Barren Fields (3 page)

“Honestly, until you just brought up rabies with Jeremiah, I can’t say any of us seriously considered this was anything but Biblical prophecy. I would like to see it as a disease, Eddie, but this fits the descriptions of Armageddon fairly accurately, don’t you think? It looks like demonic possession, the work of the Lord.”

“Is that why you shot your man back there so quickly, because you thought he was possessed? I take it you don’t know some people are immune?”

They both look at me like I’ve sprouted a new head, and I continue talking, “We haven’t had much experience with immune people either, but if your group has been secluded this whole time and haven’t thought of it as a disease per se, you might not know about it at all. I’m actually shocked you shot your man before he completely turned, even if you don’t know about immunity.”

“There are no immune people,” Jeremiah says strongly with a slight hint of desperation in his voice. “A bite allows a demon to enter and gain control of that body. We kill our bitten people while they are still human so they can die without their souls being tainted.”

I shake my head wondering what spending time with these people must have been like while surviving these past eight months, and am about to respond, but the conversation stops when we reach the second group of people. The lucky lottery winner isn’t a man, but a woman. She has a bloody bite on the back of her right shoulder and a cut on her forehead from an impact with the ground, but isn’t showing any negative signs or symptoms from her bite.

Before the collapse, many of the people in Isaac’s group were related. The woman sitting on the ground is Isaac and Jeremiah’s sister, Mariah, and if they haven’t added anyone new, then their group is still comprised of three or four large family units.

Isaac grabs her and gives her a hug, apologizing for not running to her first.

“Why were you back here? What were you thinking?” he says in a tender moment of concern amongst the horror.

Jeremiah is not so happy to see her, and yells loudly at her, “What do you think you’re doing here? You were supposed to stay back at the camp, and now look what happened to you.”

He raises his gun and points it at her.

Isaac jumps up and he, myself, and a few others step between Jeremiah’s gun and his sister.

“Jeremiah, she’s probably immune,” I say in a stern but pleading tone. “You need to put the gun down.”

“Isaac, you know I have to do it. We shoot before the possession takes hold.” He has a look that says he will shoot through all of us to kill her, until Isaac tells him to put his gun down.

“Jeremiah please, put the gun down. We might have been wrong,” he says. “Even if we’re right, she isn’t showing any of the signs.”

Jeremiah slowly lowers and then holsters his gun, and takes a few steps back but has a look of complete anguish on his face. Something else is going on here that I don’t know about, but it will have to wait.

I turn to Isaac, “Is she going to be safe with him here?”

“She’s safe,” he says while turning back and helping her to stand.

With the stress of this little encounter ebbing down, I laugh a bit too exuberantly when I see a cat pin on the front of her shirt making Isaac and the others stare at me.

“I’m sorry for laughing, but it’s the end of the world and your sister is accessorizing her clothes with cat pins?”

Isaac smiles at her, and says, “Her and her stupid cats. Jeremiah and I have had to endure them ever since she was a little girl.”

“Well Isaac, if she is truly immune, then her stupid cats saved her life today.”

Before more is said, another two groups of Isaac’s men approach from around both sides of the building and those that arrive from the north side of the store raise their weapons at Arthur, Simone, and I.

“Don’t make any sudden moves and hand over your weapons!” one of them tells us without any wavering of seriousness.

Another says with urgency, “Isaac, Jeremiah, you need to see something!”

“Eddie, Arthur, what should we do?” calls one of our rooftop shooters while watching us being held up.

“Hold your fire, but be ready to shoot if these men do anything to us,” I reply on the radio, and then the three of us slowly raise our hands to show we are complying.

“Lower your weapons,” Isaac says to his own men.

“Not until you see what’s by the building,” the man says with finality.

The men take our weapons from us and lead us toward the grocery loading dock on the north side of the building. That loading dock happens to be filled with the discarded dead bodies of Stockton and his group.

“What do I have to see so badly?” Isaac asks.

Trying to head off an already bad situation, I tell him what is coming, “The bodies of the people you came here to stop are piled up ahead.”

In his typical confrontational manner, Jeremiah stops the group then steps right in front of me less than a foot away and looks me in the eyes. Out of the corner of my eye I see Isaac drop his head.

“You have a pile of bodies up there?” Jeremiah asks in a more than agitated way.

“Yes,” I reply dryly. “The people we freed and my people took two votes to decide what to do with the criminals that were running this place. Once you speak with the former captives and find out what was done to them, you will understand why we chose not to let those criminals go free.”

“Oh will I?” Jeremiah says unconvinced.

“Yes, Jeremiah, I think you will understand. I know what you think of me. Remember what you said to me on my ranch two years ago? You said
I can’t possibly be a decent person because I don’t share your belief in God
. I know you think there is no morality without God, and you think I must be some devil or evil person or whatever must go through your brain.

