“Okay,” Jesse said. “You can go. Cory, objections?”
Cory said nothing.
“Thank you,” Eve said as she sat at one of the nearby tables and began to cry.
“What about you?” Jesse asked, speaking to Andrea.
She shook her head no. “I can’t go. I’m afraid I’m a little too old and brittle. I’d only get in your way.” She had a distant look that Jesse could not quite place.
“She can stay here,” Walter said, leaning back and puffing out his chest. “With me.”
Andrea smiled at him. He winked back at her.
That left Kate. He knew she could handle herself on the road, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted her out there with him and so exposed.
“Kate stays here,” he said.
Kate shook her head.
He bent his knees so he could look at her eye to eye.
“I know you can make it, and I do want you there. You would help us out. A lot. But, you can’t come.”
“I’m going,” she whispered, crossing her arms.
“No, you need to stay here. This will be a quick trip, and you’ll be safer here. I don’t want to have to worry about you.” Or, where you might disappear to, he didn’t say.
“You promised me you wouldn’t let me out of your sight,” Kate said.
That was the longest sentence he had ever heard her speak. It went right to his heart, stabbing him there with its simple logic, throwing what he’d said right back in his face. And she was right. He had promised her that he would not let her out of his sight.
He looked at her and reached out to touch her face with the tips of his fingers.
“She should stay,” Eve said.
“I agree,” Andrea said.
“Stays,” Cory added.
“She goes,” Jesse said. He glanced around the table, making his point with his eyes. Kate would go along. A new plan for her was already forming in his mind. He knew she would be safe, no matter what happened. Her staying with Walter and Andrea did make more sense on the surface, but having her along was the right thing to do. Somehow, he just knew it.
Jesse looked at Andrea, thinking about the others they’d left behind locked inside the mountain. What would happen to them if he went and got himself killed chasing after this virus? He had discussed heading south and looking for help from the settlements supposedly there with Andrea, and he had agreed to try. So, now he had to balance their lives against the possibility of retrieving and releasing this virus, which still might just be a giant hoax.
He sucked in a breath. “I don’t know how long this will take, but I suspect we may be gone for a while. When we get back—”
“I understand,” Andrea said. “A week. If you are not back by then,”—she looked at Walter—“we’ll find a way. Maybe we’ll leave sooner. So go do what you have to do and know that we will take care of the rest.”
“Good,” Jesse said. His mind had already begun spooling up a new plan.
-22-
SAYING GOODBYE
THE HOT STEAM of the shower did Cory some good. A lot of good. A hot head. Hot water. Cooled anger. He kept his head under the spray and opened his mind. While he had wanted to start out immediately after Noah, Jesse had persuaded him that staying for at least another day to rest up before making the long trip north made sense. Jesse could be a pain in the ass at times, but the hard reality was that he was the only person who had ever stuck around and wanted to help without demanding something in return.
Staying did have its benefits, of course. The shower was a luxury, as was all the food. It seemed somehow wrong to be leaving this all behind. Why had Noah done what he had? And why, Cory wondered, had he failed to recognize the guy? He had even shaken hands with him. Or…maybe not. He tried to picture the moment of their meeting again in his mind, but could get no closer to the truth. He just could not see it. No connection whatsoever. He also played back images of the many thousands he had met in the movement over the years and could not recall seeing the man’s face on the identification badge. No recognition of it at all. Professor LaPaz had introduced him to many in the movement, including the senior leadership, but Noah had not been among them. Though, he had to be part of it, an important part.
As Cory thought about it further, he seemed to recall seeing something in the way the man had greeted him when he’d first arrived at the compound. Had he just been too preoccupied to notice at the time?
Hanging his head, he let his thoughts drift and tangle with the steam as the hot water poured down and ran in rivulets from his lips. He would find out soon enough.
Only two hundred miles separated them.
Grabbing a towel, he wrapped himself with it and stepped out of the shower cubicle. Water continued to drip from his hair, and he shook like a dog to fling it away. There was a full-length mirror outside the shower cubicle. It was mostly steamed up, but he could see a blurry brown mass staring back in reverse. He thought the mass looked a little thin, gaunt, like it needed some fattening up. But that was not going to happen, not for some time to come. And, while he was now clean, he knew he would be getting dirty again soon enough.
Two hundred miles.
“Cory,” Andrea said, startling him as she approached from behind.
He stopped staring at his reflection in the mirror and turned to meet her. She had recently showered in the adjacent cubicle and her hair was wet and heavy. She was wrapped in white terrycloth towels and was not wearing her customary thick-framed glasses. The skin of her face sagged and was spotted with age, but she had a much healthier glow to her now, no longer looking like the tired old grandmother she had appeared to be when he had first met her.
“A moment?” she asked.
He said nothing.
She pulled her thumb between her fingers and began to stretch and massage it. “You sure you are ready for all this?” she asked.
He waited a few seconds before answering, “Why?”
“We need to talk.” She indicated for him to follow her and led him into one of the dorm rooms down the hallway. The dorm, one of six, had been set up to accommodate thirty people with a relative degree of comfort. Today, it was simply a dark and empty space devoid of life. The fifteen bunk beds were perfectly made, and there were footlockers at the end of each, reflecting different levels of light from the doorway, and making the entire room a study in green-gray tones. Everything looked as though it was only waiting for the new tenants to arrive.
