“What else? Um … I guess they move very fast. They … my wife …” His voice faltered and he looked down, his hand finally stopping its frantic plucking as he closed his eyes and bit down hard on his bottom lip.
Lucy reached across and placed a hand on his arm, her eyes brimming with tears. The stoic bearded man didn’t look up or acknowledge her in any way, but nor did he shrug her off.
After a respectful pause, Josh, who had been scribbling down Toby’s words in a notebook, took up the burden of conversation. “Thank you, Toby.”
He turned and addressed the group as a whole, holding up his notebook. “We should document everything we know about them as we go. Tonight, when we reach the town, we need to start a record of this: how many we think attacked last night, what they … did … and what they looked like. It’s the only way we’ll beat them.” He looked around the group; the others nodded quietly. “Every detail, like what Toby shared, difficult as that will be, we must make a record of. Their teeth, their size, their –”
“The water,” interrupted Lucy, not looking up, the lasting image of Dan’s sunken cheekbone vivid in her mind.
“Yes,” said Josh. “The water.”
Lunch was over. The group packed up the rest of their scavenged rations and Helena moved them onward again. The sun was already behind them as they resumed their long journey east.
***
As the journey continued Lucy got to know most of the group. She still felt acutely aware of her “B” status among the others as they talked of their professions and the reasons they’d been on the train, but the others were sensitive enough – or dismissive enough, however you saw it – not to press her on how she came to be aboard.
She began with Kristen, who made for the easiest conversation. A doctor who practiced medicine half the week and researched the other half, Kristen was used to talking to people in clinics, labs, and lecture halls, and it seemed her confidence was matched by a good bedside manner too. Kristen must’ve been about forty-five, from what Lucy could fathom, and she noticed a wedding ring on the woman’s left hand.
“I was as surprised as you to receive that letter,” she admitted. “The fact that they’re only evacuating a few thousand people out of the entire West Coast is, frankly, a terrifying indication of the mess we’re in, don’t you think? Sure, I do research, but I’m not exactly the leading light in the field, because I can only give half my time to it. Which kinda tells me I’m here because all the other candidates on the list had been wiped out by the time they wrote the letters.”
“Or maybe they needed one seat to be filled by someone who could count as two people in practice?” proffered Lucy.
“That’s kind of you to say, dear,” replied Kristen, “but the cynic in me can’t help but feel I was invited because I’m an uncomplicated guest.”
The woman smiled, taking in the vast open expanses of land that stretched out either side of them. “My boys would’ve loved it here,” she said, without looking at Lucy. “They were real outdoor types, you know? Here,” she added, showing Lucy her phone background. It was of two grinning young boys in soccer kits, one of them missing two front teeth. They looked around eight and ten.
“My boys,” said Kristen, softly, with infinite fondness and longing. It was the first time Lucy had heard her express anything other than optimism.
“They’re beautiful,” said Lucy, admiring the photo, trying to ignore the small airplane symbol in the top right corner. It was an unpleasant reminder of how much had changed in such a short time.
“Thank you,” said Kristen, smiling, sadly, as Lucy handed the phone back. “They died when the pathogen became airborne. On the first day, actually. They were at their father’s, otherwise I might have spotted the symptoms quicker. Of course, we never found a treatment that worked for it, so I suppose it wouldn’t have made a difference. I just would’ve liked to have been near them is all.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Lucy, pressing her hand to Kristen’s forearm in sympathy and stopping for a moment. Kristen paused with her, pressing a hand back on top in gratitude. Kristen looked upon the gesture from Lucy with familiarity. Perhaps she saw it a lot, working in medicine? Perhaps she was more used to giving comfort than receiving it, thought Lucy.
“What type of medicine do you work in?” Lucy asked.
Kristen laughed once, bitterly. “Surprise, surprise, I’m an immunologist. I study the body’s reactions to different pathogens and how our immune system adapts and responds to new threats. But this thing was way too fast for us. Immunologists usually have a good decade or so to study a pathogen, but we got less than a week. Plus we lost power to the lab on day two. You remember SARS?”
