Resurrection

by Mark Kelly

  With the glass container gripped firmly in her hands, Mei turned on her heels and sprinted towards Doggard.

  “Here, we’ll use this,” she said, holding out the flask. “But it will have to be prep—”

  It was as if she had stepped off the edge of a cliff. Her right leg gave way to nothing, and she tumbled forward, dropping the flask and opening her hands to brace for the fall.

  Simmons watched helplessly as she hit the ground face-first. He ran to her and dropped to his knees. A long jagged scrape ran down the left side of her face. Her forehead was speckled with mud.

  “Are you okay?”

  She winced in pain. “I think I broke it.”

  He took a quick look at her foot. It was twisted sideways, stuck in the entrance to a groundhog hole. “Maybe not. It might just be sprained.”

  “I meant the flask, Tony. Where is it?”

  Simmons scrambled sideways, searching for a glint of glass in the dirt and foot-high cornstalks that had been chewed up and spat out by McNee’s farm equipment. He found the flask lying in the dirt a few feet away, its top broken off; its precious liquid soaking into the ground.

  The look on his face was all Mei needed to know it had broken. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Tony…”

  “It’s not your fault. It was an accident.”

  “What have you done?” Henri shouted in anger.

  Simmons looked up to see the giant biker towering above them. Henri’s mouth was twisted in a fierce snarl as he furiously jabbed his pistol at the broken flask.

  “Is there more?”

  Simmons shook his head. “Not here, but I can—”

  Henri bellowed with rage. “Search the tent. Kill everyone inside.”

  “No, please don’t,” Mei cried out. She tried to stand, but collapsed to her knees, wincing in pain.

  Torn between her obligation to protect Mei or the clinic, Dines hesitated, and then made a move towards the clinic entrance. The staccato of gunshots split the air as bullets peppered the ground around her feet. She froze mid-step and raised her hands.

  “Throw your weapon over here, then sit,” Henri shouted.

  Dines’s finger tightened around her trigger.

  “Don’t,” Henri warned.

  She deliberated for a second and then dropped her weapon and sat on the ground.

  “Allez…Go…Search the tent,” Henri said to his men. “Take anything that looks like medicine.”

  “Please…don’t,” Mei begged him. “There’s nothing of value in there, and the patients are gravely ill. If your men go inside, they’ll become infected, and then they’ll infect you. You’ll all die and nothing will be accomplished except the disease will spread even more.”

  The bikers who had heard Mei’s warning faltered. They looked to Henri for guidance. He raised a hand, motioning them to hold up.

  “She isn’t lying,” Simmons said, climbing cautiously to his feet while he kept a wary eye on the bikers and their guns. “Your men will become infected if they enter the clinic. I guarantee it. I know more about this disease than any person alive.”

  “Then tell me, Monsieur le Professeur, why do they not get sick?”

  “Who?”

  Henri pointed his gun at Mei and Goodard. “Them…those two, and the others who work inside. Do not say it is because they wear masks and protective clothing because I know nothing stops the bug.”

  Simmons’s mind raced. Unable to think of a lie that was even remotely believable, he told Henri the truth.

  “They’re immune. Anyone else who goes into the clinic will die.”

  Henri blinked. Simmons could almost see the gears turning in the giant biker’s head as he processed the new information and connected the dots.

  “Are they immune because they were sick and then cured by your special medicine?”

  “Yes.”

  Whup-Whup-Whup-Whup-Whup-Whup

  Simmons looked up and saw a small helicopter on the horizon. Its sound grew louder as it approached, and the radio on Dines’s hip burst into life.

  “Charlie-one, this is Little Bird.”

  Startled, Henri twisted around, pointing his gun at Dines as the voice on the radio repeated, “Charlie-one, this is Little Bird.”

  Dines slowly lowered her hands from the top of her head. She spoke to Henri. “If I don’t answer, they’re gonna assume the worst and start shooting at everything that moves—and they sure as shit won’t miss a big target like you.”

