by Max Lockwood
“You told him to call you Lainey. It’s a cute name. If I met a guy I liked, I’d maybe introduce myself with a cutesy nickname.”
“Drop it,” Elaina warned. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not into him.”
“Okay,” she hummed, clearly not convinced. “Still, why the nickname?”
Elaina let out a long sigh. She had told herself that she would explain her situation to the girl the second they were alone. Yet, the second she unbottled her secrets, she knew she couldn’t stuff them back inside. Teenage girls were notoriously bad at keeping secrets.
“You know who I am,” Elaina explained. “You know that I work with your father. How much do you know about our work?”
“A little,” she said. “I know that you work with dangerous viruses and your lab is busy during flu season or whenever a big epidemic strikes somewhere in the world. But if you haven’t noticed, I’m not really that close with my dad. I play the role of daddy’s little girl when it benefits me, but we don’t talk a lot. I don’t know a lot of the specifics of what you guys do. I’m also just not that interested.”
“Okay, so you can assume that our lab had something to do with our current situation?”
Natalia nodded.
“By the way,” Elaina added. “Everything that’s happened is not a direct result of the virus,” she defended herself. “In fact, I bet most of the crimes are in response to the hysteria surrounding the media coverage. Why would you show images of an infected person suffering violent mania and act like it was happening everywhere? There were stories of kids going crazy and killing their parents. Did you know that there were very, very few reported cases of children and adolescents with violent reactions? It was rare, yet the news made it sound like it was the norm.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Natalia said, interrupting the rant. “Most kids and adolescents just dropped dead before they could reach that stage, huh?”
Elaina went quiet.
“You said yourself that you’re in a bit of trouble,” Natalia said. “You’re wanted by police for the virus getting out. Your virus?”
Elaina shrugged.
“So you use a fake name so our police officer friend doesn’t realize who you are? Out of all of the names you could have picked, you chose one that sounds almost exactly like your real name.” She sniggered.
“I panicked,” Elaina exclaimed. “Everything happened so quickly. I was worried you were going to give something away.”
“I’m not a snitch.”
“I didn’t say you were. I just didn’t want anything to accidentally slip out. I wasn’t sure if you knew how serious this was for me. If I’m in jail, I can’t get any work done. You know this.”
“I know. And if you think you can put a stop to this, I’m not going to get in your way.”
Elaina smiled. She had not given the girl enough credit. She wasn’t some ditzy teenager with a one-track mind. She truly cared about the state of the world and wanted to help if she could.
“Does this mean you’ll help me out?” Elaina asked hopefully, finally making an official deal with her travel companion.
“I just need to know one thing for certain,” she said, looking at the ground. “Did you do it? I mean, release the virus, either purposefully or accidentally?”
Elaina took in a deep breath. There was so much to explain, and she didn’t know how much time she would have to do it. She needed to start at the beginning of her story and tell her that the work she was doing wouldn’t cause harm to normal, healthy people. She needed to tell her that she had made a lot of progress on an antidote of sorts.
Finally, she needed to explain how she would have never infected anyone, intentionally or unintentionally, and how she suspected that there was foul play involved.
But how do you tell your travelling companion that you suspect that her father was behind all of the destruction happening right in front of your eyes?
Maybe she would leave that part of the story out for now. Until she could see some current samples from infected victims, she had no way of knowing if her hypothesis was remotely accurate. Once she had some evidence to back up her claims, she would tell her. For now, there were just some secrets too terrible to share.
Elaina didn’t have time to profess her innocence to Natalia. As she opened her mouth to speak, a gasp came out instead.
They were so deep in their own secret conversation, carefully watching Alec’s house, that they didn’t notice the people approaching them from behind. Quietly, as if they had been stalked like animals, they were ambushed by a group of the infected.
One reached for Natalia and put their hand over her mouth before she had a chance to let out a scream. She pursed her lips tightly and held her breath in case the virus was capable of entering her nose and mouth.
The infected girl holding onto Natalia looked to be about her age, but taller and bigger than the slender girl. She struggled to free herself from the infected girl’s tight grip until Elaina delivered a blow to her stomach that slackened her fingers.
Natalia broke free and ran down the street, not caring about where she was going as long as she could get away without being chased. In her fear, she could hardly breathe, let alone scream for Alec’s help.
A couple broke off from the pack and stumbled after her, their legs appearing to have undergone some sort of muscular breakdown. Atrophied legs like stilts limped after the girl, their ultimate aim unknown.
It was in this moment that Elaina saw the infected in a new light. They were no longer bloodthirsty maniacs, but test subjects. As she jogged down the street, she carefully watched their motions, trying to figure out what was going on with them.
As far as she knew, no medical professional had examined a patient in this stage of the illness, probably because it was extremely dangerous. Not only was there a huge risk of passing along an infection, but the doctor could be attacked just from asking banal questions about symptoms. No physician in their right mind wanted to work with these patients, not that anything they could do would be of much help.
