by Mark Kelly
Perhaps if she couldn’t go to them, she could get them to come to her—like moths to a flame. She smiled at the thought. Yesterday, while she and Baker had been on the hilltop, fire had been their enemy, but today it would be their friend.
She jumped to her feet, crossed over the drainage ditch, and ran as fast as she could to the spot where they had left the trailer.
When she returned with the supplies she needed, everything was as it had been when she left. The dormitory room lights were still out, the guards still on duty, and Baker nowhere to be seen. She felt a momentary flicker of guilt for what she was about to do but shoved it aside.
She returned to the road with a half-full five-gallon can of gasoline in one hand and a crowbar in the other. A knapsack containing two rolls of duct tape and an assortment of ropes of varying length was slung over her shoulder. Crouching, she scurried through the darkness to a parking lot across the street. The lot was filled with a jumble of cars that had presumably been towed there by the soldiers when they secured the dormitory.
One by one, she tried the car doors until she found one that was unlocked. She opened the front passenger side door of a luxury SUV and doused the seats and carpet with fuel. Then she did the same in the rear. Walking backwards away from the vehicle, she trickled a stream of gasoline onto the pavement, leaving a trail that would act as a liquid wick to start the fire. She stopped when she ran out of fuel twenty feet from the car and wondered if she was too close.
It would have to do. She bent down and lit the gasoline. A tiny jagged line of fire zipped towards the SUV—and stopped halfway.
Que pasó?
Annoyed, she walked to where the fire ended and saw the dry pavement where she had accidentally left a gap in the trail of gasoline. She stooped over to re-light the fuel, yanking her hand back at the very last second when she had a moment of doubt.
Too late.
The stream of gasoline caught fire and raced towards the SUV. WHOOMP—A thunderous shock wave of hot air and fire burst out of the vehicle shattering its windows and knocking her backward onto her butt.
Santa Madre de Dios!
Dazed by the inferno in front of her, Lucia stared at the burning car. The heat was like the hottest day in El Salvador multiplied many times over. She reached up and touched her hand to her face, certain she had burned off all of her eyebrows. Relieved they were still there, she came to her senses and jumped to her feet when she heard the soldiers shouting.
She grabbed the knapsack from the ground by her side and ran for the drainage ditch. At any moment, she expected to hear gunfire followed by the impact of bullets striking her in the back. She dove into the ditch and lay on her side, gasping from exertion as chaos erupted all around her.
The soldiers, thinking they were under attack, took potshots at the burning SUV. Almost every light on the dormitory’s fourth and fifth floor flicked on as the people inside went to their windows to see what the commotion was about. She was screwed. The diversion was a disaster.
As she lay there, cursing her bad luck, she realized her plan hadn’t been a total failure. Everyone’s attention was focused on the burning car—which was in the opposite direction of the far end of the building.
If she was quick about it, she might make it through a ground-floor window. With the knapsack hanging from her shoulder and the crowbar in her hand, she ran along the bottom of the drainage ditch until she reached the far end of the building. Then she dashed across the parking lot and pressed up against the wall so she couldn’t be seen from above.
The third window she tried was unlocked. Seconds later, she was inside the dormitory. The room stunk and she knew instantly she was in the company of something dead and decomposing. As her eyes adjusted to the gloomy darkness, she found the source of the odor.
There were three of them, all on the bed beside her. She couldn’t tell if the corpses were male or female, but they were fully dressed and judging from their position, someone had dumped them there. Taking care not to bump into anything, Lucia moved as far away from the bed as she could and waited for signs she had been seen entering the building.
Soon, the gunfire stopped, but she could hear the soldiers shouting orders to each other. It would be awhile until things calmed down. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall and waited.
49
We all die
When she could no longer hear the soldiers talking, Lucia decided it was safe to leave. She stepped into the darkened hallway, brushing against a piece of paper that had been taped to the outside of the room’s door.
Curious, she unclipped the penlight from her belt and turned on the narrow beam. The paper was blank aside from the instantly recognizable yellow and black biohazard symbol on it.
Taking the chance she’d be seen, she shone her flashlight down the hallway. All the doors were the same, each with an identical notice. She had seen hundreds, probably thousands of similar placards since the pandemic struck. Printed in the millions by the government, they were a clear warning sign to stay out.
Too late, she thought, and it didn’t matter in any case; she was immune. Leaving the door open so she could easily find it in the dark when she returned, she headed down the hallway to find John Raine. When she reached the heavy steel doors leading to the stairwell, she pushed gently, unsure what she would find on the other side. The doors opened a few inches and then stopped abruptly.
Lucia shone her penlight through the crack. Someone had run a metal chain through the door handles and secured it with a padlock. Behind the padlock, the entire entranceway had been sealed with a large sheet of plastic—presumably to stop people from entering the spore-filled floor, or maybe to keep the spores from dispersing into the rest of the dormitory.
She considered returning to where she had left Baker, but if she did that, she would have to listen to him tell her how foolish she had been, and all the effort and risk she had taken would have been for nothing.
