Quarantine r-4

by Laura J. Burns

They were pushing Liz away as she said this, and Kyle knew none of the doctors standing right next to her could even hear what she said. But he could, with his alien-enhanced hearing. "Liz, hang in there," he whispered back.

  Then they pushed the gurney through the doors and out of the quarantine room. Liz was gone.

  Isabel was the last to get back to Valenti's house. Michael and Max had been there only about five minutes when she showed up, looking worried. Michael felt his shoulders slump. He'd been hoping Isabel had some good news, since he and Max certainly didn't. "What did you find out?" Max asked. "Hello to you, too," Isabel retorted. "Where's Valenti?" "On the phone," Michael told her. "Did you find the CDC headquarters?"

  "Yeah. And they were talking about Liz." "What?" Max cried. "What did they say?" Isabel dropped onto Valentis couch. "That she's Patient Zero, and that the virus started spreading from the Crash-down. Apparently they found something funky in your soup," she said to Michael.

  "That's crazy!" Max said. "How could Liz possibly be the cause of all this?"

  But Michael already knew the answer. "The water," he said. "Liz had just come from Meta-chem. She said the soup was too thick, so I took her water bottle and poured the water into it. And then I served it to Kyle, and Maria’s mom, and half the other people at the Crashdown. I served it all day." He sank down next to Isabel. "This whole thing is my fault."

  "But why would Liz's water be infected?" Max asked.

  "The CDC doctor said something about a chemical spill," Isabel put in.

  "Yeah, that's why she got sent home early," Michael replied. "She said her boss knocked over some gunk but that it was no big deal."

  "Did you heal Liz?" Isabel asked. "Maybe she can figure out what happened."

  Max slammed his fist down on the coffee table. "No," he growled. "I couldn't heal her."

  Isabel blinked in surprise. "Why not?"

  "I don't know, it didn't work," Max said. "I made her worse."

  Michael watched as Isabel took this news in. "So you can't heal any of the sick people?" she asked Max.

  "I'm afraid it will make them all worse."

  Isabel looked down at her hands, frowning. Michael knew how she felt. They seemed to be out of options. "Kyle is still sick too," he said. "And Maria's mom."

  Isabel just nodded without meeting his eye. She was taking it pretty hard, he thought.

  "I have some news," Valenti said, coming into the room. "Though it's not especially good."

  "What is it?" Michael asked.

  "That was the CDC outreach person on the phone. They're setting up hours for family members to visit the people in quarantine."

  Max frowned. "Is that safe?"

  "They've determined the virus is waterborne," Valenti said. "So they'll put the patients in plastic tents and you can talk to them from outside."

  "If we get in and talk to Liz, she can tell us where that water bottle came from. Maybe that will help us figure it out." Michael knew he was grasping at straws, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.

  "It'll be a while," Valenti said. "They're doing it alphabetically by last name. I won't be able to see Kyle until tomorrow, probably. And in the meantime they won't even tell me how he is." Valenti's voice broke, and Isabel reached over to take his hand.

  "Maria," Michael said.

  "What about her?" Max asked.

  "Her name starts with D. She'll get in to see her mom today. Maybe they'll let her talk to Liz too."

  "It's worth a try," Max said.

  And it will give me an excuse to find out how Maria's coping with her dad, Michael thought as he dialed Maria's number into his cell phone.

  Maria's phone was ringing. Sadie turned away from her examination of Maria's jewelry box and flung herself on the bed. She grabbed up the phone from the bedside table. "Maria's phone!" she said into the receiver.

  "Hey, kid, it's Michael."

  Sadie grinned. "Hi, Michael! How are you?"

  "I'm fine. Listen, is Maria there?" Michael said.

  "No, she's in the shower," Sadie told him. She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling, where Maria had put tiny glow-in-the-dark stars. "Maria let me sleep in her room last night. She's the coolest sister ever."

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

  "Are you and Maria gonna get married?" Sadie asked.

  "Because if you do, then you'll be my brother-in-law. Wouldn't that be weird?"

