The Malefic Nation (Graham's Resolution Book 4) (16 page)

Lucy and Marcy came by the nursery to relieve Macy and McCann for a few hours so they could resume the search for the dogs. As Macy said good-bye, she gave directions to Marcy about the baby’s last feeding of the day.

“Please don’t go,” Bang pleaded. “Can I come with you?”

“We’re just going to search for Sheriff again. You know we do that every day. We’re going to looking on the west side today, hoping for some tracks. Doesn’t Addy want you to stay with her?”

“No, she’s helping Olivia. Please, can I come?”

Macy looked up to McCann, who nodded. “Go let Ms. Olivia know you’re coming with us—and make sure you put your boots on.”

Bang ran off, and she watched as he flung his legs far ahead of him, his desire to go with them so strong.

“He needs some time away. It’ll be good for him,” McCann said as he readied the horses.

Macy agreed and, knowing they needed some good news, she hoped they’d find something, some sign of Sheriff or even the other dogs. She tucked some supplies into a backpack and McCann cupped his hands together as a foot lift. They performed this routine nearly every day, and could easily predict one another’s actions Macy likened it to being married; she couldn’t imagine another living soul this close to her, the way a man and woman in love lived their lives side by side every day. Then, as it often did, came the reminder that Graham had lost Tala. It used to be that she couldn’t hold back this pain, but now she could stop it at the base of her throat, right before the tears began.

Bang returned, and McCann scooped him up and settled him in front of Macy on her horse.

After McCann mounted, they veered west outside the main gate. They’d covered the east thoroughly in recent weeks and had found nothing. The guards waved them through as they passed the gate. Instead of acting suspicious about their endeavors, as in the past, nowadays the guards wished them luck on departure and asked them what they’d seen out there upon return. Macy they were curious about what lay beyond the gates. Why they never ventured out and bucked the rules was something she could not fathom. Where was their determination? They had the desire, she could see it in their eyes, the way they gazed out at the same scenery day after day.

She’d finally came to the conclusion that it was just as Sam had said when she’d questioned him about their behavior: the residents of Hope were cut from a different cloth.

They crossed the road, and Macy followed McCann’s down an embankment and up the other side. Her horse easily traversed the ditch, and she held Bang tightly with one arm; the boy, following Macy’s example, leaned backward as the horse leaned forward.

Once under the dense forest canopy, they spoke in soft whispers while keeping their eyes open for signs. The shaded air chilled Macy’s bare shoulders. From time to time she would watch McCann’s profile as he turned right and then left, scanning the forest floor. His jaw flexed he gnawed on a one of the toothpicks he’d whittled from a clean stick during the quiet evening hours.

McCann would stop occasionally, study one spot, and then continue on, sometimes explaining what he saw and sometimes not. This was their customary routine on these searches. But at one stop he lingered, then descended from his horse after a few moments.

“What is it?” Macy asked. McCann walked over to the edge of the deer trail they’d followed and investigated something out of Macy’s view along the forest floor. She was afraid to hope anymore, so she didn’t; she refused to let her conscience be had.

“Could be nothing” he said, emerging from the undergrowth. Macy thought he was getting ready to remount his horse, but instead he removed the stick from his mouth and placed it in his shirt pocket. Then, without warning, he placed two fingers into his mouth and whistled long and high. It was a whistle he’d used many times to call Sheriff home back in Cascade. It startled Macy and Bang, and even her horse took a step backward.

“Did you see something?”

Instead of answering, McCann repeated the whistle, this time even louder.

“McCann?”

Once more he let out a whistle, then turned to her after a few seconds of silence. “They were here. I can see their tracks. They’re older tracks, but they were
here
, Macy.” McCann pointed to the ground and the brush nearby.

He walked a few paces and pulled back some of the greenery covering the ground to study the tracks. “There was someone else here too. Boot prints.” He handed Macy his horse’s reins and followed the tracks on foot.

Hope swallowed Macy so hard that she could barely breathe.

McCann knelt down and ran his hand over the ground. “They’re probably a few weeks old, probably from that bad rain we had. They could be anywhere by now.” He looked at Macy. “Don’t look so crestfallen. This is good news. At least we found a sign of them.”

Bang leaned back into Macy. She knew he was feeling a loss of hope too. They were
so close
.

McCann whistled again. They waited for a response, but none ever came. Reluctantly they returned back to Hope

But McCann’s words echoed in Macy’s ears:
At least we found a sign of them.

