Disease X

by Garrett Williams

  His fighting chance appeared in the form of a .44 Magnum revolver. He could tell from looking at the sides of the weapon that it had bullets in the chambers. It was the first time he had ever held a gun, let alone shooting a man with it. He hoped, in his life, it would never come down to that. The moment he pointed the gun at the soldier, time sped up and he could then hear the sounds of panicking civilians and the stranger jumping back in surprise. The stranger felt his pockets and noticed that the revolver was missing. The soldier in front of Alex then readied his weapon in preparation for anything.

  “Easy, kid!” the soldier in front of him shouted. Everything stood still for one moment. Then the man behind the counter saw what was going on and quickly reached for one of his two guns; a pistol and a shotgun. He took up the shotgun in a hurry, causing the pistol to slide from the inner desk and onto the floor and it let off a shot on impact. In surprise, Alex simultaneously ran towards the back door and pulled the trigger, hitting the soldier in the stomach. The bullet had gone through the soldier’s body and into the wall onto the other side.

  Alex slammed open the back entrance and looked back to see several of the soldiers running up to shoot. He even saw the soldier he shot hunched over on the ground, groaning in agony as he bled out in his hands and onto the floor. Alex looked forward to see several other soldiers waiting right in front of him with all of their guns pointed. He’d been flanked. Outgunned and with nowhere left to go, Alex was tackled from behind by a soldier from the store and was cuffed. The soldier lifted Alex up and jerked him over to the jeep the reinforcements came in. The soldier opened the door and threw him into the back of it.

  Despite what had just happened, Alex felt that it was over for him. He knew what they did to the infected and what goes on in the quarantine zones. He also couldn’t forget the man he had just shot and the disturbing image of him slumped over on the ground with blood slowly trickling down the front of his body and onto the floor. It was the first time he had ever shot a man, something no one should ever have to do. How would he live with himself? Every time he closed his eyes he could see the scene play in his head again.

  A man with formal army dress and a bald head with blue eyes walked up to a soldier and asked, “Any casualties?”

  “Just one, Captain Greene, the kid shot him.” the soldier replied.

  “It’s better than the time square incident at least.” Greene said disappointingly.

  Alex’s fear had been confirmed. He’d killed a man. A soldier got into the driver’s seat and started up the vehicle. The last thing Alex saw was the stranger picking up the revolver and placing it back into his coat pocket and silently walking away.

  II

  Just Business

  The rain had begun to disperse as a car pulled up to the library. Next to it was a road sign that read “Leaven St.” The building looked as though it had survived multiple hurricanes. It had storm bolts screwed into core points in the building, and an old cracked tower where it looked as though they used to have a bell. The parking lot was almost empty, except for a few small black cars in the front and several different cars in the back, likely all of the employee’s cars.

  Witnesses, Logan thought as he sat in the blue minivan that Huntington left for him. Good thing I keep this close, Logan brought out from his back pocket a folded up piece of red cloth, he then proceeded to unravel it. In its full form, the cloth was red with black computer code on it in a downward motion. He tied on the mask. It had a certain air of safety about it, like whatever was going to happen, his criminal militia alias would hide him. He broke out, I just need to capture him and it’s a deal. Besides, he probably deserves it. Logan thought. He began to sweat as he tightened the back of the mask around his neck. He had the appearance of not an average man, but rather of a reckless gangster. He left his car and proceeded to the back of the building. He had parked his car on the side of the building and facing the exit for a hasty escape.

  Heather had been silently watching Mariam speak with the owners of the library when she felt something tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see that it was a man of at least forty- two years of age. He was African American and five foot three inches tall, five inches shorter than her. He had a pointy nose and a bald head with a scar on his lower lip that she could not take her eyes off of. He also had very dark, almost black eyes.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” the man said, “I’m looking for a woman about my size but with long black hair. She should have a child with her. Have you seen them?” Heather began to look around the small room filled with corridors made of books and then the sight of the man’s descriptions caught her eye. She said nothing as she pointed towards the woman and small child sitting at a table by the window. “Thank you,” The scarred man said as he hastily made his way toward the two.

  She watched as the man embraced the little boy and the woman. The three of them were a family. She noticed that the three of them had probably not met in months as evidenced by the man’s wife being in tears at this reunion. Whatever caused them to be separated must have been hell on all of them, but made the reunion ever sweeter. She was slightly touched by this.

  “Hey Heather, can you give me a hand with this?” said a girl with long black hair and a black suit and pants with a red tie. Heather walked over to the girl who was struggling with a stuck ladder and began pulling in response.

