The Last Days (4 page)

He had the urge to go have a smoke and let the sounds of the landing fighters help clear his mind.

He had a lot of thinking to do if they were going to get through this situation.

He had been in the Navy for twenty years. He had served as a ship’s doctor on carriers during both Gulf Wars. He had seen the casualties of war during his time with the Navy, but he had never felt like this. He had never faced an invincible enemy before.

The possibility of facing defeat was never a feeling he had faced before. If what the Captain had told him was true and he had no reason to doubt the Captain. If anything, the severity of the situation had been sugar coated and they were in even deeper shit than what he was led to believe.

The jumbled mess of information running through his head would not help him come up with any productive ideas.

A smoke and a little mind clearing would be helpful, but first he needed to get an update on his patients.

He walked quickly to sick bay. He came to the entrance to the sick bay. He swung the lever on the hatch to the right and pushed the door into the room as he stepped over the curved bottom of the hatch as he went inside.

He suddenly stopped as the strong smell of ammonia and the copper smell of blood assaulted his nose.

He stood still, temporarily stunned by the unexpected odor.

As his mind recovered from the shock, he began to notice the dark red streaks that covered the walls.

He quickly glanced at the beds in the sick bay. The beds where his patients had been were now empty.

As he looked at the empty beds, his thoughts now an even more confused jumble of meaningless information, he heard a sound. The sound was familiar. A picture of the hot shot fighter pilots from the 107th tossing down a meal in thirty seconds so they could rush up on deck to be catapulted off the carrier for a mission, came to mind. Those guys were great pilots but they had absolutely no table manners. Watching them eat was enough to ruin a person’s appetite. How they kept it all down while being subjected to 7 G’s was beyond him. He pushed the door open further, half expecting to see the group of pilots eating dinner at his desk.

Instead he saw the Petty Officer bent down, blood running off his chin as he pulled the intestines from the unmoving dead body of his assistant Bill.

The rest of his former patients busied themselves by tearing off chunks of flesh from other areas of Bill’s body.

Bob Paulson  doubled over and began throwing up. Vile smelling red and brown liquids splattered across the floor in front of him.

Bob could barely see from the tears that flooded his burning eyes.

He planted his hands on the floor as his knees hit the floor to balance himself to keep from falling on his face.

As his hands slid in the foul smelling vomit on the floor in front of him, Bob’s body heaved as a sickening yellow liquid hit the floor and splashed over his hands.

He couldn’t believe he still had anything left in his stomach to throw up.

Bob caught motion from the corner of his eyes. He slowly moved his head and saw the blurry shapes moving in his direction.

He tried to stand, but stumbled backwards and fell over the hatch and ended up on his back in the middle of the narrow passageway outside of sick bay.

The most unbelievable inhuman moans started to come from inside the sick bay.

Bob struggled to get to his hands and knees. He reached up and grabbed the lever on the hatch and pulled the door closed. He slid the lever in place, only letting go when he heard the latch click into place, locking the door.

Bob fell back on the floor and pushed himself away from the door until his back was firmly against the wall across from the sick bay hatch.

He stopped struggling and let his body fall limp as fear twisted his features as he stared at the door. Slow rhythmic pounding sounded on the other side of the door.

He stared at the door, barely able to believe what he had just seen. It was a scene out of a late night horror film.

The last time he had seen anything like this, he was drunk on his ass watching
Night of the Living Dead
.

Being drunk and knowing it was only a movie, it had little effect on him at the time. He wished he was drunk now, anything to give him an excuse to write off what he had just seen as another work of fiction being presented for his entertainment.

After what he had just seen, he wasn’t sure if a bottle of scotch would have any effect on him at all.

He thought he was going to go totally insane, but movement and horrifying sounds from down the passage near the lab distracted him.

He reluctantly turned his head to look towards the lab.

One by one, grotesque bodies dressed in bloody shredded white lab coats fell over the bottom of the hatch and into the hallway. Even as they fell and bounced on the metal deck, their eyes never lost their focus on Bob.

They struggled to get to their feet. One of his former lab techs didn’t bother to try and get to his feet. He just began to crawl in Bob’s direction. Its eyes locked onto Bob. It opened its mouth. Dark red blood flew from its mouth as it let out a loud groan.

Bob got to his feet and staggered down the corridor, bouncing against the walls as he frantically tried to make it to the ladder that would take him up to the next level and away from the arms that were reaching for him. From the eyes that were burning a hole through him. From the jaws that were snapping opened and closed in anticipation of biting into him.

Bob felt like he was running through a field of quicksand. He strained and pushed, but he felt like he was moving in slow motion. His body didn’t want to move. He was starting to panic as the sounds behind him grew louder and closer behind him.

