Jordan Rose Duology (Book 2): Homecoming

by Favreau, Jeff

  Jamie really didn’t think about it a lot, she prefered to live in the present and not dwell on the past. The past was filled with pain, loss, death; the future had the prospect of so much more. Finding Rose had been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak life. Jamie had made mistakes, so many mistakes, but now she had a chance to make up for them.

  Nothing in her life could have prepared Jamie for how rewarding being a nurse at Mass General was. If Jamie had been so inclined, she would’ve kicked herself for dropping out of medical school all those years ago, but that thought had entered her mind exactly one time and had so thoroughly been pushed aside it had likely fallen right out of her head. The past was the past.

  The breeze rushing through Jamie’s hair as she sped down the middle of Boston’s wide streets was cool and refreshing, giving her a temporary reprieve from the blazing sun overhead. There were still people out walking, but they were all hugging the inner lanes of the sidewalks moving from shadow to shadow in an attempt to stay as cool as possible. Functional bikes were fairly rare and Jamie was glad to have one. The wide roads were wasted on a single biker but she could hardly complain, she knew what they were like before the infection. Jamie’s thoughts drifted off to ideas of repurposing these roads some day, finding or making new bikes and adding some much needed greenery inside the protected walls of her city. It was ironic: outside the walls it was so green and alive, but was filled with deadly Alphas; inside was safe and protected, but gray, bland, industrial and so...sterile and militaristic. Which was ironic given where she was headed to work.

  Jamie got it, she really did. Rose was very much a part of the military now and she knew their walls and guns were what protected her and everyone else inside, but couldn’t a little effort be put into maintaining the city’s greenery and parks? An argument for another time she supposed.

  Pulling up to the front entrance of the hospital, Jamie parked her bike in an empty bike rack along the side, locked it to the rack out of habit, and hustled inside, eager to avoid the sun. Jamie’s t-shirt and shorts would need to be changed for scrubs before she started her shift which was just as well, she already had a ring of sweat around the collar from the ride.

  Changing in the staff locker room, Jamie couldn’t help but glance in a mirror after peeling off her shirt. The wounds she’d suffered from the Alpha attack were still quite apparent, pink, red and jagged. The most noticeable was the large bite wound she’d suffered on her left arm. The cherry blossoms and roses, so artfully designed and colorful, were a mangled tangle, barely recognizable to what was there before. They’d been one of her first major tattoos and symbolized her breaking away from her previous life and venturing out on her own. She’d toyed with the idea of finding someone to try and repair the damage some day, but as time had gone on, the more symbolic the remains of the tattoo became. This was her life now. Pieces of her previous life still existed, but they were now warped and distorted by the infected.

  Looking at her scars in the mirror always helped to boost Jamie’s resolve to help others. People should always be willing to help others, to help them survive, even when death is heartbeats away. Jamie was now one of those people. Her left arm was her affirmation to the people in the hospital now and to future patients. She would help them survive as she’d been helped herself.

  She looked forward to a quiet day taking care of patients in a nice air conditioned space, no drama, just healing. Their patient load outside the CDC wing was low, just a few people with this or that, mostly workers from the fields. No major injuries, but Dr Faraday was always keen to “keep them for evaluation” when it was this hot outside. Jamie had started with Dr Faraday after being assigned to MGH, but now she bounced back and forth between Dr Faraday’s wing and the CDC wing as needed. While Jamie didn’t work with Dr Knight on a day to day basis, he was usually always around and would occasionally have a brief conversation with her. Rose had filled Jamie in on their history and Jamie could hardly blame Rose for being skeptical of him, but Jamie was still looking for red flags. Other than the encounter in the garage, she’d come up empty.

  Not expecting anything out of the ordinary, Jamie was caught off guard by the electric atmosphere of the CDC wing. She could tell that it was not going to be a normal day. Everyone seemed alert and on edge, rushing around. Concerned, Jamie stopped in to the front desk. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Are you just getting here?” asked the woman behind the desk.

