by Ellis, Tara
“I’ll be seventeen in less than a month,” Tyler replied, sounding a little petulant.
“No,” Bill said. “That’s not what I mean.” Reaching out, he took ahold of Tyler’s arm again but simply gave it a reassuring squeeze this time. “Okay.” He began nodding, his lips pressed together into a firm line. “Okay. We can do both. Help them get the information out, and stay alive. Can you at least work with me on that?”
Tyler raised an eyebrow. “Only if you stop being so freaking nervous about everything, Dad. It’s starting to drive Hernandez crazy and I think he’s about to deck you.”
Chuckling, Bill released his arm and ran a hand through his hair before pulling the mask down and then squinted up at the towering pines. “I’ll do my best to avoid that. I—” He took a deep breath and put his glasses back on. “I just need to know you’re okay, Ty.”
Tyler stepped into his father’s hug and allowed himself a moment’s reprieve from the anger. To his surprise, the conversation had helped take the edge off, and he realized that maybe part of it was the growing feeling of detachment from his dad in addition to actually losing his mom.
Breaking it off before things got awkward, Bill stepped back and patted Tyler’s shoulders. “I respect the fact you can make decisions for yourself, but never forget that I’ll always be your dad and will be here for you no matter what.”
The comment was proof that his dad had been feeling the same distance, and Tyler understood then why he’d been acting so weird. He offered his dad a crooked grin. “Are you kidding? You know you’ll never get rid of me. Twenty years from now, I’ll be geeking out in your basement in whatever new civilization is created.”
Their discussion was interrupted by the revving of the jeep engine, and Bill rolled his eyes. “I think this is one of those moments where I need to work on not being decked.”
As they started back, Tyler asked the questions that had been bothering him since they left Reno. “What are we going to do when we get to this woman’s house? I mean, it’s not like she’s going to be happy to see us. And what if she isn’t even there? She might have already left to go someplace safer.”
Bill scratched at his head and looked approvingly at Tyler. “All good questions, which is why I assume your mom didn’t bring it up. If she’s there, we’ll have to hope she lives alone and isn’t too unhappy to see us. We’ll either force or blackmail her into helping us. And even better if she isn’t—” They stopped at the door to the jeep and he grinned. “So long as her SAT phone and equipment are still there, we can help ourselves to everything we need.”
Tyler smiled back, but it quickly faded as he climbed inside. There was no way it was going to be that easy. In spite of what Peta thought, he didn’t consider them lucky. He had a growing feeling that going to Madeline Schaefer’s house was a very dangerous move.
Chapter 4
MADS
Undisclosed mountainous region in northern California
Madeline Schaefer’s finger hovered over the enter key, the movement barely perceptible. She was to the point in the illness where she was bedridden, and it was the only limb she still had any control over. She’d wet herself hours before and was forced to lie in it. Mads snorted, finding it fitting that she would die soaking in her own waste.
What was I doing?
Her eyes rolled up before refocusing on the open laptop, and she saw her finger was resting on the key, though she hadn’t pushed it. That’s right, she was getting ready to send the email.
Why bother?
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Mads muttered, her words slurred. She laughed, the sound coming out as a choked squeal that would have sounded maniacal to anyone else in the room. Except, there wasn’t anyone else there to witness her death. Just like there hadn’t really been anyone around to witness her life.
Mads turned her head away and stared at the empty bottle of whiskey resting next to her left leg. It might have something to do with her confusion. She’d like to think it was accountable for at least some of the fog distorting her thoughts. Not The Kuru. Not the prions writhing their way through her brain, destroying the synapses and cancelling out whole areas of thought and control.
Control.
“It’s what makes the world go ‘round,” Mads whispered, dragging her head back to stare again at her finger. It took so much effort that she had to take several breaths before she could see clearly.
The email. My confession. My deathbed declaration of guilt and dispersal of information that can help them at least try to get a grip on the disease before it’s too late.
Her thoughts were jumbled, making it harder to concentrate and focus on her hand.
Though it was composed hours earlier, she’d continued to battle with her internal demons and hadn’t actually sent it. Clearly, doing the right thing wasn’t a mantra Mads had lived by.
She was complicit.
Mads blinked slowly and willed her finger to move, finding the irony in her physical inability to finally carry out her good intentions telling. Funny, how the knowledge that her existence was about to be erased made facing the truth easier. She was forced to admit that there had always been a part of her that knew. She knew the Methane Clathrate’s presence increased the already inherent risk involved in breaching an unknown environment. Regardless of the incomplete picture she had of the unknown caldera, she still knew the risk was greater than any potential benefit. Of course, she did. She was the great Doctor Madeline Schaefer, world renowned Marine Biologist and Geophysicist.
When she’d first started her work for ICONS and discovered the scope of what they were doing: the size of the deposit, the location… she understood it was dangerous. However, when she tried to even hint at a concern, ICONS simply threw more money at her—and she’d happily caught it.
She was complicit in the fall of mankind.
Move!