  The back door slowly crept open as Logan was taking cover underneath cameras. He saw a small hallway with a door at the end of it that had light seeping through the bottom crack. It was his way in. However, it had a camera starring down the whole corridor. Either way he would be caught on tape. Logan took a quick glance out of cover, saw the camera and quickly got back in. Seeing the camera he quickly closed his eyes tightly. He could see a surge of ions rushing through the wires and forming the shape of the camera. He simply touched the wire next to him and saw his own body’s ions entering the wires through his shut eyes. He opened his eyes then to see the camera begin to spark and then shut down due to the different frequencies in the ions. Logan felt something buzz in his overcoats outside pocket and then instinctively reached in there to find a small ear bud. He could hear a tiny voice coming from it. He placed the bud into his ear and he recognized a familiar voice, it was Gavin’s.

  “Are you in?” Gavin asked from the ear bud.

  “When did you give me this?” Logan asked.

  “I slipped it into your coat in the sewers. How are things going?”

  “I just got here. I disabled one of the cameras in here.”

  “Oh, bad move considering I just got you a little something special. Reach into your other pocket.”

  Logan reached into his other coat pocket to find a small piece of paper that was folded up. He unfolded it to find a series of numbers written in pencil on it.

  “What’s this?” Logan asked.

  “It’s the master security code.” Gavin replied.

  “Perfect.” Logan closed his eyes once again and memorized the code. In that instance, he opened his eyes to see that everything was now connected to him though ions. His eyes shone a pure sky blue as he had complete control of the cameras, circuits, computers, lights, even the landline phones in the old building.

  “Are you in?” Gavin asked again.

  Logan shut his eyes again and his vision carried through into a camera in the main room. He could see his target sitting at a table with some other people.

  “I’m looking at the target as we speak.” Logan replied.

  “Good. And what if things get hairy? It’s not like he’s going to hand himself over.” Gavin asked.

  “I stopped by a gun store on the way here. I bought a sub machine gun there.” Logan replied.

  “Nice. Which store?” Gavin asked.

  “Does it matter?” Logan asked.

  “I received word from the colonel that a newly infected just ran through what is roughly the same area as you. Did you have something to do with that?”

  “Oh,
yeah I was there. He ran through the same store I was in.” Logan said in a calm and casual tone. “There was military and everything.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I think he was wearing a grey hood, maybe a backpack, jeans, He looked about fifteen, sixteen?”

  “We’re keeping tabs on him. We don’t know what he’s capable of yet, but Huntington insisted that we watch the kid.”

  “It’s a nice talk we’ve been having but I think I should get this guy before he moves again.” Logan said.

  “Fine, I’ll dig up what I can about the new kid.”

  With that the transmission ended, anxiety fell over Logan once again. He was seeing that the target, Michael, was with a small child and a woman. He could tell just from how overcome they were by the target’s arrival that Michael was a husband and father.

  Thoughts rushed through Logan’s mind. How he would be able to go out there when his family is right there was the thought that scrolled through his head the most. He began to question his own morality the more he realized the position he was in outside of work. What if things went wrong? What if he had to kill him in front of his son? What if the patrol captures me and I’ll never see her again? Logan thought the more he saw the small party. He had no choice, they needed this job, and he needed to prove himself. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes one last time and made sure that he made it to where he was a blur in the cameras.

  He walked up to the door and slid it open to where he could see out of the crack. He only saw one employee assisting a woman at a table. She had left the woman and was making her way to the back door. With his sky blue eye, he saw ions going into her back pocket and he then sent his ions into the phone into her pocket. This made the phone start buzzing, causing her to stop and walk to the side with her back to the door. As she was trying to check her messages, he quickly ran out and made a b-line for Michael. The noise of him rushing out caused confusion in the workplace and he cut off the landline phones. He tackled Michael in front of the child and woman while he was still in a chair.

  He put up a struggle as he groaned and out of nowhere, the chair that Logan had pushed Michael off of struck him in the back of the head and Michael slammed Logan’s head into the carpeted ground. Logan heard a sharp ring in his ear and he saw a blurry vision of Michael as he rushed for his wife and child amongst the panic. He lay on the ground for at least three seconds, giving Michael time to run. Logan scrambled to his feet as he needed to catch up to Michael, who was trying to force open a locked side door. He turned around to see Logan on his feet running toward him, pulling a pistol from his coat. Michael quickly reacted by flinging a table at him, without his hands. The table struck Logan with enough force to knock him back to the ground. Logan rolled sideways and back to his feet and responded by firing at him. The bullet stood in midair and Logan quickly responded by taking cover behind the service desk, pulling an old woman under with some other men in suites crouching down beside her. The bullet flew over the desk and just missed him.

  A Specter, I’ll have to think about this. Logan thought behind his service desk as debris kept flying overhead. Spirits were the nickname given to the telekinetic infected for their levitation properties. Codenames are distributed to the infected by the military based on their primary side effect. There are typically two different effects per person: a primary effect and a supportive effect, such as rough skin or rapid healing. In this case, Michael is considered a spirit due to the seemingly supernatural ability of telekinesis.

  The debris unexpectedly stopped and Logan quickly popped out from cover, only to find that Michael was ready and grabbed him by the throat. The world around Logan slowed, the people around him had almost frozen in place and then suddenly something caught Logan’s eye. A desk lamp lay sideways on the desktop with the bulb broken, it was the perfect opportunity. With Michael’s hands still wrapped tightly around his throat, Logan quickly touched the lamp.

