Pandora - Contagion
Page 34
Emma climbed down off the bench and started the stopwatch on her phone.
There seemed to be some fuss around the bulletin board. Emma couldn’t tell if it was disagreement with her rules, or merely ordinary jostling for position.
But Dwayne and Samantha joined her, and the former said, “What do we do if they don’t agree to the rules, and don’t agree to leave?”
“Have your people kill them all,” Emma said. At the urging of the voice, Emma had begun to prize Dwayne and Samantha’s lives almost as highly as her own. Dorothy, despite carrying Dwayne’s child, she could take or leave. “But be careful,” Emma said to Dwayne, who didn’t seem to know what to make of that instruction. Samantha, however, nodded in concurrence with it. “What’s your plan for clearing the road junction?”
“We’re going tonight. I’ve got twenty guns I can count on, including Samantha.”
“Leave Samantha here. Sam, you and I can come up with tomorrow’s work schedule. It needs to be posted before sun-up tomorrow. Where’s Dorothy?”
Samantha pointed. “I told her to set up a daycare center for the children. She’s putting mattresses and blankets on the floor of the Methodist Church’s basketball court.”
“Good idea,” Emma noted. Samantha is a natural planner, observed Emma’s inner voice. Emma’s phone’s timer chirped. She climbed back onto the bench. “All right! Everyone back in their places! Time’s up!”
The crowd finished their last reading of the several printed pages mounted to the bulletin board and wandered back into the square in front of Emma’s bench. “Anyone who doesn’t commit to following all of those rules—every last one of them—you may leave now.” She set her phone’s timer to one hour, raised it for the townsfolk to see, and started its countdown.
No one left the square, but one man said, “Who decides on the punishments?”
“I do,” Emma replied.
There was a brief delay until another man asked, “Who the hell are you?”
Emma could feel that the voice in her head wanted to make some point. Emma waited. Say it, was all the voice commanded. Say it!
“I…am Emma Miller!”
Pandora: Resistance
Don’t miss the next exciting novel in the Pandora series by Eric L. Harry
Coming soon from Rebel Base, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.
Keep reading to enjoy a sample excerpt…
Chapter 1
NEW ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
Infection Date 122, 1415 GMT (10:15 am Local)
“Who was the first person you killed?” asked the interviewer in her monotone.
“Do you mean last night? Or ever?”
The infected bureaucrat on the far side of the bright yellow line, uncaring and yet persistent, said, “Last night.” The count began on a thumb and ended on a pinkie. “The man coming through the door.” The typing resumed. “The woman and boy outside. The old man on the stairs. And the girl and old woman in the parking lot. Five.”
The expressionless scrivener was both doll-like and grotesque. Brown, helmet-shaped hair, loose clothes draping a scrawny, non-descript figure, no make-up of course, maybe thirty-five, maybe fifty-five. The Infected chic of shabby automata. Spartan shells, like the interview room all drab colors…save the bright, impossible-to-miss line down its middle. On either side of the optic yellow border, dark hardwoods were worn tan by countless trudges. But the neon boundary between was untrod. Our side. Their side. An involuntary reach up found no mask—a defining post-apocalyptic twitch.
“Did you kill anyone before the outbreak?” the infected woman asked.
“Of course not.”
“What were you before the outbreak?”
“Why?”
The interviewer turned worn, yellowing laminated pages in the ring binder on her desk across the room. “Is it difficult to talk about ‘before-the-outbreak’?”
“Is that what it says? What to do when they don’t talk? ‘If they say this, ask that’?” The interviewer stared back, repeatedly blinking. A tell? Getting jumpy? Welcome to the club. The door and ground-floor windows in what signs said had been a title company were wide open. That’ll help her nerves. But talking was what she really needed to calm down. Doing her job. Typing mindlessly. “Life was easy.” The clacking resumed. “So, yeah, it’s hard on me. All the emotions. You know?”
The interviewer nodded. No, you don’t know shit. You have no idea what that means. She typed every word, then looked not at her binder, but at a form on a clipboard filled with notes in neat handwriting in multiple colors. So, her boss knows I’m here. “It says you have insights into the Pandoravirus epidemic. The Outbreak, the Killing, the Schism.” They’ve named everything. A first draft of their history of the world.
