Mass Extinction Event (Book 11): Days 349 to 356

by Cross, Amy

  “Sure,” I reply.

  “And you really don't know where it might have come from?”

  “The last year has been a little crazy.”

  “No kidding.”

  “There are parts I don't quite remember.”

  “It won't even be a big job,” she continues. “The damn thing's doing its best to come out already. Whatever it is, it's not big.” She reaches over and takes a pair of scissors from the counter. “I sterilized these already,” she explains, “and I'm confident I can keep the wound from being infected. Hold tight, though, because this is going to hurt.”

  I force a smile as I wait for her to get started, but a moment later I feel a sharp pain as she uses the scissors to grip the object tight. Already, the tip is protruding from my arm, and I wince as I watch Wendy slowly but surely teasing out what looks to be a piece of metal. It's clearly not shrapnel, however, and I'm shocked to see that this thing – whatever it is – appears to have a smooth, rounded edge.

  “Nearly there,” Wendy says. “You're doing great, Elizabeth. I just need you to be brave for a few more seconds.”

  I grip the side of the table. I don't want to show weakness, but the pain is getting worse and I just want her to get this over with. At the same time, I refuse to ask her how much longer it's going to take, so instead I simply bite my lip and hope for the best.

  “We're so close to being done,” she continues. “It's just caught on something and -”

  Suddenly the object comes out. Blood runs down my arm, but I barely even notice as I watch Wendy wiping more of my blood from the strange thing that she just removed from my arm. Whatever it is, it's about an inch long and only a third of an inch wide, and its edges are completely smooth. It looks like a black metallic cockroach, albeit one without any legs.

  “What is that thing?” I ask.

  “Let's just get you patched up first,” she says, setting the object down as she turns her attention back to my arm.

  “It's not broken off from anything, is it?” I point out.

  “There's nothing else left in there. I'm sure of that.” She examines the wound a little more closely. “You don't need stitches, which is good since I couldn't do that here even if I wanted to. The wound will heal by itself, you've just got to keep it clean.”

  As soon as she's done with my arm, she picks the item up and takes a closer look. I lean across the table, but I still have no idea how I could have ended up with something so strange in my arm. Until recently, I felt no discomfort or pain there at all.

  “Elizabeth,” Wendy says cautiously, “are you sure you never had to have any kind of implant?”

  “I'm sure.”

  “Because this clearly isn't just some random piece of scrap,” she continues. “Whatever it is, it appears to be undamaged and...” She peers more closely at the item, and then she gets to her feet. “There are some numbers on the side,” she explains. “Just wait here for a moment, I have a hunch but I want to get Patrick to take a look first. He used to do some contracting work for... I'll be back in a moment.”

  “What do you think it is?” I ask, but she's already hurrying out of the room.

  Looking down at the wound on my forearm, I try to figure out when something could have been slipped into my body. To be honest, parts of the past year are a complete blur, but I'm starting to think about the time when I was taken to meet Dad again. I met so many people, so many doctors, and I never quite understood what they were all doing. Then there was the period at the abandoned hospital, when I briefly became a zombie. While I was fighting the infection in my mind, I have no idea what Doctor Carter or Doctor Musgrave might have been doing to my physical body. Carter, in particular, seemed like the kind of lunatic who might have multiple schemes playing out.

  A moment later, hearing footsteps, I turn to see that Wendy has returned. Patrick's right behind her, and he's holding the device that was removed from my arm.

  “Do you really have no idea how this ended up inside you?” he asks.

  “I don't know,” I reply. “I swear to you, it only started hurting a few days ago.”

  “Your body started to reject it,” he says. “That was inevitable, but it might have happened a little earlier than expected. Or it might have been left in for longer than intended. This thing certainly wasn't meant to last forever.”

  “What is it?” I ask, even though I'm not sure that I'm going to like the answer.

  “You were right,” he says, turning to Wendy for a moment and then looking at me again. “Elizabeth, I've seen something very similar, back when I was doing some work for the military.” He holds the object up so that I can see it properly. “This is a tracking device. And it's very much still active.”

  Elizabeth

  “Do you have any idea who might be trying to keep tabs on you?” Wendy asks as we all sit at the table.

  Staring at the device, I can't help but think back to the last time I saw my father. It must be seven or eight months since I last saw him, but is it possible that he'd already made sure that a tracker was placed in my body? I can kinda understand how and why he'd have done something like that, because he probably wanted to make sure that he could find me again in the midst of all the chaos. But if that's the case, then why hasn't he come to find me? The only really likely explanation is...

  He's dead.

  “If I remember correctly,” Patrick says, “this particular model wasn't designed to have a long shelf life. It'd work for a year at most, sometimes not even that long. But its range was supposed to be very good, albeit... I mean, obviously it wouldn't be much use without a satellite system. If you were using lower tech ways to search for the signal, you'd need to physically get within about twenty or thirty miles, otherwise you'd have no chance.”

  “So it might not actually be working?” I ask, feeling a flicker of hope.

