by Rose Francis
She had never actually seen someone turn, but she was pretty sure that this was what it looked like. Derek’s stocky, muscular frame was coated with a film of sweat, and it looked like pain was raging through him. His pink eyes closed, and then opened again briefly, and he bared his teeth as he came toward her.
“Help!” Serena screamed, knowing that it was her only shot once she noticed Derek was too near the door.
He was moving somewhat slowly, but she knew he would get to her before she could escape.
Unfortunately, she would probably also put the first person who came through that door at risk, although she knew it was inevitable—someone would have to find him eventually, whether she was still alive or not.
Her scream seemed to bring him to life beyond his pain and he started for her more competently on his feet.
She screamed again and tried to dodge him as best as she could for as long as possible.
“Derek, no!” she shouted, despite knowing that her words could no longer get to him.
His lunge for her took her down, and the momentum made them tumble and roll. When they came to a stop, she saw his face coming toward hers, his teeth bared as if he were an animal, his hands pinning her arms.
She lifted her knee and used her body to throw him, and he made a grab for her as she twisted away.
She ran to the door and pounded on it desperately, and then twisted again as she felt Derek’s body pounce.
His body hit the door and he came at her again.
The door opened just as he took her down to the ground once more, and Serena managed to get out the words, “He’s turned!” before trying to throw Derek off of her.
She kneed him in the testicles and was surprised that it seemed to affect him, for she was able to throw him off and scuttle away.
She barely registered what was happening before Derek’s body raised itself up on its knees, and then suddenly slumped forward after a shot rang out, his head hitting the floor and leaving his body awkwardly positioned, butt in the air.
Serena turned toward the shooter.
Em’s eyes looked almost twice as big as usual, and they seemed to glisten as they settled on her.
“I’m so sorry,” Em whispered, and Serena felt the weight of her apology, her unmistakeable duty.
Em raised her gun at her.
“No!” she thought she heard a familiar male voice scream as she readied herself for Em’s bullet, a bullet that never came due to Steven tackling Em and pointing her arm away.
“No, Emily,” he said, disarming her quickly and standing up.
“We have to, Steven. Don’t you realize how many people you’re putting at risk? You of all people should know we need to nip this in the bud. Look, I’m sorry—I know she’s your girlfriend, but…”
Steven glanced at the door, as if to double-check that it had closed behind him.
“Just give her a minute or a day or two or whatever—she might be immune.”
“Wait, what? What makes you think that?”
“We observe first, right? Maybe not anymore, but we have to with her, she could be one of us.”
“We cannot take such risks. Eliminating is the best course at this point rather than quarantine if there is no doubt that deadly contact with a Morph has been made. You really think there’s time to wait and see for every case?”
“Of course not, but for her we wait and see, do you hear me? Or I swear to God, I’ll make sure that this whole place goes down with you, me, and everyone else in it. Now, I know someone’s gonna come running to see what all the commotion was about any minute, but remember—you let them take her out, you’ll have to take me out, too.”
“Okay, Steven, take it easy,” Em said, still struggling to get herself into an upright position.
Steven helped her up, still holding the gun he had confiscated from her.
Em looked warily at it, even though Steven held it to his side and had already put the safety back on.
“Listen,” Steven began again, “I remember being told back then that even after getting over the infection, the shed virus could still end up in…evacuations from the body. Like sperm. What if she built up some sort of resistance?”
Em’s forehead creased. “Steven, what are you saying?”
“I…” He looked over at Serena, and their eyes took a moment to take each other in gratefully. “We…” He took a breath, then began again. “I left part of me in her—maybe a few times unintentionally, but definitely intentionally a few times. What if a surviving, weaker strain from me ended up in her, or some other kind of remnant? Does that even make any sense? I’m no scientist, but…”
“Yes, it’s possible,” Em said quietly. She turned to look briefly at Serena, and then turned back to Steven. “Take her to Observation, room number fourteen. I’m not getting near her—even if it hasn’t settled in her yet. Either way, you’ve got ten minutes to get everything in place. I know you can fight it off, but no need to do so if you can avoid it. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Serena had been frozen in place during the whole exchange, but she now melted out of her position. She wanted so badly to hug Steven—he seemed to be trying so hard not to look at his fallen brother.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: OBSERVATION
Em looked weary as she approached him in his holding room. Steven felt a knot in his stomach, but he could tell by Em’s expression that Serena was still okay.
“We have autopsied Derek,” Em began, “and it appears that he carried a slightly mutated version of the virus—one possibly more dangerous, since it hides out for a bit, it seems, and we can no longer expect symptoms to show up reliably within a given period; unlike the first generation, no symptoms show up for days while it just sits there. Then it seems to rapidly run the usual twenty-four hour course, but in your brother’s case, he recovered after some time—we’re not sure how long.”
