Tainted Cure (The Rememdium Series Book 1) (15 page)

Glancing out the window above the bathtub, Jesse stared at the sky. Though mostly bright blue, a few gray clouds were rolling in from the west. She guessed by nightfall, a storm would hit.

Jesse ran her fingers through her soft hair and smiled as she pulled it into a ponytail. “One step at a time, girl. One step at a time.” Grabbing her robe from the hook on the back of the door, she decided to beg Uncle Reed to make biscuits and his famous, mouth-watering gravy, for breakfast.

“Where in the hell did I put my cell?” she muttered, glancing around the bedroom.

Setting the robe on the bed, she dropped to her knees and checked under the bed, thinking the phone fell off the edge of the nightstand. She could hear someone running down the hallway, followed by the front door slamming shut. Jesse smiled, glad she wasn’t the only one experiencing an irritating Saturday morning.

Seeing no sign of the phone, she rose and headed out to the living room. Uncle Reed sat perched on the edge of the couch sipping coffee.

“Mornin’, Uncle Reed. Have you seen my phone?”

“Yes. It’s right here. Come have a seat. Got some things I need to share with you.”

“Oh, thanks! Mom would kill me if I lost another one,” Jesse said, reaching down to pick up the phone from its spot on the coffee table. “I swear I remember takin’ it to my room with me last night. Guess I inherited Mom’s scatterbrain.”

“Wait, Jesse. As I said, we need to talk.”

Uncle Reed’s hand clasped around her wrist, blocking her from the phone. The look on his face, and the gun on his hip, gave her pause. Sensing something was wrong, she asked, “About what? Is Mom okay?”

“Yes,” Reed answered, softening his grip on Jesse’s arm. “Your mom is fine. She’s at the PD. Probably will be for a while.”

Jesse swallowed the sense of worry and used her mother’s tactic of inappropriate humor in stressful situations. “Well duh. Shifts are a full eight hours.”

“Sit. Now.”

The tone in Uncle Reed’s voice made the hairs stand up on her neck and arms. She eased down next to him. “You must have started drinkin’ decaf again, Uncle Reed. Lack of caffeine always makes you cranky.”

Reed forced a smile. “Funny girl, just like your mother.”

Taking a deep breath to control her nerves like she learned in rehab, Jesse asked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look really worried. Why?”

Memories of when she was fifteen flashed by. The morning she woke up and found her uncle sitting in almost the same spot, arms wrapped around her mom. The wounded, distant look on his face as her mom rose and broke the news her father had died in a car accident, was exactly the same way Uncle Reed looked now. Jesse felt a lump of tears form in her throat. “Wait…is this about Turner? Oh, my God! It is, isn’t it? What happened to him? Did he get hurt while out hunting with his dad?”

“No, honey. This has nothing to do with…”

Uncle Reed paused in mid-sentence as a weird rumbling noise from outside caught his attention. In unison, they both turned and looked out the window. Jesse felt her mouth drop open at the line of camo-colored vehicles making their way down the street.

Before either of them had a chance to say a word, a loud voice announced, “Attention all residents of Hot Spring County! Per order of Governor Strickland, all citizens are to report to Malvern High School immediately. Those who refuse to comply will be forcibly removed from their homes. Repeating…all citizens are to report to the high school. You have ten minutes. This is the only warning.”

Shaking uncontrollably, Jesse pulled her gaze from the window. Her uncle cleared his throat and continued, “As I said, what’s going on has nothing to do with Turner. Your mother wanted me to keep you in the dark, but after that little spectacle, it seems pointless.”

“Keep me in the dark? About what? Why is our street full of troops, Uncle Reed? And why are we supposed to go to the high school?”

“I’m not quite sure yet.”

Jesse’s anger flared. “Stop treating me like a fragile addict! You and Mom have been tiptoeing around me for almost two years now and I’m sick of it! We were just ordered to leave, under the threat of basically being yanked from our homes if we don’t comply, and I want—no, I deserve—to know why!”

