The Living Dead (Book 1): Contagion (5 page)

            “Of course. I’ll scan the documents and email them today.” They looked relieved.

            Virginia asked, “Do you have enough food? I made it to the grocery store just before the run they had this morning. I bought plenty of canned stuff and I can share.”

            Portia said, “We’re fine. Both pantries are full. Bill took the jeep out for gas and went to the drugstore for a few extra things before the snow got bad. At the gas station he got into a little scuffle with another customer who told him he could only get five gallons at a time. She was furious. The clerk said there was no rationing that he had heard of. We’ve already filled the bathtubs with water in case it shuts down for a little while.”

            “I didn’t think of that. I’ll fill mine too. I came over to tell you that I’m leaving today to go get Anna and Greg. Ian’s parents came over and picked them up to spend a few days with them before all this started. I can’t reach them on the phone. You already have a key to the house if you need anything. I should be back late tomorrow.”

            Bill turned and looked out through the French windows leading to the patio in back. Snow covered the ground and the tree branches with a sparkling crust of white. She saw the gauze bandage on his cheek from the gas station incident. He looked at her.

            “Virginia, I don’t think you’ll make it. They closed 531 up at Chapel Croft; it’s impassible. Your car would have a tough time even getting up there in this. We can loan you the jeep but that road is the only one that will get you over to Springfield.”

            “Did they say when it would reopen?”

            “This storm should leave us with a foot or more of snow but it isn’t going to warm up enough to melt things for a few days. We’ll have to wait and see.”

            Turning away so they couldn’t see her tears of anger and frustration she said goodbye and stepped out into the storm. What the hell happened to global warming? Wasn’t this supposed to be the south?

Chapter 6

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
and then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
and thereby hangs a tale

                                   -William Shakespeare

            She turned and kicked out wildly at the parka shrouded figure, but her foot met only vinyl and down and, losing her balance, she fell backwards into the snow. He laughed, an ugly, snorting laughter and she recognized him. It was her neighbor, Larry.

            “Whatcha kicking me for? I come over here to see if you need anything and you try to kick me? That’s not neighborly.” She could smell alcohol fumes coming off him as he spoke.     “
Do
you need anything?” He leaned in closer and leered at her as she struggled to get back up. “I’ll bet you need
something
, don’t you? I haven’t seen that husband of yours around in a while. You might need someone to look out for you.”

            She made it to her feet. She was afraid but determined to hide it. He had always seemed annoying to her but now she saw a creepy side. Maybe it was the alcohol.

            Keeping her voice calm she said. “I didn’t know it was you Larry. You frightened me and I just reacted. I’m cold and I need to get inside. You probably should too.”

            His expression faltered for a second, then he sneered at her, shook his head, and walked away. Virginia watched him for a moment to be sure he kept going then opened her door (oh great, she had forgotten to lock it) and slipped inside, this time locking the deadbolt, the knob, and sliding the chain. It was time to stop being so careless.

            Scanning the documents then emailing them to Ian only took a few minutes. She wondered if he would even get them, let alone persuade someone higher up to look at them. She wanted to sit down and read them but she had something more important to do first.

            It took some time to find the guns. She had never taken any interest in them before today. She remembered seeing a handgun as well as a shotgun or rifle when they packed to move into this house three years ago. She tried the locked drawer in the desk first. Birth certificates and documents for both of their life insurance policies but no gun. She found a metal crate in the back of the bedroom closet, full of ammunition. Good. It was heavy though. She dragged it into the family room in front of the TV only belatedly noticing it left a long trail of dark grease marking the antique Tabriz rug that had been a wedding gift from Ian’s grandmother. Well, crap. Leaving it there she went upstairs and, unfolding the stairs from the trapdoor, ventured into the attic where she found a set of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1985, the rollaway bed, a broken sled, a rocking chair with no seat, and, oh good, a KA-BAR knife that belonged to her grandfather when he was in the Marines. It was to be Greg’s when he was old enough. It still would be, but it might come in handy now. It had a nice weight to it and felt good in her hand. She put it back in its leather sheath and backed down the ladder, folding it up into the ceiling. Still no guns.

