Rachel sensed movement behind her, and her stomach flipped. The feel of cold metal at the base of her skull. She glanced behind her.
Leon Gruber.
39
“Get up,” said Gruber. “I see that machine gun, so do it slow.”
Rachel considered her options. If she made a scene, she might draw the attention of Priya’s people. She stood up slowly, keeping the gun close to her body.
“You have a son.”
“I do.”
“Get inside the car,” he said. “Leave the gun on the seat. Son, stay where you are.”
She climbed over Will, giving his arm a quick squeeze as she went by, and crouched in the second row of the car, by the passenger window. The Suburban was spacious and gave her room to draw back from Gruber, keep some distance from the man.
“The gun now.”
She set it down on the first row.
A flicker of movement drew her attention.
“No one move,” Priya said, stepping up behind Gruber and pressing a gun to his head. Gruber froze, his face tightening into a grimace.
Rachel eyed her carefully as she struggled to take control of Gruber. Quickly, she reclaimed her gun from the seat and trained it on them. Priya kept Gruber between Rachel and herself as a human shield. She pushed them inside the vehicle and pulled the door closed behind them.
“Mommy!”
“Quiet,” Priya snapped.
Then Gruber drove an elbow into Priya’s midsection and dove to the floorboard, bringing his gun up toward Priya. Rachel swung her gun back toward Gruber, painfully aware of Will’s presence in a potential crossfire between these three. Priya recovered quickly and retrained her gun at Rachel’s head.
“Don’t you see?” he asked, cutting his eyes toward Rachel but keeping his gun trained on Priya.
“See what?”
“It’s almost poetic, this predicament.”
She ran the permutations through her analytical head. A stalemate. Any move right now would almost certainly prove fatal. But there had to be a way out. It was a proof to be solved, a math problem, game theory. The best solution was for everyone to walk away. If these two simply thought it through, they would come to the same conclusion.
“What do you want?” Gruber asked, directing his query to Priya. “Why did you come here?”
“To burn it all down,” she said.
Rachel turned slightly toward Priya, keeping her eyes squarely on Gruber.
“What?”
“Humanity had its chance, my dear,” Priya said coldly. “I’m here to finish the job.”
“But you said-”
“You were right not to trust me.”
“You could’ve killed us.”
“And I’m glad I didn’t. Because then I would never have found out about this place, and my work will have been for nothing. This is the holy grail. Humanity’s last gasp. Once we finish here, there will be no more second chances, no more Hail Marys. This is where it ends. I’m in no hurry to die, but it matters little whether I survive this or not.”
The briefcase.
That was the key.
That it live on beyond today.
Gruber may have had his moment in the lab with her, playing God, torturing her with his power over her, over life itself. Priya, destroying it all. Two sides of the same coin of evil here in the car with her.
“Wow,” she said, the word slipping free like a puff of wind.
It was growing steadily warmer in the car, which was becoming pungent with the gamey smell of fear and stress. Faces were flushed, breathing heavy. There was no way out of here, she saw that now. They would all die. Game theory assumed the players would act rationally.
But, Rachel reminded herself, Priya wasn’t acting in her best interest; she was playing toward an irrational end game. She was the wild card. She was the threat. Whatever had brought her to this point was irrelevant. Whether Rachel liked it or not, Gruber’s people were the solution, always had been. She had to dispatch Priya first.
But the thing was, the thing she couldn’t get out of her head - maybe she wasn’t acting in her own best interest either. She was acting in Will’s best interest. And Will’s life currently sat in the hands of a very irrational actor.
Her shoulder began to ache, and her singed arms stung; the others were fatiguing as well, hitching their shoulders, their arms trembling. They were reaching the endgame here. And if she didn’t come up with a solution quickly, she would be left to the mercy of fate.
And then it hit her.
“I want to show you something.”
Keeping her gun up and her eyes on her adversaries, she reached down into her pack and rooted around until she found it. Then she held up the grenade for everyone to see.
“Anyone moves, we all die.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Priya asked softly.
“We’re all gonna die here today,” Rachel said. “I see that now. This way, I get to pick when we go out. And I want you to know that you didn’t control shit. You have until the count of three to let my son go. Or we all die.”
“You’re bluffing,” Priya said.
“Three.”
“You didn’t have time to remove the pin.”
“Two.”
“You’re both fucking crazy,” said Gruber.
“One.”
Rachel lobbed the grenade like a softball, taking the moment to kick up the gun and slide her finger into the trigger well. Priya’s grip on her son softened, her eyes tracking the grenade as it arced end over end and began its downward trajectory. It clattered harmlessly to the ground, and a moment later, it became clear the grenade was still secured, the pin still in place.
It would have to be enough.
“Will, get down!”
The boy pushed free of his captor just as Rachel kicked up the gun, sliding her finger in the trigger well as he dove to the floorboards. Her timing would have to be perfect. Mindful of her son’s presence near Priya, she turned and fired a burst into Gruber’s chest. She swung back to take out Priya, but it was too late. She had pulled Will close to her, the gun pressed squarely against his head.
