by Olah, Jeff
The men appeared stunned as Declan continued past them; however, they must have been inspired by what he was doing. The man in the red windbreaker looked at his friend, back at the crowd, and then at the doors to the building Declan was running toward.
Red windbreaker man then shouted at his friend and also started running. He was small with short limbs, but moved fast. His legs a blur as he darted away from the nearest grouping of Feeders, increasing his lead even from the first few strides.
Declan slowed as he approached the entrance to the building. Two massive stainless steel and glass doors, at least ten feet tall. The left side had been held open by a small plastic ice chest placed in its path. There was little doubt he’d make it, although finally looking back and acknowledging the two men, he had another idea.
“LET’S GO!”
If it was possible, the man out front picked it up once again, his upper body dipped forward like a running back darting through a hole in the line of scrimmage. But what caught Declan off guard was the second man, less than two steps behind the first, their strides nearly identical.
“HEY,” shouted the man in the yellow windbreaker, “HOLD UP!”
Declan slipped through the opening, slid the ice chest aside, and pushed his back into the door. He nodded at the men, waved them forward, and gave a quick thumbs-up.
At his back, the lobby of a rundown office complex. There was a reception stand, two chairs, and a computer monitor. He looked further, toward a bank of elevators. Outdated linoleum, worn carpeting, stained and torn in places, it wasn’t clear whether from before or after the end of the world.
Wouldn’t have been his first choice of places to spend the night, but for now it was free of the infected.
The men came in quickly off the sidewalk, not slowing as they reached the door. Declan stepped aside, motioning them in, before moving away and allowing the door to swing shut.
“Boys, give me a hand.”
They worked to slide the desk, chairs, and few filing cabinets in the way of the door. It wouldn’t hold for long, although he wasn’t planning on using the lobby as his home base.
The two men followed Declan away from the lobby and into a dimly lit hall that led to the stairs. The one in the yellow turned to the other and then to Declan. “Thanks dude, you really saved us.”
He wanted to correct the man in the yellow windbreaker, but then he saw it, couldn’t understand why he hadn’t before. He smiled wide and held back a laugh. “Twins?”
They looked at one another, held a goofy grin for a moment, and then speaking in unison said, “Yep, all our lives.”
They broke into what seemed to be rehearsed laughter, the man in red stepping forward and extending his hand. “Jacob Jackson, nice to meet you. This here is my brother Joshua, younger by eight minutes.”
Declan looked from one to the other, his right arm never leaving his side. “Well, that’s interesting. Which one of you has the highest pain tolerance?”
Joshua took a half step back, looked at his brother. “Wha … what are you talking about?”
Declan shook his head, let out a forced laugh. “It’s a joke, come on, lighten up. I thought you boys had a sense of humor?”
Jacob hadn’t moved, looking like he had seen something in Declan he didn’t like. “Yeah, sorry. My brother is just a bit skittish from all of this. I mean you know how it is.”
He waited a second, and then turned to the twin in the red windbreaker, grinning as he stood before the door to the stairs. “Yes, I know how it is. But he’s going to need to grow a thicker skin to get through this.”
Jacob stared back, the lack of trust apparent in his eyes. “Don’t worry, he’ll be just fine.”
Declan reached for the handle to the door. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Declan said, “how about you boys come with me, help clear the second floor?”
71
It had been raining for the last three hours, coming down with more intensity over the last few minutes. The night was dark and the rhythmic sound strangely comforting. Gentry now sat in the upstairs den across from Margaret, peering out the floor-to-ceiling windows and watching the street leading to her home.
“He’s not coming back.”
Gentry pushed into the plush leather recliner, running his hand through his hair. This wasn’t him. It wasn’t what he did. He was never one for useless emotion, and even less for trying to comfort those who were.
But this felt different. “You don’t know that, maybe he and your nephew had to stop along the way.”
Margaret looked away from the window. “He would have made it back by now. Something isn’t right.”
She was right. There were so many ways it could have gone wrong; however, he didn’t think it was his place to confirm what she already knew. “Is there a possibility he ended up somewhere else? Do you have any family or friends close by?”
“No, my brother isn’t from around here. He was out on vacation when everything started.”
“Those he went out to meet, they from the area?”
“Not really, out near Bakersfield. They were trying to get here.”
Gentry continued to stare out into the rain. He couldn’t think of a way to redirect the conversation that wouldn’t lead to the things he didn’t think he was ready to discuss. “You want to stay here tonight?”
The look on her face changed in an instant. From despair to disgust in the blink of an eye. Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t respond. She only stared back, unblinking.
“Uh …” Good job, you just inadvertently caused her to assume that you were hitting on her in the middle of the apocalypse. “That’s not what I …” Just stop before you say anything else.
After a full thirty seconds, she sat back in her recliner and smiled wide, devious. “I got you, didn’t I?”