Screw that.
She removed the crowbar from her knapsack and wedged the small end into the gap in the padlock’s clasp. With her feet planted, she pushed with all of her might until the lock broke and fell to the concrete floor making a loud clattering noise.
She paused, waiting for a sign she had been heard. Nothing. When she was certain no one was coming, she ran her hands along one side of the doorframe, freeing half of the sheet of plastic from where it was taped to the frame and the floor. Then she slipped through the opening and made her way up the stairs.
The second and third floors were sealed shut like the first, but the fourth and fifth weren’t. She quietly slipped into the hallway on the fifth floor, and then counting the doors on her fingers as she passed them, stopped at the third room on her right—John Raine’s room.
She tried the doorknob.
Locked.
Unable to think of a better way to gain entry to his room, she did the only thing she could think of. She knocked softly once, and then twice more, a little harder when he didn’t answer.
“Who is it?”
Every muscle in her body tensed at the sound of Raine’s gruff voice. It was so loud that he might as well have been in the hallway shouting. She pulled her pistol from its holster and waited.
“Is that you Alice?”
Quién es Alice? That must be the woman with the hair bun, Lucia thought, and if he is asking, then she is not in the room with him. Good, that is one less problem to deal with.
Raine opened the door. Lucia pushed hard, knocking him back into the room with her free hand while she kicked the door closed behind her. He staggered backward and dropped the battery-powered lantern he was holding. The light flickered and then went out. Lucia clicked her penlight on and shone it in Raine’s face.
“Who are you?” he demanded, his eyes blazing with anger.
“I am Lucia.”
Raine frowned as if that weren’t the answer he was expecting. He glanced at her gun and the large bowie knife strapped to her belt.
Lucia reminded herself to be wary. This was the man who had killed millions and conned hundreds.
“How did you get in here?” Raine asked. He smirked. “Did the boys downstairs not pay you? Are you looking—”
Lucia jabbed him in the chest with her pistol. “I am not a whore.”
A worried expression crossed his face. “What do you want then?”
“You.”
Raine’s eyes widened. Slowly, he edged backward away from her. Lucia saw the gun laying on the night table beside his bed.
“Stop,” she warned, “or you will be dead before you reach the table.”
“John, who are you talking to?” a woman’s voice whispered from the hallway.
Raine tensed.
Sensing he was about to do something stupid, Lucia leapt forward and jammed the barrel of her pistol into his mouth, splitting his lip.
“Say nothing,” she hissed. “Or you will die, and then she will die right after you. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
Lucia removed the gun barrel from his mouth. He wiped his lip with the back of his hand and glared angrily at her. “You’ll pay for that.”
“John, I heard you. I know you’re in there,” the voice from the hallway said. “Is there someone with you? Is everything all right?”
“Tell her you are all right,” Lucia whispered, snatching his gun from the night table and sticking it in the back of her pants.
“I’m fine, Alice. Go back to bed,” he said.
“You don’t sound fine.”
There was a pause, and then the click of the doorknob turning. Lucia spun around as the door opened and the woman from the bus appeared, dressed in a nightgown and no longer wearing her hair in a bun. Lucia yanked her into the room and shut the door. Startled, the woman’s eyes darted about. Her brow wrinkled with concern when she saw Raine’s face.
“John, are you all right?”
Raine wiped his lip, scowling at the blood on the back of his hand. “She hit me, but it’s nothing, just a little cut.”
“W-what’s going on?” the woman stammered. She looked at Lucia. “What are you doing here? People like you aren’t allowed in the dormitory.”
People like me?
Lucia glared at the woman, wondering what exactly she meant by that. “It doesn’t matter who I am, who are you?”
“Alice Mayer…Dr. Alice Mayer,” she said, giving Lucia a haughty look. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m going to get the soldiers.”
Lucia was momentarily confused. Tony had mentioned a scientist named Mayer who had created the bacteria, but she had always assumed it was a man. Instead, it was the puta in front of her. She stepped forward and slapped Mayer hard across the face and said, “You are not going anywhere. Go stand beside him.”
Mayer’s eyes watered from the blow and then widened with shock. She trembled as she spoke. “I don’t understand. What’s going on, John?”
“I don’t know. She just showed up,” Raine said, his lip swollen to twice its normal size.
He lowered his hands and took a cautious step towards Lucia. “Look, I don’t know what you want, but whatever it is, I’m sure we can work something out. I’m important. I can get things…valuable things…almost anything. Just tell me what it is you need.”
What I need is my children alive, but that won’t happen, Lucia thought.
She jabbed her gun in his direction. “Get on your knees and clasp your hands behind your back.”
When he hesitated, she barked, “Do it now.”
Taking care to not take her eyes off him, Lucia slipped the knapsack off her shoulder and threw it onto the bed.
“There is tape in there,” she said to Mayer. “Take it out and wrap it around his wrists. Make it tight. When you finish, cut a piece off and put it over his mouth.”
“I don’t have a knife or scissors,” Mayer whined.
“Then use your teeth…like a dog,” Lucia snarled.
