A New World 10 - Storm (6 page)

It’s getting dark, and although we’d be protected if we batten down the Stryker, I’m still not a fan of being outside at night. The person, or persons, in the vehicle won’t like it much if the night runners attack, though.

“Who are you?” I shout, wondering if I can be heard over the engine.

The monitor shows movement within the vehicle, and the door opens. A person steps outside, hanging close to the edge of the door.

“You are targeted so don’t make any sudden moves. Again, who are you?”

I hear some reply but, even with my hearing, the actual words are lost.

This is fucking stupid
, I think, wishing I had a bullhorn. However, that wouldn’t let me hear any better.

“I’m going out. Gonzalez, take over. If something happens that you don’t like, you’re cleared to fire,” I state, momentarily thinking about what Lynn would say.

Exiting through the back hatch, not wanting to test my knees with the jump down, I head to one side of the road to keep out of the line of fire and advance. The cool, still air of the upper plateau chills me immediately, a little vapor visible with each exhalation. The sound of the Stryker behind me grows quieter with each step. I half expect to hear contact from the flanking vehicles, seeing we’re in the open, but the radio remains quiet. With my M-4 lowered but ready to bring up on a moment’s notice, I reach a position where I think I can be heard.

“Who are you?” I shout.

“I’m Jan…from the CDC,” a female voice responds.

From the CDC? What is someone from the CDC doing showing up here…and now?

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s a long story, but I’ll tell it now if that’s what you want.”

What I want can’t be had
, I think.
Unless she has a hammock and an umbrella drink in the back of her vehicle.

“Who else is with you?”

“No one. It’s just me,” she answers.

“Approach the gate, slowly, and keep your hands visible. Place your fingers up high on the fence once you reach it. I would advise against doing anything sudden.

“How will you be able to tell?” she asks, referring to the low visibility of the gloom.

“Never mind how. I’ll know,” I state.

She does as requested and I approach the gate once she is in position. From her startled reflexive action, it would appear that I suddenly emerged from the shadows.

“Do you have any idea what this place is?” I ask.

“I have an idea, but only in a general sense,” she replies. “I gather it’s a government installation.”

“So, Jan, are you truly from the CDC?” I ask, still confused why anyone from there would show up at a place like this.

She couldn’t know who we are, so if she is showing up here, she must know what the group was doing, which leads me to believe there must have been some collusion between the people here and the CDC. Jan must think we’re part of the group and expects her credentials to gain her entry.

But why show up now?

She removes her hand to reach around behind her. I jump back, bringing my M-4 to bear, my finger putting a little pressure on the trigger.

“Don’t move another muscle,” I state, fully expecting to hear a staccato burst from the .50 cal.

She freezes. “I was reaching for my ID.”

“I would highly recommend that you don’t do that again…at least not without asking,” I say, still focusing my sights on her head.

“Noted,” she says. “You’re a little jumpy.”

“People showing up out of nowhere tends to make me that way,” I quip. Pressing the mic button, I radio, “Does anyone have anything on screen?”

I want to verify that it’s still clear around. The Strykers and the security room report that they don’t see anything.

“All right, Jan. I’m not a fan of being out at night so here’s what is going to happen. You’re not going to move while I open the gate enough for you to wriggle through. You’re then going to place yourself against the fence in the same manner while I search you. Then, we’re going to walk back to the armored vehicle just up the road. Once we get inside the facility, there’s going to be a question or two.”

Someone just showing up at a facility like this, who worked in a quasi-government organization, isn’t filling me with good feelings. If she really is alone, there’s not much she can do, but I’m still not feeling all warm and fuzzy.

“What about my stuff?” she asks.

“If you’re on the up and up, then we can get it in the morning,” I answer.

The gate is actually two gates, swung together and locked with a length of chain at the middle. Pulling the two apart, I nod to Jan, who squeezes through, taking position against the inside of the fence. I look closer at the middle-aged woman leaning against the chain links. Clad in blue jeans with a red-and-black plaid cotton shirt and hiking boots, she looks like she should be on the cover of an Eddie Bauer catalog. Her medium-length blond hair is pulled back in a small ponytail. A thorough search reveals a set of keys, some change, a multi-tool, and, in her back pocket, her ID. I think about zip-tying her hands, but she doesn’t have anything else on her.

“No weapons?” I query.

“There is an AR-15, a .308 bolt action, and a .40 cal handgun in the vehicle,” she replies.

“Okay, again, we’ll get those in the morning. Now turn and walk down the middle of the road,” I say, backing away and keeping my carbine trained on her.

She does as I say, and with me to the side and behind, we walk toward the idling Stryker a short distance away.

“I’m returning with one woman under guard and leaving her vehicle at the front gate. Gonzalez, hold your fire,” I radio.

Backtracking inside, we park the vehicles and escort Jan to one of the conference rooms. I momentarily consider blindfolding her so she doesn’t get a view of the facility, but she already knows where it is. Besides, it’s not like we’re just going to cut her loose should her story not be to our liking. She takes in the facility as we guide her through, eyebrows rising in surprise at seeing the group of imprisoned soldiers under armed guard, but hides her expression almost immediately. She sits at one of the tables while I step outside with Lynn, filling her in on the details of the conversation at the gate.

“What do you think?” I ask. “I’m a little lost and confused here.”

“I honestly don’t know, Jack. On one hand, she knew where this place was. Then again, she may not know what it truly was or what happened. I guess the fact that she came alone is a plus on her side,” Lynn answers.