Andrea flipped on the light switch and shut the door. Cory sat down on the edge of one of the beds and ran the extra towel he had taken with him across his head, ruffling his hair. She sat on the opposite bunk, flattening her towel modestly across her lap.
“I’ve been lying to you,” she said bluntly.
He nodded knowingly. Everyone had their lies.
“I knew there was a virus,” she continued. “That much is a given. I just never believed it would ever work. I was a fucking scientist for Christ’s sake.”
She stopped herself and drew a breath. “But, assuredly, it is real, and I know how it works. And…well, that’s the tricky part.”
“How is that?” he asked.
She did not speak for several seconds. “First, you must know that I’ve been a coward. I’ve known all along this could be ended. We could have destroyed the raptors so much earlier on.”
“How?” he asked.
She ran her hand over her mouth and pulled at her chin. “I’m so sorry. So much of this is my fault. After we were overrun here, and I fled north, I debated telling Cyrus about this place and the virus hidden away here. But, I was afraid to do so since I never quite knew what he would do about it. He was doing quite well with the status quo, and a change could unbalance that. So, that made me hesitant to bring him here. I suspect he would have not done a single thing to stop the raptors. In fact, he probably would have killed me just to maintain the secrecy of this place. Fear was the underlying basis for his control, and I don’t think he would ha
ve ever given that up so easily.”
“Right,” Cory said. “And you applied pressure elsewhere to get rid of him.”
“Yes. Yeah, you get it. Good. Then you and Jesse came along and—” She did not continue.
Nodding, Cory ignored the barbed tip of her answer and asked, “And what about Noah? How does he factor into all this?”
Andrea laced her fingers together and rested them in her lap. She looked at the wall, staring at it blankly for some time. Sighing, she finally said, “I knew him as Gary Branson. I once loved him, and he once kidnapped me. Funny love story, huh? But that’s all in the past.” She looked again at the far wall and unfolded her fingers in order to rub the back of her neck. “You’ve never told me why finding this virus was so important to you. Besides the obvious reason, of course. But that can’t be the entire story, right? Considering how far you have come, Cory, I know this has been heartbreaking for you. It has been for me too. So many are now dead because of me, and the bodies just keep piling up.”
She touched him on the knee. “So… Why are you doing this?”
“I have my reasons.”
“It obviously means something important to you. Tell me, please. I have to know.”
He shook his head slowly.
“You aren’t going to tell me or you don’t want to?”
Cory said nothing.
“Okay, fine,” she said then sighed. “You know, in all my years I’ve learned that there are really no people out there who aren’t in it just for themselves. Everyone has an angle, even me. It’s something I’ve had to come to terms with.”
“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” Cory said.
“Right, very good observation. Surprising. How did you see the connection? Never mind,” she said, shaking her head. “To survive, first we need food, water, safety, and all that. But, have you stopped to consider that…there are other needs more important than those? At least to one’s soul. It might seem counter-intuitive, but I’ve learned—and it has taken me a lifetime to come to this conclusion—that there are such strong desires in some to belong and to struggle, and not simply to seek an easy life. To them, an easy life is worse than…death. They need a cause to fight for. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Yes,” Cory said. He looked down then his eyes came up slowly. “It is a tool wielded by tyrants.”
Andrea drew her head back in surprise. “Really? I would not have expected such an answer from you, much less an understanding of basic human nature. I know there is a reason behind what you are doing. I just don’t know what it is yet. But, maybe, just maybe, I know a little more about it now, and a little more about you.”
She reached out and patted his knee. Her towel unraveled and she was suddenly exposed. She hurriedly wrapped herself back up.
“Sorry you had to see that,” she quipped. A wry grin cracked her lips.
Cory had barely noticed. He was too lost in the consideration of what she had said. He understood his motivations. They were all he had left. Those long nights on the road had given him ample time to think through life, the universe, and all that was in it. He was doing this to save his sister. It was his cause, and his alone. No longer would a religion or a movement or any other force on the planet ever bind him again. She was out there waiting for him. Somewhere. And when the raptors were finally vanquished, he would go find her.
Two hundred miles.
Andrea was watching him closely. “If you truly understand this level of human motivation,” she said, “then you’ll also understand that there is no such thing as a selfless person. Even those who tell you they are selfless and pretend to act in selfless ways are really looking for something else. Maybe it’s self-aggrandizement, or a stroke to their ego, or maybe they are justifying their own self-worth. But it is always something, isn’t it? Something you must always watch out for. So, you have your private reasoning, and I have mine. Neither of which is important right now.” She stopped and pushed herself upright. “But, our cause is aligned on the destruction of the raptors. And to that, there is something important you must know.”
A knock came at the door. Andrea deferred, and Cory got up to open the door. Kate was waiting there in the hallway.
“Can you give us a few minutes, dear?” Andrea asked from behind Cory.
Kate nodded and left. Cory shut the door behind her. He gave Andrea a puzzled look.