            Restless, she paced the house, assessing the rooms and layout in a way that she never had before. Here on the first floor, most of the windows were at ground level and all the rooms flowed into one another. The windows were almost floor to ceiling, letting in lots of light throughout the day. French windows off the family room gave access to a flagstone terrace in the back. As she had thought from the first day they found it, it was an inviting, happy place. It was also, she realized now, completely indefensible.

             Her eyes fell on the crate of ammunition on the floor and she remembered something. When they first moved in, the area under the staircase was unfinished. They wound up getting a contractor to finish it for them but he left an unfinished area all the way in the back accessible by moving an unsecured panel. She went into the kitchen and got a flashlight. Opening the closet door, she turned on the light and got down on her knees, scooting to the back of the closet. Using both hands, she pressed hard against the back wall until she felt the panel give a little and she lifted it to one side. She shined the flashlight back into the aperture and there they were, one shotgun and a handgun. She pulled them out and found 6 boxes of bullets behind them. Carrying everything out of the closet, she took stock of her newfound arsenal with satisfaction.

            1 shotgun

            4 150 boxes of shells

            1 38 caliber handgun

            6 boxes of rounds

            She added the KA-BAR knife, a small first aid kit, a flashlight, and found the hand cranked emergency radio she had bought after 9/11. She then spent a couple of hours watching You Tube videos showing how to clean, load, and fire the weapons.

            By nightfall both guns were cleaned and loaded. She still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with them and knew she was unlikely to hit any challenging targets. Both were under the bed and the knife under her pillow. She was on the phone trying once again to reach her in laws when the doorbell rang. Peering through the sidelight she saw Portia standing on the porch. She opened the door and pulled her inside, out of the cold.

            “What happened? Did you hear from any of the children?”

            Portia said, “Can you come over? The children? Oh, I still haven’t been able to get hold of them. They’re smart and resourceful and should be ok. Or that’s what I’m telling myself anyway. It has to be in God’s hands. No, this is something else.”

            Virginia locked the door behind them and followed her across the street. It was freezing and the snowfall continued unabated, banking at least a foot high against the garage door. It would be hard to get her car out if it kept on like this. They reached the house.

            The smell hit her like a wave as soon as they opened the door; a smell of rot and decay so strong she almost felt it as a tangible thing entering her nostrils. She gagged and took a quick look at Portia, hoping she hadn’t noticed but Portia was watching her and nodded as if in confirmation and suddenly Virginia knew.

            “The woman at the gas station?”

            Portia said, “Probably.”

            “Where is he?”

            “In the bedroom, the vomiting started this afternoon. It’s so bad I’ve given up trying to clean it all. I’ve been through three sets of sheets. I tried calling paramedics but the line won’t pick up. Neither will 911.”

            They went up the polished oak staircase and down the hallway, past pictures of smiling babies. The smell grew stronger as they entered the bedroom. Bill, wrapped in blankets but shivering, had stopped vomiting for the moment. Portia went to the bed and put her hand on his forehead.

            “He just keeps getting colder.”

            The bed and floor were splashed about with thick black bile and the smell was as if his internal organs were rotting and he was spewing them out. His breathing was rapid and shallow and she couldn’t tell if he was conscious.

            Hating herself for saying it but doing it anyway she said, “Portia, you know you have to restrain him now, while you still can.”

            Portia sat by her husband’s side, talking softly to him and stroking his arm. She looked at Virginia but said nothing.

            Virginia left the room and went downstairs, going through the kitchen then out into the garage. She searched until she found what she was looking for and went back up to the bedroom. She handed the roll of duct tape to Portia who took it without comment.

            “Do you want me to help you or do you want to do it?”

