I turn on my side, and curl my legs up against my body to think. A fall into water at 100 feet. A human can't survive a fall to the ground above fifty feet. To survive a fall of 100 feet into water, he'd have to fall just right. Even so, he'd likely break his ankle, maybe more. But if he didn't break anything, and if he can untie his hands while kicking with his feet, maybe he could swim for shore.
I sit up on my side and scream. “Wesley! Wesley, if you can hear me, swim toward my voice. Wesley!” I scream until my throat is raw, and then I keep screaming.
I wonder if he can hear me. And if he can hear me, should I worry about John Roth? His hands aren't bound, he's a former Olympic athlete, and he wasn't injured. If he can make a one-mile swim in freezing water while fully dressed, he could pull up on shore, wet and freezing. I'm calling him to me like a beacon.
I think about the logistics of swimming a mile and run the math in my head. No one can swim a mile in less than fifteen minutes, especially not fully dressed, and factoring in time to remove his clothing, he'd be way over fifteen minutes. John Roth, healthy, unbound and whole, will be dead from the cold long before he could reach this shore. He can't possibly survive to reach me, even if he survived the fall uninjured.
Which means Wesley can't survive either, even if every single thing goes right.
I collapse back down to the cracked cement path, my face resting on chunks of ice and rocks while heaving sobs wrack my body and tears leak down my face. Why couldn't Wesley have shoved that maniac over without falling himself? Why did it have to be Wesley? It should've been me, to set right the wrongs my dad and biological father started. Or maybe even Sam, to fix what his dad did. But not Wesley, who only came along to keep me safe.
Which is exactly what he did, but the price was far too steep.
“I wish it was me and not him, too.” Sam sits down next to me. “It should've been me. My dad caused all this, and I should have stopped him, but Wesley did what I couldn't. Don't cheapen his choice by refusing to accept it.”
When I process Sam's words, I realize he's right. Wesley chose to save me, and he knew what he was doing. He only let go because he was worried I'd fall, too. “If I hadn't tried to climb over, or if I'd untied my hands instead, maybe I could've used that rope.” I close my eyes and replay the scene over in my mind. How could I have saved him?
The ground beneath me is hard, bumpy, and cold, but Sam's arms are warm and strong when he gathers me close to him. He unzips his coat and pulls me next to his chest. The heat radiates outward and I sink against him.
“It took me several minutes to get your Uncle's ropes off,” Sam says, “and several more for him to use pieces from the floodlight rack to pry my handcuffs loose.”
My hands feel for his wrists, and when I find them I gasp. The skin all around both wrists is torn and bleeding.
“You couldn't have done anything in time,” Sam says. “If you had leaned forward, you’d have lost your balance. Besides, his fingers were already slipping when he let go. The edge of that bridge is icy and wet. It's a miracle he held on with bound hands for the few seconds he did. It went the only way it could've gone, the best way any of us could have planned. If my dad had thrown you over the edge, I'd have killed him, probably by dragging him down, and you've done the math on that equation. No one could survive the combination of the fall, the ice water, and the distance. We'd all have died.”
Someone clears his or her throat, which startles me. My eyes search and find Uncle Dan standing a few feet away. I hadn't even realized he was near. “We may not be able to save the Marked kids without the hacker virus we all hoped for, but we can still save Anne.”
Rhonda stumbles along behind Uncle Dan, with Job trailing a few feet further yet, slowed by the weight of the floodlight he's dragging.
“How much further to the cabin?” Rhonda asks. “I should remember, but I'm too tired to spell my own name, and my head feels like it's been stuffed with cotton batting.”
I mumble, “Maybe a mile?”
Uncle Dan shakes his head. “Closer to two, and we better hurry. We've been out in the cold for too long, and thanks to the sleet we're all soaked. We need dry clothes, food and sleep.”
“I'm not leaving until we've swept the shoreline for Wesley,” I say. “We have three days for Aunt Anne still.”
Uncle Dan doesn't argue, and neither does anyone else.
