by Matt Ryan
“What’s going on?” Samantha asked a lady standing near the podium.
“Oh, some fool started a rumor that they had a cure in there. Please.” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Wait, don’t I know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What ya’ll doing here, dustin’ up the place?” An agitated man asked.
“Yeah, and who’s ZRB?” Another man said.
Gunfire sounded, two distinct shots from inside the gym. The armed men around her gripped their guns and spread out in formation between her and the crowd. They pushed back a few people. She felt the deep nerves coming back. If someone was in danger, or killing people, they needed to stop it. She stepped off the stool and strutted toward the gym, Hank was probably in there.
“We can’t go into that mob, Miss Samantha.” The man stood in front of her, shielding her and also stopping her from moving forward.
She walked around him.
“No,” the man said and rushed back around to face her. “I am under strict orders to have you safely returned. If you think this isn’t the place to receive the first package, we have another town assigned.”
Samantha stopped. Zach had ordered them to protect her, it was sweet but unnecessary. She gritted her teeth and watched the mob around the gym flooding out. Even with only a handful of people still lurking around her podium, it didn’t matter, it was as much for them as for the rest of the world. Once they heard what she was going to say, they’d be running to her.
She shuffled a few blank pieces of paper on the podium and stared at the cameras pointing at her. “I’m here to report great news. Through a vast amount of effort and research, ZRB has produced a miracle—a cure for the cough and a vaccine for the unaffected.”
The crowd around her stirred in excitement.
“Then where is it? I’ve got a wife dying over here.”
“We have it right here.” Samantha pointed to the nurses exiting the helicopters. They each lugged a few cases behind them, moving closer to the parking lot. “These people will give you a shot that will cure the cough and prevent you from ever getting it again.”
“Is this from ZRB? Who the hell are you? Is this from the government?”
“Yeah, how do we know you aren’t poisoning us?” Another called out.
Samantha took in the faces, a few she recognized, they were scared and skeptical. Looking down at the podium, she breathed deep. She hadn’t been prepared to take questions. Pulling the pin from the back of her hair, her locks fell down over her shoulders. The women in the front squinted at her, as if trying to solve a puzzle.
“I’m one of you, Preston. My name is Samantha Roslin and I lived over on Olive Street with my mom, Gretchen, not long ago.”
The crowd looked confused, as if she was lying to them. Another gunshot sounded from the gym.
“We need to get going,” her guard urged. Gripping his gun, he lifted it toward the sounds of the gunshots.
“Listen, we have a cure and it is here. There are enough shots for every resident of Preston. I’ve taken it; all of our people have. I’ve personally seen it cure an infected already.”
“Why hasn’t the president said they have a cure?”
“The president doesn’t know yet. The government would want to study this cure, test it for months on rats before a limited release to a test city. The red tape might go on for months, but does your wife have months? Do your friends have months? We can’t afford to wait for this cure. So we are giving it for free to the city of Preston as an example of its effects.
“We can’t rely on the government to save us.” Samantha gripped the edge of the podium and stared into the camera. “I have a message for the world. This cure is real, and it will be free to all citizens, courtesy of ZRB. If your government isn’t providing it for you in the coming days, then they are not agreeing to our terms of delivery. ZRB is here to serve the world in a time of great need, please demand that your government allows you access to the cure.”
She stepped off the podium with a thunderous cheer from the crowd. Good, they finally believe me. Too bad she wasn’t sure about the last part. Hopefully her words wouldn’t incite riots. She marched toward the helicopter.
“Samantha!”
She heard a familiar voice yelling from the crowd. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Julie and Lucas being pushed back by her men. Good, they would get the cure. And she was sure Joey and Poly were close by—thank God she hadn’t seen them. She couldn’t stand one more glimpse of their perfect life.
Turning back around, she quickened her pace toward the helicopter, wanting to be away from Preston, from them all. Bringing the cure was her final interaction with the people of her past. She would be able to sleep knowing they were still alive, but she could finally move on with her future.
The helicopter left the Preston area and she felt the door closing on that part of her life. She didn’t think she’d ever be back there again. She could fly her mom to San Francisco, maybe even buy her a place on the coast line. Zach had given her such a massive salary, she could afford to take care of her now.
It felt good to be in charge of her own destiny for once.
JOEY PUSHED AGAINST THE MASSIVE pile of crazed humans. He lost all courtesy as fear for Poly’s life pushed at his insides. His heart pounded as he yanked a man off the dog pile. If she got hurt . . . he didn’t want to think of it.
He heard Julie and Lucas yelling, their words muddled with the surrounding noises. His sole focus was getting to Poly. He hauled back on the shoulder of another man to uncover her body curled on the floor next to her case. But as he pulled away each person, another replaced them like a swarm. A man standing over her stepped on the back of her head and another woman fell, jabbing her knee into Poly’s back. She was in trouble and the urge to slow down time crashed into him. He forced it away. Sweat dripped from his head as he pulled his gun and raised it above his head.
Two shots blasted in quick succession, silencing the mob as people stared at his gun. The people around him cleared a path. “Get away from her!” Joey yelled, pointing his gun at the man hovering over Poly. The woman on Poly’s back stumbled backward.
