Deadlocked 8 (22 page)

I couldn’t fight my weariness any longer, and
my eyelids won the battle, shutting out the meager light from the
doctor’s flashlight.

* * *

By the time I woke, even the lights above me
were on instead of just a flashlight on the floor. I looked to the
right, and saw a figure standing there, staring down at a
clipboard. The tile at the person’s feet was spotless, with no
trace of the event I’d been sure had happened. Was it a fever
dream?

I started to speak, but my words turned to
garbled blurts of noise as my lips refused to coincide with my
intention. Saliva dripped down my cheek as I tried, and failed, to
turn my head. My stomach churned, and the sickening lurch
threatened to cause me to vomit. With just the mere thought of
puking, I felt liquid begin to surge up my throat.

I didn’t have the strength to turn my head,
and I opened my mouth as wide as I could when the fluid burst
forth. It came in waves, first as just a spattering of thin liquid,
and then as a gush that forced its way through my nose as well.

“Oh gosh,” said the nurse in the room. She
was wearing a protective suit, but it was different than the one my
attacker had worn. I recognized her blue eyes behind the thin
plastic shield that protected her face as she leaned over me. She
cleaned me with a rag before walking over to the sink to rinse it
off and return. She pinched my nose and apologized as she cleaned
me off. The cool water on my parched lips felt heavenly.

“Is he up?” asked a familiar voice. Beatrice
was coming in, and her concern rang false to me.

“He’s up,” said the nurse. “But I don’t think
he’s…”

“Give us a minute alone,” said Beatrice.

“I can’t…”

“Jerald gave me the okay. Now give us a
minute.”

The nurse agreed, and left the room. Beatrice
waited for the door to spin closed before she approached. She stood
beside my bed and stared down at me. “Levon?” She snapped her
fingers in my line of sight. “Levon, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can fucking hear you.” My words
slurred, but the point got across just fine.

She grimaced and then drew a long breath
before speaking. “You sure can get yourself into trouble, can’t
you? Even when you’re supposed to be sick in bed, unable to
walk.”

“One of your…” I choked and had to start
over. “One of the fuckers stabbed me with something.”

“Hush,” said Beatrice. She moved closer, and
set her hand on my head. “You need to save your strength.”

“For what?” I asked. “What was that guy doing
last…”

“Levon,” she said sharply and gripped my arm
tightly for just a moment, like the reproach of a mother trying to
keep her son from embarrassing her in public. “The doctors are only
trying to help. You need to forget about them.” Her words were
oddly insistent, as if she were trying to communicate something
with me without having to explain in detail.

“What the fuck’s going on, Bea? I don’t want
to play games.”

“But the pieces are in place,” she said as if
we were enjoying each other’s company.

“I’m not one of your pieces.”

She wiped a bead of sweat from my brow and
said, “Of course you are.” As much as I hated her, the touch of her
skin against mine was a welcome relief from the cold, plastic touch
of the doctors and nurses.

“Are you ever going to tell me why you’re the
only one allowed to be in here without a suit on?” It was a
question I’d asked in the past, but she’d never been willing to
answer.

“Jerald wanted to test me. He thinks he’s
very smart.” She chuckled as if we were old girlfriends sharing a
laugh over brunch. “When we got here, I told him you’d been cured,
but he was still taking precautions. They found traces of the
disease still in you, which is why they hooked you up to this
device.” She pointed at the tubes that hung down from the machine
above. “This is the only way they’ve been able to kill the virus in
someone that’s not immune, but the drawback is that the patient
becomes dependent on it to survive. And there aren’t many of these
left.” She stroked one of the tubes.

“So I’m cured?” I asked and then added a
weak, “Hooray.”

“They keep finding inactive viruses in you,
which is why they’re still pumping you full of these toxins.
They’re hoping that if they can keep you alive, that they can find
Reagan’s influence in you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Reagan’s the only reason anyone cares about
you, Levon. It’s his influence on your immune system that they’re
hoping to mimic. I’m just Jerald’s guinea pig. He decided to let me
come in here to meet with you to see if my immune system was
affected. That way he doesn’t have to risk the lives of any of his
precious men.”

