“Yes… sir?” James asked, studying him. He looked upset.
“Is Alexis here?” Emmett asked. James could tell he was trying to keep the anger out of his voice.
“No, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uhhh, yes,” James said, looking back into the room behind him. “You can come in and check if you’d like.”
Emmett marched through the door, looking around. It’d be hard to hide someone in the large, sparsely furnished room. The bathrooms would be the only place someone could hide, and that was where Emmett immediately went.
“Is something wrong?” James asked, shutting the door and walking into the middle of the room.
Emmett came out of the bathrooms. “I can’t find my daughter.”
“What do you mean?” James asked, getting anxious.
“We had plans for dinner.”
“When was that?”
“Six. I expected her to be late with the wounded, but she never showed up. Dr. Nelson came into the Mess Hall a couple of hours ago and said Alexis should be along shortly. She never showed.”
“You check your house?”
“It was the first place I looked. Then I checked the saloon and came here.”
James cursed, remembering how she’d talked about the locked room in the infirmary. “I think I know where she might be, although I hope I’m wrong.”
“Where?” Emmett asked, walking up to him.
“She’s been investigating some suspicious goings-on in the infirmary basement. I told her to be careful, but…”
“I know my daughter, and she doesn’t drop things easily.”
“She’s probably still there,” James said, grabbing his gun belt and putting it on.
Emmett walked out the door and James followed.
~~~
Alexis looked around the room. Shelves full of supplies, mainly medications and other drugs, sat against the far wall, with the only other thing in the room being the door to the basement. It was a brand new metal door that would be nearly impossible to break into. There was a scanner next to it and no other visible way to open it. Pulling out the keycard she’d stolen from Dr. Hart’s office, she held it in front of the scanner. The mechanism turned green and she heard the whirring of the lock as it pulled back into the door.
This was it.
If she got caught now, there was nothing she could tell them as to why she was there. Was this worth the risk? Definitely. There was something going on and she needed to know what. This place could never feel fully safe if they were hiding secrets.
Opening the door, she began to make her way down a circular metal staircase. When she reached the bottom, she found herself in a long hallway that stretched out before her. It turned to the left at the end, with two doors leading to off the left side of the hall. This wasn’t what she’d expected. The whole place looked immaculate, not like the musty old basement it should’ve been. This hadn’t been done overnight, and she realized that the underground facility had been built before the apocalypse ever began.
Carefully starting down the hallway, she glanced through the small window set in the first door. Inside was a medium-sized room with tables and some vending machines against the one wall. It looked like a cafeteria. She moved on to the next door, peeking through its window. It was a large laboratory with three people in white coats working at the various stations. There was a door at the back of the room with a Vindex guard standing by it, and it appeared that he was there to keep anyone from getting out of the room. Moving on, she came to the bend in the hallway and glanced around it.
There were three doorways going off to the right, one door going to the left into the laboratory, and one at the end of the hall. No one was in the hallway. She snuck up to the first door to the right. This one didn’t have a window and didn’t seem to be locked. Easing the door open, she glanced inside. It looked to be a small bedroom with bunk beds, two small dressers and a nightstand. She closed the door and moved down to the next one. The door at the end of the hall was open a crack and voices drifted to her from inside, but she was too far away to make them out. At the next door, she repeated the process. It was another bedroom, identical to the first. She moved onto the next doorway but stopped dead in her tracks. She recognized the voices coming from the room at the end. Figuring the last room was another bedroom, she ignored it and moved to the cracked door.
“I grow tired of living in this cage,” said a man’s voice. It was oddly familiar to her, but she couldn’t place who it belonged to.
“The new facility is almost complete,” said a gruff man’s voice she didn’t recognize.
“Good, it’ll be a pleasant change from this,” the first voice said. She really should know that voice.
“Any new developments?” another man asked. She recognized that one immediately—Dr. Hart.
“None,” the first voice said. “I appreciate the new subject. We’ve been able to study the transformation firsthand.”
“Is it as you feared?” asked the gruff-voiced man.
“Worse, I’m afraid,” First Voice said. “The virus is evolving even more quickly than we anticipated.”
“And you haven’t found a way to stop it?” asked Gruff Voice.
“No.”
“You developed this and yet you don’t know how to cure it?”
“It wasn’t supposed to get out. We’d only just discovered that it could be weaponized. There wasn’t time to find or produce a vaccine.”
“Doctor, time is up. We need you to find a way to stop this,” Gruff Voice said.
“I’m trying, but nothing is working,” First Voice said.
“You’d better find something, because we need answers, soon.”
“If you’d just let me talk to Emmett and the others, I’m sure they’d have vital information that could shed light on this. His group was out there for over a week. They have to have seen something.”
“We can’t do that,” said Gruff Voice. “They’ll have questions we’re not ready to answer.”
