Jordan Rose Duology (Book 2): Homecoming

by Favreau, Jeff

  The guards at the second set of guard towers were far more prepared than their colleagues and had already deployed a spike strip across the roadway to which Rose promptly drove over popping all four of her tires. She was going way too fast to stop for them and the loss of air in her tires barely slowed her down. Rose did the best she could to keep the car from careening off the side of the bridge. Maintaining a straight line for the time being, Rose now attempted to stop the car as quickly as she could, the rapidly approaching barrier wall looming large as she drew up upon it. Pumping the brakes hard, Rose tried to used what little steering control she had left with her rimmed tires to come to a controlled stop.

  Dangerously close to the wall, Rose gave up on pumping the brakes and just slammed them sending the car into a spin. Luckily, Rose had lost enough speed and was able to maintain enough control that she spun in the road and avoided the barriers on either side of the bridge, coming to a stop about 25 yards shy of the barrier wall.

  Exhausted, dizzy and disorientated, Rose threw open the car door and collapsed onto the ground. Almost immediately, she was surrounded by armed men and women yelling commands at her. Still disoriented, the world itself now began to spin. Rose could feel herself losing consciousness. With the last bit of strength she could muster before being swallowed up by darkness, Rose grabbed the nearest soldier, a short man with a neatly trimmed mustache, and yelled, “Jamie...In the car...You need to help her...she’s been bit!”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Unsure how long she’d been out, it took Rose a minute to put together where she was. She was inside. Bright sunlight was shining in through a big window so it was still daytime...unless it was the next day, Rose couldn’t be sure. Looking down at her arms, there was an IV taped just beyond the crook in her left elbow. Sitting up in bed, Rose winced in pain, her ribs sore, her breathing still painful. Rubbing her right hand on her stomach, she found herself bandaged and taped, her midsection stiff. That was when Rose noticed it: the beeping. Looking down at her right arm, several sensors were stuck to it, their wires running down off the side of the bed. Looking past an IV bag to her left, Rose noticed a monitor on a rolling pole recording her vital signs, it’s digital display happily chirping away as her heart beat. The lights above her head were on, Rose noticed, the heart rate monitor picking up slightly.

  The TV beyond the end of her bed was off, but Rose spied a remote on a table next to the bed and straining to reach it, turned the TV on. It didn’t matter that all she got was static, the fact that it even turned on was somewhat of a miracle to her. Turning off the TV and lying back on the pillow behind her head, Rose laughed softly to herself. It hurt, but it didn’t dampen her spirits. They’d made it. They’d made it back to humanity, back to civilization.

  They. A jolt of fear shot through Rose. Where was Jamie? Did she survive? She’d been bit! Rose needed to find her before she lost her like she’d lost Kate.

  Rose’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a nurse. A dark-haired hispanic woman of about 40 or so, she was slightly overweight but only just and wore the traditional green scrubs associated with a hospital. She was carrying a tray with food on it: a cup of ice water, an apple and what looked like pasta with red sauce. Noticing that Rose was awake, the nurse gave her a smile, placed the tray down on the table next to Rose’s bed, turned and left without a word. Finding that behavior odd, Rose eyed the food on the tray. It looked harmless enough, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Rose needed to find Jamie. She could eat later.

  Pushing back the covers of the bed, Rose found she was wearing a pale blue patterned hospital gown, all of her clothes gone. Looking around the room, Rose didn’t see them anywhere. Gritting her teeth, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, the pain in her chest was intense. Any movement seemed to make her dizzy, her head swimming. Panting as if she’d just finished running rather than merely sitting up, Rose decided to rest on the edge of the bed before continuing on.

  Before she was ready to move, the door to Rose’s room opened yet again. Instead of the hispanic nurse, this time a woman in a white coat entered the room. The woman appeared to be in her late thirties, dirty blonde hair cut shoulder-length, brown eyes and a rosy complexion. She was wearing a plastic nametag, but Rose couldn’t make it out. She also smiled as she entered the room, but unlike the nurse, stuck out her hand as she approached.

