Outbreak (32 page)

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” I ask. “You heard Owen. The plan is already in motion. And there are so many of them. If one got killed, there’d be twenty more just waiting to take his place.”

“I still should have shot him.”

“No. Listen. There’s no point telling Jayden that Owen is dead. Just tell her what we know about the virus. That has to be worth more than one dead drifter.”

“Tell her
what
, exactly? That we just sat there and listened to the drifters plot the compound’s destruction and then walked out with no trouble? How are we going to explain how we found out where they were meeting? Or why we didn’t take out Malcolm when we had the chance? She’s going to think we were in on the whole thing!”

“Just tell her we couldn’t risk getting killed in there . . . we had to get out so we could warn the board.”

“No. We’re sticking to the original plan.” 

“We can’t just say nothing!” I splutter. “We could
save
them. We have to tell the board what the drifters are planning!”

Eli shakes his head. “Owen wouldn’t have told us anything about it if there was any chance we could slow this thing down.”

“We have to try!”

“I know . . .” He lets out an exasperated sigh, and I can tell he’s giving it some serious thought.

Finally he seems to come to his senses. “We’ll warn them, okay? Just let me come up with a plan first. I can’t think straight right now.”

I bite my lip. I don’t want to delay warning the board even by a minute, but since we seem to have reached some sort of an agreement, I let it go.

“We’ll find a way out,” he murmurs. “I promise.”

“What?”

“If the virus really has been introduced to the compound, we’ll find a way to get out of there. You, me, Sawyer, Celdon, Miles . . . whoever we can take with us.”

So
that’s
what’s on his mind. Oddly, I hadn’t even thought about a contingency plan, but if someone in the compound is already infected, we’re going to need one.

We can’t afford to waste any more time, so I stand up and hold out a hand for Eli. The sun is still bearing down with oppressive intensity, but we need to find the rover to send up a distress signal.

The walk back to the vehicle is much longer than I remembered. It’s parked right where we left it on the side of the road, and the back tire is completely deflated.

Eli reaches inside and hits the tiny red button on the dashboard, and an uneasy feeling creeps over me.

Was Owen right?
I wonder.
Is returning to the compound tantamount to suicide?

We don’t know anything about the virus except that it killed thousands of people in a matter of weeks. We didn’t ask any of the important questions. We don’t know how it’s transmitted or how quickly it spreads. We don’t even know how the drifters introduced the virus to 119 in the first place.

Eli and I wait in strained silence for nearly an hour. I know we should still be watching for drifters, but after being crammed in a church with hundreds of them, one random straggler seems manageable by comparison.

Finally, I hear the soft
whir
of an engine. 

Because the rovers are painted to blend in with the desert, I don’t see the rescue vehicle until it’s about 200 yards away. 

My heart sinks when I see Seamus sitting in the driver’s seat. He’s clutching the steering wheel as though the thing isn’t self-driving, and he’s wearing a mask despite the vehicle’s airtight seal.

When the rover slows to a stop, Eli steps around back so he won’t get stuck riding alongside Seamus.

“Where are your masks?” Seamus asks incredulously when I slide into the passenger seat.

I look back at Eli, unprepared for this line of questioning.

“Uh . . . we lost them,” he mutters, buckling his seat belt and avoiding Seamus’s probing gaze in the rearview mirror.

“How did you lose them?”

“It’s a long story.”

Seamus doesn’t look satisfied with this response, but he punches the “home” button on the dashboard. The rover hums a little louder, turns, and starts accelerating in the direction of the compound.

“No trouble on the way here?” I ask.

“No. Weird, huh? It’s eerie when nobody’s shooting at you out here.”

I force a smile to hide my disgust, and a strained silence falls over the three of us.

I can’t see Eli’s face, so I can’t tell if he’s thinking about Owen, figuring out how to tell the board what we know, or trying to come up with a plan to get us out of the compound. 

“So what happened to your rover?” Seamus asks.

“Sorry, Duffy,” says Eli in a sharp voice. “Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to — not until we’re debriefed, at least. And last time I checked, you aren’t Jayden.”

