The Holocaust Engine, page 8
Charles Stratton was seated on the bed. His punctured left lung had collapsed, and the severed vein under his arm had nearly killed him, but he was healing. He could walk three flights of stairs. If he could stay on his feet for the rest of the morning, he just might make it out of the quarantine zone. After that, his survival would depend on his wife.
His wife... from what he had gathered, theirs was a shotgun wedding that Charles had regretted for the rest of his life. Something about Mary Stratton rubbed him the absolute wrong way. Still, while Charles grew increasingly quiet and sullen as the world he knew crashed down around him, Mary took it all in stride. It was not that Mary Stratton accepted the idea of collapse, it was more that she could not seem to fully process it.
For the last thirteen days, the presumptive fall of mankind had progressed according to its own schedule. Part of it he’d anticipated—a hastily erected set of barriers had let thousands escape the island, which had provoked a much tighter, much more violent cordon. Reagan thought it would prove too little, too late, but it still held for now—boats, jets, helicopters, spotters on the adjacent islands.
Part of the fall, however, he had not anticipated—two weeks and the island still had not been overrun with cases of this Bontragers disease. He’d only seen a handful of infections outside the hospital, but not all were violent, and no one at the hospital was using the word zombie. The radio reported suspected cases all over the country, but right now, the vast majority of the reports had proven false. If hysteria could kill, the nation was surely doomed. If not, then Reagan Castaneda would soon find himself in the awkward position of attempting to justify the impressive list of felonies he’d committed in the last two weeks.
All thoughts for later.
If the rest of the country remained safe, then the Lower Keys stood in sharp contrast. Unless something drastically changed, Reagan’s mental simulation worked out the same no matter how he crunched the data: dwindling resources, increasing violence, inevitable slaughter. The disease might simmer below the surface for a time, but the sheep were beginning to roll to an impressive boil. At that moment, the major obstacle to getting the Strattons away to safety was the healthy—the people still on Key West and Stock Island who were turning mean.
Mary knew little of all this, but what she did know, she filtered through a mind that only recognized her duty to her husband and daughter, and anyone she could touch with her motherly care and sunshiny disposition: Are the main lights going to go off again? We should get candles. We wouldn’t want any of the old folks to stumble finding the bathroom. The government just cut the satellite feeds? I better check on the Moores in room 226. Their son Travis is stuck up in Islamorada. They’re probably terrified.
In a few minutes, Reagan and the Stratton family would run the government blockade, and Reagan had no doubt that if she could, Mary would have packed them all lunches with a brownie wrapped in cellophane and a sticky note of love and smiley faces. Yet motherly did not mean impractical: How deep is the water in the channel? Will my blouse get wet? She even pushed her daughter’s head down, away from the window, during last night’s bombing, stroking her hair while the missiles struck.
Unfortunately, Krissy Stratton took after her father, not unlike many of the people that Reagan had encountered in the hospital and on the islands—nervous, emotional, weighted down with uncertainty. “Do they think I’m dead?” she would say, out of the blue, for the twentieth time, oblivious to the fact she’d asked the same question to the same three people only a few hours before.
Her parents couldn’t understand, and even Mary had become short. “A few more hours, Sweetie,” she said, frustration turning her soft voice hard, “and you’ll tell them how you’re doing yourself.”
Reagan understood. He only had a Facebook page starting his senior year in high school, and had only been on Twitter since a sophomore in college. On Sunday nights—his planning nights—he would set reminders.
Tuesday afternoon: notice something on the West lawn. Friday night: guys’ night out. Post something. Two of each. Look everyone. How normal am I?
But Krissy Stratton was normal, depressingly so, and her life had been lived in an echo chamber of posts, tweets, pics, and vids. Her life had been happy, shallow, and endlessly reassuring. Her life had ended the day they cut the feeds.
“They can’t do this!” she had screamed. “They can’t keep us here like this. We’re Americans!”
