Forgotten Origins Trilogy - Box Set: Infected, Heritage, Descent

by Tara Ellis

  “Oh my God, they’re going to infect them, aren’t they?” Missy cries, not as controlled as I am. I give her a warning look, but it’s too late. Jake’s demeanor crumbles and the tears start again.

  Chris gets out of the driver’s seat and comes around to the back. Getting inside, he somehow manages to squeeze into the remaining space on the floor and wraps Jake up in a big bear hug. “It’s going to be okay bud. You were amazing and did exactly the right thing.” His words have a calming effect on Jacob, and just having Chris closer to me helps take off enough of the edge that I keep my food down. Barely.

  Kyle, not wanting to be left out of the floor party, joins us, and Missy rests her forehead on his shoulder. We’re all at a loss as to what we should do now, other than draw strength from each other.

  I realize that Nate is the only one left by himself, and reach towards him, intending to include him. However, I can tell by his expression that he’s unaware of our massive group hug and is thinking very hard about something else entirely. Intrigued, I leave him alone, sensing that he’s on the brink of something.

  A moment later, Nate jumps from his seat and leaps over the front bench. He’s got everyone’s attention now, so when he falls back onto the floor with a book in his hand, we are all watching him. It’s the CDC book that he had found at the library, the one that lists all the labs.

  Sitting back down, he starts thumbing through it. Nobody says anything, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought. Missy and Kyle, feeling cramped, get back up on the seat behind us. Chris takes the chair across from Nate, leaving Jacob and I on the floor with Baxter. I’m relieved to have some more space, because my claustrophobia was threatening to rear its ugly head. I’ll have to open a door soon to let some fresh air in.

  “Ha! I knew it!” Nate finally exclaims, finding what he’d been searching for. “I know where they took them.”

  “Where?” we all ask at once.

  “RML. It stands for ‘Rocky Mountain Lab’. That’s the same lab that Alex said she heard them talking about, the level four biolab that they’re going to start doing the airborne trials at. It’s in Hamilton, Montana less than four hours from here. Five with the time change.”

  We let this information sink in for a minute. I’m both relieved and horrified. We figured out where they are, but it’s also the worst possible place for them to be taken. At least it isn’t too far away.

  “Do we have enough gas to get there?” I ask Nate.

  Getting the Atlas, Chris and Nate pour over the maps and scribble out the numbers. In just a few minutes, they have the calculations done. “It’s almost the exact same amount of miles as from here to Bigfork,” Chris confirms. “So yes, we should have barely enough. But we’ll end up stuck in Hamilton if we don’t get gas or a different vehicle to make it to Bigfork.”

  Baxter and I stare at each other. I know what he’s thinking. As much as we love our families, the fate of the world depends on us making it to Bigfork as soon as possible. But how can we not try to save them?

  The wise words of the professor’s wife, Susan, resonate in my head. It proves that you are human. That you have something to fight for and care about! If we lose sight of the love and connection we have with our families, then there won’t be much left to fight for.

  Looking up, I find that everyone is watching me, waiting for me to make the call. “I guess we’re going to the Rocky Mountain Labs,” I say with conviction.

  TWENTY THREE

  “Do you think they’re following us?” Missy asks, nervously watching out the back window. Chris is taking a random route back to the freeway, avoiding both Missy’s neighborhood and the main roads.

  “No,” Chris says with more assurance than I feel. Sitting next to him in the front seat, I’m once again studying the road map. I want to see for myself where the labs are. Hamilton is about an hour South of Missoula, which I am familiar with. It really isn’t that far after all. “If they had spotted us, we would know,” he explains. “I don’t think they’re interested in playing hide-and-seek at this point.”

  “Well, how did they find out we were there?” Kyle wonders. “Could they have put a tracking device in you or something when you were sick?” he asks me. This was something I hadn’t even considered and just the thought of it almost puts me back in a panic.

  “Of course not, you idiot,” Nate chastises. “If they had been following a signal from Alex, then they wouldn’t have been surrounding the house when we weren’t in it, now would they? And they certainly wouldn’t have just left if they had some sort of tracking device that would have shown them that she was a few blocks away at the library.”

  That makes perfect sense. I start breathing again. While Nate can be a bit rude, he’s usually right. I appreciate that immensely right now.

  “Why didn’t they just hide out and wait for you to come back, if they thought you were here somewhere?” Jake asks me.

  Good question. I’m not sure of the answer. Looking to Chris for suggestions, I ponder how they ended up at Missy’s house in the first place.

  “How many guys do you think were there?” Chris inquires.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe six or seven, plus the older guy.”

  “That’s why then. With only three vehicles and that many people, there weren’t enough resources to set up containment. My guess is that after exhausting their search in Omak and determining that we weren’t there, they left for the Labs. Missy’s place is literally on the way, so they stopped there for whatever reason and got lucky. Even so, they have no way of knowing if Alex is still in town and probably don’t have time to wait and see. Since they have our parents, they must have figured they’d just take them, use them as new test subjects for the airborne virus and then just get the information from them on where Alex went.”

  “My phone!” I suddenly exclaim. “How could I have been so stupid?”