Steven looked down. “Forty-eight hours,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“He told me. He said that he had gotten bitten, blacked out, and woke up fine two days or so later. What I don’t get is why, as he recovered, the Morphs didn’t get him. Didn’t he smell healthy?”
“Probably not until the moment he woke up once the fever broke, and he could defend himself again. Anyway, he was obviously suffering from a new infection, a recent one. Those marks on his arms were not from a dog bite.”
“But he told me the last time he had gotten exposed to an infected person was a week ago! He said that he just blacked out after the fever, and then woke up and everything was fine.”
“Yeah, well, we found traces of human skin and organs in his stomach, so that’s not all he left out of his story. As for you, based on what we’ve gathered from Derek, it’s likely that you weren’t left completely clean when you were released the first time. But you might have saved Serena’s life. Our other immune survivors have been celibate, so we have not yet been able to observe the effects of sexual intercourse.”
Steven saw the judgment in Em’s eyes, although it quickly faded.
He felt a crushing guilt.
He thought that he had recovered completely, and they had let him out, hadn’t they? Or did he just decide himself, to hell with their restrictions? He wasn’t sure anymore. Either way, they hadn’t stopped him from going back out into the public, so he must not have been a risk. Right? And he had tried so hard not to touch Serena; he had tried so hard to spare her from so many parts of him.
He remembered being proud of himself for maintaining his distance despite his desires—those pesky little creatures on his shoulders with their pitchforks poking him and goading him on. He had managed to flick them off and keep to the task at hand.
And then somewhere along the way, he lost control.
Now, he realized that he could have actually killed her.
What if she had been particularly vulnerable to a possible residual strain? What if…?
Oh god. What had he done to her? How often
had he put her at risk?
“The bad news is that, yes, Serena was exposed to the disease. The good news is that she has fought it, and it looks like she’ll be just fine. But we must keep her isolated for a few more days, considering what we now know.”
Steven felt pain and gratefulness at once—pain, for being kept from her even longer, yet grateful Serena had come back to him, alive and well. And probably a bit stronger.
“Tell me something, Steven,” Em said, suddenly interrupting his thoughts, “did you know that she is pregnant?”
*
Serena ignored the humiliation of getting stripped, sprayed clean, and quarantined once more. The worst part of it all was that she could only look at Steven’s sorrowful eyes from behind a thick glass window the whole time she was kept isolated.
She was being held longer this time—she knew it; it seemed at least twice as long as the first time. She figured that everyone just really needed to be sure.
When the quiet torture of endless, lonely days seemed no more than she could bear, the blue suits finally came for her again, putting her through yet another relentless shower, and then presenting her with a new, hideous hospital gown. But she didn’t care about aesthetics.
Anticipation mounted in her as she was led to a room—a holding room where she knew she would be with Steven at last.
His face lit up in a way she figured mirrored her own, and she and Steven embraced for what almost seemed longer than her quarantine time, deliciously welcome despite the hug being so tight, it squeezed air out of her and made it hard to breathe. But she had longed for those arms for so long that she would take any pain that came with it.
She hadn’t seen Steven in perhaps a week or two, but it had felt like a year.
Then again, who knew? All sense of time had been thrown off. She lived in a clock-less world.
*
When they finally came up for air, Steven led Serena to sit, not letting go of her hands. He never wanted to let her out of his sight again.
“Em mentioned to me some residual effects of the exposure, and I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.
She looked confused at first, then comprehending. “Don’t be. I know that in the end, you had no choice.”
No choice? Of course there was always a choice, wasn’t there? But he’d had too much experience with the contrary to easily accept such a simple concept. Steven had seen choice wrenched away when minds were lost, and he had seen an otherwise “nice guy” who smiled when he received a letter from his mom murder a non-threatening village in cold blood. Somewhere along the way, for some people, something broke, and choice become a luxury from a previous life. Somewhere down the line, addiction, obsession or some other disease took over.
But he would at least remember if he had done anything to hurt her, wouldn’t he? If he had taken her when she didn’t want it?
“Serena, tell me the truth—I remember everything, but I don’t know if my memory’s faulty—did I force you at any point?”
Serena looked at him with almost cartoonish large eyes, glistening with newborn tears.
“No,” she whispered. “Not really.”
“Not really?” An ache ran through him.
“No, it’s not as bad as you think—you were a little more aggressive, but only after…”
“After what?” he prompted, anguished.
“It escalated when my own desire for you did. You sniffed it out and gave us what we both wanted. You never made me have sex with you, Steven—I simply couldn’t resist you. My mind was still on my husband, but my body wanted every inch of you. Don’t you know how long I’ve been ignoring it and pretending it wasn’t there? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been attracted to you?”
Steven felt like he had been doused with cold water after a desert trek. “I…I thought so at times, but I could never be sure.”
“You’re supposed to be a master at reading body language, mister.”
