Spore Series | Book 5 | Torch

by Soward, Kenny

  He directed Kim on which ones to include, and she worked her mouse in between bites of the creamy pasta. With a few exceptions, every layer he built lit with green lines to indicate a safe combination of molecules. They finished their lunch, and Anthony wheeled the cart away, returning with a tray of coffee.

  They worked past noon and well into the evening. Kim messaged Bishop to let him know she would be late. They’d gotten ninety percent into the solution when they finally called it quits, leaving Kim exhausted but thrilled.

  That night snuggled against Bishop, she stared at the opposite wall, unable to sleep. The solution lingered at her fingertips, teasing and mocking her. What if something in their model was off? What if they came up with a formula Max couldn’t produce?

  Something had to go wrong. She was sure of it.

  Kim clutched her sheets, staring straight ahead, waiting for morning to come.

  *

  The next day Kim got to the lab an hour early, happy to find her security access worked. She stood inside the big room, lights dim, surrounded by the advanced technology.

  She sat down with her coffee, shivering at the chilly temperature of the air. She’d brought a throw cover with her, and she wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled it tight.

  She studied the A-Vax model and added molecules, leaning over her steaming cup of coffee.

  When Bonnie arrived an hour later, they finished their work and created a vaccine sample. They ran it through the analysis equipment, breaking it down to see if what they’d created stood up to simulated testing.

  They had to go back twice and make changes to the A-Vax formula when parts of their creation broke down under testing.

  Kim barely ate her lunch as she made modifications, built new samples, and ran more tests until they had a final solution.

  Sometime around 7:00 PM, she collapsed into her chair with a single vial of A-Vax in her hand. She held it between her thumb and index finger, staring through the clear fluid at Bonnie.

  “Is this it?” Kim asked.

  “Give Max a day to work up a small batch,” the scientist said. “We’ll spend a week putting it through more testing. If it stands up, that’ll be it.” The woman raised her eyebrows in a victorious look. “I’ll introduce you to our Redpine doctors. Together, you can form a treatment plan.”

  “Then we just need to dispense it to the population.”

  “That’s right.”

  Kim placed her hands across her stomach. Her eyes glassed over as several emotions swelled and churned and clashed inside her head. Excitement and accomplishment. Satisfaction they’d reached the end of their struggle.

  “I wish Burke would have come forward about you folks here at Redpine sooner.” Kim shook her head with sadness and anger. “He could have won himself a pardon, or a reduced punishment.”

  Bonnie stared at Kim for a moment before her eyes fell away and turned back toward the screen. “At its heart, Asphyxia is still a very simple organism. But it was nothing you’d ever seen before. Your work with Tom and Paul was nothing short of incredible.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kim slapped her knee good-naturedly. “You’re a ninja with this stuff. You picked me up and carried me across the finish line. We make a pretty good team, right?”

  As stiff and formal as she seemed, Bonnie smiled secretively. “I have to admit, the past three days reminded me of college, staying up late with my classmates well into the evening. Long, coffee-fueled nights crunching to perfect our papers. And it went beyond that.” She pointed at Kim. “We had a bigger mission in life. We thought we’d amount to more than working for a biotech company and living like drones. We thought we could change the world through science.” She laughed. “Fast forward twenty years, and here we are, living like drones.”

  Kim’s smile widened. “I thought the same when I started working for the CDC. We were going to save the world from diseases. But competing with the military for funding was never easy.”

  Bonnie nodded in understanding. “It was nice to finally contribute something worthwhile to humanity. You know, we were all doubtful when you arrived with Burke in chains. But I’m glad you came. I’m glad we worked on this together.”

  “Me, too,” Kim returned a warm look.

  The chief scientist stared at the vial Kim held. Her mouth opened to say something, but she clamped it shut. Her eyes lifted, imploring.

  Kim rose in her chair, leaning forward, forehead wrinkled in question. “What is it, Bonnie? Go ahead. You can tell me.”

  “You see how much we’ve tried to help.” The woman’s eyes became sad but hopeful.

