Connors
stopped and replied over her shoulder, “We’ve expanded our research and the doctor is now busy with other things. That’s why I called you here. Now come with me, please.”
Being at the beck and call of a civilian irked Cage
, but he followed the doctor nonetheless. She led him through the parlor and stopped at a white metal door with a keypad set where the knob should be. She swiped a card down its side and punched in a code. The door opened with a slight whoosh and cold air blew out.
“Before we go in, I need to know what your clearance is,” Connors said.
Tired of all the secrecy in a world where spies were a thing of the past and staying alive was everyone’s main concern, Cage answered, “Six foot one in my stocking feet.”
This elicited a smile from Connors
and she said, “I know this might seem trying to you, but it’s very serious. What I’m about to show you is no laughing matter.”
With that, she went through the door. Not sure what to expect, Cage followed and was shocked by what he saw. The entire first floor of the farmhouse had been gutted and turned into one huge room that housed a laboratory. Machines that Cage couldn’t even begin to identify were lined up along the outside walls while the main floor was filled with benches and tables where various experiments could be conducted.
Separate, glassed in offices filled the back wall. The change from the oak paneled and floral print wall papered parlor to this white, sterile environment was stunning.
Weaving her way between desks filled with microscopes and piles of notes, Connors said, “Everyone is at dinner right now. I don’t know what you know about this facility
, but we have a staff of fifteen. The second floor is much like this and the third floor houses our living quarters and kitchen area.”
Cage had been
to the farmhouse to meet with Doctor Hawkins a few times, but it was always in the parlor or the study off to the right of the entrance. Wondering why he was getting the grand tour after all these months, he said, “Nice place you have, Doctor, but could you tell me why you called me here?”
Connors r
eached the rear of the room and said, “It would be easier to show you.”
Stopping in front of one of the
glass-fronted offices, she pointed into it and said, “Major Cage, I want to introduce you to Vanessa. She is the reason we’re here. She is immune to the HWNW virus.”
Cage l
ooked in to the room and realized that what he thought were offices, were actually living quarters. White and sterile like the rest of the area, each room held a bed, a sink and a toilet out in the open. Only one of them was occupied, its tenant a woman in her thirties. Slightly awed by being in the presence of someone who was immune to a disease that had killed off and reanimated eighty percent or more of the Earth’s population, he was speechless.
So this is what it’s
all about. This one woman who might hold the key to a cure.
Finally seeing something tangible to focus on, he felt renewed in his duties. Wh
ere before it seemed like he was simply going through the motions of command, he now had living proof that what they were doing here was not in vain. There was hope that a cure could be found. If this woman was immune, discovering an anti-virus was only a matter of time.
Finding his voice, Cage asked
, “What do you need from me, Doctor?”
“A few things,” she answered. “There is a lot going on that no one is aware of. First of all, we are in a race. Doctor Hawkins is working on a device that can control the dead
. It is almost near completion, and the tests have been very positive. He calls it the Malectron, and what it does is repel the dead.”
Once again, Cage was stunned. His mind spun as he took in this news and combined it with what Jones had told him.
To confirm his thoughts, he asked, “Are they testing it here?”
Connors nodded and said, “It is a prototype, very crude in design
, but it works. Doctor Hawkins is refining it so that it will repel all the dead. It’s only eighty percent effective right now.”
Cage beamed as he said, “That’s fantastic news. If we can
-.”
Connors cut him off by saying, “In the right hands it’s fantastic news
, but not in the hands of Doctor Hawkins. You have to think it through. Whoever controls the dead, controls the world. The Malectron can be used to repel the dead, but it can also be used to direct them. If you’re pushing something away, you’re also pushing it toward something. It’s my fear that it’s going to be used as a weapon to send waves of the dead against anyone who opposes whoever controls it. On top of that, it doesn’t solve the problem of the dead. You can shift them back and forth as many times as you like, but the fact remains, they’re still there.”
“So
Hawkins is some kind of mad scientist bent on world domination?” Cage asked.
“No, he
’s working under the direct orders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Connors told him.
“So what’s the problem then?”
Connors sighed and said, “It wouldn’t be a problem if it was the only solution. If this were the only thing in our fight against the dead, I would back it completely. But it’s not. You see, I’m very close to finding a cure for the HWNW virus.”
Seeing the doubt on Cage’s face, Doctor Connors said, “I know you’ve heard that before
, but this time it’s true. I’ve isolated the structure of the virus and am able to eradicate it in fifty percent of the tests I run.”
“
Then what’s the problem?” Cage asked.
“All our resources are being put into the Malectron,” she answered. “I can’t get anything to further my research. I’m just days away from a breakthrough
and I can’t get so much as a test tube because everything’s being put into Doctor Hawkins’ study.”
“So where do I come in?” Cage asked. “I’ve got no control over that.”
“But you have access to lines of communication,” she told him. “What I need is another test subject. I need someone who’s immune to the disease. I need you to be my ears to the outside world since you’re privy to communications that I’m not. It’s not that they’re holding out on me, it’s more that they’re so focused on Doctor Hawkins’ Malectron that they’re overlooking what I need. I only have what they give me to work with, and lately, they haven’t given me shit because they’re too wrapped up in controlling the dead as opposed to eradicating them.”
Cage considered this before asking, “So this cure you’ve found, it
doesn’t reverse the process and bring the…” He stopped as he tried to find the right words. “Dead back to life?”
“No.
