Mind Plague Read online

  “Jack Flynn,” the man said, then grimaced again.

  “Hi, Jack,” Strock replied. “I’m Franklin Strock. Frank for short.”

  The man had closed his eyes, tight. When he opened them, he drew a breath, nodded, then said, “Hi, Frank. And thank you. For helping me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Strock said. “Be right back.”

  Strock entered the cabin and almost ran into Ellie who was standing at the screen door peeking out at them. “Ellie,” he said and laughed. He nodded outside. “Bring the man a glass of water. His name is Jack Flynn.”

  Ellie nodded and tried to repeat the name. “Jack…Flynn.”

  “Yes, Jack Flynn. Now get a glass of water and bring it out to him. Okay?”

  She frowned, nodded curtly, then said, “Yes, okay. Water. A glass of water.”

  Four

  Bad Actors

  The A-frame had a spacious main room that served as a combination living room and kitchen. The living room area was furnished with a second-hand tan couch and matching armchair and two oak end-tables with antique lamps. In the far-left corner was a pot belly stove with a pipe leading through the roof to a brick chimney. The kitchen occupied a narrow space to the right of the living room with cabinets above a red-speckled Formica counter next to a small propane-fueled four-burner stove and a squat white refrigerator.

  A narrow, dark hallway led back a few steps to a cramped bathroom and beyond it, to two small bedrooms. Strock walked back to the bedroom where he and Ellie slept, and after a brief search of a three-shelf bookcase, he pulled out three survivalist books he’d taken from the Salamanca public library. He carried them back to the porch and found Ellie kneeling at Flynn’s side waiting for him to finish the glass of water she’d brought him. After Flynn handed the glass to her, she gave a shy smile and lowered her gaze. Strock lifted Ellie to her feet and told her to go inside and fetch a bottle of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and another glass of water. As Ellie left them with an eager nod and smile, Strock said, “She seems smitten with you.”

  Flynn frowned up at him and said, “It’s just having somebody new around.”

  Strock nodded and sat in the lawn chair next to the recliner and started flipping through one of the survivalist books.

  “You really gonna try and fix my leg from a book?”

  Strock looked up from the book and asked, “You got a better idea? Maybe I can drive you to a hospital. Oh, there aren’t any hospitals.”

  Flynn grimaced, then gave a short, agreeable nod as Strock returned to reading the relevant section of the book instructing him how to fix a fractured leg. Finally, he stood and looked down at Flynn.

  “You figure it out?” Flynn asked.

  “I think so,” Strock told him. “Actually, doesn’t look that difficult.”

  With a laugh, Flynn said, “Easy for you to say. It’s not your leg.”

  Leaning down, Strock massaged the area of Flynn’s lower leg where it was obvious the tibia bone had split in two. Fortunately for Flynn, the bone hadn’t broken through the skin. Flynn winced, groaned, and grabbed onto Strock’s right arm as Strock probed the skin above the broken bone.

  “Ow, man,” Flynn groaned, “that hurts.”

  Finally, Strock let go, stood and said, “Well, at least it’s a closed fracture. Easier to treat.”

  “So treat it. Get it over with.”

  Ellie exited the cabin with an eager expression holding the bottle of ibuprofen and the glass of water. Strock took the ibuprofen and after twisting open the cap, fished out six pills. He handed them to Flynn and told Ellie to give him the glass of water.

  “These should help,” Strock said, and Flynn swallowed down the pills as Strock lifted one of the books and read for a while longer.

  “So now what? You know what you’re doing?”

  After a time, Strock looked up. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “First, I even out the bones and then splint the leg.”

  “Even out the bones? That sounds painful.”

  “Probably will be. That’s what the pills are for.” Strock opened the book before Flynn and pointed to a diagram of the procedure. “See. Looks fairly easy.”

  Squinting at the diagram of a prone man with a splint on a straight leg, he said, “Yeah, piece of cake.”

