by Kyla Stone
Willow could have hugged her, she was so happy. Hope filled her—a hope so huge she was almost afraid to let herself believe it. “That’s—that’s fantastic.”
She heard a noise down the hallway behind a door on the left. Someone coughing violently. She glanced at Mrs. Lee, confused. Amelia was in the room on Benjie’s right. She assumed the third room was empty.
Before Mrs. Lee could say anything, the door to the room opened. Harmony shuffled out, her expression tense beneath her helmet’s visor.
Before the door closed again, Willow glimpsed a skinny teenage boy with a shock of red hair and freckles sprinkled across a pale, drawn face. Nadira sat beside him in a protective suit, mopping his forehead with a damp cloth. His body trembled, drenched in sweat, tendons standing out on his neck and arms, handfuls of sheet clutched in his fists.
“Who is that?” Her stomach tightened.
Harmony sighed heavily. “My fifteen-year-old nephew, Carson. He was exposed several days ago when a stray dog bit him on a scouting mission. We followed emergency procedures and quarantined him immediately. We were hopeful the dog wasn’t infected . . . but yesterday, Carson started showing symptoms.”
Willow crossed her arms, hugging herself against the chill running down her spine. She thought about the dog with the scar that attacked her in the warehouse. She’d be infected along with Amelia and this boy Carson if not for that wolf appearing out of nowhere.
“I lost my daughter, Gracie’s mother, a month ago,” Harmony said. “Carson’s parents refused to come here when this whole thing started. By the time they believed it was real—it was too late.”
Willow didn’t know what to say. Harmony’s story was tragic, just like her own. She shuffled her feet and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
Harmony leaned against the wall and stared down at the gloved fingers of her suit, examining them as if she were imagining the manicure with the bright orange polish underneath. When she spoke again, her voice took on a raw edge. “Sometimes it feels like you’re barely holding on. What is there to live for, if not family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Keep your loved ones close, Willow. I’m praying Benjie is safe.” Her eyes lit up for a moment, her gaze sharp. “He’s a very special boy. So bright and full of life.”
Willow forced a smile she suddenly didn’t feel. Something shifted in the room; she felt colder than she had a moment ago. “I think so, too.”
Harmony left after Willow promised to help Gracie gather the eggs and feed the chickens before dinner. “There’s always more work to be done,” she said with another sigh.
Willow turned back to Mrs. Lee. She thought about Rihanna again, how glassy her eyes were the last time she’d seen her. How Amelia hardly coughed before collapsing yesterday after their escape from the warehouse, her body burning with heat. And the boy in the room next to Amelia, shaking and sweating. “What happens after the fever?”
“At the clinic in town where I worked, we followed the reports from the World Health Organization’s Global Public Health Information Network.” Mrs. Lee spoke as if she were reciting from a holotablet at a doctor’s office. “There’s a seventy-two-hour incubation period. On day four, mild coughing and sneezing sets in, not enough to feel sick, just enough to efficiently spread the contagion.
“As the disease advances through its latter stages, onset is acute with high fever, breathing difficulties, chronic coughing, and hemorrhaging from days ten through eleven or twelve. Bleeding occurs mainly from the mouth and eyes, but also the ears and other orifices. Respiratory failure and death come between days ten and fourteen.
“Some patients experience an adrenaline surge during the bleeding phase—they claim to feel better and try to escape confinement. It’s the virus’s last-ditch effort to spread itself.”
Willow remembered how Rihanna claimed it’d just been a stupid cold, then just the flu. She’d resisted medical treatment. She didn’t think she needed it. She didn’t want to waste her mom’s precious money. “It spread so fast because it mimicked other illnesses.”
“Correct.” Mrs. Lee’s mouth contorted. “The bioterrorists were maliciously clever. The bat influenza was already an epidemic, with millions of people complaining of colds, fevers, fatigue, and headaches. The engineered virus mimicked the same symptoms. Normally the key to containment is contact tracing—find patient zero, make a tree of everyone they had contact with and everyone those other people had contact with. In this situation, the CDC couldn’t do that. There were too many patient zeroes.”
She paused, swallowing hard. “Every day, the infected thought they only had a cold, so they continued to go out. They still touched their noses and mouths four times an hour, touching other surfaces at least three times an hour, on average. They flew on airplanes, went shopping, picked up their kids from school. By the time the first infected were sick enough to seek medical attention on day eight and nine, it was already too late.”
Willow shivered as they walked toward the decontamination chamber. “How many people died here?”
“Some. More than we’d like. Not as much as other communities.”
“And—what about everywhere else?”
“It wasn’t until two weeks in that the government and health agencies started to realize the staggering death toll. The virus is highly contagious with an extremely high mortality rate. By that point, hundreds of millions were infected and still spreading the virus like wildfire.
“Millions of people dropped like flies, more than the health agencies could even keep track of. They enacted the curfews and the travel bans, cordoned off cities and tried to separate the sick, but it was too late. On day eighteen, over one billion people died.”
She smiled grimly. “That’s the day the world as we knew it stopped working. No segment of the population was spared—doctors, government workers, soldiers, the poor and elite alike, military bases, government centers, exclusive gated communities, it didn’t matter. Day twenty was the last day of vlogger broadcasts and newsfeed updates. They announced half the world’s population was dead.”