  Michael started coughing. While Sadie waited for him to finish, she sat up so she could bounce on the bed. That's when she noticed her father standing in the doorway. He didn't look very happy.

  "Uh, Sadie, can you ask Maria to call me?" Michael said. "Tell her it's important."

  "Okay," Sadie said. "Bye." She hung up the phone and turned back to her dad.

  "Was that Michael?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Sadie said. "He's been Maria's boyfriend for two years."

  Her father frowned and went back out into the kitchen. He was distracted, she could tell. Sadie sighed. She'd been trying to pretend that everything was fine, but her father was miserable, and Maria was even more miserable. All last night she'd lain in Maria's bed trying to imagine how it must feel to grow up without a father. She couldn't imagine it.

  Maria came in with her hair wrapped in a towel. "Hey, squirt," she said with a wan smile "Did you sleep okay?"

  Sadie nodded. "Maria? Do you think you'll ever forgive Dad?" she asked suddenly.

  Her sister looked surprised. "Well, I don't know," she said.

  "I think it would be hard," Sadie told her. "If he did that to me, I mean."

  Maria sighed and sat down on the bed next to her. "He's not ever going to do that to you, Sadie. He made a mistake with me, and he learned from it. I really believe that."

  "So you forgive him?"

  Maria shook her head. "It's not that easy, honey And this is a really bad time, with my mom sick… " Her voice broke.

  Sadie felt a lump form in her throat. She'd been really selfish coming to Roswell. She'd made her parents worry and she'd turned Maria's whole life upside down. "I shouldn't have come here. I didn't mean to make you feel bad," she said quietly. "I just wanted to see what you were like. I didn't realize you would get hurt."

  Maria reached out and pulled Sadie into her arms. "It's not your fault," she said. "You and me will always be friends. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "I see you're borrowing my eyeliner," Maria added.

  Sadie smiled. "Is it okay?"

  "Yup. That's what sisters are for." Maria got up and started looking through her closet.

  "Michael called," Sadie said. "He says it's important."

  Maria turned around so fast that Sadie jumped back a little. "Um… excuse me," she said. And then she was gone.

  "Thanks for letting me drive you, Maria," Richard said.

  Maria just stared out the window, wishing they would get to Meta-chem already. When her father had heard she was heading over to visit Amy, he'd insisted on driving her there. He'd said she might be too emotional to drive. If only it had occurred to him to think about my feelings when I was a little kid, she thought.

  "Are you… um, are you going to tell your mother I'm here?" he asked nervously.

  Maria snorted. "Do you really think I want to kick her while she's down?" she asked. "'Hey, Mom, sorry you've got some bizarre outbreak of asthma. Did you know the guy who abandoned you has been happily married with kids for years now?'"

  "I didn't abandon your mother. We got a divorce."

  "Oh, that's right," Maria snapped. "You only abandoned me."

  Well, that shut him up, she thought as the silence stretched out. Then she heard a sniffle. Maria turned away from the window to look at her father. His cheeks were wet, and he was silently crying as he drove. She stared at him, hardly even noticing the tears that had formed in her own eyes.

  Maria tried to remember anything about her father. She couldn't think of one thing, one actual memory with any content.
She remembered his horse sound, which was closer to sounding like a hyena. But she had no idea why she remembered it; she couldn't remember a time when he'd made a horse sound for her. She remembered the smell of the cologne he used to wear, but she couldn't remember what it was called, and she couldn't remember ever seeing him put it on. All her life, she'd been trying to forget him. Now here he was, driving her car. And crying.

  Is it even possible to see a man cry and not want to hug him and comfort him? Maria wondered. Right now her father was just a guy. Not the monster who'd left her with no money and no father to love. Not the selfish jerk who was willing to have a whole second family without even telling them about the first family. Just a guy who was crying so hard he could barely drive. "Dad," she said. "Pull over."

  He did. He put the car in park, and then he just sat there crying. Maria stayed in her seat, crying too.

  "There's no excuse," he finally said through his sobs. "I love you. I always loved you. There's no excuse for what I did. I don't blame you if you hate me forever."