Mads finger lay motionless on the key. Was that her punishment? To spend her final moments writhing in the agony of not being able to undue any of her past deeds? To have any hope of repentance taken by The Kuru.
Her eyes flitted around her room, and she fought through the haze of her diseased mind to try and come up with a way to complete the task. Mads found she couldn’t move her head anymore.
It was getting harder to breathe.
“Henry…” Mads wasn’t sure if she was calling out to him, or cursing him for leaving her alone. He shouldn’t have died. Her email should have been addressed to him. Instead, she had to resort to looking up another colleague she might be able to trust. A man on the other side of the world who hadn’t spoken to her in years.
“Lizzy…” she gurgled. In her drunken state the night before, Mads had purposefully arranged herself on the bed after spending nearly thirty hours going through her documents and compiling all the data. There were two photographs carefully situated next to the laptop: her favorite of Henry she’d taken from the frame on her desk, and the one of her sister Lizzy, that she unpacked from her bags. In her left hand she clasped the cherished locket. Was it still there?
Mads whimpered when she realized she couldn’t move enough to see her hand and check, so instead closed her eyes. Struggling to find a good memory to cling to, her mind wandered to the message she’d sent to Kabir Bakshi the night before.
She had kept it simple. It was best that way. It read:
Dear Kabir-
I’m sick. I haven’t uncovered anything further of note that would help you, other than you should probably scratch site two. I imagine it’s already uninhabitable by now. Perhaps you should try somewhere in central Siberia? I hear it’s lovely there this time of year.
See you in hell.
-M
Mads smiled a crooked smile and took a shuddering breath. She so wished she could have seen his face when he read it. He hadn’t answered her, of course, and he never would. She was no longer worth his time. Just one more asset lost. So much loss.
She had regrets.
Mads eye’s flickered back open and she would have groaned if she were able. Her first regret was that she should have gone for the additional bottle of whiskey. Second, that she didn’t have anyone to call to say goodbye.
After Lizzy’s death from the cancer, Mads completed her withdrawal from society, including the colleagues and acquaintances who had never fully become friends. Henry was the only person she spoke to on a regular basis, and that had stopped after she went to work for ICONS. Not that she blamed him. Henry was a clever man, and had likely seen through the corporation’s scientific front years before the MOHO. He had always been suspicious of wealthy and influential backers with anything involving the environment. And he was right.
Maddy!
Mads eyes sprang back open in response to her sister’s voice. She’d been unaware she had closed them.
Maddy! Help me!
“No,” Mads gasped, her lips sticking together and barely parting. Her vision was blurred, but she thought she could see trees. Huge, towering pines that grew in the mountains around their family home.
“Help me Maddy, I can’t hang on!”
She was running. Mads could feel the pine needles crunching painfully under her small, bare feet as she ran frantically toward what she and her sister called the ‘watering hole’. Their parents had forbidden them from ever going there alone.
Lizzy was only nine years old, and she had been eleven. It was the second day of a much-anticipated summer break. It was so hot. Mads could feel the sun beating down on her bare arms, burning the part created on the top of her head from the thick black braids bouncing against her back.
“I’m coming Lizzy!” she slurred.
Her feet pounded the ground and her arms flailed as she flew recklessly down the steep hill leading to the cool pool of water that gathered near the base of a small waterfall. The creek that went through the secluded acreage was fed by mountain runoff, so it was always cold. Mads suspected the one-hundred-degree heat was enough to compel her younger sister to risk the wrath of their parents.
Except, Lizzy wasn’t a good swimmer. Not like she was.
There was the unmistakable sound of splashing water as Mads broke through the line of trees and stumbled to the edge of the ten-foot bank. The rope swing was loose and dangling out over the water. She could see the cascading ripples, working their way out from near the middle. A red blur of motion moved just below the surface.
Lizzy had red hair. It was an unusual genetic trait for their family, that Mads never let her live down. But on that sunny afternoon back in the 70’s, it helped her save her sister’s life.
There had been a moment. A space in time as Mads stood perched on the edge, watching her sister drown, when she considered her own morality. At eleven years old, she was smart enough to know she was risking her life by jumping in. It wasn’t automatic. She’d thought of running home for help. Of letting someone else jump in and save her.
Mads jumped. Her mouth parted as she lay there on the bed, reliving the past. The only time in her life when she’d committed a purely unselfish act for another person. Her left hand twitched and spasmed around the locket resting there, while in her mind she clawed at her sister’s flaming red hair, barely visible through the murky, swirling water beneath the falls.
She swam for the surface. But unlike that day so many years before, Mads didn’t make it. The darkness smothered her and filled her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her mind echoed with her sister’s screams, and the knowledge that with her final breath, she didn’t do the right thing.
She was complicit.
Chapter 5
JASON
Wooded area near Roy, Washington
Jason slowly approached the convoy as it came to a stop for what he assumed was a lunch break. He scowled at Marty as he bound away from one of the trucks to come and sit at his feet. “Traitor,” he joked, reaching out to pet the Shepard mix. Unlike himself, Sergeant Gentry didn’t impose a twenty-four-hour quarantine on the dog.
