Resurrection America

by Jeff Gunhus

  She reached the opening where the elevator had been. The opening had a waist-high accordion gate across it that the soldiers in the elevator had left half open. It may have been an OSHA safety violation, but it suited her fine. She hung back and listened intently, staying out of sight. There were some distant sounds of machinery, but there were no voices. That was the important thing.

  Quickly, she sneaked a look into the room and then darted back to safety. She liked what she saw, just a storage area for the trailers and without guards.

  She turned the corner, gun up by her head, pointed to the ceiling like she’d seen in the cop movies. A quick scan confirmed there were no people in the room, but she did spot a camera mounted on the wall. She ducked for cover behind one of the trailers, hoping no one had been paying attention to the video feed for the few moments when she was exposed.

  She knew where she was. The trailers filled a space that used to be a storage facility when she worked in the lab. It was the last of three connected storage rooms before the central hub of the lab complex. The access point to her sensors on the data trunk was on the opposite side of that area. Her plan was to work toward that spot as best she could, looking for any opportunity to communicate with the outside world. She figured there would be cameras along the way and that posed a problem.

  The other side of the storage room was lined with standing shelving units filled with plastic bins, labeled on the outside. MREs. Batteries. Clothing. Bingo.

  She sized up the direction of the surveillance camera and decided to risk a belly-crawl to the shelves. She made short work of it and ducked into what she approximated would be a blind spot for the camera. She reached up and pulled one of the bins off the shelf and onto the floor next to her.

  There were overalls inside, black with a zipper up the front. She found a size small and pulled it on over her clothes. A hat would have been perfect, but there was nothing like that in the box. Her hair was a problem. She’d only seen male soldiers so far, so a ponytail bobbing around on the surveillance camera wasn’t going to do the trick. She pulled Rick’s knife from her pocket, grabbed the ponytail with her left hand and sawed through it. It took longer to get through than she thought it would, but she did it. She went to work on the rest of her hair, cutting it as short as possible. She figured that and bulky overalls might fool the camera, but if she met someone face-to-face she was screwed.

  She stood, sliding the knife into one pocket and the gun into the other. She walked out of the room, trying her best to look like she belonged there.

  The next room over was also filled with trailers. She spotted a canvas duffle bag on the ground and snatched it up. Fortunately, it wasn’t very heavy so she hefted it onto her shoulder, blocking her face from the camera mounted to her right. She was about to leave the room for the next when another section of the supply area caught her eye.

  Quickly, she changed her direction and kneeled next to a metal locker box. She opened the duffel and emptied out a small toolbox and a folded-up bio-chem suit. She then filled the duffel with as many of the items from the locker box as she thought she could reasonably carry. She wasn’t sure how she was going to use them, but she knew they would come in helpful at some point.

  Rezipping the bag, she hefted it onto her shoulder. It was heavy and felt more awkward, but the contents made the trade-off well worth it.

  She got through the second room without incident. But at the entrance to the third storage room before the main hub, she stutter-stepped to an abrupt stop.

  This room had three trailers in it, two empty, but one half full of bodies being unloaded. Soldiers worked in tandem, most of them in black tactical outfits but a few thankfully dressed in the same black overalls she wore. The people were being carried off the trailer and placed on large wheeled gurneys that held four bodies at a time. Once a gurney was loaded, a single soldier pushed the whole thing through the wide door cut into the rock wall and rolled it into the next room.

  The men looked tired and sweaty. There was no chatter, only the occasional grunt when throwing one of the bodies around. She contemplated inserting herself in the line-up to push one of the carts, but immediately rejected the idea. She felt that if any of the men took a second to look up from the job in front of them, they’d call her out from across the room. Her only chance was to walk right past them, hoping that how busy they were, combined with the duffle bag on her shoulder, would be enough.

  Certainly, the only reason she’d gotten this far was that the men had zero reason to believe someone might infiltrate this deep behind their defenses. She had a feeling that if the men had the slightest indication that they needed to be on the lookout for anything, she would have been caught almost immediately. It just underscored how valuable Rick’s distraction had been. She wondered if he was safe. Or if he was still even alive.

  She shook the thought away, focusing on getting through this room and into the main hub. Taking a wide angle away from the nearest of the soldiers, and keeping the duffle bag on her shoulder, she walked quickly through the space with her head down and her eyes on the floor.

  She was so shocked to make it through without being caught that she was well into the next room before she looked up.

  When she did, she stopped in place, frozen. The duffle bag slowly slid from her shoulders and landed with a thud on the ground.

  The scene that stretched in front of her turned her stomach even as it stirred in her an indescribable excitement.

  Her humanistic side thought what she saw sprawled ahead was horrific. But she couldn’t escape the fact that to her scientific eye, it was completely mesmerizing. There was nothing else it could be. There’d been hints at Genysis that a breakthrough was possible, but nothing like this.

  With one look, she knew exactly what Keefer had built. And, in a terrifying moment of clarity, she understood that he had the power to make good on his promise to change the world forever. And it wouldn’t be the resurrection of America. All the power would be in Keefer’s hands. And she could only imagine the terrible things he would do with it.

