The Last Boys in Clinton - 8. The Interviews

A number of things happened over the next few weeks. Acting President Reed won the special election and began preparations to evacuate anyone in the affected states to elsewhere in the country. This was after the CDC determined that A, the people weren't contagious, and B, there were no remnants of the so-called death cloud present. Clean-up of the deceased would take months, if not years. The delayed decomposition of the bodies was of great assistance there. After that, the area would be opened once again to residents. There was also news from China, which we'll get to soon enough.

But first, on Tuesday evening, May fourteenth, KDNL-TV's Vincent Valencia would hold his interviews with some of the residents of the Best Western Concordville.

"Good evening, America. I'm Vincent Valencia, and tonight, we have a special report for you. We'll be talking with a group of survivors from last week's disastrous chemical accident that wiped out nearly the entire area east of the Appalachian Mountains. To put a number on that, it is estimated that 150 million people lived east of the Appalachian mountains or were affected because they were further south. It has been estimated that over 149 million people perished. That was based on the probability that at most, 0.4 percent of the population had both asthma and cancer.

"Looking at the clock, I see that is exactly one week since the accident at Mission Critical Labs occurred. Of course, the exact time could never be known, but enough information has come to light to conclude that the accident occurred shortly after seven PM Eastern Daylight Time, one week ago.

"We have a remote feed with the people at the Best Western Concordville Hotel. Ryan Becker is the twenty-year-old son of the late Matthew Becker, who managed the hotel until he unfortunately became a victim of what has been called the death cloud. Ryan, first, we here at ABC are sorry for your loss, and everyone else there with you."

"Thank you, Vincent."

"So, how did it come about that you decided to gather people together during this crisis?"

"Well, I woke up last Wednesday morning to an extremely quiet apartment building. After looking around a bit, I discovered a lot of people, well, everyone else, was dead. I stopped at my school, and saw the same thing there. I tried to get hold of my father, who I knew would be at the hotel, but there was no answer. My mother worked here as well, same lack of a response. I couldn't believe I was the only person alive, so I printed up signs saying to meet at the hotel the next evening. I placed a dozen of those signs at major intersections surrounding the hotel, came here, took care of my parents bodies, and waited."

"What about other guests? Nobody there was alive either?"

"If there were any, they had left. Fortunately, it being mid-week, the hotel was not anywhere near full capacity. The first couple days there were others here, a few volunteers and I removed the bodies."

"So, what happened next?"

"On Thursday, people started arriving. By the designated meeting time, six PM, we had ten people here. We all got together, talked about our experiences and history. The first thing we discovered was we all had asthma. Then three of our crew disclosed they had recently been diagnosed with cancer. That triggered a memory of one of us, Benjamin Fitzgerald, who I know you'll be talking to next, so I won't steal his thunder."

"And then people continued to arrive?"

"Yes. By Sunday evening, we were up to forty-four, including myself. As the broadcast started, that number is forty-seven."

"It must have been quite difficult to serve that many people by yourself."

"I wasn't alone. Everyone who first arrived pitched in to help out in some way. And of course, your station came to the rescue when we were nearly out of food. We all thank you for that."

"It was our pleasure, believe me. From what I've heard, you've done an excellent job keeping a number of people safe and moderately happy. Thank you, Ryan. We'll return after a few words from our sponsors to speak with Benjamin Fitzgerald, a medical school student who interacted with the president of Mission Critical Labs, where the initial accident occurred."

While the commercials were running, Vincent thanked Ryan and said he did an excellent job. Ryan moved away from his laptop's camera and let Benjamin sit down.

"Welcome back. We're talking tonight with a number of survivors of last week's chemical accident who have gathered at the Best Western Concordville Hotel. Next up, we have medical school student, Benjamin Fitzgerald. Welcome to the show, Benjamin."

"Thanks, Vincent."

"I understand you spoke with Doctor Kenneth Allen, the president of Mission Critical Labs in Clinton, New Jersey."

"I did. As we were having that first discussion where we found one universal common thread, asthma, and a second partially common item, cancer, I remembered recently reading about Mission Critical Labs, who were supposedly on the verge of curing cancer. Another of our number at the time also lived in Clinton and indicated she believed the labs were right down the street from where she lived. So, she and I took a trip. I'll pass on the details about the deceased, but while we were walking around the facility, we encountered a man who indicated he ran the place, Doctor Allen."

"I'm told he essentially admitted the accident occurred there?"

"He did. He explained how his team had made a breakthrough early Tuesday evening. When he tried to get a status update on Wednesday, he was in Atlanta at the CDC, but he couldn't contact anyone. He drove back Thursday, and we encountered him Friday. He indicated that the broken test tube in a sink had contained what he called sample 43b; which also contained some form of formaldehyde, which has slowed the decomposition of the bodies. He postulated that a member of the cleaning crew thought it was trash and dumped it in the sink, running the water to rinse it away. Then he inhaled the vapors and died, apparently dropping the test tube in the sink as well, breaking it. I made a comment about him contributing to killing potentially millions of people, and he responded with, and I quote, 'I didn't pull the trigger, but I helped manufacture the gun, yes.'"

"What happened next?"

"We came back to the hotel and I informed everyone of what I'd learned."

"Doctor Allen was initially unavailable for comment, but I was recently able to get a statement from him after he knew this segment would be airing. Here it is."

An audio recording then played, with captions added, "Yes, I'm sorry to say that the chemical accident that killed millions of people on the eastern seaboard occurred at Mission Critical Labs. While it was a tragedy, it was indeed an accident that caused the deaths. Neither I nor Mission Critical Labs should be held accountable."

