The virus was easy to manipulate, but what she needed was someone she could test it on. Someone she could keep an eye on, someone who was healthy and strong, who would be likely to carry the child to term. It was mere coincidence that Joshua came into work smiling from ear to ear only a few days after her search started, but Dr. Helton couldn’t help thinking that it was a sign. A gift, really.
“Parv’s pregnant,” he declared happily.
Since she hadn’t yet received the weekly transcripts—they were only rushed to her if something big happened—the doctor didn’t have to act surprised by the news.
“Congratulations.”
He jabbered away as he started his work, not noticing that she barely responded. She was hardly listening because she was already thinking about the man at her side and how she would be able to convince him to inject his wife with an experimental vaccine. It was a long shot, and if he didn’t agree she could always have a midwife tell his wife she was iron deficient and inject the woman with the virus that way. There was more than one way to skin a cat.
Luckily, Joshua gave her the answer when he said, “Of course we’re still worried. I mean, the number of babies dying from the virus has dwindled, but it still happens.”
The way he frowned almost made her change her mind and instead pick a random woman up off the streets, but then she thought of Angus, of his daughter. Of what she would be able to save the little girl from if this was successful.
“We’ve developed this new vaccine.”
Joshua froze with a slide halfway to the microscope in front of him. “What is it?”
“We’ve already tested it a couple times with good results. We’re giving the drug to pregnant women in hopes that a baby will be born immune. This could be a real turning point.”
Joshua was nodding, but he didn’t smile and the expression on his face was thoughtful.
Hoping to convince him, Dr. Helton found herself going off on a tangent, creating fake statistics about the drug and how successful it had been during trials.
“You know what this could mean for other areas, right?” she said. “Here we’ve seen a major decrease in infant deaths, but in other places mortality is still pretty high. The CDC has given us the edge, but not everyone is that lucky. This could change all of that. With just one injection during pregnancy, we can bring the human race back from the brink of extinction.”
“I wouldn’t exactly classify the human race as being on the brink of extinction,” Joshua said. “There are still plenty of us here. The settlement is so crowded people have been building shacks so they have shelter, and there are sanctioned settlements all over the country. Not to mention all the unsanctioned ones.”
“But the flu that went through the settlement just last year is a testament to how precarious our situation really is,” Dr. Helton argued. “We lost nearly half the people living in the settlement. That’s hundreds of survivors who made it through the zombie virus only to die of the flu. We’re teetering on the edge of disaster. One major outbreak and we could be done for, so the more babies that survive, the better off we are.”
Joshua’s gaze moved to the floor but she could see the cracks in his certainty, knew that he was considering it. All she needed was to play on his emotions just a little more and he’d be convinced.
“I just wish—” She forced the words to come out shaky, blinking over and over again in hopes that it would make her eyes teary. “I wish we’d had this sooner. Maybe my baby wouldn’t have died. Maybe she would have survived.”
Joshua looked up. “You would have tested the vaccine on yourself?”
“In a heartbeat,” she whispered. When a tear slid down her cheek, it was nearly impossible not to smile.
The next morning she requested to have the transcripts from the pervious night sent directly to her. When she got them, she eagerly scanned the pages until she found the one where Joshua brought the vaccine up. They had been having dinner at Axl and Vivian’s at the time, which made Dr. Helton’s heart pound. What if someone talked Joshua out of it? What if someone had enough foresight to realize an experimental vaccine was a bad idea?
JOSHUA: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT GETTING THE VACCINE?
(A PAUSE.)
PARVARTI: THE NEW ONE?
JOSHUA: OF COURSE, THIS COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING.
VIVIAN: ISN’T IT KIND OF NEW?
JOSHUA: IT IS, BUT THIS IS ABOUT OUR BABY’S LIFE.
(A PAUSE.)
PARVARTI: WHAT DOES EVERYONE ELSE THINK?
VIVIAN: I DON’T KNOW IF WE CAN WEIGH IN ON THIS, PARV.
