by Willow Rose
I exchanged a look with Al, then didn’t think about it twice. I grabbed the door handle and pushed it down.
“It’s open,” I said and glanced happily at Al.
I was about to push it fully open and storm inside when Al stopped me, putting a hand on my arm. She shook her head.
“If they’re being kept against their will, wouldn’t the door be locked?” she asked. “Why was it left open?”
“What are you saying?”
“Something is wrong,” she said.
I pulled the door closed again. “What do you mean? Like what?”
“Here, let me,” she said, then knelt by the door. She grabbed the handle and opened it cautiously, pushing it open only a hairsbreadth. Then she slid a gloved hand inside slowly till it touched something, and she pulled it back immediately. Fearful eyes glared up at me.
“There’s a wire. It’s a bomb, Harry. If you push that door open, we’ll all die.”
I held my breath. I had been less than a second from doing just that. My hands started shaking at the mere thought. I could have killed us all by acting hastily.
“Dear God,” I said. “What do we do?”
Al nodded. “I might know how to disable something like that. I felt it gently. It seems like straightforward construction—something anyone could do.”
“Have you done something like this before?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ve done it quite a few times, yes.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I said, feeling slightly relieved.
Al sent me a smile from behind the mask, then knelt by the door again and reached inside. I held my breath as she fumbled with the wire, praying under my breath that the bomb wouldn’t suddenly go off.
I didn’t even see Reese storm toward us until it was too late. All I heard was her screaming something about her baby being in there, about her baby crying for her, and then she yelled: Mommy is coming, before she pushed the door open and burst right into the wire, jerking it.
Chapter 44
Everything stopped. At first, I wasn’t blinking; I wasn’t even thinking. I just stood there, staring at my sister as she burst into the room.
NO!
I waited for the explosion. I expected it, telling myself this was it, closing my eyes, and preparing myself for the blast throwing me up in the air and ripping us all to pieces.
But it didn’t happen.
For some reason, it didn’t go off.
I looked down at Al, who was sitting by the doorstep, holding a small device in her hand. She wasn’t breathing either.
“I managed to take the wire out just at the instant she came through,” she stuttered after a few seconds of regaining her composure.
Meanwhile, Reese was inside the room, screaming her baby’s name.
“Abby? Abby? Where are you, sweetie? Mommy is here. I’m here.”
But there was no baby anywhere. Only two people sitting on a mattress, their arms and legs tied up. One was also blindfolded and gagged. I guessed that had to be Candice. The other I recognized as Bobby Kay. He didn’t look like he knew about the bomb, and he stared at me, eyes wide open.
“Was that…a…”
Al nodded. She pointed at the backpack next to the door, then peeked inside. “Just as I thought. Full of explosives.”
Bobby Kay’s nostrils were flaring aggressively, and he had a vein popping out on his forehead.
“You mean to say we almost…she almost…you…you…oh, dear God.”
I knelt in front of Candice and grabbed her hands in mine while I spoke to her calmly.
“Hello, Candice. My name is Detective Harry Hunter. I’ve been looking for you. I’m going to release you now. I’ll try my best not to hurt you.”
I leaned over and took off the blindfold first. Candice blinked her eyes and narrowed them as the bright florescent light from inside the room hit them and blinded her momentarily.
“Keep them closed for a few seconds until they get used to the light,” I told her, then moved on to the cloth covering her mouth. I untied it, then pulled it out. She gagged a few times, then coughed and leaned forward, moving her jaw. It looked painful. Her eyes finally opened and landed on me. Then, she tried to smile.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I untied her feet and arms as well, and I could tell it hurt to move them, but she was greatly relieved finally to be free.
“How about me?” Bobby Kay said and lifted his tied hands. “Aren’t you going to free me?”
While Candice tried to get to her feet, I approached him. I knelt in front of him, looking him straight in the eyes.
“You and I need to have a chat first,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do before I trust you enough to let you go.”
Bobby Kay sighed and leaned against the wall behind him. “Fair enough. What do you want to know?”
I was about to speak when Reese moved in front of me. She was almost screaming at him.
“First of all, tell me…where is my baby? What did you do to Abby?”
Bobby Kay looked at her, puzzled.
“You don’t remember, Reese?”
Chapter 45
Reese stood like she was frozen. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she couldn’t think straight. She had heard her baby crying as she ran down the hallways of the bunker, stumbling through room after room of dirty old rusty, moldy furniture, searching for her when she had been certain she heard her behind the steel door. Thinking she had no time to waste, she had sprung through it, bursting inside, desperately searching for her poor child, but the moment she stepped inside, it had stopped. The crying had ceased just as suddenly as it had begun. Now, she was standing in front of Bobby Kay, who was sitting on the mattress, tied up. She looked into his eyes as he said the words.
Don’t you remember?
“Remember what?”
