“Now that I see it, I know what it is. This is a micro memory card. With the proper adapter it fits into a computer port so it appears like a small hard drive. I use these a lot to transport files to and from school. If we were at Grandma's, I'd even be able to put this in my computer. Currently, I have no way to read it.”
“OK, this is something. He knew it was important but he didn't tell you about it. Was he hoping you were just a nice guy and you'd travel across three states to deliver an old photo to his family? Are they expecting this to show up one day?”
“At this point, I don't even know what I know. He did mention he couldn't trust me.” After a brief pause, he continued his line of thought. “This changes my whole interaction with him. I need some time to figure it out. Let's keep this between us for now. He entrusted this to me, and I entrust it to you, but I don't want anyone else to feel obligated to keep this secret. At least not until we know more. He said there were other groups out there...one of which caused the whole thing. I wish I could ask him.”
5
“Liam! Victoria!” They looked at each other, then moved for the door out of the tent. Mel, Phil, and Bo jogged their way.
“We found something you should see.”
Mel and Phil each carried a messy stack of papers, as if they'd been laying on the ground. Bo was carrying just one. “Here you go, Liam. You should read this.”
Liam took the paper, scanned it, then said, “I knew it. This is it.” He began reading, “To Colonel McMurphy. From CDC Mobile Headquarters, Black Mountain, NC. In response to your request for information on the mission of our Forward Operating Group in St. Louis, I can only express my utmost confusion at your insinuation our team is lying to test subjects about the survivability of their experiments. Kidnapping subjects would never be a procedure we could condone. Furthermore, we currently have no teams within 250 miles of St. Louis. Our nearest teams are in Minneapolis and Denver. We have no record of anyone named Douglas Hayes on staff, though I admit HR has been hit or miss since this outbreak began six weeks ago. I'm sure you understand. Good luck out there. —Felicia Iminez, Deputy Director, CDC Operations.”
Mel added, “This was actually sitting in the tray of a fax machine lying on the ground. It must have arrived very near the end of this place. We picked up as many documents as we could find, though we have no way of knowing if any of them are of any use.”
“We also pocketed some bottled waters and a handful of fruit that survived the bombing. It was a cruel joke, but the tent closest to the bombs was the camp's kitchen and food storage. Almost nothing of value survived.”
Liam looked up at Mel. “Thank you. Thank you guys for coming with me to find this. At least we know something more about Hayes.”
She replied, “He may not be with any agency, or maybe he is. Hard to say. There are literally hundreds of agencies involved in health these days. Maybe he figured it was easier to just say he was with the CDC, since everyone recognizes that.”
Phil carried on, “But what agency could it have been? We know he had access to air power, helicopters, soldiers or men pretending to be soldiers, and he fit into this camp as if he owned it. That sound about right, Liam?”
“I guess—”
Bo racked a round into his shotgun. He looked into the nearby woods. Liam's eyes followed. Things were moving there.
“Time to go folks!” Phil took off for the MRAP. Mel kept pace.
Liam surveyed the camp, wondering what they were leaving behind. He noticed a zombie as it clawed out from under a part of the tent they'd just vacated. It was badly burned, with tattered medical clothing, and it was bathed in dirt and mud as if it had been buried. Not hard to imagine with all the craters near the tents. He ran with Victoria as other infected emerged from around the edges of the forest.
Bo trailed, but stopped a few times to check the pursuit.
Liam jogged past the small tent where he and Grandma spent a little time on their last visit. It was blown over, but not destroyed. He knew the place where the colonel had shot himself was nearby, but his body was nowhere to be seen. It was gone, just like the older man's body on the operating table. The force of the blasts must have been powerful.
Everyone made it safely to the truck. Once inside, they could see the zombies wandering into the camp. Liam took a hard look at them, concluding they could only have come from the big pit in the woods where bodies were dumped after the experiments. He struggled to remember if the bodies had all been shot in the head before they were placed in their grave, but at the time he wasn't curious about the pathology of their deaths.
The MRAP growled to life and weaved through wreckage on the way out of the destroyed camp.
Colonel. If you're out there, I'll try to find your wife and son. I renew my promise to you.
6
The trip back to camp was mostly uneventful. They retraced their route, and knew what to expect. They did see a single motorcycle pass them, going the other direction on the highway. Mel called them up from the back compartment when she saw it coming their way. It was the first motorized vehicle they'd seen—aside from their own—in a long time. The rider made no effort to stop or slow down or otherwise acknowledge them. Liam didn't blame anyone for not stopping for the military.
Liam, Victoria, and Bo returned to the back and tried to look through the remaining stack of papers. They hoped to find something useful before they arrived back at the Boy Scout Camp.
After several minutes, Victoria found a short note directed to the camp from a Homeland Security department. It was an authorization for Douglas Hayes to continue his research at the camp, including his methods for subject acquisition. Furthermore, it listed him as Doctor Hayes.
“Well, don't that beat all. He said he was just a truck driver for the CDC.”
“Liam, he still might not be a doctor. Nothing about the man should be taken as fact. Maybe he sent this himself?”
