Sanctuary (19 page)

His eyes darted from the shoulder to the bridge several times, and he seemed to be sizing up his chance of escape. Hugh got an uneasy feeling about this newcomer following the children who held hands and walked together. He worried that the linebacker would rush through the children’s arms like a backwards game of Red Rover. The soldier focused on Phillip and pulled the gun from his shoulder, taking a tighter grip on the barrel.

Phillip straightened, and his eyes grew wider. He stopped. The remainder of the group continued to move forward without noticing the sudden change in him. Hugh realized that the man’s face appeared to be slightly swollen compared to before. Did Phillip still have a weapon? Hugh couldn’t tell for sure.

His heart began to race, and things seemed to move slowly. Phillip extracted himself from the crowd and started to run. The soldier leveled his gun and stepped forward. One of the women screamed, and the group rushed forward, gathering together like a scared flock of chickens. The soldier rushed forward and yelled at Phillip, “FREEZE! Get on the ground!”

Stopping in his tracks and dropping to his knees obediently, Phillip put his hands behind his head. He faced Hugh, his wide eyes like bloodshot pits in his black skin. The soldier cocked his weapon and pressed the barrel against the man’s head. Hugh swallowed hard and stepped toward them when an idea struck him. “Wait!”

The soldier and Phillip both looked toward Hugh in confusion.

He rushed out the words before someone interrupted him or a bullet was fired. “The military must have scientists studying this problem, right? I have a theory about the infected that might be considered a cure. Don’t shoot this man. I know he’s changing, but there has to be some way to keep him from hurting himself while we test my theory. Just let me talk to the doctors and scientists on base. I think I know something that they may not have realized.”

Phillip furrowed his brows. The soldier narrowed his eyes and pulled the radio off his belt. “We have a 14-22 here, a live one, not changed all the way yet. And there’s a man here who says he has a cure. Should we contact the Colonel?”

The answer came after a short moment of silence. “Affirmative. He is en route.”

When they pulled Mickey fro
m
her grip, Jennie thought she would cry. Her voice cracked. “How long, again?”

The female soldier wore fatigues under a lab coat with a nametag that read Sgt. White. Her eyes were wide and sympathetic. “This room has several toys and books for him to keep from being bored. It’s only two hours of quarantine; longer is unnecessary. You will be in the room immediately next door.”

Swallowing hard to keep down the sob that wanted to surface, Jennie looked around the room for any danger. “Can’t I stay with him?”

“I’m afraid not. It’s for the best. If he shows symptoms, he could be a danger to you, and if you were to show symptoms…” The sergeant let Jennie draw her own conclusions.

She nodded, her fingers knotting together in front of her to keep her hands from shaking. Mickey stepped in and started searching through the toys available. The walls were painted with a rainbow of colors and a border made of cute teddy bears holding hands. Jennie couldn’t stop staring at the large mirror hanging on the wall, knowing that they would be watching him from the room on the other side. “Mickey, will you be okay in here for a little bit while I get checked? You’ll be safe, I promise.”

“Will Alicia and Aaron come in here, too?” He turned over a plastic duck full of building blocks and started arranging them by color without looking up.

“No, they will be in another room. I’m just making sure you’ll be okay here while I get checked on, too, okay?”

He nodded agreeably, focused on separating the colors and joining the reds together.

“I’ll be back in just a little bit, okay?”

“Okay.”

She nodded and swallowed the lump down again. The tension in her shoulders made her neck stiff. She had a hard time turning her head either direction. Sgt. White led her down the hallway to the very next door on the right. She led Jennie in and turned on the overhead light. Within, the walls were a plain, windowless white with a white table and two upright plastic chairs. One wall had what Jennie could only assume was another observation mirror. If there were not a small stack of magazines in the center of the table, she would nearly assume the room was for interrogation.

“Will you need to use the restroom facilities before we begin?”

She shook her head and sat in the nearest beige chair, her back to the mirror. She did not want to think about the eyes that might be watching her. The plastic pressed cold against her back, making her shiver. A click signaled the closing of the door. The buzzing of the overhead florescent light reminded her of the white noise the aliens made outside, but this was almost more invasive, filling every corner with the constant sound. Without a second thought, she reached for the stack and pulled it toward her. The room must have been specifically for female refugees like herself. The magazines focused on women’s issues, including
Marie Claire
and
Cosmo
.

After looking through the pictures of two magazines, she found she could do nothing more than browse. She couldn’t concentrate enough to read a single article. Gooseflesh rose on her arms because the room’s temperature was just a bit colder than she would have liked. The chair scraped the linoleum tiles as she pushed it back to stand. She paced the room in a circle from corner to corner, counting the number of steps across each side. In her growing boredom, she longed for a clock on the wall.

Hugh

Hugh nodded and sat bac
k
in the orange plastic chair, his hands clasped in front of him. He had only been waiting about five minutes when he began to stare at his own reflection in the mirror. The long rectangular speaker above the mirror spit static before the Colonel’s voice came through. “Mr. Harris, our best men haven’t come up with the same theory you have proposed, but they believe it is worth looking into. In the interest of science, we have decided to keep Bryant in one of these rooms without chair or table. He will be under surveillance for five days along with any other member of your party who shows symptoms during this quarantine.”

