Dispersal

by Addison Gunn

  Sam gripped the rifle in her gloved hand, and slowly turned it around, holding it like a club. It might buy her a few seconds.

  As the beast advanced, Sam felt strangely calm. It was just as well that she die here, she thought; she didn’t want to go to Syracuse anyway. She didn’t want to be among these people any longer. Her treacherous thoughts regarding the cure in Baltimore had sent karma to her doorstep. Not that she believed in that, or any sort of god, but if she did, she doubted He or She would come to her rescue anyway. She was on her own, as always, struggling to find herself in a sea of other minds. It was better this way. Better for it to end in blood, in control of her own faculties, than as a cog in a massive Infected machine bent on twisting the whole world into one confused mind.

  Her fingers relaxed. The rifle sagged in her palms. She steadied her breathing, never taking her eyes from the beast as it advanced upon her.

  A shot rang out and she flinched, half expecting the bullet to pierce her own head; but the skull of the terror-jaw burst like a piñata.

  She turned to see Jan and Binh a few meters behind her. Binh lowered his rifle, smoke rising from the tip, but Jan stood with icy stillness. She squinted at Sam, glared even, as if she’d heard every word of defeat that had passed through Samantha’s mind.

  “Jesus, Binh,” Samantha breathed, her lungs stinging in the frozen air. “Good shot.”

  He grinned, despite himself, and nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  “Come on,” Jan said, glowering at Samantha with the heat of a burning forge. “We’ve got wounded.”

  With one last look at the limp body of the Infected, Sam turned and followed the others, using her footsteps in the snow to help her back through the forest and toward the road. She tried to feel relieved at her rescue, but felt only disappointment.

  She was so tired of this—of running. Always moving. Always at the mercy of the parasite. Of the cold. Of frozen toes and numb fingers. Of feeling hungry. Back in New York she had only wanted to cooperate and be one with the planet, but now—it felt as if the Earth itself had tricked her. She never should have helped Alex and the humans destroy the city. She should have stayed. Yes, the Exiles were horrible and the wasps were destroying everything, but things had only gotten worse since then.

  Back at the caravan, it was hard to know how many Infected had been lost. Severed limbs, blood, and bodies sat piled inside the last truck. The terror-jaws had shredded the whole interior. Benches, seats, and crates of supplies: everything was crushed and scattered.

  At the sight of it, Sam had a hard time to think of what to do. Beside her, Jan frowned, sighed heavily, and took command.

  “Siphon the gas,” she said. “Save whatever you can. Pile the wounded with the others in the second transport. We’ve got to move.”

  “What about the truck?” Binh asked.

  “Leave it.”

  “One down,” Sam said, suddenly feeling chilled to her bones. “Three to go.”

  Jan audibly growled and stomped off to assist the others, mumbling to herself. Sam only caught the last few words:

  “...shitty thing to say.”

  28

  MILLER SLEPT FOR twelve hours and awoke feeling as if he’d drunk an entire bottle of Jack on an empty stomach and then passed out.

  If only.

  After clawing himself out of bed and using the better portion of a week’s water ration to shower and shave, he still felt like hell. His quarters, a single compartment no larger than a walk-in closet, hadn’t been touched or cleaned since he’d left for Jacksonville more than a week before. The room smelled stale and his body felt as if he’d been run over.

  And it showed. It proved difficult to look at his own reflection to shave. His cheeks were hollow, sunken; the bags under his eyes were a deep, dark purple and looked so swollen he wondered how he didn’t have issues blinking.

  He wasn’t yet forty years old, and he looked twice that. His muscles hurt and his joints crunched like puffed rice with every agonizing step. He needed a few weeks’ rest, at the minimum—some serious R-and-R—maybe a starchy meal and a roll in the hay. Given the lack of pasta, potatoes, and sexual partners, Miller slouched back onto his twin-sized bed and groaned. Something had to give, he just didn’t know what.

