Victor Methos - Pestilence

Ian flew and slammed to the ground, then rolled at least ten feet. She swallowed, her mouth dry and her mind blank. She hit the accelerator again, and the car jumped up, then fell as if she’d driven over a speed bump.

She sat in the car, staring at the unmoving body before slowly getting out. Ian was on his back, spitting up blood. Tire marks burned his chest, and his hands were black and lay useless by his side.

Steadily, she walked up to him. His face should have been filled with terror, but he looked… serene.

He grinned at her. “It’s too late,” he gasped.

She watched him, confused, when she heard something-a ticking, but not quite. It was more of an electronic beep every few seconds. She started to run in the opposite direction.

The explosion was so massive and blinding that she didn’t even have time to realize she was dying.

Samantha wouldn’t have even noticed the explosion if not for Clyde Olsen sitting across from her on the plane.

“What the hell is that?” He pointed out the window.

From the plane, the detonation appeared only to the passengers sitting next to the window, who had happened to glance outside at the moment of the flash.

A tube of light, almost thirty meters tall, was followed by an explosion that could’ve taken out a soccer field. Like a black hole, the explosion sucked in light, and then after another, smaller explosion, a thin mist descended over the city.

She turned her head. Seated across from her were the man and his young daughter whom she had convinced General Olsen to bring along as they fled the state. They had saved her life, and Samantha was obligated to save theirs.

All of this occurred amidst utter calm and quiet. Neighborhood by neighborhood, the military had rounded up the citizens of Los Angeles and put them into camps. The ones with pull-relatives of federal employees, for example-were taken to the nicer hotels and allowed to stay there of their own recognizance. Everyone else, rich or poor, was stuck in a cage. But the guards were taking bribes to let people go.

Stretched to the brink across Southern California and then Northern, the National Guard didn’t have enough men to police itself. And most of the local law enforcement had been rounded up along with the civilians. Only the ones on duty, who were easily recognizable, had been given a place next to their captors.

In some places, Olsen had told her, guards were apparently letting people out for as little as a thousand dollars cash, jewelry, guns, or cars-anything the guards could get their hands on. The only people truly stuck in the cages were the poor and middle class who couldn’t pay up.

The operation had been a disaster from the get-go. The military only later recognized the contingencies they hadn’t planned for. They had probably thought it would be a simple operation, and that all they had to do was ensure no one left the state. They hadn’t anticipated the bribery or the failing infrastructure. After one day, water and electricity was dwindling in most of the state, including the military bases.

But the mist that had settled over the city after the explosion was something else that no one had ever seen or could have planned for.

Olsen’s cell phone buzzed as they flew over the California-Nevada border.

“Olsen… yes… yes… What other cities? Okay. Okay. Roger that.”

He hung up and stared out the window at the gray dawn, twirling the phone in his fingers before it dropped and hit the metal floor with a ding.

“What’s wrong?” Samantha asked, the pain medication causing her speech to slur and slow.

“Three other explosions. Nashville, Manhattan, and DC.”

“What are they?”

“I don’t know. But they’re all reporting the same thing. A green mist.”

A single horrifying thought gripped her mind. It sent shivers up her back, and though she was numb from the medication, she knew that something had happened that would change the course of society. As soon as the thought was articulated with words, she knew it to be true.

The mist was Agent X.

From the way Olsen was acting, Samantha knew that the military hadn’t had any idea that was going to occur. Life was truly unpredictable, a string of random events interspersed with fleeting glimpses of reason and order. But that was illusory. In the end, the events tying a life together were dictated more by circumstance than people believed. So many unknown variables existed, so many forces pulling in each direction, that it seemed funny to her that she had ever thought order endured along with the anarchy. She was almost embarrassed that she had been so naïve.

The young girl was asleep, but she stirred and cuddled up to her father. He gently pushed her away and then leaned against the window. He was pale and sweating, and he had gone to the bathroom twice on the plane.

He noticed her watching him. Glancing at his daughter, he stood up and walked past Olsen. When he came close to Samantha, he said, “Can I talk to you, Doctor?”

Samantha rose, leaning on the seats for support, and followed him. They stood far enough away that General Olsen couldn’t hear.

“You’re with the Centers for Disease Control, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a virus doctor?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“What is this thing?”

“It’s something like a variant of the poxvirus called black pox. But it’s mutated a few times, so we called it Agent X. An intern called it that, and it stuck because we didn’t know what else to call it.”

“It should be called Red Pox. It seems like all it does is make you bleed.”

She nodded. “You know you’re infected, don’t you?”

He glanced at his daughter. “Is there a cure?”

“We don’t even have a cure for the common cold or flu. There are no cures for a virus. You can slow them down or prevent them, but once you have them, they have to run their course.”

“So there’s nothing?”

“There’s an experimental drug that was being developed by a laboratory in Nigeria that I was working with. It’s a type of drug that can identify infected cells and then destroy those cells, essentially halting replication of a virus. It might work with something like this. But the research was taken over by the government and then buried. There’s nothing else I can think of.”

“Is there any way”-he paused to cough-“someone like me could get it. Or maybe someone like you?”

“No. We’d have to fly to Nigeria first and then see how far they got with it. I don’t think it ever got approved for human trials. By the time we got there and it was ready…”

“I’d be dead.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Samantha Bower.”

“Samantha, my name is Harold Burke. I know we’re strangers, and I never thought I would ask this of anyone, much less someone I don’t know, but my daughter is the only thing in the world I have left. If you could… until you find her mother, I mean… I don’t have anybody left that would…”

He said it so genuinely, filled with so much utter humiliation and so much hope that she would accept, that it tore out her heart. She thought of her own mother and the nights she’d spent crying when her father had passed away, bargaining with God that she would do anything if her husband could come back to them. She had three children to look after by herself, and her mother worked two jobs to provide for them. She gave up everything in her life so her children could have a chance at a better one. Children were everyone’s weakness.

“I’ll take care of her.”

He nodded, tears in his eyes. “Thank you.”

After a moment, he coughed again and then made room so she could get by without having to get near him. Samantha was all the way to her seat when the plane’s side door opened. The vacuum instantly sucked out anything that wasn’t screwed or strapped down, and deafening high-pitched squealing of dropping pressure filled the plane. It flung her off balance, and Olsen had to grab her to keep her in place. Her ears popped, and a terrible sucking sound filled the cabin as things bounced off the metal interior.