“My blood?” said Jamie, looking down at the vein in her arm where there was still some kind of device sticking out. The device was plugged right into her vein and it made her feel queasy just looking at it. But then again, she’d always had a strong aversion to needles, especially in a medical context.
“Look. I’m exposing myself to this virus. I’m the test. And if I catch the virus from you then I’m dead. The least you could do is go along with this.... We need someone with the virus to try to figure out how it works.”
“Can’t you just analyze the blood that you took from me?”
Lily shook her head.
Jamie was, despite her drowsiness and confusion, becoming very conscious of the gun in Lily’s hand, and the way it moved as Lily talked and gesticulated.
“We need to keep taking samples. The virus is dynamic. It’s functioning in your body.”
“But, wait, I thought I don’t have the virus? Why are you testing me?”
“We’re testing you because you’re immune.”
“So I don’t have the virus?”
“We don’t know. You might have it. You might not. We’re trying to find the vectors that—”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, it’s very complicated, especially for a layperson such as yourself. But what I can tell you is that these tests are very important for humanity. With my colleagues now out of commission...” she gestured at the two bodies on the floor with a slight nod of her head “...It’s even more important that I continue this research. We don’t know if there are any other labs functioning in the US right now, or whether everyone else working on this sort of research is dead.”
“You’re saying you’re the only hope to figure out how to stop the virus?’
“No, I’m saying you’re the only hope. My only hope. Because without my colleagues, I’m not going to be likely to capture another specimen such as yourself.”
“I’m a specimen?”
Lily just nodded, her ponytail bouncing a little on the back of her head. “Let’s face it, I’m a woman. Now I’m in fairly good shape, but I’m not as strong as a man. Not nearly as strong as McGregor or even Rory. How am I going to go out there by myself, even with the tranquilizing darts, and capture another person? And here’s the thing, they have to be immune, like yourself. It’s not likely to happen. So you’re the last hope, in a way. Who knows how long I can survive in this place by myself anyway, with no guards, and no new stocks of food coming in?”
Jamie, despite her haziness, noticed how Lily was referring to herself as the one living and surviving at the lab, not the two of them. And she also noticed how she was the ‘specimen’, rather than a person or a survivor.
“I don’t like this,” said Jamie. “I’m going to leave. Thanks for rescuing me...thanks for saying you didn’t like how I was being treated.”
“Now wait up,” said Lily.
The gun wasn’t yet pointed at Jamie, but Jamie had a strong suspicion that it soon would be.
“I’ve got to go,” said Jamie.
She wasn’t exactly functioning at her highest mental level right now, so announcing her intention was the best plan she could up with at the moment.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be enough.
“Don’t move,” said Lily, now raising the gun, pointing the muzzle right at Jamie. “I need you. Humanity needs you. I take my job seriously. Even if the whole government has crashed into nothing, even if it’s been pulverized, even if I never get another check in my life, I’m still going to go through with my work. I’m going to do what’s necessary.”
“But you said you didn’t like the way I was being treated...Strapped down...Treated like an animal...Like an experiment.”‘
“No, you’re right. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.”
But despite her words, Lily was advancing on her, slowly but surely.
Jamie found herself automatically taking unsteady steps backward, trying to increase the distance between herself and Lily.
“So I’m hoping that you’re going to say you don’t want to continue to experiment on me, then...but I have a feeling that...”
“You’re the only hope,” said Lily. “The only specimen that I have right now, and I have no chance of getting another. I’m sorry, but what choice do I have? I promise I won’t really hurt you...If you decide to give me your blood willingly, then we can have a pleasant time here...We’ll have to run some experiments, but now that I’m exposed, you can come up to the break room with me...It’ll be a lot more pleasant for you.”
Lily was fishing for something in her pocket, down below her waist, where the white suit hid her hand from view.
“I don’t want to stay here,” said Jamie. “I have friends...I have things to do...I have to get back.”
Lily took a large, fast step forward.
Jamie found herself stepping back, but coming right up against one of the laboratory walls. She put her hands in front of her, as if she could defend herself, but even her dizzy brain knew that she didn’t stand much of a chance.
But she was going to try.
She wasn’t going to go down easy. She wasn’t going to become some lab rat. Not on her watch.
But in the end, it happened too suddenly for her to defend herself.
Lily lunged forward much sooner and much faster than Jamie was expecting. Because of the lingering effect of the sedative drugs, things seemed to be happening with a delay of a second or two.
Before she knew it, Lily was already almost up against Jamie.
Jamie got her hands up, but it wasn’t enough to stop the needle that she felt entering her side. It was a sharp, deep prick.
Only a few moments of lucid consciousness remained. And even then, she began to feel the effects of the drug. Her legs felt like Jell-O, her limbs felt heavy, and the next thing she knew, she had blacked out.
