Genesis Plague (33 page)

M
y elbows and knees burned as I scrambled quickly across the
cold, hard floor, cutting back and forth and trying not to be an easy target.
Faces looked down at me from behind the windows in the doors. Frightened faces.
Infected faces. Some windows were occluded with dried blood. Others were
cracked, but not completely broken.

The gunfire stopped
from the other end of the hall, and I heard the
click
of a gun hammer
being pulled back. I flipped over onto my back and fired three rounds at the
men standing by the far door. The revolver bucked like a canon in my hands as
they jumped out of the way.

Then I was on my feet
and running, bullets zipping past my head. I grabbed the doorframe at the end
of the hall and spun out of the way as the men kept firing. The control panel
was just ahead, a broad table with a thousand buttons and switches. Without
knowing what the hell to do, I started flipping every switch I could find in
the section marked ‘Block 1’. Red lights blinked all over the panel and an
alarm sounded from deep within the building.

There was a distant
pneumatic
hissssss
as every door in Block 1 slid open.

The men at the other
end of the hallway shouted warnings to each other as fresh gunfire echoed down
the corridor. One of them screamed.

A small microphone
jutted from the top of the control panel, with a black button beneath it
labeled ‘Intercom’. I mashed the button and said, “Conny and Marco, if you can
hear me, don’t leave your rooms. I’ll find you.”

I hurried back to the
entrance to Block 1. A man with deep lesions on his face and arms ran past me,
heading for the exit. He glanced at me with solid red eyes, but he didn’t stop.
In the hallway, several other former inmates milled about, all of them in the
late stages of infection. The men who had been shooting at me were nowhere to
be seen.

I forced myself to walk
a normal past, worried that someone might be more enticed to chase me if I were
running. The infected inmates stared at me as I walked toward the far end of
the hall.

A woman stumbled out of
a nearby cell, coughing blood onto the floor. I covered my mouth as she
approached, sticking close to the opposite wall. She turned and lunged for me
and grabbed my shirt, trying to pull me closer. I shoved her backward and she
slammed into the wall.

Hands grabbed my neck
from behind and pulled me close to an old man whose face looked like it had
been turned inside-out by lesions. He tried to scream at me but only managed a
guttural hiss from deep in his throat.

I shot him once in the
leg and he dropped to the floor.

Heads snapped up to
look at me as I waved my gun at the other infected in the hallway. They backed
away as I walked past. As soon as I was too far out of reach, they ignored me
and huddled in a group against the wall, pawing at each other for comfort.

It reminded me of
Levino and Grayson in the lab in Seattle. There had been a wall between them,
but they spent hours standing just on the other side from each other, as close
as they could get.

“Paul,” said a scratchy
voice from the cell at the end of the hall.

I left the huddling group
of infected and walked into the cell. The room stank like death. Conny lay in
her cot, a blood-soaked white sheet pulled up to her neck. She tried to smile
when she saw me, but it was obviously painful. Her eyes were bloodshot, but not
yet solid red.

“Hey,” I said gently as
I walked into the cell.

“Don’t!” she shouted
with sudden force, leaning away. “You stay back, Paul.”

I stopped halfway to
her cot, feeling helpless, then I sank to the floor on my knees and sighed.

“Lookin’ good.”

She laughed, then
winced in pain. Her eyes closed and she rested her head on the cot.

“I bet I don’t look as
bad as you,” she said. “We took quite a tumble out of that truck.”

“Where’s Marco?” I asked.

“They took him away.
Into the hills. They had guns.”

“You haven’t seen him
since?”

She shook her head
weakly.

“I’m so sorry, Conny.”
My eyes watered and tears spilled down my cheeks. “We never should have stopped
here.”

“There’s still time to
find a cure,” she whispered. “But you’re going to have to do it without me.”

She gasped and her body
jerked as if her spine would snap. She looked at me, and I could see the blood
vesicles bursting in the whites of her eyes as red flowed in to cover her
pupils.

