“We have the cure. There is nothing to be afraid of,” Jo yells. Holding the syringe in one hand and waving her arms back and forth.
The guards keep their guns up. I can barely make out his a command over their radio: “Captain, please report to the front gate.”
“We have the damn cure!” I scream again. The guard’s head moves around hesitantly. He nods. He receives some sort of response.
“You can’t take another step forward, but leave the syringe.”
“Hell no. Do you know what we’ve been through to get here?” Jo replies.
“Leave the syringe,” the voice demands.
“Why in the hell can’t we come cross this line? You gonna shoot me for crossing a line?” Nichols yells, releasing Carter and walking forward.
There is an explosion, and Nichols falls backwards. Jo screams while a look of horror covers my face as Nichols’s back collides with the ground. He doesn't move. Carter struggles to his own feet, but he nearly stumbles until I can support his weight again. Jo goes to Nichols’s side and collapses on her knees.
“No... No...” she begins to repeat.
She rips open the shirt beneath his jacket. A squashed piece of metal rests in the middle of his vest. Nichols sits up and coughs. Jo looks relieved, and I finally breathe out. I reposition Carter on my shoulder.
“Please. Back up,” the guard yells, nearly sounding relieved. He doesn't want to kill anyone.
This time we listen to his command.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone else. All of you get down on your knees and cross your fingers on the back of your head. Someone will be out there shortly”
We again listen and assume the position. Nichols groans while clutching his chest, but rises to his knees.
Several armed men dressed in all black with gas masks and guns appear at the fence and go through the gate.
They advance toward us.
Chapter 31: Carter
“I'm telling you,” I yell, “we aren't infected.”
The men ignore us. After forcibly taking the syringe from Jo's hand, they push the four of us past the fence and immediately into a nearby concrete structure with a thick metal door. Men in white plastic protective suits and masks wait for us inside.
They pull us along while the men with rifles follow. After we are shoved into a room, the door behind us closes and the armed men remain outside, peering through a small glass window. The ones in haz-mat suits who remain yell.
“You need to be decontaminated, and tested. Please strip.”
“But we aren't infected,” Nichols struggles to yell while clutching his chest. They ignore him.
One of them reaches and grabs Paige. Despite the pain in my stomach, I clench a fist and pull back.
“Don't,” Paige says, seeing my building rage, and grabbing my wrist. “Just do as they say. We're almost through this.”
I listen to her. They aren't the New Americans, and I have trouble seeing that.
They remove all of our clothes and wash our entire bodies with brushes at the end of poles and with a bleach smelling soap. The four of us share concerned looks as the suited men completely sterilize us. We do our best to cover ourselves, but the humiliation of the situation is unavoidable. Hot water then pours from the ceiling and covers us. I clench my teeth in pain as the soap continues to seep into my wound.
After the shower, they dry us and provide us with sterile white scrubs to put on. A masked young woman takes our blood and even briefly addresses my wounds with fresh bandages. They load us into a blank white room with a white light and tell us to wait there until the tests return.
In the quiet cell, I look to the others. To be honest, it's the cleanest we have ever looked. I limp over to a white plastic chair and ease myself down. Paige stands beside me and Nichols stays close to Jo along the nearby wall. We are silent for several moments. None of us has anything to say.
We could be either moments away from total safety or certain death. If any of us still has some trace of the virus, God knows what they'll do. I reach up and grab Paige's hand. She turns to me, and the left side of her face smiles.
A man in a black suit walks into the main room.
“I apologize for the treatment. It's protocol,” he says, opening the top button of his suit jacket and lifting a tablet in front of him. He's probably forty years old; an age I have not seen in a very long time. His finger scans for some information, he reads it, and then looks back up to us.
“I understand,” Nichols answers before I share some of my anger.
“The name is Robert Freyson. I've been in charge of containing the United States situation these past few years. Please follow me.”
He takes us from the room and guides us though the building. It mostly resembles an office. Men and woman wearing suits give us uneasy glances and a few soldiers move along the hall amongst them.
Robert opens up a door that leads to a conference room.
“Please, sit,” Robert says, gesturing to the steel table in the center of the room. We listen and sit along one side. He goes to the other and sits in front of us. “We inspected that vaccine you came with. That really is the real deal, eh?”
I nod although I figure it is a rhetorical question.
“We've already had it mapped, and it is on the way to replication. After we get a few of our men inoculated, we will be sending them into America to distribute. We are hoping we can have men in the county within the next few hours. We've been ready for mass distribution, but until today, we didn't have anything to distribute. Because of you, we are going to be able to save a lot of lives.” He gives a big smiles and a nod.
“Why did you all abandon us in the first place for all these years?” I ask with a bitter look. “The world shut us out.”
His eyes go back and forth. Guilt covers his face.