“Despite what you think I am, it is possible to make moral decisions without religion. I have a pile of fifty bodies over there, and once you hear the accounts or read what the victims wrote in journals, you will agree with what was done here. I promise you.”

*

Standing in front of the bodies isn’t pleasant. It reminds me of the mountains of bodies we had cleared from the ranch after it was attacked. The smell is disgusting.

Isaac turns to me and with a fierce sincerity, says, “Eddie, you better be right about what you did here. We don’t allow murderers to go free.”

“If you include rapists and abusers with murderers then I have nothing to fear from what you will find,” I reply then point at the bodies. “We don’t let their kind go either.”

*

After two hours of talking with the former prisoners and reviewing the notebooks filled with accounts of what was done to them during their capture, Isaac, Jeremiah and three other men from their group walk up to Simone and me.

“You are right, Eddie,” Isaac says, speaking for his group and shaking his head in disgust at what he’s heard. “The pile of bodies is a horror, but we have all decided we would have taken the same actions based on what those men were.”

“It took you two hours to figure that out?” I say pissed off while grabbing my guns back from his men.

“Actually, that was agreed on in the first thirty minutes. The last hour and a half were used discussing in detail your use of infecting Stockton’s group with the disease and also putting to death the family members of his group.”

Isaac’s group believes that the people that get bitten are possessed or their souls are tainted somehow. This poses a particularly awkward situation for me and my people, in that we were assisting in the spreading of demonic possessions in their eyes.

“I pray that the good Lord accepts the choices we have made so far to survive and blesses us with the wisdom to choose wisely in the future,” Jeremiah adds.

Several people nearby us that overheard Jeremiah’s proclamation issue
Amen
in response to his words.

Jeremiah finishes by saying, “I am thankful we didn’t have to fight those men or with your group today.”

There was no malice or false pleasantry in his words. He seems genuinely relieved that he and his men not only didn’t have to fight Stockton’s group, but didn’t have to fight us either. Even with the honesty of his feelings, the word that echo’s in my head is his last,
today
. They didn’t have to fight us
today
. Hopefully there won’t be a tomorrow when they feel they do.

“So you would have taken the same actions?” I ask Isaac. “Even the experiments?”

“No. We would not have done experiments on them. Most of my men are against the reason you had them bitten, but considering what their group had done to others, what you did to their souls before they died seems a fitting punishment. If we had more experience with what is going on when people are attacked, maybe we would see things differently, but we aren’t convinced that this is a disease let alone that any people can be immune to it.”

“Well, if you don’t accept your sister’s current condition, take a look at my arm then,” I say while removing my bandage.

After another round of telling the
where, when, and how
of my bite and subsequent immunity to the disease, at least some of Isaac’s group seem swayed that this is a disease that people contract and not some supernatural possession. Not all of them seem inclined to accept the evidence of my survival. After listening to most of my account, Jeremiah seemed even more repulsed by me. He backed away and left with some of his men after apparently hearing enough.

We haven’t told them about Erde Fleischer’s roll in all of this, and I’m glad of our discretion on that for now. Jeremiah would probably consider him to be the devil incarnate and kill him on the spot for creating the Zeus drug. Maybe they’d try to kill us as well for doing the experiments at his direction.

Chapter 3

Waterford Steam Electric Station

Louisiana.

Eight Months Earlier.

When they arrived at the rig called The Mallory it was largely deserted. The warning call George gave to the platform was spread to many in the area, and the crews from this and many other drilling rigs opted to go aboard any passing crew change ships so they could head home to help their own families. Leaving was the only choice most of the men could make at the time with little information and no understanding about what was truly happening. It is also a decision that condemned most of them to death as none have returned in the three days’ time Keith, George, and Maggie have been on the rig.

Only Jack and Frank remained on the platform. Jack was the driller, like the name sounds, he was in charge of drilling on the rig. Frank is the rig foreman. They don’t have any family nearby to go help, so staying at the distant tower seemed the most sane with a disease spreading on land.

Each day since their arrival has been touch and go for Maggie. She is holding on but is in a great deal of pain, and even with the oxygen mix set on high, she is struggling to get enough air into her system through her compromised lung.

George stands in the doorway and waits for Keith to turn his way, waving his hand to motion him over.

“Keith we need to talk about our next step. We have to make plans to move on from here.”

“She won’t be able to move again, George. She is barely recovering from the trip out here.” He looks back at Maggie sleeping.

“Keith, she’s sleeping now. Let’s go talk.”