But when she thought about it, these were helpless people who had fallen victim to their virus-ravaged brains. Were they seeking healthy people out in an attempt to get help, only to turn violent? Or, as many believed, were they seeking revenge on those who had managed to dodge the disease? So little was known about them because their would-be victims had no choice but to run from them.
Elaina knew a good opportunity when she saw one. Being attacked by disease-ridden people wasn’t an ideal testing facility, but it was the closest she had been to them since she’d decided she needed to test on humans. If she could find a way to collect samples from them without getting injured herself, she would be in good shape.
Fumbling in her pocket, she grabbed LILY and clutched it in her fist. If she could load it into a syringe and inject it into someone, or even just drop a little serum into an open sore, she might have the chance to see if there were any immediate effects.
She looked around for her perfect candidate. A rail-thin woman sat on the ground, muttering to herself. Elaina figured that the drug would work the best on her since she had the least amount of body mass. She seemed like she was pretty sick, but not currently violent.
Elaina felt a surge of adrenaline course through her veins. She was so close to running a test, the test that she had been waiting ages to conduct. Even if it didn’t heal the woman of her ailment, at least she would finally get to find out if it worked.
She carefully crept closer to the woman, who had yet to take notice of her. She had her eyes on a particularly deep, oozing sore on her chest. With all of the blood flow in that area, Elaina hoped that it would be spread throughout her body quickly. She had to work quickly before Alec came out and before they were attacked.
Like sneaking up on a sleeping animal, Elaina tiptoed through the rubble in the street, trying not to disturb her subject who was muttering about some son-of-a-bitch named Robert who had taken her baby. Elaina grasped the
rubber stopper in the bottle with trembling hands and pulled.
A scream tore through the air. Elaina knew that it was Natalia. She had heard it before when they met in the school.
Reflexively, Elaina shoved the bottle into her pocket and ran in the direction of the scream. She wasn’t about to let her partner be attacked.
She found her about two blocks away, cowering behind a gardening shed. The girl that had grabbed her before was searching for her, blood seeping from her eyes. The look of pure determination on the infected girl’s face told Elaina that Natalia didn’t have much time.
Elaina crept toward them, just as she did before with her potential test subject. She knew she couldn’t overpower her, so she picked up a short length of pipe buried in the tall grass.
With a squeal that sounded like it came from a monster and not a human, the infected girl lunged at Natalia. Before she could make contact, Elaina swung the pipe with all her might and brought it down directly on top of the crouching girl’s skull. With a crack, Elaina felt the pipe contact the hard bone, then break through the tough exterior. She had left a dent in the infected girl’s head, leaving Natalia free to scurry out from under her heavy corpse.
“Where the hell is Alec?” Natalia cried, shuddering after removing herself from the person’s clutches. “We have to get out of here, now!”
Elaina ran back down the street without looking back at the body that lay crumpled near the shed. She would have time to process the atrocities of the virus later. For now, she needed to get the hell out of there.
“What good is it having a police officer with us if he can’t even keep us safe?” Natalia raged, booking it back to Alec’s house.
“I don’t know, but I hope he shows up here soon.”
They were nearly there when a man dropped down from a large oak tree hanging over the street. His arm was bent at a strange angle, and for a second, the girls thought that he had been hiding from the infected when he saw them.
“Holy shit,” Natalia gasped. “Are you okay?”
The man didn’t respond. Instead, he swiped at them with his good arm. Natalia let out another blood curdling scream, this time, full of frustration at Alec.
Elaina pulled her down an alley. They were running further and further away from Alec’s house, but there were fewer infected people back that way.
“It might just be the two of us from here on out if Alec doesn’t hurry up and find us,” Elaina panted as they ran.
“If we ever see that asshole again,” Natalia gasped, “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”
As if Alec had heard them, the girls heard a gunshot in the direction of his house. They slowed to a stop, looking at each other for answers.
“Do we go back?” Natalia asked.
Elaina looked in the direction of his house. More and more infected were flocking to the area as they spoke. Going back would be a major risk.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If Alec survives, he can find us. We have bigger things to worry about.”
Chapter Seventeen
The moment he realized the infected were closing in on him, he heard a scream a few blocks down from his house. The sound, if anything, drew the people closer to him, as if they couldn’t discern where it came from, but they knew they had a prime subject standing in front of them who would do.
“Lainey,” he yelled, surprised to hear that his words came out in a squeak. He thought about getting in his car and driving away, but there were too many of them now. If he didn’t fight, then the girls would certainly die. He stood with his gun drawn, just waiting for someone to make one wrong move. He was ready.
As far as he was concerned, every infected person who died by his hand would be one less infected person who could harm the girls. He despised killing, but he needed to protect those girls.
The first attacker, a short, fat man, came waddling up to him. With so much flesh preventing him from being agile, Alec took him out with a swift blow to the temple with the butt of his gun. With a loud groan, the man hit the ground hard.
But, as he was fighting off that man, a woman came hurling toward him with her hand extended. In the overcast light, Alec caught a glimpse of something metallic in her hand. As she wildly reached forward to stab him, he fired off a shot, squarely in her forehead.