  “The device is working,” he replies, “but whether anyone out there has a way of picking up its signal is another matter entirely.”

  I pause for a moment, before nodding. That makes sense, and it means that Dad might yet be out there somewhere.

  “It's pretty easy to destroy this thing,” Patrick tells me. “Do you want me to do that?”

  I pause, before reaching out and taking it from him.

  “No,” I murmur, slipping the device into my pocket. “Whoever put this in me, they did it for a reason. I think it might have been my father.”

  “And where is your father now?” Wendy asks.

  “I have no idea,” I tell her. “I haven't seem him for a long time. He was in Boston about three months after all of this started, but after that we got separated.”

  “You said Boston was a war-zone.”

  I nod.

  “There was a lot of fighting?”

  “I don't think there's much of Boston left,” I tell her. “Not anymore. My father stayed behind, I guess he thought he could still help. People were butchering one another in the streets, and there was an army of zombies on the way. I wanted to stay. I didn't run away, I swear, but my father sent me on a mission. Well, I thought it was a mission, but now I know that he just wanted me to be safe. I'm not a coward, though. I swear.”

  “We know that,” Wendy tells me.

  “Your father must have been quite well-connected,” Patrick says cautiously, “if he could get his hands on one of these.” He pauses for a moment. “I don't suppose he ever mentioned something called Project Atherius, did he?”

  “I don't think he did,” I reply cautiously, “but someone else did. A friend of mine, Thomas, started talking about it when we were trying to find a way out of Boston, but I don't think he really knew what it was about. He told me a few things, but most of it didn't make sense.”

  I wait for Patrick to reply, but he seems lost in thought.

  “So what does it mean?” I ask finally. “What's this Project Atherius thing?”

  “Damned if I know,” he says. “I used to hear mentions of it, now and again. Just
whispers, really, and more than a few conspiracy theories. Everything from aliens to government mind control to disease curation. I never found out what was really going on, but there was definitely something there. To get any kind of information at all, you had to have very high clearance, higher than anything I was ever given. I was just thinking that if your father was able to get hold of this type of tracker, then he must have...”

  His voice trails off for a moment.

  “You must forgive my husband,” Wendy says after a few seconds. “Every so often, he starts going on about all this stuff again. Sometimes I think he should be wearing a hat made out of tin foil.”

  “It was something to do with the end of the world,” he explains. “That was the one common element in all the theories and explanations that I heard. Project Atherius was either about ending the world, or about how to survive. And given everything that's happened over the past year, you can't exactly blame me for being a little suspicious.”

  ***

  Stopping in the laundry room, I look down at the tracking device and try to imagine my father's motives for having it put into my arm. I've been wondering for a while now whether he knew he was going to die when he sent me away from Boston, but now for the first time I'm beginning to think that he thought – or at least hoped – that he'd see me again. Otherwise, why bother with the tracker?

  “Elizabeth?”

  Turning, I see that Wendy is standing in the doorway.

  “I'm sorry,” she continues, “I didn't mean to intrude. If you need some time alone...”

  Her voice trails off, but she remains where she is, and it's clear that there's something she wants to get off her chest.

  “It's fine,” I say, even though that's not entirely true.

  “I saw something change in your eyes when your father was mentioned,” she replies as she comes into the room. “Forgive me if I'm getting out of line here, but I know what it's like to live in a perpetual state of hope. I know how it feels to be constantly trying to convince yourself that everything will be alright.”

  “I'm pretty sure we're past the stage where everything can be alright,” I point out.

  “You know what I mean.” She looks down at the tracking device. “Even if your father is out there,” she continues, “it's highly unlikely that he has the means to locate the signal that this thing is giving off. You must realize that.”

  “I do.”

  “Just because there are no zombies right here, right now, that doesn't mean that they aren't out there.”

  “I know.”

  “You've found a remarkable, peaceful little place to hide away, but you shouldn't let that cloud your judgment. Elizabeth, the odds of your father being alive -”

  “I know,” I say again, cutting her off. “I get it. The odds are low.”

  “The odds are microscopic.”

  “I know that.”

  “The longer you cling to -”

  “I really do know all of this,” I tell her, trying to hide the fact that I'm a little irritated now. “Believe me, I've come to terms with the fact that I might not see my father again.”

  “And what about the rest of the world?”

  I open my mouth to ask what she means, but suddenly she puts a hand on my shoulder as if she's trying to comfort me. At the same time, there's a strange, almost blank look in her eyes.

  “You realize this is the end, don't you?” she continues. “No-one's going to come and save any of us. Either we get eaten by zombies, or we turn into zombies ourselves, or we just starve to death. There's not going to be any salvation. The sooner you accept that all hope is lost, the sooner you can get on with thinking about how you're going to get out of this world.”

  “Get out of it?” I ask cautiously.

  “Do you really want to cling on until the very last moment?” she asks. “I don't know about you, but I've been thinking about ways to leave with dignity. I don't need to try to stick around forever. Now I've accepted that the world is ending, I feel strangely at peace. You should too.”

