Plague: Death was only the beginning! (6 page)

“Sadness touches both the heart and the soul. But only the heart can heal itself afterward.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 15

Worldwide Deaths: 1,119,000

Alex, Susan, and Tommy rolled up to the gates of the complex by late evening. They had been on the road for over nineteen hours and were glad that they had finally made it. Normally a time of joyous welcome by the entire group, they could only pull up to their own front door and park. For the next several days, they would keep to themselves and restrict their dogs to the enclosed front yard. Because they had been coming from “outside,” they had to isolate themselves for a week to ensure that they did not have the plague. Tony’s party was due in the next morning, and they too would be restricted to Tony’s property for the same period. Tom and Sally were going to pick them up, and they would have to ride in the open back of Tom’s trucks until they could get inside Tony’s compound. Tom and Sally would be suited in complete MOPP 4 gear and would spray down the trucks with bleach afterward. No one could be trusted with just their word any longer, as the death tolls climbed into the millions. Jim, Kim, and Joanne were expected before morning, and Tom was shocked to hear that the news reports of shootings had been about them. Sally could only express her horror that her best friend had been reduced to killing strangers so quickly as it had less than a month since the first death had been reported in New York. She was also glad that it had been the strangers dead and not her, but it still sucked.

Jim Thompson and his family were pushing the time limit as traffic had slowed to a crawl across most of the country. Many smaller towns were directing travelers around them and not letting them inside city limits in a vain attempt to slow down or stop the plague from visiting them. But, no one could cover all the back roads, open fields, and waterways that allowed strangers and family members to meet.

What was normally a two-and-a-half-day trip had already passed into three, and the deadline was only hours away as they struggled to move faster than conditions allowed. They were only in Ohio and still had to pass St. Louis before they could reach safety in the south.

Jim and Tom had been on the HF radio using 7 MHz and 14 MHz Single Side Band (SSB) frequencies to span the distances between them as they discussed and plotted different routes of travel to aid Jim’s family. By monitoring the airwaves, Tom could hear which areas of the national highways system were still functional and which had to be bypassed. As the time passed, more and more areas had to be written off and marked unusable due to the volume of immovable traffic. And it came down to which bridges were still open to traffic and which were packed solid with dead.

“Well, Jim, I found you a route, but you’ll be on every back road and boondock there is. But, it is still possible to cross the river at Chester, Illinois. And it would be clear sailing from there on State150 through Poplar Bluff to US 60 to here,” Tom reported after a long pause between transmissions. “St. Louis and points west will be officially closed by 11:00
AM
CST tomorrow. And they are crowding everyone into the county fair grounds and parts of the military depot after that time. No one will be allowed through St. Louis for any reason. And they are getting really pissy about anyone even asking.”

“Well, I’ll be over the Ohio border soon, so where do I go from there?”

“Head for Terra Haute, Indiana and on to Effingham, Illinois on I-70. Then head south on US-45 to US-50 to US-51 South. You need to get down to the bridge at Chester, Illinois as soon as possible. Don’t stop for anything or anyone at this point. The stakes are just too high.”

“I read ya, buddy. We’ll do the best we can. AA0A out.”

Tom stared at the maps and charts in front of him, and he laid his head on his arms. The pressures were building for all of them, and they needed everyone and everything to be in place before they closed the doors and locked the world outside them.

“The days of Man are troubled and filled with pain. Sometimes, every damn day.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 16

Worldwide Deaths: 1,755,000

Jim clamped his fingers around the steering wheel as he watched the Highway Patrol push another car off the road. Minutes later, they were moving again, but he could see the blood and dead bodies that lay twisted by the plague into contorted shapes.

By this time, everyone was wearing the N98 filter masks fulltime. They were being exposed every time they drove by another car, and they were rolling the dice each time. The radio had reported that the plague was now airborne and could infect you for several hours outside the body. At the beginning, the Highway Patrol had been given orders to light each plague vehicle on fire. This was soon stopped as the plague was exposed to the open air and into the lungs of the police. Now, a front-end loader did the work, and the operator was in full containment gear.

The turnoff to Effingham, Illinois was just ahead, and they double-checked their maps to ensure that they were going the right way. If they missed their exit now, it could be hours before they would reach another one. Traffic was that heavy. Even so, the exit ramp was packed and movement was slow. So, they could only calm their breathing and wait their turn to exit.