  “Yeah, why has something happened?” asked Jamie, now worried.

  “Well we have a new patient. A pregnant Alpha,” said the woman, pausing and waiting for Jamie’s shocked expression.

  While surprised the Alpha was up in the wing, Jamie was hardly shocked by the pregnancy. If anything, she was a little taken aback that the pregnancy lasted to full term. “Oh, wow,” said Jamie trying to look surprised.

  The nurse, unfortunately, caught on right away. “You knew?” she asked, slightly exasperated. “Am I the last one to know everything?”

  Jamie didn’t know how to answer that and just shrugged before walking down the hallway towards the largest concentration of commotion. It wasn’t hard to figure out which birthing room had the infected woman inside, it was the only one with guards posted outside the door, one on either side. Jamie, dressed as a nurse, didn’t even get a second glance as she hustled by them doing her best to exude purpose. Inside the room, she was greeted by two more guards on either side of the door and one on each side of the hospital bed. The infected woman, clearly very pregnant, her large belly protruding from her otherwise toned body, was strapped to the bed in numerous locations. She appeared heavily sedated but conscious, her eyes following the movements of the staff around her. The room was packed with people: nurses, guards, doctors and surgeons. It was easy for Jamie to blend into the background and she pretended to be busy with this or that should anyone’s attention be drawn to her, however unlikely.

  Dr Knight was conversing with several other doctors off to the side of the female. Jamie couldn’t hear him over the noise in the room, but a couple times he motioned to the woman’s belly, as if he was explaining something to the other doctors. After several minutes of conversation, he nodded and turned from the doctors to the surgical staff. “Ok, lets begin. All unnecessary personnel need to leave the room!” he announced loudly.

  Not wanting to press her luck, Jamie filed out of the room with most of the other doctors and nurses. Taking up a position down the hall, Jamie couldn’t hear anything for a long time. So long in fact, that Jamie had given up and was walking back toward the lobby when she heard screaming. Stopping and turning back toward the birthing room, Jamie first thought it may be the newborn, but the closer she got, it soon became clear it was the mother. Jamie had a pretty good idea what she was screaming about. She couldn’t help but notice how sad, how mournful, how pathetic the cry seemed; so much different than their cries when hunting. It almost sounded like a wounded or dying animal as wave after wave of screams rippled past her body and made her hair stand up on end.

  Suddenly, the door to the operating room flew open and Dr Knight along with several others rushed a plastic-enclosed incubator from the room and down the hall. Jamie jumped to the side of the hallway as they hustled past; catching only a glimpse of the baby contained inside, it’s cries muffled by the hard plastic shell. It’d been quick, but Jamie was almost positive it was a boy with dark black hair and light chocolate-colored skin. The doctors whisking the baby away didn’t even notice Jaime, their attention solely focused on child. At the end of the hallway, the group and the child made a hard left and disappeared from sight.

  Confused and a little concerned, Jamie took a step in the direction the child had been taken, but thought better of it and again turned back toward the lobby. She hadn’t gone another few steps when the operating room door flew open yet again, and the infected woman was wheeled out on the hospital bed. Still covered in blood and after-birth, they’d made no effort to clean h
er other than sew up the incision from the C-section. The woman, still conscious and still letting off a dull, pathetic wail, was wheeled off toward the lobby, the opposite direction of her child.

  After the woman’s exit, surgical staff, doctors and nurses began to slowly trickle from the operating room. Catching up to a nurse who’d been in the room for the birth, Jamie fell into step next to her. “Hey, Angela right? Any idea where they’re taking the baby?” asked Jamie.

  Angela laughed slightly, “Way above my paygrade. Dr Knight and the CDC have it all under control I’m sure.”

  “What about the woman,” Jamie pressed. “I think they took her somewhere else.”

  “Probably back down to the cell they dragged her from I’d imagine,” Angela shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “I guess I didn’t think they’d just take the baby from its mother like that,” said Jamie, half to herself.

