The Shanxi Virus: An epidemic survival story Read online

  Mike rolled the idea around in his head. It had never occurred to him to ask one of the sheeple for help, and here was Aaron just offering up his assistance. He'd assumed everybody would be looking out for numero uno in a disaster scenario. One thing he knew for certain was that he couldn't do this by himself. The only person who could help him was an old man with terminal lung cancer. Ironic that a nearly helpless old buzzard had the means to save him.

  He tried to figure out another way to get out of here and home, but came up empty. He'd planned on having his guns with him when the stuff hit the fan. If he had them, he could take whatever he needed, but here he was, lying in a hospital bed, literally with his pants down. Could the answer possibly be so simple as to ask the old buzzard for a ride? Had he been alone for so long that he'd just forgotten how to ask for help? Mike grew skeptical, and a bit wary. There had to be something in it for the old man, but what was it? What was he after? What did a dying man want?

  "Well, I've got a cabin in the woods. It's a damn sight more scenic than this place anyway. Can you help me out? Do you know how we can get a ride out of here?" Mike asked.

  Aaron's eyebrows arched upward. "A car is the easy part. I've got one in the parking garage."

  "Alright! Let's get out of here. I'll need--"

  "One thing though. I need to make a stop before we go to your cabin."

  "What kind of stop? At your house?"

  "Nah. Any convenience store will do. No big deal."

  "I've got just about everything at my cabin. Guns, ammo, food, water. Just name it, I guarantee you I've got it."

  Aaron sniffed the air, and then gently shook his head from side to side. "And I can guarantee you don't."

  Puzzled, Mike was ready to agree to nearly any condition to get a ride out of the hospital. "OK. We'll stop along the way. I'm ready as soon as I get some clothes on. Can you hand them to me? They're hanging in the closet."

  Aaron hopped out of his bed, surprisingly spry for an elderly man with terminal lung cancer. He brought the plastic bag with Mike's clothes over, holding it at arms length, a disgusted look on his face. "You don't have anything else to wear? These look bad. And they smell... bad."

  "All I've got I'm afraid. Believe me, nobody is going to notice," Mike said. He changed into the clothes he wore during the wreck. The pants had bloodstains on the left leg, and the shirt's left arm was cut open from the shoulder to the wrist. It did make it easier to slip his cast through though.

  Aaron removed his hospital gown, revealing a skeletal rib cage and showing just how ill he was, and put on his street clothes. He handed two cans over to Mike. "Here, drink these. It'll give you some energy."

  Mike turned the cans over, reading the label. Nutritional supplement drinks. He popped the lid and made short work of them. A few minutes after drinking the second can, his hands stopped shaking.

  Aaron started for the door, but Mike called out to him urgently. "Wait! Don't go out there yet. See that box of gloves on the counter over there? Put them on, and then let's look around for some face masks."

  More steady on his feet now, Mike searched the cabinets and found two more boxes of latex gloves as well as four boxes of cloth respirators and three plastic face shields. He donned a respirator, which covered his mouth and nose, and then put on one of the clear plastic face shields to protect his eyes. His face protected, he fitted his hands into a pair of the latex gloves and then put another pair over the top, doubling them up.

  He knew that if he was going to come into contact with the virus, the most likely contact point would be via his hands, the dirtiest part of the human body. People touched their hands to their face several times a minute without even being aware of it. Comforted that he had some form of protection against the virus, he helped Aaron don his protective gear and then stuffed the extra boxes of personal protective equipment into a plastic bag to take with them.

  "Ready?" Mike asked.

  "I guess so," Aaron said, without much confidence.

  His pulse quickening, Mike went to grab the door, and paused before his hand touched the handle. "Aaron, hand me that coat hanger from the closet."

  When he had the hanger, he used it to latch onto the handle and open the inward swinging door. Outward opening doors he would kick open with his foot. It was one more little thing he could do to minimize his contact with the environment and reduce his risk of exposure.

