Plague: Death was only the beginning! (2 page)

“Death rides the pale horse.”

-Revelations - The Bible

Chapter 2

Infected: 134 – Dead: 1

Sam Winchell was the emergency room attendant the morning that Dr. Dent died on his floor. He carefully gathered up all the disposable equipment that had been used after he had first inventoried it. Stripping the paper sheets from the examining table, he wadded them up in his hands and placed them in a red disposable plastic bag for burning later. He spent several minutes joking with the morgue attendant as Dr. Dent’s body was transferred to a gurney and covered with a sheet so that he could be moved down to the morgue. Because he could not do it himself, Sam assisted the attendant in transferring the body to the gurney. After doing so, he absentmindedly wiped his nose and went back to his work.

The doctor on the case, Dr. Peter Janzen, was puzzled by the symptoms that Dr. Dent had displayed. And he spent several minutes going over his notes and references to try to determine what the cause of death was. Something about it rang a bell in the back of his mind, and he was determined to follow it through. Even though he had been wearing complete isolation gear, he carefully washed his hands and face just to ensure there was no cross-contamination. It was only after he received notification from the coroner that he realized just how close his brush with death had been.

It was the hospital coroner, Dr. William Walls, who made the initial determination and he quickly notified the public health service for New York City of its first incident of plague. He described the red bloody sputum that stained the body’s lips. And he took samples about the sputum and the lung tissue for culturing locally as well as preparing a sample to be sent by emergency flight to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. He also wrote in his notes his observations of the lung tissue itself. He described the “Alveolar infiltrates, that was bilateral, that had enveloped in the lower lobes. And he could see that this had been preceded by nodular or patchy lesions. (Hilar lymphadenopathy is sometimes seen.)” Checking his references, he noted that Alveolar infiltrates can also occur with ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome).
The major clinical clues that should raise suspicion of primary pneumonic plague was the sudden onset, the very rapid progression, and, in the late stage of disease, hemoptysis (coughing up blood).

Even though it was many hours after the initial contact in the emergency room, he called upstairs and ordered that everyone who came in contact with the patient should immediately be put on tetracycline or ciprofloxacin to eliminate the possibility of infection. And while this is normally the protocol for the bubonic and pneumonic plague, the World Health Organization had already determined that this particular strain from Madagascar was highly drug-resistant and appeared to be mutating.

In less than an hour, the local public health service sent two doctors to see Dr. Walls to determine the severity of the infection. Having been burned by the Ebola crisis of 2014, they were not going to take a chance of this disease spreading throughout their city. After leaving the hospital, they proceeded to travel to Dr. Dent’s apartment complex to question all the people there. It was here that they discovered that the apartment manager had performed CPR on Dr. Dent prior to his removal by ambulance. They immediately ordered him to see his own physician and be prescribed either tetracycline or ciprofloxacin to ward off any infection that he may have developed. They also made note of the Chinese takeout boxes that were still sitting on the living room table as a possible vector factor for this disease to travel to others. The two health service doctors spent more than two hours going through Dr. Dent’s briefcase, apartment, where they discovered a mass of bloody tissues under the couch, and travel itineraries for the last month. They quickly made note of his flight records over the last few days as well as his extended stay in Madagascar, working with Doctors Without Borders. After calling their office and confirming the outbreak there, they passed this information to the CDC, as well as expanding notification throughout New York City hospitals and emergency rooms. The supervisor also made a necessary call to the mayor’s office to notify them of the possibility of an outbreak of pneumonic/bubonic plague within New York City. Other officials contacted the State Department and the FAA, to begin backtracking everyone who may have had contact with Dr. Dent during his trip home. All of these protocols had been expanded and updated after a doctor from Doctors Without Borders traveled back from West Africa with the deadly Ebola strain. That infection had terrorized thousands of people in the city. Even though it was extremely limited in its scope and rate of infection, the local population vowed to never again have an infectious disease spread throughout their city.