  Torn between going back to bed and going to the bridge for a status update, Miller untied and retied the laces of his combat boots. His debate was answered, however, when on a whim he slipped his com into his ear.

  “Is it mandatory?” Doyle asked.

  “Oui,” answered du Trieux. “The whole ship is receiving the injection. Not just those who have the virus.”

  “That’s a bit overkill, don’t you think?” Morland said.

  “We’ve lost two hundred and forty-five passengers,” Hsiung said. “Including Matheson’s son.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Miller said.

  “That you, boss?” Doyle asked. “Didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”

  “When did James die?”

  “Who?”

  “Matheson’s son!”

  “While we were gone, sir,” du Trieux said. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  Miller’s eyes burned and his breath quickened. He ripped his earpiece out and flicked it across the room. It bounced against the wall and snapped in two.

  No wonder Matheson wasn’t on the bridge during the attack. It hadn’t occurred to Miller to wonder why until then.

  After rinsing his face a few times, Miller stepped out his quarters and into the corridor. The sea breeze was a bit fresher than on the St. John’s River. They must have moved away from the mainland. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, but by placing one foot in front of the other, he figured he’d end up either on the bridge, or perhaps in line at the food distribution center. Better idea.

  He cut across the central courtyard, using the walls as support on the rocking ship, and hooked a left to the stairwell, trying not to imagine James Matheson on his deathbed. He’d known the kid since he was young—since before he was in the double digits. Shaking the memories from his head, Miller stomped down the stairwell, his palm skimming the railing.

  The area was surprisingly empty. Usually, passengers gathered in groups, traded, clogged the walkways and loitered in any available open space—but there was no-one in sight as Miller achingly made his way down to the next floor. That was when he found them.

  Lined up single-file down the left side of the hallway, and wrapping around the entire length of the ship, passengers wearing various sorts of face coverings stood in a queue headed straight into the infirmary.

  At the infirmary door stood Jennifer Barrett, her clipboard clasped in white knuckled hands, a stained silk scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth and tied at the back of her head. She took one look at Miller and glared. “I suppose you get to cut in line?”

  “I don’t know. Do I?”

  “Part of your team did. I’m assuming that means you as well.”

  “I guess so, then.” He paused at the infirmary entry to ask, “What’s this, exactly?”

  “Think of it as a mandatory flu shot,” she said. “If I get any more scientific, I’ll hear a ton of anti-vaxxer bullshit from the masses, so I’ll just leave it to the British doctors to explain.”

  “Sounds as if you’ve been having fun,” Miller said.

  Given her expression, she didn’t appreciate his sarcasm. With a quick wave she motioned him past the passengers clogging the entry, then blocked the way behind him with her own body.

  “What the hell?” a passenger hollered.

  “Essential personnel,” Jennifer explained.

  “Essential, my ass,” someone else snapped.

  Inside the infirmary, the queue wrapped around like a theme park line, up and down the center of the room in rows, finishing on the stage. Four folding tables had been placed downstage, equally spaced. Each table was manned by a masked, lab-coated man or woman, and behind them, smaller tables held glass vials, syringes, rub
bing alcohol, and ultra-violet sterilization units. RN crew and medical staff bustled between tables, wiping each patient’s arm with an alcohol swab and injecting them, passing the syringe back to be sterilized and refilled. It was a veritable assembly line.

  With surprising efficiency the line moved forward, one step at a time. The passengers, looking a bit ragged and skinny, trudged along with all the grace of a herd of cattle—and smelled about the same.

  Skirting around the heart of the queue, Miller pushed his way to the stage stairs and made his way to the first lab coat. He was dark-skinned, with a closely trimmed crew cut and sharp eyes. After washing his hands in a basin (quickly taken away by one of the techs and replaced), the doctor snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and reached out. A syringe was placed into his palm by another tech.

  Beside Miller, a technician arrived with a dampened square of gauze. He couldn’t have been more than twenty—a red-headed tech, wearing a dress uniform and a surgical mask over his freckled face. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

  As he did so, Miller asked, “What’s this exactly?”

