by D.C. Clemens
Chapter Twenty
Reunion
A few hours passed with my pores oozing a heated odor. The best the soldiers could do was inform us that only about half the refugees were accounted for. Some were able to escape with the help of helicopters, but the majority were on vehicles heading for various camps or towns, meaning it would be some time before they could relate who had escaped and where they were relocated to. During the next few days, as communications were reestablished in their respective sites, some names would be announced to reveal the scattered survivors who were privileged enough to have lived another day. On the first light of the fourth day, I heard four names I did not expect to hear: Neves’, Yitro’s, Bervin’s, and my own. We walked up to the soldier who called us with a blend of confusion and nervousness.
“You the guys?” the soldier asked as he looked up from his clipboard with a scrutinizing eye when we met him under a command tent.
“Yes,” I answered. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been ordered to take you to our base in Glenfar,” he replied, sounding and looking indifferent to our presence. “Your families are there.” He looked back down at his clipboard. “Delphnia, Siena, Lizeth, Dayce, and Eloram, right?”
“Yes!” Bervin said spontaneously. “That’s them! Thank the Spirits they’re alive!” He took an eager glance at each of us, then, noticing what the rest of us had already realized, he turned back to the soldier and said, “Hold on! Valssi and Kaya, where are they? What happened to them?”
He examined his notes once more, but his expression didn’t change when he said, “Sorry, I don’t have their names here.”
There was sadness for the two names that were abandoned from the soldier’s auspicious list, just as two names were discarded in ours, however, there was more relief on hearing the names of Liz and Dayce. Nothing else mattered, but even so, I could not prevent a gloom from veiling my cheerier sentiments. I couldn’t answer the question as to why we had the honor of a precious reunion while everyone else could only beg for such an opportunity. A peek at Yitro told me he was thinking something similar. We did not ask the question aloud however, as if acknowledging it would suddenly remove the unforeseen privilege. Neves still was not in the best of spirits, but the mention of his family’s names brought a spark of life in his eyes.
We followed the same soldier to a truck after hastily gathering the few belongings from the tents I was glad to leave behind. After a short drive in a truck, I saw a mid-sized, single rotor helicopter waiting for us on the helipad on top of a small hospital. We used the fire escape to climb the three stories to the roof. The chopper had just enough room for all of us.
“How long will it take us to get there?” I asked the pilot.
“Three hours,” he answered, looking a bit perturbed I was asking during the takeoff sequence.
That was the end of my questioning and I stopped anyone else from asking theirs, since I was sure the soldiers were only following orders and were incapable of answering our inquiries any better than we could. Looking down at the refuge’s layout made me comprehend just how sprawling it really was. My inspection of my former refuge did not last long. I began envisioning everyone staring up to watch the helicopter propelling to a place better than theirs. I kept my vision from drifting to the ground for much of the trip. We were not disturbed by any invaders or their contraptions during our voyage in the air. Nature tossed a minor sandstorm in our way, but any desert pilot worth their weight learned to maneuver through a sandstorm even before the unsoiled air. The voyage felt neither long nor short, for my mind was too engrossed with questions to bother keeping time.
While I was still trying to force my head not to question the few favorable things still present in my life, I saw the beginning constructions of a military base below. It was near the edge of a small sea port, allowing us to see the iridescent sapphire ocean reflecting back the harsh rays of the sun and altering them to a softer shade. The base seemed to be exclusively used by the military, with no hint of a civilian camp nearby, bringing the question as to why my family was there back to the forefront of my conscious. We landed in front of a robust, two-story building, which we were led into by a soldier who had been waiting to meet us as soon as the door slid open. I was the first to enter.
Before any image of the space could reach my eyes, I heard a ringing voice delightfully exclaim, “Daddy!”
Naturally, I went on my knees when I saw Dayce dashing toward me with his arms wide open and donning the kind of smile I had not seen him display in this era. We must have been only a second into our embrace when I felt my mother join us. I next anticipated feeling, hearing, or seeing Liz at some point, but nothing of the sort entered my reality. I lifted my head to search for her. I saw Delphnia crying in Neves’ arms, with his tears falling not too far behind. I observed Eloram quietly hugging Yitro, with an emotional but still reserved air. Standing a few feet in front of me was Siena. The expression she wore was one I had never before seen from her. Sadness was there, but that’s not what she predominantly conveyed. It was more of a repentance that cut deep into my heart. She knew I was searching in vain and right then I knew my feeling of total relief was premature.
As steadily as she could, Siena said, “She’s here, Roym, but-”
Dayce interrupted her. “Mommy’s sick. They don’t want us to touch her.”
In another day I would have probably been surprised by Dayce’s abruptness, but I only heard the most important word. I knew “sick” had to mean something far more than what it used to represent.