  “Tell them if they get any closer, we will start killing people,” Henri said, jabbing his gun at her. He flashed a wicked smile. “And you’ll be first.”

  Dines grit her teeth and keyed the microphone. “Little Bird, this is Charlie-One. Our guests want you to maintain position. Over.”

  “Roger that, Charlie-One. Everyone okay?”

  “Fine for now. Is Big Bird in the air?”

  “Sorry, Big Bird is grounded with a broken rotor. We’re all you’ve got. Over and out.”

  “What a fucking shit-show,” Dines muttered to herself. “Ask for an eagle, get tweety-bird instead.” She shared a glance with the other soldiers. Simmons knew it wasn’t good news. They were on their own.

  Henri lifted his hand in the air and shouted, “Sébastien!”

  The older man with the jean jacket re-appeared. He listened while the biker leader whispered in French. Then he stepped back and raised his rifle, pointing it at Dines and the other soldiers.

  Henri took a step towards Mei. Using one arm, the big man bent down and scooped her off the ground with no more effort than it would have taken him to pick up a doll.

  “Put me down,” Mei screamed. She twisted and turned, frantically struggling to free herself from his grip.

  Henri squeezed her tight to his chest and pressed the barrel of his pistol against her temple.

  “Silence.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Simmons begged. He rushed forward, only to be pushed back and knocked to the ground by a pair of bikers.

  “How long does the girl have to live?” Henri asked Mei.

  When she didn’t answer immediately, he gently tapped the barrel of his gun against her head. “I won’t ask again. How long does the girl have?”

  “T-twenty-four…maybe thirty-six hours,” Mei stammered.

  “And the medicine, how long before it works?”

  “Twelve to sixteen hours.”

  Henri looked directly at Doggard and Dines. “Tell your general I am borrowing one of his doctors. He has eight hours to deliver medicine to make the girl well. After that, we will talk about what happens next.”

  “Please let her go,” Simmons said, pleading with Henri. “There isn’t any more medicine. They told you that already. There won’t be any for one or two days.”

  Henri’s expression darkened. “Eight hours…no more. I will send a man back here to collect it.”

  Mei kicked and screamed as Henri dragged her to the white truck. Simmons caught a brief glimpse of pure terror in her eyes. In a little over eight hours, she would be dead, and she knew it.

  “Wait,” he cried, pulling the jar of pills from his pocket. He waved them in the air as the bikers tossed Mei into the back of the white truck. “I have something else, another type of medicine. You can use it to cure the girl.”

  Henri heard Simmons’s shouts. He stopped and looked over the heads of the men surrounding him.

  “Qu'est-ce que c'est?”

  “They’re pills,” Simmons said, guessing that’s what Henri had asked him. “You don’t need a doctor to administer them.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Simmons began to babble. “They’re new…an exciting discovery based on Firmicute endospores. I made them in the lab with a special process—a very complicated process using high speed fractionation. There are enough pills in the jar to cure two or three people.”

  His interest piqued, Henri pushed his way through the crowd with his eyes fixed on the jar. Si
mmons backed away as the biker leader approached.

  “Stay there, or else—”

  “Or else what, Monsieur le Professeur?”

  “Or else, I’ll crush them.” Simmons dropped the jar on the ground and raised his boot above it.

  “Okay…okay,” Henri said, pausing. “We will do this your way, Monsieur le Professeur. What is your proposal?”

  Proposal?

  Simmons froze. He didn’t have a proposal—just a mad scramble of incoherent thoughts, all racing through his brain at a million miles per hour. He said the first thing that came into his head. “Release her, and I’ll give you the pills.”

  “Is that all?”

  Henri smiled. It was the type of smile you’d give someone when the joke was on them. Simmons faltered as he realized he had no leverage. If he crushed the jar of pills, the bikers would take Mei—and probably kill him. And if he gave Henri the pills, the bikers wouldn’t have a reason to let any of them live.

  “Take me instead,” he blurted. “I can make more of the pills for you. She’s just a doctor—useless without the medicine I make for her.”

