Family Reunion "J" (31 page)

Jon, having recovered, put the truck in gear and pulled out of the garage, trying to avoid the larger pieces of burning building that had landed in his path. “Go to the car park, Jon,” Jay said, pointing southeast. “We can’t leave without getting our supplies.” Jon nodded, trying not to look at Jay. He turned down the jeep trail that led to the hidden car lot. Gwenn handed Jay a shirt. Jay looked at her quizzically for just a second, then turned bright red and groaned in the sudden realization she’d lost her towel.

As Jay struggled to get the shirt on, a secondary explosion made them all turn and look back at Sparky’s, only to witness the most morbidly brilliant fireworks show they’d ever seen. Every crazy for miles would be coming soon.

After another sleepless night, Julian was no closer to reversing the effects of the vaccine. At every turn, he ran into a brick wall. The groups that Brian had assembled to work on the various projects were getting nowhere fast as well. No matter how he crunched the numbers, or how he examined the data, there was no way the nanites should be mutating. The samples of the nanites he extracted from Simon had not changed one iota, nor had those he’d taken from the turned down in the sublevel of the CDC. It made no sense.

He sat back and threw his pencil across the room in frustration. Susan approached him from behind and began kneading his shoulders with a firm yet soothing grip. “You just need to step away from the problem and get some rest,” she said, bending forward. He turned his head to the side and breathed in her scent. Her dark hair tickled his neck and her closeness caused his heart to quicken.

Her right hand slid from his shoulder, under his shirt, down to his chest. She continued to rub, but now her touch was light as she traced a finger around his areola. Her left hand ran up his neck and through his hair. She gripped his hair firmly, squeezed his chest with her right hand, and pressed her lips to his. Gently at first, only slightly parted, then more forcefully as she explored him with her tongue. She pinched his nipple hard and his response was immediate. He backed away an inch. “Well, at least I know that this is not a dream. With that little pinch you have assuaged my fear that it was.”

He was suddenly aware that he had been wearing the same clothes and had not showered for two days. He pulled away further. “I must reek of body odor.” She pulled him back closer, murmuring, “You smell like a man.” She kissed him again. “But follow me and I’ll wash your back so that you’re less self-conscious.”

It was their first physical interaction since the kiss she had given him during his recovery from the CT scan. She crushed her ample breasts against his back, then turned, looked at him coyly, and led him to the shower in the next room.

He woke nine hours later in his bed, alone.
Was that a dream after all?
He heard Simon talking with someone in the next room. Then the door cracked open an inch. Susan saw that he was awake and came in and closed the door. She crossed the room and crawled onto the bed like a cat stalking its prey. She wore one of his shirts and her panties. The bronze skin of her bottom formed a beautiful heart shape from his view. She straightened her arms and arched her back, giving him an eyeful down his own shirt. He smiled and reached for her, but stopped before his hand touched her breast.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed and sat straight up in the bed. He suddenly realized that that bastard Brian might have played him again. How could he have been so stupid? The data made perfect sense. The vaccine he had used on Simon and himself was not the same vaccine he had used on his wife, daughter, and assistant Eddie. Simon was with him at the lab the day after they’d finished the vaccine. Once he was certain the vaccine was safe, he’d taken a dose himself, then given one to Simon. He left that bottle of vaccine and a couple of syringes in his coat pocket to take home with him that night to inoculate both his wife and Angelina. The bottle had broken when he caught his coat in the car door at the house. They had already sent the rest of the samples on to the CDC to disperse to the manufacturing labs. He hadn’t been able to inoculate the rest of his family and Eddie until after they had gotten a batch back from the CDC. From Dr. Brian Pearson.

Brian had never intended that Julian should survive and make it to the CDC. He had willingly walked into the worst place on earth that he could have brought his son. The woman he had fallen for, was she also duped? Or was she Brian’s confidant? Working for him to monitor and control Julian? Was the mission they had spoken of really to save humanity, or was it something entirely unthinkable?

He backpedaled away from Susan, banging his head against the headboard in his hasty retreat. Her eyes clouded over. “What is it? What’s the matter, Julian?” She moved closer to him again.

“Stay away,” he hissed. “You fooled me. You seduced me on orders from Brian. In order to keep an eye on me, to make sure I did not succeed in finding a cure. Lana said it back in the lab that day, that it was ‘all for the mission.’ What is the mission, Susan?”

“Julian, stop it, you’re scaring me,” Susan said, her eyes welling with tears. “What are you talking about?”

“The vaccine, my vaccine, it was perfect, it worked as it was designed to. Until I sent it here, where you people changed it.
I
did not kill the world,
you
killed the world, and it was on purpose!”

