by Max Lockwood
“I might be able to,” Elaina said, ignoring Alec’s request. “I’ve got a better idea how to cure it now than I ever have. If you just give me a little while to think, I might be able to come up with something that will help.”
Melissa blinked rapidly. “I trust you, Elaina. I’m scared, but I’m going to let you make the call. What do you think we should do?”
“Keep driving, Alec,” she answered immediately. “Keep driving until we find a laboratory.”
“Elaina,” he said, sounding defeated. “Please. I want you to use your brilliant scientist’s mind. Don’t let your emotions get in the way.”
“Drive,” she ordered. “I need a moment to think.”
Alec reluctantly peeled out of the parking lot and made his way back to the road. Everyone sat in silence as Elaina pulled an envelope from her backpack and studied its contents.
After she took the geneticist’s research from the elementary school, Elaina didn’t have the time to look over it. But now, in the car with Alec and Melissa, it was imperative that she understand his work. Alec’s life depended on it.
From what she could tell, the doctor was working on a treatment that involved introducing the body to the mutation in hopes that the virus would find the patient’s blood inhospitable. New antibodies would fight these microscopic viruses, rendering them useless.
Elaina’s blood was filled with Bretton’s virus, but her body wasn’t compatible with the part of the virus that caused so much harm to the body. While she didn’t completely understand the medical aspects of this therapy, she got the general gist of how it worked. She flipped through the notebook, then cross-referenced what she read with the guide to genetic therapy. When she was finished, she sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
“Elaina?” Melissa asked, concerned for her friend.
“Mmm?” Elaina hummed, her eyes still closed.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” she mumbled. “Just thinking.”
From what she read, it seemed like using stem cells would be a powerful way to introduce the gene to the patient, but Elaina didn’t know the first thing about successfully harvesting those cells. She was deep in a trance when she felt the car stop again.
Alec hopped out of the vehicle and started walking away. Elaina hopped out of the car and sprinted after him, grabbing him by the hand.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Lainey, we can’t do this anymore,” he sighed. “I’m starting to feel sick. I’ve got a terrible headache and chills. I think because the bite was so close to my head that it traveled to my brain faster. I’m scared of hurting you.”
Elaina shook her head. “There’s no research on that,” she said. “I can fix you.”
“You can’t,” he said softly, cupping her face with his hand. “Not yet, anyway. I love you, but I can’t protect you forever. You’re much stronger and braver than I am, anyway.”
Tears pooled in Elaina’s eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she whimpered.
“You’ll save the world,” he said, smiling. “You don’t need me to do that.”
He pulled her in for a hug. Her arms and legs felt numb as he held her. She didn’t realize how much she feared this moment until it stared her in the face.
“Kiss me,” he requested. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
She obliged, pressing her lips to his with so much force that she nearly knocked him off balance. She held onto his face, never wanting to let him go. Elaina wasn’t sure how much time had passed when they finally parted, their cheeks wet with tears.
Melissa stood a few feet away, silently sobbing. The top of her paper mask was soaked with tears.
“Goodbye, Melissa,” Alec said forlornly. She rushed toward him and flung her arms around her neck. “Take good care of Lainey, won’t you?” he asked.
“I will.” Melissa sniffled. She let go of Alec and backed up, looking embarrassed.
Elaina grabbed him for one last embrace, devastated that her blood could not save him. She squeezed him, mentally willing her cells to envelop his. Then, she had an idea.
“Wait,” she squeaked. “Alec, get back in the car. I have an idea.”
“No, Lainey,” he said softly. “It’s time for me to go.”
“No,” she argued. “I saw a sign for a blood bank not far from here. I want to try something. I have a good feeling about it.”
He sighed, clearly pained by her persistence.
“Alec Lawrence, get in the fucking truck,” she shouted, startling him with her strong language.
“Okay, okay,” he said as she pushed him into the back seat. Elaina slammed the door behind him and took the wheel.
“Are you sure about this?” Melissa asked with wide eyes as Elaina stomped on the gas pedal.
“No, but I have to give it a try.”
She followed the signs for the next town and made a sharp turn at the exit. When she found the building she was looking for, she slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the truck.
Grabbing Alec by the hand, she led him to the blood bank, opening the electronic sliding doors with one hand. After a quick look through the building, they deemed it safe for use.
Elaina studied the equipment, gathering all the supplies she needed. Melissa took on the role of guard, making sure the building stayed secure while Elaina did her work.
Elaina disappeared into a back office while Alec sat down on a reclining seat. Melissa could tell that he didn’t feel well and just hoped he held out long enough for Elaina to try her cure.
Suddenly, the lights turned on. Elaina returned to the donation room with a grin on her face.
“The backup generator works. Now, everyone, just hang tight while I figure out how this stuff works.”
Within minutes, Elaina had set up a donation machine and was hanging an empty bag on a metal hanger. She connected the tube to the contraption and attached the needle.