“Well, we started to transport children into our country at the initial outbreak. However, we quickly learned that even they were infected. Everyone in the States seemed to be infected. Unable to create a vaccine, we had little choice but to pull out. It only took a small outbreak in Quebec for our politicians to get cold feet. They immediately called for the militarization of the border. We had to look out for ourselves.”
“We know you did,” Jo says. Robert’s eyes linger on her for a second as if to attempt a rebuttal, but instead he just continues.
“How did you all manage to even create a vaccine? Japan, the Brits, and even Canada have all been trying to synthesize one, but it was impossible.”
“We had someone who was naturally immune.”
His eyes look puzzled. “We had no record of anyone being immune.”
“There weren't many. I'm one of them.”
“I see. Did you have any idea of how the virus came to be?”
My conversation with Matthews comes to mind. They need to know the truth, but now is not the time.
“With all due respect, sir,” Nichols says, “we've been through a lot the past couple of days. If we could just rest.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Robert says, rising to his feet. “We'd like you to stay around here if you don't mind, but there's a dormitory and a cafeteria in this building. Make yourselves at home. The people here will help you with anything you may need. Please let us proceed; I'll give you the ten-cent tour.”
He stands and nods at us. He closes the button of his suit coat and walks out of the door. The four of us are left alone in the conference room. We stand and follow him. I don't know what they did to my gunshot wound, but I can barely feel any pain.
“So,” Jo begins, “you think this is actually the time that we are safe?”
I laugh. It's an odd thing to laugh about.
“Yea, Jo,” I answer, “This is always about the time that something goes wrong.”
“Not this time,” Paige says, placing her head on my shoulder and delicately wrapping her arms around my chest.
I think she's right.
Pulling her a little tighter
, and even in the back of my mind, I don't worry about a thing.
Chapter 32: Paige
Today, they finally release us from the center. It's been a week since we first arrived. Not that they held us prisoner, but they desired to be thorough in their interviews. They wanted to know every excruciating detail about, well, everything. Some of it is painful to recall, but I finally feel like I've closed that chapter in my life – the chapter of death and survival. A new life is beginning to take shape, and I'm not sure what it'll form.
Canada and a few other countries have already begun to scour America to distribute the vaccine. Surprisingly, reports are very promising. They are finding thousands of survivors across the states. Not everything we did was in vain.
We asked them to search for Caitlyn, Ryan, Michael or anyone in that city. They said they couldn't find any of them. They brought us back digital pictures of the intersection in front of the toy store. It looked like a battlefield.
But the bus was missing.
After we get out of here, we will do our own search. One of them has to be alive. One has to be.
I lift my foot up and carefully lace my heeled boot on the frame of the bed. I can't wait to get out of this place. They gave us government credit cards to use to let us begin some sort of a life. They booked us rooms at a nearby hotel and are cutting us loose. A few cops will stay with us just in case. The Canadian government promised to support us until we completely stand on our own feet.
My arms stretch through the armholes of the thick wool coat. Carter turns to me with a smile as he enters the room.
“You still have a tag,” he says, reaching toward my waist. He pulls the tag off my coat. They had clothes brought in for us. When we leave the center, they want us to look our best. Carter zips up his leather jacket, and adjusts the pale blue patterned scarf around his neck. It's really gotten cold out these past few days.
Nichols and Jo walk into the doorway; those two are now dressed to impress as well. Nichols wears a long coat over a suit and tie. Jo wears a navy dress with long pea coat and black leggings. She wanted a green coat, but she settled for the gray one they delivered.
“Are you all ready for this?” Nichols asks, placing the same beat-up white cowboy hat onto his head.
“We have to do this sooner or later,” Carter answers.
Jo walks into the room and steps to the window, her hands in the pockets of her coat. A large crowd is gathering by the entrance. They know we are coming. Cameramen sit on top of dozens of news trucks with their cameras pointed toward the entrance. They have deemed us the “saviors of America.” Every journalist in the world seems to be waiting for us to finally be released into the wild. I had hoped that they would show us some humanity, but I should know better about the media.
The Canadians in this building have leaked our story, and the world wants to know it in its entirety.
I join Jo by the window and squeeze her hand this time. She turns, with an uneasy smile. “We are all in this together.”
Carter and Nichols come up behind us.
No matter what happens, we are in this together.
A family.
We leave the small room and walk down the hallway. My fingers hold tightly onto Carter's hand. Looking towards the other two, I see their hands do the same. We stop as we approach the front entrance.
My eyes turn up to Carter. We've been through so much these past few years. He smiles and pulls my hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it. No matter what happens outside of these doors, we will continue to be together. How many other men out there will I find that have saved my life countless times? I guess he can say the same, too. His eyes wince slightly as he walks with the healing gunshot wound. It'll heal.
We all have healing to do. But the scars will fade.
I wish Ryan and David could be with us. I owe so much to them, too. They'd be happy knowing that I made it out alive. A grin fills my lower face.
I look up. Two police officers stand on each side of the door. They turn to us.
