The male junkies went the same way, happily selling their bodies so long as they got their heroin fix. Didn’t seem to matter what they looked like, how much they let themselves go, there was usually a pervert for every type of junkie. Nope, they brought it on themselves and good riddance to the feeble-minded idiots. Did they not watch the news? They knew it was dangerous, and highly addictive, yet they still tried the product.
He wandered the empty concession store, filling his shopping-cart. He piled it high with all the luxuries that made his days bearable, Bollinger champagne, and Beluga caviar, not that he could not normally afford it, he ate and drank it most days, but it would taste even more delicious now due to the fact that he had stolen it.
He heard a noise and he went for his pistol tucked in the front of his pants, he froze, listening for more sounds, he knew instinctively that it wasn’t an army patrol. So it must be one of the plague carriers, he withdrew his pistol, he’d have no hesitation in shooting them dead if he had to, carrier or not, he wasn’t going to take a chance. It’s not as if he hadn’t ever killed anyone before. He’d lost count of how many ‘hits’ he’d done during his professional career. He’d killed for the first time at thirteen. A pretty girl, who lived on his block and had befriended him, wanting someone to call a friend. They spent most of that summer together, until one day he’d misread the signs and had inexpertly groped her. She screeched like a banshee, and in an effort to stop the sound he had covered her mouth, but her panic had gotten worse until he had dragged her screaming over to a water-filled barrel, and pushed her face into it. Her thrashing around had aroused him, especially as she went limp, he knew she was dead and that he had killed her. He had covered his tracks, gone home, and played the innocent when questioned, even helpfully joined in the hunt for her. He felt nothing for her. He displayed no emotion, yet he wasn’t a sociopath, because once retelling the story to a psychiatrist he went on to say that, he’d cried when a hit-and-run driver killed his beloved dog. Therefore, proving he was capable of feelings. Strong feelings as it turned out, of hatred in particular, as he’d tracked down the driver and ran him over. In the driver’s own car, no less — a nice touch of poetic justice, he thought. This action had made him one of the family’s youngest ever foot soldiers.
No, he managed to square away a ‘hit’ as another business deal and not think about his catholic upbringing and the commandment, ‘thou shall not kill’. He still believed in God, and supposed he would have to answer for his misdeeds when he reached the pearly gates, but that would not be happening for a long time. He planned to repent before the end, for the church loved a sinner, and boy, had he sinned. No, he’d make it right, before his time was up. He chose not to think about it too much, as his demise was a long way off, unlike this motherfucker creeping up on him, either to attack him, or at the very least suck in his clean air and replace it with his polluted contagious breath.
He abandoned his shopping-cart, he could make another trip later and crept to the store doorway, he could see his private elevator a few yards away. Tantalizingly close but blocked by a crowd of plague carrying victims. He held his pocket-handkerchief to his nose, wondering how far the germs could carry on the air. He had to get to the elevator and fast, but the man, woman and two children, seemed in no hurry to leave the foyer, no doubt hiding from the troops. The woman caught his eye, and smiled gently, “Oh, Hi,” she realized she had startled him, and smiled reassuringly. “Sir, can you please help us?”
He calmly raised his pistol and shot her between the eyes, she fell back into the man’s arms. The kids screamed and he shot them too, but the man knocked the gun from his hand. Alvin Borelli rushed to his elevator, where he fumbled with the key. The man lunged at him with hate-filled eyes. Alvin neatly sidestepped the man, sending him crashing into the wall, Alvin karate-chopped him across the throat, and the man slid down the wall choking with a broken larynx. Alvin picked up his pistol, when more people poured in through the broken doors attracted by the commotion of the gunshots and screaming.
He fired into the crowd hitting two or three, he heard the private elevator doors swish smoothly open behind him and he neatly stepped back into the comfort of his private sanctum, when the choking man on the floor grabbed his legs. He quickly shot him in the arm and the limb withdrew. But as the doors closed again a multitude of hands held them open. He fired rapidly until finally, thankfully, the doors hissed closed, and he breathed the biggest sigh of relief he could remember.
He wondered about the Bubonic Plague carriers and suspected that some germs had probably gotten into the elevator with him so he held his breath. It was only a minute to his destination he could manage that. No problem, he thought, when the elevator juddered to a halt and the lights dimmed and then finally, terrifyingly, went out.
CHAPTER 20
03:45 AM
Luke could only wonder about the effect that no power and total darkness would have. He wasn’t concerned for the half-crazed and dying; but for the healthy who’d decided to wait out the pandemic in the modicum of comfort that their own homes provided. If they had enough food, then there was no reason to venture outside, where looters might attack them, or make contact with the plague carriers unnecessarily. If they sat it out for a week, it would’ve passed over and by which time the government would have arranged for their evacuation.
Now their food would spoil and the air conditioning units would be inoperable, and the present heat wave would surely drive them outside. And that, of course, Luke realized, was the reason, to draw the survivors outside, where they'd be rounded-up and transported to the refugee camps, or now, more likely executed on the street.
He shuddered and thought of the infirm and elderly fumbling their way around their homes disorientated by the darkness, making their own homes potential death traps.
He watched the power grids extinguishing block-by-block towards them, and then pass behind them blinking out into the horizon leaving South Florida in total darkness.
He and Sophie agreed that the Government was not going to rescue them and were more likely to destroy them. Sophie said, “They told me at the President's compound that they were sending up spy-planes and drones, and were re-positioning our satellites.
Luke nodded. “We know that the roads, ports and coastlines are being watched for outward movement, maybe are chances are better if we head inland and go up the middle.”
“Speed is essential,” she said. “Before they swamp the area.”
“There’s a small landing strip nearby, I saw it before the lights went out. If we fly central and low, we might just make it.”
“What about radar?” Sophie said.
“That’s the beauty of it; I did a news story once about drug running, if you stay low and away from major airports, you can fly undetected.”
Sophie brightened considerably. “You can fly?” she asked.
“Well, I landed a jumbo jet earlier,” he smirked at his recent escapades involving the Boeing 777.
On any other day she would have laughed out loud, thinking it was some sort of cheesy pick-up line, pretending to be a glamorous airline pilot, but tonight she took him at his word. “That’s good—” but she noticed by his expression that it was not. “What’s the problem?”
“I landed one — I’ve never taken off or flown one. But, hey, how hard can it be?”