“Sick? Where is she?” I asked Siena, still holding on to Dayce as I rose.
“In quarantine,” I heard an unfamiliar, dry sounding voice answer. To my right stood a high-ranking officer, who had been overlooking our reunion, though I could not recall if he had been there the entire time or not. “So, you’re the husband, Mr. Rosyth? I’m Colonel Tanner,” he said, only bothering to approach a step closer.
Honestly, he could have been one of the Spirits in its corporeal form and I could not have cared less. I just wanted to know about one thing. “Can I see her?” I asked him, not shy in approaching him. I would have felt uncomfortable around him at any other time, but I was too busy to feel anything else but restlessness for my wife
“Yes, but only you and her father,” he informed me, taking a short squint at Neves, making sure he was paying attention to him, which he was. “You can follow me when you’re ready.”
“We’re ready now.” To my son, I said, “I have to see Mommy, all right, Dayce?”
He nodded reassuringly. I left him on the ground with my mother after a squeeze. I did not notice it before, but he appeared much older.
In endeavoring to examine the building more astutely as we walked, I discovered that we were in a research laboratory. I would occasionally see a few diligent people in lab coats and other personnel going into various labs sprinkled throughout the building, which were sometimes guarded by a soldier or two. As I wondered how I was supposed to feel about walking down a building full of some of the keenest minds in the world, with my wife being somewhere through these doors, the striding Colonel began to divulge some information.
“As your son stated, Mr. Rosyth, your wife has been infected, however, unlike a great majority of the populace, her reaction has been rather unique.”
“How so?”
“For one, she doesn’t look as sickly as many of the infected do, but more importantly, she’s still rational. Granted, she’s been a bit uncooperative, not dangerously so, but she won’t let us do any more comprehensive tests until we retrieved you and Mr. Ave.”
I could sense the annoyance he felt in those last words. With the conclusion of his explanation, we stopped by a sturdy double door safeguarded by a couple of dedicated guards, who gave their salute, and ensued to enter a code on a numbered panel to let us pass. We entered into a modestly sized decontamination room, which held a few hanging hazmat suits on either side of us.
“Put these on gentlemen,” ordered the colonel while he was unhooking one of the protective suits off the wall.
Once we had accomplished his requirement, we were directed through the solid steel door in front of us, which opened with the swipe of the colonel’s pass card. The door skated open to reveal a large and brightly lit lab. My eyes directly targeted the far end of the systematically expansive room. There were three hospital-like accommodations encased in a thick concrete wall in the lower half and a dense wall of glass in the upper half, so that no secrets could be kept within. Inside the farthest room to my left stood the figure that relit a fervor in my heart and allowed my soul to feel symphonic. Liz had one of her hands resting on the glass wall and she gazed with an eager somberness at me. I ran to her. With each stride I discerned that her features were not what I last saw them to be. The infection was attesting its influence by the veins swelling out from the skin, but not to the extent I had seen or heard from in previous subjects. Her once pure, coppery skin was now darker in tone and gave me the fleeting impression she had lost virtue itself, but it was quickly forgotten. It was her now blood red eyes that captured all my attention. The sensitive and thin blood vessels in our eyes could not handle the bulging blood flow and commonly ruptured from the effects. There was an arresting passion buried within them, one I found impossible not to find peculiarly captivating. There was an intercom by the locked door that I used to speak with her.
“Liz! Thank the Spirits you’re alive!” There were a few blood stained tears running down her cheeks gleaming from the obese florescent lights above us. “How do you feel?”
“I feel.... I’m fine. I’m not in pain,” she hesitantly said, though I do not know if it was because she was overcome with so many different emotions or because she was lying. “Orins,” she continued meekly. “What… what happened? Where is he?”
I only shook my head.
As fresh tears sprouted, she called out, “Daddy! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart,” he said as he set himself next to me. His voice was as close to the old Neves as he could possibly make it. “Don’t worry about me or any of us.”
The colonel then spoke up. “Everyone, this is Dr. Sonatis Gaffor. She’s in charge of the research division here.”
I was finally able to break the spell from Liz’s eyes to turn around and perceive the woman the colonel was introducing. A hasty observation showed me she was around the same age as my mother, but more fit looking and her better posture made her appear a head taller.
“Welcome to my lab,” she graciously said, ambling gracefully toward where we were grouped. “I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances.”
I shook the hand she held out for me. She was about to hold it out for Neves, but seeing as he had his full attention on his little girl, she did not attempt it. He wasn’t in the most hospitable spirit, which I thought reasonable, as it must have been difficult for him to see his only daughter being treated like a lab animal. It wasn’t easy for me either, but I knew I was left with no other choice. I had to be compliant, if not for me, but for Liz.
