Chapter 9: Stupid Ideas Justified

“We have new information on the plagues that constitute The Great Death that everyone listening should be aware of. It may not help you avoid it, but at least it will give everyone a common frame of reference.

There appear to be at least five different component plagues of the Great Death. We’ve decided to name them in reference to specific figures, not because of any specific reason, but just because we needed some terms we could easily use. Normally one uses Latin names, but never having attended Catholic school, no one here is up on their Latin.

The first, GD1, or Lindasis, a favorite of mine since it’s named after my mother, is denoted by little purple pimples with radiating blue veins leading away from it. It seems to impact the blood stream, causing the blood supply to become sluggish, starving the various organs of vital nutrients.

The next, GD2, or Ellenosis, is marked by the open bleeding sores on the flesh. This is a slightly more contagious variant as the exposed blood is more easily passed between victim and caregiver. Victims also tend to bleed internally and spit up blood unexpectedly. This seems to occur when the liver and stomach lining ruptures. This one has been noted in various animal forms as well.

GD3, named Sinclarium, is observed by a slight bluish cast to the skin. Again, this is the result of restricted blood flow, often intermittent.

GD4, called Floraosis, is marked by non-bleeding pimples, similar to those found in Ellenosis, although it doesn’t affect the blood directly.

Finally, GD5 or Amiosis doesn’t have any obvious marks on the face or skin, but it’s fairly clear when someone has it simply because of how sick they become without any clear symptoms. We aren’t exactly sure whether it’s a single disease or a compilation of other non-symptomatic ones, but it’s important to note that not all sufferers or survivors will bear specific distinguishing marks.

It’s important to note that surviving any one of these will make you immune to it, but it won’t provide any protection from the other variants. There seems to currently be an easing in the transmission rates, but we suspect that’s because the number of transmission sources (i.e. living entities that can pass blood, saliva or contaminated exhalations) have died out. It’s been suggested that these diseases were largely spread by insects, mosquito, ticks and even dust mites, but these and other insects that feed on sick individuals have seemingly died off, easing the risk of exposure.

However, that doesn’t mean you’re safe. Always use security precautions such as we’ve described when outside where you may encounter anyone. It doesn’t take much to become contaminated, a stray cough, a light touch, or even touching the same surface. Personally, we live off of collected bottles of antiseptic hand lotions. Since there’s no cure, the only way to survive it is to avoid it in the first place.

Of the five possible disease transmission modes, these plagues use all five. They’re air-borne, they’re transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, they can be transmitted via shared food or utensils, as we said they can be transmitted via insect bites, and although we haven’t documented it, we’re assuming that since these appear to be viral that it’s also transmitted from mother to child. It seems to be transmitted via bodily fluids, anything from sweat, saliva, blood or damp skin cells.

Finally, we learned something particularly useful, though hard to apply. We’ve discovered that dogs have the ability to smell the Great Death contagions. The only problem, as most of you probably already know, is that dogs—given their tendency to lick, roll around in, and eat dead things—have been hit particularly hard by these plagues. However, if you can find one, or any other animal that can be trained to sniff and alert, you stand a much better chance of avoiding infections, either directly via another person or indirectly by touching something previously touched by an infected person.

Anyway, that’s all for today. We still don’t know if anyone is listening, but if they are, we wish you the best in coping in these hard times, and hope you’re working together to prepare for the difficult times ahead.”

“Dad, just so you’re aware, there are several things you’ve missed over the past couple of days,” Alice informed her father over a belated breakfast while the others prepared to head out. Mattie was currently resting, David had showered, and everyone else had put off doing anything else until they’d gotten the two of them settled. “Greg got everyone to clear the dead fish from off the surface of the pond. It may not be ‘clean’ yet, but at least it doesn’t look quite so horrific.

