“Sweet Jesus…” he muttered under his breath.
As Sophie watched the convoy of military vehicles heading in the opposite direction, she thought back to how the original plague had wiped out entire villages overnight. How incredible, she thought, that a village population would retire for the night relatively healthy, maybe the odd sniffle or sneeze, come morning they would all be dead. The law at the time being if there was a known infection in the household the citizens were to self-quarantine and mark their door with a red cross to warn neighbors of their plight and potentially avoid the same fate. However, the contagion was too strong, and the ever-present black rat spread the disease from house to house, as the bacterium Yesinia Pestis was present in the fleas upon their backs and in turn infected the human occupants. London of the mid 1600s suffered especially badly; the timber framed Tudor houses were made of wattle, a mixture of straw and manure, easy for rats or fleas to pass through into the jammed together houses.
Sanitation in London city was a trough carrying effluence running down the center of the street, where residents would throw their slops; chamber pots full of urine and excrement, from the upper story overhang, often splashing the pedestrians below. The Tudor architecture did not help, with the overhang, often only at arms’ reach from their opposite neighbor. The inhabitants would keep their livestock inside their homes with them; the horses, donkeys, and sometimes pigs, were stabled below on the ground floor, their straw a perfect breeding ground for the numerous rats.
The city of London employed folk to collect the diseased corpses on handcarts, they would ring a bell and holler the notorious chant. “Bring out your dead!” Where the residents, should they be fortunate enough to have survived the night, would pay six-pence to the collector, gladly, to distance themselves from the virus-ridden corpse.
Nevertheless, whatever measures the elders took the death toll kept rising. The municipal cemeteries could no longer cope and with the bodies mounting the elders commissioned the digging of mass graves outside the city walls, where the carcasses were buried en masse, with no time for the sensitivities of a proper burial for the recently bereaved to attend.
However, even these mass pits could not cope, as thousands upon thousands died each night. Eventually the plague pits could not cope and they would dump the corpses in a heap outside the city walls. The piles grew so high that highwaymen could hide behind them before leaping out on the few travelers brave enough to venture from the city only to be robbed, by a villain with a cry of; “Stand and deliver!”
“Ma’am,” said the sergeant bringing Sophie back to the present, “Why is it spreading so fast?”
“It’s interesting, actually, because I think we are also dealing with a new strain made up partly from a septicemic plague which attacks the blood and pneumonic, which attacks the lungs, which is particularly worrying as pneumonic makes the virus airborne.”
“These buboes, you mentioned, the swellings, what happens to them?” he asked her timidly.
“They burst and then death follows swiftly… why?” However, his violent sneeze answered the question, and she regarded him with wide-eyed terror.
“Aw, fuck, one has just burst under my arm. I’ve got it!” He yanked on the brake and rested his head on the steering wheel. “Why me?”
“Did you remove your helmet?” she asked, horrified to be so close to a victim, yet still feeling sorry for him.
“Briefly, at the rest-stop. These suits are so damned hot and what with the freak weather we’ve been having, I was boiling.” His shoulders shook as he cried in self-pity.
“Let’s get you to the compound they’ll surely help,” Sophie suggested.
He removed his helmet and looked at his reflection in the side-view mirror. “Dammit, look!” he screamed. “I’m turning black!”
She regarded him sadly, not knowing how to comfort the dying man. She patted his hand but it felt like a useless gesture.
“Level with me, doc, how long have I got?”
“It’s impossible to say,” she answered weakly.
“Days, hours, minutes? Please, the truth.”
“Each person is different, but I would say a few hours. I’m sorry….”
He pulled himself together. “Ma’am you must continue to the President’s summer residence. It’s imperative to the nation. You can drive. The GPS will take you right to the door.” He handed her the papers. “Show these documents to the guards, you’ll have no trouble.” He flicked a brisk salute.
“Are you not coming?” she asked worried for her safety.
“I feel I might be a hindrance on this mission, ma’am.” He handed her his sidearm, “I’ll keep the rifle. You take the pistol. Do you know how to use it?” She shook her head. “Well, it’s easy enough, I’ve taken off the safety, anyone gives you any trouble, aim at the center of their body mass.” He placed his hand on his chest. “Here, and pull the trigger.”
She started the engine without any further argument. “Good luck.”
“Doctor, is it going to hurt… I mean, more than it already does, because, you know.” He indicated his rifle. “If it’s going to be agony, then…” He mimed shooting himself in the mouth.
She weighed up telling him the truth or not and thought there had been enough lying. “I won’t lie to you, the pain will be unbearable.”
“Thank you for being so candid. Is there—” He sneezed violently and black blood gushed from both nostrils. “Goddamn it. Is there anything else I should look out for?”
Again, she wrestled with her conscience. “Does your skin feel tight anywhere?”
“It does, now that you mention it, my cheeks feel tight. Why?”
“It can rip open… while you’re still alive.”
As she spoke, he rubbed his hand against his cheek causing the fragile skin to tear. He screamed in agony as the torn skin exposed the muscle and bone below. He doubled over in pain and vomited a puddle of black-colored vomit.
She watched in open-mouthed horror as his other cheek slowly tore open. He screeched and scrambled with his rifle, but no matter what he tried, the barrel was too long to enter his mouth. “Shoot me!” he yelled at her.
She turned the trembling pistol towards the soldier who lay prone on the street. “Do it,” he begged, then convulsed, sneezing black blood.
She pointed the gun at him, but could not pull the trigger. “I, I… can’t.” she trembled.
He rose up on his knees, and pointed at his heart. “Aim here. You must.” He howled in tortured pain. “Please.”
She pointed the gun at him in a two-handed grip, but once more she turned away unable to take a human life no matter how much pain they were in. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.”
He cried out in anguish as the skin on his chin tore open. “For the love of god have mercy! Kill me!”
Sophie steeled her resolve, aimed, but then lowered the weapon….
CHAPTER 11
23:00 PM
At the radar station aboard the aircraft carrier USS Thomas Jefferson the Boeing 777 Flight 416 returning to Miami blipped on the radar screen monitored by the signalmen, who calculated its position ten miles from shore, five minutes from landing. Commander Roscoe leaned over intensely staring at the blip on the radar monitor. He bellowed into an internal phone, red-faced in anger at the young gunner at the other end of the line who disobeyed him. “That is an order! Fire the missile, now!”