“No.” He looked at me as if I had asked him to fly us to Middle Earth.
“It’s not on your maps,” Sam said. “I’ll give you the coordinates.” As he stepped past me to talk to the pilots, he put a hand on my shoulder. “Good work, man.”
I nodded and went back to the seating area where the others were recovering from their ordeal.
“I knew you’d come for us,” Tanya said. “Even though we only had a few hours left, I knew you’d try to rescue us.”
“It’s like Sam said in the lab,” Jax said, “You’re an optimist, Alex. You don’t give up.”
I didn’t mention the fact that I had been about to take my own life when I had seen an opportunity to get into the compound and seized it. Maybe I would never tell anyone that, not even Lucy.
I took a seat next to Jax and said, “Thanks for trusting me.”
She smiled. “Thanks for saving my life.”
Her face was drawn into a grimace of pain, the skin beneath her eyes dark and blotchy.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
She nodded and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I will be. Once I get the antivirus. The stomach pain is still there, and I’ve been having… strange thoughts.”
“Strange thoughts?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re on our way back to the island. Everything will be fine.”
I smiled at her but I wasn’t going to relax until we’d all been injected with the antivirus. My optimism only went so far.
Only when the antivirus was pumping through our veins would this nightmare be over.
CHAPTER TWENTY
APOCALYPSE ISLAND LOOKED different from the air. I had gone up to the cockpit, impatient to get to the island, and unable to sit on the seats because I was full of adrenaline. Through the windshield, I saw the island, sitting solidly in a rough sea beneath the sun.
When we had approached it in the boats, it had seemed a dangerous place, surrounded by lethal spurs of rock that would tear up any boat that came too close. The cliffs had looked daunting and impenetrable.
From the air, Apocalypse Island looked neat and green, the woods covering almost the entire area except for the central grassland where Site Alpha One stood. From up here, you would never guess that zombies and hybrids lurked in those woods.
Sam pointed out the area where the two Chinooks sat by the hangar. One of those choppers was supposed to come and collect us from Site Alpha Two tomorrow. It would have been much too late by then.
“Take her down over there, man,” Sam told the pilot.
We descended gently, the rotors kicking up dust and flattening the surrounding grass as the pilot took us down. I opened the side door. Doctor Colbert and Jax climbed out, followed by Tanya and myself. I heard Sam say to the pilot, “Remember, man, this place doesn’t exist. You were never here,” before he climbed out to join us.
The Chinook took to the sky, turned toward the mainland, and flew out of sight. I wondered what the pilot and co-pilot were going to tell their superiors when they returned. I was sure they’d come up with a plausible story that didn’t involve being hijacked and forced to fly to a secret island.
The hangar door opened and Hart came walking out with a handful of his men. He didn’t seem surprised to see us at all. He had told me before we’d left here that he thought we were resourceful. Our presence here now simply proved him right.
“Alex,” he said, standing with his hands on his hips. “You’re early.”
“We have the H1NZ1,” I said, handing him the backpack. “The scientists need to work on the antivirus right now. We don’t have much time.”
Doctor Colbert stepped forward and explained that we only had a few hours left. She volunteered to help the scientists, some of whom she knew, to produce the antivirus.
“You’ll have to be isolated,” Hart told us. “It’s purely a precaution. Now that we know the real speed at which the pure virus works, we can’t take any chances. We’ll have the antivirus ready in an hour, so you won’t be waiting long.”
We were taken to the rooms downstairs and locked in. I paced around my room, but I didn’t feel anywhere near the level of anxiety I had felt the last time I was in here. Then, I had thought that I had nothing more than a slim chance of saving Lucy. Now, she was hours away from a cure.
I sat in one of the chairs and folded my arms, letting my chin rest on my chest as I closed my eyes. I was tired. Stress had built up inside me over the past couple of days and now that I had a chance to relax, my mind and body seized that opportunity by making me sleepy. My eyelids felt too heavy to keep open. My arms and legs felt as if they were made of lead and moving them was too much effort. The sound of my own heavy breathing and footsteps in the corridor outside the door were all I could hear, and those sounds seemed to fade into the distance as I fell asleep.
A LOUD CLANGING alarm woke me. I opened my eyes and pushed the chair back from the table. Through the panel of frosted glass in the door, I could see shadows of people running in the corridor, their boots drumming on the floor.
The door burst open suddenly, and three guards came in with rifles leveled at me.
Surprised, I raised my hands. “What’s going on?”
Hart entered the room, accompanied by the same scientist who had injected me with the pure virus.
“He looks okay, sir,” one of the guards said.
“Yes, I can see that,” Hart replied tersely. He looked angry and drained.
“What’s happening?” I asked him. Outside the door, guards were still running along the corridor, weapons in their hands.
“Sit down,” he said, “We need to inject you immediately.”
The scientist came forward with a syringe of clear liquid. I sat in the chair while he injected me. The needle stung as it pierced the skin of my shoulder at the same spot where they had injected me with the virus.
“You’re now fully vaccinated,” Hart said, waving the others out of the room. “That antivirus will combine with the vaccine in your blood and halt the transformation you would have gone through. You can’t be turned now, no matter what happens. If you ever get bitten, you need not fear about turning into a monster.”
“What about Lucy?” I asked.
“She’ll be fine. We’ve administered the antivirus. It’s just a matter of time before she regains consciousness and awareness. It’s the same for Kate, my wife. I owe you a great deal of thanks, Alex.”
“What’s happening out there?” I asked, pointing to the corridor beyond the door.
He paused for a beat before telling me, “I’m afraid we didn’t get the antivirus to one of your friends in time. For some reason, she reacted to the pure strain of the virus faster than the rest of you.”
“Jax,” I said.
“Yes,” Hart said.
“What happened?”
“She’s killed three of my men,” he said. “Ripped out their spines. And she’s escaped the facility. We have teams out in the woods hunting her down.”
I couldn’t believe it. My brain could hardly comprehend that Jax was a monster like Vess. This had to be a mistake. Surely Jax must be sitting in a room just like this one farther along the corridor. Something else had killed those men. Not Jax.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Hart said, probably guessing my thoughts from the look of disbelief that must be on my face. “I’ll leave you alone for a while so you can come to terms with it.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t bear to be left alone any longer. “I want to see Lucy. Right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I SPENT the next four hours sitting at Lucy’s bedside in the hospital room, watching her gradually awaken. The first thing that changed was her position. She had been curled up in the fetal position when I’d first entered the room, but she gradually straightened her body beneath the covers. Her breathing, which had been ragged, slowed to a normal pace. By the third hour, she looked as if she was simply lying there taking a nap. There were no outward signs of the battle raging inside her body between the virus and the antivirus.