Chapter Forty
~Before~
2 Weeks Ago
The bluish glow is so familiar, so comforting, that I want to cry. I grip my mother’s hand. She tightens hers in return.
Way outside of Cary, in a single country home not far off the highway, someone has on a television.
The light beckons me and we move toward it even though it’s dangerous. People are dangerous. We’ve spent days avoiding them. But news? It’s always alluring—to learn something. Know anything about what is going on. An explanation. That need overwhelms the base sense of safety.
“How do you think they have power?” Mom asks, then quickly suggests, “Maybe the grids only failed in the city.”
That doesn’t sound right. In fact we know better. Before we lost all service power outages were happening all over the quarantined areas. Maybe this means things are back online. Maybe this is over.
I take a step closer and look at the house. The owner’s did an okay job boarding up the windows but from the outside there was a sliver of space, just enough for the light to seep through.
On the roof I see rectangular grids reflecting off the half moon. “They have solar panels.”
We move quietly toward the house, ducking down beneath the window sill. We listen to the quiet, for the sounds beneath the chirping crickets and buzzing mosquitoes.
The voices are muffled. My mother’s forehead wrinkles in concentration. “It’s Roger Upton,” she whispers the name of the most famous newscaster on TV. I don’t need to see his face to conjure the image of his silver-gray hair and bushy eyebrows. A feeling of excitement bubbles under the surface. Oh, my God, maybe this really
is
over. My mother and I dare to smile at one another.
I catch snippets of his words, his voice covering me like a salve. “Outbreak…quarantine…get to the nearest shelter…”
“Anything new?” I ask.
My mom holds her finger to her lips.
“The state of Georgia announced today that they will shut down all travel to and from the state…”
Her smile fades and her eyebrows furrow.
“What?” I ask.
She begins to mouth words, the same ones coming from Roger Upton, the same warnings we heard over and over before everything shut down.
“It’s a recording,” she says.
“Like they’re replaying something—like the emergency stuff?”
“No it’s old. I swear I watched this same report months ago.”
We both move from the ground to try to catch sight of the television inside and I convince myself she’s crazy. That they are just being safe—keeping the quarantine up. Things obviously just got running again. They would take precautions.
I can’t see much through the slit, just the objects found in a living room. There is a TV, and yes, the top of Roger Upton’s head bobs up and down the screen—silver-gray hair included.
My mother, for once in her excessively easy-going life, refuses to budge. Her fingers clamped down on the edge of the windowsill. Her eyes shift back and forth, wild and searching.
“There,” she says in the lowest voice.
“What?”
“That box. The VCR.”
“VCR?” I ask like I don’t know what this is. I know, but really, no one uses a VCR anymore.
“The red light is on. And the green. It’s a tape. From before.”
I peer at the TV, looking for something, anything, to prove her wrong. I push up on my toes and crane my neck. I don’t see the VCR but I do see something that gives me pause. I blink, hoping I’m making it up, but when I open my eyes again there it is. From this angle I see the thin spray of red across the bottom of the screen. I see the foot. Pale and bare.
The sense of elation crashes down, replaced with familiar dread. The brief snapshot of the past crumbles. We’re still here. In this modern day hellhole called Earth.
“Alex,” my mom says tugging on my arm. I feel her—hear her, but she seems far away. She calls my name again and something metal and hard clinks behind me.
“We need to get out of here,” I say but my voice is drowned out by a low growl in the dark. “Get out your gun.”
I’ve removed my hatchet and hear her fumble with her own weapon. “Run that way, to the left, around the house. Find somewhere safe and wait for me,” I tell her, but beyond that I’ve got no other directions. I have no idea where we are. Other than the traitorous light from the house it’s incredibly dark outside.
The growling shifts, turning into the painful cry I’ve come to recognize so well. My mother runs left and I dash to the right, banging my hatchet against the house to get its attention. The method works and as I run through the overgrown yard, I hear the Eater follow me, hot in pursuit. It’s hungry, they’re always hungry, and I can only run so long across what seems to be an endless field.
Stupid rural North Carolina.