“What says that I have insights? What is that on your clipboard?”
“The intake form. Please describe what’s happened since the Outbreak.”
“I thought this was a trial or whatever. About the five Infecteds last night.”
“It’s an inquiry,” the infected woman replied.
“Into what though?”
Silence. You know when to lie, just not how. “You can start at Infection Date Zero.”
“What? From the beginning, to now? All three months?”
“No? Okay.” She turned plastic pages. “How about begin with the Killing?”
“And when was that? It seems like to me the killing began at the very beginning.”
“Why don’t you describe what happened around the time Vice Pres. Anderson took over?”
“We just call him President Anderson.” The barb was lost on the woman.
It would get dark early. The fresh smell of rain was in the air. It would make for a choice between a damp, miserable night in the woods, or breaking into an empty house that every once in a while turned out wasn’t abandoned. It wouldn’t matter whether its occupants were cold-blooded Infecteds or a desperate, bypassed Uninfecteds—you were in for a fight. Better to get this over with. “People told stories, you know. Maybe some were made up.”
“Lies?” asked the interviewer.
“Very good. ‘Embellished,’ more likely. Learn that word and you’ll be ready for your SATs.” The infected woman opened her mouth, presumably to correct the record about any impending college boards. “I know. You’re not taking the SATs. It was a joke.”
Apparently, there was a page for jokes. Her finger traced the line as she read. “Please just say what happened.” Page 11, Option 24 or whatever, in the binder.
“Well, in the beginning everything was normal.” She typed. “No guns, Exclusion Zone, yellow lines. Happy people living happy lives. Then, out of fucking nowhere, in three months everything got totally fucking fucked never to be unfucked again. The End.”
She typed it all, then said, “So, you decided to start at Infection Date Zero?”
The woman wanted the apocalypse in chronological order, please. Was she judging? And, if so, whom and what? The events of last night? Or all Uninfecteds on their record since the Outbreak? The woman’s finger found the question she was looking for. “On what Infection Date will you begin your recounting of events?”
“That’s your new calendar? Infection Dates? ’Cause January, February, and March are outdated now?” The interviewer stared back. “Never mind. What’s today’s date in Infection-land?”
“It’s Infection Date 122 today. On what date will your history begin?”
“Oh, I guess I’d say…” The math was pretty simple. Sixty-one days ago. Half the way back to the beginning. “Infection Date 61. Okay?”
The woman nodded, fingers poised, ready to type. What she didn’t know, however, was that she was the one being judged. It was her life, and the lives of her fellow Infecteds, that were being decided.
Meet the Author
Eric L. Har
ry launched his Pandora series of science fiction thrillers with Pandora: Outbreak and now continues it with Pandora: Contagion. He is currently working on the third book in the series, Pandora: Resistance. Raised in a small town in Mississippi, he graduated from the Marine Military Academy in Texas and studied Russian and Economics at Vanderbilt University, where he also earned a J.D. and M.B.A. In addition, he studied in Moscow and Leningrad in the USSR, and at the University of Virginia Law School. He began his legal career in private practice in Houston, negotiated complex multinational mergers and acquisitions around the world, and rose to be general counsel of a Fortune 500 company. He left to raise a private equity fund and co-found a successful oil company. His previous thrillers include Arc Light, Society of the Mind, Protect and Defend and Invasion. His books have been published in eight countries. He and his wife have three children and divide their time between Houston and San Diego.
Contact him on Facebook or visit him online at www.EricLHarry.com.
Pandora: Outbreak
BEGINNING OF THE END
They call it Pandoravirus. It attacks the brain. Anyone infected may explode in uncontrollable rage. Blind to pain, empty of emotion, the infected hunt and are hunted. They attack without warning and without mercy. Their numbers spread unchecked. There is no known cure.
Emma Miller studies diseases for a living—until she catches the virus. Now she’s the one being studied by the U.S. government and by her twin sister, neuroscientist Isabel Miller. Rival factions debate whether to treat the infected like rabid animals to be put down, or victims deserving compassion. As Isabel fights for her sister’s life, the infected are massing for an epic battle of survival. And it looks like Emma is leading the way . . .