by Matt Ryan
The house still took Poly’s breath away. Everything seemed so nice, clean, and perfect with the huge windows looking over the ocean. The dual marble staircases wrapped around the stone area. A smaller stone path led downstairs. She remembered when they were on that very staircase and Joey hurt himself saving Julie.
His hand shook, as if she needed a reminder. He clinched his fist and shook his hand. She wrapped hers around it and gave him a smile.
“We have a problem on Earth we were hoping you could help us with,” Joey addressed Jack.
“You’ve done so much for us, I don’t think we can say no to anything you request.”
“There’s an illness spreading, a cough.”
Jack’s eyes went wide and he took a step back. “A cough, like the Cough? Is it killing people?”
“Yes, and Hank has it; only has a day left they said,” Poly said choking up.
“And my mom.”
Jack shook his head in disbelief, staring at his Panavice. “I don’t . . . Harris is expected to be back any second.” He talked into his Panavice and Harris appeared, kneeling next to the stone. His smile changed to a concerned frown as he took in their looks. “What’s wrong?”
“Earth’s got the Cough,” Jack supplied.
Harris slid his hand down his face. “Jack, have Sanct check their vault for vaccines. If it’s the same thing we dealt with, we may have a few stored.”
“Can you make more?” Joey asked.
“We’re barely managing to keep up with food production here, nor have we made a vaccine in hundreds of years. I’m afraid we aren’t equipped to help much.”
“He’s dying.” Poly’s voice cracked. “Hank, he needs our help.”
“I’ll do everything I can.” Harris held his Panavice to his face and then seemed to change his mind. “Maybe you should talk to Travis, you’d get a better response.” He offered the Panavice to Poly.
Poly took the Panavice and pressed the call button.
“Yes,” Travis’s voice was filled with venom, he must have caller ID.
“This is Poly.”
“Poly,” his voice changed instantly. “How are you, is everything okay?”
She filled him in on the details and he said he’d check on it himself, immediately.
They waited an hour. Poly spent much of the time standing next to the glass windows, gazing down at the ocean feeling the guilt of being a possible carrier of the cough. The stone hummed and she whipped around. Joey held his gun out and Travis appeared, holding a black case.
“This is all we have.” He rushed to Poly and handed her the case. “There might be a hundred in there.”
Poly winced at the number. She needed a few billion. Now she would have to choose who lived and who died. She didn’t want to play God, but she would if it meant curing those she loved. Extending her hand for the case, Travis pulled it back.
“I’m not giving it up until you promise to take the vaccine. It’d be just like you two to give it to everyone else but yourself.”
“Fine,” Poly huffed.
“It works as a cure as well,” Travis said, handing it to her. “I wonder if one of you transmitted it to Earth. How else could it have gotten there?”
Poly hadn’t thought about it that way. She looked down at the case and the back of her hand holding it. That hand could be transmitting stuff from world to world. Astronauts were quarantined when they came home from the moon, how was what they did any different? What they were doing was actually much worse, as people and grinners lived on the planets they visited.
She felt a tickle in her throat. She tried to push it down, but it forced itself out in a cough. The looks of fear spread across each of their faces. Were they scared for themselves, or for her?
“You feeling okay?” Joey asked and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah, just got a bit of a dry throat.”
“We better get you back to Earth.” Travis ushered them to the stone. “How’s Julie?”
“Good.” There was something in his eyes, like he wanted to ask another question, but didn’t. “Thank you for getting us what you could.”
“We’ll keep looking, there might be some stored elsewhere.” Travis stepped out of the designated circle area.
“I will as well,” Harris added from the edge of the circle. “But hurry, you need to get that to Hank and your mom.”
Joey slammed in the code and the stone hummed.
“Come on,” Poly said. With the cure in her hand, she felt an urgency building.
Jogging through the forest they got back to their car. Poly dropped the pedal to the floor on her way to the gym. Joey held on to the case with one hand and the grab bar with the other. She glanced at the case, trying to think of a plausible explanation of where she would get such a thing.
After a brief discussion, it was obvious they couldn’t make a public announcement about having a cure, they would be trampled. So they decided to do it on the sly. They wouldn’t tell anyone what they were doing.
Poly switched the headlights on as she pulled into town. Cars lined the road as she approached the gym. They’d only been gone a couple hours, yet the line had turned into a large mob. Hundreds now stood outside, some waving their arms, others were collapsed on the ground.
“Things are getting worse,” she said, parking the car a ways down the road.
She got out and eyed the case in Joey’s hand. In it, one vial gun and about a hundred vials. Each vial represented a saved life, but it also represented a choice. Who lived and who didn’t. Would they be the only people left in the world after this? Would the rest of the world perish but the hundred they chose? If that was the case, should they save multiple family members, or spread it out to strangers with different bloodlines? Her head began to throb under the pressure and enormity of it all.
Joey took a step onto the sidewalk, but Poly stood in front of him. “I’m not doing anything until you take a shot,” Poly said.
“I was going to tell you the same thing, but I don’t need it. I feel fine. You are the one who coughed.”
