Particle Z (Book 1) (15 page)
“Looking for this?” Julian asked, standing in front of a door marked “Danger – High Voltage.”
“Of course, I should have known. The most obvious place to hide something is in plain sight.” Eric laughed at the cleverness of it all.
Julian swung the door open, revealing a small, closet-sized space. He walked in and opened another well-concealed door located in the back of the closet and this time a set of stairs leading upward could be seen.
Gesturing at Mike, Julian said, “Go see if they got in touch with Shrader.”
Before he could even take a step, Davis walked back in and said, “I spoke with Shrader and he thinks they can make the rendezvous point within ten minutes. He also said they’ve lost some people, Julian.”
Mike felt his blood run cold and could barely get the word out. “… Marlee?”
“He said we lost Ashley and Floyd. Shrader didn’t have all the details on how it happened, but they are both confirmed deceased. Said the odd thing was Marlee stopped Ashley without putting a finger on her and that freaked everyone out almost as much as the Changed did.”
“What, how would she stop someone without touching them?” Mike stammered, still too shocked to comprehend Ashley’s violent passing.
Julian stood silent with a pensive look on his face. “She’s starting to exhibit new characteristics from her Change. Maybe she’s starting to understand what those changes mean.”
“I thought you said she was latent?” Mike said, fear and anger in his voice.
“I did, and now her Change is apparently no longer taking a backseat to the old Marlee. She’s started to cross over, but that doesn’t mean she’ll turn into what we’ve seen roaming the streets, Mike. We need to get to a research lab and determine what Marlee’s condition means and if she is the key to our salvation. She’s not like the others.”
“I think you need to explain to us what exactly you need to do with her at a research lab, Julian.”
“I can promise you that no harm will come to her. She will need to decide how much of a role she plays in any possible cure, and she may only be a slightly modified version of her former self and hold no cure value at all. Humanity is on the brink of extinction, and we are talking about salvaging what is left and safeguarding what humanity we can. Think of it as protecting a seed that future generations will grow from … if we are lucky. This is bigger than you or Marlee, or me.”
Mike thought about Julian said and simply replied, “Let’s go up and get our people.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
They filed into the small room and started up the stairs. The tunnel was cramped and would only allow them to ascend single file. It was obvious this exit had never been intended for mass evacuation. After five minutes of steep climbing they came to yet another door.
The budget for this place must be huge,
Mike thought as they opened the newest door that led into a larger, albeit still not spacious area with what he hoped was the last door between them and open air.
“Get ready, we need to make this quick and fast,” Julian cautioned.
Without another word, they cracked the door open and filed out, expecting and ready for the worst. Luckily the area they now found themselves standing in was isolated and some distance from the main resort grounds.
“Get Shrader on the radio and get me an ETA now, Davis,” Julian barked when the MRAP was nowhere in sight. Mike thought he heard the whine of a motor laboring off in the distance, but it was hard to be sure with the sound bouncing off the hilltops surrounding them.
Davis spoke intently into the radio for a minute before turning back toward Julian. “He said the hills and trees are slowing them down and they have a shit load of Changed hot on their heels. I think we better be ready to get back inside when they get here.”
Minutes later the whine of the MRAP’s turbo diesel became clearly audible and Mike caught a glimpse of the war machine climbing the hill behind the tunnel’s entrance. Hundreds of Changed spread out behind the MRAP trying to keep pace with the slow-moving machine. Mike assumed the MRAP’s heavy gun was silent because there were just too many to make a realistic dent in the crowd. These people were smart as well as professional.
Mike spotted Garcia topside in the gun turret. When Garcia saw Mike’s group waving at him he ducked down inside the MRAP. Mike assumed he was getting everyone ready to unload. The huge vehicle came to a sliding stop just feet from where Mike and Eric were standing, and seconds later they heard the rear door drop. At that moment a roar ripped through the valley momentarily deafening everyone.
Someone must have climbed back into the turret because the heavy guns were firing with a frenzied violence causing Mike to stare up in amazement. Only for a moment though, as the Changed started to round the corner of the MRAP and come directly for him. These things were fucking persistent. Mike would give them that.
