The Loki Variation

by James Riley, Sabrina

  The woman’s eyebrows furrowed, creating deep lines in her forehead that said she was probably a bit older than she had looked at first. She looked towards the building, took a deep breath, and turned back to Adam and Sasha.

  “I don’t know much about any of that. If they took your friends there, they must have thought your friends were carrying the parasite.”

  Parasite! Sasha was thrilled to hear someone talk about what was going on as if they had some scientific explanation, and she wanted to know everything. But her curiosity ran into a brick wall with Miranda, as she muttered that she would come back with water in a few minutes and scurried through a wall of tents.

  Sasha stood still for a moment, letting it sink in. A parasite. From what she knew about parasites, which wasn’t very much, they needed a host to live, and usually the host didn’t fare too well when infected. Parasites had cures, though, didn’t they?

  Adam shook out one of the dusty blankets beside the tent, then he spread it on the floor for Nora to sit on. Sasha went inside after a few minutes, still probing her own mind for anything she could remember about parasites.

  Adam and Sasha talked about the tiny piece of information they had gleaned, and after a short while, Miranda was back. As promised, she had a metal bowl for Ripley, along with a bottle of water. She also had some bottled juices and some snacks for them. She explained when breakfast, lunch, and dinner were made, and how everyone helped out. To Sasha, it sounded more like everyone here was a prisoner, and that the soldiers didn’t do much else besides make sure that everyone stayed in line. It wasn’t what Sasha had pictured when Hud had left with those boys just a day ago.

  After coming back with a second load, including clothes for Sasha and Nora, and a coat for Adam, Miranda avoided any other questions Sasha tried to ask. She did, however, warn them about the other refugees.

  “They don’t mean any harm, but they know you came in with two infected people. They’ve been through it before, and they probably won’t bother you, but I’d say it’d be best if you kind of kept to yourselves at first.” She made an apologetic face, then backed away and left.

  “Great.” Adam muttered.

  It was past dinner time, just after dark, and freezing cold. They shared the bags of crackers and chips that Miranda had brought, and the juices. Ripley even got a few chips of her own, and lapped down half the bottle of water. There was nothing else to do now but wait for Hud.

  Chapter 53.

  When he woke, Derek’s eyes were not cooperating; the lids were drooping, and his head felt like it was a thousand pounds. It seemed like hours went by as Derek tried to remember where he was and what had happened.

  In slow flashes, it came back. He had arrived at the camp with Sasha and the others. They had almost made it through the gate. Lily had taken off her sunglasses, and then all hell had broken loose. He couldn’t tell how long ago that was or how long he had been asleep.

  He remembered trying to pull Lily out from under the dog pile of uniformed men. He remembered Hud yelling, then he remembered being dragged into this building, and being surprised that his strength seemed to be useless against the arms pulling him.

  He forced his eyes to look around, although all they wanted to do was close. A white curtain was hung around the bed he was lying in. His stomach pitched with dizziness as he tried to lift his head. A hospital. He must be in a hospital. He could hear the beeping of some kind of machinery right next to him; wherever he was, there was electricity.

  Using every bit of energy he could to sit up straight, Derek saw the IV needle taped to his arm. His first instinct was to rip it out, but when he tried to move his hand towards it, he realized his arm weighed about a hundred tons, and he became breathless just trying to lift it.

  He began to panic.

  His fuzzy memory conjured up an image of Sasha. The last time he had seen her, she was clutching Nora, her face frozen in panic and anger at the way Lily and Derek were being dragged away. She was yelling something, but he couldn’t hear her. There were too many voices yelling to make them all out.

  He jerked himself alert with the memory of Sasha. His heart tried to pound, working against the sedative that was flowing through his veins. Where was Sasha? He knew he hadn’t been taken far from the camp. He had seen Hud negotiating with other uniforms. Derek knew Hud would take care of her, and Nora, but that only comforted him mildly. He was supposed to be taking care of them.

