by Tom Abrahams
Sharp’s hands dropped to her sides. “Is that…?”
Bolnoy finished her sentence. “An eyeball.”
Morel stepped to the monitor and pointed at it. “I recognize him. The one with the…eyeball…he’s the driver. Timothy Taskar.”
“That’s impossible,” said Sharp. “He’s dead.”
Morel looked at her. “How do you know that?”
“AI confirmed tracking information.”
“He didn’t have a tracker,” said Morel. “You were in a hurry to get him out the door. He was already waffling. You didn’t want to spook him even more. He didn’t have a tracker.”
The three of them looked at the monitor and watched as the two men unlocked the doors, swung them open, and marched into the lobby. Whatever it was they wanted, they were now that much closer to getting it.
* * *
“What do I do with the eye?” asked Taskar as he followed Marcus through the rows of large white plastic tents that filled the three-story atrium.
Marcus was carrying a severed hand, its fingers laced in his as if he were being cute with an invisible date. “Keep it,” said Marcus. “We’re going to need it again.”
They moved past the computer terminals and exam tables Taskar remembered seeing the last time he was there. Unlike his previous visit, there were no people in colored, full-body protective suits. There were no guards either.
At the far end of the atrium, they found the elevators. Marcus stopped and squinted at the control panel above the floor indicators.
“This one needs a badge,” he said. “You have the badge?”
Taskar used the hand not holding an eye to fish one of the guards’ badges from his pocket. He swiped it across the panel. The light switched from red to green.
“Down?” Marcus asked.
“Yes.”
Marcus pressed the button. A minute later the elevator buzzed and the twin stainless steel doors slid apart. They stepped into the car and the door slid shut behind them. Taskar pressed the badge against the panel. Nothing happened.
“Finger,” he said to Marcus.
Marcus twisted the hand in his and pressed the index finger to a pad. The light turned green again and Marcus pressed the button Taskar said was the right one.
The elevator shuddered and then whooshed downward. Taskar felt the familiar loss of gravity in his feet and his stomach lurched. It reminded him of his prior visit and bile crept up his throat. The elevator slowed and an artificial voice announced their arrival at their destination floor.
“This is the observatory lab,” said the voice. “Please watch your step upon exiting.”
The doors whooshed apart and an armed guard was standing there, his nine-millimeter handgun aimed at Marcus, moved to Taskar, then back at Marcus. All three of the men stood frozen for a beat.
Without reflection, Marcus gripped the severed hand by its wrist and swung it at the gun, slapping it free from the guard’s grip. It rattled across the hallway floor, the shocked guard watching it skitter out of his reach.
Marcus then pistol-whipped him with the butt of his handgun. The guard stumbled to the side and collapsed to the floor, unconscious, a swelling lump already forming on his forehead.
He shrugged at Taskar. “I can’t kill everyone.”
Taskar shook his head and led Marcus into the hallway. It forked in three directions. Marcus dragged the unconscious guard into the elevator and sent him up.
“I think we go left,” Taskar said. “But it could be right. I don’t remember.”
“Go left,” said Marcus.
“Really?” asked Taskar. “I’m not sure.”
“It was your first guess. Go with it.”
They moved left, walking deliberately along the concrete flooring. Marcus was limping, but kept up with Taskar.
“This is right,” Taskar said. They passed an intersecting hallway and reached a coded door. “We’re here.”
The two of them opened it through a multistep process using the key card, the manually entered code they’d used at the front door, the finger, and the eye.
Marcus dropped the hand onto the floor and gripped his pistol with both hands. The door clicked open and Taskar pulled it toward himself. As he did, Marcus moved into the doorway, sweeping his weapon across the space. Other than a loud hum, banks of computers, and a large monitor wall, it was empty. Nobody was home.
* * *
“This is where we need to be,” said Marcus. “It gives us the best shot of hitting everything with one explosion.”
He was standing at the door, tracing his finger along a wall-mounted schematic map of the building’s layout. He pointed to a spot on the map and tapped it with his finger.