“What are you doing?” Alec asked as she sat down on the reclining chair.
“Donating my blood cells,” she said, plunging the needle into her arm. Dark red blood traveled from the clear tubing to the bag on her right. She sat back and relaxed as blood drained from her body.
“Lainey, don’t do this,” Alec whined.
“Let me try, Alec,” she warned. “I’m not ready to give you up.”
Once the first bag was filled, Elaina cut off the flow of blood and set the full bag on the table. Then, she hooked up a second bag to the tubing. Alec opened his mouth to speak, but Elaina glared at him with such ferocity that he clamped his mouth shut and closed his eyes as his girlfriend took more blood from her body. When she was nearly finished, Melissa noticed that she looked a little peaked. Melissa raced to the supply room and gathered a bottle of apple juice and a cookie. Elaina drowsily took the bottle and slowly sipped from it as she finished the donation.
When she was done, she hooked the bags up to a different machine, double-checking the mechanisms to make sure they would work.
“Come here, Alec,” she said, her voice sounding weak. He obliged, plopping himself down on the table. Elaina rolled up a sleeve and connected the fresh tubing to his arm with a sterile needle.
“You could use a little extra blood anyway,” Elaina said as the machine pumped the first bag of blood into his body. She pushed the adjacent table closer to Alec and lay beside him, holding his hand.
When he had gone through both bags, Elaina withdrew the needle and placed a bandage on the small hole in his arm. He looked at her with a sad expression on his face.
“Feeling any better?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Well, we’ll give it some time.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, taking her hand. “I want the two of you to keep going. If this works and I survive, I promise I’ll find you. If you never see me again, you’ll know what happened to me. I let you make the choice to bring me here—now I want yo
u to respect my wishes.”
“How about a compromise?” she asked. “I’ll give you a few days to recover. Then, I’m coming back for you. I’m curious about this cure, but I also need to see you. Promise to be here when I get back?”
He sighed. “Fine. I don’t like this, but I’m willing to compromise.”
“Good,” she said, planting a kiss on his lips. “Take care of yourself, and I’ll come back for you in forty-eight hours.”
With that, the two girls ran out to the truck where Melissa managed to get the vehicle running. Melissa steered the truck back onto the road.
“Where do you want me to go?” she asked.
“Up to you,” she said, trying to keep tears from spilling out. “These will be the longest two days of my life.”
Not wanting to go too far, Melissa drove to the next town and made a pit stop at a gun store. After grabbing a few firearms, she found an old camper on the edge of town. It was small, but Melissa reasoned that it would be easier to keep an eye out for danger in a smaller shelter. Elaina couldn’t argue with that logic.
After two days of doing little else but sitting around and staring at the walls, the girls got back in the truck and made their way to the blood bank. Elaina’s stomach churned the whole time. She was nervous about what she would find once they got there.
She ran through the front door and looked around the front office. Melissa followed with her brand-new handgun. Alec was nowhere to be found. Her heart sank.
Then, they heard a rustling from the supply room. Melissa led the way, her gun ready to fire.
“Hey,” Alec exclaimed, dropping a package of cookies on the floor. “It’s just me.”
“How do you feel?” Elaina asked, her hands shaking.
“Honestly, I feel perfectly fine,” he responded. “When you left, I was really cold and achy but couldn’t stop sweating. Then my mind felt all fuzzy. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was as good as new. Lainey,” he said, reaching out for her hand, “I think you’ve done it. I think you’ve finally created the cure.”
Chapter Thirty
Alec and Elaina held hands as they sat on the rocks, letting the mist from the ocean cover their faces. Melissa sat a few yards away, flicking small stones into the water. She stood up, brushing the sand off her jeans, then walked back up the rocks toward the house.
Taking advantage of their privacy, Alec leaned over and kissed Elaina. She scooted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Besides an occasional jolt of pain when he moved the joint wrong, his shoulder had healed quite nicely and wasn’t hurting him anymore.
More importantly, Alec was not showing any signs of illness. As far as Elaina knew, he was the first infected person to survive an attack. Elaina still wanted to make her cure widespread, but she took the small victory for the time being.
Surprisingly, the partial transfusion had cleared up all of the symptoms within a day. Elaina had been careful with him after they left for the East Coast, monitoring his symptoms on an hourly basis. She performed basic neurological exams and took his temperature frequently. All tests came back normal.
She had talked about finding another blood bank so she could prepare more blood for donating to newly-infected people, but Alec resisted the idea.
“There’s only so much of your blood to spare, Elaina,” he said. “It’s nice to know that the treatment works, but if people find out that your blood can cure them, they’ll bleed you dry.”
Elaina rolled her eyes whenever he said this. She was just glad that Alec was healthy again. She worried terribly that something catastrophic would happen to him. The two days they spent in the motor home were the worst days of her life, save for the death of her sister.
“The sun is setting,” Alec said to Elaina, nudging her side. “We should go in, too.”