  “First, I need to find a couple branches,” Strock said. “Couple inches thick, it says, to serve as the splints that’ll hold the fractured segments of bone in place so they can heal.” He looked toward the stand of trees down a slight drop about ten yards or so across the clearing in front of the cabin. Reading from the book, Strock added, “One of the branches needs to be set under your left armpit, down the length of your left leg, while the other needs to be placed from your crotch down to your left foot. I need a shorter piece, same diameter—roughly two inches—to connect the two splints. With some masking tape, I’ll secure the splints to your body, and then, with time, your fracture can heal.”

  Flynn nodded but didn’t look optimistic.

  Strock looked up, laid the book on the floor, and said, “Alright, let me get what I need.”

  He scurried off the porch and across the clearing and disappeared into the stand of trees. Ten minutes later, he returned with two sturdy looking branches, each at least two inches around, and another shorter branch, and set them on the porch floor. He retrieved a roll of masking tape, a handsaw, and scissors from the cabin. He took some rough measurements of Flynn’s left flank and started cutting the branches to size as he glanced down at the survival handbook open on the seat of the lawn chair. All the while, Ellie sat cross-legged on the porch eagerly watching Strock work while Flynn leaned back on the recliner and closed his eyes, letting the ibuprofen work its magic on his aching lower left leg.

  With the splints cut, Strock stood up with them and smiled. “Alright. Looks just like in the drawing.” He looked down at Flynn and said, “Ready?”

  Flynn sighed as Strock approached him. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Ready. Now what?”

  “Now,” Strock said, “I set the break.”

  It took Strock nearly an hour to set the break and affix the splint. During that time, Flynn was a brave patient. Before starting, Strock warned Flynn that, according to the book, as he connected the two broken parts of bone by forcibly massaging the skin above them, it would likely hurt and hurt bad.

  “I’ve been trained to handle pain,” Flynn boasted, then suggested, “But give me something to put in my mouth, a piece of cloth, something to bite down on.”

  Strock nodded, got a washrag from the cabin and gave it to him. Flynn was true to his word. As Strock set his leg and applied the splint, he mumbled and groaned, squeezed his hands into fists along the sides of the recliner, and tensed a few times, but held still for the most part and allowed Strock to do what he needed to do. Afterward, Strock stood over Flynn, satisfied with his work.

  “See,” Strock said, “it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I should have been a doctor instead of suing them.”

  Flynn shrugged glumly and whispered, “Wouldn’t give up your day job quite yet.”

  “All you need is a few days’ rest. Should heal up fine.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Frank,” Flynn said. “But right now, it hurts like hell.”

  “Broken bones tend to do that,” Strock remarked. “The ibuprofen should help. We’ve got plenty of that. When I go out for more provisions tomorrow, I’ll stop at the lumber store and get some two-by-fours and re-splint your leg. I doubt those branches will hold.”

  In the next moment, a low gurgle of motorcycle engines wafted up from somewhere along Route 417 heading east toward the cabin.

  “Shit, hear that?” Flynn hissed. “They figured they lost me around here and are back-tracking. See if they can sniff my scent. Those bastards don’t quit.”

  “Who are they anyway, those bastards?”

  “Like I said, bad actors.”

  The roar of the approaching bikes compelled Ellie to put her hands over her ears and let out a whimper. After glancing back at Flynn, Strock went over to her and pulled her down to a crouch. As he bent down with her, he whispered, “It’s alright, Ellie.”

  Finally, the biker gang roared past the mild bend where Flynn had gone off the road, avoiding the chunk of the tree Strock had left there, and continued east along Route 417. Seconds later, when the sound of the bikes diminished to nothing, Strock started to lift Ellie up. But as he did so, the low roar of the motorcycles rose up again and grew louder. The bikers had turned around and were coming back. Before Strock or Flynn had time to react or make a comment, the motorcycles had stopped at the curve where Flynn had struck the branch.

  Tight-lipped, Strock turned to Flynn.

  “You have any guns?” Flynn whispered.

  But in the next moment, the motorcycles roared to life again, and the gang sped off heading westbound again down Route 417.

