Omega Pathogen: The Beginning (5 page)

Under Siege

Houston, Texas, Present Day

Throughout the four remaining hours of the night, Jim has alternated between flipping to different news channels, and walking around the home to check for faults in the defenses they’ve placed. Although he has amassed what some may consider a large amount of ammunition and other survival gear, he knows he doesn’t have enough. You never have enough.

Jim goes out to the garage, and digs through the trunks he'd used to ship home the equipment he'd purchased while working in Iraq. He then brings them inside, into the master bedroom, and takes inventory. He fills up the tactical vest magazine pouches, and attaches two of his sheaths holding knives. Then, he fills up the medical pouches on the back and left side of the vest with as many Israeli dressings and other bandages as he can.

Jim locates four combat tourniquets, and attaches two to his vest. Then, he fills the three remaining tactical backpacks, or go-bags, with magazines, ammunition, knives, and first aid material. Jim hears a loud scream from outside. It’s a scream of absolute terror, of fear. He’s heard screams like this before. Moving quickly to the front of the home, where he pinpointed the scream, he’s met by Chris and Jeremy moving quickly down the stairs. He sees Arzu and their younger children, Berk and Kayra, at the top landing, with one wrapped in each of Arzu’s arms.

Jim puts a finger to his lips, in an obvious hushing sign, as Chris begins to speak. Arzu, Berk and Kayra remain on the upstairs landing while Jim and the boys go to the front of the home. Peering out through small openings in the plywood on the exterior, their eyes dart from side to side looking across the street, and up and down the road in front. “There,” Jeremy says and points across the street to Annette’s house.

The door to her home is closed, but the front window is smashed out, with the cool November morning air lightly blowing through and causing the curtains to lazily drift in and out of the window frame. The interior is too dark to see clearly inside the home, but some glimpses of movement can be discerned from time to time. “Well, shit. Fuck,” Jim spits out. “Chris, stay here at the front door, lock it as soon as I go out and keep a look out. Be ready for me to come running back in a hurry.” “Jeremy, you get to the back door, and keep a sharp eye out. Remember, your first priority is to keep anyone we don’t want coming in out,” Jim finishes. Both sons nod, and Jeremy moves quickly to the back of the home.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Arzu asks while walking down the stairs. “Honey, please go get the revolver out of our closet, and go back upstairs with the kids.” “You’re not going out there!” Arzu says, looking towards the doorway in the direction of the neighbor across the street, not at Jim. “I’m going to see if I can help, honey. I have to.”

Without any more words passed, Jim nods at Chris and they begin to both remove the 2 x 4 boards they had placed across the front door. Chris reaches for the deadbolt, and Jim puts his hand over his son’s. “Wait one minute,” Jim whispers, as he does his best to look through the spaces between the plywood once more. “Okay, buddy, it looks clear. As soon as I’m out the door, lock the deadbolt and keep an eye on me. If I don’t immediately turn around and run towards the door screaming like a little girl, sorry honey, sorry Kayra,” he says, looking up on the landing to his wife and daughter. “Anyway, if I don’t turn back around and cross the street, put the 2 x 4s back in position.”

Chris nods and without any more words, Jim moves his hand from Chris’s and takes a crouching position to the right. Chris turns the deadbolt, and swings open the door as Jim moves past him, and enters the front of their house. As instructed, Chris closes the door, locks the deadbolt, and watches, seeing his dad look left and right ahead of him and then the same towards his back; Jim takes off in a low crouch toward the neighbor’s home.

Chris places the 2 x 4s as his dad instructed and maintains a watch outside. He finds it difficult not to keep staring at where his dad is, but reminds himself he needs to look out for what his dad may not be able to see. “How’s he doing?” Jeremy asks from the rear of the home. Almost at the sam
e
time, Arzu asks, “What’s going on?” “He’s across the street, and crouched on the lady’s front lawn, looking at her house,” Chris informs them.

