He was unable to sleep. He poured a scotch, which strangely didn’t taste all that out of place with the residue of the barbecue chips in his mouth, and pulled a chair up near the wall-length window of his quarters.
The rebellion had been a bit of a surprise; he’d had his suspicions, of course, that nagging feeling in his mind that told you something just wasn’t right, but he hadn’t wanted to believe them. So he’d managed to place a mole inside Rogers’ group, a young survivalist who was skilled but impressionable. If Rogers had formed a breakaway group, Chadwick thought he might try to recruit the kid. He had, and the kid performed beautifully. He was a big, simple, effective machine that you simply had to know how to program.
Now, Miles couldn’t help but wonder if the roots of the rebellion were still in place, lurking just beneath the surface, but ready to grow back, stronger than before. What if it were a bigger group next time? What if he’d simply made martyrs out of Rogers and the others? What if this burst of conscience was as contagious as the Medusa virus had been? It could be out there right now, spreading from person to person, one at a time. Incubating. Waiting to burst forth.
He went back into his private office, where he kept the Citadel’s personnel files locked in a safe. He grabbed a handful at random, began leafing through them, reading through the psychological profiles, wondering if in these pages lay some hint of trouble, some harbinger of betrayal. As he scanned the documents, doubt about many of the recruits crept into his mind like a thief in the night. He moved from one to the next, unsure of what he was looking for. He paused at one, a red folder containing the dossier on one of his earlier recruits.
Eldon Washington. A thirty-seven-year-old agronomist from Idaho. A foster child who’d never found a permanent home, he held a Ph.D. in agricultural science and was one of the key players in the development of the Citadel’s food supply. He was brilliant, but troubled. Six years before the Medusa outbreak, he’d been Colin Barton, a professor at the University of Idaho. Then his wife had left him, and he had turned to booze for solace. One night, after downing half a bottle of tequila, he had gotten behind the wheel of his F-150 pickup and plowed into a family of three on their way home, killing the mother and the couple’s infant daughter. Chadwick found Barton while he was out on bond and offered him the deal of a lifetime. A new identity and a life free of the Idaho Department of Corrections, in exchange for his absolute loyalty to the project. They faked the death of Colin Barton, and Eldon Washington was born.
This was the kind of man Chadwick needed. Someone who owed Chadwick his very life. How many like those were in these files? Certainly not ninety-three. A thought took root in his mind and began to grow. Like so many businesses that had failed in the old world, he’d overcapitalized, grown too quickly. What did he have, really? Loyal, committed soldiers? Or a large, complex system that was the thing he feared above all else – impossible to control? After all, the more moving pieces a machine had, the more likely it was that it would break down.
And it wasn’t just the original group he had to worry about. They’d captured more than two dozen women. All carried antibodies to Medusa, which was good, but had he needed so goddamn many? A decision was made, right there. There would be no more captives this winter; the roads would be treacherous, and the survivors would be taking up shelter indoors, which would make it all that much harder to find them. The first big cut was coming; a million could perish out there as winter tightened its grip on the land.
A pruning.
The Citadel had gotten too big, too quickly. A lot of dead weight now. No, not dead weight. Dangerous weight. The kind of weight that could destabilize the entire community, upset the apple cart he’d spent so many years constructing. No, no, no, it just wouldn’t do.
The edges of a plan began to form in his mind.
He made a list of his twelve most loyal lieutenants, all male, all men who owed Chadwick everything. Men like Eldon Washington. Men like Lewis Hoover, the mole he’d placed inside Rogers’ group of traitors. The list came together quickly. It was like he’d known all along the ones he could trust.
Each would select one of the women from the group of captives. He didn’t care. They were to be a means to an end. Either way, they’d have to be broken.
The rest would be purged.
It was time to evolve.
#
Early the next morning, Chadwick nursed another scotch, which had chased down a pain pill, while he waited for the men to arrive. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, and so his shock troops lined the walls like kindergartners waiting for direction from their teacher. Chadwick scanned the faces of these good, loyal men and felt good about what he saw. It reminded him of a lean fighter after months spent in a hole-in-the-wall gym, stripped of the accoutrements of fame and wealth and pomp and circumstance. A fighter built in the crucible of hard work and sweat and blood. The rest of the Citadel, the women, they were nothing but fat that needed to be trimmed. And you trimmed it by being relentless, merciless.
Chadwick’s quarters were on the top floor of the main building, near the center of the compound, just west of the lab and the clinic. Beyond that lay the east housing units, separated from the wall by a thick copse of pine trees. The three other barracks were scattered to the other points of the compass.
The men had taken the news in stride. There had been no gasps, no nervous glances at one another, no sense they were wondering whether the old man had simply lost it. They stood silent, ramrod straight, as Chadwick had explained the plan to them. Charlie Gale stepped forward and approached Chadwick’s desk. He was a big, strapping man, Nordic, his hair platinum, his eyes blue like glacial ice. He took the heavy bottle of scotch and poured a finger’s worth into each of the two tumblers on the desk.
