SIck

by Brett Battles

  • • •

  A few hundred miles southeast, Tamara Costello’s sat phone pinged with an incoming email. At that moment, though, Tamara was on camera and didn’t hear it arrive.

  19

  The moment Rachel said that Josie and Brandon were still alive, Ash’s vision went gray.

  In his mind, he could hear Josie’s cry, and feel how cold she’d been as he tried to keep her warm. He could even sense Brandon’s fear as they were being led out of the house at Barker Flats.

  But most of all, he could remember the numbness, the horror, the disbelief, and the total devastation he’d felt when the voice in the ceiling had told him his children were dead.

  When he finally regained his senses, he was on the ground, one leg tucked under him, with no idea how he’d gotten there. Rachel was kneeling on one side, while Pax was doing the same on the other.

  “Are you telling me the truth?” he whispered.

  “Let’s get you back in your seat,” Rachel said.

  She and Pax lifted him to his feet and helped him into the chair.

  While they were doing this, Matt walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the tape-covered envelope. From inside, he removed a folded legal-size envelope and a thumb drive. He handed the envelope to Rachel, and took the drive over to the control panel.

  “We’ve already watched these,” Matt said. “They might not be easy to look at, but you need to see them, too.”

  He stuck the drive into a port and hit several buttons.

  The television screen was black for a moment, then gray, then…

  A room, not too dissimilar from Ash’s cell at Barker Flats. Only this room had a door that was open, and a window that Ash got the sense didn’t look to the outside. The shot was from up high and angled down.

  Lying on the bed was Brandon.

  Ash couldn’t help but lean forward. Here was his son. He hadn’t seen Brandon’s face since they had been separated. He remembered now what he told his son at that moment. “Go with them. It’ll be okay. You’ll see me in just a bit.”

  He’d believed it then, because that’s what they had told him. But it wasn’t true, so the last thing he had told his son was a lie.

  “I made some time notations on the back of the envelope,” Matt said to Rachel.

  Ash could hear her flip the envelope over, but he didn’t look. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen.

  “Oh-six twenty-seven,” Rachel said.

  The image started scrolling quickly forward, then slowed back to real time.

  “This is six-thirty in the morning, just a few hours after you were both brought in,” Matt explained.

  Brandon looked like he was asleep. Suddenly the door pushed all the way open, and someone in a biosafe suit came in. The person knelt down next to the bed and put something on Brandon’s forehead.

  A few moments later, a voice said, “Temp, ninety-eight point five.”

  Ash thought back. Six-thirty meant he’d been in his cell for at least four hours. By that point, he’d already been told that Josie was dead. But Brandon? He didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t think so.

  “Next,” Matt said.

  Rachel read off another time code. “Ten twelve.”

  That, Ash knew, was definitely after when he’d been told about his son. No way it was later than that.

  Once more the picture raced forward before resuming normal speed. The time stamp in the lower left read 10:12. The boy in the bed was still Brandon. And he was very much alive.

  “Stop,” Ash said.

  Matt hit pause.

  “Skip ahead.”

  “How far?”

  “Nowhere in particular. Just let it run.”

  Ash just wanted to see Brandon move, Brandon alive, Brandon definitely there longer than the voice had led him to believe. One hour, two hours, three, four. It was all the same, all revealing the lie he’d been told.

  “Stop,” he finally said. “Is there video of Josie?”

  “There is.”

  “Show it to me.”

  Her footage was more painful to watch. She was still ill. But she wasn’t dead. Ash made Matt speed through the footage like he had with Brandon’s, this time not stopping until Josie sat up.

  “Play it,” Ash said quickly.

  The image snapped to normal time. Josie had a hand on the wall, steadying herself.

  “Hello? Hello?” she said. “Where am I?”

  Dear God, he never thought he’d hear her voice again.

  He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and the breath quivering in his lungs. But he sucked in deeply and forced himself to remain under control.

  Matt turned the video off.

  “What are you doing?” Ash said.

  “I’ll give you the drive and have a computer set up in your room. You can watch as much as you want there. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing else that will mean anything. The most important thing was for you to see that they’re still alive.”

  Ash glanced at the envelope in front of Rachel. “You said you had different times marked. There must be something you thought I should see.”

  “Moments, only. Things I thought might help convince you. But you don’t need convincing.”

  Ash hesitated, then asked, “Were they told anything about me?”

  Matt looked at him for a moment. “Yes. At first they were told you were sick, then later that you had died.” He paused. “I can show you that if you really want.”

  A spike of pain shot through Ash’s heart. His children, how they must be suffering thinking both of their parents were dead.

  He shook his head. He would have to watch at some point, but he wasn’t sure he could take it right now. It was enough to know they were alive, that they had survived the mysterious illness that had apparently taken everyone else around them. That he would be able to—

  His head whipped around, his eyes finding Matt. “They survived the disease, but…but the explosion!”