“Hold me, Paul!” she
whispered, reaching out with her hands. “Hold me, please.”

I shook my head, unable
to speak. I remembered what she said before we came to Townsend. She said she
didn’t want to go out like Dan and Roger, losing their minds at the end.

Tears blurred my vision
as I stood. The revolver felt heavy in my hand as I aimed it at Conny. She
rolled out of her cot, the white sheet falling off her body to reveal shredded
clothes soaked into deep lesions which covered her from head to toe.

Then she stopped and
stared at me with solid red eyes. Her next words were barely audible. “Shoot
me, Paul. I can’t fight it.”

I was still shaking my
head as she lurched forward, her hands grabbing for my neck.

When I pulled the
trigger, I told myself it was to save me from infection, and to spare her from
the next few minutes of pain. But that was only part of it. I did it so I didn’t
have to see Conny bash her head into the wall until it split open, like Dan
Grayson did in Seattle.

I left the building in
a daze, stopping at the control panel just long enough to open every cell door
in the hope that some of those who weren’t infected made it out alive.

E
mma was still outside the school when I got back to the center
of town. Unsurprisingly, the women in charge of watching the children didn’t
put up too much of a fuss when they saw the gun in my hand. I only had one
bullet left, but I kept that fact to myself.

I knelt next to Emma in
the sand and she looked up at me.

“Do you want to stay
here or come with me?” I asked.

She looked around at
the other kids, then at the adults. She lifted her arms and I scooped her up.
Then I knelt next to Donna’s son.

“How about you? You
want to take a trip?”

He stared at Emma for a
long moment, then he ran over to one of the women and hugged her legs.

“Any of you have a
car?” I asked as I stood.

They stared at me
silently, eyes wide with fear.

“Okay, then,” I said.

Emma hugged my neck as
I walked to the main intersection. People stopped and stared when they saw the
gun, but no one said a word. I was about to start harassing the townsfolk for
car keys when Donna came storming over, leading a group of scowling men with
rifles.

I raised my revolver
and leveled it at her head. She stopped in her tracks and held up a hand for
the men to do the same.

“You think you can
shoot all of us before you catch a bullet?” she asked.

I shrugged. “As long as
I get you first.”

“Just who do you think
you are, you son of a bitch?!” she raged, her face turning beet red.

“I’m the guy who just
shot his infected friend. I’m the guy who should have had plenty of time to
cure her, but instead I was poisoned.”

The men behind Donna
looked at her briefly when I mentioned the poisoning.

“We’re trying to build
something here,” she said. “Something that will outlast the rest of the world.
What gives you the right to barge in here and tell us how to live?”

“What gives you the
right to tell these people the same?”

“They elected me!” she
screeched.

Quite the crowd had
gathered around us at this point. Any shots fired would have likely taken down
the wrong people.

“You know what?” she
said, throwing up her hands. “Shoot this idiot. I’m done talking.”

The men with rifles
stepped forward. A couple of them had a mean gleam in their eyes, that
unhinged, recently-found-out-I-could-kill gleam. The rest looked at each other,
hesitant to follow her order.

The mean ones, though,
they responded eagerly, despite the little girl in my arms. I lowered Emma
gently to the ground.

The closet man sighted
down his rifle and rested his finger on the trigger. He squeezed it
ever-so-slightly, preparing to pull.

The crowd around us
gasped.

The sky exploded with blinding
light on the northern horizon, then faded to a brilliant pinpoint star. The
star expanded and blinked out. The clouds evaporated to reveal a giant, burning
mushroom cloud swelling up from the earth.

“Oh my God,” Donna said
in a monotone voice.

Everyone jumped as
another burst of light erupted to the south. A second mushroom cloud billowed
upward, curling under at the edges as its inside burned with yellow-orange
fire.

The screaming started,
and soon the crowd was shoving others out of the way in a mad panic. I picked
up Emma and turned to see that the men with rifles had run off with everyone
else, leaving me and Donna standing there alone.

