by Mark Kelly
“Okay, thanks. I’ll try it.”
Saanvi’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“My head is killing me, and it’s better than nothing.”
Emma looked at Saanvi and broke out in a toothy grin. “Now Professor Simmons won’t have to worry about cramps either.”
He smiled in spite of himself. They all needed a good laugh and if it came at his expense, he was perfectly fine with it.
“We should get some sleep,” he said, bending over to take off his boots. “It will be a long day tomorrow.”
Thud…Thud…Thud
The pounding seemed like it was a thousand miles away, and Simmons pushed it out of his head until he felt himself being gently shaken awake. He opened his eyes and looked up to find a female soldier with tightly cropped blonde hair staring down at him. After a moment of confusion, he recognized Saanvi’s new chaperone, Sarah.
“Professor? I’m sorry to wake you. Warrant Officer Abrams is at the door and he’s asking for you.”
Instantly alert, Simmons sat up. “Does he have news about Mei?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”
“Come on, Professor,” Abrams shouted from the front hallway. “I can hear you so I know you’re awake. We need to get a move on. The general is outside waiting for us.”
Simmons threw aside the blanket Saanvi had given him to stay warm during the night. Stiff and still aching from the blows he had received the day before, he rose to his feet and limped across the living room to the hallway where Abrams stood by the front door.
Abrams whistled when he saw him. “Jesus, Professor…you look like shit.”
“Sounds about right because I feel like shit,” Simmons replied. He reached into his pants pocket for the small plastic bottle of Midol and popped a couple pills into his mouth.
Abrams smirked when he saw the bottle. “That time of the month, Professor?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Simmons said. “I have a headache and it works. Any word on Mei?”
“No, not yet.”
“What’s going on, Professor Simmons?”
Simmons turned to find Emma and Saanvi standing in the hallway in their pajamas. They both had worried expressions on their faces.
“Is it about Mei? Did they find her?” Emma asked.
“No.”
Saanvi furrowed her brow and looked at Abrams. “Why are you here then? Has something happened to her? Is Mei dead?”
“Of course not,” Simmons quickly answered. Then, afraid he might be wrong, he turned to Abrams.
“Right?”
“As far as we know, she’s still alive,” Abrams replied, “but if you and I don’t get moving, we’ll be the ones who are dead.” The angry sound of a honking horn accented his warning. “That’s our ride, Professor, and we better get out there before the general leaves without us.”
“Where are we going?” Simmons asked, slipping his boots on.
“To the main gate. There’s a biker there who wants to talk to you.”
“What’s he want? Is it about Mei?”
“I don’t know. All that the men at the gate were able to get out of him was that he wanted to talk to le Professeur, and they guessed that was you.”
Simmons tensed as he remembered how the biker leader had thrown Mei in the back of the truck like she was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. “Is he a big guy with a French accent?”
“Haven’t got a clue,” Abrams replied impatiently. He became more agitated when the horn honked again.
“Hurry up, Professor.”
“We’re coming with you too.” The girls walked down the hallway towards him with determined looks on their faces.
Simmons held up his hand. “Oh no, you aren’t.”
“Oh yes, we are and you can’t stop us,” Emma said. “Mei is our friend too. If there’s news about her, we want to hear it.”
Saanvi bobbed her head up and down in agreement. It was two against one. This was a fight Simmons knew he couldn’t win.
The horn honked again…then again...and again. “For Christ's sake,” Abrams exclaimed. “Would all of you make up your minds. We need to get a move on—Now!”
“Okay, you can come,” Simmons said, giving in. “But you aren’t going outside dressed like that. Put some clothes on.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Emma and Saanvi spun on their heels and disappeared back into the bedroom. Abrams groaned out loud. “How long is it going to take them to get ready? Because I’ll be cleaning the latrines if we don’t get out there in about two seconds.”
Simmons patted him on the shoulder. “Go and tell General Leduc it’s my fault. I’ll hurry them along. It will just be another minute or two.”
Abrams stomped towards the door. “Goddamnit…two minutes, no more. And make sure they dress warmly. There’s a storm coming. I can feel it in my bones.”
30
Lets Trade
Leduc’s jeep pulled up and stopped next to the guardhouse. Simmons threw open the door and jumped out, leaving the girls, Abrams, and Leduc behind.
He ran to the main gate and scanned the crowd on the other side of the fence. The more he looked, the more his frustration grew. He didn’t see any bikers—just the regular collection of camp followers and misfits who constantly hung around the base looking for handouts.
Most of them were huddled around small bonfires, warming themselves against a cold northerly wind, but a few, having spotted the arrival of the general’s vehicle, shuffled closer to the gate and started begging. Simmons ignored their pleas for food and walked back to the jeep.
The door to the guardhouse swung open. A guard rushed out of the building and dashed over to where General Leduc stood. “Morning, sir.”
Leduc returned the man’s greeting. He ran his eyes over the crowd gathered at the gate. “Where’s the biker, soldier? I don’t see him anywhere.”
“You missed him, sir. He left about ten minutes ago in a hurry. Tore out of here on his bike heading north on the main road.”
