tara, I hate to go too far with this, I mean, my God, people will think we’re crazy!”

“I know it’s probably too soon, Lee, but please can we at least cover the downstairs? I’ll help you take it down if nothing more happens, I promise!” Lee sighed and his shoulders slumped. Tara knew he’d given in.
Part of him believes it too.

“I’m not a crazy-woman, Lee. I really feel like this is it!”

Almost afraid to leave the windows with someone making noise over at the parsonage, Tara finally followed Lee to the attic. They dug in the huge pile of junk near the chimney and came up with several old oak headboards and a couple tabletops. Tara helped carry them down to the upstairs landing, one by one, mentally ticking off which item would close off which window or door.

“I’m not as worried about the second floor, not yet anyway.” Tara slid a table down the short flight of stairs to the foyer with Lee pulling the other end. “Do you have enough nails?”

Lee nodded. “Got a lot of screws too if need be.” He had always built projects over the years, and lucky for them both, they were total packrats. They very rarely threw anything away. Tara liked to think of this as a sort of insurance, harking back to their early days of being very poor. After they started making more money, pure laziness kept her from having a huge yard sale and clearing it all out.

“I’d like to leave a little slit, so light comes in and we can see.” They began in the kitchen, Tara holding up the wood and Lee nailing it into place. For the most strategic window in the pantry, Lee used two smaller pieces of wood from the basement. This left an inch wide gap between the slats.
Enough to see and enough to stick a gun barrel through,
she thought grimly. She stared out at the rose bush in the backyard, the rose hips now prominent on the stems.
I seem to recall you can make tea out of those…

She vaguely remembered a book she’d picked up at a yard sale out of curiosity. It was something about backyard foraging, and that’s where the rose hip memory came from.
God help us modern women. We don’t know how to do anything.

As Lee worked on pounding the last nails, Tara ran upstairs to the bookcase. She found the book and brought it down where she could look at it later. Just then, her cell phone rang. It was Mary. Tara blurted out what she’d talked Lee into doing, hoping for some sort of validation.

“I begged Lee to board up all our ground floor windows and doors. He’s working on that at the moment, but he’s almost done. He thought I was crazy before, but now, he’s ready to commit me,” Tara told her sheepishly.

“Ask him if he’ll help me do mine. I only have four.” Tara was relieved to hear Mary was on the same page as her about the window boarding. Tara told her to meet them out back in another hour, and volunteered her husband for Mary’s windows too. Lee just rolled his eyes at her, good natured to the end.

They finished with the downstairs and Tara felt silly, but safe. It was a chilly fall night for early October and they grabbed their jackets. Tara had a red one on at first, until Lee pointed out how visible it was. She changed into all black.

They closed the door behind them and met Mary coming down their drive. “Let’s go see what this military thing is all about,” said the older woman.

Lee held Tara’s hand as they walked quietly through the oddly unlighted neighborhood, which Lee noticed first. They took the dark country road at the edge of town, which led to the gravel pit about a mile from their house. They could hear sounds coming from there, long before they arrived within sight of it.

A grassy area along the blacktopped road ended in a bulldozed pile of dirt from the excavation site below. They approached the lip of the now overgrown gravel pit where the abandoned Kmart sat on the far side, seven hundred yards away. The three of them ducked down the last few feet, creeping closer until they could see. Then they crouched there in the grass, staring at the phenomenon rising in the distance. It looked for all the world like a huge field hospital.

~

The virus waited on surfaces everywhere now: on doorknobs and handles of doors to the most populated stores, on hard plastic armrests in doctor’s offices, on airport chairs, on smooth molded tabletops in food courts. Fast food workers—required by law to wear disposable gloves but not always complying— touched each hamburger bun, leaving virus particles as they assembled sandwiches. Cashiers at the largest chain stores took in money and passed the virus back out in bills and change. The Zaire strain of Ebola survived up to seven weeks on glass. It survived dried on surfaces, or in liquid like vomitus and mucus. It survived in temperatures as low as 39 degrees Fahrenheit. It rode along on fingers, which then rubbed eyes, wiped noses, or bit at a hangnail. Then it nestled into the soft, warm, membranes of nostrils, gums, lungs, and eyes and multiplied for an average of eight to ten days.  Headache, muscle aches, sore throat and fever then began, and the virus cycle continued, shedding from the skin and body fluids of the host. Every handshake at every gathering and party, at every workstation and each workplace, it waited and took hold, silently, aggressively, completely.

The hosts went about their daily routines, shedding virus particles thoroughly everywhere they went. A tiny little fever was no biggie. No one could afford to stay home sick because of that. Therefore, Ebola was efficiently distributed to all, regardless of race, color, creed, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, or marital status. It was a true, equal-opportunity killer.

