The Onyx Seed - A Story of Survival by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 9

Now, the sky had become a moonless, pitch-black backdrop for a partially lit city. The hospital’s generators had spent their last, precious drops of fuel, leaving it to stand as L.A.’s new above-ground mausoleum where the dead would continue to be burned and buried, but their souls wandered the rooms and hallways of what was a haven for the poor who, often, had no place else to turn. Marty made good use of his night vision binoculars, as he closely watched the guard pacing back and forth outside the emergency room. All he needed was one chance to sneak by without being noticed. If he could just get one glimpse at a body, Marty might be able to figure out what the government was hiding. But he would have to do it alone. Accomplishing this, with Lucas in tow, was too risky and there was no sense in both of them getting caught.

“What now?” Lucas whispered.

Marty leaned over toward his ear.

“I need you to stay here,” he said. “Don’t move. Don’t say anything and don’t panic.” Lucas seemed a little frustrated that he wasn’t getting a firsthand look at what Marty was trying to find. “Luke,” Marty continued. “We can’t both get caught.”

At this point, the one thing Lucas didn’t want was to get caught and quickly agreed to stay behind. This allowed Marty to move faster, dodging the guard’s line of sight. Ideally, he wanted to get as close to the emergency room doors as possible. In order to secure the area, the guard would have to watch in all directions. Marty wasn’t planning on approaching the guard, but merely taking advantage of what seemed to be an inexperienced soldier.

The guard turned away several times as he scanned the darkness that enveloped at least half the city. Each time, Marty would close the distance that stood between him and the glass doors of the emergency room entrance. His plan was not to go into the building, but only to get a look through the glass doors using his night vision binoculars. As an added advantage, the emergency rooms parking lot was filled with cars and ambulances. Marty moved from one to another, using them as a means of concealment. Lucas had not yet been discovered as Marty dodged between them and while crouching near the front wheel of a haphazardly parked car, he unexpectedly realized that it was occupied. He cautiously peered through the driver’s window, only to see a dark form sitting behind the wheel. There was no movement and a strong odor seeped through the slightly open window. Without light, seeing any detail would be impossible. Yet, the use of any light would throw the possibility of getting caught into certainty. And Marty was too close for his night vision binoculars to work effectively.

Marty breathed a quiet sigh of relief, knowing that what he was looking for might be right in front of him. The soldier, again, turned his back, giving Marty enough time to double back by five or six cars. He hoped this would provide enough distance that he could get a chance to examine the body in reasonable detail. He just needed to see what it looked like. Marty glanced back at Lucas, who hadn’t moved an inch from where he had left him. The guard turned away again, giving Marty the opportunity to raise his binoculars just over the front corner of the car he was hiding behind. And what he saw both familiar and terrifying. The image showed itself to him through the green wash of night vision. The body was that of a large man, maybe in his late forties. It didn’t look as though he had been dead long enough for decomposition to set in. The man’s head had fallen back onto the headrest while his eyes maintained a lifeless, open stare. His jaw dangled from beneath his head as the muscles of his face sagged with gravity. The image of death was not new to Marty. He’d spent enough time in Iraq to see it up close many times. After a while, death had become part of the job, as he repeatedly witnessed its many forms. Children lying dead in their mother’s arms. Men and women hacked to pieces by the machetes of Taliban fighters. Their favorite form of execution was beheading. It was always a difficult sight to absorb, and it became more difficult as the victims got younger.

Marty had fixed his gaze on the dead man’s face for only a few seconds. But it was enough time for him to see what had taken the man’s life and it was not what he expected. Lucas had told him about the Spanish Flu of 1918, and he knew, from news articles, that Bubonic Plaque was still making its way in many parts of the world. What Marty saw truly shocked him as he recognized the small, round nodules of Small Pox. He had seen it in Iraq only a few times and its discovery there had been deemed highly classified as the result of a bioterrorist weapon. But at this point, it didn’t matter where the infection came from. What concerned Marty was how quickly it killed. It had only been two or three days and the infection had nearly wiped L.A. off the map. Even the most severe strain of smallpox couldn’t kill with this level of efficiency. Marty turned around and with his back to the front side panel of the car, slid down to a sitting position.

“This is impossible,” he thought. The pieces had fallen together. He always knew it was possible but never expected that it would actually happen.

“No one would be that crazy.”

Certainly, whoever was responsible realized that the cost of launching a biological attack, on any country, far outweighed any strategic advantage. Now, leaving the city was not only preferred, it was imperative. Marty knew very little about smallpox. He recognized the nodules typical of the disease, but not much more. However, there was one important aspect he remembered from his training in the Army. Not only were the living contagious, the dead were as well. Marty and Lucas would have to remain as isolated as possible, living in a safe zone, far from any human presence. Marty tried to keep himself from becoming overwhelmed by the seriousness of what he had discovered as he, again, evaded the guard and returned to where Lucas still sat, still unseen. “Time to go,” Marty whispered.

“What is it?” Lucas asked. “What did you see?” Marty raised a hand, reminding Lucas once again, of the need for silence. Lucas nodded his head and followed closely behind as they left the hospital grounds.

