Working With Cedar: The Early Years, page 6
Shrugging, Nash continued speaking. “I’m standing here looking at a map that tells me nothing. I’ve been shot and bombed. You sewed my ass with wire. My left hand has a bandage the size of a grapefruit and one of my fingers is on the floor of a house full of dead people that I helped kill. A friend of mine is dead inside another house full of dead people.
“It’s only been three days since my sister gave me a warning that Ebola was going to hit. With all that’s happened, I doubt this is anywhere near being the worse it can be. Betty, unless you’ve got a surprise up your sleeve, we are doomed.”
In order to have both hands free to clap, Betty released the corner of the map she’d held pinned to the hood. “Bravo, bravo. Nash, that was theatrical. I mean Academy Award material. No, we’re neither survivalists nor preppers, but we are survivors … and make no mistake, you are a survivor. Last night proved that.
“Last night, you stepped to the plate after I tossed the bomb and then found I couldn’t bring myself to follow through. I’m a nurse and I knew the damage I’d done to those people. Their evil deed and the fact every grownup in there willingly let Merle lead them to murder is the only reason I could toss it. After I did, when the screaming and crying out in pain began, I didn’t have the immediate willpower to see what I’d done.
“Nash, yes, you lost a finger, but you manned-up and sucked it in. So far we’ve avoided speaking of the fact that we’ve killed people, but it’s eating me, and I know you’re sublimating your emotions the same as I.”
She reached to bring her fluttering end of the map under control, “We’re going to survive because we’re going to plan our steps, and we’re not going to let anything stand in our way. Now let’s look at the map! We need a destination. Let’s get at least that decided. Let’s get it done and get moving.”
Following her example, Nash returned his attention to the map. Pointing with his free hand, he asked, “How far do we need to be from Atlanta.”
Betty replied to his question, “We need to be far from any major city.”
Nash moved his finger to point close to the bottom of the map. “It doesn’t show on this map, but down near Thomasville is River Creek Wildlife Management Area. The wildlife commission closed it to the public in 2020. A high school friend of mine, his father owns a hunting cabin near there. My friend and I went dirt-biking there the summer after I quit school to take care of my business.”
Betty, interrupting, asked, “What sort of business did you have in high school that required you to quit?”
“I developed a few phone and computer apps that took off.”
“And they did well enough to warrant leaving school?”
Nash said, not in a bragging tone, “I’m twenty-three and I’m a multi-millionaire.”
Betty said, “Jeez, I should be so lucky. I work my butt off for less than forty thousand a year.”
Responding without thinking, Nash said, “Your butt’s fine… No, wait. I didn’t mean that the—.”
Betty laughed, “Men. Damn. The world is falling apart around us, and you took time to check out my butt.”
Mortified by his slip of tongue, Nash tried to apologize. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
Betty laughed again. “I can’t believe you’re blushing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it as a compliment.” Pointing back to the map, she said, “Eyes and mind off my butt. You were saying about River Creek. Why is it closed to public access?”
Happy to put his faux pas behind, Nash resumed his description of the WMA.
“River Creek is huge tract of primitive land, over twenty-five hundred acres. The Department of Natural Resources and the Wildlife Management Agency closed it while they reinstate and rehabilitate several species of birds and fish. Even before they closed it, the place was a deer hunters dream. Now it must be even more so.”
While Nash spoke, he saw Betty bend to examine the area on the map in detail. He let his eyes stray to her firm buttocks.
Betty said, “Damn it Nash, the map’s up here. Pay attention.” Without belaboring the fact of his straying eyes, she continued, “Thomasville is just a dot on the map. How close is the property to the city?”
“Not far, less than ten miles. I think I remember my friend’s father saying the population of Thomasville was fifteen-thousand, but that was then.”
With her finger, Betty made a circling motion on the map. “With only small towns for miles around I think River Creek will be our goal. The reason I say that, comes back to vectors. Because the Center for Disease Control is located in Atlanta, it was absolutely one of the Ground Zero’s for the Ebola epidemic to explode.
