Cheryl saw a small crowd gather around him. They were just a fraction of the very large group had gathered around the building. It seemed that the entire town or what was left of the survivors of One New Earth’s apocalypse—had come to help destroy their headquarters in the XCGen building. There were cars and trucks with flashing lights, people on motorcycles, bicycles, and even skateboards. It was hard to see details from this high up, but it looked like every one of them was carrying some sort of weapon—guns, baseball bats, pipes, crowbars, and the like.
As she turned away from the scene below, some of the group began rummaging through Marshall’s office while others headed towards the reception area. Cheryl remembered the precious cargo still cushioned inside the paper towel roll in the bag her shoulder. She told Zach about it, and he told her to hang on to it until they met up with the rest of his group.
Diego came towards her from the outer office. He stopped when he saw Aidan, and slapped him on the shoulder. “What happened, amigo? I told you to keep her out of here.”
“I tried…” Aidan said, giving her a forlorn look. “She’s always had a stubborn streak.”
She saw it then, that whimsical crinkle in his eye, the one that told her the Aidan she knew and cared about was still in there somewhere, fighting through the haze of the drug that O.N.E. had forced upon him.
“True,” Diego replied. He came over to her, grabbed her around the neck, and kissed her on the cheek with a loud smack. “It’s good to see you again.”
Aidan grabbed her away from Diego, holding her close and hugging her body against his. Her entire body trembled, feeling the culmination of the rapid, life-changing coup and a plethora a fiery emotions.
“Let’s head to the lab,” Zach said. “Find Jeremiah…and Cassie.”
After a short conversation with some of the RT group, Zach, Diego, Aidan, and Cheryl trekked down the stairs together. There were still sounds of gunshots in the building, but it was diminishing. It seemed O.N.E.’s forces were not holding up against the raging invasion of a small, but determined resistance. That confidence began to fade after they went down many flights of stairs and reached the laboratory floor.
Blood covered the area just outside the stairwell. It was streaked with footprints, and bodies littered the hallway. The carnage looked like the aftermath of gunfight and an attack by flesh-hungry Eaters or EM box-controlled Beasts set to the attack mode.
“The infirmary…” Cheryl said, moving quickly, but carefully through the blood as she tried to avoid falling. “Hurry!”
They followed her to the room with Jeremiah’s bed-ridden antidote test cases. The Eaters—could you still call them that in this purgatorial state?—were still strapped in the beds, hovering somewhere between life and death. The man she’d witnessed resurrecting was sitting upright in his bed. His cheeks were flushed pink, sweat trickled down his brow, and his eyes were wide with fear. “Heee…” he pleaded at them as they passed.
Cheryl ignored him as she spied someone lying on the floor just past the last bed. It was someone in a white lab coat. She was already saying, no no no no no…in her head as she ran towards him.
Jeremiah was on his back. His eyes were closed, and his lips were pale. There was a red splattered hole through the left side of his jacket. She fell to her knees beside him and put her head on his chest. There was no movement, no tick of a heart. She felt his whiskered cheek and found it cool.
After a second, she turned her head towards the men and shook it.
“Who did it?” Zach asked. “It wasn’t one of the RT.”
“It was O.N.E.,” Cheryl said. “After the security breech, they probably took him out to prevent his knowledge about the antidote formula from getting out.”
“Bastards!” Diego said, shaking his head.
Cheryl looked back at Jeremiah. How ironic that he’d died without becoming infected by O.N.E.’s franken-virus. If he had been infected, it might have been possible to revive him with his own antidote. From this angle, it looked like his lips were curved upward like he’d died with a hint of a smile. It almost looked like a sense of peace, a sense of satisfaction in his last moment. Cheryl thought the grin might have come from knowing that he’d accomplished his mission of getting the antidote into the hands of the RT. That, and the fact that he believed he was on his way to meet his Creator and would soon see Hannah again in the next life.
But what about Cassie? Where was she?
There was a whimper from under the bed. Cheryl crouched down closer to the floor and peered underneath. At first, she saw nothing but boxes and shadows. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she made out the form of a small human being, huddled near the top of the bed. It was Cassie, hugging her knees to make herself as small and invisible as possible. After several minutes of coaxing, it was apparent that she wasn’t going to come out willingly. They ended up rolling the bed away from the wall to get her out. Cassie’s head was hung low. Her long, fair hair covered her face, so they couldn’t see her face. She kicked and screamed when Zach and then Diego tried to pick her up, refusing to let anyone near her. Only Cheryl got a less violent response. After she leaned down and spoke soothing words to her, Cassie allowed her to lift her up without a struggle.
Her arms wrapped around Cheryl’s neck. Her skin was cool, but it warm enough that it reassured her that the girl was still alive—a good thing to know when that little mouth full of teeth was so close to her flesh.
“Let’s get out of here,” Zach said. “There’s a truck in back of the building ready to take us somewhere safe.
“That’s the best offer I’ve had all year,” Cheryl replied. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It was a long journey down to the ground floor. The elevators weren’t functioning, so the staircase was their only option. Cheryl carried Cassie all the way down to the ground level, stepping over bodies along the way and sweating rivers before they were even half way down.