“I was. I am. That’s how I figured you were ready for me. But what I read on you way back then—sure, sometimes you gave away your position, but I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t making things up. My desire for you compromised my objectivity. For example, did you really have a hard time looking at me when you caught me shirtless because you thought it was the respectful thing to do? Or did your eyes dart away and stay looking off to the side until I put a shirt on because you found that you liked what you saw?”
Serena grinned. “Oh, I remember that day. And it was the latter mostly. But both. I was caught off guard by your form—the sex appeal you exuded in that moment—and, well, looking away was the proper thing to do; I was getting all hot and bothered.”
“You see? There were many of those moments where I thought I detected something, but I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer. Look, I know that you’re a faithful girl, and that you and Gregory respected each other, so I knew that if anything was there, you would do everything in your power to hide it. For the most part, I attributed your discomfort to generally not trusting a relationship with one of your husband’s friends—despite the three of us looking like an innocent group of friends to outsiders, I got the feeling that hanging out with two guys was simply odd for you. Anyway, as much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I had to go with the most innocuous explanation. You understand why, right? No need to fuel the fire. But I…” He cleared his throat to dust off the sudden strangled sound of it. “I’ve loved you for a long time, Serena. I’ve wanted you even longer, but along the way I…” He chuckled. “I became a goner. Thoughts of you consumed me, and it was all sort of weird and selfish at first—I couldn’t stop wanting to have you all to myself; I wanted to possess you. And then later—I’m not sure when, exactly—I only hoped you were happy and well-taken care of. I would have given anything to be the one doing that for you, but I was fine with letting Gregory be the one because I never doubted that he loved you.”
Serena squeezed his hand. Then she said, “Em told me some of it, but what do you remember of your first exposure?”
“The first time they infected me, they said that I turned into a crafty, bloodthirsty lunatic. The second time they introduced the virus to me, my body fought it off before it could make a difference. A few other test subjects weren’t so lucky.”
“So you were actually willing to die?”
He looked at her strangely. “I have always been willing to die for my country—I enlisted in the military right out of high school for Pete’s sake—you think I didn’t know the risks? No, I might not have had all the details of the various ways I could be taken out—from enemy fire to friendly fire, to accidental exposures etc.—but I definitely knew that there was a large possibility I wouldn’t make it to being an eighty-year-old veteran; in fact, I was almost sure I wouldn’t make it past forty if I stayed in. Besides, you have no idea how many people unwillingly, and even unknowingly become human guinea pigs—dead and alive. I at least walked into this thing willingly.”
“But why?”
“Why not? I provide whatever service is needed; this was just another one of my duties, a new way to serve—like entering the compound of a suspected terrorist and opening fire. I follow orders for the most part; there is no questioning, only doing. Besides, it’s not like I had anyone waiting for me to come home. Anyway, you have no idea how much gambling happens with public health. From what I have observed, there are no qualms about destroying large populations, anywhere. So in the end, nothing really mattered to me—back then, that is; everything matters to me now—particularly when it pertains to you. The purpose for my battles has never been clearer.”
He reached out and gently put his hand on her stomach, and then watched her mouth drop open.
“Oh my god, I knew it—I’m pregnant, aren’t I? Is the baby going to be okay?”
Steven couldn’t stop his proud grin. “Emily said that the fetus has shown no sign of stress—as if your infection was never a concern. He or she most likely has the same genetic mutation that pr
ovided me with such a strong resistance.” He paused, still grinning, and still so very sure. “We’re all going to be fine, whatever that looks like in the new world.”
EPILOGUE
“I wonder what the others are thinking—the rest of the planet,” Serena said quietly, her hand seeming to unconsciously go to her belly as she cuddled into the crook of his arm. “How many times have we been oblivious or indifferent to their exploding worlds? Are they watching with interest? Like a TV show? Or are they too busy getting their survival camps and response teams in place? Are they horrified by what’s happening to us?”
“Of course they are, and not necessarily because it involves us. It involves them, too—they’re not safe from it. Any one of them can suddenly find the disease in their back yard, and all they can do is take the information they’ve got and use it to prepare. You can only turn your head away from something for so long before it shows up at your doorstep, and you have to face it.”
“Well, I’m pretty confident about my chances with you. You’re quite the super, I hear—resistant and immune to all sorts of things.”
“Except your charms.” She poked him with her elbow. “I can’t take credit for all of it, though—I had some standard military inoculations, and my dad was responsible for another part. But yes, ‘tis true—I am a tough cookie.” He pretended to puff out his chest.
Serena smiled at his display. Then she said, “You know, I never got the chicken pox when I was younger.”
Steven looked at her with interest. “Really? Even I got that.”
She nodded. “I came into contact with it several times at various ages—surrounded by infected cousins as a toddler, and then a later generation of cousins when I was about twelve. And still later, with the infected children of a teacher while in my late teens.”
“Sounds like we’re gonna have one hell of a child.”
He paused, reconsidering whether or not to break the news to her just yet. Then he figured, what would be the point of waiting?