“Yeah,” said Lucy, casting her mind back. “That was years ago, right?”
“Right. It started out in China, and they tried to hush it up, which meant it got onto airplanes and ended up in a whole bunch of other countries. But once we’d figured out we were dealing with an outbreak – a pandemic – the World Health Organization mobilized and everyone managed to isolate and contain the virus. So while we couldn’t necessarily cure it during the crisis itself, we managed to eradicate it by stopping its spread. Same with Ebola. The point is, you can’t contain a pandemic unless everyone’s on board – with a coordinated plan right down to the local level – and we’ve got no satellites this time, no power, no communications. This new thing spread like wildfire before we knew we’d even been hit as a species.”
“How did you know it was airborne?” asked Lucy, trying to show she was keeping up.
“The billions of floating yellow spores were a pretty big clue,” laughed Kristen. “And it spread through the population so fast that there was no other viable vector. So luckily the government, or National Guard, or City Hall – whoever’s actually been running things – figured this out and got masks out to most of the population in time to at least slow its progress. They tried burning the spores, but it didn’t work. Maybe it was too late, or maybe the spores had disintegrated to a level we couldn’t see.”
Lucy nodded, her mind flashing back to the precautions she and Dan had taken: stealing the hazmat suits, lying next to one another in their individual quarantine zones, unable to kiss or hold each other. She felt a pang of regret. Would she have done it all if she’d known they only had days left together?
“Can I ask you a personal question?” said Lucy, as they continued to walk.
“Go ahead,” replied Kristen.
“Back in San Francisco – before we got on the train. Were you …?”
Kristen looked at her sympathetically. “Ah. That. Yes, it appears there was quite a price tag for us women to board the train.”
“So … have I been sterilized?” asked Lucy, forcing the question out.
“I’m afraid so,” said Kristen. “Apparently DC have reported instances of fetal abnormalities, linked to the pathogen.”
“But I wasn’t pregnant.”
“It was a pre-emptive measure. Ingesting the contaminated water – ‘Gen Water’, they’re calling it – it’s –”
“I caught the briefing,” said Lucy.
“Oh, OK. Well, ingestion of Gen Water seems to cause severe deformation to fetuses, and many instances of still birth. Which is extremely dangerous when we don’t have the resources to do ultrasounds on people. If the fetus dies and it’s not detected, the mother could die of septicemia. And I think the government wanted everyone on that train to survive.”
“But the Gen Water only affects the fetus?”
“That’s what they’re saying. Apparently it has no effect on adults. Or at least none we’ve noticed, yet. Truth be told I think they discovered this whole phenomenon in lab rats – well, opossums, to be precise. They breed crazy quick. They didn’t have nine months to test it on enough humans to be sure.”
“But all of that assumes we got pregnant in that time? Or were on our period?” countered Lucy.
“I think they were looking further ahead,�
� replied Kristen. “The species that attacked the train is the latest to emerge, and the most powerful. They’re intelligent, and coordinated, so it’s not just their size and strength that makes them dangerous. Their key method of detection is the scent of blood. If that species continues to be the most successful, they’re our greatest threat. And to take them down, we need our best people working on it, and need those people to go undetected.”
“Have the survivors in DC been sterilized too?” said Lucy.
“Anyone recruited to help fight the pandemic, yes. It’s a huge gamble, obviously, and could never have worked on a larger scale. We’d go extinct! I think the idea is that we’re running out of time anyway – so by sacrificing a few individuals’ fertility, to help secure our efforts to eradicate the beasts entirely, then mankind benefits overall. Similarly, they’d argue that there’s no point having fertile people who get killed or only birth fetuses doomed to die. If you look at it that way, the disease has already rendered us sterile. This was about buying us the time to fight back.”