Deliveryman Jerry Lee would become the second victim to die in New York City. One of his last acts was passing out packages of leftover Chinese takeout to a number of homeless people that gathered daily in the alleyway behind his restaurant. By this time, he was coughing heavily and unknowingly spread numerous bloody droplets across the disposable boxes and bags that he was handing out to the poor. And it was here at this stage, that the strain of bubonic plague accelerated its growth exponentially. Fleas, jumping from hopeless human victims, quickly spread their disease into the local rat population where it exploded through the millions of rat nests and subway tunnels under the city. Within days, sanitation workers, as well as public health officials, were observing “dancing” rats that were coming up out of the sewers and into the streets and alleyways as a plague bacilli filled their bloodstreams and drove them mad. Quickly spreading out, they began biting and infecting the human population as they raced across the city.

“
Death conquers all, no matter how we fight it.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 3

Infected: 295 – Dead: 67

The emergency room staff of countless hospitals across the city had developed deeply ingrained procedures due to the Ebola outbreak of 2014, which had taken place inside the city. As the initial influx of patients came into the emergency rooms, they were quickly misdiagnosed as Ebola victims due to their symptoms. However, over the next few days it was quickly determined that this was, in fact, not Ebola, but the Bubonic plague. As we stated prior to this, Ebola is a virus, but the plague is a bacterium, which does not respond to anti-viral drugs. Additionally, it was well known to the CDC and the World Health Organization that the Bubonic plague was becoming drug-resistant and much more difficult to treat. Initial cases that reported to the emergency rooms were not given the proper attention needed to fight off the disease, and it quickly spread throughout their bodies in a matter of hours. Death came swiftly that first week of the initial outbreak, as the poor and homeless were unable to fight off the devastating effects of the disease. Thereby, allowing it to spread quickly across the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a matter of days. Unknowingly, Jerry Lee’s act of charity had started a major epidemic within the rat population. It was known that tens of thousands, possibly millions, of rats congregated within each square-mile of the city. And as one rat died, their fleas would quickly leave the body and spread to others and so a chain of death began.

Depending upon living conditions, many of the poor were directly affected by fleabites that quickly spread septicemic plague throughout their bodies. They in turn infected more fleas, as well as their human companions and families prior to their death. From the initial fleabite to death, time was now measured in hours, not days.

One of the operators of the Southside Soup kitchen and shelter noticed that a number of their clients were coughing and shivering as they stood in line for their nightly meal.

“Joseph, you don’t sound so good tonight. Are you coming down with something?” the man asked. “Maybe you should see Miss Julia and have her check you over.”

“I … I’m okay. Just a little bug I picked up.”

“Okay, but if you change your mind, Miss Julia would be happy to take care of you.”

As the shelter manager was making his rounds early the next morning, he found Joseph slumped over the side of his cot with a large pool of blood spreading across the floor. Rushing to the man’s side, he stepped into the pools of blood and smeared the soles of his shoes with plague. Noting this later, he swiped his shoes with paper towels and dropped them into the nearest trashcan. The EMT crew and the emergency room staff concluded that the man had died from a bleeding ulcer caused by chronic alcoholism. Not fearing any danger, the shelter crew mopped up the blood with a dirty mop and changed the sheet on the cot. Within a week, the shelter manager, staff, and most of the residents became sick and died. Fearing the establishment of a plague pit, the public health service closed down the building and sent in cleaning crews in isolation gear to trap the rodents and spray the interior with a heavy bleach fluid infusion. But by this time, the disease had moved on into a larger territory and continued its spread. This marked another sad tale of the continuing story that was only beginning.

“The will of man is to survive during times of strife.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 4

