Threnody (Book 1) (9 page)

“I’m not.  I figured you could bring the truck to me.  As long as I can keep their attention focused on me, they should stay pressed up against the fence on the opposite side of the lot, giving you plenty of room to maneuver out and around to the back of hangar four where I’ll meet you.  The noise of the truck may draw their attention, but they seem too slow for that to matter much. Got it?” John concluded with a level of certainty that indicated this was going down whether Reams got it or not.

“Once we’re on the road it shouldn’t take much longer than ten minutes to get to my house and get my wife and kid.  Where do you live, Reams?” said John.

“Not far, but I got no reason to go there.  We need to get somewhere safe after that, if anywhere safe still exists,” added Reams. 

“I know of just the place.  Well, I don’t know if it is safe there for sure, but there is sure as hell plenty of supplies and equipment there.  A friend of mine, Al, lives about thirty minutes outside of town and has been preparing for something like this for a while now,” said John. 

This caused a surprised look of confusion to blossom on Reams’ face before John explained. “Well, not something exactly like this, but at least something catastrophic.  In fact, this particular scenario might be the only one I don’t recall hearing him rant about over the last few years.  Al is one of the smartest guys I know and definitely the nicest.  There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for anyone, even complete strangers.  He’s just very paranoid.  Not in a ‘needs medication, hearing voices kind of way,’ but more like an ‘eternally pessimistic, government is going to kill us all’ sort of way.”

Albert Forrester worked primarily from home as a software engineer and managed to amass a fair amount of money over the last few years.  After tiring of life in a cubicle and being politely asked to vacate his desk due to persistent unauthorized changes that continually appeared in the code of essentially every project he worked on, Al set out on his own.  His company, which was almost entirely automated and consisted primarily of him with a few other guys he sourced when needed, would frequently get huge contracts that never took him much time to complete.  Needless to say he had a great deal of free time to surf the web and think about the end of the world.  He also had a great deal of money with which to invest in the impending cataclysm. 

“Anyway, I could tell you stories about Al all night, but for now, they will have to wait.  You good with the plan?” John concluded, smirking as he reminisced about his good friend.

“I got it.  Just be safe out there, John.  I haven’t seen any revs on this side of the fence in a while other than Hasker, and you don’t have to worry about him.  They don’t seem to have enough sense to set up an ambush or anything, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there hidden out of sight.  And John, I have no idea what’s inside hangar four,” Reams said with a look of concern every bit as forlorn as if John just informed him he was going to stage dive right into the horde itself.

“Revs, huh?  That what we’re going to call them?” asked John as his thoughts skipped back to the word like a CD player suffering a sharp jolt.

Reams shrugged but didn’t reply otherwise.

“Good a name as any I suppose,” added John.

Their preparations were brief as they had little to gather. John felt his present corazon was fueled by a frail resolve as fragile as a china doll perched precariously on the edge of a high shelf, waiting to plunge hopelessly to its inevitable fate of shattering into a million pieces.  John crammed the flares into his pockets and grabbed a couple makeshift weapons – a claw hammer in his left hand and a 3-foot long crowbar in his right.  Reams hurriedly stuffed everything he could fit into a large duffel bag he found by the employee lockers.  Just as John was about to remind him he was going to have to carry the immense, overloaded bag by himself, Reams flipped it up and onto his back with no more effort than if he were toting a bag of groceries.  Amazed by the big man’s strength, John watched as Reams snatched the handle of the five-gallon water jug, hoisting it up with similar ease.  When he noticed John staring at him, Reams said in a slightly defensive tone, “What? I drink a lot of water.”

With a chuckle, John replied, “Just remind me not to piss you off, Hulk.”

“I’ll share, don’t worry,” said Reams in a serious tone, still not completely realizing why John was gawking at him.

With his one free hand he scooped up the heavy blood-stained length of steel pipe he used to dispatch old man Hasker.  John thought he saw something dark flicker behind the large brown eyes gazing down at the once ordinary object now transformed into a brutal, skull-smashing melee weapon.  John wondered if what flashed behind Reams’ eyes was a grotesque, rapid-fire slide show of all the horrors witnessed by the end of the pipe over the last few days.  Perhaps it was the realization that everything once ‘ordinary’ like the pipe was now being transformed into something dark and sinister. 