Sadly, once you’re infected with the virus it destroys so many of the higher functions in the brain that this would be impossible. What my anti-virus does is interact with the cells in the alcohol-based fluids that make up the blood of the dead and cause them to rupture. In layman’s terms, it causes the dead to bleed out.”
Cage weighed his options.
On the one hand he had Doctor Hawkins and his Malectron, something he had seen the results of first hand. Connors had told him they were using it at the base. If the lack of pursuit of Jones and his team, coupled with the way the dead stayed away from the compound, were any indication of its capabilities, it seemed to work. The downside was that it didn’t eradicate the dead. It was a weapon that could be used against humans.
A
s a firm believer in American military might, he felt a thrill at the thought of such a weapon, but only if it were used for the right purposes.
On the other hand, he had Doctor Connors and her
…
At this he stopped and thought, shit, she doesn
’t even have a name for her anti-virus. If it did as she claimed, it wouldn’t cure the dead but would kill them off with some kind of hemorrhagic fever. This is what they’d hoped for from the beginning, something to wipe out the plague of dead feeding on the living. But was she for real?
Cage looked Doctor Connors in the eye. All he could see was a woman who simply wanted to help. He found no deception in her gaze. At the very least, he’d found out what was really going on
at the farmhouse, so his meeting with her wasn’t a total loss.
Making a decision based on his gut instinct, he said, “I’ll help you, Doctor.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The San Jacinto River:
Steve and Heather looked for any signs of life on an oil derrick as The Usual Suspects slowly motored past. The ones closer to Texas City had been nothing but twisted hunks of metal, but as they neared the mouth of the river, they could see that the fires and explosions hadn’t reached this far. Even the buildings along the shoreline had gone from mounds of rubble, to half destroyed structures, and then to a residential area that looked mostly intact, just deserted of anything living.
With the sun beaming down through a cloudless sky, they could have been on a Sunday afternoon pleasure cruise if it wasn’t for the dead mobbing the
waterline.
Heather lowered her binoculars and said, “Nobody
’s on that one, but someone spray painted a sign on one of the buildings.”
Steve swung his gaze to
where she had been looking and read the bright red letters:
ABANDONED 12/15
DEAD EVERYWHERE
GOING TO
SAN ANTONIO
“I wonder what made them head for San Antonio
?” Steve wondered out loud. Turning to Tick-Tock, he asked, “Do you remember if there are any military bases there?”
“I was in the Marines,” he
reminded him. “I was stationed at Camp Pendleton and Quantico. You were in the Army, don’t you remember?”
Steve shook his head
and replied, “Too many years ago and too many forts and bases to keep track of. I was always on the northeast coast of the States or in Europe. I’d hear people talk about being stationed at different places, but I never paid much attention. They were mostly drinking and whoring stories anyway.”
“Which I’m sure you have an abundance of,” Heather said with mock disgust.
Creating a circle by putting his forefingers and thumbs together and holding it over his head like a halo, he replied, “I always conducted myself like a gentleman, ma’am.”
Heather was about to reply when Brain
interrupted her by saying, “There’s an island coming up ahead. If I was trying to get away from the dead, that’s where I’d go.”
Tick-Tock studied the chart laid out on the deck and said, “That’ll be Atkinson
Island. Keep us in the shipping channel on the left, Pork Chop. We’ll pass by close enough to check it out.”
Since leaving the floating pyre of dead, they had watched the shoreline and oil derricks that dotted the area for any sign of life, hoping to find someone they could talk to and get some idea of where they might put ashore. They kept their weapons at the ready, their experience with the pirates in the Gulf still fresh in their minds
, but they hadn’t seen anything except the dead wandering along the shore and through the remains of the city.
Scanning the island with her binoculars, Heather said, “I don’t see anything
except marsh, rocks and trees. If I was going to pick a place to hole up, I’d pick somewhere else.”
“Looks pretty desolate,” Steve agreed. “
There’re some more islands further on, and a bridge. You can just make it out. Maybe we’ll see someone there.”
Atkinson Island slid by on their right
and was replaced by Hog Island. It too, was void of life. They had now entered the river itself and could see the bridge clearly, its double span packed with cars and trucks parked haphazardly from one end to another. Some had their doors wide open while others were closed up, all of them abandoned by their owners when the dead came for them.
Seeing nothing on the bridge, Steve turned his attention to the area on the right. When he
’d studied the charts earlier, he’d seen this marked as Baytown, a mix of residential and light industrial with an abundance of waterfront homes and businesses. This was where he hoped to put ashore. The dead tended to congregate where there was food, so if this area was abandoned by the living long enough ago, it might be free of Z’s.
At first hopeful when he saw
that the area was deserted, he was quickly discouraged when the dead appeared as if from nowhere to watch them as they passed. Soon there were hundreds of them lining the docks and shore, moaning and reaching out in hunger. Some stepped off and disappeared into the bay, only to be replaced by new arrivals.
S
teve shook his head in disgust at the gruesome sight then asked, “Where in the hell are they all coming from?”
“You just said it,” Tick-Tock told him. “Hell.”
Steve snorted a laugh and said, “I mean, what’s bringing them out? It can’t be sound because there’s no way they can hear the engine from that far off.”
“Maybe its movement,” Heather suggested.
Steve said with disgust. “Whatever it is, it’s got us screwed.”
“Probably not smell since we’re
downwind,” Tick-Tock commented. “I’d have to guess Heather’s right. We’re probably the first thing to come through here in weeks…maybe months, so they’re coming out to see if we’re edible.”