  "I don't hate you," Maria said, surprised to find that it was true.

  "Really?" He looked at her hopefully.

  "Yeah," she said. "But I don't love you either. I don't know what to feel. I don't know anything about you except that you left me."

  "I know," he said, fresh tears falling. "But I know a lot about you. I know how sweet your skin smelled when you were a baby. And I know that your favorite book was Martha the Movie Mouse… you would never go to sleep until I'd read it to you at least twice. Sweet pea, I had seven years with you. I've been holding on to those years ever since. In my mind, you're always my baby girl."

  Maria wiped her eyes. "I don't remember those years," she whispered.

  "Can you take my word for it?" he asked.

  "I guess," she replied. She took a shaky breath. "But it doesn't make up for the ten years in between."

  Richard sighed. "I understand that."

  They sat in silence for a minute, both of them sniffling. "I have to get to Meta-chem," Maria said finally.

  "Okay," he answered, putting the car in gear. He pulled back out onto the road.

  "Thanks for driving me," Maria said.

  12

  “So what's going on outside?" Amy asked. She immediately stuck the oxygen mask back over her nose and mouth.

  "Oh, not much," Maria lied. "The whole town is sort of shut down." She tried not to let her mother see how worried she was. Amy looked terrible, thin and pale and tired. Maria had never seen her mother look so tired.

  Amy pulled the mask down again. "I've been hearing whispers around here that this all started at the Crashdown," she said.

  "Yup. Michaels soup was infected."

  Amy just rolled her eyes.

  Mom is supposed to be the one worrying about me, Maria thought. I don't like it this way. She had a sudden vision of what it would be like if her mother never got better. Maria felt as if she might hyperventilate. "What's it like inside that thing?" she asked, nodding to the plastic tent that covered Amy's cot. It was strange to be making small talk with your own mother, but glancing around the room,

  Maria saw other family members doing the same thing

  "It's pretty annoying," Amy admitted. "I can't really see you… you're all distorted by the plastic."

  "So are you." Maria grinned. "Your nose looks huge!"

  "Shut up!" Amy cried.

  They sat in companionable silence for a moment.

  "Hey, Mom? Do you need me to do anything?" Maria asked. "For the business, I mean. I know I was being kind of a pain in the butt before…"

  "It's okay," Amy replied. "You have your own life and your own job to worry about."

  "Yeah, but your alien stuff is the family business," Maria said. "And I'm going to help you with it from now on."

  "Oh, Maria, you hate those alien tchotchkes."

  "I know," Maria said, "but I love you."

  Her mother laughed. "Don't get all morbid on me, honey. I'm not gonna die in here."

  "Promise?" Maria asked. "Because I don't know what I'd do without you."

  "I think your mom needs to rest now," said the nurse who was taking care of Amy's section of the room. Maria felt a stab of panic… had she tired her mother too much?

  "I'm fine," Amy told her, as if she could feel Maria's fear. "I'm just wheezy."

  "Okay," Maria said, standing up. "I'll come back and see you as soon as they let me."

  Amy nodded tiredly and waved as Maria left. She walked slowly down the row of beds. Because it was visiting day, the nurses weren't paying much attention to security. All the quarantined patients had been put in their own private plastic tent. Maria scanned each bed,

  looking for Liz. She was supposed to find out where Liz got the water bottle, that's what Michael had said. But mostly she just wanted to see for herself that her best friend was okay.

  Where was Liz? It was hard to see through these thick plastic tents. She reached the end of one row of beds and casually started down the other row.

  "Maria!" The voice was muffled, but it was definitely Kyle's. She stopped walking and squinted through the plastic. Kyle lay on the bed inside. Unlike her mother, he had no tubes in him and no oxygen mask.

  "Kyle! How are you feeling?"

  "Like a freak," he said. "And don't talk so loud, I can't handle loud noises."

  "O-kay" she said. "Where's Liz? I'm supposed to… "

  "They took her," he interrupted. "And I need to get a message to Max."

  Maria blinked in surprise. "From Liz?" She sat down in the chair next to Kyle's bed. Hopefully no one would notice that he wasn't supposed to have visitors today.

