Containment - The Complete Series Page 2

  Minutes later, after the shock wore off at least enough to function, they moved from the living room to the kitchen table. It helped to change the setting. The living room would not be able to escape being the reminder of where the news dropped that their family’s life was put in danger. The dining room offered a better alternative, and sitting around the table helped change their states of mind. They sat as though around a conference room table, discussing matters in a calm and collected manner.

  Lisbeth held a cup of coffee in her hands. The heat didn’t bother her as she spun it slowly on the table. She stared down at the mug before speaking.

  There was a calm rationality in her voice that neither Martin nor Judy-Anne expected from her. “Martin, what are we going to do?”

  Martin sat across the table from Lisbeth, while Judy-Anne sat at the foot. Martin also had a cup of coffee in front of him, but instead of fidgeting with it, he let it sit right where it was, not paying the slightest bit of attention to it. His elbows rested on the table, and he folded his hands into a fist in front of his mouth, as though holding a microphone.

  “I don’t know, Liz. This is all happening kind of fast.” He let his hands fall to the table, still clenched together. “We can’t stay here, that’s for sure.”

  The weight of the words fell heavy on the group. They were all silent for a moment, not wanting to believe that they would have to abandon their home of so many years, but unable to deny the truth in Martin’s words.

  “Where would we go?” said Judy-Anne, breaking the silence.

  “I don’t know. The CDC is going to be looking for us pretty soon if not already, which means that wherever we end up, it’s not going to be inside the country.”

  Lisbeth let out a long sigh. “What about the kids? I mean the twins and Jaylynn. What are we going to tell them? They’re so young; they won’t understand.”

  “Not at first, no. We can’t tell them until we get to wherever we’re going. We’ll just have to make something up.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  Martin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I don’t know. There’s no telling what they already know.”

  “Do you think they’ll come tonight?”

  Martin looked at Lisbeth, his eyes locking with hers. Not wanting to expose his fears with Judy-Anne sitting in front of them, he lied. “No, I don’t think they’ll come tonight.”

  Lisbeth understood. She looked at Judy-Anne and gave her a forced smile, reaching out and placing her hand on her daughter’s arm with a gentle squeeze.

  “Honey, it’s okay. This wasn’t anything you did wrong.”

  Judy-Anne ripped her arm away from her mother’s grip, her chair sliding back with a loud groan. “Don’t touch me! I’ll get you sick, too.”

  “Honestly,” said Martin, “if you’ve had it, we’ve already been exposed enough to have gotten it, too, if it’s taken hold. Grabbing your arm isn’t going to help or hurt.”

  Judy-Anne’s eyes widened, and Lisbeth shot Martin the nastiest look he had ever seen. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you see she’s already freaked out? You’re not helping.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Just trying to put things in perspective.” He stood and walked to the far side of the table and leaned on the back of a chair. “Look, regardless of anything else that we know or don’t know, or whatever happens to us, we’re going to be in this thing as a family, one unit. We might as well start thinking that way because as soon as we go out that door, we’re sticking together, and we’re going to be in close quarters.”

  Lisbeth sat back hard against her chair and folded her arms. Her jaw was clenched and she avoided looking at Martin, but didn’t face Judy-Anne, either.

  “When are we leaving?” asked Judy-Anne.

  Martin stared ahead in thought, tapping his index finger on the top of the chair as he leaned. He looked at the window, thinking about the world beyond the closed blinds. His mouth scrunched as he pondered a plan until he stood straight, putting his hands in his pockets. “We leave in the morning.”

  Lisbeth turned to look at Martin, her mouth slightly agape at the decision. The nightmare had become reality, and the truth of the situation suddenly fell on her like a heavy weight. Judy-Anne felt it as well. There was no point in arguing. They all knew they couldn’t stay in that house, not with the CDC watching and Judy-Anne’s spots only bound to worsen.

  Lisbeth loosened her folded arms and let her hands fall into her lap as she stared straight ahead, a blank expression on her face. Martin walked over behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t respond, and kept staring straight ahead into nothingness.

  “Why don’t you go to bed, honey. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow and we’re going to have a lot to do in the morning. I want you to try and get some rest.”

  Judy-Anne only nodded and looked up at her smiling father. She knew it wasn’t a real smile, but for some reason, the attempt to reassure her that everything was going to be all right when she knew it wasn’t seemed to help. At least in some small way, it was comforting that her father was trying to put her mind at ease. As a senior in high school, she was trying to figure out what life as an adult was going to be like, and though she didn’t even have a car of her own, she had started to think of herself as one. But the comforting smile from her father took her back to a place she had almost forgotten, where she could tiptoe down the stairs and crawl up into her father’s lap while he watched television on the couch, resting her head against his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her, cuddling her into warm sleep.

  A solitary “whoop” of a police siren sounded, and suddenly red, blue, and yellow light began flashing across the closed blinds. Martin and Lisbeth rose, leaving Judy-Anne alone at the table.

  “Martin,” said Lisbeth, out of breath, “that’s a CDC truck.”

