The Journal: Fault Line (The Journal Book 5) (21 page)

Marcus Hebert picked up a few items at
random: a bag of potato chips, a chilled bottle of juice, and a bag
of peanut snacks, mentally calculating that the purchase would be
close to twenty dollars.

Trevor let his face go neutral, hiding the
shock of seeing Dr. Creepy in his store, especially so soon after
that weird phone call to Christine.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Hebert,” Trevor said
without a trace of emotion.

Hebert’s head snapped up at the sound of his
name. He had been so preoccupied with his mission he’d failed to
see the young man behind the counter.

Oh!
he thought.
This is
perfect!
He would get those two after all!

“Well good afternoon, Trevor! I didn’t know
you worked here! How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you. Is this all for you?”
He remained professional, ringing the purchases up. Hebert nodded
with a grin that sent chills up Trevor’s spine.

Hebert reached in his left pocket, pulled out
the remaining twenty, and set it down, sliding it toward Trevor,
who only got a brief glimpse of the flesh colored glove.

Trevor got change from the register, and
handed it to the doctor, never touching the bill. When Hebert
noticed the bill still on the counter, he looked up and saw Trevor
smiling at him.

“Is there something wrong, Trevor?”

“You tell me,
doctor
.”

Hebert straightened his back, took his
purchases, and left without a word.

He can’t possibly know,
he thought,
walking briskly back to his car.

The first casualty of the
new outbreak of flu was Mae Singleton, the waitress and part owner
of the café. The second was her eight-year-old asthmatic son. They
had both checked into the hospital the morning after Mae was passed
the tainted bill. The virus was new and strong and attacked her
lungs with a vengeance, inducing a cytokine storm in her immune
system that killed her in less than twenty-four hours. Mae was near
comatose for much of time and was saved the agony of knowing her
only child had died hours earlier.

The virus spread quickly. The two bills
infected the recipients, and they in turn infected everyone they
came in contact with; a spark that became a wildfire.

***

“I’m telling you, Marty, that Dr. Hebert from
the CDC is spreading this virus on purpose!” Trevor insisted.
Trevor and Christine had already related, in detail, their
encounters with the man.

“Trevor, I believe you. Honestly. Without any
of the bills, though, I can’t prove anything!” Marty paced,
obviously frustrated.

“Can’t we just tell his superiors what we
know and let them decide what to do?” Christine suggested, glancing
at Trevor.

“I suppose, but again, it would be our word
against his.”

***

“Why didn’t you tell Marty that we still had
the bill he paid at the store with?” Christine asked.

“I don’t know,” Trevor answered, his head in
his hands. “I know we froze it to preserve the virus as evidence,
but what if all it does is make us a target? What if it isn’t just
Hebert behind this? It could be the whole CDC, or at the least a
branch of it. I’m not willing to risk our lives.”

“And I guess we really don’t know if the bill
is actually infected,” Christine said, sitting beside him.

“There may be a way to find out,” Trevor said
with a grin.

***

Trevor pulled into the parking lot at the new
CDC office in his red Mustang. He intentionally picked a spot up
close to get the attention of the person at the reception desk.

“I’ve got more of these surveys for Dr.
Hebert,” he said smoothly. “Is he in?” Trevor already knew he
wasn’t since he’d watched the doctor leave ten minutes earlier.

“Uh, no, he isn’t. Is that your car?” the
young man asked in awe.

“Yeah, a beauty, isn’t it?” Trevor smiled at
how easy this was going to be. “Would you mind keeping an eye on it
while I drop these sheets off? I’ll only be a minute.”

“Uh, yeah, go ahead.” The young man walked
over to the window for a better view.

Trevor quickly moved down the hall to the
office with Hebert’s name on it and silently stepped inside. He set
the blank surveys on the desk and since he already had surgical
gloves on underneath his winter ones it was a simple matter of
taking the plastic bag from his pocket and removing the ten dollar
bill, which he placed on the office chair behind the desk. He
stuffed the baggie in his pocket and stepped back into the
hall.

