The Aegis Solution (61 page)

The tear broke loose and trailed down her cheek as she moved her head in a single nod. A second
tear followed, then a third, until the dam burst and she was racked with sobs. She flew out of her chair,
and throwing her arms around Elias, she broke down, holding him tightly. He put his arms around her,
and Leah placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

"Hey!" someone shouted from the doorway before he noticed the scene that was being played out.
"Oh, sorry."

Elias was able to turn his head enough to see that it was Crabill. "What is it, Jay?"

"We've…the radio's working. Uh, you should probably come and hear this."

Elias nodded. "We'll be right there."

Crabill left and Tillie loosened her grip on Elias, backing away and letting him go. Her eyes a bright
red, her nose running, she dragged her sleeve across her face and sniffled loudly. After a few swallows,
she said, "We should go listen."

"Anytime you're ready."

With another loud sniff, she stood up. "I'm ready. We can go."

Elias and Leah stood, and as they all walked toward the door, Tillie stopped abruptly. "I know
you're expecting a ‘thank you' or some other soppy thing…."

Elias began to deny that he was, when he was interrupted.

"But I'm gonna kick your butt for that." She finished the threat with a weak smile.

He broke into a relieved grin. "Better bring your lunch."



A twelve-volt power supply and some speakers had been located. The makeshift radio was on a
small folding table which had been placed atop the elevated platform Pierce and Wilson had spoken
from earlier. The group, scattered throughout the hall, edged forward, closer to the radio, many of the
people sitting down on the floor at the base of the platform.

Crabill scanned the channels looking for a station. Finding one, he turned the volume up, moved
to the edge of the platform, and sat down.

    
     "…that is all we know at this time. We have been completely unable to contact any
authorities for a report or an update on the epidemic. Broadcast stations in our nation's capital are off
the air. Cellular systems are so overwhelmed with people attempting calls that it has proved useless to
try them. We have made repeated attempts to contact our sister station in Washington, D.C. using land
lines. When we were able to get through, there was no answer other than voice mail.

    
     "There has also been no contact with other major cities, including New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Miami, Charlotte…the list is growing by the minute. We have not heard anything from
Atlanta, the home city of the Center for Disease Control.

    
     "Some functionality still remains on the Internet, and we have been able to receive word that
martial law has been declared by the governors of all states not yet affected by the epidemic, or
pandemic, I guess. We have also been able to find out from the Internet that cases have been reported
overseas. Illness, fatalities, and widespread panic are reported in France, England, Germany, and the rest
of Europe. At this time, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and Australia have not reported any
outbreaks of the epidemic."

Elias looked around the room and watched the faces of the crowd. Everyone was listening silently,
and he was certain that each was thinking about friends, family, and acquaintances on the outside,
visualizing the horror that was spreading like a wildfire around the country and the entire Earth. He
knew that all of them must be as dumbstruck as he, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the events.

The gathering continued their vigil into the night, with more arriving from other parts of Aegis.
Everyone listened. No one spoke. At one point, Milton Pierce, helped by two others, brought food and
drinks, distributing them individually, rather than placing the meal on a table, buffet-style, as he would
have only hours ago. The rationing had begun.

Fours hours after the radio had been turned on, the station, which they had learned was based in
Denver, abruptly went off the air with no explanation. Crabill jumped up and quickly found another
station which was still broadcasting from South Dakota, and they continued listening as the news
broadcasters, sounding more exhausted, more hopeless, and more terrified as the night went on,
provided a litany of locations where the pathogen had struck.

When the final populated continent fell victim, Elias turned to Leah. "I don't think I can stand
listening to this anymore."

She nodded and they both stood up, careful to not step on the strangers around them, many of
whom were now lying down on the floor, loath to return to their quarters, craving the presence of
others. Some of them were huddled against their neighbors. Some were curled up in almost fetal
positions. Leah espied Tillie several feet away, lying on her side, sound asleep. Pierce had dimmed the
lighting in the hall hours ago, so they were not able to locate Wilson, Sweezea, Lisa, or the others from
their original group. The only other person they recognized was Crabill, now sitting on the platform
near the radio, his back against the leg of the folding table, his eyes drooping from fatigue.

"Where do you want to go?" Leah asked in a whisper.

Elias surveyed the room filled with strangers, realizing that very soon he would know each and
every one of them intimately.

"I need to get outside" was all he said, as he walked to the heap of clothing Pierce had piled against
the wall near one of the exits, as a resource for the volunteers who were working on the roof. He
grabbed two heavy parkas and some thick gloves and, with Leah following, left the meeting room which
had become a site for a wake.

Twenty minutes later they were standing on the roof of Aegis, buffeted by the frigid winds and
surrounded by the shaking and rattling heaps of debris. The salvage crews had cleared a passable trail
from the hatch to the perimeter wall, which was where they now stood, clutching each other and staring
off into semidarkness. To the left, in the direction of the now collapsed entrance, they could barely see,
in the moonlit night, that the people outside the wall had pulled several of the abandoned vehicles into
a tight semicircle as a windbreak.

Elias had heard earlier that the first supply of food, water, warm clothing, and blankets had been
dropped, accompanied by a message from Pierce, explaining that he would continue to supply them
outside until he was satisfied that they were not infected. Although Elias could not tell in the darkness,
he guessed they were now all huddled inside the vehicles for warmth, most likely running the engines
so the heaters would function. The rooftop around them was dark. The volunteer crews had quit for
the night.