“What? I’m sorry, but that’s total BS,” protested Lucy. “The military did that without telling me what the hell they were doing!”
“Maybe they were saving your life, Lucy? Maybe you’d have refused if you’d known? Either way, they did it to me too – so kindly don’t shoot the messenger. You asked, I answered.”
“Sorry. I’m just –”
“Processing. That’s OK, I get it. Look, as I understand it there are three stages to this. One, secure DC. Two, win the fightback and re-technologize. Three, repopulate using IVF. But stage three can never happen if stages one or two fail. We need to focus on the short term for now, because this is no kind of world to raise a child in. If we do stages one and two, then who knows what the future holds for us – maybe it holds children. I’m trying not to think that far.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes while Lucy digested the information, until she was ready to ask again.
“Sorry for how I reacted,” she said.
“Don’t sweat it,” replied the doctor. “Compared to some of my patients, you’re a human rainbow.”
“Last night, before we got attacked, this guy threw an old man off the train. I think it was because he was bleeding. Is that right? Is that the deal now? If we bleed, those things will find us and kill us?”
“From a precautionary perspective, I think that should be the default assumption,” replied the doctor. “So taking precautions would be wise. But from what I heard on the train, these things are still evolving. Their blood detection may change, or that species line might come to an end, if something more efficient outcompetes it.”
“More efficient? At finding us?” said Lucy, wide-eyed.
“It doesn’t have to be hunting us, necessarily. Personally I’m holding out for a particularly kick-ass herbivore to evolve that takes out those beast things and then gets on with eating all this damned blue grass. But a girl can dream,” chuckled Kristen.
“Check this out,” called Helena, who had stopped with Josh further ahead. Lucy and Kristen caught up with them.
“What is that?” said Lucy, peering down at the sticky spherical globule clinging to the side of the track. It was around twenty centimeters in diameter, and entirely transparent, like an impossibly large and sticky water droplet. Suddenly, the sphere began to ripple as great, spontaneous pulsations travelled through it.
“Woah, woah, everyone stand still!” cried Helena, as the group instinctively shuffled backwards. “No one move!”
The globule came to rest. Everyone held their breath, eyes fixed on the motionless ball. Another pulsation surged through it, more violent this time, immediately followed by another. The pulsations continued, the gaps in-between shrinking until the ball was in a state of constant tremor.
“Get back!” cried Helena, suddenly pushing backwards from the quivering orb. “I think it’s gonna hatch!”
Everyone leapt back, just as the orb began to change color. It was as if droplets of ink had been flicked into the center. The orangey-red dye started to diffuse around the pulsating sphere, twisting and turning as it mingled with the browns and reds also appearing. Soon the entire orb was a swirling mass of color.
With a gushing sound, the globule burst and hundreds of butterflies spilled out, soaring upwards in a spiraling column where the wind began to carry them away.
Lucy looked around the group; she and Toby were the only ones to have drawn their handguns. He looked at her but said nothing as he lowered his. Helena and Josh moved back towards the vanished globule to inspect the remains.
Josh crouched down and photographed the side of the track, where a damp patch indicated the site of the sticky orb.
“Interesting,” commented Helena, before stepping away from the rail. “We should move on.”
Lucy took a closer look as Helena, Kristen, and Toby set off. At the base of the track were the limp bodies of several butterflies, stuck on their sides. Small droplets covered their wet, crooked wings as they flapped weakly, unable to get off the ground.
“Why are those ones damaged?” asked Lucy, peering down at their earthy, autumnal patterns, as the creatures one by one stopped flapping and fell still.
“Reproduction goes wrong,” replied Josh, standing up and putting his phone away. “What’s got me stumped is how there were so many of them. I thought fission meant dividing in two?”
Lucy fell in step with him as they set off after the others. “Maybe whatever it was used to be larger. Like a rodent? Then it ingested some butterfly DNA and changed when it re-specialized?”