“Geographically speaking, the farther from any affected area the longer it takes for the spreading viral infection to present itself, especially rural areas because the source of infection came from the doctors who traveled to Africa, and the military contingent that accompanied them. The doctors, of course, returned to their homes, which, because of their status, tended toward highly populated cities. In turn, they either work in hospitals or teach at universities, both cases lead to an extraordinary level of social interactions.
“The soldiers returned to their individual bases in their countries of origin. Not only would they infect their fellow soldiers, military bases also tend to be near sizable towns and cities and there is a lot of mixing with the civilian population.”
Nash said, “So, if we get far enough from major sources of infection we should have some breathing space?”
Betty grimaced. “In theory only would that hold true, in actual life not necessarily? People have only a few degrees of separation from everyone else in the world. Picture this; a doctor in Atlanta has relatives in southern Georgia, say, Savannah. Not knowing he’s infected, he visits with them. Let’s say those relatives visit other people… farmers who have a farm outside of the city. Those farmers visit other farmers and relatives, and on it goes, Ebola spreading, ad infinitum.”
“So there is no place to go?” Nash noticed he’d failed to quell a petulant tone. “I’m sorry, Betty. It’s just first you lead me to believe we can put distance between us and the virus, and then tell me we could end up driving right into an outbreak.”
Betty nodded and said, “I did do that, didn’t I. I guess that’s my roundabout way to say, ‘Who knows what’s safe and what’s not. This mutation of the virus is terrifying. Before the power went down, I received a call from a friend, a nurse who works at Grady Memorial in downtown Atlanta. She said after the broadcast on CNN, people who thought they had the symptoms of Ebola swamped the emergency room. Most of them didn’t, of course, but Laura said several of the hundreds presented definite symptoms. Since the infected can spread the disease even before showing symptoms, the ones who didn’t have the virus sealed their fates by simply coming to the emergency room.”
Nash was quick to seize on the fact Betty had firsthand knowledge concerning Grady Memorial.
“My sister called from Grady. My brother-in-law suffered a heart attack. She was there at that time. Do you—?”
“Nash, don’t dare ask me to give an opinion about their fate. Laura called me directly after she and the rest of the staff abandoned the hospital. All the staff, doctors included.”
Brushing aside any chance of him pushing for further information, she pointed to the map. “Now look. Here we are. We’ll need to skirt around Atlanta.” She began tracing roads with her finger. “I say we go north to here, then east and work these smaller roads around Athens. Okay, check it out.” Betty lifted her hand to place her finger on a road some distance from her tracing. “Once we clear Athens we have many road options to get us to here; highway nineteen. It leads directly in the direction we need. Best of all, there are only a few larger towns to work our way past.
Nash agreed. “I like the route. If we head out now we should be at River Creek by early evening.”
Betty jiggled the map to get him to move his injured hand. “Find me a pen and paper. Even though circumstances can change as we go, I’ll write some basic directions so we won’t have to deal with the map every turn.
“Let’s not bother eating a meal. We can dig out snacks to munch as we go.” Betty stopped speaking to pluck at her long-sleeved sweatshirt, then pulling it over her head and tossing it onto the hood, she said, “I believe the record breaking cool spell the news was excited about has ended. It’s freaking hot this morning. Bottled water to go with the snacks, we’ll need a lot if the temperature keeps climbing.”
Under the sweatshirt, Betty wore a loose fitting tank top that flared over her hips. Nash fought to keep his eyes from focusing on her breasts. It came to him he had never before felt such a strong sexual attraction for a woman.
They left their sanctuary behind the abandoned shop with Betty again behind the wheel. On the drive to Interstate 85, they encountered no traffic at all. The same held true on the interstate. Cruising at sixty, they traveled less than ten miles before seeing a large plastic banner hanging from an overpass proclaiming the interstate closed to northbound traffic.