  He felt a strange comfort in feeling his heart pounding. It had been slow and steady a moment ago, normal. But he had been so used to feeling it beat within him quickly and heavily that he was glad to feel it pounding again.

  He saw a shadow, and although he tried to move quickly to see what was casting it, he felt his head was barely moving as he faced the direction in which it was approaching. A dark skinned man was standing there, in a pair of jeans and a lab coat. His demeanor didn’t seem threatening, but either way, Derek was not in a position to fight. The man was looking at the readout on the machine next to Derek, but when he saw Derek looking at him, he startled a little, and then his face softened.

  Derek’s head swam, and for a second he began to wonder if he was hallucinating. But then the man’s voice, covering a slight foreign accent, broke through the haze that was Derek’s mind.

  “Hello. Sorry for the sedatives, but it is necessary. How are you feeling?”

  The man’s voice seemed genuinely concerned.

  “Drugged.” Derek’s voice was low, his tongue felt thick and heavy.

  The man nodded sympathetically.

  “Where am I? Are you a doctor?” Derek wanted to laugh at how drunk his slurred speech made him sound.

  The man shook his head.

  “I am not a doctor, I am just a student. My name is Sanjeev. I am helping to find a cure. The doctor is with your friend.” He looked across the large room, where Derek could, if he squinted, make out another makeshift room like his, made from a white curtain hanging on a frame around a bed. Lily.

  “If you feel well enough, I would like to ask you some questions.” Sanjeev sounded as if he knew he was intruding. Whether it was the chemicals flowing through his veins, or the fact that he didn’t have the strength to fight, Derek was feeling quite cooperative. He answered Sanjeev’s questions truthfully. Sanjeev asked about his life before the breakout, his prior medical history, when and where he had been bitten, and what each symptom had been since then. Sanjeev wrote these answers down on a small notepad and nodded.

  When he was done, Derek felt it was only fair that he was able to ask questions too.

  “What is this? What’s happened to me, what’s happened to everyone?” His voice was wavering.

  Sanjeev tucked the notepad under his arm and pulled a small stool over to the side of Derek’s bed. Derek could hardly follow his movements, although he wasn’t moving especially fast. Sanjeev took a slow breath and began to speak.

  “It’s called the Loki Variation.”

  Chapter 54.

  Sasha’s eyes were still closed when she woke up, but she could see the bright sunlight coursing through the thin walls of the tent. She heard a rustling, and before she was sure she was ready to wake up, her eyelids opened and she saw a shadow just outside the door flap of the tent. It seemed to be hesitating, and reached for the Velcro that was holding the door flap closed.

  Sasha sat up and watched. Next to her, Nora was sleeping still, curled into a small ball under the old blanket. Adam was on the other side of the tent, not far away, sprawled across a mat, his blanket tossed aside.

  Just before the hand began to pull on the Velcro, Sasha cleared her throat. The hand froze, and a moment later, a familiar voice whispered.

  “Sasha? Are you awake?”

  It was Travis. Sasha jumped up and opened the door flap. To her surprise, and his as well, she hugged him. He stiffened, but hugged her back quickly and then went inside.

  “Adam!” Sasha shook him gently, trying to not wake Nora, “Travis is here!�
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  Within a few minutes, the three of them were whispering a quick account of what had been missed in each other’s absence. Travis explained that he and Hud had made it to the camp a day ago, and Hud had immediately been recognized as having the experience wanted to put him to work on some special project. He had talked his way into waiting for the rest of the group to show up, they wanted him to begin some type of training immediately. No one in their group had seen or heard from him since they had taken Lily and Derek.

  Travis, however, had been asked to help scout for more survivors and hunt down any more infected.

  “So they are infected?” Sasha asked, her eyes huge.

  “It’s a parasite. They call it the Loki Variation, it’s like a little bug that gets in your blood and makes you crazy or something.” Travis said it all in one breath, like he hated the idea of telling Sasha.

