by Emma Castle
With a roar, he swung his fist into the nearest wall, and pain exploded up his arm to his shoulder.
Julian put a hand on his arm, but Lincoln nearly shrugged him off with a snarl—almost. He wasn’t a wounded animal; it wouldn’t help to lash out at his friend.
“Let’s go see the doc,” Miles suggested.
“Yeah, she may be close to a vaccine, assuming it can help someone who’s already infected,” Jason agreed. Julian gave Lincoln a gentle nudge as they headed down to Dr. Kennedy’s lab floor.
One of her technicians, a woman named Isabel, met them at the entryway to the labs.
“Can we speak to the doc?” Miles asked.
“Only if you suit up.” She nodded at the door behind her. It had a sign that said “Decontamination Area.”
“I’ll walk you through the procedure. You won’t be near the hot zones. But you’ll be next door, so it’s an extra precaution.”
“But we’re immune,” Jason pointed out.
“Yes,” Isabel said. “But you could still take the dormant hot agent outside with you. We want to keep the CDC clean. If we ever find a way to stop this, we don’t want an immune person years from now to walk through and touch a doorknob or an elevator button and give the virus a new home. Or God forbid, a chance to mutate into something that could kill even those of us who are naturally immune.”
“You heard the woman,” Miles said. “Suit up, guys.”
Lincoln donned the suit as instructed and taped up his wrists and ankles before he followed Isabel inside. They were showered with chemicals and their suits inflated with air. The sound of the air filtration was loud.
“Can you hear me?” Isabel’s voice came through a comm in her helmet. Lincoln flashed her a thumbs-up. She laughed a little.
“I can hear you if you talk.”
“Oh.” He felt a bit like an idiot. Of course these suits had microphones.
“Follow me, gentlemen.” She led them down the hall and through another pressurized zone before they found Dr. Kennedy and Ellie. The baby was in an isolette incubator, to keep her body temperature maintained. Several little flat white pads with wires were taped on her chest, monitoring her vital signs.
She’s so small. All this time, he thought Ellie was a fighter, this little bundle of strength, but now he saw how very small and delicate she truly was. Her breathing was shallow, and her temperature was at 101 degrees.
“Dr. Kennedy.” Lincoln joined her at her desk, where she was peering into a microscope. Her clear face mask on her helmet was pressed against the eyepiece.
She waved him over and vacated the stool. “Come take a look at this.” He looked into the microscope and saw several strand-like shapes wrestling with red blood cells.
“What is it?”
“The enemy. Hydra-1. The strands of the virus attacking Ellie’s blood sample.”
Lincoln’s entire body went rigid with primal fear for the child he’d come to see as his own in the last week. To see what was happening to her, to see the devastation the virus wreaked upon her cells was horrifying in a way that haunt him for the rest of his life. He focused on the microscope again, watching the most ancient battle play out. Deadly virus versus living cells.
“I injected a test vaccine into the cells. Normally, a vaccine works only to prevent falling ill, but I think what I’ve been creating so far may be a dual cure and vaccine, which means if it works, it could stop the progression of the virus already present in a person’s system. So far the virus is fighting it but not succeeding in breaking the cells to replicate. If they were, we would see tons of bloated cell membranes exploded into a gooey gray residue.”
“Is that the medical term for it?”
“You don’t want the medical terms, trust me.”
Lincoln peered hard at the virus in the cells. He didn’t see any gray residue.
“So…is this the cure?” he asked, too afraid to hope.
“It might be,” Erica said. “The virus takes a few days to manifest itself inside cells normally, so I can’t say for sure.”
Lincoln’s breath shook as he glanced at the baby inside the incubator. “How long does Ellie have…before?”
“Before she crashes and bleeds out?” Erica said and blushed. “Sorry, that’s the medical term. I didn’t mean to—”
Lincoln shook his head. “It’s fine. You warned me. But how long does she have?”
Erica looked to the bassinet.
“A day, maybe less. She’s so small, the virus can destroy her much faster than it would an adult.”
“Give the vaccine to her. Now.”
Erica hesitated. “I plan to, but you have to realize, it could behave differently inside the human body. She could worsen and die even sooner. Caroline should be the one to—”
Lincoln turned to Julian. “Get Caroline in here.” Julian nodded and left the room. Lincoln refused to leave Ellie and he knew Caroline would understand.
Erica and Lincoln watched Ellie silently while they waited. Ten minutes later, Caroline, fully suited up, came into the lab. She went straight to the baby, her face wet with tears. She splayed her gloved hands on the plastic case. Lincoln’s vision blurred, and he had to remind himself to breathe.
“Julian said there might be a vaccine that could also be a cure?” she said.
“It’s far from certain, but it’s our best shot yet,” Erica explained. “We won’t know right away if she will survive. It’s possible it can even speed up the virus.”
Caroline stared at Lincoln and then at Ellie, her face pale as alabaster.
“Dr. Kennedy, if Ellie were your child, what would you do?”
Erica’s eyes brightened with tears. She had to be thinking of her own children.
“I…would take the chance. She’s already close to crashing. She can’t survive if we do nothing. If she were an adult, she’d have a five percent chance of surviving. We don’t have any records on infant survivors.”