Jim, Kim, and Joanne were now in Missouri and fighting the traffic congestion around Springfield. The secondary roads were also packed, and they too could only wait their turn as the vehicles ahead of them rolled slowly forward. The only saving grace for them was that the governor’s office had extended the deadline to 12:00 midnight for selected areas after viewing the level of traffic that was still on the road. St. Louis was completely gridlocked and not moving at all, so transports were loading people up into Army trucks for movement to the depot. Many people didn’t want to leave their vehicles, and small battles broke out as Army soldiers equipped with Colt M4s fought civilians equipped with sticks and stones. By this time, civil rights were superseded by the adage “might makes right.”

Finally, Jim could turn off Interstate 70 and onto US-45 headed south through Effingham. The level of traffic was still heavy, and the local civilian police and volunteers had blocked off all the side streets and refused to let anyone stop for any reason. Those low on gas were directed to a single lane where a single gallon of gas was added to their tanks to get them outside of town. Requests for food and water were refused, and anyone trying to get out of their vehicles was threatened by gunpoint and soon moved on. The city had already seen the results of kindness as their local clinics and hospitals overflowed with the sick and the dead.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Jim and Kathy’s two children, David and Maryann, had sat quietly in the back of their car and played games on their laptops and tablets. Jim’s wife Kathy had been monitoring the HF radio using a headset and recording her finds into a logbook on her own laptop mounted on a stand made just for this purpose. This way they were always up to date on all of the government’s actions to control the population that was running for the hills as soon as they were allowed to do so. No one was trying to stay on the job now, and services had failed across vast areas of the country. Some had left their power plants and water pumps on automatic to give them a little longer to survival. But, for the most part, they just ran. The National Guard and U.S. Military were also seeing large numbers of personnel deserting their posts in an effort to save their families and loved ones. The level of the disaster had passed anything seen since the last world war. And they were helpful to meet the needs of the people. The President and Cabinet had moved into Mt. Weather to ride out the storm. But, even they were helpless as the plague rolled in behind them. A staff member had been added at the last second, and they had missed the mandatory health checks that had taken place after names had been collected. Because space was strictly limited, a healthy, younger staff member had to be dropped as this older member, a friend of the Chief of Staff, had been added. Nepotism met a serious payback later on because of this, as the bunker became a tomb.

“Time heals, it is said. But, it seems to take forever!”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 17

Worldwide Deaths: 2,335,000

Mankind seemed to take a deep breath as it viewed the vast scale of the disaster in front of it. We had not seen deaths on this level since the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed over twenty million worldwide. With resources shrinking and power and water slowing to nothingness, they tried to gauge which direction to turn to next. No one seemed to understand that all directions led nowhere and that they must settle wherever they were and ride out the storm until it was over. Tom’s group was only waiting for their last arrivals in order to do so. Sally had talked, in person, to a handful of select people and given them the option of joining their group. They were strictly warned that only those they invited would be allowed inside the gate. It wasn’t to be cruel, but because resources were so strictly limited to just how many could be supported. Add too many and all would die.

Ken and his wife already had cattle and farmlands to care for, besides their business, and they decided to stay home. It was the same for Jerry and his family as they bunkered down to wait out the storm. Prior to completely closing their doors, Jerry had stopped by with his propane truck and filled all of their large tanks to aid them to see their way through the winter. He smiled and said he would add it to their bills in the spring.

Dave and some of his staff waited as long as they could before deciding that this disaster was bigger than all of them and closing his clinic. They had no hospital beds or supplies to aid a large disaster and realized that someone had to survive to aid in the recovery efforts. Dave had to think long and hard about this, as it went against everything he believed in. But Tom’s group figured out a way that he could work in the interim. They moved his entire family and staff to the compound and allowed Dave to stay in isolation dwellings outside the fence line. He could keep working as long as he was still doing some good. But, as services died, he realized that there was nothing he could do any longer. The local drug stores and hospitals had closed their doors, and no one was filling prescriptions any longer. He finally closed up shop and sat out his isolation while talking to his family and friends by local Skype-type net. One added couple was the local butcher and his wife, who had served the needs of their city for many years. As orders stopped, they closed down their shop and waited things out. After talking to other friends and checking the local phone book, Sally had tracked them down at their home, and they welcomed the chance to ride out the event in greater comfort. The power was off, and they had been canning all the extra meat as quickly as possible. Their shop had a generator and was still running, but the limited amounts of gasoline were causing them to face the facts that most of their stock was going to waste. Charlie and Dana could not express how thankful they were, and Tom emptied one of their freezers to take the large frozen cuts of meat that could be broken down later. They also geared up their own canning system to save everything that was left over. Steaks, ground beef, and roasts were sliced up using Charlie’s equipment that had been picked up by Tom and stored in an enclosed trailer. Soon the storage shelves were pack to overflowing, but everyone was pleased at the results. The small community now had sufficient food stocks to last for an extended period, but how long a period, they didn’t know.

