Joseph was pushed to the back of the squad of pieced together soldiers. He joined a couple of people huddling near the back. A woman with glasses cried. The man wrapped his arms around the woman. “Shhh. It’s okay, Megan. These men will keep us safe,” he said.
Her head shook side to side in a tepid no. “They grabbed Stephen from my arms and ate him,” she mumbled. “They said we would be safe inside the mountain,” she whispered. Her words were guilt-ridden, barbed arrows into Joseph’s soul. I caused this.
They avoided a puddle of crimson liquid and bits of a uniform as they followed the soldiers like elementary students following their teachers on a field trip. The soldiers checked room to room for survivors. Quick knocks. Quick questions to determine if they were alive. The group’s progress was painfully slow down the hall.
Joseph recognized the double door at the end of the hall. Bloody footprints stained the floor, leaving long streaks across it.
One of the heavily armed soldiers leaned back. “Wait here,” he said in a gruff voice. He eyed them over his shoulder. “We’re going to clear the main room. Yell if somebody comes up behind us.”
The soldiers filed up on either side of the door. The squad leader held up his hand. Three. Two. One. He displayed with his fingers and the squad of mixed personnel disappeared into the office.
A man growled and someone fired their gun in a short staccato of bullet notes. Joseph crept down the hallway after the soldiers.
“What are you doing?” the man behind him hissed.
“I’ve got to see something,” Joseph said.
“They said to stay here.” The man’s voice came out in a whine. Megan continued to cry on his shoulder.
“I know.” Joseph ignored the man’s pleas for him to stop and walked inside.
Cubicle walls were knocked over onto desks. Blood covered the floor where people had been consumed or turned into infected. The squad had cleared corners and made its way cautiously forward to the bloodbath around the elevator. The soldiers twisted back-and-forth, guns searching for threats. Joseph followed behind them thirty feet behind them.
“Help,” echoed out from the elevator.
Shouts sounded out. “Drop the gun,” screamed the soldiers. Metal clanked on the ground.
A man emerged from the elevator where he had been hiding. Dead soldiers were strewn around him. His body was covered in dried brown blood as if he had been swimming in a cesspool of death. Only his eyes were gore-free. His shirt and briefs were stuck to his skin. Bites decorated his skin. His arms and shoulders were covered with open wounds in the form of bite marks. Blood seeped from the indentations in his skin.
“He’s been bit,” shouted a soldier. He pointed his pistol at the man. Guns lifted to shoulders and they sidestepped away from one another in an effort to not get stuck in the crossfire.
Gauze had been stuffed into a hole in his calf and bandages had been hastily wrapped around both his arms.
“I…I…Please don’t shoot. I’m okay,” the young soldier stuttered. Joseph jogged closer to the group. It can’t be him, he thought.
The soldiers exchanged looks. The squad leader, the most heavily armed soldier, turned back to the young man. “I’m sorry, buddy. It’s been a rough day for all of us. You know a bite means. It’s only a matter of time. Our orders are clear.”
The young, shaved-head soldier shook his head, looking from gun to gun. “No. Come on, guys. Same team.”
Joseph eyed the squad leader. The squad leader’s finger tapped the receiver of his carbine three distinct times, and a man in only a tactical vest and civilian clothes moved to the side.
“Make your peace, brother. We won’t let you turn,” the squad leader said. The other soldier crept up from the side, gun pointed at the young soldier’s head.
“Wait,” Joseph screamed. Guns whipped his way, and for a second, he knew they were going to shoot him.
“Get back in the hallway,” shouted the squad leader, pointing a gloved-finger at him, his other hand still on his carbine.
“No.” Joseph gulped.
The soldier’s eyes went wide and he marched for him. An iron grip crushed into Joseph’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see it isn’t safe?”
“Don’t shoot that man,” Joseph shouted. The squad leader shoved him backward. Joseph stumbled back.
“Get back,” the squad leader shouted. He pointed a black-gloved finger at Joseph. “He’s infected. We’ve let him live too long as is,” he hissed through his mask.
