Future Lost

by Briggs, Elizabeth;

  I sit back in the seat, unable to take my eyes off the once-familiar streets of Los Angeles, which have now become unrecognizable. “Paige. Seriously. What happened here?”

  “The Black Friday Virus,” she says. My head snaps to her, and she offers me a grim smile. “We have a lot to catch you up on from the last thirty years.”

  I rub my forehead, where a headache is beginning to grow. “How am I supposed to find Adam in all this?”

  She hands me a canteen. “Don’t worry. You’ll bring him back.”

  I gulp the water down, even though it’s warm and metallic. “How do you know?”

  “Because I was at your wedding.” She gently pats my knee. “My past is your future, remember? That’s how I knew you’d be here today.”

  A trickle of hope makes my shoulders relax slightly, but I still have so many questions. “If that’s the case, why didn’t you rescue Adam when he came through the aperture?”

  “We tried. But you weren’t sure what date Adam arrived here. I’ve been watching for the last week or so, but I never saw him. I’m sorry.”

  Dammit. The new accelerator must have put me in the wrong point in time. But did I arrive after Adam…or before him?

  Either way, I’m relieved by Paige’s words. If I found Adam in her past, I can find him now. We can both make it back alive. And once we do, we have a new mission: preventing this future from ever happening.

  01:19

  The car slows as we approach a metal wall that must be at least ten feet tall. It stretches between the buildings on either side of the road and is topped with barbed wire. A quick glance up reveals snipers in the windows, ready to take us out.

  A gate slowly opens, and two people holding guns stand inside it, surveying the street. They nod at our car and let us drive inside. As we pass by, I notice they’re dressed similarly to Paige and Jesse, with dusty clothes that cover most of their bodies and their faces. Their eyes follow me through the slits, though I can’t tell if it’s with suspicion or simple curiosity. I suspect they don’t get too many outsiders here.

  “Welcome to Miracle Mile,” Paige says. “The last survivor refuge in Los Angeles.”

  With her words, I realize where we are. Every kid growing up in LA has been here on school field trips to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the La Brea Tar Pits, or one of the many other museums in this area. We’re driving slowly down Wilshire Boulevard, but unlike downtown, this area is full of life and has been completely rebuilt. The buildings are covered in solar panels, and there are big rain barrels to collect water all around them. We pass the old El Rey Theatre, which now reads TOWN HALL MEETING: TUESDAY 6 P.M. below its neon sign, where it once spelled out the names of bands performing there.

  People walk down the sidewalk past various shops selling clothes, household goods, books, or weapons. Another store, which used to be a Starbucks, judging by the faded green sign above it, has a sign that says SCAVENGED GOODS: RARE AND UNIQUE – BUY AND SELL. In the windows I see everything from jewelry to a kid’s bike to an old PlayStation.

  “How long have you lived here?” I ask Paige.

  “About fifteen years. Started out with a few survivors who holed up in the museums, partly to preserve the art and fossils in there, and partly because it had the best security around. Now we’ve reclaimed everything from Olympic to Beverly and La Brea to Fairfax. Our plan is to keep expanding outward until we have control of all of central Los Angeles again. Someday.”

  “What about the government?” I ask. “Can’t they send help?”

  Paige’s mouth twists. “There’s no government anymore. Not like you knew it, anyway.”

  We continue down the road, past lines of people waiting to get water rations from a building that used to be an Office Depot. The Ralphs supermarket is still there, but it has guidelines posted along the outside about how much food each person or family is allowed per week.

  “We’ve done our best to preserve and rebuild what we can,” Paige says. “We’ve turned the nearby parks into farms, and we make sure everyone has enough food and water. Kids still go to school, but now they learn a useful trade and how to protect themselves. We do what it takes to survive. But there are very few of us left.”

  Jesse leans forward in the backseat. “There was another refuge in Santa Monica. That’s where I lived when I was a kid. But it was attacked by the Militia, and I barely made it out. My parents weren’t so lucky. Now this is the only safe place left in the city.”

