Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

  The man’s rifle barrel lowered fractionally. Mason dropped his own aim, matching the man’s movements perfectly. Looking like mirror images of one another, they lowered their weapons until they were pointed straight at the ground. Seeing the two men back down, Anna, Julie, and the scraggly man’s companions all dropped their aims or holstered their pistols. The six survivors heaved a collective sigh of relief.

  “Glad that’s over,” the scraggly man said. “Can’t say I enjoy the feeling of having a gun pointed at me.”

  “Me neither,” Mason said. “Though it sure ain’t the first time.”

  “Name’s Trevor. Trevor Westscott. You can call me Trev,” said the scraggly man, holding out his free hand.

  “Greg Mason, NSA,” Mason said, shaking Trev’s hand.

  The newcomer’s eyes widened. “NSA?”

  “Well, as of last month, anyway,” Mason said, shrugging. “I’m pretty sure I’m fired. This is Julie Ortiz, formerly of Channel Thirteen News, and Lt. Colonel Anna Demilio, USAMRIID.”

  “Well, hell,” Trev chuckled, shaking their hands as well, “It seems we’ve run across some white collar survivors, lady and gentleman. This is Matt Tanner, and Junko Koji, both students. Well, they were students, anyway.”

  “Hello,” said the short, dark-haired female, nodding.

  “Hiya,” waved Matt, slinging his rifle.

  “What did you do?” Mason asked Trev.

  The scraggly man grinned by way of reply and shrugged. “Little of this, little of that.”

  Mason knew how to read people well enough to know Trev wasn’t just being facetious; the man was actually hiding something. He decided he didn’t want to risk their newfound friends’ ire and chose not to press the issue.

  “What brings you three into town? With those jobs, you’re obviously not from around here,” Trev added.

  “Just passing through,” Mason admitted. “On our way west.”

  “What about you three? Towns aren’t exactly the safest places these days,” Julie asked.

  “Shopping,” Matt said with a grin.

  “He means looting,” Junko interjected. Her voice had a slight accent to it. “We’re getting to be pretty good at it, too.”

  “That’s right,” Trev said. “Got as much non-perishables as three grown people can carry. It’s not much, but it’ll keep us alive a bit longer.”

  “Really,” Mason said. His stomach growled slightly at the mention of food. “Uh, I know we just met and all, but we actually ran out of food ourselves a few days ago, and—”

  “Forget it,” Matt interrupted. He turned to look at Trev. “This is why meeting new people is a bad idea, Trev. Eat us out of house and home. Let’s just go.”

  Trev looked sheepish. “Hate to say it, Mason old chum, but he’s right. We barely scratch out a living ourselves. We can’t feed three extra mouths.”

  “We’re not looking to impose,” Mason said. “We’d be happy to trade.”

  “I’m not sure you have anything we’d want,” Trev said after a moment of consideration. He shook his head. “No, no, sorry, but we’ll have to pass.”

  “Ammunition? We’ve got boxes,” Mason suggested.

  “We have plenty,” Trev said.

  “How about a GPS?” Anna offered.

  “What, and have it kick the bucket on us in a couple weeks when the satellite falls out of proper orbit? No thanks. Besides, we already know our way around here well enough to get by,” Trev said.

  “Clean socks?” Julie asked, but she knew it was a stretch even as she said it.

  Trev chuckled by way of reply. “I hate to leave you high and dry, folks, really I do. You’re funny,” he said. “But I have to look after me and mine first, you know?”

  Mason nodded slowly. “I guess I understand.”

  “Got ourselves a little cabin outside of town,” Trev went on. “If you can find your own food, you’re welcome to stay the night. Just follow the logging trail up the mountain—it’s the first dirt road on your left once you pass city limits.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Mason said.

  “My pleasure,” Trev replied. “Well, it’s been fun. Take care, folks.”

  With that, Trev threaded his way between Mason and Anna and began walking off to the east, resting his rifle on his shoulder. Junko and Matt followed closely behind him. Mason turned to watch him go, a frustrated expression on his face. He glanced at Anna, and his eyes lit up.