“We need to try.” Lincoln could hear Caroline suck in a shaky breath through the radio.
Erica went to a lab station and prepared the vaccine. She came over to Ellie and opened the bassinet. Caroline reached down and carefully grasped one of Ellie’s small hands. Lincoln took Ellie’s other hand.
Caroline met his gaze and mouthed the words “I love you.” He managed a nod back as Erica injected the needle into the baby’s tiny thigh. Ellie twitched, and her small mouth opened with a startled cry.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Erica breathed. She wiped the injection site. No blood welled up. “Now we wait.”
“Can I stay with her?” Caroline asked.
“Yes, but the battery on your suit will die in a few hours. I’ll go get a replacement battery ready.”
Lincoln pulled up a pair of stools by the baby’s bassinet. “Grab two.” He and Caroline both sat down to wait.
“Anything we can do?” Julian asked. He, Miles, and Jason still stood in the back of the room, wearing their spacesuits.
“Pray.” He’d never been much of a believer, not in the churchgoing way. But there had been moments of his life, times when the darkness was ready to take him over, that he thought he could sense something, a peace and tranquility that came from an unknown place outside him. Whatever that was, he did believe in it.
Don’t let Ellie die. We need this hope more than you can know.
17
Final radio broadcast from Adam Caine, the last president of the United States:
“I know you are afraid. I know it feels like darkness is all around you. But you must remember that you are not alone. We are all in this together.
We have faced war, natural disasters, times of true crisis. This is no different. But this time we risk losing ourselves to the madness of our own fears. We must stop ourselves from falling apart. We must come together. A dozen sticks bound together are stronger than a dozen sticks alone. Trust each other, move past fear, leave behind hate.
We face hard times ahead. But if we work together, we
will save each other. We will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight. We will survive if we believe in each other. Do not give up that which is our greatest strength.
Do not give up our hope.”
* * *
Caroline was exhausted, but she kept herself upright on her stool, her hand clasping Ellie’s. From time to time, she would drift into a near sleep state and see flashes of memories of her family, both painful and beautiful. Like finding an old photo of lost loved ones hidden at the back of the drawer. She embraced the pain and the longing for what she had lost and poured that blend of emotions into her heart. Tears dropped down her cheeks inside her spacesuit.
She kept her vigil all night. By two in the morning, she jolted when the baby in the bassinet stirred and started to cry.
“Ellie?” She and Lincoln tensed, afraid they were seeing the spasms of death, but then Caroline really looked at the baby. The pallor of her skin was gone, replaced by a healthy peachy color. Ellie squirmed and fussed in a way Caroline had come to recognize.
“I think she’s hungry. Dr. Kennedy, can we feed her?” Caroline asked.
Dr. Kennedy came over to check Ellie’s vitals and take a blood sample. “Yes, if she’s wanting food, we definitely should.”
Lincoln left and returned with a bottle of baby formula. He handled it to Caroline, who picked the baby up and held her against her spacesuit-covered chest. The baby drank greedily from the bottle, and Caroline felt like she could finally breathe a sigh of relief, at least for the moment. Caroline waited for Dr. Kennedy’s results, her heart pounding.
“The virus doesn’t seem to be replicating. Ellie’s system is fighting back. A few more days and her immune system might be able to remove the strains of the virus from her body altogether.” She paused a moment before feeling confident enough to add, “I believe we have our cure.”
Caroline bit her lip to hold back a sob of relief. Lincoln put an arm around her, their spacesuits crushing against one another.
“She’s going to be okay, Caroline. Now you need to rest,” he said.
“You both do,” said the doctor. Caroline met his gaze. His brown eyes were dark and stormy with emotions, but he was just as exhausted as she was.
Jason entered the lab, grinning. “Lincoln, you and Caroline need to see this.”
“What is it?”
“Just come.”
“You know, at some point I’m going to have to remind people what the chain of command is,” Lincoln muttered. They followed him out, careful to follow the decontamination procedures. Then they went to a tall bank of windows that looked out over the CDC courtyard.
“There,” Jason said, his voice soft and reverent. “Take a look.”
Caroline stepped up to the windows and looked down. Hundreds of candles and lighters filled the night as a thousand people held a silent vigil below.
“My God…”
“They heard about Ellie. They’ve been there since midnight. Men, women, children. Praying for and believing in you. Caroline, you did this.” Jason paused before he continued. “We were broken, a nation scattered on the winds, and you brought us back together. You made us one people again. A nation to fight for.” Jason paused again. “You weren’t simply just giving us hope. You spent the last week sharing ways to rebuild, safe zones, how to find supplies, blocked roads, the locations of wildfires. You told us what to do. You gave us a blueprint to come back to ourselves as a community.”
Caroline stared speechless at the dots of light, and she remembered a poem her father used to read to her.
* * *
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
* * *
“William Henley?” Jason asked, still smiling.
She nodded. “‘Invictus.’ My dad loved poems. He used to read them to me and Natalie all the time.”
She looked out once more at the sea of candles, her heart bursting with hope and pride. Lincoln wrapped her tightly in his arms.