After a moment of silence, he took his place back in line and raised the tumbler skyward.
“To Dr. Miles Chadwick!” Gale called out, his voice firm but proud.
“To Dr. Miles Chadwick!” the other eleven echoed in unison.
Warmth spread from Chadwick’s core to his extremities. He felt lightheaded, almost dizzy with joy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good. It seemed that the entire project had been snakebitten since Rogers had sat down with him and told him that the women were infertile.
His stomach dropped; he held the smile on his face, as he wanted to know how much he truly appreciated the men’s loyalty. Because he did, well and truly so. But he didn’t want them to see the sudden panic on his face, even as the room filled with the stench of his flop sweat.
Since Rogers had told him the women were infertile.
Rogers had been the one to tell him. Had Chadwick ever verified Rogers’ report that the women were, in fact, infertile?
He must have. Certainly, Rogers must have shown him charts, lab reports, something that documented his testing and findings. Chadwick felt the rage swell up inside him, and he knew that he was doing the right thing. At this point, it didn’t even matter. Rogers was dead. They were taking fertile women, the kind who’d trigger positives on home pregnancy tests simply by walking by them in the store. He packed away his rage as best as he could and focused on the moment at hand. He joined Gale in raising his glass.
“To you, my warrior poets,” he said gravely. “To all of us. To a new beginning.”
He put away the scotch with one pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Let’s get to work,” he said. “We have much to do, and not much time to do it. But by this time tomorrow night, the Citadel’s future will be secure.”
The twelve scattered to the winds, each bearing his own task, each holding his own unique piece of the puzzle.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rachel picked at her breakfast, moving the food around her plate like a government bureaucrat intent on showing that she’d done something productive with her day. Again, she hadn’t slept well.
The atmosphere reminded her of the CalTech student cafeteria on th
e rare occasion she’d managed to make it there for a meal. She’d normally been so busy that she often took her meals at her desk, a protein bar here, a slice of cold pizza there. The old tape in her mind unwound. It made her sad to think about the empty hallways and graveyard campus. She’d spent most of the summer there, having gone home for a two-week break just before the outbreak had begun. Had her friends, her teachers, her advisors died there? Were their bodies still dotting the campus, the quad, the dorms? Guilt spiked through her like a burst of static electricity.
She forced herself to eat, focusing on function rather than form, chewing the peanut-butter-smeared English muffin a little bit at a time. She wished she had something hot to drink. It was cloudy and the dorm was dank and cold. She despised cold weather, the way it got into you, how it was almost impossible to snuff out once it had set into your bones. Growing up in San Diego had ruined her on cold weather, just ruined her. To stay warm now, she wore her heaviest sweatshirt, a gray Dallas Cowboys hoodie she’d found on the grounds.
Now she was thinking about home again, about how her stepdad Jerry had dragged her to dozens, no thousands, of Padres games over the years. How she complained about it during the thirty-five-minute drive there and how he would threaten, no, promise her that he was never taking her to another game. And then she’d get there and have a corn dog and an ice cream cone, and she’d be happy. What she wouldn’t give to be at a Padres game in the middle of May when the city absolutely exploded with its sharp lines downtown and its green parks and, of course, the shimmery silver of the Pacific.
The exhaustion was wrapped around every fiber of her being, down to the roots of her hair. A mental exhaustion, the byproduct of the strain from being trapped in this hellhole. They were nothing more than slaves, concubines. She hadn’t been inseminated yet, but she suspected it was only a matter of time. A few of the girls had been raped, she knew that, but so far, she’d been spared that atrocity. At least three were now pregnant. They were being incredibly careful with the program, taking their time, not rushing, making sure that each pregnancy was viable. Their blood was tested weekly for Medusa, and she could see in the way they skittered around the lab that she and the other women scared them, as though there was something mystical about their genetic makeup.
A commotion at the table drew her attention. A rumor was sweeping among the women that a couple of new girls had come in overnight and were currently being processed in the lab, undergoing the humiliating medical tests that bonded them together, creating a sisterhood.
“You stole my biscuit!” It was Julie, a heavier set woman with thin black hair.
“Why would I steal your goddamn biscuit?” replied a fiery Erin Thompson, now halfway through her pregnancy and dealing with a hell of a case of heartburn.
Rachel watched for a moment, embarrassed to admit she was fascinated by the conflagration because it was a break in their awful routine. It was something that fired up the synapses, and all of a sudden she understood the psychology of prison riots.
“Because you’re pregnant and all you can think about is your stupid baby!”
Erin exploded into sobs; Julie reached across the table and plucked the allegedly purloined biscuit from Erin’s plate. Then she shoved it into her mouth all at once.
“You disgusting cow!” yelled Patricia, who was sitting next to Erin. They’d become close friends, probably as close as any of the women in the group.
They were all getting a bit flaky. Fuses were getting short. Despair was growing long. It wouldn’t be too much longer before Chadwick and his band of psychopaths would have exactly what they wanted – a group of broken women, capable of reproducing and little else.
