Spore Series | Book 2 | Choke

by Soward, Kenny

  “Yeah, I didn’t even tell you about that.”

  “Lay it on me,” Kim said, smiling down at the young woman’s enthusiasm.

  She told her about the crash, at least what she remembered of it, and how they’d gotten the pilot from the crash to the farmhouse using a riding lawnmower. Then she told Kim how she’d tried to save the pilot, but he’d died, anyway.

  “I’m kicking myself for that.” Jessie shook her head.

  “Why?”

  “I should have risked it and moved the pilot. We could have made it to Washington way sooner. The poor guy might have had a chance, and we would have caught you.”

  “Yeah, but who knows what Burke might have done to Fiona?” Kim replied, sincerely. “No, you were right to do what you did anyway, and lucky you didn’t make it to Washington sooner.”

  “He’s that bad of a guy?”

  “Worse,” Kim confirmed. “He’s roaming around here probably looking for a way to finish us all off at once…” She let her words trail off, because they hadn’t been focusing on Burke at all over the past three days. “At least, I can’t imagine he plans on leaving us alone.”

  “He’d be looking for a weakness,” Jessie stated.

  Kim nodded, because the field agent was right. “I’d bet he’s looking for an opportunity to strike, and he’ll be desperate once he finds out we broke Asphyxia’s code.”

  Jessie cocked an eyebrow. “Are you saying you have a cure?”

  “Maybe,” Kim said. “It will be a combination of Paul’s treatment followed by a booster for your immune system using Fiona’s blood. It’s a process called blood therapy. We can’t make a lot of it. Just enough to keep us alive until we can find a better solution.”

  At first, Jessie appeared relieved, then her chin fell to her chest.

  Bending lower, Kim saw tears streaking down the young woman’s face. “Why are you crying? Hey…” She reached out and cupped Jessie’s jaw with her hand. She didn’t know the woman well, but Kim was still a mother. “I can tell you’re struggling. Not just with the infection. There’s something else.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jessie sniffed and waved her off.

  “It’s not nothing,” she countered, scooting closer. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “My family is down in Dayton,” Jessie said. “I haven’t talked to them since all this started.”

  “Dayton is close, right?”

  “An hour or two from here,” she nodded. “My plan was to drop Fiona off here and go check on them. I’ve been tempering my expectations of what I might find. I mean, they’re probably dead.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “No, but they probably are,” Jessie stated, her eyes lifting to meet Kim’s. “And now that there’s a potential cure, my hopes are rising when they shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m all about knowing the truth,” Kim nodded in understanding. “But I think you should take those high hopes and ride them for a bit. Especially if you want to get better.”

  “Positivity goes a long way,” Jessie agreed, and the girl wiped the tears off her cheeks with a tissue.

  “Hey, want to go for a walk?”

  “That sounds great.”

  Kim stood and held out her hands to help her up. However, the young woman waved her off and stood on her own. She wobbled but remained upright.

  “I still get a little dizzy,” Jessie grinned.

  “Take your time.” Kim backed up and waited at the door as the woman shuffled over.

  “When will we be sure about the cure part?”

  “Paul’s synthesizing a batch now,” Kim said. “Should be ready in a few days.”

  Jessie shuffled over with growing confidence, her tongue popping out of her mouth in concentration. “Who’ll be the guinea pig?”

  “That’s up for debate,” Kim said, bending her elbow so she could hook her arm into it. “Paul. Me. You.”

  “I volunteer to be the first.”

  “We’ll see,” Kim said, and together they shuffled down the hall.

  “Then I’ll go check in on my family,” the young woman continued. “I’d love to have the cure in my hand when I go.”

  She only smiled in response. They thought they’d made some progress with Samantha Rogers until Burke had blown things up, so Kim didn’t want to give Jessie any false hope. She liked the field agent a lot, and she wasn’t sure anyone else could have done a better job at keeping Fiona protected while transporting her across dangerous territory.