  “Yes, absolutely. You and Anthony have been incredible. Nancy, and all her facilitators, too. I was worried when we first got here, but I’m not anymore. I trust you, and you can trust me, too.”

  Bonnie nodded and went ahead with confidence. “You’ll have a batch of serum in a few days. You practically have a working vaccine, barring more testing. Not only will we save your lives, but we can save what’s left of humanity. Maybe we can reverse some of the damage Burke did.”

  “I think so.”

  “I mean, we’ve done the right thing.”

  “Yes.” Kim waited.

  “All that being said, we just have one favor to ask...”

  Chapter 25

  Sage, Chinle, Arizona

  “How can we help him breathe?” Sage asked Brandi as she stood at the foot of Mr. Nez’s bedside, watching the eighty-four-year-old man gasp for air like a fish.

  “I don’t know,” Brandi stood next to her with her arms crossed, her face a mixture of sadness and defeat. “We don’t have respirators or enough antibiotics to begin to fight this thing. Carver’s got all that stuff back in camp.”

  Sage squeezed her fists tight against her sides, shoulders tense as she watched the man struggle to breathe. “I feel like we should go to Carver and beg for access to the medical facility.” She shook her head so her hair fell loose around her shoulders. “I mean, we need something. We need some kind of hope.”

  “We’ll have to wait for--”

  Mr. Nez suddenly convulsed and surged up off the cot. His hands clutched at his throat, scratching and clawing as he grasped for air. Sage and Brandi rushed to his bedside, Sage using a thin, flat instrument to clear his breathing passage while Brandi held the man’s arms down.

  With a frustrated grunt, Sage produced a pen light and shined it into the man’s throat, noting with disgust the tendril-like material that clogged his airways. She used a pair of scissors and curved tongs she’d brought from home to try and clear the passage, but Mr. Nez jerked and bit and twisted, his face turning blue.

  “We can’t even intubate him,” she said tension straining her neck. She dove back in to try again, but the man’s teeth clamped tight, and she struggled to secure his craning neck, even when an orderly rushed in and held the man’s head tight.

  “I’m not certain that would even help,” Brandi replied. “His lungs are probably full of that stuff.” The doctor quietly removed a syringe from a case she held and lifted it so Sage could see.

  Sage teared up and her lips pressed tight.

  At the start of the trouble in Chinle, they’d secured valuable pain medications, including narcotics, from the Chinle hospital. But they’d not gotten enough other supplies, like intubation instruments. Already, the ten they’d brought were in use by other patients. There just weren’t enough for everyone.

  Sage stared at the syringe for a moment, then her eyes fell to the struggling Mr. Nez. The man was in agony. Suffocating. Dying right before her eyes. She lifted her gaze and looked around Cave 10, the primary infection wing. She was the most senior Navajo health care professional in camp, and no one else would make a major decision without her approval.

  While she appreciated the respect of her position, she hated the unsavory decisions that came with it. But Mr. Nez wasn’t long for this world, and miracles weren’t falling from the sky. She gave Brandi a single, fateful nod an
d watched as two young orderlies swooped in, grabbed Mr. Nez’s arm, and held it steady for the injection.

  Brandi administered the drugs and pulled the needle free, not even bothering to cover the prick point. The man calmed almost instantly, settling down on the cot, panic ebbing as the opiate took hold of his system. In less than ten seconds, he didn’t care if he breathed or not. He wouldn’t care about anything but the beautiful feelings the drugs gave him as he passed into the afterlife.

  Sage bowed her head and whispered an old Navajo prayer that would protect Mr. Nez in the Shadow World. When she finished, she looked up at him and saw he’d stopped struggling. He no longer raised and thrashed on the cot. He no longer gasped like a fish for air.

  The man raised up one final time, took a breath that sounded like a squeak, and collapsed with a baby’s sigh. He stared at the ceiling of rough-hewn stone, finally at peace.

