The Immortality Virus (37 page)

The man was beginning to get on her nerves. She hadn’t realized how angry she was at him for playing God until that very moment and something seemed to snap inside of her. She rounded on him, letting her venom fly. “How dare you? How dare you do this to me? Did you know he was my lover for fifty years? Fifty years! You got your wife for that long, but you two had forever and what did I get? Forever to regret ever falling in love! You’ve got some idealized picture of your wife in your mind you’ve been carrying around for centuries, but do you really think you two would still be together after so long if she’d lived?”

“Yes.”

Grace blinked. Then she scowled. “What do you know?”

“Do you want to die?” Jordan asked.

Grace didn’t answer. She didn’t know how.

“Neither do I,” Jordan said. “Even after all this time. Even after losing my wife. That’s why I won’t go with you.”

“What are you talking about? Matt needs you to help undo all of this.”

“You must be really gullible.” Jordan bent down over Sam’s unconscious form and studied the field dressing. After a moment, he opened Sam’s coat, tore off the right sleeve, which he was only half using anyway, and replaced the dressing with his own. It was good. It would hold much longer than Grace’s would have.

“It still won’t hold for long,” Jordan said.

“Thanks.” It was a grudging apology. “I’m still mad at you.”

“Of course.”

“What makes you think I’m gullible?”

“You think you’re on some high and mighty mission to save the world, don’t you?” Jordan asked.

Grace glanced at Alex, who still had his eyes fixed on the cemetery. He didn’t seem to want to look at his grandfather.

“What if I do?” Grace asked.

“Then you’re gullible. Even if you think the world should be put back the way it was; even if you think that’s saving it, that’s not what you’ve been hired to do. Matt doesn’t need me to reverse The Change. He’s got all my notes and he knows I wouldn’t help him anyway.”

Alex finally turned to look at them. He gave Grace a look that told her he understood something she didn’t. She closed her eyes and went back through their conversation again. Then she thought about the conversations she’d had with Matt Stanton. Finally, she understood. “He did kill his father, and you’re the only proof.”

Jordan lowered his eyes. “Oh sweet Margaret, what have I done?”

Alex’s voice was so low they barely heard it. “You killed him.”

“But Matt asked you to,” Grace finished.

Jordan didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.

“In four hundred years, if man had wanted to learn the secrets of aging, we would have.” Grace had said it almost the same way to Matt back in their first meeting. It was true–they didn’t need Jordan; they just needed someone willing to do the research. Someone like Sam, funded by someone like Matt. Yet, she’d let herself believe that this time she really could do something to help.

“He had me fooled, too,” Alex said. “I thought the worst he wanted was to put Granddad back in prison.”

“You never met him face to face, though,” Grace said. “It was my judgment call.”

“And if you’d failed to take his offer?” Alex asked.

“He would have hunted me down and killed me within twenty-four hours,” Grace admitted. “My only real choice was not to have taken the meeting in the first place.”

She walked to the entrance and looked out. “Fighting has died down. That can’t be a good sign.”

“Probably not,” Alex agreed. “The shield attacks stopped some time ago too.”

Grace hadn’t noticed but then again, she had gone straight from the sewers to this cemetery. “Do you think Edgers is in the city?”

“I’m sure of it,” Alex told her. “It’s only a matter of time before the city falls. Most of the troops came off the streets and are just looking for something to eat anyway. They won’t fight, especially not if Edgers’s men offer them food.”

“That’s all it takes?” Grace asked.

“That’s what he did in Chicago.” Alex smiled. “I guess that didn’t make your local news, though. I heard it from Mr. Cooper before he died.”

“All too easy,” Grace mumbled.

“Of course not. There will be plenty of people left standing to fight. This won’t be a safe city for a while.”

Sam groaned. Grace knelt by his side. “Lie still, you’re bleeding.”

“Need to get out.” Sam’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I know, we’re working on that.”

“We can’t hand Granddad over to Matt,” Alex said.

“Matt may not even be a player anymore,” Grace said. “Last time we saw him, the Sewer Rats had him.”

“Need to save Matt,” Sam said.

Grace shook her head. She didn’t want to go back through this conversation with Sam. “Try not to talk. Matt’s not who he said he was. He killed his father.”

“Sort of,” Alex muttered.

Jordan looked away. “Four hundred years. You have no idea. And he didn’t tell me my Margaret died. Not until after...”

“We should get Jordan out of the city,” Grace said. “I don’t know what Edger’s game is but I don’t want to find out. We may all have to go. Our lives could be in danger here.”

“I agree,” Alex said. “Granddad, we’ll get you out of here.”

Jordan didn’t reply.

“The wall isn’t far from here,” Meg commented. She fired a couple of shots into the night. “It’s just behind the mausoleum.”

“It’ll be tough to climb a stone wall,” Grace said.

“Disruptors will cut a hole through it,” Meg said.

For some reason, the thought of defacing the cemetery like that bothered her, but it was the only plan that had a reasonable chance of getting them out of there alive–especially carrying Sam.

“How does it look out there?” Alex asked.

“Looks like a graveyard,” Meg replied, soberly.

They spent a moment in silence, whether in fear or respect for the dead, Grace wasn’t sure. She thought of all the people out there who had lost their lives and for what? She thought she’d been on a mission to save the world when instead she’d been on a mission to save some rich man from the consequences of his actions. Did that make her arrogant or foolish?

Sam coughed several times. “Need to save Matt.”

“I told you,” Grace said. “This isn’t what he said it was about. He’s got everything he needs to put the world back the way it was, if that’s what he’s after.”

“Need Jordan,” Sam insisted. “Or they’ll kill Matt.”