“You may want to think about this one, Clover. Your insistence on secrecy may be what causes our extinction,” First Voice said.
“Your concern is duly noted, Albert, but you have one job here and that’s to find a vaccine. Leave the rest to me and my men.”
Albert? That name, that voice.
It can’t be, Alexis thought.
Suddenly, it dawned on her. She did know that voice. The first man who’d spoken in the room was none other than Dr. Albert Hashen, her grandpa.
“I have to go,” the man named Clover said. “We have a situation at the gate.”
“What is it?” Dr. Hart asked.
“Emmett and one other person are here looking for your assistant,” Clover said. “She went home, right?”
“I assume,” Dr. Hart said. “I heard her go.”
“My men at the gate haven’t seen her leave,” Clover said.
“She’s still in the building?” Dr. Hart asked.
“So it seems. She doesn’t know about this place, does she?” Clover asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Hart said.
Alexis was pressed against the wall between the room the three men were in and the last bunkroom. She could tell the conversation was winding down and didn’t know if she’d be able to make it back upstairs in time. Acting on instinct, she turned and dashed into the nearest bunkroom. It was empty like the others. Keeping the door cracked so she could peer out, she saw a heavily muscled man with a red beard exit the room.
“You better not hurt her,” Albert said. “Your secrets aren’t worth her life.”
“We’ll see,” Clover said as he walked past the room Alexis was hiding in. He spoke into the earpiece he wore. “We have an uninvited guest in the building. Find her.”
33
Answers
Emmett stood outside the gate to the infirmary, using all his self-control not to bar
ge past the two Vindex mercenaries. He just wanted to see his daughter, but they wouldn’t even give him a straight answer. It was just an infirmary. Why was the security so tight? Unless Alexis was onto something. James had filled him in on their way down here, and he couldn’t help but feel hurt. His daughter hadn’t brought this to him. She hadn’t even mentioned it when he’d seen her, not that he’d seen her much lately. He was so busy trying to make this place safe for her that he was finding less time to spend with her. That’s why he’d planned the father-daughter date that night.
“Just tell me if she’s still working,” Emmett said to the two guards.
“Someone will be here to answer your questions soon enough,” said one of the guards, a young man named Smiles.
“They better be,” Emmett said, “or I’ll be going through that gate in two minutes, whether you want me to or not.”
The two guards looked at each other, gripping their ACRs a little tighter. Soon, the red-bearded Vindex leader from the town meeting came out of the front door to the infirmary and started their way. The guards called the man Clover, but Emmett knew it was an alias.
“At ease, men,” Clover said, walking up. “What can I do for you tonight, Mr. Wolfe?”
“Tell me where the hell my daughter is, Clover,” Emmett said.
“That’s a question I was hoping you’d have the answer to,” Clover said.
~~~
Alexis watched through the crack as Dr. Hart left the room shortly after Clover and entered the laboratory through the door opposite her. She berated herself for forgetting about the dinner date tonight with her dad. In all the chaos of the four wounded Marines, it had slipped her mind. Hopefully, her dad wouldn’t do anything stupid trying to find her. And she hadn’t needed to hear that James was the other one with her dad. She just knew.
Acting once again on instinct, she left the safety of the dark room and walked into the office the two men had just left. There was a desk in the middle of the room and her grandpa was sitting behind it. A doorway led to a small bathroom on the left side of the room. Judging by the cot sitting against the right wall, she assumed this was where her grandpa was living. On the desk was a picture of her family before Mason’s death and the divorce. Her dad and grandpa had always gotten along in the early years. They’d been a happy family back then—Jane, Emmett, Albert, Mason, and her. It seemed like so long ago.
Her grandpa didn’t look up from his desk, not even when she closed the door behind her. He’d always been extremely focused when he worked. Albert looked like he’d aged years in the few months since she’d last seen him. Even though he only lived thirty minutes away, she’d rarely seen him after the divorce because he came around less as the years passed. His skin was even paler than usual, and it seemed as though he’d shrunk a few inches, or maybe that was because he sat with a hunch to his shoulders. He looked defeated, not the excitable old man she remembered.
“I thought you were…” Albert said, trailing off as he glanced up. “Alexis! What are you doing here?” He glanced around nervously.
“I came to get answers,” Alexis said, sitting down across the desk from him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Albert said, getting up and locking the door behind her.
“How are you involved in something like this, Grandpa?” Alexis asked him as he sat back down. “I thought you wanted to help people.”
“I did, and I still do,” Albert said, looking down. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
“None of what?”
“Any of it.”
He looked up at her, staring into her eyes. The once proud way he held himself was gone, replaced by a regretful old man. What’d happened to make him this way? Some of her anger abated as she looked at the man who’d always been kind to her.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive, Grandpa Al,” Alexis said.
He smiled at that. “It’s good to see you too, sweetie.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on?” Alexis asked.
