Dying to Live

by Roxy De Winter

  When they pulled up outside the main doors of a rather grand looking hotel, Xin’s hand drew out her purse to pay the taxi.

  “That’ll be ten bucks,” The driver announced.

  “Oh dear. I don’t suppose you take English pounds, do you?” Xin giggled nervously. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to get her money exchanged, but in the rush that she’d been in that morning, she had completely forgotten.

  “Don’t toy with me lady...” the driver replied menacingly, turning in his seat to glare at her. Xin recoiled under his scrutiny.

  “It’s okay,” Pete said, cutting in and handing the driver a twenty dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

  The driver grunted and grudgingly told them to enjoy their stay. Xin doubted she’d get a chance to enjoy the simple pleasures that Vegas offered, but thanked him anyway.

  As the taxi pulled away, Pete cocked his head.

  “Did you hear that?” He asked.

  “Hear what?” Xin had barely finished her sentence when she heard a scream. Her brow furrowed as her mind struggled to gauge how far away it came from. Pete started forwards, as if to go and investigate, but Xin hesitantly pulled him back. “Pete, I wish we could go and see what is going on, but right now it is someone else’s problem. Until you know what all this is about and I can establish the situation and how to deal with it, we should be careful.”

  “Okay, so you’re definitely an agent,” Pete said, trying to make light of a situation that was rapidly growing more and more serious.

  2.

  “My name is Bao- Zhi Yuan. My office in Beijing received confirmation of the outbreak 2 hours and thirty minutes after Xin was discovered to have left London on a flight to America. I’d been biding my time sat at my desk for a while after I normally would have left and gone home. It was pointless. I knew I’d be waiting all night to hear from her considering the flight duration, but with the circumstances unravelling before me, what hope did I have of sleep? I decided I could just as easily wait for her to contact me at home. As I headed down to the reception to sign out and leave, I was accosted on the stairs...”

  The man who was approaching Bao, looked flustered. His white lab coat was flapping ridiculously as he hurried down the stairs after him.

  “Dr Yuan!” he panted “Dr Yuan, sir!”

  Bao turned to face the young technician, his hand subconsciously clenching tighter around the handle of the briefcase he was carrying. For a moment, he wondered if somebody had spotted him earlier, transferring files from the computer in the main office to a USB stick now stored in his case. He dismissed the thought.

  “Can I help you?” Bao asked, looking up from halfway down the stairs to the small landing where the technician had stopped and was clutching the banister, wheezing and red in the face.

  “The boss... he wants to see you... in the main conference suite...” The man, who was really not much more than a boy, stuttered out his message between deep gulping breaths. He had obviously run straight down from the main office at the top of the building. With a sigh, Bao turned and headed back up the stairs.

  As he drew level with the landing of the floor which the conference suite was on, he saw that others were already there and were making their way inside. It seemed that the whole team of senior personnel had been called to attend. Some of them had obviously been pulled back from their homes after having already left, judging from their casual attire. Bao made his way down the short hall and into the conference room. The room had not been prepared for use. The desks which were usually arranged into a rough circle, were piled against the walls. People were just stood around waiting to find out what was going on. This told Bao plenty. If the meeting had not been planned or anticipated, then it meant that something had happened. He’d known in his gut all day that it was headed to this point, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. If he had, then maybe he would have stopped Xin from heading straight into the heart of it, all by herself.

  “Good Evening esteemed colleagues,” Dr Hitsu called out over the gentle chatter of his ruffled employees. Everyone turned to face the man who was now stood at the front of the room in front of a large projection screen. “I offer my deepest apologies for this inconvenience; authorities higher than myself have ordered that we gather. They have insisted that all of our high-ranking staff members be present for a live broadcast from the Chief Executive Officer at the global head office. It is not only our department being called in like this, but international research offices also. I’m sure I do not need to press upon you all, how serious this matter is. I therefore ask that you listen carefully and save any questions until such a time as we are equipped to deal with them.”

  Bao disliked Dr Hitsu. Mainly for his way of speaking as though he was superior to anyone else who occupied the same building as him. The brief speech he gave, dripped with self-importance and delusions of grandeur. This man may be the head of the facility but in Bao’s eyes the rest of the people gathered in this room were the ones doing the real work. Whatever was said in the broadcast, Bao could guarantee that it meant more work for them than for Dr Hitsu, who’s only job seemed to be keeping head office in the loop and feigning stress when he had to report anything that was less than perfect.

  Turning his attention to the screen which was now set up with the projector and displaying a live webcam feed, Bao watched the sombre, tired looking face deliver a grim message indeed.

  “I would like, first, to thank our offices in France, Russia, Italy, China and Britain for convening at such short notice. Before I proceed I must remind you that, as written in all employees’ contracts; clause 16 paragraph C: ‘The Corporation has the right to demand complete discretion and secrecy in reference to any of the projects or work being carried out throughout the course of its research.’ At this point we are obliged to enforce that right. Put bluntly, what I am about to tell you must remain confidential. Anyone caught breaking the trust of this agreement will find themselves facing more than just disciplinary action. This is now a matter of global security.