  “Hello, my name is Dr Sara Faraday,” she said grabbing Rose’s hand and shaking it. “I’m one of the resident physicians here at Massachusetts General Hospital. How are you feeling?”

  Rose didn’t know what to say. This encounter was not what she was expecting...It was like the last two years hadn’t existed.

  Dr Faraday seemed to recognize the confusion on Rose’s face. “I suppose I should have started with a ‘Congratulations’ for making it to Boston. From what I’ve been told, your arrival caused quite a stir.” The smile on Dr Faraday’s face seemed warm and genuine, Rose was looking for any hint of deception but she wasn’t finding it. Was it being hidden that well?

  “I was with another woman…” started Rose.

  “Yes, she was in much worse shape as you probably already know. She’s in another wing of the hospital receiving treatment. It’ll be slow going, but she seems to be responding well. The first few days are always the most crucial.” Dr Faraday looked down at a clipboard she had with her. “So how long were you out there? Since the outbreak two years ago I mean.”

  “I need to see Jamie,” said Rose, attempting to stand, wincing, and then sitting back on the bed.

  “No, you need to rest. Jamie, you say? She is being well cared for. In a few days, after your ribs heal, I can bring you over to her room. You were lucky you know, any of those broken ribs could have punctured a lung. I doubt you would have made it here if that’d happened.”

  Rose knew the doctor was right. She couldn’t even stand, how could she get to another part of the hospital? She knew nothing about these people, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself, fight back. Still, it seemed rather coincidental. Rose needed to bide her time, heal and wait for an opportunity. Slowly and with great effort, Rose pulled her legs back onto the bed and layed back on the pillow.

  Satisfied, Dr Faraday again looked down at her clipboard and continued. “So, you were out there for a while?”

  “Since the beginning. I’m from northern Maine, my hometown was overrun and I made it north to Quebec. I...Jamie and I found a cabin in the woods far away from any towns or cities and waited it out.” Rose felt that was enough detail, the doctor didn’t need a blow-by-blow of everything they’d been through and Rose wasn’t about to share.

  “Was it just the two of you?” asked Dr Faraday.

  “No, there were others,” said Rose. After a pause she added, “They didn’t make it.”

  “Based on your injuries and your friend Jamie’s, you almost didn’t make it either. What happened?” asked Dr Faraday as she made notes on the clipboard.

  “We were attacked, as I’m sure you already knew. An infected man, he seemed stronger than the infected I remember...Almost like a predator. When this all happened, the infected were wild beasts. This guy seemed to almost know what he was doing. Like we were fighting an intelligent animal.” said Rose.

  “Well you’re lucky it was just one. And I don’t mean to insult you, but he was probably one of the weaker infected that remain out there,” said Dr Faraday, putting the clipboard down on the bed and looking at Rose. Rose only returned a blank look, unsure what to make of what she was saying.

  “The infected are different now,” continued Dr Faraday. “The infected you knew when this all started, they could still be around I suppose, maybe some hapless survivors out there somewhere who gets infected. I suppose it still happens but those infected don’t last long. The real problem are the Alphas, or at least that’s what we call them.”

  “What do you mean Alphas? Like an Alpha Male?” asked Rose, still confused.

  “Actually, th
at’s not far off,” said the doctor. “Alphas, as far as we can tell, are infected that have been around, possibly since the beginning. Their brains have adapted to the infection and they are able to survive, albeit at a lower cognitive level compared to pre-infection.

  Based on what we’ve found from testing, an Alpha is around the same cognitive level as a wolf or dog, sometimes more, sometimes less. Just like every human has a different level of intelligence, so goes for the Alphas. There’ve been some documented cases of near-human levels of cognition, rudimentary speech, etc. The infected you and Jamie encountered sounds as though it was alone and had likely been culled from the pack, maybe because of lower cognition, injury, illness...who knows. What I do know is that if you’d run into a pack of Alphas, you wouldn’t be here. We lose soldiers all the time and they’re trained to deal with them.”