“You’re right,” Reed said. He grabbed the remote and turned on the television.

The annoying sound of the emergency broadcast warning blared through the speakers. The screen was filled with the EBS emblem, noting it wasn’t a test. After the sounds of the warning ended, the same instructions about heading to the nearest high school were given.

Throwing her hands in the air, Jesse snatched her cell phone off the table and stood. “Well, that certainly didn’t answer my questions!” With the click of a few buttons, Jesse’s phone turned on. The sounds of multiple social media notifications filled the quiet living room.

Opening her favorite video sharing site, Jesse clicked on the first one in her newsfeed. By the time she finished watching it, her knees gave out. She collapsed onto the couch next to her uncle, stunned into silence.

Mouth dry and heart pounding, she watched one from Phoenix. Then another from Seattle. Mind already on overload, the one from her friend Megan’s feed made the room spin and her stomach quiver in disgust.

The video was from a rave in Memphis the night before. Megan’s cousin had rented out an old warehouse in downtown to throw a roll party to celebrate the holidays. Megan had stopped by two days ago and begged Jesse to go, asking her to be the designated driver to and from Memphis. Jesse had resisted the temptation—even though it was extremely difficult—and told Megan she needed to find someone else.

Jesse couldn’t get her mind to grasp she was looking at hundreds of dead bodies of former partygoers, some still clutching their glow sticks. The images were distorted as the person holding the cell phone ran through the crowd, dodging bodies. The electronic music had stopped, replaced by shrieks of terror. The multi-color strobe lights cast eerie shadows of the piles of the dead. Closing her eyes to the carnage, Jesse prayed Megan and her other friends made it out alive.

As tears ran down her face, Jesse opened her eyes when she heard Megan’s voice shout, “Dear God! They’re eatin’ people! Run!”

Blood and gore covered not only the still bodies but the ground, too. Several people were crouched next to the dead. Jesse’s heart skipped three beats. Peering closer at the screen, praying what she saw was a trick of the light, she gasped.

It looked like…

“No…fucking…way….”

Ignoring her uncle, Jesse dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom. She only made it to the door before she threw up.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL - Saturday - December 20
^th
– 7:10 a.m.

Dirk Kincanon powered down his laptop and stared out the window. He needed a minute to pull himself together. He watched thick, gun-metal gray clouds swirl around in the sky. The ache in his bones warned him a wicked storm was approaching.

Leaning back in the chair while rubbing his stiff shoulder, Dirk took a few deep breaths. Though still in great shape, he wasn’t the buff, twenty-something who’d enlisted in the Army almost thirty years ago. His body bore the scars from countless missions in the Special Forces. As a former member of the 1
^st
Battalion of the 20
^th
SF Group headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, Dirk’s career in the military had taken him all over the world on covert operations. The horrors he’d witnessed dimmed in comparison to what was coming, and the thought made his stomach rumble.

Turning his attention to the eight-by-ten photo on the desk, Dirk was hit with a pang of melancholy. Just as the photograph had been a source of inspiration for its previous owner, the happy family served the same purpose for Dirk. The smiling faces of Jason and his wife and children stared back in silence. He’d retrieved the picture, along with everything he could stuff into his backpack, after scouring the lab for survivors.

That part of his mission had been pointless since all of them were dead.

The day he stormed into the facility almost one year ago—and the bloody remains of his friend and others—still haunted his dreams. He would never forgive himself for allowing Dr. Thomas to go to the lab alone. Dirk shouldn’t have ignored his gut instincts about Daryl Riverside either. He tried to warn Dr. Thomas about the geeky bastard. Dr. Thomas listened to Dirk’s concerns, yet with nothing to offer as solid proof of his distrust of the scientist, Dr. Thomas brought the boy into the fold.

Had Dirk insisted on accompanying the good doctor, things would have turned out differently. Dr. Thomas and Dr. Flint would still be alive, and Dr. Berning wouldn’t have turned into a complete and total shell of his former self.

