An Apocalypse Family (Book 1): Family Reunion (10 page)

She shut the door. “Lauren, give me your phone.”

“Mom, what in God’s name is going on?” she said, shaking, crying, and handing Carla her phone all at the same time.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, we need to call the police.”

She dialed 911 and an operator answered on the second ring. “San Joaquin County 911, what is your emergency?”

“We just witnessed a fight between two men at the Mini-Mart gas station off Interstate 5. There was blood everywhere,” Carla told the operator.

“Are you still at the scene?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you know either of the people fighting?”

Carla hung up the phone. She set the phone down and started praying aloud. “Lord, I don’t know what’s going on, I am scared.” The phone interrupted her prayer. She picked it up and saw that the 911 operator was calling back. She shut the phone off completely.

“How do I get the battery out of this thing?” she asked Lauren.

“You have to unscrew the case with a screw driver,” Lauren said.

Carla didn’t have a screwdriver. In frustration, she opened the door and threw the phone out. She then slumped forward, her head resting on the steering wheel.

“Mom, we have to go back. We have to find out what happened. Steve would never do that! Why would Steve do that?” Lauren knew she was in shock, but it didn’t matter; she still thought she was being reasonable.

“No, Lauren, we cannot go back. Do you remember the report on TV that said our soldiers were attacking each other?”

“Yeah, Mom, I remember. I also remember that they said those rumors were unsubstantiated.”

Carla looked across at her daughter. “Well, I think we just substantiated them, don’t you?”

Carla pulled the Rover back onto the road, turned up the freeway onramp, and merged onto I-5 north. “What are you doing, Mom?” Lauren asked.

“I’m going to go get my son, that’s what I’m doing,” Carla responded.

“So, do you really think this flu virus is causing people to go insane like Steve did?” Lauren said like she didn’t believe any of it.

“No, I think it’s the vaccine.” The words came out of Carla’s mouth without passing through her normally highly sensitive thought process.

“Oh my god, Mom, did you get a vaccination?”

“No, I was about to, but for some reason I didn’t. When did you get yours?”

“I didn’t. I was off the day Steve went, remember? Then one thing or another kept me from rescheduling it. I never did get it done,” she said, with a look of realization cresting her face.

“Open the glove box,” Carla said. Lauren opened it to find her dad’s .45-caliber pistol and a box of ammunition. “Get it out and load it. We may need it before the night is done.”

Lauren shook her head, “Mom, I think you are wrong. I think Steve just snapped.”

“Lauren, you know Steven better than I do. Do you really think that?”

Lauren sank in her seat; she took the pistol out and saw that it was already loaded. She closed the glove box. “I don’t know what I think, Mom, I really don’t know.”

They drove north for another eight hours on I-5, both of them in shock and with no more conversation than was necessary. At one point, Lauren demanded that her mother turn around and go back, but Carla refused, saying that getting to Conner was the only thing that mattered.

They arrived in Portland at ten o’clock the next morning. Conner answered the door in his boxers, his eyes squinting behind his hand, held up to block the bright morning sun.

“Hey guys, I didn’t think you’d be here until tonight. Where’s Dad?”

Conner didn’t believe them when they told him what happened. He just sat on the couch, shaking his head.

“If this is some kind of joke, it isn’t funny!”

Carla put her hand on his knee. “I wish it were a bad joke, son, but it’s the truth, and the sooner we deal with it, the better.”

“Deal with it? You want me to deal with it?” He stood up and threw the coffee cup he was holding. It smashed into pieces as it exploded against the wall. Conner began to cry as he stared at the coffee dripping down the wall.

“Mom, why didn’t you do something? You always do something.”

“Conner, there was nothing I could do… there just wasn’t.” Carla began to weep also.

He went to her and they embraced. Carla stroked his hair. “It will be okay,” she said.

She closed her eyes and asked Conner the question she was terrified to know the answer to. “Honey, did you get the vaccine?”

“No, I slept in the day I was scheduled to. So, I won’t be turning into a cannibal like Steve?”

“We think that’s what caused it, but we’re not sure.”

