by Eli Constant
I was an antsy-pants at dinner, watching my girls eat, trying not to protest as one of the privates walked over with three dried ice creams for the girls. I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn’t bodily rush the stragglers out of the mess hall.
I mentally willed them away, but that wasn’t very effective. As the last of the slow eaters walked out, a very smiley Nick and Jamie walked in.
“Allison, Michael, can you take the girls to the bathroom?” At my words, Megan immediately started whining.
“But mom, I don’t need to go to the bathroom and Kara used the potty right before dinner.”
It was such a relief not to need diapers anymore. In three weeks, Ms. Donna, the nursery worker, had taught Kara how to reliably use the bathroom. Kara was so proud of herself, announcing to anyone who’d listen that she could use the big girl potty now.
Meg didn’t say anything. I had a feeling she’d gotten the impression that I wanted them to leave the room; not because they actually needed to pee, but because I wanted them to leave the room. Plain and simple.
“Megan, humor me and go to the bathroom. If you don’t need to pee, how about you just wash the spaghetti sauce off your chin.”
Megan, always theatrical, hopped up from the table and covered her chin. “Eww.” She said.
The little group left the cafeteria; Allison held Kara and tickled her stomach.
As soon as they were gone, Jamie and Nick started talking a mile a minute. I stared at them dazedly.
“Whoa, hold it. Firstly, I know I’ve told you both that it is impossible to understand either of you when you talk over one another like that. Secondly, less talking, more decorating.”
They followed me into the kitchen and helped me grab the sign, paper hats, and Timmons helped carry in the cakes. “Okay, now talk… one at a time.” I fiddled with the decorations and listened. Jamie jumped in before Nick could so much as crack his mouth.
“It’s amazing. In the few short hours since treating the other subjects, we’ve seen an amazing rate of change. The cocktail inoculation O’Toole and Peters were administering actually inhibits the progression of H2H on the undergrounder systems. The new subjects, excluding the twentieth, were drug free and so the physiological changes have occurred exponentially quicker.”
Nick broke in excitedly, determined to deliver some of the amazing news. “On the cellular level, the changes are off the charts. The nanotech bond held, the vector self-released after entering the respiration cycle, and so far has only affected the target chromosomes. The only issue we have identified is our nanotech begins to lose its charge at the 24 hour mark.”
I half-focused on his words, half-focused on positioning the paper crowns around the table.
“That’s great, guys…” I trailed off, determined to position the birthday sign perfectly centered on the table.
“Elise, are you even listening?” It was laughable how exasperated Nick sounded at my lack of focus. I straightened up and surveyed my work. The olive green poncho was a really drab backdrop to Timmons’ beautiful cakes and my colorful decorations. Oh, well.
“Elise!” Jamie’s high voice piped up.
“Good God, Jamie. You don’t need to yell at me. Yes, I’m listening… mostly.” I moved the cakes into a neat little line with plenty of room in between for each girl to sit. “Have you determined the long term implications on physiology? How do we know that the H2H won’t continue to change the undergrounder’s until their physiology is rendered unviable? Also, have you subjected the human samples to the H2H yet?” I didn’t mean to, but once again I snapped their bright and shiny children’s toy in half.
Jamie’s entire demeanor changed and Nick shifted uncomfortably. It was Nick’s voice that filled the brief silence.
“Well, we sampled the air in the first ten cages and aside from the gradual decline in charge, the contained vectors seemed intact. As for our subjects stabilizing after the change, that will take time. As for human trials…” He shifted again. I looked up at him, finally giving him my full focus. I got the feeling that he’d rather I didn’t focus so hard now.
“What did you do? I’m not going to like it am I.” The last was a statement, not a question. My intuition already told me they’d done something really stupid.
Simultaneously, they both rolled up the sleeves over their left arms. At first, I was expecting to search for some miniscule pin pricks indicative of them using their own blood for sampling. What I saw puzzled me: numbers- two sets divided by colons. They didn’t leave me wondering for long.
