“What’s in the suitcase?” asked one child, a little girl named Madeleine. She was a precocious brunette who had attached herself to Sarah.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
The children giggled and squealed.
“Mayor Townsend,” he said turning toward Gwen, “can you take these kids inside and wait with them in the first office on the right?”
“Of course. Come along, kids.”
She herded them inside like sheep. The curiosity was killing them, their little heads turning back to watch Adam even as she shuffled them inside the thick oak doors.
When they were inside and out of sight, he called the adults around and unzipped the suitcase. He showed them the dozen Halloween costumes and candy he’d been collecting during the past couple of days. The calendar on his watch had reminded him Halloween was approaching, and unless they did something about it, these kids were never going to have another Halloween or any other holiday again. He glanced up at the others and saw their eyes moisten, their lips curled upwards in sad smiles.
“They’re going to love this,” Nadia said.
“Where did you find this stuff?” Sarah asked.
“I’ve got my little secrets,” he said.
He handed them each a bag of goodies and dispatched them to the various rooms of the town hall, where the excited trick-or-treaters would visit them. Then he stepped inside the office, where the kids were impatiently waiting.
“Does anyone know what day it is?” Adam asked after he was able to quiet the kids down to something resembling a dull roar.
The kids looked at each other blankly and shook their heads.
“Are you sure? Maybe this will help.”
When he removed the first costume, a Spider-Man mask, the kids lost their minds. An Iron Man and a ninja costume followed, and eventually, they sorted it out. Madeleine went with the doctor’s lab coat. After a few minutes, all the kids were appropriately decked out, each holding a plastic orange bag. Mayor Townsend bear-hugged Adam and planted a kiss right on his mouth.
The kids spent the next hour trick-or-treating, making loop after loop through the building until their bags bulged. Even Max got in on the fun, after watching it from the sidelines for a bit, insisting he was too old for Halloween. He dug through Adam’s bag and found a werewolf mask; he pulled it on and chased the children through the building. At first, Adam thought the scare might be more than the kids could handle, but they loved it, exploding with squeals and screeches of joy as Max lumbered after them with a throaty deep growl.
When they were done, the group gathered in the mayor’s office and enjoyed the spoils of war. Adam ate a bag of corn chips and drank a lukewarm fruit punch while he watched the kids absolutely ruin their dinner with junk food. Sarah gently teased Madeleine by hiding her bag of goodies from her, feigning ignorance when the little girl found her bag tucked behind Sarah’s back. He caught the mayor staring at him. When their eyes met, she placed her hand across her heart and mouthed the words thank you.
He nodded, feeling his throat tighten, his eyes water. It had gone off just as he’d hoped. These kids were incredibly important, the most important thing this world had. Each of the adults here had a responsibility to them beyond simply housing and feeding them. If the world at large was going to have any chance at some peaceful future, these kids were going to be a big part of it. They would be the last generation to remember the old world, and for the younger ones like Madeleine, that memory would fade soon enough. They would be the last ones to teach any future generations about the good that had been present in the world and warn them about the bad.
He smiled at the mayor and hoped they would be up to the job.
#
Sarah toed the welcome mat at Adam’s front door, her heart pounding in her chest. She’d known for a while that she was in love with him, but for whatever reason, it had taken his little Halloween stunt to drive it home like a nail into a two-by-four. It had been an amazing thing to watch, people forming their first truly good memories since the cataclysm had befallen the world. The children, who had developed a heaviness about them, seemed light and carefree, and it had been all due to Adam.
Another memory, that of their disastrous kiss, loomed large in her mind, a thing she had to fix, a chore she kept pushing off and finding ways to avoid. She’d been in love before, but it had ended because he’d been a civilian and he’d never quite understood what it meant for her to wear the uniform. That had been before the diagnosis, when there was still a chance things would go her way and there was still the prospect of finding someone she might grow old with. Then she’d gotten the bad news, and she made a point not to get too close to anyone because even if it were meant to be, it was meant to end badly, and the thought of the stupid disease being the thing that broke it up was more than she could deal with.
But then the world had gone off and ended and left her behind in what had to be the biggest cosmic joke ever. She wondered about others like her and it came close to driving her mad. The poor quadriplegic, unable to do a single goddamn thing for himself, perfectly Medusa-free and abandoned. She pictured him (and in her mind, it was always some young guy with shaggy brown hair who’d been injured in a snowboarding accident) slowing dying of thirst, terrified, his lips cracking, his mouth drying like a desert.
The door opened before she knocked, startling her, making her feel exposed, like she’d been snooping, a Peeping Tom. Adam was wearing a Crosby for President sweatshirt and blue jeans. An ambient hiss in the background, from one of those efficient space heaters they’d all agreed to use to reduce the load on the town’s power supply, kicked off, leaving the apartment deathly quiet, as though waiting for someone to fill the void of silence.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“Please,” he replied, stepping out of her way.
