The President came on the news; his wife and daughter pa.s.sed away. He didn"t look good. Maybe he should have gone into a safe location.
Rolling power outages due to lack of employees caused the news to be sporadic and only hourly until eleven p.m. I caught a segment on body disposal. The federal government was no longer responsible for bodies. There was very little news about other countries on the stations. I guess everyone worried about themselves.
The newscaster spoke as handy dandy tips on what to do with decreased family members scrolled the screen as if directions for baking a cake.
Each community was responsible for their own body landfill.
Each family was responsible for their own deceased. They had to prep the body, wrap it, and bring it to the landfill.
It was odd because I saw a similar scene in a Vincent Price movie, an old black and white movie that was later redone with Charlton Heston. I remember Vincent Price"s character carrying his wife or daughter to the landfill and rolling her over the hill where a perpetual fire burned. Workers kept the flames going as if it were some steel mill.
From the station wagon to the pit. His heart broke. He wanted to roll down that hill and join her. The world was void of caring people. No one really cared when the world around them died.
I suppose that was happening now.
I remember seeing that film and thinking that they were far off, that would never happen. But it was happening. Like in the movie, so many were dying there weren"t enough left to bury the dead.
When it is all said and done, and I pray there are still many left, I believe there"ll be too many bodies to remove. I believe cities will be torn down, burned. Forgotten. All those people who lived lives, dreamed, and loved would never be any more than a statistic.
Over dinner, Del expressed concern over the lack of news. What would happen when it stopped? How would we know what to expect when we emerged?
We run on generator power, and above us are cameras. We can watch the lobby, outside the center, and a little of the street. I declined watching.
The news is reality enough. I didn"t need to see the world outside.
I wasn"t ready.
Day 97 of the virus 55% infected 64 days until I am forced to see what lies above.
Time Stamp 10
Andy"s Journal
April 3rd
The United States sits at the highest infection rate. Russia is rapidly catching up. We never heard anything from them regarding a vaccine. China, however, seems to have pulled through. From their underground "doomsday" lab, they seem to have cracked the code. They believe they have what they are calling the morning after vaccine. It works before exposure and within twenty-four hours of exposure. They started testing.
Phone contact isn"t guaranteed; Chad is hoping for results soon. Chad could create the vaccine and test it down here, but even if it worked, there was no way to produce more than a hundred doses here in the facility.
A hundred doses was really nothing.
China and India were still on the low end of the infection rate. They told Chad that if the vaccine proved successful, they would inoculate all those within the facility and go topside by overriding the seal. China could do that. We could not.
Even if we could, the United States didn"t have the resources or the bodies to ma.s.s produce the serum. We lost all power two days ago. While we still had generators, the rest of the US lives in the dark.
China"s plan was to ma.s.s-produce the serum with help from India and j.a.pan. However, best-case scenario was three months, realistically six.
A little too late for this side of the world.
Day 108 of the virus 68% infected.
53 days left until the seal is broken.
Time Stamp 11
Andy"s Journal
April 30th
It took Chad Walker nearly two weeks to copy the serum successfully. He refused to believe, despite what the Chinese had told him, that it worked, and then he ran simple lab tests. It looked promising.
China had informed him they had already moved into ma.s.s production.
They had power, they had news, and we had dark.
Five days ago, four people volunteered to be test subjects. Two would get the vaccine before exposure, two after.
Del was one of those people. I was so angry. He and I had just actually started to become friends, and he did that.
It angered me that his reasoning was weak. He owed it to n.o.body to be a guinea pig, but he did anyhow.
I spent the days watching the surveillance. Everybody did at one time or another. Eight monitors and someone always caught something.
At first, there were many people coming in and out of the CDC. They weren"t workers. Somewhere in everything that happened, Chad and Edward failed to tell us the CDC closed down. We learned that when we saw the broken gla.s.s.
People were desperate, looking for things.
Fires burned; we could see them better at night.
Every once in a while, someone would point out movement.
Was that a person? I think so, yes.
Del survived the testing. The serum worked both as a vaccine and as a morning-after treatment. It was a shallow victory, but Edward was happy. He spoke to his wife and believed it was the last time he"d speak to her until he went to their safe house.
Her generator power was fading and the phones would be out of commission.
They were still healthy, and Edward wanted to deliver the vaccine himself.
The woman that cooks our meals gave a lot of us haircuts. It pa.s.sed the time and prepped us for the world in our final days in the facility.
Chad began working on producing doses of the serum. He"d give it to everyone in the shelter and extra to those who needed to take it to family members they knew were alive.
Last, we spoke to China; they insisted they would drop vaccines once they provided for their own.
Would it even matter?
Day 135 of the virus 72% infected.
26 days to go.
Time Stamp 12
Andy"s Journal
May 24th
This is my last entry in the journal. I am now packing what few things I have in a survivor backpack to take with me on my journey.
I have no idea how Del and I will get to Montana, but we will. We will.
Edward will find his wife, and Chad said he was confident his wife went into their home"s safe room. He designed it for such an event. It was the first he spoke of his wife the entire time here, at least to me.
There is nothing left up there, at least in Atlanta. The last movement we saw on the street was ten days ago.
We watch. Every day, diligently, we watch for any speck of movement. Even a rat. Nothing. I wonder what waits for us above. It has been so long since I saw the sun, felt the warmth. It was snowing when I came down here.
We will emerge into a completely dead world. Will it be violent? Will those who survived this plague of horror be sh.e.l.ls of human beings caring less for each other, or did they band together as survivors, making communities?
Did the Vice President come out of hiding, rally the troops, and start things? We don"t know. We lost all ability to communicate with anyone.
We may have lights, but we are in the dark.
The doses are done, sealed, and packed. But it doesn"t matter. Maybe it does, just as a safeguard against future infections.
But when the timer counts down and the door opens, we will walk into a world that is safe from infection. Not because the infection was cured, but because every person that was to get sick ... got sick. Every person that was to die has died.
There are no more hosts to spread the virus.
G.o.d help us all, and I pray, I just pray all is not lost.
Day 159 of the virus we stopped keeping track of the infected.
Two more days left.
THE EMERGING.
Chapter Sixteen.