  She picked the bag back up and hurried through the open space, feeling more pressure than ever to find a way to stop him.

  49

  “You son of a bitch,” Rick said. “Let them go.”

  “But don’t you see?” Keefer said. “This is perfect. You said you wouldn’t kill faceless masses to save those you care about. Here’s your chance to prove it.”

  “I never said that. I’m a soldier, of course I killed people to save America. I killed Jihadis by the hundreds.”

  “Only enemy combatants?” Keefer said. “That’s bullshit and you know it. It was impossible over there to separate them out. How many women and children did you kill? How many did we all kill?”

  Rick grabbed the sides of his head, pain pounding with each heartbeat. He didn’t want to think of it. He didn’t want the images back in his mind.

  “Not on purpose …” he mumbled.

  “This isn’t 60 Minutes, Rick. Not some official board of inquiry. I know what it was like over there. I know what it’s like everywhere. Sometimes you have to make the hard decision. Sometimes innocent people lose their lives.” He pointed to the screen. “Which people will it be? The two people you love? Or the two thousand strangers? I’ll let you choose.”

  Keefer walked all the way up to Rick and grabbed him by the arm. His eyes were wild, out of control.

  “Pick the two thousand people out there and show me my plan’s wrong. Go on, tell me to kill the woman and the boy and to release the rest of the town. Show me that I’m wrong to save what I love at the expense of a world that wants to kill us.”

  Rick searched the man’s face, looking for a sign that the offer was real. Trying to understand where all of this was coming from. He held out hope that the whole thing was really a plea from Keefer, something subconscious that was looking for a reason not to pull the trigger on whatever horrific weapon he had at his disposal.

  “You d
on’t need me to show you,” Rick said. “You know that killing all those innocent lives can’t be justified. No matter what you say.”

  “Choose, Rick,” Keefer said. “The ones you love or two thousand strangers. Who dies?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I choose,” Rick said. “You’d never let them all go.”

  “I will. I swear to God I will.” Keefer’s eyes welled with tears. “Don’t you understand the burden I have on my shoulders? Can’t you feel even a fraction of it? You only have to put two thousand to death to save two people. I have to execute seven billion to save my country.”

  Rick put out his hands, gesturing Keefer to calm down. “Easy. There’s no certainty America will die if you do nothing,” Rick said. “Don’t you get it? You’re not trapped. You don’t have to do this.”

  Keefer stepped back, his expression hardening, the momentary look of uncertainty turning back into a stone mask. “You still don’t get it, do you? If Brandon Morris and Genysis can develop this weapon, don’t you think someone else will discover it? Do you think the Jihadis would hesitate to destroy us? Would China? We have to strike preemptively while we can.”

  Rick felt a surge of panic at the mention of Genysis. For a second, he considered whether Cassie had betrayed him. Whether she’d been on the other side of the equation the entire time. But he rejected the idea. She’d taken risks right alongside of him in town. Done things that could have sent the operation sideways. No, she wasn’t part of it. But if Keefer was using some kind of Genysis technology like they’d thought, then the chance of Cassie stopping it just increased.

  Keefer made a hand signal and then shouted, “We’re running out of time.” On the screen, Dahlia’s head jerked toward the camera. The audio was turned on. “What do you choose, Rick? Do I kill them or not? Your decision.”

  “Rick? Oh my, God,” Dahlia screamed. “Help!”

  “Dahlia, I’m here!” Rick cried out.

  “The drone can kill her and the boy in a split second,” Keefer said, his voice rising. “Tell me to do it and I’ll set the rest of them free. I swear it.”

  “Rick!” Dahlia screamed, curling her body around Charlie. “No!”

  Rick looked back and forth between the screen and the door.

  “What do you choose?” Keefer said.

  “Rick!”

  “Make a decision!” Keefer roared.

  “I choose them,” Rick said, barely audible.

  “What was that?”

  “I choose them!” Rick yelled. “I want them.”

  Keefer waved his hand and the rear door opened.

  Dahlia stood there holding Charlie in her arms, her body wracked with sobs. Rick ran to her and hugged her. She didn’t say a word, but turned and clung to him, sobbing.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said, tears streaming down his cheek. “Is Charlie okay?” he asked, looking down at the boy. His eyes were barely parted and stared through him, unfocused.

  Dahlia nodded. She wiped her eyes. “T … th … they said it’s just the drug … wearing off.” She looked up at him. “What is this place? What the hell is going on, Rick?”

  “It’s simple,” Keefer said, walking up the stairs toward them. “Rick here just saved your life. An act of love. And now, I intend to follow his example.” He patted Rick on the back. “Congratulations, you’re now part of the resurrection.”

  Keefer walked out of the room and past the guards. Two drones floated up from the ground, one oriented to Rick and the other on Dahlia. The guards waved them forward, so Rick took Charlie from Dahlia, his tiny body dead weight in his arms. He put the boy’s cheek against his and then kissed him. Rick knew he had to focus on the danger they were still in, but being reunited with Dahlia and Charlie, actually holding the boy in his arms after thinking they were dead, was almost too much to bear. Dahlia wrapped her arm around his waist and they followed Keefer. The drones hovered silently behind them.

