Quaranteam - Book Two (Ch. 14)

(Author's Note: I generally don't do 'content warnings,' but I feel like in this one particular case, I need to make an exception, as I know some people have difficulty reading about mass casualty events. The following chapter is meant to be highly reminiscent of the events of 9/11/01, and as such, may provide a challenge for some readers. I've written this chapter specifically so that it can be skipped if needed, although obviously I feel its inclusion in the story is important, otherwise I wouldn't have written it. That said, for anyone who was gathered around a television on that cruel morning of 9/11, this will have strong echoes of that, and if you feel you don't want to read the chapter because of it, I absolutely want to respect that decision. What happens in this chapter will be referred to again later, but never shown again in quite such graphic detail.)

Chapter Fourteen

December 18 ^th , 2020

The book signing in Denver the day before had gone off without a hitch. They'd flown into Denver airport and headed straight towards The Tattered Cover, where Andy's fans were eagerly awaiting his arrival, albeit in smaller numbers than originally anticipated. The cold weather had discouraged people from protesting too heavily, although there had been a few hardened, determined people who had insisted on parading around with their signs, although the media coverage was still lingering around, the story of the shooting a few days ago still lingering over the general reporting around his book tour.

The fans had been incredibly gracious and welcoming, and when he'd read an excerpt from the book under development, he'd gotten a standing ovation for almost five minutes. The security was also a little bit stronger this time around, but it didn't feel constrictive, and if an attendee wasn't observant, they might not have even noticed there were additional guards stationed around The Tattered Cover bookstore the event had been held at, one of the largest bookstores in America.

Overall, it had let Andy relax a little bit yesterday, since he had been nervous of a repeat of the experience back in his home state of Ohio. The time spent with Niko's mom had certainly soothed his nerves some, as well as how welcoming to their family she'd been. (The fact that she'd just found out she was going to be a grandmother probably helped also.) And since the signing had been without issue, Andy's guard had been slightly lowered when they got back to the hotel on the night of the 17^th.

The hotel itself had been set up incredibly well, with one massive bed, plus a couple of additional beds so that security could sleep somewhere during their down time. It felt like it was nice and safe, and they'd slept well, all huddled together in one big pile like they preferred to, given the option. It was a good time at rest.

That should've been what set warning flags up inside his brain, but he was hoping that maybe, just maybe, he'd earned a bit of a respite.

Instead, he woke up on the morning of the 18^th to Niko shaking his shoulder.

"Andy, I think you'd better come take a look at this."

He was going to remember this exact morning for the rest of his life.

Andy got out of bed, extracting himself from the sea of still slumbering bodies with a casual adeptness he'd gotten better at over the last few months, and moved out of the bedroom into the foyer, where Alexis and Melody were already awake, watching the television, a sort of almost exhausted shock having settled in on their faces, and the look had Andy concerned, more concerned than he'd thought he'd ever been.

The clock read 9:52 a.m. MST.

"We bring you continuing coverage of the crisis in New Zealand, I'm Shannon Mason for CNN. For those of you just joining us, allow us to recap the events of the last few days," the woman on television said to them from her studio somewhere in Atlanta. She was the sort of blonde talking head that seemed to be a staple on the news networks, but she looked like she was exhausted, the toll of what she'd been talking about clearly weighing on her. He wondered how long she'd been on the air. "In February of this year, the small country of New Zealand shut its borders down just as the twin pandemics of DuoHalo and Covid began, and as such, had circumvented the heavy casualties that had affected the rest of planet. Since February, they had reported zero cases of either disease. Up until three days ago, when people in New Zealand began dying off in large numbers. The government of New Zealand initially attempted to keep it quiet, at first, to try and prevent a panic, while reaching out to the US government for emergency support but word broke internationally late last night."

"Oh god," Andy said, moving over to sit down on the couch as Niko sat down next to him, snuggling in hard against him, her lip quivering a bit nervously. He felt that nervous pit in his stomach that he'd only had once, half a lifetime ago, early in the morning on September 11^th, 2001. He'd been nineteen, just starting his second year of college, when he'd been walking to class in the morning, seeing that people were huddled around televisions. He'd sat down in the lobby of one of the buildings with several dozen other students watching on a television that had been playing the same thing every other television across America was playing. He imagined that might be happening again right now, endless masses glued to the television in fear and shock.

"The United States had been in negotiations to start delivering the serum to New Zealand starting in January, because the small country had been confident that they had the disease under control," the reporter said. "As such, they were not prepared to discover that the disease known as DuoHalo had somehow invaded their shores, unbeknownst to its citizenry. This problem was compounded by the fact that because New Zealand was so confident in how secure their borders were that they had given their citizens free access to travel within during that entire time. Because of this, the..." The reporter stopped, looking down at her hands nervously before looking back up and into the camera again, a tiny tremble visible in the woman's hands atop the news desk. "Because of this, we are currently operating on the assumption that the entire population of New Zealand is currently carrying the DuoHalo virus. As such, the United States is making an emergency shipment of the Quaranteam serum to the country that should be touching down shortly. We have with us via remote satellite Doctor Charlotte Varma, who is part of the United States's team dedicated to combating the DuoHalo epidemic, and one of the researchers who worked on the Quaranteam serum almost since its inception. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us this morning, Doctor Varma."