One of Liam's earlier self-revelations was that once the zombie apocalypse befell mankind, a person looking to reinvent himself would have no problems doing so. You could erase your past and become practically anything, as long as you had the practical skill to fake it. You couldn't say you were a doctor and expect to get away with it. The first time you had to make a diagnosis it would become obvious. But a doctor would have no problem pretending to be a truck driver, especially in a world where trucks were scarce. The only question was why.
It made more sense if Hayes was a doctor. It would explain his keen interest in Grandma. His command of resources, including Army personnel. An Army doctor?
“Mel, could an Army doctor command troops in the field?”
“Yes, though it would be unusual. Maybe less so now, but they do have rank and could command troops.”
“But aren't doctors supposed to help people? Doesn't shooting my girlfriend disqualify him from the academy or something?” Still, “doctor” felt right. He hated to use the term, but he thought it anyway. An evil doctor. Maybe a step down; a sinister doctor. Just the kind of person who would thrive in an environment of plague, death, and zombies. It was a bit cartoonish, but he couldn't think of a more reasonable explanation.
His question turned out to be rhetorical. No one volunteered an answer.
The remainder of the documents provided a few additional snippets of data, but little in the way of information. Protocols for destruction of camps. Composition of security details. Numbers of infected tested at the camp—224. Very little in the way of clues.
One tantalizing piece of data was in the header of an email sent to the colonel. The hardcopy didn't give an address, but listed “Riverside Operations Center, St. Louis, Missouri.” The message referenced medicines and other supplies they had on hand for shipment to various research facilities, including Elk Meadow. Someone had used a highlighter throughout.
He leaned over to show Victoria. “Check this out. It seems to imply this place is some kind of supply hub. Colonel McMurphy mentioned a base of operation
s in downtown St. Louis. Maybe this is where they'd take Grandma? But why doesn't it list an address?”
“Maybe they didn't want anyone to know where the stuff was coming from?” she volunteered.
“Or maybe they all knew where it was, so putting an address was silly. No one on Earth probably knows the postal address of the St. Louis Arch. You don't need it to find it.”
“So, all we have to do is find someone from this camp and ask them for the address of their secret headquarters in the middle of the collapsed city we just spent days escaping?”
Liam laughed at the thought. “Yeah, and while we're at it, we'll ask them for a ride to get there. Save us all the effort!” He thought about it for a second. “OK, it's a working theory for where she is.”
Chapter 5: Riverside
Marty knew she wasn't awake as soon as she saw the birdbath. Almost two weeks ago, her very first encounter with a man purporting to be her late husband, Aloysius, had been at this very spot—her backyard. The man wasn't really her husband, and she wasn't really in her backyard, but she couldn't say for sure who he was or where she was. It was more real than a dream, but she wasn't really awake either.
“Hello, Marty.”
“You aren't really Al. You don't have to pretend.”
“I'm sorry. I have to say it helps me relate to you better. May I continue the charade, if you will?”
She hated to admit he was right. She feared what other form he might take.
“Oh, alright. I guess it helps me, too.”
The avatar of her husband walked over the bright green grass of her backyard, and stopped at her favorite birdbath. It was a gift from her family for one of her big birthdays; the eightieth, she guessed. Before the infected came, she loved to sit on her back porch and watch the birds playing there. It brought her peace. As close to Heaven as she could get in this world.
“Heaven. An interesting concept. In a universe defined by the cold of absolute zero across the infinite depths of space and time, your warm rock called Earth would be Heaven by almost any definition you could conjure.”
“Even with infected walking all over it?”
“Hmm. I guess that depends on if you're still alive or one of the living dead. But do you recall what I told you in an earlier meeting? The infected are still human, and they'll be walking the planet when it's finally engulfed by the Sun if they aren't stopped here and now. That's why I chose you to fulfill your mission with your two young friends.”
“Liam and Victoria. Yeah, you said we were a trio of heroes. I fear they're trying to get themselves killed by rescuing me from these people. I encouraged them to be heroes, but they don't appreciate the danger they're in.”
“On the contrary, my dear Martinette, you don't understand the danger you are in. They understand it better than you do, I think. They don't know it as intimately as you do because they aren't here with us now. You know you must survive or all of humanity could be lost.”
“What if I don't?”
“Then the cure dies with you. Eventually everyone will succumb to the plague, or die resisting it. Even those who survive the next few years will die off soon enough. The thought of having kids in a world ruled by the undead will eventually decline the pool of survivors to a point the human race can no longer endure as a species. If you had a supercomputer you could run the numbers. I've seen it in other...worlds/simulations/archives.” He chuckled to himself. “Actually, I do have a supercomputer. As part of my research, I've found the pool of surviving humans is dwindling far faster than expected. Though most humans survived the initial crisis, time is indeed growing short for them as the number of zombies rise.”
They stood near each other in the simulated backyard of her house and watched the bird bath. It had water in it, but there were no birds to be seen.
