“Come and join us, Alex,” she said, indicating a seat at the table next to Sam. I took it. MacDonald remained standing.
“You people have surprised me with your resourcefulness and skills,” she said. “When Ian told me he was sending you to Site Alpha Two to recover the H1NZ1, I was skeptical to say the least. Yet here you are.”
“Not all of us,” Sam said. I looked at him closely. His eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if he had been crying.
“That’s right, not all of you,” MacDonald said. “Two of your number have been lost and that is regrettable. If it’s any consolation, the chemical you brought back from Alpha Two will enable us to save many lives. Your friends did not die in vain.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation. I was glad that Lucy was recovering and that there was now an antivirus, but that didn’t make the loss of Johnny or Jax any easier.
None of us replied to MacDonald so she continued. “I’ll come straight to the point. This facility is in a dire situation. We are now responsible for producing the antivirus that can save everyone from becoming a zombie or a hybrid. That is a huge task yet we are trying to perform it with a skeleton staff. Once the virus is being manufactured in large quantities, we will need skilled and resourceful people such as yourselves to help us get it to the camps on the mainland.”
“The army camps, you mean?” I asked.
“No, I mean the Survivors Camps.”
Tanya leaned forward in her chair. “When you made the original vaccine, it was only being distributed to the army. Vaccinating the civilians didn’t figure into your plans.”
“It wasn’t mean to happen that way,” MacDonald said. “We sent the vaccine to the mainland. How the army distributed it was up to them.”
“I’ve got a newsflash for you, man,” Sam said. “They kept it for themselves.”
“Yes, I am aware of the situation with the vaccine.” MacDonald folded her arms. “As I said, that is not what we intended to happen. With the antivirus, we can do things differently if you help us. We don’t have the resources to make sure the antivirus gets to the people in the Survivors Camps and I can’t afford to spare the guards from the island. They have a tough enough job to do already keeping this facility safe.”
“So you want us to do the job for you,” Sam said. “What are you going to inject us with this time to make sure we do your bidding?”
“Nothing. We couldn’t inject you even if we wanted to; you’ve all received the antivirus. You can’t be turned. Besides, I wouldn’t have thought that would necessary; I’ve looked into your backgrounds. You are the type of people who want to make a difference. You wouldn’t have taken over the Survivor Radio station and given that message to the people if that wasn’t the case. And Alex,” she said, looking at me, “you want to find your brother and parents. What better way to do that than by visiting the Survivors Camps?”
She had a point. Helping her was my best chance to find Joe and my parents. Not only that, I wanted to get that antivirus into as many people as possible so that the virus that had taken my friends could be destroyed. We needed to eradicate the zombies.
“Can I take your silence to mean you’ll do it?” she asked when none of us said anything.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Me too,” Tanya added.
Sam looked at us, and then at MacDonald. “I guess somebody has to make sure this is done right. Count me in, man.”
“Excellent.” MacDonald smiled but I couldn’t detect any genuine warmth in it. “You really are good people.”
“We don’t need your platitudes, lady,” Sam said. “Just tell us what we need to do.”
“It will take us a few days to manufacture enough of the antivirus for the first distribution run,” she said. “We’ll work out the details then. In the meantime, I’ll get someone to assign you rooms and you can enjoy the few comforts our facility has to offer.”
“Screw that,” Sam said. “I’ll be sleeping on the Escape.”
I nodded. The thought of staying here at the facility didn’t appeal at all. Especially when my home, The Big Easy, was so close. I wanted nothing more than to get onboard with Lucy and sail out onto the waves. The atmosphere at Apocalypse Island was oppressive, and I needed to escape it.
“That’s fine of course,” MacDonald said. “So we’ll meet again in three days. By then the first batch of antivirus should be ready.” She went to her desk and sat, indicating that the meeting was over.
Hart led us out of the room and toward the elevators. “Good to have you working with us again,” he said as he jabbed the elevator button.
“At least this time we get a choice,” I said.
He ignored that and said, “I’ll get a team together to take you to the docks.”
I pointed to the Desert Eagle on my hip. “I suppose you’ll want this back.”
Hart shook his head. “Keep it. You’re going to need it when you take that antivirus to the mainland.”
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “So you trust us not to sail away with your weapons?”
“Of course,” Hart said. “As the director said, you’re good people. You’ll be back here in three days, I’m certain of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HART ARRANGED for a convoy of three Jeeps filled with men and women from his security team to drive us to the dock. The guards were all armed with automatic rifles and sat in the vehicles scanning the terrain as we drove beyond the gate. With Jax on the loose somewhere, these people weren’t taking any chances.
We got to the dock without incident. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw The Big Easy and The Lucky Escape waiting for us.
I told Lucy to get aboard while I untied the Easy. Although Lucy seemed perfectly fine and had regained her strength, I didn’t want her to do anything strenuous, at least for a while. We had both been through a lot to be reunited and now that we were together again, I wanted to protect Lucy from everything, even the chance that she might pull a muscle untying the boat. My overprotectiveness would probably drive Lucy mad sooner rather than later but for now, I wanted to do everything for her.
As I jumped from the dock onto the aft deck, I said, “Home, sweet home.”
Lucy looked up at the sun. The day was unusually warm. “I’m going to put on a bikini and catch some rays on the sun deck.”
“I approve,” I said.
She kissed me. “And why don’t you find a pair of shorts and catch some rays yourself?”
“I might do that,” I said, surprising myself. I usually wore a baggy T-shirt no matter how hot it was. I had always tried to hide my body, but now I thought what the hell? I’d survived zombie attacks, explosions, being shot at, and an injection of the pure virus; being seen without a T-shirt wasn’t going to kill me.
I climbed up to the bridge, picking up the radio and hailing The Lucky Escape while I sat in the familiar pilot’s chair.
Sam answered. “What is it, man?”
“Any particular place you want to go?” I asked him.
“I don’t care where it is, as long as it’s far enough away from here that we can’t see the island, man. Why don’t we find a nice spot, just drift for a while, and enjoy the ocean and the freedom?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Two hours later, we were drifting on the gentle waves. The coast was in sight, the cliffs bright in the sunlight. The wind was almost nonexistent, making the sun feel even hotter. Lucy was lying on the sun deck wearing one of the bikinis I had taken from the marine shop in Swansea, a yellow number that barely covered anything. I was in a pair of black board shorts, and nothing else, feeling comfortable and cool. We had Survivor Radio on. The new DJ wasn’t a patch on Johnny. He played some good tunes, though. The opening bars of “Don’t You Forget about Me” by Simple Minds drifted from the radio.