The Morgan Strain Series (Book 2): Point of Proximity

by Max Lockwood

  Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just so focused on getting out of there. Plus, I didn’t want to see people get killed for no reason.”

  “If you still have any doubts of our intentions, then I could give you all the proof you need at a hospital or laboratory.”

  “Don’t go to a lab,” Thomas warned.

  “Why not?”

  “A hospital is fine. No one is going to touch a hospital with a ten-foot pole. Now, a laboratory is going to give you some trouble. My crew wasn’t the only one who was after you. I’ve heard word of people setting up traps in labs to kill you. Apparently, you’re like a mouse with a taste for cheese. They knew you couldn’t stay out of the laboratory, so they’re trying to get you in any way they can. I don’t know if this is true, but it’s best not to try it.”

  Elaina bit her lip. “So, it’s settled—we’re going to find a hospital.”

  Alec sighed. Thomas tried to make eye contact with him in the mirror to appeal to him.

  “What?” Elaina asked. “Is there something you want to say? You haven’t given us your idea yet.”

  “You know how I feel about hospitals,” Alec said. “My opinion hasn’t really changed. There’s a very good chance that infected people still walk those halls. Have you ever been in an abandoned hospital? It’s creepy. It’s just going to be floor after floor of dark rooms. There are too many places to hide, and not enough ways to escape.”

  “Then you two can stand guard for me while I work,” Elaina offered.

  “Sure,” Alec said. “We can probably handle a small group of infected. But, what if we encounter a large gathering like the one we saw at the military base? We have guns, but they’re made for taking a few careful shots. We don’t have the firepower for a serious emergency.”

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  Alec shrugged, his eyes fixed on the road. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to give a practical answer,” she urged. “If you could do anything with our limited resources, where would you want to go? What would you want to do?”

  Alec thought for a moment before speaking. “I think I would keep looking for Natalia and Will. They’re out there somewhere. I don’t feel right about moving on without them.”

  “Are those your friends?” Thomas asked.

  “Yes. We were traveling together when they disappeared in the middle of the night. We were looking for them when we got taken in by your people. Who knows where they are now.”

  “Sorry,” Thomas said.

  “It’s not your fault,” Alec replied. “They were young, though. Probably about your age. They’re smart kids, but I don’t know if they can make it on their own. My vote is that we continue looking for them.”

  “How?” Elaina asked. She missed Natalia and Will as much as Alec did, but recovering them would be a logistical nightmare.

  “I don’t know. We can’t go anywhere near the town where we lost them. We’d just get picked up again and we’d all be killed.”

  They were at a standstill. Everyone had their own idea about what was best for the group, and they each disagreed with the others’ plans.

  “I think we just need to decide on what’s the most important, in terms of desired outcomes,” Elaina said. “For instance, I want to be safe, but more importantly, I want to cure this virus. If we don’t go to a hospital, then we can’t cure the virus and more people will suffer and die. Eventually, we’ll probably contract it and die, too.”

  Alec and Thomas groaned. She had put them in a difficult position.

  “So, you’re saying that because I don’t want to die, then I don’t care about other people dying of the virus?” Alec asked.

  “I don’t think that’s fair,” Thomas said. “You can’t ask us to choose other people’s lives over our own.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Elaina said. “I’m already so close to figuring this thing out. Take me for example—I’m the first living test subject of my cure, and I haven’t shown any symptoms of the virus yet.”

  Thomas jumped so dramatically from his resting position that he almost hit his head on the roof of the car. “Wait, what?”

  “Hey, easy there,” Alec said, watching the kid move his hand toward his gun. “Sit tight and let her explain this one to you.”

  “You’re infected?” he asked again, ready to protect himself in any way he could.

  “No, not really,” she answered. “Would you like me to fill you in?”

  “'Not really’ isn’t good enough,” he objected.

  Alec made eye contact with Thomas in the mirror. “I once struggled with believing her, too. But, if you let her talk, you’ll understand that she knows what she’s doing.”

  Thomas gritted his teeth, not confident in his choice to release the two and join them on their journey. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  Elaina explained all the relevant bits of information about her personal work on the Morgan Strain, her infection by Bretton Vincent, and her self-treatment. She promised Thomas that after about a week of being infected with the Vincent Virus, she was feeling perfectly healthy.”

  “So, you think your cure worked?” Thomas asked once she was finished talking.

  “That’s what I need a hospital for. If I can look at my blood and figure out what the serum is doing to the virus, I’ll have a better idea about my prognosis. Plus, the sooner I fine-tune my serum, the sooner I can replicate and mass produce it.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “I’m not sure. If I can find a steady workplace where I don’t get interrupted, it could be a matter of days or weeks before this thing is sorted.”

  Thomas raised his eyebrows. “That soon?”

  “Potentially. Do you see why this is so important to me?”

  “I guess. It’s just a lot of information to take in all at once.”

  Alec gave him a sympathetic look.