“No!”
Behind her, Gruber grunted, the sound of his gurgling huge, the coppery smell of his blood and gunpowder hanging in the air. Her arms ached, her body ached, her head hurt.
There was only one card left to play. And she was going to play it. At the end of the day, she was Will’s mother, and she was going to pick Will’s life over the life of all the babies yet to be born. How could she not? She was his mother. History could judge her, fate could judge her, God Himself could judge her. She would pick her son every day of the week and twice on Sunday. If God or fate or karma had wanted a different outcome, these would not have been the stakes.
“If I give you what you want, will you let us go?”
“What is it you think I want?”
“I hid a suitcase full of vaccine in the woods,” she said, her heart breaking as she gave in. “Hundreds of doses. It lets women give birth to Medusa-immune babies. If you get that, it doesn’t matter what happened here.”
Rachel watched her work it out in her head.
A fighter came up to Priya. He was injured, bleeding from a wound in his shoulder.
“We can’t hold them off much longer,” he said, struggling for breath in the thinner altitude.
“Look,” Rachel said, “if I’m lying you can kill us both.”
Priya looked to her soldier, glanced out the windshield toward the battlefield, where it was becoming clear her gambit had failed. Much of the compound was destroyed, but it had come at a terrible price. And now there was nothing to stop her from cutting her losses, simply killing her and Will right here in this Suburban.
“Let’s go.”
They alighted from the car into a chilling quiet that had descended on the chalet. The battle appeared to be over. This was it. In a few minutes, Rachel would surrender virtually all of humanity’s last hop
es to this woman.
“Give me two guys. We’re taking a little stroll into the woods.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They waited a few minutes until her two charges joined them. After explaining what they were doing, she shoved Rachel in the back and they started anew, following the cut of the driveway, around the ruined chalet, and then to the tree line. The mishmash of footprints pointed the way to the edge of the property and into the woods.
“Keep moving,” she said. “If you don’t do exactly what I say, I’ll splatter his brains all over the snow. How do you think that would look?”
She ignored her, watching her footing, studying the terrain, looking for the tiniest opening that would let her save Will. They dropped into the woods, their pace slowing a bit now. Ahead, she could hear her flock, chattering nervously. The barren trees were thick here. Heavy roots crisscrossed the ground, more akin to a relief map. Clouds of fine snow wafted about in the steady breeze that had picked up.
“There are others,” Rachel said. “They escaped with me.”
“Make it clear to them. If I sense any trouble, the boy dies.”
She paused and turned to face her son. He looked scared but alert.
“You OK, buddy?”
He nodded.
“It’s almost over. Can you hold it together for Miss Priya a little bit longer?”
“Yeah,” he said it, almost sighing the word.
They covered the last fifty yards in silence, concentrating on negotiating what little trail there was here. Here the trees were so numerous there was barely enough room to slip through them. It made for slow going and all but eliminated any possibility of escape. After about a hundred yards, the trees began to thin out and the trail opened up on a large clearing, where the group was waiting for Rachel. She could hear them before they saw them.
“Stop,” Priya said
Rachel and Will froze.
“What’s that sound?”
The children. Priya could hear the children. She didn’t know about them yet.
“I said there were others.”
Priya was visibly shaken now, her eyes wide, her hand tightly gripping the barrel of her weapon. They continued through the trees, Rachel’s mind on overdrive now. Surprise. The element of surprise was on her side now. She knew what lay ahead. She’d seen them. After a few minutes, the trees thinned, giving her her first glance at the group, now seated in a circle, talking quietly. There was a narrow trailhead here, allowing them to walk single file.
“Buddy,” she whispered, “slide ahead of me.”
Will did as he was told.
Behind her, the crunch of the trio’s footsteps in the snow grew louder as they hurried to catch up. As she neared the clearing, she slowed down, narrowing the gap between herself and Priya. She hazarded a glance back toward the woman; her head swiveled from side to side, anxious, on alert. Her gun was up, aimed squarely at Rachel’s back. Her escorts had lagged back a bit.
Twenty yards now from the clearing.
A giggle.
“What is that?” Priya asked, her voice suddenly cloaked with fear. It was a strange sound, Rachel now knew, when you hadn’t heard it in a decade.
The sound of a child laughing.
Ten yards.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked.
Rachel played it off.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
Five yards.
Rachel cleared the trees and stepped to the side of the clearing, just enough to give Priya room to come through.
A few more seconds.
Priya stepped into the clearing and saw the children.
“Dear God,” Priya said.
Rachel glanced back at the woman, who stared at the children with her jaw hanging open. There it was. Their future, right here. The future Priya was desperate to stop was already underway.
Now, Rachel. Now.
She lowered her shoulder and drove into Priya’s midsection like a linebacker. The shock of seeing the children must have frozen her because she put up virtually no defense at all. Her gun flew out of her hand, banging against a tree at the edge of the clearing and dropping down into the snow.