"I only wish it could be under better circumstances, Ms. Mason," Charlotte's familiar face said, split screen on the television, with the reporter on the right and the doctor on the left.

"I think we all feel that way, Doctor," the reporter said, clearly shaken. "Can you tell us what the current state of the population of New Zealand is right at this moment in time?"

"Yes, ah. Yes." Andy had seen Charlotte during dark times before, when he'd helped pull her and her daughter from the clutches of Arthur Covington the Fourth, but her face looked like she was desperately struggling to keep it together, something which made the whole moment even more uncomfortable for Andy to watch. "So, two days ago, the city of Christchurch reported its first casualty from DuoHalo, something which wasn't supposed to be possible. Because the country had closed its borders off, many initial reports which were presenting as DuoHalo were ignored by local authorities, until things turned severe in rapid succession."

"Why did local medical authorities discard diagnoses of DuoHalo in such large numbers, Dr. Varma, and did that disregard complicate things?"

"It certainly did not help them any, Shannon, although even if they had correctly diagnosed DuoHalo upon first presentation, it would've really only bought them an additional twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and while that may sound like a lot of time, many of the consequences of their actions were already, at that point, unavoidable."

"At this point, I feel the need to warn our viewers that we will be showing some fairly graphic footage over the next few hours, and that they may wish to look away from their televisions," the reporter said, her hands balling up into fists. "How bad is it looking for the country, Doctor?"

"New Zealand has... had a population of around five million people, Shannon, according to the most recent estimates, with about fifteen percent of that being in the immediate, incurable age range from 11 to 18. Almost all those young people are already dead, and those that have not yet expired will do so shortly. There is nothing that can be done about that."

The word 'expired' hung uncomfortably in Andy's head for a moment, making the deaths of approaching a million young people sound like a show on a streaming service being cancelled, rather than the mind shattering number of dead people that it was.

"The graphic footage which we are about to rebroadcast comes from local New Zealand television media, taken yesterday afternoon local New Zealand time. Doctor, can you explain to us what we're seeing here?"

The screen cut away from the two women to show a distant shot of what looked like hospital staff tossing bodies into a large open pit in the earth. The shot was taken from enough distance so that the faces of anyone involved could not be made out, but even from the distance, it was clear the pit already held hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies, many of them teenagers.

"Yes, ah, the death toll is so high in New Zealand right now, Shannon, that individual graves are impossible and even mass cremation is basically unscalable at the rate of which new casualties are arriving at the hospitals," Charlotte said, her face shown in a corner of the screen that couldn't cut away from the horror, all the color having drained from her face as she was watching it along with everyone else. "Considering the infection rate, the incubation period and the lateness with which we are arriving with the serum to try and help these people, we are expecting the best-case scenario for New Zealand is to have somewhere between twenty and thirty percent of its population alive this time next week, although I have to admit more realistic projections are putting it significantly lower, within the ten to twenty percentage range."

"Is there a reason none of the hospital workers are wearing personal protective equipment, Doctor?" the reporter asked.

"Because, at this point, Shannon, it would be completely wasted," Charlotte sighed. "Everyone you see in these videos, the corpses, the hospital workers, even the very camera crew filming all of this, each and every one of them is already nearly guaranteed to be infected with DuoHalo. That's one of the reasons we're projecting such high casualty rates. There is no one to tend to the cases that might have been less severe in terms of women's cases, meaning that basically every person in the country that we cannot get the Quaranteam serum into within the next three to four days is going to die, both men and women alike."

The video cut to a closer shot, showing one of the hospital workers taking a photo of one of the dead bodies with that person's identification on their chest. The man looked like he was in his early thirties, and Andy wondered how many more just like that had already been catalogued.

"In such catastrophic conditions, all hospital workers can do is quickly catalog the dead before disposing of the bodies in the safest way possible, so as to not contaminate the soil or the ground water," Charlotte said. "All of this information is being cataloged, but at the same time, many of the hospitals have abandoned the practice, simply choosing to focus their time on doing what they can to try and keep those cases who might be borderline salvageable alive long enough to try and get some of the Quaranteam serum into them. In the words of their Prime Minister, it is looking increasingly likely that it will be easier to take a census of those that survived than to catalog those who have died."

The video feed cut to a shot from what looked like a block away from a major hospital, the entire building surrounded by people clogging nearly every way in or out.

"We're getting reports that many of the hospitals are simply turning people away at this point, unable to provide them any help or support, at least until the Quaranteam serum arrives," the reporter's voice said. "You can see here that in some cases, the hospitals have simply been abandoned by the medical staff for the time being, as doctors and nurses have either gone home to be with their loved ones, or to try and get into line to get the Quaranteam serum as quickly as possible. Do you know anything at all about the Air Force's plans on how they plan to deploy the serum, Doctor?"

"The Air Force will be landing two or three planes each in each of the five major cities of New Zealand - Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton and Tauranga. As you know, you have reporters embedded with a couple of those units. I expect they should be contacting you soon, as they will be able to give you much more up to date information that I can, although I'm here to help speak to the medical concerns."