When they finally reached one of the back exits and stepped into the sparkling sunlight, it seemed she had crossed the threshold into another dimension. There were still people gathered all around the building. A man stood on the roof of a white O.N.E. van with a megaphone shouting to the crowd, leading them in chants of victory. Their cheers rose to a frenzy when they realized that the group leaving the building were part of the resistance team that had infiltrated the building and taken down One New Earth.
Aidan took Cheryl’s hand and helped her into the truck.
Once they started moving, the crowd parted to let them through. They pulled away from the towering building and into the congested downtown streets of Denver. Their progress was slow because of all of the people. A woman ran alongside them. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she held up a photograph of someone that looked like her son. His eyes were half-mast and his skin had a morbid pallor. Cheryl wondered if he was rotting in a grave, or if he was he locked in her basement where she’d put him, hoping against all the odds that someday he could brought back from the other side of the abyss. Was the woman carrying his image in homage or was she begging for the antidote?
They drove on….to where she didn’t know… she didn’t care as long as the people were friendly and there would be a chance to rest. What mattered now was that O.N.E. had officially lost in this city. Luke Marshall was dead, and the success here would likely embolden the resistance across the country even more, so hopefully it would be just a matter of time before control was back in the hands of the people. There had been plenty of times that she’d wanted to give up since last summer, but what had kept her going was the hope that it was possible to revert things back to the way they had once been. Perhaps this would be the start of a new normal. It would be a life without some of the people that she’d loved, but at least one where there was hope for a better future.
Chapter 23
The family that had taken Zach and Diego in also welcomed Cheryl, Cassie, and Aidan. They tried to keep a low profile at the Strickland’s home, but the sur
vivors in the area wouldn’t give them much peace. The men and women who’d led the invasion into the XCGen building were like rock stars around town. Cheryl had only been involved incidentally at the XCGen building in Denver, but when word got out that she and Aidan had been one of the members of the RT who’d destroyed O.N.E.’s operation in Sedona, people flocked around them to get an autograph or to simply give their heartfelt thanks.
Cassie began to improve daily. Within a few weeks of recovery time, she spoke in full sentences and began to draw real pictures again instead of just scribbling on the walls and floors with her crayons. Being one of the first people to be resurrected, she was a bit of a celebrity herself. People came up to her and mussed with her hair or touched her cheek, saying what an angel she was and how her story inspired them to have hope for finding and bringing back a child they had lost in the chaos of the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, the work of reanimating the dead and rebuilding began. There were two scientists who had hidden during the RT’s invasion of the XCGen building and had survived O.N.E.’s attempt to eliminate them before they could share their knowledge. Since they knew how to replicate Jeremiah’s antidote, they became the most valuable men on the planet. Fearing that remnants of O.N.E. were still around and might try to harm them, the RT provided bodyguards for them around the clock. The antidote was produced in larger quantities and distributed that summer, and the period that followed came to be known as The Great Resurrection.
Distribution began randomly at first, but eventually a systematic process was put into place to decide which of the infected were eligible for the antidote. Cheryl volunteered to be on one of the task forces started by Logan to determine who was eligible for a resurrection. Their first candidate was the wife of a man who lived a mile away, and she accompanied the team to his house.
Like many of the houses that were still occupied, the doors on Jared’s house were boarded shut. After they knocked, they heard him unlock several deadbolts. When he opened the door, his eyes were forked with red and his slender body trembled like the leaves on a quaking Aspen. He let them in, apologizing for the lack of furniture and the trash in the living room then he told them what had happened to his wife.
“Lauren was infected by our son, Blain. He was thirteen at the time. He was never bit. I suspect it was tainted food we got from the community pantry that made him get sick in the middle of the night. He came into our room where we were sleeping. Laurie woke with his teeth biting into her arm.” He choked back a sob before continuing. “She was screaming and I had to beat him off of her with the baseball bat I kept by the bed. I killed him, smashed in his head. Poor Lauren—she was bleeding and crying. I bandaged up her wound and kept telling her everything was going to be all right, but she knew I was lying. By dawn, she’d started to lose consciousness. Before she went dead and cold, I chained her up out back. When she woke back up with those lifeless eyes and hissed at me, I thought I’d never seen anything so evil in all my life. I sat out there on the grass with my gun in my lap and watched her for a while. Somehow, I just couldn’t make myself take her out. I decided it just wasn’t fair to lose both my wife and my son in twenty-four hours. Even if Lauren’s mind wasn’t there, I still had her company…I could still keep her close by. It worked out fine for a few days. Then, my one living neighbor, Avery Jackson—that crotchety old nag—decided to crawl out of his basement and pay me a visit. He had a hissy fit when he saw that I was keeping her. We got into a brawl and…” He balled his fists and grimaced. “…I didn’t mean to kill him. He fell when I punched him, and he hit his head on a rock.”
“What did you do with his body?” Logan asked.
Jared hesitated, and Cheryl imagined that he was about to confess that he fed Avery’s corpse to his wife. Although, the new interim local government had decided not to punish many of the crimes that were committed in the previous year, an offense like that would not have been let go.