“Um… time stamp and dosage. I did it about an hour before Jamie just to see if I’d have any fast-coming, adverse reaction.”
“Did what?” But I didn’t have to ask; I knew already.
“Elise, we inhaled H2H.” Jamie spoke very calmly, her body pushed up against Nicks.
I sighed heavily, the breath pushing out of my body in a hot wind of resignation.
“To be so smart, you two are complete idiots.” I wanted to chastise them, tear them a ‘new one,’ verbally beat them into the past and force them to change their stupid, stupid decision. I muttered choice words under my breath, but I didn’t have an opportunity to audibly speak something less crude. A young voice rang from the hallway.
“That was the longest pee break ever! Meg, what were you doing in there? Pooping?”
Megan! I’d told her many times that saying poop or any variation of poop was unacceptable. I heard Kara’s peeling laughter and Meg’s cry of indignation.
“I’s not poo-ping!” I was so happy that Meg was building such a lady-like vocabulary. I called out, trying to sound reproachful.
“Poo-ping! Poo-ping!” Kara laughed each time she said it.
“Girls, that word isn’t allowed.” I yelled it, making sure they’d hear me in the hall.
“Sorry, mom.” Three little voices rang out. It was still odd to here Meg call me mom. In a way, I felt she was past the need for a parent’s guidance. In another way, she needed a guiding hand more than any child on earth.
The gang of five pranced in, all smiles. The smiles grew so much bigger at the sight of cake. All of the adults- very out of harmony- yelled ‘Happy Birthday.’ The girls squealed in delight and their little bodies broke out into a full run towards the cheery, little party. Michael and Allison strolled slowly after them, smiling and hand-holding.
Megan loved the stars; Kara immediately stuck her index finger knuckle deep in the pink icing. Meg examined her cake with interest. She pointed at it and looked at me.
“It’s cake sweetheart. It’s sweet and you eat it and it’s usually baked in celebration of something. Like, someone being born.” Meg reached up to her eye and her finger came away slick and glistening. She looked at the moisture. I side hugged her. “Happy tears, sweetie.”
She wiped her eye again and looked up at me. “I ha-ppy.”
I hugged her again and then turned to my other daughters, just as Kara slammed her whole hand into the middle of her cake, took a fistful, and ate a heaping mouthful of pink yumminess. Everyone around the table laughed and Kara grinned so wide that cake crumbles fell from her mouth and snowed all over the olive green poncho- it was an improvement in my opinion.
It was a sweet affair, very uplifting. The cakes were delicious and all attending praised Timmons on his baking skill. He excused himself halfway through our celebrations saying he needed to tidy up the kitchen. I could see the pink creeping up his neck; I was no stranger to embarrassing retreats.
Following Timmons’ departure, we sang a very bad rendition of the traditional happy birthday song. Jason tried to remember the words to the extended ending, but winded up just soloing ‘and many more.’
We were throwing away soiled decorations and piling the dishes into a wash bin when we heard the screaming.
NORAD Left Behind
My first thought: I need my guns.
My first actions: Kara monkey style on my back, Megan thrown at Michael. Meg jumped into Allison�
��s arms; she didn’t need an invitation. Jamie and Nick looked stricken; I wondered if they’d ever been knee deep in a shit pool.
“Stay close. We need to get back to our room.” Classic Jason- instant assessment and smart decision.
Timmons came rushing out of the kitchen. “Move in tight.” Jason yelled at him and motioned to his left flank. The line cook still had his knife apron on and as he closed the distance to us, he pulled the cleaver from its pocket.
The screaming rose and fell, like Sirens in the night calling us to un-pleasantries.
I could not cover my daughters’ ears and knew that if physical safety could be attained, mental safety would be compromised.
We worked our way down the halls. It was an odd and eerie thing: to hear all the screaming, but not see a single soul on our trip to the residential quarters. Every now and then, we came across a discarded, crude weapon. My stomach lurched with unease.