  “I get that,” Elaina said. “That’s why I was hoping I could keep all of this a secret,” she said, shooting Alec a look.

  They sat in silence for a while. Elaina daydreamed about how great it would be to work on her cure again while Alec and Thomas thought about ways to compromise their need to survive with their desire to end the virus.

  Elaina watched out the window as the landscape flew by. She was getting tired of being obstructed from doing the job she needed to do to end the epidemic. She was determined to make things work, but with each roadblock, she was losing steam.

  “We’re going to have to come to an agreement sooner or later,” she said. “We have just half a tank of gas left.”

  “I know,” Alec said. “Let’s take a vote. We already know your vote, Lainey. What do you think, Thomas?”

  Thomas thought carefully for a moment. “I’ll agree to the hospital on just a few conditions.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m allowed to voice my input on other matters. Just because I’m agreeing to your plan now, doesn’t mean that you become a proxy for me.”

  “That’s fine,” Elaina said, surprised by this carefully thought out response. She had wrongly assumed that Thomas was just another uneducated hick from a small town.

  “Also, I would like to reserve a dose of the cure when it becomes available,” he negotiated.

  “I can make that happen,” Elaina said. “Alec, what do you think?”

  He turned to look at Elaina. “I will also agree to go to a hospital. I know how important it is to you. But, like Thomas, I also have conditions.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Hear me out. If we get the opportunity to, I want to go looking for Natalia and Will. I need you to promise that you won’t give up on finding them.”

  “Deal,” she smiled. “Now, how soon until we’re in a city with a decent hospital?”

  Alec looked back at Thomas. He seemed to have a better grasp of the land than he did.

  “If you stay on this road and take a left at the next
highway, I think that will take us close to Boise. There are a few towns in that area, so we should have some good options.”

  “Sounds good to me. The further southeast we get from Seattle, the better,” Alec said, speeding down the road.

  Elaina could hardly contain her excitement. She had almost entirely forgotten about her trial and near-execution until Alec brought it up.

  “So,” Alec started, hesitantly, “what happened during your trial? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “No, not really. I just had to sit and be subjected to a long list of lies about me. I suppose it was no worse than what the national media is reporting. I assume that’s where they got the bulk of their information.”

  Thomas squirmed in his seat. He was uncomfortable with the fact that he had been associated with that group and had even believed the things they told him. He still didn’t know exactly what to believe, but at least he knew the blood of two innocent lives wouldn’t be on his hands.

  “I feel terrible about it,” he said from the back seat. “That was the only information we got—the stuff we heard from the radio. When people are afraid, they’ll believe anything they hear.”

  Elaina looked back at Thomas’s sheepish expression. “I understand.”

  “Tell me about the daring escape,” Alec said quickly, breaking the awkward tension.

  “Oh, there was nothing to it,” Thomas said. “They had sentenced her to death and put me in charge of walking her outside. Their plan was to put her in the back of a truck and take her to the woods for the execution.”

  Now it was Elaina’s turn to feel uncomfortable. She fully understood that she’d cheated death. As wary as she was about Thomas, she owed her life to him.

  “Thank goodness it all worked out,” Alec said. “How did you know that you were going to be in charge of conducting Elaina outside? I mean, was it already planned out that much?”

  Thomas shook his head. “After a while, I started to figure out how they thought. That’s how I knew that they wouldn’t give you two a fair trial. They had a vendetta against you guys and I knew they would want to maximize your pain and suffering.”

  “How do you factor into that?” Alec asked.

  “It’s better that you don’t ask. Just keep in mind, they always planned on killing Elaina. They were going to keep you alive, but torture you. To make a long story short, they planned on letting you see me take her away, then feed you terrible stories about what I was doing with her. But, even if their plan had gone the way they wanted, I don’t think that method of torture would have worked.”

  Alec’s face turned pale. He breathed through his nose because the thought of what could have happened to Elaina made him want to throw up.

  “Why wouldn’t it have worked?” he asked when he was ready for the answer.

  Thomas gave them a small smile. “Because I think you already knew that I believed you, even before I unlocked the cell for you. I think you saw something special in me, too. Otherwise, why would you have shared your story or offered to take me away from there?”

  Thomas sat back in his seat, content with his current situation. He much preferred Alec and Elaina’s company to the men who had taken advantage of a lawless society.

  “Well,” Alec said, sitting up in his seat. “I’m glad you’re with us. Now, let’s promise to never talk about that town ever again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Will walked over the hills, leading the way by a few feet. He couldn’t stand to talk to anyone. He couldn’t even look Melissa in the eye. He knew that Victoria only wanted to comfort him, but he couldn’t even listen to her speak. Only Derek handled the situation in the way he wanted—complete silence.

  The terrain was not easy to trek, especially after walking for a few hours. Derek showed no signs of struggle, but he must have been tired. He had been carrying Victoria for quite some time.

  “Let me give you a break,” Will finally offered, slowing his pace.

  “I’m fine,” Derek replied, wiping sweat from his creased forehead.

