Barren Fields

Barren Fields

The Last Blade of Grass Book II

Robert Brown

Copyright 2015 by Robert Brown

CHAPTER 1

Shell Beach, Louisiana.

Eight Months Before the Plague.

“Hello. You got JeeJee’s Airboat rental.”

“George, this is Maggie. Maggie Roach.”

“Hello Maggie, what can I do for you?”

George is an educated man. He was born and raised in Louisiana in a family that was considered old money. His education growing up was of a dual nature, as it was with most of the very wealthy. He was sent to the best private schools, and along with other educational requirements, he was taught to speak impeccable English in the proper manner according to those with money. Having power and influence in this state required those who want to fit in to have an unblemished Louisiana Southern drawl, with the usual French words or catch phrases thrown in at the right times. George had his accented speech for business and his proper speech for his closest friends.

Maggie’s husband, Keith, had become one of George’s friends ten years earlier, when they were working together at one of the shipping docks along the Mississippi River. Keith was in charge of safety and maintenance at a loading facility, and George was a new manager coming in to inspect the facility and do hands-on learning of the whole operation.

George was working as a manager but was actually the owner’s son. There was no part of the family’s holdings that a son or daughter could run or manage later in life without direct experience in those business operations. The children learned early in life they had to earn their place in running the business or accept a smaller cash inheritance and have no controlling interest in the companies when the parents died.

George took that to heart and spent his evenings during college and the years after getting his degrees working on family fishing boats, at small oil refining plants, and at the shipping docks where he met Keith. George had plenty of scars from the difficulties in working at the various family businesses, and each scar gave him a profound sense of respect for the employees that he would one day call his own. He received his biggest scar on the third day working with Keith. That day Keith should have been home during his day off but went in to work because a storm was wreaking havoc on the docks and loading equipment.

Keith’s arrival to work that day put him in the unique position of having saved George when a secure line broke causing it to snap in George’s direction. The line embedded itself a foot into the concrete wall of the warehouse they stood next to. If George wasn’t pulled out of the way, the line would have cut right through him.

The scar he received was from taking a step back after being saved and falling on a large bolt at the base of a support beam. George knew he was lucky to be alive. Since that time he and Keith had become friends, and they made it a habit to go fishing or watch a New Orleans Saints football game.

“George, I need a safe place to go with Keith. We’re getting out of town.”

“Can’t stand the rioting anymore?”

“I wouldn’t call it rioting, George. It sounds like a warzone out here. Keith’s son, Eddie, called to tell him it is some kind of plague.”

“And you want to move, Maggie?” he asks, ignoring what must be embellishments of their situation.

“I have to get out of here, George. Keith won’t leave without me, and if he stays here we’ll both die. I can hear the shooting from the city at my window, and it’s non-stop. Please, George!”

Maggie is sick. She needs oxygen, and any stress of travel could end her life, which increases the seriousness of what she is asking. Maggie has only one lung remaining and doesn’t qualify for a transplant because she has cancer. She is at home for
end of life
care, and while she has made peace with the fact she is dying, she can’t bare the idea of Keith’s love for her getting him killed as well.

George knows Eddie from a few previous fishing trips with Keith. Eddie was always relaxed and mellow like his father, but had strong ideas that he wasn’t afraid to express about politics, guns, or survival if you got him going. He knows Eddie is a
Prepper
and owns a gun shop in Oregon somewhere. On one particular visit, Eddie said some things about survival that particularly bothered George and caused him to make some extra preparations of his own.

Prepping isn’t such a big deal in Louisiana where people have to deal with hurricanes and potential floods, so that aspect didn’t bother him. What bugged George was the reason Eddie gave for not moving to Louisiana when he had the chance.
There’s no way I will move to an area with so many nuclear power plants. The entire Eastern U.S.is a dead zone if any national disaster hits.
That statement by Eddie bothered George enough to buy a retreat property in Mexico after he did some of his own research.

“Do you know what Eddie said, exactly?” George asks with concern.

“He said the CDC is warning about a plague starting at military bases that’s making people attack each other. The Navy base is only twenty miles from here, across the river. That’s probably why I can hear the shooting.”

“Maggie, if you can hear the gunfire, it is a lot closer than New Orleans. Is Keith there? Can I speak to him?”

“If I let him speak to you, do you promise to come and get us no matter what he says?”

“I promise, Maggie. It will take a while though. I’m out on my boat now, so I have to—”

“Don’t go home, George. If you go home you’ll never make it here by car. I told you it is a warzone out there right now. I called you because I knew you would be on your boat. There is no place on land Keith and I will be safe. I need you to get us out of here.”

“I’ll do it Maggie. I’m on my way.”

George spoke with Keith, and as much as Keith insisted that he not come to get them, George respectfully declined the refusal of help.

“I’m doing this for Maggie, not for you, Keith. She made me promise.”

George owed Keith his life and wasn’t about to let him die when there was something he could do about it. There was also a chance, if whatever is happening ends quickly, they could ride out this mayhem in some level of comfort on one of the oil platforms the family manages. They aren’t luxurious, but the one he is thinking of does have a medical bay that can keep Maggie stable.

Turning his boat around to face the shore, George’s heart sinks as he finally notices two important things: the number of boats heading in his direction toward open water and the amount of smoke rising from New Orleans. For the last two years fires and shootings had increased as the economy sank, so seeing smoke every day from a fire was common. Now it seems like the whole coast is on fire. The truth is there are fires spread throughout the city at various spots giving the whole coast a dark billowing look from this distance. He doesn’t remember ever seeing this many vessels on the water—especially with them all heading out to the Gulf at the same time.

