Genesis Plague (43 page)

F
lint and Emma disappeared from view as Sherri piloted the
Cessna away from the PharmaCor building. Frank flicked a switch on the console
in front of his seat next to Sherri and his voice crackled in my headset.

“Doin’ okay?”

“Been better,” I said.
“How about you two? You’re the ones that have to haul me so far north the
plane’s engine will freeze.”

Sherri smiled. “We’ve
been better, too. And don’t you worry about the plane. She’s tough enough.”

I told them the
location of the research base in Greenland from the coordinates listed in the
PharmaCor binder. Frank assured me we had plenty of gas to get to a refueling
station just over halfway to the base.

The majority of the
flight was spent thinking about what I could have done differently over the
past couple of weeks. My mind offered up no shortage of possibilities. I even
managed to sleep for a few hours, waking up as we landed for refueling at
Arctic Bay Airport in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The airport didn’t look
to support much in the way of occupants to begin with, but now the place was
utterly abandoned. It was so remote I had a feeling that, even if someone were
there, they would have looked at us like we had antennae growing out of our
heads and asked, “
What
virus?”

The wind picked up
while we were on the ground, and Sherri dialed in to a weather station while we
waited for Frank to top off the tank outside.

“I don’t think we
brought thick enough jackets,” she said, blowing into her hands.

The weather station
gave nothing but static, and Sherri clicked it off as she looked out at the
abandoned arctic airport.

“Don’t see why anybody
here would have to evacuate,” she said. “Probably safer than anywhere else I
can think of.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “Well, except maybe
for where we’re going.”

We caught our first
glimpse of Greenland a few hours later. It appeared as a vast field of white,
stretching from horizon to horizon.

Frank flipped a bank of
switches as Sherri descended, banking sharply.

“What’s going on?” I
asked.

“Thule Air Force Base,”
said Frank, pointing to the south. In the distance, I saw a geometric formation
of low buildings covered in snow. “Need to give it a wide berth in case they
don’t think we’re here to help.”

“Would they shoot us
down?”

He shrugged. “Their
comms have gone silent. Either nobody’s home, or they decided they got nothing
to say to anyone that isn’t them. Either way, it’s best to steer clear.”

As we flew north over
the mainland, details in the topography revealed a beautiful landscape draped
in pure white. Mountains thrust toward the sky in vast ranges. Deep glacier-cut
canyons scarred the ground.

“Think we’re getting’
close,” said Frank.

The plane shuddered, then
leveled out.

“Just a little
turbulence,” said Sherri. “Air’s a little thin up here. The cold don’t help
much, either.”

She descended to avoid
the stronger winds, taking the plane closer to the peaks of the jagged
mountains rising from below.

Frank adjusted his
microphone in front of his mouth.

“Arctic research base,
arctic research base. This is Cessna Three-Charlie-Romeo, requesting permission
to land, over.”

The walls of the plane
rattled as a flurry of snow blew past the windshield.

Frank flipped through
the different channels, repeating his request.

“HOLD ON!” screamed
Sherri.

The entire ground
seemed to swell up from below. A down-current of icy wind buffeted the top of
the plane, pushing us lower. Metal squealed. We were suddenly in a sea of
churning snow, unable to see more than a few feet ahead.

Frank unbuckled his
harness and joined me in the back of the plane.

“Frank, what are you
doing?!” yelled Sherri.

I grabbed for my own
harness, having foolishly neglected it until then. Frank opened the door to a
storage compartment and pulled out the packing box filled with vials. He
stuffed the box under his shirt as Sherri screamed for him to strap in.

The snow parted at the
nose of the plane to reveal the ragged edge of a cliff. Sherri banked hard but
it was too late. The right wing was sheared clean off the body of the Cessna,
and the plane spun toward the ground like a javelin.

Frank couldn’t reach
his seat. He was pinned to the side of the cabin by the force of the spin.
Sherri looked back at him, and an understanding passed between them.

I tightened the straps
of my harness and closed my eyes as the ground rushed up to meet our plane.

I
trudged through the freezing Greenland blizzard like a
machine, lifting one booted foot after the other and stomping it down into the
hard white snow. I could no longer feel my legs. The cold sun blinked dimly on
the horizon like a dying headlamp, offering no warmth, before it was quickly
covered again by the storm.

There was ice in the
wind. It bit my exposed face, peeling back raw flesh – and thank God for the
ice, because one of the vials had broken in the crash, and I was infected.

I could
feel
the
microscopic terror crawling over my skin, making its home, working its death.

The wool cap over my
dark, shaggy hair only came halfway down my forehead. The tips of my exposed
locks were icicles. My beard and eyebrows were frozen solid. With every blink,
my eyelashes froze together and pulled apart like Velcro.

One foot, then the
other. That was what kept me going, that one myopic action. Simple walking, but
not so simple for a man thigh-deep in snow who just crawled from the mangled
wreckage of an airplane.

I saw an amber light
ahead, through the slashing blizzard: the small glowing star that was my
destination. Behind me, the path I had cut through the snow was gone, filled in
by the blowing white. Somewhere back there was the Cessna, nose buried in the
hard ground, tail pointed at the sky. No wings. Those ripped off in the crash.