We trudge home and dry off. I chew and swallow the jerky and dried biscuits Sam hands me, but it all tastes the same. I finally collapse on our dusty old family room sofa, my back to Sam's chest. I offer up a prayer of thanks that we survived, in case God really exists and listens to us. Then I ask God to tell Wesley I miss him. Stupid and superstitious, but what could it hurt? As Sam's breathing evens out, my mind shuts off and I drop off to sleep.
I wake up at first light, pull my damp boots and soggy coat back on, and trudge outside. Sam and Job are no more than two steps behind me, and Sam's carrying a gun. We walk the shoreline for more than two hours with no luck. We could've shot a thousand different kinds of birds, but we don't see a single person until we reach the trail off the lakeshore toward our cabin. A flurry of birds fight and dive and squawk a hundred yards down the shoreline, and Sam runs toward them. I sprint to try and keep up, which I only manage because it's so near. Sam stops abruptly and holsters his gun, and when I realize why, I have to turn away.
The birds are shredding a ration pack lying alongside a single black boot.
“We should go,” Job says. “I really don't want to see a bloated corpse.”
I can't block the image of Wesley, his body swollen and stuck underwater somewhere, being eaten by fish, or birds. I bend in half and vomit chunks of jerky into the silty dirt of the shoreline.
“His parents would want his body.” I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my jacket, stand up and keep walking.
Three hours later, Uncle Dan finds us and begs me to stop looking.
I can't meet his eyes.
“Ruby, it was a fifteen hour drive to Nashville Before. It'll take us twenty if we're lucky. Anne's execution, without John Roth to halt it, will not wait for us.”
I know it's childish, but I don't want to stop thinking about Wesley and start trying to save Aunt Anne yet. It feels wrong somehow, like I didn't care about him.
I shake my head. “Not even two days ago I told him I didn't love him, not like he wanted. He's been my best friend for years. We did everything together, and now he dropped a hundred feet into freezing water to save me. I can't abandon the search for him less than twenty-four hours later.”
I can't.
Except Aunt Anne's still alive, and she can't wait either. It's like I told Rafe a few days ago. Triage rules apply. I have to mentally block the pain from Wesley's death until we've done what needs to be done. If Aunt Anne dies from my childishness, I'll never forgive myself for that either. Uncle Dan doesn't argue with me. Rhonda and Job don't beg me to let it go. Which is how I know that I need to.
“Fine. We head for Nashville.” I clench my mittened hands into fists and begin walking toward the cabin.
“What's the plan when we get there?” Job asks.
“John Roth didn't grant a stay of execution, and they have a signed confession,” Rhonda says.
“Which is clearly a lie John either forged or made her write,” I say.
Sam nods. “My dad won't be coming back, which no one in Nashville will know. We can file an appeal with the CentiCouncil, and if we can find a few supporters, it'll buy us some time. We'll need to identify where the new charges related to the suppressant issues originated, and make sure they don't resurface. Shouldn't be too hard, since they weren't formally filed.”
“Do we tell them what happened with your dad or go into his involvement in . . . Well, in everything?” I ask. “They know about my dad's journals. If we show them the partnership paperwork, they'd probably believe us.”
Uncle Dan holds the papers up. “I grabbed them, but it's Sam's decision.
It's his dad.”
The toe of my boot catches on a rock and I stumble forward.
Sam's arms catch me and swing me up against his chest, his arms cradling my back and underside of my knees. “I need to think about it.”
Sam's dad died, and Wesley was his friend too. I shouldn't be relying on him so much, but I can't help it. I tuck my face against his collarbone and close my eyes. He carries me inside and sets me on a sofa while the others prepare to leave. We load up in the jeep again and drive to the Land Cruiser.
I hop out to try and help free it, but after wringing my hands uselessly for ten minutes, I climb back in the jeep. At least being inside cuts the wind.