  I really don't know what to say to any of that, but a moment later she squeezes my shoulder.

  “Just something to think about,” she says with a smile. “I wanted to ease your burden, that's all. I could tell that you were conflicted when you saw the tracking device, that's all. I thought that maybe it gave you some unwelcome hope.”

  “I'll manage, thank you,” I reply, and I'm starting to feel really weirded out by this whole conversation.

  “I know you will,” she says, smiling as she squeezes my shoulder again. “You're clearly a smart girl, Elizabeth. I'm sure you'll come around to the best option sooner rather than later. You know about the concept of the death drive, don't you?”

  “The what?”

  “It was a theory of Freud's,” she explains. “One version posits that, at some point, a person switches from pursuing life and happiness to, on some level, pursuing death and a return to the nothingness from which we all came. That's my interpretation of it, at least. The point is, I think we've reached that point as a species, and I also think that there's absolutely no point trying to push back. Once the death drive kicks in, it can't be fought. It's just who we are now. Just think about that. Forget your fear and focus on how this is all going to end. You want to be at peace, don't you?”

  I almost ask her what she means, but she's already turning and walking out of the room and – frankly – I don't want to do anything that might make her stay. As she heads off into the main room, I feel a sense of relief that she's gone, but I also can't help thinking about exactly what she was trying to make me understand. Until today, I generally got a pretty good vibe from Wendy, yet now I'm starting to wonder whether she's hiding something. For a moment, just now, it was almost as if she was suggesting that we should all give up and accept that the world is over, that there's no point fighting to survive... and that there's no point even being alive anymore.

  Elizabeth

  “These maps are great,” Patrick says as he unfolds another on the kitchen table. “They're a lot more detailed than the ones we've got on the boat.”

  “They must have been left behind by whoever used to live here,” I point out. “By the time I got here, the place was deserted.”

  “We can't keep sailing back and forth,” Patrick explains. “At some point, we're going to have to come up with another plan.” He pauses, studying the latest map for a moment, before turning to me. “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “We have room on the boat. I don't know where we'll end up, but it's got to be better than sitting around here. Right?”

  “I'm not sure,” I say cautiously. “I was traveling around for so long, I think maybe I'd rather just stay for a while. I know that probably sounds crazy, but this is the first time in about a year that I've felt even vaguely safe.”

  “Are things really that bad out there?”

  I pause, before nodding.

  “Sometimes I think we were lucky, being out on the boat when everything went bad,” he tells me, “and sometimes I think that was the worst place to be, because it meant that we didn't see how awful things were. We got little hints and clues, of course, but for a while we were able to fool ourselves. I guess I'm a little old-fashioned, because I still believe that it's my job to protect my family, and right now I don't know how I'm supposed to do that.”

  “You're all alive so far,” I reply. “That's better than most people managed.”

  “What percentage of the population do you think is still going?”

  “I don't know. Not a lot. On my way here from Manhattan, I didn't bump into anyone, and that must have been at least a hundred miles. I went close to several towns, and there just wasn't another soul around. I've got to admit, I was surprised. I thought I'd at least bump into someone, but...”

  My voice trails off.

  “At least you didn't bump into any zombies, right?” he says after a moment.

  “At least there's that,”
I reply.

  “Think about the offer, okay?” he continues. “We're planning to leave tomorrow. Wendy's going to make a big meal for us all tonight, as a way of thanking you for your hospitality, but it doesn't have to mean goodbye. I understand your reasons for wanting to stay, but please at least consider coming with us. It'll feel strange tomorrow if we have to leave you behind.”

  “I'll think about it,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

  ***

  “Fuck you!”

  Limping down the path that leads to the beach, I stop as soon as I see Sammy down by the shore. I had no idea she was here when I decided to come down and try a spot of foraging, and now I'm starting to think that maybe I should look somewhere else. I hesitate for a moment, and then I watch as Sammy picks up another rock and throws it at the cliff-face.

  “Go to hell!” she screams.

  Turning, I start limping back the way I came.

  “Where are you going?”

  I look over my shoulder and see that, unfortunately, Sammy has already spotted me.

  “If you've come to tell me to stop,” she continues, sounding a little breathless, “then there's no need. I have to get my anger out somehow, right?”

  “Sure,” I murmur. “Please, don't mind me, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'll let you get on with whatever you're doing.”

  I turn and resume my walk back up toward the lighthouse.

  “You've seen zombies, haven't you?” she calls after me.

  I stop again, but I'm not quite sure what to say.

  “You don't need to lie,” she continues. “I'm not that stupid. Mom and Dad sometimes whisper to each other like characters in TV shows. They think I can't hear them, but I can. I know things are way worse out there than anyone's admitted to me, and I also know that you've seen a lot of it.”

  I turn to her, and I realize that there's no point pretending.

  “Is it really everywhere?” she asks. “Like, the whole country?”