“But perhaps of more interest, Tobias finally radioed back. He finally made it to Florida yesterday. Not knowing where he was, he headed up the coast looking for an inlet rather than having to beach one of the few functioning boats. That took him even further off course, but he entered the ... uh ... the Boynton Beach Inlet, where he’s taken refuge until he figures out where to go from there. That puts him just outside Palm Beach, which is a ways north of Miami. He planned to leave his boat in a private marina he found, grab a local car and drive north along the coast, seeing what he can find. He’ll report in if and when he finds anything.”

“He should do more than that,” David reminded her. “There’s no telling what he’s going to find. He should be checking in at specific times so we’ll know if something has happened to him.”

“And what would we do if anything has happened to him?” Greg asked from behind the counter. “We can’t exactly hop on a plane and fly down to help him out, or even call the local cops to look for him. Face it, he’s on his own. He’ll either succeed or fail on his own, with no help from us. If he can provide decent intel, then so much the better. But if he doesn’t, that’s sad, but it doesn’t really change anything.”

“Yeah, I guess, but we’re in contact with so few people, I hate to lose any of them,” David responded.

“That’s understandable, but you can’t take what happens to them personally, as you’ve got no control over their lives. They’re only distant voices, and they’re outside of your control. Try to keep that in mind and don’t claim them as your own as yet,” Greg cautioned. David simply nodded, anxious to be underway.

Finishing, David was ready to get back out and interact with the world again. But when he tried to follow the others as they headed out, Alice reminded him he had some things he’d left undone that the others were depending on; namely establishing power to the other homes. When she broached the subject, Greg told him he’d already disconnected the houses from the larger power grid from the overhead power line on the street, so all he’d have to do is flip the power on when he switched the power on from the house. However they couldn’t wait around while he did that, so they left, telling him where to find them if he wanted to join them later.

Despite feeling mildly frustrated, David could hardly object. He’d been out of it for days, and he’d fallen way behind on a variety of tasks. The others had been very accommodating by picking up his work, but there were certain things that only he could do.

However, he was amazed once again at how weak he felt after being largely immobile for several days, and it hadn’t been that long since he’d been so sick himself. He could only imagine what Mattie felt like at the moment. Although Alice had assisted him, she’d also been helping the others finding things in town and getting them acclimated with their weapons, so she’d been getting out and moving about more than he had.

It didn’t take long to switch the power over to the outside line. Since it had been shut off, Greg had been free to handle all the high power lines without fear of electrocution, but he’d left the power off at each house, so David now had to go to each one, turning it on, testing it and ensuring they didn’t burn anything down in the process.

They still hadn’t worked out who was going to live where. For now everyone seemed happy with remaining with them, although the topic worried David. With three contagious carriers, four unexposed ‘plague virgins’ and one other still vulnerable to other infections, it seemed like an unacceptable risk to him. But if they chose to accept it, then it didn’t make much sense in his second guessing their judgments. As much as he worried about it, he would hate losing Tom or Monique, even if they only moved to the end of the long driveway.

Turning on the power at each house was easy enough, although it was a bit tedious. Basically he had to drive to each house, find the main fuse box in the dark house using a flashlight, check all the connections one last time and flip the power on, then check the various electronics in the house. Once he finished, he turned it off again and went to the next house. He assumed if anyone wanted to move out, they’d select whichever house they wanted, so it made no sense leaving the power on at any one house. Still, getting them set up was a major milestone. It meant that they were now ready to house other residents in the comfort they’d grown accustomed to, even if they hadn’t been able to appreciate it for some weeks now.

He had to use the walkie-talkies to locate the others as they were making such steady progress they’d moved away from their starting point. They’d worked out quite a system. Greg and Melissa would carry the bodies out while Monique carted out any infected sheets, mattresses or other items that looked like they’d been compromised. Alice, having already trained Lassie a bit, was putting her to use inspecting carpets, couches and towels for the scent of disease. Anything he turned his nose up at went out.

