This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
***
Due Date: 74 days away
The sun shone bright outside, a clear spring day, the only clear part about the day.
In the distance to my right, smoke rose from behind a building. On the other side of the street, a young man and woman ran hand-in-hand toward the smoke. To my left, I heard sirens approaching.
I turned to see six, seven, eight—I lost count—police cars blaze down the street and pass us, their sirens echoing between the buildings like feedback at a concert. The others who had gone out to see, pushed back against the wall, the sound hitting them hard enough to force them to recoil.
I was frozen. The noise, the wind, the rush—it all blew past me without even letting me flinch. The group beside me scurried to go back inside. One older lady looked at me as she hurried past.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t make eye contact. I didn’t do anything to reassure her.
She continued inside anyway. Social distancing at its best.
I stood there stupidly, the sirens still ringing in my ears, for who knows how long. It could’ve been five seconds. It could’ve been a minute. I couldn’t tell. My phone buzzing in my hand brought me back to life.
“Hey,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Liz said.
“Hang on.”
I plugged in my ear buds, stuffed one into my ear, dropped my phone back into my pocket, and started walking.
As I investigated, I gave Liz the play-by-play, helped her confidence that I’d be okay. That’s what I told myself.
At the end of the block, I crossed catty corner to the other side. One street over, and I could see it.
The smoke had all but cleared. I couldn’t see any fire, nothing still burning.
What I did see was two separate parts to what had once been a bridge.
A giant gap, spanning all six lanes, long enough for maybe three cars to fit lengthwise, now separated Kentucky from Indiana.
If it was an explosion, like it sounded like it was, it must have been massive. It looked like there was enough steel, concrete, and asphalt in the construction to hold up a small skyscraper. I noticed some of the windows in the building right there on the corner had broken glass too.
“Traffic is backed up,” I continued to Liz. “There are probably 20 cop cars holding—”
I stopped.
The other bridge interrupted me.
Sparks, giant sparks, evenly spaced, shot down nearly a third of it. They immediately turned into multiple clouds of smoke and dust particles. The structure hung in mid-air for a fraction of a second, like it was still in tact, and then fell apart and crashed into the water.
And then I heard it. The thunder. It sounded like a lightning bolt striking right above me, all that power, but it didn’t have the roundness. It crackled, more like a firework.
I heard Liz ask what it was, the ear bud still connecting me to her.
“They blew the other bridge,” I said. “You know, the one that goes the other way, from Indiana to Louisville. It’s in the river right now.”
I tried to explain more of the scene in front of me. The police rushing to renegotiate the situation. Pockets of pedestrians, some fleeing, some gathering for a closer look. Further down the road toward the explosions, a woman started screaming in bursts. Traffic, everywhere I could see, stopped.
My phone buzzed with a new text message.
“Liz, you still there?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I pulled out my phone again. Jerry had texted me.
“Just got off the phone with a buddy of mine. There’s a rumor that they destroyed the bridge to try to quarantine downtown. You and Liz should get of there.”
I reread it to Liz.
“Let me call you back,” I told her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She was the one not sounding so great.
“Yeah, yeah. I was far enough away. I’m headed back to you.”
I got off the call with her and redialed Jerry.
He answered after two rings.
Hurrying back toward Liz, I told him about the second bridge.
“You need to get out of there,” he said.
“I saw your text. What do you mean quarantining downtown?”
“They’re trying to close it.”
“Why?”
“Did you see the news?”
For once, I had. He continued before I could answer.
“The governor’s trying to open back up. They don’t want him to. They don’t want people to flood our hospitals.”
I didn’t understand. I thought that’s what everyone wanted, to open up, go back to normal again. Less than two weeks before, they were still protesting at the capital building. “Open up Kentucky, open up Kentucky, open up Kentucky!”
“I was just in our hospital,” I said. “It wasn’t crowded. I mean, there were people there, but… I don’t know.”
“Listen, that’s just what I heard.”
I was breathing heavily, power walking as fast as I could after slowing from a jog.
“How’s Liz?” he asked.
“Seems okay right now,” I said.
He repeated himself again. “You should get out of there.”
I stopped outside the hospital entrance.
“I’m going to get my kids,” I told him. “If you’re right, I want them with me. And I want Liz here. At the hospital with the doctors.”
“Let me get your boys. There’s a group of us who are getting together, let’s just say, out in the country. To hunker down. We’ll take care of them. You take care of your wife.”
I peered through the impressive glass doors into the hall I’d entered with Liz earlier. Inside, I could see the nurses, taking temperatures, directing people this way and that. I bent over, propping myself up with my hands on my knees.
“I appreciate that, Jerry. Let me get with Liz and get back with you.”
“Let me know. We’re hoping to leave here within the hour.”
“Thanks, man. This is super helpful.”
I was about to get off the phone with him when I thought of something else.
“Oh, and Jerry. How many people know about this?”
“It’s all over the news.”
“No, I mean quarantining downtown?”
“No one,” he said.
I got off the phone with him, making sure I’d ended the call.
I didn’t go back inside the hospital. I didn’t immediately call Liz back either.
I took off running.
There’s a third bridge. Second Street. I wanted to beat the thunder.
