by Kate Myers
Keith manages a warm smile. “It’s not completely unexpected, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hopeful for a better outcome.”
At that, Quinn and Wiley walk in, latching the door quietly behind them.
“What’s going on?” I ask, scanning the room for information.
“Ask the boss, he called this meeting,” Quinn chimes.
“I’ll make this quick,” Keith begins. “Alex gave us an ultimatum. He said we have forty-eight hours to either leave with him, or he leaves alone.”
“That’s good, though, to get rid of him?” I ask.
“That was my initial thought, too,” he responds. “But then Wiley brought up the thing I hadn’t thought of: he knows too much.”
A mutual understanding fills the room.
“I’d like to point out my first time being of use,” Wiley rejoices.
Keith smacks his arm lightly and mutters, “You know that’s not true.”
Wiley shrugs.
“Obviously we aren’t going with him.” His eyes sway to Max, and he continues, “But we can’t let him leave, either.”
Quinn asks the question the rest of us are thinking. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.”
“We could kill him,” Wiley submits, matter-of-fact.
A chill creeps through me at a rapid pace.
“That is an option,” Keith confirms.
Silence falls, and seconds tick by, filling me with a sad reality of knowing the only suggestion thus far is of killing a man.
“You can’t be serious; we can’t just kill him,” Quinn pleads.
“I’m open to any other alternative that doesn’t result in him running back to tell his friends about our location, or worse, that Max’s blood saved Skylar.”
“Maybe we reason with him? Convince him not to tell them about us,” she implores.
Keith shakes his head. “But how do we trust him? That’s been the issue the entire time. He’s clearly hiding something.”
“Then we don’t let him leave. We kidnap him, lock him up in the cellar until we can figure out what to do next,” she says desperately.
“Temporary solution, but I’m not opposed. He’s military-trained, incredibly savvy. I doubt we’ll be able to get away with it easily, let alone for an extended amount of time,” Keith counsels.
“And then we have to consider how pissed he’ll be if and when he gets free,” I add.
“I guess we’ll deal with that bridge when we cross it,” Wiley answers, a look on his face I’ve never seen before.
It makes me wonder what this world has done to him. This world has changed us all, some for the better, some for the worse.
“That settles it,” Keith declares. “Unless someone comes up with a better solution, we’ll lock him up for the time being.”
“How?” I ask
“Leave that to me. No one drink the coffee tomorrow morning.”
39
Quinn
I messed up and I don’t know how to fix it.
Max still isn’t awake, and according to every single bit of math I do, he should have been up by now. The sedation was just supposed to help him sleep, allow him to rest with ease and recharge his body to fight against whatever demon I forced into him.
But that’s not the case. The window of time where he should have naturally awoken has passed, and now, I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t help but assume the worst.
On paper it all made sense. His blood reacted against Skylar’s, fighting and essentially eliminating the virus. Even the little bit of blood we injected into Skylar had improved her condition slightly, and clearly, the procedure worked for her. But what if we did something wrong, what if we flooded his system too quickly and his body wasn’t able to fight back? What was meant to be a rescue has turned into a suicide mission.
I should have never let him talk me into this. I can barely even believe he managed to convince Keith, too, although Keith was heavily intrigued by the scientific part of the whole thing. I know he would never really do anything he thought would risk Max’s life, but maybe we weren’t thinking rationally. Skylar was right when she came to and immediately wanted the procedure to stop. She knew Max was at risk, and we were idiots for continuing, even if we thought it was to help her.
This strange silver lining—a friendship through the heartbreak—stripped away before I could even hold on to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for the friendship that has blossomed with Skylar, but Max and I grew close these past couple weeks, bonding over shared misery.
“You okay?” Skylar asks, chin resting on her knee while she hugs her legs in the recliner next to Max.
I shake my head.
She continues. “You two were close, weren’t you?”
“Not at first.” I laugh, remembering how he didn’t talk to me at first like he was some feral animal who couldn’t be bothered with a human. He was scared, terrified of losing his best friend, the love of his life. It wasn’t until he saw me, that he could let me in.
“What happened?” Skylar probes, but not in a jealous way, more curious at what she missed kind of way.
“He was lost for a while.” I glance at his pale face. “I think he was just so afraid of losing you that he couldn’t really comprehend what was happening.”
She repositions herself toward me, eager for more.
“He was angry, but justifiably. He didn’t know I was helping you. Nearly got into a fistfight with your dad when we put an IV in your arm.”
“No way,” she says in disbelief.
“Yeah way. We bickered with each other a couple times, and then I don’t even know what happened, but one day he snapped out of it and apologized. Thanked me for helping you. Trust me, I was just as shocked as you.”
“Wow,” she whispers.
“And then we talked. About my past, what happened. We sort of opened up to each other in our time of desperation. He was kind to me, and I felt like he knew, ya know? What it’s like to lose someone. I guess that kind of stuff will bring people together. Made me want to fight for you even more.” I struggle as the tears do their best to fall, and I do my best to keep them at bay. “I couldn’t save Cynthia, but I could save you, and at least one of us wouldn’t have to lose the person we loved forever.”
