Survivors (35 page)

Rebecca heard muted laughter from down the hall. It sounded like the sailor, Allen. He’d finally started to warm up to the soldiers, and last time she saw him, he was arm-wrestling for a bottle of liquor with Brewster. The other survivors were taking their time before turning in, telling jokes and sharing stories. She’d never felt any reason to join in. Once upon a time, she would have, but no longer. It was easier to watch a stranger die than a friend, or a lover.

The thought made her gut churn, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. She held a hand over her mouth and clenched her eyes shut, stifling the sob she knew was coming. When the feeling had passed, she relaxed, and lay back on her cot, wrapping her arms around herself and drawing her knees up close, staring off into nothing. The moon was out, and it bathed the room in a dull blue glow. A single tear fell from her eye, rolled down her face and soaked into the pillow beneath her head. She paid it no mind. She merely lay still, and tried not to think about anything at all.

A pair of gunshots rang out. Rebecca found herself running toward the source of the noise, apprehension etched on her face.

The gray steel corridors of the ship were narrow, but well lit. The hum of the engines was ever present, but even that couldn’t drown out the sound of gunfire. Rebecca turned a corner and saw General Sherman and a group of soldiers standing in front of a sealed door. They were arguing.

“Sir? They might still be infected!” one of the soldiers was protesting.

Sherman disagreed. “Open the door. They’re clean. They’ve been in there long enough.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rebecca found herself running toward them. “No! Don’t open the door! Please, don’t open the door!”

The soldiers ignored her. The man Sherman had been arguing with reached for the latch.

Rebecca felt frantic. “No. No! Don’t open it! Please, don’t open it!” She grabbed at Sherman’s shoulders, shook him, pleaded with him. He merely watched the guard at work, ignoring her. “Please!” It was as if she didn’t even exist.

The door swung open.

Ewan Brewster appeared, sweat-stained and anxious, but otherwise unhurt.

“Finally! After a week in there, getting some fresh air’s a nice change of pace!”

“No, no, no!” Rebecca yelled, close to tears. “Close the door!
Please
close the door!”

No one responded to her pleas. No one looked over at her. She may as well have been a phantom.

Rebecca looked down at her hands, and saw that she had her pistol grasped firmly in her left. Her right was balled up in a white-knuckled fist.

“Please,” she whispered. A part of her knew what was coming next. “Please, close the door.”

“Get down!”
came a cry from one of the soldiers in the corridor. He fumbled with his sidearm.

“No,”
Rebecca whispered.

Behind Brewster, a figure rose up, eyes bloodshot, a feral growl emanating from its throat.

Rebecca, lips trembling, felt the pistol in her hand come up until the sights danced before her eyes.

The bloody-eyed figure grabbed Brewster’s shoulders, but instead of attacking, it looked up, and fixed Rebecca with a grim stare.

It was Mark Stiles.

“No,” repeated Rebecca. “No, not again.”

Stiles opened his mouth and leaned forward to tear into Brewster.

The pistol in Rebecca’s hand bucked. The casing
tinked
off the steel bulkheads, rolled to a stop against her foot. Stiles’s head snapped back, and he fell, laying in a twisted heap on the floor, a hole drilled neatly in his forehead.

With a cry, Rebecca turned and heaved the pistol away with all her might, but it wouldn’t leave her hands. She couldn’t let it go. It stuck to her palms as if coated in glue. Frantic, she beat the weapon against the nearest bulkhead. Try as she might, she couldn’t let go of the pistol. She looked down at it, and was horrified to see that a trickle of blood, instead of tendrils of smoke, was dripping from the barrel.

She let fly a scream of grief and terror that echoed throughout the bowels of the ship and beyond.

Rebecca’s eyes flicked open.

Across from her sat the tan filing cabinet with its perfectly positioned but nonfunctional lamp perched atop it, and next to it, her pistol belt. The calendar hung on the wall, just as she had left it.

She used to bolt awake after her nightmares, but over the months she had become so accustomed to them that she no longer shot upright, clutching at anything and feeling short of breath. She still felt the cold sweat that soaked the sheets of the cot, and the frantic beating of her own heart, however. Hardly a night had gone by since her journey on the USS
Ramage
without at least one nightmare plaguing her sleep.

Rebecca felt her teeth chattering, and she willed them to stop. When that failed, she clenched her jaw tightly shut and pulled the thin sheet of the cot up to her chin. She hadn’t even remembered falling asleep.

She hoped she hadn’t called out in her sleep. She’d done it before, and had been awakened by concerned group members when they were on the road and all slept in the same room. Here, at the Fac, no one would come running. They were all used to it, and some were far enough away down the hall that they might not have heard her at all.

A soft knocking at her door drew her attention. Her eyes flicked in the direction of the noise, but otherwise, she remained perfectly still, curled up on the cot.

“Wha—” she started to say, but found her voice was still quavering from the shock of the nightmare. She took a breath and swallowed to calm herself, and tried again. “What is it?”