  Sasha let that sink into her mind. It really was a parasite. She had never even considered that, none of them had. They had been convinced it was some kind of virus, or something even less easy to understand. But a parasite wasn’t hard to understand. Just like Travis had said, it was like a bug, it got inside you and lived off you and sometimes hurt you in the process. But as far as Sasha could remember, they were mostly curable. Her breath quickened. A cure.

  “Anyway, we left yesterday before you got here, went driving around looking for survivors, but instead we found more of the infected. Tons of them. We almost used all the ammunition we had brought, and it was a lot. We ran so low we had to come back. So here I am.”

  Adam had been listening carefully, hoping to find something useful.

  “So, the Army or whatever put this camp together and they are going out and finding more survivors and bringing them back here?” He seemed dubious.

  “They’re not the Army. I don’t know who they are, but they aren’t all real military. They don’t act like it, there’s no real ranks or anything. But they seem to know what they are doing, at least when it comes to hunting these things.” No matter how hard he tried, Travis could not hide the fact that he got quite a bit of enjoyment out of killing the infected.

  Adam looked a little concerned over the idea that the group running the survivor camp might not be the military. Sasha was too, but she couldn’t help but console herself with the idea that there could be a cure for Derek. And for anyone else still left alive.

  “Where did they take Lily and Derek?” Adam asked.

  “Same place they brought Hud. They call it ‘the offices’ and it’s where the special project guys get to live. They are called the officers. I can’t even go in there. But I think they have doctors in there too, and maybe a few more people who are like Derek and Lily. You know, infected, but not crazy.”

  He kind of shrugged, and Sasha could tell he was a little embarrassed at the fact he had such a small amount of information on that. She wanted to know what was going on, right now, inside the offices with Derek and Lily. But in lieu of furthering Travis’s embarrassment, she decided to come up with a plan.

  “We will find Hud after we eat. We’ll ask everyone around here until someone can tell us what is going on in that building. If we can’t see Derek and Lily ourselves, Hud can, and find out what’s happening. Maybe they have a cure already!” Sasha could tell she was letting herself get her hopes up, but she had become so complacent to the idea of a dull, doomed future for so long that any tiny sliver of hope was going to feel as large as the beam from a lighthouse to her.

  They nodded, and Sasha gingerly woke Nora up from her sleep. They were heading out to the area where the mess hall tent was set up, they could smell the powdered eggs and processed meat cooking for breakfast.

  Before they made it very far, Miranda’s face appeared around another tent, coming towards them, paper plates balanced two to an arm. She almost ran into them as she watched the plates, trying not to drop them.

  “Oh, sorry, hi. I was just coming to see you all. I brought you some breakfast. I didn’t know there would be four, lucky I made an extra plate, huh?” She extended her arms a very small amount, to emphasize, almost too much, how lucky they were. Her smile was forced, it didn’t get past any of them.

  “Thank you, Miranda.” Adam was already unloading plates to help her.

  “We were going to go out and sit in the tent to eat with everyone else, though. We can follow you back.” Sasha said. She was chomping at the bit to meet more survivors. She had craved the company of more humans for a very long time.

  “Uh, well, why don’t you all just eat here for now. Maybe for lunch we can see.” Miranda looked at the ground. Sasha’s head snapped back and she pivoted back to face Miranda.

  “Why?” Now she knew why Miranda’s smile was so fake.

  “Well, people are really tense around here is all. They know you had two of the infected with you, and they don’t want to take no chances.” Miranda’s eyes stayed on the ground.

  So many vicious thoughts came to Sasha’s head. Not a minute ago, she had been dying to meet more people, to know them and to maybe share some of the burden of the end of the world with, relying on the compassion and empathy of others. Now she was in awe of how self-centered and ridiculous people could be. Instead of speaking, she clamped her jaw shut, nodded once to Miranda, took her plate of food and turned back towards the tent, pulling Nora by the hand.

  Adam and Travis followed, thanking Miranda quietly for the breakfast, and they ate a silent breakfast alone in their tent.