John’s contemplative reverie was suddenly shattered by a strange rhythmic buzzing sound that erupted on the far side of the room.  For a brief moment the two men stared at one another bemusedly before glancing around the room to locate the source of the disruption.  Confused, neither man was able to identify the frustratingly familiar sound. Out of habit, John’s hand moved to his side to ensure it was not his cellphone.  Simultaneously realizing his cellphone was not on his belt, and that the sound was indeed a cellphone, he lunged toward the source of the noise.  In a panicked flurry of movement, he grabbed the phone and tapped the answer button.

“Hello
?
”

The shaky word threatened to fracture and fall apart as it passed his dry, cracked lips, as if the whole thing was simply a mirage.  He heard only the low hiss of dead air in reply.  Again, John forced the pained word past his lips, accompanied by the dread that it really might be a mere figment of his imagination.

“Hello
?
  Anyone there?” he repeated, audibly deflating like a latex balloon gouged by a needle.

After another agonizing moment of nothing, a sound crackled through the speaker sounding both broken and very far away.  Though he could not make out the words in their entirety, John knew immediately who held the other end of the line.  The voice he heard was that of his longtime friend Dr. Lin San, who currently resided in Brazil where she worked in biomedical research.  In his earlier unsuccessful attempts he only dialed local numbers, not having considered calling internationally.

A rapid barrage of questions from both sides followed, succeeding only in cancelling one another out. Lin finally managed to get his attention, and John strained to hear her desperate, fragmented message through the static plaguing their tenuous connection.

“John, …can’t hear…listen…can hear me…terrible has happened…Brazil… spread to the United…world.  …horrible, a plague the likes of…quired a drive containing files…periments aimed at creating a new biologic…the origin…has a near one hundred percent mortality... victims reanimate or…threshold needed for life…become violent and serve as vectors.’’

Reams gazed intently as all the blood drained from John’s face.  The look of terror left in the wake of its departure sent a cold chill up his spine.

Despite the overwhelming visceral sensations accompanying his rising dread, John tried diligently to focus on what Lin was saying as her impossibly distant voice continued with renewed urgency. “I…boarding a plane heading …States now…evacuation of those left alive...need to analyze…drive and…cure…too late if not already…hope you …safe.  …possible, meet me… CD…lanta…if someone is infected …don’t…near…no longer who they were…see you…” 

The line went dead as John tried fervently to hear the rest of her message, as if he could reestablish the connection merely by sheer force of will.  When his strain caused the muscles in his face to ache, he realized she was gone.

“Lin!  Lin!  No!  No!  No!  No!” exclaimed John, shaking the phone as if that action might somehow restore bring her back.  He tried in vain to redial the number but, like everything else, it was now dead.

As John lowered the now useless phone in defeat, Reams said, “What the was that all about?  Who was on the phone?  Your wife?” 

Reams saw a look of pained disappointment on John’s face and realized it probably was not his wife.  “Look, I’m sorry man, I just…” said Reams, his voice trailing off.

“It’s okay.  It was an old friend of mine, a research scientist in Brazil.  She seemed to know something about what is going on.  The call was pretty broken, but I think she was calling to give me a warning, and maybe to ask for my help.  I think she said something horrible happened in Brazil and was behind what is going on here.  She thinks it is a virus that originated from experiments aimed at creating a ‘biologic’ something, maybe a weapon.  That part was pretty badly broken.  She said she has a drive with files – I assume data about the current epidemic – and that she was being evacuated to the U.S. to try to find a cure.  I think to Atlanta, maybe to the CDC?  She works for a comparable agency in Brazil,” said John flatly.

Reams interjects, “What
?
  Doesn’t she know it’s
already
here!  It’s not safe here!  She can’t come here!”

John’s flat expression did not waver as the same thought shot through his mind as soon as she mentioned her destination.

Calming down slightly, Reams added, “Did she say anything else?”

“Yes.  She said the disease is nearly one hundred percent fatal, and the infected either succumb and ‘reanimate’ or are maintained just above the threshold for life for a period in order to propagate the disease.  Those infected become violent toward the uninfected, and she warned not to go near any infected individual no matter who they were before infection,” said John still wearing the mask-like, expressionless face.

“How can the infected tell if a person is uninfected?  Why don’t they attack one another?” John asked more to himself than to Reams.