Joseph gave him as fierce a look as he could muster. “That man is living proof that we have found a vaccine for the virus.”
The squad leader looked back at the bleeding, bandaged man in his briefs. He released Joseph and pointed back. “Him?”
“Yes. Subject C is the only one who hasn’t turned when bitten.” Joseph eyed the young soldier standing there practically naked. His skin was pale beneath the blood. Joseph added hurriedly, “We must get him medical treatment and pray he doesn’t turn.”
***
Forty-eight hours later, Subject C, Private First Class Rodgers was confined and under constant monitoring in the quarantine wing of the BSL-4 lab. Joseph watched him sleeping on the other side of a camera.
“No sign of infection,” Joseph said to Byrnes. The gaunt military man rubbed his chin and nodded his head.
“I can’t remember the last time we had any good news. We will continue monitoring him for any changes.”
“I’m thinking another week and we will be almost positive that the recipients of the vaccine will not turn infected. Its replication cycle is so fast that every hour he doesn’t turn, I am more sure it worked. Two to three weeks, and I will be comfortable for expansive distribution among the soldiers.”
“What if there are long-term effects?”
“Nothing is more long-term than death, but we will use it on a few squads to begin with. Men involved with some front-line work. I can live with some irritable bowel syndrome, or something like that if it can keep these guys fighting long enough to win.”
Joseph didn’t like it but had to agree. This vaccine would provide soldiers and civilians with an opportunity to live through potential infection. The infected could still murder them, but vaccinated victims would not contract the disease by fluid transmission or bite.
Byrnes nodded thoughtfully. “The outbreak was terrible, but we did it, Dr. Jackowski.” Byrnes wrapped his arm around Joseph, cupping his shoulder. The tall colonel smiled down at him. Still a sad man, but happy in this brief moment in time.
“We did,” Joseph said. Joseph gently released himself from the colonel’s grip. “I’m going down to speak with Richard.”
Byrnes watched him for a moment before he spoke as if he tried to understand him. “What is your loyalty to that guy? He’s the cause of all of this.”
Joseph looked down. Patient Zero had caused him nothing but pain and suffering. Men had died to help Joseph find him. Men had died controlling him. Rebecca, a woman whom he had fallen for even as she slowly succumbed to Primus Necrovirus, had died because of him. This had all been because of one person who had unknowingly spread the virus to an unsuspecting planet. Yet, in the end, the virus was to blame, not the man that contracted it. Richard Thompson, Patient Zero, would get the blame if someone ever wrote about the virus in a history book, but he would also be the man who saved mankind from it.
“I dunno. But I want to tell him that we did it. That we couldn’t have done it without him.”
Byrnes nodded his acceptance and Joseph left. He walked quietly down the hallway, to his room. He donned his HAZMAT suit, undergoing all protocols.
Gasses released as the pressurized doors opened up to Patient Zero’s white sterile room. His heart monitor beeped. Beep-beep, beep. Beep-beep, beep. Patient Zero’s chest rose and fell. Joseph hesitantly approached the bed, remembering the time he had been in the room with Rebecca and Patient Zero had infected her.
His blue-suit-boot
ed feet crunched like plastic beneath him until he was alongside Patient Zero.
“Richard,” he whispered. Richard’s fingers were limp and lifeless. He took the man’s hand and squeezed. Patient Zero’s hand felt almost artificial through his biohazard suit. It was like squeezing the hand of a mannequin.
Bandages covered the countless incisions where the other doctors had sliced him open for observation. One bandage covered his forehead where they had taken a portion of his frontal lobe. It had greatly diminished his communication abilities. His eyes fluttered and cracked open.
“It’s me, Joseph. Do you remember me?” He gave Richard a faint smile.
Richard’s pale white eyes blinked acknowledgment, a faint milk-chocolate brown hidden beneath their whiteness.
“I came here to tell you something.”
Richard blinked his almost white eyes again. Drool dribbled down his chin from the corner of his mouth.
“We’ve come up with a vaccine. It’s more of a miracle than real science, but it worked.”
