Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Clover looked at him, and the two men held each other’s gaze. “Get the secretary of defense on the line as quickly as you can, Master Sergeant.”

  Pete looked up at the motionless black mass, a trickle of fear going up his back. “Right away, sir.”

  17

  The sky glowed a dim orange as the sun sank behind the clouds. Mitchell watched Dr. Samantha Bower with detached curiosity. “You know,” he said, “I think you and I would’ve hit it off quite well in private. Before all this… mess.”

  She didn’t respond. Rather, she looked out at the horizon and the setting sun.

  “Well,” he said, “you never made your flight out to Africa, did you? Instead, you ended up in Miami helping the dying for no reason at all. Sisyphus pushing your stone up the hill.”

  “We didn’t make the flight because there wasn’t one for a long time, a couple of months. So I thought I could do some good here.”

  Mitchell nodded, a slight grin on his face. “I see that about you, that drive to do good. Hasn’t really helped you so far, has it?” He sighed and pulled out the pistol tucked into his waistband. He placed it on the table. Samantha’s eyes drifted down. The smooth steel, a silencer built into the end, reflected the dimming sunlight. She’d seen an identical gun before.

  “Ian failed,” she said. “And I get the sense that he was much better than you.”

  “Actually, he was in the organization a lot longer, more training. But I’m right about up to snuff now. You know, he was a friend of mine. I was very saddened to learn you killed him.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Really? That’s not what I’d heard. Doesn’t matter. There’s only one way this ends anyhow.”

  She looked up, into his eyes. “Why does Hank Kraski want me dead?”

  “That’s not his real name, you know. Hank is… he’s quite an amazing man. He’s fierce, willing to do anything to achieve what he needs to achieve, a Napoleon. It’s a shame he doesn’t have the army he needed to do what Napoleon couldn’t.” Mitchell chuckled. “Although I suppose the virus is the army, isn’t it?”

  “Why me?”

  “He thinks you might actually develop a vaccine, and that we can’t have, not yet, not until humanity can’t fight back anymore.” Mitchell leaned forward, crossing his hands on the table. “Hank is the type of man who would stomp the world under his feet if he could rule over the dirt afterward. He doesn’t see civilization the same way you or I do. He has a long-term view of it, of the species as a whole. He thinks we’re weak, and he is going to make us strong.”

  “Strong?” Samantha motioned to the devastated buildings around them, the fires that dotted the landscape randomly like erupting geysers. “Does this look strong to you?”

  “It looks like a crucible, and when man does finally emerge from it, he will be strong, yes, willing to do what it takes to survive without distractions.”

  She shook her head. “Hank is insane just like Napoleon. One driving ambition blinds him to everything else. Napoleon brought destruction to the world, too. That’s all he’s giving you; destruction.”

  Mitchell shrugged. “I suppose only time will tell.” He paused. “You know, there is a way you can prolong your life, if you would like to. Right here on the table, let me fuck you. That would buy you an additional half hour or so.”

  He chuckled. The look of disgust on her face was priceless.

  “I suppose that’s a no. I could rape you, but I’m not in the mood for a fight right now. I think I’d rather put a bullet in your head and then find a hot meal. And thanks for allowing the interview. I knew it’d be an easy way to get close to you. Everyone wants to tell their story.” He lifted the pistol and then felt a muzzle against the back of his head. He instinctively spun just as the round caught him near the ear. Years, almost decades, of training saved his life with one jerk of his head.

  Jason Shafi stood behind him.

  Mitchell leapt to his feet. He thrust out with his hands, trying to knock the pistol away, gouge Jason in the eyes, or land a fist to his jaw, anything. The round had grazed his head, causing a ringing in his ears, and his vision spun. Jason easily moved away from his blows until he finally caught his fist, twisted the arm around, and snapped Mitchell’s wrist.

  Mitchell screamed as Jason got him down to his knees.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Jason said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not yet.”

  Mitchell slammed his foot into Jason’s ankle, knocking him nearly off his feet, and then came up with a quick blow to Jason’s neck. Jason backed away enough for Mitchell to side kick him in the chest, his heel crashing into Jason’s sternum and sending him flying back. Mitchell didn’t pause. He leapt into the air and came down with a knee. Jason rolled away just as the knee hit the soft covering of the roof. Jason spun and landed two kicks to Mitchell’s face before he lurched to his feet.

  Jason, wrestling style, sprinted at him and tackled him around his waist. Both men hit the roof, Jason landing sharp elbows to Mitchell’s jaw. Mitchell was feeling loopy by this time but managed to slip out the knife hidden in his sleeve. Jason saw it and caught his arm just as Mitchell tried to thrust it into his neck. The two men pushed and pulled, grunting like animals, the knife slowly slipping closer and closer to Jason’s throat. Mitchell had him. He knew it. The knife would enter the throat and he would twist, ensuring a wide wound that would bleed out.

  Just as the tip of the blade touched Jason’s throat, Mitchell saw movement above him. Samantha lifted her glass and slammed it down into his face. Mitchell, the move catching him off guard, lost his grip. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but for someone like Jason, it was all the time he needed.