A breeze of air blows across my sticky with sweat face and the moon appears from behind a cloud. I stop, forced to catch my breath. The Eater wails sending a chill up my spine. Every step elicits the same rattling clank. I turn to face it, can’t tell in the shadowy night if it’s a male or female. For the first time I don’t think I care.
I only see the creature in front of me as nothing more than a dead man walking. His shrieking cry turns ragged as he approaches, feet tangled in the weeds, a long chain clamped to his wrist.
“Did you leave that video on for me?” I see him clearly now. Metallica t-shirt, face oozing with sores, eyes black and spidery. “Hoping to lure me in? God, trolls exist even after the internet is gone.”
He lunges forward, swiping an arm at me. I step back, dodging the chain. Had he been restrained?
“I guess it’s gonna be either you or me,” I tell him, clutching the handle of my weapon. This will not end like the night I met Paul, when he had to save me. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a job to do and I’m not letting a rotting, parasite filled bastard keep me from doing it.”
Eliciting my own feral cry, I lift my hatchet and swing.
Chapter Forty-One
~Now~
Cole’s hair is still wet when Walker returns to our cell. We’re both dressed in drab green military fatigues. Clean clothes are a luxury. They’ve hit us with our basic needs—wants. Food, shower, clothing. Add housing into it and I can see the allure. Except we’re not here by choice. We’re prisoners.
“Turn around,” she says and we both comply after a moment of notable hesitation. My wrists are then bound with thick plastic zip ties. A quick glance tells me the same is happening to Cole. Again, whatever is going on here, they don’t trust us.
But why?
Walker and another solider, this one a black male in his late twenties or thirties, walk us down a long corridor. His tag says Richardson. Doors line the hallway. There are no windows. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Walker stops abruptly, causing Cole and me to stumble in reaction. Richardson’s hand never leaves the butt of his gun.
“Where are we?” I ask again, not expecting an answer.
I watch, intrigued as Walker enters numbers into a security pad and then presses her palm flat against it.
“Shaw Air Force Base,” Richardson replies.
“We’re in South Carolina?” Cole asks.
“I must have really been out of it,” I mutter.
The security box lights up green and the door opens with a sigh, cool air slipping out. “Got something important down here?” Cole says lightheartedly.
I don’t know what I expect, but it isn’t a full lab, similar to my father’s at Duke. Scientists in crisp white coats and blue vented face masks work at the long rows of tables. I search each face for my father—for his familiar eyes, the mole next to his temple. If he’s here I don’t see him.
“You’ve continued the work?” Cole asks.
“It never stopped,” a voice says from a small office beside us. The man from the trailer park steps out. The one with the mustache. His hair is cut short, and he’s lean and muscular. He’s got the same stance and demeanor as Wyatt but twenty years older, without the man-bun and in distinct military dress. This furthers my theory Wyatt has military training.
Beneath the stars and medals a name tag declares his name: Colonel Erwin. “We moved everything here after Raleigh fell. It’s more secure.” He gives me a once over. “Feel better after that shower and meal?”
“Is my father here?” I ask hopeful. Maybe that is what this is about. They’re bringing me to him. Cole and me. That makes sense.
“The whereabouts of Dr. Ramsey are classified, for national security.”
My first thought is relief—he’s not dead. My second is rage. “He’s my father! I have the right to know,” I yell, my temper at the end of its fuse.
“The security and outcome of the human race depend on his work. Unfortunately, you’re not privy to that information.”
I take a step forward but a hand restrains me on my arm. Cole tugs me back toward him. Hope sinks like a stone in my chest. “If we’re not here to see him, then why have you brought us here?”
“Because even though you cannot see him at this time, we’re aware that you’re in possession of vital information needed to develop a cure for the infection. The fact you’ve been hiding out from us for weeks hasn’t helped matters. The infection has spread across the globe, reaching catastrophic levels—any chance we have of stopping it lies with you.”
I glance uneasily at Cole since he’s the one that suggested I hide it. But there’s something else. Why would my father have told me to take it and run? There’s a reason he doesn’t want this man to have the information. I make the snap decision to lie. “I don’t have any information. My father never gave me anything. And I’ve only been hiding from you so I can get to Atlanta to find my sister.”