  Angela stopped and turned to face Jamie. “I think you need to get your priorities straight. This isn’t a fucking daycare okay? That kid is a means to an end, nothing more. It’s not human, it’s one of them. We’re fighting a war, in case you forgot, this is an important victory for us.” Angela turned abruptly and stormed off, muttering to herself as she walked away. Confused, Jamie continued slowly down to the lobby lost in thought. What “end” might a little baby possess? What an odd thing to say.

  Everyone on the wing seemed to slowly return to normal operations after the excitement of the birth. By the afternoon, the morning’s events seemed like they’d happened days ago and everyone had fallen back into their routines. What the nurse had said to Jamie still nagged her in the back of her mind, but she just ignored it, her focus was her patients: soldiers and workers unlucky enough to have been attacked but lucky enough to have been near Boston when it happened.

  While checking the vitals on one unconscious soldier, Jamie was joined by an unexpected visitor, Dr Knight. Jamie hadn’t seen or heard him enter the room and she had no idea how long he’d been standing there watching her, but when she turned and noticed him, she yelped so loud she thought for sure the soldier would be drawn from his coma.

  “Sorry to disturb you, I always finding it calming to watch a competent person do their job well, it’s like watching art in motion,” said Dr Knight, a thin smile on his thin lips.

  “I didn’t know you were going to stop by Dr Knight, I could have come to you, you didn’t need to stop by while I was just doing rounds,” said Jamie, her heart rate starting to slow slightly.

  “Like I said, I like watching my staff work, but given your...history, I wanted to address this issue with you in private while not calling you out in front of the staff. Calling you to my office, as it were, would only draw attention.”

  Jamie wasn’t quite sure how to react to that and so she kept silent.

  “It has been brought to my attention you seemed concerned for the child born today and it;s mother, beyond the normal concerns of your profession.” Dr Knight walked over and took a seat in a nearby chair. “I would appreciate you not talking about this child with other nurses and staff in this hospital. Everyone has different levels of knowledge and this is done for specific purposes. It is not fair to others to ask them what they may or may not know. Come to me and I will tell you everything you need to know.”

  Jamie raised a sarcastic eyebrow to that. “Well then, what do I need to know?”

  Dr Knight chuckled. “You and your wife, Ms Rose, are in a unique situation. Given your background outside of Boston, you two are among the ones most likely to survive should we ever be overrun here. Therefore it behoves me to keep both of you in positions of advantage should a situation like that lurk on the horizon. I’ve placed Ms Rose on one of my most elite capture teams to further our research goals and I have placed you here to ensure our fallen get the care they need to recover and re-enter the field as quickly as possible. Everyone has value in this new society, but some have higher value than others.”

  Jamie thought about that for a second. “If we’re more valuable than others, I’d like an answer to this question then: Where is the child that was born today?”

  Dr Knight smiled a toothy smile. “I can, of course, answer that question. The child is safe in another wing of the hospital, a quarantine if you will, just for him.”

  “Why? Why is this child so important? A nurse told me he was a ‘means to an end.’ Called it a victory…”

  “Ah I see, you’d like to find out just how much of a valuation you have in this new society we have here.” Dr Knight stood and walked over to Jamie moving well into her personal space. Jamie took a step back, caught the back of her knee on the hospital bed, and sat down next to the unconscious soldier. Dr Knight leaned in closer still, his nose just an inch away from Jamie’s, his breath heavy with the scent of mint. “This child is everything.”

  Dr Knight backed away and stood up. “Everything we have worked for, the future of our race, this child embodies all of these things.” Moving back toward the chair, Dr Knight continued, “I’ll admit, when we first captured its mother, we thought her little more than a sideshow attraction, a freak we could study, make note of and move on. That’s all she would have been if she’d been captured in Milwaukee or Denver or any of the other remaining cities, their technological abilities did not survive as well as Boston’s. Oh, but the tests we did, the results were so exciting. Groundbreaking.” Dr Knight turned and sat, facing Jamie and crossed one leg over the other.

  “I still don’t understand,” said Jamie, continuing to sit.