Bobby Kay scoffed. “You really don’t, do you? You don’t recall that the DCF took her? They came to your apartment one day and took her from you. They put her in foster care because you couldn’t take care of her properly. Because of your condition, they said, because you had gone off your meds. We tried to help you through our foundation. That’s how we met. I saw you crying at the CVS where you work. I stop by there when I need a new inhaler, around once a month. That day, I saw you crying behind the building and walked around it to talk to you. You told me what had happened, how they had taken your child, and you didn’t know what to do next. On that day, I promised to help you. It wasn’t unusual for me. We do stuff like that from time to time for people, you know, for the little people in society who can’t pay for a lawyer on their own. Those that have met injustice in the system and need help. I had my lawyers look at your case, and they believe that you have a case and that they can help you. In fact, until this virus happened, they were still working to win back your baby. You’re telling me you really don’t remember?”
Reese stared at the man in front of her as she realized she did remember. As he told her these things, she now saw the faces of the people taking her baby. She vaguely remembered the woman from DCF who had come to her apartment on several occasions, talking to her, observing her with the baby.
“Is this true, Reese?” Harry asked. He turned to face her. “Reese?”
Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about that day when they had knocked on her door. The more she thought about that day, the more the blanks were being filled in, and the more it now made sense. Her baby had been crying day and night, and Reese hadn’t known what to do. She had refused to go back on her meds when they asked. She argued that she felt fine, yet the voices and hallucinations had grown terribly strong and made her incapable of taking care of the poor crying baby. The lack of sleep hadn’t exactly helped her situation either.
That’s why I keep hearing her cry. I didn’t take care of her properly. I wasn’t good enough.
“Reese?”
She looked up at her brother, then felt the tears escape
her eyes even though she tried to stifle them. Then, she nodded.
“So, it’s true?” Harry asked. “DCF took your baby, not the foundation? Not Bobby Kay and his people?”
Reese nodded. “Yes. I…I think I remember now.”
Harry scoffed, then turned to face Bobby Kay again. “And what was in it for you? What was your price for helping my sister? That she got infected with the virus and went into society to spread it so you could create a New World Order, or what the heck it was you were planning? Did you use Reese’s situation to pressure her into helping you? You needed someone like her, am I right? How else would you spread the deadly virus that you stole from your sister?”
Chapter 46
“No.”
I clenched my fist. I had to tread carefully now, not act out in agitation. The thought of my sister being used this way was making my blood boil.
“What do you mean, no?” I asked and eased the tension in my shoulders slightly. I held my hand on the grip of the gun that had gone back in its holster when untying Candice.
“No, that was not my intention at all. To use Reese,” Bobby Kay said.
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“But it’s the truth, nonetheless,” he said. “I’m not proud of what happened at all. This was never my intention. I had different plans for the virus.”
“Really? Like what?” Al asked from behind me. “Why did you take the virus?”
Bobby Kay sighed. His shoulders slumped. Candice, his sister, was staring at him. We were all waiting for answers.
“It wasn’t really my idea at all,” he said. “But one day, we were hanging out at the house, talking about the future for our group, when I accidentally mentioned my sister’s work. There isn’t a minute that I don’t regret having told them about it. Jacob and Petra both got that weird look in their eyes and started having all these strange ideas about us stealing the virus, and then we’d have a weapon. We could use it to press the politicians into meeting our demands. I don’t know if you heard about David Brunner?”
“Sure,” Al said. “He was imprisoned because he published undisclosed documents on WikiLeaks. Civil rights organizations argue that what he did shouldn’t be punishable because his activity mirrors conduct that investigative journalists regularly undertake in their professional capacity. Prosecuting David Brunner could cause journalists to self-censor out of fear of prosecution as well, which would be bad for our constitutional rights of freedom of expression.”
“Exactly,” Bobby Kay said. “We’ve been running a campaign for his release and tried to influence government officials into helping us plead for his release, but we were getting nowhere. No one was listening to us. Somehow, Jacob and Petra got it in their heads that with this virus, threatening to release it, they would comply. I told them those were the methods of terrorists, and we’d end up being listed as such, as a terrorist organization, but they wouldn’t listen. They’re the money behind this entire foundation; if they pull out, we’re left with nothing, so as they pushed for me to get ahold of the virus, I finally complied. I visited Candice and took her keycard, then broke into the lab and took a sample of the virus. I thought I’d be able to take it back once our demands were met and Brunner released. I thought no one would ever have to know. I honestly thought I was helping a humanitarian cause. I was an idiot.”
“You think?” I asked.
I felt Al’s hand on my arm. She was telling me to back off.
“But then what happened?” she asked. “How did the virus end up in Reese, and how did you end up down here?”