  3

  Martin was silent, crossing his arms. He watched as an accompanying police car and black sedan pulled up in front of the house to join the van. Officer Garrett stepped out and looked around, catching Martin’s eye. He didn’t make any kind of motion or gesture, merely letting his gaze linger until he turned to the black vehicle as it came to a stop.

  The family watched in silence as a woman with pale skin and black hair stepped out of the driver’s side of the vehicle and walked briskly around the front of the car to shake Officer Garrett’s hand. Everything about the woman seemed to be in place and with a purpose. She didn’t smile, and though they couldn’t hear anything that was being said, it was clear from Garrett’s demeanor that it was strictly professional. She wore slacks and a nice-looking coat, with a black turtleneck sweater underneath. She let her hands hang by her sides, though her fingers were restless with constant fidgeting. After the formalities with Garrett were finished, she headed over to the driver’s side of the CDC van and raised herself up to the window by stepping up on the rail. It didn’t take long before she lowered herself back down to the ground, and the back doors of the van swung open, letting loose a handful of CDC agents. They were dressed in traditional yellow hazmat suits, with a clear plastic face shield and two filters for breathing. Martin counted six altogether, each of them wearing a submachine gun slung by a strap around their shoulders.

  Heart beating wildly now, Martin snapped himself out of his daze as he realized what was happening. He herded Lisbeth away from the window and quickly closed the blinds.

  “Martin, what’s going on? What are they doing here?”

  Judy-Anne sat frozen at the table, hands on the surface. She stared at the closed blinds, waiting for agents to bust their door down any second and take them all away to God-knows-where.

  “It’s Jesse and Natalia. They’re going into their house.”

  Judy-Anne perked up, simultaneously relieved for herself and terrified for her neighbors. Images flooded her mind of Aiden being handcuffed and dragged through the front door of his house like a rag doll. Even for a sophomore in high school, Aiden was slight,
and could never offer any kind of resistance to the kind of people that worked for the CDC.

  “Judy-Anne?”

  She looked up. Her mother was standing away from the table, one hand over her mouth, eyes glistening. Martin crouched next to the table to look Judy-Anne in the face.

  She sucked in a breath, her emotions getting the best of her. With her sleeve, she wiped away the tears from her cheeks.

  Martin placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Judy, you need to go upstairs.”

  “Dad...”

  “It’ll be okay, honey.”

  Judy-Anne stood slowly, looking at her father and then her mother. When she did, Lisbeth walked over and held her tightly. The embrace suddenly released a torrent of emotion from them both, and both sobbed loudly. At first, Judy-Anne had just let her mother grab onto her, but the unexpected emotion took hold of her, and she gripped her mother just as tightly, if not harder. Warm water poured from her eyes and stained the shoulder of her mother’s cardigan, and her knees wobbled under her own weight.

  Martin crossed the room as they cried and slowly and gently put his arms around both of them. “Come on, honey. It’s time to go upstairs. We’ll be okay.”

  Reluctantly, Judy-Anne let go of her mother and when she looked up at her face, she saw a woman she had not seen before. Lisbeth’s eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks were shiny and wet. She pulled the sleeves of the cardigan down over her hands and tucked the thin sweater tightly around her, still sobbing gently.

  Martin stepped between them and put his hands on Judy-Anne’s arms, squeezing gently. He tilted his head down at her and gave her a look that prodded her politely to do as he asked. Wiping the last bit of tears from her cheek, she moved past her father, avoiding looking at her mother again as she trudged heavily up the steps to her room.

  4

  Judy-Anne left the light off and sat down by the window as she had done that afternoon, looking down at the chaos that surrounded her friend’s home.

  All lights were on in the Blackstone home, but the agents had apparently taken the time to close all the blinds after rounding everyone up. They made no attempt to conceal their purpose, coming right in the middle of dinner time for most families, flashing bright lights so that everyone knew they were there. But despite the fanfare, they didn’t seem to want anyone seeing what was going on inside.

  A lump formed in Judy-Anne’s throat again as she recalled the stories she had heard from other towns about containment crews. She looked out at the street. Though the flashing lights were bright, she could still make out the street and homes across from their own. Normally, when an ambulance or police car or firetruck showed up, people would come out of the woodworks to rubberneck and see what was going on. But not for this. There wasn’t a soul on the street, and even though the streets were supposed to be clear, for some reason they felt even emptier than normal.

  She had heard about the armed agents dressed to protect themselves from catching the virus, loaded guns to discourage resistance as they did their job. The people they took were put into their own hazmat suits, although instead of keeping something out, these suits were designed to keep something in. They were the same color, same design, and other than the handcuffs and lack of machine gun, you could hardly tell them apart from the CDC agents.

  No one in the Gratz family had ever known anyone personally that had been contained. Only strangers to the family had ever been contained in their neighborhood and small town. The Spot in this part of town was unheard of, at least in their lifetimes. But Judy-Anne knew that the people that had been taken were never heard from again. There were no stories of people coming out of quarantine, returning to their old lives. No stories of people contacting friends or relatives, letting them know that they were okay, or how the infected family member was doing.