  Henri slowly ran his fingers through his beard, twisting the ends of the long black hairs. “Tell me, Monsieur le Professeur, will your pills make people immune—like the medicine does?”

  Simmons had no idea. He didn’t even know if the damn things worked, but now wasn’t the time to worry about truth and semantics. “Of course,” he said with far more confidence than he felt.

  Henri turned and spoke to the man in the jean jacket. “Go get the doctor, Bring her here.”

  The older man walk back to the truck. He returned with Mei and deposited her on the ground next to Henri. She gave Simmons a worried look. He nodded reassuringly and then beckoned at her to come to him.

  “The pills first, Monsieur le Professeur. Bring me the pills. Let me see them.”

  Simmons walked over and handed the jar to Henri. Then he reached down and helped Mei to her feet. She leaned against him and whispered, “Tony, are you sure?”

  In fact, he’d never been more unsure of anything in his life. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered, hugging her tight to his body.

  “Vitamins! Do you think I’m a fool?”

  Simmons felt Mei being ripped from his arms. He lunged for her, but was knocked to the ground by a massive blow to the back of his head. Dizzy and struggling to make sense of what had just happened, he staggered to his knees, only to go down again when Henri kicked him in the stomach.

  “I should kill you,” Henri snarled, “but you will be my messenger boy. Eight hours, no more or she dies. Tell the general.”

  The wind knocked out of him, Simmons gasped for a breath as he tried to speak. “Stop them,” he shouted just before everything went dark.

  29

  Back at Base

  It was 6:30 p.m., half an hour past the gang leader’s deadline when General Leduc asked, “Are you positive he said eight hours and not 8:00 p.m.?”

  “I think so,” Simmons replied, still feeling light-headed from the blows he had received from Petit Henri. “But it doesn’t matter. Eight hours or eight o’clock—we’re not giving up on Mei.”

  Leduc reached over and picked up the radio sitting in the middle of his desk. He keyed the microphone. “Charlie-One, this is River Bend, over.”

  A few seconds later, Dines’s voice came over the radio. “This is Charlie-One. No sign of the bikers yet, sir. Do you want us to hang tight?”

  “Affirmative, Sergeant Dines. Stay there all night if you have to. Keep us posted. Over and out.”

  Leduc placed the radio back on his desk. “Don’t worry, Professor. We’ll get her back.” He gave Simmons a reassuring look that quickly faded.

  Simmons knew the general was just as worried as he was. The reality was they had no idea where the bikers had taken Mei. Leduc’s helicopter had been forced to return to base and when it resumed the search after refueling, the bikers had disappeared.

  Now, their entire plan to get her back depended on Petit Henri doing exactly what he said he would do: which was sending a man back to the clinic to collect the medicine he believed would cure the girl. Leduc’s soldiers were waiting there, ready for that to happen.

  In addition to Dines, who had a flask of fake biotherapeutic to give to the bikers, Baker’s partner, Taxson, and one of Leduc’s special ops soldiers were hiding at the clinic. Both men were skilled warriors and motorcycle enthusiasts, and each had a bike with a reserve fuel tank that would allow them to stay on the road for up to two days.

  The plan was for Dines to handover the flask to the bikers. Then, Taxson and the other soldier would discreetly follow the bikers back to wherever they were hiding Mei and the girl.

  After that, things became less certain, but the hope was that once the gang leader had the fake biotherapeutic, he would force Mei to administer it to the girl, buying time for the soldiers to figure out next steps.

  Simmons felt a pang of remorse. Mei would never knowingly administer fake medicine to a patient—not even to save her own life. But it didn’t matter what Mei would do. They had no choice, and the girl was going to die, anyway.

  At 11:00 p.m. sharp, Leduc slid his chair back and stood. “It’s late,” he said to Simmons. “I doubt anything is going to happen tonight, and we won’t be any good in the morning if we’re too tired to function. I’m going to get some shut-eye, and you should too.”

