The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “Ten,” Joffer said. “Besides those two. Your knee is bleeding.”

  Truman nodded. He looked up at the people standing by the door: the Verloren family; Hicks, the Australian power plant worker; Mishra the Indian tech; Li Huan and his wife Li Chen, engineers both; and Mottz and Joffer. Joffer pulled the Dmietrievs clear and Li Huan and Li Chen began ministering to them. Mottz knelt beside Truman and tenderly squeezed his knee. Truman winced. Taking off his shirt, Mottz tied it tightly around Truman’s knee.

  “Might be a broken kneecap,” Mottz said. “That will at least stop the bleeding.” He lifted Truman and set him with his back to the tunnel-side wall. It felt like a knife was twisting inside Truman’s back, but he managed not to scream.

  “We’re all gonna die,” Hicks said. He coughed. “Look at that mess. We’re dead.”

  “Shut up,” Mottz said as he glanced at the Verlorens. He moved toward the pile of rocks. “The medical supplies are buried along with the doc. We’ll have to see if we can dig them out. Everybody quiet. Hello!” he called. “Anybody alive under there?”

  Truman heard a soft whirring sound that might have been ringing in his ears. He heard the muffled voices of people in the room next door. Somehow their voices made it through the solid rock wall.

  Hicks grabbed the door handle and pulled, but apparently the force of the explosion had warped the heavy metal door and sealed it tight. “Get us out of here,” Hicks yelled as he pounded on the door. “Somebody give me a hand with this door.”

  “Leave the door shut,” Li Huan said.

  “We gotta get outta here.” Hicks continued pounding on the door.

  “We don’t even know if the tunnel’s structurally intact,” Brian Verloren said. He hugged Kyler while his wife Roanne held Kaylee in her arms and rocked her side to side.

  Joffer grabbed Hicks and pulled him away from the door, then shoved him toward the pile of rocks. “Help Mottz dig.”

  Hicks stared at Joffer, his hands clenched into fists, while Mottz straightened from his work and looked at Truman.

  Truman shook his head, signaling Mottz to leave Hicks alone for the moment, and said, “Joffer, see what you can find out about our neighbors. Are they okay? Are they in contact with anyone on the outside?”

  Joffer walked over to the wall and ran his fingers along a crack. Putting his mouth close to the crack, he called out:

  “You okay in there?”

  “We’re fine,” someone called back. “Lost all electrical power though. Emergency lights—batteries only. All our PlusPhones and interfaces are fried. No communications with anybody on the outside. How are you?”

  “Half the room collapsed. We’re digging people out now. Can you get out into the tunnel?”

  “When we opened the door, a bunch of rocks spilled in. Now we can’t get it to close.”

  Truman said to Joffer, “Tell them to stack the rocks inside the room and re-seal the door. There might be a leak out in the tunnel.”

  Joffer relayed the instructions and stepped over to help Mottz pull rocks clear of the pile. Mishra moved into position to take the rocks from Mottz and Joffer and stack them in the corner. Brian bent over to face his daughter. “You stay with Mommy, all right? Daddy’s gonna help move these rocks.”

  “Okay,” Kyler said. She looked at Truman as she backed into her mother.

  Truman smiled at her. “Everything’s going to be fine, Kyler.”

  Hicks shook his head. “You’re all crazy. Those people are dead. Why waste time digging them up?”

  Mishra said, “What do you want to do, Hicks? Stand around bitching?”

  “I’m not helping dig up a bunch of corpses. Let ’em stay buried.”

  “The food and water are under that pile as well,” Truman said. “Not to mention the medkit and the oxygen generators. You don’t dig, you don’t eat. And you don’t drink.”

  Hicks stood for a few more minutes, muttering to himself, then began to help Mishra, taking rocks from the Indian tech and placing them atop the pile beside Truman.

  Every few minutes, Mottz would hold up his hand, they’d stop digging, and Mottz or Joffer would call out: “Anybody alive under there? Anyone?”