            “Help me.”

            Virginia took the roll and wound several layers round both ankles, tight enough to hold him but not tight enough to cut off his circulation. She didn’t want to hurt him. She then secured both feet to the foot rail at the bottom of the bed and handed the tape to Portia who wrapped each of his wrists and then looped the tape through the spindles on the headboard. It looked terribly uncomfortable but Bill didn’t appear to be aware of being moved. His face was a mottled white/gray color and his breath came in short gasps. The bandage on his face was saturated with oozing pus. She watched as Portia adjusted his blankets then, after partially drawing the door to, they went back downstairs.

            Portia said, “I’m not sure what to expect next. If he does go into coma and then revives like they are saying, violent, I wonder if I’ll be able to calm him down enough to eat or drink. If I can’t, then I’ll need to get an IV drip going as soon as possible. I don’t have the equipment for that here. I’d start it now if I did. He’s already dehydrated from all the vomiting.”

            Virginia couldn’t imagine anybody surviving what she had seen upstairs. She wanted to be sure he was restrained just in case she was wrong but from the moment she saw the condition he was in, she was sure he wouldn’t make it through the night. She kept her opinion to herself and made Portia a cup of hot tea, with a little whiskey for extra warmth. She added a small log to the fire and sat on the down filled sofa. Portia took a sip of tea, then another and seemed to relax a little.

            “Did I ever tell you how I met Bill? It was just after I started working on the pediatric floor at East Beaumont. I was new in town and the new kid at work. I’d just started a week of midnight shifts and I had a hallway of the injury cases- you know, kid falls down the stairs and get concussed, toddler who jumps out of the crib and breaks a collarbone. There was also one case of measles. That was kind of unusual. Even back then you hardly ever saw it thanks to immunizations. I had checked on all of my patients and the measles case would be the last before I went home. When I went into the room, I thought something was wrong. There was a grown man in the bed, asleep. I went back to the station to tell them we had a patient misplaced. I was wrong. Measles was Bill. He’d been working on a project in the Dominican Republic for 6 months and probably contracted it there. Since it was considered a childhood illness, they put him on the children’s ward. When I went back into the room, he was awake. I saw those blue eyes and when he smiled… that was it for me. He asked me for my phone number and called me after he was discharged.” She smiled at the memory then leaned back and rested her head on the sofa.

            Virginia turned on the television. CBS reported infected victims wading ashore in the Carolinas and Florida and advised people to avoid the beaches and dock areas. As reports of attacks grew more frequent, homeless shelters began to turn many away, the fortunate inside huddling together as they listened to the desperate cries of people, many of them with children, begging for shelter and protection.

            CNN reported they were still unable to connect with any of their local people in Miami. Martial law had been declared throughout the entire southern half of the Florida peninsula. FEMA shelters opened several hours ago and locals were directed to go to those locations if they had to leave their homes. Now, there were new reports that these shelters were overrun by the infected and should be avoided. The network’s remote cameras were up and still working in a few areas of the city. Live footage from these was shown in a small screen in the corner of the TV. Fires were visible in some scenes. Slow moving figures thronged the streets but details were difficult to make out in the darkness.

            C-SPAN replayed an interview from earlier in the day with a World Health Organization official.

            Interviewer: What can you tell us about the spread of the infection?

            WHO: We believe the virus is pandemic. We have received reports of outbreaks in Europe and the Middle East. China is officially denying having any cases but internet messages from inside the country tell a different story.

            Interviewer: Have researchers made any progress in finding a treatment for the disease?

            WHO: Our treatment protocols at this time are still isolation and restraint. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Once victims reach the psychotic stage of the illness they are very difficult to control. They do not appear to recognize friends or family members and will attack without warning or provocation.

            Interviewer: We have seen medical reports describing the vital signs of the infected patients as “virtually indiscernible from death.” They have no heartbeat and do not appear to breathe. What else characterizes these patients?