by RJ Crayton
Concealed
Part 1 of the Virus series
By RJ Crayton
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Preview
About the Author
Also By RJ Crayton
Copyright 2016 RJ Crayton
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
They said it was extremely hard to get.
They said it wasn’t airborne.
They said we had nothing to fear.
They were wrong.
Her name was Mary. When all was said and done, Mary Mallon, known better as Typhoid Mary, had infected fifty-three people, killing three of them.
His name was Mark. In the first week, Mark Dayton infected 900 people directly; eventually 864 of them would die. It’s not all said and done. The virus Mark spread unknowingly is still ravaging the population and is still without a cure.
Chapter 1
Elaan stopped short, just outside the bedroom door. The female voice emanating from her father’s bedroom had halted her. He was supposed to be alone. She leaned in, her ear almost touching the door, and heard grainy microphone feedback followed by the call letters of a news station. It was a recording. Elaan froze, not sure if she should enter and tell her father to stop what he was doing or let him finish.
She heard the woman’s voice say, “This is Monica Maverick, and I’m here today talking to infectious disease specialist James Woodson about the deadly Helnoan virus.”
Her father was watching one of his early interviews, which meant he felt guilty. There was no way he couldn’t feel guilty, but guilt wouldn’t help their situation. She had to stop this. She took a deep breath, steeling herself to be more confident than a 17-year-old girl should have to be, and opened the door. She walked in the bedroom as Monica Maverick asked, “So you’re saying people here in the US are safe? We don’t have to worry about the Helnoan virus that’s killing so many in South America right now?”
“Turn it off,” Elaan said to her father, who was sitting on the edge of his bed with his laptop perched on his thighs. He didn’t look up. Elaan heard his recorded answer begin. The him a few months ago was full of righteous indignation: “Those people out there demanding quarantine for doctors, demanding locking people away for trying to heal the sick are just alarmists. Our greatest danger is failing to stop this virus in South America, not allowing our doctors to treat patients and be welcomed home.”
Her father lifted his gaze from the computer screen but didn’t smile. He used to always smile at her when she came in, even if she was interrupting his work. Now he seemed lost, uncertain, when he stared at her. Out of place, even, as he sat on this bed in this barren room — brown walls and devoid of pictures or anything that made it feel like a home.
He stared at her blankly, not even turning off the recording. It kept playing, the last words of his chastisement of the alarmists crackling over the laptop’s speakers.
“I said, ‘Turn it off!’” She spoke loud and firm. He tapped a key on the computer, and the sound stopped. He closed the screen and slid the machine from his lap.
“She died about six weeks after this interview,” he said, finally seeming to focus on Elaan, meeting her eyes. “Monica Maverick was only twenty six.” He kept Elaan’s gaze, an attempt to not back down, she supposed. Her father was stubborn, but he’d raised her, and she was stubborn, too.
Elaan stared into her father’s green eyes and tried to appear assured and confident when she said, “Lots of people died six weeks later.” Too many people were dead, and dwelling on that meant…it meant you ended up like her father. She took a step toward him. “You can’t focus on that right now, Dad. You have to focus on your work. People need your help. The disease can be stopped, if you help. Your focus has to be on stopping.”
James Woodson stood up. With his white hair swirling messily on his head and his wide eyes, he looked a bit like a madman. “There. Is. No. Stopping. It,” he said, punctuating each word by jabbing a finger at the heavens.
“Not until you find a way to stop it,” she shot back. “You can’t do this today, Dad. You can’t have a pity party. There are too few people left. You have to help. You have to focus. We’re in the scientist protection complex so people like you can find a cure or create a vaccine without getting sick. Dr. Wells can’t do it alone. He needs your help. That’s why I’m here. He wants you upstairs in the lab.”
Her father rubbed his chin, stared at her a moment as if wondering if she were real or an illusion. He looked around the dull, empty room and finally nodded. “Fine, I’ll go.”
Relief surged through Elaan, but she tried not to show it. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if he’d refused to go to the lab.
Her father came over and extended his arm with a flourish, as if to say, “Ladies first,” so Elaan turned and walked out of the bedroom. Her father followed, closed his room door and locked it.
She wanted to sigh, or express some indignation, but the truth was, it was wise to lock his door. Dr. Wells had suggested confiscating her father’s computer or, at the very least, erasing those media files he liked to watch.
Elaan followed her father from his room, through the hallway just outside it, past the small living area they shared, and out the front door of their unit. She watched him lock the apartment’s front door and start to walk away. Satisfied he was out and planned to go the lab, Elaan turned right to head to the dining hall.
“You’re not going to escort me?” her father called to her.
Turning back to him, she spied the sarcasm in his tone on his face. “I trust you, Dad,” she said, with a wink. “Besides, Dr. Wells will send one of the military officers if you don’t show up. Sending me was just him being nice.” She was sure neither of them wanted to see Dr. Kingston Wells when he wasn’t being nice.