  Roanne sat with her back to the door, her daughters on her lap. They kept quiet, thank God. Truman wasn’t sure he could handle crying children. He felt nauseated. His throat burned with dust. He smelled urine and bile. Sitting there with nothing to do, he recalled the moment the blast hit—the ground shaking under his feet, people screaming as the lights went out and the ceiling collapsed. Truman had been standing beside the Russians. He’d fallen, pummeled by debris. It had taken him a few seconds to realize that he was screaming too and only then managed to stop himself.

  He shook off the thoughts and concentrated on staying calm, smiling in as reassuring a manner as he could at the two girls. Boulders scraped against each other as they were pulled free and stacked in the corner. In a few minutes Mottz and Joffer pulled three bodies clear, their heads and chests bloody and misshapen. Roanne turned the girls’ heads away so they wouldn’t see the devastating injuries. Hopefully, the fallen had felt no pain.

  Truman felt useless sitting against the wall but every time he tried to move he nearly fainted. So he just watched as Mottz and Joffer led the rescue effort.

  He thought about the weirdness of how the room next door had survived the blast and how only part of this room had collapsed—the part of the room that was structurally the weakest. There must be tiny fissures running all through the Moon, created by the continual hammering of asteroids over millions of years.

  He tightened the bandage on his leg, grunting as he did so. Every movement of the knee felt like someone was sawing across it, ripping tendons and muscles.

  “You okay?” Mottz asked.

  “Just a little discomfort,” Truman replied, his raspy voice betraying his thirst. He wanted to scream—give in to the fear and agony, but he was afraid of starting a panic. I have to be strong, he told himself. These people are my responsibility. He heard a couple people in the other room ranting about death. And for their voices to carry through the crack, they must be shouting. Truman was thankful that his charges were more composed. He caught Kyler’s eye and winked at her. She offered a tentative smile.

  Mottz stopped working, held up his hands and said, “I got someone here.”

  “Alive?” Truman asked.

  “Can’t tell. Joffer, give me a hand.”

  The cadet joined him in lifting the rock while Hicks and Brian pulled the body clear. It was a woman, her skull an oddly misshapen mass of bloody tissue. Brian kept her mutilated head hidden from his daughters’ view. After Mottz and Joffer lowered the boulder to the ground, Mottz handed Brian a dirty cloth, which he placed over the woman’s head with a nod of thanks.

  “I think I found water,” Mishra said.

  “Excellent,” Joffer said. “We could use a drink.” He moved over to Mishra’s side and helped remove boulders. “Under here. Mottz, give me a hand.”

  Mottz stepped to Joffer’s side and together the two of them grabbed a massive boulder that would have weighed well over a ton on Earth. They lifted it off the ground and carried it toward the pile of rocks in the front corner where they carefully leaned it against the pile.

  Meanwhile, Hicks rushed over to the five-gallon water container and pulled it free. He scraped away some loose dirt and tried to twist the cover off, but it was jammed. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Please,” Brian said. “That’s not going to help.”

  “Give it to me,” Mottz said.

  Hicks handed the container to Mottz, who drew his Las-knife and cut the top off. He poured some water into the upside-down cap and handed it to Roanne. First Kaylee, then Kyler took a drink. Mottz filled the cap for them again and passed the container to Truman.

  Truman drank slowly, savoring t
he moisture. He hadn’t realized just how parched his throat was. “Thanks,” he said. “Let’s take a ten-minute break.”

  Truman didn’t want the break—or more precisely, the thoughts that were bound to come with it—but these people couldn’t keep working at this feverish pace. The sound of screaming came from the next room. Everyone looked over at the crack in the wall. It lasted for maybe a minute. The ranting died away. Truman recalled that Dr. Lee was next door—probably a tranquilizer.

  In the quiet that followed, Truman thought about McKenna and Emily, then for some reason flashed on an image of his older brother Ned, who had disappeared in South America while working for the CIA fifteen years ago. Why was he thinking about Ned now? He had a few old photos of Ned on his broken PlusPhone, but he hadn’t looked at them in a while and he was having trouble recalling Ned’s face.

