by A. G. Riddle
They sat in silence for a few moments, sweat dripping from Millen’s brow, soaking his face, the taste of salt touching his lips.
When Elim had caught his breath, he asked, “If your team is gone, who is searching the town?”
“Survivors. From a village nearby.”
Elim looked surprised. “They were given ZMapp?”
“No. They survived the virus.”
“That’s good.”
“I’m taking them back to Atlanta. Hopefully we can study the antibodies for clues about how to treat the infection.”
“Have you told them?”
“I have. They know what they’re signing up for. They’ve agreed.”
“Good. It’s a good plan.”
“When will you be ready to move again?” Millen asked.
Elim peered out the window at the sun. “If you must, come again at sunset. It will be cooler.”
Halima and the other two survivors returned pushing a cart filled to the brim with produce and packaged food. They joined Millen in the main tent and sat around the long table, sharing in a bizarre feast of junk food, MREs, fresh produce, and soft drinks.
When the sun began to set over the rocky hills in the distance, Millen again donned the suit. He was about to coat it with chlorine when Elim emerged from the hospital, pushing the cart full of supplies that had stood in his room.
In seconds, Millen and the survivors were at his side.
“I didn’t want to spend another night in there,” Elim said, panting.
“I don’t blame you,” Millen said.
He introduced the Kenyan physician to the villagers, and the five of them made their way to the tent complex, which they set about transforming into a makeshift rehabilitation facility for Elim.
Chapter 51
In Atlanta, the day had gone mostly as Elliott had expected. The stock market crash had rattled everyone. It was a cloud that hung over the euphoria of Black Friday.
The most difficult part of his plan had been convincing the other five families to pool their money with his for the purchases, which together added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had begun by renting two twenty-six-foot U-Haul trucks. They drove them to Costco and filled them with survival necessities. It was mostly food; Elliott planned to be near a freshwater source if worst came to worst.
Next, they purchased two high-end RVs. The price was exorbitant, but they carried a thirty-day money-back guarantee, and they only had to make a down payment—the remainder was financed. Elliott had assured his neighbors that within thirty days, they would either be incredibly glad to have the two homes on wheels—or they’d have their money back.
Now he sat in his study, watching the news, waiting for the event he believed would come.
He hoped he was wrong.
Day 7
900,000,000 infected
180,000 dead
Chapter 52
Desmond’s captors were trying a new approach. Gone were the teams that showed him pictures and played music. Now three skinny white guys were camped out at a long folding table, typing on their laptops. Black cords snaked out of their computers, connecting to dozens of cell phones and tablets.
Periodically, the three stooges, as Desmond had nicknamed them, would erupt in an argument. They stood, shouted, paced, pointed, and threw their hands up. He couldn’t hear them, though—they had turned off the speaker in his cell—so he could only watch the three guys argue like a silent slapstick comedy.
He had almost drifted off to sleep when a fourth figure entered the scene beyond the thick glass wall. She struck a sharp contrast with the greasy-haired guys. She was tall, blond, with piercing green eyes. She glanced at Desmond, a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, then turned away. The exchange was so brief that he instantly wondered if he had imagined it. She focused her attention on a tablet and tapped several times.
The speaker in his cell crackled to life. Did she turn it on? Why?
“Where are we?” she asked, her tone forceful.
“Grasping at straws,” the closest programmer said.
“Grasp harder. We’re running out of time.”
Desmond wanted to turn toward them, but his instincts took over. He sensed that she—or whoever had turned the speaker on—wanted to keep that action a secret from the programmers or anyone watching the video feed. So he lay still in the bed, occasionally glancing over, showing only mild interest in the scene playing out.
“You know, telling us to work faster doesn’t actually help us, Avery. It just wastes our time.” The stooge grinned insincerely. “And I’ve heard we’re running out of time.”
“I see what you did there. That’s cute.” She raised her voice. “What would be helpful?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe some actual clue about what we’re looking for.” The programmer held his skinny white arms in the air and shook his hands theatrically. “I know that sounds super crazy. Like, why would we even need to know what we’re looking for?”
Avery turned away from them and once again fixed Desmond with a quick, fleeting glance. He thought this one said, Pay attention. Somehow he knew her. They were in sync, understood each other, like two friends who had known each other a very long time. Or lovers.
Avery’s tone was more measured when she spoke to the programmers again. “Look, Byron, you have all the information you’re going to get. Hughes has a Rapture Therapeutics implant in his brain. We think it’s been adapted to release memories. We know he has a substance throughout his hippocampus—in the memory center of his brain. Something sends a signal to the implant to unblock the memories. And somewhere in those memories is the key to finding Rendition. Without Rendition, the Looking Glass will never work. It’s very simple: you figure out how to trigger that implant, he remembers, we interrogate him, recover Rendition, and everyone lives happily ever after. You fail, the entire Looking Glass project goes down the tubes.”