  “Now, onto business. As you are all aware, unsettling developments have disrupted the facility based in Nevada, USA. Known popularly as area 51, the work carried out there to revolutionize life as we know it has suffered a terrible calamity. On Tuesday 17th August at 6pm local time, Nevada, a technical failure led communication to break down. We are now sure that it also caused a breach in security.”

  Around him people began to gasp and whisper. Bao took advantage of the pause, to work out mentally the time differences. Beijing was sixteen hours ahead of Nevada time, meaning that the outbreak would have been at 10am that morning to him. It was 5.30pm now so why was it only just being confirmed to them? He tried to make some allowances for the fact that, given the many time differences, it was likely that communication could be difficult at the best of times. At least they had known of the communication failure within an hour of it happening. The thought still worried him. If seven and a half hours had already passed and Xin still had somewhere around another eight hours left on her flight, what situation would she arrive to?

  He turned his attention back to the screen as the speech resumed.

  “The Nevada facility, fortunately, has a back-up security system. Although everyone within the compound was at that point presumed to be either dead or infected, the outbreak was contained. A little under three hours ago, at approximately 10.40pm local time, military forces were deployed to the facility.

  I would, at this point, like to mention that we would have liked to have handled the matter much sooner but needed, first, to understand more fully what had happened and consider the safety of civilians in the surrounding areas.”

  At this point, the quiet chatter in the room had begun to escalate and Bao was trying to figure out where the information he was being given was leading to. As he thought about it, he recalled something that brought a lump to his throat. He had seen for himself the strange news reports about attacks on civilians. He had briefly me
ntioned it to Xin. That had been before he had told her about the military being dispatched to the area. He had known about that shortly before it had actually happened, but had known about the attacks first. If the outbreak had been contained, how was that possible? For there to have been attacks being reported in the surrounding areas, when the outbreak was supposedly confined and the military hadn’t even arrived at the base. If the outbreak was not contained, as he now suspected, then why was the military response not aimed at the areas that were suffering attacks?

  Bao made his way through the small crowd to the front of the room. He wanted to be able to see and hear the rest of the broadcast properly and feared he wouldn’t be able to over the growing hysteria.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I must now inform you that although armed soldiers arrived at the site and cleared the facility, there was enough evidence to suggest that a small number of staff members managed to flee the site. Given the occurrences in the surrounding area, we think it fair to presume that at least one of these survivors was infected during the incident and can now declare a state of emergency. At this moment, the number of attacks is low and we aim to keep it that way. We want to have this problem dealt with quickly. We are currently unsure of how fast this infection could spread, but have all of our best minds working overtime on this matter. We hope to have the r-nought worked out soon and a plan of action imminently. I ask that nobody panics, nobody discusses this situation with friends, family or other civilians and that all correspondence, research and files relating to the Area 51 facility and its work be destroyed.

  Rest assured that the corporation recognises your loyalty and appreciates your co-operation with this delicate matter. Good day.”

  With that, the screen went black and there was stunned silence. Behind him, Bao heard a small group of women start whispering, questioning in disbelief the order to destroy any files related to the outbreak. As he listened, one of the women voiced the exact thought that had already crossed his own mind.

  “Surely, if all the research is all destroyed, the hopes of curing these people are destroyed with it? Nobody will know what it is or where it came from and anyone infected will die.”

  Bao turned to her.

  “Don’t you see? They don’t care; they don’t want anyone to know that they are to blame. Their first priority is drawing the blame away from themselves. They’d rather let those people die than have to face the consequences of their own actions.”

  She looked at him. He could tell that she didn’t want to believe what he had said, but she was starting to see that he was right.

  “Surely they wouldn’t...” she began in reply, but let the sentence trail off.

  “Well, that’s certainly what it looks like to me.” He shook his head and ran a hand quickly through his hair. “Excuse me.”

  Bao approached Dr Hitsu, who was now trying to turn off the projector and the computer that it was hooked up to.

  “Ah, Dr Yuan...” Dr Hitsu began.

  “Please, spare me,” Bao said, cutting him off before he could start with his usual condescending bullshit. He carried on before Hitsu could protest. “Are we free to leave now?”

  “Of course, but...”

  “Alright, then I bid you goodnight.” And with that Dr Bao-Zhi Yuan walked out of the conference suite, right down the stairs and out of the glass doors of the building.

  For a while Bao just sat in his car, out in the parking lot with his elbows rested on the steering wheel and his face in his hands, thinking. Going over the things he had seen and heard. Considering what his course of action should be. He admired Xin for her decision to head straight out into the centre of things, without even a thought for her own safety. However, he was not the man he wished he was. He had to think about things. He didn’t just DO things without being prepared. Although he was not selfish, he wasn’t reckless either. He had a good instinct for self-preservation.