Finally, at long last, Jim, Kim, and Joanne pulled up to their compound and opened the gate. They were dressed in full containment gear also as the hands of passing strangers had touched the outside of their vehicles before being waved away. And more blood covered Jim’s Mountain Aire where a fool had tried to stop him on the highway by jumping in front of him. But the person had forgotten the laws of motion as the 11,000-pound vehicle bounced him off like a hockey puck and rolled him under the heavy truck wheels. Kim felt the jolt as her own wheels finished the job a few seconds later.

Tom and Sally had volunteered to come over and helped to spray the vehicles down with a heavy dose of high-pressure water and bleach. And the water ran red as they circled the vehicles and cleaned the road surfaces of any additional material. Finally, the three weary travelers could escape their confinement and moved toward the house. They had been trapped inside the vehicles for over three days, and they were dead tired. But they were home at last.

“See the Rider as he spreads his wings upon the land. And death followed him as life passed away.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 18

Worldwide Deaths: 6,450,000

Jim adjusted his mask as he struggled to view the bridge approaching in the distance. They had been stopped by a barricade of trees and logs across the two-lane highway leading into Chester, Illinois. Just like Effingham and other cities, the people had said strangers had visited enough death upon them, and they stopped all traffic trying to enter the small town. Because of a chance event of nature, the town’s location had favored the building of a bridge across the Mississippi River Valley. Founded in the early 1830s, the small village had grown to over 8,400 by the 2000 census. What made the location valuable now was that it was sixty miles south of St. Louis and one of the only bridges that had still been open the day before. Now, Jim could see that the main street was totally blocked off, and more cars and trucks were being added as they watched. From his location, he could see that the bridge itself was currently clear. Looking carefully around the area, he got an idea.

The turnoff to Menard was only a short way back, and it led to the Kaskaskia Street river road, which fronted the river itself. Because there was so much going on over the main US-150 highway, a detour was sounding very good at this time as darkness had fallen hours before, and everyone was completely worn out. Creeping slowly with the lights out, Jim, and a handful of unwelcome followers, approached a new barricade that was covering only the center of the street. Jim knew the street did not directly connect to the bridge approach, but it did connect to Randolph Street and that connected to the bridge as it looped around to the side. Close enough, Jim turned on his headlights and pressed his accelerator to the floor. The heavy super duty engine roared as the truck leaped forward. A quick jerk of the wheel caused the cattle guard on the front end to clip the side of the barricade and shoot wooden pallets and logs flying. A second later, he was through without a shot being fired. But, he was going too fast! He could see the bridge passing overhead as he slammed on his brakes, and his heavy trailer seemed to crawl right up his ass end for a second or two. A fast turn to the left and he was on Randolph, and he rolled the wheel hard over to make the tight turn onto the bridge. Behind him, he could see a string of lights that seemed to run for miles as the other travelers rushed the turnoff and the bridge as well. Within a few minutes, they were across the wide river and deep into southeastern Missouri. Slowing down and pulling into a side lane, he had Kathy stick her head out of the window to see if the barricade had damaged the side fender of the truck on her side. A quick look and a laugh greeted him when she came back inside.

“Well, the truck is fine, but the wooden pallet has seen better days. You have one jammed up between the bars of the cattle guard and the lights on the passenger side are gone. If we can safely stop somewhere, we can pull it out. But it’s not causing any trouble for now,” Kathy reported.

“We’ll worry about it later then. I don’t want to stop until we have to. We should be able to get past Poplar Bluff before I have to fill up again. I’ll do it then,” Jim replied. “Get Tom or Sally on the radio, and let them know that we are over the river and will be there in a few hours. God willing.”

“Amen to that!” said his son David, from the back seat. “My butt is killing me and I really have to pee!”

“Well, you’ll just have to hold it for another hour as the road should be empty of traffic by then. Just think about your nice warm beds waiting for you just up ahead,” Kathy replied. “And I’m tired of using ‘Depends’ myself! You guys can always pee in a bottle!”

“Yeah, Mom! Wearing a diaper is the pits!” added their young daughter, Maryann. “I outgrew this two years ago!”

Everyone could only laugh at the remark as potty training their youngest had seemed to take forever and a day, and to hear her comments now was so apropos. The lights were off in Poplar Bluff as they rolled through the small city. No one was on the streets, and all the businesses and shops were locked up tight. Hasty signs had been painted on plywood sheets and directed everyone out of town by the most direct methods. Broken down cars and trucks littered one section of town as a major battle between travelers and town folks had ended badly for someone. Bodies were still lying in the street, and one of the cars had nosed into a barricade before stopping. It’s interior still glowed from the fire. The family drove on in silence.