Graham's Resolution Trilogy Bundle: Books 1-3

by A. R. Shaw

  “This is the first time I’ve had all test subjects show no sign of the virus. There was no increase in temperature, no runny noses, no weight loss, and no loss of activity, but they do show strong antibodies.”

  For a while Steven acted bored, but as she babbled on he soon realized what she was saying—something he hadn’t heard before: strong antibodies. She’d tried over and over for months, and now, she’d finally developed a viable vaccine.

  He ignored her babbling while he digested the information. He lifted one eyebrow and said, “Wait a minute. Are you saying you created the vaccine? For real? You did it?”

  She nodded, and to his surprise, tears started flooding down her cheeks. Her shoulders heaved with suppressed sobs.

  Steven got up off the lab stool with arms opened wide and yelled, “You did it? You did it!”

  He lifted her up and spun her around a few times, then set her back down carefully. He fixed her collar while she adjusted her glasses. “Oh, my God! Why doesn’t everyone know about this?” he asked as the realization set in.

  “Because I wanted to be sure my data was correct. I wanted to finish checking the results last night, but Dalton wouldn’t let me stay, so I came out early this morning.”

  “That bastard! Is the vaccine ready for the first round?”

  “No, I’m using the cell-cultured method, so the process should take about four weeks; then we can begin giving the first injections.”

  “So you’re saying that once we are inoculated and show antibodies to this one, we can interact with the carriers?”

  “Yes. Full immunity will take about two weeks, but yes,” she nodded, glassy-eyed. “It means Addy can be with her dad again.” It took all of Clarisse’s strength to keep her voice from cracking as she revealed the triumph. Steven reached out to hold her again, more softly this time; even the Quarantine Queen needed a hug now and again. He held her there for a moment until she recovered and pulled away from him again.

  “One thing no one knows yet, though, is if this virus will naturally mutate next season. We have to assume, based on recent history, the likelihood that the virus will continue to transform. We’re still not safe from H5N1, and neither are the carriers, for that matter. Next year we could be dealing with a much different mutated form of the avian flu—call it a subtype variation. The only thing now that might save us is this drastic decrease in population allowing a greater buffer between societies.”

  “Will this vaccine give us any immunity to another mutated subtype form?”

  “It’s possible, but not something we can count on.”

  “Can we tell everyone?”

  “Um, I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t see why not, but instead of having everyone on edge again for four weeks, why not just keep the secret to ourselves until we have only one more week to go?”

  “I see your point, Clarisse, but you have to tell Dalton. And I can’t not tell Rick, he’ll do something evil to me for sure. If he finds out I knew and didn’t tell him . . .” Steven shuddered at the thought.

  “I tried to tell Dalton, but he doesn’t want to hear about a cure anymore.”

  When he heard her say that, Steven diverted his attention away from what he thought Rick might do to him and gave her his attention, nodding in understanding. They’d been through so much, and after a while, like Dalton, many people built a shield to protect themselves from going through the cycle of hope, crushing disappointment, and desperation over and over again.

  “Well, I’ll let Rick know, with the disclaimer that we don’t announce until the last week. And you must tell Dalton; he needs to know.” As Steven headed for the door, he added, “Great job, Clarisse, you saved us all again.”

  20 Marcy Moves

  Marcy closed the guys inside the wretched house. Dawn came in a mist of blue with everything in sight frozen. The evergreen trees loomed like dark imposters. Though the snow had left the ground piled high in drifts; she could barely make out the lead line. After carefully descending the slick and rickety porch steps, she ran out the long driveway to the Scout, careful not to slip on exposed ice; the last thing she wanted to do was to injure herself and be of no help to the men.

  Though the whiteout had dissipated, snow still swirled with sharp gusts of wind, stinging her exposed, tear-streaked cheeks. She began to run faster along the rope line left on the ground until she spotted another rifle laying half buried under crusted snow.

