Amy shook her head. “Just because I personally try to lead a less violent life doesn’t mean that I don’t see that it now has a place in this world, sadly. I didn’t get out of Kansas City by the power of my faith alone.”
“You’re a very spiritual person?” I asked cautiously, my conversation with Nadia from a few days ago having made me wary of this topic.
She inclined her head, but also pulled her shoulders up in a shrug. “I’d like to say yes, but I can’t in good faith say that my beliefs haven’t been shaken up. We’ve all lost friends and loved ones.” Looking around, her easy smile from before resurfaced. “But we’ve endured, and we’ve all found new people we care about. It is often in times of crisis and despair that we find out who we really are, and while I wouldn’t presume to say that we’ve all been tested, I think that a few people thrived after getting a much-needed reality check.”
I didn’t know what to make of that statement, and that it left me vaguely uncomfortable only contributed to that. When I didn’t reply, Amy got up, an apologetic smile on her face now.
“Never mind an old, rambling woman. I’ve kept you from your discussion too long. But should you, for whatever reason, want to talk to someone who doesn’t know the person you’ve been before, nor the person you are now, come find me. Sometimes outsiders see things more clearly than those mired in the details.”
She left us then, Megan and Ethan dragging me right back into their conversation—which I was glad for. I’d spent way too much time inside my head during the last week. It was time to change something about that.
I finally got my bath later that day, and although it was more lukewarm than hot, it was that kind of luxury that almost made me forget about the world outside the small chamber in the back of the bathhouse. I could have spent the time just soaking, letting my thoughts drift, but instead I kept reading up on Megan’s notes. She was definitely up to something there, but it showed that she simply hadn’t had time enough yet to sink deep into the material. I felt insanely arrogant about that assessment, but it was the truth. I didn’t know what the others besides her and Ethan had been up to, but even just spending a few hours checking their approaches, I already had two sheets of paper scrawled with alternatives that might actually yield results.
Wearing fresh clothes, really clean for the first time in forever, I couldn’t help but feel like a new person—or like the woman I’d been before that fateful day when a jogger in a park had asked me out for coffee. The past months had forced me to learn one lesson quickly—that woman was dead, because she could never have survived out there. Now, for probably the first time ever, I started to consider if maybe she still had a chance to exist.
The sun was setting outside as I left the bathhouse to rejoin the others. It was pretty obvious that no one wanted to leave yet, and when I asked Nate if he had any plans, he left it at a shrug that could have meant anything.
Amy and the other people of the village were trying their hardest to make the refugees feel welcome, but that still looked a long way from happening. Back on the road, I’d felt like I’d be happy to be rid of them, if only to forget about the circumstances of how they’d come to be with us. Now, I didn’t feel much different about the entire thing, making me wonder if that was one wound that just wouldn’t heal. But the general atmosphere was a good one—people laughed and smiled and told silly stories while food was passed around, seemingly not discriminating between farmer, guard, scientist, refugee, or us. It was hard to hold on to the cloud of darkness permanently lurking in the back of my mind. And if a few of the guys dipped a little too deep into the bottle of moonshine that followed dinner, so be it. I felt the rest of my tension drain away, leaving a strange sense of warmth inside of me. When I caught Nate’s gaze across the campfire that had been lit in the middle of the village square, I couldn’t help but smile—a sentiment that he returned, with just enough of a twinkle in his eye to let me know that if I slinked away now, I would very soon have company. More to spite him than because I still felt like I needed my space, I looked away, laughing over a crude remark Burns offered.
Maybe, that wound was scabbing over already, and I just didn’t know it.
I could tell that something was changing in the atmosphere when Stone joined us with two of his flunkies in tow, still in their lab coats. They were wearing them like a uniform. I would have ignored them, but Amy got up and walked over to him, shaking her head.
“Not tonight, Brandon. They only just got here, and we don’t even know if most of them won’t depart with first light.”
She probably meant us. She’d been talking in low tones, if not exactly hushed, but I saw Nate and Martinez look at her with that similar sense of foreboding that suddenly gripped me. Hell, but I was really getting jumpy.
“One more reason not to dawdle,” he insisted. “You know the regulations. The regulations you swore to uphold as mayor.”
That sounded ominous enough, but none of the other people from the village seemed alarmed.
“What is this all about?” I asked, mostly not to feed my paranoia even more. So far, no one here had done anything to incite my suspicious side—at least not during the last twelve hours or so.
Amy opened her mouth to reply, but let Stone talk when he stepped forward.
“You’ve probably not heard about this program yet, but our government has decreed that we should start a new census round, trying to get at least an estimate of how many people are left.”
That didn’t sound too bad. “Easy enough, I’d say.”
“Didn’t know that we still have a government,” Nate interjected, sounding way too bland not to make my hackles rise. I glanced at him, but he focused on Stone when he replied.
“That doesn’t come as much of a surprise from what I’ve heard about your group. You seem to have kept remarkably under the radar during the past months.”
“Staying to scarcely populated areas works well when you’re trying to avoid the undead masses,” Nate noted, completely unfazed by the condescension in Stone’s words.
