Decimation Series (Book 1): Contagion Page 5

  He looked up at my poor bruised face.

  “It seems you have a knack for finding trouble, Mr. Hayes,” he said, closing the file in front of him and sliding it to the side.

  I shrugged, not sure how to reply. “Not usually,” I said, “but at the moment, you certainly seem to be not wrong.”

  I had been brought by golf-cart-caravan to an unfamiliar area of the airport. I believe its original purpose was that of an airplane hangar; it was hundreds of feet across and at least as many feet wide, with a ceiling at least sixty or more feet high, and it looked very industrial. Lit by dozens of bright lights standing on pedestals powered by a generator I could hear running off in the distance, it appeared to be a hastily-constructed quarantine and medical zone. Unlike the quarantine area we had been confined to, where we were out in the open but isolated, here there were several clear plastic “rooms”. Each room, my own included, was connected to what looked like corrugated clothes-dryer vent hoses, all snaking along the ground through a complicated series of connections; the hoses appeared to eventually go outside. There was a slight amount of vacuum pressure at the hoses, as my little plastic room seemed to be slightly sucking in on itself. I assumed this was to create just enough negative air pressure to prevent any air from my room escaping into the common area beyond my plastic walls.

  There were a disturbing number of rooms in this area, and almost all of them appeared to be occupied.

  As I watched, more chambers were being hastily constructed from rolls of clear plastic sheeting, snap-together PVC framing, and duct tape. I kid you not. Duct tape.

  “Dr. Lam seems to believe that you represent a minimal risk of infection given your limited exposure to the infected guards, and that you in all likelihood were never exposed to the initial contracting agent due to your trip overseas. I’m told we’re still weeks away from developing any form of conclusive testing for the presence of this contracting agent, so for the time being we’re relying on the timeline of release the CDC has worked up for us.”

  “For the time being, however,” he continued, leaning backwards in his chair, “I don’t feel we can risk returning you to the general population of your fellow passengers.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and he silenced me with a raised hand before I had even spoken a word. I didn’t like that I complied, but he had that type of physical presence that made you want to do as he expected; I supposed that was some intrinsic quality needed for a military command.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Hayes; from what we’ve been told, another eight or ten hours should be sufficient to eliminate you as a potential contagion carrier. I’m sure you haven’t had much sleep yet tonight, so I can have Dr. Lam here give you something to help you sleep. If you’re still asymptomatic a few hours after lunch, which I expect will be the case, we’ll be happy to escort you back to your wife and friends.”

  I nodded, and thanked him for his personal attention, telling him I would be very happy to be back with my wife. I looked at the room around us, at the hundreds of people sitting dejectedly in their isolation units, almost all of them wearing military fatigues; some were wearing medical scrubs. Other than me, I didn’t see anyone in isolation wearing civilian clothing. In the short time I had been in here, I had seen dozens of people start to show serious cold symptoms such as coughing and sneezing. When they did, each of them were individually removed from their room by a team wearing biohazard suits and taken elsewhere, and just as quickly others were brought into fill their empty chambers. On more than a few occasions, the sick passengers being transferred did not go gently.

  “Sir, how long do you expect until we’ll be allowed to continue on our way back home?” I asked.

  He sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his weathered face with both hands. Something in this action conveyed a feeling of immense weariness, and I was suddenly very, very glad that I wasn’t in his shoes.

  “We haven’t made a public announcement yet,” he began, pushing his seat back and standing from behind the table while turning to look at the hectic traffic of the room around him, “but I believe our strategic position here is becoming unsustainable.”

  Despite being a lifelong civilian, I think I knew exactly what he meant by that. Whatever battle they were waging here, they were losing. What I had seen in the last couple of hours had prepared me for this but hearing him say it out loud still hit me hard.

  “My expectation is that within forty-eight hours there won’t be enough healthy resources here to continue this operation. And I’m afraid even that might be an overly-optimistic estimate.”

  He turned to me, a grim smile on his face.

  “What I’m saying, Mr. Hayes, is that very soon I think you’ll be free to go and do as you choose, since none of us will be here to stop you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Day 3

  “Slow down babe, please,” Stephanie said in a near panic. It was the first time she had called me babe, one of her pet names for me, since that morning in the cafe in Paris almost a week ago.

  I had my suitcase open on my cot and was going through it, culling anything that I didn’t think we were going to need on our journey home.

  Thirty minutes ago, Dr. Lam had come to my quarantine chamber and had unzipped my door, my uneaten lunch still sitting on the tray just inside. Unlike in the past, she was alone, there were no soldiers accompanying her.

  I had been stunned to see she had a runny nose.

  “I think Captain Harrison’s forty-eight-hour estimate is proving to have been drastically underestimating the situation,” she said to me with a shrug as she saw me pause.

  I hadn’t known what to say. In the short time I had known her and the few interactions we’d had, I think I had grown somewhat attached to this young woman and her easy bedside manner. The thought that, within a matter of a day or two, she would likely be dead in a pool of her own mucus staggered me, literally. I had to sit back down on my cot, my head swimming trying to come to grips with this new reality.