She hadn’t been on Mallory square when two boats full of them had tested the tightened cordon. Reagan had. She had no idea what was happening. He did. Reagan was not the only person who would have things to answer for when this was over. The world was changing—every day changed, and they were long, each day now feeling like two or three. So much happened that, by nightfall, Reagan remembered the mornings as if they were yesterday. Two weeks had felt like two months.
They weren’t Americans anymore. That much was clear. Three days after they’d arrived in the hospital, two jet fighters had blown the bridge between Stock Island and Boca Chica—US 1, the only road in or out. Key West, and its little eastern neighbor Stock Island, had been isolated from the United States—nothing in and nothing out. No one in the hospital, no one inside the blockade, had any rights or representation. The old rules had vanished, just as he knew they would. Anyone trying to escape would be shot, their boat scuttled.
Reagan and the Strattons were at ground zero, and that was the problem. Every good prepper knew how to survive a disease, the same way the wealthy Europeans had survived the Bubonic Plague.... Just leave. Get as far away from ground zero as possible and wait for nature to take its course. The hospital was the worst place to be.
Lower Keys Medical, the only hospital inside the quarantine zone, had been built to look like a Caribbean merchant house, as if with each hall you might turn the corner and find a concourse selling woodcuts and jerk chicken. They’d painted the walls the color of sand, with accents blue like the ocean. Sky lights and large windows let in the bright sun, casting a glow on the island-themed paintings in the halls, and the manila paper drawings from the nearby elementary school that hung in the waiting rooms and the cafe. Two weeks before, the ambiance was at least distracting, if not healing. Now, the hospital had become a shipwreck populated with desperate castaways.
Last night, they’d barely managed to get to sleep when the missiles struck, but even on the other nights, they’d slept only a little. The pallets they’d made on the floor provided thin comfort, and now that their phones and even the televisions had died, they had only each other to take their minds off the constant sounds of voices and footsteps in the hall. They could always hear the sound of crying. Always.
Reagan had been deputized, with some of the other men, as a sort of bouncer/orderly. This meant he knew how things were progressing with the outbreak. It also meant that nurses were calling on him for help at all hours of the night. Between that and his daily excursions to gather intel and prepare their escape—and now, for the last six days, his work with the smugglers—Reagan Castaneda had grown weary, near total exhaustion.
“The guards, the ones that come up and talk to you, are in big plastic suits,” he said, his voice low and serious. “They look like astronauts with guns. It’s kinda nerve racking, but you can’t look startled. Remember, it’s got to look like you’ve seen this before.”
On this morning, Krissy had dressed in capris and a thin white shirt that would be see-through once they entered the channel. Reagan had almost groaned, until he realized that her attire might serve as a moment’s distraction, if they encountered soldiers on the opposite bank.
“But why can’t we try for the yacht once we have the ID cards?” Mary stepped out of the bathroom and over the collection of clothes and towels that had served as a bed for Reagan. She snapped a rubber band around a ponytail on her light brown hair. With flat canvas shoes and cargo shorts, her arms hugging herself, and a look of girlish concern, she appeared hardly older than her daughter. “How do you know the highway will be any safer? If we could just get Charles to his boat, he could hide us in all those little islands. I’m sure he could.”
“Even if we could get to the yacht,” said Reagan, shaking his head, “and trust me, with all the ships around the harbor right now, we can’t. But even then, he might be able ditch the boats, but we would still have to deal with the aircraft that are all over the place. There are no civilian boats in the water. If we’re going out, we’re going on land.”
“Let’s just do what he says.” Charles Stratton had been sitting up in his hospital bed for the last several minutes. Dressed in another of his collection of Bermuda shorts and an aloha shirt, with a pair of Birkenstocks that Mary had helped him step into, he looked like the gaunt captain of a fishing rig, complete with the scraggly beard of a man who hadn’t shaved in half a month.
“You remember the story, Charles?” Reagan stood with arms folded like an inquisitor pronouncing sentence.
