Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain) (24 page)

I know I have no right to complain. This is all happening because of me
—on so many levels—and I feel good about what we're doing. I still wish we'd gotten more time together. Now the sole reminder he'll have of our time together is a video of me telling the story of the tragedy that is my life, intercut with footage of me as a nearly dead monster. A killer. Not exactly the stuff of epic romances.

“
I know,” I tell him, even though I can’t possibly. “It’ll fly by. For now though, you should really get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“
Big day,” he agrees. Neither of us moves, not quite ready for the day to be over.

“
No, you hang up first,” I joke. Zack smirks, which quickly grows into an obnoxious belly laugh, breaking the moment once and for all. God, he’s cute.

“
All right. All right.” He brushes a stray hair out of my eyes. “Goodnight, Chelsea Zimmerman.” Zack leans over and plants one last slow kiss on my lips. And then he’s gone, sauntering off down the hallway.

I fall asleep that night blissfully happy despite knowing that in twenty-four hours it will all be over. Zack will be gone, and so will
almost everyone else, but for right now, my world is absolutely perfect.

Chapter 30 – Savannah

I pace in front of the door to the office, knowing that if I knock even one more time I'll be banished back to my room to wait it out in solitude where I can'
t bother anyone. Dooley has been closed inside that room for almost seven hours now, ever since the Initiative tech junkies called it in for the night. He had the final version of the DVD finished by lunch, and now it was a matter of making enough copies, which he assured me monkeys could manage.

Trained m
onkeys could learn to make DVD copies, but I’m not even allowed to
watch
. If he's not done within half an hour, we'll have hit the two a.m. mark and will have to wait until tomorrow to execute the next phase. It's now or never, and I don't think my heart will be able to take another day of waiting and praying we don't get caught before we have a chance to get out of here with everything we need.

My breath catches in my throat as I hear the unmistakable rattle of a d
oorknob. Turning on my heel, I spin back toward the door right as it opens and Dooley steps out into the hall.

"How did I know you'd still be here?"

"Excellent deductive reasoning." I glance down to see his empty hands. "Where are they?" His final job was to make as many copies as he could of the DVD so that we'd each have over a dozen to take with us and distribute. I expected him to come out carrying a box full of them so we could hand them out in the garage as everyone leaves.

"I thought it might be sus
picious if someone sees me in the hallway with a massive box of unauthorized equipment in the middle of the night. We should check with the others first, make sure they have everything before we reach a point where there's no turning back."

As far as I'm c
oncerned, we've already reached that point, but I don't argue. In a way, he's right. The DVDs are only one part of what we'll each be taking with us. Chelsea did a brilliant job with telling her story, and Dooley was able to cut in some riveting footage of what she was like when she got here, near death and obviously infected, but I know for some people that still won’t be enough.

While Dooley was here copying the multimedia side of things, Zack was in the medical wing with Sara, the lab tech, photocopying
the files we'd selected—a mixture of papers that can be understood by those of us without medical degrees and formulas to explain how to replicate two versions of the Veritas serum in case we find anyone else who might be able to help in that area. We ended up having to take twice as much as we thought we’d need since there are now two relevant versions of Veritas that should be getting out into the world. The one that worked on Chelsea and the one that they’ve adapted since but haven’t done anything with yet.

These two things together should give anyone we come across the proof and maybe even tools they need to start developing the serum themselves. Combine that with the one final element that we have to wait until the last possib
le moment to collect and I
know
that we're going to change everything.

Dooley with the DVDs. Check.

Zack and Sarah with the file folders. Check.

Carly with eight packs of rations, enough for one week. Check.

Liam with weapons, both standard and improvised. Check.

Mack and Cody with the car assignments and passcodes. Check and check.

Me with the checklist. Obviously.

Three a.m. Time to rock and roll. Now all I can do is head to the garage and hope that Cole knows exactly what he
’s doing.

