The Doomsday Infection (3 page)

Lieutenant Graves’s bullets hit their target and the police helicopter lurched over, recovered, when the engine spluttered, and the chopper went into a quick spin, rotated a semi-circle, the pilot corrected, when abruptly the helicopter dipped, went into a dive, floundered then jerked upward. It looked as if it should clear the building, when the engine coughed and the chopper wobbled onto its side, with smoke belching from the engine. The pilot struggled with the craft and turned tight circles fighting for control as the engine stalled and choked, then with a deafening roar it shot forward crashed into the second story where it burst into a ball of flames scattering debris into the night.

A piece of shrapnel shot through the air and ripped through Luke’s bicep in a plume of red mist, the impa
ct of the force spun him into the ground. He glanced up at Kenny. “Tell me you got that?” he managed to gasp before passing out.

Kenny held his thumb up, grinned, and went to speak, when a rogue helicopter blade, turning end over end in the night sky, spinning at over three hundred revolutions per minute sliced him in two.

His eyes froze, and he stood motionless for a moment as blood trickled along the line of the wound, when ghoulishly his severed upper torso slid down to the dirt, his legs remained upright for a moment longer before they too toppled to the ground.

CHAPTER 3

21:50 PM

Doctor Sophie Garcia down-shifted a gear in her cherry-red jeep, glad she had the top down, feeling the welcoming breeze in her long dark, naturally curly hair. Her tires changing sound from the pavement to metal and back to pavement, as she crossed the cantilevered bridge from mainland Florida to the spit of land known as Sandbank Island that housed The Good Samaritan, the run-down hospital where she worked.

After graduation she’d had her pick of prestige hospitals, but instead chose research work in the field; mainly in Africa studying the unusual and e
xotic, not to mention the most dangerous virus’s that mother earth could produce, after which she returned to work in a less affluent district, finding satisfaction helping the hard-up and needy at the pay-as-you-go hospital.

Yet even this meager facility had been withdrawn, the hospital
had fallen victim to the latest spending cuts and was scheduled to close the next day. This would be her last night. The hospital-board had deliberately run down the number of patients so she wasn’t anticipating a busy night.

She pulled into the three story hospital parking lot
, entered the building, and was hit by the smell of the disinfectant as she slipped into her white coat. A Latino girl with a distinctive purple streak in her hair bustled past her and rushed to the reception, ignoring the line of other patients and blurted. “I need to see one Doctor. Help me, PLEASE. My baby - she is dying.”

The larger than life receptionist on the desk ruled her domain with a rod of iron. She looked over her spectacles at the young Latino. “Not here, honey. Not anymore.” She saw the girl’s confusion and tapped the sign affixed to the front of her desk. “Didn’t you read the sign?”

“I no read American too good,” she said, and then more urgently. “Please. My baby need help.”

The receptionist leaned over the counter and tapped the sign with her pencil for effect, and quoted. “The sign reads: Hospital closing. All walk-in patients to find the next nearest hospital.”

“I no understand? Why you no help?”

The receptionist spoke slowly. “This hospital is closing tonight due to the cut-backs. It’s been in the news for weeks.”

“
No comprendo
?”

The receptionist sighed again, losing her patience. “You need to go to a different hospital.”

“
Habla usted espanol?”

“No I don’t. This is America
and I speak American.”

Sophie intervened, “What’s the problem here?”

“This lady don’t speak American. I tried to explain -”    

Sophie turne
d to the distressed Latino girl and addressed her in Spanish. She glared at the receptionist for her lack of compassion, and then quickly walked the Latino girl and her baby though the admissions door. One of her colleagues unwrapped the swaddling to reveal a dead African-American baby, as Sophie guided the mother to the waiting room, “It’s dead,” said her colleague. “Stone cold.”

“That’s curious,” said Sophie. “She acted like she expected her baby to be saved.”

“She’s been dead for hours.”

“OK, alert the coroner. We’ll need cause of death on this,” she peeled off her latex gloves. “I’ll go and speak to the mother.”