Stratton looked up with sunken eyes, each breath rattling in the back of his throat, and held the bandages where the knife had punctured his lung. “I’m going to let you do the talking.”
“If you don’t say anything, it will look suspicious.”
“Reagan,” Mary pleaded, “every breath is hard for him. I don’t even know how we’re going to get him across. If he has to say more than a few words, he’ll start panting again, and won’t that look suspicious?”
“No, you’re right. You’re right. Okay, Charles, save your breath. One-word answers. What have you been doing? You say fishing. If they ask where you, say Bahamas. I’ll be standing next to you at the registration table. I’ll try to do as much of the talking as I can.”
“You’re sure we can’t wait until he’s stronger.”
“After last night....”
Krissy whimpered, “This isn’t right. None of this is right. I’m going to tell everyone, when I get out of here—the news, YouTube, everyone.”
“Girls, it’ll be scary,” Reagan said, “but this is perfect. All the smoke from those fires... but even if it clears, it’s still got to be today. We’re going to be some of the last people registered on Boca Chica. If we can find the lady I talked to yesterday, our chances improve. I tried to set it up by saying that you guys had already left by car. We need to be sitting at the marina when they put out their tables this morning. We find her, and you guys just say that you spent all day getting the run around after you showed up at the checkpoint without your registration cards. If we do this, we have to do it today.”
“And if it’s already too late?” Krissy said.
Reagan shrugged. “Then we most likely get herded into a FEMA camp, and have to spend a week or two trying to use your dad’s connections to get out.”
Reagan put on his paper ‘orderly’ scrubs over his jeans and shirt, did a final inventory check, then repeated in half a dozen different ways why none of them could take anything more than a single change of clothing. “Wallets and cell phones in the bag. Everything else either fits in a pocket or stays here.”
“My Chambray button-down takes up almost no room.”
“Mary,” Reagan and Charles said in near perfect unison.
The hallways had devolved into the very opposite of peaceful or therapeutic, littered with human detritus. People lay on the floors outside of rooms. Nurses and doctors wearing masks and gloves shambled from one patient to the next. A little girl cried as she walked, but no one asked what was wrong or tried to help. Shouting, moaning, and sobbing contributed to a scene of fear and despair, layered on a foundation of utter fatigue, as if just outside a war had been lost and now they were waiting, one and all, to find out what fate would bring when the invaders came.
A nurse noticed Reagan in scrubs holding a black trash bag. “They’re going to need you in 214.”
“I’ll check on it in a minute, Rose,” he said, then nodded over his shoulder. “Gonna take the family outside for some air.”
Once they loaded into the elevator, Krissy asked, “What’s in 214?”
“Gunshot wound that’s acting funny.” He met Krissy’s gaze. “Doc Morenz has this test he gives, memory and reflexes and stuff. If the guy fails, some of the other orderlies will move him to the outbuilding.”
“What do they want you for?”
“The family.”
The first light of dawn showed through the smoke. The front parking lot, now free of cars, had become a single, extended triage center. Two open-air medical tents dominated the space. They had a few cots, but most of the injured lay on pallets no more comfortable than what Reagan and the girls had been using. The staff working the tents had passed out blue face masks, which nearly all the civilians wore. Everyone showing signs of dementia were housed in the outbuilding to the west. Doctors in flimsy, paper suits, most so weary of the routine that they no longer wore the masks, came and went.
On each side of the gate, they’d erected a wall of tent posts sitting in traffic cones, with tape wrapped between the posts—a visual barrier more than a physical one. Tendrils of smoke from what had been the Stock Island Marina seeped between people, trees, and buildings, trapped in the sticky, humid air, as if a disgusted giant were fumigating the island of all its loathsome humans. Even on the other side of the island from the marina, visibility had dropped to no more than three hundred feet.
“Perfect,” Reagan muttered to himself.
Two other orderlies were walking back from the parking lot entrance. One of them held a pump-action shotgun. The other dangled a flashlight. “Hey, Reagan,” said the bald one with the thick, dark beard. “Can you get my afternoon for me. Lights were on in the Community College. We spent the last two hours checking it out.”
