I left my cart and moved closer until I could make out what was being said.
“At one o’clock, the Deaconess Hospital announced it had eight new cases of Rh Viridae and out of the eight cases, only one patient remains alive. The CDC is asking that only those with life threatening emergencies come to the emergency room, and those who can manage it, to go to Sacred Heart and avoid Deaconess at this time. Patients inside Deaconess are being secured in their rooms while the emergency room is being locked down to prevent the flu from spreading. Again, they are asking that you avoid Deaconess and seek other hospitals …” she continued on, but I was done listening.
“Ray? Can you ring us up? Please?” I asked one of the cashiers.
“Oh, sorry, Emma, I got caught up watching the news. Can you believe this? New York and Florida are reporting that a ton of folks have already died overnight. They’re saying the flu that was in Europe is here in the States now.” He gestured back at the monitors as he walked with us to his register.
“Crazy,” I answered while a shiver ran up my spine.
“They say it’s moving really fast, just like it did in Europe,” he continued.
“Crazy,” I said again, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
I waited for Addy to get through with checking out before I paid for my groceries and we loaded our few items into her car. “Can you drive me by the school? I want to get Grayson and get him home. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Addy looked at me cautiously as she tossed her purse in the car and pulled her long blonde curls into a ponytail. “Should we be worried?”
“They were watching a reporter from Spokane,” I explained.
“Shit,” she said as she slid into the driver seat of her Volkswagen bug which she had named Satan. The car was named aptly, since it had a tendency to break down when she needed it the most. “Yeah, let’s go grab him. You think we should go buy more food?”
“No, I think we should get him and then get home. Dad is probably at the shelter already. Might be a good idea to grab some things and meet him there.”
“Emma, give it to me straight. No bullshitting!”
“I’m starting to think my father was right to prep, and I think we should get Grayson and your parents to the shelter, right now.”
“My mom’s in Spokane with my dad; he’s getting another treatment at Deaconess.”
My heart chose that moment to plummet to my stomach. I had a feeling that this flu was something bad, really bad. “Try to call them when we get to the school, you can use my phone.”
I took out my phone from the side pocket of my purse and checked the list of missed calls and voicemail messages. I hit the play button on the first one, and listened to my father as he barked out orders like any good drill sergeant. “Emmalyn, this is your father,” duh, Dad, “I picked up Grayson, where the hell are you!? Get to the house and grab your bags; have Addy do the same. I packed one for her and put it in your closet last week. Tell her I reached her mom, and she’s fine. She’s with her dad, and he has to stay overnight because of the quarantine order. She said for us to take Addy with us, and she’d keep in touch…” the message ended so I clicked on the next, “Grab a gun from the house, use the back way to get to the shelter, and be careful.”
“Change of plans, head to my house, Addy. Your parents are stuck at Deaconess, but they want you to come with us. Your mom says they’re fine, but stuck until they lift the order.”
“What order?” she asked as she flipped the bug around and headed back in the direction we’d just come from.
“Quarantine; they have him at the hospital so he’s probably started his chemo.”
Fuckitty fuck! Chemo took your defenses against viruses down because it killed your immune system. Her father was stuck at Deaconess, where the news lady had been reporting from. I did my best to keep the worry I felt from showing. Addy was delicate already from her dad’s cancer coming back, but this would make her strong façade crumble.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Means they are playing it safe, and trying to keep him away from the flu.”
At my house, we both jumped out of the car and headed inside. It was quiet, with the exception of the television which had the news on. My dad must have forgotten it when he bugged out with Grayson to the shelter. I walked over to it quickly and turned it off. “You want to grab some movies and I’ll grab the bags?”
“Sure,” she said, and I smiled reassuringly. We’d been through drills before. Not like this though, and I had a bone-deep worry that this time was different than the other bug-outs we’d done. Addy had been a true friend staying with me even when my father ran drills daily. At the most random of times, he’d make us practice escaping to the shelter.