Compared to the hallways we’d just walked, the residential wing was teeming with life and activity. There was so much noise; I could not understand what any one person was yelling.
I could see clearly though. Men and woman were grabbing bags, wielding anything that resembled a weapon and rushing in a congealed mob towards the far exit. Jason and I looked at one another- apparently we weren’t the only ones whose exit plan revolved around a chopper.
In our room, we found several people rummaging through our bags.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jason rushed the people and pushed them away from our things.
Luckily, the strangers hadn’t found the two weapon’s duffels. Jason had shoved them under his bed and against the wall- hiding them from prying eyes. It didn’t take much convincing to get the people to leave our room empty-handed. All Jason had to do was yank free the Glock he’d taped to the under frame of his bunk.
“Get. The. Hell. Out.” And, not surprisingly, they got the hell out. Like I said, easy-peasy, lemon-squeezey.
We didn’t waste time on clothing. I swung the pack with the first aid products and the atlas onto my back and grabbed the bottles of iodine tablets out of the food supplies. Jason got on his hands and knees, retrieved the weapons, and began to hand them out.
He handed me my lucky sidearm, but with no hesitation I gave it to Allison. She nodded. She’d made her first kill with that gun. The trigger would feel familiar to her finger and perhaps that would make the inevitable killings-to-come a bit easier.
Jason understood and handed me one of his Desert Eagles. It was heavy in my hand and comforting. When everyone was armed, Jason attached a silencer to his Glock and pulled the facility map off the wall.
“Okay, everyone’s going to be taking the easiest route to the hangar. That is absolutely not what we want to do.” As he was speaking, he ran his finger along the glossy map, showing us the way. “We’ll backtrack to the cafeteria and take the second hall through the science wing. It’ll take longer, but we’ll deal with less traffic.”
I pointed to an area on the map to the left of the hangar entrance- the area Benson had shown me, where the walls were weakest.
“We need to stay as far away from this area as possible. If undergrounders have tunneled in, this’ll be the entrance point.”
The hangar was located in the north wing of the facility, but was at least a dozen yards removed from the possibly breached wall. Benson had been very specific when he’d shown me on the map.
We ordered our group smartly: weakest on the inside, strongest taking up our front, rear, and side positions. It wasn’t until grouping that I realized we’d lost Timmons.
I hoped he’d broken off by his own volition and not been picked off soundlessly without our notice. Without Timmons to make us stronger, Allison and Jamie (Jamie having never held a weapon in her life), were in the center of our parade with Megan, Kara, and Meg. With Jason on point, Michael on rear, and Nick and me in flank positions, we began to move.
I kept glancing at my three girls, making sure they were staying very close to Allison and Jamie. It was hard to focus on our progression when I wanted to keep watchful eyes on my daughters.
The majority of the other people had already disappeared beyond the far exit. Our back-tracking towards the lunchroom was uneventful. Talk about reverse déjà vu.
We met our first beasties a short distance past the cafeteria. There were five of them entering and exiting doors, searching rooms for victims. At one point they were all in the hallway. They had not noticed our quiet movements.
The muted pings of a silenced gun drew my attention to Jason. And then I was drawn to the five bodies falling to the floor.
“Holy crap. I’m glad you’re on our side.” Nick stammered; Jamie nodded vigorously, her mouth quivering minutely, her chest rising and falling quickly. She seemed to be breathing even heavier than usual. Her asthma in hyper-drive maybe?
Our surroundings were so quiet that the low sound of labored breathing seemed loud. I realized it was not one person’s struggle, but two. As I glanced around my companions, I saw that both Jamie and Nick were ashen and their chests were moving jerkily out and in. I did the math in my head, trying to figure out the elapsed time since they’d inhaled H2H. Nick had inhaled the proto-tech vaccine an hour before Jamie, but he didn’t look much better.
My second clear thought of the night: Great. Just peachy. They’re going to get themselves killed because they decided to become freaking guinea pigs.
