The End Came With a Kiss (11 page)

"And," I add, "I’ll get you a two-way radio so we can communicate. Fair enough?"

The large man nods his massive head. "Very fair. We can’t thank you enough."

"Good," I say, looking at Ashlyn. "We all set?"

She lifts her hard chin. "Yeah. We’re set."

Two curious loopers have started walking down the corridor toward us. They can still hear the muffled thrashing of Kevin in the office, but thankfully, not his voice. The only sound the dead can form with their vocal chords is a horrific siren scream, a rally call that stirs the horde to violence. Although I am thankful Kevin cannot sound that alarm, I still regret what I did to him. From now on, I will go for the head only as a last resort.

"You two get in that office over there and lock the door," I say, indicating the next office toward the approaching loopers. The two men move behind us cautiously as Ashlyn and I advance, hugging the right wall to keep some distance, just in case.

I recognize these two, Lori and Derek. They work in advertising. Derek used to be thin as a rail with acne scars from his teens, and although Lori was always a pretty girl, her drab clothing choices and extra weight kept her from getting many dates. I remember when they started spending more time with each other on break. It was a relationship of convenience, really, both wanting more and settling for what they could get. Now look at them. He’s athletic and chiseled, and she looks like a beauty queen. If we ever do find a cure, I wonder if they’ll stay together now that they can have anyone they want.

Lori waves shyly as we pass. Derek follows behind, unresponsive. No change there for him. He was not the most animated fellow, even when he realized he was changing.

They feel so close, even with eight feet separating us. But there is no baring of teeth or growling. They’re just out for a stroll, probably curious about the thrashing sound, but unable to investigate. Well, mostly unable. There’s always the chance that they will fire off a random motion memory while standing by the door. It’s hard to know what they can and cannot do. I’ve seen them overhaul the entire office and then get it back into top shape, while other times they’re stumped as to how to get out of a bathroom stall.

The cubicle room looks calm for the most part. These loopers look like they’re returning from the feed Ashlyn laid out for them. Their faces and hands drip with sloshy food remnants. Their clothes are a smeared mess. When that food starts to rot, the office will have a wonderful new addition to its already pungent odor.

Lau lets us in to the lab with bulging eyes. "Did you find where the shots were coming from?"

"Yeah. Two men came up into the building to get away from the craziness outside."

"And you sent them away," he says matter-of-factly.

"No. I told them I could get them some provisions."

"They’re outside?"

I push past him and go to the storage locker. "Don’t worry, they’re down by the executive offices. You’re safe." I open the large metal door and assess our stockpile. I’ve been eating at the safe house mostly, so our reserves are still solid.

"Once you give them food, you’re going to send them away, right?"

"No," I say, sliding a cloth sack off the second shelf and stabbing some canned goods into it. "I told them they could stay in one of the offices."

"You remember what happened last..."

"I’ve got this," I say, giving him a stern look.

"This is an ecosystem. It doesn’t take much to upset the delicate balance. And we have a mission. We might be the only hope for humanity. My research..."

"I am aware of the importance of your research, Lau! And besides the fact that we can’t afford to make enemies, this is the right thing to do!"

I slam the door shut and snatch up a two-way radio. "Do you have a First Aid Kit, or do I have to go into one of the other labs?"

He gives a grumpy point.

"Thank you."

I can’t blame him for his nervousness. It is warranted. We almost lost everything the last time we took in a lost soul. His name was Jared. He was 5" 9’ and built like a rock, a handsome guy with thick black hair. Initially it was he who rescued me. But after a few days, Lau came to the unsavory conclusion that Jared was contaminated. When we asked him to leave, things got ugly—real ugly. Lau has refused to help anyone since, except Ashlyn. Perhaps it’s her young age or petite frame, who knows? But she is clearly the one and only exception. I stuff the First Aid Kit in the pouch. "This will only take a minute, then I’m going to find Katherine."

"And what are you going to do when you find her?"

"I don’t know yet."

"Even if you can get her back on her loop, she won’t be safe out there."

"I know. I’ll probably have to do something drastic, maybe bind her and put her in the basement of the safe house."

Lau shuts down. That’s what he does when he wants to say something but is unsure of the result.

"What is it, Lau?"

"It’s just that—she might not recover from that."

It’s true. When loopers get trapped and can’t loop at all, something breaks inside them, like with my doomsday-prepping friend, Craig. His lifeless and unresponsive body doesn’t respond to anything—not even a roll of duct tape to the head. Lau’s right, they don’t come back from that.

"Well, I can’t just leave her walking around out there!"

"Why don’t you bring her back here?"

"This place is a powder keg. It’s only a matter of time before those loopers run out of food and start rioting. It will only take a few to get the rest wound up."

"We could seal the floor off and just take care of the loopers here."

"You remember what it was like when the government tried to enforce the quarantine. It was all out war. They were scaling buildings like ants to get at the soldiers firing on them. They overthrew tanks, Lau. There’s no way we can seal this floor."

"Then we’ll seal the lab. The solar skin on the building can generate enough power to run this lab for eight hours if we limit our usage. You won’t have to make dangerous trips to feed the generator if we conserve power. We could stay in here till we find the cure."

Ashlyn steps in toward us. "What about a fire? Half the city is burning. If this building catches on fire, we’ll be trapped up here."

"The sprinklers and other secondary systems run off of a lithium battery bank in the basement. This building is state-of-the-art. We’ll be safe in here." His eyes snap back to me. "You should bring her back here."

"That’s all well and good, Lau, but what difference does it make if she goes crazy here or there? Either way she’s going to suffer permanent damage when I break her loop."

