by JK Franks
They were nearing the town of Pine Bluff. Bobby was nervous, as the riverbanks here were heavily developed, with little cover. He wanted to travel at night, but Jordan resisted. If Jacob fell asleep and fell out, she might never find him in the dark. It wasn’t as if he would yell for help. A ten-year-old boy wouldn’t have a chance.
They rested at a shady patch of the riverbank on the north side of Pine Bluff, watching the activities downstream. Fishermen were numerous, but they also heard gunshots and saw a large fire burning somewhere in the downtown area. Jordan finally agreed that night travel would be better. They pulled the boats into the brush out of sight and tried to get some sleep. The heat, the insects, and their ever-present worries made rest during the day impossible for the two grown-ups, but Jacob slept soundly against his mother.
They found themselves talking at length for the first time since leaving the farm.
“Has Jacob ever talked?”
“Some . . . never much.” She picked a stem of grass and began to chew it. “He used to have a therapist who was wonderful. She ruled out several things, including mental illness. He’s not a mute—he can talk. In fact, the first time he did it, he spoke in complete sentences.”
“Is it me?” Bobby asked. “I mean, is he scared to talk since I showed up?”
She shook her head before looking down to where the boy slept. “He hasn’t uttered a word since he saw his father killed. He understands most of what’s going on. Don’t let his silence fool you. He’s intelligent, above grade level still, I imagine. I’m not sure if he will speak again, but I’m not forcing it.”
“He’s a good kid . . . definitely not a complainer,” Bobby said with a grin.
Jordan smiled. “Thanks.” She paused and looked more serious. “Bobby, I appreciate what you’re doing for us. I’m sure your trip would be easier and faster without us around.” He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Let me finish, please. We are not your responsibility. I’m just someone you knew in another life. I told you I had a crush on you back then, and that was true, but I don’t anymore. I’m not looking for a new father for Jacob or a new man for myself. I know you’re still very much in love with your wife and not even thinking about this, but . . . I just wanted to make that all clear. I’ve been told that I tend to be a bit blunt, but I feel it’s better that, than to give you the wrong idea. You know?”
“So, not even a handjob?” he said with mock seriousness. He broke into a grin as she punched his arm hard. “Okay, okay,” he conceded, feeling playful for the first time in a long time. “But you deserved that. I do understand, but I do owe you, you saved me, and well, I appreciate your determination. It couldn’t have been easy surviving on your own and taking care of a child. I have no expectations, just to put your mind at ease. I just want to get us to the coast and safety . . . see my own child. You’re an impressive mother and a friend, and I don’t say that lightly. I appreciate you and Jacob being with me. It gives me purpose.”
Jordan smiled but said nothing. She eased over to the grass and lay down, curled around her son. Bobby plugged the slackline antenna into the little two-way radio and tried to raise anyone in Harris Springs. Recently he had been doing so at least once a day.
After thirty minutes, he gave up and plugged the batteries into the solar charger, laying them out on his pack. Then he, too, fell back and finally drifted off to sleep.
He awoke some time later to find a small hand clamped over his mouth and another pushing his chest down. He looked up to see Jacob over him. It appeared to be early evening, and the sky was growing dark. The boy being so close surprised him, and he went to move his hand, but the boy raised it and placed one finger to his lips, shaking his head.
Bobby heard the men’s voices; they were close. Jacob patted something else into his hand and silently disappeared back into the bushes. Bobby looked down to find his pistol in his hand. He ran his thumb above the handgrip to find the hammer back. Jacob had cocked it as well. Jeeze. The kid was smart; smarter than him—why had he not made one of them take a guard watch?
He assumed Jacob was waking his mother as well, though he heard nothing. It was already too dark to see them. Bobby rolled to his side and slowly raised his head to look in the direction of the sounds. He could just about see them: four of them, about fifty feet downstream. They appeared to be fishing, but the straight barrels of rifles were clearly visible on each man’s back. They may not be a threat, but that was no longer an assumption anyone could make in this world. If the men moved any closer, they would likely spot the boats, and most definitely the people lying beside them. The best option was to simply be invisible. No sound, no movement.
Bobby lay still in the grass for what seemed like hours before the men moved farther downstream. In reality, it had been less than one hour, but the exertion of being perfectly still, combined with the adrenaline of the situation left him fatigued. He crawled back to where mother and child lay and saw both figures watching him. He reached out and hugged Jacob tightly. The boy did not resist. They waited together until they could no longer hear the men, then slowly they slid the boats back into the river and began paddling.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Present Day
Devil’s Tower Oil Platform, Gulf of Mexico
Skybox looked at the medical team with anger mixed with amusement. It was obvious to him they were not normal doctors. They were not used to having subjects that responded to questions, had opinions, or were, like him, fed up with being drained of more and more of the blood from his body.
“No offense, doc, but you must have gallons of the stuff by now.”
Dr. Colton leaned away from the man and studied him briefly. “We do, but it’s old. Our pets require fresh.”