  Raddock Boyd’s face, on the other hand, was clear in his mind. And he could hear the ex-Marine pleading for his life. No, he told himself. That was an accident. You didn’t know the stimulants and painkillers in the truth serum would kill him. You were just following orders. Right, tell that to God when you die.

  He forced his mind to focus on Emily and McKenna and Lendra. Was it too late to reconcile with Emily? Probably. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. The truth was, he loved Lendra. Perhaps that was stupid, for she wasn’t his to love. But if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he had stronger feelings for her than he did for Emily. McKenna he loved completely, wholly. But she was no longer his little girl. He glanced at Kyler and Kaylee. My God, they were calm—sitting there with their mother’s arms around them. They reminded him of McKenna when she was young.

  He found his fingers stroking the outline of the glass bulb of neo-dopamine Lendra had given him. Of course! He pulled the necklace out of his pocket. It took him only a few seconds to figure out how to unscrew it. Inside sat a silvery paste. Touching it with his finger, he pulled away a small dab and placed it on his tongue. Within seconds a comforting warmth engulfed him, a rush of optimism as the pain in his back and leg receded. He felt like he could accomplish anything. His mind seemed to expand, slowing down and speeding up at the same time so that every problem presented a solution.

  “What’s that, sir?” Mottz asked.

  “Neo-dopamine,” he replied. “Since the pain medication is buried, I thought it might help.”

  “Good idea,” Mottz said. “I could use a hit as well.”

  “Me too,” Joffer said.

  “We should all get a hit,” Hicks said.

  “Okay,” Truman said. “Just a tiny dab. It’s highly concentrated. Not the girls though.”

  He allowed the adults to put a finger in the glass bulb and touch it to their lips. For a moment the room was quiet, as people absorbed the drug.

  Joffer yelled, “Hoooweee! That’s good stuff!”

  Mottz nodded. Hicks just smiled, his eyes narrowing. Perhaps he’d taken too much. Roanne began to hum; Brian hugged his daughters and kissed the tops of their heads. Mishra bobbed his head over and over, while Li Huan looked at his hands as if seeing them for the first time. His wife Li Chen appeared unaffected. She pointed to Gregor and Maria. “Them too?”

  “Ask the doc next door,” Truman said.

  Joffer called out the request to Dr. Lee.

  “You just gave it to everyone?” Dr. Lee yelled. “This isn’t some recreational drug. It’s serious medicine—only to be prescribed after a thorough neurological examination. I recommend that none of you take another dose. The risk of addiction is extremely high. The risk of brain damage from overdose is extremely high. And it has an accumulating effect. It builds up in your system over time. It can even change neural pathways—sometimes after a single dose.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Truman called back. He screwed the cap on the glass bulb and put the necklace back in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “Joffer, tell Dr. Lee to find whatever they can to start enlarging the opening between these two walls. We want it big enough that people can get through if necessary. Also, get them working on trying to fix the communications equipment so we can contact the people at LB2. Maybe those folks are still in touch with someone on the outside. We’ll continue our rescue efforts here. We’ll need to reach the portable chem-toilet at some point. Okay, let’s get to work.”

  Mottz and Joffer jumped back to the pile and began lifting large boulders, which they passed to Hicks and Mishra, who assisted Li Huan and Brian in stacking them beside the bodies. The neo-dopamine had given them increased energy and strength. Wow, Truman thought, we’ll find those buried people in no time.

  And in less than a minute they found two more bodies. Li Huan and Brian stacked them atop the others while Mottz and Joffer continued to dig. Hicks, however, began to slow down, his movements less coordinated. He fell at one point, causing everyone to stop and stare. Laughing, he got to his feet and said, “Whoopsie. Don’t know what happened there. I just fell over.”

  “Maybe you should sit for a while,” Truman said.

  “I’m fine. Let me gurg. I mean, let me work.”

  “Okay,” Truman said.

  They returned to their digging. Glancing up at the ceiling, Truman wondered what else he should be doing, what else he should be taking into account. His eye tracked a reddish dust mote that swirled up and around in a tiny whirlpool of air. Another dust mote did the same. And suddenly Truman realized there was a leak.

