by Cass Kim
Aching to talk to him, but scared he wouldn’t be the same, Alyssa stayed on the opposite side of the fire. She wondered if he remembered her visiting him. If he recalled any of those long weeks, trapped in the tent. When Syd explained about the discovery of the virus, how it was man created, Benjamin growled and stood up from the cooler, pacing tensely behind the group. Alyssa didn’t miss how Emerson set down his water jug, hand near his knife. She noted how Shelly shifted to be entirely between the pacing Wilder and her injured sister, who was dozing off and on while listening.
Dr. Kim stood, making a gesture for Syd to continue, as he brought a small vial over to Benjamin. He sternly thrust the vial into Benjamin’s hands, speaking rapidly in a low voice. Benjamin downed the liquid, lips turning in disgust. He reached for the water jug the other Dr. Kim offered and washed the substance down. Soo patted his back, taking the empty vial back with her. Dr. Kim studied him, checked both pupils, before leading Benjamin back to his spot next to Renna.
When Syd outlined her plan for the escape, and how she’d been sneaking essential items out of the camp, Alyssa looked down at the half full mug in her hands, grateful to have something to eat out of. She was also amazed at how many times Syd had snuck out of the camp. Who knew her fellow loudmouth could be so tricky?
Once Syd had finished her story, she outlined her plan. “Okay, so you all know that Cupboard Lake has been under quarantine for a while now. That means the government, and I do mean the real government, is there. We need a direct line to somebody high enough to do something. I can think of a few ways we can do that.” She held up a small red flash drive. “One, if they let us near a computer, we’ll show them this. If they won’t, which I get how they might not want some strangers plugging things into their computer system, then we’ll have to convince them. Or get them to call somebody higher up, like Ma’s old boss in the CDC.”
Alyssa’s gaze drifted to Janeece, where she stared blankly into the fire. She’d been at the camp the whole time, but she hadn’t said a word yet.
When she got no reaction from her mother, Syd barreled on, “And we always have the fallback of the Wilders.”
“Hey, whoa, no. If they aren’t believing you when you tell them this stuff, then we are not risking our necks by showing off ourselves. They’ll shoot us! Come on, Girl Genius, you gotta have a better idea than that.” Emerson pushed his hands in front of him, as if to ward off the future he saw.
“Wait!” Renna leapt up, dashing to the tent Alyssa had woken up in. She charged back, appearing to not even realize she was zipping around at Wilder speeds. “These! We’ll show them these.” She held up two thick leather-bound journals.
“What are those?” Soo’s voice broke easily over the small argument that had broken out between the Wilders and Syd.
“Royce Algin’s personal journals of the experiments he ran. In awful, damning detail.” The look on Renna’s face as she stared at the journals frightened Alyssa. Just a little.
They spent another hour discussing military ranks and deciding on the best strategy for approaching the quarantine line. As the sun sank lower, they all agreed that, for their own safety, they’d have to put out the fire. The snow had mostly stopped and had long since covered their tracks. The last thing they needed was the warm glow to give away their location for any of Royce’s men that may be hunting them.
With the dropping temperatures, they had to share tents, and body heat to stay warm without the fire. Soo stayed with Alyssa and Jeremy to lend them her extra heat. She wrapped herself carefully in a blanket, with no exposed skin except her face, and they woke Jeremy long enough to get hot soup in his belly. In her own exhausted state, Alyssa had a hard time staying awake long enough to help Soo rebundle him. She didn’t think about the fact that Renna was sharing a tent with Emerson. Alone. Or that Dr. Kim was sharing with Benjamin, to keep a closer eye on his symptoms. She was too tired to have anxiety about her role in the plan tomorrow. As her head hit the pillow, Alyssa’s brain tried to alert her to the potential of danger in the night. There were wilder Wilders out in the forest. There may be men with guns hunting for her best friend while they slept. Heavy lids dragged back open at the thought. Then, Tim Tam’s warm body settled onto her feet. Her eyes closed, and exhaustion won.
36
Renna
She lay next to Emerson, board stiff, as if touching here in the tent alone meant something different than holding his hand in the firelight.