The loud noise must have momentarily startled the infected, because they quickly retreated a few feet. They didn’t disappear completely, just regrouped and waited for a better opportunity to strike.
Alec knew he needed to leave immediately, but he couldn’t help himself. He bent down to get a quick look at the life he ended. He knew it would give him nightmares for years, but curiosity got the better of him.
Bleeding from the head was the woman he had waved to every morning on his way to work for years. His neighbor lady, Mrs. Daniels, was currently on his driveway, staining the concrete with her blood.
Alec clasped a hand to his mouth. She was a kind, middle aged woman with a deadbeat ex-husband who could never make his child support payments on time. Her two boys often played in his yard in the evenings when she was making supper before leaving for her night shift at the supermarket. She, unlike a lot of the other neighbors, liked the fact that he was a cop. She said she always felt safer when he was home.
He wondered where her boys were now. Her house looked like it had been vacant for days. She loved her boys—she would have never let anything bad happen to them. If she knew she were ill, she would have found somewhere safe for the kids to go. That, or they had fallen ill before she had.
Alec’s throat felt thick. Breaths came out ragged through his choked up throat. He had just killed the kind of citizen that came to mind when he talked about keeping his community safe. Mrs. Daniels could do no wrong in his eyes.
Yet, here she was, a shell of her former self. Alec staggered back and sat on the concrete before his wobbly legs gave out.
He closed his eyes for a second and was transported back to the shopping mall on the day that he fired his weapon in the line of duty for the first time. After the deafening shots, he heard nothing. Time seemed to move by in slow motion. The girl, pretty as could be, fell to the ground and ceased to move. Motionless, she looked completely harmless. In fact, Alec wondered if he had imagined seeing her attempt to kill him.
At first, Alec really believed that he could help her. As she reacted to the tormenters in the crowd, he spoke over them, reassuring her. He promised that whatever was going on, he could save her from it. He truly believed his words, too. If she just listened to him, he knew he could get through to her. For all he knew, she was just a troubled kid in need of someone to listen to her.
Those words seemed to have had an effect on her. She turned toward him and sort of cocked her head, as if she was interested in what he had to say. He gave her clear instructions to drop her weapon, but she didn’t. It was as if it were an extension of her hand. She didn’t even look down at the weapon as if to consider her options.
Then, she started coughing up blood. A few sputters, and then crimson splattered the sidewalk like paint. First, it was a little bit that dotted her top, then more. Alec had never seen someone become so ill so quickly. He called for an ambulance into his walkie talkie, perhaps one equipped with hazmat gear. There was something seriously wrong with her.
“We’re going to get you some help, okay?” he said gently, holding out his arms to her. For a moment, he saw the light return to her eyes. She slowly walked toward him—he had gotten through to her.
As quickly as the light appeared, it had vanished again. Then, all hell broke loose. She ran toward him at full speed, ready to strike, and he stopped her.
Then, as if someone had turned the sound back on, he heard the screams. Much of the crowd had stayed to watch, even though he’d ordered them to vacate the premises. Somehow, the thin glass of their camera phones would protect them as they greedily fantasized about the fame their crazy footage would capture. Now, they were collecting evid
ence.
The worst screams of all came from the girl’s mother. After seeing the commotion, she worried that her daughter, a regular at the mall, might be present. She searched through the crowd in hopes that she could spot her daughter and bring her to safety from whatever madman was wielding a knife in a crowd.
Instead, she arrived to find her varsity cheerleader, honor student dead, bleeding from a perfect round hole shot by Alec as if she were nothing but a paper target at a shooting range.
The wails from the mother of the girl instantly made his heart ache. He had no children of his own, yet he felt like he’d just watched one of his own die. Through her tears, he felt the pain of someone who had suffered a tremendous loss.
It was all such a waste of a life, too. If it had been a treatable illness, she would have gone to a doctor or a therapist, talked about what was going on, taken a few pills, and would be right as rain. She could go back to school, graduate, go to college, and begin her life. Instead, her face was plastered all over the news, sharing the gory details of her last act, something that was out of character for the teen.
Everything about it was so unfair. There was nothing but chance that separated Alec from the people he was gunning down in the name of safety and security. He could have easily been infected when he killed the girl. If it weren’t for his leave from work, he probably would have been infected some other way. Yet, here he was, ending the life of his good neighbor, who only wanted her young children to have a good life. He felt like a monster.
He had known Mrs. Daniels fairly well, too. At least, he knew of her problems. He had visited her home in uniform more times than not for different issues with her ex. One time, he had slapped her around so hard that he left her bloodied and battered. He nearly lost it and would have put his fist through the guy’s face if his partner hadn’t talked him down. She was a good woman who didn’t deserve that.
In fact, her kids were great, too, and if by the off chance they were still in the house, he needed to make sure they were okay. Alec fired off a few warning shots into the lurking infected before jogging to her house.