He was unsure if she was kidding. The woman was bookishly beautiful, with glasses and deep auburn hair pulled back under her surgical hat. The researchers wore full bio-suits. He did carry the Chimera virus, but in his body, for some reason, it had remained almost completely dormant. He was immune.
Skybox had been at the facility for weeks and still had not managed to develop a rapport with anyone here. He wanted to know if Tommy was also in the facility, but no one answered those questions. He had not met anyone in command, so he assumed the “staff” was mainly made up of civilian contractors. In his walled-off rooms, he had limited freedom; he was not allowed to go outside. He had been on a stretcher in a self-contained bio-tent when he was transferred here, so he was unsure of where or even what it was. Although the air was filtered, cycled, and irradiated to kill germs, he occasionally thought he could smell salty air. He was not used to this level of secrecy. He was a commander, after all, and now he was taking instructions from a civilian and her minions.
He realized she had been speaking to him again while he fumed. “Commander, we are going to start running some different tests with you. Tests that will involve differing levels of stress, and I’m afraid, in some cases, pain. We will also be taking more blood during each phase to see if the disease shows any change in activity. It is very important for us to know exactly how stable it is within your body. Do you understand?”
He looked at her piercingly. Her eyes were amazing, he thought.
“Do you understand?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, yeah. No problem, doc.” The pressure on his arm relaxed, and he saw the needle being withdrawn. Why had he not felt it going in? The thought fluttered away like a seagull on an updraft.
“Hey, doc, do you know where they located my friend? His name is Tommy, and he was supposed to have been transported here.” None of the medical staff ever responded to personal questions, but it was worth a shot. This woman seemed to be the boss, so maybe she had information to share.
“No one has been brought here since you arrived,” she said. “If he is an active duty soldier, I probably wouldn’t be able to find out . . . none of you guys use real names, you know.”
“No . . . he’s not active. He was—he’s disabled. Head tr
auma. He has to have constant care and monitoring. Last I heard he was at a camp hospital in Memphis, but my CO said they were bringing him here . . . wherever here is . . . to be with me.”
“Memphis?” she said, her voice shaky.
“Yeah.”
He noticed tears in her eyes. What did she know? “No one from Memphis has made it here.”
Skybox watched as the doctor gathered her equipment and his blood and hurried away. Clearly, she knew something more, something that caused her great pain. How that was connected to Tommy he didn’t know, but his mind was scattered from the drugs they kept pumping him with, the blood they kept extracting. He would keep asking until he understood.
But soon it became clear no one really knew much about the outside world. This was what they knew: this lab and their specimens, of which he was now one. Their world was one of proteins and bacilli and disease vectors: a brutal microscopic world now eerily mirrored by their big world.
Week after week slowly passed with little distinction for Skybox. The poking, prodding and more and more elaborate tests continued, intensified in strangeness. This morning he was greeted by one of the more likable researchers, one he had learned was called DJ. The guy was nice and smart, but he also had something of an actual personality. He even laughed at jokes. He was also the one Skybox felt sure was holding something back; it seemed the young man knew more about what was going on than he let on.
“DJ, how would you know if the virus became active? I mean, do you have sensors that go off? Alarms? Would they seal the exam room and fill it with poisonous gas?”
The kid grinned. “That would be cool, but no, nothing that sophisticated, unfortunately. We’d still have to take a blood sample to see . . . or of course, if you started presenting symptoms, we would know that way.” He was busy attaching another electrode to Skybox’s bare chest. “The pathogen’s not typically airborne, but none of our biofilters are equipped to register something as small as the Chimera. The molecules of the disease are ridiculously tiny. We still have trouble spotting it, even now that we know what we’re looking for . . . the size is one reason it’s been so hard to isolate. We thought it would be easier with a live host, but . . . so far, Commander, you haven’t really been that helpful.” DJ smiled at Skybox.
Skybox was both amused and deflated. “Fuck,” he exhaled. All this and nothing yet. “I think I’m offended by that.” They both laughed briefly. “Tell me, DJ, where are you from? Do you have family there, a girlfriend maybe?”
“Not sure anymore,” he answered sadly.
Skybox knew he had struck pay dirt. “What’s her name?”
“Look, we aren’t supposed to discuss stuff like this, you know that. I’m sure someone’s listening to all our conversations.”
“Yeah, I get it. I’m just a lab rat,” Skybox ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I’ve been here for weeks with no real human contact. I just thought . . . you know . . . I just wanted to feel human for a second. I thought maybe hearing about someone else’s life would help me deal with not having one.”
DJ looked the man over, “You have a life, man, you’re a soldier. Christ, you’re a Grayshirt! You guys are the best of the best, aren’t you?”
Skybox couldn’t decide if his tone was one of scorn or respect; something seemed a bit off about it. “Just a soldier, kid, nothing special.”
DJ finished attaching the leads, plugged in the monitoring station and walked out without comment. Moments later, another suit came in. She would be administering today’s test. He saw DJ’s face on the other side of the glass in the observation room. He was even more convinced the kid knew something.
Chapter Fifty
“Kaylie . . . I don’t recall ever knowing a Kaylie. Pretty name. You think she’s okay?”