Byron shook his head in disgust and looked over at the guy sitting next to him. “You know, I wish some useless hot chick would tell me a bunch of stuff I already know and pretend like she’s helping me.”
Avery’s tone betrayed no emotion. “I’m trying to help you see the big picture and anything you’ve overlooked. And, I’m trying to impress upon you the stakes of your task.”
“You think I don’t know?”
“I think you lack motivation.”
“Are you kidding? McClain telling me I better get this done or else is all the motivation I need. That guy’s like a walking Nightmare on Elm Street. Actually, Freddy Krueger’s got nothing on him.”
Avery smirked. “You know he’s watching right now.”
Byron went pale. The other two programmers slowly leaned away from him.
Avery broke into a grin. “Kidding.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. That’s how scared you ought to be all the time—why you need to be working harder. Now—Hughes would have left himself a way to recover the memories. He may have already found it. Did you read the transcript from his interrogation?”
“Of course. He just found some prepaid credit cards and some dead ends. None of it worked.”
Avery nodded.
“Look, even if it is an app, and even if we could hack it, it might not matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“The implant could be set up to release the memories at certain times or certain locations. If so, until that time, or until he’s at the programmed location, nothing will happen. Or, he could have loaded a set of memories to release no matter what, and reserved whatever he didn’t want us to find for these locations or time points. Or—again, we have no clue how this thing works—memories could be keyed to sensations, images, sounds. Who knows?”
“Why do you think the memories might be triggered in different ways?”
Byron shrugged. “Simple logic. He wouldn’t want himself to be in the dark, but he also wants to keep us from knowing any sensitive informat
ion. If he runs into something he needs to know about, the implant could release memories to help him out without compromising his goal.”
Avery bit her lip. “Okay, fine. Just keep at it. Let me know what you find.” She held the tablet up again and tapped it. The speaker in Desmond’s cell fell silent, but Avery kept speaking to the programmers. Byron shrugged and gave an animated response, then Avery turned, again glanced quickly at Desmond, making eye contact for a fraction of a second, and left through the hatch.
The moment the hatch closed, Byron stood and began pacing and talking to the two other programmers. They pointed at the laptop screens and leaned back in their chairs.
Desmond wondered why she had let him hear the conversation. Was she an ally? Or was she trying to build trust? Was it part of their plan?
They were looking for an app. Could it be the Labyrinth Reality app? In Berlin it didn’t seem to work. Maybe Byron was right—maybe the app was waiting for the right time or location. But some memories had come back to him—memories of his childhood. They wouldn’t reveal what he had done with Rendition. Maybe that had been his plan: to hide the most sensitive memories until the right time. Or until he was ready.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He truly was in a labyrinth of his own making. He wondered if he would make it out alive. His breathing slowed, and another memory came.
One Saturday, when Orville was waking up, when he was sober, Desmond said, “I need you to take me to Oklahoma City.”
“What for?” the man grumbled.
“I need to buy something.”
Orville shook his head, annoyed.
“I need to buy a computer.”
The older man stared at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
Desmond had rehearsed this conversation a dozen times in his mind, imagining what Orville would say. That Desmond had no use for a computer. That he needed it like he needed a hole in his head. That it was a waste of money.
Instead, Orville put a large pinch of Copenhagen snuff behind his lip and simply said, “All right then. Go get in the truck.”
A minute later, Desmond sat in the Jeep pickup, waiting.
Orville walked past it, to the shed behind the house. Desmond heard him open the hood of the broken-down Studebaker truck he had been threatening to fix up for years. He tossed some tools around, then slammed the hood shut, got in the Jeep, and drove to the city.
The CompUSA store was larger than Desmond expected, the choices much more numerous. He had considered ordering the computer by phone, from a vendor in a magazine called Computer Shopper, but he felt it was too risky; if the computer broke, he wanted to be able to take it somewhere and have it repaired—under warranty.
He expected Orville to remain in the truck, or more likely, pony up at the nearest bar and drink until Desmond found him. Instead, he followed Desmond inside. They looked like the Beverly Hillbillies as they wandered the pristine aisles in their coveralls and dirty Carhartt coats, their tan faces and massive hands marking them as anything but computer geeks. Most of the clerks, who were young guys with glasses, glanced away and avoided them.
At the counter, Desmond described what he wanted in a computer and told them how much he had to spend.
“You’re short.”
“By how much?”
“Two hundred and fifty by the time you pay tax.”
Desmond told the clerk that he could get the same specs from a number of places advertising in Computer Shopper. That set the guy off. He went on a tirade about the low quality of the computers they sold, compared small details, and insisted that having local service was worth something.
When the worked-up man finally finished, Desmond said, “Well, what do you suggest?”
“Drop the optional stuff. Modem. Downgrade the graphics card. Smaller monitor.”
Before Desmond could speak, Orville stepped forward, pulled three one-hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, and slapped them on the counter. “Forget it. Build it just like he said.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“You heard me. Do it. We’re in a hurry.”