In front of Annette’s home, kneeling on the cold, damp lawn, Jim hears only distant yells, screams, sirens, and gunshots, but nothing from the house in front of him. Taking a quick look around at his surroundings, he mutters, “Shit. Shit. Shit,” and rises to his feet, making his way to the front of Annette’s house. Keeping his AR-15 aimed at the space where the large window was, he tries to listen for anything that may be a threat, but can only hear his own pounding heart.

Jim gets to within six feet of the front door; his main focus is the more obvious point where a threat could come from, the glassless window to the left of the front door. Looking closer at the front door, Jim notices that the faux wood door has dents with some smears of blood. Slowly, Jim tests the doorknob and finds it locked.
The fucking window it is then
, he thinks.

Taking a couple of deep calming breaths, Jim steadies himself to take a look inside the window. He makes a mental note that he needs to get a small mirror to use if this kind of situation presents itself again. Still crouched low, Jim takes small quiet steps toward the open window frame. Placing his back to the exterior of the house, he switches the position of his AR-15, to give himself a better shooting position. Jim places the pistol grip in his left hand and fore grip in his right.  Jim thumbs the selector from safe to fire. The slight click of this action seems to be extraordinarily louder than it actually is.

Another slow, quiet deep breath to steady his nerves. Jim crouches a little lower so he can peer through the opening on the bottom right corner of the frame. Inching his face closer and closer to the edge, his left eye finally crosses in front of the opening. He is immediately face to face with a man glaring out of the window at him. His head is lowered slightly, and he has what looks like a hairy, ragged-edged, bloody steak hanging out of his frothy, drooling mouth.

The man lets out a low growl, like a dog warning off another from its food. Jim then hears another growl from something unseen, deeper inside Annette’s house. Although taking place in fractions of a second, all of this seems to be agonizingly slow to Jim. Jim realizes that the hairy looking piece of meat hanging out of the man’s mouth is part of a scalp, as he notices that, attached to the hairy piece of steak, is a right ear with a pearl earring.

Having to only slightlyadjust the location of the business end of his AR-15, Jim presses the trigger twice, and sends two 5.56mm hardball into the face of the man chewing on Annette’s scalp
.
Through the ringing in his ears, he hears the growls again from the interior of the house. This time, it sounds like it’s coming from at least two areas within. Moving back against the exterior of the house, Jim comes up from his squatting position, into a crouch, and then sprints to the front door of his home. Making his way to his driveway, and then the path to the front door, Jim hears the deadbolt click, and the sounds of wood hitting the floor on the inside.

The front door swings open and Chris steps to the side out of his dad’s way. As Jim crosses the threshold of the door, he yells, “Close it, close it!” After getting Berk and Kayra started on breakfast in front of the TV in the downstairs master bedroom, Jim gives a rundown of what happened. “So what are we going to do?” Arzu asks. “Well, I think we should try and hold out here for now. From what I saw on the news during the night, every one of the shelters has had these crazy infected fuckers too.”

Looking to Arzu, Chris, and Jeremy for a different opinion, and getting nods and shoulder shrugs in agreement in return, Jim begins to have more ideas run through his head. “Chris, you go in the garage and get the extension ladder. Take it upstairs, and put it near the attic door. In a little while, we’ll get it up in the attic. After you do that, please take all the water containers upstairs into the game room. Jeremy, grab something that you can eat while walking around the downstairs, keeping an eye out on the outside. Let me know if someone comes our way.

“Honey, can you carry the containers of freeze-dried food upstairs into game room, and then pack some clothes and necessary things for you and the kids, and take the bags upstairs too? I’ll be helping Jeremy keep an eye out while I’m getting some more equipment together that we’ll need.”

Everyone sets off to do his or her tasks. While rummaging through shelves, boxes, and cases in his closet, Jim realizes he hasn’t called his mom to see how she and his siblings are holding out in Florida. Getting her voicemail, he tries his younger sister’s cell number, and she answers. “Oh my God, I’m glad you’re okay. How are Arzu and the kids?” his sister asks.