  Waiting at the table, the doctor pinched the top of his mask against the bridge of his nose, tightening it. “A flu shot.”

  “No,” Miller said, pulling away so the tech couldn’t sterilize his arms. “No, really. What is this?”

  The doctor sighed loudly and raised an eyebrow, then turned to one of his techs. “Did you give him the pamphlet?”

  “No.”

  “Todd!” the doctor barked. One of the other techs stood up straighter. “Hand this soldier a pamphlet, will you?”

  Todd, a muscular brute with a thick cockney accent, squinted at the doctor from behind his mask. “We ran out of pamphlets, sir.”

  “Out of...?” With a great sigh the doctor rolled his eyes. “Fine. It’s a shot of therapeutic microbiomes which fight off the flu virus and any secondary bacterial infections.”

  “Fight them off how, exactly?”

  The doctor’s face reddened. “Todd, could you explain things to this soldier? Over there? He’s holding up the line.”

  “Yes, doctor.” As another tech returned with a fresh washbasin, Todd motioned Miller behind the table.

  In the meantime, the doctor impatiently waved the next person forward from the line.

  “Now, what’s your concern?” Todd asked Miller.

  “My concern? Look, I don’t think I’m asking too much to want to know what you’re shooting into my body.”

  “Like the doctor said, therapeutic microbiomes.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. But what’s a microbiome?”

  “Humans depend on a variety of microbes to function,” Todd said. “One microbiome digests food, another yields nutrients, another set protects us against bacteria and viruses. The microbiota we’ve isolated is one of the latter. It both attacks the secondary bacterial infection striking influenza patients, and weakens the virus for the body’s natural immune system to fight.”

  “So you’re using the body’s own bacteria to fight off other bacteria?”

  This seemed to fluster Todd. “I—well, no,” he scratched his head. “Okay. Sort of.”

  “And Lewis and Matheson approved this?”

  Todd’s face contorted for a moment, but then relaxed. “Yes, sir. They were the first to get it.”

  Miller inhaled and eyed the crowd of people waiting below him in the queue. If only they hadn’t wasted all that time in Jacksonville, could they have gotten the solution to the ship faster? Would James have been saved?

  Miller had known investigating the old labs was a long shot—desperate, even. Gray wasn’t in his right mind, and was in no position to give orders. Then again, after Miller had watched James vomit all over his bed and nearly choke to death on it, he hadn’t been in any position to take orders. He should have stayed. He shouldn’t have gone to Lewis with the idea. He should have...

  The room went blurry. Miller pursed his lips and swallowed. Then, turning back to Todd, he nodded. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  The tech’s eyes brightened. He motioned back to the doctor and the first table, stacked high with syringes. “Doctor? He’s ready.”

  The doctor jabbed a passenger in the arm. “Hallelujah. Alert the media.” Pulling out the needle, he held it aloft for a tech to remove it from his hand, and then pulled off his rubber gloves to wash again.

  “Seems awfully wasteful,” Miller said. “All that water and the new gloves each time.”

  The doctor patted his hands dry on a paper towel, tossed it into a trashcan beside the table, then snapped on new gloves and held out his hand. Todd placed a syringe into it.

  With a quick motion the doctor jabbed the needle into Miller’s arm and compressed the plunger. He snorted under his mask. “Yes, well, what you see as wasteful is necessary. A bit more cleanliness could have jolly well avoided this whole epidemic.”

  Miller tried not to wince as the doctor pulled the needle out of his skin and a tech pressed a piece of gauze over the injection site. It throbbed. “Thanks, though,” Miller said, meaning it. He grabbed hold of his arm and moved ahead in the queue. “If this works, we owe you, big time.”

  The doctor shook his head. “I think that’s the point, isn’t it?” Turning back to the line he shouted, “Next!”