“That may be one strategy,” Stone admitted. “But as you see, people are doing well together. Our future lies in rebuilding civilization, not hunkering down and ignoring what the rest of the world is up to.”
“So count us,” I said before this could escalate. “Twelve, to make it easy for you.”
Now I got that same non-smile, but he toned it down a little. Clearly, he realized that if he wanted something from me, he’d have to not act like the bigger asshole than his competition. That thought in itself made me want to laugh, and not in a good way.
“It’s not just a headcount,” Stone explained. “People far more intelligent than me have devised this plan. Scientists, like you yourself.” He turned toward where the bulk of our group was sitting. “As Dr. Lewis can likely explain to you, even with a virus of this magnitude, there’s a good chance that some people have natural immunity. Our duty is now to collect the data of everyone still alive, in this case their DNA. We don’t have a sequencer on site, but a few gene loci have already been identified that look promising. So we’re testing everyone, hoping that one day that data will help us find a cure.”
My immediate reaction was disbelief, but then my mind snapped to the task. Theoretically, it was possible. Even looking like the perfectly tailored killer virus, it still stemmed from naturally occurring viruses that humanity had been battling for millennia. Immunities to virtually any infectious agent I’d ever heard of existed, be it the common cold or HIV. And the more complex a virus, the larger it usually was, the more bits and pieces of it that antibodies could be built against. Maybe it was even enough to possess a latent immunity to any of the parts of it—influenza, coronavirus, or ebola. Particularly with the first, it was likely that in this very town there were somewhere between one to ten people who’d caught the flu and survived, leaving them with a good chance not to catch that strain or a close one again. Or getting the flu shot for years might do the trick. It was a
possibility that I hadn’t even considered yet, and that made me feel damn stupid right now.
“Exactly how do you test people?” Nate asked, his voice that kind of soft that pulled me right back out of my theories.
“A simple blood sample is all we need,” Stone offered. “Nothing complicated.”
“Let me guess. There’s no opting out of this.” Nate still sounded pleasant enough, but I could tell that he was rather close to drawing his weapon.
Stone looked at him with perfect confusion on his face that just had to be fake. “Why would you? You and your people were brave enough to take down a colony of cannibals, but you’re afraid of a small needle prick? What if it’s your genetic information that might lead to the breakthrough? Could you live with denying thousands of people a cure, or at least a life where they don’t have to be in constant fear of infection?”
Nate easily held his gaze. “I don’t really feel special enough for a savior complex.”
“Enough, please,” Amy interjected, getting up and taking position between the two fronts. “Let’s not forget that they are our guests, and as such they enjoy our hospitality. That includes not being subjected to anything they have moral objections to.”
She might have meant well, but I could see that neither Nate nor Stone appreciated her interjection.
“Last time I looked, this was still the United States of America,” Nate ground out. “We as citizens have rights. Also the right not to be subjected to any nonsense experiments.”
Stone’s smile turned belligerent. “Do you want me to show you the official seal and decree? As a citizen, you’re actually obliged to follow the directive. I just thought that with someone like you I didn’t have to resort to such measures.”
“Someone like me?” Nate asked, his amused tone holding a certain edge.
“You were in the Army, right? A captain, if my notes are correct. I’d like to believe that a decorated soldier would be the first to thrive for order over chaos and to uphold our laws.”
I didn’t think that argument would work with Nate—but it certainly worked on the people of the town all around us, curious looks now mixing with frowns of disdain. I could see the conflict warring behind Nate’s eyes, and it sucked that he didn’t even glance in my direction to request my opinion. Pia gave the smallest of shakes of her head, while Andrej relaxed visibly, showing his indifference.
“Why blood?” Andrej asked. “Don’t you usually do these swab thingies in the mouth?” I felt like rolling my eyes at his heavy accent that I knew was all for show.
“We don’t have the equipment for that,” Stone explained. “That would require a forensic setup that our lab was never meant for. I’m sure Dr. Lewis can explain all this to you.”
I really didn’t like being pulled into this, but when all eyes fixed on me, I couldn’t exactly back out.
“What assays are you going to do? Without a sequencer, there’s only so much you can do.”
Stone nodded at one of his assistants, who was only too happy to jump into the limelight. “As Dr. Stone already said, we have identified several gene loci that look promising. We extract the DNA and do PCR with the primers for the loci. The presence and strength of the signal are recorded and filed away. This gives us a good representation of the genetic diversity. The more people show the same or similar mutations in the same genes, the better the chance that it’s these exact variants that might lead to the next breakthrough.”
It sounded harmless enough. When I saw the confusion in the eyes of the people of my group—well, in Pia’s case it was thinly veiled hostility—I tried to explain.
“They think they’ve found some genes that might be responsible for antibody expression, or some other kind of innate immunity. What they do is kind of slap small complementary pieces of the ends of the sequence they are looking for on the sample DNA, and if it’s a match, it sticks and gets replicated. If you don’t have the mutation or that gene variant, there’s nothing to stick to, so no replication. Or less replication. It’s a little more complicated than that. In the end, you get a rather good yes or no result that’s quantifiable. It’s the same method they use for paternity tests.” I didn’t know if that helped. None of them looked any less or more concerned.