  Jason grabbed the wrist that held the knife and turned it toward Mitchell. Using both hands, Jason put all his weight on the hand and wrist, the knife slowly entering Mitchell’s throat. He screamed, and then the scream went silent as his larynx was sliced in half.

  The last thing Mitchell saw as the warm blood pooled around him, running down his shirt, over his chest, and spurting out over the roof as Jason removed the knife, was Samantha Bower, a doctor, standing over him and not moving to help him.

  18

  Samantha watched as Jason dragged the corpse over to the side of the roof and tossed it. The body hit the building before looping down and hitting the ground. Several infected rushed for it from the mounds of debris they hid behind, tearing at it like coyotes over carrion.

  “He’s not the last,” Jason said. “Hank will keep sending people over and over, until either you’re dead or he’s outta guys.” He turned and looked at her. “I can go to the village by myself. I’ll bring back samples of their blood for you to analyze. We can find somewhere new for you to hide. Somewhere Hank’s influence doesn’t reach.”

  She shook her head. “I’m tired of running. I wanna know why this happened, Jason. I wanna know why the world turned into this.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I am.”

  He nodded. “Flight leaves tomorrow.” He hesitated. “We can’t take her with us.”

  “I know.”

  “This hospital’s about as safe a place as any to leave her. They get resupplied every month, plenty of troops guarding the entrances, she’ll be safe here.”

  “No, she won’t be safe anywhere.” She turned and headed back through the door leading down into the hospital.

  The clinic-cum-hospital, which had once been for physical therapy and several other paramedical professions, consisted of sixty staff, not counting the marines that guarded the entrances, and now served as the local military hospital for an area covering almost a hundred square miles. As part of the deal the medical staff had made with the military, civilians would be served here as well, as long as resources were available and soldiers were the first priority for the beds.

  Samantha had spent the past two months trying to bring ritual and routine back into her life. She had never
known how much she needed those things, how much she relied on them. With a life of routine, your brain could almost go on automatic pilot, and you would have mental resources to focus on other things. When every second of existence had to be carefully thought out and planned, she found that by the end of the day, she couldn’t think. All she could do was lie in her cot and take sleep aids so she could actually stop having nightmares for a few hours.

  Jessica had been doing much better. The hospital staff all lived there in the building, and several had children, even two girls who were near Jessica’s age. The three of them were inseparable, and their giggling and mischievous laughter that sometimes filled the halls comforted Sam in a way she didn’t think something like that would.

  A rudimentary laboratory had been set up in the hospital’s basement. Nothing anywhere near a BS4 lab. Those days, at least for people outside the military, were gone, but she had enough equipment to study the virus. Several times a day, the hospital would be attacked and corpses of the infected would be burned after being shot by the marines. She would occasionally collect tissue and blood samples, trying to isolate the virus and track its mutations. With the equipment she had, however, it was nearly impossible. It felt a bit like grabbing things in the dark, hoping to land on something useful.

  Jason stepped into the laboratory and sat down on a couch pushed against the wall. He rubbed his temples. “We’re ready. Just gotta wait till the morning.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s something I should tell you, Sam, about Tristan.”

  Samantha turned to him. “What?”

  “She’s… unique. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m just so tired.”

  Samantha sat next to him on the couch and held his hand. Neither of them spoke or moved, not until the sun came up and Samantha realized they had both slept on the couch. She rose and checked her watch. The plane would be ready for takeoff in less than four hours, and before that, she would be entering the depths of Miami to get to the airbase.

  19

  The empty roads reminded Sam of the barren wasteland of Death Valley. She’d been there for a marathon once, seemingly in another life when training and competing in those actually seemed important.

  In the tepid morning light, car after car stood on the sides of the interstate. The buildings beyond them were deteriorating so quickly that she couldn’t believe her eyes. Windows were broken wherever they could be broken, and she wondered why people, during all this, would take the time to break them and find amusement in doing so.

  “We need to switch cars,” Jason said. “This one’s almost out of gas.”

  He took an exit that led to an intersection. The traffic lights, covered in what appeared to be dirt, swung in a strong breeze. The lights in Miami no longer worked. Turning left, Jason parked on the side of the road. “We’ll move on foot until we find something else. Stay close.”

  Sam exited the vehicle. If they were caught by a crowd of ips, no one could help them. Police didn’t exist here. They were scattered to a few hospitals and financial centers or other places deemed worth protecting. The military patrols would be their only help, but they were few and far between as well.

  “Let’s move,” he said.

  They hurried up the sidewalk, Sam at Jason’s side. He seemed single-minded, his eyes focused ahead of them, taking in their surroundings, considering every option, a soldier bred for war.

  Jason nodded in the direction of a large building, and they took the corner and strode over.

  The building, large and gray and at least twenty stories tall, had a massive parking structure next to it. They headed for the parking structure. Sam guessed the cars on the sides of the roads had had their tanks siphoned dry a long time ago and hoped they could find something in the structure that still had some gas left. Jason stopped at the entrance, closing his eyes.

