Sealed In (21 page)

The President came on the news; his wife and daughter passed away. He didn’t look good. Maybe he should have gone into a safe location.

Rolling power outages due to lack of employees caused the news to be sporadic and only hourly until eleven p.m. I caught a segment on body disposal. The federal government was no longer responsible for bodies. There was very little news about other countries on the stations. I guess everyone worried about themselves.

The newscaster spoke as handy dandy tips on what to do with decreased family members scrolled the screen as if directions for baking a cake.

Each community was responsible for their own body landfill.

Each family was responsible for their own deceased. They had to prep the body, wrap it, and bring it to the landfill.

It was odd because I saw a similar scene in a Vincent Price movie, an old black and white movie that was later redone with Charlton Heston. I remember Vincent Price’s character carrying his wife or daughter to the landfill and rolling her over the hill where a perpetual fire burned. Workers kept the flames going as if it were some steel mill.

From the station wagon to the pit. His heart broke. He wanted to roll down that hill and join her. The world was void of caring people. No one really cared when the world around them died.

I suppose that was happening now.

I remember seeing that film and thinking that they were far off, that would never happen. But it was happening. Like in the movie, so many were dying there weren’t enough left to bury the dead.

When it is all said and done, and I pray there are still many left, I believe there’ll be too many bodies to remove. I believe cities will be torn down, burned. Forgotten. All those people who lived lives, dreamed, and loved would never be any more than a statistic.

Over dinner, Del expressed concern over the lack of news. What would happen when it stopped? How would we know what to expect when we emerged?

We run on generator power, and above us are cameras. We can watch the lobby, outside the center, and a little of the street. I declined watching.

The news is reality enough. I didn’t need to see the world outside.

I wasn’t ready.

Day 97 of the virus – 55% infected

64 days until I am forced to see what lies above.

The United States sits at the highest infection rate. Russia is rapidly catching up. We never heard anything from them regarding a vaccine. China, however, seems to have pulled through. From their underground ‘doomsday’ lab, they seem to have cracked the code. They believe they have what they are calling the morning after vaccine. It works before exposure and within twenty-four hours of exposure. They started testing.

Phone contact isn’t guaranteed; Chad is hoping for results soon. Chad could create the vaccine and test it down here, but even if it worked, there was no way to produce more than a hundred doses here in the facility.

A hundred doses was really nothing.

China and India were still on the low end of the infection rate. They told Chad that if the vaccine proved successful, they would inoculate all those within the facility and go topside by overriding the seal. China could do that. We could not.

Even if we could, the United States didn’t have the resources or the bodies to mass produce the serum. We lost all power two days ago. While we still had generators, the rest of the US lives in the dark.

China’s plan was to mass-produce the serum with help from India and Japan. However, best-case scenario was three months, realistically six.

A little too late for this side of the world.

Day 108 of the virus – 68% infected.

53 days left until the seal is broken.

It took Chad Walker nearly two weeks to copy the serum successfully. He refused to believe, despite what the Chinese had told him, that it worked, and then he ran simple lab tests. It looked promising.

China had informed him they had already moved into mass production.

They had power, they had news, and we had dark.

Five days ago, four people volunteered to be test subjects. Two would get the vaccine before exposure, two after.

Del was one of those people. I was so angry. He and I had just actually started to become friends, and he did that.

It angered me that his reasoning was weak. He owed it to nobody to be a guinea pig, but he did anyhow.

I spent the days watching the surveillance. Everybody did at one time or another. Eight monitors and someone always caught something.

At first, there were many people coming in and out of the CDC. They weren’t workers. Somewhere in everything that happened, Chad and Edward failed to tell us the CDC closed down. We learned that when we saw the broken glass.

People were desperate, looking for things.

Fires burned; we could see them better at night.

Every once in a while, someone would point out movement.

Was that a person? I think so, yes.

Del survived the testing. The serum worked both as a vaccine and as a morning-after treatment. It was a shallow victory, but Edward was happy. He spoke to his wife and believed it was the last time he’d speak to her until he went to their safe house.

Her generator power was fading and the phones would be out of commission.

They were still healthy, and Edward wanted to deliver the vaccine himself.

The woman that cooks our meals gave a lot of us haircuts. It passed the time and prepped us for the world in our final days in the facility.

Chad began working on producing doses of the serum. He’d give it to everyone in the shelter and extra to those who needed to take it to family members they knew were alive.

Last, we spoke to China; they insisted they would drop vaccines once they provided for their own.

Would it even matter?

Day 135 of the virus – 72% infected.

26 days to go.

This is my last entry in the journal. I am now packing what few things I have in a survivor backpack to take with me on my journey.

I have no idea how Del and I will get to Montana, but we will. We will.

Edward will find his wife, and Chad said he was confident his wife went into their home’s safe room. He designed it for such an event. It was the first he spoke of his wife the entire time here, at least to me.