“You know, I meant it, before. What I said.” His voice was soft, floating through the darkness and bouncing off nylon walls.
“About not showing ourselves to the quarantine line? Yeah, I agree. I’ve got your back one hundred percent.”
His chuckle was soft, as his arm snaked under her and pulled her closer. “No. I mean, yes I meant that too. But I meant before, when we talked about going slow. No pressure, ever. You can relax. But,” his voice softened, reminding her of long nights spent staring at stars, talking about hopes, dreams, and loss, “I would like to hold you until we fall asleep. If, I mean, if you’d still like that.”
She couldn’t stop the snort at his insecurity. “I’m starting to feel like being close to you is the only place I want to be.” She rolled to drape an arm across his chest, resting her head on his shoulder. “Everywhere else is too dangerous.” She thought about his story earlier. About the blood that had gotten on them. About killing other Wilders. Him finding Jackson’s body, circled with dead Wilders, but torn and ripped long past death. “Do you—” she started, pausing in fear of revealing the darkest parts of herself, only to start again. “Do you ever worry that maybe we’re dangerous? That some part of us will always be a ticking time bomb?”
He shifted to peer down at her face. “Are you thinking about your brother?”
“Actually, I wasn’t. But that’s a true worry for him, I think.” Her mind replayed the face of the guard when she’d shattered his forearm. “We are, though. We’ll always been a threat to regular humans, how we are.”
He rubbed her back with one arm, running the other hand through his hair as he thought. “If the vaccine works like my Dad thinks it will, then we won’t be that different from most people, as the prevention spreads. People will all have some of our traits.”
“Will they have the aggression?”
He slid out from under her, rolling to meet her eye to eye. “You gotta spit it out. I know you can talk around your thoughts without saying them for days. Renna, throw me a bone here and tell me why you, the least wound up person out here, are worried about being violent.” His almond-shaped eyes peered into hers, studying her as if he truly believed the eyes were the window to the soul.
“I wanted to kill him, Emerson. Royce Algin. I wanted to leap across his tent and shove my thumbs into his eye sockets, to hear him scream in agony as I unhinged his jaw with my super-human strength. I wanted to punch my hand through his chest and rip his heart out, crush it until the pieces slid out between my fingers.” She waited for him to pull away in fear or disgust. He waited, steady, face emotionless. “He killed my Father, Emerson. He killed so many people. And for what? For greed? For fame? I hate him. I want to watch him suffer over and over again, as the families he’s destroyed have. He ruined my life. His stupid virus destroyed my family. We were happy once.” Tears streaked down her face. His thumbs reached up, gentle, and wiped them away. Still his face was calm, waiting. Allowing her to spit out her anger, her sadness, in one continuous stream. “I just want us to be happy again. What if— What if this is it? What if our whole life is going to be one struggle after another? More things we can’t have, more things we can’t do? More people we watch die?” She reached up and caught his hand, pulling it from her face, clutching it tightly. “You tried to warn me. You told me that this vaccine would have consequences. That maybe it would have consequences we didn’t expect.”
He nodded, swallowing hard. “Things won’t always be like this. We’re close to a cure. We’re close to safety. And
, Renna. We’re not monsters. We’re not some mindless rage-filled zombies. We are still in control of our actions.”
“I don’t even mean just now! I mean forever. Emerson.” She met his eyes again, knowing misery was plain on her face. “I know you always wanted to have kids. But. We can’t. I looked through all of his notes, and there was never one Wilder that wasn’t sterile. Not one, in all the mutations, in all the trials. I know we’re young, but maybe…maybe you should try to find somebody who will get the new vaccine when they fix it.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s slow down. We’re not taking things fast, remember?” He rolled onto his back, staring at the tent ceiling.
She felt the loss of his warmth acutely. Gritting her teeth, Renna tried to stem the flow of tears. She turned onto her back, the salty wetness trailing to be absorbed by her hair. When he didn’t say anything more, she gritted out, “It’s fine. I get it.”
His arms reached up before crashing down to sweep through his hair then cover his face. Heaving a big breath, he turned toward her again. When she didn’t roll to face him, he tapped her shoulder lightly.