“Nothing?”
He shrugged.
The one with the flashlight said, “Kids maybe. Hey, where you going?”
“Need to get these guys back to their condo. I’ll be back by the afternoon.”
The orderlies turned back to the hospital as Reagan and the Strattons walked toward the road.
The girls looked frightened. Charles watched his own feet as he walked, his steps uncertain.
The black LeSabre had parked on dirt next to the road. Reagan opened the passenger door and motioned for the others to get in back. While the girls settled Charles into the backseat, Reagan stripped off the scrubs and pitched them into the grass.
Inside the car, the driver smiled. He was young, with short-cropped reddish hair, light complexion, a set of mismatched teeth visible with every one of his smiles, and a tattoo of a playing card on the right side of his neck.
Reagan nodded. “Everything ready?”
“Sure is,” said the tattoo boy with a slow southern accent. “Beatty and Grant are up on the bridge in case we need to get their attention, like we did yesterday.”
“Their attention?” Mary asked from the back.
Reagan turned to her. “They threw some... um... some garbage off of the end of the bridge, kept the spotters looking while we crossed. We probably won’t even need that today.” Then, turning back to the driver and in a far more serious tone, he said, “Grant’s solid. Serious little bastard, but solid. Who’s Beatty? Do I know him?”
“The guy who had words for you that first night.”
Reagan leaned in. “The little fucker who almost got his teeth kicked out?”
The driver smiled all the more.
“Where are my manners?” Reagan turned around in his seat. “Strattons, this is Spade. Spade, this is the Stratton family.”
“Hi.” Spade looked at Mary, then at Krissy. His smiled faltered for half a second.
“Hello, Spade,” said Mary.
“Just start the car,” said Reagan.
Spade started the car.
“Spade,” Mary said, “is your family still on the island?”
His smile was uncertain. He turned back to his passenger. Maybe a woman as attractive as Mary Stratton had taken an interest in him at some point in his life, and maybe not. Either way, he’d seen what Reagan could do.
“No, Ma’am, it’s just me. I work on a shrimper. I’m sorry, Ma’am, on a shrimp boat, and my captain kinda made it sound like all of us would lose our jobs if we left. So, I stayed.”
“Well, that wasn’t very nice. I bet he wishes he had let all of you go now.”
Spade chuckled. He started to speak, but then noticed Reagan, who was looking at him and shaking his head. “Uh, yeah... yes, Ma’am. I’m ‘bout certain that’s true.”
When they reached Highway 1, Spade slowed nearly to a stop in order to navigate through the abandoned cars. The south side of the highway looked deserted. Once, Reagan saw someone wearing a surgical mask crawling out a house window, but otherwise, he saw no one. Some of the houses were shuttered, and some had sealed their windows with tarps. Cars sat with their doors opened, bicycles lay on the grass, trash cans lay on their sides, surrounded by the trash that never got picked up—this surrounded by hungry seagulls—and children’s toys lay strewn about a front yard. All this stuff of the “old world,” no one in the new world could be bothered to care about.
They drove through the neighborhood to the very southeast point of Stock Island.
Reagan had begun again to give advice for the crossing. “When we get to the other side, we have to change out of the wet clothes fast. If we get caught, just do what they say. They’re not going to shoot you.” He now had an echo. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spade looking at him as much as he was looking at the road. Spade had started coming in midway through Reagan’s sentences and finishing them in unison, as if he wished he had said them himself. “They change shifts right about sunrise.”
“...about sunrise.”
“That and this smoke are going to make it easy, a lot easier than yesterday.”
“...easier than yesterday.”
Reagan stared straight at him, and Spade held a smile that said he had no idea what he was doing.
The car stopped in front of a house that looked just like the others around it—single story, plain brick, of the sturdy blue-collar sort that dominated this part of the island. Spade turned to Reagan, and his smile never faltered.