  “I have an idea,” Mason said in a low voice, flashing a lopsided grin at the doctor.

  “Oh, no,” Anna said, studying his face. “What is it?”

  “Just take your cues from me,” Mason replied, still grinning. He raised his voice to normal conversational volume. “Damn, doc, if we don’t find you some food soon, the world’ll be out it’s best shot at finding the vaccine.”

  Anna sighed and shook her head, completely missing Mason’s intent. “We’ve been over this. The chances of me actually being able to sequence a vaccine once we get to Omaha are somewhere between infintesimal and imp—”

  “Vaccine?” came an interested voice.

  Anna, Mason, and Julie looked over to see Trev’s group halted in its tracks. Trev had turned and was facing them, an inquisitive expression on his face. Matt looked dubious, but he, too, had stopped and turned. Junko’s eyes were narrowed, and she was studying Anna intently.

  Mason feigned surprise at having been overheard, and nodded. “Yeah, the doc here is trying to get to some lab where they’ve been stockpiling info on Morningstar. She’s a bit of an authority on the subject.”

  “One of a few authorities,” Anna admitted. “I mainly focused my attention on the various manifest symptoms of the virus as well as the epidemiological ramifications of—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there, professor,” Matt said, holding up a hand to forestall any further exposition by Dr. Demilio. “What was that about a vaccine? That was the interesting part.”

  “Well, there isn’t one,” Anna said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “That’s right,” Trev said, as if he’d expected to hear it. “Viruses. Tough to find cures for them, right?”

  “Yes,” Anna agreed. “Not like bacteria. Those are pushovers by comparison. Your run-of-the-mill broad spectrum antibiotic can wipe out just about any bacterial infection you come across, but with viruses, you have to specifically engineer a vaccine for each individual viral strain.”

  “Yeah,” Trev grimaced, glancing at his companions. “That’s why the polio vaccine was such a big deal when it came out.”

  “Right, and flu shots,” Junko agreed, speaking up for the first time since the group had stopped. “Each year they need to re-engineer the vaccine to fit the mutations of the influenza virus. Or, well, they did. Before all of this.”

  “Exactly,” Anna said, raising her eyebrows. She hadn’t expected such an astute crowd.

  “But you think you’re on to something?” Matt asked.

  Anna shrugged. “Maybe. Like I said, I mainly kept my focus on the epidemiological aspects. But there was a laboratory in the Midwest that was focused on finding a vaccine. I’m not sure how much progress they made, or whether or not they’re still alive and working or all dead now, but the idea is to get out there and pick up where they left off.”

  Junko once again let a suspicious expression crease her features. “I took a few biology courses last year. The only place they’d work on a virus like Morningstar is in a biosafety level four laboratory, right?”

  “That’s right,” Anna nodded.

  “Well, there are only two in the United States,” Junko said, treating Anna to an accusatory look. “One’s in Atlanta, the CDC, and the other is USAMRIID’s.”

  “Wrong,” Anna said, smiling pleasantly. “There are three. The CDC operates one, USAMRIID operates another, and the two share joint responsibility for a third facility outside of Omaha, Nebraska.”

  “Then why haven’t I ever heard about that one?” Junko asked.
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  “Because you were never meant to,” Anna said. She sighed. “I guess security clearances don’t matter now, what with things the way they are, so I may as well just tell you. That facility researched possible real-world uses of various viruses and bacteria. Everything from agricultural uses—bacteria as fertilizer—to more offensive adaptations.”

  “Wait, what?” Trev asked, narrowing his eyes. “You mean to tell me people were fucking around with Morningstar before this shit hit the fan—and they were considering actually using it as a weapon? Infecting innocent people with this?”

