by Glenn Cooper
Of the forty-six recruits, nineteen died that day, most of them cowering inside their bunkhouses, shot at close range. Of the wounded, only two survived the night. There was too much snow and the ground was too hard, so they had to drag the bodies on a makeshift sled to a corner of the camp where they cremated them with chainsaw gasoline mixed with oil. They burned Streeter, Holland, Roger, and Rocky separately, so as not to pollute the ashes of the innocents.
None of Streeter’s men remained in the camp. They had piled into a truck and fled his killing spree, leaving the main gate wide open. Jamie closed it to keep the bears out, but he couldn’t bring himself to lock it.
They consolidated the remaining recruits into two bunkhouses to conserve firewood and spent long hours talking them through their horrible ordeal and just hugging them. Many couldn’t stop crying. A few curled themselves into tight balls on their mattresses. They let them decide who they wanted to bunk with, gender be damned.
“We’re not Puritans,” Connie said. “If they want to hook up, I say let them. God knows they’ve got few enough pleasures.”
“What if the men use force?” Jamie said.
“I’m going to teach them all that no means no, and that if anyone violates that, they’re on the other side of the fence as bear food.”
Jamie laughed at that. “I’d like to sit in on that lesson.”
“It ought to apply to our house too,” she said. “I don’t want Dylan locked in anymore. If he and Emma want to be together, they should be. Same with Kyra and Jeremy.”
“The girls are my responsibility.”
“Yes, they are.”
He sighed. “I hate being a parent sometimes.”
“Yeah, it does have its sucky moments, but it’s the right decision and in honor of it, you can continue to share my bed.”
Another week passed, and a stretch of above-freezing days came and the snow began to melt. It got easier to do simple things like take walks, and Jamie took long ones with the dog outside the fence. He took a rifle in case the bears showed an interest, and he thought about trying to bag a deer, but he really had no interest in doing any more killing. Food supply for the camp was no longer a critical issue. With half as many people, there was enough for several months. Such was Streeter’s contribution.
The night he made his announcement, Connie was ready for it. He supposed he’d been telegraphing it plainly enough.
They made love and lay in each other’s arms, listening to the silence of a house deep in the winter woods.
He said it. “I’ve got to leave.”
“I know.”
The vials of freeze-dried proteins had never left his pocket.
“I don’t want to.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I want you to come with me.”
He felt her starting to untangle, but she abandoned the effort and remained in his arms.
“I can’t.”
He knew why, but he still asked.
“I can’t abandon them,” she said. “They’ll perish without me. The Hollands taught them to be their version of good Christian Americans, but they didn’t teach them a fucking thing about getting on in this world. I’ve got to teach them how to survive and it’s going to take a while. They’re sweet souls who’ve been traumatized. Leaving them would be like handing down death sentences.”
He held her a little tighter. “Can you handle everything on your own?”
“I’m a goddamn combat surgeon. I can handle most anything. Besides, Jeremy’s a good kid. He can pull his weight. Between the two of us, we’ll be able to dirty up all those clean minds.”
“I’m sure you’ll be the best deprogrammer in these parts. When I come back, they’ll all be swearing like drunken sailors.”
“Are you coming back?”
He kissed her. “What kind of question is that?”
“A realistic one. It’s dangerous out there. Remember, I’ve heard all your stories.”
“I’ve become a survivor.”
“If you make it to Maryland, you’ll be sucked into working at Detrick. You can do more good there than in the Carolina backwoods.”
“I’m coming back.”
They lay in silence until Connie said, “There’s an elephant in the room.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your intention?”
“I can’t leave them, Connie. I’ve got to take Emma and Kyra with me.”
“It’s going to break four little hearts. At least leave Kyra with Jeremy.”
“Pulling the girls apart would cripple them.”
“Oh, Jamie, this is so hard.” She started to shudder. He felt tears on his shoulder.
“I didn’t know you knew how to cry,” he said.
“I’m not crying. I’m cleaning out my tear ducts. It’s recommended in the user’s manual.”
“So I understand.”
“There’s something else you need to know,” she said. “Emma’s pregnant.”
He was out of bed fast.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned sure. She told Kyra and me this morning while we were coming back from the bunkhouses. She said, ‘I’m having a baby too.’ So, I examined her. I told her I’d tell you.”
“I lost track of her periods. She missed?”
“Yep.”
“Christ. When it rains—”
“—it fucking pours. I don’t suppose this changes your mind.”
“I don’t think it does.”
It was too cold to be standing there naked. He started dressing and asked her if she wanted to go downstairs for a few hits of Streeter’s bourbon.
“I’m coming,” she said.
“You’re not going to tell me you’re pregnant too, are you?”
She sniggered, “If the Internet magically reappears, I’ll text you in Maryland if I miss my next period.”