  “Thanks for bringing Fiona back here safely,” Kim said in a serious tone. “If we still have a president, I hope he’ll give you some kind of medal.”

  “I’d accept it in front of a crowd of exactly zero people,” Jessie scoffed.

  “Well, I’d be there. Fiona, Bryant, and Paul, too.”

  “And what a ceremony that would be,” Jessie said in a grand voice as they passed through the lab and server room and entered the garden.

  At first, Kim didn’t think the field agent would be up for a walk, but Jessie seemed to gain strength as they explored, and the sheer beauty of the mushroom garden invigorated her.

  “I don’t remember any of this on the way in,” Jessie said, marveling at the trees, stones, and giant mushroom caps buried in the rich earth all around them. Soft, vibrant green mosses covered rotted logs and filled the air with a pungent, natural scent. They even stopped for a moment and leaned against one of the stone walls that encircled a portion of the garden.

  “You were pretty out of it,” Kim said. “I doubt you remembered your name.”

  “This is incredible,” Jessie said, looking around at the lush green before she gestured to Kim that she was ready to move on.

  Upon entering the gaming room, they found Bryant and Fiona sitting at the big table, locked eye to eye in an intense game of Connect Four. Both little girl and soldier had cleaned up and dressed in fresh garments, and Paul had even provided him a crutch.

  “Hey, you two,” Kim called out, but Bryant raised his hand to shush her.

  “This girl is a stone cold killer,” he said. He shook his head faintly as he leaned over the table, dwarfing the little girl.

  Fiona grinned, but kept her eyes pinned on the board.

  “Looks like David versus Goliath to me,” Kim said, expecting the soldier was letting her win.

  They played several more moves, dropping pieces into the rack with soft clicks, before Bryant tossed up his hands in defeat. “She beat me again. I can’t believe it.”

  “You’re easy to trap,” Fiona giggled.

  Kim had been watching, and she believed Bryant’s surprise and exasperation. He’d not let her win at all. The little girl had built out a series of plays from the center of the board until she had three unique ways to win, forcing Bryant into a losing situation.

  “I didn’t realize it was such a complex game,” Kim said, impressed with the little girl’s moxie.

  “Neither did I.” Bryant flashed Fiona a somber look before he turned to the ladies. “Looking good, Jessie.”

  “Thanks,” she replied. “I’m just happy to be alive.”

  “You and me both.”

  Kim lingered at the corner of the table. “Any word on Burke?”

  “While you and Paul have been science-ing.” Bryant made a vague gesture with his hand. “I’ve been monitoring the situation.”

  “And how are you doing that?”

  Bryant lifted their GPS radio phone and shook it.

  “You’ve got AMI piped in?”

  Bryant put the phone on the table and held the Send button. “AMI, are you there?”

  “I’m here, Lieutenant Colonel Bryant.” AMI’s familiar, soothing voice came through loud and clear. “What can I do for you?”

  “Have you noticed any activity around the Mobile Unit XI? Any annoying CEOs interested in sabotaging it?”

  “None so far,” AMI responded. “I have body scan comparisons of both Burke Birkenhoff and Josh Richtman, but I’ve ma
de no matches.”

  “Have you seen anyone at all?”

  “Negative, Lieutenant Colonel Bryant.”

  Bryant shrugged at Kim and gestured for Fiona to start a fresh game. The little girl hit the rack release at the bottom of the game board, and all the pieces fell out with a clatter. The two separated out their own colors.

  “And we’ve also got a movement detection warning on Paul’s security system,” Bryant went on. “We’ve only had one hit so far, and that was Winona.”

  “His deer friend.”

  “Yep.”

  Kim deflated, though a bit of worry still prickled at the base of her spine. What was Burke doing out there? What was he waiting for? Still, she didn’t let her worry show. “Well, I guess I’ll try to relax then.”

  Jessie had already gone over to Paul’s album collection and was flipping through the titles, so Kim walked to the mini fridge, got out some bottled water, and passed them around. She joined the soldier and little girl at the table and watched Fiona obliterate Bryant yet again.