“How does it look for her?” I asked the expert.
“Her physiology has certainly changed, but she is more or less stable at this point,” she answered, her severe eyes sweeping Liz’s figure.
“I’m assuming you took blood samples?”
“A few, but we haven’t had time to form any solid conclusions from them. Though, from what we’ve seen, we can theorize she isn’t contagious. We injected some of her blood into some of our rodent specimens and no perceptible effects formed. Once the machines enter the first subject, they seem to discard much of the infection they carry, leaving little or nothing to spread to other hosts, and the nano-machines themselves remained inert in their new hosts. Of course, we’ll have to keep her isolated until we can be sure. With you and her father here, she will hopefully allow us to continue with more all-inclusive tests.”
“I know it’s early,” said Neves, “but do you have any clue why she’s been able to, um, hold back the infection?”
“There’s really no way to know at this time,” the head scientist replied. “I initially believed she didn’t have enough of the infection in her system, but if that was indeed the case, I would imagine many others would be in this sort of half-state she’s in. Instead, with the exception of a few more like her, anyone else exposed to any measure of the nano-machines has become wholly infected.”
“There are others like her?” asked Neves, beating me to the question.
“Reports have come in about a handful of others who have been able to resist the infection to some degree. From what I’ve gathered, Mrs. Rosyth here might be one of the best examples.” Liz hadn’t moved or emitted a sound since the doctor was made known, but with these last words I thought I saw her bow her head and relinquish a sigh. “She’s suffering very few side effects compared to the others we know about, who do still experience intense pain, bouts of convulsions, and many more graphic symptoms. In fact, taking into account how grievous most symptoms are, I’m surprised by how relatively few people or animals die from the contamination itself. It makes me think a large percentage of the population might already hold some level of resistance that prevents their bodies from completely failing, and Mrs. Rosyth is taking that a step further. What we need to do is discover what exactly makes Mrs. Rosyth so resistant and, with any luck, replicate that propensity in others. Even if we can’t entirely remove the contamination, we can at least adapt to it.”
“Thank you for your time, doctor,” I said. “We don’t want to keep you any longer from your work.” What I said was true, but it was also true that I did not want to hear anymore. It was beginning to be too much to absorb. I looked at Liz, whose eyes were cast to the ground.
“I know it must not be easy to see her like this,” said the doctor, changing her methodical voice into one that was kinder and gentler, “but she’s our best hope in finding a way to counter the infection right now.” The doctor nodded her goodbye and walked away, just as elegantly as she came.
“Roym, Dad, you can go rest and eat now,” said Liz. She tried to sound strong, but she was not fooling anyone. I stared at her face and she at mine. Despite everything she had been through and everything that was happening to her, I could still see her soul scorching underneath, making me feel as though this was the clearest I had ever seen her. “Go back to Dayce. He missed you so much.” The ardent tone in her appeal had me wondering how long it had been since she had seen her child.
“I can stay longer,” I said, with my best attempt at convincing her it was all I wanted.
A little smile came across her face, a smile she still wore beautifully. “Don’t be stubborn. Even under that suit I can tell you look terrible. Don’t worry about me. I’m content knowing you’re safe. Besides, there’s work to do.”
I did not want to leave her, but I knew she wanted me to take care of myself and Dayce, and there was no refusing that petition. We exited with the colonel and we soaked in one last look of each other before the door sealed itself.
While we were shedding the hazmat suits, which I did not comprehend just how constricting they were until I was free from their grasp, I asked the colonel a question I had been too afraid to ask, and the only reason I must have asked it was because my mind needed to cleanse itself from the image of Liz being restrained in the glass container. “How’s the rest of the world doing?”
“It’s not pretty,” the colonel answered frankly. “As of right now, sixty-seven major populations have been targeted by those drill-ships, including the original site. Our estimates put the infected or dead at a quarter to half a billion.”
“We heard Valland tried nuking the mother ship,” said Neves. “Do you think we’ll try nuking the smaller Towers next?”
The question took me by surprise, as the Neves I once knew would never think about putting thousands of uninfected people at risk by k
nowingly exposing them to either the blast or radiation from the military’s drastic measure. It was logically the next stage in the match with our enemies, but it was not a train of thought the old Neves would have made.
“If the Valland attempts showed any kind of promise we might have already went ahead with phase two,” the colonel answered, “but the failed attempts have made us believe that air delivery is an unviable option.”
“You want to send in ground forced to deliver a nuke?” I asked. “Do you think that would work?”