Quaking with fear, Mayer bound Raine’s hands and mouth with duct tape. When she finished, Lucia did the same to her and then muttered, “Get up. We are going to take a walk. If you make any noise or try to get help, I will hurt you, and you will wish you had listened to me.”
Raine was sullen and silent, but Mayer sobbed beneath the duct tape covering her mouth.
“Don’t kill us,” she moaned in a muffled voice.
“I am not going to kill either of you,” Lucia said, smiling coldly as a thought crossed her mind.
She opened the door and cautiously poked her head out. The hallway was dark and quiet with no signs of the soldiers.
Stepping back into Raine’s room, she used the barrel of her gun to prod her captives out of the room and towards the stairwell. When they reached the first floor, neither of them resisted as she pushed them through the opening and into the darkened, spore-filled hallway.
Their lack of fear infuriated her. She wanted them to be scared for their lives, petrified like her children had been before they died. Angrily jabbing the barrel of her gun into their backs, she pushed them down the hallway towards the door she had left open.
As they entered the room, she clicked on her penlight and shone it at the bed. When Mayer and Raine saw the three bodies, they stumbled over each other, trying to move as far away as possible.
Lucia dragged two hardback chairs from the wall and placed them in the middle of the room a few feet apart but facing each other. She tied Raine and Mayer to the chairs and ripped the duct tape from their mouths.
Raine winced from the pain and cursed at her. “Bitch.”
Lucia raised a finger to her lips. She walked over to stand next to him and pressed the cold steel of her gun barrel against his forehead. “Keep your voice down, or I will kill you right now.”
Smirking, Raine glanced at the bodies on the bed and then looked back at her. “You’re the one who should be worried.”
She pretended to not understand what he was talking about. She didn’t want him to know she was immune—not yet anyway, but it bothered her that neither he nor the woman weren’t more afraid. Perhaps they were immune too? That thought bothered her even more. She had to find out, but she wasn’t ready to just ask him. That would take the fun out of it.
She stared at Raine, taunting him. “I expected someone else. You are not the big, scary monster he made you out to be.”
Raine raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who told you I was a monster?”
“Tony.”
“Tony, who?”
“Tony Simmons—don’t you remember him?”
For the first time, something resembling fear crossed Raine’s face. He recovered quickly and said, “Did that gutless coward send you to kill us?”
“No one sends me anywhere,” Lucia replied. “And I have already told you I am not going to kill you.”
Raine remained wary, but Mayer relaxed slightly. “How do you know Tony? Are you a scientist?”
“I am a friend.”
“A friend from where—”
“Alice, don’t trust a word she says,” Raine blurted. “She didn’t bring us here at gunpoint and tie us up because she wants to be your friend.”
“What do you want then?” Mayer asked.
“Information.”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“And you’re not going to kill us?”
“No.”
Mayer blinked with apparent relief. “Is Tony working on a cure? Is that why you’ve come? He was never one to give up. I always respected that about him. Even as a student he was driven. Is he focusing on the mutation or the toxins?”
“I told you I am not a scientist. I don’t know what he is working on,” Lucia replied.
“Active immunity is the key,” Mayer said, “We’ve been able to develop a monoclonal antibody vaccine that temporarily neutralizes the C difficile toxins, but the strain persists and the vaccine needs to be reapplied every—”
“Shut up, Alice!” Raine cried out. “You’ve already said too much.”
Lucia grabbed the piece of duct tape she had ripped from Raine’s mouth earlier and stuck it back on. She leaned in close and spoke. “Now I know why you were not afraid to enter this floor. You are immune, but only for a little while it seems.”
She stepped back and smiled.
“When will it run out?”
“Today?”
“Tomorrow?”
“The day after?”
Raine’s eyes filled with hatred.
Mayer gave Lucia a pleading look. “Please…You have to understand, the strain wasn’t intended to be deadly. I never planned for any of this to happen. It’s not my fault the bacteria’s DNA mutated, disabling the toxin-antitoxin control system.”
“What about the people on the bus who came here with you, did they help create the bug?” Lucia asked.
Mayer shook her head. “No, they don’t know anything about it. They’re working with me to find a cure. We’ve got some of the brightest minds in bacterial genetics and vaccine development working twenty-four hours a day. We’re so close to something permanent. I know it…I just know it.”
Mayer closed her eyes as if she were exhausted from speaking. When she opened them, she looked at Lucia, confused.
“What are you going to do to us?”
“Nothing. I am going back home.”
“Aren’t you afraid of dying?”
“We all die.”
Mayer glanced at the bodies on the bed. “But aren’t you afraid of dying from the pandemic bacteria?”
Lucia plucked the piece of duct tape she had left stuck on the back of Mayer’s chair and placed it over the woman’s mouth before speaking.
“You asked me what Tony was working on and I will tell you. He is working on a cure—a permanent cure, thanks to a beautiful child who I hope is still alive.”
She looked at John Raine and smiled. “Like you, I am immune, but unlike you, my immunity is permanent.”