  The spacesuits were buried in the back of the room next to the oxygen generators—no telling how badly damaged they were. And there was no way, without functioning sensors, to determine just how quickly the room was losing air. Truman studied the rising dust motes, wondering if it was possible to determine by their speed just how much time they had left. He almost laughed. Maybe Lendra could do it, or Devereaux, but Truman’s grasp of advanced mathematics was practically nil.

  Should he tell his fellow survivors about the problem? Or should he wait until he had no choice? Let them enjoy the moment. Besides, if the oxygen generators and the spacesuits aren’t damaged, it won’t matter. And it’s a slow leak. If that holds true, perhaps we can replace any missing oxygen with airflow from the room next door, which still has its oxygen generators intact.

  “Got another body,” Mottz said as he reached down into the pile and placed a hand on someone’s neck. “Dr. Melsinto. The medkit must be here too.”

  He and Joffer moved two rocks and pulled the corpse clear, coming up with the medical supplies, which they set beside Li Chen. Mishra removed a large QuikHeal bandage from the medkit and wrapped it around Truman’s knee, adjusting the anesthetic to high. He pulled out a back wrap, and when Truman gingerly lifted his shirt, the Indian tech settled it around him.

  Truman adjusted the anesthetic on that to high as well and within seconds his back pain vanished. He got to his feet.

  “Careful, sir,” Mottz said. “You might have serious damage to both your leg and back. Just because they don’t hurt anymore doesn’t mean you’re not making things worse by moving around.”

  “I’ll take it easy,” Truman said. “Three more people to find. Then we’ll dig up the food, the chem-toilet, the oxygen generators and the spacesuits. Li Huan, perhaps you can move to the crack in the wall and get instructions from Dr. Lee. Hicks and Mishra, help Joffer and Mottz with the heavier boulders. Brian, continue stacking rocks and bodies. I’ll help where I can.”

  “Lork the lagpolly,” Hicks said. His face scrunched up in frustration. “Fahgenny oggpoggin wallagoddy.” He jabbed his finger in Truman’s direction.

  “What did you say?” Mottz asked.

  “What the hell?” Hicks flushed, his breathing coming quicker, raspier. “Sorry. Don’t norg what gort into me.”

  “Must be the neo-dopamine,” Truman said. “We’d better run a scan on you. Come over here.”

  Hicks rubbed his face with his hand, leav
ing black smudges on his nose, cheeks and forehead. “You might be right. I feel kinda weird.”

  Truman found the scanner in the medkit and turned it on. Running it above Hicks’ head, he checked the readout, but it presented a series of graphs and lines that made no sense to him. He didn’t even know how to translate what he saw. Nevertheless, he walked over to the crack in the wall and called out to Dr. Lee, telling him what he’d found.

  Dr. Lee made him run the scan twice more, each time changing the parameters to access different information.

  “I can’t be sure without running the scans myself,” Dr. Lee said, “but it sounds like the neo-dopamine is altering his neural pathways. That’s not uncommon.”

  “Should he rest?”

  “No,” Hicks said. “I can work.”

  “It probably won’t hurt him to work,” Dr. Lee called out. “It might even be better for him—get the neo-dopamine out of his system quicker. Just don’t let him strain himself.”

  “There,” Hicks said as if he’d just proven some point. “Don’t stop me.” He grabbed another boulder.

  Mottz looked at Truman, who shrugged. “He seems okay.”

  “Curse I yam,” Hicks said. “Butter than you.”

  Truman reached down and fingered the Las-pistol Zora had provided. It was set to medium—a high stun setting. Hicks hadn’t shown any tendency to violence so far, but he’d been hostile and uncooperative. And for some indefinable reason Truman suspected he might erupt.

  Joffer apparently agreed for he placed his back to the wall so he could hand rocks off without turning his back on Hicks.

  Meanwhile Li Huan relayed instructions from Dr. Lee to Li Chen, who gave Gregor and Maria the prescribed medication. The scanner showed head injuries to both Russians, and Dr. Lee felt that their best chance for survival was to remain unconscious.