Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) Page 7

  “Jason’s eyes ran down to my chest and made me uncomfortable until I realized he was staring at my lanyard. ‘You with the CDC?’ he asked. I nodded, and he said, ‘What’re you doing up here?’ I looked at Luther, who had his gaze fixed on Jason. Something was happening between the two men, but I didn’t know what. Almost like some sort of challenge.

  ‘Same as you,’ Luther said, ‘running.’

  “A moment passed between them where neither spoke. Jason finally said, ‘I figured you guys ran for the hills. I saw some people with the CDC trying to collect samples from the ips at the airport. They were some of the first ones killed.’ I glanced at Jessica, who stared at the fires in the city around us. ‘So?’ Jason said. ‘Do you have a vaccine or not?’

  “Luther said, ‘Why would you think we have a vaccine?’ Jason quickly looked around, making certain no one was paying attention to us. Everybody on the bus was so focused on themselves that I don’t think they cared what anyone else spoke about.

  ‘That’s the rumor,’ Jason said quietly. ‘That y’all have a vaccine and just haven’t gone public with it yet.’

  “I shook my head. I’d heard these rumors my entire career at the CDC. That HIV had been cured, but the drug companies had bought us off so we wouldn’t release it. That cancer was avoidable, but we didn’t want to release the research on prevention because too many industries relied on the ‘cures’ they peddled. Any time people feared something, they needed to blame someone else for their fear.

  “ ‘If we had a vaccine,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be on this bus.’

  “Something about him made me uncomfortable, the way he wouldn’t blink, maybe, and I looked out the window rather than keep eye contact. But the city wasn’t much better, not for a few hours, until we got upstate and away from major population centers. The buildings turned to barns, and soon we were surrounded by forests rather than skyscrapers. Traffic clogged the roads there. No one knew where to go. Every talking head on television told them something contradicting the last talking head. MSNBC said to run to the cities. Fox News told them to get to the country. CNN told everyone to stay where they were and that government rescue operations were underway.”

  Samantha grinned and shook her head, taking a sip of the drink before taking off her sunglasses and putting them on the table. “There were no government rescue operations. The government was as clueless as everyone else. We were fighting an enemy who didn’t care about morals or standards, who didn’t care about harm to themselves, who had no problem wiping out civilian populations. Our government didn’t know what to do. They were still thinking in terms of the old world, the pre–T-Zero-Event world. Politicians fought just so opponents across the aisle couldn’t get something done. But the rest of the world was changing. Generals disobeyed the president because he hadn’t served in the military, and they didn’t respect him. States tried to assert their authority over the federal government as much as they could. The governors of several states even declared their states would be seceding from the Union. All federal programs were shut down. The governor of Arizona said that illegal immigrants carried the virus over onto US soil, and he used people’s fear as leverage to build a wall. That’s how the Rio Grande Wall began construction, a nineteen-hundred-mile wall with armed guards every two hundred yards, at a price tag of only five billion dollars. The ips, a term I began using after meeting Jason Shafi, were killing us in our own homes, and the government cared about whether Mexicans sneaked across the border.

  “Driving near Albany, New York, we saw a line of people, handcuffed, with blindfolds over their eyes. It was just like that, too, like you see in the cartoons, when Bugs Bunny is almost executed and then saves himself. The only things missing were the cigarettes dangling from their mouths. We stopped near them. The military checkpoint couldn’t let us pass until they verified the identities of everyone onboard. I don’t know why they cared who we were; maybe they thought terrorist groups were attempting to take advantage of the chaos and attempting further attacks. Maybe they’d bought the Arizona governor’s line that illegal immigrants had spread the virus and were rounding up everyone without proper ID. I don’t know. But they made us sit there for almost half an hour. So I had a good view of the line of people.

  “They were crying and trembling, some of them young, really young, preteens. The soldiers lined up in front of them didn’t seem that much older. I could see them, too, because of some floodlights illuminating the area. They appeared almost as frightened as those lined up in front of them. And then, without warning, someone barked an order, and the soldiers lifted their rifles. I pressed my hand to the glass and said, ‘No.’ But it was just an instinctive reaction. I knew I couldn’t help them now.

  “The soldiers fired, and all but one of the people in the line dropped. The one that didn’t drop was one of the preteens, a girl. The soldier in front of her hadn’t fired. He held the gun in position but refused to fire. His CO barked orders at him, got in his face, shoved him, but the man just lowered the rifle and then dropped it. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see his lips. All he said was, ‘No… no.’ Finally the CO picked up the rifle and shot the girl himself. He tossed the rifle at the soldier, bouncing it off his chest. The soldier stood at attention, and, though it was difficult to make out, I think I saw tears on his cheeks.

  “Somewhere the order had been given that what was termed the ‘pre-infected’—those who had the virus and were beginning to show symptoms but hadn’t reached the point of attacking others—would be executed. To house them in prison, feed them, and take able-bodied men away from the fight in order to guard them was determined to be a drain of resources.” Samantha smirked. “A nineteen-hundred-mile wall was deemed necessary, but allowing sick citizens to live was deemed a drain of resources.