Even though most of the kids we’d grown up with had made me the brunt of their jokes, she’d stood beside me and defended me when the need arose, and I loved her for it. The jerk-weeds didn’t tease me just because they thought my dad was crazy. No, my hair had that weird orangey thing going on as a kid. Fortunately, I’d grown out of that and it was now more of a long strawberry-blonde mess that was always in my way. Them thinking my dad was nuts wasn’t anything I could grow out of, though. I walked down the long hallway and into my room, where I threw open the closet door and grabbed both of the heavy bug-out bags. I opened mine and tossed a few more clothes in, then gave my room a quick once-over.
I wasted no time in heading to the safe where the handguns were kept, and punched in the code. I stuck one of the guns in the back waistband of my pants, and added back-up ammo clips to each of my pockets, then closed the safe and picked up the bags. I stopped in the hallway, and set the bags back down before I grabbed some of the photo albums my mother had made; they held some of the only photos with her and Grayson in them.
I met Addy by the door to the pantry and smiled as she held up bags of snacks for Grayson which I’d implemented in the last bug-out we’d had. There was nothing worse than a cranky preteen who had to go without his snacks and was convinced he was going to have to eat MREs. Together we headed back to the car.
“Did you want to stop by your house?” I asked.
“No, this is a drill, only a drill,” she snapped, and I lifted my eyes to hers.
“You sure? We could stop for you to grab a few things. Just in case; you never know, right?” I hated that she was going to say no. I knew it before she answered.
“No, it’s only a drill. It won’t hit us like it did Europe. This is the United freaking States!”
I didn’t point out that Europe had amazing medical facilities, or that they had some of the most skilled doctors on the planet. She was grasping for straws and I understood why. Her parents were in a hospital that was currently under quarantine for a deadly virus. They were in the eye of the storm, and her brother was in the Army. He was currently deployed to Iraq, and on his second tour.
“I love you, bitch,” I said and watched as her lips curved into a soft smile.
“Love you too, whore,” she said, and started the car.
“You know, I’m not sure you can call me that.”
“I know you well enough that I can call you whatever I want. I know you are a whore deep inside where it counts. Just because you don’t advertise your deviant ways, doesn’t mean I don’t know the real you,” she snarked with a mischievous glint in her soft brown eyes.
I smiled back, even though I was consumed with worry for my family and hers.
We hit the highway just in time. I looked over at the town of Newport as shit hit the fan. Cars were lined up, and it looked like some of the people from town were heading out. Why would they leave Newport? It was less likely to be swamped with infected people, and yet it seemed like they were all heading to Spokane from the looks of it.
I looked over to Addy who also noticed the line of traffic, and I wondered what she was thinking. Fortunately, she normally voiced her opinion pretty loudly, so I didn’t have to wonder what was on her mind for very long.
“They’re idiots. All of them.”
Blunt and to the point; yet another reason why she was my best friend. I closed my eyes and sent a silent prayer that this would pass. We made it to the shelter in record time, and I smiled as I mentally high-fived Addy for being so vigilant through the bug-out drills we’d endured through the years.
The shelter was an abandoned missile silo my father had purchased from the government. When he got it, the silo had been nothing more than piece of crap metal fortress. It now had solar panels, and my dad had paid to have the well that fed it cleaned and rebuilt. It had over a hundred rooms, and seventeen levels. Most of the levels had rooms with sleeping quarters, but some of the floors he’d used to store food, ammo, weapons and pretty much anything else you’d need to sustain life for quite a few years in the event of an all-out emergency.
“Thank God!” My dad wrapped his arms around me the moment I stepped from the car and smacked a wet kiss to my forehead. “I was so worried,” he continued and then did the same to Addy. He grabbed the heavy bags as we grabbed the groceries. Inside, Grayson was reading and looked a little pissed off, but he’d always hated being pulled from school for anything related to the shelter.