  No one actually knew what happened to people after they were contained, outside of those that worked at the CDC. And even those employees had to be high in the organization. Important, lifelong, dedicated employees. But people rumored. Some thought the infected people were put into camps, to live out their days until The Spot eventually took its toll. It was so contagious that people assumed anyone sent to the camp with them would also eventually die of the same thing.

  Others speculated that the government simply didn’t have the money or manpower, or the patience to sit around and wait for the infected to die on their own. Those conspiracy theorists believed the people herded into the backs of those CDC vans were simply taken to a secure location, free from security cameras and any wandering hikers, and shot on sight. The bodies were burned and buried, never to be found by accident. Fire was the only way to know for the certain that the virus was killed.

  It had started long before Judy-Anne was born, even before her parents were born. Everyone was taught the same thing in history class. According to the history books, the U.S. used to be one of, if not the most powerful nation in the world, until The Spot first broke out. No one knew where it originally came from, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. The government tried every antidote and cure they could concoct, but millions of people were lost to the disease. The accounts of the time say those that became infected died a very painful and drawn out death, though it’s been so long that most people have completely forgotten what The Spot actually does to you.

  The government had no other option. The CDC was given new authority, new power, and with no cure, there was only one way they could think of to control the disease: containment. If they couldn’t cure the sick or vaccinate the healthy, the only way to stop the spread of the disease was to cut it off where it stood. Like forest rangers setting smaller fires to contain the blazing inferno, anyone found to be infected was taken away, quarantined, cut off from the rest of the population before further damage could be done.

  Brutal, but effective. The day the containment protocol was enacted, the CDC began to expand its influence. It didn’t take long before funding was siphoned from several other departments and agencies, even the military, and pumped into the CDC’s budget, making it the largest branch of the Federal Government almost overnight. They became the new national police force, solely focused on combating the disease that no one could defeat.

  A noise from the Blackstone’s house shook Judy-Anne out of her rumination. She stretched her body up and craned her neck, trying to get a good look at the house. Her heart sank as she heard the sound of Mrs. Blackstone screaming and crying. She couldn’t yet see anyone, but her imagination filled in the details of the scene inside the house: the armed agents forcing each of them into their own containment suits, struggling to keep them still while they slipped arms and legs and finally heads into the yellow jumpsuits, sealing them up like a body bag. The screams didn’t stop, but eventually became muffled, and Judy-Anne knew she was right.

  The house went quiet and figures began exiting the house. The light from the house illuminated the front yard as the door was held open, facilitating the movement of reluctant bodies out of the building. First was the woman with the black hair, who took a few steps out into the yard and turned back to face the house, one hand on her hip, the other holding a previously concealed cell phone to her ear. She spoke and Judy-Anne tried to read her lips, but couldn’t make anything out.

  She was soon followed by a procession of yellow jumpsuits. Everyone’s head and face were covered, so Judy-Anne couldn’t immediately make out who was who, but as they spilled out onto the lawn, it became obvious. The first was tall and sturdy looking, with two CDC agents on either side with firm grips on his arms. Mr. Blackstone didn’t appear to be resisting the agents, but at the same time didn’t go along willingly. The agents made no attempt to be gentle and rushed him along to the back of the truck, where he was shoved through the open doors. One agent stayed on the ground, gun in hand, while the other followed Mr. Blackstone into the van.

  Next in line was clearly Mrs. Blackstone. Slighter than the men on either side of her, their grip and force were much red
uced from that used on her husband. Her head hung down, body bent from sagging, a sign of defeat and desperation. She was escorted to the back of the truck, but this time, both agents followed her inside.

  Finally, a figure that could only be Aiden exited the house. Shorter by a head than the single agent that hurried him along through the yard and into the van, his posture was more composed than that of his mother, a skinnier image of his father, though he didn’t have the strength to put up the kind of fight that Mr. Blackstone had. Like his parents, his hands were cuffed behind him. He walked to the back of the truck, where his escorting agent put one hand on his back and pointed into the cell where his parents were being held.

  He put one foot up on the step and paused. Aiden’s head had been down as he walked, but looked up, and Judy-Anne knew that he was now looking into his parents’ eyes. He looked around him for a moment, before turning his gaze over his shoulder and up at Judy-Anne’s window. Judy-Anne’s breath left her. Despite the fact they were separated by probably a hundred feet, a pane of glass, and a plastic hazmat face mask, the two locked eyes. She stared back at Aiden until the agent gave him a final shove in the back. It wasn’t hard, but Aiden’s skinny frame lurched forward, snapping his head back. He stumbled into the van, and disappeared.

  The agent standing guard closed the van doors with a loud, metallic slam and headed around the far side of the vehicle to the passenger side. The remaining agent was now standing in front of the black-haired woman, still on her phone. She held up one finger to the agent, who took the cue to wait as an opportunity to undo part of his suit and peel back the hood and face mask. He rubbed his shaved head and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, letting out a long plume of steam as he exhaled. He looked around to examine the scene, and when he caught the attention of Officer Garrett, who had been standing by his squad car while the scene unfolded, he said something to the officer that prompted him to somewhat clumsily and nervously jog to the back of the car and open up the trunk. Garrett pulled out a giant roll of bright yellow caution tape and began marking off the area around the house.