“Aren’t they worried you’ll get infected and
carry the virus out of here?”

“Like I said, the only viruses they’ve found
in you have been dead. The only concern they have is that you might
have a negative influence on the doctors and nurses, and it’s
important that they stay healthy. Allowing me to meet with you like
this gives them the chance to test me endlessly as well.” She
rolled up her sleeve to reveal several purple lesions where blood
had been drawn from her. “But I’m not scared of you, Levon. We’re
friends now, aren’t we?”

“Nope.” My mouth was so dry. I licked at my
chapped lips and then asked for water.

“They’ve got fluids going into you,” said
Beatrice as she traced her finger along one of the tubes that hung
down beside me.

“Just get me some water.”

“I can’t,” she said, and was about to say
more when I interrupted her.

“Come on,
buddy
, I just want some
fucking water.”

She frowned, but relented. She went to the
sink to get a washrag that she ran under the tap for a few moments.
She squeezed out most of the water, but brought the washrag back
over and held it out as if in offering.

My arms were either too weak or I was too
drugged. “Can you put it on my lips?”

Beatrice did as I asked, and gently touched
the cool rag to my lips. I savored the taste of the water that
dripped into my mouth and said, “Thanks,” once I’d had enough.

“Things are changing around here, Levon,”
said Beatrice as she returned the rag to the sink. “I don’t know
how much longer I’m going to be able to protect you.”

“Protect me?” I asked with a snort of
laughter. “You’re doing a bang-up job.”

“I am protecting you. In fact, I’m the only
friend you’ve got in this place. The Electorate would just as soon
burn us all in a purge; all except the Dawns, of course. The girl’s
rooms are reinforced, and not connected to the purge system. Or
perhaps Jerald will purge us all in his rage. I wouldn’t put it
past him. You know, if it weren’t for me, Jerald would’ve tortured
all the information he needed out of you, and when he was done, you
would’ve begged him to kill you.”

I looked at the tubes sticking out of me and
said, “You mean this isn’t torture? You coulda fooled me.”

“These are the only things keeping you
alive.” She stood beside me and slid her fingers along one of the
tubes that was pumping that mysterious concoction into me. “And I
need you alive, at least for the time being.”

“Stop trying to play games with me,” I said.
“I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s not a game when your life’s on the
line.” Then her words took on a darker edge as she whispered, “And
the lives of everyone you love.”

I grumbled and looked away. “I’m not going
to…”

“Listen to me, Hero,” she said my nickname as
if taunting me. “We’re coming to the end of this, and you’ve still
got a job to do.”

“Fuck off.”

She pressed her hand against my wrist and
squeezed, bringing memories of how my aunt used to do the same
thing when she was angry with me. I recalled those blistering
Georgia summers, when Mark and I would stay with our aunt because
our mother couldn’t handle having us day in and day out. My brother
and I weren’t used to discipline, because our mother’s version
depended entirely upon her mood – or more specifically, how long it
had been since her last hit.

Auntie Claire was as different from our
mother as two siblings could be. She was strict and demanding, with
little patience for two naughty hood rats like us. The first summer
we spent with her was a tumultuous one, and I got myself whipped
more than a few times. We learned fast that Auntie Claire wasn’t
kidding with her threats. We damn well learned to treat her with
respect.

As Beatrice gripped my wrist, squeezing tight
enough to cause pain, I couldn’t help but smile. I was thinking
about how Auntie Claire was probably yelling at Mark in heaven,
chastising him for talking too loud or not wearing his Sunday best
to church. Auntie was the only person in the world that Mark
wouldn’t dare challenge, and I imagined him hanging his head and
murmuring, “Yes ma’am.”

When I think of Mark in heaven, he’s not in a
wheelchair. He’s tall, strong, and healthy, with a wide smile ready
for me when I finally make it up there to see him.

Beatrice’s harsh whisper broke the spell,
“Jerald is rounding up your friends as we speak. He found them, and
he’s going to bring them here.”