  Forty-five minutes later, Paul came trundling in from the gardens with an assured expression on his face. “I’ve got a batch of the cure cooking, so to speak. It’ll be ready in a couple of days. Now, time for some pizza.”

  “I thought you were kidding about that,” Kim shot him a questioning look.

  “I’d never kid about pizza.” Paul doddered to the kitchenette and opened a small freezer stuck in the back corner. It surprised her although she’d spent very little time in the commons since they’d arrived. All of her time had been spent, as usual, with her eyes pinned to the computer screen as she ran countless antifungal simulations.

  Paul reached inside the freezer and pulled out two frozen pizzas and placed them in a toaster oven on the counter. “It’ll take a while to cook them in this, but they taste great.” Paul set the oven to four hundred degrees and joined the party at the table.

  “I can’t believe this!” Bryant threw his hands up in exasperation, the big tough soldier looking like an amateur against the Connect Four skills of the little girl.

  Fiona hit the rack release with a giggle, and Kim joined her in laughing as the pieces hit the table.

  Chapter 34

  Randy and Jenny, Indianapolis, Indiana

  Randy and Jenny ate dinner alone in the food court later that day. Randy picked at his baked beans and slices of canned ham with his fork. He should have a better appreciation for the food on his plate, though it was hard to feel hungry with so much going on.

  The events of their day’s scavenging had left him confused and anxious. The planned attack on one of their team leaders and subsequent escape of two scavengers was being talked about throughout the terminal. And Randy couldn’t stop thinking about the two intruders who’d told them about the hand signal and to “flash the sign.”

  “If we do go with those people.” Randy leaned across the table, keeping his voice low. “We can’t be sure it will be any better there. I mean, we don’t want to leap out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “I won’t disagree with you,” Jenny said. “But this place is poison, and it starts at the top and works it’s—”

  Odom and two of his cronies strolled by like they owned the place, peering down at the twins with smirks on their faces.

  “It starts at the top and trickles down to those jerks,” Jenny finished.

  “I’d feel better if we ran on our own.” Randy watched Odom over his shoulder. “And not be part of some group or gang.”

  “That’s why we need to escape with those people,” Jenny said. “Their place might not be any better than the Colony, but maybe they won’t be so insane.” Jenny shook her head and looked around. “I wish we could help the people here, but I think I learned my lesson back in Kentland.”

  Early on in the crisis, Randy hadn’t wanted to go into Kentland to search for survivors, but he’d done it for Jenny and her friend. And through the hard lessons of the Dickie’s guy and Krumer, Jenny had learned how dangerous people could be.

  “Don’t give up on finding a home, sis. I think we have to go west.” Randy imagined mountains, canyons, and desert land. “Some place dry where the mold can’t reach.”

  “That makes total sense to me,” Jenny took a bite of her fruit cocktail.

  “I know this will sound stupid—”

  “You were on such a smart roll,” Jenny interrupted him with a wicked grin. “Are you sure you want to ruin it by saying something stupid?”

  Randy smirked. “I want Tricia to come with us.”

  Jenny leaned back and dropped her fork on her plate. “That is insanely stupid. She might as well be one of them. She’s totally dedicated to this cause, whatever it is.”

  “She acts that way sometimes,” he countered. “But I don’t get that feeling from her, and you don’t either.”

  “I totally get that feeling from her,” Jenny retrieved her fork and ate a piece of pineapple from her plate. “She’d shoot us at a word from Jergensen.”

  “She acts like us when she’s off duty,” Randy defended her. “And she put her own safety on the line to protect me from Odom the other day.”

  “I have to give her a little credit for that.” Jenny’s words cooled. “I hate to admit it, but I actually like the girl.”

  “I think she’s trapped, like us,” he kept on. “We could use her firepower. She’s a soldier.”

  “It has nothing to do with you being all wide-eyed over her?”

  “A little,” Randy admitted. “But she’s the only person I can think of I’d take with us. I don’t know how to bring up the subject.”

