by Tracy Serpa
She watched him as he continued peering out into the dark, fingering a ring of keys he had taken from a drawer in one of the offices marked “Impound.” Their plan was to circle around the building to the impound lot on the east side, take a vehicle, and head for the freeway. All in all, it would probably take them less than ten minutes.
Finally, Mike took in a deep breath and turned on his heel.
“You girls ready?” he asked gruffly.
They both nodded, Sarah more slowly than Heather. Mike looked at her for a long moment and said, “Don’t put your finger on the trigger—”
“—unless I absolutely have to. And don’t point it at anything I don’t mean to shoot,” she finished, her voice shaking.
“Stay behind me, and be as quiet as possible. If you see anything move, don’t make a sound, okay? No screaming; no calling out. Just put your hand on my back, and be still.”
They nodded in silent agreement; Mike’s voice was hard and businesslike, but Sarah took comfort in the fact that he seemed unafraid. When he turned and put his hand on the door handle, however, her stomach dropped the way it had the first time she flew in a plane. She knew she was stepping into an environment in which she did not belong, one she didn’t understand and couldn’t navigate. Sucking a breath in through her teeth, she mentally scolded herself. It was time to be a Mike or a Heather, and stop being a Gordon.
The lobby hadn’t seemed stuffy while they were in it, but when Mike pushed the door open slowly and a warm, moist breeze swept into the room, Sarah realized how clammy the air inside had become. The smells of her island greeted her: rain and plumeria, laced with hints of acrid smoke and gasoline. The air was laden with moisture, but also with electricity, and the sky was dark, covered by thick storm clouds that churned above them. Occasionally lightning would illuminate the horizon for a brief second, the clouds outlined in eerie shades of gray and purple.
She was outside before she realized she was walking, padding gently down the sidewalk, crouched between Mike and Heather, who moved silently as well. Scanning the street that lay to the north, she realized she could see better outside than she could inside the lobby. Although the moon was concealed by the brewing storm, she could still see the faint line of the horizon and the dark outlines of the buildings that lined the streets. The hair on her neck and arms stood up as she moved smoothly toward the corner of the building, beyond which lay the impound lot. Mike slowed, and Heather moved up to stand directly behind her; after a quick glance around the corner, Mike walked forward again with steady steps, heading straight across a grass lot toward the impound lot, which lay less than thirty yards ahead, surrounded by a high chain-link fence, with unfriendly barbed wire coiled along the top edge. Inside, the lot looked to be relatively full of vehicles, their familiar shapes a comforting promise of shelter and safety.
Sarah scanned their surroundings as they trotted across the grass, and found nothing moving in the dark. The buildings and streetlights were dark, still casting the faintest shadows on the ground from the diffused moonlight that struggled through the cloud cover. A surge of confidence flooded into her limbs as she sped her pace to keep up with Mike, who was almost to the gate; he was already fishing for the key ring in his pocket.
The adrenaline and confidence waned slightly as they had to wait at the gate while Mike tried different keys in the padlock, working hard to keep the jangling to a minimum and only having mild success. The wind had picked up, and all around them the trees shuddered and hissed, while leaves and refuse skittered down the empty streets, lending them some sound cover. Still, Sarah hoped fervently that the next key would be the one that opened the gate. The breeze tugged at her clothes and pushed her hair into her face, urging her to move forward.
The right key was hidden somewhere in the middle of the bunch, and when the padlock clicked open, they all three let out a breath of relief. The celebration was short-lived, however; as they slid the gate open, it creaked and whined, the wheels badly rusted from the moist air. Like a high-pitched alarm, the noise screeched out into the night, making Sarah cringe. She briefly imagined some nearby fiend’s ear perking up, and shuddered. So much distance lay between her and the door to the station, and she knew the people who remained inside would never leave the cells to let her back in. They were fully committed to this course.
Heather whispered, “Let’s go,” in her ear, and Sarah realized Mike was already well into the lot, examining keys and cars, trying to find a match.
“Shouldn’t we close this?” Sarah asked as they stepped past the gate.
Heather shook her head. “No, we need it open to drive out.”
With a nervous glance back at the gaping hole in the chain-link fence, Sarah hesitantly followed them farther into the lot. It was hard to see Mike clearly in the dark, but as he moved swiftly from car to car, it became evident that he was becoming frustrated with the process. The key ring was nearly full of keys, but without the remotes attached, it was simply a trial and error situation. And Sarah wasn’t sure Mike would risk the sound of an alarm, even if he had the remotes on hand.
There was no reason to follow him as he weaved through the lines of cars, so she tugged on Heather’s shirt and quietly suggested they keep watch while Mike found transportation. She looked back at the open gate again, and Heather followed her gaze.
“Sure,” she whispered, nodding. “Probably a good idea, just in case.”
Minutes passed slowly while they stood, shielded slightly by a maroon Cadillac Escalade, both their eyes on the entrance. When she finally realized that the keys quieted, Sarah sucked in a quick breath and grabbed Heather’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” the older girl hissed.
They both listened to the silence for a moment before Sarah whispered back, “The keys. I don’t hear the keys anymore.”