Finally his hand latched onto one of the rungs on the ladder.

Bob frantically pulled himself up to the next rung as the hands on his legs tried to pull him back down into the groaning and the sound of snapping teeth below.

“One more rung” he thought as he moved up the ladder.  The open hatch was just above him. Instead of feeling relieved, it scared the hell out of him and he hesitated.

He had only hesitated for a second, but it was a second he didn’t have to spare.

He screamed as something bit into the calf of his right leg.

He screamed even louder as the teeth in his leg pulled away as their owner fell to the deck below, taking with them a large bloody chunk of his leg.

The quick surge of adrenaline gave him the strength to pull himself up through the hatch.

Bob Paulson crawled a few feet down the corridor then collapsed on the deck and passed out.

Chapter 4

One week later.

John picked up the remote and changed the TV to channel 11, the NBC affiliate in his area.

He sat on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees as he nervously leaned forward and stared at the screen. He pushed the channel button and the TV changed to CBS.

John rocked back and forth as he pushed the button on the remote again, now he was looking at the screen for channel 4, the ABC station.

All the channels had the same thing. A dull gray screen with the words, “Emergency Broadcast Alert” across the top of the screen in red letters, but nothing else.

The drone of the robotic mechanical voice, “This is a National Emergency Alert,” had stopped two days ago. Today, even the scrolling message that moved across the bottom of the screen was gone.

The absence of the scrolling message was no big loss. It had the same message running for the last two days. “Marshall Law has been declared. Stay in your homes. The National Guard has instructed that all highways are to be used by emergency vehicles only. Remain in your homes until you receive further instructions.”

John and his family had waited in their home.

The last bit of useful information was four days ago. The information wasn’t really useful. It didn’t tell them what to do or what to expect next, but at least it gave them something more than the fact there was an emergency and to wait for more instructions.

The first indication of a problem was something about riots in China. John thought that was strange. He thought that rioting was unique to America. Americans seemed to riot over anything. They would spend years buying and fixing up a house. They would buy a nice car and nice furniture. Then someone would say something to offend them or something would happen that they didn’t like. The next thing you knew, they would burn down their house and blow up their car. Then they would bitch to the government that they needed help to buy a new house and a new car. That sure didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.

Apparently America didn’t have a monopoly on stupidity. With the world economies becoming intertwined, China appeared to have begun to adopt some of the West’s behaviors.

John had felt the reports were concerning, but not too disturbing. That was in China. What was the worst that could affect him, Walmart would have to import stuff to sell from India or Vietnam instead of China. No big deal.

Maybe something good would come from all of that. We might actually have to start making these things in the U.S. again.  New factory jobs in the U.S. would be a good thing.  It would be good as long as the workers didn’t demand $100,000 salaries to make $5.00 products.  It could end up being good for everyone.

The next day the reports started to become alarming.  Apparently war was breaking out in Asia.  Someone dropped a nuke. It had been over eighty years since anyone had dropped a nuke. The U.S. had mutual defense packs with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and a lot of other countries in the South Pacific. John knew it wouldn’t take much to draw the U.S. into a major war. Everyone had missiles and nukes now days. There were a lot of countries that was just looking for an excuse to use their weapons.

The next day reports of rioting on the West Coast of the U.S. were the major headlines. No surprise there. Apparently the fighting in Asia had offended some of the people in California and they decided the best way to protest was to burn down their house and blow up their neighbor’s car. People were crazy. At least it would take a lot more than a war in Asia to get the people on the East Coast to burn down their own home. In fact, no one in Ligonier, Pennsylvania had ever burned down their own home, at least not intentionally.

That night all the major networks went off the air, replaced by the creepy looking National Emergency Alert message.

John wasn’t able to even find any radio stations that were still broadcasting.

This was when things started to get scary.

The Emergency Broadcast, in its mechanical voice, reported emergencies in New York, Washington, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte. It didn’t give any reason what the emergency was about, just that no one was to try and travel to these cities.

There were no news clips to show what was going on in these cities, just don’t go there.

John had worried that maybe someone had decided to drop a nuke on these cities. If that wasn’t the reason, he was sure that the emergency was that everyone in these cities had decided to burn down their own homes in protest of something.

After three days of being instructed to stay in his home until given further instructions, John decided to go into town. He lived about three miles north of Ligonier. His food was running low and he wanted to find out if anyone else knew anything about what was going on.

Maybe he was too accustomed to listening to the radio and TV for information and he had overlooked some other alternative that would have told him exactly what was happening. He didn’t know what that would be, because if he knew he wouldn’t be asking himself this question. He had tried the computer, but when the networks went off the air, so did his WiFi connection.

