by Urban, Ami
“I don’t see one single platelet.”
Pushing back the metal stool with a screech, he approached the microscope. “No.”
Incredulous, I moved back to let him see. A sound close to a stutter rose from my throat. “Uh… Yes.”
He pressed his face against the microscope’s lens. A lock of his dark hair brushed the top of the machine. He hummed and hawed while looking at the specimen. Then, he stood straight and announced to the empty room he had no idea what he was looking at.
“I do not understand.”
Brendon shook his head and smiled. “I’m just fuckin’ around.” As he passed me, his fingers grazed my arm. “You’ve got to laugh a little!”
“No platelets explains the ‘bleeding.’” I used two fingers to quote the word.
“Mm.” He sat down, the stool protesting under him. “Wouldn’t we have seen bruises, though?”
“Depends on how long he’s had the thrombocytopenia.”
“Oof. Say that ten times fast.”
“I likely have at some point.”
He laughed.
“He wasn’t on any medications. He had a bad habit of refusing all types of it.”
“He didn’t ever drink, so I doubt it was a liver issue.”
I tapped a finger against my chin. “He was a chef. Maybe he ate some undercooked meat and developed hemolytic uremic syndrome?”
Brendon shook his head. “No way. That kid was meticulous in the kitchen. He inspected every plate that went out.”
“I know.” A sudden pang of fire lit up inside my belly. I resisted the urge to place a hand there. “Did he ever show symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis or Lupus?”
A coy smile spread across his face at that moment. He opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something but thought the better of it. His smile faded, and he said, “No. He never complained about anything like that. His blood tests were clear.”
I pressed my palms into the metal table and splayed my fingers. “Oh, I wish we had his chart!” Inhaling, I turned to Brendon once more. “When was the last time he allowed you to take his blood?”
“Oh.” His head shook back and forth. “Upon admission only. When he wasn’t even Scotty. He was, like… Well, you know…”
I nodded, plopping my chin in my hand. “So, his blood tests upon admission were fine aside from the rabies virus.” While in thought, our gazes met, and he smiled. “Was a blood test done after the vaccine was administered and he began to respond positively?”
“No. He wouldn’t let us.”
“Then, I think we can safely say that he developed the thrombocytopenia after given the RDV vaccine.”
“Sure.”
“But my platelet level is fine.”
After the rat poison flushed out of my system.
“And I had the experimental version of the vaccine. What about yours?”
Brendon tossed a glance up at the ceiling. “Well…I actually never got it.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“I like how you have a selective listening disease.”
“Well, I know Jack’s, Lexi’s and Rex’s platelet counts are fine.” I tapped my finger against the metal table. With each tink sound, my thoughts came closer to a central idea. “Brendon.”
“Yes?”
“Can you go get Cyrus?”
July 7 – Jack Reynolds
Lisa’s office was frozen in time. Halloween decorations from years prior peppered the small room. A black pumpkin smiled from one wall. Orange and black streamers hung from the ceiling like jungle vines. And a plush black cat, stuck in a screaming pose with back raised, sat at one corner of her desk.
I went to the bookshelf on the back wall. Anatomy books and medical texts filled the first three shelves. The rest were decorated with binders and scholarly medical papers. I thumbed through them. A picture of Lisa, Chase and Rex bookended between a pile of papers and the edge of the bookshelf.
I picked it up, ignoring the medical article that fell to my feet. Instead, I studied the photo, having never seen what the kid’s dad actually looked like. The fucker was a Goddamn GQ model. He looked mixed-race, like Lexi. Possibly Hispanic and Caucasian or Eastern European. The dude was toned, tan and had a cool, white smile.
She killed this guy. She shut his fucking finger in a drawer until it tore off and then killed him before he could kill her.
Damn. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t hot.
And then another thought hit me as I put the picture back in its place. If she could kill two guys to protect her kid, one of them with a fucking stick, she didn’t need me to save her. As I stooped down to pick up the paper that’d fallen on the floor, I glanced at the kids. They looked bored. But safe.