“I can’t. There’s more at play here than even I know.”
“Please, Grandpa. We need to know.”
Albert gazed into her eyes and then took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“Okay,” he said. “But can I have a hug first? I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again until I heard you’d come into town.”
“Of course,” Alexis said, standing up and walking around the desk.
He stood up and wrapped his arms around her. Her head rested against his chest, so maybe he hadn’t shrunk after all. He held her for a solid minute, slowly stroking her hair. Finally, he broke the embrace and stepped back with tears in his eyes.
“You remind me so much of your mother when she was young,” Albert said, sitting down. “Can you tell me how she died?”
“How’d you know?” Alexis said, sitting again.
“I sent men to get her from the house when this all started, but she was gone. I knew Emmett wouldn’t have left without you or her, no matter their differences. And when you showed up in Coutts without her or George, I connected the dots.”
“She was bitten,” Alexis said, surprised at the tears that came to her eyes. “Dad tried to save her, but she died anyway.”
Albert just nodded, more tears brimming behind his glasses. “I told myself to reconcile the fact that you were all gone, but when you came into town, I couldn’t believe it. How did you get here?”
“That’s a story for another time,” Alexis said. “What are you doing here?”
“A good question,” Albert said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I can’t tell you all of it for fear that they might do something drastic, but maybe I can give you enough to make a difference. Just don’t tell anyone I told you. If word gets out…”
“Does it really even matter anymore?”
She thought about telling him that she’d already overheard some of their conversation but decided not to. Best if he was kept somewhat in the dark. She thought she could trust her grandpa but not the other men running this place.
“No, I guess not,” Albert said with a sigh.
“Who’s in charge of all this?”
“The Vindex Corporation. They’re the ones who paid for all the research and supplied the protection.”
“What research?”
“You have to understand, I did this to help people. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“Just tell me, Grandpa.”
She suddenly remembered a conversation with her dad when they’d been locked in the basement at Safe Haven with Ana. When her father worked for LifeWork, he’d seen them experimenting on people and had watched as the patients came back to life. He said it was something about a new drug to cure everything. She almost spoke up again, but stopped. She wanted to hear it from her grandpa first to see if it lined up.
“LifeWork doesn’t just produce pharmaceutical drugs. We also have a division that does testing for new drugs. A few years ago, we were approached by Vindex. They were worried that our enemies were producing a biological weapon that we’d be helpless against. They wanted us to find the vaccine for this new virus. The problem was that they didn’t know much about it, just bits and pieces. We started testing, trying to create a virus like the one they were worried about. We stumbled onto something a couple of months ago.”
“A virus?”
“Not just a normal virus but one that eventually kills the host. Then, it somehow brings them back, only they aren’t the same. They’re mindless killers.”
“How is it possible?”
“It’s not, and that’s what scared us. We still don’t know what it is, except that it’s a virus unlike any the world has ever seen. Even after working frantically for these past few months, we still don’t have a vaccine for it, and there’s no way to combat it or reverse its effects. We’re continuing to search, but time is running out.”
“What do you mean time is running out?”<
br />
“The virus is evolving,” Albert said, his eyes showing true fear. “It’s why we haven’t been able to figure it out. Every few hosts, it mutates—some small change that’s barely noticeable at first. It’s impossible to anticipate.”
“Then how do you stop it?”
He shook his head and then suddenly looked at her as his eyes widened. “You’ve been out there. You’ve seen it. Explain to me all you’ve seen with the infected—the symptoms they show, the way they act, anything that might help us learn more.”
She explained everything she’d seen over the past three weeks—how they only seemed to truly die with a headshot, the way they walked and acted, and anything else she could think of. After she finished, she added, “Some of the survivors I’m traveling with even said some people have turned without being bitten or scratched. And some turn quicker than others.”
“Yes, that’s very astute of them. The incubation time is different, depending on a lot of factors—the location of infection, heart rate, age, blood type, body temperature, external—” Albert suddenly stopped talking and looked directly at her. “They turned even if they weren’t bitten? Are you sure of this?”
“No, but they seemed to think so,” Alexis said, looking confused at her grandpa’s excitement.
“That’s it!” Albert said, standing up suddenly. “That’s how the cities are being infected from the inside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s mutated again,” Albert said and looked at her, his excitement fading, replaced by dread. “It’s gone airborne. Everyone who comes into contact with the hosts will contract the virus.”
“Then why aren’t we all turning?”
He cocked his head. “Good point, unless… maybe it’s not the same virus, or maybe it’s different if you get a direct infection instead of just part of it. Like how airborne particles of peanuts can cause some people to have an allergic reaction, but it’s not the full reaction they’d have if they were to ingest it. What if the virus is dormant until the host dies and then it sets off a reaction in the brain that activates it?”
Bad Company (The Brother's Creed Book 4) Page 22