  After the roar had faded, Strock stood up with Ellie and patted her long, disheveled reddish-brown hair. He noticed her sneaking a look at Flynn, their strapping, handsome, hurt visitor stretched out on the recliner with the broken leg secured by a wilderness splint. She was clearly captivated by the stranger, the first human she’d encountered, other than Strock, during the long months at the cabin. Strock frowned. Ellie’s infatuation with Flynn bothered him. It could only spell trouble, he thought, and it brought home quite suddenly and clearly that she was still childlike, and worse, that he’d probably been unsuccessful thus far in resurrecting her love for him.

  “Omar hasn’t figured out what happened,” Flynn said. “How he lost me. But something’s telling him it was around here. It’s eating at him for sure.”

  “Who’s Omar?”

  “The bikers’ leader. The only one of them who isn’t a zombie.”

  “So, you think they’re coming back, eventually?”

  “I don’t know,” Flynn said with a shrug. After a moment, he asked, “You have any guns?”

  “Yes, of course,” Strock said. “Shotgun, a couple rifles, some pistols. I’ve shot some deer, a turkey with them.”

  “Well, you may need them pretty soon for shooting something else.”

  That was the first time, but not the last, when Strock would regret having gone down and helped Flynn that afternoon.

  Five

  The New World Order

  After taking Ellie over and sitting her down on the lawn chair next to the recliner, Strock unfolded a second chair from the other side of the porch and sat down next to Ellie. Leaning toward Flynn, he said, “I know you’re hurting, but I need to know what’s going on. Who those bikers are and why they’re after you. Who you are, for that matter. What’s happening out there in the real world.”

  “What’s happening?” As Flynn pushed himself up on the recliner to get as comfortable as he could get in his condition, he winced in pain. After a breath, he said, “A new world order, that’s what’s happening.”

  “So, tell me about it, this new world order.”

  “Well, you already know about the disease,” Flynn began, “or whatever it is that made almost everyone—ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of humanity—lose their minds.”

  Strock nodded. Of course, he knew. He was living it. “Yeah, they went blank,” he said. “That’s what I call it.”

  Flynn nodded and said, “Good name for it. We called them zombies. Anyway, most of them who went blank, who became zombies, you know…well, they died.”

  Again, Strock nodded. He knew that as well. He’d seen hundreds of dead, rotting corpses in the streets, in beds, everywhere, during his travels to nearby towns for food and supplies.

  “They died because they couldn’t think anymore,” Flynn said. “They couldn’t remember how to get out of bed, eat, take care of themselves. Unlike her,” he went on, glancing at Ellie, who smiled up at him before he looked back at Strock, “they didn’t have someone around to save them—to help them get out of bed, help them eat. So most everyone in the United States, at least, who were in bed when it happened early that morning, stayed in bed, and they remained in bed, and died there.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Strock added dryly. “I’ve seen it. Hundreds of dead bodies in beds who never woke up.”

  “No, they woke up,” Flynn said. “They just didn’t know what to do next, how to get out of bed.” Strock nodded as Flynn went on, “And those who were up and around in America, and the rest of the world, when the disease struck, couldn’t think either—went blank as you say, where they stood. They remained fixated, in a strange kind of stupor, stood in place and stopped doing whatever they were doing; they just kept walking or driving—over cliffs, into walls, off the road, without a clue where they’d been, or where they were going. Eventually, they weakened and starved to death or fell where they stood. The car they were driving when they lost their minds crashed because they forgot how to drive it, or the plane in which they’d been flying went down because the pilot forgot how to fly.”

  Flynn sighed and drifted off thinking about all the rest of it, the crazy disasters that had befallen the stricken.

  The morning it had happened, Strock had opened his eyes and stretched in bed and after a time, turned to Ellie and patted her shoulder. It was a Thursday, seven-ten, time to get up and shave and shower and dress for work, slurp down a cup of coffee, a slice of toast, and head out the door for whatever awaited him at the office. But Ellie didn’t move under his touch that morning. She just laid there, staring up at nothing.

  “Ellie?” Nothing. No response. Frowning, he turned to her and nudged her shoulder, then reached under the covers and massaged her breasts. Still, nothing. She was looking up, staring at the ceiling. “Ellie?”