Heather’s eyes widened, a look of fear mingled with anger washing over her pretty features. As quickly and quietly as they could, they moved in a low crouch toward the back of the SUV to peek out at the last place they had seen Mike.
Sarah had her hand on Heather’s back, and so could feel her body relax as her father came into view. He was standing with his back to them at the driver’s side door of a black sedan.
“He must have gotten it open,” Heather mumbled. The interior light was on in the car, silhouetting Mike’s bulky figure and darkening the night around him. He was several rows from them, almost to the back of the lot, and Sarah thought it wise not to call out to him. If the car door opened, they were nearly on their way. But she couldn’t understand why he was waiting there, still as stone. Then the sedan’s interior light clicked off, and she saw the other man.
He was only a few feet outside the chain-link fence, just beyond the perimeter of the lot. The distance between them made it almost impossible to make out any details, but Sarah knew immediately from the man’s posture and the way he shuddered that he was not like them. Her stomach knotted into a tight ball, so violently she nearly doubled over. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness again, she saw that the man outside the fence was staring at Mike. Between gusts of wind, she thought she could hear a low growl, like a dog who had found a stranger in his house.
“Oh my God,” Heather breathed. Sarah gripped the older girl’s shirt, pulling her back as she tried to go to her father.
“Wait for him to tell us,” Sarah said, her voice low but insistent.
Mike had not moved an inch; it was difficult to tell from their position, but it appeared as though he had locked eyes with the man outside the fence, their shared gaze the bond that was holding them in place. The man outside shuddered again as if he had been chilled to the bone and began to pace slowly back and forth in the dirt, his muttered growls sweeping past them on the wind. But his eyes never moved from Mike. Suddenly he let out a short cry that resonated with both pain and frustration, and carried with it notes of a call. Like an electric current, the sound sent goose bumps rippling down Sarah’s body.
Whether it
was a sense of vulnerability or intuition that made her glance behind, she couldn’t be sure; she swung her head around to check the gate almost involuntarily, and let out a choked scream, clutching at Heather’s arm. Two more figures moved stealthily in the dark, closing the gap from an alley across the street to the impound lot with steady loping gaits.
And then everything was happening at once. The yipping that had terrified her inside the station was suddenly all around her, wails and barks like those of animals but still too human filled the air; Heather was up and running, her hand clamped down on Sarah’s wrist like a vise, dragging her into the open; Mike was shouting for them to run, and an engine roared to life; footsteps and slavering mouths closed in on them as they ran into the open lane and straight for the sedan; headlights ripped open the dark, illuminating two more figures outside the fence, sprinting for the gate.
Then they were at the passenger door of the sedan, Heather shoving her into the vehicle so hard she hit her head against the frame and bit her tongue, but there was no time to cry out; the door slammed behind them just as the first of their would-be attackers leaped into view and lunged at the handle. Heather slammed her palm down on the lock and screamed as the maniac outside hooked a bloodied hand around the handle, but the car was already lurching forward. The one at the door disappeared suddenly with a yelp of pain, and the car heaved grotesquely, swinging into the clear lane. Mike’s teeth were gritted as he slammed his foot down onto the gas, accelerating down the narrow lane toward the gate, where three more figures appeared; he was yelling for the girls to hang on as they shot toward their attackers, who faced them without fear, mouths open, and bloodied, horrific wounds on their arms and faces.
“Hang on!” he bellowed.
Two fell beneath the sedan’s wheels, and the third was thrown forward onto the hood, his face slamming with appalling force into the windshield, sending spidery cracks shooting across the glass; the car listed like a boat in heavy seas, throwing Sarah forward onto the gearshift. She could feel the power go out of the car, and the sound of the engine changed, becoming a whine of frustration rather than a purposeful growl. The man on the mangled hood slid away from the windshield, his blood smearing a glistening streak behind him.
“It’s in neutral!” Mike shouted as he grabbed Sarah’s arm and tried to drag her up onto the seat. She cried out in pain, her knee wedged impossibly between the seats. As they struggled to free her, the man on the hood pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, slipping grotesquely as he clambered forward, lips pulled back into a terrifying snarl, revealing bloodied gums and broken teeth. Within seconds he was kneeling in front of the glass that separated them, pounding his fists against it. As Sarah wrenched her leg free and shoved her body away from the shifter, she realized Mike had maneuvered the rifle off his back and had it pressed against the windshield.
Involuntarily, she looked at their would-be attacker. The sound of the rifle firing rocked her, and then she heard nothing but a tinny ringing sound. And so it was strange to see the glass shatter and the man on the hood collapse into an unmoving heap, with his face and part of his neck blown away. A rough hand pushed her back into the seat and yanked the belt over her chest; she looked up and saw Mike, stone-faced, buckling her in. The rifle sat beside him, muzzle up. She frowned. Shouldn’t it be smoking?
A muffled voice that could have only been Mike’s penetrated through the ringing silence; it was strained with urgency. The car was back in drive, and they shot forward toward the gate, the ruined body sliding off the hood after a few seconds. To their right, a few more figures were sprinting through the darkness, drawn to the headlights. Next to her, Heather shook her head back and forth a few times and pulled the rifle across Sarah’s lap toward her. But they were out into the open street before any other figure got close, streaking away into the night.
