If her head wasn’t stuffed and fogged enough, confusion added to it.
“What… what’s going on?” she asked.
The big brown eyes peered at her through the faceplate of the suit before he spoke. “Are you Isabella Lyons?”
“Yes,” Isabella answered.
“You’ve been in close contact with William Daniels?”
“He’s my boyfriend, yes. What… what is…” Isabella held up her hand, covered her mouth and coughed. She coughed again, deep and rattling.
The man’s eyes widened even more, and he spun with a vengeance and pointed to his coworker behind him. “Confirmed. Get them back on the phone, inform them we have an affirmative and tell them to seal it up,” he said, his voice authoritative. “Seal it up and shut the entire airport down… now.”
Reston, Virginia
After hanging up the telephone, Kurt made his way to the coffee pot and poured the last of the contents into his cup.
“Well?” Henry asked.
“Shut down,” Kurt answered. “No one gets out. Hospital, too. They have twelve flights on the runway, seven scheduled to return, and six that will be quarantined upon landing.”
Henry closed his eyes. “You realize that this is a wild goose chase.”
“No, it’s a possibility,” Kurt said. “Bill Daniels flew home on a corporate jet. The pilot is not ill. That is good. The girlfriend and Bill both confirmed he got into his car, went straight home and didn’t leave until she brought him to the emergency room.” Kurt took a sip of his coffee. “We’re just waiting for federal approval from FEMA to—”
“Don’t say it.” Henry chuckled in disbelief. “Quarantine Anchorage?”
“Yes.”
Henry laughed again. “Why not the state?”
“If we have to.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“No!” Kurt finally showed emotion. “You were the one not twelve hours earlier trying to get across how deadly this is, how we shouldn’t tag it contained, and now listen to you.”
“I think we should be looking at other options,” Henry stated.
It was Kurt’s turn to scoff. “What other options? You were right. It’s not over. So what other options do we have? How many years, Henry? How many years have eighteen research institutes been trying to beat this virus? How long? And nothing…” Kurt’s hand shot through the air. “Not a whisper of a vaccine has been heard of. Nothing. So we do what we can to contain it. One city, two, a state? Doesn’t matter; if we have to shut down one half of the world to save the other half from dying…” He paused when the phone rang. “Then we will. We have a shot. We really have a shot of keeping this thing under control.”
Henry picked up the phone. “Yeah,” he answered and his eyes lifted, then he rubbed them with a heavy hand. “All right. Get back to me.” He hung up. He stared down at the phone as he talked. “What were you saying about having this under control?”
“That we have a shot.” After realizing that Henry wasn’t asking for a repeat of his earlier comments, Kurt grew concerned. “What? What happened?”
“They found the second reporter.”
“Excellent.” Kurt smiled.
“You think?” Henry said with sarcasm. “He’s not in Anchorage.”
“Then where?” Kurt asked.
Henry hesitated and swallowed before answering. “LA.”
Los Angeles, CA
The agonizing pain that Trevor felt generated loud, horrid cries of the damned in the final moments of his life. He wasn’t even conscious enough to realize and pinpoint where the pain came from, but it consumed him. His hospital bed was soaked with the black blood that seeped from every bodily orifice.
Dr. Benjamin Anthony from the CDC knew the end was at hand for Trevor, but he couldn’t help but want to fight for him. Fighting for Trevor meant fighting for anyone else who had to go through it.
Caroline Sanders, another doctor from the CDC, held a different opinion. She, Ben and two others diligently toiled over the patient they had just been introduced to an hour earlier. Trevor convulsed as the team watched, marked the occurrences, and photographed it all as the ‘beginning’ in their minds. Registering every second of the event, it was literally a new history in the making, one that generations to come would not soon forget.
“He’s bleeding from somewhere,” Ben stated, eyes glued to the racing heart monitor. “Maybe if we can slow down the—”
“Somewhere?” Caroline ridiculed. “His goddamn organs have melted; they’re just finding their way out.”
Trevor threw his arms out and his neck and back arched as he yelped, a bizarre sound no one had ever heard before. In the midst of the scream, Trevor violently coughed and projected thick dark blood onto Ben’s protective facial shield.
“This has to end.” Caroline shook her head. “Three CCs of morphine.” She held out her hand toward an assistant.
After dropping the end of the blanket he used to smear the blood on his mask, Ben saw the assistant hand the syringe to Caroline. “What are you doing?”
“Ending this.” Caroline lifted the syringe.
“That’s inhumane.” Ben grabbed her hand stopping her.
“No,” Caroline argued passionately and pulled away her hand. She looked at Trevor who still screamed in agony. “What is happening to this man is inhumane.” On her final word, she brought down the syringe and silence came, not only to the room but to Trevor as well.
CHAPTER TEN
Lodi, Ohio
August 30th
Flinging his head, Mick threw the wet strands of his long hair from his face and reached for the brush, a brush that took him forever to find in Dylan’s dark bedroom. He’d brought nothing to her home the night before because had no intentions of staying, but the long day had caught up with him and he ended up passing out on the couch somewhere in the middle of watching a cable movie. He only wished that Dylan would have woken him, or at the least made him stretch out. Falling asleep partially sitting killed his back.
Running the brush through his thick hair with thoughts of the day before him racing through his mind, Mick jumped a little, set down the brush and flew out of the bathroom when he heard the alarm clock radio blare. He thought he had silenced it when it went off prior to stepping into the shower, but he supposed he had only hit the snooze button. He couldn’t figure out why Dylan had the thing set so early anyhow.
Holding the towel to his body, Mick flew into the bedroom. Dylan hadn’t budged at all in the midst of the blaring newscast.
“Ok, how do I shut this damn thing off?” Mick muttered to himself. He picked up the clock and turned it upside down and around searching for the button.
“And Ohio Governor Theodore Higgins is insisting the plane be removed from the Cleveland Airport runway where it is remains in quarantine,” the woman newscaster spoke. “A spokesperson with the Centers for Disease Control assured Governor Higgins…”
Mick turned the volume down, low enough to hear, but his attention was caught.
“…that everything would be fine, and the quarantine will be lifted once the passengers show no signs of the flu that has proceeded, before midnight, to shut down not only the entire state of Alaska, but nine counties in California as well…”
“What?” Mick exhaled, as he backed up and sat down.
“Governors of both Alaska and California are expressing deep concern over citizen reaction when they wake to find they are imprisoned in their own home states. The National Guard has been brought in for precautionary measures in more heavily populated areas where tension could cause rioting. In an early morning statement, President Ross is urging people not to be too concerned…”