Seeing the young man still ogling his car,
Trevor breathed a sigh of relief. “Hey, thanks!” he said walking
out the front door.

***

“Tell me again what it is you did,” Christine
prompted.

“I took a ten and rubbed it with the twenty
he tried to pass me. If there is indeed a virus planted on the
twenty, we should know soon. I set the ten at the edge of the
cushion on Hebert’s chair, like it might have fallen out of his
pocket or dropped somehow. Since he’s been using twenties for his
dirty work, a ten shouldn’t alarm him. I’m hoping he’ll just put it
back in his own wallet, catching the virus himself. If he doesn’t
come down sick, then we were wrong and no harm done. However, if he
does get sick, then we’ve stopped him from hurting anyone
else.”

***

“Trevor, Christine, Doc Adams asked me to
check in with you,” Chief Marty said when Trevor answered the
door.

“What’s up, Marty?” Trevor and Christine had
been talking earlier about Dr. Creepy, and noted it had been over a
week since the plant of the ten dollar bill. They had both been
extremely cautious when working the store, and had avoided anyone
sick.

“Doc has been busier than a one armed paper
hanger with this new virus going around. It’s a really bad one.
Since you had the last one, he thought you might be vulnerable to
it, but he hasn’t had a chance to stop by,” Marty replied. “You
both look well, so I might conclude you haven’t caught this new
flu.”

“No, we’re doing all the things that Doc
suggested before, plus wearing gloves all the time at the store and
masks whenever someone comes in,” explained Christine. “What does
that Dr. Hebert have to say about this latest outbreak?”

“That’s another thing I wanted you to know,
since you two have been suspicious of him,” Marty stated. “I
stopped to see him yesterday on behalf of Doc Adams, to see if
there was any help he could give in treating this virus. The CDC
has left.”

“What do you mean ‘left’?” Trevor
questioned.

“That’s it, just left! The place is closed up
tight and vacant. No one there at all. When I told Doc that, he
made a few phone calls. Now, this is the interesting part. By all
accounts, Hebert came down sick, really sick. He was evacuated
during the middle of the night a week ago. The employees were told
to pack everything up and to sanitize the place, and then
they
were evacuated. No one knows where any of them are now,
or at least they’re not telling.”

“I don’t know what to say, Marty.” Trevor and
Christine exchanged a knowing look. “How bad is this new virus?
Does Doc Adams have a handle on how it’s transmitted, the
incubation time, or anything else?”

“He says it’s like any other virus: it’s both
airborne and contact. Plus, this one seems to have mutated quickly,
oddly to a less hazardous form. He thinks it should die out on its
own in another week or two. That being said, these first two weeks
have been devastating. Fifty percent of our population caught it,
and ninety percent of those have died.” Marty shuddered.

“That’s horrible, Marty!” Christine
whispered, aghast. “I guess we’ve been lucky.”

“Marty… we’ve also been following Marion’s
advice,” Trevor said, surprising Christine. “She gave us a couple
of bottles of vitamins and supplements the last time I was sick,
and I stocked some through the store.”

“She’s a smart woman,” Marty chuckled. “She
has my daily pills waiting for me in the morning, and nags me until
I take them. I’ll tell her you’ve been following her lead on this.
Who knows? Maybe her advice has kept us all healthy.”

“It sure is cold out for
March!” Trevor commented when Christine poured their morning
tea.

“I didn’t know if that was normal or not
since I moved here last May when it was warm,” she replied. “And
March was cool in Ft. Wayne.”

“I’ve been here most of my life, and this is
cold,” he shivered. “By the way, how are our supplies in the
basement? Do you need me to bring anything home tonight?”

“I was hesitant to mention anything.
Truthfully, I keep hoping that things will get back to normal and I
can do my usual grocery shopping.”

“Babe, let’s not keep things like this from
each other, okay?” Christine nodded glumly. “So, what do we
need?”

“Coffee, macaroni, bathroom tissue, soups,
anything heat and eat, and I’ve had a real craving for pork and
beans.” He gave her a sharp, scared look. “Oh, and tampons.”