  “Cox, get in here,” Leduc yelled through his open office door.

  Seconds later, the general’s aide-de-camp appeared in the doorway looking as fresh as a daisy.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Leduc picked up the radio and handed it to him. “Take me to my quarters and then take this to the duty officer. Tell him I want to be woken if so much as a bird chirp comes over it.”

  “Right away, sir. Anything else?”

  “I think we can do better than a chair. Find Professor Simmons somewhere to sleep.”

  Simmons pushed himself up from the hard piece of lumber that had been his home for the past nine hours. “Thanks, but there’s an extra bed at Saanvi’s house. I’ll stay there. You’ll let me know if anything changes?”

  “Count on it. Come on, we’ll give you a ride.”

  Simmons shook his head. “No, I’ll walk. Her place isn’t that far, and I could use the fresh air.”

  He said goodnight to the two men and left Leduc’s office. In the moonlight, he could see his breath hanging in the air like a puff of cigarette smoke. He tilted his head back and gazed upwards. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just a million stars glittering in a pool of milky blackness.

  A pin prick of light streaked across the horizon. Probably a satellite, he guessed. One of the thousands that continued to orbit the earth, ignorant to everything below them. It might even be the satellite used by the phone Lucia and Baker carried with them. He wondered how they were doing, but more than anything he wished they were here. Lucia and Baker would know what to do, and even if they didn’t, they’d still do something. Feeling useless, he shivered and drew his coat closer.

  Saanvi’s house was the last one on a cul-de-sac. As Simmons turned the corner onto her street, he spotted the small bungalow alone amongst the shadows of its neighbours. The faint glow of a battery-powered lantern shone through the curtain covering its front window. He walked up the driveway to the front door and put his hand on the door handle. Then he pulled his hand back and knocked. It wasn’t his house after all; it was Saanvi’s.

  The inside door flew open. “Professor Simmons,” Emma blurted. I knew it was you. Do you have news about Mei? Did they find her?”

  “No news,” he said, shaking his head. “The soldiers are still looking for her. Is Saanvi here?”

  Emma gave him a curious look. “Of course, she is. It’s her house. Where else do you think she would be?”

  He shrugged, unsure if the question was rhetorical or not.

  “Can I come in?”

  “You bet.” />
  He opened the outer screen door and stepped inside. Saanvi was standing in the doorway to the living room, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Professor Simmons. It’s all my fault.”

  “Your fault? Don’t be silly. You had nothing to do with it. Why in God’s name would you say that?”

  Saanvi’s lower lip quivered as she spoke. “If there had been material at the clinic, the bikers wouldn’t have taken Mei.”

  Emma frowned. “She’s been saying that all night, but I told her she’s not a poop cow.”

  Poop cow?

  He wouldn’t have put it that way, but Emma had a point.

  “It’s not your fault, Saanvi. If anything, you should be proud. Hundreds of people have been cured and will never have to worry about becoming infected because of you.”

  He walked to where she stood and gave her a hug. She sniffled a few times then pulled away and said, “I can make you something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  The dull, throbbing ache in his temples had returned with a vengeance. He reached up and ran his fingers over the spot on the back of his head where Henri had hit him.

  “I’m not hungry, but if you have any aspirin that would be great.”

  She started to cry again.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m useless. I don’t even have aspirin.”

  Oh, for God’s sakes.

  “That’s okay, Saanvi, I have something,” Emma said, disappearing into the living room and returning a second later with her knapsack. She reached into it and handed Simmons a small plastic bottle.

  “Midol?”

  In between sniffles, Saanvi choked back a giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, eying the bottle.

  “It’s for when you have your period,” Saanvi answered.

  Emma frowned indignantly. “Well, it’s all I have and it’s better than nothing.”

  Simmons brought the bottle closer to his face. In the dim light, he had to squint to read the ingredients: acetaminophen, caffeine, pyrilamine maleate. He had no clue what pyrilamine maleate was, but the other two were typical components in over-the-counter pain medication.