He had caught up with the troops around the same time the day before, after walking for most of the night. They hadn’t made it too far south on Interstate five before it got dark, so he’d stumbled across the group before they cut over east to interstate 167. Otherwise, he would have lost them.
It didn’t take Jason long after leaving the hospital to come to the realization that he wasn’t going to get very far on his own. Not without basic gear and more resources available to him. He had no phone reception, only the clothes on his back. And no way to get food or water in the city suburbs without looting for it. Since that was something he refused to do, it left him with taking his chances with the sergeant and her ability to be reasonable. The military was also his best bet to go south, if he could talk them into it.
It was a short conversation. Fortunately, in addition to being reasonable, she was intelligent enough to understand that if Jason wasn’t symptomatic after twenty-four hours from his surprise arrival, he should be in the clear.
A bird chirped happily from one of the many pine trees lining the rural state route, painting a false atmosphere of serenity. The reality of their situation was anything but serene. The gas masks dangling from all of the soldier’s necks and their constant, nervous glances exposed the heightened anxiety and intense alertness they all shared.
As he watched Gentry and another soldier approaching him along the blacktop, Jason was aware of the strategic placement of the two military vehicles, as well as the troops. The area of wooded, rolling hillsides was sparsely populated, and they’d only passed a couple of other vehicles and a few random people throughout the past day, but it only took one. One infected person, either sneaking up on their own, or in a group desperate enough to try and ambush them for the supplies. After everything else that had happened, it turned out the most dangerous threat was a microscopic assassin.
The sergeant and her companion pulled their masks up when they got to within ten feet of Jason. He had his own N95 hospital-issued mask on, though it had certainly seen better days. He definitely wouldn’t rely on it to protect him anymore if he really thought he needed it.
“You’ll understand if I don’t take your word on being symptom free,” Gentry said as the man next to her held up a digital thermometer.
Jason shrugged and held out his hand. “I’d do the same thing, so of course I won’t hold it against you.” He took and then pressed the device to his forehead and held his breath as it beeped. Although he didn’t have the tell-tale headache or anything other than some understandable aches and pains, a lot rode on what his current body temperature was. He handed it back without looking.
“Ninety-eight point nine,” the man said aloud with obvious relief. He pulled his black-colored nitrile gloves off and pocketed them. “No headache?” Jason shook his head. The guy took a step forward and scrutinized his face. “No burning eyes or neurological issues?”
“No,” Jason said. “In spite of repeated exposures for the four days I spent in the hospital with people who were actively infectious.”
The soldier abruptly stepped back again and exchanged a look with Gentry. Jason could read the concern even with their full-faced respirator masks on.
“What are you saying?” Sergeant Gentry asked, squinting at him.
“That I’m immune.”
Gentry cleared her throat nervously before huffing, clearly not accepting his explanation. “The latest report we got from the CDC this morning indicates a more than ninety-nine percent infection rate, Jason. They’ve been unable to determine for certain if anyone is immune.”
Jason grinned, and he hoped it showed in his eyes. “Then I guess someone is going to want to talk to me and maybe go over the research material I told you about yesterday.” When he sensed a continued hesitation, he resisted the urge to move closer to them and instead gripped the straps of his backpack. “Look. My pal, Eddy? You know he was one of the leading neurologists in the country. Did you happen to go through the documents I gave you Tuesday morning? Be
cause he put that together a few days ago, highlighting things the CDC hadn’t even figured out yet at that point. He was the one feeding them some of the initial data. He turned down jobs to go and work for the government more than once over the years. The CDC, or whoever is leading the investigation into The Kuru, is going to want to have a look at the additional research he gave me before he died. Maybe you can also sample my blood, or something.”
Gentry waved a hand dismissively at him. “We don’t have time to discuss this now. We’re moving again in…” she glanced at her watch. “In twenty-five minutes. You’re welcome to join us, so long as you keep your mask on when inside our ranks and respect some social distancing etiquette. We’ll be reaching an established FEMA camp later tonight where you can get a real medical clearance and talk with someone there about all of this. It’s above my pay-grade, to be honest with you.”
Jason didn’t hesitate to jump at the invitation, and fell in beside Gentry as they began walking back to the vehicles. Reaching the FEMA camp would check off a goal on his list, but he would still be a long way from his ultimate destination. That would require a different form of transportation.
The sergeant had been keeping a grueling pace, but they’d still only be about fifty miles south of Seattle by the end of the day. The transport trucks, though necessary, could only go as fast the obstacles in the roadways allowed. As they moved off I5 and onto the less-traveled roads further inland, that became less of an issue, but they were still limited to how fast those on foot could walk. Jason suspected that as they got far enough out of the Damage Zone, they’d simply meet up with more vehicles to continue whatever new rescue mission they were transferred to.
“Are you being sent to help with the Yellowstone evacuation?” Jason asked, prompted by his thoughts.
Gentry’s head bobbed in response. “We’re getting restocked at the camp and heading east, to Montana. I’m not sure what our role will be once we get there, but honestly, right now nothing is certain.”
