Outbreak

by Tarah Benner

  Owen wasn’t prepared for my storm of fury, so he doesn’t move out of the way. I slam straight into his chest and pin him against the wall with my forearm.

  “How could you do this?” I growl. “I trusted you.”

  My voice sounds very strange, and my face and throat are burning with bitter unshed tears. “I’ve been running around trying to figure out a way to save your ass so we could be a family again, and you go and get yourself involved in something like this. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Eli!” Harper snaps, grabbing my arm. “Be quiet! They’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I shove my arm harder against his throat. Owen’s having a hard time breathing, but I don’t loosen my grip. Part of me wants to let him pass out and hope he wakes up a changed man. But I’m done lying to myself.

  “What the hell has gotten into you?” I whisper, all the disgust and anger leaching out in my voice. “We weren’t raised this way. If Mom and Dad heard what you just told me, they’d die of shame.”

  I drop my arm and let him choke in a breath before stabbing my index finger into his chest. “You’re a fucking disgrace.”

  Owen takes a moment to replenish his lungs, and when he finally speaks, his voice is angrier than I’ve ever heard it.

  “I’m a disgrace? You talk about what Mom and Dad would say, yet you’re gonna turn your back on me? Your own brother? For what? For a bunch of people who don’t give a shit about you? People who’d kill you just like that?” He snaps his fingers together, but the chilling effect is somewhat lost by his loud gasps for air.

  I swallow and meet his gaze with as cold a look as I can manage. “You’re not my brother.”

  As long as I live, I’ll never forget the look on Owen’s face. He’s staring at me as though I just ripped his soul out of his body.

  Then he lets out a low, bitter laugh. “Not anymore, I guess.”

  He reaches into his front pocket and holds out a closed fist. When I don’t reach for it, he jerks his hand at me. “Take it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just fucking take it, Eli.”

  Reluctantly, I hold out my hand. He opens his fist, and something hard and flat falls into my palm. It’s the arrowhead he and Dad found, still warm from his pocket.

  All I can think is, What the fuck is he giving me this for?

  It feels oddly heavy in my hand — as though Owen somehow managed to transfer the weight of his disappointment to this tiny piece of flint.

  “If you’re smart, you’ll go into hiding,” I say. My voice sounds funny, but I refuse to feel remorse. “Stay out of range of the cameras. I’m going to report you terminated. That’ll buy us both some time.”

  I want him to take the damn arrowhead back, but he’s just standing there staring at me.

  Finally, I shove it in my pocket and turn to Harper. She’s giving me a broken look that exactly captures the way I feel, but I can’t wallow right now.

  Without another word, I grab her hand and pull her out of the chapel.

  I don’t look back at Owen. As far as I’m concerned, Owen Parker is dead.

  twenty-five

  Harper

  Eli doesn’t say a word the entire journey back through town.

  The winding streets of faceless, empty homes are downright chilling after what we just heard. I picture rows of compartments standing vacant in much the same way — waiting for owners who will never draw another breath.

  I keep expecting Eli to stop at an abandoned building to rehydrate or come up with a new plan, but he seems determined to put as much distance between us and the drifters as possible.

  The afternoon sun feels as though it’s baking us alive, and by the time we reach our cliff outside of town, I’m exhausted and dehydrated.

  “We have to stop, Eli,” I say, tugging on his arm to bring him back to earth.

  When he turns toward me, I half expect him to be wearing the same “you’re dead to me” expression he had in the chapel, but he just looks lost and a little confused.

  “I need some water,” I say. “So do you.”

  There’s a long pause, and Eli nods slowly. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Relieved, I guide him into the shadow of the cliff and settle onto the ground to dig into my pack. Eli is still standing, staring off into the open desert as though he plans to make a run for it. When I hand him the water bag, he crouches down next to me and takes a long drink.

  “So what’s the plan?” I ask tentatively, still concerned that he might lash out at the only person nearby.

  “We need to signal the compound,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We can’t exactly walk back.”

  “I mean about the drifters — Owen.”

  Eli reaches into his rucksack and withdraws Owen’s faded gray baseball cap. “I’ll tell Jayden I took out Jackson’s right-hand man,” he says, brandishing the hat. “Hopefully Owen does what I told him to do.”

  I look from Eli to the hat, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t add anything else, I say, “That’s your plan?”

  Eli looks taken aback by my incredulous tone, and I force myself to muster up a little patience and compassion.

  “Eli . . . you can’t count on him going into hiding. Even if Jayden believes you killed him, one wrong move from Owen and she’s going to know you made the whole thing up.”

  “Well, what do you suggest?” he snaps. “I’m doing the best I can here, Harper!”

  “I know . . .”

  Eli lets out a guttural growl and digs his hand into a clump of weeds next to his foot. “Shit! I should have shot Malcolm when I had the chance.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. We never would have made it out of that place alive.”

  “But he’s their leader. If I’d shot him, this could all be over.”

  I can tell he’s furious with himself, but whether his frustration is truly about Malcolm or if he’s regretting the things he said to Owen, I can’t be sure.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I ask. “You heard Owen. The plan is already in motion. And there are so many of them. If one got killed, there’d be twenty more just waiting to take his place.”