  Sage blinked at dead Mr. Nez, forcing tears out in streaks. She lowered her head, feeling failure in her heart. In a surge of anger, she whipped her visor off and threw it on the ground, stomping toward the cave’s entrance as her emotions surged through her body.

  Other nurses and hospital staff dodged out of her way as she stormed by. Sage barely glanced at the growing number of cots and makeshift beds they were assembling to accommodate the rise in critical cases. Cave 10 was the worst of the worst, those on the brink of life or death, and Mr. Nez’s was just the beginning of something truly terrible.

  In her haste to get free of the cool cave confines, Sage ran into a nurse carrying an armful of bedding. She snapped for the woman to watch where she was going. Then she moved past the wide-eyed nurse, more aggravated with herself than before.

  Sage tried to force the anger down. It wasn’t the staff’s fault. They were only trying to help. It did her no good to berate them.

  She stepped out onto the cave’s entrance and watched the bustle of people bringing in supplies from Waki’s last successful scavenging run. Sage angled to her left down a series of rocky steps and walked into the basin.

  She headed for the creek that ran through the canyon’s center, drawn by the trickling water. Picking her way along the dry bank, she put her boots on two flat rocks and balanced there on the balls of her feet.

  The evening was dark and cool. She put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath of night air, filling her lungs before letting it out in a long, shaky gust. She turned her face up to a sky littered with stars. The electric light spilling from the cave entrance couldn’t drown them out, and Sage stared at them in wonder.

  Footsteps approached hesitatingly.

  “Sage?” Brandi’s tone was imploring, yet sympathetic. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t reply, but the woman’s simple concern caused another surge of emotion to swell in Sage’s chest. Her breath hitched as fresh tears cascaded down her cheeks.

  A hand gently touched her back. “Hey, what’s wrong?” The doctor made a derisive snort. “Well, I know what’s wrong. I mean, we’ve got sick and wounded coming out our butts and no way to help them. It’s what my father would call a shit show. I can’t blame you for being upset.”

  Sage chuckled darkly through her tears. “It’s true. As much as we’ve tried to put together a decent hospital here, it’s nothing but a shit show.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “Mr. Nez was the fourth person who died on my watch.” Sage locked her jaw tight as anger rose inside her. “And there will be many more to come. It’s just going to get worse.”

  “The four who died were the weakest to get the disease,” Brandi offered. “We don’t want anyone to die, but that’s the nature of such infections. It will claim the older and weaker people first, as much as we hate it. The strongest among us will fight it for weeks and months before they get like Mr. Nez.”

  Sage sniffed and wiped the stinging salt tears from her cheeks with her arm. “You’re right about that, too. But we’ve got thirty infected elderly being transported to Cave 10 right now. The next few days...” her words trailed off as her voice cracked. “It’s just... It’s hard to see hope in the situation.”

  “Why don’t you take a day or two off?”

  “What?” Sage turned her head, slightly wounded.

  Brandi stepped onto the rocks and turned to look Sage in the eye. “Look, I worked in some of the worst hospitals in the country. I even saw action in the Middle East. I’ve seen enough nightmare fuel to give me bad dreams the rest of my life. I can handle stuff like this. It took a few years to come to grips with death and sickness. At first, I didn’t think I could, but I did. I wouldn’t expect you to get used to it so quickly. Especially considering that these aren’t strangers to you. So, if...”

  “No, I understand what you’re saying.” Sage’s resentment melted away. “You’re just looking after me, and I appreciate that. But I could never take a day off knowing my people needed my help, even if it was only to ease their passing. I have to face this. I have to deal with it.”

  “Okay then.” Brandi slipped her arm inside of Sage’s and squeezed. “I’ll be at your side the whole time. You can count on me.”

  Sage pulled the woman’s arm against her and closed her eyes. “I’m such an asshole.”

  Brandi shook her head and gave an uncertain smile. “Why do you say that?”

  “The four people we lost. I just nodded for you to inject them, and you did it. That’s not fair to you.”