Seamus blanches, and I turn slightly so I can give Eli a warning look. I’m not Seamus’s biggest fan either, but there’s no reason to piss off Jayden’s right-hand man.

“Just trying to make conversation,” he says.

After that, time slows to a crawl. The ride back to the compound is infinitely longer than the trip out to the town, and when the tall silver compound finally comes into view, I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anything in my life.

The rover makes a clean sweep around the structure, and the hangar doors slide open automatically.

The tension seems to magnify in the small space as we wait for the doors to close, and as soon as they do, a trio of med interns in hazmat suits shoots out of the side doors. 

I’m relieved to see Sawyer is among them. I get out of the rover and move toward her automatically, and the others descend upon the vehicle to supervise Seamus’s and Eli’s decontamination.

Sawyer steers me out of the hangar into a much larger decontamination chamber. Half a dozen enclosed shower stalls are lined up in a row, and I realize this must be where the ExCon guys go after a long day of work. I shudder as the cold water pelts me clean and wait for the light above the next door to turn green.

Sawyer leads me through to the secondary chamber, where she strips me down to my shorts and tank and shimmies out of her hazmat suit.

When we’re as clean as we can be, she punches a large blue button to retract the doors, and I plop down in the wheelchair waiting on the other side.

It propels me toward the megalift, and as soon as the doors close behind us, Sawyer lets out an enormous sigh of relief. 

“Oh my god, Harper! I was so worried!”

“Why? What happened?”

Sawyer shakes her head so her hair whips back and forth. She looks more frazzled than usual — as though she hasn’t slept in days.

“They’ve had us on standby for the last twenty hours! They received a message that your rover had been compromised, and they were talking about deploying an emergency rescue crew to bring you back. We were standing by in case . . .” She trails off for a minute, looking sick. 

“I thought you were seriously hurt. I didn’t like them sending you out in that thing in the first place.”

“Hey! It’s okay. I’m okay.”

Sawyer’s eyes are wide behind her glasses, giving her an almost cartoonish expression. 

“When I went for Health and Rehab, I never thought I’d be waiting around to get horrible news about you.” She purses her lips and stares at the corner of the lift, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

That elicits a sharp pang of guilt in my stomach, and I reach up to wrap an arm around her. “I’m sorry you were scared. But honestly, this isn’t what I signed up for either.”

I’m just trying to keep the mood light, but Sawyer’s face falls. “Oh god. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m such an idiot! Forget I said anything.”

I bat her apology away. “It’s okay.”

The megalift dings, and the doors slide open to reveal a bustling tunnel in the medical ward. Sawyer moves to disembark, but Jayden is blocking our path.

“What the
hell
is going on?” she barks.

“Commander,” I say in a curt voice, trying to filter out my own contempt.

Her gaze snaps onto me. “We need to talk.”

“O-
kay
. . .”

“Now!”

Sawyer clears her throat behind me. “Um, Commander? I’m sorry, but I can’t release Cadet Riley until she’s been medically cleared.”

Even though I can’t see her face, I know Sawyer must be blushing profusely. She
hates
standing up to her superiors, but by god, Sawyer always follows the rules. 

Jayden stares at her blankly, unaccustomed to having her authority challenged. Normally, she just intimidates people from other sections until they give her what she wants.

Her lips tighten as if she’s sucking on her teeth, but she musters up a fake smile and gives Sawyer a tiny nod. “Of course. Silly me. I just jumped the gun a little, I guess. Please let me know as soon as she’s available for questioning.”

Then, to my utter amazement, Jayden turns and walks away. I bet she’s going to lurk nearby to ambush Eli, but I never see where she goes. 

Sawyer maxes out the speed on my wheelchair, and we slide into the exam room farthest from the waiting area. As soon as the door closes behind me, all the problems I’d been trying to deny come crashing down around me.

Eli made me promise not to say anything to anyone about the virus until he came up with a better cover story, but seeing Jayden reawakened all the anxiety I felt listening to the drifters’ scheme.