  After picking up the gun, she eyed the spotlight poking through the snow farther ahead. Either the two guys had managed to throw the gun and light when they were attacked, or the woman had seen no need for them or had missed them altogether. The visibility then had been nil.

  Marcy tried to push the terrible memories out of her vision, but they returned in flashes. A shot in the dark. A mad woman astride Sam. A butcher knife raised high. Her own finger pressing the trigger. The blast of sound when her weapon fired. The blood that splattered against Sam. I killed her. I killed her. Forever, the mad woman would remain in her mind, branded as the one I killed.

  Graham’s “no regret” rules were there for a reason, but the statute didn’t stop Marcy’s stomach from dry heaving or her mind from remembering. She tried to focus on what she needed to do now but flashed back to Campos, remembered horror, the newer vision of blood on the wall. Blood of the one I killed.

  The nausea would not subside, though what had just happened seemed like a dream, a nightmare. One should be able to tell when tragedy strikes because the drag in time, right before the event, seemed scripted now, and somehow slowed, with colors more saturated and conversations foretold. As if she might somehow recognize the pattern now, she would predict when a tragic event might happen again and avoid another tragedy. She saw herself again as she leaned over the seat and kissed Mark. Even then she’d known Sam would have to go find him, knew she shouldn’t have let them go, should have somehow stopped them. But she hadn’t. And now she would forever be the one who killed another.

  She retched again and again, bent to retrieve the spotlight, and fell. She wanted nothing more than to curl up somewhere and sleep, to forget all of it, but something told her to get up.

  Graham. The voice was Graham’s. He’d kept her alive once, and she knew she needed to keep moving or else Mark and Sam would die from their injuries and then their deaths would be on her conscience too. Her head spun, and her hands were frozen through her gloves to the ground as she braced herself still with a stream of fluid still hanging from her bottom lip and nose. She closed her eyes and pulled her hand away from the ice. She wiped her mouth and sat farther back. Then she took several deep breaths of the icy cold air and thought of Mark inside, needing her, and pushed herself up off the ground without looking down and made her way farther to the truck.

  The drive ahead would be on the icy roads. She needed to get herself together—and fast.

  Marcy quickly untied the line and flung it into the snow bank, then opened the passenger side door and climbed in. I must have closed it out of habit. Good thing, or the battery would be dead for sure. Shards of glass littered the driver’s seat. Marcy took off her knit cap and used it to brush the sharp pieces off the seat and out the driver’s side door.

  With the keys in the ignition she tried to turn the engine over but all she got was a small attempt at life.

  Marcy rocked back into the driver’s seat and said to herself as Graham would have lectured her, “It’s just cold. Don’t flood the engine.” She looked ahead of her at the derelict old white house in the distance. I have to get the damn truck moving—now. She gave the key a second try, again the rumbling dragged on, and she said, “Come on!” Finally the engine finally roared to life. She almost cried. “Oh God, thank you.”

  “Okay, now I’ve got to drive the truck into the ditch?” She remembered what Sam had told her, but now she doubted that logic. The truck rolled into the ditch in the pitch dark of night, and Sam wasn’t here to look the situation over in the light of this new morning.


  With one wheel over the side of the ditch, Marcy slid out of the driver’s door with the engine running. She had to get an idea of the direction she needed to go. She instantly recognized the sunken footprints of her assailant and how she had fallen into the snow and then climbed out on the other side of the incline. Marcy chased those memories away and studied the placement of all four wheels and how she might maneuver the Scout. If she didn’t do this and managed to turn the wrong way, the delay in getting help from home might mean the death of them all.

  “God! Why don’t we have cell phones or tow trucks?” she screamed out loud, mainly to interrupt the cold quiet around her to remind herself that she was alive. “Okay, Sam said to drive straight into the ditch and keep the truck straight to the driveway.” But the more she looked at the depth of the ditch with the deep tracks from the woman’s escape and how much snow accumulation there was, there was no way that made any sense to her.