Dirk let his thoughts wander over to how he’d meet the only real person he’d ever been close to other than his deceased twin brother. He’d been by Dr. Thomas’ side ever since rescuing him from the jungles of El Salvador. Though Dirk had been part of many ops to extract hapless civilians and dignitaries from around the world who’d found themselves trapped in hostile territory, the mission to retrieve Dr. Thomas changed the course of Dirk’s life.

The shift in trajectory wasn’t from the loss of Dirk’s entire unit, nor from the tension-filled hours as he guided the nearly catatonic doctor through a haze of gunfire and explosions through the dense terrain.

No, what changed Dirk’s life was the rescue of Dr. Jason Thomas, and the eight days they spent together surviving in the jungle. Something about the man’s demeanor struck a nerve deep down in Dirk’s darkened soul. The man had endured being kidnapped by drug kingpin Mario Alvarado, along with his family, and forced to attempt to keep the dying Mrs. Alvarado alive. Dirk recalled her illness stemmed from complications during childbirth. The good doctor’s mission of mercy as a member of Doctors Without Borders, ended after being captured and skirted away at gunpoint by Alavardo’s goons.

What really got under Dirk’s hardened skin was Dr. Thomas’ sheer determination. Not a determined will to live, or seek revenge on the man who sliced his family up in front of his eyes. No, Dr. Thomas was a driven man. An obsessive desire pushed him to make sure the world culled what he considered the source of all its problems.

Drugs and those who dealt them.

Huddled up together in the dark, loud jungle, Dr. Thomas laid out his plans. Drug dealers ruled the world. They paid off and even ran some governments. The court systems around the world were helpless to stop or even attempt to contain the constant influx of cases stemming from drug charges. Prisons were overcrowded, and many jurisdictions bowed to social pressure to release the “non-violent” offenders back into society.

Counseling didn’t work. Rehabilitation centers had a combined success rate of non-relapse less than ten percent. Law enforcement agencies were outnumbered by the multitudes of dealers and struggled to keep up with the new, innovative ways drugs were smuggled into countries. The only solution, according to Dr. Thomas, was to find a real, permanent cure to quell the cravings of addicts. His rationale was simple yet brilliant. If no one had a habit to feed any longer, drugs abuse would end, and dealers would disappear.

Dirk didn’t pay much attention at first, assuming the ramblings were brought on by shock, exhaustion, and fear. Yet the more he listened to the intricate plan, the more he realized the scrawny man next to him wasn’t crazy. Full of lofty, pie-in-the-sky goals maybe, but certainly sane.

After making it out of the jungle and to safety, the bond between the two was set in stone. At Dr. Thomas’ request, Dirk retired from the military and became the good doctor’s full-time bodyguard. Once all the particulars were hammered out, Dirk sought out and found the perfect location to set up shop in the Ozark Mountains. The cave was enormous and could easily house two hundred people with room to spare. Money was never an issue, since Dr. Thomas had married into money. His wife’s vast wealth transferred over to Dr. Thomas, and the man poured the funds into his project. The choice was the doctor’s way of making sure the death of his family wasn’t in vain.

They agreed to make the entire operation and set up underground resemble a government installation. The idea was to make the scientists who joined believe their every movement was monitored, thus ensuring their full cooperation. In truth, they were monitored, just not by any government entity.

Dirk had been responsible for everything, including security and background checks. On that end, he obviously failed.

Rising to his feet, Dirk shook off the continuous shame and humiliation that had been his constant companion for a year. There would be time to lament his mistakes later. At the moment, ensuring the safety of Dr. Berning and the rest of the small staff, was top priority.

From what he’d witnessed on various news sites, including a live video feed from the Colombian Consulate in New York, things were deteriorating around the world at a phenomenal pace.

Dirk Kincanon had seen some fucked-up shit in his fifty-one years on the planet.