18
Matt
Matt was waiting expectantly for something to happen.
The men were walking toward them quickly and with purpose.
Matt’s grip on his gun was good. His breathing was steady. He was going over his mental checklist, trying to make sure he did everything that he could do.
He was actively focusing on everything but the pain, not letting it get in the way. He was determined not to let it get him and Judy killed by distracting him. He’d fight it any way he could, by focusing on his breathing, by keeping his attention intently glued to the men. He paid close attention to each of their movements, to each of their footsteps. He noted where their hands were and how their heads moved. There was a lot you could glean from posture and body language alone.
Judy was next to him. He knew there was no point in trying to get her to leave. It was too late now anyway.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the end.
A firefight. It’d all be over soon enough.
But in his mind, he was gearing up for a huge battle. Not something short and quick. Not something brutal and cutthroat that was over in a flash. Maybe it was the result of a lifetime of Hollywood movies. A lifetime of TV gun battles.
When it finally happened, it was almost unbelievably fast. The men came into range, and it was a guessing game on who should shoot first. Shoot first while they’re in range, and you’d have the advantage. Shoot first but miss because they’re too far away, and you’d do yourself a disservice.
In the end, Matt and Judy waited.
The other men shot first.
Matt and Judy had the lying-down advantage. Instead of barn doors head on, they were barn doors held sideways.
Comparatively, the hugeness of the men was their disadvantage. They were like barn doors themselves, facing Matt and Judy head on.
It was over almost before the first shot.
Matt was acting automatically, almost purely by instinct. Thought was absent. It was just movement. It was just his body responding.
It wasn’t like the movies. There was no dramati
c music giving Matt that soaring feeling in his chest. There was no well-timed witty banter in the background by secondary characters. There was nothing except the pain, except the roaring in his ears from the gunshot, and the sound of his own heart thumping crazily in his ribcage.
It couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. Maybe not even a half a minute. But time seemed distorted and it was hard to judge. And he wasn’t going to risk looking at his watch, or removing his hand from his gun. He made a mental note to start to wear his watch on the inside of his wrist, making it perfectly visible when handling a gun.
The three men were down.
Matt still felt pain. But just the pain of the stab wound. No additional pain.
He hadn’t been shot.
He glanced quickly over at Judy, barely taking his eyes off the three men on the ground.
No point in speaking to her. She probably wouldn’t be able to hear him over the roar in her ears, and he probably wouldn’t be able to hear her answer even if she did.
It had all happened as if automatically. His hands had seemed to have a mind of their own. His finger, as well, had seemingly executed effortless pulls. Maybe it was an effect of the stress. Maybe it was an effect of the pain. Maybe it was just an effect of his mind and body having to suddenly deal with so much...sort of like those situations in which a mother is able to lift a car off a trapped baby. The body is capable of extraordinary things. Sometimes.
Judy gave him a thumbs-up, letting him know she was okay. He did the same, gritting his teeth all the while through the pain of the knife wound.
Were the men dead?
There were three of them. What were the chances they were all dead? What were the chances that they weren’t pretending? Or that one of them was pretending, lying there still alive, among his dead buddies, just waiting for revenge.
Off in the distance, the ambulance looked surreal, its lights still on.
What should they do?
Wait. That was the answer.
Neither he nor Judy spoke as they waited. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Then thirty. He finally felt confident enough to move his wrist around so that the time on his watch was visible.
An hour had passed. And there was still no movement.
Still trying to ignore his injury, Matt would only occasional reach down to feel his wound. It was bleeding freely. He did some mental calculations, very rough ones, that were not much more than guesses, about how much blood he could lose.
Could he really die from such a wound? Would he really bleed out or would his own coagulation factors kick in before then?
The truth was that he didn’t know. But he was starting to suspect, given the warmth of the blood when he moved his hand to feel his wound, that he was going to keep bleeding until he was dead, unless he did something about it.
He wasn’t feeling woozy or dizzy. He wasn’t feeling like he was going to pass out. But that wasn’t any indication of reality, or of what was really going to happen. He knew that his body was doing everything it could to keep him alert and unaware of the pain. And, unfortunately, that might eventually be to his detriment. The body could go hard in one direction, pushing and pushing, and then suddenly the whole system would fall off a cliff. The body was smart, but it wasn’t perfect. He’d need to use his mind as well.
“Judy?” he hissed, his voice less than a whisper.
She didn’t hear him.
He had to try again, raising his voice ever so slightly. If there was a man alive, he didn’t want the slightest possibility that he could be overheard.
She looked over at him, raising her eyebrows and cocking her head slightly, to indicate that she’d heard him. But she didn’t speak, which was smart. Cut down the chances that someone could overhear.
He motioned with his head and she did a sort of side-crawl over to him. Now their bodies were right next to one another.