The video cut to shots of a local store apparently being swarmed with looters and rioters, the windows completely shattered, people simply walking out with armfuls of things, although the health of the rioters looked suspect, many of them coughing, staggering in their walk, their eyes heavily bloodshot, their noses dripping with mucus.

The reporter's voice spoke again, overlaying the footage of looting. "Law enforcement has, at this point, almost mostly abandoned their efforts to keep the populace in check and are also either with their loved ones or attempting to get in line at locations that it has been reported the serum will be delivered to shortly. In some cases, they have tried to establish some crowd control at locations suspected to be serum drop points, but for the most part, they are simply completely overwhelmed on all fronts. Doctor, how fast will they be able to distribute the serum?"

"It's not a complicated process, Shannon, but the—"

"Sorry to cut you off, Doctor, but I'm just getting word that we've made contact with one of our embedded reporters with the Air Force salvation team. One of our southern Pacific correspondents, Jenny Sheppard, joins us now. Jenny, can you hear me?"

The feed cut in with a shot of a brunette woman with a giant airplane in the background. She was dressed in what looked like a typical reporter's attire but had a decidedly non-standard flak jacket on over it. Her hair was done up in a bun, and she looked like she'd only recently been woken up from a bad night's rest, which Andy suspected she'd had on the plane on display behind her.

"I can hear you, Shannon. I'm here with the 102^nd, who arrived just about ten minutes ago in Auckland, as they are preparing to head over to Eden Park, a sports venue here with a capacity of 50,000. They are planning on using this as a staging ground for the first wave of patients in Auckland, and we are expecting to roll out within just a few minutes, a little past 3 a.m. local time. It will be the first stop of nearly half a dozen this team will make over the next twenty-four hours. Between the two planes landing in each of the five major cities, there are over two and a half million doses of the Quaranteam serum that have just arrived within the last couple of hours. I asked the commander of the task force before we deployed if this would be enough and was told that this was all the supply they had available, and that they would provide as much of it as they could to people in need."

"Jenny, how many—"

"I'm sorry to cut you off, Shannon, but I'm being told we need to move right now to relocate with our hosts, so we should be able to get back to you in twenty or thirty minutes," the reporter said, clearly being hurried by her Air Force handlers, the trucks starting to drive off as the feed froze on a still of the last image.

"Stay safe over there, Jenny, and we'll talk to you again a little later." The shot cut away from the field and back to the split screen of the main reporter and Charlotte. "That was Jenny Sheppard, southern Pacific correspondent, and she'll be joining us again later. Doctor Varma, what kind of recovery can we expect from those New Zealanders who are able to get access to the serum in time?"

"The results will vary significantly, depending on what happens to them after they get the serum, but many of them stand a good chance of recovery," Charlotte said. "Assuming they are able to find and partner themselves."

"I want to get more into that, but we need to take a quick commercial break. Don't go anywhere, our coverage of Crisis In New Zealand will be back in just a few minutes."

The screen faded and then turned into a commercial about some older man and his need for finding a comfortable catheter, which gave Andy a moment to look away from the screen for a moment, suddenly aware that a couple more of his partners had woken up during the time he was watching and had moved to snuggle in as much as they could. He realized at some point, Emily had taken his hand and wrapped it around her own.

"This is horrifying, Andrew," she whispered to him, her eyes filled with tears.

"I know, Em. I know."

Melody went to go wake the rest of his partners, as Andy recognized they might not be leaving the hotel room for a while, unable to turn away from the tragedy that was unfolding on the other side of the planet but was still only as far away as their television set. By the time the rest of his partners were moving to sit on or in front of the couch, the reporter had returned to the screen. Other than some very brief filling in of what was happening to the partners who'd awoken last, nobody much felt like talking.

When the reporter came back from commercial, it was in a three-panel split screen, with Charlotte on the right-hand side and the same reporter from before, Jenny Sheppard, who was now standing inside what looked like some sort of large sports arena, where it looked like pallets of serum had just been yanked off the trucks and stacked down in large sections. Many tall plastic dividers had been laid out on the field, funneling the open area down into twenty stations, each staffed by two people, one nurse and one armed soldier, before just opening out to the back.

"We're back with Jenny Sheppard in Eden Park within the city of Auckland in New Zealand, and Jenny, it looks like behind you, they've set up stations where people can get injected with the serum quickly, although I don't see any area set up for post-injection observation."

"Shannon, the situation here is currently so dire that the commanding officer, General Natalie Scrimshaw, told me just a few moments ago that they simply do not have time for any observation or post-injection care, as the situation here is so dire," Jenny said, her voice starting to crack just a little bit. "They do not have time for Oracle screenings or even to ensure that people are getting paired up appropriately. As soon as someone is injected, they are given a pamphlet explaining how the serum works, which instructs them to go and find a male partner as soon as they are able to, and sent onward. Any men who try to show up in this area are being redirected from entering the lines and being sent to stand around the back, so that any women coming out of the area can collectively grab a partner or form ad hoc Teams before leaving the site, if they do not have someone already in mind who they know and is both available and alive."