Marlee and Reid came barreling around from the rear of the MRAP just in front of the Changed and Mike forgot everything else in that moment. Marlee looked tired and scared, and Reid wasn’t looking much better. Garcia burst into sight then, mowing down the Changed with his assault rifle. He was a good shot and quickly dropped the slugs pursuing Marlee and Reid.
The heavy guns went silent as Shrader changed gears and jumped down from the turret, hitting the ground with a roll then back on his feet in seconds. At the same time Marlee ran up to Mike and fell into his open arms.
“I slowed them down, but if we don’t get inside now we’ll get overrun,” Shrader gasped.
Mike didn’t doubt that for a moment because the noise coming from the other side of the MRAP was reaching a fevered pitch along with the wafting scent of decaying flesh. They hurried back to the tunnel entrance, wishing there would have been enough time to unload the MRAP before heading back underground.
Maybe later
, Mike thought.
Once inside with the door lock triple-checked each of them sank to the ground to wearily catch their breath. Mike was cradling Marlee in his arms with Eric slumped down next to them. Mike didn’t want to discuss Ashley’s loss or question Marlee about how she had stopped Ashley at the moment, so he just held her tight while they rested. He knew that conversation would best be had after everyone was rested and felt secure. She looked up at him with a smile and the red glow deep in her eyes caused an involuntary chill to run down Mike’s spine. He wanted so badly for his Marlee to be okay.
By the time they made their way back down the long flight of stairs and into the bunker’s medical center, everyone was exhausted. Mike commandeered a couple of bunks in one corner of the room away from everyone else. He gently led Marlee to a bunk, made sure she was comfortably settled in, and decided it was time to get some rest himself. Mike knew if they went too long without sleep mistakes would start to happen, and the world they now found themselves in had no provision for error. Soon the hum of the generator and the relative peace of the bunker’s protective concrete walls lulled Mike into a much-needed sleep.
Other than Julian, who was busy tinkering with the equipment in the communication room, everyone had crashed. Too much running, fighting, and death had taken its toll; even the hired guns were using the down-time to rest their weary bodies.
When Mike woke back up he waited a few minutes before opening his eyes to enjoy the low murmur of conversation going on in the room. It brought him back to his childhood when his grandmother would drive up for an early morning weekend visit and he would wake up to the muffled sounds of his mom and grandmother talking to each other. He was glad they had both moved on from this world. The thought of either of them enduring the horror he had witnessed over the last few days was unthinkable.
“Hon?” Marlee whispered, “are you awake?”
Mike was convinced Marlee possessed a sixth sense because she always knew when he was awake, even when he was pretending not to be. He decided it was pointless to pretend any longer, so he propped himself up on one elbow and opened his eyes. The face of the most beautiful women he had ever set eyes on greeted him. She was giving him the “you’ve been sleeping for too long” look.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
“Close to ten hours.”
“Damn, I must’ve been tired. What’s everyone been up to?” Mike asked, seeing a couple of blanketed forms sleeping still.
Ashley’s loss came crashing back into his consciousness then and he felt the cold grip of despair clutching at his heart. Marlee noticed the expression on his face, leaned in and held him tight.
“How are you feeling?” Mike choked out.
“What you really want to ask me is if there is anything funny going on with me after what happened with Ashley.”
“No, I just want to know how you’re feeling. We can talk about
that
when you’re ready.” Mike didn’t know if he himself was ready for that conversation.
“That’s sweet of you, baby, but I actually feel pretty good, like I’ve found my center again. I can even feel things going on inside my body and I think if I were to concentrate hard enough I might even be able to sense what others are feeling. I’m afraid to try though. After what happened to Ashley I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“What did happen back there with Ashley?”
“It was all so unexpected and then she was standing there with that poor boy’s face hanging from her mouth. I felt the waves of violence pouring off her. All she wanted was to feed and kill anything living. It was so intense and I somehow followed her rage and anger back to its core and extinguished it. I don’t really understand how I did it yet, but Julian said he may be able figure it out.”