She turned and walked in the opposite direction as her father. She passed several apartment doors as she walked the cool, damp hallways of the subterranean complex. When she got to the stairwell, she climbed two flights and exited to the floor with the cafeteria. The lowest levels of the SPC, as they’d taken to calling the scientist protection complex, were living spaces, while the ones closest to the surface held common areas and the labs. On the floor she’d just arrived at, there was an exercise room, a dining hall, restrooms, and a social area.
She headed straight toward the dining hall, glancing at her watch to see it was 9:42. Shit. She wished her father had just gone to do his job. She might have missed Josh. And breakfast, too. She wasn’t super hungry, so she figured she could last until lunchtime if the cafeteria had closed. She slipped the elastic scrunchy off her wrist and used it to pull her shoulder-length curly black hair into a ponytail.
She arrived and scanned the room, a large space with several round tables flanked by chairs. To the right were cafeteria-style serving areas to house food, but there was nothing there. They’d closed for breakfast at nine thirty and in such a small SPC, it didn’t take long to clean things out. The room was empty, except for Josh sitting by himself in the corner.
He clearly was waiting for her, and she felt a pang of guilt at being so late. They had a routine. They met up for breakfast at nine, but she’d not come this morning. She sped over to him.
Josh looked up at her. He had brown hair, g
reen eyes, a strong jaw, a kind smile and was slightly pale down here with so little sunlight. He was handsome, too, as if he’d walked straight out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. Josh was sitting with a single-serve box of cereal in front of him, along with a plain bagel and packet of jam.
Josh gave her a harsh stare when she sat down across from him. “Elaan,” he said, his voice strained. “You need to get here before they close for meals.” He slid the bagel, cereal, and jam over to her. “Dave just barely gave me your rations. He trusts me, but the rations are to go to each person. Otherwise it looks like there’s favoritism or hoarding.”
Elaan nodded. She felt bad that she’d missed breakfast and Josh had to sweet talk Dave, the man on kitchen duty. Dave worked in the lab with their fathers, so he’d been willing to bend the rules just this once. Anyone else would have let Elaan go hungry, which she was willing to do. But it did worry her that they’d gotten so tight with the rations. It worried her that communication with the uptop had ceased. So had the weekly food deliveries of perishables like milk. She looked down at the food and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be so late. It couldn’t be helped. I had to talk to my dad.”
Josh pursed his lips, raised an eyebrow. “Because of my dad?”
Elaan shrugged. Dr. Kingston Wells was Josh’s father, and while it was the senior Wells who had asked for her help, she didn’t want to say it. Josh’s implication was that his dad was being a jerk. His dad was generally viewed as an asshole. A really brilliant asshole, but an asshole, nonetheless. However, Elaan didn’t feel the need to affirm that right now. Josh pretended he didn’t care what people thought. But she could tell it bothered him that his father was so disliked, especially when Josh was the exact opposite of his father: kind, thoughtful, and sweet.
Elaan shook her head. “No, it wasn’t your dad’s fault,” she lied. “It’s….” She was trying to think of what to say that didn’t involve his father. Finally, she settled on a partial version of the truth. “It’s my mom’s birthday, and it’s just hard for my dad on days like this.”
Josh’s face morphed from simmering displeasure to complete pity. She wished she’d picked anything else to say. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t want Josh’s pity. “It’s OK,” she said, with a shrug, hoping to appear nonchalant. “Everyone down here has lost someone. I can’t pretend like I’m special because a virus that’s killed half of humanity happened to kill my mother.”
Josh reached out and set his hand on Elaan’s, which rested on the table. She looked down at his hand on top of hers, and it reminded her a little of the way her parents’ hands used to look holding each other: one light, one dark.
“Still, it’s hard,” Josh said, pulling her from her thought. “On days like this, I mean.”
Elaan nodded and peered down at the cereal box. She didn’t want to talk about her mother, whom she missed terribly. A mother she never got to say goodbye to. A mother she saw one day and then never again. That was probably the hardest part. Or maybe that was the easiest part. She wasn’t sure.
She’d only been to two funerals in her life. One had been for her grandfather. Her father’s dad, Arthur Woodson, was eighty when he died suddenly of a heart attack. She’d watched her father go up to the casket and say his final goodbye. She remembered her father reaching in and touching the body, as if to confirm that it really was his father and that he really was dead. She’d gone up to the casket and glanced inside, as was her obligation, but that had been all she could muster. She’d only been ten at the time and the thought of touching a dead body was creepy, not comforting. The other funeral she’d gone to had been of someone she hadn’t known. It was two years ago, when she was fifteen. Alyssa, a girl on her swim team, had an older sister who’d died of an asthma attack. Elaan hadn’t met the sister, but the coach asked the entire team to attend the funeral and pay condolences. Elaan remembered people looking at the body, resting a hand on the chest, the mother stroking the girl’s cheek. It had all been poignant and sad, watching grief so close. But now Elaan realized it had also been important. That mother, that father, that sister, those other family members all needed a chance to see for themselves that the person was really gone, to imprint it in their memory, to say a final goodbye.
