“They turned their backs on us,” Tori says. “That was a mistake.”
“Their zip-tie wasn't quite strong enough,” Darrel says. I look to his wrists as his hands go into his pocket; they are bleeding from a narrow slit. “Kevin's gone to find the SUV. We're to meet him in the front.” He pulls out a handcuff key and unlocks the cuffs around my wrists. I bring them to the front and delicately rub where the steel had been.
“Have you seen any of the others?” I ask.
They both shake their head.
A distant explosion rocks the small room.
“I think they have learned that taking us alive is one of the biggest mistakes they have ever made,” Ryan says with a faint smile. Arming ourselves with what we can, the four of us rush from the room and follow the sound of the explosion. We move carefully along the concourse, checking each corner methodically as we move around the stadium. We still have a good distance to cover before we make it to the entrance. A few soldiers appear, but they don't expect us. They're confused. Whoever else has escaped really caught them all off guard. Their bodies hit the ground after Ryan fires multiple shots.
Another explosion occurs, this time from outside. Ryan calls for us to halt with a closed fist. He holds the radio out and we gather around while keeping watch.
Over the radio, it sounds like there is chaos all over the stadium. The soldiers are having a tough time making sense of it all. Probably nothing like this has ever happened before. Ryan cranks up the volume:
“They are in two vehicles; I repeat they are in cars and again moving towards the exit. Do not let them escape.”
That's where we need to be.
We rush down the stairs and back out the entrance. A Jeep is a burning inferno, and several bodies lie dead on the ground. Panic looms at first, but none of the bodies is recognizable. It's not them. Aside from the sound of the flames, it is quiet near us. Gunshots echo in the distance.
“Ryan what happened...” I begin. Before I can finish, the white SUV and a black sedan sharply turn from the other side of the stadium and rush towards us. They skid to a halt right in front of me. Kevin is behind the wheel of the SUV. I scan through the cars, trying to identify those that didn’t make it. It takes me a second to realize that everyone is accounted for, and then some. Someone new drives the new car; Jo sits beside him and Caitlyn is in the backseat. If they can trust him, I am quick to as well.
“Well get in,” Laura yells from within, holding open an outstretched door of the SUV. Ryan and I both quickly enter. Darrel and Tori load into the sedan.
“How the hell did you all manage this?”
“Long story. It's best we get the hell out of here first,” Carter answers from the passenger's seat of the SUV. “The remaining units are catching up. We've been giving them a chase all around this park waiting for all of you to come out. We almost left.”
Our SUV crashes out of the entrance of the ballpark. A few gunshots follow us from the distance, but they quickly subside after several turns within the city.
“How much farther to the hospital?” Ryan asks, checking the firearm in his lap.
“Not far,” Paige answers from beside me.
The SUV slides over the ice in a few places, as we follow the road to the hospital. I glance behind us a few times, but only the black sedan follows.
I never imagined we'd all make it out of that alive - it seemed hopeless. For once, things are in our favor. We may actually succeed, and live to tell the tale.
Nate coughs and suppresses it with the back of his wrist.
* * *
Our SUV drifts down the ramp of the hospital's parking garage beneath the building. It's dark, and aside from a few rotting cars, completely empty. We unload the few guns remaining and the medical equipment from the trunk. I grab one side of the generator and Kevin grabs the other. We walk in a silent, urgent caravan towards the entrance. Laura is a few paces in front of me. She hesitates as she passes the elevator button. She hits it with her elbow and gives Nate a playful smile. Not me.
Good. I guess...
With the help of our flashlights, we climb the few stories and step into the third floor lobby.
“This is definitely right,” Nate says, looking at the dossier in his hand with his flashlight. We hurry down the hallway and find a waiting room. Patient rooms surround this main hub, and a set of double doors stand in the middle of the far wall. Dusty, poorly padded, wooden chairs line both sides. We set down our final possessions. Laura and Nate quickly walk through the double doors and disappear.
Moments later, they reemerge.
“Yea, everything we should need is back there. As soon as we are unpacked, we'll get started.”
Caitlyn lets out a deep cough immediately following Nate's words. Most of us share a concerned look.
“We'll work as fast as we can,” Nate reassures while clearing his own throat.
Kevin and I lift the generator through the double doors and find a side room inside the laboratory with a window. We carefully set down the generator. I open the window while Kevin plugs in the extension cord and runs it to Laura and Nate's workspace. Nate takes it from Kevin and plugs in several of their machines. Laura walks into the room with me.
“Thanks,” she gives a weak a smile. I simply nod and place my foot beside the generator. I grab the cord and give it a few tugs.
The generator roars to life with the last pull. Light surges out from within the laboratory.
“If you need more gas, we have a few gallons in the SUV. I'll go get it.”
She nods. I go to walk past her, but her hand catches my arm.
“I'm sorry,” she says.
“Me too,” I say, pushing past her and heading back into the lobby. The others are distributing our gear throughout the nearby patients’ rooms. This will likely be our home for the next few days; we will have to make the best of it. I help Tori turn a gurney right side up, and I sweep some broken glass into a corner.