The mangled bodies of
my friends were back there, too, already covered by the quick snow.

In front of me was the
light. Between here and there was a wide field of perfectly flat, treacherously
calm fallen snow. The blizzard didn’t seem to touch the surface. White sworls
danced calmly over the smooth, unbroken plain, as if the rest of the world were
not in chaos.

With numb hands, I patted
the leather pouch tied around my waist to make sure it was still there. The
glass vials shifted reassuringly within.

As I trudged toward the
amber firefly stuck in the snow ahead – the welcome beacon of the research
facility that I hoped and prayed would have the answer – I had to force myself
not to think of Frank’s and Sherri’s broken bodies in the ice; to not think of
reaching into Frank’s open ribcage to pull out the wrapped vials of red liquid,
saved only because he didn’t let go of the small packing box and strap into his
chair during the crash.

All of the vials saved
but one.

I knew what it meant
when the drop of thick red liquid hit my exposed, bleeding, shaking hand. I
knew what it meant, but it didn’t matter. I was going to die out there in the
snow regardless, so what difference did it make if I had a little infection
when I checked out? I was going to bury these damned things as far down into
the snow as I could, so there was still one clean place left on that forsaken
planet.

And then the soft ping
of Sherri’s tracking monitor sounded from the cockpit. I scrambled past her
twisted body, already half-covered in snow, and tapped the cracked, dying
screen.

We had crashed only two
miles from the research facility.

Maybe I could make it.

Instead of lying down
next to my friends in the snow, instead of taking the easy way out and letting
humanity wallow in its downfall without the one small hope I carried in a
leather pouch around my waist, I forced myself to focus on the only thing that
would get me to that amber light ahead: one foot in front of the other, into
and out of the freezing snow.

Across the field of
smooth snow and ice, two hundred yards away, the blocky research facility was
nothing more than a dark outline in the background. The amber light flickered,
and for one terrifying moment I thought it was an illusion the whole time. Then
the shadow of a figure passed in front of the light. A small spark of orange
flared in the figure’s hands, briefly illuminating his face and the cigarette
in his mouth.

Whatever caution that
remained left me instantly. I ran across the smooth, white plain, shouting and
waving my arms. The ground was hard beneath the layer of soft snow, and some distant
part of my mind registered that I was running across ice.

I couldn’t be sure, but
I thought the man heard me. I shouted louder, and the glowing ember of his
cigarette turned in my direction—

—then the icy ground
below me cracked as if it were made of thin glass, and suddenly there was
nothing under my feet. One second I was running toward the research facility,
and the next I was falling through darkness, waiting for the impact.

I
awoke in a small, warm room with lime green walls, thick
blankets pulled up to my chin, cardiac monitor beeping gently in the corner.

Burning pain shot
through my ribcage when I tried to use my left arm to pull down the blankets.
My right arm worked well enough, and when I peeled back the thick sheets, I
stared dumbfounded at the black and purple flesh that covered my body. My left
leg was in a hard cast from ankle to hip, and my right was in a cast up to the
knee. My left arm was bound to my side, pinned down by tight bandages. Old
blood stains showed faintly through the bandages over my ribcage.

“Well, well, look who’s
up.”

A woman in a brown parka
and black snow pants strolled into my small room and checked the monitoring
equipment. Then she rested her palm on my forehead. Her features were pretty in
a rugged sort of way. Freckles and green eyes. Her red hair stuck out from the
back of a Texas Rangers baseball cap.

“Fever’s breaking,” she
said with a smile.

“Is this the research
base?” I whispered, unable to raise my voice any higher.

“Yep. You made it. I
don’t know how, but you did.”

“The…samples,” I said.
Every word took too much effort.

She hesitated a moment.
“We were able to save half of one vial. And lucky for you we got that much. We
formulated the first-gen cure while you were napping, based on the data
uploaded from the Seattle lab. You’re no longer infected.”

“What about the
permanent cure?” I asked. “Is half a vial enough?”

Her smile faltered.
“Well, we’re still working on that. Once you’re on your feet, we’re hoping you
can offer us some fresh perspective. There are only ten of us here, so we need
all the help we can get. Unless somebody falls out of the sky like you did, I
doubt we’ll be seeing anyone else for a long time.”

I looked around the
room and noticed a map of the area with three small red pushpins at the far
northern tip of Greenland, right on the border of the Arctic Ocean, near the
research base.

“What are those?” I
whispered.

“Those?” she asked,
pointing at the pushpins. “Location markers for the things we found in the ice.
We’re hoping they’ll help us find a cure.”

“What are they?”

“You won’t believe me
until you see them.”

I doubted that was
true, given my recent experiences.

“The others would never
forgive me if I spoiled the surprise,” she said. “Besides, you need motivation
if you’re going to hope to walk again before you’re eighty. Your femur was
shattered in a dozen places.”

She offered her hand,
and I winced as I shook it slowly.

“I’m Val,” she said.
“Let me be the first to officially welcome you to Research Base Four. We have
microwave dinners, watered-down whiskey, and sometimes even hot showers.” She
smiled as she stood. “Not too bad of a place to wait out the apocalypse.”