At three or four blocks distance from the hospital, they stopped in an alley to put their shirts back on. The smell of smoky decay still lingered heavily in the fabric. They would later discard them, rather than continue wearing the pungent odor of burning flesh. “Marty,” Lucas said.

The panicked look on Marty’s face brought a tone of urgency to his voice.

“What’s going on? What the hell did you see back there?!”

“Luke,” Marty began. “We have to get out of here. Right now, getting caught is the last thing we need to worry about.”

Marty stepped back to the entrance of the alley, looking in both directions for anyone who may still be on the streets.

“Marty,” Lucas insisted. “What the fuck is going on?”

Realizing that Lucas would continue asking, Marty took him by the arm and pulled him back into the alley.

“Luke,” he began. “It’s not the flu, alright? It’s smallpox! Now, let’s get out of here!” Lucas stood unable to wrap his mind around what he’d just heard.

“Smallpox?” he asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Marty looked out toward the street, then turned back to Lucas.

“Listen, we can talk about this when we get back to the apartment,” he said. “But right now, we need to go!”

Getting back to their apartment during the day was easy. But at night, the city always looked different. The streets and buildings had not changed. Yet, there was something about the night that twisted the city into something unnatural. The quiet that had taken the place of the human element left the city looking like a long-abandoned alien world. Navigating the night was difficult, but Marty had a well-honed sense of direction and had the city mapped out in his mind. Lucas managed to keep up, but in his mind, L.A. had come alive with the shadows of things that could not be seen. The smallest sound suddenly possessed a life of its own while, at a distance, things moved that did not exist. Getting back to their apartment seemed to take longer as well. Or perhaps the anticipation brought on by the taunting darkness gave the perception of time an unexpected twist. Even the idea of time had lost its meaning. The daily devices of human activity -- clocks, watches, and calendars had been rendered irrelevant by the downfall of their creators.

Within an hour’s time, Marty and Lucas found themselves climbing the rear stairs leading to the back door of their apartment. They sat in the kitchen for a few minutes within the quiet darkness, listening for anyone who might have followed them. After what seemed like an eternity, they left the kitchen for the foyer. They had yet to obtain the black cloth needed to light proof the apartment, so a window in one of the other bedrooms was covered with a blanket. It was in this room that Marty and Lucas continued to plan their escape from the city of angels, a place that had, seemingly been abandoned by God and taunted by all the angels in heaven. They sat on opposing sides of the small room. A single, dimly light between them. “Smallpox,” Lucas whispered. “Jesus fucking Christ, how can it be smallpox?”

Another few moments went by as Marty sat, knowing that Lucas had a lot to get off his chest. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. Marty nodded his head.

“Yeah,” he answered. “When I was in Iraq, they taught me how to spot different diseases. It was part of bioweapons training.”

In denial, Lucas rationalized Marty’s explanation, arguing that his training did not make him a doctor. He was clearly terrified by the night’s events. Marty remained silent, realizing that any argument would likely prompt Lucas to become further entrenched in his denial. Lucas sat against the wall with his head in his hands. He began pounding a fist against the side of his head as if to beat the images of death from his consciousness.

“That can’t be happening!” he said. “This has to be something else. Is there anything else that looks like this?”

“Luke,” Marty answered. “I wish I had a different answer but I don’t think it really matters.” Everything Lucas had seen was beginning to catch up to him as he started quietly crying. “Fine! Whatever!” he said.

Another moment went by as their new world began to make itself real to him.

“Goddammit!” he said angrily. “Everyone’s fucking dead!”

He continued crying as Marty made his way across the room and sat next to him.

“Luke,” he began. “Luke, not everyone’s dead, alright? We’re still here.”

He tried his best to give Lucas some hope. “Oh, yeah,” Lucas replied. “We’re alive, I guess we just fucking lucked out, right!? How fair is that!? Now, were the only ones left to get through this bullshit! I’d rather be in Maria’s place.” Marty continued in his silence and just listened. “And did you see how they fucking treated her?! They didn’t even put her in a fucking body bag. They just threw her on the fire, like she was roadkill! Fuck! How can this be happening?!”

By this point, Lucas had raised his voice considerably, forcing Marty to remind him of how important it was to remain hidden. This meant that they had to keep their voices low as well. “Maybe they were right,” Lucas said. “All those people who carried those dumbass signs around about how God hates us. Maybe they were right. Maybe God just wants to start over. Human 2.0.” Lucas began to slow down in his rant and started to tire.

“Son of a bitch!” he continued. “All those people!” He lay down on the floor, pulling a pillow under his head. Marty took a moment to cover him with a nearby blanket. He had always looked after Lucas, as though he were family. Now, it would be much more difficult. He would have to help Lucas keep his head together as well.

“Luke,” he said. “We’re going to get through this. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He went back to the other side of the room and sat up, reading over the lists of information they’d put together. As the glow of morning light crept its way up from a night filled with the whispering ghosts of the dead, Marty retreated to his room and drifted off to sleep. He had been trained to cope with hardship and isolation, but something inside him was also in denial. And after the events of that night, sleep seemed to be the best escape, if only temporarily.