I
’m the first to arrive, but no surprise there. Alex joins me less than a minute later because he wants to be a part of this final moment—seeing everyone off. He’ll be going too, but not until everyone from New Ravencrest has been given the okay to travel. In three or four days, once they're ready to go home, he can leave with them.

It's possible they
'll suspect him of being in on our plans since enough people here know that we’re friends, but there isn't much they can do to him and they won’t be able to prove anything. Mack, one of our unexpected team additions, works in security here and promised at least a dozen times that none of our meetings have been caught on tape. They might be able to piece together some of what happened but not enough to get ahead of us.

I hope.

Alex will go back to his family as planned, where Zack will have left his portion of the cure packs waiting for him—giving Zack the chance to see everyone from home again before he leaves. Alex will have time to tell his mom where he’s going, get Marybeth—assuming he can convince her to go with him, which is something he’s more optimistic about than I am—and go, heading back down the route he used to get to this part of the country in the first place and back home to the Florida area.

“
Give Belle a hug for me when you see her,” I tell Alex right before Carly, Liam and Chelsea join us, entering from the other side of the parking garage. Liam gives me a long look that I can’t decipher—I hope he knows better than to worry about me at this point.

I
’m counting on Alex to set up some way for New Ravencrest to stay in touch with the Initiative so that someone, anyone, will be able to tell me where they finally decide to settle down.

“
Ugghhh. Need sleep,” Carly groans as she approaches us. “How am I supposed to drive on three hours of sleep?”

“
Coffee?” I offer her a cup from the tray I have waiting on the floor for just this kind of emergency. There’s one for everyone, whether they like it or not. I can’t be the only one who didn’t get much sleep last night, and there won’t be anyone falling asleep at the wheel on my watch. “Where’s Zack?” I ask, turning to Chelsea.

“
Cole needed an extra pair of hands.” She presses her lips together like she’s trying not to say whatever it is she’s thinking—a skill I envy. I’m guessing she didn’t love the idea of giving up even a handful of her last minutes with Zack before he leaves.

Zack didn
’t tell me what happened between the two of them last night, but I’m not sure they’ve left each other’s sight even once today. And at least twice I caught them holding hands under a table or desk when they didn’t think anyone was watching. I wish I had more time to talk to Zack and get the details, but the longer we wait, the more chance there is that something will go wrong.

Like Carly, Zack will be going west. He has a lot of family in Idaho, and if he can find anyone still alive, it might be a good way to introduce himself to any communities that have surfaced there.

Carly will be going even farther, not stopping until she hits the coast. After a day, I still don’t know her well, but I suspect she got caught here through some weird twist of events and never really felt like she had much to contribute. And like she put it, “Any excuse to visit California is a good one.”

As for Liam, all he
’s said is that he’ll be headed back the way he came and now I have to admit that I’m not totally sure where that is. I know when the first outbreak happened he was practically at ground zero in Cleveland but that he hadn’t lived there long before everything started to go to hell.

“
So you’ve got a game plan for the route you’re going to take?” I ask, handing him his coffee. He smiles appreciatively, but the look in his eyes stays hard, determined.

“
Well my first stop will be to find somewhere I can ditch this car for a bike.” He looks over at the sedan he’ll be taking with disdain. “From there I’ll probably be kind of zig-zagging a bit, I think. There was a settlement that Zarah and I stayed at for a while that I’m going to circle back to. Lots of people, hard living. It’s the type of place that could use a little hope, and I know Zarah would have wanted me to check in on some of the people she made friends with while we were there.”

I make myself push back the part of myself that wants to do the swoony girl thing and admire h
is dedication to his lost love. From here on out, it’s all game face, all the time. At least until we both make it back here safely. “Then… home?”

“
Well since none of you were volunteering to head north, I guess it’s back to Canada with me.”

“
You’re Canadian? I had no idea.”

“
Half.”

“
Well take care of yourself, okay?”