  “There’s no friggin’ way that’s going to work. Why can’t I just back the truck out and then go forward?” If Sam were to see what she saw, he’d agree with her.

  Right. She was here and he wasn’t. The job was hers to do, so she’d do it—her way. She checked out the back tires and where Sam had previously dug into the snow and ice in his attempt to reverse last night. He’d dug shallow divots in the ground.

  She began looking around for anything she could get her hands on that would help provide grit and traction. Spotting a cluster of trees across the street, she tramped through the snow and pulled off several pieces of bark casings and gathered armloads of sticks and debris to put under the back wheels.

  “Okay, let’s give this a try,” she said, the sound of her own voice in the silence giving her courage. Although Graham had taught both girls more about the art of driving since their first adventurous attempt, she still wasn’t totally comfortable behind the wheel. She moved the stick into R like the first time, when she’d learned by trial and error, because then she’d had wild man-eating dogs on her tail.

  She applied a little gas and could feel the tires spin before they caught on the brush she’d laid down behind them. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she felt the front end come to rights and lurch up and backward. “Oh, thank God, thank God!” she cried.

  “Okay, okay,” she said quickly to herself as she let the tires roll backward another five feet and clear of the forward obstacle, then moved the stick to D.

  Marcy didn’t precisely follow the long driveway. She was careful and drove where the path made sense, avoiding drifts and favoring the few open graveled areas where she could gain more traction. Even with four-wheel drive and snow tires, driving conditions were treacherous.

  She pulled up as close to the front door of the house as possible and jumped out of the truck, leaving the engine running. When she opened the door, she heard an awful noise that sounded like someone drowning.

  Sam held Mark and the boy had a death grip on his forearms, his face nearly blue, his eyes wild, as he struggled for breath. She’d seen this before, but this was Mark, not Campos, and she jumped into action. She understood his panic as Sam tried desperately to hold him still with one hand and to cut a hole in his windpipe with the other.

  “Marcy! Find a straw, a pen, anything small and hollow. Quick, he’s going to suffocate.”

  Marcy left the front door open and frantically ran around the small, filthy house but soon gave up as she remembered there were a few straws and pens in the glove box of the truck. She rushed through the opened doorway to the truck, grabbed what she needed, and flew back.

  When she returned, Mark’s eyes were rolling backward and she feared the worst. She handed Sam the straw, stripped of its paper wrapper. He grabbed the tube and pinched one end and stuffed the end through a hole he’d already cut in the boy’s throat.

  “Breathe, Mark—God dammit, breathe!” Sam yelled.

  He did, sucking in as deep a breath as the small hole in his trachea permitted, but it clearly wasn’t enough, and the wild-eyed panic returned. Sam had to grip him by the shoulders to get his attention. “Slow down, don’t panic. Take one long slow breath,” he said, trying to calm the boy down as Marcy watched, terrified she would lose him.

  They could not have been closer to watching him die. She had never seen Sam scream or panic. She knew he’d really feared for Mark’s life. Soon Mark got the idea and began trying to control the urge to gasp for air. Marcy knelt down to him and held his hand. He looked up at her and wiped one of her tears away after he regained control of himself.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she promised him. Please make it so! she begged silently for both of them.

  With the knife he’d used to make the incision, Sam shortened the straw now sticking out of Mark’s neck. “Marcy, get the tape and find something clean we can wrap around his neck,” Sam said, out of breath himself.

  She ran back out to the truck and grabbed one of Mark’s clean t-shirts and a roll of duct tape they’d packed for the hunt.

  As she came back in Mark watched Sam, who had slumped back against the remains of an old ratty couch. Clearly, his injuries were taking a toll as well.

  Marcy ripped a few pieces off the roll and placed the tape around the tube to hold the device still. “Do you think you can walk?” she asked Mark after his breathing had steadied.