~

“What in God’s name?” hissed Mary between clenched teeth, and Tara shushed her with a gentle touch on the arm.

“Wow,” breathed Lee. Tara just stared in horror at the scene.

Below them spread out around the old Kmart building were tents, at least ten of them, and large ones too.  The original Kmart parking lot lights were on, as well as five or six tall lighting trees, which rose above generators thrumming with power. Military trucks were parked all around the building, and men in camouflage uniforms walked back and forth, carrying building materials. From the looks of it, some stood guard, both at the front and rear of the building.

“What are they doing? Do you think they’re expecting to fill this place with patients?”

Lee shook his head while both she and Mary stared at him. “I think it’s already filled.”

Tara scanned the scene down across the pit, fastening her eyes onto what looked like a fleet of smaller ambulance type vehicles and white vans. Just then, headlights approached around the side of the old store and they watched as one of the smaller vehicles stopped near the rear entrance. A team of hazmat-suited workers exited the building and approached it. The rear hatch was opened, and two plastic encased stretcher type objects were lifted out. You couldn’t really see what was in them. They were completely enclosed in white plastic interspersed with clear panels. The suited people, who disappeared with their burdens into the building, carried these two large objects on each end.

“There’s someone contagious in each of those pods,” Lee told them.

“Oh, my God, Lee, this is really happening, isn’t it? It’s really going on, right now, right down there!”

Mary encircled Tara’s shoulder with one arm. “I think it is, Tara.”

“I can’t quite see for all these bushes,” Lee said. He rose to his knees then stood.

“Lee, stay down! They’ve gone to all this trouble to keep this under wraps, what do you think they’d do if they saw you spying?” Tara pulled at his pants leg and Mary joined in. “She’s right, Lee, let’s get out of here.”

“Okay, just a minute.” He took two steps, climbing up on the soft dirt at the lip of the gravel pit. The sudden noise of an approaching vehicle on the country road behind them caused Tara to cry out to Lee to get down. As the van’s headlights swept around the bend, Lee was briefly silhouetted in its lights. He made a quick move to jump back, and the dirt beneath his feet gave way. Instantly, he was gone, tumbling forward into the pit.

Tara barely stopped herself from screaming. She heard Lee’s grunt of pain and the sound of him hitting the rocks hard.

“Oh no,” Mary cried softly. They stayed crouched in the grass until the white van went by and disappeared down the road. They hadn’t seen him. Then Tara scrambled to the edge and looked over. Mary joined her.

Lee was groaning softly, pulling himself back up. He hadn’t fallen far.

“I fell on my leg. It bent up behind me!” 

Tara saw his grimace of pain and sprang into action. “Mary, help me. We’ve got to get him back up here.” The two women gingerly planted their feet in the soft soil on the other side of the pile of dirt, as Lee crawled to them. Grasping his hands, they pulled for all they were worth. Lee’s two-hundred-pound-plus frame inched slowly toward them. Tara’s fear for him rose up, nearly choking her, but she was more afraid they would be discovered spying on the medical facility.

“Mary, come on, pull, just a foot more.” The women struggled and grunted, and Lee pushed with his good leg until he finally heaved his chest across the top of the dirt pile.

“My God, we’ve got to get you out of here!” Tara was in a panic, staring at the vehicles now leaving the parking lot below. “They could come up here any minute!” She knelt beside Lee to survey the damage. Mary was already running her hand down his right leg to ascertain where the injury was. Lee winced as she felt along the outside of his knee.

“I heard it crack, Mary. And I feel sick at my stomach, just like I did when I broke my arm years ago.”

“I think you’re right, Lee. I believe it’s broken. It’s a common break when you fall with your leg bent under you—it’s the outer bone, the smaller one called the fibula”

Tara wiped Lee’s face with her shirt. He had broken out in a cold sweat. “I think I might be sick,” he said. Tara glanced around, and saw there were dense bushes just a short distance away from them along the road.

“Lee, we’ve got to get you out of sight. Mary, grab his arm. Let’s drag him over there behind those bushes, so no one can see us.”

Lee groaned, but was able to help them push off a little. It was obvious he was in severe pain. They pulled him behind a clump of brush, and Tara knelt there. “Lee, what should we do? How can we get you home? We need to call the ambulance, get you to the ER.”

“No way!” he erupted. “I’m not going to the ER. Go in for a broken leg, you come out with Ebola! Mary, how much do you know about breaks? Can you rig me up with something?”

The older woman nodded. “If it
is
broken, these are painful breaks, Lee, but they heal fairly well because it’s the non-weight-bearing bone there on the outside of the leg. In fact, I may even have an air cast at home that will fit you. But you’re going to be in a lot of pain for a while, and will have to keep the leg iced and propped up.”