  “Be very careful.” Jenny leveled her brown eyes on him. Her bleached eyebrows were growing out a bit, a few red hairs in all that white. “You say one thing wrong here, and we’ll end up—”

  “Everyone to the west side windows!” Odom shouted as he turned in a circle and gestured for everyone to follow him over.

  His buddies mimicked his motions, pointing to the long strip of glass that looked out onto the tarmac. They grabbed people out of their chairs and shoved them in that direction.

  “What in the heck is going on?” Jenny asked.

  “No idea,” Randy shrugged.

  He looked up as Odom approached their table. At first, the guy started to grab him by the shirt, but he backed off with a gesture. “Come on, everyone to the window.”

  Whatever Tricia had done in the background to protect them, he was thankful for it.

  “Okay, fine,” Randy said, getting up with a gesture for his sister to follow. “Is our food still going to be here when we get back?”

  “You know what happens to people who steal,” Odom smirked and then moved on to the next table. Those people saw him coming and scrambled out of their seats and shuffled over to the west-facing window.

  The twins found a spot somewhere near the center. He looked around at the two hundred people in throwaway pajamas and paper slippers standing at the window while the soldiers walked around in fatigues and guns. It wasn’t lost on Randy how vulnerable they all were.

  Two military vehicles drove onto the tarmac; one jeep and one transport. They pulled to a spot where everyone could see and parked. A half-dozen soldiers climbed out of the transport while two others climbed out of the jeep. Randy identified one of them as Jergensen with her squat form and authoritative gestures. She staggered, though her soldiers kept her from falling over. It was a subtle but clear sign of how sick the woman was.

  Two soldiers stepped off the back of the transport truck and turned to receive two prisoners. Randy recognized them as two scavengers from another team; he thought their names were Polly and Stan. The prisoners had their hands tied behind their backs, and the soldiers had removed their filtration masks. They gazed up at the people in the window with uncertainty and fear in their eyes. Even though they were fifty yards away, their bloody noses and split lips stood out.

  The soldiers shoved them out onto the tarmac and forced them
to their knees, facing the window.

  Colonel Jergensen stood next to the captives, her attention focused on the people watching in the terminal. Her voice came through the terminal intercom system, sounding raspy and thick with phlegm. “People of the Colony, look to me.”

  “Where else are we going to look?” Jenny scoffed under her breath, but he heard the defiance in her voice.

  “She’s turning into that guy that attacked us at the library,” Randy said, already hardening himself to what was about to happen. “The infection makes you muddled and crazy.”

  “As you all know,” Jergensen continued. “A group of insurgents attacked one of our scavenger teams today. We lost one brave soldier. These two scavengers kneeling before you took advantage of the situation and tried to escape. They failed.” Jergensen looked down at the two like she was staring at a puddle of mud. “You all know the punishment for abandoning the Colony. Repeat it for me, please.”

  The crowd all around him murmured something he couldn’t quite hear, and Odom shouted for them to repeat it louder.

  “We are one, you and I,” they chanted. “To leave the Colony, you must die.”

  Odom shouted for them to do it again and again, and the chant grew louder until it reached a fervent crescendo. Odom called for them to stop, and the chant ended, leaving stillness in its wake. Jergensen stood waiting for something, and Odom went to the window and put his hand against the glass as a signal.

  The colonel nodded and shifted her position as she drew her gun from its holder. “It’s good everyone remembers the words. Let those words be seared into your brains. The only way out of here is to die.”

  The female prisoner, Polly, struggled at the sight of the gun. She screamed and slumped over, pulling out of the soldier’s grip. The soldier snatched her upright by the back of her fatigues and slapped her hard across the top of the head. While her head was rolling around on her shoulders, Jergensen lifted her pistol and fired.

  Stan broke free from his captor, staggered to his feet, and took off running across the tarmac. Colonel Jergensen turned sideways and raised her pistol. A quick squeeze of the trigger sent blood spraying across the concrete, and Stan fell dead.