  "Come on. Let's go."

  In the hallway, the man that had collapsed against the window lay in the hallway, just to the right of the door. He was still alive, his chest rising and stomach sucking inward as he wheezed for breath. Beads of sweat dripped off of his forehead.

  Mike gave the man a wide berth and quickened his pace until he reached the end of the hallway. The doors to the individual patients rooms were all shut, and all of their window curtains were closed as well. A nurse came out of a room, and ran over to check on the man that had collapsed on the floor. At the end of the hall a sign pointed him in the direction of the parking garage elevator. They followed the next hallway until they reached the elevator

  "What floor of the garage are you on?" Mike asked.

  "Second floor."

  As the elevator opened and the walked out into the second level of the parking garage, Mike was able to see the city in the distance and he paused, astonished at the state of the city. Dozens of columns of black smoke rose from points all over the city. On the ground level below, the hospital's emergency entrance was a mad jumble of vehicles parked at odd angles with a mix of ambulances and police cars thrown into the mix. A pitiful looking mob of sick people waited outside of the doors to the emergency room, sitting on the pavement wearing defeated looks.

  "Mike! Come on," Aaron said, gesturing toward his car.

  He followed Aaron to a faded old brown sedan. After they got in Aaron started the car and gripped the steering wheel, then suddenly leaned his head forward and rested his head on his hands. The short walk had visibly exhausted him. His hands trembled slightly.

  "You all right?"

  "I'll be all right. Just give me a minute."

  Seeming to perk up after a minute, Aaron left the parking garage and pulled onto a road that looped around the hospital. As they rounded the side of the hospital, six large commercial dumpsters came into view, butted up against loading bays at the back of the hospital.

  Two men in hazmat suits emerged from the hospital lugging a body bag. They tossed the body into the dumpster and went back into the hospital, and almost immediately emerged with a second body bag. At the far end of the lot a tractor pushed a dumpster filled with bodies towards an empty field. Mike saw two other dumpsters there, flames rolling off the top of them, thick black smoke rising into the air.

  "My God. Look at how many there are," Aaron said. "Do they have to use dumpsters? It seems... disrespectful."

  Mike nodded. "It’s probably the only way to get rid of that many infectious bodies quickly. It has to be done. They can't just leave the bodies lying around."

  "Can't they bury them?"

  "I doubt there are enough people left alive in the city to dig that many graves," Mike said.

  The dumpster-pyres disappeared from view as Aaron merged onto the main road and headed out of the city. They passed houses with boarded up windows that had hand painted signs warning against trespassing. Other houses had broken out windows and doors that had been kicked in. Trash was mounded up at the curb. Bodies wrapped in bed sheets and tarps had been dumped at the edge of the street.

  A bright flash of light down the street caught Mike's eye. A Humvee was parked in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead, blocking the way forward. Three soldiers in CBRN suits stood around the Humvee, holding M4 Carbines at the ready, others removed red metal canisters from the vehicle. Another soldier with a flamethrower strapped onto his back walked down the sidewalk, looking at the houses.

  He stopped in front of one that had a bright orange symbol spray painted on the garage and another symb
ol painted on the front door. Mike squinted and made out the symbol's shape, but not it's meaning. It was a large circle with a vertical line splitting the middle of the circle.

  The symbol's meaning quickly became clear as the soldier aimed his flamethrower at the house and set it on fire. With a wide sweeping motion of the weapon, he spread the fire around. The house burned brightly, flames licking at the eaves of the two-story building. The soldier appraised the fire, and then moved down the sidewalk, passing three unmarked houses until he came to another house marked with the symbol. He raised his flamethrower and proceeded to burn that house down as well.

  While the soldier with the flamethrower worked on the homes, three other soldiers moved up the street, using large meat hooks to pull bodies left at the curbside into the middle of the street. They made piles of the bodies and then doused them with gasoline and set them ablaze.