  “We crossed the border that night into Pennsylvania and then Ohio, where we transferred to another bus. Wyoming was the least-populated state in the nation and someplace Luther and I decided we could hide until we figured out a way out of the country. All international flights had been cancelled with the exception of military flights, and no one was going to give us space on those flights.

  “Jason Shafi came on the other bus, too. He sat across from us again. Late into the night, when Luther and Jessica were laid out on the seats asleep, I noticed him staring at a photograph. ‘What is that?’ I asked. He glanced up from the photo.

  “ ‘Just someone I lost.’ He paused. ‘You’re looking for a vaccine, aren’t you?’

  “ ‘What makes you say that?’

  “ ‘What’s the likelihood that two scientists are on the same bus at the same time? Poindexter has that look about him, that look of certainty. That’s the hubris of science, you know. Science isn’t a history of developments like people think. It’s a series of revolutions, complete upheavals of knowledge. After a particular revolution, the previous theories are laughable. And without their certainty, people lose themselves. So they cling to the next thing and are so certain about it that they’d fight to the death to protect it… until the next revolution. That’s the look he has, as though he knows everything, but, just underneath, he’s uncertain about everything.

  “ ‘You don’t speak like any soldier I’ve ever met.’

  “He leaned his head back on the seat and turned his eyes out the window again. Skyscrapers, then farms, and now cornfields and great open valleys. ‘My degree is in engineering,’ he said. ‘I thought that I’d be the best asset to the army that way.’ He smiled. ‘Haven’t used it since the day I graduated from college. Shows how much I know.’

  “I shifted in my seat. We’d been on the bus so long that my legs were falling asleep. ‘This is a civilian bus, but you’re military. What’s a soldier doing with civilians?’

  “He grinned. ‘Tit for tat. You’re looking for a vaccine, aren’t you?’

  “ ‘Yes. Now you.’

  He put the photograph in the breast pocket of his jacket. “ ‘Let’s just say I d
idn’t agree with my orders.’

  “ ‘You’re a deserter.’

  “ ‘It’s not desertion to want to live. They were sending my team to our deaths, and I’d seen enough death.’ He paused. ‘Few days ago, I found out the team was killed to the last man. There wouldn’t have been any use me dyin’ with ’em. The brass don’t see it that way, though. I’ll be shot if they ever find me. How do you plan on finding a vaccine?’

  “I didn’t know who this man was or why he wanted to know what we were doing. My initial discomfort with him had faded. We’d all developed it, everyone that had lived through T-Zero, a general distrust of strangers. I tried to fight that distrust. ‘We have a few leads,’ I said.

  “He chuckled. ‘We’re about to live in the desert together and eat cactus three times a day, but you don’t think you can trust me with your big plan to find a vaccine for something that’s already infected half the world? Doesn’t seem too smart to me, especially since I can help.’

  “ ‘How can you help?’

  “Jason leaned forward, holding my gaze, our eyes locked as he said softly, ‘Because I know where a vaccine is.’ With that, he leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes, settling into sleep and leaving me staring at him.”

  8

  Samantha gazed out over the buildings, hardly remembering Mitchell sitting in front of her. She glanced down to the digital recorder and then back out to the horizon. “That’s what he told me, that he knew where a vaccine was, and then he just went to sleep like it was ordinary news, as though he were telling me who won the soccer game last night. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to wake him up right then and make him tell me what he was talking about, what he knew, but I didn’t. Somehow I understood that he wouldn’t tell me then. He would at some point, but not right then. So I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep, too.

  “When I woke, we were in Iowa. The farther we got from the coast and the cities, the less damage we saw. No waves of infected barreling through the towns, no tanks, no constant thuds in the sky from the helicopters raining bullets down onto the ips. It seemed almost… normal. We even stopped at an open diner still serving food. They took barter or money, and hyperinflation hadn’t touched them. Eight dollars for an omelet and an orange juice. Nothing I’ve ever had in my life had ever tasted so good.

  “After we ate, we were back on the bus. Luther and Jason didn’t really talk much, but Jessica was fascinated by him. She asked him questions about his background, the places he’d been, how many infected he’d killed. ‘Too many to remember,’ he said. Jessica then asked if he had a family. His went silent for a while then said, ‘Not anymore.’

  “Luther calculated that Niobrara County in Wyoming would be the ideal location for us to set up and plan our next move. It was the least-populated section of the state, which meant there likely wouldn’t be any infected. Jason watched us with a detached curiosity and never said a word about our plans. Not until we were in South Dakota. Driving through barren fields, watching the empty canyons and the way the sunlight reflected off a flowing river next to the road, I wondered how many more buses like this one there were. How many other civilians were they shuffling from the cities to the more rural counties in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains? My guess was a lot, which meant they didn’t yet understand that not everyone with a dormant virus activated at the same time. Jessica and I weren’t showing any symptoms, and the hope grew within me that maybe the virus would simply stay dormant.

