by Mark Kelly
Raine cursed her, his words muffled by the tape over his mouth.
“You lying bitch.”
“I am not lying; not about being immune, not about the cure, and not about not killing you. You will die by your own hand, sitting in your own shit, looking at each other.”
She turned away and peered through a small crack in the curtains. The car was still burning. She could see the outline of the soldiers standing near it. It had seemed like forever, but only half an hour had passed. It was time to go, but first she had to ensure that Raine and Mayer were never found.
She left the room and walked to the end of the hallway where she re-taped the plastic sheet to the floor and doorframe. Then she slipped the broken lock through the chain and carefully closed the stairwell door. It was almost perfect. Only a close inspection would show the seal had been broken. Mayer and Raine would be missing from their rooms in the morning, but no one would ever find them.
When she returned to the room where she had left them, Raine strained against his ropes, his face red with anger, but Mayer was quiet, her eyes closed as if she were contemplating something. Lucia took one last look at them before slipping out the window and returning to where she had left Baker.
“Where the hell did you go?” he asked from the shadows of the drainage ditch as she approached. “I heard an explosion and when I came back you weren’t here and the car was on fire. Lucia, I was scared you had gone and done something stupid and were dead.” He placed his rifle on the ground and hugged her.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“What about Raine, did you see him?”
“I saw him and he is dead,” she said, feeling no joy in the words.
“Let’s go home.”
50
Merry Christmas
Simmons stood quietly in the doorway to the base infirmary watching Saanvi and Emma laugh. Their giggles filled the room, and a medic walked over to shush them. Saanvi’s face turned serious as she nodded an apology, but Emma waited until the medic walked away before making a face behind his back.
It was a few days before Christmas, and the soldiers on the base were surprisingly festive—driven mostly, he thought, by Saanvi’s rescue and recovery. It was a big deal that gave them something to cheer about in otherwise bleak times.
“Excuse me, coming through,” a soldier carrying a three-foot tall artificial Christmas tree said as he brushed past Simmons. The tree was decorated with crunched up balls of tinfoil and strings of colorful yarn. A distorted five-point star made from a bent coat-hanger was stuck to its top. The intention was genuine, but it was quite possibly the worst-looking Christmas tree Simmons had ever seen. The only thing missing were the presents, and he didn’t have to wait long for that.
“Don’t you say a goddamn word.”
He turned to find Dines standing behind him, scowling and wearing a Santa Claus costume two-sizes too big. Streaks of charcoal or black eyeliner stained her cheeks and chin in a misguided attempt to create a fake beard.
“I’m Santa Claus,” she said.
“I figured.” He glanced at the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. “What’s in there?”
“Presents.”
Dines dropped the bag on the floor and opened it. It was full of dented metal ammo boxes the size of loaves of bread. “They’re for Saanvi.”
Simmons grinned. “Just what every fourteen-year-old girl wants for Christmas—boxes of ammunition.”
Dines cocked her head to the side and stared at him. “They’re not really full of ammo, you know? I couldn’t find any wrapping paper.” She gave him an embarrassed shrug. “I think it’s a stupid idea, but the guys wanted to give Saanvi an old-fashioned Christmas with presents, and a tree, and all that other shit. Maybe a nice meal too.”
“Right,” Simmons said, still grinning. “Turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy, rice pudding for dessert…cranberries.”
Dines scrunched up her face. “Don’t be stupid. Where the fuck am I going to get cranberries?”
She grabbed the bag, threw it over her shoulder, and walked through the doorway into the infirmary.
“Merry Christmas…Ho! Ho! Ho!”
“Merry Christmas, Santa,” the girls shouted back, laughing uproariously at the sight of Dines in her costume
Simmons stepped back from the doorway. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the folded letter the soldiers had found in Saanvi’s cabin. Afraid of what it might say, he had put off looking at it until he knew she was all right. He took a breath and was about to open it when Mei spoke.
“What are you reading?”
He dropped his arm to his side and spun around to see her a few feet away, walking towards him. “It’s from Saanvi,” he said, handing her the letter. “She wrote it in the cabin. It’s addressed to all of us, but I don’t really want to read it.”
Mei hesitated and then took the paper. She started to open it and stopped. “Maybe, it’s best if we don’t. Why don’t we give it back to her and let her decide if she still wants us to read it?”
He nodded.
They stood side by side, watching Dines and the girls joke with each other as Saanvi opened the ammo boxes.
“When are you leaving?” Mei asked him.
His heart skipped a beat. “The day after Christmas. How did you know?”
She turned and gave him a sad smile. “Tony, five minutes after you and General Leduc finished the phone call, everyone on the base knew. You should know by now nothing stays a secret here for very long.”
“It wasn’t really a secret,” he said, protesting. “And I was going to tell you tonight at dinner. They’re sending a plane from Kansas City the day after tomorrow. Abrams and a couple of his men are taking me to North Bay by snowmobile. There’s a working airport there.”
“How do you know you’ll be safe? A few months ago, you were the most wanted man in the world.”
“I’m still wanted, but for a different reason now,” he said, joking.