Damn it. They were too late. Simmons slammed his hand against the side of the jeep in frustration. He should never have told Abrams to wait for the girls. “Did the biker say anything about Dr. Ling?” he asked the soldier.
“No, sir. He didn’t say anything about anyone except you. He kept asking me where you were. When you didn’t show up, he started getting edgy.”
“Did he tell you where he was going or when he was coming back?”
“No, but he had a walkie-talkie with him. He was talking to someone on it the entire time he was here. I think he was getting instructions from whoever was on the other end, or maybe he was giving them updates.”
Simmons felt a rumbling vibration. It started in the pit of his stomach and worked its way up to his chest. He had felt it once before, and it didn’t bode well for what was going to happen next.
Leduc felt it too. He frowned, looking around for the source. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s them,” Simmons said ominously, “and they’re coming.”
A long line of motorcycles led by Petit Henri on a candy red Harley-Davidson appeared in the distance. As the gang of bikers approached, the crowd at the gate scattered in every which direction. Leduc’s men unslung their rifles and moved into position.
“Hold your fire,” Leduc shouted at his men. “By showing up like this, they aren’t here to fight. They’re sending a message.”
“What message is that, sir?” a soldier asked.
“Don’t screw with us,” the general replied dryly.
Petit Henri casually steered his bike to the gate and stopped. Simmons couldn’t help but be impressed. The biker leader was a modern version of Genghis Khan and his gang, a horde of angry Mongols.
The frown on Petit Henri’s face changed to a broad grin when he spotted Simmons. He marched to the closed gate and smiled. “Monsieur le Professeur, it is good to see you again. After our last visit, I was afraid you would no longer want to talk to me, so I ca
me to see you.”
Simmons seethed at Petit Henri’s fake camaraderie. “Where’s Mei?” he asked.
“She is well.”
“You didn’t answer my question. I asked you where she was.”
Petit Henri gave Simmons an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, my friend. She is doing what doctors do: taking care of sick people. But this is not about her. It is about you and I. We have unfinished business.”
“What business is that?”
“Your magical vitamin pills that aren’t vitamins.”
Simmons’s pulse raced. He took a couple of steps forward. “What happened? Did you use them? Did they work?”
Petit Henri shrugged nonchalantly. “I almost threw them away, but your doctor friend told me I would regret it.”
“Professor, what’s he talking about?” Leduc asked, walking over to stand beside Simmons.
Petit Henri wagged a finger at Simmons, taunting him. “Monsieur le Professeur, have you been keeping secrets from your general?”
Leduc raised an eyebrow.
Simmons turned to him and said, “I was going to tell you but with everything going on, I never had a chance. We’ve been having a lot of problems producing the biotherapeutic. I was frustrated, so I tried something different using spore fractionation. We were going to start human trials at the clinic using both treatments yesterday, but we couldn’t.”
Leduc cocked his head to the side. “Why not?”
“Mei dropped the flask of biotherapeutic and he stole the pills.”
Petit Henri shook his head. “I didn’t steal your pills, Professor. You gave them to me. But I did take your doctor, and it is a good thing too because she convinced me they were a cure for the bug. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
Leduc’s mouth dropped open.
Petit Henri turned and nodded to another biker, who pulled out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it. A moment later, the white truck appeared and did a three-quarters turn in front of the gate and reversed. When it stopped, the truck driver hopped out and ran around back to open the cargo doors.
Simmons saw Mei, fifteen feet away sitting in the back of the truck next to a body on a mattress. It was all he could do to stop himself from climbing over the fence to reach her. He called her name. She turned her head and smiled when she saw him.
“Tony!”
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, stopping to help the girl on the mattress sit up. Simmons watched in astonishment as the girl the bikers had brought to the clinic the day before looked around and then whispered something to Mei.
It’s impossible, he thought. No one gets better that quickly. Even an FMT take seventy-two hours.
Mei beamed with pride. “The pills worked, Tony. You did it. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything—”
Petit Henri stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply. “Allez…go now,” he shouted at the driver.
The truck driver slammed the cargo doors closed, locking Mei and the girl in the back. Simmons panicked and yelled at Leduc, “Stop them. Don’t let the truck leave.”
The soldier next to Leduc raised his rifled and took aim. Leduc knocked the barrel upward with his hand causing the gun to fire harmlessly into the air. “Don’t,” he shouted at the soldier. “You won’t hit the driver, but you might hit the two in the back.”
Distraught, Simmons watched the truck round a bend and disappear. Leduc’s men would never be able to catch it without battling their way through a couple of hundred armed bikers first.
“What was the point of that little stunt?” Leduc angrily asked Petit Henri.
“You have something I want….and I have something you want,” Petit Henri replied slyly.
“What is it you want?”
“Him,” the biker leader said, pointing at Simmons. “I want Monsieur le Professeur. I will trade you the doctor for him. All you have to do is say yes and I will call the truck back.”
“I’ll go,” Simmons said without any hesitation.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leduc scoffed. “I’m not about to trade one life for another.”