“Julian seems to have his act together but we need to be cautious; we don’t know what his true objectives are yet and I’m not taking any chances with you. Speaking of Julian, what’s he up to?”
“He’s been …”
As if on cue, Julian’s voice drifted into them from the COMM room. “I’ve got some television news feeds going and it looks worse than I thought out there.”
They were up in an instant and rushing into the adjoining room. It was filled to capacity within seconds, everyone wanting to see what was going on outside. Mike looked at the monitors everyone was transfixed by, and what he saw were grainy images of chaos.
He wasn’t sure where the images were originating from but it appeared that civil unrest was the rule not the exception. Image after image of cities burning and crowds of people ripped into by those recently turned were everywhere. It was more than his mind could handle and he was forced to look away. With his eyes averted, he saw the tears openly flowing down the faces of the others.
They all have family somewhere
, Mike thought sadly.
“Where are those images from?” someone asked.
“Everywhere,” came Julian’s low, measured reply. “Everywhere.”
“What do we do now?” Mike asked, knowing everyone was having the same thought.
“We need to regroup, reassess, and find a way to get Marlee somewhere we can research her change further. If she can look into their minds and extinguish the very thought that makes the Changed the way they are, maybe she holds the key to a cure or vaccine of sorts. We need to see if she can heal them or at a minimum remove their desire to attack the living. It’s imperative we understand their science if we are to have any chance at salvaging humanity. If not, I fear the remainder of the world’s population will be hunted until there is little or no civilization left on this planet of ours.”
“How do you know so much about it, Julian, when it took the rest of the world by surprise?” Marlee asked him. She was staring intently at him now, almost through him it seemed.
“You can sense it now, Marlee?” Julian asked her with a look just as intense.
Mike got the definite impression there was something else going on between them, something the rest of them could not see or understand.
“Yes, I feel it now. You have a familiar feeling about you that I also sensed when I first touched Ashley’s mind.”
“Very good, Marlee, you’re getting stronger and have already gained some control of your gift.”
“Gift, is that what you call this curse?”
“How else would you explain something that didn’t kill you and may help others?” Julian asked her with a clinical inflection to his voice.
“How do you know what I can feel?” she asked suddenly.
“I’ve had a little more practice than you,” he said and looked directly into Marlee’s eyes.
Without blinking, Julian’s eyes turned from a crisp blue to a dull red. The red radiating from the depths of his pupils mirrored Marlee’s exactly. Her breath caught in her throat and shock registered on the faces of those around Julian.
“How?” she breathed after a pause.
“Up till now there were only sporadic outbreaks involving a small number of people, relatively speaking. These outbreaks were easily contained and explained because they occurred in remote or Third World countries,” Julian started to explain before Marlee cut him off.
“Julian, I want to know how you changed your eye color,” Marlee asked impatiently.
“I’ll get to that, patience please, but I’m going to start from the beginning. It’ll save time and answer many of the questions you’re going to have.”
Marlee didn’t argue so Mike assumed Julian’s presumption was correct. He wondered if they were going to finally learn the real story behind Julian and his motivations.
“Okay,” Marlee said a bit sheepishly, confirming Mike’s suspicion.
“Like I was saying, there were only sporadic outbreaks involving a small number of people. I had been conducting research for the Army and a few other agencies to determine what could be done, if anything, to prevent a worldwide pandemic. As you now know, that part of the mission can be checked off as an extreme failure. It was inevitable anyway; the secrecy surrounding the research prevented collaboration between agencies as well as nations and it was only a matter of time before all of these little outbreaks would hit a tipping point and go global.”
Mike stopped Julian mid-oration and asked, “How did you get selected for this mission in the first place?”
“Mike, you’re as impatient as your girlfriend. Please let me finish,” Julian said gently, not wanting to offend Mike, but letting them all know he was going to provide this explanation on his terms. “Like I was saying, the outbreaks were getting harder to explain; the recent Ebola outbreak that obviously
wasn’t
Ebola was the tipping point, and when it started to spread globally I knew we had lost the battle for a cure or containment. We never really had the resources or the time to get ahead of it. Looking back, we were foolish to even think we could turn the tide of an event that was prophesized and inevitable. Man was doomed the day they fired up the Large Hadron Collider. As for me, I can only assume I was exposed when we went to Switzerland to demand the immediate shut-down of the Collider. I got lucky with my Change and didn’t exhibit the most obvious sign.”