Sophie steeled herself; she hated this part of the job, all doctors did, informing the next-of-kin. It was especially difficult for Sophie; she felt such empathy with the bereaved, and found it doubly hard when it involved such a young person. The girl howled at the tragic news. A guttural wail, from deep in the pit of her stomach, that echoed around the empty hospital. It shook Sophie badly, but worse, much worse would follow.

__________

The Latino girl not only lost her baby, but also had to go through the indignity of a formal interview with Police. Not that the hospital suspected any wrong doing on the mother’s part, more of a formality to cover themselves in a world where litigators lurked around every corner. The girl still had to go through the rigmarole of filling out reams of endless paperwork, made harder by her lack of spoken English and complete absence of any written. Above all else, and to start the ball rolling Sophie had to ask the Latino girl to give a visual identification of her child as part of the protocol.

The Latino girl understood the request, and in a trance followed Sophie to the morgue. Her back stiffened and she readied herself to see
her beautiful baby girl dead.

The drape pulled back to reve
al her baby. Sophie squeezed her hand sympathetically when the girl laughed. “What is this? You make one joke?”

“I, I don’t understand . . .?”

“This is not my baby.”

“I assure you it’s the baby you brought in with you. We don’t make that sort of mistake, besides she's the only baby left in the entire hospital.”

“I’m telling you this is not mine,” she folded her arms defiantly, glowering at Sophie. “How dare you. What sort of girl do you think I am that I could produce this – this thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at it - it’s black.”

23:15 PM

Sophie sat alone in the empty hospital canteen, gazing absently into her Styr
ofoam cup at the liquid that was loosely described as coffee and hesitated before taking a sip, as she went over the earlier event that had left her stunned. Bereavement struck people in different ways, she knew that, but she had never experienced a mother denying her own baby before. The whole incident left her feeling uneasy, but that was for the coroner to sort out during the post mortem.

She finally took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Vile isn’t it?” said her friend Doctor Juliet Miller, joining her at the table. “You’re not due in tonight. I thought you were meant to be convalescing?”      

“I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, it was only an auto-accident.”

“Only an auto-accident? You nearly died. Three blood transfusions I heard?”

Sophie shrugged it off. “I thought I would be more use here, helping to close down the hospital. What about you?”

“I haven’t left since yesterday. I've been flat out for twenty-four hours.” She glanced at her watch. “Boy, they run us ragged. You know, I wouldn’t let
a grease-monkey touch my Benz if he hadn’t slept for two days, yet this is what the board expects us to do with human lives.”

“Ah, but this is the poor hospital, we can’t be, or are unlikely to be sued,” Sophie said. “I thought they’d be easing up on the pressure as we close tonight.”

“It’s only a skeleton staff, although we were inundated earlier, everyone sneezing all over the damn place with summer flu. The nurses ran out of medicine at one point.”

“I noticed a lot of sneezing tonight.”

A janitor passed them. “It’s going nuts out there. It’s this damn heat. It’s still over one hundred degrees, fourth night in a row. And the humidity, don’t get me started on the humidity, it’s freaking unbearable. The heat brings out the loony-tunes. The heat, that or the full-moon, and tonight we got both.”

Miller scoffed at him.

“Actually, it has some merit,” Sophie said. “Many a study has shown an increase in the mentally ill and a propensity towards violence during the different phases of the lunar cycle.”

“Yeah, I know,” agreed Doctor Miller, “lunar cycle equals lunatic. But it’s just not medical enough for my taste.”

“I tell you,” said the janitor, “Full moon and heat; it’s gonna be a hum-dinger tonight. We had a coupla cracker-heads in earlier; both been bitten by rats.”

Sophie scrunched her face horrified. “What is the world coming to?” She rubbed her injured shoulder.