  “How do you know all this? How big is this community in Boston?” asked Rose, her head swimming with new information.

  “Research of course,” said Dr Faraday, smiling slightly. “We never lost Boston, since the infection started the military was able to mitigate the situation here. Once the walls went up, we went from surviving to defending and finally to conquering. We lost a lot of people to get us to this point. Here in Boston and a couple other cities: Milwaukee, Atlanta, Denver and San Diego; humanity was able to survive and we’ve made significant strides in defeating this disease. There isn’t really a United States anymore so the remaining five cities have decided to call ourselves ‘The Pentagon.’ People needed something to rally behind and it seemed fitting.”

  Rose was still having a hard time believing all of the information she was being told, but there was so much detail, was it possible? “How many people are left?”

  Rose watched the small smile die from Dr Faraday’s face, pain and remorse flashed behind her now-tired eyes. This woman had likely been through as much as Rose in the last two years. “We will never be 100% sure of the numbers, but from what we’ve gathered, only about 1/10,000th of the US population survived. Around 30,000 people total we think, but that number is growing every day. Communication with other countries has been limited and I just don’t know how many survived elsewhere.”

  Rose had figured that the number of survivors would be small, but that was a crushingly high number of people to have died in only just two year span. It didn’t hit Rose until that moment how bad it’d really been, how much was lost, how much would need to be rebuilt. “How did you do it?” Rose asked after a long silence. “How’d Boston and other places survive? Just outside the city was like a war zone.”

  “It was a war. That first year after the infection was all-out war, night and day, no rest. The infected were relentless, their numbers seemingly unending.” Dr Faraday was now staring off into space, lost in recollection. “It happened almost naturally, groups of survivors, the military, the CDC...We all just kind of came together and established a place to make a stand, we used the river and harbor on three sides to make a natural moat and just kept fighting. The military took on defending what few small footholds we established and fought admirably. They lost so many but they knew what was at stake. The CDC did the same thing. They worked tirelessly trying to find a cure, find a way to mitigate the infection. Then everyone else, people like me and other civilians, we did everything we could to assist them. It’s kind of ironic that it took the end of humanity for people of all walks of life to work together so cohesively. There wasn’t any time for petty squabbles, for egos. You either helped survive or you died. And so many did...So many.”

  Dr Faraday trailed off, lost in unimaginable tragedy. Rose sat there in her silence for some time. Rose had known loss, she knew the pain. After a short time, Dr Faraday shook her head, drew herself out of her memories and looked down at her clipboard attempting to regain her place.

  “So how far has the CDC come with the infection? Last I knew there was no cure, but that was two years ago,” said Rose, breaking the silence.

  “Quite far if that was your experience. Were you aware you’re immune?” Dr Faraday asked casually.

  Taken aback, Rose didn’t immediately answer. Rose opened her mouth to say something, but only accomplished gaping at Dr Faraday.

  “So you did know. I figured, being on your own for two years, you likely figured it out.”

  Rose felt immediately uncomfortable. She was in a hospital, inside a walled city, she was injured, unable to walk or defend herself, the CDC were here and they knew she was immune. This was possibly a worst-case scenario, the exact thing she’d killed for to escape Green Forks. The fear must have been plain on Rose face, Dr Faraday reached over and placed a hand on Rose’s foot.

  “I understand. If your only experience with the CDC was two years ago, I get that fear. There were lots of people who felt the same way in the beginning. Their scientists did a lot of...unconventional things trying to contain and find a cure for this disease that they’ll forever be associated with, that’s their cross to bear. But the CDC of two years ago is very different than the CDC here in Boston. I can’t get into all the details because frankly, I don’t know all of them, but I can tell you there is a cure. It’s not glamorous, it’s not like a flu shot you’d get every year...it’s painful. But know this: your friend Jamie will survive. She’ll be fully cured and the CDC are the ones to thank for that.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Rose’s skepticism was the only thing that kept her from being lulled into any sense of security by everything she was surrounded by while recovering in the hospital. The power, the technology, it was all so overwhelming at first. Just sitting in her room with the light on, a gentle breeze blowing out of the vent in her ceiling, the beeps of the equipment monitoring her vital signs. There were even movies she could watch in the DVD player on the TV in her room. At first it was hard to accept, but it didn’t take her long to grow comfortable again with the technology all around her. Using all the gadgets she’d been so accustomed to using only two years ago was an easy transition.