Willow felt cold all the way to the marrow of her bones. “Half the world’s population is dead?”
Mrs. Lee cocked her head, studying her. “No, dear. That was day twenty, as I said. This is day fifty-five.”
Willow’s brain filled with sludge. It couldn’t seem to figure out the pieces of the puzzle. It felt like working out the worst math problem ever invented. She swallowed. “What—what does that mean?”
“Before the net went out, an epidemiologist from the CDC gave an interview on the newsfeeds. According to their projection models, within the next thirty to sixty days, ninety-four to ninety-six percent of the population would be wiped out. The holoscreen went dark less than five minutes later. It never came back on.”
Willow stared at her, uncomprehending.
“Two to three percent are likely immune,” Mrs. Lee continued. “But many of them have died or soon will due to the abrupt lack of health care—think of people with diabetes, cancer, pacemakers—plus accidents and other secondary diseases caused by millions of decomposing carcasses polluting water supplies.
“Another two to three percent are not immune but have protected themselves through isolation and early precautionary procedures. Several small towns were able to effectively seal themselves off and expel outsiders and anyone showing symptoms. Out of four hundred million Americans, less than ten million are still alive. How the rest of the world has fared, no one seems to know.”
She couldn’t handle any more information, not right now. It was too much.
She thanked Mrs. Lee and moved through the decon chamber in a daze. Inside a sealed chamber with pressurized air, she stripped her suit and placed it into a container marked ‘ultrasonic cleaner and sterilizer’. She dropped the gloves and paper booties into a biohazard bin, then stepped inside a tall aluminum box and turned on the disinfectant foam shower.
She sealed the door be
hind her, then stood naked and shivering in front of the heat blowers in the clean room. After she dressed in black utility pants and a loose pine-green T-shirt, she stepped into the sunlight, blinking.
All around her, people were caring for animals, preparing meals from scratch, or tending to hydroponic farms. It was like she’d stepped back a hundred and fifty years or more, but for the clothing and the occasional hovercart whooshing between buildings.
The sun still shone. The sky dared to be blue. A squirrel chattered at her from a nearby tree, whose leaves burned a dazzling orange and crimson. Nature would continue on without them, she thought dimly. The earth didn’t care about any of them—not her lola, not her aunts and uncles, not Rihanna or any of her school friends.
How many of them were dead because they were poor? The terrorists unleashed the virus in the poorest communities. Their hospitals and medical centers were the first to be overwhelmed, the first to be guarded by soldiers refusing the sick at gunpoint.
When people sought help for their sick mothers and grandparents and children in neighboring counties, the very checkpoints touted to save lives became the snares that doomed them. Entire neighborhoods were quarantined, trapping people in infected zones and virtually guaranteeing their fate.
She couldn’t begin to imagine the horror.
She moved without knowing her destination, her heart a ball of fire in her chest.
25
Micah
Micah and the others abandoned the truck behind a thick copse of trees further down the road and headed into the small town surrounding the FEMA center. Everyone carried guns, even Gabriel.
They followed Jericho as silently as they could as he jogged between houses, crossing overgrown lawns and clambering over fences, keeping the rising spire of the largest tent always in sight as they circled to the rear of the facility.
They crouched as they ran across the parking lot of a dated apartment complex about six stories high, the paint a faded, peeling dark brown. There was a strange stench in the air, like something singed or burning. They hugged the wall and crept to the end of the last row of buildings.
“Damn it,” Jericho said.
Past a low fence that bordered the apartment property was a huge open field, and beyond that, the plasma fence perimeter. There was far less security on this side.
Still, two drones patrolled the fence line with a single human soldier standing at a lookout station built into the top of the fencing. They couldn’t reach the guard or disarm the drones without crossing the field. They would be too exposed.
“What do we do now?” Micah whispered.
Russell spat out his gum. “Nothing to do.”
“We’ll try the far side,” Silas said.
Elise shook her head. “That’s the same. A huge open field all around that plasma fence. There’s no getting close.”
“We could crawl through the grass,” Micah offered.
“Maybe at night.” Jericho frowned. “There’s still no way to get inside the fence. The only entrance I’ve seen is the one crawling with soldiers.”
Micah stared at the fence. A humming noise came from inside, followed by a loud beeping. He could make out huge, lumbering shadows behind the crackling blue plasma. Some sort of electric machines.
What were they doing? What was happening in there? The hairs stood on the back of his neck. If only they could—
The apartments. He spun around, shielding his eyes as he gazed up at the aging complex. “We climb.”
“What are you mumbling on about?” Silas said.
“We can’t get inside or see through the fence. But maybe we can see over it.”
Jericho shoved his goggles over his eyes. He raised the rifle. “This could be dangerous. Stay behind me, be quiet, and for the sake of all that is holy, stay on your toes, people.”
Micah fixed his glasses, checked his gloves, and adjusted his mask, making sure it fit tight over his face. Adrenaline flooded his veins. He breathed deeply and whispered a silent prayer as they made their way around to the front of the building.