“I buried him in his back yard. You can go see for yourself. He’s over by his tool shed in the corner.”
Two men from the task force went to investigate his story. They came back a short while later and confirmed that they’d found an occupied grave. On the spot, Jared was informally acquitted of his neighbor’s murder and his request for his wife’s resurrection was approved pending the verification of her condition.
Jared led them to his backyard. His wife, Lauren, was attached to a pine tree by a thick chain, and was partially hidden in the shadows of the thick branches. Her head hung low and her long black hair cascaded in front of her face like a cloak. When they approached, she lifted her head and her mouth opened wide, twisting and grimacing as the sight of them triggered her hunger. Though her dry skin was flaked and discolored, it was easy to see that she had been a beautiful woman when she was alive. She hadn’t been dead long and the shade of the tree had protected her from the elements. It was agreed that her relatively good physical condition and the fact that she hadn’t eaten anyone made her a good candidate for resurrection.
It had been discovered that giving the antidote injection as close as possible to the head produced the best results, though it was risky to get in that close. One of the men, wearing thick leather gloves, held Lauren’s head back by holding a fistful of her hair while Logan injected her. Within seconds, her snarling stopped and her entire body slumped against the tree.
“You can unchain her now,” Logan said.
“Really?” Jared asked. “It’s safe?”
“Yes. We’ll help you carry her into the house. Be patient with her. It will take some time for her to recover. Like a stroke victim, she will need help relearning basic tasks.”
Jared’s entire demeanor changed as he helped to lift her body. The haggardness in his face vanished and he looked like the happiest man in the world.
As they placed Lauren’s limp body on a cot, Cheryl gave him some instructions, “When she wakes up, she’ll be confused, and she won’t be coherent. It’s very important that you tell her as little as possible about what happened to her. Let her learn it slowly over time as she recovers. She may not be hungry for days. Just give her water to drink at first and introduce food a small spoonful at time.”
“Food? What kind of food?”
“Soft foods at first. Cream of wheat, applesauce. Whatever you can get at the food pantry.”
Jared rubbed his cheeks like he was trying to rub the disbelief from his mind. “Are you sure it’s safe? She’s not going to—”
“Attack you?” Logan said. “No...no worries. The antidote works on the brain immediately. When the neurons are revived, the chemical stimulation makes the unnatural hunger disappear like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Jared looked down at Lauren, staring at her with unabashed love mixed with what looked like a little bit of fear. Her eyes were closed, and she still looked very much like a corpse. Cheryl didn’t blame him for still being afraid of her. It would take time for him to realize that the woman who had been his wife was still in that body and would no longer have the urge to attack him.
“It may be a few weeks or months before the phone lines or cell towers are working again,” Logan told him. He handed Jared a piece of paper. “Here’s the address of the Resurrection Center we’re setting up. In a couple of weeks, we’ll have some beds there to help with some of the tougher recovery cases. If you have any questions or need help…just stop on by.”
“Thank you,” Jared said. He shook Logan’s hand then one by one…he hugged each one of them. There was a river of tears streaming down his unshaven cheeks as they left.
###
Cheryl attended many satisfying resurrections like Lauren’s, but some of them were controversial from the start. Rules were created to establish who qualified for a resurrection and what to do with the Eaters that were not candidates for a return to life. Not everyone agreed on those two points.
The task force required a family member or relative to vouch for the person’s identity and agree to be thei
r caretaker, because rehabilitation required around the clock support for weeks, sometimes months. If that kind of assistance was available, resurrections were usually granted.
One reason for rejection was if the Eater’s appearance was too decayed. Tempers flared when there was disagreement between the family and the task force about physical condition. A resurrection request could be denied because of some small, but horrific factor in appearance like a missing nose that wouldn’t regrow. The task force’s reasoning was that the person would have become a walking horror show and a burden on the recovering society’s medical system if they’d been allowed to regain consciousness. Yet, if family members pled their case well enough, a resurrection might still be granted.
Cheryl sat in on the trial for an Eater, an attractive middle-aged man with an acceptable physique who had serious brain damage that had occurred when he’d forced his way into a house and tried to attack a family. They had defended themselves with any object they could find, including a steel curtain rod that had pierced through his skull. Somehow, the damage hadn’t terminated him at the time. After, the family escaped, he’d continued to wander the streets, attacking and eating anyone he could catch. When his wife found him after the defeat of One New Earth, she managed to lock him in a car until she could reach the Resurrection Task Force. After they examined him and found the hole from the curtain rod above his temple, they determined that he had internal head trauma that would make it unlikely for him to fit in again with society. Mrs. Rodgers protested the decision and a jury was called. The petition to resurrect James Rodgers was rejected because two doctors examined him and confirmed that he had damage to his amygdala. They testified that such trauma made a resurrected person turn extremely violent after they regained consciousness. Like most cases of this sort, this one ended in defeat for the defendant, because juries nearly always voted in favor of public safety. Mrs. Rodgers didn’t take the verdict very well. After the trial, she tried to shoot the judge but was put down by a jury member before she got off a second shot.
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