Taskar motioned with his chin. “What is that?”
“It says it’s the specimen storage room,” said Marcus. “If they’ve got samples of the bigger, badder virus, they’ll be in there. At least that’s what I think.”
Taskar scanned the map. “It’s close to the rooms where they keep the patients too.”
“Exactly,” said Marcus. “There’s a closet between the storage room and one of the patient rooms that contains elevator mechanics. It’s got a lot of wiring in it. Might provide us with our best shot. And it’s on the same level. We don’t have to change floors.”
“Still, getting there could be tough,” Taskar argued. “Even with the key card, the body parts, and the code, it’s a lot of doors. That area is secure. See the thickness of the walls?”
Marcus smirked and shrugged the pack on his shoulders. “We have a lot of C-4.”
He ran his finger along various routes through the building. Taskar agreed with some of them, disagreed with others. Together they concocted a path. Both men checked their weapons. They were ready to go. And then the door opened.
* * *
Charles Morel froze with his hand on the door handle. In front of him were the two men he’d seen on the security monitors. They’d beaten him to the lab and had their weapons pointed at his chest.
“Don’t shoot!” he pleaded. It was the only thing he could think to say. “We’re unarmed.”
Sharp and Bolnoy stood behind him in the hallway. Neither of them moved, and Morel wondered why they didn’t make a run for it. His body provided more than enough cover for them to have sprinted from the hallway and toward the elevator. Maybe they were frozen too.
“Dr. Morel?” said Taskar.
“Don’t shoot,” he said again. “I can…I can help you.”
“What?” Sharp shrieked from over his shoulder and he felt the hard jab of her elbow into his spine.
Morel screeched, arched his back in pain, his face cringing, and dropped to one knee. That left Sharp exposed to Taskar’s aim.
“You,” said Taskar, his anger sparking. “Sharp.”
“These the people who sent you south?” asked the man with Taskar, the same man on the monitor holding a severed hand.
Taskar nodded. He stepped forward, keeping his aim on Sharp. “You okay?” he asked Morel.
Morel coughed and rolled to one side. “Yes,” he rasped. “I’m fine.”
“We can help you,” Bolnoy said. “What do you want?”
Sharp’s face reddened. She gritted her teeth. She did not, however, take a swing at the much larger Russian.
Morel pushed himself to his feet with the help of the open door. “I have a wife and children.”
Taskar narrowed his gaze. “We want to end this place,” he said. “We want to destroy whatever it is you’re making here.”
“That’s not happening,” Sharp said defiantly with two weapons pointed at her. “Nobody’s ending anything. We’re just starting. You’ll destroy what we’re doing over my dead—”
A loud, percussive blast knocked Morel off balance before he understood Bolnoy had pulled a handgun from his back and fired. The single shot echoed loudly in the small space as it punctured a round hole in the back of Sharp’s head. She stood there for a moment, blinking, her mo
uth agape, her sentence unfinished; then her chin dropped and she collapsed to the floor in a heap.
* * *
Bolnoy took his finger off the trigger and placed the weapon on the floor. He took a step back. “I couldn’t listen to her anymore,” he said. “Take the gun. It’s yours.”
“I’ve been there,” Marcus said. “If you hadn’t pulled the trigger, I might have done it.”
“I was about to kill her,” said Taskar. “He beat me to it.”
There was a ringing in Marcus’s ears that muted the discussion, but he could hear. Still, he kept his weapon on the one with the Russian accent.
“Any more weapons we need to know about?” Marcus asked.
Both men shook their heads.
“What are you going to do to help us?” he asked.
Morel looked at the Russian. “We can help destroy the samples,” he said as if asking the Russian for permission.
“Who is that?” asked Taskar. “Who’s your friend? I don’t remember seeing him.”
“You didn’t,” said Morel. “He does autopsies.”
“I am Bolnoy,” said the Russian. “I do more than autopsies.”