  “You think they tracked your cell phone? You have it with you?” Kyle asks.

  “No, no. I haven’t tried to use it for a couple of weeks. All they had to do though was check my phone records. The one person I texted and called the most was Missy. If they were trying to figure out quickly where we would run to outside of Omak, the most obvious would have been our family in Nebraska or my best friend here in Coeur d’Alene, which would have been clear by all my calls and text messages. I’m so sorry, Missy,” I say, turning to my friend. “It’s my fault they have your parents and Natalie now. That was a really stupid mistake.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” she answers without hesitation. “You had no way of knowing. None of us thought of it, and I guess we should have.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore how they found us,” Chris interjects. “It’s done. We need to concentrate on getting them back. How long has it been since they left, Jake?”

  Staring at his wristwatch, Jacob thinks about it. “What time did you come back?”

  “About ten minutes ago,” I tell him.

  Looking again at his watch, he taps the top of his knee with his knuckles. “Well… Baxter and I went over to the park at about 6:30, because I remember telling Mom that I had only gotten to play the game for half an hour after checking the time. Then, it was 6:40 when we went over to the playground. I know, ‘cause I checked again. I wanted to get back before 7:00 so that I could play Xbox for an hour before the power went out. I think they must have shown up a couple minutes after that and were probably only there for like ten minutes at the most. So that would make it…umm…maybe a half hour ago?”

  “Maybe we can catch up to them if we go fast enough!” Missy says, excited now.

  “Then what? Run them off the road and get in a gun fight with their automatic rifles?” Nate asks, being painfully blunt.

  “Hey, man, you don’t need to be so rude,” Kyle retorts, pulling Missy against him protectively. “Her family is gone. Have a little heart.”

  His freckled cheeks flushing, Nate for once has nothing smart to say back. “Sorry, Miss
y. I just meant that even if we do catch them, there really isn’t much we can do to get them back in that situation. We should really try to avoid it. Our best bet will be sometime after they get to the RML, but before they’re infected. I’m not sure how we are going to pull that off though.”

  “It’s okay, Nate, I knew what you meant. You’re right of course. Alex, what do you think? Do you remember anything else about that lab? How in the world are we going to get inside?” Her positive attitude is wavering at the stark reality of the nearly impossible rescue.

  As we finally pull back out on the main freeway, I90east, I try and think back over the conversations I heard. “Nothing that would help,” I finally answer. “Only that it would be ready for testing at the end of the week, which is about now. What does the book say about it, Nate?”

  Thumbing through the CDC book, he reads over the information for what is likely the fourth time already. “It says that there are five labs on thirty-five acres and four hundred and fifty employees. It’s a huge complex. However, I highly doubt that there would be that many employees there now. If the Mudameere are taking it over, I think that the people working there now would be their own.”

  “I bet you that the only ones in the dangerous parts of the lab will be the Shiners they’ve already created,” I add. “They seemed very concerned about not becoming exposed themselves, which is why they are using this lab. I think that may be why they infected so many of them: to use them for the next step in spreading the new Nephi virus. I imagine that once that protocol is in place, the leaders will disappear again.”

  “That’s an interesting concept,” Chris says to me, his brows furrowed. “What kind of stuff do they work with at the lab, Nate?”

  “Umm…let’s see. It says here that they are best known for their research in vector-borne diseases and infectious agents such as Lyme disease, plague, encephalitis and flu. Nasty stuff. I hope everyone is current on their vaccines!”

  I have to smile at his weak attempt at a joke, but it hits a nerve. “Alex has never had any vaccines,” Jake states, echoing my own thoughts.

  Chris turns to look at me questioningly. I shrug my shoulders like it’s no big deal. “I don’t think I have to worry about that at this point.”

  “Wait,” Nate says, leaning forward towards me. “You never got a vaccine? Why not? Your mom doesn’t strike me as the anti-vaccine type, especially since she’s a nurse. Why wouldn’t she vaccinate her kids?”

  “Oh, I had to get all of mine,” Jake complains. “It was totally unfair.”

  “I think it’s because I was their first bor-..um, I mean child,” I say weakly. “It was Dad’s thing. He insisted that I not have any. Mom put her foot down with Jake though and he didn’t seem to mind. But when they had the whole flu vaccine campaign a few years ago, it was one of the rare times he and Mom ever had an argument. He said he’d pull me out of school before he let them jab me.”

  “So, you’ve never really been sick. Never been in the hospital and you’ve never had any vaccines,” Nate summarizes. “I’ll bet you’ve had some sort of significant injury though, right? You’ve always done sports and stuff.”

  Thinking about it for a minute, I almost hate to answer. “No. I twisted my ankle once my freshman year in cross-country. Mom was going to take me to the doctor the next day, but when I got up that morning, I was able to walk on it again, so I never went.”

  “It always ticked me off how she never got the same bugs I did, even though we spent practically every waking minute together,” Missy adds.

  Chris slows down to pass a horse-drawn cart full of garbage. Apparently this is the new garbage collection service in town. Missy explained earlier that they created a system to haul and burn it at a spot just outside the city.