Immediately after that sign, they began seeing smaller ones in the emergency lane informing them to leave the freeway at the next exit. Betty pulled into the emergency lane and switched off the engine. Turning to Nash, she said, “Ten to one odds there’s military manning a roadblock ahead.”
Nash didn’t dispute he prediction. “Probably to stop migration from Atlanta. There’s no place here to cross over to the southbound lanes, nothing we can do but go on.”
Betty said, “One of Merle’s favorite conspiracy theories was if a situation like this happened, the government would round up people and process the sick ones from the healthy. Kill the sick and take the uninfected to internment camps for relocation.”
“Do you believe that is what’s happening up the road?” Nash asked.
Shrugging, Betty turned the ignition switch, “We’ll find out.”
Blocking the roadway just before the underpass for the next exit was a blockade of orange rubber cones arranged to guide traffic onto the exit ramp. Under the bridge, backing up that flimsy obstacle were half a dozen armored military vehicles with mounted machineguns. Soldiers using the vehicles as shields brought their weapons to bear on their jeep.
Slowing down, Betty quipped, “I think we’re exiting.”
At the top of the ramp, was a hand-painted sign that read, “No through traffic east or west. Do not give us reason to fire upon you. Do not stop. Do not approach Barricades.”
They found the roadway in both directions blocked by a mix of Georgia State Patrol cars and local police forces. Once more facing bristling lines of rifles pointed at them, their only option was to regain the interstate heading south.
Betty drove until they were out of view from the overpass and again pulled into the emergency lane.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Then Nash said, “That was the creepiest, scariest, non-event I’ve ever experienced.”
Betty shuddered and said. “Neither of us said a word to each other, and what made it worse was the silence from the barricades; no one shouting or waving, no sirens blaring— Man, we are fucked. Now we know why there’s no traffic. I bet they have roadblocks all up and down the freeways.”
Nash said, “I didn’t see any roadblocks on top of the bridge at the exit before this one.”
Betty pulled back onto the roadway. “Let’s check, see if it’s on the map. Either way, we’ll need to use smaller roads. Surely the military can’t have enough personnel to block all travel”
They soon found that it wasn’t necessary for the military to be the force behind impediments to travel. Almost every road led to a town. These towns, fearing outsiders would bring Ebola to their communities, had barricades of their own guarded with a mix of law enforcement and armed citizens.
Some towns had barricades utilizing movable concrete sections of the type used during road construction. Most though were impromptu in nature; cars, trucks, heavy-construction equipment, anything to block entry.
Though worded differently at each town, all had signs posted, usually hand painted, warning travellers to turn around, and that they would shoot violators attempting to breach their roadblock.
In the not too distant past, GPS was at their fingertips. Roving rural roads to bypass these towns was frustrating. Often they found themselves headed in an entirely wrong direction or that the road they chose lead nowhere. Sometimes they would end up right back at the town.
Nash and Betty would sit for minutes at each crossroad or fork talking about the merits of a direction, sometimes agreeing, but often resorted to the flip of a coin to make the decision for them.
The traffic they encountered was sparse, slow driving local residents going about their business. The occupants of the vehicles eyed them with suspicion but were not hostile.
Because of the turns and backtracking, not only did they use gas to the point that only three remained of the five containers Jill filled. When they saw a sign that they were approaching Interstate 20, the east-west freeway that passed through downtown Atlanta, Nash estimated that even though they’d driven over four-hundred miles, only two-hundred of them were in the direction they needed.
Nash, guessing the distance based on the map legend, informed Betty the overpass crossing the ‘20’ put them only seventy-five miles east of Atlanta.
Over the past twenty minutes, they had managed to work their way around the town of Crawfordville and were back in a rural area on state route 77. Waving to a roadside diner isolated from any nearby buildings or houses and devoid of any vehicles in the parking lot, Nash said, “I need a restroom break and a stretch.”