It turned out they were storing everything in a trailer they’d found. The plan was to dispose of them later, probably by burning them. They couldn’t do so safely, but Greg assured him he had a plan to take care of it.

Betty and Melissa scoured the street and yards, picking up all the animal carcasses they found, tossing them on the dead truck. After they finished, Alice and Monique carried out the boxes of supplies they’d scavenged to the truck that Greg was using, one of the ones David ‘rescued’ from the armory attack. However, David suggested they leave some staples there, arguing they didn’t have unlimited space, and anyone hoping to use the houses in the future would appreciate them.

Still, they were working as a well-organized unit, and they were making steady progress.

“We found a juicer, a nut grinder and some canning supplies,” Monique told David. “That will allow us to keep vegetables throughout the year, or if things turn bad, for however long it takes before we can grow them again.”

“It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s little things like that which will keep us going when the gas and other supplies run out,” David said, congratulating her.

They moved to the next block and started again, when Melissa called for David. Curious, Alice and Lassie followed. Walking across the street, they entered a modest house, walked through the entranceway to a small back room, where Melissa made a grand sweeping gesture, revealing a pottery room, complete with potter’s wheel, kiln, various glazes and clay working tools.

“Wow, this is big. I’d heard about a local artisan who did pottery, but I never met her and had no idea where she lived.”

“Well, she didn’t survive, but there’s a lot of other stuff. Not only are there a bunch of paintings she did, but apparently she collected and traded other people’s artwork as well, so we can grab anything that grabs your fancy.”

“It’ll take a while to cart all this stuff off. We can’t leave it here, since we’d need electricity to run it and it’s too valuable in the long run to risk losing. So, do any of you have an inclination for pottery? It could become a new career path in our new economy.”

“I don’t know about the pottery, but I wouldn’t mind playing around with the paints,” Betty said, entering from the other room carrying some sample prints. “She also has a small printing press.”

“I’m not sure being a free-lance painter will be as useful as being a potter would be. I suspect there’s too many existing pieces of art hanging abandoned in people’s homes as it is.”

“Yeah, but I did fair amount of painting in school, and I wouldn’t mind doing some more,” she objected.

“That’s fine, but just don’t confuse that with the more essential tasks we have ahead of us. It’ll be better to focus on it when we’re snowed in over the winter.”

“What about the printing press?” Alice asked. “Will that be helpful?”

“Eventually, I guess, but in the short term we still have printers, and I doubt it’s a high volume typographical press. While it’s probably good for doing artwork, it would be pretty useless for printing books. It’s more geared for low-volume high-quality prints rather than the low-quality mass productions we’d be interested in.”

“I guess that means we should try to find a printing press,” Alice suggested.

“That makes sense, although there’s been no large scale printing with presses in a long time. We’d have to try searching antique houses or specialty book makers, which would involve searching a nearby city. We’ll have to keep our eyes open, but it’s not a high priority, as the likelihood of finding any is pretty low.”

“Still, nothing says we can’t look,” she replied, leafing through the artwork. “I like this one,” she said, picking out a picture of an angelic figure flying into the sky. David wondered why she found it attractive, suspecting it may be the imagery and the implications behind it, but he chose not to comment on it.

“Well, this is too much for us to carry. You’ll have to go dump the bodies while I return to get a truck big enough to cart this stuff back. You others can divvy up the other stuff.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Melissa agreed, “though we should leave most of the stuff here, since we’ll start again tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, but it’s getting late and I’m still anxious about leaving Mattie for too long,” David added.

“Dad, I’ve got Tobias on the line again,” Alice called out. She’d gone in to prepare her nightly broadcast after they’d returned home, but had decided to check the ham radio to see if she could reach anyone again.

“Good, it’s about time I talked to him,” David said entering the radio room—what had once been his own private office—but which was now littered with various bits of radio technology. It was made even worse as Tom had taken to dumping his various books here until they could get some better shelving up in what had once been David’s living room.