  “No, no, that was just a very small portion of the overall research,” Anna protested. “Yes, that was one of the possible outcomes, but more interesting to the staff both at the Omaha facility and USAMRIID were Morningstar’s ability to alter a victim’s metabolism and basic brain functions. Some thought that there was a chance we could actually use the virus to permanently slow an individual’s metabolism and make it possible for that individual to live on, say, one-fifth their normal food intake. The final objective there, of course, is a solution to world hunger, or at least a way to put a serious dent in the problem. Victims also display a heightened sense of hearing, smell, even sight—you’ve noticed they don’t like daylight much.”

  “Yeah,” Matt said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the afternoon sun. “That’s why we’re here right now.”

  “They’re photosensitive,” Anna went on. “At least the living ones—though even the dead ones seem to avoid the light when possible. It causes them a certain degree of discomfort. Some hypothesized that we could find a way to reduce the loss of hearing and sight with age using the virus. That sort of thing. Weapons research did occur, and possibly was still occurring at the time of the pandemic, but it made up a fraction of the overall project. Please don’t judge us just on that fraction.”

  “Besides,” Julie said, speaking up in Anna’s defense, “it’s not like that weapons research started the pandemic. That was totally natural, a fluke of nature.”

  Trev considered this for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. I see what you’re saying. Bottom line, now—if you got to Omaha, what’s the chance you’d find this vaccine?”

  “Percentage-wise?” Anna asked.

  Trev shrugged.

  “One percent?” Anna said, cringing.

  Matt sighed and shook his head. Junko tapped her fingers against the stock of her slung rifle and glanced at Trev to observe his reaction. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem fazed at all. In fact, his eyebrows were raised and his face spoke of someone who’d just received wondrous news.

  “I’m sold,” Trev said after a long moment. “I mean, assuming you’re all on the level.”

  “We are,” Julie said quickly. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “Because you’re out of food, we have our packs full, and you’d like to eat tonight,” Trev riposted, staring at the reporter. “Hunger’ll make a person say just about anything, promise the world, just for a bite—hunger’ll turn a saint into a sinner.”

  “He’s right,” Mason said, earning irritated looks from Anna and Julie. He noticed their expressions and rushed to defend his apparently traitorous comment. “No, really, he is. We used to use hunger to extract confessions from suspects. It’s incredibly effective. Julie, you should know. We barely fed you when you were in the dungeon.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Julie said, looking away. Mason was referring to Julie’s time in one of the NSA’s Washington, D.C. facilities months earlier, after she and Anna had both been arrested for treason for releasing documents and research that showed Morningstar reanimated infected bodies after death. The ‘dungeon,’ as it had come to be called by the agents and staff at the facility, was one of their best weapons against stubborn suspects. Mason had explained it to the two women on the road.

  “It was actually a wine cellar back in the early nineteenth century,” Mason had said. “Part of some sprawling colonial estate. It was willed to the federal government by its owner, and they converted the place into a training facility for U.S. Marshals. Time passed, the city grew, and the mansion was razed and replaced with the NSA facility that stands there now. Or, well, used to stand, for all I know—those fire-bombs we saw being dropped on the city probably burned it to the ground. Anyway, the cellar was converted into a cellblock around 1960, and we added controls to modulate the temperature, lighting, even the relative humidity. It was all designed to be as psychologically distressing as possible. And it worked, too.”

  Julie, who had spent a much longer time in the dungeon than had Anna, was not comforted by the history lesson. Anna had found it intriguing.

  In the present, more pressing matters than history demanded the trio’s attention.

  “So how do we earn your trust?” Anna asked Trev.

  “That’s a tricky one, isn’t it?” Trev answered. “I guess the only way you’d be able to prove anything of what you just told us would be for us to actually see this facility.”

  “And that’s hundreds of miles away, isn’t it?” Matt asked.

  “Omaha,” Junko added, nodding.

  “Yes,” Anna agreed. “You’re right. I guess we really can’t prove it here and now. You’d have to take us at our word. And I really wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

  “Hold on,” Trev said, holding up a single finger in front of Anna’s face. He turned to Junko and Matt. “Guys, group conference. Over here.”

  Trev led his two companions a short distance away from Mason and the others. They huddled like an underpopulated football team and began to confer, glancing every now and then over their shoulders to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped on.