LILA: IT’S YOUR BABY.
JOSHUA: BUT YOU HAVE KIDS AND YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THE SAME FEAR WE’RE GOING THROUGH. WHAT IF SOMEONE HAD OFFERED THIS VACCINE TO YOU WHEN YOU WERE PREGNANT WITH CHARLIE? OR MARGOT? WOULD YOU HAVE DONE IT?
(LONG PAUSE.)
VIVIAN: I WOULD DO ANYTHING I COULD TO MAKE SURE MY BABY WAS SAFE.
The conversation veered off after that, but hours later, after everyone had left, Vivian and Axl talked about it again. Dr. Helton read it just to make sure the woman hadn’t changed her mind and decided to talk Parvarti out of it.
AXL: YOU THINK THEY SHOULD DO IT? SEEMS LIKE A BIG RISK.
VIVIAN: IT IS. HONESTLY, I DON’T KNOW. MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE STAYED OUT OF IT, BUT I HAD TO TELL THE TRUTH, WHICH IS THAT I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO MAKE SURE OUR KIDS ARE SAFE.
AXL: SO YOU’D TAKE IT IF YOU GOT PREGNANT AGAIN?
VIVIAN: I’M NOT SURE. MAYBE. I JUST WANT EVERYTHING TO WORK OUT. I WANT US TO BE HAPPY. I WANT JOSHUA AND PARV TO BE HAPPY AND I WANT TO STOP LOSING PEOPLE. IT WOULD BE NICE IF WE COULD LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE OUR KIDS DIDN’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT DEATH ALL THE TIME.
AXL: THAT’S WHY WE’RE HERE.
(LONG PAUSE.)
VIVIAN: IS IT?
AXL: IT’S WHY WE CAME. IT’S WHY WE GOTTA HOLD ON.
Dr. Helton was prepared when Joshua showed up in her office. Prepared to look surprised, prepared to ask the right questions that made her sound concerned and caring, but also ready to do what needed to be done. She cautioned him while at the same time lacing the warning with words of hope and promise, and he bought it. He sank his teeth into the promise of hope and swallowed every bite, and less than two hours later his wife was leaving the office, the virus flooding her system and hopefully creating the hybrid zombie of Star’s dreams.
When the child was finally born, they woke her, and even though she had been sound asleep, she dragged herself out of bed and hurried to the observation wing. This baby had been a desperate attempt to change the course of things, one that would most certainly send her to hell if she hadn’t already been on the way there. If they could achieve their goals this way, they would be able to spare Angus’s child. At least that’s what she told herself, although a voice whispered in her ear that Star would insist on moving forward no matter what happened. That if this hybrid was the answer they’d been looking for, he’d just create another puzzle that needed to be solved.
Joshua had been all too eager to give his wife the drug in the end, something that had caused Dr. Helton only a moment of guilt. The fact that she knew the vaccine was a death sentence for the baby—and possibly for the mother—was a sacrifice that would all be worth it if she was able to spare Angus any more pain. Why she cared so much about whether or not Test Subject 01 was hurting was a question she still didn’t care to reflect, but it was also something she couldn’t escape no matter how hard she tried.
“Did the mother survive?” she asked when she swept into the lab.
The nurse on the other side of the room looked up from the table where the infant lay. “She did. They had to preform a hysterectomy, though. The baby ripped her to shreds on the inside.”
A shudder shook Dr. Helton, but she pushed the feeling off. She couldn’t allow herself to get emotionally invested in anyone else if she was going to achieve her goals, which meant not thinking about the pain Joshua’s wife must have gone through. What she needed t
o focus on was if the drug had done what it was supposed to do and what the downfalls of creating a hybrid this way would be. For example, if the infant ripped the mother to shreds, the host would only be good for one offspring. Meaning they would have to find a new woman for each creature.