“Go ahead, Tobias, where are you now and what’s been happening to you?” Alice prompted their faraway friend. Since they were the only ones on the open airwaves, they’d given up following the traditional ham radio protocols.

“Well, first let me say that it wasn’t as noticeable out on the open sea, but the beaches here in Florida are littered with dead animals of all kinds. Fish, dolphin, turtles, whales, birds, mice, crabs, you name it. There aren’t that many human bodies, but it’s apparent as soon as you enter any of the houses that they’ve been rotting in the hot unair-conditioned homes. What’s more, most of these massive seaside homes with the beautiful ocean side windows are now exposed to the unfiltered ocean air and mold is growing rampantly, so most of them are no longer habitable. No one has built a home suited for the oceanfront environment here for at least a good fifty years now.”

“That’s fascinating, but we’re hoping to get more specific information,” David related. He quickly introduced himself before getting to his point. “Is there anyone there that’s still alive? Any sign of an organized community?”

“Well, I drove into South Palm Beach, normally a pretty busy oceanfront tourist area, but most of the homes and businesses here are either boarded up, or were never repaired after the meteor storm, showing that they haven’t been occupied for some time. It looks like the whole town has been abandoned. I thought I saw a couple of people, but I only got fleeting images of them and could never confirm what I’d thought I saw.”

“Yeah, we had the same thing here,” Alice informed him. “People are afraid to interact. They’re still afraid that the plagues are carried on the wind, and that if they get downwind of you, you’ll infect them.”

“I guess I can see that, but it makes it difficult trying to do a tally. I’ve been checking out various houses and businesses, and most of them have already been stripped of food, although there’s plenty of fancy furniture and electronics, so there’s no widespread looting going on.”

“That may have happened before the big die-off,” David suggested. “Chances are everyone on the beach ate all the available food, and then when the heat started making things difficult, they split.”

“That may very well be. I managed to find a locked storeroom in a beach club which had a lot of canned goods in it, so that’ll hold me for a while. There are some big-assed hotels here, and while there are a few dead bodies stinking up the place, most of the rooms are empty. But the big news is that I found someone, a woman, who like me was hiding out in an abandoned hotel. She was desperate to get off the island so she decided to join me.”

“Does she know what happened there?” David asked.

“No, she says she got sick and woke up to find everyone dead. But she was from a ways up the beach. She’d been avoiding people, but when she discovered there wasn’t anyone else, she walked to the hotel here.”

“Is it that hard to get off the island?” Alice asked, confused as she’d thought the barrier islands were fairly well connected to the mainland.

“That’s the other news I had to report. When we tried to exit the island, heading to South Palm Beach proper, we came under fire. It seems that someone, or a group of people, are preventing anyone from crossing the bridges. I’m planning on heading back to my boat and sailing around the area to Palm Beach itself, hoping I’ll find a slightly friendlier reception.”

“It sounds like they forcibly isolated the infected people in the community to the beach, and are still keeping a watch to prevent their return,” David suggested.

“That may be, but I’m guessing any organized effort to isolate people probably ended when most of their members died. I’d guess that this was organized after the big die-off,” Tobias responded.

“Well, at least you know there are survivors,” David said. “What you need is some way to reach out to them, either there or in Palm Beach. Grab what you can while you’re there, but you need to be looking for things like generators, bottled water, used smartphones or iPods you can charge up to trade with. You’ll probably have to leave things with anyone you see to entice them to trust you. If you charge up an old iPod, record a message explaining what you’re trying to do, and leave it with some food, you may be able to win them over.”

“That makes sense, but the people guarding the bridge don’t seem to be very open to negotiations. I’ve tried a couple of different bridges, and each one has been similar, so rather than driving up the coast, trying one bridge after another, I figured sailing around the trouble might be a better option.

“Wait, posting guards on a number of brides and staffing it 24/7 has got to require a significant number of people. It sounds like there’s a LOT of survivors there,” David pointed out.