“Hey, knock that shit off!” Rachel bellowed, surprised by the power of her voice. The other women fell silent.
“Don’t you let them do this to us,” she went on. “Don’t you let them!”
Patricia burst into tears.
“Can’t you see they just want to break us?” Rachel said, looking squarely at Patricia. “They want us to give up. They want us to quit.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw one of Chadwick’s lackeys approaching their table.
“You bitches shut the hell up.”
Patricia helped Erin out of her seat and escorted her away from the dining area. Rachel lost interest in her muffin like it was a boring book that she had to read for school. She set it back down on her plate and gave up. The fight concluded, the remaining women at the table began chattering away again, their voices on edge, probably not far from another eruption.
She wondered if it would be possible to see San Diego again.
She wondered if there was a way for all of them to escape.
She wondered whether she would be willing to die trying.
She thought that she would be.
#
The morning passed by in a haze, Rachel stretched out on her bunk, her mind singularly focused on the idea of escape. She lay on top of the itchy woolen blanket these assholes provided, the one that barely covered her toes at night but that she dreaded losing. Now that she knew the lay of the land and had absorbed the routines and the rhythms, she knew she could get out of the compound on her own.
But that wouldn’t do. If she left the others behind, Chadwick’s retribution would be swift and terrible. He’d kill the others like he was throwing out a batch of burned brownies and start again. She’d done the math; even if the epidemic had been as bad as she feared, there were still a couple of million women out there, hundreds of thousands that would meet his needs. He’d slaughter her fellow captives.
No, if this were to work, she had to get them all out. No matter how much it ratcheted up the danger. It had to be this way or not at all.
At noon, a knock on her door. There was no need to get up, as it was a courtesy knock, and the door swung open a second later.
“Get up.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up to greet her visitor. It was one of Chadwick’s men, one of the inner circle that she frequently saw by his side. A kind of caste system had come into play since the executions. Some had better access to Chadwick than others, and some seemed to barely be in the mix at all.
“Pack your things,” the man said, tossing a pair of plastic grocery bags at her feet.
“Why? We going on vacation?”
The retort earned her a hard smack to the side of the head, enough to fill her field of vision with a flash of white light.
“Get your stuff,” he snapped. “Don’t make me ask again. You’ve got thirty seconds.”
She packed quickly, sticking to the essentials as she stuffed the plastic bags, scolding herself for the pointless, illogical decision to give this guy lip. This was something a child would do, or someone capable of only child-like thinking. If she was going to lead these women out of here, she was going to have to start thinking like a grownup. No, she would have to think like a machine, a thing incapable of making irrational decisions, incapable of saying stupid things because they felt good to say.
She would have to inoculate herself against being human.
Outside, the sky was gray, the air cold and damp. The chill stung her nose, and she thought it might snow soon. Since Chadwick had cut their outdoor excursions, this was her first time outdoors in days, and she couldn’t even manage to draw a little sunshine. She climbed in the idling SUV, which zipped away before she even had a chance to buckle her seatbelt. The driver rambled east, away from the lake and toward the road that bisected the compound into two rectangles. Then he turned south toward the group’s nerve center.
A short drive brought them to a cluster of buildings just east of the road; the driver let Rachel and her escort out in front of a boxy building, slate gray. Nerves pulsed through her like lightning bolts. She twirled the plastic bags containing her meager belongings; the way they spun in her hands and unspooled again gave her a measure of comfort.
“Follow me,” he said.
He pause
d to punch a code into a keypad at the door, which unlocked with a satisfying click. He held the door open and motioned her through it. They were in a narrow foyer now, empty and hollow. She half-expected to see one of those directories mounted on the wall identifying the occupants of an office building, telling you which floor the accountant was on, where you’d find the physical therapist. She followed him through a door on the left side of the corridor to a stairwell, gray and metal. Again, he yielded her the right of way and trailed up the stairs behind her. They came to a heavy metal door on the second floor, which he knocked on.
Her heart was throbbing now, so fiercely that it took her breath away.
The door opened.
Miles Chadwick stood before her.
He had a wild grin on his face, the look of a man who’d just heard a very funny joke.
“Rachel,” he said. “Welcome to your new home.”
#
Chadwick and his man spoke briefly while Rachel scanned Chadwick’s living quarters. It was spartan, to say the least. She counted at least three rooms – a large living room, a small kitchen, and two smaller rooms, just off the main corridor. There was a cheap-looking bookcase in the corner, stuffed to the gills with all manner of tomes. She was too far away to make out the titles.
Until now, she had not known where Chadwick lived. Truth be told, she had not recognized him as a person who needed a place to live, to sleep, to take a well and good shit in the morning. He was the boogeyman, a phantom, a monster who transformed into some terrible winged creature and flew back to his cave at the end of each day. But no, he was a man like any other. He ate and drank and had bad dreams and checked the stove before going to bed at night.
A man had rendered this terrible fate on the world.
A man.
A single, solitary man.
Behind her, the door opened and then clicked shut again. They were alone now.
“My dearest Rachel,” he said.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 45