“Julian, you’re wrong, I promise you. Brian did tell me to seduce you, but he said I was to do everything I could to relieve your stress, to help you, that your role was vital to solving the problem. He told me that he had planned to have Lana do it, but that he could see I liked you, that I would be more natural. I told him that I would do it, not because he’d asked, but because I wanted to, because I wanted to be close to you and Simon.”

Julian spun away from her and out of the bed. He stood there naked, a wild look in his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?” he said incredulously. “That you are not part of this?”

“I swear to you. What you are saying may be true, but they told us that we were trying to find a way to kill all of those that had turned. Until you came. Then Dr. Pearson said it might be possible to reverse the effects of the vaccine. That our mission parameters had changed.”

“I do not believe you,” Julian said. He turned away from her, to the dresser, and retrieved a pair of underwear.

“What are you going to do?” she asked plaintively.

“I am taking my son and leaving here.”

“If what you are saying is true, then Dr. Pearson will never let you leave.”

“He will try to stop me, of that I am sure. He has already said as much. Nevertheless, I have to try. I am sorry, but I will have to secure you so that you cannot raise an alarm.”

“Julian, please let me prove to you that I had nothing to do with this. I can get you out of here. Take me with you.” Her eyes pleaded with him, tears now running down her cheeks.

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because I think I love you.”

Every fiber of his logical mind screamed at him to disregard her plea. How could she possibly love him? Yet he knew that on top of everything else he was feeling right now—the danger to his son, his hatred of Brian, the shock of his realization that his vaccine had been tampered with purposefully—was the fact of this tremendous hurt he felt at her betrayal. Why? Because he too had feelings for her.

“How would you get us out of here?” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“The tunnels. They expanded and improved the entire sewer system. When they did that, they dug two large tunnels under the city to carry excess floodwaters to treatment facilities before being released into the Chattahoochee River. The entire CDC campus is isolated from the new system, but I know where the old abandoned system junctions with the new one. I can get us out.”

They had traveled all night since leaving Sparky’s. Jay led the caravan in her SUV. Auddy’s truck didn’t have the fancy lights so she took up position between Jay and Jon’s vehicles. Once they’d gone fifty miles to the west on Route 76, the sky cleared and a full moon lit up the terrain well enough for them to run without the lights on. When they encountered any of the turned, they’d flip on the UV lights and close ranks around Auddy. It slowed them considerably, but the group was traveling away from disaster and not toward any goal other than immediate survival. Tami had suffered a few second-degree burns and got knocked on the head by a flying board, but she would be okay, physically. Mentally, the whole group was fighting off the depression that comes with being violated.

Tami wanted to return, but realized they were in no shape to take on the gang that attacked the compound. She would return, but it would be to seek revenge. She thought that both her husband and son had perished in the explosion that nearly took her life as well. She would be back, you could bet on that.

When Jay saw the eastern sky turn gray, she pulled the SUV over and retrieved her road atlas. They needed to figure out a way home.

They gathered around the hood of Auddy’s truck. Gwenn passed out water to everyone from the supplies they had in Jon’s truck. Jay gratefully accepted the lukewarm water and guzzled almost the entire bottle, drizzling the last quarter of it over her head. Auddy opened a can of Pringles, sat in the cab of her truck, and ate them mechanically one at a time. She stopped every third or fourth chip and drank some water. Jon looked at the atlas that Jay had laid on the hood. “What are you thinking? We go straight up 77 to Charlotte?” Jay shook her head. “I don’t think we should go anywhere near Charlotte. I think we head farther west. Then north through Tennessee and Kentucky, then head east toward home. I want to stay as far away from that gang as we can.” Jon nodded but had a frown on his face. “That’s going to take at least two extra days at the rate we’re going.”

They discussed it while the group ate. No one fixed a meal; they just poked around in the supplies and grabbed something.

Jay’s eyes were heavy. “I think we ought to rest here for a few hours, try and get some sleep before it gets too hot.” Jon agreed, Tami didn’t care, and Gwenn and Auddy were already lying down in their respective vehicles. Three hours later Jay woke up sweating.

She sat up and saw Jon had a cook stove out and was busy making some coffee. At least she hoped it was coffee.

“Hey,” he said as she climbed out of the SUV.

“Hey. You get any sleep?” Jay asked.

“A little. I don’t fit as well as you girls do in tight spaces.” Jon was six foot four and in decent shape for a fifty-two-year-old. His normally well-groomed hair was sticking up in places and his two-day-old beard gave his face a gray, gruff cowboy look. “Coffee?”

“That would be a ‘hell yes’ for me,” Jay said.

Auddy groaned as she lifted herself off the front seat of the pickup truck. “To think of all the little things I used to complain about. They seem laughable now. The traffic, the tourists, my job. I wish I could have those problems again.”