I cringed against the pain for an indeterminate amount of time, during which I heard footsteps shuffling along the carpet into and out of the office. There were whispers and the constant fade and return of the sound of rustling clothes.
“Maybe he made it. Maybe he was able to get away…”
“It’s been fourteen hours, Mei. It’s dark out and he’s not…I don’t think…I don’t know how he could have…”
With that sentiment, my fingernails dug into my pant legs and my face winced against the tears beginning to fight their way out. Mei noticed and approached me, sliding down the wall to place an arm over my shoulders. I curled into her embrace and let my body shake from the sobs consuming me. My knees folded into my chest and my head sank down against them as I leaned on Mei, in so many ways.
“I’m in love with Harrison, Mei. I love him.”
“That’s really good to hear,” said a relaxed voice from the door. It was out of place, entirely, because it was nonchalant and lined with playfulness. “I love you, too, Kennedy.”
Before my head could even snap up, I recognized the voice. It was one that had led me, literally, through my worst nightmares. Yet even as my eyes darted to its source, my mind refused to believe what I was seeing.
“So quick to write me off, huh?” he said with a smile. “I thought you had faith in my abilities…”
And there he was…whole, healthy, and teasing me, lit by the candles lining the room and the hallway beyond it.
I was overwhelmed. I pushed myself upright, and suddenly, I ran for him, throwing myself in his arms. I began feverishly kissing him, leaning into him and caressing the muscles that rippled down his back as he held me close. He kissed me with the same intense passion he’d shown the first time our lips touched, leaving me breathless and wanting more, wanting all of him.
“How?” I asked through a kiss. “How…?”
He chuckled and pulled away long enough to answer. “It took some maneuvering, but I lost them. Sat the last few hours on a rooftop and then snuck back here, found the keys in the guard’s booth, and here I-”
I kissed him again, deeply, before stepping back. “Don’t you ever! EVER! DO! THAT! AGAIN! EVER! Don’t you leave me again! I don’t want to live without you, Harrison. I can’t. I won’t. Because I love you. Life isn’t worth living without you. Do you understand? NEVER do that again.”
He let me finish my rant before calmly explaining with admirable patience, “I needed to lead them away or they’d have surrounded us like they had at school. I couldn’t risk that again not when I knew you were inside.”
“Tell me that you won’t do it again,” I demanded and waited for his reply, squaring up my shoulders to show I was serious.
He took them tenderly in his hands and grinned. “I won’t,” he said and his eyes grew serious, “ever leave you again…”
Ms. Kremil, who had been watching, scoffed and muttered something about ‘young love’ before disappearing back inside the boardroom. Doc laughed and stepped forward to slap Harrison on the shoulder.
“Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” he said with a nod of respect.
Mei sighed, contentedly making her way to the door while Beverly sneered.
“What is it with the abnormal people always surviving?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Doc reminded her, to which she rolled her eyes.
“Good to see you again,” she mumbled before shrugging away the discomfort of admitting it.
Harrison tipped his head toward the boardroom. “So is that Marion Kremil?” There was some hesitancy in his tone, which I understood. He and I were the only two who knew she was trying to find Harrison for reasons that remained a mystery to us. Apparently, he was ready to figure out why.
“Come meet the rest of the group,” Mei suggested, starting toward the room.
Harrison drew in a deep breath and did something I hadn’t been expecting. He took my hand and walked with me into the room. At first, I thought it was for a show of solidarity, him and me against the world. But by the time we entered the room and our hosts had introduced themselves, I knew it was because he didn’t want me to stray too far from him again. When it came time for us to introduce ourselves, Beverly announced her name first, adding her traditional, “like the Hills” appendage. Doc and Mei had already greeted them and knew everyone by name. I tipped my head at the room, thanked them for letting us in, and gave them my name. And then it was Harrison’s turn. By this time Ms. Kremil had taken one of the flashlights and had circled the room toward him with an expression of speculation on her face.