After cleaning up the mess, they sat down and turned on the TV. Most of the stations were playing their normal broadcast schedule of taped shows. There was an unfamiliar anchor on the first news channel they found. He explained he was filling in for the regular anchor, who was away on assignment. The anchor then spoke with a panel of government experts about the South African Flu.

“Jessica, is it true that the vaccine developed by the CDC and the World Health Organization has been recalled?”

“Yes, Walter, the vaccine that we thought was effective against this flu has been recalled. The recall came because it is believed that, though it was originally effective, the virus has mutated and now the vaccine needs to be changed to combat this mutation. No one should take the old vaccine; it just is not working any longer.”

“Jessica, there are rumors flying around the Internet that the vaccine is causing people to become violent; is this true?”

“Well, Walter, while a very few people have reacted that way to the vaccine, we believe it is a very small percentage of those inoculated, and that the vaccine was effective in containing the virus in its original form. However, no one should get the vaccine at this point. It is not worth the small risk of the side effects.”

“So Jessica, the government has now changed what they are telling people to do. They are telling people to stay home if you or a loved one are showing symptoms of the flu.”

“Yes, Walter, until the new vaccine can be developed, we are recommending that everyone go into lockdown mode in order to stop the spread of the flu. We are setting up new facilities around the country, but they won’t be ready for people until tomorrow at the earliest. Only essential public works and infrastructure workers should be going anywhere. Everyone else should shelter in place, drink plenty of liquids, and rest. We will be distributing food and water starting tomorrow. The worst thing you can do at this point is go out into public places. Stay calm and stay at home. Your government is confident that we can fix the vaccine and provide safe water and food for everyone; everyone just needs to be patient.”

“What a crock!” Lauren said. “Look at them trying to calm the masses with this crap! Change the channel, Conner.”

Conner did as Lauren requested. Every news channel they went to had the same anchor and panel.

“I think you’re right, Lauren. I think we are being lied to,” Carla said. “I think Lauren and I need to try and sleep for a while. I need to make some calls first, though.”

Carla tried to call her mother. The phone rang once, then went to a message saying that the caller was not available at this time. She tried her uncle, Ryan, with the same result. Everyone she tried either didn’t answer or the circuits were reported busy. She tried using Conner’s phone and got the same thing. Giving up on the phones, she used Conner’s laptop to get onto her Facebook account, where she was able to leave a post telling people that Jake had died from the flu and that she was sorry she couldn’t reach any of them by phone.

The house, occupied by four other tenants besides Conner, belonged to a friend of the family who had reluctantly agreed to rent it out to the five college boys, with a hefty security deposit. All the others had already left to go home for the summer except for Sam, the only other senior of the five. Sam was at his job. It was his next-to-last day before he quit delivering pizza.

Both Sam and Conner were outdoorsy types. They would often spend time hiking in the mountains or kayaking in the ocean. Sam had been raised by his uncle and was well off, financially. He’d received a settlement from the accident that killed his parents. He still liked to work, though. He said it wasn’t right that some people just sat around wasting air because they could. He could have easily afforded his own place, but he and Conner had been friends since grade school, and he liked hanging out with the guys. Sam paid a little extra on the rent to keep his Jeep and assorted toys in the garage. Truthfully, he spent most of his time in the house and only occasionally slept in his own room, the loft over the garage. More often than not, he would end up sleeping on the couch in the living room.

“When is Sam due home?” Carla asked Conner.

“He worked the day shift today because so many people called off that they actually have him making pizzas.” He made a face as if he would never eat a pizza that Sam made. “He should be home by five.”

“Does his uncle still plan on being here for the graduation ceremony?”

Conner nodded. “Yeah, he’s supposed to be here next week.”

Carla thought about this for a minute. “I don’t want to leave Sam here alone, and I do plan on leaving before next week. We need to get back to San Diego.”

“Okay, but Sam can take care of himself fine, Mom.” Conner stopped, not wanting to say what he was going to say.

“What?” Carla said looking at him.

“Nothing.” He paused for a good ten seconds, but Carla stared him down.