Joey rushed to Poly’s side and put his hand on her shoulder. She winced and opened her eyes. Recognition of who he was lit her eyes and Joey helped her get to her feet with her free hand. Lucas, Trip, and Julie rushed to his side.
“You okay? You hurt?” Joey searched her body.
“I’m fine.” She took a few deep breaths and said, “Maybe a couple bruises.”
He felt his eyes twitch, the anger building at the people around him. He turned in a circle, taking them in. They all stared in his direction, glancing from him to his gun. Were they sizing up their chances? If they rushed him, what could he do?
“Let’s get out of here,” Poly said, holding the case in her hand.
Joey nodded to Lucas and wrapped his arm around her.
“Helicopters landed next to the school,” a man yelled from the door.
Why are helicopters landing? Has the government finally come to help?
Joey pushed passed people toward the door, keeping his hand on the gun. He gave each person standing in his way the strongest look he could muster. It must have worked as each stepped aside, opening a tunnel of sorts toward the door. Sneers and grumbles went abound as they passed by the coughing crowd.
“I’m going to stay with Hank,” Trip said and hurried back through the crowd.
“I hear you have a cure.”
Joey turned and found Sheriff Pick standing at the door, pointing his gun at him. His uniform clung to his body like he’d jumped in a river, coughing into his free hand while maintaining his level gun.
“You just drop that gun, son, and hand me the case.” Sheriff Pick coughed into his sleeve and used his gun to point at the case and the floor. A bit of blood dribbled down his chin.
Poly sneered. “Fine, take it.” She set the case on the floor and kicked it.
/> “Poly, no, my mom.” Joey watched the case slide across the polished wood floor and took a step toward it.
The sheriff fired a shot into the floor next to him. Joey jumped back and resisted every urge to shoot back—he wouldn’t miss. The man yanked it off the floor. He brushed back his greasy hair with the gun still in his hand. He looked frantically at everyone around him as he backed toward the door, pointing his gun at the greedy looking people closing in. After a few deft steps, Sheriff Pick was out the door and gone.
Joey let out a long breath. He needed those cures to help his family. His mom was coughing like heck when he left his house. How did all this happen so fast?
With the case and the cure gone, the sick people found their way to their cots or loved ones, some just fell to the floor, giving up. He knew them, and the sight of his town in such trouble made him ill.
“Julie and I are going to check out these helicopters. Maybe there’s help,” Lucas said and took Julie by the hand as they left the building.
“You saved me back there, Joey Foust.” Poly pointed to the area she was almost trampled.
“Did they hurt you?” He glared at the people around them.
“I’m okay,” she said. “You weren’t thinking of going all slow-mo, were you?”
“Thinking it? Yes. But I didn’t, I made a promise I intend on keeping. Besides, I had other ways to stop my girl from getting trampled. And really, I thought at any second you’d get stabby and fight your way out of there. So really, I saved everyone else’s life.”
“Aren’t you the hero?”
A man approached them, coughing in his hands. “Did you really have a cure?”
Poly shook her head. “Nah, just a cough suppressant. You should get back to your bed. Everyone should get back to their bed,” she said it loud enough that her voice carried over the whole gym. People grumbled but mostly coughed.
“Come on, I have something to show you.” Poly put her arm around his.
They walked outside and the fading daylight gave him a chance to see the red, swollen mark on her neck. She wasn’t okay, they had hurt her. Anger built up and he stiffened, turning and glaring at the door. He wanted to march back into that death pit and put a few marks on their necks.
Poly yanked on his arm and pointed ahead.
Where is everyone going?
The mob was moving toward a large white backboard with a finely dressed woman standing in front of it. He squinted and pulled Poly toward her. “Is that—”
“Oh my God, it’s Samantha,” she confirmed.
The woman on stage pulled her hair down and even from across the school yard, he knew it was Samantha. What could she possibly be doing there? Did she land with those helicopters in the field?
He jogged closer and heard her words blasting through the speakers. The crowd was fifty people deep and he half thought of using his gun to clear a path. He apologized as they plowed through the crowd, the mass cheering and roaring around him. Through all the hands in the air, he spotted Samantha walking away from the platform, heading toward the helicopter.
“Samantha!” he called. She kept walking. “Samantha!”
She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back around and climbed into the helicopter with an armed man.
He pushed his way to the front of the crowd where a group of guards pushed back against the front row. Julie and Lucas stood at the front as well and yelled for Samantha, but she was long gone.
“Get off me, dude,” Lucas said to one of the guards.
“Form an orderly line or you will not receive treatment. We have enough for everyone, so please be patient as we move as fast as we can.”
“What are you talking about?” Poly asked.
Men with cameras hovered in the background, pointing their large lenses at the people of Preston. The cheers had slowed to a murmur, mixed with coughs. Men with machine guns made people behave, apparently. Julie and Lucas paired up next to Poly and him, as the crowd moved around them.
They huddled close in all the hubbub. “What the hell was that about?” Poly asked.