  “No,” Matt said quickly, shaking his head. “They weren’t there. They were moved as soon as your daughter could travel, two days after they took you in.”

  “Moved where?”

  “Some place where they…”

  “Where they what?”

  Matt glanced at Billy, so Ash did the same.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  Billy cleared his throat. “Captain, you have an immunity to this particular virus. They’ve been looking for someone like you. What happened at Barker Flats isn’t the first time some variant of this virus has been tested. But we’re pretty sure you and your children are the first to survive. It’s obvious you’ve passed your immunity on to them. We think they are…running tests on your kids. Using them to pinpoint this immunity.”

  A mix of anger and horror flashed in Ash’s eyes. “Tests?”

  “Mostly with their blood, would be my guess,” Billy said in his nonchalant way.

  “The good news,” Rachel said, jumping in, “is that it means they’ll want to keep Josie and Brandon alive.”

  “I need to find them,” Ash said, pushing himself up. “I need to go now. I have to get them back.”

  Rachel touched his arm. “If you go now, you won’t get within a hundred miles of them. Your face is all over the television. You’ll be caught, then all three of you will be lost.”

  Clenching his teeth, he said, “I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”

  “We’re not asking you to do nothing.” Matt walked down the table until he was directly across from Ash. “We’re asking you to let us help you get them back.”

  Ash was almost shaking now, his anger at those who had taken Josie and Brandon growing with each second. “How can you help me?”

  Rachel smiled. “Let us show you.”

  20

  Hector Mendez arrived home at ten a.m. He lived alone in an old house on the outskirts of Victorville, California. The place had belonged to his mother, but she’d be
en dead for three years so it had been his since then.

  That had also been around the time he and Lucy finally went their separate ways. It was his fault, and he knew it. He’d been a long-distance trucker when they were together, away from home for weeks at a time. He’d made some big stink about this being who he was and how he wasn’t going to change. But staying home by herself wasn’t who Lucy was either.

  The irony, of course, was that not long after she left him, he gave up the long-distance work, and took a local trucking job for a regional bakery that had him home every day just about the time everyone else was going to their jobs.

  His daily route started at midnight and took him from Victorville through Barstow, up to Sage Springs, around to Trona, then Ridgecrest, Johannesburg, Adelanto and finally home. His employer supplied mostly hotels, a few restaurants, and a couple of hospitals.

  As was his habit, he and a few of the other drivers had breakfast at the local diner and then he’d driven home. Once there, he had his usual pre-sleep beer, watched one of the shows he’d recorded the night before, and went to bed.

  He woke at three p.m., two hours earlier than usual. The reason was simple. He’d coughed himself awake. He headed into the kitchen where he hocked up what was in his throat, spit it into the sink, then got a glass of water.

  Great, he thought as he chugged the liquid down. He hated being sick.

  He decided to take a couple of cold tablets, the non-drowsy type since he’d have to be up and moving around in a few hours, and went back to bed.

  When his boss called at 12:10 a.m. to find out why he was late, the ringing of his phone reached his ears but his mind barely registered it. Thirty minutes later, when Karl, a friend who also drove for the bakery, knocked on his door, he didn’t hear anything at all.

  Hector was dead.

  • • •

  Tamara Costello didn’t see the email from her brother until after lunch. She wasn’t used to checking for them on her sat phone. Ninety-nine percent of the time she relied on her smartphone for email. But finally she noticed the tiny icon glowing dully on her display, indicating she’d received something.

  She’d actually become annoyed with Gavin. She’d been trying to call him, but kept going straight to his voice mail. The email, however, more than made up for his lack of communication.

  Daniel Ash was in the Army. Could it be that this was some kind of military accident, and not an act of terrorism like officials were starting to characterize it? She couldn’t help but make the connection to the still unconfirmed report of an explosion at a military installation two nights ago. Had that been an Army base? It was something to check.

  She had another live spot coming up in one minute. She tried her brother one more time, wanting to see if he’d learned anything more. Voice mail.

  “Dammit, Gavin. Where the hell are you?” she said.

  “Tamara, thirty seconds,” her producer, Joe, announced.

  While she did consider trying to get independent confirmation on Gavin’s information, the thought passed so quickly through her mind it was almost like she hadn’t had it at all. The several times she’d relied on her brother in the past, his information had always proven to be accurate. And there was no question that the Ash in the picture from one of the links Gavin sent was the same man in the photo authorities had given to the media.

  As she got into position, Joe checked the mic clipped to her shirt. The moment he stepped away, she looked at the camera.

  “How’s this?” she asked.

  Bobby, the cameraman, kept his eye on the viewfinder and gave her the thumbs up.

  “Okay, we’re coming up,” Joe told her.

  As she put her earpiece back in, she could suddenly hear Greg Roberts in the studio. He’d taken over anchor duties from Catherine a half hour earlier. Tamara took a deep breath, put the appropriate concerned look on her face, then gave Joe and Bobby a nod.