Gentry shook his head, trying to make sense of what just took place. “Wait, you weren’t thinking that …”
She brought her hand up to her mouth, giggled quietly. “Oh no, what are you like thirty years old? I’ve got you by at least twenty-five years. And trust me, I know when a man is hitting on me.”
He could feel his face start to warm, a line of sweat beginning to form near his hairline. “No, no, no. I didn’t mean that you weren’t … I mean … I guess …”
Margaret dipped her chin, leaned forward in her chair. “You’re doing it again.”
Gentry was terrible with this kind of thing. Small talk and playful banter were never something he felt the need to indulge in; they were a waste of time and brain power. But tonight, it was better than the alternative. Anything to keep her mind away from what was right in front of them. He also sat forward, folded his hands in his lap, and matched her smile. “No, you’re way off, I’m thirty-three.”
“And a doctor.”
“What?” He hadn’t remembered telling her.
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“How’d you—”
“I’m psychic.”
Gentry cut her a look.
“I saw the picture in Major Daniel’s office, the one with the two of you. That man labeled everything.”
“You got me.”
“So,” she said, “what did you do before all of this? Brain surgeon, maybe plastic surgery?”
“Plastic surgery?”
She nodded. “This is California.”
Gentry figured there wasn’t a reason to keep it from her. There wasn’t really a reason to hide anything anymore. Nothing mattered after the infection broke free. Not a damn thing. He hadn’t talked about it to anyone in the last six months, but tonight it came over him like a tsunami, he was finally ready.
“Hey,” he said, “you want something to drink? I think I remember seeing a bottle of red downstairs.”
Margaret seemed to melt in her chair as she peered out into the night. “That would be nice.”
Thirty minutes later, they had worked their way through
almost the entire bottle, Gentry still contemplating how he wanted to start. “Where were you when all hell broke loose?”
She continued to watch the world beyond the glass and through the heavy rain. “My husband was at work. He was trying to call me. I was at the market buying a few things for dinner.”
“Your husband? I didn’t know.”
“I’ve been forcing myself to keep it together, to try to forget.” She started to cry. “I didn’t know that anything was happening. I mean I had seen it on the news, but not anything like it was that day.”
Gentry was now second guessing his attempt at changing the tone of the evening. He hadn’t asked her about any of this before and hadn’t ever planned on doing this with anyone. Typically these things were better left alone; however, it seemed like this was something she needed to do.
Margaret wiped a tear from her cheek and turned away as she remembered. “When I finally noticed that I had missed his call, I was in the check-out line. I thought it would be okay to call him back from the car and was loading the groceries when I got his text.”
She paused, dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders hunched forward as she cried harder. Gentry felt for her in a way he didn’t think he was capable of, but at the same time he was struggling to come up with a response.
“I’m sorry.”
After a few minutes Margaret brushed the hair away from her cheek and wiped her face on her sleeve. She rubbed at her already red nose and finished what was left in her glass. “He was my entire world, and I wasn’t there for him when he needed me.”
Gentry sat quietly. He could see that she needed to get through this.
“Once I got settled in the car, I could see only the first few lines of his text and at the same time a notification that he’d sent a video. I thought it was odd because he’d never sent a video before, I didn’t even think he knew how.”
She looked past Gentry toward another bank of windows that faced the ocean. “I was happy for a second, almost giddy, like a child. I thought it was something that was going to make me smile. He was a very funny man when he wanted to be, but as the excitement was still washing over me, I opened the video. It was a close-up of his face, he had blood running from his eye, and down his face …”
She stopped.
“Margaret, you don’t have to do this.”
“He put his phone on the floor, it looked like he was under his desk. Those things, whatever they are, they took him from me. It was over quickly, but I had to hear him scream, I had to hear him cry. It was only about a half a minute, but it was the most terrifying, heart-breaking thirty seconds I’ve ever had to live through. And the whole time all he wanted to do was to tell me one last time that he loved me. That’s how it ended … he told me that he loved me, he told me to get somewhere safe, and then he picked up the phone and ended the video.”
There wasn’t anything he could say to help and he could sense that she didn’t need him to try. That wasn’t why she shared the story with him. It wasn’t for him. It was for her.
There were a few minutes where they just sat in the quiet darkness of the upstairs den, both again watching her home and the street. She reached for the almost empty bottle on the table between them, looked it over, and poured what remained into the two glasses. “So you weren’t a plastic surgeon, but you were a doctor.”
“Yes?”
“Then I want your expert opinion. What’s really happening out there, to those people? It just doesn’t seem real, doesn’t make any sense. What do you think it is?”
Gentry felt the blood draining from his face. There wasn’t going to be a good way to answer her question, at least not if he were to tell the truth. On some level he was involved in what the world had become, but announcing that he had a hand in her husband’s untimely demise wasn’t exactly what he had planned for the night.