  He kept calling her, gently pushing her, getting annoyed, then panicky. “This isn’t funny, El.” But on and on it went, her dumb look, eyes blinking without a seeming thought behind them. “Ellie, what the hell is going on?” He shook and shook her and still nothing. Finally, he got out of bed and tramped over to her side and tried again for some minutes to rouse her without getting anywhere. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  Finally, he lifted her out of bed, carried her downstairs and gently lowered her onto the couch. He stood back and looked down at her laying there, staring up at nothing.

  “Ellie, what…is…the…matter?”

  Nothing.

  It seemed too silent in the house, everywhere. He turned on the TV and stared back at a blank screen. He turned on the radio and got static. He went outside and was struck by an eerie silence, the total lack of human voices or sounds. No one was about. All the houses were dim and quiet. No one seemed alive.

  Strock rushed next door to the Remsler’s house and found Joe and Helen still in the king-sized bed in their spacious master bedroom, and like Ellie, they were on their backs, eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. He went around the bed and shook Joe, but he didn’t stir. Then he went around to Helen’s side and got the same result. Strock started yelling at them. But that didn’t work either, didn’t bring them out of it. They continued staring up at the ceiling, seeing nothing it seemed. What kind of sick joke are they playing? Strock had thought, a part of him wondering if this was simply a strange, vivid nightmare.

  Finally, Strock put his arms under Joe’s armpits, pulled him out of bed and let his bare feet fall to the floor, then dragged him out of the bedroom and into the hallway to the second story landing. But out there, he still couldn’t get Joe up and on his feet. Frantic now with the oddness of what was going on, Strock left Remsler on the carpet and went to the bedroom down the hall and found Charles, their thirteen-year-old son, still in his bed, staring up at nothing. Strock shook him and found that like his parents, he wouldn’t snap out of it. They weren’t sleeping or daydreaming, it was something other than that. Far beyond it. Their eyes were open the whole time. They were up, awake. But they seemed unable to recognize anything that they saw. Strock’s entreaties and shouts and nudges meant nothing, had no effect. They wouldn’t budge.

  When he returned home, Ellie was still laying on the couch with that blank stare. After trying again to rouse her, he ventured back outside and found the same eerie silence. The upscale neighborhood was deathly silent as the sun rose up in a crystal blue sky that chilly Thursday morning in late October, just a few days before Halloween. No planes flew overhead, no cars drove down the wide streets on their way to work that morning.

  What was equally disturbing was that Strock found no one like himself. There was no one else awake, alert. Alive.

  “I was away from home,” Flynn said after a time. “On a mission, overseas, in Berlin.” He looked at Strock. “I’m an intel agent, part of an NSA unit—the National Security Agency. Or former National Security Agency. We were monitoring a terror cell.” He laughed. “Doesn’t matter now. None of it. Idiots forgot they were terrorists, the religious belief they were killing people over meant nothing to them now.” He sighed. “That morning, my colleagues became zombies—all five of them. One minute, we were meeting in the apartment, talking over how we were going to take down the cell.” He snapped his fingers. “And the next, Rivera, he goes zombie, in the middle of a sentence. Just stares at me. ‘Juan?’ I say to him and laugh, as if he’s daydreaming. But he doesn’t come out of it, even when I snap my fingers across his zombie eyes. Just sits there. Same with Jepson. She starts to slump forward, and they both give me the silent treatment. I laugh and say, ‘What’s with you two?’ Of course, they don’t answer. Nothing.

  “Then, I hear the crashes, explosions, and I think World War Three has started. Cars are running into each other, and into buildings for no reason, jet planes are falling out of the sky. Buildings here and there are exploding. Nothing works. Not the TV, radio. Nothing. But it wasn’t World War Three. It was this, some kind of mind warp no one can explain. The Event.

  “After a day or so, I managed to contact some of my people, intel types around the continent, in Germany and Sweden, France and Italy, who, like me, hadn’t lost their minds and become zombies. The following week, we linked up, eight of us in all, including my zombies, Rivera and Jepson. One of the others could fly a plane, and we commandeered a Bombardier Global Express jet from the Berlin airport and flew back to the states, landing at a desolate Dulles Airport outside DC a week after the Event struck.