  But there was always that skepticism in the back of Rose’s mind. That nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. It likely had a lot to do with not being able to see Jamie, something that Rose was eager to do. She’d been told that once she was well enough, she would be taken over to her wing. It took over a week for that day to come. Between the broken ribs and the concussion, the medical staff wanted to make sure she was well on her way to recovery before allowing her to leave the wing she was in and go to Jamie’s.

  Rose felt doted on. She never wanted for anything and there was always a nurse or doctor, Dr Faraday or some other doctor, available at her beck and call. Once Rose was allowed to walk around her own wing, she found out why. Despite the enormity of Massachusetts General Hospital or “MGH” as most of the staff called it, there were only about ten other patients in her entire wing. All of the others were residents of Boston and most were from the Boston area. There was one man from Connecticut and another woman from Rhode Island, but everyone else had been local before the outbreak. That wasn’t the most interesting bit though, many of the people Rose talked to were immune. The staff was mixed, some were immune, some weren’t, but as she learned from the other patients in her wing, many of the civilians living in Boston were immune. Apparently, the CDC had brought as many New England-area immune people as they could to Boston when it was decided they would make a stand here with the military. There had been other, non-immune civilians brought as well, but the early days of Boston’s defense were dark days and the CDC still hadn’t found a cure. The immune were able to survive the infected’s slashes and bites while defending the city, the others did not.

  Not many people seemed interested in recalling many details of those early days in Boston or what they’d done to survive before coming here. Rose could understand, she wasn’t interested in sharing her story either. Rose was able to cobble together enough to get the basic backstory and that was good enough for now.

  Most of the patients of the wa
rd were workers who’d suffered some sort of workplace injury. A broken leg or a bad cut from doing this or that helping to maintain Boston. Talking to them about what was being done in the city made her eager to explore it. This, coupled with her desire to see Jamie as soon as she could, pushed Rose to be on her feet as much as she could and speed along her recovery.

  While Rose hadn’t gotten her things from her car returned yet, she’d been told they were being kept safe and would be returned once she was discharged. Rose’s clothes, including her cell phone, were returned to her a few days into her stay after they’d been washed. The phone was dead, its cord likely still in her car, but it only took Rose asking for it before it was delivered the next day. Charged, Rose now had access to music, the date and time. It was late April and her window was filled with the typical April showers. The day was bright but gray, the rain running down her room’s big window in zig-zagging lines like long wet fingers. Dr Faraday usually didn’t show up at Rose’s room first thing in the morning, but today was different. She was there, dressed in her traditional white doctor’s coat, clipboard in hand and a typical small smile on her face.

  “So, I think you’re ready to make that trip to the other wing,” said the doctor, her voice pleasant. “How does that sound? Are you up for it?”

  Rose was already standing before Dr Faraday finished the second question. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said moving to the pile of clean clothes on a nearby chair. Rose dressed quickly and joined Dr Faraday who was waiting outside her room.

  It was still fairly early and most of the other patients were not awake yet. Most, seeing their time in the hospital as a vacation from laboring to keep the city running, slept in, shades closed blocking out the early morning gloom outside.

  At the far end of the hallway, there was a guard station that always had rotating military personnel. Rose had taken to doing laps around her wing as it was circular and while she’d passed this desk multiple times, Rose still wasn’t sure of the guard rotation. There were at least four people who rotated shifts at that desk, possibly five, but the times of those shifts seemed to be random. The guards working there always seemed nice, giving her a smile or wave, but she’d also never tried to pass by them. Today was different though.