  "Turn around. Let's find a different route," Mike said.

  "I should have stayed in the hospital," Aaron said as he put the car into reverse. "I heard about them burning down contaminated homes on the news, but it's still hard to believe."

  Aaron sped down the street and found another way around, taking them through a commercial section of town where there were fewer homes than the original route. Many of the buildings had broken out windows similar to the residences they'd passed, signs that they had been looted.

  As they passed a convenience store with broken out windows, Aaron slammed on the brakes, jarring Mike's broken wrist and fingers. Pain shot up his arm.

  "What the hell is the matter with--"

  "Be right back," Aaron said, as he opened the door and jumped out of the driver's seat.

  "Where the hell is he going," Mike muttered to himself as Aaron ran around the front of the car.

  Aaron ran up to the convenience store and pulled at the door handle, and when it didn't open, he kicked out the remaining broken glass clinging to the doorframe. He disappeared inside the store and emerged a few moments later, carrying an armful of cigarette cartons. He tossed the cartons of cigarettes into the front seat, plopped down behind the wheel with a huff, and then stomped on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a squeal of its tires, and Aaron giggled like a child.

  "What in the hell was that all about?" Mike asked.

  When Aaron finally stopped laughing and had regained his composure, he took a carton of cigarettes out of the bag. They were an off brand, one that he didn't recognize from any ads. Aaron ripped open the carton and took out a pack, then shook loose a cigarette and stuck it in between his lips with a well rehearsed maneuver and lit it up. He took a long pull off of the cigarette, and let out a moan of satisfaction.

  Mike shook his head in disbelief, waving the sour smelling smoke from the cheap cigarettes out of his face. "What the hell were you thinking?"

  Aaron shrugged his shoulders and cracked his window, allowing the smoke to escape. "What? They can't give me cancer twice, right?"

  Fuming, Mike turned his head and glared out the passenger window. There could have been an infected person in there, and Aaron could have put himself, and more importantly, both of them, at risk. Mike thought about confronting him, but what could he say about it? Aaron had told him that he needed to stop on the way out of the city, and that was what he'd just done. The old man had been his ticket out after all, so he couldn't complain too much about it.

  "Grab the next exit and take Highway 44 until we get to Steelville. My cabin isn't too far from there," Mike said.

  "Steelville? Is there anything out there except trees?" Aaron asked. He lit a second cigarette off of the butt of his first and tossed the old one out of the window. "So what's your plan? What do we do after we get to your cabin?"

  Mike didn't reply, but looked out the passenger window, deep in thought. He had enough supplies at home to last for a good long while, but the security situation of the neighborhood left something to be desired. He doubted the sheeple had done anything to lock the neighborhood down while he was gone. Anyone could drive into the neighborhood. There was nothing stopping them from coming and going. The virus was highly contagious. He would need to find some way to isolate himself, and everyone else in the neighborhood from the outside world and the neighbors from dragging the sickness home with them.

  He'd been lucky to get out of the city alive. Saddled with an old man he hardly knew, he would have to come up with some way to make his last stand at his cabin.

  Friday, June 12th

  Chapter 10

  In the middle of Jen's living room, a young girl with brown hair and plaited pigtails lay on the floor, screaming and writhing in pain as she clutched at a large wooden stake protruding from her leg. The stake was large and splintered, and had gone all the way through her leg. Tears ran down the girl's red face and she cried out for her mother, struggling against the two men holding her still so that she didn't disturb the wound.

  Jen ran to the guest bedroom in her parent’s house to fetch her black medical bag. After grabbing the bag, she ran back into the living room and kneeled down next to the girl and motioned one of the men aside so she could get a look at the wound.