Eyeing her as she advanced, he tipped his head at them. “I’m Harrison-”
“Huntington,” Ms. Kremil finished before he had a chance to.
Doc, Mei and Beverly glanced at each other in confusion and returned to Ms. Kremil.
“Do you know each other?” Mei asked.
Ms. Kremil didn’t seem to hear her, continuing her advancement until she was within arm’s reach of Harrison.
In a show of good southern manners, he extended his hand in greeting, which she seized at the wrist before whipping it around to the soft underside.
“Harrison,” she said tightly. “I need a sample of your blood.”
~ 13 ~
“WHAT THE FU-” BEVERLY UTTERED. DOC and I moved to separate Ms. Kremil from Harrison, nudging her so closely that she was forced to release Harrison’s arm. Mei took a more respectful approach.
“Why do you want Harrison’s blood?”
Ms. Kremil’s eyebrows furrowed before answering. “He hasn’t told you?”
Beverly’s head jerked forward.”Told us what…exactly?”
Ms. Kremil’s face contorted again, deeper into confusion as she glanced at Harrison. “You didn’t mention-” she began to say until her voice faded away. After her face contorted in bewilderment, she started again. “You didn’t say a word to them?”
“About what?” Beverly demanded. Her bottom lip was puffed up, reminding me of a whining toddler.
Ms. Kremil tipped her head back and shook it in wonder. “He is the reason we are here now. All of us. Each and every one.”
For once, Beverly’s sarcasm was to our benefit. She scoffed and replied, “I don’t know about you, but I’m here because a bunch of psychotic cannibals broke into our school.”
Harrison, who had been docile the entire altercation, suddenly asked in a far nicer tone than I would have, “What are you talking about, Ms. Kremil?”
She took a moment to close her eyes and work through her astonishment. When she opened them, they were filled with renewed vigor. “Come with me.”
She led us down the hall to the office where’ I’d been slouching against the wall in misery only a few minutes earlier. Heading directly for the desk and shifting through papers, she seemed to be looking for visual tools to explain whatever it was she needed to.
We remained just inside the door, waiting. Doc and Mei appeared perplexed while Beverly’s wore her usual disgusted expression, as if she thought the woman had lost her mind. She may have, but one of the reasons they were waiting so patiently for Ms. Kremil’s explanation was because they had seen themselves that Harrison was different. And they wanted answers. If she could provide them, they’d stay in place until she confirmed it one way or another. Only Harrison stepped forward, and he did so in a curiously defensive manner, which was explained by his next question.
“Why are you in my aunt’s office?” he asked, not hiding his confusion.
“Your…aunt’s?” I said, stumbling through my question in shock. Looking at the edge of the desk, I noticed a very dated, wooden and brass nameplate. It was engraved with the name Eve Kelly.
Eve.
The name he had mentioned her by on the first day of the outbreak, a day that felt like an incredibly long time ago.
She gave Harrison a fleeting look and resumed her hunt across the desk. “Your aunt didn’t tell you anything, did she?”
> “About what?”
“About what she was doing here.”
“She’s trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s,” Harrison said.
It was absolutely clear he was as puzzled as the rest of us. Even Ms. Kremil stopped her search to assess him for several long seconds before discarding her efforts on the desk. She directed an irritated frown at it and then came around the edge in order to lean against the front. Before beginning to speak, she shifted her position on it and it looked like she planned to be there for a while.
“It started in the major metropolitan cities, nearly every one of them around the world. Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Chicago,” she emphasized. “Bangkok, Hong Kong, London, Johannesburg, Paris, Rio de Janeiro. It hit every continent in a nearly simultaneous timeframe.”
Mei gawked at Ms. Kremil and then cut her off. “But how? How could that happen? There are…There must have been safeguards in place.”