  He raised his right hand and gave her a thumbs up—just to make her smile, she suspected. He wanted to get out of there as much as she did. She helped him stand while he held the straw in place with one hand. He leaned forward once he was up, and for a minute, she thought he was passing out again from the lack of oxygen, but he strengthened again and she led him out to the truck. She put him in the backseat, and he used his feet to push himself farther across, then lay down. When his breathing steadied again she knew she could risk leaving him.

  She returned for Sam, who seemed barely conscious as he stared at the form on the floor and the spread of blood in a growing puddle.

  “Sam, come on, let’s go.”

  He sat silently, as if sifting through the events. She eyed him, worried about what he might say or what judgment he might make.

  “Why’d you shoot her again, Marcy?” he finally asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Let’s talk about it later, Sam. We need to go now.”

  “I’m not judging you, Marcy, I just want to know. She was clearly dead the first time.”

  She, too, stared at the body. “Graham’s rule; make sure or it’ll cost you later.” After a moment, she was able to meet his gaze. “I had to be certain, Sam. You were hurt. I didn’t know if Mark was alive or dead. So I did what Graham taught me. I’m not proud of it, but it needed doing and I was the only one who could.”

  Sam looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Let’s go, girl.”

  She helped him up, and his weight leaned on her, then away from her, then back again. “World’s going in circles,” he said.

  “Just close your eyes, Sam, I’ll get you there.”

  She led him out to the truck, stopping and starting, taking as much of his weight as she could as he staggered. When she got him there, she buckled him into the front passenger’s seat, grabbed a tarp from the back and folded the plastic enough to fit over the driver’s window. She taped it in place. She couldn’t see out of that side, but she had to keep heat in the cab while she drove home.

  With that taken care of she scanned the area for the best way out, then climbed up behind the wheel. She grabbed the shift knob to put the truck in reverse, and Sam placed his hand on hers.

  “You did good, Marcy. Good job.”

  “Thank you, Sam. Let’s go home.” She looked back at Mark, whom she loved now as much as Macy—even more. She smiled at him as he gave her the thumbs up again, and she backed the truck around, eyeing the opened front door of the house, hoping to never see the image again.

  She headed out on a long trip over icy roads back to Graham’s camp, toward home.

&
nbsp; 21 McCann

  McCann held a toothpick in the side of his mouth. It wiggled from time to time as he chewed on it, focusing on the delicate job of stitching up the torn tissues of Graham’s leg wound. That’s when he realized he didn’t know the man’s name. He recognized him as the one who had stopped him in the street months ago and invited him up to Cascade.

  He recalled again the blue-eyed girls he’d seen in the truck at the time, and a young boy, so he knew the guy would be missed. Certainly someone would come searching for him soon.

  Nearly done with the last stitch, McCann left in a piece of a flexible straw to help drain out any fluids that accumulated in the wound. There would be more swelling, and almost certainly the wound would become infected. Inserting a way for the discharge to release would help the healing process by his way of thinking. Plan ahead, his father had always taught him.

  The man already ran a fever and mumbled off and on. McCann had poured whiskey down his throat whenever an opportunity, between the mumblings, would present itself. McCann hoped the stitching pain he’d inflicted wouldn’t be remembered once the man awoke. He was used to working on cattle, after all, not men, and cows didn’t tend to hold grudges after surgery. Men held grudges and acted on them with revenge.

  With the last suture tied off, McCann snipped the ends and then wiped the sweat from his own forehead. He kept everything as clean as possible. After he had cleaned himself up, he sponged off Graham’s leg and shoulder again, hoping to minimize the risk of any infection.

  He covered the leg wound with several large gauze bandages, staggering them to fit the large area, and taped them down lightly so they could easily be redressed. The puncture wounds on the man’s arm needed only three small stitches. The other ones he left to heal on their own. He had cleaned the deep wounds out as well as possible.

  McCann listened to his patient’s chest for any sounds of lung problems. He thought his ribs were at least bruised, if not cracked. His breathing sounded good, but large contusions already appeared. In McCann’s estimation, the man’s chest would be black and blue by morning.