Endemic Rise of the Plague (8 page)

Kate looked down at her chewed fingernails, tugging at a loose string from her sweater. Lost in her thoughts, her mind went to her mother and how much she missed everything about her. It had only been two years since her mother died in a fatal car accident, but Kate felt as if her memories of her mother were fading. She had felt like this for a few weeks now, and it had been wearing on her mind. After some self-reflection, she realized that she needed to talk about it—about her mother. Although a sensitive subject for Dad, she hoped that he could help her through it.

“Dad, I want to talk to you about something serious for a sec, no joking around, okay?” She looked up at him shyly, only to see him staring in the opposite direction. After waiting a moment for him to respond or acknowledge her, she rolled her eyes, letting her mouth fall open.

“Dad!”

“
Shhh, Kate look,” he motioned toward the center of the carnival.

Dropping her shoulders, she inched forward to try to get a glimpse at what he pointed out. This better be good, she thought. Letting out a gasp, grabbing her father’s forearm, she saw a massive crowd gathering, just past her father’s shoulder in the distance, near the midway. Abruptly, the Ferris wheel began to rotate, jerking the cart forward. Not stopping this time to load more passengers, it continued to revolve.

“Dad, what is going on? Is that a fight?” Kate’s chin pointed outward, her neck extended around Joe’s shoulder.

“Yeah…maybe…I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it looks like it’s getting out of control. It’s time for us to leave,” he said, gazing apprehensively at the growing crowd.

As their cart neared the bottom, the conductor seemed equally consumed by the sight of the crowd that slowly migrated toward the Ferris Wheel. He cocked his head to the side, on his toes weaving back and forth, trying to get a peek at the action.

“Hey Bud, can you stop the ride?” Joe shouted.

“Yeah, we want off, please stop the ride,” Kate whimpered.

“Oh…sorry…okay,” the man uttered with a thick accent.

Turning around as the cart rose skyward, the man pulled the lever, stopping the wheel. Joe and Kate’s cart rocked back and forth at the unanticipated stop, leaving them just less than half way up the wheel.

“He's letting people off now, Dad,” Kate said smiling, looking down at the conductor.

“We are not going to make it off in time,” Joe said slowly as the mob drew closer.

Kate watched in silence at the hellish sight before them. As the crowd drew closer, she could see that people were ferociously attacking one another. They were biting and clawing at each other like vicious animals. There were small groups within the mob aggressively tackling individuals to the ground. Snarling teeth were shredding flesh down to the bone. Blood gushed and sprayed onto others. Gasping in repulsion, Kate’s eyes traveled around the carnival, unable to look away.

A chubby man grabbed a plank of wood from the ground near the concession stand. He began swinging it wildly at two women that were closing in on him. One of the women rushed toward him, and he struck her in the face with the board. She sank to a knee, but wasted little time rising back to her feet. A crazed, tall man in a plaid shirt grabbed the board-wielding man from behind and sank his teeth into his shoulder. The two women moved in, one biting his neck and the other tearing into his arm. The chubby man dropped the wood and disappeared beneath the three of them, with more people joining the pile on top of him.

Kate’s eyes
scanned the groups of people within the mob. The scenes were similar. The attackers seemed peculiar. Kate couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with them, but they were…different. She scanned the mob looking at the attackers. All were injured, having bleeding wounds, and hanging their heads in an odd way.

In the wake behind the mob, along the course they had traveled, bodies were strewn out all over the pavement. Blood pooled and stained the ground. Some of the bloody people were unsteadily rising up from the ground and getting to their feet. They staggered around confused and lost. A woman stumbled toward the concession stand whose arm had been torn from her body. Blood spurted out from her shoulder, yet she shuffled forward. A man not too far from her had just climbed to his feet, with a broken-looking ankle. He limped a few steps on his ankle with his foot awkwardly twisted inward.

The crowd rapidly moved across the carnival, some already reaching the bottom of the Ferris Wheel. Several members of the crowd surrounded the conductor. In desperation, he searched for the nearest thing to a weapon within reach. He positioned his hands around the lever that controlled the ride. As he pulled the rusty, white lever out of the socket that it lay upon, the wheel switched gears to the rotate, then to the stop position again, causing the wheel to rotate a few feet, then suddenly stop, swinging the carts erratically.