“You’ve been around your mom and I’m not going to be changing your bedpan in a few days, Joey Foust.” She’d said it louder than she wanted but it worked, he looked hurt.
“Fine, but you first.”
“No, I know you’ll run off with it or something stupid after I’ve got mine.” She coughed to drive home the urgency. Her throat started demanding another cough, but she suppressed it.
Placing a vial in the chrome metal gun, Poly shot it into Joey’s shoulder. His hand shook as he placed the end of the gun on her arm. As soon as the vaccine was injected, guilt spread over her.
“We should save one for my mom.”
“Agreed.” Though it hurt to use the words. They were already playing God and it made her feel queasy.
Making their way through the mob of coughing and yelling people, she couldn’t help but wonder if a civil place like Preston was starting to lose it, what were big cities with anonymous faces doing?
The place had filled the cots and now people lay on the floor, on the stage, sitting against walls, coughing. Poly spotted Trip hovering over Hank’s body. They rushed to him, being delicate enough to avoid the people on the ground. One person grabbed Poly’s leg and begged for help. She pulled her leg from him and apologized. She wanted to open the case and cure the man right there, but she needed to get to Hank first. If anyone knew they had a cure, the mob would turn into a full riot. She hated making the decision, but she pushed on to Hank.
Trip greeted them. “What are you doing here?” His voice cracked and he rubbed his nose.
Lucas and Julie pushed off the wall to join the group around Hank. Julie stared at the black case.
“How’s Hank doing?” Joey asked.
“I think he’s sleeping. Though, I can’t get him to wake up.” Trip rushed the last words out and took a deep breath.
Poly gripped Hank’s hand and felt warmth. Breathing a sigh of relief, she knew they ha
d made it in time. Stage three put the person into a coma state, where they slowly drowned as their lungs filled. She listened to Hank’s wheezing. “We have a gift from Harris.”
Trip’s eyes brightened as he stared at the black case.
Poly opened the case on the floor and set a vial in the gun. She shot the vial into Hank’s arm and placed another vial into it. She then shot it into the arm of Trip without asking.
“Hey,” he protested.
“I know you would have said no.”
“Dang right I would have. Look at the people around me. They need it.”
“We don’t have enough,” Poly whispered trying to drive home the information.
Lucas walked over, pulling his sleeve up. “Hit me up with some of that.” He cleared his throat. “I’m feeling it coming on.” He did look a bit on the ill side, but he had ever since he’d been bitten by that grinner. The only person in all the worlds to be immune . . . did Lucas even understand how many lives he saved on Vanar?
Poly shot him in the arm and then did Julie as well. How selfish of her, she was glad to be saving the ones she loved, but it hurt her soul to let the rest die. The sounds of wheezing, coughing, moaning, and crying crashed into her. There were hundreds in the gym, hundreds outside. She shook her head. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“The president just announced he’s shutting down all airports and putting the country in a state of emergency.” Julie held her Panavice so they could see the headline on the screen.
Poly looked around the gym, thinking of how she would distribute the last of the cure.
“Please tell me you have more than this?” Julie asked, looking in the case.
“It’s all they had,” Joey answered.
“This is going to cause a riot,” Julie said eyeing the people nearby.
“Do you know how much people would pay for this stuff?” Lucas said. “What? I was just joking.” He rubbed his shoulder where Poly injected him.
“Do you have a cure?” A man next to Hank asked and then went into a coughing fit.
Poly felt the brick in her throat as she stared at the man. “It’s just a cough suppressant.” She hated lying, but she couldn’t have the entire gym hog piling on them.
“We should leave here,” Julie whispered. “If we can get this into the right hands, they can copy it and mass produce a cure.”
“And where should we say we got this?” Poly asked.
“I don’t know, maybe we can just mail it to the CDC or something.”
“They’ll find us and ask questions we can’t answer. Like, what’s that device you have, miss?” Poly pointed at Julie’s Panavice.
“Guys,” Hank sat up, “how did I get here?”
“Hank,” they said in unison, rushing to his side.
“We found you on the road,” Poly said. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember leaving my house.” Hank took a deep breath and then coughed. “Did they find a cure?”
“This one’s better! They have a cure. Give it to me!” The man fell off his cot and went into a coughing fit, blood flung from his mouth as he did. The rustling of the man caused a stirring in everyone nearby.
“We better get out of here,” Julie said.
“We can help them,” Poly said. She pulled the case out and loaded a vial in the gun. She rushed over to the man on the floor. “This will make you better.” She shot it into his arm.
“Please, help me.” A woman, looking like a grinner stumbled forward and Poly shot her in the arm.
In less than a minute, Poly found herself in the middle of dozens of grabbing hands, coughing faces surrounding her like a horde of grinners. She reloaded the gun and fired into the nearest person, but someone else grabbed the gun and tried to shoot the empty vile into her own arm.
Joey moved next to her and pushed the person back, taking the vial gun from her hands. The crowd roared at this and pushed against them. “Get out of here,” he yelled.