“How much longer do you think they’ll be?” Lexi asked, a slight whine to her voice.
I shrugged, turning the paper over in my hands. I was about to put it back in the shelf when I chuckled at the title.
Social Distraction and Retardation in Teen Tourette Syndrome Patients.
I rolled up the paper and stuffed it in the duffle bag we’d brought along. The worn stock of my sawed-off shotgun caught my attention. On a whim, I snatched it and shoved it into the seat of my jeans.
“You plan on using that for something?” Cyrus’s voice wavered.
“Depends. You gonna give me a reason to?”
He shook his head and plopped into one of the overstuffed chairs in Lisa’s office. And in the silence that followed, that muscle in my jaw twitched. I strained my ears, shuffling closer to the half-open door. Sure enough, the soft scrapes of footsteps were falling through the entrance of the hospital.
I pushed a finger against my lips after turning to the kids. They nodded, Lexi pulling Rex closer to her. I turned back to peek through the door. A shadow fell over the nurse’s station. Papers whispered against the counter as a slow breeze wafted over. The silhouette of a person used cautious steps to enter the hospital.
I ducked back when a bright screen lit up the subtle features of whoever it was. The unmistakable cluster of beeps that I recognized as a walkie-talkie startled me. The man mumbled something into it, got a response and made his way toward the stairs. Whoever it was had backup.
I turned toward Cyrus and, without hesitation, pressed the key to the office in his palm. Then, I glanced at Lexi.
“As soon as I step out of here, lock this door and don’t open for anyone except me, Lisa or Brendon.”
They both nodded. I gave a lingering glance at the kid and Lexi before slipping into the hallway like a ninja. I waited for the lock to click into place before heading down to the nurse’s station. My footsteps were nonexistent as I made my way across the linoleum.
The walkie-talkie made its noise again. I ducked behind the nurse’s station. The man didn’t answer the call this time. Instead, his footsteps shuffled sideways in a hurry. I heard the hammer of a gun click and the door to the stairs creaked open.
Oh fuck. Brendon’s singing floated out into the hallway. I popped my head up enough to see the top of his, bobbing down toward me. Saying a silent curse, I knew there was nothing I could do.
“Don’t move, Dr. Rutherford.”
I should’ve known. Dr. Wood fucking followed us here. And he brought his fucking cronies with him. Jesus. Was he that hell-bent on making sure Lisa was wiped from the CDC’s records.
Feeling braver, I ducked back, deciding instead to lean to my right to get a better view. Wood was standing behind Brendon whose hands were up in a defensive pose. They were both facing slightly away and diagonally from me.
“Okay, okay. Just relax, Dood.” To my surprise, Brendon remained calm. “I’ll cooperate.”
“Good.” The other man released the gun’s hammer and dropped it a few inches. “Where is Dr. Reynolds?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Score. Nice lying, B.
“Don’t lie to me, Dr. Rutherford. Might I remind you that you’ve already committed several federal crimes.
If you cooperate, we might reduce your sentence.”
Brendon didn’t flinch. “I’m telling you, Dood. They all ditched me. I came here looking for them, too. Maybe you should—”
A shot rang out, sending plaster raining down from the ceiling. Both Brendon and I clapped our hands over our ears. Wood dropped his arm back down.
“I’m not playing around, Dr. Rutherford. And I wasn’t born yesterday. We know she’s here. We’ve been tracking her. We’ve already pinged her location. I know she has those samples.”
I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in that Lisa had dropped that fucking phone when it went off and ran like I’d asked. But something told me that was wishful thinking.
Brendon’s eyebrows shot up in a remarkable act of surprise. “Oh, good, then. Let’s find her together.”
“Dr. Rutherford, I’m not going to ask you again to cooperate. We know you know where she is.”
“I really don’t.”
“I’m going to give you five seconds to answer my question before I shoot you in the head. One.” He brought up his arm, pointing the gun directly between Brendon’s eyes. But he didn’t flinch. “Two. I’m not getting any younger, Dr. Rutherford. Three…” He pulled the hammer back.