*
Nothing could have prepared Jamie for the leaving day.
He had one of the camp’s four-wheel-drive SUVs, gassed and warm, packed with their clothes, Mandy’s notebooks, some food, a rifle, a pistol, and plenty of ammo. Emma and Dylan were holding each other so tightly, Jamie worried about their breathing. Kyra and Jeremy were doing pretty much the same thing. And the four of them were bawling their eyes out.
“You’re going to need a crowbar,” Connie said.
“Come on, kids,” Jamie insisted, “the sooner we leave, the sooner we can come back.”
He enlisted Connie’s help separating Emma from Dylan and bundled her into the back seat, where she plastered her face against a window, screaming, “I don’t want to go!”
Jeremy reluctantly got Kyra into the car and she was screaming too.
“Do you and I need a crowbar?” Jamie said to Connie.
“Yeah, a psychological one.” She gave him a brave smile. “Notice that I’m not crying?”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Don’t need to. My tear ducts are all cleaned out.”
He gave her a quick hug and kiss and said, “I will come back.”
“You won’t, you know. I’m never going to see you again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry, it’s what I think.”
He got into the car and lowered the window.
“You know what?” he said. “You’re wrong.”
Epilogue
When spring finally came to Lake Splendor, it announced itself with color.
The snowmelt exposed a rich, dark soil from which grew a sea of pale green, delicate ferns that undulated in the warming breezes. The forest was a palette of hues. Red maple buds stippled the mountains. Rhododendrons flowered in white, pink, and purple. The dogwoods were blooming white, and painted trilliums dotted the forest floor with whorls of white petals with pink centers.
The lake came alive again too. Free of ice, the waters began moving, catching the sunlight and gilding the surface. The fish, long dormant under ice, broke the surface to feed on insects
. Jeremy taught everyone how to bait a hook and cast a line, and the delighted campers got good at pulling out smallmouth bass. Connie refused to call them recruits, because the name was a lie. She called them campers when she was being glib, but her preference was ladies and gentlemen. On one of his foraging trips Jeremy found a supply of seed packs in someone’s greenhouse, and Connie laid out a large vegetable garden.
She treated coughs and colds and infected cuts the best she could and kept everyone as healthy as she could. Each day, she taught a class in whatever subject moved her. It could be reading or arithmetic. It could be how the human body worked. Sometimes, she just read to them from a novel. She always read to Dylan at night, and when he fell asleep, she took a black tea onto the porch, listened to the owls, and wondered if Jamie and the girls were still alive.
*
On a bright, warm morning where everyone was occupied with chores, Connie and several of her ladies and gentlemen were weeding the vegetable patch. Others were sweeping the bunkhouses or working on lunch. Jeremy and Dylan were digging for worms and making rabbit traps. Arthur was sunning himself in the grass beside Connie.
One of the men Streeter shot never fully recovered. He was the oldest man at camp, around fifty, Connie reckoned. He had been wounded through the right lung, and although Connie saved his life, he developed a stubborn, draining chest wound that refused to heal. Because of his sickly nature, he was excused from most chores. On this fine morning, he was wandering the camp, picking wildflowers. He knew he would always get a kiss whenever he gave Connie a bouquet.
From her crouch, Connie heard him calling to her. She looked up and saw him running clumsily, coughing and sputtering.
She got up and told him not to run. “You’ll make yourself sick!”
“Connie! Connie!” he persisted.
“What is it?”
“A car! A car is coming!”
She panicked.
For a while, she’d never gone anywhere without a gun, but she’d fallen out of the habit. She shouted for Jeremy and started to run toward the house to get the rifle, but she was too late.
A black SUV with tinted windows came barreling down the road and pulled up at the house, cutting her off.
She was about to scream for everyone to run, when the driver’s door opened.
She cried, “Jamie!” and fell to her knees.
He ran to her, picked her off the ground, and he kissed her harder than he’d ever kissed anyone before.
The dog leapt into the car and began mauling the girls with his tongue.
“Arthur!” Kyra giggled. “Watch out for the baby!”
They got out and Connie cried, “Would you look at those two beauties!”
Emma was showing and Kyra was big.
They rushed toward her and were about to exchange hugs when Jeremy and Dylan ran up from the lake.
The girls shifted their attentions.
Emma screeched and pointed at Dylan. “I remember you!” she screamed. “I love you!”
“And I remember you!” Dylan screamed back. “And I love you!”
They embraced and Dylan said, “Where’s the baby?”
“It’s still in my belly,” she said. “Want to feel it?”
Jeremy hugged Kyra and said, “Oh my God! I missed you so much! How’s my girl?”
“I’m going to have our baby soon! I love you, Jeremy.”
Jeremy said, “I love you too. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“I’m here! You can see me now!”