Keith follows George as he walks to the upper platform deck on the outside. They both know the situation is serious because of the complete absence of communication since the day they arrived. The internet was down before George made it to Keith’s house. All phone service was off by the afternoon, not that any calls would go through earlier than that, but at least they would still ring. All radio and television service was preempted by a looping emergency alert broadcast that was never updated. It keeps repeating the message:
Stay indoors and avoid people behaving strangely.
Nothing else is heard and the sudden vacancy that the departure of instant communication leaves is filled with the worst doubts and fears the trio can come up with.

“I’ve been speaking with Jack and Frank about where we should go when we have to leave.”

“I told you Maggie can’t move again.”

“Don’t get angry with me, Keith. We won’t have a choice.”

Keith shakes his head and begins to counter the argument he thinks George is going to make. “When we run low on supplies we can scavenge from on shore. Also most of these rigs are built to take hurricane winds and waves, and we aren’t that far from the end of the season.”

“I’m not worried about hurricanes or supplies. I’m worried about radiation.”

Radiation isn’t something Keith or most other people around the world gave much thought to. Nothing could be done about a dropping bomb and the fears of that diminished significantly since the end of the Cold War. Dirty bombs were a concern, but there wouldn’t be a point for a terrorist to set off a dirty bomb now when there isn’t a population to terrorize. Nuclear power plants are the only source radiation that anyone has to concern themselves over. It is the cleaner energy that actually worked for the masses unlike wind or solar. With a radiation leak being so dangerous, multiple layers of protection were put in place at power plants to ensure accidents couldn’t occur.

“You are too paranoid about things, George. You’re starting to sound like my son.”

“That’s who I got the idea from and being too paranoid is exactly what I thought when he said it. Unfortunately, your son was right,” George says dejectedly while moving to sit at a table. “He moved to Oregon because they only have one nuclear power plant in the Northwestern U.S. We have one just outside of New Orleans, and if goes into meltdown and breaches containment, the normal wind patterns will take the fallout right across the city and out into the ocean. Directly at us!”

“They have safety measures to keep that from happening.”

“Yes, yes they do. And each one of those measures requires a team of plant workers to keep those safety checks in place.”

Keith looks at him skeptically, not wanting to believe their situation could get any worse.

“Trust me, Keith. I’ve checked into it. My family does have a stake in the energy sector, after all. I mean,
we did
. I bought a property in Mexico three years ago after your son mentioned why he wouldn’t move to Louisiana. He said the entire eastern U.S. would be a dead zone of radiation if only a few of the power plants melted down. It took over four years for the Japanese to get control over the Fukushima nuclear plant after the tsunami knocked out the diesel generators. Four years with every resource being thrown at containing the problem and no diseased maniacs trying to attack the workers at the same time.

“How many workers do you think stayed on the job at Waterford Steam when New Orleans was collapsing? And how long can the ones that stayed survive against the numbers of infected leaving the city? The Waterford Station is literally a ticking time bomb, and to make matters worse, you have to multiply that effect by every nuclear power plant east of the Mississippi. We have two plants just in our state alone. It is just a matter of time before we have to leave, and I want to include you and Maggie in on our plans.”

“I keep telling you Maggie won’t survive another move, and I won’t go anywhere without her. For all we know the plant could have melted down already and we are soaking in fallout right now.”

“Ten years ago,
yes
, but not today,” George replies. “You can thank the Department of Homeland Security for this save. With all of the terror attacks and the collapse of Middle Eastern countries, DHS put radiation monitors on most of the rigs out here. That way no one could sail a dirty bomb or worse up to one of our cities and set it off. We will know if radiation is detected, the sensors are wired into the alarms.”

“I still can’t move Maggie. She won’t survive the trip.”

“She won’t let you stay when I tell her what we have to look forward to, Keith, and trust me, I will let her know. You know I care about her and how much you two love each other, but she is already dying. She has come to terms with her situation. You’re the only one that doesn’t seem to accept that fact.”

Keith wants to hit him; he wants to knock those words back into George’s mouth. It is a truth he hasn’t been able to run from these last few years, but he has managed to comfortably ignore the progression of her cancer. She is the woman he loves, and he wants to be with her until the end.

“I know what she means to you, Keith. I feel the same way about my family, but there’s nothing I can do for mine. At least you have a chance to keep protecting Maggie if we have to leave, and you have other family out there that might still be alive. I’m not going to let the two of you stay on this platform when we leave just so you can slowly die of radiation poisoning.”

*

Standing in the medical bay, George is going over the situation with everyone, including Maggie.

“The Waterford Steam Electric Station is our main concern. I’m sure we will know if it has gone into meltdown within another five days with the direction the wind has been blowing.”

“Why five days?” Maggie asks with a tone full of increasing strength.