Ms. Kremil drew in a deep, distraught breath and began again. “Oh, they followed them, but Ezekiel Labs was about to go under. Being under time constraints, they pushed for an aggressive Phase III clinical test…human trials. The virus had been tested on animals and since Phase II trials showed no effect….” Ms. Kremil shrugged to indicate Ezekiel Labs’ indifference. “But animals wouldn’t have reacted. A bovine serum was used… Animals are immune.” She paused to discount this assertion which had been realized too late to be of any good. “So, in a brilliant promotional effort, they launched Phase III. They figured…why wait to get the word out? Launch worldwide, demonstrate the impact of its effectiveness, word would spread.” In summary, she added, “The trials would be their advertisement.”
As we stared back at Ms. Kremil, astounded by what we were hearing, Mei summed up our thoughts perfectly when she muttered under her breath, “Amazing…”
Ms. Kremil nodded once, sharply, in agreement. “When the first test case in the clinical trial was given the T1L2 virus, that person immediately experienced a flesh-eating psychosis. And that first injection was all it took. The research subjects weren’t strapped down, or guarded. No doors were locked, no one in the reception areas or the waiting rooms had any indication the trial had gone wrong until it was too late. The virus spread rapidly. Within two days, the cities were devastated, some were nuked while others simply…went under. The rural areas began to be affected by the third day. Now there are pockets of survivors but…there’s no telling when they can be rescued, or if they can be rescued.”
“What about the military?” Doc asked.
“Gone,” Ms. Kremil replied flatly.
“The government?” Mei pressed.
“Disbanded, although I hear a small group made it to Mt. Weather, without the president or any cabinet members. The CDC…we did our best for as long as we could, but…we needed to understand its origin…which we didn’t; and we needed time to develop a vaccine, which we didn’t have. Nonetheless, some of my more…unyielding…colleagues stayed behind in hopes of-”
Beverly shifted in agitation from one foot to the other, drawing our attention. “Wait, how do you know all this?”
Ms. Kremil slid to the side and revealed the name plate I’d sought earlier. “Eve Kelly,” she declared, “was project lead.”
The desk behind her with its stacks of paperwork, which Ms. Kremil had been shuffling through, took on an entirely new meaning in that moment. That was where the idea was pushed along, through the channels, until it was released into the world. It was where late nights and early mornings had been spent inadvertently conjuring up something that would lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people, and very possibly the end of the human race.
“Tell me she didn’t know what she was creating,” Harrison implored, breaking the tense silence.
“She was developing a cure for Alzheimer’s,” Ms. Kremil replied gently before giving him a meager smile, as if trying to convey the futility of worrying about it.
“I don’t understand,” Mei pressed. “How does any of this explain why you need Harrison’s blood?”
She gave Harrison a wary look before answering. “Well,” she said hesitantly. “As I mentioned, we needed to understand the virus’s origin. We were able to track it here and, from Ms. Kelly’s notes, we learned that the virus…well it…”
When Ms. Kremil didn’t finish her sentence, Mei prompted, “Yes?”
And then she explained why she was so tentative about vocalizing what she knew. She was astute enough to know it would come as a shock to us.
“The virus,” she said carefully, “began with Harrison.”
“What?” I said, nearly shouting. Becoming immediately defensive of Harrison, I stepped forward. He placed a cautious hand on my arm to hold me back. In my mind, my reaction was justified. Who was she to make accusations like that?
She gave me a look, telling me to hold on and she’d explain. “Eve Kelly, Harrison’s aunt and project lead, used Harrison’s blood to develop her cure for Alzheimer’s. It was mutated in the lab intentionally to preserve all positive properties – his strength, exceptional senses of smell, vision, and hearing, and his capacity to heal at an accelerated rate – and to bind with the bovine serum they manufactured. From there, it became what it is today, the T1L2 virus.”
Mei, Doc and Beverly looked with astonished expressions from Harrison to Ms. Kremil and back to Harrison. I stood firm, trying to understand everything this woman was telling us.
