She looked over at the lead guard again. “Thank you. That will be all.” After the guards retreated and shut the door, she said, “Due to the nature of the…emergency, we haven’t always been able to get the best help. The men on sentry duty are good men, just a little rough around the edges at times, so I apologize if their behavior’s disturbed you.”
When the test subject relaxed a little, she knew she had guessed right, that the guards had somehow spooked her. Lawrence made a mental note to have a discussion with their boss later. Things would go much more smoothly, especially when the exploratory group went out in the field, if everyone projected an aura of understanding and sympathy. Flies to honey and all that.
Rivera stepped next to the girl and said, “Please roll up your sleeve.”
The survivor looked at the syringe. “What’s that?”
Rivera looked a bit confused, so Lawrence jumped in. “The vaccine. You’ve passed the incubation period, so it’s time.”
Rivera gave her an admiring nod.
“Vaccine?” The girl looked surprised.
“Yes. It’s why you came here in the first place, isn’t it?”
The subject looked as if she were having some kind of internal debate. Finally, she started to roll up her sleeve. When her bicep was clear, Rivera stuck her with the needle and pushed down on the plunger, sending a mega dose of active KV-27a virus into the girl’s arm.
As soon as the needle was removed and a small bandage applied, the survivor reached over to roll her sleeve back down. “Hold on,” the doctor said. “One more.”
“One more?”
“Yes. As you can imagine, this is a very special virus,” Lawrence said, improvising again. “We’ve developed a, um, two-injection method to combat it.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
“We had to work in a hurry,” she told the girl, her confidence building with every word. “Two separate teams have come up with different variations. Both methods work, but some people react better to one than the other. So by injecting both, we’re giving you a much better chance at survival.”
The survivor considered her explanation, and then nodded. Rivera, on the other hand, was staring at Lawrence with what appeared to be a new level of respect.
“You may give her the second vaccine now, Doctor,” she said to nudge Rivera out of his trance.
Rivera blinked, then, somewhat embarrassed, grabbed the syringe containing the sedative. After he had given the injection and applied another bandage, he said, “You can pull your sleeve down now.”
“It will be a full day before the vaccine is truly effective,” Lawrence said, enjoying playing the part of the kind doctor. “So we’re going to put you someplace where you can rest and wait. It’s only a few doors down. After twenty-four hours have passed, you will be free to leave.”
The girl blinked a few times. “Or…or…go to the safe…zone.”
“I’m sorry?” Lawrence said, momentarily confused. Then she realized what the girl had meant. “Right. Of course. If you so choose, you can join the next group heading for the safe zone. It’s definitely the choice we recommend.”
The survivor blinked again, her lids closing for a second before popping back open. Lawrence could tell she was confused by the response, but the drug was hindering her thought process.
“How…long…does…does…”
Her head drooped forward before she could finish the question, the sedative knocking her out even faster than the doctor had hoped.
Together, Lawrence and Rivera moved their test subject into the small office just off the lab. They had earlier removed all the furniture and replaced it with a single metal cot. They had covered the walls and ceiling with plastic and made sure the seams were sealed tight. Next up had been replacing the door with one from down the hall. It had a window taking up the top half and a square vent on the bottom. It had taken a little work, but they had created a space in the vent through which they could pump in whatever they wanted.
A tidy and safe observation room.
Once they had the girl on the cot, they closed the door and sealed off the joints along the frame with more plastic. Rivera walked over to the set of valves they’d mounted to the wall and activated the oxygen tank. He then skipped the middle two valves, neither of which was connected to a tank, and turned on number four, sending a fine mist of concentrated Sage Flu virus into Ruby’s room.
Perhaps it was overkill to inject KV-27a into the subject and the air she would breathe, but the first thing they wanted to know was if the acquired immunity was a hundred percent or not. If the girl caught the disease, they could then use the other subjects to find the borderline of where the immunity stopped working. If the girl didn’t, well, then, that would be something else, wouldn’t it?
Dr. Lawrence tingled with anticipation of the outcome, wondering which would prevail. She didn’t have a preference, of course. She never did.
It’s what made her such a good researcher.
26
Since leaving Texas, Curtis Wicks slept only when he absolutely had to. Otherwise he kept heading northeast.
The route was nowhere near as straight as he would have liked. Avoiding permanent Project facilities and locations where survival stations had been set up was a priority, so that meant detouring onto smaller highways that were often littered with accidents and abandoned vehicles.
And then there were the blockages like he encountered on the Kentucky side of a bridge over the Ohio River. He was on one of his detours at the time, avoiding the survival station in Cincinnati. The accident was in Maysville at the mouth of the two-lane suspension bridge that he’d planned on using to enter Ohio.
Even on his motorcycle he couldn’t get around the problem. Several cars had been deliberately jammed between two concrete columns to bar any vehicles from passing.
Deciding to walk across and find another motorbike on the Ohio side, he climbed over the cars and hopped down on the other side. More cars were strung out on the bridge, sitting sideways to the lane markers. It looked like there had also been a car fire or someone had tried to burn down the bridge near the center; the metal railings and concrete sidewalk were scorched black. Why someone thought they could burn down the bridge, he didn’t know. What he did know was that with all the obstacles, it would take him forever to get to the other side. There had to be a better way.
He decided to see if there was another bridge close by he could try. When he turned to climb back over the main roadblock, he stopped in his tracks.
Painted on each concrete pillar was a message that clued him in to what had happened here.
STAY OUT. GO BACK. VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT.
A last stand. The police or desperate locals trying to keep the outbreak from crossing the river. And perhaps they had succeeded, but unfortunately for them, the Sage Flu had been coming from all directions, not only the north.
He located another bridge a few miles north, but it too turned out to be a bust. While the side railings were still there, someone had blown a twenty-foot hole in it near the center. Perhaps that explained the burn marks on the other bridge. Maybe someone had tried to blow it, too, but failed.
Wicks did finally find his way across, one that allowed him to keep his ride, but it was only after traveling more than fifty miles east to South Portsmouth. That had been the previous evening, and since it was already dark by the time he crossed and he was bone tired, he stopped not far north of the border and slept dreamlessly until that morning.