  “The Militia?” I ask.

  “It’ll be easier to explain if we start from the beginning,” Paige says.

  We drive past the La Brea Tar Pits, with the black lake full of asphalt in the front and the statues of mammoths stuck inside it, and then the large building housing the museum behind it. Except, as we get closer, I see there are people stuck in the tar pits too. Two of them, both men, one in his twenties or so, and the other one probably double that in age. The younger one glares at us as we pass by, while the older one yells, “Please let me out. I didn’t mean it!”

  “What’s that about?” I ask.

  Paige doesn’t even spare them a glance as she pulls into the parking lot behind the museum. “They’re criminals. One of them was caught stealing food; the other beat his girlfriend.”

  “You leave them to die there?” I shudder. What a horrible way to go.

  “Not usually. We’ll fish those two out when they’ve done their time. Might be a bit sick from the methane gas, but they’ll survive.” She glances at my face and chuckles softly. “I know it sounds barbaric, but we don’t have the space for a prison, and trust me, it works. We have very little crime and almost no repeat offenders.”

  I’m horrified less by their methods than by how much Paige has changed. Gone is the optimistic, perky girl with boundless energy and a kind word for everyone. This future has made her hard. I’m almost scared to ask what happened to the rest of us.

  Paige turns off the car, and we all hop out. She moves close to Jesse and speaks quietly to him, while I look around. I can’t make out their words, but after a minute, he nods.

  “Got it, boss,” he says before taking off down the road.

  Paige and I head for the museum entrance, which has pictures of ancient animals depicted on the stone above the door. Two armed guards nod at Paige and let us inside. The building is silent, and we seem to be alone. It’s warm and stale without any air conditioning, but a few lights are on, highlighting the displays. We pass by a skeleton of a saber-toothed tiger and another of a woolly mammoth, along with a wall of dire-wolf skulls. Each exhibit looks exactly like it did when I was last here as kid, as if this is the one part of the city that’s remained untouched since the world fell apart.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I’m taking you to speak with our leader,” Paige says.

  She leads us into a long hallway with doors on either side, the light dim over the dark carpeting. We step inside one of the rooms at the end. As the door shuts behind us, a black woman with braided hair turns toward me. She’s wearing a heavy gray coat over cargo pants, but her face isn’t covered up like the others.

  “Dr. Campbell?” I recognize her immediately, but I’m still surprised to see her here—and leading the survivors.

  A weak smile splits her wrinkled face. “Elena. I can’t believe you’re here.” She gives me a loose hug, her movements slower than I remember. She gestures at the conference table and office chairs in front of us. “Please sit down, and we’ll try to explain everything.”

  I take a seat and study the room we’re in. The power’s on, illuminating the paper maps that cover one of the walls. Most of them seem to be of Los Angeles or California, but there’s another one with a map of the United States. Some areas are filled in with different colors, while others have big X marks over them in red tape or pictures tacked onto them.

  Dr. Campbell turns to Paige. “Were there any problems?”

  Paige sits in a chair next t
o me and removes the scarf from her face, revealing an older, harder version of the girl I know. Her long hair is more gray than blond, and there’s a new scar through her left eyebrow. “Downtown is overrun with Infected again, but otherwise no trouble. We didn’t see any Militia. Didn’t find anything of value either, unfortunately.”

  Dr. Campbell nods. “You brought Elena here, and you made it back safely. That’s all that matters.”

  “Do you know where Adam is?” I ask.

  “No, but I’ll get my best people to look into it. Don’t worry; we’ll find him.”

  I’m antsy to get moving, but I can’t run out blindly looking for Adam. The world is too dangerous, and I need to know more before I rush into anything. “Can you tell me what happened to this future?”