His cell phone still seemed to be working, but he didn’t know who to call. Directory assistance didn’t answer anymore so he didn’t have the phone number of any place that might be able to tell him anything.

He had his brother Mike’s number, but he was on vacation and his call to Mike went straight to voice mail. Mike had taken his family and had gone to some state park in Kentucky that didn’t have any cell phone reception. Maybe when he was on his way home, he would get the message and call him back.

John had left Mike four messages to call him right away. He told him that he thought the world had gone crazy and he should call him as soon as he got his message.

He wasn’t expecting to hear from Mike anytime soon. Mike didn’t like phones and seldom turned on his cell phone.

Hopefully Mike would be curious after a week without cell phone reception and turn his phone on to see if he had received any calls.

Hopefully he was OK. He hadn’t seen any emergency alerts for Kentucky before the networks stopped broadcasting.

John had dug out his old electric and cable bills and tried to call the number for customer service that showed on the front page of the statements. All the calls went to a recording, except for the ones that played a message that said they were unable to complete his call, to please try again later.

He had tried to call Latrobe Chevrolet, where he worked as a mechanic, but was greeted with a recorded message that the dealership would be closed for the next week until the state of emergency had been lifted.

John drove into Ligonier. The place was like a ghost town. Everyone had listened to the emergency broadcast instructions to stay in their homes. The people he did run into, those like himself that had decided to go out to see what they could find out, either didn’t know any more than he did, or were leery of him and wouldn’t talk to him.

All the stores were closed. He managed to find one little Mom and Pop store where the owner was brave enough to open for business.

John bought all the bread, cheese and lunch meat the little store had. For good measure he bought the twenty cans of soups that sat on the shelf in the back of the store.

The little shop only had four boxes of cereal, John bought them for little Cindy. Fruit Loops were her favorite, but John decided Frosted Flakes were better than nothing. They were heavily coated in sugar, so he didn’t think Cindy would complain too much about not having Fruit Loops.

The store owner was friendly enough, but he also seemed nervous. Nervous and scared like the few others he had managed to find in town.

John hit the button on the remote one more time, just in case. He didn’t want to give up without trying all the stations. Maybe he would get lucky, but that wasn’t the case. He hit the power button and turned off the TV and dropped back against the soft stuffed cushions of the old couch.

“Nothing?” Barb asked.

“No, just the same old message.” John replied sounding frustrated.

“Why don’t you try calling your brother again? Maybe he is on his way home now and has cell reception.” Barb said.

“I’ve left him four messages already. Besides he isn’t coming home until Saturday. I think today is only Thursday. It is Thursday isn’t it? I can’t even remember what day of the week it is.” John sighed.

Barb laughed. “Relax while we can. I’m sure this will be over in a few more days. When this is all over you will probably have to work overtime for the next month to handle the back log of inspections and oil changes at the dealership. Just pretend we are on vacation.”

“Yea Daddy, let’s pretend we are on vacation and you can take me fishing!” Cindy joined the conversation and ran over and jumped excitedly in front of her dad.

Cindy was six years old and a tom boy. She was probably more of a son to John than if she would have been the boy John was hoping for when she was born. He wasn’t disappointed she was a girl, he had just been hoping their first child would be a boy.

She followed him around everywhere he went. If he was working on the car, she worked on the car. If John took something apart, Cindy took something apart. When he took the washer apart to fix the motor, Cindy took the TV apart. Fortunately John discovered what she was doing and had been able to stop her before she had taken more apart than he could put back together.

She also enjoyed going fishing with her dad, whenever he had the time to fish. Her second favorite part of fishing was pulling a fish out of the water. Her favorite thing was pushing the worms on the fishing hook.

“Fishing sounds good. If you two guys can catch three nice big fish, I’ll make us fish for dinner.” Barb smiled. “Why don’t you take Cindy down to the creek and see how they are biting today?” Barb smiled.

Cindy looked excited as she stared at her dad, waiting for him to say OK.

Little Cindy’s smile melted away all of John’s frustrations and he smiled at her.

“OK.” John said. “But I’m afraid we don’t have any bait.”

“I’ll go get us some.” Cindy shouted as she ran into her room and returned with her yellow bucket and shovel.

John laughed. “You go dig us up some worms and I’ll get our fishing poles and meet you outside.”

Cindy squealed with delight and ran out the back door.

Barb gave John a smile. She was happy to see the stress that had constantly been on his face the past few days, be replaced by a smile and that twinkle in his eyes that had made her fall in love with him seven years ago.