“You are willing to help us destroy the virus?” asked Marcus. “We have explosives.”
Bolnoy nodded. Morel nodded in compliance.
Marcus nudged the men back with a motion of his rifle. “Let’s go, then. We think the elevator mechanical room will be the best point.”
Bolnoy nodded his approval.
The men led their uninvited guests through the maze of the sublevel. At each door they gave the information needed to pass. They’d gone through three of them when Morel explained they had reached their intended destination, just outside the mechanical closet.
“If you do it here, it will kill the subjects too,” said Morel.
“That’s part of the plan,” said Marcus. “Whoever is infected needs to die. They’re unfortunate casualties of this.”
“Some of them aren’t that sick,” explained Morel.
He told the group what he and Bolnoy had been doing. That many of those who’d been injected would recover.
“Some won’t,” said Marcus, “and we can’t take that risk.”
Morel raised a finger. “I’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “What if we didn’t kill the subjects? What if we only destroyed the samples, got rid of all the virus, but we kept the subjects alive until we know if they’ll be okay?”
“What do you mean?” asked Taskar.
“I mean that we keep an eye on these people who are sick,” said Morel. “We keep them here. If they are sick, they will die. If they are not, they will go free.”
Bolnoy shook his head. “That’s no good,” he said. “Superiors come. They see what happened. They blame you. They kill whoever stays. We cannot stay.”
“I say we blow the whole thing,” said Taskar. “All of it.”
“We do need to hurry it up,” said Marcus. “The closer we get to daylight, the closer we get to people coming back to work, creating problems for us.”
Morel stiffened. He pulled his shoulders back. “I’ll stay,” he said. “I owe it to the people I infected. I’m the one responsible. I’ll stay.”
When Bolnoy started to protest, Morel cut in, “Just promise me two things. Watch over my family if I can’t?”
“Of course,” said Bolnoy.
“And destroy every last bit of the virus in the sample room,” added Morel.
“What does that mean?” asked Taskar. “Are we doing this?”
Bolnoy nodded. He smiled at Taskar and started to lead Marcus, Taskar, and the backpack full of explosives into the sealed sample room.
Marcus caught his arm. “Hold up,” he said. “How do we know this isn’t a ruse, that you’re not just going to release sick people into the world after we leave? How can we trust you?”
Bolnoy shrugged. “You can’t. But I did kill the woman who started the program.”
Marcus smirked. “Good point.”
* * *
The explosions were violent, quaking the building as they incinerated the entirety of the YPH5N1 cache in the sample room. Because the room was secured and had its own dedicated air circulation, the blast was contained.
Morel provided all four with hazmat suits and freshly charged oxygenators. Together they marched to the three transport SUVs a couple of blocks away, retrieved the subjects one at a time, and moved them back to their rooms within the facility.
It was three o’clock in the morning by the time they were finished and had removed the suits. Morel again promised to cope with whatever consequences might befall him for his betrayal. It was his penance, he’d explained, and apologized to Taskar.
“None of us is all bad,” Taskar said. “None of us is all good either. It’s not my place to judge you. Someday I might even forgive you.”
Marcus left Morel with Bolnoy’s gun. Just in case.
Bolnoy agreed to collect Morel’s family and move them to a more secure, hidden location. He’d communicate its whereabouts in the event Morel was able to join them once the subjects were either healed or dead.
Marcus and Taskar thanked the men and then slogged the long walk back to the truck. Once they’d reached it, Marcus told Taskar he wasn’t going with him.
“What?” asked Taskar. “I don’t get it. Why would you stay here?”
“I don’t belong anywhere,” said Marcus. “I think I’m destined to roam, to travel.”
“Like a hero saving the world?”
“Hardly,” said Marcus. “Like a man trying to survive.”
Taskar pointed back toward the CDC. “You saved the world back there.”
Marcus laughed. “You think we saved the world? We didn’t. We stalled the inevitable.”
Taskar frowned. “You’re damaged.”