He closed his eyes in relief. “Don’t scare me
like that.” When she gave him a quizzical look he added, “You said
craving
…” and she burst out laughing.

***

When Christine let Holly out during the early
afternoon, she noticed that dark clouds had moved in from the
northwest and the temperature had dropped another five degrees.
When she let the dog back in, there were a few drops of rain in the
air. She turned the TV on for some weather reports.

“…
band of moisture moving in from the
west,”
Matt Zika was saying, pointing to the map behind him.
“Add that with the cold front coming down from Canada and it
could bring some cold rain, even some freezing conditions, though
that would be unusual for this time of year.”

Christine glanced out at the darkening
sky.

“Come on, girl, let’s go see Trevor,” she
said, and the canine wagged her tail at the mention of Trevor’s
name. She grabbed the keys to the SUV and backed the four-wheeled
drive vehicle out of the garage, glad she had also worn her warm
jacket.

Rain splattered on the windshield with a soft
ping, easily swiped away with the windshield wipers.

***

“This is a pleasant surprise,” Trevor said,
giving Christine a quick kiss and Holly an ear scratch. The dog
then went to her blanket behind the counter. “Did you forget
something for your list?”

“No, but when the rain started and the
temperature dropped more I thought you should have the SUV in case
it gets worse.”

“Don’t trust your Cruiser?” he joked.

“No, I don’t. The weatherman said it’s
possible to get freezing rain and PT isn’t four wheel drive like
the SUV.”

“Hey, don’t get upset. I appreciate that you
want to trade cars so I’ll be safer, however, now I’ll worry about
you
until you get back home.” He hugged her. “Since you’re
here, you can pick out the groceries you want.”

They filled two boxes with items and set them
in the back of the PT Cruiser, along with a bag of dog food.

“It’s raining harder, Trevor. Why don’t you
close up early and come home?”

“I may do that in a little while. There are
people that depend on me being open though. If it gets much worse
I’ll close up, okay?”

***

Christine drove home cautiously. The streets
were slippery in spots and she maneuvered carefully around a couple
of accidents. By the time she got to the driveway, her hands were
cramping from holding the steering wheel so tight. As she drove up
to the garage door, the car slid sideways. She coasted back down to
the street and tried again. Once more the car slid at the same
spot. She parked the car at the bottom of the driveway, let Holly
out, and the two walked carefully up toward the opened garage. When
she approached the area where the car slid, Christine slipped and
fell, landing on her arm. Holly whined when Christine cried out in
pain. On her knees and balancing with one hand, she made it to the
safety of the dry garage. It was raining hard now.

“Okay, Holly, you get inside, I’ll see what I
can do here,” she said to the dog. The dog sat on the top step into
the house and refused to go in. Christine tucked her left hand into
the opening of her jacket to support her injured arm and looked
around the garage until she found a bag of rock salt. Taking a
handful, she tossed it onto the quickly growing sheet of ice. And
then another and another.

“This will take forever!” she complained. She
found an empty soup can in the trash and filled it with salt,
sprinkling it as she slowly made her way toward her car. After
three refills, she used the last under the front tires, hoping it
would give her enough traction to move the car.

Once inside, Christine lowered the garage
door and let Holly into the house, leaving the door open. With one
arm, she awkwardly dragged one of the heavy boxes up the two steps
and into the kitchen. After the second box was safely inside, she
went back and opened the overhead door on the empty side of the
garage. Using the last of the rock salt, she treated the area of
the driveway that appeared to have the heaviest coating of ice.
Exhausted, and in a great deal of pain, she went inside and closed
the door, leaving the overhead door open for Trevor.

***

“Trevor? Are you still here?” Chief Marty
called out.

“Yeah, Marty, I was just getting some extra
groceries before closing up.”

“I hope you didn’t drive that Mustang today.
It’s a real mess out there,” Marty warned.

“No, I left it back at the parking garage, so
I drove the Cruiser. However, Christine came by and left me the
SUV. I thought it unnecessary at the time, but now…” Trevor looked
out at the freezing rain.