“It doesn't make sense. Why am I responsible for saving humanity from this plague? You said before it was because I was close to Hayes. Now that we know Hayes is deeply involved, why not send in the Army? Give the President a visit with this information. Why put three—nobodies—at the center of this fight for all of mankind?”
Al took a full minute to consider. He walked slowly and deliberately around the birdbath several times.
“Do you have any doubt that what you see here is actually how you see it with your own eyes? The complexity of translating the reality of this—place—into something you can process is beyond reckoning. Yet it gets done. Would it surprise you to learn there may be other Marty's talking to other Al's in backyards very similar to this one? I once called myself a close approximation to an angel. You may believe I am infallible—truly an angel in the 'wings, harps, and white clothes' tradition. Those may yet exist. I've not seen a fraction of existence, though it would not be braggadocio to say I've seen a near-infinity's worth of it more than you. Suffice it to say, I am not infallible. I'm not even the best at what I do. But I do serve the Light. I do serve the one true God.”
He stopped at the birdbath and looked directly at Marty. “But I do make mistakes.” The being pretending to be Al actually managed to look sheepish.
“So, I was your mistake? That explains a lot, though it doesn't make me feel any better.”
Al laughed out loud. “No, my dear. Let me finish. You are the exact person I wanted for this crisis. It was your age—along with a few complimentary parameters—which enabled you to hear/decipher/recognize our call.”
“There! Why did you say it like that? This/this/that? Who are you, really? I think I need to know.”
“I told you who I represent. Isn't that enough?”
“You said this universe was at a tipping point between good and evil. Why don't you just cut with the mystery, tell me what I need to do, and we can get it done together?”
“A delightfully human response. I've admired you from the beginning. But as I imagine you already know, if a creator interferes with his creation to the point he dictates what happens, it really isn't a creation at all. A creator could just snap his fingers and arrive on the final day of the simulation, everything neatly wrapped up. But what purpose would that serve? Why start it at all?”
Al continued to pace around the birdbath while he moved his hands over the reflective water in a kind of pattern. “Instead, imagine a creation of wonderful chaos. If there was an omnipotent being behind it all, wouldn't absolute chaos and uncertainty ensure He wasn't dictating everything that happened? And perhaps that being would ensure general chaos by allowing his agents to continually introduce new stimuli, even to the point one might think it was 'evil.' That would be the last thing you'd expect from an omnipotent being, would it not? Agents of the Light. Agents of the Dark. Agents of order. Agents of chaos. All designed to complicate the universe to the point of infinite unpredictability. That would achieve a near-impossible result for an omnipotent being, wouldn't you think?”
“It has a certain logic to it, but to what end? Why put humans through the ringer like this? Does that mean God has no involvement whatsoever in His creation?”
“Ah, my dear Marty, I love your spirit. All I can tell you is that if God didn't care at all, He wouldn't allow me to be here, either. But there are more pressing and important questions you should be asking. Like how to work that phone you've been hiding in your pocket.” Al pointed to her fuchsia-colored pants pocket where Liam's phone rested.
“You must summon Liam and Victoria. They will come to you. Together, unified by your shared experiences and emotional interconnections, you have the best chance of anyone to access the 8088 room.” In a prior visit, he showed her a locked room behind a window containing an old 8088 model computer sitting on a wooden table. It was part of an elaborate construct which included a seemingly magic waterfall nearby. “I assure you what you will find in there is much more powerful than your nominal recreation of a personal computer. Inside lies salvation for you and for your planet.”
She reached for her pocket, but instead found herself back in her bed. It was dark once again. Sh
e didn't think she screamed when she woke up. Another small victory.
2
The MRAP idled outside the front gate of the camp. Liam and his friends were trying to agree on where to secure it. They couldn't park it inside the camp because the council was dead set against it, but leaving it outside the camp left it open to theft from anyone who stumbled upon it.
Mr. Lee came up with the only viable solution. “We'll hide it in the woods near the watchtower south of here. Technically it'll still be on Boy Scout land, but as per the council, it will be outside the camp itself. It will allow us to access it when we need it, prevent it from being easily stolen, and keep it close enough to the main camp to be useful in case we're attacked.”
Phil and Mel nodded vigorously. Victoria and Bo also seemed to agree. Liam couldn't think of a better idea, so he too lent his support.
“Wow, we all agreed on something,” Mr. Lee laughed. “If only dealing with the council was this easy!”
As the truck rolled down the pavement and headed for the dirt track leading to the watchtower, Liam moved closer to Victoria so he could talk to her in private near the back of the truck. She was looking in his direction with a smile on her face.
He returned a smile and asked, “What do you think happened to us back at Elk Meadow? Why did we both pass out at exactly the same time?”
He expected Victoria to have an answer prepared. She was planning for a career in medicine, so certainly had to have been thinking about the incident since it happened. But she surprised him. “I can't explain it. I don't even have a guess. Shared vision isn't something I've ever studied or even read about. Maybe it was some kind of suggestion put in our head by the stress of the bombed out camp? Something there, but beyond our comprehension.”
“Something that made us both think about a city when we were in a bombed camp in the woods? That's your answer?” Liam smiled, but he was also serious.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 64