“Huh,” said Josh. “I like that hypothesis. We’ll have to test it. What did you say you do again?”
“Me? Oh, nothing like you guys. I’m …” Lucy sighed. “I was in the B-carriage.”
“I see,” said Josh, a tone of curiosity in his voice. “But you know about the de-specialization?”
“I caught the briefing in A8.”
“But you also know what cell specialization is. And how fission works. There’s totally a bit of scientist in you.”
Lucy smiled. “I did a year of veterinary college.”
“A year? How come?” probed Josh, sticking his thumbs under his backpack straps.
Lucy scrunched up her face. “It’s kinda a long story.”
“Well that’s just as well,” he replied, “’cos we’re on kinda a long walk.”
“Um, OK,” said Lucy, gathering her thoughts. “I guess it starts back on my dad’s farm.”
“You were a farmer? No way!” he cheered, slapping her arm playfully. “I didn’t have you down as a hick!”
“I hide it well. People tend not to hire hicks, outside of farms. It was also years ago, I should add. I grew up on a farm, but left. Sold it, actually.”
“You get good dollar for it?”
“Enough to cover my dad’s medical bills.”
“Oh,” said Josh, staring down the track.
“He got cancer when I was sixteen. His health insurance wouldn’t let him renew, once he’d gotten sick. So we had to finance the farm. It paid for his treatment. He went into remission around the time I got a place at Wisconsin U, and he insisted I went. So I did, and I completed my first year. Did pretty well, actually. But in that year his cancer came back, and he didn’t tell me. And I only found out when I got back home for the summer and he couldn’t hide it anymore. He died four weeks after that. Suddenly I didn’t wanna be a vet anymore. I didn’t wanna be anything. I wanted to escape. So I sold our last stake in the farm and used the money to travel. Wound up in San Francisco a year later and decided to stay. So that’s me.”
She swallowed, hard, as memories of Dan, her father, and the life she’d lost all intermingled painfully and suddenly.
“How about you?” she croaked, deciding not to go into her whole Mom situation.
“I’ve been in San Francisco my whole life,” said Josh, proudly. “Great city. Was a great city,” he added, less cheerfully.
An awkward silence fell. Lucy’s mind gravitated to the aching soles of her feet, and the blisters she knew were forming.
“Reckon we’re about halfway there now,” noted Josh, changing the subject.
“Uh-huh,” she grunted, swinging her backpack around and pulling out a cereal bar from one of the side pouches. Josh copied.
“I’m not used to this either,” he said, tearing off a chunk of sugared oats as he spoke. “My life usually consists of sitting in front of test tubes and computers for nine hours a day then walking to the bus stop, sitting down some more, then sitting on my sofa at home.”
“That’s a lot of sitting,” said Lucy, already halfway through her bar.
“Welcome to lab work,” he sighed.
“You’re a researcher too, then? Like Kristen?”
“I think we’re all researchers of sorts. Toby’s a geologist.”
“Climatologist,” corrected Kristen as Lucy and Josh caught up with her. She and Helena had stopped and were consulting the map. Toby was a few yards ahead, staring into the distance.
“What about you, Lucy, what do you do?” asked Josh, posing the question she’d been dreading all day.
“Walk, apparently,” replied Lucy, as Helena and Kristen began moving forward again.
“We need to pick up the pace if we’re gonna make it by nightfall!” called Helena, marching ahead.
“Tell me about your research?” said Lucy, turning the conversation back to Josh.
“I’m a botanist. I know what you’re thinking – very sexy. I get that a lot,” he replied.
“You read my mind,” quipped Lucy.
“My job was – is – to advise the government on how to replant America’s farms. Assuming we make it to DC, and there’s anyone left to advise.”
Lucy gave him a puzzled look.
“There’s no one to collect this year’s harvest,” he elaborated. “And pretty much all of the country’s farms are supersized now – I guess you’ll know this as well as anyone, being a hick and all.”
Convulsive Box Set Page 18