“I need to tell you something,” I say to Sawyer, glancing back at the closed door.

“Okay. Spill.”

I take a deep breath and get out of the wheelchair, pacing to relieve some of my pent-up nerves. “We have a problem. You know that virus that wiped out 119?”

Sawyer nods. “I’ve been studying the exam notes to see if I can figure out what it was, but I haven’t heard of any virus that causes those symptoms and moves that quickly.”

“That’s because the virus came from some government facility in Colorado. The samples should have just died when the lab shut down, but a bunch got transferred to one of the compounds in the Rocky Mountains before Death Storm.”

“That would explain why none of the antiviral meds worked,” says Sawyer. “They’d never seen that virus before. Hang on. How did it get from Colorado to 119?”

“The drifters planted it there to wipe out the compound.”

Sawyer looks stunned and then panicked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they purposely introduced the virus as a biological weapon. They’re using it to bring down the compounds one by one.”

I launch into the story of everything that happened on our deployment, and Sawyer listens with rapt attention, trying to absorb every detail. When I get to the part about spying on the drifters’ rally, her eyes grow so wide it looks as though they might pop right out of her head.

Sawyer doesn’t really understand how deadly the drifters are, but the idea of survivors is still so new to her that it seems impossible that there could be hundreds congregating twenty miles from the compound.

“Owen said we’re next,” I finish. “He said the plan was already in motion.
What does that mean
? Is the virus already here? Do you think somebody in the compound is infected?”

“It sounds like it,” Sawyer breathes. 

“At first I thought maybe he was bluffing, but it doesn’t make sense that he would just let us leave unless he was confident that the virus was already here.”

Sawyer looks a little sick and backs up so she can support herself on the exam counter. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know! I have to tell someone, don’t I?”

She nods slowly.

“But Eli wants to wait until we have a better story. He thinks it’s going to look like we were in on it or something.

“If Jayden finds out we were there and didn’t take out Malcolm, she’s going to freak. The board’s going to be looking for
someone
to pin this on, and Jayden will probably try to make it look like we’re traitors so she doesn’t get blamed.”

“Plus there’s the whole thing about you guys not actually killing Owen.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

“God, Eli’s plan sucks,” Sawyer mutters, cracking her knuckles nervously and staring up at the ceiling. She’s got on her analytical face, and I know she’s still processing all the information — too shocked to offer any real solution just yet.

“How the hell did they introduce the virus to 119?” she asks, more to herself than to me. “Recon operatives are always kept in the medical ward for observation, and patient zero wasn’t a Recon guy anyway. He was Health and Rehab.”

Sawyer closes her eyes in concentration. “Even if the virus was passed from a Recon guy to someone in the medical ward, the Recon worker would have presented with symptoms first . . .”

“I just want to know what he meant when he said the plan was already in motion. I mean, do you think they plan to ambush the compound again? We have people patrolling the perimeter, so . . .” I trail off, slowly latching on to Sawyer’s train of thought. 

“Hang on . . . Patient zero belonged to Health and Rehab?”

Sawyer sighs loudly, probably frustrated that I interrupted whatever breakthrough she was so close to. “Yeah, he worked in the decontamination unit . . .”

Suddenly, Sawyer’s eyes snap open, and a look of pure dread spreads across her face.

“Harper . . .”

“What?”

Judging by her expression, I can tell she’s worked out some horrible conclusion that I just haven’t been sharp enough to grasp.

“Patient zero worked in the decontamination unit.”

“So?”

“So . . . the decontamination unit is how people usually smuggle pre–Death Storm contraband into the compound.”

“People like Shane?”

“Yeah. People like Shane sometimes pay Recon workers to bring stuff back from the Fringe. They’ve cracked down on illegal smuggling recently, but sometimes Health and Rehab workers still let things slip through.”

She lets out a shallow breath, staring at me with a look that can only be described as devastation. 

“
What
?” 

She swallows. “The plan the drifters put in motion . . . It was you and Eli.”