The door was locked, but the glass top half was busted out. Jericho reached inside and unlocked it. The door swung open.
They stepped inside, their feet crunching on broken glass. The fetid stench struck them like a solid wall. It was overwhelming—like rancid meat, rotten eggs, and raw sewage, the foul reek of decay and death.
Micah flung his hands over his face mask, as if that would help.
Three bloated, putrid bodies lay decomposing in the small foyer. One splayed on the floor directly in front of them. Two others leaned against the stairs, arms flaccid, heads lolling, like grotesque dolls.
Jericho lifted his fist, then gestured them silently toward the stairs. Acid burned the back of Micah’s throat. He could taste the rotting stench in his mouth. He choked back the nausea writhing in his gut.
He needed to keep it together. This was for Amelia. He could do this. He forced his gorge back down as he stepped gingerly over the bodies and the puddles of their assorted bodily fluids.
They climbed up the first flight of stairs, still covering their mouths and noses. The only sound was his own breath against his mask, the rapid thud of his heartbeat, and the distant hum of whatever machines were at work inside the FEMA perimeter.
They climbed the second flight. A soft dripping noise plop, plop, plopped from somewhere. Rust-colored handprints stained the railing.
Sweat slipped down the back of Micah’s neck. There’d been so much life here only a few weeks ago. Families, children, people longing for a better life. Now this place was a tomb. His fingers tightened on his rifle.
On the landing of the third floor, Jericho paused, lifting a closed fist. The group froze behind him. Micah strained his ears. He heard a faint, mechanized whine from above them.
Jericho lowered his mask to whisper, “Drone.”
Micah’s pulse raced. He looked up the stairwell and saw nothing but more metal grate stairs, the landing, and a glimpse of an empty, shadowy hall to the right.
Jericho crouched, gesturing for the others to do the same. “It’s an older model. The newer ones are dead silent. They’ll kill you before you know they’re there.”
“Where is it?” Micah asked.
“Forth floor.” Jericho cocked his head. “Sounds like it’s further down the hall, inside one of the apartments.”
“What do we do?” Elise’s face turned bone-white, but her voice remained steady.
“As soon as we’re on the same floor, the drone will be able to read our heat signatures.”
“Too bad we don’t have your drone,” Micah said. “It could save our asses again.”
Jericho’s lips twitched into a grim smile. “Alas, the Navy confiscated it.”
“So, we shoot the drone or knock it out the window.” Russell hefted the spiked bat he brought. “Easy peasy.”
“These militarized drones are all connected to a centralized cloud, a hive mind,” Jericho said. “The second we attack it, it will send a signal to alert the other drones and send the soldiers our exact GPS location and thermal image screen shots.”
“But the net is out.” Micah bit the inside of his cheeks. He couldn’t bear to just crouch here, letting every worst-case possibility loom large in his head. They needed to move.
“A government facility like this will have a local system online, I guarantee it.” Jericho grimaced. “If I had an electromagnetic pulse shredder, I could deactivate it from here.”
The mechanized whine grew louder.
“We’re screwed, then,” Silas muttered.
“The sensors are usually at waist and chest level,” Gabriel said. “We can crawl.”
Micah shot him a glance. “Usually?”
“He’s right.” Jericho jerked his finger to his lips. He spun and crept up the stairs like some deadly spider.
Micah helped Elise and then followed behind Gabriel and Silas, holding his breath, his gloved hands touching the stair treads
stained and infected with who-knows-what. He prayed his gloves wouldn’t rip, willed his roiling stomach not to turn on him, not now.
They crawled up the stairs to the fourth-floor landing, rounded the corner and kept going, silent and terrified. They didn’t stand until they reached the sixth and last floor.
The walls were grungy, trash scattered across the dingy carpet. Darkness bathed the long, narrow hallway, the only light streaming from an opened door midway down the hall.
They moved swiftly to the open door. Jericho and Silas slipped inside, guns up, quickly clearing each room before gesturing for Micah and the others to follow.
The apartment stank but not of death. The owner hadn’t died here, or at least, not recently. The singed smell was stronger, like something burnt. The group crowded around a sliding glass door that led to a tiny balcony.
Micah peered through his binoculars. He was right. They were high enough to partially see over the plasma fencing. And what he saw made his blood turn to ice.
Behind the white tents but within the perimeter of the fence was a wide expanse of field—or rather, what used to be a field. Dozens of mounds of dirt were pushed up all over; other sections were flattened down with pressed dirt.
Three automated digger machines dug a fresh pit. A second huge pit was already finished. Two more machines were stacking in long, floppy shapes wrapped in some kind of plastic.
Bodies filled the pit. Human bodies. Micah staggered, a sickening dizziness washing over him.
Jericho gripped his shoulder. “Keep it together.”
“Those are mass graves,” Elise said.
“They’re burning them first, then burying them.” Silas pointed to a third pit along the west side, where another digger dumped a load of dirt. Micah made out piles of ash and glinting shards of bone.
He shook his head, his brain refusing to compute what his eyes had already told him. Surely, he was wrong. This had to be some kind of mistake. The government was corrupt. Everyone knew that. But this? “No.”