“It’s a mutated version of the virus,” he told Dr. Helton three weeks after the girl had been saved. “I’m sure of it.”
“Is that so.” She didn’t even blink when she took the report he’d prepared.
Something in her expression told Joshua that she already knew this, and he found himself taking a step back. Dr. Helton was aware that a mutated virus was out there and yet she hadn’t bothered telling him. What else was she keeping from him?
He’d been working in the CDC for nearly ten months and had kept his eyes and ears open, but he’d seen nothing to indicate that their earlier fears were true. There was no sign of Angus and no whispers about anyone being held against their will, and even though there were still parts of the CDC that he hadn’t gained access to, Joshua had begun to think that all their paranoia was totally unfounded. It was clear based on everything he’d done in the lab so far that they were working hard to create a vaccine.
But Dr. Helton’s reaction made all those questions pop back up. It had him wondering what was behind the locked doors that he wasn’t allowed to see. Were there labs back there? Were they were doing experiments he knew nothing about? Were there people? Zombies? What behind those doors was so secret that they had guards—Parv had been right about that, he’d seen them with his own eyes—living in the CDC?
“I’ll look this over,” the doctor said, “but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. These things happen and it’s very possible that whoever created this virus intended for it to mutate like this. Perhaps it’s a way of keeping us on our toes.” She nodded once as she tucked the report under her arm. “Good work today. Why don’t you go home and get some rest? You look tired.”
Joshua let out a deep breath, but he wasn’t sure if it was a sigh of frustration or exhaustion. “Yeah, I am.”
“We all are. This vaccine has created problems we didn’t foresee. Star’s working on new regulations for going in and out of the settlement in hopes of keeping people from being so reckless.” She shook her head. “After everything we’ve survived, it would be a waste to allow people to continue to commit suicide the way they have been.”
Joshua stayed where he was when she turned and walked away. The idea that Star—a man who controlled everything but was rarely seen—was thinking about limiting who could and couldn’t go outside the walls sent a shiver shooting through him. It seemed too controlling, like a dictator who wanted to keep his citizens in check.
Parvarti was in the living room when he got home. They’d been living together for months now and had fallen into an easy routine, and while there was nothing romantic going on between them, he felt comfortable enough to talk to her about almost anything. Joshua was still licking the wounds Anne had inflicted on him when she’d decided to stay in Colorado, and Parv hadn’t been the same since Trey died. They understood each other.
“You look like shit,” she said when he threw himself on the couch next to her.
“Thanks for taking my feelings into consideration.”
She shrugged, but unlike Vivian her coldness didn’t bother Joshua. He knew that Parv cared more than she was letting on or she wouldn’t be working the gate. To her, protecting the settlement meant keeping them safe. Their group, their family. A part of her had died when Trey was killed and she wanted to do whatever it took to make sure no one else went through that.
“Anything new?” She asked the same question every night but the little bit of optimism that had been in her voice in the beginning had faded to almost nothing.
“I don’t know…”
Parv sat up straighter. “What? Tell me.”
“There’s a mutated strain of the virus and I think Dr. Helton already knew about it.” He shook his head. “Star is also considering limiting who can go in and out of the settlement.”
“I know,” Parv said. “We were briefed on that today. The new measures will be in place starting tomorrow. I agree that it sounds harsh, but there have been too many zombie attacks. It’s putting everyone at risk and we’d be stupid to let it go on. From now on, people aren’t going to be allowed to go in and out whenever they want.”
She had a point, but something about it still felt wrong to Joshua. Like the stupidity of the survivors was playing right into Star’s master plan. Assuming he had one.
But Joshua was too tired to debate it and he wasn’t even sure if his brain was working well enough to think it all through. “I guess you have a point,” he said with a sigh.
They lapsed into silence that was comfortable and relaxing. Living with Parv had felt a bit off at first, but now he couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. Their personalities suited one another and he’d come to respect how cool she was under pressure. He even liked it a little.
Vivian
Of all the pains the world had to offer, childbirth was the easiest to forget. Vivian knew that fact firsthand, both from her own experience with giving birth to Emily and from sitting by dozens of bedsides over the last several months. The population of New Atlanta was booming and more and more pregnant women were showing up every week, keeping her busy in her new profession.
All the women’s circumstances were different, some looked at the child they were about to bring into the world as a blessing while others looked at it as just another thing that had gone wrong in their lives, but the end result had become achingly similar. Either the baby lived and the agony and fear was erased by the joy of the new life or the baby died and the pain was overshadowed by the realization that things in this world were still dire.
“Almost there, Lila,” Vivian said in the soothing tone she reserved for the laboring women she waited on. “Just a few more pushes.”
Her friend’s face was red and dotted with sweat, and she was exhausted from the long night of almost constant contractions, but the end was near and she was doing well.
“I’ll get the blankets,” Debbie, the head midwife, said. “We’ll have a baby any minute now.”