Poly brushed her hand over her dagger, but did not remove it from its sheath. She couldn’t harm any of her own people, even if they wanted to rip them apart. Her small frame tried to push back and clear a space so she could reload the gun, but as she bent down to grab another vial, a person fell on her back, pushing her to the ground.
Her face slapped the smooth wood floor of the basketball court. She heard Joey screaming for her, but he sounded distant. A foot slammed against the back of her head and the pain was immediate. A knee jabbed her in the back and many hands scattered around her as they grabbed for the case and gun. Bare feet pushed against her face and she tried to move, but the weight of all the people pinned her down. Poly squeezed her body in and got away from the feet. She held the gun and case close to her chest and curled herself into a ball, trying to protect the remaining vials and her own vital body parts.
A woman pressed against her and coughed in her face while trying to pry Poly’s hands free. More anonymous hands joined in as they assaulted her.
“Poly!” Joey yelled again.
“Joey,” she tried to yell, but the sheer mass of bodies pushing against her wouldn’t let the air escape. She tensed her body as tight as she could, trying to keep them from crushing her. The gym went dark with all the bodies piling over her. She couldn’t breathe, and she knew if she didn’t get up soon, she was going to die.
All she wanted to do was cure them.
HELICOPTERS WERE LOUD, SO LOUD that Samantha had to wear noise canceling headphones to be able to communicate with the people sitting right next to her.
“Ten minutes ‘til we’re there, Miss Samantha.”
Miss Samantha? It made her smile. Many people around the office had been calling her that lately. The smile faded as she gazed at the passing fields below. She was returning to her home town in a freaking helicopter. She should be excited to show everyone she’d made it in the big city; she didn’t need the Six. But her nerves were creeping in, increasing every second they came closer to her old school.
She looked at the papers detailing the bodies and infected in the school gym. She scanned some of the names on the list and stopped cold at Hank. Her heart stuttered and tears welled in her eyes. Hank had never done her wrong. The guy had always been there when any of them needed him. Her heart went out to him and was even more thankful for what she was bringing to them all.
Preston was only the beginning. The whole world needed her.
The two helicopters flanking her on each side, carried enough of the cure to supply the entire town. If it worked like Zach said it would, the world would be clambering for it. She hadn’t a clue how Zach had found a cure so fast, but she knew the man was the smartest person she had ever met.
“Five minutes, Miss Samantha.”
“You know, you can just call me Samantha.”
The man sitting next to her holding a machine gun nodded. She had grown used to guns working for Zach. Guards patrolled everywhere now and Zach personally saw to training many of them. And from the rumors spreading around the company, she gathered he could take on as many trainees as they could find. The man earned so much respect in such a short time, it was hard not to gravitate toward him.
A few houses passed under her and in the distance, the town’s buildings popped in and out of sight as the trees obscured much of the town. She knew exactly where the school was and kept her eye on the growing building. Her heart pounded in her chest. What if Joey and Poly are there?
Taking a few relaxing breaths, Samantha counted in her head. It was something Zach had told her to do if she became nervous. She had no idea why he thought she should be the one to launch the cure, but she was glad to save her town, glad he picked Preston as an example to the rest of the world. It was curious he hadn’t chosen his own hometown . . . but she couldn’t waste too much thought on that as the helicopters hovered over the field next to the school.
All three lowered and the dust swirled around the windows. She felt the abrupt landing and watched as the three men with
guns went out the door, fanning around outside.
Most of the country was starting to fall into chaos, so Samantha understood why the security was necessary. But it still felt weird having a group of armed men protecting her. She didn’t feel as important as everyone treated her.
Adjusting the black suit Zach had made for her, she checked her hair and makeup in a small compact mirror. It had been done prior to arriving and she wished she felt as confident as she looked. The whole world would be watching this soon.
One of the armed men moved up to the helicopter door. “All clear, Miss Samantha.”
“You’re not going to stop with that, are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
It looked like she was going to have to suck it up and get used to it. The man helped her down the small steps. Her black heels stepped onto the dirt and at once she felt a connection to Preston. The playground behind the school, the dirt track they ran miles on. She saw the window to Mrs. Nires class and looked away. I’m not here for memories. She was here to save her hometown and prove to the world Zach’s cure worked. She knew it did already, they tested it on numerous people at headquarters, but the proof would be in the showing.
Samantha walked toward the podium her people were setting up. A few of the Preston folk had already started gathering and more were coming from around the school parking lot. She tried to maintain a confident walk just like her preppers taught her. Head up, shoulders back, she looked ahead, just hoping she didn’t trip.
Keeping her eyes on the podium, she slowed her walk. The last thing she wanted was to stand by while they finished building it. Instead, she timed her walk just right and arrived at the edge of the parking lot just as they finished setting it up. A large background was now up and displaying the ZRB logo for the company.
Standing on the stool behind the podium, Samantha watched over the people gathering around. Two cameramen they’d brought along pointed their cameras on her. She swallowed and took in the faces gathering around. She didn’t see any of the Six or their parents. In fact, it didn’t seem like enough people for the arrival they had. She gazed down at the gym across the parking lot. A mob of people appeared to be storming into the gym.