Dreading his next words, she edged her face toward him, refusing to move further to close the gap. To show him the small kernel of hope he was about to extinguish.
“I stopped living for ‘maybe’ and ‘what if’ for myself a long time ago. The only what if I care about is that this wasn’t in vain. So, no. No, you don’t get it. I don’t want a ‘what if’ shot at love with somebody else hoping that ‘maybe’ they’ll find a way for me to have a kid with her. I know you. I know that I love you. And I’m not saying we’re getting married. Heck, I can’t even say for sure what the world will look like in three weeks. But right now, that love— That’s what I’m believing in. I don’t want ‘what if’ and ‘maybe’ to be happy. I want this. The rest we can figure out later.”
She said nothing. What could she say? Her eyes flowed up and down his face, from the high cheekbones smattered with freckles, to the strong jaw line, and thick eyebrows set over the warmest eyes she’d ever seen.
He raised an eyebrow at her, a single perfect invitation.
“I love you too,” she whispered, eyes still leaking, smile wavering.
“For a minute there I thought you were going to leave me hanging.” He tugged her closer to him again, wrapping her in warmth. “And for the record, I doubt you could really punch a hole through somebody’s chest and rip their heart out. That’s really just a Kung fu movie thing.”
37
Alyssa
Syd had made her wash her hair out before they left. She didn’t even care that it was forty-two degrees. In fact, she’d made some smartass comment about that being above freezing. Alyssa stared daggers at the older girl’s back while they tromped through the woods, wet snow dropping from trees around them as the sun warmed it. Forty degrees or not, her head was uncomfortably cold.
Ahead of her, Jeremy was trying his darndest to smooth talk Syd on the walk toward Cupboard Lake. Alyssa wondered if he was really taken with the brash older girl or if he just couldn’t help himself. Once a flirt, always a flirt. At first Alyssa had been entertained by his attempts to impress her. She had to give Syd credit for shutting him down without even blinking. Some of her responses were downright creative. After a while, though, listening in on their back and forth got old. It was a long walk, and she was so over walking.
It didn’t help that Janeece was trudging along with them, silent and lost in her own world. Alyssa didn’t know what was wrong with the woman, but she assumed if it was really bad, Syd would handle it. For now, she was giving her Mom space and not pushing her to respond, so Alyssa did the same. After a few lame attempts at small talk, she let her walk in silence.
At least they’d be in civilization soon. This close to the quarantine lines there shouldn’t be Wilders running around. Though who knew. Alyssa would feel a lot better with a few good humans holding guns around. The quicker they got there and got people taking care of the situation in camp, the better. She wondered if she’d see her parents. Would the military call them as soon as they realized she was technically a minor? A vicious part of her hoped they’d been worried the entire time she was gone. Maybe even concerned enough to stop drinking and fighting all of the time. Unlikely. But, a girl could hope.
“Halt! Stop walking and put your hands up. There are guns pointed in your direction, and we have orders to shoot at the first sign of suspicious behavior.” The voice rang out through the woods, snapping all three heads up.
Feet planted, hands raised clearly over her head, Syd called out, “We’re humans. Don’t shoot us.”
“Officers, I’d like to see my family please.” Jeremy chimed in, voice smooth, used to being adored by the adults around him back home in Cupboard Lake.
“Keep your hands where we can see them. Do not address the soldiers as they inspect you. Move only when spoken to. Any threats will be eliminated immediately.”
Alyssa swallowed hard, thinking of Renna’s dad. She kept her arms up over her head, shaking with the effort after the long days of carrying supplies. Her fear pushed her through her pain, and she held as still as she could, waiting for a soldier to come up.
The soldier that approached her was in muted green, gray, and brown camo, a beret sitting on her head, pulled higher at one side, with the US Army symbol at the front. She was short, stocky, and looked like she could wrestle a full-grown cow with little problem. She probably had perfect abs. Her blue eyes were wary as she looked Alyssa up and down, first searching for evidence of blood. Then she flashed a penlight into both of her eyes, checking for any sign of changes to the pupil.