  “You know,” Mason said to Anna and Julie after watching Trev’s group for a moment, “even if they do help us out, we might be doing them a real disservice by bringing them along. It’s not like food and infected are our only problems.”

  “Huh?” Julie asked.

  “Sawyer,” Mason said, glancing at her.

  “Oh,” Julie breathed. “Him.”

  Julie furrowed her brow and kicked gravel. Mason looked over his shoulder and stared in the direction of the hillside where Sawyer was waiting, out of sight behind the rusting peaks of the warehouses and facilities in the industrial district.

  “I guess you’re thinking right about now that it would have been a lot better if you’d just killed him back in D.C., aren’t you?” Anna asked Mason.

  “Yes and no,” Mason replied. “If I had, I really would have been a murderer. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. He might be an asshole, but he’s an asshole following orders. I can’t fault him for that. At the same time, he is getting to be a little overzealous, and I have no doubt he’d kill me and Julie in the process of netting you. So, yeah, I guess I do regret not killing him when I had the chance—but only a little.”

  “Given another chance, would you?” Anna asked, staring at Mason.

  The man sighed heavily, stared once more in the direction of Sawyer’s planned ambush site, and slowly nodded. “I think I would, yes. It’s down to survival, now. We’ve escaped him a few times, now, by the skin of our teeth. We might not be as lucky in the future. If I had the shot, yeah, I’d take it.”

  “All right,” Anna said gently. It was obvious that, to Mason at least, the moral implications of killing an agent on the job were distressing. “Then I don’t see why we should burden our possible allies with that little tidbit of trouble.”

  Julie looked mildly surprised, and Mason swung his head around to fix Anna with a narrow-eyed stare. “If we don’t tell them, and they end up helping us, and then Sawyer comes down on their heads, it would be just as bad as if I’d shot them myself. We have to warn them.”

  “No, we don’t,” Anna insisted. “You just said yourself, if Sawyer comes around again and you have the chance, you’re going to finish it. It’s our problem, and if Sawyer does catch up and try again, we’ll deal with it.”

  “And w
hat if he catches up, say, in the middle of the night, and offs them while they’re sleeping?” Mason challenged.

  “We’ll just have to be extra careful,” Anna said.

  Mason shook his head and bit his lip. “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I, but let’s face facts,” Anna said. “We’re out of food, we have no vehicle, my GPS says we’re still weeks, probably months, away from Omaha on foot, and the three of us alone are damn tired from walking twelve hours a day and then pulling rotating three-hour guard shifts every night. We could definitely use a hand. If we add Sawyer into the equation, they might back down from even considering involvement with us.”

  Mason looked to Julie for support, but the journalist was fixedly ignoring both of her companions, suddenly seeming much more interested in her bootlaces than either of them. He grimaced and finally nodded.

  “All right, we’ll keep it to ourselves,” he said, head hung slightly, sounding quite dejected. Then he looked back up and added in a firm voice: “For now. If Sawyer realizes we’ve slipped his noose here and catches back up with us, I’m giving them a full run-down! It’s only fair.”

  “Deal,” Anna said, sounding satisfied.

  Trev and his companions looked as if they, too, were close to reaching a consensus. Matt seemed to be the odd man out, as he kept lifting his head from the huddle, shaking it as if greatly displeased, and then ducking back in. Trev repeatedly jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Mason, Anna, and Julie and must have deftly countered whatever argument Matt was putting up, because the younger man’s shoulders sagged, and he finally nodded. Trev’s head turned in Junko’s direction, but the young woman was already bobbing her head in agreement. Trev slapped both of them on the shoulders and straightened himself out, turning on his heel to head back towards where Mason and the others stood next to the rusted warehouse wall. Junko and Matt followed closely behind. Junko seemed to be attempting to reassure Matt with a playful shove and a smile.

  “Well,” Trev said as he approached, “we’ve talked it over, and we figure that if the only way to learn whether you’re telling the truth or not is to see it for ourselves, so be it. After all, what’s a little food in exchange for a shot at a vaccine?”