“If we can get close enough quickly enough,” he replied. “However, the Valland attempts have shown that they can detect the nukes coming from a significant range. So even if we could find a way to get through their defenses, all the Towers would have to do is take off, which, in spite of their size, they can accomplish incredibly expeditiously.” We walked out the double doors and I heard them shut softly behind me. He resumed his steady gait. “Truthfully, if ground forces don’t work, then the only other offensive option left would likely cause a nuclear winter.” He curtly stopped. “Now, if there are not more depressing questions, I have to get back to work. My men back in the lobby will accommodate you.”
We followed Liz’s request to eat and find what respite we could, but despite our new comfortable and agreeable quarters—not taking a whole lot of luxury for me to say at this point—and having the company of my son and mother by my side again, it still wasn’t enough to bring my full appetite back. Since finding out Liz had a resistance to the infection, and I could not be gratified enough on that verity, as I knew that was the only reason I was able to come back to her, my thoughts kept drifting back to Orins. An alarming possibility plagued my mind. What if he also had a higher form of resistance? After all, when we abandoned him, he had not been completely overtaken by the infection yet. It was still conceivable we gave up too soon. I thanked the Spirits for Liz’s fortune. She could have been left behind like her brother and I don’t think I could have blamed anyone for it. Maybe there were more out there who never did get the chance. The boy in the Meltmore camp may have not have never gotten the chance and he wasn’t even infected. Of course, Orins was displaying clear symptoms. I had to keep telling myself there was no use thinking about it, that I didn’t have a choice. The others in the bus would have never allowed him to return with us. Still, I could have stayed with him, just maybe… No, there was no other choice. Yet the disturbing doubt would not escape my conscious. What if we had left him too soon?
I was staring intently into Dayce’s face as he was eating some cereal in front of me, albeit slowly. Yet it was not really my son I was watching. I was imagining myself as Neves staring into his own son’s terrified face in the final seconds he saw him. Thankfully, I did not believe Dayce noticed where my contemplation was. I only saw the illusion for a moment, being replaced by my own weary child. It was apparent he had not been sleeping well. Once we finished our meal, or as much as were willing to fit in our stomachs, I followed my mother to our latest lodgings. They were located on the second floor, accompanying the cafeteria, positioned at the eastern end of the hallway. The living quarters consisted of large rooms with each one employing eight bunk beds and supplemented with a spacious gym-like bathroom of their own.
I started with something I was positive I would never experience again; a shower. The cool water tickling the surface of my skin, hearing the resounding drips when the water droplets hit the cool tiled floor, and the very smell of my cleansing gave me a feeling of bliss. It was odd to me how something so simple could uplift me so much. I dressed into some new airy clothes my mother had picked out for me, the first time she had done so since I moved out of her home, and I rested on the first bed I saw, the sheets wrapping me with their companionship. As I closed my eyes, trying to picture myself in a time when it was no feat to feel the softness of a bed, I felt Dayce lie down by my side, enfolding his small arms around me, making the trip back in time much easier.
He did not say anything. I had no doubt he was happy to see me, for he held on to me so tightly, and that he was glad to see his grandfather and his new favorite hero, but he was unusually quiet since I had arrived. I surmised it was due to him detecting that our group had come back smaller, combined with the shrinking of his previous group and the state of his mother, along with so many other things. I felt as if I could sense all the questions bundled in his body, wanting to come out, but he never did ask them. Maybe he thought they were too inappropriate, or that I would not want to answer them, or that I simply did not know the answers. He would not have been wrong. At any rate, he did not have the time to build the courage to ask. I began to hear his soft, rhythmic breathing within the minute of his joining me. Hearing his metrical breaths soon soothed me enough to allow my own body to partake in a much needed reprieve.
It couldn’t last. The nightmares lurking in my subconscious emerged from their slumber when I started mine. Barely an hour had gone by, and I felt neither well-rested nor tired enough to try again. The room was darker, as someone had turned off all the lights and the sunlight was close to leaving us. It would have been completely dark if the door wasn’t halfway open to allow a stream of light to come from the hallway. Dayce was still sleeping, seemingly not bearing my burden, at least, not in his slumbering. I don’t think he had even moved since I last saw him, and was, encouragingly, drooling on my shirt, a signal he would not wake for a few more hours.
On a bunk bed neighboring mine, I saw my mother was also sleeping. Yitro was on the top bunk in the middle of the room. He was awake and listening to music, going by the earphones he wore. His face glowed off the light from a music player he had somehow acquired. There were also a few strangers in the room getting their rest from their scientific burdens. At the far end of the room, I perceived the silhouettes of Siena and Eloram. They were whispering to each other, so I could not hear what they were saying. Sleep had escaped me and I knew I would not be able to chase after it, so I delicately slid myself off the bed and covered Dayce more completely with the blanket. When I arose, I heard the whispering cease. In the corner of my eye, I saw Siena rise. She passed through the shaft of light formed by the open door and, in that moment, I saw the fresh gleam of what was the residue of recent tears.