  After she had taken her last bite and given herself a moment to compose herself, Sasha took a deep breath to speak.

  “This isn’t a refuge. This is a prison. I want to get Lily and Derek and get out of here. Now.”

  Chapter 55.

  Derek seemed to drift in between sleep and awake for hours. He had no concept of time, but he was aware, every once in a while, of someone standing near him. A slight tug on his IV, blood being drawn. The scratch of pen on paper. He also remembered asking for water, and being helped to sit up to take a few sips of warm, stale liquid. Sanjeev seemed honestly concerned for Derek’s wellbeing, while the silent doctor went through his motions like a robot. He was an older man, balding on top. His eyes were hard and beady, and never made contact with Derek’s. His jaw was always clenched and he had never spoken one word to Derek. He ordered Sanjeev around, however, with a gruff voice.

  During one period where Derek felt a little more alert, he turned to see Sanjeev using a hypodermic needle to inject something into the IV line.

  “What’s that?” Derek said, his tongue still thick.

  “This is the Loki Variation.” Sanjeev said, looking Derek directly in the eyes. Derek was confused.

  “Aren’t I already infected?” And if he wasn’t, why was Sanjeev infecting him now?

  “Yes. But this is a dead version, in simple terms. We want to see if your body has created any defenses against the parasite.” Sanjeev watched Derek for a moment, and noticed that Derek still looked concerned.

  “It’s similar to a vaccination. What you are actually receiving is a harmless version of the virus, which helps your body build a defense to the actual virus. That way, if you come in contact with the live virus, your body already knows how to defend against it.” He hesitated, waiting to see if Derek understood.

  “Do parasites work the same way?” Derek was struggling to conjure up any memory he had of biology class.

  “Not usually, but this one is different. It is a viral parasite, something I was researching before…well, before this happened. It’s genetically altered, a cross between a parasite and a virus.”

  Derek was beginning to wonder if he was dreaming. It sounded like Sanjeev was reading a science fiction story to him. He didn’t have the slightest clue how something became genetically altered, and while he was infuriatingly hungry for the knowledge, he knew that his mind was in no condition to grasp the concepts that would have to be explained to him. He looked at Sanjeev with a blank expression for a moment before he sp
oke again.

  “Am I going to be cured?”

  Sanjeev just smiled and looked back at his notepad. Derek took that to mean that he didn’t know. It was disappointing, but not because Derek couldn’t live with the Loki Variation parasite living in him. He had already become accustomed to the effects, although they had failed him somewhat recently. He was more concerned with Sasha, and being able to be around her safely.

  As soon as Sasha’s name entered his mind, he jumped. How long had it been since he had seen her? Where was everyone else? He cursed the sedatives for making him feel relaxed and for making it impossible to tell how much time had passed.

  “Where is Sasha?” Derek asked, more clearly than any other words that had come out of his mouth.

  Sanjeev jerked his head up, eyebrows furrowed.

  “Who?” He asked.

  “Sasha, Nora. Adam. My friends I came here with. How long have I been here? When can I see them?” He couldn’t get the questions out fast enough.

  “Whoa, whoa. If they are here, they are safe. I can’t bring anyone in here, but I will see if I can get someone to let them know that you are safe. Calm down, your heart rate just spiked.” He was watching the machine that was beeping next to Derek.

  Derek had the urge to pull the IV out of his arm and run. He felt heavy still, but he thought maybe he had the strength to get away. He reached for the IV, and was fumbling with it when out of the corner of his eye, he saw the doctor heading over. That fuelled his desire to move faster, but then he felt a wave of calm come over him. He looked at Sanjeev, who was injecting another needle of fluid into the IV line. Another sedative. As Derek’s eyelids grew heavy, he saw Sanjeev look at him apologetically for a moment before he turned to speak to the doctor.

  Then everything faded.

  Chapter 56.

  Sasha forced herself to swallow the powdery eggs. She was far from hungry, but knew she needed to eat. In between bites, she thought out loud to Adam and Travis.