“Seriously, aren’t you worried?”
He shook his head. “It turns out Raine kept all his files about the North Korean operation on a USB disk. When they were cleaning out his office at McConnell Air Force Base, a private found it and turned it over to the base commander.”
“So, you’ve been fully exonerated?”
“Pretty much. I’m sure there will be questions about what happened at Fort Detrick, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“What about Lucia and Baker? Are they coming back on the plane?”
“No, they’re going to Florida and then riding back in the spring when the roads are passable. Baker wanted to show Lucia his old stomping grounds, and she mumbled something about having loose ends to tidy up with Michael Otetiani and the Mohawks at the reserve.”
He leaned over and gently nudged Mei with his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? We might be in first class. Free meals and all the booze you can drink.”
She grinned and nudged him back. “I don’t think they have first class on Air Force planes. Besides, you know I don’t drink so the free alcohol would be wasted on me. How long do you think you’ll be down there?”
“I’m not sure, probably until the spring.” He paused and looked at her. “Did you know Alice Mayer was the one driving the team in the KSU lab to find a cure? With the work they’ve already done, and bacteria from the spore pills, there’s an excellent chance we’ll be able to mass produce a vaccine within a year or two.”
“That’s great news.”
He nodded and sighed. “Baker told me what Lucia did. I’m not going to lose any sleep over Raine’s death, but I’ve got mixed feelings about Alice.”
“Why? She’s the one who started it all.”
“She was careless and stupid, but she didn’t intend for it to mutate. Her mistake wasn’t doing the work, it was allowing her work to be used in the way it was.”
“Alice Mayer played God, Tony. What’s that saying, you reap what yo
u sow?”
He paused, surprising himself as he spoke the words from memory. “God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap—Galatians chapter 6, verse 7.”
Mei’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not. My parents were.” He grabbed her hand and said, “let’s see if Santa has any presents for us.”
She smiled back. “Just knowing everyone is safe is enough of a present for me.”
51
Rise from the ashes
The young 2nd lieutenant pressed the black button on the wall. Then he respectfully stared at the floor, allowing Colonel Tao Jiali and her grandfather, President of the greatly diminished People’s Republic of China, to enter the elevator first.
After they boarded, the 2nd lieutenant joined them and pressed the button to take them on a nearly four kilometer journey from the bottom of a Karst limestone cave to the top of the highest mountain in the Western Hills outside of Beijing.
It would be the first time in eight months that Jiali, her grandfather, or any of the nearly six thousand people inside the world’s deepest and most secure bunker had seen the sun or breathed unfiltered air.
Jiali felt, but wouldn’t admit to a certain amount of trepidation. Even in the mountains two kilometers above Beijing, there was the possibility of spores.
The elevator jerked to a stop and the door opened. She couldn’t help but notice the young 2nd lieutenant holding his breath. With his lips pressed together, he looked like a puffer fish. She wouldn’t show such weakness. She took a deep breath and waited for her grandfather to exit first. Then she followed him onto the cold and windy concrete platform.
“Leave us,” the old man said to the young lieutenant who almost sighed with relief.
Twenty kilometers to the east, the great city of Beijing was laid out before them. Jiali marveled at the sight. Eight months without heavy industry or coal-fired power plants had done what all the good intentions of the National People’s Congress could not do: clean the air of the ubiquitous choking yellow smog Beijing had been known for.
Her joy was short-lived though. The city was lifeless. A shadow of itself. The scientists inside the mountain estimated that no more than fifty-thousand of the original twenty-two million residents had survived. It was the same everywhere. China had been decimated by the pandemic.
“The Americans have a cure.”
Stunned, Jiali addressed her grandfather formally. “Wài gōng, how do we know?”
“Our satellite surveillance systems detected and recorded a phone call. It was between our friend and scientists at an American research lab.”
From the way he said our friend, she knew instantly her grandfather was talking about Tony Simmons. “Will they share the cure with us?” she asked.
“Yes,” the old man said with a slow nod, “but not until they have vaccinated all of their citizens. That is one or two years away. We can not wait that long. It would place the Americans in an overwhelming position of power. China must rise from the ashes first.”
“I understand,” she said, looking down and waiting for what would come next.
“There is a ship in Yulin. It will take you and a small group of our most trusted soldiers to North America. Find our friend and bring him here.”
Jiali faced her grandfather and bowed deeply as she spoke. “Wài gōng, I will not fail you again.”
The old man nodded. He walked to the elevator and knocked. The door opened and the young 2nd lieutenant reappeared, his cheeks puffed out like a puffer fish once again.
“Return for me after you have taken him back down,” she said and turned away when the elevator door closed.
Beijing was still in the distance. A trail of oily black smoke rose into the sky from the top of a high rise. Someone was cooking dinner. She wondered what had become of Chen Gong, the agent she had sent to the United States. Had he died too, or given up? She couldn’t imagine he would have just quit. He was an honorable man. Perhaps she would find out about him when she met Tony Simmons.
The elevator opened behind her. She took one final look at Beijing before returning into the mountain.
52
Afterword
Thank you for reading the third book in the Altered Genes series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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