It took a few moments for her to realize she was holding her breath; as she gulped for air, she heard her own heart beating in her ears and the haggard sound of her lungs expanding. Heather’s comforting voice sounded very far away as she spoke, placing her face directly in front of Sarah’s and mouthing the words, “Are you okay?” She nodded, unsure of the truth. She had been terrified . . . but the moment that the rifle went off, it was as if someone had turned off the sound during a scary movie. Nothing that happened after that point seemed real, despite the fact that the hood of the car was a mess of blood and hair, covered in dents and crumpled near the front. And she could feel the night air as it whistled through the grisly hole that the shot had punched through the windshield.
Finally she curled up into a ball against the older girl, a wild tangle of emotions. She was confused and scared, but she found that she was also embarrassed by her fear. For a few moments back at the lot, she had felt competent; now, as she realized that she had lost both her composure and her pistol, her face flushed red-hot.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I lost my gun,” she said, holding out her empty hand. Her voice was a loud, muffled echo inside her brain.
Heather shook her head to indicate it didn’t matter and wrapped her in her arms.
Rather than look out the cracked and bloodied window, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against Heather’s shoulder, a sudden exhaustion overpowering her and pulling her down into unconsciousness.
~
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
Thad was sitting on his stool, his shoulders hunched forward, his body betraying the fatigue he was doing his best to hide. Karen Lau watched him as his eyebrows and lips pinched together, as if he were considering a better way to explain. She reminded herself that he had been at the hospital for a full fifteen hours longer than she had, and he spent most of that time hunched over a microscope or staring at a computer screen.
With a long exhale, Thad shifted his weight and turned to look back at the display screen.
“Well . . . whatever it was that was killing the viruses has either been eradicated or has mutated in some way that makes it ineffective. I can’t think of any reason why that might have happened, though. Did you give him any kind of antibiotics?”
Karen nodded. “Just penicillin, because of the wounds. His brother reported some were bites, from another person who attacked him.”
Thad’s furrowed brow rose slightly at that, but he collected himself and continued, eyes still on the screen.
“There are no white blood cells present in either sample. The original pathogen wiped them all out.”
“I wonder if that will change,” she murmured, more to herself than anything. It was almost unheard of to encounter a patient with a completely depleted white blood cell count; with autoimmune diseases like leukemia, the cells produced in the bone marrow were simply immature or abnormal. And in those situations, the cells would overreproduce, crowding out healthy cells. She considered aplastic anemia, but it seemed unlikely: the red cells would also be nearly nonexistent as well if that were what they were dealing with. She let out a small sound of discontent, and Thad turned to look at her.
“It seems likely,” he answered her previous question. “We’d be looking at a complete suppression of the marrow stem cells in order to keep the white cells from being produced. Maybe we could get another sample in a few hours?”
Karen nodded again.
“Any luck with the pharm company?” she asked.
The smug smile that spread across his face made her chuckle. He scooted his stool over to another desk and pulled out one of the reference books. Flipping open to a dog-eared page, he offered the book to her, tapping a paragraph near the top. She took the book and found a friendly-faced woman wearing a lab coat smiling at her from the left-hand side of the page, an introductory paragraph to the right. Karen skimmed the words quickly.
Argo (NYSE: ARG) leads the industry in product research and development geared toward the protection and improvement of human life. We are committed to serving as a responsible corporate citizen, as well as to stockholders, employees, custome
rs, suppliers, and the communities in which we live and work. Our guiding philosophies are centered in these goals and are great contributors to our success.
“They were running a clinical trial here and on Kauai,” Thad told her. “From what I can tell, they started three months ago and were set to wrap the first round this week. You remember Serophim?”
She raised an eyebrow. The drug name sounded familiar, but she wasn’t sure. Thad reminded her of the antidepressant that had been in the pipeline a few years earlier. Argo made the claim that the drug would first work as a synthetic serotonin, increasing the brain’s reaction to favorable stimuli and feelings of happiness. Over time, it was meant to forge neural pathways that the depressed patient’s brain lacked, increasing the neurotransmitter’s natural presence and production in the brain. As it became more widely used, the serious side effects began to emerge: patients found their moods more difficult to control and anticipate, and reported feeling irritable, angry, and occasionally violent. After prolonged use, patients’ natural serotonin levels would drop, and they needed higher doses of the Serophim to regulate their mood, sleep, and appetite. Many experienced weight gain in addition to their other symptoms. Serophim was quickly taken off the market for additional research.
“They’ve revamped it?” she asked, surprised. She thought she remembered at least one class action lawsuit over the rampant side effects.
Thad made a face. “It’s hard to say. There’s not a lot of info out there; but I did some digging on the hospital network, and I found this article.” He tapped a few buttons to bring his computer monitor to life, then clicked on a link. The screen changed to show a headline that read “NANOPARTICLE-BASED DEPRESSION TREATMENT MOVES ONE STEP CLOSER.” She leaned in over his shoulder so she could read the short piece.