Reams, for his part, did not seem overly affected by John’s words, as he already had firsthand experienced the majority of what he said.  John, on the other hand, was completely floored once again upon hearing the reality of their situation put into words by a highly trusted, longtime friend.  The blood that fled from his countenance during the short phone call had yet to return, making John appear like a ghostly apparition in the dimly lit room.

After a few moments of silence, Reams spoke up, “John we either knew or at least suspected most of what she told you.  It doesn’t change anything for us now.  We need to get going if we are going to go through with this.”

Raising his head in disbelief, John replied, “Doesn’t change anything?  I came from a few states over where things seemed like business as usual and landed here to find this.”  John made a broad sweeping motion with his hand to indicate the horrors and carnage abounding just beyond the confines of their little temporary safe zone.  “Reams,” John continued in a quiet, somber tone, “she’s in Brazil.  If this shit is happening there, it is, or will be happening everywhere.”

“Okay, but it still doesn’t change anything here and now.  We still have to get out of here, and we still have to look for others,” replied Reams.

John knew Reams was right, and he certainly knew whom he meant when he said ‘others,’ but still he couldn’t escape the enormity of what he had just heard.  If the mass of infected smashed against the fence less than a hundred yards away was indeed just a microcosm of what the world as a whole was experiencing, then maybe this truly was the world’s dies irae.  Perhaps this plague was civilization’s final threnody.  A slight shudder pulsed through John’s body as he again thought of all the infected thrown against the fence like the fecula of the Devil himself.  Fighting those thoughts back, he strengthened his resolve before saying, “You’re right, Reams.  I’m ready.  Let’s do this.”

With that the two moved to their respective positions and steeled their nerves for whatever was about to befall them.

Chapter 11

Lin San and John Wild first met at the beginning of their freshman year at Stanford University.  They both enrolled in an introductory biology class and simultaneously, albeit independently, saw fit to dismiss themselves after the elementary nature of the material left them feeling bored and insulted.  As they made their way toward the rear exit, they moved silently along their respective sides of the classroom, with all the stealth of a ninja on an assassination mission.  In an instant, however, all hope of a covert extraction ended when they clumsily collided with one another, sending them both crashing to the floor along with an entire tray of small metal dissection pans.  John could not clear the mental image of the finale at a performance of Stomp as the deafening clang of the metal reverberated in his ears.  Scrambling out the door with the weight of their combined embarrassment dragging them down, they erupted into uncontrollable laughter as they fled the building.  The bonds formed by this chance collision and their combined humiliation proved to be more durable than the strongest covalent bond, as they quickly became one another’s closest confidante.

The overwhelming sadness Lin felt when she graduated from Stanford after only three years seemed wholly out of place on what should have been a joyous occasion.  Though their relationship was nothing more than platonic, the prospect of leaving John behind to pursue her PhD in neurobiology at Harvard University was as daunting and unsettling as getting a divorce after fifty years of marriage—such was the depth and strength of their relationship.  Needless to say, when she learned the following year that John had been accepted into the medical school at Harvard, her elation could not be bridled. 

To say they were destined to be the closest of friends could not be further from the truth.  Beyond their ‘well above average’ intelligence, John and Lin shared few other commonalities.  They represented the epitome of the saying ‘opposites attract,’ and they both knew that had they not literally ‘bumped’ into one another that first day they would likely have never been so much as acquaintances.  John was far too crass, laidback, indifferent, and frankly reckless for Lin.  Lin, on the contrary, was his antithesis with her dry, by the book, no nonsense approach to life that made her appear more like a venerable librarian than a freshman college girl.  Another integral factor in their blossoming friendship, at least from John’s side, was a peculiarity he had possessed for as long as he could remember.  Immediately upon meeting anyone, John would instantly decide if the person would become a friend or not, sometimes before the person ever uttered a single word.  The decision, or more aptly the verdict, seemed to materialize without any real conscious interpretation of information or apparent active participation on his part.  He, himself, could not really explain it once he became aware of it; it was just the way he was.  Once he decided he liked a person, there was nothing he would not do for them.  If he did not get such a feeling he hardly paid another thought to the person.  This was the first of many of John’s quirky peculiarities that Lin would come to discover as their relationship developed.