“We're all up and running,” Laura announces. I make no response, but a few of the others react. She closes the double doors.
Now, we pray. I'll be okay. Carter will be okay. The rest of them… the clock is ticking. We all know it.
I turn to the others. They look tired. Tori and Darrel head into one of the patient rooms. Kevin sits beside Caitlyn and Jo, each of them look pale. I can’t help my amazement at how infectious it is. From the short time that we were captives, it seems all of them have become ill. The adrenaline from our escape is gone and the impact of the virus is already beginning to show. It is worse this time. All of those soldiers back there must have been exposed.
Ryan stands over the few weapons we have left on a table along the side of the room and does inventory. He gives me a worried look. His eyes are starting to look red. Carter and Paige stand with the new guy in the corner, conversing about something. Probably making sure that he is on the level.
I should do the same, but hell, I trust them all. If they say this cowboy is fine. Then so be it. Everyone in the room has someone to be close with. I turn to Ryan as he checks the slide on a rifle. The only real friend I've had has lost his mind. I may as well just be by myself.
“I'll take the first watch,” I say. Most return with a nod and then go back to their discussions. It wouldn’t take a doctor to realize they are all getting sick. Laura and Nate will work against time and around the clock, and if they fail, Carter and I could be the only ones alive by the end of the week. A few coughs sound down the corridor.
Hell, maybe the end of tomorrow.
I grab the rifle from in front of Ryan and head out of the lobby and down the hall. At the other end of the building is a patient’s room that overlooks the main street leading to the hospital. If they follow us here, they probably will use that road.
I pull the chair over to the window and open the blinds ever so slightly. Late daylight illuminates the streets in a deepening gold. It looks quiet all over.
Desolate.
Occasi
onal snowflakes drop through the air. Despite everything, the city out the window looks peaceful. In a little, I will go around and make sure that all the entrances are locked and barricaded. Carter and I will have to do much of the work.
I don't mind.
As I squat, I pull the chair beneath me and take a seat close to the window. I gaze down the city road and hope that I don’t see anything.
Chapter 13: Nathan
“I can’t believe this thing is still in full working condition. I was half expecting scrap, or the best case scenario that it only needed complete recalibration.”
“We lucked out,” Laura answers while leaning into the microscope. This shouldn’t take much more. We are hours away from knowing exactly how to formulate a cure. And to think I officially never made it past AP Biology. I just hope that the nearly twenty-four hours it took to reach this point weren't too many...
It seems like we have traveled such a long road to reach here. To reach this moment. In addition, I do not just refer to today, but the last six years.
In Florida, after the plague, our science team spent countless weeks studying chemistry and physics in the little free time we found at the hotel. Then, while with the Resistance, we initially were concerned with a community's survival, but our natural curiosity began to consume us. How did this virus begin? Where did it come from? What part of the system did it attack? Why only adults?
These questions filled my mind day in and day out while we struggled to survive in Florida, but I only managed to begin answering them once we found relative stability from within the Resistance. Like man at the beginning of time, we thinkers are only able to think when there is security and food to go around. I fell into textbook after textbook trying to hypothesize how this virus could have even come to be. Luckily, the digital revolution had not completely occurred when the virus took over and enough print sources still existed. Many scholarly works were only being published in digital formats, but when I went out with the supply parties, I was able to find the periodicals that I needed in libraries. They’d been collecting dust even before the plague eviscerated the country.
These references provided enough information for us to eliminate some of our hypotheses and present new ones. Our first objective was to determine the trigger and the specific physiological target for the virus. The only facts are that children seemed immune, and at least at the initial outbreak, that it was restricted to the borders of the continental United States. These two peculiar characteristics are enough for even the most experienced virologists and epidemiologists to wrap their heads around. We had ruled out the possibility of it being bacterial when primary studies done at the start of the epidemic showed no reaction to antibiotics.
Our first true breakthrough occurred in one of our deep-dives. The group of us locked ourselves in what appeared to be an old mathematics classroom exploring the possible scenarios of the virus’s target. After discussing some conclusions that a late virologist had drawn in a very recent science journal, we developed our first general hypothesis. Others came and went, but that one couldn’t be disproved no matter how many samples we examined.
The plague is a highly advanced autoimmune disease. It is introduced into the body and targets regions of DNA strands that become less prevalent in the body due to age. Some segments of DNA naturally wither away as the years go on. The virus infects everyone, but a certain amount of this genetic deterioration is necessary for it to begin attacking the body. It lays dormant in those who were under nineteen at the initial outbreak. For whatever reason, it's now activated in everyone.
The scary part about all this is there is no conceivable way that nature constructed a virus to behave in this manner. This was man-made. Although more than likely, whoever designed this would have needed years of experience. So, either this virus was an unexpected outbreak, or another country is responsible for the plague. Needless to say, my own capabilities can do little to help answer those questions. I just needed to find a way to create a cure that no one else was able to.