  The skin surrounding the wound was angry red and had swollen up around the stake. Jen tugged at the stake experimentally to see if was still intact inside the girl’s leg, or if the two pieces protruding from either size had separated. Blood oozed from the wound as she adjusted the stake, but it was still intact. Jen recoiled from the blood, but gritted her teeth and used a pair of large forceps to grab hold of the larger end of the stake. Jen gripped the wood tightly with the forceps and yanked it out of the wound in one clean motion. Blood flowed from the wound, and yellow pus oozed after it, a sure sign of infection.

  Her skin crawled as she pictured the billions of infectious microorganisms present in the vile yellow fluid. Her palms slick with sweat, she got up and backed away from the girl. Her pulse quickening, she couldn't control her urge to flee.

  "Where are you going?" one of the men holding the girl asked. "She's still bleeding! Stitch her up or she'll die!"

  Jen shook her head from side to side, backing down the hallway. "No. I... I can't do this."

  "Please help me!" The girl wailed and looked at her with pleading eyes. "Please don't let me die!"

  Jen ran for the front door. She threw open the front door, planning to run to her car and drive away as fast as she could. She skidded to a stop in the doorway. Outside on her front yard, sick and injured people lay on the lawn, looking up at her expectantly. They moaned with pain, coughed and hacked, and writhed in discomfort. Jen wanted to flee, but her body was frozen in place.

  "Please help us!" they cried. "We need you."

  "No! Please! I can't help you!"

  An insistent buzzing noise filled the air as she ran, and the sick people on the lawn faded away into white light.

  Jen startled awake, her cell phone buzzing insistently on the couch next to her head. Still foggy from the nightmare, she picked up the phone, unsure what to expect. "Hello?"

  "Jennifer Pruitt? This is Doctor Payton. I'm calling you to let you know that I have to cancel your appointment. I won't be in the office this week. Frankly, I don't want all of my patients congregating in one place and risking infection. Is there something I can help you with over the phone?"

  She closed her eyes and tried to center herself, flooded with anxiety. She tried to convince herself to hang up the phone and forget about the medication, but couldn't get the image of the injured little girl from her dream out of her mind. What if one of the neighborhood children was injured? What if they came down with an illness? Robin was right. She was the closest thing to a doctor these people had without going to one of the larger hospitals and risking exposure to Shanxi. She could ride this virus out in her parent’s house and ignore the other people in the neighborhood, or she could get the OCD medication she needed. It would be risky going to a pharmacy. She could run into someone infected with the virus.

  The injured girl fr
om her dream wouldn't leave her mind, and she made her decision. She would try to help, but if she was going to be of any use to anyone, she had to medicate herself.

  "Yes, please. Can you increase my OCD medication? The current dosage isn't helping enough. I'm having a tough time."

  "Not a problem. Would you like me to call it in to your regular pharmacy?"

  "No, I'm at my parents house. Can I find a pharmacy nearby and call you right back?"

  "Sure thing. I'll be here for another two hours."

  Jen ran a computer search and found three local pharmacies, and called each one until she found one that was still open.

  "Hello?"

  "My doctor is going to call in a prescription. Are you open on Saturday morning so I can pick it up?"

  The woman on the other end of the line dropped her voice to a whisper. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone this, but after we close tonight we won't be opening again." The woman resumed her normal tone. "Yes Mam, we can fill that prescription. Just have your doctor call it over. It should be ready within the hour."

  "Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much it means to me," Jen said.

  "No problem sweetie."

  Jen called her physician back and gave him the pharmacy information, then hung up the phone and grabbed her car keys from the end table. She went into the basement and found a pair of rubber cleaning gloves and a pair of her father's safety glasses next to his tool bench. Jen found a bottle of rubbing alcohol in her parent's bathroom, then got a handkerchief out of her suitcase to use for a mouth covering. It wasn't a professional grade set of personal protective equipment, but it would better than nothing. She had to get her OCD under control so she could help her neighbors if they needed it. She didn't think she couldn't live with the guilt if someone was injured and she had done nothing to help. She had to get to the pharmacy, and get there quickly.