Richard’s eyes blinked rapidly. Joseph squeezed his hand.
“We couldn’t have done this without you. It was your cells that allowed us to find a way.” And Rebecca. “I just wanted you to know that. You have saved a lot of lives. And you took Rebecca’s.” A flash of anger bubbled in Joseph’s gut. “You took hers. You took the woman who was to be my partner in this. You took her and made me watch her die.” He found himself crushing Richard’s hand in his. Richard’s eyes blinked fast. Joseph let go of his hand, staring at his own.
“Why am I even bothering? You can’t even speak on your own behalf.” Joseph shook his head in frustration. He stared at the white walls. Pure and snow-white and sterile, but also, devoid of feeling and emotion.
“No, it’s not your fault. It is the virus’s.” His eyes dropped back down on Richard’s incision-covered body. Look at his man. More scars than Frankenstein. The man stared back, a primal form of relief in his eyes.
Willing or not, you both gave your lives for this.
From the corner of Richard’s eye, a tear trickled down his face.
“Goodbye, Richard. Your part is done, but this war is not over.”
Richard would continue to be observed in his diminished state until his heart gave out. After his body was put down and incinerated in the flames of a cremation furnace, the war for the living would continue. Richard, Patient Zero of the worst outbreak in recorded human history, would be a footnote. The outbreak war would continue until the living became the dead or as long as the infected roamed the earth.
STEELE
Shores of Lake Michigan
White caps on gray water crashed onto the beach below, filling the air with a dull roar. The sky was a lighter version of gray. Dark clouds hung low, racing across the horizon of the giant lake promising rain sometime in the near future. They stood near the edge of the lakeside sloping cliff that dropped almost one hundred feet to the beach. The grass was uncut and overgrown, standing all the way to Steele’s knees.
The wind came off the water, whipping his coat that dangled around his shoulders. Steele didn’t wear a suit or a tie as was customary before the outbreak. Simple and more functional clothing was appropriate. His sling-propped arm wouldn’t allow him to easily wear a coat, so he wore it around his shoulders.
Loose-fitting ACU pants covered his yellow and purple leg that itched like hell. He decided it was a good time to ditch the crutch, having leaned heavily on it for a week. He wasn’t sure if a few of those nasty metal pellets were still stuck in his leg or if his wounds were just that deep, but the small wounds ached and itched incessantly. He was only thankful he hadn’t taken a slug to the thigh instead. You would have bled out in a minute.
Gwen was there with him. The wind attacked her hair, pulling pieces and strands all over her head despite the fact she wore it in a ponytail. Having her nearby comforted him. It gave him some sort of solace in a time that was filled with so much loss. She held his free hand.
She stared downward at the two piles of freshly dug dirt in the ground. Kevin stood next to her, his hands clasped in front of him. Ahmed stood next to him, a shovel in one hand, a black M4 slung on his back. He had insisted on digging in Steele’s place. Steele had begrudgingly obliged and watched the burly man go to work on the sandy soil.
There wasn’t much to bury, but Ahmed dug full-sized graves anyway. Releasing Gwen’s hand, Steele bent down on one leg, ignoring the screaming of his other. He picked up a handful of gray ash and sprinkled it in the hole. Much of it lifted off, the wind carrying it away. Gwen did the same. The only sound was the crashing waves of Lake Michigan. Steele nodded to Kevin and then Ahmed and they followed suit.
Steele looked down at the almost empty grave. The words to say hid from him. What do you say to the ones who’ve already passed that you should have already said? All those missed phone calls. The times when he thought he would just catch-up later. Other things had filled her place.
Work dragged him from corner to corner of the earth as he paid the price of being a counterterrorism agent day in and day out. It was a never-ending battle between good and evil fought in the gray. His mother paid her own price for his dedication to his country. Gwen paid that price. The price of lost time. Time was one thing he could never get back. It made him question whether or not he had made the right decisions even if they were for his country’s sake.