“From what I’ve read, it only takes a few hours to a day for a plant to go into meltdown. That is if there is a failure that can’t be corrected in one of the safety measures. We can expect the same amount or more of the diseased people leaving New Orleans and heading west toward the power plant as those that came across the bridge and through St. Bernard Parrish. The station is only twenty-five miles from the center of the city, so it takes less than a day to walk there. Anyone that was alive and stayed at Waterford to keep it running is most likely gone or dead by now. Another five days and we should find out if they had the time to shut it down properly.”

“That doesn’t sound as grim as what you told us earlier,” Frank mentions.

George gives Frank a look trying to make him shut-up, but Frank doesn’t stop talking, he just points out the obvious.

“Maggie is a tough lady, George—probably tougher than all of us with what she’s dealing with right now. Tell her everything you told me.”

“George, tell me. I need to know the truth,” she says.

“We need to leave within five days but preferably earlier, before the radiation alarms start ringing. We don’t know how much fallout we’ll be dealing with when it starts, and even a short term exposure could be fatal.”

“I thought you said we would have some time?” Keith says in frustration.

“I didn’t create this situation, but I understand it. Please, let me explain what I researched and we all need to decide what to do together, okay?”

Everyone nods or mumbles their acceptance so George continues.

“If the workers at the Waterford plant were able to shut it down properly, a power plant takes continuous upkeep and maintenance to ensure those shutdown protocols keep functioning the way they should. Just like at this platform, complex machinery needs regular maintenance. If there were workers still there, unless they were underground, they would have been killed or run off by now. No army can stop the whole population of New Orleans from overrunning the power plant, and the military was the first to be infected. The entire area had one and a half million people, so at best, only two hundred thousand people will walk by or through the power plant property. That’s a lot of bodies to break something as they move by.”

Then, let’s say best case scenario, the workers are alive, stay alive, and no equipment or generators are damaged. Power stations usually keep one week of fuel on hand for emergency generators. Even if they kept a month supply of diesel on hand, eventually the generators will shut down.”

This dramatic information in George’s mind is met with blank stares by everyone in the group but Frank.

“The generators run the coolant circulation for the reactor. No generators means no coolant, and no coolant means meltdown. No matter how carefully maintained they kept Waterford, even if it was one hundred percent automated, the generators will eventually stop, the fuel rods will heat up and make the plant meltdown. Even the security measures won’t hold it if a reaction starts, the whole containment building will be blown up just like in Fukushima and Chernobyl, and that isn’t the worst part.”

“Now I’m beginning to get concerned,” Maggie says dryly making everyone, even Keith laugh.

“I’m sorry for the interruption, George. Please continue telling me how a disease destroying civilization isn’t our biggest threat,” she says in a serious tone but follows with a smile.

“The worst part is other power plants and cooling ponds,” he explains. “Each nuclear power plant has cooling ponds where spent fuel rods are kept, and they aren’t enclosed in containment buildings but they rely on the same generators to keep the coolant circulating. So even if a reactor doesn’t explode, the ponds will heat up, burn off the coolant, and the rods will catch fire and explode. That has to be multiplied by the sixty nuclear power plant locations in the U.S., many of which have multiple reactors and cooling ponds at each site.”

“Keith’s son, Eddie, told me he would never move east of the Rocky Mountain states because of the nuclear power plants. I bought my retreat property in Mexico after I looked into what I thought was his overblown paranoia. Fifty-seven of the sixty power plants are east of the Rockies. The other three are located in Washington, California, and Arizona. That is why he moved to Oregon, even if this disease burns itself out in a month, it will be too late. The Eastern half of the country will be a maze of radioactive wastelands, and there is nothing we can do about it but run.”

A few quiet seconds go by allowing the group to absorb what George just told them, when an alarm starts ringing and makes them all jump with terror.

“I am so sorry,” Maggie says laughing as she turns off her alarm clock that she surreptitiously grabbed while George had everyone in rapt attention to his speech. She has tears in her eyes and is struggling to breathe and speak through her laughter. “You should see your faces!” she is finally able to say with considerable effort.

Jack seems more upset than all the others at Maggie’s joke at their expense. He turns and starts walking out the door.

“Jack, I’m sorry,” Maggie says calling after him. “Don’t be mad.”

“It was a good joke, Maggie. I’m not mad,” he calls back. “But you made me wet my pants, and I need to change.”

This brings another round of tension releasing laughter that they all need. The laughter is short lived as the reality of what George told them sinks in, and Maggie especially has a very serious expression take over from the joyous one.

“Frank, if we move again soon it will kill me,” she says. “Keith and George know this, and you need to tell Jack as well. I have made my peace with God, and I am ready to die. Do not let my illness slow down your preparation to leave, no matter what my wonderful Keith may try to plead you to do otherwise. My time is up, and I am ready to go to a better place but I am not going to be the cause of any of you fine men going with me. It is not your time.”