  “What’s happening?” Dahlia whispered as they walked.

  Rick shifted Charlie, so he could carry him in one arm, and freed the other to pull Dahlia in close to him. He kissed her cheek and used the moment to whisper, “We’re just trying to slow him down. Buy as much time as possible.”

  “Is there help on the way?” she whispered back, her eyes searching his.

  He heard the sudden hope in her voice and hated to steal it from her, but she deserved the truth. He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. But for some reason he wants me alive. He knows he can control me with you and Charlie. As long as he wants to keep me around, you’re both safe.” It was mostly true. Whatever Keefer’s breakdown had been about, his apparent moment of self-doubt seemed to be over. Rick wasn’t sure how long before Keefer decided to remove him as a distraction.

  He decided not to say anything about Cassie in case he was overheard. And he didn’t want to give Dahlia false hope. For all he knew, Cassie had doubled back out of the tunnel once he was captured and had tried to go for help. Or she might have already been captured or killed, although he felt fairly certain Keefer wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to hang that over him. There was still a chance she was somewhere in the mine, trying to find a way to stop the madness.

  Keefer waited in front of a metal door. “We’re here. It’s time for me to show you how America will rise again.”

  50

  Rick walked through the door, still carrying Charlie. He was all too aware of the drones hovering nearby and he held no misconception about how fast he would be shot down if he made a move against Keefer. Besides, he was too mesmerized by what he saw in the room to think about an attack. All he could think about was how quickly things had gone from the strange to the completely bizarre.

  The large room had been transformed into a hospital operating theater with white walls, bright lights, and banks of monitors and computers. In the center of the room, lined up next to one another, were four gurneys, each with a patient on it dressed in a white hospital gown.

  The beds were inclined at a forty-five-degree angle. Thick straps crossed over the patients’ chests, holding them in place. There were two IVs, one in each arm, a plastic oxygen tube in their noses, and EKG wires attached to their skin. Monitors on a cart, ubiquitous in hospitals, displayed heart rhythm, pulse and blood oxygenation levels. A third monitor showed a three-dimensional image of a human brain, colors flashing across the surface.

  Rick guessed this image came from the piece of medical equipment he’d never seen before. A helmet of soft, malleable material stretched from the patients’ eyebrows, up over their scalps, covering their eyes and ending at the base of the neck. It was thick, maybe two or three inches. That in itself wasn’t the disturbing thing.

  Positioned over each head was an articulated robotic arm, the end of which held a disk mimicking the curve of the scalp beneath it. Protruding from it were dozens of needles, six to eight inches in length, that hovered just above the helmet.

  The room was filled with technicians, looking very different from the burly soldiers Rick had seen so far. This was a group of scientists, most of them very young, perhaps in their early thirties.

  “Oh my God,” Dahlia said next to him. She pointed at the patient in the second bed from them.

  It was Bertie.

  Rick lunged toward her.

  The drones that had been quietly hovering on either side flew in between him and the patients. Red targeting lasers shone out, putting a red dot on his chest and head.

  Keefer held up his hands. “Easy. We don’t want our little friends taking your head off, do we?”

  “What are you doing to her?”

  “I should have warned you,” Keefer said. “But this is a good place for her. She’s safer here than the others will be.”

  “Get her up,” Rick said. “Get her off that bed.”

  Keefer shook his head. “I want you here, Rick. I do. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. But if you don’t calm down I’m going to have a drone shoot the
boy. Do you understand?”

  Dahlia stepped between the drones and Charlie.

  “Tell me you understand,” Keefer said.

  “I understand,” Rick whispered, unable to take his eyes off Bertie’s face.

  One man, distinguished by his dark complexion and silver mane of shoulder-length hair, walked up to Keefer, eyeing Rick as he did.

  “Everything all right?” the man asked with a faint Indian accent.

  Keefer smiled then pointed to each in turn as if they were at a dinner party. “Rick Johnson. Dahlia. And her son Charlie. This is Dr. Kalabi, our head scientist. The good doctor’s entire family was killed by a terrorist bomb on a New York subway. He’s someone who understands the darkness in the world all too well.”

  Dr. Kalabi looked away, seemingly embarrassed by the introduction. His anxiety over their presence was obvious. “Do they need to be here?”

  Keefer frowned. “They won’t bother anything. Besides, history should have outside witnesses.”

  Dr. Kalabi nodded, acquiescing. Then he turned and pointed to the four patients. “We are ready for stage one,” he said. “Mr. Morris is on standby video link. We waited per your instructions.”

  “Put him on the screen.”

  A large monitor on the far side of the room came to life. On it was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Brandon Morris.

  The feed was clearly bi-directional because his expression went from excitement to consternation in about the time it took to pick out Rick and Dahlia in the image.

  “Brandon,” Keefer said. “We’re here. We’re right on the edge. I told you our plans would work.”

  “What are they doing in the room?” Morris snapped. “That’s not in the plan.”

  “An operational adjustment,” Keefer said. “Don’t let it bother you.”

  Morris didn’t look happy, but he let it go. “And Cassie? Dr. Banks, I mean?”