His mother suffered in silence, alone, with his father gone, waiting on her only son to return from his modern-day quest. A mother who waited patiently day-by-day, praying that her son stay out of harm’s way long enough to make the final journey home. Then tomorrow came and his mother was gone, and he was too late. I should have been here. I never should have left. Who would I be if I had stayed?
He bent down again, digging into a handful of smoky ash. “You’re going to be a grandma,” he said, tears filling his eyes. He bit his lip and wiped his eyes. She had loved to talk about how excited she was for him to be married and have kids. Now she would have a grandchild she would never see. Cheeks she would never pinch. Little feet she would never tickle. A forehead she would never kiss goodnight. Newborn baby smells she would never enjoy. All of these precious things taken from her. Experiences that he would never get to share with her. All taken by the pastor and his men. He suppressed his deep rage for the man.
His fingers closed and he made a fist. The granules crumbled into dust as they were compressed by his palm, and he tossed the remainders into the hole. “I wish it was different,” he whispered.
He took a deep breath trying to collect himself. “We put you here because we knew this is where you’d want to be,” he said, taking a deep breath. The hugeness of Lake Michigan stretched far and wide as he could see. “You got a great view. Sunset every day. The lake will be here and some trees. We’ll bring the baby back so you can meet,” he said to her ghost.
He bowed his head in silence, lost in his thoughts. For minutes, the group stood quiet, contemplating all those they never had the chance to say goodbye to. They contemplated all the missed opportunities and missed phone calls to their loved ones, each person and minute, now gone. The wind picked up and a sound came flirting with it.
A slight humming pricked his eardrums. The others heard it too. Gwen looked over her shoulder. Her hair continued to get tossed in the wind. Ahmed eyed the road. Steele turned, shifting his feet around in search of the source. Soon all their attention was in the direction of the street.
“A car?” Ahmed asked. He shrugged his M4 carbine off his shoulders and into his hands.
Steele eyed the road expectantly. The Red Stripes? The rumbling grew louder.
“Bigger,” Steele said, limping for the charred remains of his family’s house. Gwen put an arm around him and helped him to the ground with a grunt. Seconds later, the first truck wheeled by. All tan. Thick wheel treads. The truck looked like it was made from rectangles. A man’s head poked out the top of a turret. A camouflaged helmet sat atop
his skull. He rested easily on his M2 .50 caliber machine gun, the barrel pointed lazily upward. The Humvee disappeared behind trees and another house.
“Military? Here?” Gwen whispered.
“I dunno,” Steele breathed. He kept only his eyes above the charred wood, watching.
A minute passed and another Humvee rolled by, followed by another and another. All bore the same mark: a dark red anvil painted on the side of each driver’s door.
“Jesus, look at all of them,” Kevin whispered. Humvee after Humvee drove along the lakeside road. Troop carriers filled with soldiers crammed in like a box of bullets were spaced intermittently throughout the convoy.
“Who are they?” Gwen asked.
She was silenced as an airport mobile lounge followed along, its steel-plated windows raised up. Arms and heads stuck out, draped on the sides of the tall moon-rover like vehicle. Lunchbox.
Steele swallowed hard, all the moisture in his throat disappearing. His heart pounded his chest. He knew, and it scared him to his core.
“Colonel Jackson.”
KINNICK
Peterson Air Force Base, CO
The dark black liquid was too hot. Little waves of heat quivered up as they struggled to free themselves from his cup. He sipped it anyway, feeling it burn his tongue a bit on the way down. Can’t waste the good stuff.
He gestured his cup at his master sergeant. “Coffee?” he asked.
“I’d love some,” Hunter said. Hunter still wore white bandages around his head. They covered his eye along with a black eye patch. Kinnick poured him some coffee and handed it to the man. Hunter took it carefully with two hands.
“Any word from Wyman’s platoon at South Fork pass?” Kinnick asked.
“No. But I can’t imagine Turmelle going down without a hell of a fight,” Hunter said, running his coffee cup into his lip. He noticed Kinnick staring at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Still getting used to it. What the hell you need two for anyway?”
The Rising (The End Time Saga Book 3) Page 42