  “Where do I even begin?” Dr. Campbell sits in front of me and folds her hands on the table. Sadness overtakes her features as she watches me for a long moment before sighing. “It started twenty years ago. A bioengineered virus was released on Black Friday at dozens of different shopping centers in all the major cities across America, just in time for it to be spread by people traveling home after Thanksgiving.” She stares down at her wrinkled hands as she continues, her voice solemn but steady. “They called it the Black Friday Virus. It quickly became a devastating pandemic that swept through the United States, resulting in basic services being shut down. Hospitals were overrun. Looting and rioting became commonplace. The police couldn’t keep up.”

  “It got so bad that we ran out of room to put the dead,” Paige adds. “They just started piling them up on the side of the road.”

  “My God,” I whisper. I guessed some of this from what I glimpsed earlier, but hearing it out loud is even more horrifying.

  Dr. Campbell glances at the map on the wall. “The largest cities in the United States, which were hit the hardest, were abandoned except for small, violent gangs of survivors. People were sectioned off into quarantine zones by the military, but the virus kept spreading, no matter what the government did to stop it. It became a global epidemic, and a few months later, the entire world had crumbled. Billions of lives were snuffed out in less than a year—and there was nothing anyone could do but try to survive.”

  “We lost so many people in those early days,” Paige says. “Friends. Family. No one was safe. The only reason we survived was because you and Adam warned us, giving us some time to prepare.”

  “How did it spread so quickly without anyone stopping it?” I ask.

  “After the virus was released, no major symptoms were reported for over twenty-four hours, allowing it to spread unnoticed,” Dr. Campbell says. “The first sign of the virus was a light nose bleed about four hours after infection, but then there would be nothing until thirty hours, when the symptoms began to feel like a cold or the flu—fever, headache, muscle pain. Nothing that would make most people visit the hospital. It was only at sixty hours from infection that things started to really go bad. Severe pain in the stomach and chest. Vomiting blood, which soon became blood pouring from the eyes and nose too. This would go on for a few days, during which time doctors tried to treat the symptoms, but inevitably it ended in death. But by then, it had probably already infected someone else.”

  “Only a few people seemed to be immune.” Paige rolls up her sleeve and reveals a large, mangled scar on her arm that almost looks like a bite. “An Infected did this to me a few years ago. Good thing I’m one of the lucky ones.”

  “So those zombies out there have the virus too?” I ask.

  “The virus mutated about five years after the pandemic, when we were just starting to pick ourselves up again,” Dr. Campbell says. “But people didn’t die this time—they became Infected. Stuck between life and death, their minds so decayed they don’t know who they are anymore, their bodies out of their control. It’s a miracle they survive at all, but the virus keeps them alive on very little food so that it can spread to others.”

  “They’re not zombies,” Paige adds. “They’re not dead and they’ll eat just about anything, but all their humanity is gone and there’s no cure for them. The only thing we can do is kill them and try to wipe the remaining traces of the virus out.”

  I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for them during the early days of the virus or what it’s like now, as they try to rebuild a world that’s fallen into chaos. So many people dead, and nothing they could do to prevent it. I have to find a way to stop it. “Do you know who released the virus?”

  Dr. Campbell’s mouth twists, like she’s tasted something sour. “A radical neo-Nazi group known as the White Outs claimed credit for it. Their goal was to purge the world of people of color and other minorities, and they thought white people would be immune. Of course it didn’t work, or I wouldn’t be here right now. The virus spread out of control and affected everyone.”

  “Ugh.” I feel physically sick. How could anyone do such a thing? I will never understand that kind of hatred or intolerance. “Do you know who their leader was? Or where they were located?”

  Paige shakes her head. “We know very little, unfortunately. Everything was so chaotic after the epidemic broke out. There were lots of conflicting news reports, and we were all so focused on trying to survive. Then, after the world collapsed, it was tough to find any information about the group.”

  “You have to know something,” I say. “Even something small, like a tiny detail that might seem insignificant to you. Just give me somewhere I can start.”

  Pity and sadness fill Dr. Campbell’s eyes. “Elena, I know this won’t stop you, but there’s nothing you can do. You spent years trying to track down the White Outs and prevent the pandemic, but you failed.”