Vincent picked it up from there, "Fortunately for Doctor Allen, the entire justice departments of anywhere with jurisdiction over the case are now deceased. I have since spoken to acting President Reed's staff who indicated the case will be investigated and Doctor Allen will be held accountable if it is found he or MCL was negligent. In our next portion, we'll be speaking to two very young men who overcame significant obstacles to make it to the hotel, and very likely were saved from potential starvation. Thank you for being with us Benjamin. We'll be right back."

In the end, there were a number of regulations that were broken, and Doctor Allen couldn’t continue the fight against cancer from a jail cell. At least not for the next ten years. He was spared millions of counts of negligent homicide, though. Other experts in the field took over, continuing to modify Sample 43-b to try to eliminate its brain cell impacts on non-cancerous people.

Again, a changing of the guard occurred, as it were. George sat a little further away from the camera with Lionel on his lap.

"Welcome back once again, America. We've gotten details about how the accident occurred and how Mr. Becker coordinated getting a number of people together. Now comes more of a human-interest part of the story. With us now are two young men, also from Clinton, New Jersey, a.k.a. ground zero. They are thirteen-year-old George Dunlop, Junior, and nine-year-old Lionel Smart. Welcome to the broadcast, boys."

They both thanked Mr. Valencia.

"So, George, I understand you found Lionel and guided him to the hotel, but surely there's more to your story than that. Walk us through what happened Wednesday morning before you met Lionel."

"Sure. Well, I must have forgotten to set my alarm, because I woke up late. I hurried to get to school, hopefully before first period ended. I opened the door to my classroom, and it was empty."

"That must have been shocking."

"It was, but not nearly as shocking as finding Mr. Adams, one of the janitors at the school, lying on the floor in another classroom. I figured I would try to get him help, so I went outside to call the police. We weren't allowed to use our phones in the school. I suppose I could have called from inside, but, well, losing my phone for the day a couple times earlier trained me well."

"And what happened when you got outside?"

"I looked out toward the road and saw there were cars all over the place. Looking in a few of them I discovered those people were dead and figured Mr. Adams was too. I called my mom, hoping she'd answer, but she didn't. So, I called my father, and he suggested I go to the police station, and he would call them ahead of time. So, I went home to get my bike, because the police station was on the other side of town. When I walked into the garage, my mom's car was there, and cold. I figured she didn't go to work after all. I found her in bed. I thought she was asleep, but..."

George sniffled a little at that point.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, but that wasn't the end of your troubles, was it?"

George took a deep breath, "No. I called my dad again and told him mom was dead. He said to still head to the police station. When I got there, they were all dead too. I tried calling the state police and got a message to phone 9-1-1 in an emergency. I called that and was told that all their agents were busy. Busy being dead, is what I thought. I didn't know where to go or what to do. I'd skipped breakfast, so I stopped for a bagel and headed toward home. Another phone call to my father went unanswered. I figured I'd ride around the neighborhood first. That's when Lionel ran out of his yard stopping me."

"Lionel, you've been very patient listening to George. Can you tell us what happened after you got together?"

"Yeah. I, um, told him I couldn't wake my mom and asked him if he could try. But he couldn't either and said she was dead. I cried for a while, and he asked if I was hungry. I said yes, mom usually made us breakfast, that's when he looked in on my brother, Jimmy, and told me he was dead too. He made me breakfast, and we went back outside near his house to wait for a car to go by."

"And a short time later a car did go by, correct?"

"Yeah. The girl took us to the mall to look for more people, but the mall was locked. When she wanted to break in, George said we shouldn't, and we both said we wanted to go home. She took us back to George's house. She complained about paying for gas, so George went in and got her some money. She said she never wanted to see us again and left."

"Is that when you started riding your bikes?"

"Yeah. George packed us some food, and we went back to my house so I could get a jacket and a change of clothes. We decided to go south. I thought the people in New York might be mean, and route 31 didn't have as many exits, stores would be right on the road so we could get more food when we needed to. We stopped a bunch of times to rest, then we found this small restaurant. George made us hamburgers. After we had supper, we found a bed-breakfast and stayed there that night."

"And how far away from home were you at that time?"

George answered, "We didn't know right away, but we found out the next morning we'd gone twenty-eight miles."

"How did you find that out?"

"Marie followed us and was cooking us breakfast. We told her we didn't need her and left. George..." George shook his head, "George told me she couldn't follow because we were going to change roads."

"And then you saw Ryan's sign?"

"Yeah. George said we were still four hours away, and we were probably right at where Ryan lived. We took our time because I was getting tired, but we got here before six o'clock, when the meeting started."

"Quite an adventure for two boys as young as yourselves. I've been told the hotel is eighty-five miles away from the boys' homes, and that they traveled that entire distance on their bicycles. Quite an adventure."

"It didn't stop being an adventure. Marie somehow made it to the hotel too. We told her not to sit with us, and Ryan made her listen. She went with Benjamin back to Clinton the next morning and sometime after they got back, she left. Ryan said she came back a little while later to drop off Larry."

"Oh, and who's Larry?"

Larry leaned in, "Hi. I'm Larry, really Lorenzo Perduto."

"I bet you're glad you found Marie."

"Yeah, she seemed nice to me, but people here said she wasn't nice, and they asked her to leave."

"And you haven't seen her since?"

"Nope."

"So, as an investigative reporter, I don't like loose ends. So far, Marie hasn't made herself known, but I did find out a little something else related to this story. This afternoon, while getting ready for tonight's program, George told me his father lived near Knoxville, Tennessee. Apparently, George Dunlop Senior was heading to his local police station after getting no response from the Clinton PD. There was an accident, and until earlier this afternoon, Mr. Dunlop was unconscious, had lost his phone and didn't know his son's number by heart. Can we connect Mr. Dunlop now?"

The screen split again, showing George's father, lying in a hospital bed.

"Oh my God. Dad! You're alive!"

Next Up - "Reunions and Other Plans"