  “I still should have shot him.”

  “No. Listen. There’s no point telling Jayden that Owen is dead. Just tell her what we know about the virus. That has to be worth more than one dead drifter.”

  “Tell her what, exactly? That we just sat there and listened to the drifters plot the compound’s destruction and then walked out with no trouble? How are we going to explain how we found out where they were meeting? Or why we didn’t take out Malcolm when we had the chance? She’s going to think we were in on the whole thing!”

  “Just tell her we couldn’t risk getting killed in there . . . we had to get out so we could warn the board.”

  “No. We’re sticking to the original plan.”

  “We can’t just say nothing!” I splutter. “We could save them. We have to tell the board what the drifters are planning!”

  Eli shakes his head. “Owen wouldn’t have told us anything about it if there was any chance we could slow this thing down.”

  “We have to try!”

  “I know . . .” He lets out an exasperated sigh, and I can tell he’s giving it some serious thought.

  Finally he seems to come to his senses. “We’ll warn them, okay? Just let me come up with a plan first. I can’t think straight right now.”

  I bite my lip. I don’t want to delay warning the board even by a minute, but since we seem to have reached some sort of an agreement, I let it go.

  “We’ll find a way out,” he murmurs. “I promise.”

  “What?”

  “If the virus really has been introduced to the compound, we’ll find a way to get out of there. You, me, Sawyer, Celdon, Miles . . . whoever we can take with us.”

  So that’s what’s on his mind. Oddly, I hadn’t even thought about a contingency plan, but if
someone in the compound is already infected, we’re going to need one.

  We can’t afford to waste any more time, so I stand up and hold out a hand for Eli. The sun is still bearing down with oppressive intensity, but we need to find the rover to send up a distress signal.

  The walk back to the vehicle is much longer than I remembered. It’s parked right where we left it on the side of the road, and the back tire is completely deflated.

  Eli reaches inside and hits the tiny red button on the dashboard, and an uneasy feeling creeps over me.

  Was Owen right? I wonder. Is returning to the compound tantamount to suicide?

  We don’t know anything about the virus except that it killed thousands of people in a matter of weeks. We didn’t ask any of the important questions. We don’t know how it’s transmitted or how quickly it spreads. We don’t even know how the drifters introduced the virus to 119 in the first place.

  Eli and I wait in strained silence for nearly an hour. I know we should still be watching for drifters, but after being crammed in a church with hundreds of them, one random straggler seems manageable by comparison.

  Finally, I hear the soft whir of an engine.

  Because the rovers are painted to blend in with the desert, I don’t see the rescue vehicle until it’s about 200 yards away.

  My heart sinks when I see Seamus sitting in the driver’s seat. He’s clutching the steering wheel as though the thing isn’t self-driving, and he’s wearing a mask despite the vehicle’s airtight seal.

  When the rover slows to a stop, Eli steps around back so he won’t get stuck riding alongside Seamus.

  “Where are your masks?” Seamus asks incredulously when I slide into the passenger seat.

  I look back at Eli, unprepared for this line of questioning.

  “Uh . . . we lost them,” he mutters, buckling his seat belt and avoiding Seamus’s probing gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “How did you lose them?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Seamus doesn’t look satisfied with this response, but he punches the “home” button on the dashboard. The rover hums a little louder, turns, and starts accelerating in the direction of the compound.

  “No trouble on the way here?” I ask.

  “No. Weird, huh? It’s eerie when nobody’s shooting at you out here.”

  I force a smile to hide my disgust, and a strained silence falls over the three of us.

  I can’t see Eli’s face, so I can’t tell if he’s thinking about Owen, figuring out how to tell the board what we know, or trying to come up with a plan to get us out of the compound.

  “So what happened to your rover?” Seamus asks.

  “Sorry, Duffy,” says Eli in a sharp voice. “Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to — not until we’re debriefed, at least. And last time I checked, you aren’t Jayden.”

  Seamus blanches, and I turn slightly so I can give Eli a warning look. I’m not Seamus’s biggest fan either, but there’s no reason to piss off Jayden’s right-hand man.

  “Just trying to make conversation,” he says.

  After that, time slows to a crawl. The ride back to the compound is infinitely longer than the trip out to the town, and when the tall silver compound finally comes into view, I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anything in my life.

  The rover makes a clean sweep around the structure, and the hangar doors slide open automatically.

  The tension seems to magnify in the small space as we wait for the doors to close, and as soon as they do, a trio of med interns in hazmat suits shoots out of the side doors.

  I’m relieved to see Sawyer is among them. I get out of the rover and move toward her automatically, and the others descend upon the vehicle to supervise Seamus’s and Eli’s decontamination.

  Sawyer steers me out of the hangar into a much larger decontamination chamber. Half a dozen enclosed shower stalls are lined up in a row, and I realize this must be where the ExCon guys go after a long day of work. I shudder as the cold water pelts me clean and wait for the light above the next door to turn green.