Vivian nodded, not taking her eyes off Lila. The contraction subsided and her young friend took advantage of the break by lying back and closing her eyes. Al stood on her other side, holding her hand with the only one he had, his stump resting at his side as a reminder of how close this moment came to never happening.
Debbie had been right when she said the baby would be arriving any time, because less than ten minutes later Al and Lila’s son came into the world screaming. It was a good sound because it meant he was healthy and strong, but that didn’t stop Debbie from whisking the baby away so she could check him over and administer the new antibiotic the CDC had developed. Even with the drug babies were dying at an alarming rate, but the deaths were becoming less and less frequent, and if the baby was going to succumb, they would know soon. It usually took less than ten minutes for symptoms to develop.
“Is he okay?” Lila asked, straining in a futile attempt to see her baby.
“He looks good,” Vivian said, doing everything she could to ease her friend back onto the bed, “but we need to keep an eye on him.”
Lila tried a couple more times to look past her, and when that didn’t work she turned to Al. “Check on him. Make sure he’s okay.”
“I’m on it.” Al gave his wife a quick kiss on the forehead before taking off.
“Tell me he’s going to make it,” Lila said as she watched Al disappear from the room in search of their son.
“You know I can’t,” Vivian replied, hating that she had to say the words but knowing she couldn’t promise something that she had no control over. If she told Lila everything would be okay and the baby died, she would never be able to forgive herself. “But we’ll know soon.”
Lila laid her head back and shut her eyes while Vivian went about cleaning everything up.
This was the first birth she’d attended where she actually knew the parents, and if she were being honest she’d admit that she preferred working with strangers. Giving the mothers bad news was hard enough when she barely knew them, and if she had to
tell Al and Lila that their baby was going to die, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get over it. That was one thing that had never occurred to her when she’d started this job, and one she wished she could change.
“How much longer?” Lila asked, breaking the silence.
Vivian looked toward the clock. “A few minutes. Debbie will come back when she knows something.”
Knowing how cold mothers could get after delivery, Vivian took a second blanket to the bed. Lila was already shivering, but the young mother was so worried about her baby that she didn’t seem to notice it.
“Here,” Vivian said, spreading the blanket over her and tucking it in.
“We’re going to name him Luke,” Lila said, her teeth chattering together and distorting the words. She was still staring at the door. Waiting. “It was Al’s brother’s name.”
“I like it.” Vivian took a seat at her side and eased her friend’s hand into hers.
“I thought about naming him after my dad, but I barely knew him or my mom.” Lila turned and looked at Vivian. “It kind of makes losing them worse.”
“I’m sure.”
When footsteps sounded in the hall, both women turned to stare at the door expectantly. Vivian held her breath as they waited, once again saying a prayer to that faceless entity in the sky in hopes that He actually was there and listening to her.
A second later Al walked into the room holding a little bundle wrapped in a blue blanket and grinning from ear to ear. “He’s perfect.”
Lila let out a little sob as she pulled her hand from Vivian’s grasp and held her arms out for the baby. Al was beaming when he slipped the baby into his wife’s arms, and the tears that shimmered in his eyes told Vivian that this was a private moment.
She slipped from the room, grateful that this had turned out the way she’d hoped it would. It was a relief, not just for the couple she’d just left, but for herself as well. She wasn’t pregnant yet, but she and Axl had been trying for nearly seven months now and she knew that she might find herself in the same situation any day now. Hopefully, this delivery was a sign that things had finally made a turn for the better and the babies from here on out would survive.
She was exhausted by the time she dragged herself out of Al and Lila’s, and thrilled beyond words that all she had to do to reach her own apartment was walk across the hall. It was close to five o’clock in the morning and it had been a long night, but she knew the day ahead of her would be even longer. She’d only be able to grab a two hour nap before Axl had to head into work himself, leaving her alone with a ten month old who was doing her best to explore every inch of the apartment. Learning to crawl had made Megan adventurous and twice as exhausting as she’d been before, but even in her tired state Vivian had to admit that she was enjoying the challenge motherhood had brought her.
She’d only taken one step across the hall when Parv came out of the apartment she shared with Joshua. The other woman stopped outside her door and looked Vivian over before turning her gaze to the apartment she’d just left.
“Lila had her baby?” Parv asked, her gaze frozen on the closed door.
Vivian had almost gotten used to the lifeless tone the other woman’s voice had taken on. Had almost forgotten that there was a time, no matter how brief, when Parv had been content with the lot life had given her. Thinking back to the timid college student they’d picked up on Route 66 in the early days of the outbreak, it was hard to believe that had been her. She’d changed so much after Trey’s death that it almost seemed like she had died as well.
A few times over the last ten months Vivian had thought that Parvarti and Joshua might be able to comfort one another. They shared an apartment, and like Parv he was nursing a serious case of heartbreak, plus their dispositions seemed to compliment one another so well. Thinking of them as together came naturally to Vivian. Nothing had happened, but she wasn’t sure if they were in denial or if they were both just too broken to ever allow themselves another shot at happiness. She hoped, for all their sakes, that wasn’t the case.