“She’s okay—I mean, I think she is.”
Inwardly, Skybox gave himself a mental high-five. The kid had just let something important slip out. It had taken several weeks to get this far, but there it was. “So, what’s everyone so excited about?”
“They think they’ve isolated the proteins, and we finally managed to get to the genetic core of the virus thanks to you. Dr. C. thinks we can finally see what mutations have been going on with the agent.”
“I’m not sure what any of that means, but I helped?”
“Yes,” DJ smiled, “you helped. Without you, we couldn’t have made this leap. I mean, it’s no cure, but we finally know how to slow it down at least. The DNA of this thing is, well, freakin’ awesome. It’s unlike anything we were considering—unlike anything anyone’s ever seen, to be honest. We were assuming all along that it was based on a more traditional carrier, a tuberculosis mycobacteria, something like that, but that was a false clue. Your field team’s notes from the point of origin have been very helpful. The lead scientist you had there was a genius. He was definitely on the right track. I’m sorry he didn’t survive.”
“So, was he right about the disease being some cutting-edge, engineered virus?” Skybox responded, testing how much the lad actually knew.
“No, that’s just it—it’s not new at all.” DJ looked around briefly as if he was about to give out the cheat codes to his favorite video game. “No, man, it’s ancient. Like, prehistoric—predating mankind kind of ancient. I should probably let the doc talk to you about it. She’s the expert. But basically, we have—” he held up a hand and began counting off fingers, “—poisons, viruses and bacteria, each of which are very different beasts, also prions . . . anyway, Chimera, as you call it, started out as none of those, though it actually has parts of all of them. The genetic base of this pathogen could be millions of years old. Like, this might be what wiped out the dinosaurs!”
“And . . . I have it.” Skybox nodded remembering a similar conversation with Genghis. “I thought a meteor took out the dinos.”
“Possibly, but they lived for a really, really long time, during which there were numerous mass extinctions, and we’re pretty sure disease caused several of those. The most interesting part is this: there’s still some confusion over what kind of animals most dinosaurs even were. Forty years ago, they were all thought to be cold-blooded reptiles, then amphibians, maybe mammals, then early members of the bird family.”
“Yeah,” Skybox said. “I remember some of that. What difference does it make?”
“All the difference, man,” DJ was clearly excited. The kid clearly loved science. “Do you have any idea how rare it is for diseases to jump across species? Dogs don’t catch colds from their owners and so forth. Humans can and do catch diseases from birds, pigs, even primates, but it’s not very common. Very few animals can catch diseases from people.”
Skybox had heard much of this before from Genghis. “Okay. Not really following,” he responded, mainly to engage DJ more.
“Think about the diversity of animal life back then. All types were alive—warm-blooded, cold-blooded, mammals, birds, reptiles . . . Yet something wiped nearly all of them out in one punch. This pathogen, or some variant of it, seems to us to be a likely candidate. It adapted to each host in a way that allowed it to survive and multiply across species. That’s basically all nearly every life form wants to do at the base level: survive and multiply. And this one achieved it. It’s almost beautiful in its effectiveness.”
Skybox fell serious. “DJ, listen. I’ve seen this thing out there, out in the wild. It is in no way beautiful. In fact, it is the scariest, creepiest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life.”
“I know, I know, Commander. I mean, I’ve seen videos. I just mean that, from a purely scientific standpoint, this is amazing. This is discovering-life-on-Mars levels of awesome.”
Skybox leaned back with a sigh. He suddenly felt very, very old. “Sounds great. Tell me one thing then. Why is it not killing me?”
DJ shrugged. “We’re still unsure. We finally have all your prior medical history, records of all your immunizations and illnesses since you were born. Part of the team is busy doing the
genetic mapping to see if anything in your base DNA might have the answer, and another group is looking at the early antiviral treatments you were given overseas, including those dispersed in the atmosphere. The truth is, we may never know. If your man was right, and the Archaea domain is the key to this, we likely don’t have the expertise or equipment to solve it.”
“So why am I still here?”
“You need to speak to Dr. Colton about that. She seems to feel that synthesizing your blood chemistry might be the better step. We may not need to know why, as long as we know how—how to stop the transmission of the disease, that is, or at least how to keep the symptoms contained. You are the key to that, sir.”
“Yeah, well, the doc hasn’t been one for speaking to me much. I’ve only seen her a handful of times the last few weeks. She seems . . . preoccupied. Sad.”
DJ looked left in the direction of his boss’s office. “She is, she—well, we’ve all lost people during this mess. Her family was in an accident, all of them were killed.”
Skybox groaned. He didn’t like the thought of her in grief.
“Yeah, Praetor agreed to bring them down from Tennessee before they relocated us out here. Apparently, the helicopter they were on went down near the coast. Might have been the Navy guys. They seem to have a hard-on to be rid of you guys.”
“Navy?” He was confused for a moment; then remembered a conversation with his CO. “I hate that that happened to her.” He shook his head in empathy. He had lost so many people in his life, but none were family. Still, he could imagine how she must feel.