Juliet Miller noticed. “Go take a nap; I’ll come wake you, if I can’t cope.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. We wound down the surgical ward. We ship the last few patients out in the morning. A news reporter hit by shrapnel is the only new in-take and only because the paramedics said he was losing too much blood. He’s quiet as a lamb under heavy sedation and we’re re-directing the walk-ins to other hospitals.”

“If you’re sure?”

“We’re only taking in life or death cases.”

“You might get the overspill from the riots,” said the Janitor.

Sophie sighed. “Not riots again.”

“It’s the heat, I’m telling you,” the Janitor chuckled and meandered away.

“The rioters will be re-directed,” Juliet told Sophie. “Off you go. Besides, I don’t think you’re fully recovered. So go have a good night’s sleep.”

Sophie yawned and dropped onto the cot in the bedroom reserved for the doctors’ on duty to use when they
got a chance to nap. She thought about the baby again, and thought she might take a look at the coroner’s report. There was something not entirely right about the incident. She massaged her aching neck still stiff from the neck-brace she’d had to endure for several weeks after the crash. She lay down on top of the bedding and was asleep in seconds.

CHAPTER 4

DAY ONE

FRIDAY JULY 1st

8:00 AM

Sophie awoke slowly and stretched. She glanced at the bedside clock and sat bolt upright, surprised to find that it was eight in the morning already. Why had no one woken her as per her instructions? She should be on duty. Perhaps, under the circumstances, no one noticed her absence.

She jumped
from the bed, still clothed from the night before and hurried from the room. Her heels clicked down the cavernous corridor, which made her notice the exceptional quiet, none of the usual hustle and bustle of hospital life. She stopped and looked around. There should be noise. There should be lots of noise in the hospital. Too much noise usually, in fact, close to bedlam. Yet this morning not even a whisper. Not even the incessant messages bing-bonging over the tannoy system.

Nothing.

She marched briskly toward ER and with a sense of foreboding; she pushed the double doors open. Immediately she spotted small bodies on two separate gurneys. Judging by their size, she assumed they were children. She pulled back the cloth covering the first body and stood back in surprise to see the top half of a man, cut cleanly though the middle. She pulled back the next cover to see his lower torso and legs.

She went to the outpatients department and found the receptionist fallen behind the counter. She knew before she got to her that she was dead. She checked her neck as a procedure, noting the
dried blood around her ears, nose and eyes.

08.10 AM

Luke Spencer stirred in
his hospital bed. He took in the surroundings of the hospital ward and sat up fast, which he instantly regretted as his head pounded worse than any hangover he could remember. He noticed his arm in a sling. His other arm had a catheter and a blood bag hanging on a metal stand next to his bed. Slowly the events of the night before came back to him, then quietly. “Maaan . . .”

He turned to the patient on the next bed. “
Pst! Hey!” He waited for a reply for a moment. “Hey, buddy?”

He sat up cautiously and rummaged in the locker next to his bed
, found his Hawaiian shorts, and slipped them on along with his flip-flops. He moved towards the neighboring bed dragging the squeaky metal stand with him.

The man was asleep on his side. Luke shook him gently. “Hey, man, where is everyone?” He rolled him over, and reeled, as he stared into
the dead man’s blood-shot eyes and bloodied nostrils. “Nurse!”

He looked around the ward in disbelief. All the other patients were dead. They all appeared to have died during the night of the same disease, he took in dark ringed pustules, and oozing boils. Then the stench hit him, his knees buckled and he gagged at the overpowering smell. “Nurse!” He shouted, wandering from bed to bed touching the ice-cold flesh of each body just to be sure. “Where the hell is everyone? Nurse!”

He entered the corridor highly attuned to the stillness. “Hello, can anyone hear me. Hello?” He felt vulnerable dressed in his pale blue hospital gown, Hawaiian shorts and flip-flops. He dragged the squeaking metal stand behind him. He pushed open each ward door, most were empty. Luke gulped down his fear and never wanting to miss a story gave a closer look to each of the remaining patients, but quickly determined, disappointingly, that it was not the work of a mass murderer.

