“…appears to be spreading rapidly, though scientists on the project say that there is no cause for alarm. Symptoms have been reported in several major countries, including Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, and England. There is no word yet on how fast the symptoms appear after exposure. Doctors on scene in the most affected countries say they are unsure if the spread is airborne, but that fevers usually appear within hours. They are attempting to identify Patient Zero at this time, and are awaiting the first full recovery…”
Anna looked at Jared in shock. He was still staring at the screen with a strange look on his face. Fear? She didn’t know for sure, but she did know that she didn’t like it, not at all.
“What’s all this?” Mr. Hubbard said, coming into the break room, probably alerted by the loud volume of the alert. When Anna turned around, she noticed the rest of the employees trickling in behind him.
“Some kind of illness. It’s spreading,” Jared said. “Really fast.”
“Oh, some kind of flu thing?”
Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the screen. The news crew showed a familiar scene, a building partially burned in the distance. Anna recognized it immediately as the lab that had supposedly exploded in Russia. This was not good.
Anna noticed Mr. Hubbard’s assistant, Madeline, had crept up close to him and was clutching the back of his suit jacket fearfully. She was a real bitch usually. She thought that because she was his assistant, that she was also second-in-command. It wasn’t true, but Mr. Hubbard seemed to be particularly fond of Madeline, and let her dictate to a lot of the employees. This caused the sales team to have a particular grudge against her.
Anna was sure that Madeline and Mr. Hubbard were having an affair, it was obvious after she caught sight of lipstick on Mr. Hubbard’s neck before. When she told Jared, he seemed shocked that she hadn’t noticed it before. Anna didn’t really care one way or the other what they did, she just wanted to do her job and collect her paycheck.
After the alert ended and the commentators turned to a less alarming topic, everyone left to return to their desks. Work doesn’t stop just because some kind of disease was spreading overseas apparently.
◆◆◆
Later, as she was sitting at her desk, a Post-It note came tumbling down onto her keyboard. She uncrumpled the neon green ball and read Jared’s note.
Check your email
She logged in to her work email and opened the message from Jared.
TO: ANNA COLLINS
FROM: JARED CARSON
RE: The Post-It Note
No, check your other email, Collins. This isn’t a secure mode of communication. The enemy must never receive intel because we got lax on security.
Loose lips sink ships.
P.S. Do you have any sandwich left?
~J-Dog
She logged out and quickly logged into her personal email, even though she wasn’t technically supposed to on company time.
TO: ANNA COLLINS
FROM: JARED CARSON
RE: News
Check this out.
And get back to me about that sandwich.
~J-Dog
There, at the top, was a link.
She sighed loud enough that Jared could hear it and know she was not amused.
She clicked it, hoping it was work appropriate. Jared had been known to anonymously send inappropriate links to some of the sales team, but he had never pranked her like that.
When the webpage came up, her brow wrinkled, and her heart rate accelerated. “What is this?” she whispered to herself as she scanned the article.
It was some sort of foreign news story, choppy from being translated by the browser. The more she read, the more concerned she started to feel. High fevers, blood that wouldn’t clot, gangrenous limbs…it was horrifying, and that was putting it mildly.
She spent another quarter hour browsing the web for more information. News coming from foreign countries mostly reiterated what the commentators had been discussing earlier on T.V., but some…some told a different story.
Another Post-It landed in a crumpled heap on her desk. She opened it, expecting some explanation or theory about the link he sent her.
She should have known better.
Where’s the sandwich?
She gritted her teeth and pulled a neon pink note from the dispenser.
There is NO sandwich!!!
She loudly clicked her Bic, threw it back into the cup and kind of half-slung, half-tossed the note over the top. She didn’t wad it up enough, so it paused at the top of the partition before lazily fluttering down and disappearing into his cubicle.
“You need to work on your note-tossing finesse, A-Dog,” he said as he rolled himself around the cubicle wall.
“Since when do we call ourselves J-Dog and A-Dog?” she asked before he rolled back to his desk.
He looked at his watch. “Since about 13:09 o’clock. Why? You don’t like your codename?”
“13:09 o’clock? And I haven’t even thought about my codename. I didn’t even know I had one!” she said skeptically.
“It’s military time, and you didn’t have one until 13:09 o’clock.” He pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows slightly, daring her to contradict him.
“Will you stop it with the 13:09 o’clock?! You weren’t ever in the military! Just say 1:09 like a normal person.” She turned back to her desk.
She twisted around to ask him about the creepy link he sent her, but he was already gone. She huffed, but she wanted to know, so she got up and walked around the partition. Plastic rattled in his hand. He was eating cheap ramen noodles raw.
“What the hell are you eating, Jared?”
“Codename, please,” he said, taking another crunchy bite.
“Jared?” Her tone changed and he must have heard it, because he turned around and gave her his full attention, all joking aside.
“What?”
“Do you think it’s real?” She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice, because she wasn’t a weak person, or easily scared.
He swallowed and looked serious before letting out a breath. “I don’t know. But if it is, then it’s bad.”
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Refuge From The Dead | Book 2 | Dead Summer Page 28