  "They took Liz because she was the first one sick," Kyle told her. "They're going to do tests, and they're going to find that the virus is mutated alien DNA."

  "What?"

  "Just listen and tell Max everything I say," Kyle said urgently. "Liz says she and I have alien DNA mixed with our DNA because Max healed us both. And when Liz cleaned up that chemical spill in the lab here… "

  "Dr. Sosa's lab."

  "Right. She thinks whatever the chemical was, it got into her system and caused a mutation in her alien DNA.

  Then she spread it to other people. She and I have one set of symptoms because it activated our alienattributes, our alien genes,"

  "And in everyone else it activated whatever genes they had for all these different sicknesses," Maria said.

  "Yeah, that's what Liz says. But no one else knows that the virus itself is alien. It comes from Liz's alien DNA. The CDC won't figure that out."

  "Because of the whole they-don't-believe-in-aliens thing."

  "Exactly. So Max has to figure out how to stop the virus."

  "Got it," Maria said, standing up. "How long ago did they take Liz away?"

  "Hours and hours," Kyle replied. "She was much sicker than I am. When Max touched her, she got even worse. He was probably putting more alien DNA into her system just by trying to heal her."

  "So she's overdosing on alien genes."

  "She and I both," Kyle said. He dropped his head back onto his pillow. "I have to sleep now."

  "Don't worry, Valenti," Maria said gently. "We'll take it from here."

  "Alien DNA." Valenti shook his head. "That's it, the entire virus. It's alien DNA."

  "It's my DNA," Max corrected him. "This is all my fault. I always thought I was doing a good thing when I healed people. Turns out I was infecting them with some big time bomb." I should have known better than to think I could do anything to help people, he thought bitterly. Every

  time I try to do the right thing, it has awful side effects.

  "Max, that's just not true," Isabel said. "This virus came from a chemical spill. Maybe we're lucky it was Liz in that lab. If it had been one of us, the virus would've been much stronger."

  "So her DNA mutated," Michael said. "And that's what's swimming around in everyone else now. What do we do about it?"

  "It seems
they're all sick because their bodies can't handle the alien influence," Max said. "So we have to get rid of the alien DNA in them."

  "Not necessarily," Valenti put in. He was pacing around his living room. "Think about it, alien and human DNA can coexist. You guys have both."

  "That's true," Isabel said. "And if Liz is right, she and Kyle have both had some alien DNA for a while now and they've been fine."

  "So it's not the DNA we need to target," Maria said. "It's the mutation."

  "No, it doesn't work that way," Max said, trying to remember his genetics. "There should be a gene that acts as a sort of bridge. It allows the human and the alien to coexist without harming each other. We all must have that gene, and Liz and Kyle should have it too."

  "So the chemical spill did something to deactivate that gene in Liz," Michael said. "How do we fix it?"

  "I go in again and try to heal her," Max said. "Then the CDC can use a sample of Liz's DNA to make a cure for the others."

  "Then half the people in Roswell will have alien DNA," Valenti said. "Seems kind of appropriate."

  "But last time you made Liz even worse!" Maria cried.

  "Well, this time I know what to look for," Max replied. "Unless anyone has a better idea?"

  He looked around the room. No one said anything. "Okay. I'm going to figure out how to do this. You guys figure out how to get me to Liz."

  He headed out to Valenti's backyard, needing to be alone. He didn't want to let the others see how frightened he was. Maria had a good point. Last time he'd made Liz's illness worse. This time he could kill her.

  I have no choice, he thought. Liz wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't put her in it. He sighed heavily. If she got through this, he would leave her alone. She wasn't sure she wanted to get back together with him, and maybe she was right to feel that way. It seemed that everything he did put Liz in danger, even though she was the most important thing to him. So if she still wanted him to back off, he would.

  But first he would save her life.

  Michael pulled on the pant leg of Kyle's Meta-chem jumpsuit. "This is way too short," he complained to Max. "No one will ever believe it's my uniform."

  Max shot him an impatient look. "Then fix it," he said.