“Not really. We only tried the two bridges, and the second one wasn’t actually guarded, per se. Instead it was closed with a large notice announcing it had been shut down due to damage from the initial meteor storm. We walked out on it, working our way past the blockade, but Olivia pointed out that someone had hidden spikes in several of the potholes, so we were afraid to venture very far across. The other bridges we tried were either too hard to reach, or were too heavily damaged. I’m not sure there are a lot of people involved, but it seems to be a very concerted effort to restrict access.”

“Damn, that’s something I’m fighting here as well. We can’t have people willy-nilly deciding who’s allowed to access public roads and bridges,” David fumed.

“That may be a solid philosophical stand, but we weren’t about to argue the point sitting on a bridge with someone firing at us. Chances are the bridge isn’t guarded consistently, but we aren’t willing to try it again, figuring they won’t be as forgiving about letting us go the next time.”

“Still, it just irks the hell out of me,” David responded, sounding like he wanted to drive down and set the situation right then and there.

“Anyway, we spent last night in a very exclusive hotel executive suite overlooking the ocean. We’ll do the same tonight and then double back to my boat in the morning. I’m curious, though, is there anything I should look for besides people and food?”

“You should visit any clinics you can find to look for medical supplies. Don’t bother with the hospitals, as they’ll all be horribly contaminated since they were warehousing plague victims. Hopefully the clinics all closed down and wouldn’t be seriously compromised, but make sure you get in and out quickly.

“You won’t be able to use any refrigerated medicines, but if you can stumble across some antibiotic pills it would help. Surgical tools, stethoscopes, things like that would be helpful, even if you can’t use them right away. Wraps, cast materials, things like that will help if anyone breaks a leg.”

“Check the local schools or a library for books on how to do anything you’re not familiar with,” Alice suggested. “If you don’t grab them now, you may not have access to them in the future.”

“OK, the odds are we’ll encounter more people in South Beach, but we’ll see just how receptive they are. If they’re as inhospitable as the one’s here are, we may just pull into a private dock and establish a home for ourselves, only venturing out to explore later. I’d rather one of us was safe if the other one comes under fire.”

David and Alice heard an argument break out over the radio at that point, showing the unidentified woman didn’t agree with that strategy, but Tobias came back online before long.

“Anyway, we’ll let you know what we find later. Right now there are still some places I’d like to check before we leave.”

“Well, good luck. You’ll probably need it. We’re pulling for you,” David said before they signed off.

“That’s certainly not very encouraging,” he said, turning to Alice. “I’m hoping we have better luck than that when we begin exploring more, but it shows the common mindset of people.”

“Well, it’s encouraging to know that people have survived, even if they aren’t receptive to helping each other,” Alice observed.

“David, I want to bring up a fairly delicate topic, so I hope you’ll listen first and then respond only after seriously considering it,” Monique began after they’d finished dinner, while everyone was relaxing before getting up to clean away the dishes.

“Go on, I’m listening,” David responded. “After all, it doesn’t help if we belittle ideas or keep people from suggesting things.”

“OK,” she said, taking a deep breath before beginning, steeling herself for his reaction. “As we’ve observed, there seems to be something you passed to Mattie that allowed her to survive, even though the plasma transfer infected her and made her sick in the first place.”

“And very nearly killed her in the process,” David reminded her.

Monique didn’t respond, merely staring at him, so he decided he was supposed to be quiet like she’d suggested. When he didn’t say anything else she continued.

“Anyway, if this wasn’t a completely random occurrence, it holds enormous potential in terms of a possible cure. We’d have to figure out what the active component in your plasma is, and how we can limit and control it, but it holds such amazing potential that we can’t ignore it.”

She stopped, watching his reaction as if waiting for a response. When he didn’t, she continued again, observing that everyone else was watching the discussion attentively, watching him nervously as she did so.