“Neither am I.”
“Four…”
I watched his fist squeeze the stock of the .22. His lips were just forming the F in the word “five” when I stood up and shouted for him to stop.
In a flash of light and sound, the gun went off as Wood was turning toward me. Brendon crumpled to the floor before I could see if he’d been hit. No other words were spoken because another shot rang in my ears, the wall behind me exploding.
I ducked as three other bullets whizzed past me above the nurse’s station, buzzing through the air. One struck the glass doors, shattering them in their pane. After a few seconds of quiet, I pulled out my twelve gauge and stood up.
“I’d think twice about pulling that trigger again, asshole.”
The barrel of Wood’s gun stared me down. A black, never-ending mouth of death. The last thing many people saw before they kicked the bucket. And when I saw the subtle twitch of his fingers, I did the only thing I had been prepared to. I squeezed the trigger on my gun first.
And it jammed.
Son of a bitch! The motherfucker hadn’t been cleaned in over a year! Why did I think it’d work? I stared at it like it called me a dirty name as another bang and flash sent a bullet flying past my head. In that moment, I panicked, threw back my arm and hurled my shotgun at his face.
“Ah!” He ducked, putting his arms out in front of him to protect himself. My sawed-off crashed into his forearm, sending his own gun clattering out of his hand and onto the floor.
I took the opportunity to rush him. Thankful I didn’t have far to run, I vaulted out from behind the nurse’s station and tried to tackle him to the floor. But I only got so far as his shoes before he backed up and started searching for his gun. I swatted it away from his hand, sending it sliding across the floor and underneath Brendon’s shoulder. His body was too still for my pleasure.
“You are the bane of my existence, Jack Reynolds!” Wood cried, snatching my shotgun from the floor and pointing it at my face.
Oh shit! Oh shit, shit, shit. Please jam again, please!
It did. And a third and fourth time. He kept squeezing the trigger, but nothing would happen. He was about to throw it at me like I’d done him when a blast of light and sound caused my eyes to shut tight. When I opened them again, Wood was staring straight through me. I small trickle of blood ran down between his eyes, dripping from his nose. He rocked back once, then twice, then crumpled to the floor, his head crashing into the opposite wall. I swung my gaze over to Brendon who held the .22 in his hands, a river of blood matting the hair on the left side of his head.
“Holy shit! You just killed him!”
Brendon’s body jerked at the sound of my voice. His hands opened, and the gun clattered to the floor once more. He sank to his knees while keeping his eyes on Wood’s corpse. His hands began to shake, then his shoulders. Soon enough, his entire body was wracked with shakes.
“Oh, my Jesus. Christ. Holy…shit. I cannot believe I just killed someone on purpose.”
“That was fucking bad-ass, B.”
He swiveled his gaze over to me. His eyes were wide and afraid. The shakes caused his hair to fall across his forehead. Wood’s walkie-talkie went off. This time, I understood the voice coming out of it. They were checking in. From the sounds of it, they’d send backup if he didn’t answer soon.
I scrambled over to the corpse to search through his pockets. Nothing was in them except a single, folded photograph, a bloody thumbprint in one corner.
It was his family. Two good-looking kids and a wife. And Wood was smiling in the picture. They looked like a completely normal family.
“What happened to you, man?” I sighed as I turned back to slip his backpack off. Unzipping it, I began to dig around the mess of papers. I pulled out a binder with a bright red cover. It was listed on the outside as Classified: Secret. The Rabid.
“The hell?” When I opened it, a mess of Polaroids spilled onto the tiled floor. Some of them were of Braycart before and after its destruction. There were two maps as well. One of the whole world and another of the area just outside Johnson Village, CO. And then I spotted the missing posters. My own stupid face looked back at me from one of them. Lisa’s was plastered on another. The walkie-talkie beeped again. I kept going.
“What is it?” Brendon’s voice was close behind me as I flipped through the documents in the binder.