  She was ready.

  • • •

  “…that time until the CDC was notified,” the PCN anchor said. The graphic at the bottom of the screen identified him as Greg Roberts. “The situation seems to have settled into a kind of wait-and-see. We should learn more at the next press conference scheduled for two hours from now.” He paused. “Okay, we’re going to go back out to our reporter on the scene, Tamara Costello. Tamara, how’s the mood there?”

  Dr. Karp frowned at his television. Mood? Where do they get these people?

  The picture switched to the same desert shot beside the roadblock the network had been using most of the morning. Centered in the frame was Tamara Costello, their on-scene reporter.

  “The high level of tension we noticed when we first arrived at the western roadblock has become more of a simmer as we await word of what’s actually happening in town,” she said.

  “I’ve talked to several members of the highway patrol who are manning this post with a squad of Army personnel, and I can truthfully say no one has any more information concerning the residents of Sage Springs than we do here.”

  The image on the screen split in two, with a shot of the in-studio anchor on the left, and Tamara in the desert on the right. “There’s been a report that at least twenty-five people have died in town,” Greg said, “and somewhere between seventy-five and one hundred are feared infected.”

  “We heard that, too, Greg. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to confirm any numbers. I can say that twenty minutes ago, a convoy of vehicles, mostly Suburbans, passed through the roadblock and headed into town at high speed.” As she spoke, footage of the caravan replaced the two talking heads. There were five vehicles altogether, their windows blacked out. “Our producer, Tim, heard from someone on the roadblock that these were part of a CDC team here to help the situation.”

  The picture switched back to the double shot.

  “Are there any concerns that the virus could reach where you are currently situated?”

  Dr. Karp rolled his eyes. Ten miles away through a warm desert? His skills were excellent, but they weren’t that excellent.

  “Greg, we’ve been told that our position is completely safe. In fact, one of the officials who stopped here earlier made a point to say that even if the roadblock were just a mile out from the town, there would still be no problem. A source has told me that the extra distance gives the authorities enough room to spot anyone crazy enough to try and sneak into or out of Sage Springs. As we already know, two people have attempted this and have been arrested.”

  “Thanks, Tamara. We’ll check back with you—”

  “I do have one piece of new information that I can share with you, Greg. It concerns the man authorities have deemed a person of interest.”

  Dr. Karp leaned forward. Beside him, Major Ross did the same.

  “Daniel Ash?”

  “Yes. According to my information, Ash is either in or was in the U.S. Army. We know that three and a half years ago he was a lieutenant at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and before that, he was stationed at Fort Irwin, which is less than eighty miles from Sage Springs.”

  “How the hell did she learn that?” Major Ross said.

  Greg, the anchor, looked equally surprised by this new information. “That’s certainly something we haven’t heard yet. Is there more?”

  “That’s all I have at the moment, Greg, but as soon as I know anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you, Tamara. You and your crew be careful out there.”

  “We will, Greg. Thank you.”

  As the image switched to a one-shot of the anchor, Ross picked up the remote and hit MUTE. He then quickly punched a number into the conference-room phone, making sure the speaker was engaged.

  One ring, then, “Yes?”

  “Were you watching that?” Ross asked.

  “If you’re talking about the Costello woman, then yes, I saw it,” Shell said.

  “How the hell did she find that out?”

  “Apparently her brother sent her the information in
an email.”

  “Her brother? I thought you had her brother.”

  “We do. We only learned twenty minutes ago that the email had gone out before we were able to fully secure his equipment.”

  “Twenty minutes ago? You could have stopped her then!”

  Shell was silent for a moment. “There was no reason to. The information was going to come out eventually. It’s not going to do any harm.”

  Dr. Karp, who’d been content to let the other two fight it out, finally said, “I think we can use this to our advantage.”

  Major Ross glanced at him doubtfully. “You want to explain that?”

  “We’ve already been putting the pressure on Captain Ash. A little more can only help. I say we identify him as a mole. People will already be thinking that’s a possibility anyway.”

  “So change him from a person of interest into a suspect,” Shell said, the hint of a smile in his voice.

  “Not a suspect,” the doctor said. “The suspect.”

  It would either flush Ash out or get him killed. Either way, he wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

  21

  The one thing Ash was very good at was going all in when he decided on a course of action. The only goal he had in his life now was getting his children back. Rachel, Matt, and the others described a plan that, even a few hours earlier, he would have found crazy. But not only was his face plastered all over television, it was now being openly speculated that he was responsible for the virus outbreak, exactly as Rachel had predicted.

  Give it another day and he would be branded a terrorist, something they were all convinced would occur. And when it did, not only would he be in danger of being arrested if anyone recognized him, there was a good chance some “concerned citizen” would try to kill him.

  If he was going to save his kids, the Ash he saw every morning in the mirror had to go.