  My fists clench under the table. “Maybe, but I’m not going to give up that easily.”

  “Of course not.” Paige gives me a warm smile. “You never give up. And maybe this time you’ll find a way.”

  01:42

  The door opens, and another woman walks in. Her dark brown hair is streaked with gray, and she wears glasses now, but I’d recognize her anywhere. I stand when I see her, relieved to see she’s still alive. “Zahra.”

  She wraps me in a tight hug, tighter than I’ve ever received from her before. Like me, Zahra isn’t normally a hugger. “Elena. It’s been too long. Way too long.”

  “Too long for you maybe,” I say, stepping back. “I saw you and Paige yesterday.”

  “Looking a lot younger, no doubt,” Paige says.

  Zahra rolls her eyes. “Please. You still look exactly the same.”

  “Hardly.” Paige waves the compliment away, although the two of them do look pretty good considering they’re almost fifty.

  Zahra pats my arm. “I missed you. Don’t tell anyone though.”

  “It’ll be our secret. But how long has it been exactly?” I glance between the three of them. All the sad looks they’ve been giving me. The tight hugs. I’m scared to ask about my fate, but at the same time, I need to know. “Does that mean I’m…?”

  None of them want to answer me first. Their eyes remain downcast, until finally Dr. Campbell speaks up. “I’m sorry, Elena.”

  I swallow hard, but I expected that much, and it’s not the first time I’ve learned I’ll be dead in the future. I’ve changed my fate before; I can change it again. “What about Adam? And our daughter, Ava?”

  Paige reaches for my hand. “Also gone. I’m so sorry.”

  Their deaths are harder to stomach than my own. My fingers tighten around Paige’s hand. “What happened to us?”

  Her voice is quiet, her eyes haunted. “Your daughter was born a few years after the Black Friday Virus, but she got sick when she was only an infant. Adam was so upset he killed himself, and you died not long after that.”

  I close my eyes for a second, letting the knowledge sink in, fighting back the grief. There’s a tightness in my throat that I can’t speak through, so I only nod. I start to ask how I died but decide it doesn’t matter.

  “Wha
t about Chris? And Ken?” I finally manage to ask.

  “Thanks to your warnings, we all knew the plague was coming and were able to prepare for it, as much as we could anyway. None of us got sick right away, but Chris and Shawnda ended up contracting the virus a few months after the outbreak. Their son survived, and for some time, you and Adam raised him as your own. But after you died, he disappeared. I’m not sure what happened to him or if he’s still alive. And Ken…” Paige’s eyes grow heavy with emotion, and she looks down at our entwined hands.

  “Ken died protecting Paige from the Militia,” Zahra fills in. “He knew without the cure for Huntington’s he wouldn’t live past forty anyway. He chose to go out fighting instead.”

  “What is the Militia?” I ask. Jesse had mentioned them earlier too.

  Dr. Campbell stands and moves to one of the maps, pointing to the different-colored zones. “After the government’s collapse, small militia groups rose up in rural areas and then proceeded to take over. Now the United States has split into different regions that govern themselves. Here in California, the West America Militia has tried to take control, although we refuse to recognize their authority. We prefer to remain independent.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t joining with others be a good idea?”

  “Not with them. The Militia are fanatics who care nothing for personal freedoms or about preserving culture. They demand order and kill anyone who disagrees with their command or steps out of line. Men are pressed into being soldiers, while women are forced to become breeding machines. We refuse to be ruled like that. There’s more to survival than just staying alive.” Dr. Campbell sits back down in her chair and runs a hand over her braids. “We used to trade with other independent groups, like the one in Santa Monica, but the Militia destroyed their refuge and forced their people to join them. I fear we might be next.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” Paige says. Always the optimist, even in a world as dark as this one.

  “That’s actually what I came to tell you,” Zahra says. “Jesse said you were here looking for Adam, so I hacked into the Militia’s computers and found a message mentioning a new recruit matching his description.”