Infected: 421 – Dead: 141

Tom Drury scanned the headlines that were appearing on his laptop from Fox News. It made note of a large and growing population of indigent people falling ill and dying within the city of New York. Initially thought to be an emergence of Ebola, it was later determined to be the dreaded disease, the Bubonic plague. Tom was shocked at the number of deaths that had already been reported, and he dreaded the possibility of a widespread outbreak within the Continental United States. This was truly the thought of horror for many preppers and survivalists across the United States. They feared the influx of a virulent disease against the American people who had no known immunities for it. This was based on the introduction of the Enterovirus D68, also known as EV-D68, virus into hundreds of local schools when the U.S. government dumped thousands of illegal children from Central American into a healthy population in 2014. Many had already prepared after the outbreak of Ebola that had spread across several countries in 2014 and early 2015. Countless families had bought masks, gowns, duct tape, and plastic sheeting to seal off their homes and thereby isolate themselves from the growing pandemic outside them. Others, like Tom, had moved further into the wilderness areas of the U.S., to isolate themselves from any possible contact with infected members of the general public. For Tom and his neighbors, the wilds of southeastern Missouri had both the benefits of isolation and easy access to a town, mostly because the region was crisscrossed with little used low-maintenance gravel roads that often dead-ended deep into the surrounding wilderness. Because of this, Tom was able to find a nice acreage with a pretty valley meadow, fishpond, and outbuildings at a price he could afford. Now upon hearing the news of a possible outbreak of plague, he got on the radio and called members of his local group to alert them of a probable recall. Tuning his Kenwood TS-2000 HF radio to 14.095 MHz, he opened his Digipan PSK-31 software and typed up a message in the “clear” to alert them that further messages would follow later that day. Clicking “Send” on his computer screen, he heard a warbling sound in the background as the computer digitized the message into audio sounds and transmitted them over the legal Amateur Radio frequencies. Normal PSK-31 messages were transmitted on 14.070 MHz, but it was still okay to do so in other locations on the band. This less used location allowed Tom to post a digital message his friends would see easily on their radio/computer logs, while not leaving an electronic signature by using the Internet and email systems.

Within a few minutes, he received an answering message requesting that he “QSY- move to” frequency 14.162 MHz USB (Upper Side Band) to talk to his contact.

“AD0F, AD0F, AA0A calling.”

“AA0A, this is AD0F, how are you doing today?”

“I’m doing okay. I saw your message, and I agree that things are not looking good right now,” the voice stated. “Local stations are saying that the current situation is under control and that the CDC has been dispatching teams to head up the local response efforts. Personally, I think it is all BS and that things are worse than they are saying. Even so, it’s within the first few days, and the Public Health people have really jumped right on this from what I have observed from here. Over.”

“I copy that, as you would be the first to bug out from that area if necessary. I just hope you don’t wait too long. Over.”

“Don’t worry, there is a reason that I work where I do. And it’s nice to see that others are noticing what is going on around here. Over.”

“If things change, post a message and don’t be afraid to call if you need help down the road. I’ll go over and make sure your battery bank is charged up and that your generator fires up okay,” Tom stated as he keyed the microphone. “I’ll touch base with Alex and the others as well and let them know that we are doing a basic check-in protocol this week to test our communication setups. This is AD0F, over to you for your final.”

“Copy that. Good idea to test the comm checklist as it’s been awhile. I’ll reach the local bunch on 2Meter VHF (very high frequency) radio and have them call you on HF (high frequency) over the next few days. This is AA0A out.”

Tom reached out and pulled a three-ring binder down from a tall shelf. He opened it to a tabbed page and made a check mark with wax pencil on a plastic-covered diagram. Moving to another tab, he noted the date and time on the page and started reading the instructions listed there. Pulling out his small hardcover notebook from his thigh pocket, he used a paper tab to mark a new section and started to write. Over the next few hours, he checked his own power and water systems. He added distilled water to his massive 6V batteries, cleaned his solar panels, and rotated his numerous five-gallon containers of gasoline for his gasoline-powered backup generators. They were backup to his main propane-powered 9000W generator that ran his numerous freezers, wells, and storage systems scattered across the area. Later, he rode his Polaris ATV to other locations across the valley and hills that surrounded his property. Stopping at each, he entered a code into a closed gate system that enclosed each building complex. Pulling up to a barn or shed at each, he checked their battery banks, adding water or acid as needed. Stopping nearby to start a generator, he observed the meters there that tested the automatic transfer switches, which controlled the transfer of electric power from the batteries/generators to the load panel at each house. After keying in the code, he opened the house’s side door and checked the meter readings on the multiple Outback Flexmax 80A charge controllers. After writing this information onto a checklist, he checked that all the doors and windows were locked and secured before moving on.

Shutting down the generator, he again noted the time of shutdown and left the property. The rest of the afternoon, he completed this same action five more times before going home again. His job completed, he pulled out his checklist ad noted his completion time as well. Checklists can save lives!