He could lie, say that he had absolutely no idea. He could tell her what he knew based on what he had seen on the news and over the last two weeks, but again that would be a lie. And at the moment, anything less than the absolute truth didn’t seem right.
But where would he start, how could he loop the whole thing together without talking it into the ground?
“Have you ever heard of BXF Technologies?”
72
She hadn’t been looking at him, but turned at the question, her face a look of obvious confusion. “What?”
He’d stepped over the line. There wasn’t really a way to walk it back now, but that was okay. He was through hiding what he knew and now wanted to tell someone. It was going to be like running through a minefield, but it was the right thing to do—at least that’s what he needed to tell himself to get through the next half hour.
Gentry tilted his glass back and finished what remained. “BXF Technologies, you know the company?”
“I don’t think so, I mean what does this—”
He responded before she had finished. “What about Marcus Goodwin?”
“Oh yes, he owns two of the largest homes in California.” She paused, set her glass on the table between them. Looked like she was starting to form a different set of questions. “And he’s the CEO of that company, yes I think I might have heard of it.”
“Okay, is there anything else you might have heard?” He was stalling, thinking of how to transition back to her original question, but could see that she was growing impatient.
“I’m not sure I understand. What does Marcus Goodwin have to do with any of this?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Wait,” she said, “you mentioned him on that call earlier tonight?”
“Goodwin?”
“Yes, I heard his name.”
Gentry sat back, ran his hand through his hair, figured that the time had come. “He did this.”
She shook her head. “Wait, he did what?”
“All of this, what’s happening out there. Marcus Goodwin is responsible.”
“I still don’t understand, this virus came from somewhere overseas. It was called something like Intermittent Explosive Disorder or something like that.”
He paused, knowing how this next part was going to sound. “That’s what the news and everyone else thought, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth.”
Margaret now looked more irritated than confused. She slowly sat forward in her chair and folded her hands. “Wait, are you saying that you know something about what’s going on out there? Something besides what we’ve all already seen?”
“Yes.” He paused.
But she just stared back at him.
“And there’s not really a good way to explain how all this fits together, so I’m going to just jump in.”
She raised an eyebrow and bit at the side of her lip. “Okay …”
Gentry regarded her with a quick smile. “Until six months ago, I worked for BXF Technologies and Marcus Goodwin. He had developed a program that was initially titled Project Lockwood. It was named after Dr. Eugene Lockwood, the biologist he was working with at the time. Marcus Goodwin is a very smart man, but also an absolute sociopath, and a self-made billionaire with too much time and too much money for his own good. When he became bored with the micro-technology business, he thought it would be fun to dabble in genetic engineering.”
Margaret’s mouth was now slightly open. It looked like she was putting the pieces together. “Are you trying to say that this wasn’t an accident?”
There wasn’t really a reason to keep it from her, any of it.
“Well, not exactly.”
“Not exactly, what does that mean?”
“Marcus Goodwin was obsessed with redefining the boundaries of human genetics. He knew enough about the way people were wired to understand that we all have certain limitations, ones that we don’t even realize or have the ability to consciously access. He wanted to find a way around that, a way to mute some of the automated responses within our minds.”
Margaret shook her head, closing her eyes fo
r a moment. “Okay, you’ve completely lost me. How about you try again, this time in a way that I might actually understand.”
He thought that’s what he’d done, but the look on her face said otherwise.
“So, Project Ares—” He stared off quickly, now feeling the need to get it all out at once.
However, she held up her hand. “Uh, that’s not what you called it before, you said …” She looked at the ceiling for a brief second. “You called it Project Lockwood, I think.”
“Yes, Marcus Goodwin renamed the initiative once Dr. Lockwood left the program. No one really knew why and no one wanted to ask. It seemed to be a hot-button issue for Goodwin, since he had run through more than a half dozen chemists in four years. None stayed longer than a few months after given the full details of the program. That was until I came along.”
“What do you mean ‘details of the program’? You’re still not making any sense.”
“It’s actually pretty simple,” Gentry said. “Goodwin was trying to find a way for the human brain to respond at an increased rate, like upgrading the processor on a computer. He wanted to build a more perfect human, a faster sprinter, a better soldier. He wanted to remove the hindrance of empathy or compassion, nothing but reaction. Make the mind process information faster—much faster. And for a while, it seemed to be working. He sold the rights to the program to a few confidential government organizations and worked with them to perfect it over the last six or seven years, but never got it exactly right.”
Her eyes narrower now, Margaret just stared at him. “Let’s say that I believe you … how did that turn into whatever this is?”
“There were side effects from the injectable, some that we didn’t see until the very end. One of which ended up shutting down other parts of the brain. Parts that would be necessary for empathy and impulse control. And then over time, the side effects began to compound. They started closing off everything in the brain except the most animalistic tendencies—hunting and feeding.”