Elaina helped Alec to his feet and walked hand in hand back to the abandoned bed and breakfast they had discovered earlier that day. After adding a roughly-constructed barbed-wire fence around the perimeter, they brought along a stack of two-by-fours to barricade the windows and doors. The three had spent the better part of the afternoon lugging water cooler jugs and pallets of food into the seaside-themed home.
“It kind of smells out here, doesn’t it?” Alec asked as he rubbed his hands on a seashell-shaped soap at the kitchen sink. “I thought the ocean smelled refreshing, if not a little fishy. There’s a strange scent to this place.”
Elaina shrugged. “I think you’re referring to the smell of death,” she said, plugging fuel canisters into the camp stove. She placed the stove by a small window that was only partially boarded up. Streaks of pink light streamed into the cozy home.
“You might be right,” he replied, crinkling his nose.
As they drove into town, they noticed that the Infected in the area were withered and sickly. The three concluded that the militias had not made their way to Maine yet, preserving one last safe place—which they were aware of, at least.
Once the sun went down, it was time for their new nightly ritual. Gathering around the dinner table, Elaina, Alec, and Melissa would turn on the radio and listen to whatever they could find while sharing a meal. This night was sardines on crackers, fruit cocktail, canned corn, and a little radio station from the suburbs of Chicago.
“Folks,” the raspy voice said as it mixed with soft static, “I’m afraid that things aren’t looking so good right now. We’ve been hearing reports that the two prominent militant forces are preparing for war. Who knows who’s going to have control of the country by this time next year? But folks, does it even matter? If the virus hasn’t already made an impact overseas, do we think that our brothers and sisters overseas will allow our sickness to spread? I worry that some country will decide to bomb us into oblivion just to preserve their health. Maybe they have the right to. Folks—”
Elaina turned off the radio and yawned. “It’s been a long day. I think I’m going to go to bed.”
“I’m going to put one last board in the door, then I’ll be right behind you,” Alec replied.
Melissa cleared the dishes and placed them in the sink. She gave them a quick rinse with the water from the rainwater storage tank.
“Where’d we put that extra lantern?” Melissa asked. “I grabbed some books from the store today. We’ll see how long they last.”
“I think I put it in your room,” Elaina answered from down the hall, shouting over Alec’s hammering.
When he was finished, he found her in their new bedroom on the second floor. Elaina had swept the mass of lighthouse-covered throw pillows off the bed and onto the floor, creating an obstacle course to get to the bed.
“Sorry.” She giggled. “I’ll clean those up in the morning.
He pulled her in close and gave her a big kiss. Since Alec’s infection, they were no longer afraid to be near each other.
“Do you think we’ll be safe here?” she asked.
Alec stroked her hair, kissing her on top of the head. “I think we’re going to be okay. The three of us will just hang out here for as long as possible. If things get bad and Melissa runs out of ammo, then we can reevaluate the situation. Remember, you’re the only person in the world who has successfully cured the infection. We can always find a way to leverage a good deal with that information.”
Elaina tucked her head into Alec’s chest. They were living in a boarded-up house on the coast, but she felt safer than she had in months. Alec was immune to the virus, they were still together, and they had survived far more than she ever thought possible. She had been given a second chance at creating a cure and a second chance at a life with Alec. The time to mass-produce a cure would come, but for the time being, she just wanted to spend as much time as possible in peace and quiet before the world threatened to implode.
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About Max Lockwood
Max Lockwood writes suspenseful, post-apocalyptic thriller and dystopian f
iction while living in New York.
Growing up with parents who were preppers and always planning for the worst, but hoping for the best, got him interested in writing in the first place. “What would happen if the world were to change?” is something he asked himself his whole life. Until one day he decided to put it down on paper.
His stories will have you reading on the edge of your seats…you have been warned!
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Also by Max Lockwood
The Morgan Strain Series
Point Of Transmission (Book 1)
Point Of Proximity (Book 2)
Point Of Destruction (Book 3)
Point Of Escalation (Book 4)
Point Of Profusion (Book 5)
Last Man Standing Series
Zombie Apocalypse (Book 0—Prequel) (FREE!)
Zombie Armageddon (Book 1)
Zombie Annihilation (Book 2)
Zombie Decimation (Book 3)
Zero Power Series
It Began (Book 1)
Trying To Survive (Book 2)
They Invaded (Book 3)
Fending Them Off (Book 4)
Excerpt From It Began
Chapter One
School was annoying, even when she was the one standing at the front.
Clara was rethinking a lot of life choices, and not for the first time. In fact, she thought of it often and wondered why she'd thought it would be a good idea to become a teacher, and a high school teacher at that.
"Now, if you would all just pay attention…"
She threw the words out there not expecting much and sighed because nothing changed anyway. It was a particularly trying class, one of the hardest in a long time. Usually, she could get at least one or two students to pay attention, but that wasn’t even the case.