Sick of this bickering that sounded more and more like a debate on principles, I got up, shoving the sleeve of my thermal up.
“If all you mighty heroes are afraid of a little prick, I’ll go first,” I griped, trying to quench the flutter of anxiety low in my stomach as I watched Stone’s assistant prep a sterile needle. More to alleviate my innate dislike of needles than actual curiosity, I asked her, “So you’re not even hunting for acquired immunity?”
She shook her head but never looked up from her work. “The virus structure is too different from the structures of the different viruses it seems to be based on. Antibodies against them don’t work; we’ve tested for that. And so far no one’s come back from being a zombie, as far as I know.”
Wincing at the sharp prick, I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, seeing as they’re not exactly working as a normal human is supposed to, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
Now she did look up, surprise plain on her face. “You have data about their physiology? Metabolism, too? That would be very fascinating to discuss.”
I snapped my mouth shut before I could say anything further. Much to my surprise, Nate was ready to jump in for me.
“‘Data’ is kind of too big a word. We cut a few of them up, checked what it took to kill the fuckers more efficiently. You know, because that’s what we need to survive out there? Doesn’t really yield that much substance for academic discussion, I’m afraid.”
Part of me wanted to rail at him completely hashing over the fact that I’d been the one to do most of the cutting and experimenting, but I wasn’t stupid enough to tell anyone that now. Not sure why he thought to exclude me—I wasn’t going to put up a fuss over that. It was bad enough that I knew all too well what I’d been responsible for. The woman’s face evened out as her momentary interest was quenched. I didn’t know what to make of the half-sneer appearing instead, or the look of sympathy that she shot me.
When she was done with drawing blood from me—one vial only—she threw away the syringe into a small biohazard bag the other assistant carried and stashed the sample in a small ice box. Looking up expectantly, she waited calmly for the next one to approach her while I sat down again. There was some more silent debating going on, and I expected Pia to put up more of a fight—starting with the fact that she wasn’t a citizen of this great nation—but with Nate leading the charge, one after the other the guys got up and let their blood get drawn. The tension in the air dissipated notably, laughter and chatting soon taking over again. Amy still looked somewhat disconcerted, but then I could understand where she’d want to keep the peace in her village—and while no one seemed to actively avoid us for what they knew we’d done to the cannibals, she must have been considering what would become of her charges if things escalated.
To try to alleviate her fears even more—and maybe humanize us further—I approached her after Pia had, if reluctantly, joined the small line for sample extraction. “You mentioned that you received our radio transmission? Would it be possible for us to use your equipment for an hour or so? We have friends back west, and I think all of us would feel better if we could check in with them. Let them know that we’re okay, ask how spring’s coming on over there. Let them know that we’re not the only people left in the world.”
Amy’s face lit up at the suggestion, telling me that I was on the right track there. “Yes, of course. How rude of me, I should have offered before. It didn’t even occur to me that of course you want to keep your people updated.” It sounded more as if she hadn’t considered that a bunch like us could have “people” somewhere that weren’t running around with as many weapons as they could comfortably carry.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment,” Stone interjected, s
tomping my attempt at damage control right into the hard-packed earth of the town square.
“Why not?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop again.
“Because a solar flare fried our transistors,” he explained. I wasn’t sure if I believed him.
“Campbell’s pretty good with electronics. Maybe he could help your guys with the repairs? We probably have the spare parts for it, too,” I offered.
Stone hesitated for just a second, but that was enough to make my suspicion skyrocket again. He caught himself before I could latch on to that, though.
“Of course. That would be much appreciated. I’m just not sure how well it will work. Our technician is a rather peculiar man who seldom lets anyone near his equipment.”
Amy laughed softly. “That, I’m afraid, is true. He’s also very good at what he does. It only took him a week to build his equipment from what looked like barely more than scrap metal to me. He also rigged up the solar panels that now keep the lab powered and the backup batteries charged, and allow us small comforts if we have surplus energy. I’ll see that I talk to him first thing in the morning. As much as it’s easy to sometimes pretend that things aren’t that different now, at other times the changes are glaringly obvious.”
I forced myself to smile and thank her for the offer. Thinking about it, it made absolutely no sense for my paranoia to be on high alert again. Why should they go out of their way to sabotage their own equipment only so we couldn’t chat with Kevin and Dave, and maybe Emma if they finally managed to set up a relay at the bunker? And I was sure that if we demanded to see their equipment right this fucking moment, we would find it fried and in need of repairs. I might not like Stone, and he certainly held back more than he volunteered, but he didn’t sound like a liar.
There was some ongoing grumbling between the guys, but they relaxed gradually—also thanks to the pretty girls from earlier showing obvious interest in not yet hitting the sack for sleeping. I noticed that Amy watched the ongoings with a hint of disdain on her face, but when she caught me looking at her, she offered a small if sad smile.
The Green Fields Series Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 86