“Now everyone just calm
down!” she shouted. Her mouth opened and closed as she stuttered over her words.
“Now, listen! Everyone just…everyone just settle down! We made it this far. We
can handle this!”

But no one listened.
Her authority had collapsed under a heavy blanket of chaos.

“You should go to your
son,” I said over the noise. “He’ll be frightened.”

She stared around at
everyone as they ran away, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“You’re
son
,” I
said again.

She nodded, barely
hearing me, then wandered off to be pushed back and forth by people running past.

I ran for the nearest
parking lot and started checking cars. I ran my fingers along the undersides,
searching for a magnetic lockbox with an extra key. The fifth car I checked was
a Nissan sedan with a rusty roof. The key was hiding in a box under the rear
bumper.

The engine started easily
and the tank was almost full. With Emma belted in to the passenger seat, I drove
out of Townsend, heading for Rapid City.

O
nly a single AM radio station was still broadcasting. It was a
weak signal out of Casper, Wyoming. The newscaster spoke a mile a minute,
obviously crying, stopping every few seconds to sniff or curse. He reported
that ten atomic bombs had been detonated within the United States so far. The
majority hit big cities, but several were dropped on smaller towns, most near
the center of the country.

The reason for the
attack was unknown.

The list of major
metropolitan areas that were hit included New York City, D.C., Philadelphia,
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, and San Francisco.

San Francisco.

My home had been wiped
off the map. The truth was that I felt like a drifter ever since Cassidy
disappeared, but it had been comforting to know there was a place for me
somewhere in the world.

Emma slept soundly as I
drove south and turned onto I-90. It didn’t surprise me in the least to find
that Donna lied about the damage to the highway. It was wide open.

I occasionally glanced
at the rearview mirror, at the mushroom cloud past Townsend that filled the
sky. As if we didn’t have our hands full enough with the epidemic, now people
were dropping bombs on each other. I wondered if any other countries had been
hit.

I had just woken up
from a five-day nap, so the eight hours to Rapid City were a breeze. The sun
was setting as I drove past a sign welcoming us to town. Emma was awake now,
sitting upright and looking out the window at an empty city.

Unlike some of the
other towns I’d seen where everyone had bolted in a hurry, leaving their doors
open and belongings scattered in the streets, Rapid City was pristine. It
seemed as if the inhabitants had vanished rather than evacuated in a mad dash
for safety. The few cars that remained were parked neatly. None of the stores
had been looted, or at least none of their windows had been broken. It was
spooky.

I drove through the
empty streets, to the other side of town. It wasn’t hard to find the pharmaceutical
compound. PharmaCor was a company that liked everyone in the city to know how
many jobs they brought to the area, so there were signs plastered all over the
place.

The road leading to the
facility shot in a straight line out of town to an expansive complex set
against the backdrop of a nearby mountain. Most of the building was covered in
dark glass windows which glimmered in the light of the setting sun.

At the end of the long
road leading to the complex, I saw the dim outline of a small airplane.

Emma sat up higher in
her seat and nervously gripped her door handle as the heat fog over the road
vanished to reveal three people standing next to the plane, watching our
approach.

“It’s okay,” I told
her. “They’re friends.”

I stopped the car a
short distance from the plane and got out. Flint walked over, shaking his head
and smiling.

“You really had us
scared, Paul.”

Before I could respond,
he enveloped me in a bear hug and squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Sherri and Frank Walker
stood by their plane. They waved at me as Flint tightened his hug. I finally
tapped his shoulders and he stepped back.

“Missed you, man,” he
said.

“I can tell.” It was
hard to not sound like I was scolding him when I said, “What the hell are you
doing here, Flint?”

“We came as soon as we
could because you never called!”

“What are you talking
about?”

“You said you would
call when you got to Rapid City. I figured something went wrong when I didn’t
hear from you. That was four days ago. I knew you’d make it here eventually,
and I got tired of waiting.”

“We all did,” said a
woman from behind the plane.

I recognized the voice
instantly. Maria ran over and nearly tackled me with a hug.