“I don’t know what to say, Quinn. I really am so sorry.”
“I can’t help but feel like it will be sort of all for nothing if you end up losing him in the process. I don’t mean that to sound as horrible as it does, obviously saving you was so incredibly important, but losing Max wasn’t part of the plan, and I have no idea what to do to save him.”
A person catches my attention from the door, and when I look up, I see Alex standing in the doorway.
“How’s he doing?” Alex asks, sounding more considerate than I expected.
“I don’t know.”
“May I?” he asks before entering the room completely.
I glance down at Skylar, noticing her stiffen and then standing, her back to Max like she’s creating a barrier between him and Alex.
He closes the gap cautiously, standing at the foot of the bed, overseeing Max.
“He looks like crap,” he says. “No progress at all?”
“Incredibly minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Steady with no drastic change, but also no deterioration either.”
“That’s a plus,” he adds.
“We’re hoping that time helps aid in any type of recovery, but at this point, it’s not seeming so great.” And just like that, I have an idea. Something that could get Alex out of here alive without him wanting to return for us.
I have to get him out of this room and grab Wiley and Keith for another meeting.
Skylar searches my face, and it worries me that my excitement may be showing too heavily, especially with the context of the conversation.
“I’ll leave you to it then.” He turns to walk away but then stops to add, “I hope you bot
h know I wish no harm on any of you. I truly am happy that they were able to save you, Skylar, and as much as I disagreed with the things Max did, I would never wish this upon him. He’s a good kid, he doesn’t deserve this.” He says his peace and exits the room.
With a double take to confirm he’s gone, Skylar urgently asks, “What the hell was that about? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I just have an idea. A Plan C.”
Her eyes widen with intrigue. “What is it?”
“Let’s get the guys first. This calls for a meeting.”
Maybe it’s a stupid idea, maybe it won’t work at all. But there’s still the chance that it will, and that has to be better than killing a man to keep a secret.
40
Wiley
Did I really suggest that we kill a man? Not a deranged man, or a mind-controlled man, but a man who legitimately saved my life and brought me here, to my family, all while risking his own life in the process.
Who have I become?
Part of me thinks that we can trust Alex, not necessarily with the whereabouts of our cabin or Max’s blood, but with being who he says he is, and working with a company trying to save us from this mess The Reformation caused. But then part of me is worried that Keith is right, and Alex is really some double agent or something crazy and is going to lead us to our deaths.
I am certain that we can’t trust him if he leaves. He will undeniably tell his group where we are, what we’ve been doing, and how vital Max is to helping figure out some kind of cure. There’s no way Keith will leave without Max, let alone Skylar or Quinn, and I’m not leaving without any of them, so we’re at a standstill. Max doesn’t appear to be waking up any time soon, not to mention even if he woke up right this second, he needs to recover before going back out into the world. So that leaves us with the obvious problem we’re trying to solve.
Alex can’t leave.
There’s the first option: we kill him.
But then that leaves us with the whole we killed a man in cold blood thing that we will all have to live with for the rest of our lives. It’s not like Alex is some horrible man who has caused us pain and suffering or kicked our puppy, he’s a genuinely decent person at his core. Conflicted, yes. Difficult, surely. Bossy, absolutely. But he’s a good man. And you can’t just go killing a good man without doing some kind of damage. But what if that good man knows the secret that could potentially put yours and your family’s lives in danger? Would that justify ending his life to save yours? How do you even begin to know what the future holds without seeing it through?
The second option is to kidnap him and lock him up in the cellar.
It’s not a bad idea; sure, beats killing him. But how are we even going to pull it off? Keith said not to drink the coffee tomorrow, so that has to mean he’s going to taint the coffee with a sedative or something to knock him out so we can secure him? Alex is smart; what if he doesn’t fall for it? And then there’s the chance that he does, and we lock him up. Then what? Eventually, we’re going to have to let him go or revert back to option number one: kill him. And at that point, not only do we have murder on our hands, but poisoning, kidnapping, and possibly torture, too.
“Hey,” Skylar says, poking her head into Keith’s makeshift lab.
Keith looks up from his endless piles of work.
“You two have a second? Quinn has another idea.”
Good. Hopefully something better than the seemingly inevitable assassination of Alexander Sanchez.
We walk the picture-frame-lined hallway in silence, filing into Max’s bedroom one at a time, Skylar closing the door behind her.
Quinn is smiling, giddy with whatever she’s about to say.
“Okay, so,” she begins quietly but loud enough for us to hear. “We’re worried about Alex telling his friends about Max’s blood, right? And that’s really the only reason why he would tell them about where we’re located, right?”
“Well, they want Keith, too, obviously,” I add.
“But they won’t want an emotionally distraught Keith,” she explains.