And, by God, we've nearly done it. With the proper sample from an immune donor, we'll have this done in no time.
This device will finish what we started. With the proper equations, it can check within a blood sample for the major genetic code dealing with immunity. Having immune hosts is perhaps what has given us the best possibility of finding a cure. They are so rare. And our group managed to have two.
That is of course why I decided to stay with Ryan after the attack at the school. Staying with those who were immune seemed like an intelligent move. The others said they didn't care anymore. I couldn't really argue against them, but I am lucky I stuck to my gut. I wonder how many of them are still alive after this second outbreak.
I shouldn't get ahead of myself though. We nearly have the cure, but it's not yet in our possession. And this is the hardest part. Considering the millions of sequences imaginable, it will take an incomprehensible amount of checks to determine the immunity sequence within a non-infected person's blood sample. We’ve been able to isolate potential chains within the DNA sequence where the resistant chain most likely resides. However, that still requires nearly a thousand tests to find the exact sequence for immunity. Each test requires five ccs of a single donor’s blood to analyze. The machine will speed up the process significantly - it can run hundreds of tests every half hour.
The only catch: it must be the same donor's blood.
My original plan was to test once every few days, so the donor could have time to regenerate the plasma. We don’t have days. Most of us are coughing and have rashes. If it weren’t for the morphine I am sneaking into my arm when Laura isn’t looking, I would probably already be bed ridden from the pain. I'm willing to die, but I'm not willing to watch the rest of them die, too.
We need the cure by tomorrow, and that leaves one solution...
I tense every muscle in my body, furiously searching for other options. I would need months, years to reconcile the data associated with two immune donors. Options… options…
Exhaling slowly, I allow my eyes to turn slowly to the door. Carter and David…
One of them has to die.
The work has to continue. I shake my head. When we have the genetic code of an uninfected host, the cure will quickly follow.
At least I hope it does...
Chapter 14: Jocelyn
“Hey, let's go for a walk. I'm sure this place has a lot more to offer.”
I open my eyes to see Nichols looking down at me with a small smile. A hint of the rash runs up the side of his neck. For once, he isn't wearing that damn hat. His hair is blonde. I don't know if I noticed it before in all the time we have spent together in the past twenty-four hours. It brings a smile to my face.
“Why?” I whisper. Speaking is a little bit painful – the kind of pain that lingers in the back of the throat. I look around the room. Caitlyn lies in the gurney beside me with shut eyes. I rarely leave her alone. She is really sleeping this time. It has only been a day since we arrived at the hospital. Out of everyone in the group, Nichols and I seem to be the most resistant to the virus itself, but resistant doesn’t mean anything. We’ll share the same fate as the others, just later. I swing my feet over the side, and stand up. Dizziness momentarily overtakes me. Nichols grabs my arm.
“I'm okay,” I reassure him. The room stops spinning. After pulling the thick covers a little higher onto Caitlyn, we leave the room and head down the hallway. In the darkness, we find a set of steps and proceed to the upper level. As I reach to open the door to the fifth floor, Nichols stops my hand.
“Let's check out the roof,” he says with a smile, barely visible with the faint light of his flashlight. We continue to climb. The stairs end, and he opens the final door. The draft of cold air is strangely refreshing. We walk to the railing, surrounded by tall buildings that frame the world around us. I catch glimpses of landmarks that I never thought I'd see again.
“Quite a view,” I say. Nichols nods, movin
g beside me. It's been so long since I've seen the city up close. I want to smile, but only the bottom half of my face succeeds.
“Forgive me for being forward, but something’s really weighing on you. More than just being sick.”
“Yea. This place used to be my home. I hoped that when I saw it again, things would be better. It's not. We're all dying, now.”
“I may be new with you, but I believe it's going to be okay,” he says, staring into the hospital's reflection on the side of a glass skyscraper.
“It was difficult enough watching my father die from this thing - watching someone you love suffer so much. But it’s not just that. My brother and I came across this park ranger. The agony displayed all over his face. He looked like he suffered so much. But in the end, he was so strong, maybe even helping to save our lives in his own death. And I’m… I’m afraid it’ll all happen to me, and I won’t have the ability to die with such dignity. These past years have been far from easy, but I've never wanted to die. Despite loss after loss, I always believed that it would get better. My faith is running out. Especially if I lose her downstairs...”
“You don’t think those two will be able to find the cure?”
“I don't have faith in much of anything.” I look up at the sky and exhale.
“What about faith in God?” he asks optimistically. I laugh.
“Especially not faith in God.” I look to him. Despite my contained laughter, I have his complete attention. My grin subsides. “I don’t know how you keep it up.”
“Sure, things have been rough, but it’s happened before. Maybe this is God’s plan; maybe it’s not. When things are at their worst, that’s when we need him the most.”
“So you think an all-powerful God would let this happen? I still prayed when I lost mom. I still prayed when I lost dad and then Jon. After Sara though, I've given up. No one is in control of this madness. There is no God.”
“Perhaps. But I still see his little miracles.”
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