Sam, Uncle Dan, Rhonda and Job eventually free the back tires on the Land Cruiser, and Sam and I switch into that again. After we've divvied up the remaining gas, Rhonda, Job and Uncle Dan pile into the Jeep. I don't remember much about the first ten hours in the car, except how depressing Kansas City is with no one living there. Deer bound across the freeway, birds swoop from the tops of buildings and the few remaining upright power poles. Weeds and spindly trees grow everywhere, transforming normal sights into alien ones. I should be grateful the roads are mostly clear, but I'm too numb to recognize any emotions other than desperation and sorrow.
The temperature's risen by almost ten degrees, and everything around us melts. That's probably why we don't get stuck in ice or snow. When we stop for blockages and downed trees, Job and Sam clear the roads quickly. Sam doesn't ask me any questions along the way or try to initiate a conversation. He holds my hand when I want reassurance, and leaves me alone when I can't bear the guilt of being comforted. We drive, we ponder, and we grieve.
It's enough.
St. Louis takes longer to navigate past because it's an active Unmarked settlement. We stop a few miles out to coordinate our stories. Uncle Dan explains that we went on a mission for John Roth up north to recover some data. He tells the guards we're headed to Nashville to make sure the Council gets the data it wanted, and to ensure the execution of Anne Orien is halted. As close to the truth as we can manage.
They ask us all a lot of questions, and I try my hardest not to sound like a zombie. They let us pass and even refill our gas tanks, so I must've succeeded.
We drive past the Arch, a tall, metal structure that bends up, up, up into the sky, and then bows and comes back down. I marvel that such a thing exists, and that it somehow survived the decimation of the world. I'm still peering out of the window when we drive past a street marked Rose Street. The next road down is Liberty.
Libby and Rose. I wonder who'll care for Rose when Libby dies. We can't save the Marked, but we need to get down there and make sure the babies I inoculated don't die too.
How could there not have been a cure? My dad was infected, and he used it on himself. Was that false? Did he die infected? I think about that night, about his face, but it was clear, no rash.
My mind whirls furiously trying to recall everything I've read between the original journals, the journal we found in the safe, and the letters I've seen since. I think about dad's entries, as many as I can remember, one by one. They included a lot of technical information focused on his conclusions and interspersed with personal notes, introspection and reflection. The journal we recovered in Galveston was different. It came from his lab, and consisted almost entirely of dense scientific notations. Rafe stole it, but when we left in pursuit of this Hail Mary play, he gave it back.
I scramble over the seat and dig it out of my bag.
“Everything okay?” Sam asks.
“Yeah, I'm just thinking about what your dad said. I can't make sense of why my dad would lie about having a possible cure in his personal account. He wrote in his journal that he injected himself with the hacker virus after exposure and the injection worked. It doesn't make sense for that to all be a lie. Wouldn't he be scared, at least of infecting me or others?”
I flip through the pages of the one I have and like before, I can't really digest a lot of the notations. Hopefully my aunt will be able to. Maybe she can figure out how to boost my antibodies into a cure. Maybe. But not in two days. Even Aunt Anne can't turn water into wine on a moment's notice.
If only John Roth had stolen the hacker virus. A weight presses on my chest when I think about his monumental stupidity in stealing a virus and unleashing it on the world when a cure wasn't yet prepared and verified. I keep coming back to the same question over and over.
Why lie in his own records?
Dad might've lied to Jack because he was freaking out about money. Maybe Dad wanted to convince John not to rush into anything or do anything hasty. But there's no reason for him to lie to himself. Unless he thought Jack might steal his journals? But even then, what would be the point? He’d have had to lie about a lot. About injecting himself when he was infected, about his hopes. It’s too convoluted. When all other things are equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one. What simple explanation can there be?
I close my eyes and think about the last journal I read, the one I finished in the last few moments of quarantine. It revealed that I could reach the place where important things were kept. 'Ruby can always find what she needs,' or something like that. I always assumed it was the safe, but maybe he meant because he injected it into my blood?