“Well, let’s see what she says. After you,” I say, opening the door.

I sit at the table while Lynn remains at the door. Lynn isn’t keyed up and alert, but she’s not exactly relaxing her guard either. Jan appears a little worn from whatever experience she’s been through.

“Okay, let’s begin. Who are you?” I ask.

“You have my ID, but I’m Jan Clark. I worked for the CDC before the world fell apart,” she answers, with a touch of sarcasm. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or annoyed. I choose both.

“How do you know about this place?” I ask, probing for her involvement.

I take her for having above-average intelligence, if the green eyes staring back at me are any indication. She has to know something big has happened, or is happening, by the prisoners she saw as we walked through. And by the fact that most were dressed as soldiers.

“That’s a bit of a story,” she responds.

“I have nowhere to go at the moment,” I state.

“Well,” Jan begins with a sigh, “I was the supervising manager in charge of several labs, specifically those dealing with the mutations brought about by the vaccine. You know it was the vaccine and not the virus that caused the changes?”

“Yes, we know,” I state.

“Well, it’s not that it wasn’t known. Anyway, we conducted tests…”

She continues to tell us about their tests and what they discovered in the short period of time they had available. It is nothing we really didn’t already know, but I let her continue nonetheless. She talked about classes of UV lighting and the effects each of the three wavelengths had. It appears that none of the manmade UV lighting would have any effect on the night runners. Only the sun provides the correct wavelength. There are other technical details, most of which go flying right over my head. At one point, I radio for some water to be brought in, as she was right about her story being a long one.

“There was one thing that led me to believe everything wasn’t quite right. Gabe Simons, a man I worked with for years, the director of the CDC and my boss, wouldn’t let us conduct any EEGs or MRIs on the test subjects. That hit me as odd, as it removed some very important resources. We were limited to physical tests…blood draws and such. So, when he told me to leave, I grabbed my duplicate files from his desk. I may have, well, picked up a couple of extra ones. I knew he was hiding something and that he knew more about what was going on than he let on. After a while, I looked through them and found a file talking about this place and one other about an hour north of Atlanta. I looked up the coordinates and kept them in the back of my mind. I had other research to conduct, but, well, that ended. Things weren’t getting any better so I decided to head out. I figured this for some kind of government installation and thought I could help. Besides, there wasn’t really any other place to go,” she says, ending her long-winded story.

I chuckle at that bit about taking the files from her director’s desk. Not because it is terribly funny, just at the irony of it. This woman took the files that may have given us a clue to the existence of this place, and possibly what it was. It’s funny how seemingly random incidents can play a big part in other’s lives. If we had known about this place to begin with, we might have been able to plan for it. Or maybe not. That’s rather a moot point at this juncture. I could do the "what ifs" all day and it wouldn’t change a thing.

“What’s so funny?” Jan asks, and Lynn looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“Nothing. It just might have helped us if you’d left those files where they were,” I say.

Jan stares at me, confused. “How? I mean, those files were on the direc…wait, you went into the CDC, didn’t you…afterward?”

“Yeah, we were there. But that’s neither here nor there. So, Jan, here’s the million-dollar question: What do you know about this place? I mean, what do you truly know about it? You didn’t just show up out of the blue,” I state.

“I told you. I thought it was a government installation and could help. However, your question implies that it might be more than that,” she responds.

“If you thought that, then why are you just showing up now? If you wanted to help, you would have shown up within days after the fall,” I comment.

“I had my own research to follow through with. I didn’t want to be interfered with, like I was before.”

“And where did you go to do this research?”

“When I left the CDC with my files, I also took some of the lab equipment and retired to a cabin I have in Montana. I had it set up to operate off the grid and I studied the mutation. I captured one of the infected and set to work,” she answers.

“You captured a night runner?” I ask.

“Night runner?” she asks, confused by the term.

“That’s what we call the infected,” I reply.

“Oh, okay. I guess that’s an appropriate term.”

“That’s a pretty ballsy move,” I comment.

She shrugs. “I needed one.”

“How did you capture it?” Lynn asks, intrigued.

We’ve never tried capturing one, nor had need to. Our specialization has been putting them down. Of course, our goals were a little different. We weren’t trying to understand the mutation; we were trying to stay alive.

“It was pretty easy, actually. I went to where they were, dug a deep hole, and went back in the morning. Shot it full of tranquilizer. I knew how much to use from the lab tests we conducted. You wouldn’t believe just how much it actually takes. I think you could bring down two horses with the amount,” she says.

“What happened to the night runner you captured?”

“It died,” she answers with another shrug.

“Couldn’t you have captured another in the same manner?” Lynn asks.

“I suppose I could have. However, without the proper lab equipment, I figured there wasn’t much use. I wasn’t able to glean anything further than finding out that they have a more complicated DNA makeup than we originally thought,” she replies.

“Did you find anything in your research that might indicate that there could be a cure? Can this be reversed?” I ask, excited about the prospect.

“I don’t know. If it can, I haven’t come close to finding out how,” Jan answers.

“I’d like to talk about this some other time. Do you know what happened to the director? It sounds like he was in on it,” I query.

“He was in his office last time I saw him. I have no idea, but was half-expecting him to be here,” Jan says.

“Well, he’s not, nor is he in his office anymore. Not unless he turned into a night runner. There were plenty of those running around,” I state.