There is nothing left up there, at least in Atlanta. The last movement we saw on the street was ten days ago.

We watch. Every day, diligently, we watch for any speck of movement. Even a rat. Nothing. I wonder what waits for us above. It has been so long since I saw the sun, felt the warmth. It was snowing when I came down here.

We will emerge
into a completely dead world. Will it be violent? Will those who survived this plague of horror be shells of human beings caring less for each other, or did they band together as survivors, making communities?

Did the Vice President come out of hiding, rally the troops, and start things? We don’t know. We lost all ability to communicate with anyone.

We may have lights, but we are in the dark.

The doses are done, sealed, and packed. But it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does, just as a safeguard against future infections.

But when the timer counts down and the door opens, we will walk into a world that is safe from infection. Not because the infection was cured, but because every person that was to get sick … got sick. Every person that was to die has died.

There are no more hosts to spread the virus.

God help us all, and I pray, I just pray all is not lost.

Day 159 of the virus – we stopped keeping track of the infected.

Two more days left.

Like schoolchildren waiting for recess, they lined up in front of the only exit door that was viable. The clock counted down.

Edward seemed the most enthusiastic, waiting to go to find his family. It was a six-hour drive that he hoped to begin right away. He had to go first; he had gasoline stored at the house.

If, of course, the house was still there.

Andy stood with Del and carried a small pack over his shoulder. It was from Chad.

“There are sixty more days of the medication in there,” Chad told Andy. “After that I can’t guarantee if the stutter will come back or if you’ll be able to get more. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and find some marijuana.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Andy replied. “I’ll deal.” He was excited. His stomach twitched in hopefulness and fear, and then the counter reached zero.

The buzz went through him like an electric shock. There was a hiss as Edward reached for the door. It opened.

The journey topside was no less than eighteen flights of stairs, a marathon of exercise Del and Andy were more than ready for.

The others were not. They stumbled and stopped, rested, then moved. Andy and Del ended up leading the way. The staircase led to the far end of the employee-parking garage. That was where Edward hoped the car would be, a car left there by Martha.

Andy wasn’t even winded when he reached the top, Del right at his side. He looked over the banister and hollered down. “I’m gonna go check it out. Stay put. We just don’t know.” He then turned to Del and told him to hang tight, and Andy alone opened that final door.

There was a spring smell to the air, and it wasn’t what Andy expected. He prepared for a raw smell, death, maybe even burning. But nothing.

The dead had passed on long enough beforehand that they left no smell.

Dust was thick on the remaining cars in the lot. He ran his fingers across them as he raced toward the sunlit entrance of the garage.

Already, before he even arrived, the daylight hurt his eyes. He took a few steps, paused, moved, and paused
again.

Inching his way into the sun, Andy let his eyes adjust. They watered and burned; soon the blurry vision left, and he stepped into the street.

It wasn’t a wise move because Andy didn’t know what awaited them.

Nothing.

Empty streets, quiet like he had never experienced. Not a bird, animal … nothing.

“Hello!” he called out loudly.

His voice echoed back.

He tried again. “Hello!”

Not a roll of a can, a scuffle of movement, only silence. The sky was blue, the early morning sun was bright, and the temperature warm. Andy went back to the garage.

It was time to tell the others they could come out; there was no danger because there was nothing.

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Edward kept the battery as charged as he could in the facility and was able to start the car with ease. After it charged some, he jump-started other cars. They were the first to pull out of the garage. Andy drove, because Edward’s eyes were having trouble adjusting.

Andy and Del said their goodbyes to Chad, and promised to return or find a way to contact him.

Chad had no idea where he’d end up, but he said he’d leave word at his home, and gave Andy and Del the address.

Edward didn’t want to waste the gas to drive Andy and Del to the outskirts of Atlanta. They would try to find a vehicle outside of town; if unable to do so, they’d walk.

Andy was certain they’d find transportation eventually. Many people died. Many cars were left and gas buried in the ground at defunct fueling stations.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to Virginia with me?” Edward asked. “It’s wonderful property.”
Andy shook his head. “No, I have to go to Lincoln. I left something there I have to get.”

“Nothing is left,” Edward told him.

“I’m certain that this is left,” Andy said.

“Del?” Edward asked.

“I go where he goes. As much as we hated each other, he’s all I got.”

Edward nodded, and then he wished them good luck.

Andy and Del began their journey. They had food and water and would ration as best as they could. They walked all morning and into the afternoon.

Somewhere around three, a pickup truck stopped and asked them if they needed a ride. It was the
survivor Andy and Del had seen since they left the facility!

When the older man asked where they were going, he laughed at the response of Montana.

He told Andy and Del he would take them as far as Alexandria, Virginia, but that was where he stopped.