They sat on the sofa, Sarah in the pool of light spilling from the lamp on the end table, Adam on the other end, shrouded in darkness. On the coffee table in front of her was a book about farming. It was a project he was working on. The center of his personal solar system might have been his search for Rachel, but he was starting to fill in the orbit with other things. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Adam sat with one leg crossed over the other, his left arm draped across the back of the couch, and she almost called him on it, the way he was going out of his way to look casual, but she decided against it. She stared at the empty cushion between them and found herself wishing they were sitting closer together. Jesus, she hadn’t been this lovesick since high school.
She tented her hands at her lips and lightly tapped her fingers together, cursing herself for not knowing what to say. Finally, she thought of something.
“That was a hell of a thing you did,” she said. “It meant a whole lot to those kids.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Just throw yourself at him. He’s a guy. He hasn’t had any action other than his hand in months (neither have you, I might add), He’s not going to resist.
“It really worked out.”
“I love you,” she said.
Blerrrrrggghhhhh.
What the fuck was THAT?
She didn’t even recall forming the words before they just blew out of her mouth like they’d stolen something.
He sat there looking at her, and for a moment, she hoped she’d just imagined herself saying it, because seriously, no one could be that stupid. Right?
“But?”
“But what?” she replied, confused.
He smiled at her and slid over one cushion, into that void between them, for which she was grateful.
“You love me but…”
She couldn’t hold his stare, and her eyes wandered off, looking for something else to fix on. She landed on a bookcase in the corner, lined with paperback books, the familiar names on the spines facing her. Bond. Clancy. Grisham.
“Look, I’m a pretty smart guy. I went
to college for like twelve years.”
Just pretend you’re talking to the bookcase, she thought. Easier than looking him in the eye, right?
“I’m dying,” she said finally.
“What?”
It took all she had, but she swung her head around and stared him directly in the face. Let him see this stupid woman, this dumb chick who’d just told him she loved him and would be dead in the next five years, if she was lucky enough to live that long.
“Huntington’s.”
She said it like she was lobbing a grenade, and she expected to see on his face the look one might express when seeing one roll up by your feet. But he just stared at her. His face didn’t sink or shatter; his eyes didn’t well up, and his lower lip did not begin to quiver. He simply looked at her.
“My mom had it,” she said. “She died when she was forty. I had the testing done when I turned thirty. I carry the gene for it. You’re a doctor, you know what that means.”
“Yes, I know what that means.”
“So there it is.”
“There it is. I love you anyway,” he said.
“You do?”
He’d moved closer to her, his arm still draped casually over the back, but their knees were touching now. She felt his hand on the back of her neck, stroking it softly; then he was drawing her toward him, and it felt warm and safe, like she was sliding into a bath, like they had done it a million times before. Their lips met, and she tasted fruit punch from the Halloween party. A light kiss at first, and then her hands were on him, peeling off his sweatshirt; she felt her shirt come up over her head, and she was wrenching her jeans off because she couldn’t wait any longer. The air in the apartment was cool on her skin, but she felt heat everywhere else as his hands roamed across her body, finding her breasts, slipping between her thighs, and she pushed hard into his touch.
Their clothes shed in a pile on the floor, she pulled him down on top of her, and then he was inside her, and she was happy.
Fuck Huntington’s, fuck this stupid graveyard world, she thought, as their bodies rocked together, her hands holding his face.
As she climaxed, her body quivering, she thought of the life stolen from her, the one only made possible by seven billion deaths, one where she and Adam might have grown old together in a clean, empty world. She thought of the hysterectomy, which she’d undergone when the test had come back positive because there was no way she would chance conceiving a baby into a world where there was a fifty percent chance it would contract Huntington’s.
When it was over, he led her to the bedroom, where they made love again. After, she curled up alongside him, draping an arm across his bare chest, and lay there in the dark. He kissed the top of her head and fell asleep. She lay awake, staring at the cheap plaster ceiling in the blackness of the night, wishing that so many things could be different.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Rough hands shook her awake, and Rachel felt her throat close up with fear. This was it, she thought, the idea clear, even as her mind was foggy with sleep.
They’re coming to kill me.
Or worse.
“Rachel, wake up,” a voice hissed at her. “We need to go right now.”
She sat up quickly, so quickly that the rush of blood to her head left her dizzy. Two figures stood at the foot of her bed, the room dark but for the ambient light. Their faces remained veiled.
“Quick, get this on and meet us outside,” the second voice said. A woman.
A bundle of fabric hit her in the face, and it gave her a start. As quickly as she could, she slipped on the heavy coat they’d brought her and her shoes and then she followed her visitors into the corridor. In the dim light of the hallway, she saw Jeremy, one of the guards from the yard, and a woman she didn’t recognize waiting for her.
“Hands,” the woman said.
Rachel held her wrists out, and Jeremy slapped the zip ties on her, but only loosely. She looked up at him, and he winked at her, a slow, deliberate wink of conspiracy. Nothing lascivious about it. Her heart was beating so quickly it felt like a purring motor; she could barely distinguish one beat from the next.