I glared up at her. Was she lying? I had no
idea. I didn’t trust her, but I also knew that Jerald had been
desperate to find the Rollers. It was certainly possible that he
had.

Apparently she could see that I was curious.
“That’s right,” she said with a raised brow. “This is all about to
end, Hero, and it’s not going to end well unless you do what I tell
you.”

I waited for her to continue.

“If you want to save your friends, then I’m
the only person that can help you do it. But we don’t have much
time.”

The snake had my attention.

Beatrice Dell

I left Levon to ponder what I’d told him
about how his true enemy was just down the hall. I had to be
careful what I said, because there was always a chance that Richard
or Jerald was watching, but this was worth the risk. We were
reaching our endgame.

My original hope had been to bring Levon into
this facility with the Tempest Strain still burning in his blood,
but masked by the vaccine he’d been given at the transfer facility.
This would force them to purge the entire area. If that occurred,
then the Dawns would be protected in their fortified rooms along
with all of the information that The Electorate had stored in
them.

That plan had fallen through when I
discovered that Jerald and Richard had emptied the purge tanks and
deactivated the system. Shortly after, they discovered the virus
still in Levon, and hooked him up to the device that Covington had
been experimenting with at the Nederland facility before Reagan’s
attack. No one in The Electorate knew that Covington had survived
or that they had salvaged one of the LiMM chairs. After Levon had
been hooked up to the machine, I was forced to come up with a new
plan.

Jerald’s decision to use me as a test subject
to see if Levon’s immune system affected those around him had
required me to spend a lot of time with the doctors. They were
always testing me, and I took the opportunity to get to know them
and their daily routines. This was how I learned about Covington’s
dependence on them, and how he’d made certain they could always get
to him by having them close by. Access to Richard’s floor was
restricted, but not to his room, meaning that anyone down here
could make their way to him at any point without having to worry
about punching in a code or carrying a key.

I asked the doctors and nurses about their
families, and learned which ones had spouses and children. When I
discovered which of them had children here, I eagerly listened to
stories about them, pretending to love kids. It didn’t take long to
find my mark. Once I’d found the most sympathetic doctor, I plied
him with promises of escape, if only he would work with me.

It was through this doctor, named Hank, that
I was able to start crafting my scheme. He passed messages between
The Electorate and me, using Covington’s own system that allowed
only sporadic, late night transfers of wireless communication. We
learned that The Electorate was debating different courses of
action, and that Covington’s reappearance had given ammunition to
the members that were calling for an end to the Dawn program. They
wanted to erase all evidence of the eugenics experiments, and to
ensure that our ancestors never knew of our involvement with the
apocalypse.

I had to make them an offer that would delay
any radical decisions. In order to placate them, and to save the
Dawn program, I had to devise a way to kill as many people that
knew the truth as possible. That meant Jerald and his Wolf Pack had
to die, as well as Richard Covington. But The Electorate were also
worried about the group of terrorists that had followed Reagan, not
only because of their knowledge, but also because of the
possibility that they were immune. The last thing The Electorate
wanted was to have a band of survivors out here that knew the truth
about us and had any chance of surviving The Noah Initiative.

I assured The Electorate that with Hank’s
help, we could do as they asked. With The Electorate’s help, I
acquired the drones that I then delivered to Jerald. If I could get
him to track down Levon’s friends, then I hoped to get them here to
die along with everyone else. Only the Dawns would survive a purge,
along with anyone else that happened to find their way into the
girls’ sealed environment prior to the blast.

Covington then surprised me by inviting me to
take part in his negotiations with The Electorate. It turned out
that he didn’t have the ability to perform his own transfer,
meaning that he was dependent upon us. Of course, he didn’t want
The Electorate to know everything, and neither did I. The best
thing for me would be that it appeared to The Electorate that I had
everything in control here. To my surprise, The Electorate offered
Covington the chance to lock down the entire facility, causing most
of the people here to starve. They said that if he did as they
asked, that they could facilitate his transfer once they arrived,
but that he would have to give them total control of this entire
building.