“Any recent injuries?” Her voice was surprisingly melodic, despite the crispness of her words.
“No Ma’am.”
“Do you have ID on you?”
“Yes Ma’am.” Thank God she’d had her driver’s license stuck in the case of her phone for the past few weeks. That useless hunk of uncharged metal and plastic still sat tucked in her coat pocket.
“Good. You will present it shortly. Why are you here?”
Alyssa launched into the line they’d come up with the night before. The one Dr. Kim had made them all practice over and over until it rolled off their tongues without thought. “We have been a part of a classified experiment station. We are fully human. We have valuable research that the CDC is expecting.”
The soldier staring at her, Faulkner, according to the patch across her right chest pocket, blinked a few times before looking to the others inspecting Jeremy and Syd. One gave a small hand signal and Faulkner turned back to her.
“Miss, I am going to need your ID, and then I need you wait here, hands in sight.”
“It’s in my coat pocket.”
“You may retrieve it, no sudden movements.” Faulkner stepped back and trained her weapon on Alyssa as she fished in her coat pocket and took out her cellphone.
Popping the case off, Alyssa focused on keeping her motions smooth and obvious. Her ID was there, where it always was. The face smiling back from it, with long blond hair and perfect make-up, felt like a stranger now. She waited for the soldier to tell her she couldn’t be the same person as the license depicted.
Faulkner didn’t though. Instead she grabbed the ID and backed toward her unit, handing it to a man holding a portable scanner.
Each ID was examined closely, then held under the scanner’s red line. Four beeps later and radios were held to mouths, words low and rumbly, too soft for Alyssa to hear. As she strained, she thought she heard Janeece and Syd’s names, but maybe that was her brain struggling to fill in what she wanted to know.
One of the soldiers invited them to sit on the felled tree they were using as a partial roadblock but kept their guns close to hand. A line of orange and white folding roadblocks weren’t necessary anymore, but remained in place. The only vehicle they saw for the thirty long minutes they sat in the sun, backs rigid, hand fidgeting, was the large black SUV that pulled up a
nd parked.
Three people exited the vehicle. The first looked like most of the others around them; he was in shape, with a broad chest clad in the Army uniform, short neat hair quickly covered by a maroon beret, and dark sunglasses to ward of the glare of the sun on the wet pavement while he drove. The second looked petite next to him, a mousy middle-aged guy with a clipboard, thick silver framed glasses, and a tool belt that held wads of latex gloves, alcohol wipes, tiny vials, and more miscellaneous medical supplies. Alyssa couldn’t decide if the belt was funny or genius, but she definitely wanted a closer look at it.
The third person to step out of the vehicle was a woman with blond hair tied up in a neat bun, crisp khaki’s and a long sleeve tee-shirt under a puffy vest. Her cheeks were ruddy with the cold, but she seemed unfazed by her lack of gloves or hat. Leaving the men behind, she walked over toward the group, eyes on Janeece.
“Oh Shit,” Syd muttered, leaning across Jeremy. She whispered in awe, “That’s Dr. Brittney Ann Eckles.”
Alyssa looked from Syd to the woman approaching and hissed back, “Am I supposed to know who that is?” Between her throbbing clavicle and aching legs, Alyssa wasn’t in the mood for one of Syd’s smarty-pants know-it-all moments.
Syd, undaunted by her tone, continued rapidly, trying to explain in the moments before the woman reached them, “She’s the most renowned epidemic researcher in the history of, well ever. Her parents were huge in the CDC, and they took her on site her whole life, home schooling her between outbreaks. She grew up an expert in viral outbreaks even before the Wilders virus started. Rumor even has it that she’s got some kind of crazy immunity. She’s been sick, like, once her entire life. Even when her parents caught the Velinstint virus in Malaysia and they both died from it, she didn’t get sick. Instead, she found an effective treatment for the virus and pretty much wiped it off the planet. When she was twenty-three.” Syd’s voice was filled with fangirl excitement as she whispered the information to Alyssa and Jeremy, finishing just as the woman stopped at the line of soldiers.