“The red eyes,” Marlee stated
“Bingo, although I could feel things were different within me but I just assumed the Change was dormant. What other choice did I have?”
Reid interrupted Julian even after his quiet warning against such an action. “What happened in Switzerland? Did they shut it down?”
Julian gave Reid the stink-eye for interrupting again, but responded anyway. “They refused, of course. Those high and mighty pricks already knew their work was the catalyst that would end the world and they didn’t give a flying shit. Arrogant self-righteous assholes making decisions in the name of higher education with little regard for the rest of us … sorry, I’m getting off topic. Back to the first question. I have enhanced senses and figured out by pure chance how to hide the eye thing. Very useful when meeting new people for the first time and yes, I can show you how it’s done later.”
This was a huge relief for Marlee as well as Mike. His biggest fear was having her mistaken for one of the Changed and being butchered right in front of his eyes. Looking over at Marlee, he could tell she was having the same thoughts. He could almost see some of the stress leave her body.
Julian continued speaking after a short pause to allow that small bit of good news to sink in. “I don’t have the ability to do what you did to Ashley, and other than slightly improved vision, smell, and hearing I’m pretty much no different than anyone else … living.”
Eric interjected this time, “Are you a molecular biologist?”
That question brought a look of sadness to Julian’s face. “No, they were all on the bus that was overrun when we landed. That team of scientists and medical staff contained a couple of very talented molecular biologists who will be sorely missed. Unfortunately, we’re now very limited on medical and scientific resources.”
Mike didn’t know the people they lost on the bus had been so critical. He wondered what the chances were of finding talent like that again with the world being what it was now: fucked.
“What’s the plan now? Do we just hunker down in the bunker and wait? This place seems about as secure as it gets,” Mike asked.
Julian looked lost as he stared at the images streaming across the television screens in front of him. He finally responded to Mike’s question. “We need to see what’s going on outside and we need to secure the lower levels of the bunker. A mini rail system goes between the bunker and a secure location in the D.C. suburbs. My original plan was to get to the Naval Research Laboratory just outside D.C., but I ‘m seeing some news here that suggests the D.C. area is a total loss, completely overrun with Changed. I doubt there are any surviving staff that would be able to assist us in such a large metropolitan area. We may be on our own for a while.”
Everyone was silent for a moment as the realization took hold that the people in this room were most likely the people they would be living and surviving with for an undetermined period of time. Suddenly it was clear to everyone standing in that small cold gray room – images of horror and desperation splayed out in front of them on the screens – that life was forever changed and it would never go back to the way it was. No more work, summer trips to favorite vacation spots, or even pizza or a hamburger from a local fast food restaurant. How long would cable TV work? And the ease of instant information at your fingertips would be a distant memory soon. Even the weather would become a daily surprise to the survivors. Every man and woman standing inside the entombing walls of this bunker would gladly accept this new reality because the alternative was so much worse.
Breaking the eerie silence that had come over the room, Mike quietly said, “Let’s take inventory of what we have, make sure we’re alone down here, then take some time while we have it to learn a little bit more about each other. It seems we will be spending the foreseeable future together.”
“He’s right. Get ready to move out; we need to secure the entire facility before anything else,” Julian said, reasserting his leadership over the group. Mike knew this was more from habit than a need to control the situation, so he motioned for Eric to get ready to head out with Julian and his men. He turned to walk Marlee back into the medical center but she wasn’t budging.
“I’m going to stay here and start writing down all the news I can so we have as much information as possible about what’s going on outside.” This was one of the reasons why Mike loved this woman so much; she was as smart as she was pretty and still managed somehow to impress Mike with her drive and work ethic. Reid, on the other hand, was headed back to bed. Mike just shook his head and smirked inwardly.