  “So, it’s that bad?” I asked after a moment. For the last few hours, unable to sleep, I had watched as time and time again people had been removed from their quarantine chamber as they began to present symptoms. In the last hour I counted almost a hundred people taken away.

  “I’m afraid so,” she replied. She took a deep breath and looked at me with that small smile I had really come to like. “The good news is,” she continued, “we still haven’t had anyone from the several groups who were abroad at the time of initial distribution present as symptomatic, so I think I can safely pronounce you healthy.”

  I sat for a moment, trying to get my head around it all.

  “It isn’t just tens of thousands, is it?” I asked, quietly.

  She looked at me steadily. After a moment, she shook her head.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. I sat, waiting, my eyes closed, dreading what she would say next.

  “It’s millions. Maybe tens of millions. Maybe more.” Her voice caught at that last. I heard her sniffle, and I didn’t think it was from the cold.

  Without saying anything, I reached out and took her hand. She held on tightly. The enormity of what was happening was beyond me, so instead I just shared a moment of humanity with someone I had come to care about in a very short time.

  After a moment she pulled her hand back and wiped at her eyes. She turned to look at me, her eyes sad and soulful, but her gaze intent and solid. This was one strong woman.

  “I hope you get home to your children,” she said, “I really do. I’ve seen so many of my friends and colleagues die over the last two days, I’d like to think that at the very least someone will have a happy ending from all this.”

  I smiled and thanked her sincerely, having a hard time keeping my eyes from tearing up. I didn’t think there would be any happy endings for anyone; I didn’t say it, but I think she saw it in my eyes.

  She waved down a soldier and had him drive me back to the other passengers in one of their golf c
arts. I thanked him as he let me off and watched him drive away. Looking at the back of his head as he drove away, I heard him sneeze.

  I walked quickly back to my cot and grabbed my luggage.

  “Babe, please,” Stephanie repeated.

  I stopped for a second, looking around us. There weren’t that many people nearby, I was guessing since it was early afternoon most people were gathered at the food court. A few people had seen my return but they gave me a wide berth. I expected the events of the last twenty-four hours had given me a degree of notoriety amongst my fellow passengers, and I’m sure my split lips and black eyes didn’t help.

  “Listen, Steph,” I said quietly, “things are a lot worse than we’ve been told, and things are going to get very intense very soon.”

  I gave her a quick summary of my last few hours, and when I told her the extent of the severity of what has happening out there, she put her hand to her mouth and sat down on her cot as though the strength had gone out of her legs. Like me, she just couldn’t process what it meant, but also like me, she keyed immediately on what really mattered to us.

  “The kids,” she said quietly. I nodded grimly.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” I said, not believing it but saying it with conviction anyway.

  “In a very short while we’re either going to be let go, or there won’t be enough guards to make a difference either way. These people here, there’s nothing we can do for them, and there’s certainly nothing they can do for us. When that happens, I want to have you and me, and maybe those two brothers, ready to move. We’re going in the same direction, they seem like decent kids, and I think it will help to have extra hands and eyes where we’re going.” She nodded, understanding where I was going with this.

  “It’s not just our group here, there are five or six groups like ours in total, and that’s over a thousand people. I don’t know how everyone is going to react when Captain Harrison cuts us all loose, but if I know anything about human nature it’s that we’re unpredictable. And in a situation like this, that can be very bad. I want to be ready to get gone and get away from any big crowds.”

  After a few moments of discussing our options, Steph was on the same page as me. I left her to go through her luggage and trim the fat while I walked quickly to the food court to find Jamie and Alex.

  ♦♦♦

  Alex and his brother were joking with each other, a plate of reheated Chinese food in front of each of them. Jamie was stabbing his brother with his chopsticks when I came up to their table.

  “Listen guys,” I started.

  “Hey, it’s the Terminator!” cried Jamie, a big smile on his face. “Or better yet, it’s Mr. Timex, takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” He looked at my bruised face, losing a bit of his smile. “Man, I’d hate to see the other guy!”

  “By now I think the other guy is likely dead,” I said deadpan. That took the wind out of their sails.

  I pulled up a chair to their table, making sure no-one was listening to us, and I brought them up to speed.

  They were surprisingly quick to absorb it all. Ah, the resiliency of youth.

  “Gotcha,” said Alex. “So, we need to be ready to move and move quickly, is what you’re telling us.”

  I nodded grimly.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Right now, Steph is going through our luggage and making us as mobile as possible, you should both do the same but try and be inconspicuous. Lose the luxuries. Take only what you think you’ll need over the next few days. My plan is when the doors open, or however it happens, we need to be ready. There are dozens of car rental places downstairs. If the guard situation is as thin as I think it is, I’m going to try to get down there now and see if I can find some keys; that will save us some time later. I think some car rental places are on-site and some you have to take a shuttle to get to the cars. Do either of you know which is which?”