They had all died of the same disease and bizarrely, they were all African-American. What were the odds? In his layman terms he presumed some sort of communicable disease, had killed them. Then why had he not succumbed? Did the fact the victims were all African-American have something to do with it. Could it be a rare bacterium that killed one race more swiftly than another? He vaguely remembered hearing that some drug cure for malaria had the adverse effect on the African-American soldiers out in Korea. He thought through the script of his next broadcast, which reminded him that he nee
ded to find Kenny his cameraman. He felt like he had been hit with a brick as he remembered a glimpse of Kenny injured just before he passed out.

He pus
hed open a heavy rubber door to the vast kitchen and stepped back revolted as a stocky black rat shot through the gap in the door with a high-pitched squeal. “More rats!”

08:30 AM

Sophie could not believe it. Every single one of her colleagues had died during the night. She checked the symptoms and slowly one virus pushed its way to the forefront. She fou
nd it hard to contemplate the thought. If correct in her diagnosis - although she hoped upon hope that she was wrong – it could mean a pandemic of biblical proportions. She had heard the sneezes last night, not thought much of it, putting it down to summer colds. She had heard from colleagues that they were turning away patients with the aches and pains associated with flu-like symptoms, but she now realized what this could also be - she stopped short, she could not even say the name of the disease - not even to herself.

She looked down at the body of her dear friend, Juliet Miller, who had all the tale tell signs; the blood from nostrils, blo
od from her eyes, blood from her ears and from the foul odor she could smell, from the rectum. She saw burst, swollen buboes from under her arms and around her groin. Sophie shuddered as she thought of the suffering her friend must have gone through; the pain-racked sneezing, the aching of the swollen lymph glands, the pus-filled swellings in the armpits and groin, the blistering boils, the blackening of the skin, and most horrifically, in Juliet’s case, the skin over her cheek bones had torn, while she was still alive.

__________

The rat stopped in the corridor and looked back at Luke. He watched the rodent who in turn watched him. The rat twitched his nose sizing him up. Luke thought of another story he could file on the hospital’s health standards, when he recalled that the hospital was closing down anyhow. “Hey, Mickey, which way?” he asked. The rat scurried off along the corridor. “OK, let’s go.”

Sophie turned startled as she heard the squeaking. The sound made the hairs stand up on her neck, an eerie scary sound. She did not spook on a usual day, but this was anything but a usual day. She headed out into the corridor
. She saw the rat and screamed.

Luke jumped out of his skin. Sophie saw his movement and screamed again. He collapsed against the wall holding his heart. He finally got his breath back and said; “What’s up, Doc?”

She went to reply, when the corridor plunged into darkness.

12.25 PM

The Miami-Dade Health A
uthority has several hospitals in the predominately poor districts, one being the Good Samaritan hospital situated on Sandbank Island. The hospital building was to undergo transformation into exorbitantly expensive beachfront condominiums. The remaining stores were soon to have an upgrade to meet the wants and needs of the up market condo dwellers, but at present catered to the tourists who flocked to the island primarily for the long sandy beach, and the man-made coral reef out in the ocean that produced the rollers that in turn brought in the surfers.

One road led onto the island crossed by a cantilever bridge, one of many that cross the rivers and canals of Southern Florida, that opened to let tall boats pass, but in this case were opened to stop anyone getting on or off the island and currently being guarded by armed soldiers.

“Goddamn it!” said Luke when he spotted the soldiers.

“Can’t we wave to them, get them to lower the bridge to let us cross?” Sophie asked.

“I figure they’re protecting the mainland from us. They could’ve come over here, looked for survivors, even helping the survivors. Instead, they raise the bridge and put on an armed guard. Call me paranoid but I think they suspect a chemical attack or something.” He nodded across the stretch of water. “Look, they’re wearing gas-masks, whatever’s happened over here, you and I are immune. You’d figure that they would want to study us to discover what the disease is.”

“I know what it is,” she said.

