The Beginning of the End (6 page)

Chevy threw a couple of
pieces of pizza on a paper plate and tossed it in front of me.
Without thinking, I took a bite of the steaming pizza. The second I
closed my mouth around the gooey cheese, it was like someone had
exploded napalm in my mouth. I felt the roof of my mouth beginning to
sear instantly.

“Ouch! Ouch!” I
poured soda into my open mouth trying to put the flames out.

“Careful Ty, it’s
hot!” Chevy giggled.

“Really!!! Do you
think? I just burned the skin off the roof of my mouth.” I began
tonguing the burn, checking to make sure there was still skin on it.

Chevy was holding his
piece of pizza, blowing on it, ensuring he would not make the same
mistake I had made, “Well of course, it’s hot! It just came out
of the oven. Quit being such a baby!”

The pain slowly began
to subside, and I started thinking about my dad again. “Maybe I
better call my dad back and make sure everything’s okay.” Chevy
stopped chewing and asked me, “Why do you think there’s something
wrong?”

I picked a piece of
pepperoni off my pizza and put it in my mouth, “It’s just
strange. Dad always calls me back, and Mom always answers her phone.
If for some reason, she can’t answer, she usually calls me back
within a minute or two. You know that thing is attached to her head.”

Chevy could see the
concern on my face, and began to worry himself, “So just give her a
call back!” I picked up my phone and went to recent calls, avoiding
the voice command feature completely. My last call had been to my
mom, and the one before that had been to dad, almost eight hours
earlier. I hit Mom again, and the phone began calling her number.
Four rings and voicemail. Chevy could see the concern growing on my
face.

Chevy had spent so much
time at our house growing up, that he considered my parents as his
parents too. Chevy put down the pizza and wiped off his fingers,
“Call your dad back!” I didn’t like to call him when he was
working because it seemed like he was always in the middle of an
arrest or a domestic. He’d always tell me he was on a gun call, so
I would think he was tough.

Worry started to take
over as I reached for my phone. Ring. Ring. Ring. Hi! This is Sean.
Leave me a message. “Hey Dad, it’s Ty. Where are you guys? I left
you a message this morning, and you never called me back. Now Mom
isn’t picking up her phone. I’m getting a little worried. Call me
back please!”

I hung up and set the
phone down. I pushed my pizza away, suddenly I’d lost my appetite.
I picked my phone back up and held it in my hand, staring at it as if
it was going to ring any second. It didn’t. As a matter of fact, it
didn’t ring at all. Chevy knew what I was thinking, almost like he
was able to read my thoughts, “Ty, don’t worry about it man. You
know how your parents are. I bet your dad got the night off, and they
headed up to the casino on the reservation, or decided to go to over
to Vermont, so he could hit the Steak House and order one of his
favorite blooming onions. You know he digs ‘em the most!” Chevy
threw up a wanna be gang sign when he said the movie quote, trying to
make me laugh.

“Yeah, you’re
probably right. It’s not like them not to call back, and the crap
on the street today is really making me nervous.”

“Hey!” Chevy
snapped, waiting until I made eye contact with him. “You know
what’s gonna happen? Your dad is gonna call you up at seven
tomorrow morning and wake your ass up! Then you’re going to feel
like an idiot because you were up worrying all night.” Chevy
brought up a good point. I mean they were in their forties. They
weren’t dead. They like to go out and have a good time just like we
did. I guess I was just being a nervous Nellie.

By the time we had
filled our bellies and put out those evil pangs of hunger, my mind
began thinking again. Where were they and were they okay? The same
way your mind works when you’ve got that song stuck in your head
that just won’t go away. I was looking for an answer for all those
agonizing questions that never came. With my mind in the gutter, I
completely lost focus of where I was and what I was doing. The couch
began to shake and for a brief second, I couldn’t figure out what
was happening.

“Come on! Shoot him!”
Chevy yelled breaking my mind from its trance. My thoughts returned
to the Xbox blasting through the surround-sound system and Chevy
bouncing up and down on the couch screaming, “Die! Die! Die!” as
body parts exploded on the screen in front of me. Chevy was
transfixed on the TV, not even realizing I was out of the game. I
couldn’t sit here and wait any longer. I reached over to the 1920s
antique end table with the broken leg that Chevy and I had paid two
bucks for just a month earlier, for no other reason than to have a
place to put the remote. I latched onto the remote and clicked the TV
off.