“They turned on me and our original plan. The others went behind my back and injected Reese with the virus. They never even told me they had done it. I merely realized the sample was gone. But I had my suspicions, and that’s why I started following her and later mapping her whereabouts to see if there was a pattern for where she had been and clusters of infections. Seeing her state of mind, how she was very obviously sick and running a fever, confirmed my suspicion. I even went to her workplace and asked her if she was all right. But she just said she was fine. She had a sore throat; that was all. For a long time, I told myself it wasn’t the virus, that she just had the flu or a bad cold, that I was being paranoid. Still, I couldn’t look away from the fact that everywhere she had been, there were new clusters, lots of infected people. By the time I finally admitted it to myself, it was too late. She had already infected hundreds of people, and it didn’t take long before all hell broke loose. I watched, terrified, as it was all over the news. I asked the others about it, about what had happened to the virus. No one wanted to admit they had done it. I got scared and didn’t know what to do. Later, I told the others that I wanted to come clean. We had to tell the authorities what they were dealing with, what we had done, that we had taken the virus and somehow it had been set free in the public. I was scared, especially once you came knocking on our door. I didn’t know they had already taken Candice. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks since I was so terrified that she’d figure out it was me who took it. But when you told me she was gone, I suspected the others had kidnapped her so she wouldn’t tell anyone what they had done—so she wouldn’t be able to tell that they had released a genetically created virus and caused the entire world to go into lockdown. I pretended that I didn’t know her very well, so you’d leave, then I confronted them, and they knocked me down. I woke up down here with my sister. I didn’t even see them put the wire on the bomb. I had no idea that it was there.”
“And the baby? Why was there a baby at your place when I was there?” I asked. “If it wasn’t Reese’s baby?”
He looked confused, then shrugged. “That could have been Loretta’s. She’s my cleaning lady. She recently had a baby, and she brings it to work. She doesn’t have anyone to take care of the child while she works. It doesn’t bother me that she brings him.”
“So, you’re telling us that you had nothing to do with Reese being infected at all? That you didn’t even know about it? How are we supposed to believe that? You’re the leader of OUTRAGED, aren’t you? How could you not know what was happening?”
“I don’t know how to make you believe what I’m saying,” he said. “They don’t tell me everything. I’m just the spokesman, the front figure if you will because of my fame. They’re the ones making the decisions, not me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
Reese approached me. Her big eyes lingered on me.
“He’s telling the truth, Harry. That was what I was about to tell you earlier. While we drove here, it came back to me. I remembered something. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t have time to listen.”
My eyes met hers. She wasn’t really there as she was pondering something, trying to make sense of her thoughts.
“What, Reese? What did you remember?”
Her eyes came back to me, and she gave me a faint smile.
“I think I remember who gave me the injection.”
“And it wasn’t Bobby Kay?” I asked, puzzled.
She shook her head.
“No.”
“And this isn’t just one of your hallucinations or voices telling you this?” I asked, concerned.
“Not this time. This is what really happened. The memory is crystal clear in my mind.”
I was waiting anxiously for her reply when my phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
“It’s Jean,” I said and picked it up. “I have to take it.”
“Harry?” she said on the other end. I didn’t like the tone of her voice. She was crying. “Oh, Harry, honey.”
“What? What’s going on, Jean? Is it Josie? Did something happen to Josie? Jean?”
Chapter 47
Her condition got worse the past few hours, and they have to intubate her now. The doctor says he’s not sure her heart can take it. I’m so sorry, Harry. I’m so terribly sorry.
Jean’s words rang in my mind as I rushed back toward town. Everyo
ne was in the car with me—Al, Reese, Candice, and Bobby Kay. I had no plan. I didn’t even have an idea of a plan, not even a sketch. I hadn’t even thought about what to do next. I just knew I had to get back to town to get to my daughter.
A thunderstorm had pulled in over town, and as we got closer, the dark clouds surrounded us above our heads, and a few seconds later, the heavy rain poured down on us. I barely noticed. All I could think about was my daughter, my poor baby girl.
I had called my dad from the car to check in on him, and he sounded weak but said he was okay. He had taken his temperature just a few minutes before I called, and it was down from this morning, which was the first sign of progress I had seen in him so far. I told him about Josie, crying my heart out in despair, and he went completely quiet on the other end. I hadn’t realized until now that he naturally blamed himself for having infected Josie.
“I brought this to her,” he suddenly said. “I brought it into your house, and now she’s fighting for her life because of me.”
“No, Dad. You can’t think like that, you hear me? I might as well have been the one to bring it into our house and infect you and her. We can never know for sure where it came from.”
“Don’t patronize me, son,” he said. “I know I was the one. You never had any symptoms.”
“Some people don’t get any,” I said. “Some are just asymptomatic carriers. I connect with many people in my daily work. I’m telling you; it might as well have been me.”
He didn’t believe me. Of course, he didn’t. If I didn’t believe myself, how could he believe me? We both knew I was just talking to make him feel better about himself. I didn’t want him to blame himself. But the fact was, there were times I’d think that maybe this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t asked him to move in with us, to be with Josie while I was at work. Perhaps she could have been spared that way. I guess I blamed both of us, but mostly myself.
