Victor Methos - Pestilence

“Damn,” she muttered. She began pacing. “This is the key, Ngo. There has to be some way to slow the mutation.”

“How?”

She thought of graduate school. She remembered an experiment in which they slowed ants with liquid nitrogen. When they thawed, they would pick up exactly where they had left off. If they were heading for a piece of food, they would continue there. If they were retreating, that’s what they would continue doing.

“What if we could slow the mutation with liquid nitrogen? After immunization with poxvirus, we could slow Agent X before injection. Maybe that would give the body enough time to come up with antibodies before the next mutation?”

Ngo thought it over. “I love it. I’ll get the LN. We have some in Lab Two.”

Samantha bent down in front of Mongo. She placed her thickly gloved hand over his head, and he didn’t have the strength to respond. Instead, he whimpered and closed his eyes.

Tommy Metheny stood in line outside for his portion of the rations. The San Antonio heat pounded down on his head so fiercely that he kept having to mop his face with the back of his arm. The grocery stores had been wiped clean. He’d gone that morning, and nothing was left, not even batteries. The employees had abandoned the store, and the big chains had given up, too. The only ones still left were the mom-and-pop stores, and the owners guarded their inventory with shotguns and pistols.

One of his neighbors had been robbed overnight. He called the police, but no one came. The police, he’d heard, couldn’t go out on calls anymore. Tommy didn’t understand why some fucking terrorist attack in Manhattan and LA had to affect him. Those places were in different worlds. Let them worry about it. Wasn’t that what he paid his taxes for? Instead, he was out there in hundred-degree heat just to get a few military rations so he could feed his wife and kids.

The soldiers had taken over an old rec center, and he stood by the entrance. Four hours, he’d waited, and as he approached, a woman in a uniform stepped out of the building. She had a cold, determined look on her face. The kind that was meant to deliver bad news and give the impression that she didn’t give a shit that she was the one delivering it.

“We’re sorry,” she bellowed, “but that’s all the rations we will be handing out today.”

She continued to speak, but no one heard her. The crowd was in an uproar. Tommy was yelling, too.

“This what I pay my fucking taxes for, huh? This what I paid ’em for twenty years for?”

The shouting grew more intense and someone Tommy couldn’t see tried to push the woman out of the way of the entrance and go inside. The woman was young, probably inexperienced, and not well trained. She should have locked the doors and gone for help. But she went for the pistol holstered at her side. One of the men in line swung at her, a wide haymaker that connected to her jaw. The blow was so hard, Tommy heard the pop of her jaw as she fell back and hit her head on the cement.

The crowd rushed in through the doors, ripping the remaining rations from the arms of the young soldiers. Only three of them had been stationed there. Tommy was unclear which one did it first, but at some point, they removed their semi-automatic rifles, and opened fire on the crowd.

Tommy ran out of the rec center, holding four ration containers. The pop of gunfire followed him, and off in the distance, a military truck was speeding toward them. He had no plans on sticking around for that.

As he turned to go to his car, a rumbling tore through the air. The sound was so deep and forceful that he felt the vibration in his bones, as if he’d been holding a powerful jackhammer that hit something unbreakable.

The crowds were quieted and stood still. Even the military vehicle had stopped. Tommy saw that everyone’s faces were turned to the sky. An eerie feeling gave him shivers. People had been ready to tear each other’s throats out one second, and the next, they stopped and gazed up. He almost didn’t want to know what would make them do that.

A shadow moved over him, and he turned, looked up to the blue sky… and screamed.