  They both shook their heads no.

  Dammit, I thought. Well maybe I could figure out which is which, assuming I could get down there at all.

  “What about everyone else?” asked Alex, looking around the room at the other people, sitting and eating and chatting.

  “I don’t know, buddy, I really don’t,” I said seriously, “I’m not trying to be insensitive, but everyone is going to have to look after themselves. That includes us. I have a feeling that shit is about to get very real here, and I want to be perfectly clear about something: I’m not going to let anything stop me from getting back to my kids.” I saw he heard me, but I wanted to make sure he really heard me. “Anything,” I emphasized, grabbing him by the arm.

  He nodded, and I could see that he got it.

  We agreed to meet back in our common area in thirty minutes, and I went to see if I could track us down some wheels.

  ♦♦♦

  I came around the corner into our sleeping area and saw Steph, Jamie and Alex all sitting together on their cots. They looked up at me hopefully, but I shook my head.

  “No keys,” I said, “but I did have some luck.”

  I had gotten past the guards easily since several of the stations were empty, and those that were manned didn’t seem too intent on stopping me. I had made my way down to the lower level where the baggage claim area was, right behind which were the car rental desks. I searched several but none of them had any keys, so I assumed all the key and vehicle storage would likely be somewhere in a parkade nearby, or if we were unlucky, off-site blocks away. I did, however, grab some maps of the Toronto area and southern Ontario, as well as one larger fold-out map of Canada. Once we secured transportation and were on the highway, I didn’t think we’d have too much trouble finding our way home; just hit the TransCanada and follow the sunset.

  Also on the plus side, I had found where they had the big golf carts stored, and they all had the keys in them. None of them were plugged in, since there was no power at the moment; I knew they wouldn’t get us far, but it would be better than running, and if we were lucky, they might have enough juice to get us to the rental depots. For some reason, I didn’t think we could count on a courtesy shuttle anymore.

  I looked at Steph’s feet and saw two new backpacks. They both still had their price tags on them, but they looked like they were stuffed to the gills. I looked around and didn’t see our luggage anywhere, and eventually put two plus two together.

  “I was ready to talk my way past the guard at the end of the hall,” she said, nodding back in the direction I had just come from, “I was going to tell him I needed to get to the pharmacy to find some, you know, feminine products, but he really didn’t seem too interested.” She said she had recalled seeing on the way here a luggage place along the line of stores lining the hallway, not far from where we were now. Once past the guard, she popped into the luggage store and found two sturdy backpacks to replace our awkward roller suitcases. I had walked right past the luggage store but the thought of grabbing more portable gear hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  “Jamie and Alex with their backpacks gave me the idea,” she said. “If we wind up thumbing our way home, these will be better than big heavy bags. If those backpacks would get these boys across France and back, I figure these would at least get us back to Regina.”

  She held up a plastic shopping bag. “I also stopped at one of those grocery kiosks and grabbed some sandwiches and a handful of granola bars.”

  “Smart,” I said, congratulating her on her thinking. I picked up one of the backpacks and saw that she even had water bottles in the outside pockets of both bags. I nodded my approval. I was mentally kicking myself for not going on a bit of a shopping spree at any of the stores I had passed; I was sure there would have been gear there that would have helped us. Maybe if we got lucky, we could have another look on our way out of here.

  I looked down the hallway to where the guard station was. It was deserted.

  “I think we can likely split any time we want to,” I said. “It doesn’t look much like anyone is going to be that intereste
d in stopping us.” I looked at my watch. It was just after three o’clock in the afternoon. The day was slipping away from us, and I didn’t know if we wanted to be out in the city on foot in the dark. We didn’t know what it was like out there, but from what we had seen and heard, I expected things could be very bad.

  “What about Seth and Michelle?” asked Stephanie. “Should we maybe all try to get out of here together?”

  I had considered that. Personally, although I had been to Toronto many times on connecting flights, I had never been outside of the airport. I didn’t know the city at all. The twins had been here a couple of times with their family, but it had been a few years ago and they weren’t much more knowledgeable than me. It would be handy having someone who knew the city to help us navigate, and we could help them get home. Safety in numbers, and all that; it would be sort of a win-win.

  We had the maps I had grabbed from the car rental kiosk. Despite having no cell phone service, I knew the GPS systems in our smartphones would still be operating. There would be no online mapping, since those require data service, but the compass and location services would still work, so that along with the paper maps, I knew we wouldn’t get lost.

  But locals would know which areas of the city would be best to avoid, how to get around traffic congestion quickly, and more. Their route to Muskoka would take them straight north. If I had my geography right, and if we wanted to take the Canadian route home and avoid crossing into the US (which, all things considered, I thought would be wise), we would follow the exact same route.

  We discussed all of this and decided we should track them down and pitch the idea of travelling together to get out of the city, for the first bit anyway. I figured the worst they could do was tell us to piss off.