“I don’t know,” Andrea answered. “That girl is such a mystery. Wish I knew more about her. Like where she came from.”
“You were saying?” Cory said.
“Yes,” she breathed, “I wish it weren’t so, and this is going to be difficult to process, but...this virus will require a sacrifice. And I mean it in the literal sense.”
Cory said nothing.
“See this?” Andrea asked. She pointed to the tattoo on the knuckles of his right hand. The letters were fading, which had seemed unusual for a tattoo.
“It is growing dimmer, isn’t it?” she asked.
He held his hand up for her to inspect. She grabbed his fingers and massaged his knuckles. “Do you know what this represents? Do you know what the symbols are all about?”
Symbols? he thought. They were letters. So, of course he knew what they meant. He’d been given the tattoo a month before entering the bunker in Upstate New York, as had all the other people they’d allowed in. He’d always assumed the tattoo was a way for members of the organization to recognize each other. An identification tag of sorts.
“I think you get it. It means more than you think,” she said. “It’s not just about the organization and the mind-numbed idiots who fell for that bull—” She stopped herself. “Sorry, I know. There were many who joined who didn’t know any better. Hell, I probably would have too. They had an excellent marketing plan, now didn’t they?” She grinned. “I know I even started to buy into their dogma at one point. But we killed people, Cory. We literally killed millions and millions of people. All because we thought the planet could not support so many. But it really wasn’t that, was it?”
He nodded yes. He understood, and that had been the biggest revelation in his life. The cause was no more than an organized religion led by tyrants. And it was worse than most religions. Most only wanted to convert you to their chosen belief, or to get you to donate time or money to support a relatively benign oligarchy. And all of them used guilt in one form or another. But this one was truly evil, for it had wanted to reboot humanity in its entirety, all in the name of saving Mother Earth.
And they had succeeded brilliantly.
Andrea held her own hand out to show him. She wiped her thumb over her knuckles. She did not have the tattoos.
“I thought you said you lived here?” Cory asked.
“I did, but I wasn’t one of them. I was an outsider. I wasn’t given the mark. I think they knew I would use it against them if I could. I was always second-class to them.”
Against them? Cory thought. What did she mean by that? He examined his own knuckles again.
“They were made with a special ink,” she said. “A synthetic protein, so to speak, and its main purpose is to act as a catalyst for the virus.”
“A catalyst?” He scooted himself back on the bed in surprise. That did not make any sense. Why would they…?
“Yes,” she said. “I see that you’re beginning to understand why. How do you think the virus was going to be disseminated? How do you think it was going to be activated?”
He had assumed the process would be simple: find the virus and spread it among the raptors. The how part had been a mystery, but it had to have been simple for it to work.
“So, the virus is not airborne?”
Andrea shook her head no. “It’s a blood-based virus. It has to be transmitted via some kind of bodily fluid, preferably through blood-to-blood contact. It is most concentrated in the organs, especially the liver, and it remains mostly harmless to us. When we are injected, the catalyst is triggered. The purpose of it is primarily to s
uppress our own immune system and keep it from destroying the virus while it multiplies. So, that allows for only a short window of time from injection to transmission. Probably no more than two or three days from injection to delivery. Maybe a week. After that, the virus is rendered harmless. And so, do you know what this means?”
He was beginning to understand. Then the dawning realization hit him hard, and he now understood what was truly needed. He gazed at Andrea, wondering if she was making all this up for some crazy reason. But, why would she? What benefit would it be to her?
“It will require a sacrifice,” he stated flatly.
She sighed and patted him on the knee again. Tears had formed in the wells of her eyes. She wiped them away, jiggling the tiny folds of sagging skin drooping below her eyes. She placed her hands over his.
“Yes, a sacrifice,” she repeated.
Cory grinned. That waiting and assuredly unwilling sacrifice was only two hundred miles away.
-23-
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
JESSE STEPPED OUT of the Humvee and surveyed the destruction. Before him lay a dark black ring of scorched earth that completely encircled the city of Denver. Trenches, barbed wire, and corrugated fencing that had once surrounded the city, now sat rusting in haphazard piles of jagged metal. When he had first encountered the destruction five years ago, he had not been able to determine why it had failed. It seemed sturdy enough. Today, the former battlefield was littered with burnt military hardware. Tanks, trucks, and automobiles, all were piled high in disordered formations, as if some child had finished playing with their toys, gotten bored, and swept them aside.
The whole mess had sprung from incompetence. While most of the soldiers Jesse had met after the downfall had been competent and trustworthy, their leadership had certainly not been. Too many years of soft-headedness and political correctness had deeply wrecked the military, so when it had come time to fight the raptors, chaos had ensued.
As he surveyed the scene, he sought to remember which route through the debris field offered the safest passage. The Humvee was to his back, sitting on one of the last expanses of asphalt left before dropping into a crater at least one hundred feet across. Rain and sun and time had flushed away most of the charred blackness and left behind splotches of fiery rust and dappled grays. Crisp new shoots of green sprouted defiantly in the shallow craters pockmarking the landscape, replacing hard edges with soft.
Righteous Apostate: Raptor Apocalypse Book 3 Page 16