“It’s just that Sam’s been buying survival stuff all year, and I didn’t want to get him busted because I know you will rat him out to his uncle.”

“Why would that bother Tom? Oh, I see, he’s been buying guns, hasn’t he?”

“Mom, you can’t tell Tom. You know what a left-winger he is. It’s bad enough that he has control over Sam’s money until he turns twenty-five. If he finds out that Sam has been spending money on guns, he’ll go ape shit.”

“First of all, watch your mouth. Secondly, Tom is Sam’s legal guardian, and he has done all right with that for twelve years, hasn’t he?”

“Yes ma’am, but Sam is not a little kid and Tom still treats him like he’s fifteen… sorry I swore.”

Carla shook her head and smiled; he was his father’s son. That thought brought the grief boiling up inside her. She had to turn away to collect herself. Conner, thinking he blew it again by making his mom cry, felt like an ass.

“No, Mom, I really am sorry, I won’t do it again.”

Carla wiped her eyes. “Make sure you don’t. You know what your father would say.”

They said in unison, “Your mother brought you into this world, and I can take you out!” They laughed with tears in their eyes.

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Son.”

Maddie sat in the comfortable custom-made leather chair across from Harry as they pulled into the Marathon Coach headquarters. Harry was worried that he’d made a critical error in judgment; Maddie loved the coach and talked about how they needed to look into buying one. What worried him even more was that he’d begun to daydream about owning one, too.

They spent the previous night at an RV park just off Highway 58 in Oakridge, Oregon. Harry finally told Maddie that they would be dropping off the coach at the Marathon headquarters. When she asked what they were going to do for transportation from there, he simply said, “There’s a ride waiting on us.”

The ride waiting on them was Don’s brand new custom Prevost coach. Marathon’s reputation was that if you could dream it, they could build it, and they had done just that. Don McClure wanted a coach that he could take anywhere and have no fear of being stuck or brought to heel by anyone. He designed the coach to survive the worst humanity could dish out and keep him living in style and comfort.

Harry parked the coach in front of the offices, where the president of the company was waiting to greet them. Normally, the site manager would have been there, but he was out with the flu.

“Good morning, I’m Warren,” he said as he shook Harry’s hand. “You must be Harry. Don told me to expect you today. I’m sorry Don couldn’t be here for the delivery, but he said we should fully brief you on all the systems onboard the coach so that you can bring him up to speed when you get home.” Harry introduced Maddie and they spent a few minutes making small talk.

Maddie caught on right away and gave Harry the eye for letting her think that they would be giving up the coach for a lesser mode of transportation. Harry ignored the eye, so she added a quick elbow as well. Harry winced and smiled as Warren escorted them into the building.

“Would you folks like something to drink, or would you like to get right to it?”

Harry looked at Maddie, deferring the decision to her. “Let go see it!” she said, with a big smile.

Warren laughed, “Yeah, we get that a lot here. I used to drag people to breakfast and give them a tour, when all they really wanted was to see their new coach. Okay then, if you will follow me, I will introduce you to our VP of Design and Engineering; he will spend the day with you to make sure you’re comfortable with all the features of the coach.”

They made their way through the offices to an attached giant hanger-like building that housed the manufacturing department. Warren knocked on the edge of an open doorway to an office that overlooked the entire production area.

“Hello, anybody home?” Warren called out as he entered.

A beautiful brunette stood and walked across the room toward them. Her smile and demeanor, meant to put even the most nervous client at ease, worked exactly as intended.

“Hello, I am Sourires. You can call me Sophie,” she said, hand outstretched.

After the introductions, Warren asked, “Is Robert here? I spoke with him yesterday about doing the delivery for Mr. McClure’s coach because David is out sick.”

She frowned. “I’m sorry, sir, but I just found out that Robert is out as well.”

“Oh my,” Warren said. “That is unfortunate.”

He turned to Harry. “I am really sorry about this, but this flu going around is about to cripple us here. Over half our work force has called in sick this week; we just had a doctor out here on Tuesday to give the remaining employees the vaccination.”