The nurse stepped aside when Dr. Helton approached, and she got her first good look at the baby. It wasn’t a baby, though, that much was obvious. Its eyes were milky white and its movements jerky and uneven. It thrashed on the table violently, and even before she allowed it to grasp her finger in its hand she could tell it was much stronger than any normal infant. The child’s grip was sturdy, and it tried to pull her finger to its mouth.
“Boy or girl?” she asked as she pried her digit from the baby’s fist.
“Boy.”
Dr. Helton wasn’t sure if the sex of the baby mattered or not.
“What are we going to do with it?” the nurse asked.
“We’re going to watch it grow and see if it’s the link we’ve been missing,” she responded, still staring down at the child.
It was no surprise when Joshua came to her office a few hours later. He was a mess. His clothes were disheveled and his eyes were red and puffy. She knew that her actions had devastated this man, and even though she fought against it, the knowledge actually made her feel something. She hated that.
“Joshua.” She stood halfway, but sat back down when he dropped into the chair across from her desk. “Are you okay?”
“Tell me it was an accident,” he said, meeting her gaze head on, like if he stared at her hard enough she’d give something away.
Dr. Helton kept her gaze even and unemotional. “I don’t know what you mean. Has something happened?”
“Parvarti had the baby.” He shook his head. “No. It tried to rip her apart and they had to do an emergency C-section.”
“My God,” she said, but her voice came out too flat and she knew he wouldn’t be convinced. Not that it mattered. What was done was done and there was nothing he could do to change things now. “Is she okay? Is the baby?”
“Parv’s alive, but they had to—” His voice broke. “The baby turned inside her. Something, a new strain or the vaccine we gave her, turned it into a zombie. They had to destroy it.” The last two words were so shaky that she barely caught them.
“Joshua,” she said, reaching across the desk like she was going to comfort him. She sat back when he shrank away from her. “I’m sorry. This is… This has never happened. I told you we tested the vaccine on other women and it was successful. Maybe it is a new strain.” The idea was something he had come up with, but it was an easy lie to grab hold of.
“What if it isn’t?” he asked. “What if it was the vaccine?”
Dr. Helton let out a deep breath like she was thinking it through. “I don’t know. I wish I could tell you definitively, but I can’t. You and I both know that drugs affect everyone differently, and it’s always possible—” She broke off, pretending to have a difficult time going on. “We won’t use it again, we can’t take the risk. I’ll have it destroyed. I swear to you.”
Joshua’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Thank you.”
He didn’t move, but Dr. Helton found herself wishing he would leave. The utter devastation on his face was hard to take, especially when she was working so hard at reigning in her newly discovered emotions.
After a minute or so, Joshua dragged himself to his feet. She stood, hoping to convey respect and empathy, but he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t look at her again before leaving the room.
When he was gone she sank back into her chair and closed her eyes. That had been more difficult than she’d thought it would be. She didn’t know where these feelings were coming from, but she did know she couldn’t let them take hold. She’d fought to push them away over the years, knowing that she needed to be stronger than this if she wanted to succeed. She’d been successful too, at least until Angus had come into her life.
Dr. Helton hadn’t always been this way. She’d grown up in a good family with parents who cared about her but had struggled to make ends meet in a world that favored the educated. Her father had worked as a security guard at a bank while her mother cleaned houses, and as she’d grown older and had seen how difficult life was for them, she’d decided that she would not struggle her whole life the way they had. She worked hard in school and did well, earning scholarships that paid for college and paved the way for her success.
The deeper she got into her studies, the more she felt the need to change. She saw her female classmates drop out one by one as they chose marriage over education, then later watched as the ones who had graduated chose to raise children instead of have a career. All of them had been driven at one time, but there had come a point in the other women’s lives when they’d allowed their emotions to get in the way. Love stole things from you, that much Dr. Helton knew for sure. It robbed you of your common sense and drive to succeed and took away your identity. She had refused to let that happen to her.