Later that afternoon, Graham passed by the doorway of Tehya’s room. “Graham, come in,” said Clarisse. She’d come home early that afternoon to bring the baby out of quarantine for the first time.

Mark swung the bedroom door open a little wider for Graham to step inside.

“I’m going to open the incubator. Do you want to hold your daughter?” Clarisse said.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted other than Tala alive and here with him. “I . . .” His voice came out raspy and pained. He shook his head.

“Graham! She’s your daughter!” Marcy scolded him, angry tears running down her cheeks. “Tala would want you to hold her now. She’d
hate
you for this!”

Tears came to Graham at the mention of her name. He’d been numb for days and hadn’t realized how much everyone else was grieving, nor had he cared, but hearing Marcy so upset with him shook him a little, and he opened his arms for her to come near. He hugged the young lady. Yes, she had given him some teenage trouble in the past, but what she’d said just now was right. He couldn’t neglect the baby; Tala would, in fact, be furious with him. He owed it to her, and he owed it to Tehya. The infant hadn’t ask to be brought into this screwed up mess of a world, but yet she was here now, and she was his responsibility no matter how much pain he was in over the loss of her mother. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Marcy,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said sniffing. “Just . . .
come back to us
. We need you.”

The baby choose that moment to cry out in hunger. Her little fists rose to her mouth as she tried to find something to suck on.

“She’s hungry. Would you like to feed her?” Clarisse asked.

Marcy stepped away and wiped her tears. Graham took a deep breath and Clarisse stood over the opened incubator, holding a bottle full of formula. Wrapped in a blanket she battled to kick off, Tehya’s cries became more urgent; from the moment she was born they had tugged at his heart.

“Go ahead, pick her up,” Marcy urged.

“Let him take his time, Marcy,” Mark said.

Graham brushed his index finger along her soft baby cheek, and Tehya turned in his direction.

“She’s hungry,” Clarisse repeated, now farther away.

He could only see Tehya as his daughter now, her dark, shiny hair so like her mother’s, her little nose and mouth. “Shhh,” he said and reached down with his large, clumsy hands to pick up her tiny body. He slipped one hand under her small round head and the other under her bottom and cradled her up toward his chest. Her warm body squirmed in his hold. Her little heart vibrated strongly against him. He sat with her in the chair by the window and Clarisse handed him the bottle. He brushed it against her lips and soon the baby greedily suckled. He hadn’t heard anyone leave the room, but by the time she was finished with the bottle, he found himself alone with his daughter in his arms; her bright coal eyes stared up at him in wonder as he began to hum one of the many songs Tala sang during her days. And somewhere within his heart it hurt just a little less than it had before.

“Ask him where they first landed in the States,” Rick said to Reuben.

“I don’t know all of those words, man,” Reuben said and ran a hand over his face in frustration. “Look, the kid’s tired. We’ve kept him up for two days straight now. This is cruel.”

Rick couldn’t believe what he was hearing from Reuben. “This is cruel? So, we’re keeping him from sleeping? After everything they’ve done to us, you think this is cruel?”

“I’m just saying it’s below us, that’s all.” Reuben said.

“Sometimes I don’t get you man. It’s only sleep deprivation,” Rick muttered while watching the kid, who leaned against his cell wall blinking his eyes; each time his lids slid down over the corneas for a longer stretch of time. “Hey!” Rick yelled and startled both the kid and Reuben.

Reuben got up and left the room.

“Fine,” Rick said.
That guy is losing it.

“Kid, you tired? Sleepy?” Rick asked, nodding his head. The young man must have gotten the gist of what Rick was asking and nodded back.

“Too bad.”

“Allahu Akbar,” the young terrorist said in a sleepy tone.

“Yeah, yeah . . . How about you tell me where you arrived when you came to this cursed land you hate so much?”

The boy’s eyelids began to bob again and soon his dark curly head followed the movement.

“Crap,” Rick muttered and rose from his chair to get a glass of water. As he passed the cell of the man next door, he heard him say, “He . . . don’t . . . know.”

Rick stopped in his tracks. The light was dim in the cell. “You speak English.”

“Some” came the reply.

“What’s your name?”

The man snorted and laughed a bit. “Names? Names no longer matter, but they called me Omar.”

“True. Why don’t you tell me the answers to the questions I tried to get out of him, Omar?”

“We arrived all over. In every airport of this country. Even by sea. Each team has its job: to exterminate or imprison the leftovers until our task is done.”