The voice outside answered immediately. “It’s, uh, me. Mark. I heard you screaming. Are you all right?”

He sounded genuinely concerned. Rebecca closed her eyes and sighed. Of course. Stiles wouldn’t have known about her nightmares.

“I—I’m fine,” Rebecca said, without opening her eyes. She remembered who it was she had just shot in the dream, and clenched her jaw once more. “I . . . saw a mouse. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. “Okay. Just wanted to make sure you were all right. Uh, good night.”

Rebecca lay still until she heard Stiles’s footsteps fade, and the muffled click as his own door swung shut. There was no way she was going to fall asleep again. She could feel it. The nightmare had been different from the others, and it stuck with her, wiring her awake. She sat upright, letting the covers fall away. She hadn’t even bothered to undress before retiring, so she simply rose and walked across the room to the only other piece of furniture it had: a simple wooden desk and swiveling office chair. On the desk, neatly arranged in a row, were medical volumes Anna had given to Rebecca to better learn the nuances of assisting a researcher in BL4.

Rebecca pulled open a desk drawer, withdrew a candle and a book of matches, and lit the former, bathing the desk in a dull glow. She pulled out the third volume, bookmark protruding from the middle, and began to read, trying to lose herself in the text.

Omaha, NE
1 July 2007
0834 hrs_

B
ELOW, IN THE
BL4 laboratory, Anna Demilio was beginning to feel exhaustion setting in. Lack of food and sleep conspired against her. She sat in her blue Chemturion suit on a stool in the lab, staring at the small cage containing the inoculated lab rat. The hiss of air entering her suit from a hanging valve threatened to lull her into a doze. She had always been a sucker for white noise, and the escaping air drowned out lesser sounds.

Slowly, her head slipped forward, hands sliding from her lap to her knees. Only when she had nearly slipped free from the stool did she reawaken with a start, straightening herself out and looking around as if to catch anyone who might have seen her nod off.

“God, what time is it?” Anna muttered behind the thick faceplate of her suit. She couldn’t wear a watch into BL4—and even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to see it through the suit’s protective sleeves. But such was her level of exhaustion that she looked anyway before catching herself and rolling her eyes. She shifted her position to catch a glimpse of the clock hung on the wall, just above the lab’s exit doors, and sighed. “Morning again.”

Anna swiveled on her stool to face the lab rat’s cage once more.

“Well, little buddy, it’s been almost a day since you were given some Stiles blood. Time for another sample.”

Anna reached into the cage and plucked out the rat. It squirmed in her hand, but she kept a tight hold on it as she fetched a hypodermic with her free limb. A moment later, she had drawn the blood sample and replaced the rodent in its cage.

Blood sample in hand, Anna unhooked her air hose and walked briskly across the lab to a station where a bank of microscopes awaited. Once there, she hooked herself up to a new air nozzle and breathed a sigh of relief as cool air rushed through her Chemturion suit once more.

She spent the next few minutes preparing to view the rat’s blood sample, slipping the sample under the telescopic eye of the microscope. She pressed her eye in as close as the suit would allow, squinting to see better. A long moment passed. Anna’s mouth fell open slowly.

Anna shot to her feet, knocking the stool behind her to the ground. She turned and ran for the exit, but forgot about the air hose attached to her suit, yanking herself backward. She cursed, her hands trembling in excitement as she ripped the nozzle free and bolted for the decon room. Inside, the spray of disinfectant that washed over her seemed to take hours.

This is big. This is very big.

Finally, the decon showers shut off to a trickle, and the light beside the second exit door blinked over from red to green. Anna shoved it open with her shoulder, tearing the duct tape from the joints of her suit as she went. For a moment, she considered changing back into her regular clothes. She decided against it, pausing only to yank the helmet from her head and toss it on a bench as she passed by on her way out.

The final door to BL4 was opened by access code, both for those entering and exiting. Anna, in her excitement, punched in the wrong code twice before she hit the correct sequence and the heavy steel dead bolts in the door swung back.

Anna tore down the ramp that led to BL4 and through the swinging double doors. She ran past the other biolabs, which the survivors had taken to using for storage and, in the case of BL1, their infirmary. Her feet slapped the floor and echoed in the empty hallway.

As Anna passed BL1, Mason leaned up on his elbow from his bed to see what the commotion was.

“Anna?” he called out. “What’s the matter?” Then, noting her odd attire, he added, “Anna, are you all right?”

Anna Demilio didn’t answer. She ran right on past the open doorway, and out of sight. She heard Mason say, “Well, good morning to you, too, Doc,” before the heavy click of the stairwell door swinging shut cut him off.

Anna took the steps up to the Fac’s main floor three at a time, grasping at the handrail as she went. She burst into the hallway, looked left and right, and spotted Francis Sherman just emerging from his room, preparing for the day’s outing.

“Frank!” she yelled.