Keith scrunches his eyebrows. “I’m not following. Why am I emotionally distraught?”
“We fake Max’s death.” She says the words and then pauses, wide-eyed and waiting for a reaction. No one says anything so she rationalizes, “Okay, I know, it’s super morbid, and obviously not what we want to happen in real life, but Alex won’t need Max’s blood if he thinks Max is dead. He will be of no use to him at that point. And Keith,” she points across the room to him, “you’ll be in no shape to leave with him, grieving the loss of your son. And clearly, he has no interest in me or you.” She points to me. “No offense or anything.” She smiles warmly.
I return the gesture, knowing damn well that Alex would rather chop off his legs than take me with him.
“What if he wants proof? What if he wants to see the body?” Keith questions.
“Today when he came in, he asked for permission, which leads me to think he’s at least respectful enough to not barge in, especially with you and Skylar losing your shit over his death. We mourn Max and attempt to get Alex out of the house. And the incredibly obvious, we don’t have to kill him.”
It’s not a terrible idea. Definitely not foolproof but ends in not having to kill anyone, at least literally.
“All of this is banking on numerous variables starting with the most obvious, if he’ll even buy it. And then whether or not he’ll just let me off the hook. He’s been adamant about The Resistance specifically requesting me. And then, he still knows how to find us, and who knows how many people he’ll end up telling. This cabin is our only shot at surviving whatever is happening out there. We have no backup if this cabin becomes compromised.”
Skylar chimes in for the first time. “It’s not a bad idea.”
Keith resumes. “No, it’s not a bad idea at all. And I have to admit its lack of committing murder seems appealing. But there are still so many unknowns and what-ifs. Just let me think about it, okay?” He scans the room for any rebuttal. “Let’s talk again after dinner.”
41
Alex
Days tick by, and with each moment passing, I feel further detached from this group. I didn’t expect to be one of them, but I hadn’t anticipated this. I thought bringing Wiley here would show them good faith, allow them to trust me. I was under the impression we would arrive at the cabin, fill Sinclair in on the details, and then head out, to join The Resistance.
I could have never anticipated that they would be this well-off on their own. This place is a prepper’s dream; minus the ability to protect them from a nuclear bomb, there are renewable resources to last an indefinite period. The state-of-the-art water filtration system is genius, which runs completely off the grid with stored solar powered energy. I don’t know what Keith had in mind when he built this place, but he’s prepared for the long haul.
Another thing I hadn’t considered is that one of them would have been infected and that another in the group had a blood type capable of bringing her back to life, which according to any and all research I’ve seen, is impossible.
I didn’t realize the group would be so attached to each other, let alone their precious cabin in the woods. That’s what I get for letting my basic human elements slip away again.
People care, people love, people fight for their own.
I was that way once. I cared, I loved deeply, I fought, and I lost; I lost the most important thing in my life and I will forever be changed. Now, I will do everything in my power to defeat the ones who stole my everything.
I inhale deeply, closing my eyes, and with my exhale, I scan the room. A small but cozy spare bedroom I was gifted upon my arrival, where I’ve since spent most of my time. Wiley opted for the couch in the living room, even though I offered. He had insisted, making a joke about how most of the group has already seen him in his underwear. To be honest, I was grateful for the room, for the privacy, the actually comfortable bed to lay my head. If anything, this has be
en a pleasant vacation from the shitshow that is life.
An old wooden dresser fills the space next to the bedroom door, laden with photos in frames of smiling faces and trinkets that look like a child made them. The walls are painted a muted lilac, perhaps even grey with a hint of purple. A thick, deep-blue comforter lines the full-sized bed. Everything in the space seems to be mismatched but remains clean, and well kept, like someone preserving an old piece of artwork.
Presently, I sit in a creaky rocking chair in the far corner with a direct line of sight to the door, notebook in hand, preparing an update for my superiors. I continue to struggle with what to write. Sinclair disregarded the fact that he’s one of the best chemical engineers in what’s left of the United States, the fact that he could prove useful in helping us all. He would rather stay in his little slice of heaven, with what remains intact of his family.
It’s not exactly like I can say: His son’s blood could be the key to our survival.
What kind of man would I be, or father that I was, if I threw his son under the bus like that? We don’t even know if Max is going to pull through. The procedure never should have worked on Skylar, let alone bring Max back.
I can’t put most of this in my report. I’ll have to cover it up, only giving bits and pieces. I’ll say that I brought Wiley here and Sinclair’s group member was infected, she died, and the group refused my persistent offering of safety. But what if they don’t buy my story? They know how persuasive I can be, and they know that I know how important Sinclair is. I would be a fool for not dragging him to The Resistance.
The other alternative would be to say Wiley died or became infected before we reached his group. That he hadn’t given me enough information to find the cabin. That Sinclair is in the wind and that we should move along. But I’d have to come up with a convincing enough story as to how and why Wiley died, because with me, there are no casualties, not unless I intend there to be.