Either way, that wasn't actually the end of Dad’s entry. A chunk of pages were torn out after that statement. I assumed my dad wrote more about the virus, or details about the cure. I wondered at the time whether maybe he explained more about me or my mom, and Aunt Anne didn't want me to see it. She insisted she never saw the pages, and if that's true, who would have removed them? His office manager? Maybe David Solomon, or John Roth if they found something they wanted to keep a secret. But if they'd seen it, they'd know I housed the antibodies, and neither of them knew. What else could’ve happened?
Maybe none of them tore them out. Maybe Dad did.
If Dad had the epiphany about reverse engineering the antibodies at home, and scrabbled the parameters of the solution out there in his personal journal, and if he read the article about stimulating the CpG oligonucleotides in our condo and realized he could apply the same principle, he could've written down the process on whatever paper he had handy. But he'd need the sophisticated equipment at his lab to implement the idea. Dad might have ripped the pages out himself, carried them to his own lab in the black briefcase, and possibly even shoved them into the bio safe to make sure no one else saw them.
Until John Roth found the notes lying on top of the syringes he stole.
What if John assumed the notes documented the contents of the syringes? Maybe the notes had nothing to do with the contents of the syringes. Maybe the syringes contained the hacker virus, and John really had it all along without knowing it? What if he only shared the notes with Dad’s old boss?
It's an awful lot of maybes.
I bite my lip. I wish I could go back in time and ask my dad. And I'd really like to hug him, too.
“What's wrong?” Sam asks. “Did you think of something?”
“I'm not sure. I'm sad and tired and I might be grasping at straws. Crazy, crazy straws.”
“Want to walk me through it?” he asks.
“It might help to go through it out loud. Last night your dad said he didn't have the cure. He said he took the notes about what he stole to an expert, and what he took was really just a roadmap for how to reverse engineer antibodies. That's essentially what my dad dosed me with.”
Sam grunts.
“That's what you heard John say, right?”
Sam says, “Yeah something like that.”
“You know your dad better than I do by a long shot. Let's say he dosed himself with one of the doses like he said and then he administered Tercera. He didn't contract it, so he knew it worked. Then he wanted to replicate the cure so he could be ready to sell it. He has one dose left to use, and some notes. Would he have taken notes and the one remaining dose for testing? Or would he show up at
the meeting with only notes?”
Sam frowns. “He would definitely have started with just the notes. He’d want to meet the guy, take his measure, and figure out whether he could trust him. He wouldn't work with anyone unless he had some kind of leverage. He called it necessary collateral, knowing something damaging that he could use to force partners to comply.”
“Which is exactly what he had on my dad—knowledge that Dad stole me from someone. I wonder how he found out about that to begin with.”
Sam says, “He paid a lot of people to investigate any possible partners. He said digging up dirt was his due diligence, which I didn't realize was a business joke until I was much older.”
Poor Sam. “What if he didn't trust the scientist, but he was too paranoid to take the actual syringe? Might he have only ever taken the notes?”
“He would've been nervous to tell someone what was really going on. They could've reported him. Tercera would already have been out at that point, even if no one knew how bad it was yet.”
“What if the paperwork he had, the notes, were from my dad's journal, but they weren't reflective of what was in the syringes?”
Sam glances back at me. “What are you saying, Ruby?”
“My dad's journal mentions he had three doses of the hacker virus, but he took one himself, so he should've had two left, just as your dad described. According to my aunt, the police didn't find anything like that in my dad's lab or home office. No viruses in cold storage, no syringes. I assumed Jack stole the last two doses of the hacker virus before Dad died.”
“But my dad says it didn't exist.”
“What if your dad didn't know what it was? Maybe he only knew it stopped Tercera. If I'm right, and Dad put the notes he had from home in the same place as his remaining two samples, maybe your dad took the notes he found with it, which were actually detailed instructions explaining how Dad made what he injected me with. Your dad thought they diagrammed what he stole, but what if they didn't? What if John Roth really did steal the hacker virus, but he never knew it because he didn't have the last dose itself examined?”
Sins of Our Ancestors Boxed Set Page 69