“It’s…it’s our journals. What the fuck?” On every page I turned, either mine or Lisa’s words stared back at me. Why did he have them? What did he want with them?
“Whoa, Dood. Someone in the government is really keeping tabs on y’all. What did you do?”
I piled everything back into the pack and zipped it up. Then, I slung it over my shoulder. “I have no idea. Where’s Lisa?”
From the desk of Dr. Lisa Reynolds – July 7
I was trying to make sense of the blood report when my phone beeped the third time. It sat beside me on the metal table, vibrating the contents on top. I ignored it, pouring over the composition of Scott’s blood.
Just as something very curious caught my eye, I heard the first gunshot. I ripped my concentration away from the test results to hear several more shots and shouting. Something bad was happening. I snatched my phone, stuffing it in my back pocket as I collected the samples from the lab. In the middle of packing everything up, I heard the final shot, and everything went silent.
I slipped out of the lab as quietly as I could, tiptoeing on the linoleum toward the stairs. There were voices downstairs. They were mumbled. I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Pressing my back against the wall, I made my way toward the large window to my right.
But when I came close to rounding the top of the stairs, I smacked straight into Jack’s chest. He grabbed my shoulders as I yelped. Thank God he was alright. When I saw Brendon behind him, his face dripping blood, I let my husband go.
“What happened?”
“B got shot in the head like an idiot,” Jack said, his tone light.
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” He pretended to whine like a child.
“Shh!” I scolded him as I checked for wounds. He winced as I rubbed a thumb through his blood-matted hair. “I can see your roots. You should dye your hair again soon.”
“Damn, Mama Reynolds. Lay it on thick.”
“Looks like the bullet just grazed you. Take off your shirt and use it to stop the blood flow.”
“You had me at ‘take off your shirt.’” He did as instructed, using his white undershirt to press against the shallow wound.
“Wood’s dead.” Jack caught my attention.
I sighed. “That poor, poor man. We should find his family and tell them.”
Jack nodded, handing me a folded photograph of the man’s fa
mily. “He’s got backup.”
“They’ll likely find us soon.” I took the phone out of my back pocket, the notification of a “test ping” flashed on the screen. I knew what I had to do. Using my full strength, I pulled back and hurled the phone at the wall. Plaster glittered to the floor as it hit, its glass display shattering and turning dark.
“That’s one way to do it,” Brendon said.
“Yes.” I stooped to dig through my bag, trying to locate the test results again. For some reason, Jack mimicked my behavior with a backpack I didn’t recognize. Once I’d found the test results, I shoved them at Brendon. “Tell me what’s wrong with this.”
Jack stood and handed me a binder with a red cover. With a serious expression, he said, “You should flip through that real quick.”
I did, feeling an impending sense of dread build in my middle with the turn of each page. The private words of my diary had been copied and distributed to someone. Perhaps multiple people. Nonsensical notes were tagged in the margins.
“I don’t understand.”
“They’re trying to erase you from the vaccine.” Jack’s eyes were serious.
Brendon handed me the results back. “What’s gentamicin C1a?”
“It’s an antibiotic. And the fact that you haven’t heard of it means you didn’t use it at the Utah hospital and it never showed up in his composition before. Am I correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, dear.” While I was one step closer to understanding what I was being hunted for, the conclusion was horrifying if correct.
“What’s all this mean?” Brendon asked.
“Gentamicin was not in my vaccine. I didn’t use it because it’s not an effective antibiotic compound in the human anti-viral.”
Jack shifted his weight next to me. “Why’d you say it like that?”
“Because Gentamicin is used in Defensor.”
Brendon’s eyes widened as my words sunk in. “Are you serious?”
“I’m lost,” Jack said.
I turned to him. “Defensor is a rabies vaccine used in dogs.”
“What—”
A loud crash stopped Jack mid-sentence. Car doors slammed outside. We moved toward the picture window. Outside, a caravan of black SUV’s littered the parking lot. Men in hats and Kevlar vests with guns drawn swarmed the entrance of the hospital.