  “There are people in here,” he finally said. “I don’t know if they’re hostile or not. If something goes down, you just run. Don’t wait for me. Run.”

  She swallowed as they entered the building, the butterflies in her stomach nauseating her.

  The structure had a ramp leading to the other levels and rows upon rows of cars. When Miami, like most major cities, had been evacuated, the roads had been shut down afterward. Cars were obsolete anyway because gas was nearly unaffordable. Everyone left had to walk—everyone who didn’t have connections. The well connected could get out of any city.

  “You should probably know something else, Sam. It’s Hank’s plan… the last phase isn’t done yet. There’s one more component to it.”

  “What?”

  He hesitated. “The clouds again. It was, like, his obsession. He believes he can wipe out everyone if he can find a way to infect the clouds more efficiently. I think he may have found a way, but I’m not sure.”

  Jason began checking all the cars. When he found one he liked, he’d search it for keys. If it didn’t have keys, he would break open the steering column and hot-wire it to check the gas gauge. They would then move on to the next car.

  They checked the entire first and second floors of the parking structure. The gasoline had been siphoned from the cars long ago, leaving just a trace in each one.

  As they approached the top level of the structure, Sam could hear voices, a lot of them. Jason motioned for her to stay back as he quietly took the stairs leading up.

  She crossed her arms and paced around. The memory of what had occurred in Los Angeles was fresh in her mind. A man like a machine, who wouldn’t stop no matter what pain he was put through, to carry out a single mission: kill her.

  Her boyfriend had been killed in that fight, and the thought of Duncan filled her like a gray weight in her stomach, as though she had swallowed concrete.

  On the outskirts of the parking level, she saw movement. She whipped her head around, but the movement was gone. Scanning the structure, a chill went up her back, a primal warning that she wasn’t alone. A noise came from behind her and she looked back, catching sight of just the heel of someone scurrying behind a truck.

  Samantha backed away, toward the stairs leading to the top level. The noises grew louder. Someone, or several people, was closing in around her.

  Her heart pounding, she turned to run and froze. A man in tattered clothing stood before her, his hair gray on a rectangular head. He grinned and produced a knife hidden in his clothing. Behind her, two other men appeared, sinister smirks written across their faces, their fingers wrapped around a screwdriver and a length of steel pipe. Not ips, not enough blood covering them, but not friendly, either.

  “You lost, Little Bo Peep?” the man in front of her said.

  Samantha said nothing. She took in her surroundings. Only two routes away: down or up.

  “Keep away from me,” she said.

  “Or what? Hm? What you gonna do?”

  She broke into a run, as fast as her legs could carry her. She dashed past the man, headed for the ramp leading down to the lower levels. The other two men behind her were sprinting as well, their footfalls echoing against the walls. The tall man casually stepped away, letting the other two do the work.

  Sam pumped her legs, making it halfway down to the other level before the men overtook her. One tackled her at the legs, slamming her down into the pavement. A burst of pain exploded inside her, but she didn’t stop to consider it. She pushed up to her hands and knees and was on her feet again before the one with the pipe came at her. He swung wildly. She ducked and then kicked his groin. He grunted like a pig from the sudden pain, and she was gone. Turning around and heading in the opposite direction, she was almost to the next level by the time the men were dashing after her.

  On the third level, she could hear their shouting. Their words were filthy, horrible things. Descriptions of what they were going to do when they caught her. One of them said they would wear her skin.

  She sprinted past a few cars and jumped over the hood of one, landing hard on the ground. C
overing her mouth with her hands, not trusting that a scream wouldn’t escape her lips, she attempted to control her breathing, to remain still and quiet.

  The running behind her stopped. The men were breathing hard, the one with the pipe letting it dangle in his hand and run along the pavement.

  “Come out, come out,” he said. “You can’t run forever.” He turned to the other man and said, “Go by that ramp so she can’t get out. I’ll look for her.”

  Hidden behind a tire, she poked her head underneath the car. One set of feet moved toward the ramp leading down to the second level. Another began going in between the cars, stopping near the windows a moment before moving on.

  Eventually, they would find her.

  As quietly as possible, she lay flat on her stomach. As she crawled underneath the car, her belt scraped against the pavement. She held her breath, her eyes on the feet not four cars away. They didn’t show any reaction, just kept going from car to car.

  Her entire body could fit underneath the car, a large SUV. She curled up so as to have all her limbs in the center of the vehicle and less likely to be seen by someone walking by. If he passed there without seeing her, she would crawl back to the ramp leading up and find Jason, or maybe to the set of stairs on the far side of this level and head down to the street, and attempt to find a military patrol.

  The feet were two cars away now. They hurried around the next car, and she could see the man peering in through the windshield. His fingernails were black with grime and oil. She didn’t know why that would be the thing she would notice above all else, but it was.

  She held her breath as the man got to her car.

  He paced around it and then looked inside before moving on to the next car.

  Before she could release her breath, she felt his grip on her ankle and screamed. He began pulling her out from underneath the car, giggling. His grip was tight, and his fingernails dug into her skin.