The campers gathered around, happily watching the spectacle, and Connie nuzzled Jamie and said, “Hey, I remember you too.”
*
Up at the house, the two young couples talked and canoodled, and Arthur had to fight for attention. Jamie produced a can of fresh coffee from one of his bags.
“No way!” Connie said. “We’ve been out for weeks.”
She lit the wood stove and got the kettle going as he slumped on a chair, a little dazed.
Emma padded in, asking for a drink of water.
Connie filled a glass from a jug and said, “Here you are, sweetheart.”
She drank it, looking out the window toward the mountains. “It’s pretty here. Look at all the colors. It’s so beautiful.”
“Springtime in the mountains,” Connie said, “Doesn’t get prettier.”
Jamie stooped to kiss the top of her head. “You’re a good girl, Emma.”
“I’m going back to kiss Dylan some more.”
“You do that.” When she was gone, he said, “I want to hear everything that’s happened.”
“Yeah, well that’s going to have to wait,” Connie said, accentuating each word and showing some sass with hands-on-hips. “You first, for fuck’s sake. Did you make it to Detrick?”
“Yeah, we made it. A few scrapes on the way, but we made it.”
“And? The cure? Come on, Jamie. Don’t slow-play me!”
“The people at Detrick were unbelievable. There were scientists there who’ve been working on their ideas, completely on their own. They’re cut off from any kind of military or civilian command and control. The Pentagon’s gone offline—no one knows why. They’re just good people, trying to do their best.”
“And?” she insisted.
“And to a man and woman, they saw the merit of my approach, and all of them threw themselves into working on my approach.”
“And?”
“Two weeks ago, we tested it on a dozen infected people sheltering at the base.”
She said, “I swear, I’m going to strangle you. And?”
He choked up, keeping her waiting a little longer. “It worked, Connie! It worked. After a week, it all came back. They remembered everything. Every single memory that was there before they got infected came back. They became the people they were again.”
She broke down and muttered, “Oh my God,” over and over.
“For a tough combat surgeon, you sure cry a lot.”
“You’re a fucking genius,” she sobbed. “A gold-plated genius.”
“I had a lot of help at Detrick—and before Detrick.”
“Mandy,” she said.
“Yeah, Mandy.”
“So, what’s happening now?”
“The people at Detrick are scaling up the vaccine production. They think they’ll be able to make hundreds of thousands of doses in a few months’ time, millions by late summer. The base commander’s working on a logistical plan to use the troops he has to fan out across the country, recruiting volunteers along the way, to vaccinate everyone they can find then let the new virus spread on its own to the ones they can’t find.”
“What about the girls? They’re the same. Wonderful, but the same.”
“I wanted to get here as soon as I knew it worked. I didn’t want to dose them right before we hit the road.”
“Is there enough for Dylan, for everyone at the camp?”
“I’ve got a few hundred doses with me.” The kettle whistled. “Let’s talk to the kids over coffee, okay?”
They gathered around the dining room table and Jamie gave a little speech. Jeremy listened and nodded, as he told Emma, Kyra, and Dylan that there was a medicine that would help them remember everything they had forgotten from before they got sick. They would be the old Emma, the old Kyra, and the old Dylan.
“Who was the old Dylan?” Dylan asked.
“You were a wonderful young man,” Connie said. “You were smart and funny and you were very talented. There was nothing you couldn’t do.”
“Will I remember everything after I got sick?” Kyra asked.
“That is a very good question,” Jamie said. “The people who got the medicine at the army base still remembered what happened after they became sick. They had the old memories and the new ones.”
The room fell silent. The four teenagers exchanged enigmatic glances.
“What do you think, Jeremy?” Connie asked. “It’s exciting, no?”
“I guess so,” h
e said. “If—”
“If what?”
“If Kyra still likes me afterwards.”
There was another silence, this one broken by Emma.
“I like the new Emma,” she said. “I don’t want the old Emma.”
Kyra immediately chimed in, “I don’t want the old Kyra.”
And Dylan agreed. “I don’t want the old Dylan.”
It was Jamie’s turn to cry. It would be a while before he figured out if he was happy or sad.
He got up to put an arm around Emma, then pulled in Kyra with his other arm. Connie was crying and doing the same with Dylan and Jeremy.
He liked the new Emma. He liked her very much.
He heard Connie say, “So, are we all going to be staying here for a while?”
And he heard himself answering, “I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
About the Author
GLENN COOPER is a Harvard-trained infectious diseases physician who became the CEO of a large public biotech company in Massachusetts. He sold his company in 2009, about the time that his first novel, Library of the Dead, was published. He has been a full-time writer ever since, with fourteen top-ten bestselling thrillers published in thirty translations, and seven million copies sold. A TV series based on his first trilogy is in development.
@GlennCooper www.glenncooperbooks.com
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