“Dad!”
Kate’s scream sounded nearly muffled by the agonizing screams from the fearful riders in the seventeen other carts on the wheel.

“I got you,” Joe’s strong eyes locked onto Kate’s face as he braced his muscular arm in front of her and held the other side of the cart. In that moment, she transported back to her younger years when her father seemed like the strongest man alive. She nodded, accepting his reassuring arm, her small fingers seizing the bar restraint with all her strength.

Joe and Kate looked down to the control station of the ride, and could see the conductor swinging the white pole at the mob surrounding him. Within seconds, he disappeared into the mob along with two carts at the bottom of the wheel. The riders had no chance to attempt an evacuation of the carts. The mob had now reached massive proportions, shambling beneath the Ferris Wheel. Some of them began to look skyward, perhaps noticing that there were more people still on the ride.

“Oh
my gosh!” Kate said looking out at the ravaged scene, “Are we gonna make it out of here?”

In a matter of minutes, this mob had taken out nearly the entire carnival. The only ordinary people nearby were in the remaining carts on the Ferris
Wheel. Kate could still hear people screaming on the Zipper. The ride rotated, with no conductor at the controls of the ride. Few crazed people could be seen darting around the carnival, but most of the remaining carnival goers were under the wheel.

“Yes, Kate. We’re gonna make it, we’ll be fine. I’m going to call the police,” Joe pulled out his silver and black cell phone, pressing just one number he placed it to his ear. He tightened his jaw and hung up the phone. “All circuits are busy.”

He looked down trying another call.

“Hey Roxy, why aren’t you picking u
p your cell? Kate and I are at The Harvest Carnival in the Willow Lake Marketplace parking lot. There are riots or something going on here. We’re stuck on the Ferris Wheel and can’t get through to the police. We’ll keep trying, but can you call for us? Call me back. I’ll call you if we make it out of here before I hear back from you. I want you to stay in the house, until I get home. Do not go outside! I want you to—hello. Hello,” dialing once more, he sighed and hung up. Shoving the phone into his pocket, he repositioned his arm from in front of Kate to around her shoulder. “The line went dead.”

Randy pulled out his yellow and black phone, shutting the back hatch of the SUV. Noticing the time at six-thirty, he needed to hear from his men on the status of their assignments. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Bishop were wrapped in a tarp—that Randy had found in the garage—and stuffed behind the backseat. As he pulled on the Bishop’s garage door, Randy heard a thud from inside the house. It sounded as if an object had fallen to the floor, like a picture from the wall or something off a shelf. Randy listened again for a moment, before closing the garage. Resolving that it likely had been the vibrations from the Mariachi band that had knocked something down, he dismissed it.

“Buzz, Doyle come in,” Randy called into the radio in his phone as he climbed into the front seat of the truck to escape the blare of the music at the neighbor’s house.

“Go ahead Boss,” Buzz’s voice came in clear.

“Status?”

“Boss we are stuck in traffic on Dixon Avenue. There’s a major accident up ahead, and there’s no way around it. Cops are everywhere, so we can’t just take off, over,” Buzz said dryly.

“Okay, keep me posted,” Randy said, “Rhino, Junior come in.”

“Rhino
here, go ahead.”

“Location, status?”
Randy questioned.

“On our way home, Boss.
We’ve got the bookends, over,” Rhino said, meaning that he had two people that were linked, like brother and sister or husband and wife.

“That’s alright. Call the doc to receive them.
ETA?” Randy’s voice stressed.

“I’ll give her a call. We’re maybe
forty-five minutes out, with all this traffic,” Rhino strained.

“Any trouble?”

“None, Boss,” Rhino’s voice seemed wary. “Should we expect any?”

“I’m not sure, be careful. We’ll be home soon,” Randy paused for a moment looking at Shotgun, “Boots, Walker come in.”

“Go ahead,” Walker responded.