After a few unproductive phone calls, Warren looked at Sophie with his eyebrows raised. Sophie quickly volunteered to assist with the delivery, and Warren promised to come find them at lunchtime to give them a break for a few minutes. He apologized again before heading back to the front offices.

“Wow, this flu is really starting to cause problems, isn’t it?” Maddie offered.

Sophie blew an errant bang of hair back with a long breath. “You have no idea. We are never behind around here, but it’s really starting to take its toll on us. I am just glad they finished Mr. McClure’s coach before you arrived.”

Sophie led them back out to the floor of the production area. “I have never done a delivery before, so please bear with me.”

Maddie tried to put her at ease. “We’re just the hired help,” she said, with a chuckle and a smile.

They went out a door to a large parking lot. Sophie took them about a hundred feet away from the building, then turned them around. A large roll-up door began to open and the outside speakers started playing
Flight of the Valkyries.

The custom H3-45 Triple Slide coach appeared like a bull entering the ring. Maddie let out a little gasp and was immediately embarrassed. Harry’s jaw loosened and he heard himself making a rather unmanly noise. Sophie was watching them, not the coach, and was grinning from ear to ear.

“I could get to like this part of the job,” she said. “Watching your faces, well, it’s very gratifying.”

Sophie rattled off a few stats on the coach. “The coach is 45 feet long and eight and a half feet wide. Some of the features are: a gourmet kitchen, a large walk-in shower with two rainfall showerheads above and eight body spa total-immersion showerheads down the sides, three queen beds, two pullouts in the salon and one in the rear bedroom. Two single bunks across from the bathroom. There are three slide outs, two in the main cabin and one in the rear bedroom. The paint is not one of our usual colors, either. Don requested a camouflaged paint scheme, but changed his mind after viewing our computer mock-ups of this one.”

Harry nodded, noting how the paint seemed to absorb the colors of the surrounding landscape as the coach moved through the parking lot.

“It’s beautiful!” Maddie exclaimed.

“Wow,” was all Harry could offer. The coach pulled up and stopped in front of them.

Thomas, the company engineer who drove the coach out, began briefing the group at the rear bay. “This is the power plant for the coach. Don opted for the Detroit S-60 over the Volvo engine. The S-60 turbo produces 515 horsepower and 1950 foot-pounds of torque. There are three alternators—two for the house batteries, which are also charged by four 100-watt solar panels on the roof, and the third alternator for the 24-volt batteries, which are also trickle-charged via solar. As you can see, there is redundancy for each system to ensure you don’t ever find yourself without power.”

He closed the rear bay doors and moved to the right side of the coach. “This next bay is custom for this coach. You open it using the Crestron remote or manual release; I will further explain the remote later. As you can see, this bay is just aft of the rear axles and is fairly narrow, but extends up behind the rear of the cabin. It houses two Kawasaki KX250 motorcycles.”

He pushed a hidden button in the wheel well, the bay door opened, and a rail holding the bike automatically extended. He unfolded the end of the rail, which acted as a ramp, unfolded the handlebars of one motorcycle, and rolled it down to the ground. “As you can see, we had to slightly modify the handlebars to fold down and lock; they are actually stronger than the originals.” He reversed the process and explained that the other motorcycle could be accessed the same way on the other side.

He paused at the wheel well and rested his hand on one of the tires. “These tires are the first run-flat tires we have ever installed on one of our coaches. In addition to these, the bullet-resistant windows and Kevlar window blinds make this coach as close to a tank as anything I’ve ever worked on.

“This next bay houses the 20 kW diesel generator, mounted on air cushions for vibration-free operation and this pull-out shelf for ease of maintenance. The bay has soundproofing such that you can barely hear it running when you shut the bay door. It also has a 110 compressor that powers the A/C.”

He closed that bay and moved forward to the next one. “This one is for storage, and as you can see, is open all the way across to the other side. Along the back of this compartment are the circuit breakers for a lot of the equipment as well as a manual generator panel. The generator is also operated by the Crestron remote.”

Sophie’s cell phone rang. She excused herself and stepped away from the group. Maddie thought she heard her say something like, “Are you kidding me!” in a hushed hand-cupping-the-phone kind of way. She hung up the phone and came back over as Thomas was explaining the water system bay to them.