“
You too, Savannah. I’ll see you back here before you know it.” In one fluid motion he reaches over and gives my hand a quick squeeze which gives me exactly the strength I need to break away and get back to business.

It takes another ten minutes before the
stragglers finally show up, each one of them burdened with two small, portable coolers to house the Veritas samples we’ll all be taking with us. If Cole’s estimates were right, we’re taking almost the entire supply of both versions, leaving enough to deal with any medical emergencies that could come up before they’re able to create more.

With how many doses it takes to cure someone completely, I
’m not sure exactly how much good our supply will do us. But if one dose can help stave off infection for a little longer or provide a sample for a doctor who might be able to help us, then it’s worth taking.

I watch everyone in turn as we start loading everything into the cars we
’ll be taking, but almost every person in the group is hard to read except Chelsea, who looks mostly lost. I don't envy her role in any of this. Having to get up in the morning and deal with the fallout of what we've done won't be fun, even if she can manage to hide her involvement. There will be a lot of work involved in reproducing what we’ve taken, and it will be all hands on deck from here on out, even for suspected conspirators.

It's also easy to see how much she's going to miss Zack. Her eyes follow him wherever
he moves, even when she’s ten cars away helping someone else. All I can hope for them is that they’ll only have to be apart from each other for a few weeks. Hopefully by the time he gets back, Cole will have been able to smooth things over so that we’ll all be allowed to come back when the time comes. If not, Zack, Alex, and I will always have a place with the survivors from home, but there’s still too much uncertainty for my taste.

Cole
has one stop to make, but it's easily the most important both for him personally and for our mission overall. Finding an excuse to be reunited with his brother is, I suspect, the main reason he agreed to any of this. Seeing as that same brother turned me in to the United Militia, I'm less enthusiastic. It has been a long time since Cole last saw older brother up close and personal, but we’re all counting on Ethan at least being open to hearing what he has to say.

There is so much I don't like about the Uni
ted Militia, but they're our closest and most well-connected neighbor. If we're about to have people from all over the country knocking on our door for a chance at the cure, then it'll be in our best interest to have them on our side. That plus the resources they'll be able to offer make them an obvious choice for an ally. My main concern would have been that they would try to corner the market on Veritas, giving them power over everyone else in the country, but we're taking that option away from them before it's even a possibility.

If Cole can manage that much
—a sit-down between the Initiative and the Militia—that would be huge in and of itself. Of course, after that, we’re hoping he’ll be able to convince his father that what we did was the right move, using inside information from Gregor to figure out the general mood of the people we have to convince to let us come back.

All too soon, it
’s time to say our goodbyes. A little surprisingly, it’s easier to get through the incredibly awkward half-wave farewells to the people I barely know, who are putting their lives on the line based on my crazy ideas. Dooley at least offers me a stiff hug before climbing into his car and taking off.

With a slow, deep breath, I step toward Cole. I briefly consider offering him a handshake instead of a hug, but I know that
’s ridiculous. We ended…awkwardly but amicably, and that doesn’t have to end here. "Thank you," I whisper in his ear before breaking off the hug. "Thank you for everything."

“
Be safe,” he answers, pulling away. His expression is tense, and I can’t tell if it’s me or the situation. I wave one last time as he pulls away, but I don’t think he even notices. The two of us take the whole ‘needing space from each other’ concept to a whole new level.

Letting go of Zack and Alex is the hardest, especially with Chelsea hovering nearby and waiting for her own goodbye.

“Take care of yourselves. Come back as soon as you can,” I say with one arm wrapped around each of my guys. I do my best to make it sound like an order rather than a suggestion.

“
We’ll be fine,” Alex says. “We can do this. We’re going to do this.”

“
For Pierce,” Zack adds.

“
For Pierce,” I agree, squeezing them both obnoxiously for an extra-long moment before I let go. Once I do, Alex gives us both one last hug and then retreats back into the stairwell that will take him to the medical wing, only looking back once.