“A boy,” Vivian said, smiling despite her exhaustion. “He’s healthy. No sign that the virus is going to take him. They named him Luke.”
The news was met with a nod. “Good.”
Vivian waited for Parv to say more, but the seconds ticked by and nothing happened. It irked her, but she’d been up all night and was way too tired to try and draw Parvarti out of her shell.
“She’s exhausted, and she’s not the only one.” Vivian rolled her shoulders back and cringed at the way they popped. “I’ll see you later, Parv.”
She’d only taken one step when the other woman called out to her, and Vivian turned to find Parv’s previously indifferent gaze now intensely focused on her.
“We could use you out there, you know,” she said. “You’re a good shot. Strong. Reliable.”
This wasn’t the first time Parv had tried to talk Vivian into working the wall, but she wasn’t interested. “I’m happy with what I’m doing.”
“But why?”
Memories of all the months they’d spent on the road came back, strong and fast, nearly taking her breath away. Parv should know why, she’d been right there at Vivian’s side the whole time, but maybe she was incapable of understanding. They all dealt with death and loss differently, and Parv’s way of coping had always been to fight it while Vivian’s had been to try and work to make things better, hoping that the good things just might one day overshadow the bad.
“I want to leave the death and blood behind,” she said, letting out an exhausted sigh. “This job gives me hope. Hope that things will get better. For once, I’m bringing life into the world. It’s nice.”
“It can’t be that much better,” Parv nodded toward Lila and Al’s apartment. “Half the time, they die.”
She had a point. Vivian had seen too many heartbreaking moments in the last ten months to count them all, but they hadn’t all ended that way. “But half the time they live.”
Parvarti shook her head like she thought Vivian was a fool. “I have to go. My patrol starts in ten minutes.”
She was already headed down the hall when Vivian said, “Okay.”
She watched her friend walk away, not moving until she had disappeared into the stairwell even though she was so tired her eyes burned with the need for sleep. It made her sad that Parv was still so hard, but Vivian had to hope that eventually the other woman would find something to make her happy. Whether or not Joshua was the answer, she didn’t know for sure, but there had to be something. Otherwise, what was the point of going on?
By lunchtime Vivian was considering a nap. The day had been even more exhausting than Vivian had expected, and she was having a difficult time keeping her eyes open because Megan was out cold and the apartment was deathly silent. Before she could make up her mind, though, someone knocked at the door. The last thing Vivian wanted was to make small talk with a visitor when she was feeling this exhausted, but she dragged herself up off the couch anyway, afraid that if she ignored whoever was at the door they’d keep knocking and wake Megan. Then she would be stuck with a fussy baby and an unwelcome guest.
She opened the door and found herself staring into the face of a total stranger. The woman was tall and slim, and maybe only a few years older than Vivian. She had blonde hair that was so pale it looked almost silver, and strikingly pale blue eyes, so light that they seemed almost colorless. Her eyebrows and lashes were the same shade as her hair, giving her eyes a hairless look that brought a lizard to mind, and she had skin that was the purest shade of ivory Vivian had ever seen. It was so white, in fact, that she couldn’t help wondering where this woman had come from. If she was like most of the other people in this settlement she’d traveled here from somewhere, but Vivian couldn’t imagine a person with such a fair complexion making it here without being turned into a lobster. Even Jim, who hadn’t been this light to begin with, had shown up scorched by the sun, but this woman looked as if she’d never seen the light of day.<
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The woman’s blue eyes looked Vivian up and down three times before she finally spoke. “I’m looking for Axl James.”
“He’s working,” she said, taken aback by the brusque way the woman seemed to dismiss her as anyone important. “Can I help you?”
“Who are you?”
In her exhausted state Vivian had a hard time biting back the retort that this woman had knocked on her door and wasn’t really in any position to throw questions at her. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m his wife. Vivian.”
The woman blinked twice before smiling. “How lovely to meet you. I was wondering if I could come in.”
Vivian almost shut the door right then. Something about this woman rubbed her the wrong way and she was functioning on only two hours of sleep. The last thing she wanted was a bi-polar guest who didn’t seem to understand the basics of social niceties.
But the woman was smiling now and she seemed harmless, so Vivian nodded and pulled the door open the rest of the way, allowing the woman to enter. She only took two steps in before pausing to look around, the expression on her face oddly reverent. Almost as if she was stepping into a church instead of their living room.
Vivian did the polite thing and asked the woman to sit. She did, balancing on the edge of the couch cushion with her back as straight as a board while Vivian took the chair across from her. The woman had yet to introduce herself, which would have been odd if she hadn’t already proven that she had no idea how to interact with other people in a social setting.
“What is it I can do for you?” Vivian asked instead of bothering with names.
“I just wanted to talk,” the woman said. Her eyes were lit with excitement and wonder, and they wouldn’t stop scanning the room. “So this is where Axl James lives.”
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 50