  Sawyer leads me through to the secondary chamber, where she strips me down to my shorts and tank and shimmies out of her hazmat suit.

  When we’re as clean as we can be, she punches a large blue button to retract the doors, and I plop down in the wheelchair waiting on the other side.

  It propels me toward the megalift, and as soon as the doors close behind us, Sawyer lets out an enormous sigh of relief.

  “Oh my god, Harper! I was so worried!”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Sawyer shakes her head so her hair whips back and forth. She looks more frazzled than usual — as though she hasn’t slept in days.

  “They’ve had us on standby for the last twenty hours! They received a message that your rover had been compromised, and they were talking about deploying an emergency rescue crew to bring you back. We were standing by in case . . .” She trails off for a minute, looking sick.

  “I thought you were seriously hurt. I didn’t like them sending you out in that thing in the first place.”

  “Hey! It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  Sawyer’s eyes are wide behind her glasses, giving her an almost cartoonish expression.

  “When I went for Health and Rehab, I never thought I’d be waiting around to get horrible news about you.” She purses her lips and stares at the corner of the lift, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  That elicits a sharp pang of guilt in my stomach, and I reach up to wrap an arm around her. “I’m sorry you were scared. But honestly, this isn’t what I signed up for either.”

  I’m just trying to keep the mood light, but Sawyer’s face falls. “Oh god. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m such an idiot! Forget I said anything.”

  I bat her apology away. “It’s okay.”

  The megalift dings, and the doors slide open to reveal a bustling tunnel in the medical ward. Sawyer moves to disembark, but Jayden is blocking our path.

  “What the hell is going on?” she barks.

  “Commander,” I say in a curt voice, trying to filter out my own contempt.

  Her gaze snaps onto me. “We need to talk.”

  “O-kay . . .”

  “Now!”

  Sawyer clears her throat behind me. “Um, Commander? I’m sorry, but I can’t release Cadet Riley until she’s been medically cleared.”

  Even though I can’t see her face, I know Sawyer must be blushing profusely. She hates standing up to her superiors, but by god, Sawyer always follows the rules.

  Jayden stares at her blankly, unaccustomed to having her authority challenged. Normally, she just intimidates people from other sections until they give her what she wants.

  Her lips tighten as if she’s sucking on her teeth, but she musters up a fake smile and gives Sawyer a tiny nod. “Of course. Silly me. I just jumped the gun a little, I guess. Please let me know as soon as she’s available for questioning.”

  Then, to my utter amazement, Jayden turns and walks away. I bet she’s going to lurk nearby to ambush Eli, but I never see where she goes.

  Sawyer maxes out the speed on my wheelchair, and we slide into the exam room farthest from the waiting area. As soon as the door closes behind me, all the problems I’d been trying to deny come crashing down around me.

  Eli made me promise not to say anything to anyone about the virus until he came up with a better cover story, but seeing Jayden reawakened all the anxiety I felt listening to the drifters’ scheme.

  “I need to tell you something,” I say to Sawyer, glancing back at the closed door.

  “Okay. Spill.”

  I take a deep breath and get out of the wheelchair, pacing to relieve some of my pent-up nerves. “We have a problem. You know that virus that wiped out 119?”

  Sawyer nods. “I’ve been studying the exam notes to see if I can figure out what it was, but I haven’t heard of any virus that causes those
symptoms and moves that quickly.”

  “That’s because the virus came from some government facility in Colorado. The samples should have just died when the lab shut down, but a bunch got transferred to one of the compounds in the Rocky Mountains before Death Storm.”

  “That would explain why none of the antiviral meds worked,” says Sawyer. “They’d never seen that virus before. Hang on. How did it get from Colorado to 119?”

  “The drifters planted it there to wipe out the compound.”

  Sawyer looks stunned and then panicked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they purposely introduced the virus as a biological weapon. They’re using it to bring down the compounds one by one.”

  I launch into the story of everything that happened on our deployment, and Sawyer listens with rapt attention, trying to absorb every detail. When I get to the part about spying on the drifters’ rally, her eyes grow so wide it looks as though they might pop right out of her head.

  Sawyer doesn’t really understand how deadly the drifters are, but the idea of survivors is still so new to her that it seems impossible that there could be hundreds congregating twenty miles from the compound.

  “Owen said we’re next,” I finish. “He said the plan was already in motion. What does that mean? Is the virus already here? Do you think somebody in the compound is infected?”

  “It sounds like it,” Sawyer breathes.

  “At first I thought maybe he was bluffing, but it doesn’t make sense that he would just let us leave unless he was confident that the virus was already here.”

  Sawyer looks a little sick and backs up so she can support herself on the exam counter. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know! I have to tell someone, don’t I?”

  She nods slowly.

  “But Eli wants to wait until we have a better story. He thinks it’s going to look like we were in on it or something.

  “If Jayden finds out we were there and didn’t take out Malcolm, she’s going to freak. The board’s going to be looking for someone to pin this on, and Jayden will probably try to make it look like we’re traitors so she doesn’t get blamed.”

  “Plus there’s the whole thing about you guys not actually killing Owen.”