  “If we get into a situation where we have to run, I can’t take her. You should probably rest up.”

  Derek seemed to disagree with Will’s assessment of his energy levels, but nevertheless, let Victoria cling onto Will’s back. Perhaps Will just wanted to have a purpose in a moment without hope.

  When the pair were a few feet away from Derek and Melissa, Victoria whispered in his ear so softly, he hardly made out the words.

  “If you need me, I’m here for you. Let me know if you want to talk.”

  “Thanks,” he replied. “I will.”

  They continued on in silence through the brush and rocks. Walking on the highway would have been much easier on their bodies, but it would have made them susceptible to attack. In the hours they had been walking since abandoning their truck, they’d heard several vehicles on the road, but saw nothing.

  “Does anyone know this area? I’m not originally from around here.” Derek asked. “We need to get off the road and find resources soon. Plus, we need to discuss shelter. We will have to rest at some point, and I want to be prepared for when we do.”

  “What direction are we headed?” Melissa asked, looking at the sky.

  “East northeast,” Derek replied.

  “Let me hop out on the road for a second to look,” Melissa said. “Maybe it will look familiar out there. I can’t make heads or tails of anything from over here.”

  As they waited for Melissa to return, the three sat down on the ground and rested their tired feet. Derek took off a shoe and drained a particularly nasty blister and Will sat cross-legged and wiped the dust from his face with his t-shirt.

  Victoria propped herself up against a large rock, her bandage starting to seep with blood again. She closed her eyes and Will was afraid she wasn’t going to open them again.

  In a moment of panic, he reached over and grabbed her hand. She returned a slight squeeze.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she murmured through a tiny smile. “I’m still alive.”

  “What do you want to do, Victoria?” Derek asked. “It seems only right that you get first priority in these decisions.”

  She cracked one eyelid open and looked at her thigh. Then, she shut it again and rested her head back on the rock.

  “I think we all know that I’m going to need some medical attention if I’m going to make it. The body only has so much blood, and I’m losing more cells than I could make. Unless any of you have Type AB blood and a means to transport it from one body to another, I think we’ll have to go to a hospital.”

  “I think I’m Type O Negative,” Will chimed in. “You can have my blood.”

  “And do what with it?” she laughed. “You’re sweet, but unless we have the right needles and tubes, we can’t do a transfusion in the field. Also, it won’t do much for me if we can’t get it to stop bleeding. There’s chemicals that can make the blood clot better, but I don’t think we can find any of them here. And to think,” she added, “I turned down taking a class on healing properties of native plants because I thought it was too much hippy nonsense, even for me. I feel like an idiot now.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Derek said. “I don’t think many people would expect to find themselves needing a doctor and not having access to one because you’re hiding in a forest.”

  “Except for you,” she added.

  “It was my job,” Derek said. “I bet you wish you would have found a medic to rescue instead of me,” he smiled. It was a rare sight to see him with any other expression, let alone one of levity.

  “So?” Derek asked. “You make the call.”

  “It’s not an easy call to make,” she frowned. “I don’t doubt that I would be putting your lives in danger if we went to a place where infected people spent time. I don’t want to put anyone else in a bad position because of me.”

  “But what do you want?” Derek pressed.

  Sh
e shrugged sheepishly. “Is it selfish of me to want to live? I don’t know how else I’m going to survive this if I don’t get help.”

  Derek nodded. “Then it’s settled—we’re going to take you to the hospital. Don’t worry about us; we’ve done a good job defending ourselves up to this point. In fact, I think I’d rather take on infected people than uninfected people.”

  The three heard a rustling in the trees. Derek pulled out his gun and pointed it toward the sound.

  Melissa burst through the forest, red faced and out of breath.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she panted, as Derek lowered his weapon. “I ran up the road a little way to see if I could recognize anything.”

  “And?” Derek asked.

  “If I’m not mistaken, I think I’ve been over here before. My family used to go on camping trips around the area. If we continue in this direction, I think we’ll hit a town in a few hours. I saw a sign for a gas station in the distance but I couldn’t read it from that far away. At the very least, we can stop for food and water there.”

  “Good. While you were gone, we decided that our main mission after gathering necessary supplies is to find a hospital. I’d like to see us pick up the pace and get there before nightfall.”

  “Whoa, what?” Melissa said. “Why did you decide this without me? I thought we were just going to keep the hospital idea in mind and play the rest by ear? This seems so definite.”

  Will glared at her. “What would you rather do? Would you like to shoot her and leave her in the forest? That way, you can keep your safety and security.”

  “Enough,” Derek shouted. “We are stopping at the nearest town. Once there, we will get supplies. If a hospital is available, we will go to it. Any questions?”

  The others stared at Derek, afraid to challenge him. He had a very controlling way about him. He knew how to lead a group and take control of a situation.

  “Nope,” Will said flatly. “Fine with me. I’d like for Victoria to get better as soon as possible.”

  “I do, too,” Melissa said, “but it’s a huge risk.”