“What is it?” she whispered, her mouth right up against his ear, but her face and eyes not leaving the men.
“I don’t know how long I can hold out,” he whispered.
“You still bleeding?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not good.”
“I’d go over there,” he whispered. “But I don’t think I can make it.”
“There’s no way you can make it. You could barely walk before.”
“You think they’re all dead?”
“No.”
“You saw one move?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“Just a feeling. A hunch.”
“But we shot them all up. Even after it was over. Pumped a few extra rounds into the bodies.”
“Why are you arguing against it? Don’t you think there’s one alive too?”
“Yeah, there’s got to be.”
If they hadn’t been whispering, Judy probably would have audibly sighed.
The conversation seemed to be more confusing to Matt than it normally would have been. Much more confusing. Maybe his brain was affected by the injury. Things seemed strange. Something wasn’t quite right, but it was hard to tell. Very hard to tell.
“You’re not making sense,” she whispered.
“I’m not?”
She ignored that.
“Look,” she said. “You see that one guy. That one body.”
“Which one?”
“I’m about to tell you. The one behind the other two...See how it’s very cleverly positioned there...Almost as if on purpose...None of the rounds would strike it like that. It’s buffered. You see it?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“If I were to put money on it, I’d say that guy’s still alive.”
“But he’s not moving.”
“No, he’s not. And that’s bad for us. If my hunch is right and he’s still alive, then he’s a smart one. He’d have to be, to act like that.”
“Then what...?” he started to whisper a sentence, but he sort of began to trail off, forgetting what he was trying to say halfway through.
“You still with me, Matt?”
“Of course. What were you saying?”
“You were the one talking. You stopped. I’m worried about you. Let me see that wound.”
“If I move, he might shoot.”
“He hasn’t shot yet.”
“What do you think is stopping him?”
“I don’t know. He must not know you’re injured.”
“What do you mean?”
“He thinks we’re two able-bodied fighters. He doesn’t know I’m old and you’ve been stabbed. He thinks it’s two against one? What would you do in that situation? Probably play dead, right?”
“Makes sense,” said Matt. “But what do we do?”
Judy held her tongue for several long moments. “I’ve got to do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“I’ve got to head over there,” she said.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll be completely exposed. Completely out in the open. You’ll get shot. There’s no way to sneak around. Nothing to hide behind. Nothing at all.”
“So what? I’ll make it.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What choice do we have?” she said.
Then it was Matt’s turn to fall silent. She was right. There was nothing else to do. There was no point in trying to be valiant, offering that he himself would go. It would just be a completely false and completely pointless offering. They both knew that it was unlikely he could stand up under his own power, let alone walk more than a few steps.
“Exactly,” she said, ending the long pause herself. “There’s no other way. So here’s what we’ll do. You start shooting. Hopefully, that’ll distract him. Make him either take cover or try to return fire. Meanwhile, I’ll move out to the left.” She pointed in the direction that she would head. “From there, I should be able to get a clean shot at him.”
“You think you can?”
&nb
sp; “Get a clean shot? Yeah. It’s just a matter of angles. You never played pool?”
He knew she was trying to tell a joke, but he couldn’t laugh. And if he could have laughed despite the situation, he wouldn’t have been physically able to tolerate the pain that it would have caused to his injury.
The pain was starting to come on strong. He didn’t know why. Maybe the adrenaline was wearing off, or maybe the pain was just pushing through, despite all the efforts his body was making to counteract it, trying to keep him in the moment, trying to keep him functional. Maybe his body had staved it all off for as long as it could, and now it was allowing the pain to come through, almost as if it were saying, “Hey, you really have to do something about the injury because you’re not going to last much longer.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
The pain was there. He couldn’t push it away. And because of the pain, he knew that he wouldn’t have even been able to start to stand up.
It was getting bad.
He hated the situation he was in. How could he let an older woman expose herself to such danger? She’d lost her son and before that, she hadn’t had an easy life. She’d done so much for him already. It wasn’t fair to ask her to do this.
But what was the alternative? Sometimes life came down to these hard moments, when one had to cast aside the conventional ideas of how things should be in order to survive, or at least attempt to survive. If he objected, then they’d both end up dead.
“You have to do it,” he finally said, barely able to speak through the pain.
“Right,” she said. “Can you still shoot, do you think?”
He nodded.
“Good,” she said. “We’ll do it soon. The longer we wait, the worse you’re going to get.”
He nodded curtly.
He was already trying to mentally prepare himself for this, and a quick glance in Judy’s direction let him know that she was doing exactly the same thing.
19
Cody
It was a day later, and Cody had somehow managed to make it through and around Santa Fe proper. He was now on the southeastern outskirts, in an area that was much less densely built up, where hints of Highway 25 could be seen in the distance.
Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos Page 13