  This whole conversation about my health and lack of vaccines is making me very uncomfortable. I’m already freaked out enough about what’s been happening to me and the line I’m walking between panic and control is very fine. Seth’s words are still haunting me, but I firmly believe that my destiny is my own to create. No one else’s.

  “So she has a good immune system. Big deal.” I silently thank God once again for bringing Chris into my life. He seems to always know what to do or say. “If anything, it might prove that we’re better off without the vaccines.” He successfully shuts down any further conversation on the matter and it turns to more important things.

  “So what in the heck are we going to do when we get to this lab?” Kyle asks the one question that no one has the answer to.

  Flipping through the atlas, I find the inset for Hamilton and locate the street map for the area of the lab. “It actually looks like it sits inside the city limits, in a residential neighborhood, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get close without being obvious.”

  “We’ll get there a little before one in the morning,” Nate observes. “So I would assume that there isn’t going to be too many people out and about, or working. That should at least make it easier to get in and maybe find where they are, especially if the trucks just got there.”

  “If Alex is correct and they are using Shiners, she might be able to just walk right up to the complex,” Kyle suggests.

  He’s right. It could be a huge advantage, at least for a few minutes. Hopefully, that will be enough.

  As we head up the first of two steep mountain passes, the woods become thicker and the sky darker. Somewhere not far ahead of us, our families are being led to a fate that I have already had to face.

  Chris turns the radio on to the AM station and scrolls through the channels. To our surprise, he finds one that’s broadcasting. An older man with a welcoming southern drawl speaks about loss, love and heartache. He challenges those listening to hold onto the values that built this nation up, and to not tear it down. Climbing higher into the Rocky Mountains, we’re accompanied by the rich voice of John Denver, singing of simpler times and a kind of life we might never experience again.

  TWENTY FOUR

  Once it gets dark enough, I take over driving and turn out the headlights. We figure that if we manage to catch up to the convoy, that this way we’ll notice them before they spot us.

  We’re over halfway there and just crossed over the State line into Montana. We’ve also moved into a new time zone so it’s just past eleven at night. I’ve seen two other cars the whole time, and they were both traveling in the opposite direction.

  Although it would be a good time to get some extra sleep, only Baxter and Jake are taking advantage of it. Missy moves up front with me and Chris joins his two friends in the back.

  They’ve been debating the best entry point at the lab for over half an hour now. It’s almost enough to drive me crazy, but Missy making fun of them keeps me sane. She’s great at impersonations and can already mimic all three of them quite well.

  I know that her attempt at entertaining me is a much needed distraction for us both. It’s either laugh or cry and with Missy, she’ll choose to laugh if at all possible. Now that we’re finally together again, I realize just how much I’ve missed her.

  More than an hour later, we’re getting close to Missoula and traffic is starting to pick up a little, in spite of the time. I am forced to turn the lights back on or risk drawing suspicion and attention. Just outside the town, I pull over and have Chris drive. The highway we have to take south to Hamilton goes right through the middle of Missoula. All we would need is for someone next to us to look over and spot my shining eyes.

  At twice the size of Coeur d’Alene, but smaller than Spokane, we aren’t sure what we’re going to find. To our relief, there isn’t a strong military presence or anyone actively looting.

  It’s obvious that things were bad at some point, with plenty of damage to the buildings and garbage and debris littering the roads. The traffic lights aren’t working, but some of the streetlamps are. Broken barricades block random side roads, but fortunately the main strip is open so we’re able to pass through.

  Missy and I watch out
the back window for signs of trouble while Kyle sits up front with one of the pistols in his lap. A moving vehicle is a target for anyone wanting gas or transportation. We spot several individuals who look threatening, but no large groups or gangs. As we near the far side of town, a police cruiser passes us going the other way, lights flashing. The fact that their police force is still active is likely a big reason that there still seems to be some order.

  After traveling south for a few more miles past Missoula, we stop seeing any other cars. Chris and I switch again, but he stays in the front seat with me this time. This stretch of highway is very dark and a bit isolated, which is both good as well as eerie.

  Nate did a great job in estimating the distance and time, and it’s close to one in the morning as we reach the outskirts of Hamilton. According to the atlas, its population is barely 4,000 which makes it even smaller than Omak.

  It’s apparent immediately that they don’t have any power, so I’m thankful that our vehicle is black. We can see up ahead the glow from the Rocky Mountain Labs, evidently running off generators. “Just tell me where to stop, Chris,” I say quietly.

  “You’re going to need to go about a mile here, right through Main Street. There should be an intersection just before the turn off for the lab with a gas station on the corner. At least, there’s a gas symbol on the map so that’s what we assume it means.”

  After five or six blocks of a mix of old style buildings and a couple of grocery stores, we do, in fact, come to a larger intersection with a gas station. While there are some signs of vandalism, it isn’t nearly as bad as some of the other places we’ve seen. I figure the residents here are mostly farmers, which means they know how to take care of themselves.

  The nozzles at the pumps are lying on the ground, dry long ago. The station itself appears empty of its contents, the front door wide open. I pull around to the back and park in between the building and an overflowing dumpster.