“You speak better English than you let on. You’re not Arabic.”

“I am not.”

“Why did you join them?” Rick thought he saw something like shame, though he couldn’t be sure. This man had a conscious; a rarity among these animals. Though the light was dim in his cell, the whites of his eyes looked down as if the answers were there on the concrete floor.

“There’s isn’t a good reason anymore. Everything I was running from is now gone. They killed them all. I, myself, killed many.” He paused, then pointed to the sleeping kid in the next cell. “This kid is brainwashed. He will tell you nothing. This woman next to me will slit your throat if you turn your back on her. She’s killed children, pregnant mothers, in the most horrific ways. She’s honored among them, but even they know she is insane; a revered oddity. I know you will kill us. I ask you to just do it now. But know your days are numbered here. They will kill all of you, and then they will kill themselves. Evil has a way of triumphing even among those who use its will.”

Rick thought he might be dreaming this. He shook his head. The more the man talked, the more his accent started sounding almost Italian. His appearance wasn’t anything he’d question. He certainly looked Arabic. He knew there were many Americans who turned traitorous and joined the Islamist terrorists, as well as many Europeans seeking adventures among killers. It never made any sense to him.

“Why are you saying this now?”

As the man began to speak, his voice tightened with emotion. “I don’t want to return to them. If there is anything good left, let it be a warning to you to leave here. Go north. Live the remaining days hiding from them, if you can, or end it all now. Leave nothing for them to take.”

Rick shook his head as he left the lockup. It was too much. He began to wonder if perhaps he was sleep-deprived and was imagining all of this.

“So what does this do, exactly?” Dalton asked Clarisse. He checked to make sure the lab door was locked so that no one might accidently come in and disturb their very private conference. Sam, Reuben, Graham, and Rick were also in attendance, each having snuck into the lab at various times over the last half hour.

“Is it a completely new virus?” Reuben asked.

Clarisse pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Dalton loved it when she did that.

“It’s a mutation of the existing virus. I’ve manipulated it to attach to the antibody markers from the hosts we collected.” Dalton looked around the room at the blank stares.

“Let’s say the terrorists have carrier captives. They’ve never contracted the virus, and they were never given the terrorists’ vaccine. They should be okay. This virus will pass them over, since they don’t have the same markers in their antibodies. It’s a selective virus. A
deadly
selective virus.”

Dalton watched for Reuben’s reaction more than anyone else. He knew Reuben wouldn’t be comfortable with the plan, but what were they to do—die off because the terrorists said so? To hell with that.

Reuben shifted in his seat, asking, “So, how many will this thing kill?”

Dalton thought that Reuben was probably trying to reconcile this genocide in his own mind. Before Clarisse could answer, he interrupted. He wanted that answer to come from him so that she wouldn’t be the one to blame. “
All
of them.
Every last one of them.
Whoever has received their vaccine will perish of this manipulated virus as it spreads over the globe.”

The room remained silent for a time.

“Damn . . . that’s dangerous.” It was Sam who finally said something, in a solemn whisper.

“Don’t you think
they
had one of these meetings?” Reuben asked, clearly agitated. What makes us any better than them if we go through with this? What keeps this from mutating and coming back to bite us in the ass?”

“Come on, Reuben. That’s not exactly fair,” Rick interjected.

“Sure it’s fair. Are we not also terrorists if we commit this crime?”

Dalton struck back, “What would you have us do? Do you have any better ideas? Look, I know you’re uncomfortable with this. Hell, I’m uncomfortable with it too, but we have no choice. They’ve already killed most of us. Think about that. I shouldn’t have to remind you of it. They’ve already murdered over ninety-eight percent of the human race! We don’t have a choice anymore! Nothing else will work!”

More silence ensued after Dalton stopped shouting.

“Reuben, I too have a difficult time with this,” added Graham, “but let me just say I’m willing to accept this evil deed so that our children and others can live their lives. I’ll bear the burden of this crime until I die, but I’ll do so, so that they can live again.”

Reuben let out a long, slow breath. “And what if
I
can’t live with it?”

Dalton shook his head. “That’s a decision that you will have to make for yourself. This
is
the plan. We’re ready to implement it now. So if you’re not with us, please leave and don’t stand in our way.”

Reuben shook his head. “I need to think about this,” he said, leaving the room with a slam of the door.

Everyone stole glances at the other faces around them. Dalton’s face glowed red hot with anger. It was a tough decision, but any thought of his own kids told him it was the right one.