“Dude, what the fuck!
Are you kidding me?” Chevy’s eyes disengaged from being locked on
the TV screen, and he snapped at me. “Why did you do that, I was
kicking ass?” he said giving me a look like I had just pissed in
his Cheerios.

“I can’t stand it
anymore, Chev. I’ve got to go find them.” Chevy gave me a slap on
the shoulder and said, “Buddy, you’re really overreacting. I’m
telling you, they’re fine.”

I took a second to
think about it while Chevy continued trying to calm my nerves. Maybe
I was being ridiculous. I mean they were grown adults for god’s
sake, and my dad was a cop and carried a bad-ass gun even when he
wasn’t working. I was their kid, and it wasn’t my responsibility
to worry about my parents…. was it?

“I guess you’re right Chev. I’m
just a little weirded out about this whole Ebola thing and my trip to
the store this afternoon. And what was that horrible smell outside?”
I decided to put my worries to bed and wait for their call tomorrow.
I threw the remote to Chevy so he could get back to doing what he did
best. Chevy gave me a reassuring smack on the shoulder and said,
“I’ll put some news on for a few minutes, maybe it will make you
feel better when you see that the world is fine. I have to go pee
anyway.” Chevy turned off the Xbox and pointed the remote at the TV
changing the input. The screen snapped to life, and we were both
startled by a high pitch whining coming through the surround sound
speakers. As the color came to life on the LED, I was looking at a
rainbow of vertical color bars covering the full-spectrum, white to
purple. On the bottom of the screen, written on the color bars, were
three words in black bold letters that made my heart drop into my
stomach when I saw them.

OFF THE AIR!

I pushed on Chevy’s
arm attempting to make him move faster as he cycled through the
channels. Every channel displayed, off the air bars or just static.
My heart had now left my stomach and returned to my chest, where it
felt like it was going to explode. Chevy broke his trance from the TV
and turned to me like he had just seen a ghost, “Ty, we’ve gotta
find your parents!”

October 4th 12:25am

An hour after Bob
opened the first box of ZMapp, the team was finishing giving out the
last doses.

Dr. Marcil and Sophie
accomplished an amazing feat by making the serum soluble, making it
as easy as squirting a syringe full of liquid into the patient's
mouths. The team of doctors began to congregate in the small nurses’
station by the row of windows. Bob was the last to join the group, he
sat down in the larger nurses’ chair working his oxygen line around
the arm rest, as to not jeopardize his life if he was forced to make
a speedy evacuation from the chair.

Bob looked at the other
doctors, giving them a great job nod, and expressing his exhaustion
from the long day that would soon be over, “Did everyone complete
the dosing on all the patients in your zones?” The doctors
simultaneously nodded and said, “Yes.”

“How long until we’ll
start seeing some results, Dr. Marcil?” Bob said as he fondled his
oxygen line.

“Well, depending on
the viruses’ state of aggression, patient age, and overall health
before exposure, I’d estimate 12 to 24 hours.”

“That’s wonderful,
Doctor!” Bob cheered, as he rose from his chair, reaching to shake
Dr. Marcil’s hand, making sure not to catch his oxygen line on the
chair’s arm rest. While Bob was in mid shake, an announcement came
across the PA system above their heads. “Colonel Aiken, you have a
call on the Sat-phone.”

“Excuse me.” Bob
said as he turned and headed toward the elevators. Bob stepped into
the elevator, pressed one, and leaned against the back wall in time
to see the doors slide closed. He closed his eyes for a moment, and
realized this was the first time he had been alone in the last 24
hours. Through the plastic suit hood, Bob heard the faint rhythm of
the acoustical version of
Tie a Yellow Ribbon around an Old Oak
Tree.
He thought to himself, maybe we will beat this thing Tony.
Just maybe.

The elevator door
opened, and Bob was again met by a soldier slinging an M4 rifle over
his protective suit. “This way, Sir.” Bob followed the soldier to
the main lobby of the hospital and through the glass doors passing
the Sergeant and his makeshift office. The soldier turned and headed
straight towards a Humvee that was parked next to a state of the art
V-22 Osprey. Bob hadn’t had the pleasure of flying in one yet, but
he knew when this thing was over, it would be on the top of his list.
They reached the Humvee. The driver’s side door opened and out
stepped another rifle slinging Sergeant holding a Sat-phone up to
Bob, “General Strong, Sir!”