But with the Helnoan virus, there were no goodbyes. Once people got sick, they were gone. The disease was so contagious, the sick were quarantined so their families didn’t see them again unless they were one of the four percent who survived. But the survivors were so few, that most people never saw the sick again. The bodies of the dead were bloated with disease. There could be no viewings or other contact with the corpse, for risk of contagion from bodily fluids. The bodies were hermetically sealed and cremated. You had the knowledge that your loved one was dead but no proof. You couldn’t look at that unmoving body to know that the person was gone forever. If you wanted to, you could just pretend the person was on an extended vacation. Sometimes that was what Elaan did. Sometimes she pretended that maybe, one day, she’d see her mother again.
Only, in her heart, she knew that wasn’t true. Shonda Woodson was gone. Elaan would never again see her mother, a beautiful woman with beautiful dark chocolate skin, a smile that lit up a room, and eyes that connected with you so you felt like you were the most important person in the world. But now Shonda was dead and buried. Well, if not buried, scattered somewhere. She wasn’t sure what they did with all the ashes of the deceased. Part of her didn’t want to know.
She felt Josh’s hand rubbing her own. She looked up. He was speaking. She hadn’t realized it until she saw his lips moving. “Are you sure you’re alright, Elaan?”
She smiled, slid her hand out from under his, and opened the cereal container. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She ate her cereal quickly, munching the flakes straight from the box. She missed milk, but that hadn’t been available since deliveries from the outside world had stopped a month ago. After she finished the frosted flakes, she picked up the bagel and spread the jam. She knew Josh was watching her, but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. She just wanted her breakfast.
That was the nice thing about Josh. He never pushed. He was there to sit with you, to listen, but never to force you. She liked people like Josh, those who knew how to be your friend, how to be a friend to each person they met. It was as if they had some secret answer key that she didn’t possess that told them just what to do in every possible social situation. Perhaps that was why Josh was so liked. He’d inherited the key. One of those traits that had apparently skipped his father’s generation, but had landed squarely upon Josh’s shoulders.
“Dude,” she heard her brother’s voice call out. “I’m going to start thinking you have ill intentions if every time I turn around, I find you with my sister.”
She stopped chewing the bagel, and heat rushed to her cheeks. She was going to kill him. If she didn’t die of embarrassment first, she was going to kill Elijah Jacob Woodson. She turned to see her brother striding toward them, and she gave him a death stare.
“Dude,” Josh said. “We’re just having breakfast. Nothing shady here. You’re paranoid.”
Lijah, tall with broad shoulders and skin the same warm caramel color as Elaan’s, sat down next to his sister and smiled.
Elaan smiled back. “Actually, Lijah,” she said. “I think you’re deflecting.”
Lijah looked at Josh curiously and then pointed at his sister, swirling his pointer finger near his head. “On second thought, maybe I should thank you for babysitting my nutso little sister.”
“I’m not nuts.” Elaan poked her brother in the shoulder and then biting her lower lip. She normally wouldn’t mention this in front of Lijah’s friend, but she was really irritated that he kept telling Josh to stay away from her. She didn’t understand why he was so against them getting closer. Everyone else seemed to think it was inevitable, given that she and Josh were both immune, and given how much time they’d been spending together.
/> Elaan had asked her brother why he was so hostile, but he’d just said Josh wasn’t a good match for her. She glared at Lijah. “Where were you this morning?”
Lijah stared at her. “Umm, sleeping in my bed.”
Elaan shook her head. “I woke up at four this morning. Couldn’t sleep, so I just thought I’d get up and stretch my legs a bit. Your door was open, but your bed was empty. I looked in the entire apartment. You weren’t there.”
“I had trouble sleeping, too, so I went for a walk.”
That was a lie, and everyone at the table knew it. People were not allowed to walk the compound in the overnight hours. Everything was off limits from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. They were in a quarantined environment. Scientists, select military officials, family members, and a few people who had genetic immunity to the virus were being housed in this underground compound. They were supposed to get supplies regularly from the uptop, supplies that had not been in contact with contaminated people. The supplies were helpful, but a few of the scientists had taken to trying to grow a few plants down below. They’d been here three months. Elaan and Elijah’s father was the scientific leader on the project, and Josh’s father was second in command of the scientists. Only, her father had fallen apart, and Wells was doing everything now.
Elaan leaned in and whispered. “You could get in major trouble for what you did. I won’t tell Dad, but if someone saw you, he’ll find out. And worse, it might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. At least mentally for him.”
Lijah gave his sister an appraising stare and then turned to Josh. “Hey, man, can we get a minute?”
Josh nodded affably and left the table.
Lijah and Elaan watched Josh leave the room. Once Josh was out of sight, Lijah looked his sister directly in the eye and spoke softly but firmly. “I had permission.” Elaan raised an eyebrow. Lijah continued. “Dr. Wells needed help. He’s doing some testing that isn’t authorized under the program, and he needed a competent assistant. Something Dad isn’t right now.”