The trio moved quickly down the corridor, Rachel in the middle. Icy sweat exploded on her skin. It was late, a moonless night greeting them outside. A car was idling in the access road, its exhaust gleaming in the red taillights like an ominous fog.
“Get in the back,” the woman snapped when they reached the car’s rear bumper.
Jeremy followed her into the backseat, and the woman rode shotgun. Rachel was barely in her seat before the car sped off like a sprinter breaking from the blocks. The driver’s identity remained a mystery as they careened through the outer part of the grounds, paralleling the long perimeter fence surrounding the Citadel complex. Not a word was spoken as they approached the main gate.
After a minute, the car slowed to a stop, and the woman got out. She sprinted for the gate and accessed a control box at the base of the fence. The driver – her buddy Ned, she now saw – looked back at Jeremy, whose eyebrows went up. A tense moment passed; then the gate began to slide open. The woman bolted back to the car and they were moving again even before she’d had a chance to sling the door closed.
Rachel glanced at the dashboard clock as they rocketed through the gate.
It was 3:47 a.m.
#
They ran southeast for a while, the world zipping by Rachel’s window. It was the first time she’d been outside the gates since her capture, although she wasn’t sure how long it had been. Even cloaked in darkness, the land overwhelmed her senses. She saw farms and billboards and feed stores. Here and there, a corpse or two.
Fifteen minutes later, Jeremy pulled into the parking lot of a warehouse on the outskirts of Beatrice, Nebraska. The quartet exited the vehicle and climbed the stairs to the office door, where a dim orange light glowed in the window. Ned rapped on the door in a series of coded knocks. The door opened, and they filed inside.
Three people were inside in the dimly lit room, seated on metal folding chairs, smoking cigarettes, their faces drawn tight with panic and fear.
“Let’s get started,” the man said after everyone had sat down. Rachel took the last empty seat, the one at the center of the seven, the keystone, and it made her feel very uncomfortable.
She recognized the man next to her as James Rogers, Chadwick’s second in command. Jeremy and Ned sat to her left. The remaining three members of the group were women.
“Rachel, my name is Dr. Rogers.”
“Yes, I know who you are.”
“Do you know what the Citadel really is?”
She looked around the room and saw six faces looking back at her with longing there. As if they wanted her to forgive them for something they had done.
“No,” she said.
The others exchanged nervous glances; their chairs creaked as they shifted in their seats. Rogers looked down at his lap, plucked a piece of lint from his pants and flicked it away.
“We created the Medusa virus,” he said, his eyes still cast downward.
“You what?”
He didn’t reply. He just sat there as Rachel processed his words, her stomach churning. She felt dizzy.
We created the Medusa virus.
She tried standing up, but her knees buckled underneath her, dropping her back into her uncomfortable seat.
“No.”
No.
Not because she didn’t believe him. But because it was too much to comprehend. The room seemed to shift off its axis before snapping into place again. The epidemic replayed in her mind, those terrible images of watching her mom drown on her own blood, of Jerry, curled up on the kitchen floor, naked, crying, covered in his own waste. The human race wiped out, and here she was chatting with the people who had done it. Her body felt soft, like it was filled with jam, and she was glad to be sitting down. She looked around the small office they were gathered in, still bearing the relics of a lost civilization. A wall calendar with a photo
graph of a monster truck, stuck on August, when the world had stopped. Grave Digger, indeed. She zeroed in on an ashtray on the corner of the desk with its pile of cigarette butts.
“Jesus Christ, why?”
He laughed, a high-pitched giggle, laced with manic.
“Miss, is there really any answer I can give you that would make you feel better?”
A good point.
“No, I suppose not.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. How the hell was she supposed to deal with what they’d just told her?
She opened her eyes and looked at these six ordinary looking people sitting there with her. Crazy. So goddamn crazy. And then she started laughing. Because what else could she do? It started small, a few giggles. But then it got away from her like a housefire. She laughed harder than she ever had in her life. They waited as she laughed, waited until she laughed so hard her sides hurt.
“The reason we’ve brought you here is simple,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Although we cannot undo what has been done, we can put a stop to any future atrocities. You know we had a vaccine against the virus.”
“Well, hell, of course you did!” she snapped, and the giggles started to make a comeback. “How else would you survive the great plague! It really wouldn’t do if you all ended up like my family now, right?”
Dead silence. She eyed each of them, one at a time, but none could hold her gaze.
“Well, the vaccine had a side effect that we failed to detect during testing,” Rogers said. “It rendered all the women who received it infertile.”
Rachel shook her head.
“But not us,” she said, the final piece falling into place.
“Correct.”
“You need concubines, right?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Rest assured, we are all deserving of every ounce of scorn and contempt that you feel for us,” Rogers said. “But that will not help us right now.”
“What do you need me for?”
“We’ve now captured thirty-four women since the epidemic ended. We want to end the project and destroy the Citadel.”
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 34