“Thank you, Sergeant”
Bob said as he lifted the phone to his ear trying to find it through
the bio suit.

“Hello General.”

“Bob, what’s the
status of the P.A. Site?” the General asked.

“Sir, we’ve just
finished administering the serum. Dr. Marcil tells me we should start
seeing results in 12-24 hours.”

“That’s excellent!”
the General exclaimed. Bob could hear him teething his pipe as he
spoke. “We have been in contact with Dr. Marcil’s staff, and
they’ve supplied us with enough ZMapp to guarantee that every
American citizen has a chance of beating this thing. We’ve had
flights in and out of Montréal all day. Every military base foreign
and domestic should have the ZMapp within the next six hours, with
instructions to start dosing all drinking reservoirs, water
filtration plants, and storage tanks two hours after. By this time
tomorrow, every civilian should be protected against this terrible
affliction.”

Bob watched the suited
soldiers walking around the hospital grounds, as he played out
possible scenarios in his head, “General, don’t you think we
should make sure the serum works here first?”

There was a slight
pause on the other end of the secure Sat-phone, “Now Bob, I
understand your concern, but we need to get the jump on this bug. Dr.
Marcil’s staff in Montréal have assured me that this serum will
work. Now I have to go with my gut on this thing and its telling me
this is our best option.”

Bob was too tired to
debate and asking the General to hold off for 24 hours would be
useless anyway. It was easier to respond with an automatic, “Yes,
Sir.” The line went dead.

He handed the phone
back to the sergeant and began making his way back towards the Ebola
floor. As Bob rode up in the elevator listening to the wordless music
coming from the speaker above his head, he couldn’t help but think
that maybe Gordon Lightfoot had it right and this Ebola outbreak was
Bob’s Edmund Fitzgerald.

The doors opened and
Bob made his way to Dr. Marcil, who was still standing in the window
laden nurses station. He worked his way through the patients and for
the first time, felt a sense of uneasiness. Bob froze and felt the
hairs on the back of his neck raise just a bit. He scanned the room
and saw that nothing had physically changed in the ten minutes he was
gone, but something certainly seemed different. Bob shook it off,
blaming it on a simple case of the willies and headed on, “Dr.
Marcil, how sure are you that ZMapp is going to work?” Dr. Marcil
gave Bob a curious look and made his way over to the desk where a
full bag of ZMapp lay. Dr. Marcil picked up the bag and rubbed it
through his gloved hands, “Colonel, how sure can we be about
anything. I admit. I've spent my life working on ZMapp, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the cure all. Sophie and I have had
the opportunity to sample our serum in Africa, and we were able to
record tremendous results. Based on those findings we’ve shown
ZMapp to be, quite frankly, in this case, a wonder drug.”

Just then, a small
bedside table tipped over in the middle of all the gurneys making a
loud crashing sound. Sophie looked at Dr. Marcil and said, “You go
on Doctor. I've got it.” Dr. Marcil nodded and thanked Sophie as
she headed out onto the main floor, “As I was saying Bob, I believe
that my ZMapp may have just saved us al-"

Dr. Marcil was
interrupted by Sophie screaming, “Help! Help! He’s trying to bite
me!” Bob charged toward Sophie in time to see Jean-Luc tackle the
male patient who had been on top of her. Bob arrived a second later.
Sophie was leaning against the gurney, and Jean-Luc was holding a
male down by his arms. The male Ebola patient was growling and trying
to bite Jean-Luc through his suit. The male’s bites were so
exaggerated that every time he tried to bite, his teeth snapped
together. The sound of the teeth snapping together reminded Bob of
the glass marbles he played with as a boy striking each other. Bob
grabbed a pillow from the gurney and held it over the male’s face
“Ted. We need 10cc’s of Benzodiazepine Stat!”

Bob fought to hold the
pillow, and could see that Jean-Luc was rapidly approaching
exhaustion. Ted was back just in time, dropping to his knees, fill
the syringe with the Benzo, “What happened?” “Just give him the
damn shot!” Jean-Luc yelled.