I expect Colonel Erwin to call my bluff but he simply looks over my shoulder and commands, “Take her to room eight and prep her for testing.”
Four hands grab me from behind and Cole is shoved out of the way. “Testing?” he asks.
“Yes,” Erwin says. “If the data is gone then we’ll have to start over again to build the cure. Dr. Ramsey isolated Alexandra as his primary test subject. We’ll have to replicate his work.”
“This is crazy,” I say but Walker and Richardson hold tight. They drag me away from Erwin, and I see two more soldiers grab Cole as he starts in my direction. We pass the rows of scientists all deep into their projects. None even glance up at me.
I’m carried, more than walked into the small room. A single chair, much like the kind the dentist’s office sits in the middle of the room. They force me into the seat, quickly binding my wrists to the arms with Velcro straps.
“I suggest you don’t struggle,” Walker says flicking on a blinding fluorescent light.
“What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait?”
For the first time she looks me in the eye. The green of her eyes takes me by surprise. They aren’t hard like I expect them to be. She’s not my friend but…
“Follow directions, Alex. Things will go better that way.”
With that she shuts the door and leaves me to wait.
***
After hooking me up to a bag of fluids and prepping my arm, men and women (or rather Drones as I start to call them) in white coats and blue face masks take blood from me like it’s my job.
“No injections?” I ask a Drone—a female with her dark hair wound in a bun so tight I can see where her skin stretches at the temple. She has on thick framed glasses and I can see myself reflected back in the lens. I’d like to say I look menacing and dangerous but the wide, scared eyes mirrored back to me are that of a kid strapped to a chair who hasn’t had a full night’s sleep or a solid meal in months.
“No,” she says, surprising me with an answer. “We’ll just take blood from now on.”
“How much blood,” I ask.
She shrugs, pressing the needle into my skin with a pinch. “As much as it takes.”
This happens three more times before the Drone tapes a bandage to the inside of my elbow and unhooks the tube of fluids. She leaves and Walker and Richardson enter the room.
“Hey guys,” I say feeling a little woozy.
Typically silent they rip the Velcro off my wrists and ankles.
“What? Where are we going?” I ask but my arms are latched behind my back again and we head through the lab.
I scan the room on my way out but there is no sign of Cole among the Drones. I do catch sight of Colonel Erwin in his office, huddled over a computer. His eyes are narrowed and his jaw tense. He doesn’t look happy, no, I know he’s not happy. He finds the closest Drone and begins screaming.
“We’ve got a timeline here! A completely fucked timeline. We’re weeks behind and without Ramsey we have no map to follow. Do you not understand that? We have to get this out there before PC gets their version live. Once they do we’re screwed. Not just us but the whole goddamn planet. ”
Spittle flies from his mouth, and the Drone, a Hispanic guy, mask off, stands ramrod straight in front of him taking it like a champ.
“We’ve only just started processing her blood,” I hear him say. “It’s going to take time to get a breakdown.”
“We don’t have time,” Erwin says glancing away in disgust.
I avert my eyes before he can spot me. I have no interest in being any further on his radar at the moment. Walker’s hand pushes against my back, leading me faster out of the room. She must feel the same way.
We travel the same long hall as before and I realize we’re going back to my room. “So that’s it? Are we done?”
“For today.”
Richardson unlocks the door and they push me inside, slamming the door before I have the chance to ask anything further. Cole is sitting on the bed but jumps up quickly and rushes toward me.
“Are you okay?” he asks taking my arm and lifting the bandage at the crook of my elbow. “Did they hurt you?”
His concern is real. I can see it in his eyes and voice. It stings as much as the injection. It’s his fault that we’re here—or partially at the very least, and I want to be angry, but right now he’s the only one on my side. The only person I’ve got.
“No, I’m fine. They just took some blood.”
“Sit down,” he says leading me to the bed. “Are you lightheaded? Weak?”
“A little. They had me hooked to fluids.” I sit and lay back, resting my head. Cole doesn’t leave me but presses his hand to my forehead like he’s checking for a fever. “I need to know the truth, Cole.”
“Okay,” he agrees. “About what?”
“Everything.”