“So what I’m suggesting is that we need to establish that it wasn’t a random occurrence, and that there’s something in your blood that allows people to survive the multiple plagues. However, instead of applying the plasma therapy in a haphazard method, stopping as soon as the individual becomes ill, we need to apply it to a healthy test subject, and continue the treatment for the course of the illness, and measure whether it affects the course of the disease.”

“Wait, are you suggesting we do animal testing? Because I believe we already ruled that out until they have time to recover. Besides, there aren’t any animals remaining that are that similar to human physiology.”

“I never suggested testing animals,” she answered levelly, staring him straight in the eye.

“Uh, so what are you suggesting?” he asked, afraid of the obvious implications.

“I’m suggesting the oldest method of scientific discovery. When previous generations of scientists were convinced of their new methods of treatment, they were willing to bet their lives on it by testing it on themselves. Scientists like Madame Curie testing radium, Stephen Hoffman testing irradiated mosquitoes, or even Jonas Salk, who tested the polio vaccine on himself.”

Even though David was ready to jump out of his chair in response, he willed himself to stay seated, squeezing his fists to control his emotions. Monique finally signaled that he was allowed to respond, so he leaned forward, getting visible upset.

“You mean you want to infect yourself with the Great Death, which is very likely to not only kill you, but to make you die an incredibly painful excruciating death as well?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” she replied levelly, meeting his challenging stare without blinking. She knew she had to be convincing if he was ever to buy into this argument, so she couldn’t afford to show any doubt she might have at the idea. “We need to do the test on someone healthy and that understands the importance of the research. Who’s willing to potentially sacrifice themselves in the hopes it can help others survive.”

“But we have no way of knowing whether it will work or not. We only have a single case to judge this from. We have no idea of what kinds of odds you’d be facing, what kind of survival rate the process grants someone.”

“No, and unless we try it, we’ll never know. But the idea of testing it on people who’ve already started showing symptoms is problematic. Not only are their immune systems already compromised, but the timing is incredibly difficult to arrange with any certainty.”

“No, there’s no way I’d agree to that,” David insisted, even while his mind was busy dancing with the very idea.

“Actually, she makes a lot of sense,” Tom suggested. “We need to know if this treatment would be safer or have less drastic effects if applied to someone healthy. You may have given it to Mattie too late for it to have its full effect. We don’t have enough animals to do testing on, but now we at least have enough people, and here we have one who’s actually volunteering for it.”

“Still, we have too few people remaining to intentionally infect one of our own,” David insisted.

“But if we can determine the success of this option, and broadcast the results, we could potentially have dozens of researchers working on it. With a lot of eyes studying it, we should be able to identify what’s in your plasma that aids in someone’s survival,” Tom argued, sounding like he was already convinced. That only made David wonder whether they’d already agreed in advance about this, preparing to hit him with a prearranged one-two punch. “With such a low survival rate, anything we can do to increase the recovery odds would be a tremendous help.”

“Right, we’re going to reach dozens of researchers with fully functioning labs when we’ve only been able to contact a single person so far?” David countered.

“We’ve been broadcasting steadily for a while now. We have no idea who may be listening to us, or what facilities they may have. And even if their labs aren’t fully equipped, they can still do a lot of the legwork,” Tom countered.

“That may be, but there’s no way I’ll allow you, Monique, to do this,” David countered. He knew their arguments were well rehearsed and formidable, so he was hoping to short circuit them, cutting their points out from under them. “You’re our only available medical person. While you may not be able to help with the Great Death cases, you’ll be essential if someone breaks an arm, or needs their appendix removed. No, you’re too valuable to risk. And Tom can’t do it either,” David pressed, hoping to head off his suggesting himself. “He’s the only one who could do any subsequent research, so we can’t afford to lose either of you.”

Both Tom and Monique sat in a confused silence. They hadn’t expected this particular response. While they’d expected a fight, they hadn’t counted on his refusing on quite these grounds. All their prearranged arguments were for naught, and they didn’t know how to respond to this very basic question.