Replying, “You’re not the only one,” Betty turned into the lot and parked behind a double set of dumpsters some distance from the diner.
Stepping from the air-conditioned jeep, Nash suffered a mild wave of Vicodin induced vertigo that caused him to stumble. Along with the dizzy feeling, he felt the oppressing heat of a normal June day in Georgia. Recovering his balance, he met Betty at the front of their vehicle.
Handing him a roll of toilet paper, she said, “It’s hot as hell out here. It has to be pushing ninety. The place looks vacant, I don’t think it’s open, but even if it is, I’m doing my business in the trees.”
She headed for the pines just beyond the dumpsters. Not wanting to follow behind her, he opted for the woods at the rear of the diner, unsnapping the retainer on his holster in case she was incorrect about it being unoccupied.
With only one usable hand, he had a bit of trouble dropping his pants to position his back against a tree. Where he squatted gave him a clear view of the loading dock at the rear of the restaurant. He found it worrisome that the backdoor stood wide open.
Finished with his business, struggling to button his jeans, he sound of someone coughing snapped his attention back to the restaurant. A woman was outside of the doorway leaning against the concrete-block wall coughing and spitting blood. She pushed from the wall and staggered toward to steps leading to the paved service drive. At the top of the steps, she lost her balance, and to Nash, it looked like she made a perfect dive as though into a swimming pool. Even from sixty or seventy feet away he thought he heard her skull crack. After the headfirst impact with the hard surface, her body twitched and jerked.
Still buckling his pants, he began walking toward the woman. Betty came around the end of the building. Her scream “Don’t go near her!” stopped him in his tracks.
“She fell off the dock,” he called as Betty ran to him.
Stopping beside him, she said, “Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. We can’t chance contact with anyone. What happened?”
“She came out of the restaurant, coughing and staggering around and then she fell head first down the steps. She was coughing blood. I wasn’t going to touch her. I don’t even know why I was going over there.”
Betty turned from staring at the now unmoving body of the woman. “”Stress… Stress makes people do stupid things. What we need to do is find a place to lie low and rest for a couple of days. Rest and eat better meals. Especially you; you’ve been through hell.”
Nash agreed. “I could use a week of rest. I’m out of it… and doping with painkillers makes me loopy. Once we cross Interstate 20, let’s find a place to stop.”
He bent to pick up the roll of toilet paper and then said, “I have no doubt that woman had Ebola. She was hacking up blood. I wonder if we’ll find roads blocks on the ‘20’ like back on the ‘85’.”
“We aren’t that far from Atlanta… Didn’t you say seventy miles?”
“Close enough,” Nash said.
Betty continued, “Anyway, I’m not surprised the disease has spread along such a major corridor. As far as roadblocks, we’ll have to see.” Glancing to where the woman lay on the asphalt, she said, “I don’t know enough about this strain of Ebola. I’m not a virologist. For all I know we could get infected by windblown pathogens.”
Horrified by her statement, Nash said, “Christ! Let’s get away from here.”
Before reaching the point where route 77 crossed over Interstate 20 they passed by another truck stop, slash, fueling station. Broken windows, shot-up vehicles and bodies littering the plaza showed this place had seen its quota of violence. Unlike the truck stop at Interstate 85, they saw there were some people who were still alive, staggering aimlessly around the vehicles near the pumps and coming and going through the shattered glass doors of the service center.
Wearing suit and tie, a man with blood streaming from his eyes and nose stood near the roadway motioning for them to stop. Coagulated mess coated the front of his white shirt. His waving arms fell to his sides as a coughing spell wracked his body. Frothy, blood filled spittle came halfway to their jeep. Betty floored the gas pedal.
They discovered that there were roadblocks where the road bridged the interstate and down on the freeway. Were, was the operative word. Approaching the roadblock on their side of the overpass, they saw the bodies of uniformed military personnel lying on the pavement near their armored vehicles. The bodies of civilians, men and women, lay among them,