"You don’t have to break her loop. I can use the lucid dreaming pills on her. Her mind will create the perfect loop right inside her head."

If Katherine could do her loop in the safety of her own mind, I wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore. I wouldn’t have to travel back and forth from home to work and she wouldn’t have to make the dangerous journey to the old food distribution point. "Lau. You’re a genius!"

"I do have two doctorates to corroborate that hypothesis," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose with his pointer finger.

"So all I have to do is get her back here. What do you have that will knock her out? Do we have any Chloroform?" I start walking toward the medicine shelves.

"Chloroform?"

"Yeah, to keep her asleep so she doesn’t go crazy and snap before I can get the pills in her."

"You could use Chloroform, if you want to repeat the process every two or three minutes," he says with a snort.

"All right, then what?"

"Azaperone and carfentanil," he says, scooting past me.

"What?"

"Azaperone is a sedative and an antipsychotic drug which might help keep your wife in a peaceful state of mind. When mixed with carfentanil, a potent sleep agent, it is potent enough to take down an elephant or a bear. We just happen to have that exact mixture in these tranquilizer guns." He slides open a metal drawer in a cabinet on the wall and pulls out a silver case. "These are four-shot handguns. If one doesn’t do it, you have three more chances to bring her down." He unlatches the case and flips the cover open. "It goes without saying, but don’t use these on a regular human. One dart could cause severe respiratory malfunction. This is a potent chemical cocktail."

"What if there’s an accident?"

"What do you mean?" he says with a scrunched face.

"You know, what if one of us gets shot, or we stab ourselves with a dart by accident?"

"Oh! Well, I can give you a few shots of Naloxone just in case. It’s an opioid inverse agonist. It should counter the effects of the carfentanil."

I nod, as if I know what that means, and turn back to Ashlyn. "You want to come or stay here?"

"As much as I enjoy Lau’s sparkling disposition, I’ll take my chances out there."

"Okay, then we’ll…" Before I can finish the statement, a faint scream grabs my attention. I hadn’t noticed before, but a low rumble has started outside in the cubicle area. My shoulders sink. "They found Kevin."

Ashlyn and I run to look out. Figures flutter past the window of the outer door, one after the next, jarring my nervous system with each flash of movement. The floor vibrates to their pounding feet. The door and wall shudder at the sound of their agonizing screams and the muffled crash of partition walls.

A memory, startlingly vivid, envelops me. It’s the beginning of the quarantine war, and the entire city has gone mad. I'm running across a field on the outskirts of town because the roads are filled with angry mobs or military and law enforcement. I'm turning and looking back at the long parking lot behind me and the sprawling city beyond it. I’m high enough to see, in the light of the afternoon sun, thousands of running bodies flowing like waves of ants across cars and trucks and billboards. Scaling buildings or pouring off them.

We can't fight them. We’re too far gone. The world embraced its death as a passionate lover and welcomed the change as a leap in human evolution. Most of the soldiers fighting to protect us are already deeply infected. It is a battle of attrition. There is no hope.

"Earth to Ben Carter." There is a snapping sound next to my ear. "You in there?"

I look at Ashlyn and blink.

"Where’d you go?"

I rub my hand through my thick hair. "I don't know. I think the pills are messing with me."

Lau clears his throat. "Yeah. There will be a little of that."

"Great."

"Don't worry. You have control over it."

"That's comforting," I say, gripping the gun in my hand. "Is there anything else you want to tell me about those
experimental
pills?"

"Nothing comes to mind," he says, poking his glasses up his nose.

"I bet."

Ashlyn looks uneasy, which seems out of place for her.

"You okay?" I ask.

My question seems to startle her. "Yeah. I'm okay." She straightens herself and adjusts the straps of the little brown back pack she wears. "So—are we going to rescue those two men or leave them out there to die?"

Lau squirms. "You're not bringing them in here."

"They'll be fine," I say. "We'll only have to wait till the loopers calm down."

Her worried eyes look out the glass again. "What if they don't calm down?"

"Well," I say, "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

11

I stare out the window of the lab for a long time. Watching the city burn. Watching the chaos below. And hearing it through the thick wall separating the lab from the main office space. As I watch, I scan the throngs of angry people running the streets. Is my wife out there? Is she in one of those packs? If her loop is broken, she would be drawn to these hunting parties. She would be unable to resist the hive instinct that draws them to swarm. It’s an elaborate game of follow the leader, only now the threat is in their bellies. It cannot be hunted like a human. Death pursues them as they run blindly after empty air. There is no end to the pursuit. They do not grow weary. They will run until the shoes wear off their feet and the tar has so marred their soles that they must stumble to the ground and wait to regenerate. It pains me to think of my wife running at top speed with mindless aggression for days on end, but it's worse to think of her standing alone and catatonic, unable to reconnect with the memories of the life we once shared—a life I hope to restore. If she is in one of those packs, how will I ever find her?

My thoughts are interrupted by Ashlyn's voice. "You're thinking about her, aren't you?"

"Yeah," is all I have the energy to say.

Ashlyn watches out the windows with me in silence. For this I am grateful. I don't want to talk about it. I can't afford to allow hopelessness to take root in my heart as I have seen it do with so many others. It is a cancer. Those who succumb to it soon succumb to death as well. I'll find her. I have to.

It’s a long time before it’s quiet enough to venture a peek into the main office space. There is some wreckage but for the most part the facility is sound. Loopers don't tend to destroy things unless they’re trying to get at something that is threatening them. "I think it's clear," I say to Ashlyn, who has grabbed her shotgun and backpack and taken up position behind me. I look at Lau. "We'll be back in a while. Keep low till then, okay?"