“I will make it worth your while,” Petit Henri said. “One thousand barrels of fuel.”
“No.”
“Two thousand.”
“Stop it,” Simmons shouted. “If you have sick men, I can make more spore pills and Mei can treat them. You don’t need to own either of us to do that.”
Leduc placed his hand on Simmons’s arm. “This isn’t about what you or Mei can do for his men, Tony. He doesn’t care about human life.”
“What’s it about then?”
Petit Henri threw up his hands in mock dismay. “Mon dieu, Monsieur le Professeur, how is it possible a man as smart as you could be so stupid? Are you certain you were the one to make this great discovery? Your general understands, but he is also wrong. I do care about my men and human life, but this is about much more than medicine—much, much more. This is about control of the cure—and I want it.”
“Why?”
Petit Henri gave Simmons a patronizing look. “Do you not understand what your magical pills are worth? If you come and work for me, with my organization distributing them, You would never lack for anything. We would profit together.”
Simmons couldn’t believe his ears. He glared at Petit Henri. “The cure doesn’t belong to any one person, it belongs to the world. I would never agree to anything else.”
“Then, we have a problem, Monsieur le Professeur,” Petit Henri snarled, his easygoing manner from earlier gone.
Leduc jabbed his finger at the biker leader. “No, you have a problem. I have a base full of heavily armed soldiers.”
Petit Henri’s eyes darkened. His face turned deadly serious. “I know exactly what you have, General. I make it a point to know my friends and enemies better than they know themselves. You have less than one hundred soldiers. I have one hundred and seventy men behind me and more in Montreal.”
“We’re better armed.”
“A bullet is a bullet—both kill,” Petit Henri replied grimly. “And if deliveries from the local farms were to stop, your men would starve in less than a month.”
“You’d never survive laying siege to the base through the winter,” Leduc replied.
Petit Henri scoffed at him. “General, we are well prepared for the cold weather. You would be wise to trust me when I tell you we have fuel to last until spring and if needed, access to even greater supplies.”
“I think you’re bluffing,” Leduc said with a trace of doubt as he ran his eyes over the gas-guzzling motorcycles parked outside the gate.
Petit Henri shrugged. “Believe what you want, but I don’t need to bluff when the truth will do. It is true a siege would cause many deaths on both sides, but like you, for a man in my line of work, it is the cost of doing business.”
The biker leader looked Leduc directly in the eye. “Tell me, General, are you prepared to watch your men and the people in the surrounding communities die?”
Simmons fumed at the way in which Petit Henri had them over a barrel. There had to be a better way. He remembered Mei’s words from the day before. “No one needs to kill anyone. The pandemic is doing a good enough job.” She was right, but he detested the notion of anything that would benefit the biker leader. However, a war would be worse.
“I have an idea,” he said.
The two men stared at him. “Can I speak to you—alone?” he asked Leduc.
Petit Henri smiled smugly. “Do not be long, Monsieur le Professeur. There is a limit to my patience.”
Simmons and Leduc stepped back from the gate. When they were out of Petit Henri’s earshot, Simmons said, “He’s not lying about the fuel. I saw drums in the back of the white truck and he wouldn’t be offering it if he didn’t have it.”
“You’re probably right,” Leduc said, scowling, “but so what? I’ll never agree to his demands.”
“I underst
and, but maybe there’s another way.”
Leduc raised an eyebrow.
Knowing the general wouldn’t react well to what he was about to propose, Simmons took a breath and said, “What if you and the bikers worked together to get the pills out to the people who need them?”
“Have you lost your mind,” Leduc sputtered. “There’s not a chance in hell I would ever work with a bastard like him.”
“Stop and think about it,” Simmons argued. “He’s perfectly positioned to help. He has fuel and manpower. Organizations like his have a long and successful history of distribution.”
“Yes, of illegal drugs,” Leduc scoffed.
“This is a drug.”
His mouth agape, Leduc stared at Simmons. “I can’t believe you’re suggesting this—you, of all people. He kidnapped Mei and is holding her ransom. How can you even consider allowing him to profit from other people’s misery?”
“Because the alternative is worse, general,” Simmons replied soberly. “I don’t know who would win a battle between your men and his gang, but the one thing I do know is that he’s right—many people would die, including Mei. You may be willing to accept that outcome, but I’m not—and I’m the one with a cure.”
Leduc stiffened. His eyes turned cold. “Is that a threat, Professor?”
Simmons shook his head. “It’s not a threat, General. It’s a fact, and I think it gives me the right to have a say in how we solve this problem.”
Leduc’s posture softened. His shoulders slumped forward in resignation. “What’s your proposal then?”
“I haven’t fully thought it out, but what if, in return for distributing the pills, we allowed him to charge a fair price—a price that covered his costs plus some agreeable amount of profit?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Leduc snorted. “If these pills are the miracle cure you and he and Mei think they are, he should give us his unconditional support, not try to extort us.”
Simmons sighed. “General, that won’t happen and you know it—especially now that he knows what they can do. When we start producing large quantities of the immunity pills, we will need all the help we can get distributing them.”