  Brandi smiled wanly. “It’s okay. I don’t mind doing it. Really. If it keeps you--”

  “No.” Sage shook her head tersely as the tears began to dry. “I’ll share that responsibility from now on. And I’ll try not to have any more breakdowns.”

  “Nonsense,” Brandi scoffed and leaned her forehead against Sage’s shoulder. “It’s essential you have them. You know, cry it out every now and again. Believe it or not, it’s good for your psyche. It’s a sign you still care. It’s like washing all the bad away.”

  Sage nodded and breathed in the silence, her eyes wandering over the moonlit creek’s playful waters.

  “You were speaking of hope a minute ago.” Brandi raised her head and looked back toward the cave.

  Sage nodded.

  “Well, I think we have a great amount of hope. There’s Moe, and he’s probably in Little Rock by now loading cases of medicine into a helicopter, ready to bring it all back to us.”

  “Don’t get my hopes up like that.”

  “I’m not at all,” the doctor said, firmly. “I’ve known Moe less than a month and the guy has done some amazing things. I’ve never seen someone so damn focused. He gets that look in his eye, you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Sage smiled. She thought about how Moe had helped Brandi and her staff escape Carver’s camp. All the work he’d done to form the Navajo scout teams and secure their defenses in the canyon. He’d fought bravely to get them the vital supplies they needed and trained Waki to be a solid truck driver.

  “I’ll do better.” Sage spoke with a promise in her voice. “For my people, and for Moe. I want to make him proud of me just like I’m proud of him.”

  “That works for me,” Brandi grinned. “And I’ll have my work cut out for me keeping up with you.” The doctor shook her head as she lifted her eyes to the sky. “One day, we’ll look up and see that helicopter flying over the canyon rim, loaded full of vaccine to save your people. And Moe will be sitting in the back, smiling down on us.”

  Sage lifted her face to the swooping neck of Fortress Rock, its impregnable spine ending in a dense tortoiseshell shape. It had been the backbone of her people for centuries. She took a deep breath. “Yes, I believe you. I believe it’s true.”

  Chapter 26

  Jessie, Redpine Facility, Little Rock, Arkansas

  Jessie stretched her legs out on her bed, sitting back and watching an old movie on the flat screen television hanging on her wall. While things such as films might never be created again, they had a wealth of old content to peru
se. A lifetime of shows that would shape the future of mankind.

  She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

  Dex lay next to her, half dozing with his arm thrown over her stomach. She traced her fingers up his forearm and the back of his hand, a slow smile playing across her face.

  The touchscreen on her wall blinked that she had an incoming call, and she lifted her chin. “Answer.”

  Bryant’s face appeared on the screen. “Jessie, open up. Emergency meeting.”

  She raised up, causing Dex to stir and look around in slight confusion.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Emergency meeting.” She helped Dex roll away from her and leaned back against the wall. She called to the touch screen. “Open.”

  The door slid open, and Kim, Bishop, Savannah, and Bryant stepped into the room. Kim looked especially triumphant.

  Jessie drew up her feet to give the woman space to sit on the bed. She glanced around as Savannah perched on the desk, and the two big men stood side-by-side with their arms folded across their chests.

  Everyone else was grinning like fools as Kim lifted her hand and held up a small vial of clear liquid.

  Jessie’s chest stirred. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Kim nodded vigorously. Bishop and Bryant bear-hugged while Savannah, recently liberated from her air filtration mask, put her hands over her mouth and laughed happily.

  “It still needs some days of testing, but it’s right there.” Kim gave them all an informing look. “And we’ll have twenty vials of the serum in two days. If we tolerate it well, they’ll make thousands more.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Jessie buried her face in her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks. Dex laughed and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, hugging her tight. “It’s just too good to be true.”

  She looked up to see Kim embracing Savannah, Bryant, and her husband in turn, the joy spreading through the room like wildfire.

  “That’s it,” Bryant said. “We should bring Melissa and Moe in. We need to get to the bus and make the call. She can land the chopper in the courtyard, and we’ll escort them in ourselves.”