by Mason King
Kendall excused herself, making sure not to gloat about her awesome Yahtzee skills, and made a pot of coffee. With no power, “coffee” was probably a loose term, but she still managed to do what she could with coffee grounds and super-hot water. She’d made herself a make shift French press so that they could enjoy one of her favorite luxuries. It was starting to wind down and get close to sunset. That time was now the unspoken last call for everyone to get ready for bed.
Frank and Diana were always the first to bid everyone goodnight. Brad and Trevor were almost always last, but this time they quickly followed Kendall’s parents in going to their separate houses. So tonight it just came down to Kendall and Hunter. They each had themselves a cup of coffee and sat in comfortable silence for a while.
The sun had set and there were several candles lit to illuminate the room as it seemed like neither one of them was ready to go to bed yet. Kendall and Hunter had gotten a lot closer over the last few weeks. They had unintentionally asserted themselves as the leaders of the group, therefore went on a lot of resource finding trips on their own, and had spent the majority of those rides talking about their lives before the outbreak.
Hunter now knew that Kendall had been engaged before, having called off the wedding due to the guys’ unwillingness to move forward with a real career. Kendall had thrown herself in to work and studies after that, and accrued a large group of girlfriends.
Hunter told her about how he and Allison had met, admitting that she had been engaged to one of his best friends, Jake.
“The same Jake that helped you guys out, back when this all started?” She’d asked, surprised.
“One in the same.” He explained that he had, in no way, stolen Allison from Jake. Allison had called off their engagement much like Kendall had with her ex. It was years before he and Allison had ended up dating, but he and Jake made sure to remain friends. Hunter went on to admit that he’d always had a thing for Allison, though. Even as she’d dated Jake. But he made sure to never let anyone realize how he’d felt.
“Looks like it’s all moot now, anyway.” Hunter commented. He’d come to terms with what had happened to Allison, as much as one can, considering how she was lost. He still missed her every day, but he reasoned that in this type of situation he couldn’t continue to dwell on what was. He had to continue to live in the present, only looking forward.
Kendall looked at Hunter sympathetically and reached over to grab his hand.
“It will be okay.” Hunter didn’t return her look, just let her hold his hand and give him some comfort.
“I know that. She’d be proud of how far we’ve come.”
Kendall smiled, “Yes, should would be. Because, face it, we’ve kicked some serious ass. And we’ve been able to somewhat settle down.
Hunter looked up from his coffee cup and returned her smile. She was right, and he told her so.
They sat in companionable silence for a while longer, enjoying each other’s company.
***
Lil, need you in the basement. The text popped through from Sam.
Lillian put the papers she was looking at down and headed for the stairs.
Sam had made it back to headquarters a few hours ago and headed straight for the lab guys in the basement of the bureau.
Walking down those stairs always gave Lil the heebie jeebies.
It had been awhile since she’d needed to grace the lab guys with her presence, and the second her shoe hit the concrete floor, she had already regretted her decision.
Lil was momentarily taken aback by the lab guys in Hazmat suits that were catering to various human specimens that they had acquired to do more research on the outbreak. She had heard rumors that the bureau was doing some experimenting, but she hadn’t let herself think too deeply into that possibility and had shrugged it off.
Now, seeing several men, women, and even one child locked in a glass cube looking severely emaciated, infected and unhappy, Lil thought she may get sick.
Sam was all the way at the back of the room and called her to him.
Lil sucked it up and headed his way.
Sam was bent down looking in to a microscope and intermittently looking up at the woman in the glass cube in front of him. One of the lab guys was beside of him, seemingly explaining something to him.
Once Lil finally reached the two men, she had to admit she was intrigued.
Sam immediately started talking in the fast paced manner that was common for him when he had figured something out.
“So it appears that the four separate outbreak sites were all infected with different strands of the same original disease: rabies. But what they did was, they spliced it with several different diseases that they haven’t totally identified yet but they’ve narrowed it down to Ebola, Measles, and Yersinia pestis, which is what primarily caused the black plague. The people that organized this attack are geniuses.”
Sam’s tone turned from informative, to spiteful as he continued, “If the lab guys are correct, then there will be almost no way to cure this disease. It’s so unique and contains so many different variances that it would take years, possibly even decades to come up with an antidote.”
Sam looked towards the lab tech beside him, and he continued where Sam left off.
“It’s true. None of us has ever seen anything like this in our entire careers. It’s hard to get diseases like these to even merge together. Hell, any one of these diseases on their own is almost impossible to cure. For example; Rabies has no known cure. It’s common knowledge that once an animal has rabies, there is no way to cure it but to simply put the animal down to prevent any further outbreak. There have only ever ben 1-3 cases of human rabies in the US annually. If it wasn’t so devastating, it would be fascinating.”
With that, the tech looked up towards the specimen that they had been watching. The words “Outbreak 3” was written at the top of her cube. Lil looked and noticed that, sure enough, there was a 1, 2, and 4 on the other cubes, all with a person safely inside.
