But continuous communications wasn’t the only problem with leaving.
There was Captain Ash, too.
The captain had been severely injured in an explosion during the early part of the outbreak. And while Dr. Gardiner was encouraged by Ash’s recovery, he insisted the captain should not travel for at least several more days. It had finally been decided that a small group would stay behind until Dr. Gardiner gave his okay, or, more likely, until the weather forced their hand. Chloe had volunteered, of course, and Brandon and Josie — the captain’s children — refused to go anywhere without their father, so they had stayed, too. Matt had assigned an additional dozen trained men and women to act as escorts in case this second group ran into any problems.
He had always planned on staying with them, something his sister Rachel was not happy about. He kind of felt it was like being the captain of a ship, and thought it only proper to be the last one to leave. But when he received the message that was now tucked in his pocket, his reason for staying changed completely.
“Are you coming?” Chloe asked.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “I promise.”
“All right,” Chloe said. “I’m going to go see if they need any more help.”
Once the sound of her steps faded into the woods, he double-checked to make sure she was really gone, and then retrieved the piece of paper from his pocket.
At the top was the message as it had originally been received — a string of letters and numbers and symbols that were unreadable unless you had the key to the code, which Matt did. Below this, scrawled in his own handwriting, was the translation. The only thing consistent between the coded and decoded message was the first line:
To: MH
The translated portion then read:
Have been transferred to NB219 as part of new principal director Perez’s support staff. He has decided that through the end of this phase of the operation, Las Cruces will serve as his base. I in no way believe this will remain true once we move to rebuilding phase. This is an opportunity, my friend. If you wish me to act, please give the order.
C8
It was indeed an opportunity. One that could mean everything.
Matt had already sent a reply.
I will come to you.
December 31st
World Population
1,122,463,297
2
It’s snowing again.
So I guess that means the university’s New Year’s Eve party will probably be canceled.
That sounded a lot funnier in my head before I typed it down. I wonder how many people even realize that it is New Year’s Eve. If anyone does, I doubt they care. I know I don’t. What is today but one more day I’m alive? Perhaps the old calendar isn’t even viable anymore. Maybe the day the virus hit should be day one of year one. Or would it be year zero?
What does it matter?
I’m not sleeping well. I keep thinking I’m hearing things in the building — someone coming up the stairs, breaking through the barrier I put up, stumbling into my dorm room. In my mind, whoever it is oozes sickness. But so far, if others have come into the building, none have made it this far up. Still, knowing this doesn’t keep me from getting up six or seven times a night just to check.
By 5 a.m., I’m usually done, and pull myself out of bed. I’m careful with lights, though. I’m afraid of drawing anyone’s attention, so when it’s still dark outside, I never turn anything on in a room with a window. As I write this, I’m sitting on a pillow in the corridor, wrapped in a blanket, and using a desk lamp from one of my floormate’s rooms that I brought out here with me.
I know at some point I’m going to have to leave. I don’t have enough food to last more than a couple more weeks. What I really need to do is get to the survival station the UN has set up in Chicago. It’s the closest one to me. When I get there, I can get vaccinated. Maybe that’ll relax me enough to get a good night’s sleep. Wouldn’t that be a miracle?
The snow’s the problem right now. First off, I don’t want to leave during a storm, but the bigger problem is the roads. Those that I can see from my room are completely covered. No one’s clearing them. I have to think it’ll be the same problem on the highway. I mean, even if someone who isn’t sick has a plow, why would they leave their home? So I either wait until the snow melts off the roads, or I hike out.
I can hear the television down in the common room. It’s still playing the message from the UN secretary general. I’ve pretty much memorized it at this point. I have to say, his voice is comforting. There are TVs on in the other wings of the dorm. I can see them when I look out any of the windows, so I figure leaving mine on shouldn’t draw undue attention. I’ve tried calling the numbers at the end of the message, but even though my phone shows I have a signal, I can’t connect to anything.
I hope the snow stops soon. I hope we have a few days of warm weather to melt it away.
I started to write that I hope I don’t die here, but I deleted it because dying here of starvation or exposure has to be better than dying of the Sage Flu, right?
There was the Before and the After.
In the Before, when Robert had been the head bartender for the Isabella Island Resort, and routinely worked until three or four in the morning, the only time he would have seen the sunrise was after a particularly late night as he headed off to bed.
In the After, when Robert no longer poured the drinks, but was the de facto leader of the employees and guests who made up the group of survivors occupying the island, he seldom slept more than four hours a night, and found himself for the fourth day in a row on the beach staring at the horizon as the sun crested the sea.
Like he’d done every morning of the After, he allowed himself a few minutes to wish there was a way to go back to before Christmas Eve, to the time when the world as he knew it had yet to go insane. In this waking dream, the containers that had been secretly placed around the globe failed to open and spread their deadly cargo of Sage Flu, and his friend Dominic and all the others who had fallen victim to the pandemic would still be alive.
He had no idea how many were dead. Millions, surely. The horror he and the other Isabella survivors had seen on TV before the news channels stopped broadcasting made it clear the disease was not contained in only a handful of locations, but was everywhere. Worse, there had been no reports of recoveries.
Isolation is what had saved Robert and his people. Apparently the island had been too small to merit one of the deadly containers. Or, perhaps, it’d just been overlooked. Whatever the case, it was a blessing, but it wasn’t even close to a guarantee that those on the island would all remain safe from the flu. He’d been the first to realize it, to know their survival depended on not letting anyone from elsewhere on shore. It’d taken some convincing, but Dominic soon saw the logic in it, too.
This hard stance resulted in some tense encounters, but everyone on the island was still breathing and disease free. Everyone except Dominic. His death had been an act of self-sacrifice after he’d unintentionally come in contact with the disease from a body that had drifted ashore in a small boat.
Even if he couldn’t resurrect everyone, Robert wished he could at least have his friend back. He would have even been willing to change places and be the one who died so that Dominic would still be here. Robert had no business calling the shots. He didn’t have Dominic’s patience. He was much better in the role of first lieutenant, not leader.