Marcus looked up at the moon, which had appeared from behind the silvery clouds moving fast across the dark morning sky. He closed his eyes as if in prayer.
“I’m working on it,” said Marcus.
Taskar climbed into the truck and pulled the seatbelt across his chest.
“You gotta hold up your end of the deal,” said Marcus. “I helped save the world; now you have to go back to Baird and tell Lou I’m okay. Maybe I’ll see her again someday.”
“I thought you didn’t save the world.”
“You thought I did,” said Marcus. “Promise me you’ll tell her. She’s as close to family as anything I’ve got.”
“I’ll tell her,” said Taskar. “But if she’s family, you—”
“I don’t deserve a family,” said Marcus. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”
Taskar offered his hand. Marcus took it and shook it firmly. Then he closed the driver’s side door and Taskar drove off. The red taillights dimmed in the distance and the truck vanished into the night.
CHAPTER 24
FEBRUARY 13, 2044, 5:00 AM
SCOURGE + 11 YEARS, 4 MONTHS
BAIRD, TEXAS
Lou stood on her porch in the darkness against the roughhewn cedar railing, which framed the small rectangle at the front of her house. She looked at the thin wisps of clouds that sailed past the countless stars dotting the expansive black sky.
She wondered if Marcus could see the same stars, if he might look at them and think of her. A breeze swirled around her and she tilted her cap back on her head. The chill was refreshing, renewing. She inhaled and relished the chilly air, which smacked of dry grass and dirt, with hints of mesquite.
Lou wanted to think that Marcus would ride back on the breeze someday. Whether he was on a horse or in an SUV, or magically appear by clicking his ruby slippers, he’d find his way.
She knew, though, he wasn’t returning to Baird. He’d said as much with the way he hugged her goodbye. He’d suggested as much by making Rudy the sheriff. Rudy had disagreed.
“He’s not gone forever,” he’d tried to reassure her as they walked back to his property. “He can’t be alone. If I know
anything about Marcus, it’s that he’s a people person.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration,” Norma had argued. “If he’s a people person, then Lou is as fragile as a dandelion. And we both know that’s not true.”
Lou had picked up a stick from the side of the road and chucked it ahead for Fifty. The dog had bounced on his back feet and exploded forward, racing for the stick. He’d grabbed it in his teeth and pranced back to Lou, his tail wagging. He brushed the stick against her thigh, asking her to toss it again.
“We’ll be fine,” Lou had told them. “We all got along in our own ways before we met Marcus. We’ll get along now.”
“I suppose,” Rudy had said. “It won’t be the same though.”
Lou had tossed the stick again and Fifty bolted for it. He picked it up and shook it in his jaws.
Norma took Rudy’s hand with both of hers and held it to her chest. “If by ‘not the same,’ you mean less violent, I agree.”
Rudy had glanced at his wife and smirked. Lou had been able to tell they’d talked about it. They’d probably wanted Marcus gone. They’d wanted him to take his issues with him. Lou didn’t agree he was a danger to everyone around him. At least he wasn’t any more than she was. But she couldn’t blame them for feeling the way they did. Marcus did let a lot of blood on the streets of an otherwise quiet town, enough that they needed a new cemetery for all the bodies.
The wind shifted. The dark outline of the Gallardos’ house was visible. She imagined Rudy and Norma were getting a good night’s sleep. The two whispering women probably were too, unless they were up early, gossiping to themselves.
Lou chuckled at the thought and looked to the ground at the foot of the two steps leading to her porch. Fifty was there, curled into a ball. He was dreaming. His back legs twitched and kicked. He whimpered.
Lou wondered where Fifty traveled in his dreams. His feet padded across imaginary ground. Could he be dreaming of some place without gunfights, without the need to attack enemies at their necks, a greener Eden full of sticks and girls to throw them? Or was that a dream, a subconscious reliving of the only reality he’d ever known—the dry, cracked, and cragged, wall-enclosed post-Scourge world?