  ON THE BRIDGE, Miller was unsurprised to find Commander Lewis and Clark standing side-by-side beside the captain’s chair, deep in heated discussion. What caught him off-guard was seeing Gray Matheson with them. He stood by the pilot’s chair, looking sickly.

  “Sir,” Miller gasped, feeling as if every ounce of blood had drained from his head.

  Gray nodded, expression blank. If Miller didn’t know any better, he’d say Gray didn’t look as if he felt anything at all.

  Lewis sat in the captain’s chair and dug his thumb into his thigh, scratching with vigour above his prosthetic. “Good, I’m glad you’re here, son. Clark has just brought something to our attention.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Clark gestured to the communications console on her left. “We’ve intercepted a message from the Johns Hopkins University Research Center in which they claim to not only have an effective anti-fungal solution, but also a cure for the Archaean parasite.”

  Miller dropped his hands from his hips. “Do we have access? How soon can we get to them? Is this verified?”

  Lewis shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.”

  Clark said, “The United States government is attempting to seize the facility, and the message we found was an S.O.S. from the main researcher at the facility. They’re under attack and need reinforcements.”

  Miller’s mind was already on track. Any muscle aches or joint pain he’d experienced when awakening clouded over with adrenaline. “How long ago did you ‘intercept’ this message?”

  Clark frowned. “Five days ago, but we don’t know how long it’s been broadcasting.”

  “You knew all along,” Miller said, realization dawning. “That’s why you wanted to commandeer the ship. You need bodies, soldiers. To invade Baltimore.”

  If he’d hit upon the truth, Clark didn’t give any clue. She squared her shoulders and set her jaw as tight as a vice. “Our ship is well-equipped with landing gear, ammunition, and weaponry, and we possess plenty of surface missiles—but yes, for a full-scale military operation to assume control of the university, search and rescue of the medical staff and their research, and to evade the whole of the United States Infected Army—we needed people. You have approximately fifteen hundred able-bodied men on this ship alone, another thousand on the other cruise liner.”

  Miller shook his head. “Civilians, Clark.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Miller,” Clark said, glaring. “But humans are losing this war. We’re spread out and dispersed so far and wide we’re no use to anyone. If we don’t band together and fight for our existence, we might as well curl up into a ball and die now. Our only chance is to find the cur
e.”

  “If this is truly the cure,” Miller said, “why didn’t they broadcast the formula? Why make us send thousands of people to their deaths, just to save a couple of scientists who aren’t smart enough to figure that out? It doesn’t feel right.”

  “It doesn’t feel right?” Clark asked. “You’d let Fredericks destroy the last chance we have at saving the human race, because it doesn’t feel right? Civilians are already dying, Miller. There are reports of human hunts, labor camps, mass exterminations.”

  Gray cleared his throat. “This is our last chance, Miller.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’ll lead the strike,” Lewis said, digging into his thigh with added force. “If Miller won’t, I’ll take Baltimore myself.”

  “Sir!”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing what Clark has been saying, son. If we miss this chance, we may miss our only shot to save us. All of us. Every. Single. Human. Being.”

  “I understand that, sir,” Miller said. “But we don’t even know if this broadcast is legitimate. It could be a trap. What if Fredericks set this whole thing up just so we’ll come running?”

  Gray shook his head. “Stockman could have come up with something that smart, but Huck? Please.”

  “He has a point,” said Lewis.

  “Great. It has to be true because our President is too dumb to think of it?”

  Gray shrugged.

  “A full frontal assault with civilians would be a disaster,” Miller said.

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. “We’re not planning to just walk in, son.”

  Clark nodded. “Our crew will engage the US military. If the university is truly under siege, then Cobalt will slip in, rescue the team and their research, and get out. We’ll withdraw to the ship once we know the solution is safe.”

  Miller pursed his lips. It wasn’t the worst of plans. “What do we do with the cure once we have it?”

  “The British government is prepared to enact mandatory inoculations...”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Gray said. “Retrieve it first. We can argue what to do with it once we have it.”