  “After days on the bus, having to refuel three times at government gas stations and stopping for the bathroom at least five times a day, we finally reached the Wyoming/South Dakota border. The dirt was dark brown, with the odd cactus growing between rocks and on the sides of cliffs. Luther said, ‘I bet we can rent a cabin. Maybe stay put while I try and arrange a transport out of the country.’

  “ ‘Ain’t gonna happen,’ Jason said.

  “ ‘Why not?’ Luther replied, not even bothering to look up at the man. I had noticed that Luther had a particular disdain for anyone trying to tell him what to do, and Jason seemed to be that man. Jason felt like he’d already lived through this once in the jungle and gave off an air of being an expert on the infected, which seemed to drive Luther crazy. Luther was used to being the one everyone looked to for answers, and to have someone like Jason challenging him sent him into miniature tantrums.

  “ ‘How long you planning on hiding out in Wyoming?’ Jason asked.

  “ ‘What business is it of yours?’ Luther replied. He had been examining a map and put it down on his lap, his eyes rising to meet Jason’s. The two men stayed silent for a second before Luther said, ‘And by the way, what are you doing here? Sam and I caught the bus heading this way on purpose, and you just happen to follow us? And you were on the first bus and just happen to sit across from us again? That seems like too much of a coincidence, and I don’t believe in coincidences.’

  “To his credit, Jason didn’t take the bait. He just smiled and said, ‘I wanted to come. I think she’s got a plan that might stop all this. If she does, I have an obligation to help.’

  Luther laughed. “ ‘Obligation, huh? Men like you don’t have obligations. You just have opportunities, and nine times out of ten, you take the opportunity that benefits you the most and screws everyone else.’

  “ ‘That so? And how many men like me have you met in that lab of yours?’

  “ ‘I know your type really well. You’re the ones who fight just to fight and run away when it gets too hard. The ones who believe you have to have regular wars to keep a nation healthy. You try to justify your inherent violence with imaginary arguments, unable to face the fact that you’re just barbarians that find living in civilization difficult.’

  “Jason leaned forward, pointing his finger at Luther. ‘And I know your type, too. You think everyone else is so far beneath you that they become numbers. And you can do whatever you want to numbers. I may be violent, but the greatest atrocities in history weren’t committed by people like me. They were committed by people like you, people who thought they knew what the greatest good was. That’s your battle cry: the greatest good for the greatest number, and you justify every slaughter with it.’

  “ ‘And you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you on this bus?’ Luther set the map aside as though he were going to rise up and punch Jason in the face. I thought I might actually have to restrain him. But Jason just chuckled, and Luther soon followed. I still didn’t understand what it was between them. Some sort of primal, alpha-male nonsense, I guess.

  “ ‘I’m on this bus because I can help you end this,’ Jason said.

  “ ‘How?’ Luther said. ‘You gonna club the virus to death?’

  “ ‘Better. I know a place that Samantha would be very interested in. Shangri-La.’ Jason paused. ‘And it is real. I know because I’ve seen it. I’ve been there.’”

  Samantha folded her arms again, lost in thought a moment, the breeze blowing over the tops of the skyscrapers, before she said, “I had heard rumors of Shangri-La before. It was a place somewhere in the world where everyone was immune to the virus, the initial Agent X. Different reasons for it were given. Some people said the townspeople had a natural immunity, some said they had developed a vaccine, others that they had a cure. A cure… You don’t really know how far you’re willing to go to save your life until your life is threatened. Having a cure to a virus is a one-in-a-billion shot. We don’t even have a cure for a cold or the flu, much less a destructive supervirus like Agent X and whatever this new strain was, but at that time, in that moment, when Jason said ‘Shangri-La,’ I knew I would go. I would have to. No matter how long it took or what the cost was, I would try to live.

  “ ‘Bullshit,’ Luther said. ‘Might as well go visit Santa Claus and see if he has a cure.’

  “ ‘Ain’t no myth, man. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the town, and it’s not a lie. It’s in the middle of the jungle, and there’s ips all around them,
but no one in the town’s infected. They know how to fight it, if you can find them.’

  “Luther folded his arms. ‘And where exactly are they?’

  “ ‘Western Africa. The Congolese jungle. About as far from civilization as you can get.’

  “Suddenly, I didn’t believe in coincidences anymore, either. Jason Shafi didn’t look like someone running from something, he looked like someone running to something. He wore his army jacket proudly. He wasn’t hiding from anyone. ‘You already knew who I was, didn’t you?’ I asked him. He grinned.

  “ ‘I may have heard you’d be on this bus.’

  “ ‘How?’

  “ ‘When you checked in for the transport, they told me who you were. I’d been looking for someone that could help me. I’ve tried going up command, but the army’s such a mess that no one knows what to do. I went to the medical research division and told them about Shangri-La. They didn’t even care. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe me. They didn’t care. The only thing they cared about was making sure they weren’t the ones blamed for this outbreak.’ He shook his head, staring out the window. ‘They actually told me to leave the science to them and just go shoot some ips, which was the only thing I was good for.’