Hugh nodded, hoping he might have saved his new friend’s life. “I can assure you that no other member of our party will need to be kept. I’ve been with each member for over twenty-four hours with the exception of Phillip Bryant.”

“This is not the time to judge the weight of a man’s words or honesty. There can be no room for error. Therefore, we subject everyone to the same quarantine.”

“Understood, Colonel.”

“If you should be released after this short separation, it would be useful to our team if you are willing to join and observe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good to hear. One hour and forty-five minutes remain. Please rest and relax for that time.”

Hugh stifled a yawn, nodded, and put his head in his folded arms on the cold plastic table. With his eyes closed, he let the tension leave as he relaxed his shoulders. His mind wandered, visually revisiting the video footage he’d seen and reconsidering the theories that he’d come up with. Could he be wrong?

He must have dozed off. It seemed almost instantly that he heard a buzzer, and the door opened. Colonel Wesley and an armed MP entered the room. “Mr. Harris, this is Sgt. Liles. He’ll be escorting us to the watch room for Phillip Bryant. His infection has brought on the change. If it’s not something that you’ve experienced fully, it would be good for you to see, scientifically speaking.”

Hugh nodded, stood, and followed the two camouflage-clad soldiers. His eyes felt dry and itchy, and he wiped a bit of drool from his chin. Even though it had only seemed like seconds, he’d definitely fallen asleep. The narrow hallway had a row of doors to each side, always in pairs, a room for the quarantine, and another for surveillance. Every one of the white doors had a number and a letter in gold lettering on black placards. He walked between the two men as the Colonel approached a door marked 14B.

He knocked twice and opened it. The wailing struck Hugh before he even stepped inside the room. Within, a dim light exposed two lab-coated men and a woman. Each of them had tall black boots peeking underneath their long smocks and held clipboards in their hands. The wall appeared as a window and could only be the mirror from the other side.

Phillip had become a full-on wailer. If his skin hadn’t been so very black in color, it would have been as red as his bloodshot eyes. Foam frothed from the corners of his mouth, and he pressed his lips against the mirror in an attempt to bite it. And then there was the moaning. Blood dripped down in rivulets from his head and fleshy pieces of scalp were underneath his fingernails.

It had been one thing to watch the infected women from a distance, another to see them on television. But this. What Hugh saw now caused a visceral response reminiscent of a punch in the gut. His theories ran out the window, and he felt a combination of pity and fear.

“We’ve observed from other infected parties that this behavior lasts a full five days. No matter what sort of injuries they incur while in this state, they continue to move and behave as if alive.” The female lab coat was the nearest to him and had begun talking. She was about a full twelve inches shorter and a decade older than Hugh. Her ash-blond hair was pulled back in a tight bun. A blue ink pen poked through it like a hair pin.

“What happened to the others after five days?”

“They all died,” the taller of the two men answered with a deep baritone. He pushed his glasses up his nose and wiped his brow. “However, if your theory is correct, they may have died of injuries incurred rather than the disease itself.”

“Yes,” the woman nodded hard. “Most of the bite victims have huge gaping wounds. They would have easily bled to death if the infection hadn’t caused this strange zombie-like behavior. Additionally, many of the ones we’ve gotten for experimentation were either shot or injured in other, possibly fatal, ways. This specimen appears to be almost uninjured all together.”

Hugh furrowed his eyebrows at how the scientist called Phillip a specimen. He looked back at the man he could have become friends with if given more time. The quiet strength Phillip possessed had become a terrified panic. His calm demeanor transformed into a contorted chaos of swollen features and bloody scars. But still, Hugh could see the human underneath. Deep in those pupils, Phillip still remained. And as long as he didn’t injure himself in a mortal way, maybe he could be saved. Hugh breathed deep and let the words come out barely above a whisper. “I believe he’ll make it. It’s only five days.”

Brad

As Brad stood at th
e
end of the hallway and watched Jennie and her brother reunite on the other end, he changed his mind. He was bored with her. In the close quarters of the church, she’d been an interesting way to mess with his brother. But in reality, he could see a relationship with the girl going nowhere. Her virginal ways and empty checking account wouldn’t feed any of his needs. In fact, on the broad expanse of the island military base, he didn’t need to even look his brother in the face again, if he wanted. He turned away and headed for the marked exit.

The wind greeted him as the door opened out, and the oversized sun dipped low in the sky. Only an hour or so until sunset, he imagined. Out of habit, he pulled out his cell phone, but it had died days ago. And, he had no charger. A crowd of soldiers jogged past, chanting in an even rhythm with their footsteps. Those were people who would likely leave the safety of the compound to fight the battle outside. The losing battle.

Brad looked around and considered where he might go from here. Behind him, the door squeaked open again. A woman in a lab coat stepped out. Her fire-engine red lipstick stuck out in contrast to her black hair pulled tight in a bun and the common camouflage garb worn by every Tom, Dick, and Harry at the base.

She had an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips and was rummaging through her purse when she walked right into Brad. She looked up with her amber eyes and smiled wide. Lipstick stuck to her top teeth in a provocative way, and she smiled. “Oh, excuse me.”

Now this was something interesting.