Victor Methos - Pestilence

“Is it a terrorist attack?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell us anything.”

The road smoothed, and the truck turned off at an exit near the beach. It rode right out onto the sand and stopped. Several guardsmen came and unlatched the back, then shouted for them to get off. Slowly, they climbed out of the truck.

Howie put his arm around Jessica and whispered, “Stay behind me.”

He climbed off and waited for his daughter. Two guardsmen were escorting them around the truck when Howie saw why they had brought them there.

Built right on the sand was a massive fence with barbed wire around the top. Two towers were arranged around it, and inside the perimeter, green canvas tents were set up down the beach as far as he could see.

This was a camp.

Someone pushed him from behind and told him to keep moving. He held tightly to Jessica as they walked with the crowds. The people were surprisingly docile. The fight in them had been spent. Now they were in unfamiliar territory and at the mercy of men with guns.

Beyond the gates, a guardsman with glasses stood at the front. He glanced up at them. “Men to the right. Women to the left.”

“No, Howie, don’t let me go there,” Jessica said.

“Please,” Howie said. “She’s my daughter.”

The man pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and looked them over. “Fine. But she’s your responsibility. We will not be held for anything that happens to her.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Just keep moving.”

Howie nodded, and they were led to the right, down a gated path that opened up onto a section of beach. He saw nothing but tents, cots, and men. Most of them were standing around talking, but a few had already lain down on the cots or gone inside the tents to sleep.

His daughter was holding his leg tightly, and he glanced down, then put his arm around her.

Samantha sat on top of that hill for several minutes. She could just go about her life as if nothing were wrong and wait for her sister to contact her. That would probably be best. She had her mother to look after, and the nurses could only do so much. But it wasn’t like Jane to not contact her; whatever the government planned to do had already begun.

She bit her thumbnail as she stood up. She paced for a moment before pulling out her phone.

She tried to book a flight to LAX or John Wayne in Orange County, but no airline would allow her credit card payment to go through. She kept getting an error message and being redirected to the main site. Flights must have been cut off. She checked the clock on her phone, then dialed Duncan’s number.

“Hey,” he said, out of breath.

“Hey. What’re you doing?”

“Elliptical. What’s up?”

“Sorry. I know you hate people interrupting your workout.”

“No biggie.”

“So, you get access to military flights, don’t you?”

“Sure, all military employees do.”

“Could you book passage for someone else?”

“Only if I went with them. Why?” A pause. “Oh. Oh no, you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“She’s in trouble, Duncan. I know it.”

“Sam, it’s not going to be like that. At least, I don’t think. She should be fine. They just want to make sure people are safe. And besides, you haven’t heard anything on the news yet, right?”

“It won’t be on the news this time. In Oahu, they made it public, and the virus still made it to the mainland. They’re going to keep it as quiet as possible.”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything, and there’re at least twenty high-ranking army guys in my building.”

“Duncan, I know she’s in trouble.”

“Well, look, we’ll book a flight out there on Southwest or something, and-”

“You can’t book a flight. You can’t call anyone. All the communication lines are down.”

“What? Hold on a sec.” He paused again, much longer this time. “That’s weird,” he finally said when he got back on.

“I have to get out there.”

“Why? What could you even do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve dealt with this virus before, and-”

“And it almost got you killed.”

Flashes entered her mind of a man inside her home-flashes of pain, motion, and blood. The trauma hadn’t fully settled in yet, and it still stung as if it had happened just the day before. She suddenly grew uneasy, and her finger traced the outline of the mace in her pocket.

“I know. But I need to get out there.”

Duncan mumbled something under his breath and then said, “Fine. I’ll get us passage tomorrow on the next plane going out.”

“I’d like to go tonight. Right now.”

“Why?”

“It’s going to be chaotic at first, and there won’t be any precedents. It’d be good just in case we need to pull some strings to get back out.”

“Get back out? What do you think’s happening there, Sam?”

“I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling about it.”

Howie sat on a cot with his daughter lying down behind him. She was listening to her iPod and falling asleep. Kids seemed to have an amazing ability to sleep through almost anything. He glanced at her and then back out over the men. An uncomfortable thought came over him. She was the only female he’d seen on this side of the fence.

Guards walked the perimeter and were stationed on makeshift towers that seemed to be rising higher as time went on. But the crowds were so dense, they weren’t able to pay attention to everything.

The man in the cot across from him was also sitting down and nervously rubbing his hands together. He smiled at Howie. “You ever been through something like this?”

“No,” Howie said. “I don’t even really know what this is.”

“I was talkin’ to some o’ the other guys, and they said it had to do with the sickness.”

“What sickness?”

“That flu or whatever that was in Hawaii some time back. You remember when they had to shut down the airport and all that?”

He did remember hearing something about it on NPR. But the public was so jumpy that anything unusual would set off a panic, so he hadn’t paid attention to it. Avian flu, one of the most ridiculously docile viruses in history, had caused an enormous panic that triggered a drop in commodity and stock prices as people were anticipating Armageddon-like devastation. And of course, nothing happened. He had thought the virus they were reporting on in Hawaii had been something similar and that some doctor working for the government would come out and say it was nothing.

“I do remember that,” he said. “What does this have to do with it?”

“It’s here, man. At least, that’s what they say. That it’s on the mainland, and they’re closin’ off California.”

“The entire state? That’s impossible. The border’s hundreds of miles long.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. That’s just what they sayin’.”

Lighting was sparse, but out of nowhere, the entire beach was engulfed with illumination. Massive floodlights connected to generators turned on. The lighting was harsh and felt like the sun. A crowd entered both the men’s and the women’s sides, and couples spoke to each other through the chain-link fence, calming crying spouses and children.

“This is monstrous,” Howie said. “They can’t do this.”

“Already did it, man. It’s done.” He put out his hand. “I’m Mike, by the way.”

“Howie.”

“Well, Howie, I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but this is about the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. Damn near shit my pants when them guardsmen broke inta my house.”

Howie glanced around the space. He recognized only two ways to get out: the entrance he had come through and an entrance at the back that was sealed with a massive steel lock. Howie rose and said, “Mike, keep an eye on her for a second, would you?”