“Oh, Paul, it’s so good
to see you!” She leaned back and put on her fake pouting face, the one I had
seen so many times while we were dating. “But you said you would come for me,
and instead you sent Flint!”

“Hey!” Flint said,
looking offended. “I got you out, didn’t I?”

“I’m just happy to see
you,” Maria said, putting her hand on my cheek.

“You, too,” I said
honestly. “But how did you guys get here? I thought you said the lab in San
Fran was on lockdown.”

“They’re packing up
shop and heading out,” Flint said, “Some research base they built up north
where they’re shipping all the remaining virus samples.”

“What about the vaccine
distribution?”

“They gave it up,” Maria
said. “They refused to make any more.”

“Said it was a misappropriation
of resources,” Flint said. “Frank and Sherri managed to sneak us out while
everyone was packing up for the move.”

The two pilots were
still dressed in the same clothes they wore before we parted ways near Seattle:
ruddy jeans and worn leather jackets over black t-shirts.

“Flint told me they
wouldn’t let you leave San Francisco,” I said to Sherri and Frank. “I’m sorry
you couldn’t go see your daughter.”

“We were lucky to make
it out before the bombs hit,” said Sherri.

Frank held her hand and
smiled. “So was our daughter. We sent a message as soon as we landed, and she
got the hell out the city. Headed inland.”

“But who is this little
lady?” asked Sherri, walking over to the car.

“That’s Emma.”

I introduced her to
everyone, and Sherri didn’t wait for an invitation before reaching in through
the passenger window and picking her up.

Flint and I turned to
look at the PharmaCor building, which shimmered like a mirage in the setting
sun.

“Half the country’s been
nuked to hell, Paul,” he said.

“Who did it?”

He shook his head and
scratched his beard. “No one has a clue. Theories range from North Korea to
American-born terrorists. The bigger question is
why
anyone would do
such a thing.”

“Maybe we weren’t the
only country who got hit,” I said.

“Haven’t heard about
any other attacks.”

“We’re in a blind
panic. Our infrastructure will fail if things continue the way they’re going.
If anyone wanted to take a swing and knock us off our pedestal, now’s the
perfect time.”

“Yeah, but the virus is
everywhere
. There isn’t a country in the world that isn’t dealing with
containment. Who thinks about dropping atomic bombs at a time like this?”

“Well, that’s a
question for someone else. Right now, we have other problems.”

Flint sighed and
squinted at the shining building.

“You still want to go
in there?” he asked.

“We don’t have a
choice. Whatever Xander brought back from Hawaii might be our only chance at
finding a true cure. And I have to know what happened to Cassidy, even if it’s
bad news.”

“Well, I’m not letting
you go in there alone.”

“I didn’t figure you
would.”

“I’m going, too,” said Maria.

“We don’t know what’s
waiting for us in there,” I said.

“You’re forgetting all
of our adventures, Paul. I’ve saved your skin just as many times as you’ve
saved mine.”

I grinned. “I remember.
Just trying to keep the people that I care about from getting hurt.”

Flint slapped me on the
back as he walked past.

“You just worry about
yourself, partner. You look like you need to rest a hell of a lot more than we
do.”

Maria caught up to him,
and they walked down the road together, toward the PharmaCor building.

Emma rested her head on
Sherri’s shoulder. I brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face.

“You mind keeping an
eye on her while we’re inside?”

“This precious thing?”
said Sherri. “Not at all.”

“I think we have some
food around here somewhere,” Frank said, hopping up into the plane.

“You don’t have some
place to be?” I asked.

Sherri smiled, but her
eyes were sad. “Nowhere else.”

I looked back in the
direction of Townsend, and my heart sank at the thought of those I left behind.

It felt like I had already
made too many mistakes on my journey, and that the end of it was getting
farther and farther away. There was still a lot of time to screw up, but maybe
also time to get something right.

As I followed after
Flint and Maria, heading toward the looming PharmaCor building, I hoped we
could handle whatever waited inside.