“So you’ve managed to ascertain one person from each outbreak point? So are you trying to match a vial to them?”
“Actually yes, you’re correct. We have been able to match a vial to 3 of the outbreak site victims. This is the first one we matched and once we realized that that’s what we were looking for, it wasn’t hard to match the other 2. We’re still working on matching the 1st outbreak site with a vial. We’re hoping to do so within the next few hours. We’ll keep you updated.”
Sam and Lil thanked the men for their hard work, and made their way back up to their offices. It had been so long since either of them had slept that they each took up space on separate couches in the break room, and did their best to get a few hours of sleep before they prepared for their next move.
***
Frank was standing close to the window, looking outwards. He hadn’t wanted to wake Diana, but he was sure he heard something this time. In the pitch black dark, it was so hard to tell. Frank watched closely for any movement down below. After what felt like 10-20 minutes, with no clock he had no way of knowing, he finally crawled back in to bed trying, in vain, to get some sleep.
The next morning, he was greeted by his wife with a bottle of water and a pop tart. “Why were you up last night?” She asked, concerned.
“You heard me?”
“Of course I heard you. But you didn’t’ say anything so I just went back to sleep. Was something wrong?”
“No, at least I don’t think so. I just heard a few noises was all.”
They finished their conversation and headed to the community house to see what everyone else was planning for the day.
As they got there, Brad and Trevor were getting their weapons and some additional resources together.
“What’s going on?” Franks’ senses had been on high alert ever since last night, he’d barely been able to sleep.
Brad and Trevor exchanged a look, seemingly unsure if they wanted to divulge what they were up to.
<
br /> Trevor caved and admitted that he was pretty sure that there was someone in the compound.
Brad explained, “I heard something last night so I went over to Trevor’s after dark. We both stayed up and we could hear noises, like someone moving around. We took turns watching the window, but we never saw anything, so we didn’t really want to scare anyone.”
Diana looked to Frank and watched on as he admitted to the two men that he had heard something as well. They decided the best thing to do was to go from house to house and check everywhere that they could to make sure.
Hunter had walked out of his home about the same time that the commotion was starting for Frank, Brad and Trevor to begin searching homes. It’s not that they were on a man hunt to kick whomever was here out; they were open to new people joining their group, they just didn’t want someone feeling the need to sneak around. Plus, there was always the unnerving possibility that there was malicious intent with that person.
They quickly filled Hunter in and it wasn’t long before everyone, save Diana, was combing through every house in the development. They started with the empty houses and were able to clear those pretty quickly. Then, somewhat skeptically, they began to search their own houses. Hunter’s was clear, as was Brads’, Trevor’s’ and Franks’.
However, when they got to Kendall’s’ they knocked for a several minutes, realizing no one had seen her yet this morning. That was odd since it wasn’t unusual for her to be one of the first awake. When she didn’t answer the door, Hunter used his master key to open it and tentatively let everyone inside. He called her name several times in case she was somehow still asleep.
No answer.
Once they were all inside they split up to search the house.
After several minutes Trevor’s voice could be heard from her bedroom.
“Guys…”
Everyone came to see what Trevor was trying to show them.
Kendall’s bed was in complete disarray, more so than if she had just been sleeping. Her bedside table and lamp were knocked over and her bedroom window was wide open.
Frank pushed through the men and surveyed the room. No one spoke, it was obvious something had happened here.
They continued to search the house ensuring that the coast was clear, and they all went back out to the road where they had spoken earlier. Diana was still standing there, waiting patiently.
Once Frank filled her in on what they had seen, Diana immediately burst in to tears.
They all started talking over each other at once, trying to figure out where to even begin looking for Kendall.
Diana, generally the quietest of them all, yelled out, “Shut up!”
Everyone immediately silenced and listened to what she had to say.
“Everyone arguing is not going to find my baby. Let’s go in to the community room and talk this through and figure out our next step.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel in a huff and headed into the community room.
Everyone exchanged looks before following her inside.
The four men continued to talk as they walked into the building.
Trevor, not paying attention, ran straight into Diana’s back as she had stopped short without anyone noticing.
“What the...”
But he was unable to finish that sentence as there, in the middle of the community room, was Kendall.
She was seated in one of the dining style chairs, tied tightly down with tape over her mouth.
Standing directly behind her with a gun touching her temple, was Paul.
***
Sam woke up from his pseudo-nap and stretched. He looked over and realized Lil must have already gotten up so he went to his bag to navigate some toiletries and get himself somewhat freshened up to get back to work. By the looks of the steam on the communal bathroom mirror, it was obvious Lil had already done the same.
Once Sam had showered, dressed, and obtained a giant cup of coffee, he headed back down in to the lab. He had hit a wall with leads to find Hunter or Paul. Paul they wanted to keep in custody and find a way to prosecute the son of a bitch. Hunter, they wanted to glean some insight to help with the Paul issue,
Either way, he wanted to find them both. Since he was having trouble, Sam lost himself in the basement with the lab techs. Sam began to realize that he was fascinated with the bio-chemical aspect of the entire situation. It was both horrifying and fascinating and while he wasn’t much help, the lab guys didn’t mind him being down there. They seemed to enjoy getting to explain everything to him.