“I’m so sorry, but I have to head back over to the office. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Thomas, can you continue with Harry and Maddie?”

Thomas shrugged and said, “No problem.” With that, she turned and practically ran back to the building.

Harry looked at Maddie with raised eyebrows as if to ask what that was all about; it was Maddie’s turn to shrug.

“As I was saying,” Thomas continued as he crouched down next to the coach, “this panel controls the water manifold. You can see that both hot and cold systems have multiple lines. This allows you to shut them off individually in case of a leak in any one line and maintain water access across the rest of the system. There is a 500-gallon clean-water tank that can be serviced from here.”

He pointed to a connection on the panel. “This one is for clean water, and once connected, it will monitor the tank. When the tank is full, the valve will close. That means you can hook it up and go do something else while it fills. This button will lower a door below the coach that will give you access to three different things.”

He pushed the button and a door dropped from below the coach. “If you push this switch labeled ‘Shore Connection,’ it will release the electrical hookup for external power for the coach.” He pushed the button and out popped the electrical cord. “It will extend twenty feet—just keep holding the button for the desired length. Then just push the top of the switch to retrieve the cord until it retracts all the way in.”

He was about to tell them about the waste disposal when he got a call and excused himself to answer it. He listened for a minute as Maddie watched the color drain from his face. “Sophie! Sophie, are you still there!”

He listened for a few more seconds and then let his arm drop to his side. “Uh, that was Sophie, and, um, she said something about people in the factory going crazy and that we should get the hell out of here, then she screamed and dropped the phone. I could hear what sounded like a scuffle, and then it went dead.”

Maddie stuck her hand in her back pocket and came out with an LCP .380. She looked at Harry and asked, “Do we leave, or do we look?”

Harry took a deep breath and sighed. “I guess we look. Let’s go back to the other coach out front and get some more firepower just in case there really is something going on.”

Thomas drove them around to the front of the building and parked next to the old coach. Just then, the floor-to-ceiling windows of a second floor conference room exploded and a chair landed on top of a car parked below, activating its alarm. Next came Sophie. She flew out of the space, locked in an embrace with another woman. As they fell, the two women appeared to be struggling. They landed behind the car with the blaring alarm, out of their direct line of sight.

“Holy shit!” Thomas yelled, leaning back and away from the scene.

Harry threw the door open, and he and Maddie ran to help Sophie. They rounded the damaged car to find Sophie lying on her stomach next to the other woman. Sophie was covered in blood and was trying to get up, but the fact that her right arm was missing below the elbow was slowing her progress. She looked up at Maddie and said, “I’m really sorry for this inconvenience,” then fell over on her side, eyes open and fixed.

The other woman was obviously dead, but upon further inspection, Harry found her skin was a translucent with blotches here and there. As he watched, her skin turned red and blistered, like a sunburn developing instantaneously over all exposed areas. He turned toward Maddie, who was checking on Sophie.

“She gone?”

Maddie nodded and looked over at him. “What about her?”

“Yeah, come check this out. She was all pale-looking, then right before my eyes she turned red with a postmortem sunburn.”

Thomas disabled the car alarm so they could hear themselves think. “What the hell is going on, guys? I’m working seven days a week, twelve to sixteen hour shifts, to meet our deadlines. Last week they announced that we needed to be here to get our vaccinations against the South African Flu.”

Harry interrupted him. “So, you got the vaccination?”

“No, we had an issue with the motorcycle lift on Mr. McClure’s coach, so I stayed on the floor and didn’t get it. I sent everyone else, though. I actually had my foreman sign my name on the list so I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“Well, all we know is that when we left Texas, they were saying the virus had spread to Europe from South Africa and that the CDC had developed a vaccine that was mass-produced in labs all over the globe. We weren’t too concerned about it, as we were not going to be hitting any major cities and figured we would just get it when we got home.” Maddie looked over at Harry, who was quietly rubbing his chin in thought.

“Look, this coach is supposed to have all the latest communication gear on it, right?” He directed the question at Thomas.