Julie furiously moved her fingers around on her Panavice. She never had it out in public so she must have felt it was important enough for the risk. “I’m guessing ZRB slash Marcus recruited her for this very reason.”
A job fair had come to the high school last year and Samantha had been wooed by this ZRB company. Joey hadn’t thought much about it, and Julie said they were a startup and probably wouldn’t make it a year, but now they were landing helicopters and delivering a message?
“I don’t care if they find me,” Julie said, typing into her Panavice. “I’m going find out very quickly what this ZRB has turned into,” Julie said.
“What was Samantha saying up there?” Joey asked.
“Dude, she was all primed and looking good,” Lucas said. Julie nudged Lucas’s shoulder. “She was going on about how the world could get their cure if they just called ZRB and requested it. Something about telling the people of the world if the governments didn’t get it to them, it was because they wouldn’t agree with Zach Baker’s terms. Oh, and Preston was an example city or something for the cure.”
Julie raised an appraising eyebrow at his lengthy synopsis.
“Did you guys see her look at me at the end there?” Lucas said. “I mean, she looked straight at me—she heard me—but she turned anyway, and went into her helicopter.” He crossed his arms and huffed.
“She brought a cure?” Poly stared at the white tables, watching people getting injected in the shoulder at a rapid pace.
Joey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even when Julie showed the information to him that ZRB was possibly Marcus, he didn’t want to believe it; Samantha couldn’t be fooled so easily. He hadn’t seen or heard a thing from Samantha in a long time and now she lands in a helicopter and delivers something the whole world would go to war over. It seemed insane and he waited for the cameras to turn on him and for someone to come running out to tell him he was part of the biggest prank ever. He felt his heart in his throat. Marcus had Samantha. Was she being coerced into working for him? Was he torturing her?
“There’s no way in hell I’m taking a cure from him,” Lucas said.
“Some scumbag stole ours,” Joey said.
“He didn’t actually steal anything.” Poly pulled her hand out of her pocket, holding a handful of the thin glass vials. She reached into her jacket and showed them the vial gun.
“You gathered all that up while they were trampling you?” He shook his head with admiration.
“Oh no, their servers...” Julie turned, showing her screen to them. Just a bunch of lines on a graph. “I’m not going to be able to hack into their servers anytime soon.” Julie lowered her Panavice to her leg and blew air into her bangs.
Joey didn’t care about the servers, he wanted to get Samantha out of there. She had never seen the videos of Marcus, he could be pulling her strings and she wouldn’t even know. “We need to get her out of there, who knows what he’s doing to her? Where’s their headquarters? Where’s she being held?”
“Just outside of San Francisco.”
Joey turned and walked toward Poly’s car.
“Wait!” Poly grabbed his arm and yanked him around. “We can’t just go storming off to Marcus’s house. He isn’t like the others. We have to be a step ahead of him right now. You don’t think he sent her here by coincidence? You don’t think he knows we know now?”
“She’s right,” Julie said. “This is part of a plan.” She shook her head and gazed at the remaining helicopters on the field. “This was the equivalent of leaving a business card with Marcus Malliden on it at our front door. Brazen, really.”
“I say we go to this San Fran headquarters place and kick in the front door.” Lucas kicked the air in demonstration of the kick he’d use.
“I’m with Lucas on this one.” Joey finally agreed with him on something.
“Yeah, let’s go all gangster on them. Maybe we
can take him by the tie and pull him through the offices, show everyone up in there whose boss.” Julie used her sarcastic gangster voice. “Bring our gats up in there.”
“Now you’re talking,” Lucas said.
Julie took a deep breath and placed her hand on her forehead. “You’re talking about the most dangerous person ever. A rank ten. A guy who could probably kill anyone on this planet. Have any of you seen his fight videos? And don’t even get me started on the code written by that guy.”
“Fine, what do you think we should do?” Lucas crossed his arms.
“We can’t just leave her with that monster, I mean, look at what he’s done already.” Joey pointed to the coughing line of people.
Julie stared Joey in the eyes. “This is the harder part. We are nothing but a fun side note to him; a child’s favorite play toy he brought to the park. We’re nothing. He will have a much bigger game even than this.” She pointed to the orderly lines forming.
“I like to think I’m something,” Lucas said. “I did get a medal for archery.”
“Regional medal in recurve bow,” Julie corrected.
“Don’t down play it, I’m huge in some circles.”
Julie ignored Lucas and focused her attention on Joey and Poly. “If I had to guess, this Cough is about to get much worse before it gets better and when the world is begging for mercy, guess who has the cure?”
Joey’s gaze went wide and he looked at the coughing people. It wasn’t about making them suffer, it was about setting himself up to be the hero, to be the person the world was going to turn to . . . and he used Samantha to deliver the message. It finally sunk in. “He’ll be expecting us,” he said.
“Yep.”
“What if we do the unexpected?”
“I’m all ears.”
Joey laid out the idea, which started with getting their cure to their entire family; he didn’t trust something that came from Marcus, or Zach, or whatever he wanted to call himself. Then, they’d get Samantha out of his foul hands and end his life at any cost. This would be the last time he allowed Marcus to control his life.