“Status?”

“
We’re getting changed. There's no food in the fridge. I heard from some neighbors that there is a new market on Marshall Boulevard. We'll go there and pick up what we need,” Walker replied.

“Radio back when you pick up the food. Be careful, over,” Randy slid his phone into his pocket.

Their code wasn’t anything elaborate, just a way for them to communicate without anyone else on the air waves being able to understand. 'No food in the fridge' meant that the target wasn't home. 'Heard from the neighbors' meant just that. They had asked some of the neighbors if they may know of the target’s whereabouts. 'New market on Marshall Boulevard' meant that there was a temporary venue on Marshall. This could be a street faire, car show, parade or something similar.

Randy looked to Shotgun, “You know anything that’s going down on Marshall?”

“Yeah, there’s The Harvest Carnival in the parking lot of the Willow Lake Marketplace.”

“Alright.
Let’s get these two back to the lab,” Randy said with a sigh.

Roxy awakened to claws digging into her ankle. She sat up from the couch, to see Gypsy mid-air, springing from the couch
.

“Aw Gypsy!”
Roxy sighed as her Pit Bull raced alongside Rogue, toward the front door.

Both dogs were anxiously jumping and barking fanatically at the door. Roxy took in a deep yawn and slid her legs off the sofa. Flinching as her bare feet rested upon the icy tile floor, she stood quickly and tip-toed to the dogs to
find the reason for all the commotion.

As Roxy approached the
front door, Rogue raced around in circles, barking and letting out sporadic, low growls. Gypsy, barking as well, sprung straight into the air, as if she were on a trampoline.

“Out,” Roxy said calmly as she snapped her fingers. Both dogs instantly sat and obediently peered up at
her awaiting the next command.

Roxy popped her neck then rubbed her knuckles over eyes and looked out the peep hole into the darkness. The motion light hadn’t been activated
, meaning that nobody had been at the porch. As she backed away from the door, she noticed a glow. Just beyond the peep hole’s view, a flickering orange radiance shimmered from the darkness.
It’s probably the kids across the street partying out front again
. Glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall, the time read four minutes past seven. She turned her head and looked down at the ladies.

“Eh, as long as they don’t get too crazy, they can have their fun, huh ladies. Besides, Dad will be home soon, and then the party will be over,” she said looking at the dogs.

Her headache and dizziness had, at long last, subsided. She made her way to the kitchen, with the ladies in tow and opened the fridge. She felt considerably better than earlier but felt overcome by a ravenous hunger, as though she hadn’t eaten in days. For the last four years, Roxy has been a vegetarian. Her love of animals is what motivated the choice to not eat meat. While peering at the food on the shelf, she found it difficult to understand why she couldn’t take her eyes off the half pound of roast beef, sandwich slices in the fridge. She felt like she had to have it. Not like a craving or a case of the munchies—like she almost couldn’t stop herself from grabbing it and eating it right out of the bag—as though her body needed it. She slammed the fridge closed and dashed to the cupboard and fished out the peanut butter. Retrieving a spoon from the drawer, she scooped out a mound-full and shoveled it into her mouth. It somewhat helped alleviate her hunger, but Roxy still found herself agonizing over the roast beef. After two more spoonfuls of peanut butter, she dropped the spoon into the sink and went back to the fridge. The meat tempted her. Her mind couldn’t concentrate on anything but the succulent meat. She squeezed the refrigerator handle, when a loud boom erupted from outside.

“Son of a …” Roxy stopped herself short; the dogs were in
a frenzy. It sounded like a bomb had exploded in her front yard.

“That’s it!” Roxy released her
hold on the fridge, and strode to the coffee table in front of the sofa and snagged her cell phone. Storming back to the front door, she turned to the dogs and said, “Stay.”

B
oth dogs stopped immediately and looked on at their human in anticipation.

Roxy swung open the door with such fury that her
hand nearly slipped off the knob. Taking three steps outside, she froze, staring at the incomprehensible sight before her. Her eyes were first drawn to a car across the street afire. Huge flames stretched out of the barren vehicle toward the trees above.