So she’d worked hard to become as clinical as possible, to push away the empathy that had persisted in making an appearance during the early days of her residency, instead focusing on the academic aspect of things.
Meeting Star had helped. He was the very definition of cold and detached, and she’d found herself modeling him, watching him for clues. It was how they became so close, working side by side at the CDC and eventually in secret to create the virus. In those days most people had thought they were a couple on the side, but Star had his wife—a silly woman who stayed home and kept him fed—while Dr. Helton had her job and the knowledge that she didn’t need a man for anything.
She’d become a statue of who she used to be, cold and hard on the outside and just as rock solid within, but she now knew that keeping people at arms length had been what had helped her achieve that. Had she known this about herself when she’d come up with the idea to breed Angus, she never would have offered her own body. She’d forgotten what it felt like to have another person’s skin touch hers. How warm it was. How comforting. The feeling had woken something in her that she’d been positive had died, and now that it was conscious, it wanted to break free. It wanted more. More of Angus, but also more of everything else.
But she knew she couldn’t let it thrive. She’d gone too far, done too much. There was no turning back.
At least not until she saved Angus’s daughter.
The hybrid didn’t thrive the way they’d hoped. It was alive, it’s heart still beating, but it refused bottles and there was little else they could feed it since it had no teeth. At first they attempted to give it nourishment intravenously, but the baby thrashed so much that the tubes were constantly ripped from its little arms.
They considered the idea that the child might not need food at all. It was a hybrid, after all, and the zombies roaming the earth didn’t need flesh to keep going, they just craved it for some reason no one could quite understand. But after only one day of no attempts to feed it, the child grew weak and lethargic.
The most problematic part of the whole thing was finding someone to take care of the infant. When Test Subject 06 was born, Helen had taken her without even a moment’s hesitation, but no one wanted to care for an infant that might infect them with a simple scratch, and it soon became too much work with no payout in sight.
“It was a nice try,” Star said.
Dr. Helton stood at his side and together they stared through the observation window. The nurse inside the room wore gloves that extended to her elbows as she prepared the final IV the infant would ever receive.
“I thought it would work.” Dr. Helton didn’t mean to sound so dejected, but she knew it wouldn’t matter. Star would never suspect the real reason for her disappointment had to do with the child she and Angus James had created together.
“We’ll have more success using the test subjects’ blood to create a virus.” He turned away from the window. “Test Subject 06 will be three soon. She should be
strong enough by then, so we’ll ease her into the tests.”
Dr. Helton couldn’t move for a long time after Star left.
For the past two years Dr. Helton had gone to get the child on her birthday, but the third one was much different than the others had been. It started with an unannounced early morning visit, catching Helen completely off guard. The child’s guardian seemed to know immediately what was going to happen and even though her brown eyes were full of regret and anger, she didn’t fight them when they took Test Subject 06 from her.
The tests started out small. They took her blood pressure and temperature, measured her height and weight, all things that any normal child would go through at a doctor’s visit. Then they drew blood, something they hadn’t done since she was born and then only a little so they could see what kind of antibodies she had in her blood. Dr. Helton did the procedure herself while the nurse held the girl down, and the little cry the child let out seemed to pierce the doctor through the heart. She’d never felt anything like it, and the pain refused to go away for the rest of the day, growing worse when they injected Test Subject 06 with the virus for the first time.
By the time they returned her to her apartment, Dr. Helton felt certain that she was having a heart attack.
She went back that night, just like she usually did, but this time when she slipped into the room she was met with hostility and fear. The girl shrank away from her while Helen glared, and the emotions swirling through the air were enough to make the doctor want to turn and run.
But she knew Angus was expecting them, so she followed through, taking the sleeping child to him in the middle of the night as usual.
He saw the Band-Aids on his daughter’s arms the second he took her and the cold stare he shot Dr. Helton made her shrink away. “What’d you do?”
“You know,” she said. “You’ve known all along this was coming. Don’t act like it’s a surprise.”
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 60