“We’re okay right now, but a couple of those infected people are in the neighborhood and a lot of Houston. How are you guys? Where are you?” Jim asks. “We’re okay. Mom’s here, and so is the rest of the family. Everything seems fine around here for now, but it looks bad in the bigger cities,” Kathy replies. “I’m glad everyone is okay. I’m not sure how long we’ll have cell service, or electricity for that matter, but I’ll do my best to keep in touch. Tell everyone I love them. Bye,” Jim says. Pausing for a moment, and hoping his family in Florida remains safe, Jim then begins looking for items on his mental list, and also grabbing some that he comes across and thinks he may need.

As the day becomes evening, they all gather in the living room. The younger kids, Berk and Kayra, are present, so they leave the TV off, and are careful in selecting their words. “I’ve got a couple of things I added to my pack,” Jim starts off. “I only have two radios, but we’ve got enough batteries. I found my compass, and the magnesium fire starter, too.” “Are we going somewhere?” Arzu asks. “No. Not right now, anyway, but we need to make sure that if we need to leave in a hurry, we have the ability to navigate without relying on major highways, there could be big traffic jams.”

“Dad, I was able to get the ladder into the attic by myself,” Chris says
.
“Good job, Chris. Good job, everyone. I think we need to do the same as last night with the sleeping arrangements. I’ll take the first watch. Jeremy, you’ll be second, and Chris, you’re last watch. Any questions, opinions, or observations?
”
“Yeah, I do,” Jeremy says in a low voice so his younger brother and sister playing with cars nearby won’t hear, “We’re going to be using the extension ladder Chris took up into the attic as a way to escape if things get really bad, right?
”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Jim confirms.
“
Well, I was thinking we should probably take an axe or something up there to knock out the vent if we need to get out that way, and maybe some rope, too.
”
“Great idea, Jeremy. Would you mind grabbing the axe in the corner of the garage near the lawnmower? There should be some rope hanging on the wall near the extension cords.”

Jim takes the first watch as planned. Jeremy comes downstairs around 1:00am to take his turn at watch. Jim tells Jeremy that he’s seen a few people running around from house to house. Some of the people were chasing dogs and the occasional cat. Jim makes his way upstairs, and lies down in the game room on a mattress taken from Kayra’s bed. Chris is lightly snoring nearby. Arzu, Berk, and Kayra are sleeping in the spare bedroom, so that Jim and his older sons’ movements throughout the night will be less likely to wake them.

Not bothering to take off any equipment, Jim lays his head on the pillow, and hopes he can at least catch a little sleep.
Jim is startled awake, being shaken by Chris. He realizes the sun is up, and he slept through the night. “Dad, come on, get up! The bastards are all over the place outside.”
Jim bolts upright, and carefully looks out the second story game room window. He’s got to be having a nightmare, because it looks like hundreds, maybe thousands of people are trudging around the neighborhood and their home.

Strangely, with seemingly no emotion, Chris hears his dad say, “Holy shit.” Jim steps away from the window, and turns to see his wife and his children staring at him questioningly. Arzu looks out the blinds of the window and immediately backs up and puts her hand over her mouth. Recovering from the shock she asks, “What do you think?”  “I think we need more ammunition.”

# # #

                           
Jim and Arzu

Having divorced from his first wife the year before, Jim found he could use his background as a police officer, and current profession as a paramedic in Iraq, as a contractor after the invasion. The last thing he expected, or thought of, was meeting his second and last wife.

Jim and Arzu met after he was in country for about a month. Arzu, a Turkish national, was working for a construction company contracted by the US to repair and construction work on bases.

Periodically seeing each other on the base Arzu was working at in northern Iraq, they began a friendship that soon turned into flirting. Being that Iraq was the first place Jim had been outside of the United States, he accepted an invitation to visit Turkey sometime.

Not really having set a date, and not really thinking he would actually go, he later found himself wanting to visit Arzu after her work in Iraq was finished, and she smartly decided it was too unsafe to return.