Luke did not hear. “Or, most likely they’ll suspect us of the chemical attack. And Homeland Security can detain us, without lawyers for as long as they like. I don’t know about you, but I have a healthy distrust of the military.”

“The gas-masks won’t do them any good.”

“Why, what is it?”

“You’d laugh,” she said.

“Try me.”

She started to tell him then changed her mind. “Maybe later.”

“We’d better get under cover they’ve probably got a drone up there looking for movement.” Luke sauntered down the road in his hospital gown and flip-flops dragging the metal stand behind as if he did not have a care in the world. The sun beat down upon them, sapping their strength. The heat haze made the street shimmer. Luke gazed around at the abandoned parked vehicles, some with drivers dead behind the wheel. The virus had clearly gotten outside.

He entered a diner, “Let’s grab a drink, while I think of a brilliant idea to get us off the island,” he said. She looked heavenward, then followed him in.

The stifling heat inside the diner hit them immediately. “Man, it’s hot.”

“The
AC’s off.” She pointed to stationary fans.

“I guess they’ve turned the power off to the island.”

“Can they do that?” she asked in surprise.

“Sure. My cell phone
ain’t got a signal, yet the mast is on top of the hospital.” He told her. “They’ve crippled it somehow. So, we can’t get off the island, or let anyone know what’s going on.”

He went behind the counter, and tripped over the body of the owner. He popped open two Cokes from the cold shelf. He callously used the corpse for extra height, to reach an upper shelf. He passed a candy bar to her and had one for himself. “Breakfast.”

“What are you standing on?” Sophie asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“
Erm, nothing,” he looked down guiltily at the corpse.

“Let me take your catheter out.” She withdrew the needle from the back of his hand, detaching him from the annoying squeaky stand.

A notion struck him and he asked her. “How come all the patients where African- Americans?”

“They weren’t.”

“Well, everyone I saw had black skin.”

“That’s one of the symptoms. In fact, that is why it is called; The Black –“

“Kenny!” he said suddenly. “My camera-man? How is he? I have a vague memory of him being injured?”

“
I’m sorry, the gentleman admitted the same time as you did not make it.”

“Did he die from wounds or the disease?”

“He most definitely died from his wounds.” She told him remembering the two halves of his body.

“And you couldn’t . . . ?” he mimed sewing.

“He was sliced in two.”

“Damn.”

She put her hand on top of his in sympathy, and left it a moment too long and felt embarrassed. She quickly changed the subject. “So, have you had a brilliant idea yet?”

“I have, as it happens.”

“What?”

“Can you Scuba-dive?”

14.00 PM

Quinn Martell, the silver-haired Surgeon General, replaced the telephone on his desk and pondered the facts he had received from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He leaned his elbows on his leather-topped desk and steepled his fingers below his chin, as he decided his next course of action. Apparently, the entire staff and patients of a Miami hospital had died overnight. The information had been shaky to say the least. Luckily, the local police acted quickly and sealed off the island as the disease spread to the nearby retail outlets.

Normally disease control was a civilian matter, but the CDC had decided that the scale of the outbreak needed swift action and had called in the military to seal off the island and therefore the spread, but
they did not have any notion of what the disease was, or indeed if it was even a disease. He stood and paced the office, caught his reflection in a mirror and ran his hand through his silver gray hair. A hospital was a deadly place for infections, sure, but it could be as likely a chemical spill of some sort, or even a combination of chemicals had reacted and made a deadly vapor.

If that had happened, it would have dissipated and blow
n out to sea. He hoped that to be the case. Sad as it would be for the deceased and their relatives, but nowhere near as disastrous as a deliberate act of terrorism. He’d feared an attack for some time. It would be relatively simple to knock up a batch of something potent. You could easily find instructions to make deadly potions on the internet.

Why anyone went to the trouble of inventing a chemical weapon, when there were so many virus’s without antidotes in the world. He shut his mind to the thought. That would be his worst fear
, a pandemic without a cure. That was why the CDC and the World Health Organization based in Geneva constantly monitored international outbreaks.