“Are you four ready for this?” the one portly officer asks. He looks unsure about all of this as well. “They're damn vultures.”
“We can do this,” Nichols whispers to them. Yes, yes we can.
The police officer nods, and they both open the doors.
My eyes squint as light burst from every direction.
The four of us stay close and push forward as the camera's flash and the reporters shout.
Chapter 33: Jocelyn
I step over the threshold and into a home that I have not seen in nearly seven years. The room is dusty and a musky smell fills the air. Still, it doesn’t look much different from how I remember it. It doesn’t appear to be looted and everything stands the same way that we left it. I point my flashlight toward the windows. The curtains block out the sunlight. I walk to the glass and pull back the fabric.
Daylight pours into the room. I switch off the light and press my forehead against the glass while peering into the street. Several waste trucks move up and down. Cleanup is going to take a long time. Some uniformed men toss large bags into the green trucks. God knows what's inside of them.
The city will take years before the streets look the way they once did, and it has already been over a year since the vaccine was distributed throughout the country. Only yesterday did the UN Reconstruction Services begin to let the few survivors back into the cities. Most cities are too hazardous from the years of decay and filth. It all was worsened with the addition of the thousands who now lie dead from the second plague.
Carter and Paige chose not to come back to the country. The house that we briefly shared off the Great Lakes turned into their permanent home. I couldn’t stay with them anymore - I needed to return. Besides, I had found a reason to move on, and he had had enough of Canada.
And he was okay with visiting my old home one last time before we head further south.
We're done with being cold.
Another flashlight comes through the front entrance. Nichols gives me a nod and proceeds to another room.
“So, this is where you used to live?”
“Yea,” I say. I remember a painful memory. “Just don’t go into that bedroom, okay?” Gesturing at the door to the right.
He nods and continues to move through the room. He could tell that I didn’t want to tell him why, and he is kind enough not to ask. I walk toward the dining room table, and take a seat at the end of it.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was here, icing a damn cake above all things.
Has it really been over seven years since dad died?
Since the city turned to chaos.
Since those two girls snuck in the back of our SUV.
They both had become family in such a short time that I had forgotten how we found them. Sara had so much personality. Caitlyn was the quiet observer.
Thinking of them feels good, but then I remember what happened to them. We lost them both. Despite our efforts, we couldn’t save either of them.
We never heard from Caitlyn. We figured she died there that day and despite our most thorough searches, we never found her. Her body was probably lost among the many other who died that day in the city.
I want to be more persistent, but this isn't like last time. Deep down, I know she is gone.
I turn to the right along the wall. Two matching sized picture frames of my brother and I stare back at me. They were our school pictures that dad insisted on putting up on the wall. Jon gave a closed lip smile, and I beamed without a care in the world. I faintly make out my reflection in the glass of the frame. My face staring back looks much different from the photo.
“So, is this your brother?” Nichols asks moving beside me. His hand goes around my waist tenderly.
“Yea,” I say. While looking at his photo, I realize that this is the longest that I have thought about him in years. He’d kind of fallen to the farthest corner of my mind, and I let his memory stay there.
I do feel
guilty about it. I was so hard on him back then. He made up for it a thousand times over.
“Do you wanna take the pictures with us?” he asks. That’s why we are here anyway. To take the last little bit of a lifelong since past.
“No,” I respond. I don't need a picture to remind me. Just being alive reminds me of what he did. I know that without him, I wouldn't be here today. We walk carefully around, and briefly enter my bedroom. It is filled with things that don't matter anymore.
“There is nothing here I need.”
“Are you sure?” Nichols asks.
“Yes, I just,” I hesitate, “I just needed to say goodbye.” We walk back into the hallway; my thumb reignites my flashlight.
I shut the door behind me, and fight the minor urge to turn around and lock it. Nichols turns on his flashlight, and we walk down the hallway. Some of the noise from the outside echoes into the hall.
Just as we are halfway to the stairs, a buzzing sound comes from all around us. It’s a low-pitched hum. We both stop and look at each other. A fear begins to build. What is that...?
Then, the lights come on.
They must have gotten the power plant back online. It’s a miracle that any of the wiring still works. I look at the ceiling at the lights. Several of the bulbs are burnt out, but enough light illuminates the hall.
“Well, how about that?” Nichols says. We continue walking down the hall. I feel a hand tug at my own. I look over to Nichols; he winks and smiles.
We interlock our fingers and continue in the low light to the stairwell.
Chapter 34: Caitlyn
The wind continues to blow my hair back behind me. The hot sun feels amazing. We’re almost there.
I never thought this trip would end. Being behind the wheel of a car is a breathtaking experience, especially when there are few other cars to slow me down. I reach for the radio and crank the volume up a few notches. It was just a few months ago that the radio stations began playing music again. The song is familiar, yet I'm not sure where I heard it last.
Humanity Gone (Book 3): Rebirth Page 17