He felt Leah pressing hard against him, holding him tightly.

Looking at her profile in the moonlight, Elias was, once again, overwhelmed at his fortune in being
reunited with her. In all of the thousands of hours since he first received the news of her demise, he had
never thought for a moment that this would be possible. And yet, despite the almost mind-numbing
series of events which had to happen to bring them together, they were.

She sensed his gaze and turned to him. Their eyes connected and they kissed, the cowls of the
parkas forming a fur-lined tunnel around their faces. It was a consuming and passionate kiss, both of
them trying to convey, with the contact, the intensity of their love for the other; both celebrating the
fact that they were alive and with each other, right then, at that moment. Somehow, despite the fact that
the entire world had been turned upside down, with all of the billions of pieces crashing into a jumbled
heap, they were standing side by side, looking out over it all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Wilson told all of us today that we each need to start keeping a journal. He said that someday, way in the future,
people are going to want to know what it was like for us in Aegis. I think it's stupid and I told him that. But he wouldn't
give up until I said I would do it. So here it is, all of you grandchildren of the grandchildren of the grandchildren of the
grandchildren of the people who are in Aegis today, Mathilda's journal.

I woke up a few hours ago. I was sleeping on the floor in the big hall, where all of us listened to the radio last night.
There was some station on – I don't know from where. A lot of people were still glued to it, but I couldn't stand listening,
so I left and came back here, to my pad in the ductwork. Besides, Pierce and his sister were handing out rations and I've
got my own stash.

Here I am, back at the pad again. Ate two bites from the sandwich I made and felt bad. So I packed up all my food
and took it to Pierce to add to the communal food store. Dumb, huh?

It's later now. Hunted down Matthias today because we haven't really had a chance to talk since, well, you know.
But he was busy up on the roof working with the other guys on the solar panels. Then I went looking for Wilson. But he
was tied up with Pierce, having some kind of meeting.

Couldn't find Elias and Leah. They probably have a lot of catching up to do. After two years, I would think so.
Sweezea, Hutson, and Crabill were all busy gathering up weapons. Right now they are only asking people for them. They'd
better not start just taking them, at least mine.

This journal is ridiculous. I don't have anything to say. And I don't feel like reading right now. Maybe I'll go up
on the roof and help those guys.

DAY 2

Didn't get back to writing this last night. I was so tired that I just crashed. Got up this morning and grabbed my
ration and wolfed it down in like two minutes. If that's all the food I'm going to get for breakfast, I'm going to starve.

Bad news at breakfast. The supply drop to the poor people outside was still sitting where we dropped it, unopened.
And nobody could see any people around. They might still be inside the cars and trucks out there, but it seems like they
would have gotten out to grab the stuff. I hope they're okay.

I started marking my calendar. There are two "X" marks now. Who knows how many to go?

DAY 6

I apologize to all of you twenty-second-century folks who might be reading this, but I haven't had a chance to write
a word in the journal for days. Sweezea was put in charge of our army. Everybody calls it the security team, but I like
"army" better. I had a chance to talk to him on Day 2, and he asked me if I wanted to be on the team. Me! How cool
is that? Today, flopped in my pad with every bone in my body hurting, I'm not sure it was such a dandy idea. He's gone
nuts. Has us training all the time. And when we're not training, we're doing workouts. And when we're not doing either
of those, he has us studying! Studying? Well, overall, it's not bad, so I'll hang in there. I am running circles around most
of the guys on the team. Ha!

A bunch has happened since the last time I wrote in this thing. Let me see if I can remember it all. Wilson was real
excited because one of the last-day newbies, actually two of them, if you want to count the blond, are meteorologists. One
was on a TV station, the blond of course, before she came into Aegis. But the guy was the local head of the national
weather office. They've been huddling up with Wilson, trying to figure out exactly how this downdraft works.

Milton Pierce seems to be doing a great job. He takes it so seriously. I thought he'd lost his mind, asking the Aegis
people to vote in his sister as his second-in-command. I even had a chance to talk to him about it for a little bit. He said
that she would be a good balance for him. Whatever that means! We'll see, I guess.

Elias and Leah are so cool together. They are never more than about five feet apart, and every time I look at him,
he's staring at her with a sappy grin on his face. Other than that, he kind of bounces all over the place. One day he works
with us on security. The next day he's on the roof with Matthias, helping the crew. He did get real jazzed the other day.
It seems he was walking down one of the hallways and ran into two brothers he knew from the outside. He only told me
that they were the Barton brothers and he met them on his trip here. He didn't tell me why they were here.

They've gotten three sections of the panels hooked up, so we are getting a trickle of electricity back into the batteries.
They say it isn't enough yet, but it helps. I guess the wind has died down a little. Wilson said it got worse so that it was
strong enough to knock down the entrance, and now it has eased off to the level needed to keep the bug away. This is all
so strange. I don't know if I'm ready to really think about it yet.

I have been thinking a lot about how we all feel inside Aegis, and it is bizarre. Before the "event," as everybody calls
it – I think they are all afraid to call it what it was – we were stuck in here, anyway. We weren't supposed to leave. Ever.
And we had no communication with the outside world. Nothing's changed, not even a little bit. Well, that's not true. We
did have incoming communication for a day or two, until the last station went off the air. Other than that, everything is
the same as it was.