  “The work we do in this wing of the hospital, to cure those that have been bitten but don’t have the good fortune of being immune like your partner, I think you would be inclined to call it a miracle, or maybe something close to it. It starts to become less and less of a miracle each time you undergo the treatment.” Dr Knight motioned to the soldier lying on the bed next to Jamie. “This man for example, this is his fourth treatment cycle. He was patrolling along the wall and...well the Alphas are still out there as you know. He’s a good soldier but these treatments take a toll. How much longer will he stay a good soldier, a willing soldier? What if we could prevent infection in the first place? What if scratches, bites, all of it were simply just wounds instead of death sentences without prolonged comatose recovery?”

  “Are you saying that…” started Jamie.

  “Preliminarily, yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.” Dr Knight stood and walked toward the door but then stopped and turned. “I guess you now know your worth.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  It’d been a long day and Jamie had been lost in thought for a large portion of the later half after her conversation with Dr Knight. As much as Jamie wanted to take what he’d said with a grain of salt, she had a hard time doing so. It seemed logical, a child of two Alphas, growing and developing immersed in the infection and who is able to be born alive and seemingly uninfected might carry an innate immunity different from the one Rose has. If this immunity could be replicated...It was all a lot to think about.

  Leaving the hospital and hopping on her bike, the sun was drifting low on the horizon and dark clouds seemed to be slowly rolling in. “Rain might cool this place down a little,” thought Jamie as she began to peddle away.

  Jamie’s route brought her along the side of the hospital for a bit before she turned off onto one of the main roads which led toward home. As Jamie came to the end of the building, she could see an ambulance parked nearby. Not unusual near the hospital, but this one was running. As she got closer, she could see several guards escorting a naked woman from a nearby exit to the waiting ambulance, its back doors splayed open. Slowing and stopping, Jamie couldn’t help but watch. As the group cleared the building and walked the short distance to the ambulance, Jamie realized it was the Alpha female, the one who’d given birth just hours before. The roundness of her belly was still quite visible.

  As the group approached the ambulance, as if on queue, the woman began to struggle, half-hea
rtedly at first as you’d expect someone who’d just given birth under heavy sedation would. However, Jamie watched in horror as the female, her struggles apparently a ploy to draw her guards in close, seemed to flip a switch. The two closest guards were thrown off of her in separate directions stumbling and falling on their backs, one guard knocking down a third. The two remaining guards rushed in to subdue her. Before either could reach her, the female turned in the direction of the barrier wall, cupped her hands around her mouth and let out the loudest, high-pitched scream Jamie had ever heard from a human. Both rushing guards pulled up short, clearly not expecting the sound before regaining their composure, resuming and tackling the female, subduing her in handcuffs and shackles.

  Jamie stood frozen watching the female, who’d since gone limp after unleashing the scream, finish being hogtied and tossed unceremoniously in the back of the ambulance like someone being ejected from a bar. That scream though...Jamie knew it was bad. Down in the pit of her stomach she knew. Fear was growing, fear she’d not felt since before she’d met Rose. A cold trickle that soon blossomed into a torrent of dread.

  Turning her head toward the wall, Jamie heard it. At first it was just one or two, but it was soon joined by more 20? 40? There were so many now it was hard to differentiate between them. Screams. Some like the females, most undeniably male. All from the far side of the wall.

  Sprinting, Jamie made for the hospital. There wasn’t much time.

  Chapter 14

  The troop carrier Rose was riding in was hardly state-of-the-art but not particularly old either. Like all things in this new military, it was bare-bones efficient. It was a modified flatbed tow truck that had a canopy built over the back and had benches installed on either side. The open space in the middle was filled with the squad’s backpacks. After the briefing they’d received, the ride out to their drop-off location had given them nothing but time to think about what might be to come. Rose, while concerned after the talk-up she’d been given by York, was still probably the least concerned of any of the ten troops in the truck. Having been outside the walls of Boston for the last two years, Rose felt oddly at ease, as if she were back in her element. She didn’t realize until then how artificial it felt inside those walls.