Right as Sam was beginning to wonder if he’d missed his calling as a chemistry nerd, his phone ringing jerked him back to the task at hand.
“Hello?”
Lil’s voice was quick on the other end, “I have a lead. Get your ass up here.” And she hung up.
Sam quickly excused himself and went in pursuit of Lil.
She was in a flurry getting her bag together and as soon as he stepped into the room she threw his at him as well.
Sam barely had time to catch the bag before it hit him in the face before Lil was already explaining, “So if you were a developer who had just finished completing your first completely finished gated housing development, where would you go during a Zombie Apocalypse?”
Sam looked at her, wondering if the question was rhetorical. When she didn’t answer, he did, “The finished development?”
She turned towards him and held up a piece of paper showing several rows of beautifully finished houses with the name up-top “Appalachian Hills”.
“You bet your ass you’d go to the development. Come on, you’re driving.”
***
“Paul.” Hunter spoke. As soon as he said the words, Brad and Trevor’s bodies tensed. Frank and Diana already knew what this man was capable of, and they had explained it to Brad and Trevor as well.
Paul sneered at Hunter before shouting to the group, “Drop your weapons. I’m begging you to give me an excuse to blow this pretty little things brains right out.” Paul took that moment to run the barrel of the gun through Kendall’s disheveled hair.
Hunter was the first to drop his weapon. One by one, he could hear the sound of metal hitting tile as each of his companions set their guns to the floor. Hunter let out a sigh of relief, he was nervous someone would try something stupid. He was not willing to risk Kendall’s life to test the craziness level of Paul.
“Good. Now all I need are my vials and I’ll be on my merry way.” Paul looked Hunter dead in the eye.
“Paul…we don’t have them.”
“Bullshit. Like I believe you’d get rid of those?”
“Frank and Hunter looked at one another and back at Paul.”
“He’s telling the truth, son.” Frank, of all people, knew what Paul was capable of. Diana remained silent, simply watching Paul’s interactions towards her daughter with quiet contempt.
“We left them at the University of California.” Hunter continued.
“Excuse me? Why the hell would you take them there?”
Hunter didn’t want to give too much information on Kendall, so he lied to the best of his ability, “I went there. I thought one of my old professors could help us figure out what you’d done.”
Paul shoved the gun harder into Kendall’s temple, causing her to cry out in pain. “Bull shit.” He claimed once again.
Everyone in the room jumped, feeling Kendall’s pain as if it were their own. They had become a family, and none of them wanted to see each other get hurt.
“I’m telling the truth. If you want, I’ll go with you back to the University and show you myself. We had to get out of there for obvious reasons, and your vials were not exactly at the top of any of our lists of shit to grab.”
With that Paul turned the gun on Hunter. Kendall, who had been fairly calm throughout this entire encounter, widened her eyes in fear. Hunter noticed and thought, of course she would be more worried about the gun pointed at me than her own head.
“Alright then, let’s get a move on.” Paul walked towards Hunter and pushed the gun into his chest.
***
“All right Sam, it’s not a race. Calm down a little okay?”
“Don’t you want to get there?”
“Exactly. You going 104 miles per hour isn’t going to accomplish the task. Especially when you’re not buckled.” Lil scowled good-naturedly.
Sam slowed down to a solid 90, and assured her that’s the lowest he was going.
“This is the first solid lead we’ve had in days. They’re there. I can feel it.”
Lil agreed, “I’ve tried calling Hunter’s phone but it must be dead. It keeps going to voicemail. Before we left I had the guys check and see and sure enough the development has no power. It has water though, so I’m surer than ever that that’s where they are.” Lil was getting excited as she always did when they were getting to meat of a case.
She and Sam had been partners for over 5 years and they had solved the most cases of any team in the Bureau to date. Solving this case would be the end all be all to any case for the duration of their lives, and they both knew it. More than that, solving this case meant answers for everyone who’d lost people to this outbreak. It wouldn’t cure anyone, or bring back anyone’s loved ones, but answers were better than nothing.
They drove for several hours, taking turns driving. Sam didn’t let Lillian drive much though. Apparently 85 miles per hour was just too damn slow. The roads were still pretty clear, except for a few abandoned cars. And an unnerving amount of bodies littered the road, causing Lil to say a prayer as she passed each and every one.
***
Hunter had his hands up, signifying he was not going to attempt anything stupid. As soon as Paul was a good 4 feet away from Kendall, Diana quickly went to her to untie her. Once the tape was off her mouth, Kendall attempted to protest, “Hunter, don’t.” Paul’s gun swung around to point at Kendall, “trust me. I wish it was you taking me. You and I could have some fun.” The grin he shot her sent ice through her veins.