Orville wanted to put the two boxes on the back of the truck, but Desmond wouldn’t hear of it. Between the cold and the wind, it was far too risky. So they placed the computer in between them in the cab, forming a barrier Desmond spoke over on the way back.
“Thanks.”
His uncle grunted.
“I needed the modem to get on the internet.”
“I know why you needed it.”
“I’ll be able to—”
“You don’t need to explain. Buying that computer’s the smartest thing you’ve done in a while.”
Desmond had no idea what to say to that.
“I thought you were going to buy a truck with the money,” Orville said.
Desmond had considered it. “I needed the computer more.”
The machine and the internet access it granted were to Desmond at seventeen what the library had been to him at six: access to another world of seemingly endless knowledge. The web fed his mind and inspired his curiosity. It always led to more questions, more places to explore.
Every time he heard the noise of the Texas Instruments 28.8 modem, he came to life like never before.
In IRC chat rooms, he met like-minded people. Many were in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, but plenty were in small towns across America, just like him. Most were young people in their basements or bedrooms typing away at night.
He downloaded several programming languages: C++, Python, Java, and Perl. He created a GeoCities page and began learning HTML and Javascript. He loved the logic of computer programming—it was a sharp contrast to the chaos and unpredictability of people on the rigs. Every day was a new puzzle to solve.
That summer, he busted three of his ribs on an offshore rig. He was home alone, recuperating, when two cars came barreling down the dirt driveway: a shiny Mercedes-Benz followed by a beat-up Ford pickup with two hunting rifles hanging in the back window.
Two men exited the Benz, both in suits. They were clean-shaven, their short hair combed to the side, and they were sweating like pigs. Desmond didn’t know either of them. He did know the lanky man who stepped out of the truck and sauntered toward the run-down house like he owned the place. His name was Dale Epply. He was another roughneck, possibly the only man Desmond knew who was meaner than Orville.
The suits introduced themselves, said they were from the West Texas Energy Corporation, and asked if they could come inside. Desmond forgot their names as soon as he heard them. He already knew what this was about.
Inside, they sat down, took him up on his offer for some iced tea and water, and with words that sounded very practiced, told Desmond that his uncle had died in an accident on a rig in the gulf. They waited for his reaction.
“Thank you for telling me,” Desmond said.
His eyes were dry. He couldn’t wait for them to leave.
One of the suits pushed an envelope across the chipped coffee table. The man was wearing a tie. Desmond assumed he was a lawyer. What he said next confirmed it.
“Your uncle, like all WTE contractors, signed a contract…”
Desmond couldn’t focus on the words. He heard only clips and phrases. Binding arbitration was part of the contract. Attorneys might contact Desmond about suing the company for wrongful death, but they were just opportunists and would be wasting his time. There was a standard death benefit, which was generous, they said, and, conveniently, it was contained in the envelope.
Desmond ripped it open. The check was for ten thousand dollars.
The two men watched him nervously. Dale looked bored. Desmond was pretty sure he knew why the man was there.
“Make it twenty-five thousand and you’ll never hear from me.”
The lawyer cut his eyes at the other man, who said, “I’m authorized to pay up to twenty thousand total.”
“That’s a deal,” Desmond said flatly.
; Dale smirked.
The oil executive drew a checkbook from the inside pocket of his suit, folded the alligator skin cover back, and wrote out a second check for ten thousand dollars.
The lawyer shuffled papers in his briefcase and presented Desmond with two copies of a four-page agreement.
“This explicitly waives your right to further litigation…”
Desmond signed them before the man could finish speaking.
The lawyer collected them from the table and took out an envelope.
“We’ve sent your uncle’s body to the Seven Bridges Funeral Home in Noble. Due to the nature of his injuries, he’s already been cremated. We will, of course, cover the expense.”
The lawyer waited. When Desmond said nothing, the lawyer opened the envelope.
“Your uncle, like all contractors, was required to file a will with us. We’ll read that now.”
He squinted at the page. Through the glare of the sun through the window, Desmond could tell there was only one line.
The sweating man in the suit cleared his throat.
“The last will and testament of Orville Hughes is as follows: To my nephew, Desmond Barlow Hughes, I leave everything. 39-21-8.”
From the recliner, Dale let out a laugh. “Well, least we know Orville was sober when he wrote it.”
All eyes went to him.
Dale shrugged. “He was a man of few words when he wasn’t drinking.”
No one responded.
The oil executive again expressed his condolences, this time without the forced sincerity. They were in a hurry to leave now. They were out the door within seconds.
Dale told them he wanted to stay, “in case Desmond needs anything,” as if they were anything more than work acquaintances. When the oil men had left, Dale and Desmond sat across from each other in the shabby living room, Dale chatting about nothing in particular, seeming unbothered by Desmond’s silence. He was working up to something. Or working up the courage to do what he’d come here to do.