She reared back and delivered a jab to Priya’s chin. The woman turned slightly at the last second, reducing the punch to a glancing blow. But she was still recovering from the hit Rachel had laid on her, gasping, clawing for air. Rachel lunged for the gun, reminding herself this was now a one-on-three battle. She flipped over to her seat and slithered up against the tree as Priya rolled over onto all fours.
Adrenaline flowed through Rachel’s veins as she struggled to get a bead on her target, even as the two escorts closed in on the scene. Then they were in the clearing as well, and they too were stunned into still life by what they saw.
Rachel swung the gun toward them and fired twice. At such close range, they were easy pickings. Each took a round in the torso, dropping them to the snow. That threat was now neutralized. But it had given Priya time to recover; she leaped onto Rachel and grasped wildly for the gun, which proved tough to hang onto with cold fingers.
They were face-to-face now, inches apart, Priya’s forearm sliding up Rachel’s neck toward her throat. Rachel pushed the gun up, near her clavicle, pointed toward Priya’s face. But she couldn’t fire, she couldn’t get her finger inside the trigger well. And Priya’s forearm was now pressing against her throat, cutting off her full intake of oxygen. Priya had the upper hand here, the leverage; in a few more seconds, she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all.
“Mommy!”
Will’s voice was everywhere in the clearing.
Fight, goddammit, fight!
They locked eyes, Priya’s round brown eyes, filled with hate, filled with rage, filled with sadness, staring at her. The sadness of the world lost, the sadness of the babies lost, of the babies that had never been born.
From the corner of her eye, she detected movement. A blur of movement coming toward them. Will.
“Mommy!”
No. No, sweet Will, stay away.
He jumped on Priya’s back and tried to pull her free, but the woman was too strong; she had locked herself to Rachel’s body. She reared back and grabbed Will by the collar, swinging him clear and back into the snow. But her weight shifted, just a hair, just a smidgen, giving Rachel clearance to get her finger around the trigger.
She fired.
The boom echoed through the clearing and up the mountain, the vibrations rattling free the beards of snow clinging to trees, showering the area around them with fluffs of white.
Priya’s body went slack, her forearm easing up on Rachel’s throat as the bullet tore through her, but her eyes remained open. They went blank, totally blank, as though someone had pulled the plug on her. Rachel shoved Priya’s body off her and pushed up onto her hands and knees. She vomited in the snow.
“Mommy!” Will called out, sliding next to her, throwing his little arm around her back.
“You OK, Spoon?” she croaked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Is it over?”
She wept.
“It’s over.”
She washed her mouth out with a handful of snow; then she pulled her son close, hugging him tightly, breathing him in. He had saved her. He had turned the tide. Around them, the crowd stood mute, watching the bizarre scene unfold before them. She kissed him on the cheek and then stood up.
“Love you, bud.”
He nodded.
Nearly twenty people in her charge now, nearly all of them children. There would be many more back at the ruins of Olympus, wondering what to do now.
They had little food. Their shelter was in ruins.
But they were free. These women were no longer bound by the stricture of their oppressive Lottery. These children would have a future, that much she would see to. They were in her charge now. And most important of all, they had the vaccine.
She passed out the little bit of food remaining in her pack, told the group to sh
are it. They ate in silence. Their faces were long and dirty and sad. Will sat quietly in a group of kids for the first time in his life, his eyes bouncing from child to child. He had never spent time with other kids. Ever. The enormity of that burden made her tear up as she sat there. It hadn’t been fair. Not fair at all.
A little girl, maybe seven, approached her. She wore a heavy jacket and ski pants. Her face was small and round and Rachel wanted to scoop her up and read her stories and drink hot chocolate with her.
“I want my mommy.”
“We’ll go back and look for her.”
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know. We’ll try to find out.”
“OK.”
She tottered away, chewing on her jerky.
They would find out, Rachel decided. They would wait. They would scavenge for supplies. They would find the hybrid seeds Gruber had mentioned. They would do the best they could, and they would press on. If Gruber’s wild claim was to be believed, they all had many decades ahead of them.
They would start again.
She thought about her father.
I hope you can rest now, Dad. I forgive you.
Whatever debt he had built up to her, he had paid off in spades. He had done the best he could with the equipment he had. She liked to think she had done the best she could with Will. No beating around the bush. It was a terrible world out there. If the last few months had taught her anything, it was that every day, every minute could be their last. Maybe there would be no happy ending for all of them, for any of them. Maybe they would have to be satisfied with a happy present. A happy moment. Here and there. Putting those moments together like a puzzle until it resembled a picture worth looking at.
She saw Will smile at something one of the kids said.
Then he laughed.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David lives in Richmond, Virginia, where he works as a novelist and attorney. His first novel, The Jackpot, was a No. 1 Legal Thriller on Amazon in 2012 and was later published in Bulgaria. His second book, The Immune, was published in 2015 in serial format and made it to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for post-apocalyptic novels.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 90