“So, what are you saying?” Mei asked, tipping her head forward to peer suspiciously at Ms. Kremil. “That he’s the cause?”
“No, no, no, no.” She waved her hands frantically in the air, as if to wipe away that notion. “No…,” she reemphasized before dropping the bomb on us. “Harrison isn’t the cause. He is the cure.”
~ 14 ~
THE SURREAL HAZE OF MS. KREMIL’S stunning revelation hung over us as she retrieved a medical kit from one of the offices and took Harrison’s blood. It clung to us as Doc, Mei, and even Beverly studied Harrison, seeing him for the first time not as a threat but as the invaluable human being he turned out to be. And still it hovered as Harrison and I found a private office to spend the night together in, and as he sat against the wall and I stared up at him from where my head lay on his shoulder. My eyelids drifted closed far too often as sleep tried to take over, but I fought against it as Harrison’s handsome face drew me back.
I won’t fall asleep. I won’t fall asleep. I won’t fall asleep.
Despite my struggle, Harrison’s face faded from my sight but only momentarily. Then I was watching him again, enticed by the slope of his nose, the firm set of his jaw, and the depth of his concentration in thought.
“You look humbled,” I mentioned, moving my fingers to trace the muscles along his arm. They were taut, strong, and they flexed every now and then.
“I am. I’ve always thought of my condition as a curse, and it is,” he added emphatically, “but at least it comes with a silver lining.”
“I’m…I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Kennedy, the T1L2 virus would never have been developed if it hadn’t been for me, for my blood. But now that it has, I can do something about it.”
“Which is?”
“I can help manufacture a cure.”
“And that’s the silver lining?”
“As much of one as I can see in all this.”
“So…,” I said, shifting my head back to get a better view of his face, “…what’s your plan?”
The few candles lighting the room cast a dull yellow tint across everything, including Harrison’s handsome face, revealing enough of him to keep me warm inside.
“If Ms. Kremil can’t do it here, then I’ll be heading for the CDC,” he replied.
That warmth instantly turned cold with fear, yet I took my time reacting.
As he tilted his head against the wall and heaved a sigh thick with wariness, I saw the guilt that had been eating at him when he thought of himself as a risk. It had returne
d, only now it ate at him because his worst fears had come true. He thought of himself as the reason for the recent demise.
I sat up, which pulled his attention back to me.
“What Ms. Kremil said is true, Harrison. You aren’t the cause. Someone else took your blood. Someone else concocted the T1L2 virus. Not you.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “This isn’t your fault. You’re beating yourself up over something that you have no ability to control.” His reaction was to pinch his seductive lips closed until they disappeared into a thin line, so I wrapped my hands through his and told him, “You’re not alone in this, Harrison.”
Finally, he responded, his eyes softening while he stared down at me.
His voice was deep with emotion when he said, “I’m so incredibly in love with you.” Leaning forward, he tenderly brushed his lips across mine and sat back up. “When I was leading the Infected away and I saw you through the doors downstairs…” His head dipped and shook back and forth as he recalled the feelings that image summoned. “I thought it would be the last time I’d ever see you. When I got to that roof and sat there waiting for the dark to come, all I could think of was you. Getting back to you was the single most important thing on my mind, and as much as you don’t want to hear this, I was prepared to die trying.” While listening to him, I became torn between concern for him and being flattered by his confession, but he gave me no time to respond. “When you said you couldn’t live without me…” He laughed to himself. “My God, I feel the same way, Kennedy. I can’t…I won’t live without you.” He brought his eyes down to meet mine, and the intensity in them took my breath away. “All those weeks on the rooftop, walking the grounds at school, I felt like it was imperative that I stay clear of you, for your own good. Just like I’d been doing before the outbreak, I was a threat and I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way, no matter how the world had changed. And so much of it had, but that one hazard remained exactly the same. All that time…I avoided you and all I wanted, Kennedy, was to be with you.”
Haven (Apocalypse Chronicles Part 1) Page 24