  His sky blue eyes flickered as ions were sent from his body and overloaded the lamp. A small electric explosion slowly grew bigger and bigger as time then began to resume normal pace. The explosion escalated and then vanished in a second. Michael and Logan both took the brunt of the blast and were both knocked to the ground. Michael quickly looked around the room for something to use until he saw a blonde girl sitting up against the wall in fear. It was perfect, he used his power to fling the girl to him and use her as a hostage. Michael picked up a piece of broken glass and held it to the girl’s throat. Logan rose to his feet with several bruises and cuts all over his body and face. He abandoned his pistol and pulled out his new sub machine gun, his sights were set on Michael.

  “Shoot and she dies! I know the militia must have sent you!” Michael shouted with the horror in the girl’s eyes growing every moment.

  “Easy Mike, we don’t have to bring innocent people into this.” Logan said as he looked at the girl with sympathy and caring eyes. They did nothing to sooth her anxiety.

  “I can’t go back! Not yet!” Michael shouted as he looked at his family. “My daughter’s pregnant!” He included.

  Hearing this only added more guilt and fear behind Logan’s calm and stoic face. Would it be wrong to kill a fugitive before he got to see his grandchild be born? Logan looked to the side to see the wife and child close together by the window in fear and sadness of what was happening. He could also see that the son had been crying for his father the whole time. At the same time Logan was fixed on the hostage he had and at the sheer terror in her eyes as the glass fragment slid slowly across her neck, held by the force of the infected holding her.

  Thoughts rushed through Logan’s head as he replayed the situation. There was never supposed to be a hostage in his plan. He was supposed to capture Michael and bring him back. Logan remembered the negotiations from way back and one of the military’s terms were to bring back escaped infected dead or alive as long as the public just think it was a domestic terrorist act. Still with doubts in his mind of his own character and moral stand point, Logan sighed, raised his hand and dropped his weapon.

  The previously crowded room was empty by this point. Time slowed one last time as he saw the terrified look of the girl’s eyes frozen in place. Without thinking much, he then fell to his side on the ground, catching the slow falling automatic weapon in midair and firing off a shot from the ground. There was no time to think, it was completely unexpected. Michael’s head jerked back with a small amount of crimson spraying into the side of the adolescent’s face. Her right eyes squeezed shut as iron and DNA seeped into her cornea. Michael then descended, face forward and it was the end of it. He was eliminated. Logan looked back at his family who were now in complete distress over this with tears and heartbreak taking complete control. He looked back at the girl who had panicked over the blood striking her and had fallen to her knees.

  “I’m sorry.” Logan said in a quivering voice, not just to the family but to every remaining citizen in the building. He then ran back out, through the door he came, as he heard sirens coming from ten miles away due to his ion sense. Before he entered his vehicle, he stopped, took off his mask, fell to his knees and disgorged. “God have mercy on me.” He said to himself as he stood and entered his car.

  Heather ran into the nearest restroom and grabbed the sink. She turned it on and proceeded to wash the blood from her face. What just happened? Out of nowhere a specter and a droid face off in the middle of my job possibly being at stake? God, I hope I’m not sick. Heather thought as she made sure that she got the last of the blood off her suite and the side of her face. She still could not believe what she had just seen. She’d never seen a dead body that close to her. She was still frightened and disgusted. The way that his life force spilled out in one shot and fell onto her flesh made her sick.

  It was the kind of thing that everyone has to face eventually. The childlike dream of having these kinds of powers has been made a reality. However, after the temptations that child faces. After everyone fears that ch
ild simply for existing, as though he were the devil. That child questions were they fall in the world, as he faces the simple truth that there truly is no such thing as a hero or a villain. A simple deception brought about by perception of the public. That child finds that there is only balance brought about in the world by humanity. Why do people fight? Why do people kill each other? It is the same instinct that would make someone want to protect and love someone. The beliefs that that child has been fed is simply just a manifestation of society. The truth is that where a person falls in the world is never good or bad, just humanity. It is up to the child and the child only what role in humanity he wants to play.

  Heather took off her outfit in the back room and changed back into her original clothes. Then she continued out the same back exit that the droid ran through and drove off in her car.

  What were you thinking back there?!” Ashely said while she was standing over Danny, who was sitting in the chair across from her. Ashley wore a Kevlar vest with a black shirt underneath. She had blue eyes and long black hair. She was also wearing grey pants with military boots. The room they were in had a desk separating Danny from Ashley and a mirror on the left hand side of the small, rectangular room. On the right side of the room was a large piece of graffiti carved into the wall surrounded by several smaller statements around it. Fear, desperation, anger, violence, mockery, persecution, greed, death, these were all sprayed on to surround the single, four letter word in the center of the madness. Hope. That was what was carved into the concrete wall.