For a moment, Grace thought someone had swung a hatchet into her heart. Sam had known all along. He knew what this was about and he didn’t tell her. She backed away from him, her body numb with shock and disbelief.

She turned, and Alex was there, accepting her in his strong, bloodied arms.

“It’s time to get out of here.” Alex lifted Sam in his arms. “You and Meg will have to provide cover.”

They didn’t give Jordan a weapon. Grace didn’t trust him enough, and he didn’t always come across as entirely stable. Most of the time he was lucid, but then he would randomly fall into a conversation with his dead wife.

“Good-bye, Margaret,” Jordan said as they prepared to leave the mausoleum.

“Is he okay?” Meg whispered to Grace.

“Hard to say,” Grace admitted. “He’s a little obsessed with his dead wife.”

“Sam, I mean,” Meg said.

“Oh.” Grace’s face turned scarlet, and she glanced at Sam, barely conscious in Alex’s arms. For the first time ever, he looked disgusting to her.

“Listen,” Meg said. “I was thinking. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad not to be on the farm. I was only there for a few weeks anyway and they took care of me but...” Meg took a deep breath. “I just don’t really know what to do out here.”

“Neither do I half the time.” Grace gave her a tiny smile, the first time she’d felt like smiling in a long time. “But you’ve got me.” She held her breath, thinking of her mom and her sister and how they chose to be there for her sometimes and not at other times. When was the last time she had spoken to Charity? Before her most recent boyfriend, probably. She had a sense Meg wouldn’t be like that, though. Maybe that was why she had so completely disregarded the girl’s feelings and taken her out of the farm.

“You may have to leave the city,” Meg said. “If you don’t turn over Jordan, will that guy who hired you kill you?”

“Only if he finds out I found Jordan.” Which he would, as soon as Sam regained consciousness and told him.

“He’ll bring us all down,” Meg said, glancing at Sam. “That’s why Jane would have turned him out.”

“What about you?” Grace asked. “What would you do?”

“I wasn’t in Jane’s clan.”

“Neither was I.” Grace readied her weapon and took a deep breath. “I think it’s time to make a run for it now.”

“I’m ready when you are,” Alex said. He glanced back at Jordan. “Granddad?”

Jordan wiped a tear from his eye that Grace hadn’t noticed before. “Yeah.”

Grace didn’t count to three; she just launched herself out of the mausoleum and into the deadly twilight. She couldn’t see much in the darkening graveyard, but they wouldn’t be able to see her, either, unless they had night vision gear. If she got out of this alive, she might have to invest in some. Meanwhile, her brilliant strategy was to run.

A wild shot barely missed Meg’s head, and they took off around the mausoleum. The stone wall stood not twenty feet behind it, and they fired at it without stopping. Three blasts from each of their disruptors managed to clear a large enough hole for them to climb over fallen rubble to the other side.

In the distance, flashes of light illuminated the northern and eastern skies. Disruptor charges still rang out in the cemetery, but most of the nearby streets were relatively quiet, punctuated with only the occasional sound of weapons fire.

“They got the shield down faster than I expected,” Grace said, off-hand.

“I don’t think they got them down at all,” Alex told her. “I think they had inside help.”

“Oh.”

Alex shifted his weight and his hold on Sam. “We need to get Sam to a doctor and the rest of us out of the city. I’m guessing transportation will be hard to find, though.”

Grace looked around and considered the problem for a minute. Then she spotted some abandoned ground vehicles up the road. They were military vehicles, mainly troop and supply transports. Several of them lay on their sides, but it was possible at least one of them still worked. “There.” She pointed.

They followed her gaze, but before they could move or make a sound, someone from that direction started shooting. They ducked for cover behind a nearby bush, but a second later it burst into flames, and they sprinted for the apartments on the other side of the street. They ducked behind a flight of stairs and paused to catch their breaths.

Grace did a quick head count to make sure everyone was still there and in the same number of pieces they had been a minute ago. Sam didn’t look good. The bandage was red, and he was mumbling something incoherently.

“We can’t go up this street,” Grace said, thinking as she spoke. “We can go behind the apartments and around.”

“Whatever we do, we need to hurry,” Alex said, his eyes on Sam’s bandage.

“All right, then. One...two...three...”

They stayed low as they rounded the apartment building, keeping to the walls and looking around the corners as they did so. There wasn’t a lot of light back here, and Grace nearly fell twice, but she managed to keep pushing forward until they reached the back of the apartment near the pile of vehicles.

“Leave Sam here,” Grace said. “He’ll be safer for the moment.”
Wordlessly, Alex lowered Sam to the ground. “Granddad, stay with him until we get back.”

Jordan glanced at him, then down at Sam. “I should have called you, but I knew Ethan would understand why I did what I did.”

Alex took his grandfather’s hand, squeezed it, and then led the way down the narrow gap between apartment buildings that led to the dangerous street.

“Do you know how to operate one of those things?” Meg asked Grace.

“I do,” Alex said. “They’re military, so they probably don’t have locks, but I don’t know what the startup mechanism will be. Could be a key, a code, or a fingerprint.”

Oh great, they needed a hostage. Just what Grace needed.

“I didn’t see more than one person shooting,” Alex said. “I think everyone else has either fallen prey to the graveyard or left to join the rest of the forces elsewhere in the city.”

“We don’t know for sure there’s only one, though.” Grace considered their options for a moment. “I’m going out there. You two cover me.”

“Wait, that’s your plan?” Meg said. “Didn’t I tell you I needed you out here?”

Grace hesitated. “All right, then. Give me a two-minute head start. Then start giving me cover fire.”

She turned and ran in the opposite direction, behind the next apartment building so she would be coming out from a different location. Alex and Meg started shooting just as she reached the gap between buildings, and she didn’t hesitate in moving forward, low to the ground.