The ride to Shell Beach will take nearly half an hour, so George starts using that time to try reaching his family and friends to give them a warning. He also decides to call the oil rig to get it ready for Maggie’s arrival. He curses at himself for turning his phone and radio equipment off when he left yesterday to go fishing. It was supposed to be a relaxing escape away from everything to deal with his girlfriend breaking up with him.

Now all the text messages that showed up this morning from his family when he turned on his phone have a more ominous meaning than he had first imagined. He was curious why they kept writing urgent and thought they were worried about his break up and that he wasn’t responding. Now he wonders if his family is dealing with problems from the rioting, or a plague, if Maggie is right.

*

When George maneuvers his boat up to the dock outside Keith’s house he is worried about many things, but his greatest fear is that he can’t reach any of his family. They all live in the city, and his father is in the hospital, with a respiratory virus. He tried calling them all continuously on the boat ride to shore, and the lines kept going to voicemail. He couldn’t get anyone working at his parents’ house and knows Evelyn and others should be there today. He wasn’t even able to reach anyone at the main office or on their private lines. Every number went to a message, and there were no responses to e-mails. Yesterday he wished the whole world would leave him alone. Today it seems his wish came true.

He is also worried about transporting Maggie to an oil rig in his boat and what the trip will do to her in her condition. Her decision to leave with Keith is tremendous, in consideration of her recent return from the hospital to live her final days in the comfort of her own home. The magnitude of what she was doing and
why
compounded his feelings of anxiety with each unanswered call.

The fear building in him is of the
empty bottomless pit
variety that comes from being helpless in a situation. It builds into desperation as he ties up the boat and listens to the sound of shooting that isn’t coming from distant New Orleans, but a mile or two up the road, in the adjacent town of Yscloskey. There is also another sound in the air. Something that makes the hair stand up on his neck, but he’s not sure why. It’s like the deep groaning sound a large ships hull will make when it is being hammered by waves, but this sound is constant and overlapping.

Keith comes out of the house with a bag in his hand, a shotgun slung on his shoulder, several portable oxygen tanks in a rolling carrier, and a face full of tears. George knows the pleading Keith would have done to try and get her to stay, but he also knows Maggie wasn’t one to have her mind changed once it was set. Keith would do anything for her, and she would do anything to keep him from harm.

“Do you know what’s going on out there?” George asks. “Have you gone up the road to check?”

Keith shakes his head and steps into the boat to load what he brought.

“I haven’t left Maggie alone since we started hearing the shooting this morning,” he calls from inside the cabin. “But I have a pretty good idea of what is happening. Is it anything like this at your place?”

“I have no idea. Heather and I broke up, so I took a few days off and took the boat out by some of the rigs yesterday morning to do some fishing. I left everything electronic off through the day and last night, so I haven’t heard a thing. I had a bunch of messages my family sent last night on my phone, but I couldn’t reach them. I mean, I couldn’t reach anyone, not at home, or at the office.”

George is surprised to see Keith step off the boat with the shotgun still slung over his shoulder. He assumed Keith was just bringing it out to load with the other items, but with the shooting in the town just up the road, it makes some sense.

Keith puts his hand on George’s shoulder, and says, “I’m sorry to hear about Heather. Have you tried contacting her at all?”

“I tried, but it’s just like my family. I didn’t reach her. She left to visit her sister in Colorado, so there isn’t anything I could do for her from here anyway.”

“You know I don’t like the idea of moving Maggie, but I’m glad you came. I’ll need your help bringing her out, but first you should come in and listen to what we know. It isn’t good, George.”

*

“Hello, Maggie,” George says as he leans over to give her a hug.

“You better sit down before Keith tells you what’s happening,” Maggie says with less strength than she had on the phone earlier.

“Last night we saw a report of rioting at both of the military bases, the Joint Reserve Base and the Naval Support Activity base. I didn’t listen closely and thought it was some protesters attacking the bases. This morning I got a call from Eddie, and he tells me the CDC is warning hospitals that a plague is spreading across the U.S. and the origin is military facilities. Hospital staff are supposed to be on the lookout for people acting aggressively and trying to bite each other.”

George finally takes Maggie’s advice and sits down.

“This disease is everywhere, and it’s manmade,” Keith says angrily and hands George a letter. “Eddie e-mailed that to me and told me to print it out because he thought the internet would get shut down soon.”

George laughs. Even with all of the smoke he saw over New Orleans and the gunfire close by that seemed like a ridiculously funny thing to say.

“They can’t shut down the internet!” he says expecting some smiling faces to stare back at him, but he only receives two faces with dead serious expressions as a response.

“Our internet service is out, George. Are you getting anything on your phone?”

“I thought I couldn’t get anything because I was on the boat,” he says while looking at his phone’s screen.

“Read the letter, George.”

Turning it over in his hand he reads:

“I verified that the Zeus drug was administered to The Tiger Squadron and to General Taggart as well without incidence. It is assumed that the current batch was contaminated somehow as most of the men who were inoculated started showing tremors and violent behavior from ten to twenty-five minutes after injection. By the time we realized the reactions of the men weren’t fitting the guidelines, we had already managed to inoculate over 300 men. Those men with immediate symptoms were able to attack and infect the remaining base personnel and the infection spread exponentially. Those personnel that received the infection from attack, usually in the form of a bite started showing tremors or violent action from one to five minutes time. I am currently trapped in my office with a small group of surviving soldiers under my command and this is the only way left for me to get the information on this drug out.