  After so long, he began to tell himself that it was time to push some of his old self to the side and go and make himself useful. Xin was good at what she did but so was he. The two of them working together could get more done and faster. When Xin had been the new girl, it had been he who had mentored her. He had helped her become accustomed to the work and helped her collect samples and analyse them. His way of nudging her thought process in the right direction, without giving her the answers, had been just what she needed. He couldn’t help but think that somewhere along the way, she may need him again.

  Bao sat up and wiped his eyes with one hand. When he opened them he saw his briefcase on the passenger seat beside him. Remembering the now forbidden files on the memory stick, he smiled. He still had a knack for being one step ahead. The knowledge that these files would soon be the only kind of record anyone had of ALS, gave him the push he needed and he pulled out his mobile phone.

  It took a lot of convincing and he had to call in a favour or two but Bao had a plan. He managed to book, not only a flight to Nevada, but a private plane. His reason for not just using a commercial plane was simple; he needed to keep safe at all costs so that the memory stick arrived safely with him. This meant that he needed no possible run-ins with infected people. He doubted that it had yet left the USA, but he figured he’d rather be safe than sorry. It was probable that all of the staff working for the government research areas involved in the Nevada Project were being tracked. He may still get caught out, but going by private plane was a little less obvious. One of the pharmaceutical companies that he had worked for had a plane that was used for transporting things that they didn’t want to draw attention to. Dr Bishop, who ran the show over at ZanChai Med, still owed him a personal favour for sorting things out after a run in with some semi-illegal narcotics. After the plane was sorted, he pulled some strings with Yuna Ling and Zoe Chow who worked in a different department to him. They knew nothing about the international projects that he was involved in and would never admit to giving him the equipment they had arranged, for fear of losing their jobs. Before he began the long journey to the private aircraft hangar which he was due to leave from at 8.45pm, he wrote out a short text message to Xin:

  ‘Xin, I hope you arrived safely. There have been developments here but I can’t really say much in this message. I have something you need and I’m bringing it to you. By the time you receive this I will be on a plane, but message me back when you land. I will need the details of where to find you. See you soon, Bao.’

  3.

  ‘Well, I’m Pete. Peter Rzewski if you wanted my full name. I’d not known Xin for very long when she suggested that we get a hotel, but how could I say no? Okay, so it wasn’t like that but still I was pretty surprised. It shocked me most how quickly we began to trust each other. I knew that she was aware of something big that was happening, it was clear from the moment she asked me to stay with her. When we had managed to secure separate but adjoining rooms at the hotel, I tried to prepare myself to hear whatever it was that Xin was going to tell me...’

  The room was decidedly gaudy. Maybe that was just to be expected in Vegas. The walls were painted in shades of purple and there were shiny, silver accents scattered throughout. A mirrored disco ball hung from the centre of the ceiling and there was a switch that would cast beams of light at it, refracting dancing spots of colour all around the room. None the less, it was clean and comfortable. The bed was piled with furry throw pillows and a quilted, satin blanket.

  This high up, the windows didn’t open. It was a health and safety precaution that prevented unlucky gamblers from returning to their rooms after a night in the casino and jumping from them. Pete would have appreciated the fresh air. Instead an oscillating room fan circulated the stale air, stirring it up and creating the illusion of a fresh breeze.

  Pete opened his suitcase, which was laid on the freshly made bed in his room. He had parted ways with Xin just outside of her room next door. They both needed to change and freshen up after the madness of the plane ride and the crushing airport. He took out his electric ra
zor and plug adaptor and headed into the en-suite bathroom. Dumping them beside the sink, Pete gratefully discarded his clothes, which seemed soiled by the travel and stress. He left them pooled on the floor and stepped into the glass shower cubicle, before turning on the water. The soothing torrent gradually washed away some of the bewilderment he felt at finding himself in this situation. He kept telling himself that the reason he liked to travel a lot was, after all, to experience new things. And this was definitely going to be new for him. Pete didn’t know how long he’d been stood under the water, but a knock on the adjoining door told him it must have been a while. He smiled to himself, thinking about how it was typically said that women were the ones that took forever to get ready. He turned off the water and brushed his hair back from his face, before stepping out and wrapping a towel around his waist.

  “Sorry, could you give me another ten minutes?” He called.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Sorry,” Xin flustered. He sensed that she was anxious to have this over with, and so he shaved quickly and threw on some beach shorts. Pete pulled on a t-shirt and hurriedly cleared away his laundry and used towels. He was still towelling his hair dry as he knocked on the adjoining door.

  “Okay, I’m all done. Let’s get this show on the road,” He called.

  When Xin opened the door, Pete was leaning into the mini-fridge. He turned to face her with two miniature bottles of whiskey in his hand.

  “I’m willing to bet this is going to be serious, so do you fancy a drink to settle our nerves?” He asked.

  “I think I better had,” she told him. “At the moment, I feel like it could all get to be too much for me before its even begun.”