We moved; I shoved my worries downwards in favor of pushing forwards.
Slowly, tip-toeing over and around the sprawled beastie bodies on the floor, we moved. After several yards, we breathed a little easier. We should have known better.
“Must’ve only been five of…” Before Michael could finish his sentence, a body launched itself out of a side room and tackled him to the floor. Allison screamed and tried to move towards Michael.
“No, Allison! Get back.” I pushed her roughly away from the fight.
It only took a moment to survey the action and position myself. Michael was on his side, struggling with the undergrounder. It was my turn to fly into the air. Only difference? I did it of my own volition.
I landed on Michael instead of the undergrounder, but the weight of me was enough to pull Michael loose. We tumbled away from the humanoid and both came up on our knees, guns in hand.
Unfortunately, the beastie was perfectly positioned in front of the rest of our group. If we shot and missed, we’d risk hitting one of our own. I wasn’t going to take that chance. Why was it I rarely got to use my gun? Fighting would be soooo much simpler.
In a singular and fluid movement, I rose up from my knees and pulled the knife from my calf sheath. I was happy that Jason had buckled it there before we’d left the room.
I moved towards the erect monster, my body crouched slightly over and ready for a killing lunge. The undergrounder did the work for me though. It came at me and as soon as its chest was in arm’s reach, I plunged the 9 inch blade into the pale flesh.
When the hilt met the bloody hole I’d made, I was happy. I was even happier when its body fell backwards and lay prostrate on the cold floor. I did not come away clean and unscathed though. I had a few new claw marks, a bit of blood stippling the front of my shirt. All in a day’s work.
I took a moment to collect myself and survey the body on the ground; my eyes shifted from the beastie at my feet to the five several feet away. It was like looking at a sketch of the evolution of man. One undergrounder seemed wild, perhaps a new arrival onto our surface world; whereas the undergrounder I’d just downed seemed almost Sheila-like with hair and humanized features.
“Elise, you ready?” I turned from my contemplation and nodded. I shook off distraction. I could not allow myself to get distracted today; this fight was everything. I couldn’t falter in my focus.
Our group reformed. Our attempt at silence was ruined by the hand-covered coughs from both Jamie and Nick. I looked at them knowingly and I hoped they knew that there was absolut
ely no chance of them coming with us.
I didn’t know what they’d become, how the H2H would affect their bodies, but they were absolutely not going to be around my children. Probably best to wait and break it to them with a ‘Sorry, no room in the chopper.’ Me? A cold, heartless jerk? Proud to be, if it protected my children.
We were through, into the science wing, and approaching Lab-3 on our right. I heard yelling- Benson’s voice definitely. I fought the impulse to move faster. When we came up next to the double doors, I paused and pushed. I held one of the heavy doors open just enough to yell in.
“Benson, that you?” I heard clattering and then my call was returned with a brusque:
“Yeah, what the hell are you doing here?” A pause. More noise. A grunt. “You should have taken the planned exit route with everyone else.”
“And follow everyone into that congested feeding fest? I don’t think so.” I heard a huge crash and then Benson’s big head pushed through the door I was holding open. “What the hell are you doing, Benson?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” He disappeared back into the lab. He wasn’t alone; I heard other voices. I opened the door more and stuck my own head in, watching the chaos inside. Men and women, all in uniform, were racing about the room- unplugging computers, trying to break down the manufacture set-up, trying to salvage the tech.
“What are they doing, Elise?” Jason asked, not looking at me directly.
“They’re gathering all the data and tech.” I made a decision then. “Jamie, Nick, I think you should both help Benson.” I said it simply, but my words were heavy with meaning.
“Elise, we can’t afford to wait for them to help Benson.” Jason looked at me now bewildered.
“Jason, they need to stay and help Benson.”
I wanted him to understand without having to spell it out, but no dice.
I looked from Jason to Nick to Jamie’s face. There was no doubt that the latter two understood my meaning. We were wasting time. Guess it was going to be the blunt and unkind route. Damn it.