“Ellie is safe. You’re safe,” he whispered.
“We’re safe,” she corrected.
“What do we do now?” Jason asked him.
“What I’ve always said we’d do. We rebuild,” Caroline said. “We make a list of the survivors, find out their knowledge, skills, and former jobs. We get the power on, we get farms going, we start searching for other survivors, the ones who didn’t hear the broadcasts. We rebuild.”
Miles joined them at the windows. “Finally, some orders we can follow.”
Caroline leaned her head against Lincoln’s shoulder and drew in a slow, deep breath.
“I love you,” she whispered quietly enough so that only he could hear. His arms tightened around her, and he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head.
“I love you too.”
But the words were so much more than a simple declaration. They were vows that went deeper than blood, deeper than the necessities of survival. They were vows whole new worlds were built upon.
South Carolina, three months later
“How much farther?” Caroline asked. Lincoln turned their car up the wooded dirt road toward a distant cabin by a shimmering lake.
“It’s over there.” Lincoln nodded at a small log cabin, his heart hammering. Ellie sat in the back seat in her cars seat, making small random chirping noises that made him laugh most of the drive to his parents’ cabin. Now he was too nervous to think beyond what lay in that cabin.
“Stay in the car. Kirby and I will take a look around. Odds are…” His voice roughened suddenly.
Caroline reached over and covered his hand where he rested it on one of his thighs.
“We know the odds,” she said. “But a little faith doesn’t hurt, either.” Her lips curved in a hopeful smile. How could he not have faith when he looked at her? In the last three months, Caroline had helped get the power back on around Georgia, and now they were looking toward the surrounding states. Lincoln had organized an effective security force, making Julian, Miles, and Jason team leaders. They had kept her people safe from any dangers still lurking out there, but there were fewer and fewer crazed bandits every day it seemed. Many tried to come in from the cold, so to speak, hoping to make amends.
They’d found another ten thousand people in the last couple of months, and all were now connected on the CB radio system until the cellular network could get back up and running. Caroline and the others sent out daily broadcasts, bringing together news to connect survivors, create supply depot stations, and a way to gather information about those who were ready to join society again. Caroline had the only radio that could reach the entire United States on the emergency channel, the one that Lincoln had carried out of the bunker from Adam’s last moments alive. But Holt and the others had worked extensively to get the CB radio system up despite the limitations of the range. So far, the plan was working.
It was a start. A good one.
“Go on, we’ll wait here.” She nudged him, and he slowly climbed out of the car, the Irish setter quickly following him out. The dog kept sniffing the air and clung to his side as they walked the last fifty feet.
The oak trees around the cabin had grown taller and thicker since he’d last been there. How long had it been? Lincoln couldn’t remember, maybe when he was twelve? The lake just beyond was small but always well stocked with fish, and a person could survive here for a long time if they had to.
Lincoln reached the front steps of the cabin and looked up toward the open screen door. A woman stood there, staring at him with wide, tearful eyes.
“Mom?”
“Oh my God. Lincoln! Harry, Lincoln’s here!”
Lincoln winced when she said his father’s name, but she shoved the screen door open and rushed into his arms. He caught his mother, her body still slender and delicate. Once a dancer, always a dancer. Her gray hair was cropped short, and she still s
melled of lavender. The scent brought back a wave of memories, good memories, ones he’d sometimes thought he didn’t actually have. Then she pulled back and looked up at him, smoothing her hands over his chest and then touching his face tenderly, her lips quivering.
“I knew you’d be alive,” she whispered. “I knew it.”
A shadow darkened the doorway of the cabin, and Lincoln looked past his mother to see his father. His old man was now indeed old, his hair completely silver and his eyes softer than Lincoln remembered them being.
“Sir,” he said stiffly.
His father looked from him to the dog wagging his tail beside him. “So you finally got a dog, huh?” There was a twitch to his lips that made Lincoln think the old man was on the verge of smiling.
“Yeah…and a wife and a kid.” He nodded toward the SUV at the edge of the clearing.
His mother almost shrieked. “What? Don’t make them stay in the car! Get them inside! I want to meet them!” His mother rushed back into the house, muttering frantically about guests, where her tea bags were, and for Harry to get the coffee brewing. Lincoln stood there on the porch, the scent of the woods and the lake wrapping around him as he stared at his father and his father stared back at him.
“I…” his father started. “I’m glad you’re here, son. We’ve been worried sick, gave up hope, really.” He leveled his gaze at Lincoln. His chest ached as he stared at the man he’d hated for so many years. “The world ending makes a man realize how many mistakes he made, you know?” Harry said quietly. “How many times I let you down, hurt you. I…” Harry cleared his throat and looked away. Lincoln did too. He could barely breathe, so he turned to wave Caroline inside. She was already halfway out of the car, carrying Ellie in her arms.
“Mr. Atwood?” Caroline greeted him, all smiles as she stepped onto the porch. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Caroline.”
For a second Harry just stared at her, and then he looked between her and Lincoln. “You’re not…not Caroline Kelly from the radio?” His voice deepened as he struggled to contain himself.
