Quarantine (15 page)

Finally, Paul looked freaked. “We were told today that he and his team were killed a few days back, in a lab incident at Fort Detrick.”

“Who told you that?” Felicity asked.

“Our CO,” he said. “The general in charge of this quarantine op.”

“Why would he lie?”

He shook his head, looked around, as worried as I'd ever seen anyone. “I don't know.”

“It was a US aircraft that swooped down and destroyed the trucks and killed them,” I said. “It was, wasn't it?”

Paul nodded. “We're the only ones that have aircraft like those you described.”

“Killing their own and covering it up,” Rachel said. “In case anyone is wondering, that there's another example of why I prefer animals over humans.”

Felicity put a hand around Rachel's shoulders.

“This virus,” Paul said, “it only lasts a certain time in the air and on the ground. Call it an hour, max. We wanted to send crews looking for samples but it was deemed that we were far too late—that this contagion is dead, the risk looking under rocks too high.”

“Their doctrine,” I said.

Paul nodded.

“But what?” Felicity asked.

“If we had a sample of it from ground zero, we could try to work up an antidote.” Paul looked at me. “Jesse?”

“I can do better than that.”

The girls looked at me, too.

“I can show you where an unexploded missile is,” I said, the image of the explosion and subsequent infection of my friend Caleb as fresh in my mind as that missile at St. Pat's.

“Where?”

I shook my head. “No. I'll show you.”

The two girls looked worried but I could tell that Paul was wavering. I pulled the IV needle from my arm.

I
t was pitch dark when we prepared to leave the quarantine zone.

“Jesse, this is a situation where darkness will not be our friend,” Paul said.

The three of us—Paul, Felicity and I—were dressed in black camouflage outfits complete with bulletproof vests and helmets.

“Do we really need helmets?” Felicity asked.

Her brother was firm. “If you're coming, it's my rules.”

“I'm not letting you out of my sight,” she said, and the pair of them hugged.

“Most serious injuries on the battlefield are insults to the head and are easily preventable by these,” he replied, rapping his knuckles on the Kevlar shell atop his head. “Of course, you could stay here.”

She punched him in the arm, their argument about that long over and won by her.

Rachel hugged me. She was still dressed in the quarantine outfit, although she now had a coat on over it. “Be safe, be quick.”

I nodded, and we slipped out the side gate by the zoo's arsenal building, itself as defiant a survivor as I'd ever seen. The soldiers in the upstairs windows didn't wave or seem to take notice, such was their ambivalence to us sneaking out—but their boss, a gruff army major, was a friend of Paul's, and after a heated conversation he'd arranged our covert leave pass via his security post here. Rachel locked the gate, the major by her side.

We raced up the stairs to Fifth Avenue. I had to be quick and be safe—Caleb's life depended on me getting back with a sample. I knew the dangers that lay ahead: the so-called cleanup squads tasked with shooting any threat on sight; the Chasers out for their nightly hunt; getting the sample of the contagion from that missile and taking it back to the quarantine zone. They were only a tad less scary than the other thing working against us: time.

 

Silenced weapons of silent killers. We watched from a first-floor window of a Fifth Avenue store. Paul took the night-vision goggles from the clip on his helmet and passed them to me. As I looked through them, the green-hued world around me came alive.

Below our position, a group of Chasers walked the street, wary. They were headed south, and walking right into an ambush: eight figures were crouched, hidden from the Chasers' view, some behind cars and others behind the columns of a building opposite. I could see their night-vision goggles, their raised weapons.

The silenced submachine guns spat jets of bright flaring flames. I passed back the goggles, rubbing my eyes. At least a dozen long tongues of death as the soldiers did their devil's dance in the street, wiping out the group of Chasers. I'd never felt so ashamed.

 

Fifteen minutes later we emerged once more onto the street.

We were silent, the three of us, Paul with an assault rifle ready and night-vision to guide him. It had become windy.

“They're gone,” he said, scanning the street up and down.

I led the way to the south. We walked in silence, stopping every few yards to be still and listen, never moving until Paul said so.

 

In my pocket I carried the only vestige of my former outfit, the tiny little holy medal I'd found in the cathedral. I rubbed it between my thumb and fingers, waited while Paul watched from another window at the front of a store. It smelled of death inside here, and I didn't have the stomach to search around for the source.

“They're close,” he whispered.

Felicity looked at me, the shine of the moonlight reflected in her eyes. The three of us headed deeper into the store, behind an aisle unit that had tipped over and spilled its contents, the mess a pattern of repeated destruction that I'd seen so often.

“You know those patterns that repeat themselves?”

“What?”

“Like, the pattern is the same no matter what the size, you know . . . I've been wondering about it my whole time in New York.”

Felicity shook her head, looked at me like I was nuts.

“Fractals,” Paul whispered. “Like the Mandelbrot set.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, and he went back to keeping lookout, peering through the shelves from where we sat crouched in the dark recess of the store.

“You should have stayed back there,” I whispered to Felicity. “This isn't safe.”

She hugged me, said close into my ear: “I don't ever want to be left behind again.”

 

An hour later we waited. Twice Paul went up to the front of the store to watch and listen, twice he came back, convinced it was too dangerous for us to leave. Paul headed out—waited outside by a smashed taxi in front of the store. No sign of a cleanup squad of killers, nor Chasers. Not a sound here except for the constant drum of military aircraft echoing through the streets. He called us out. The three of us by the cab, watching, waiting, listening.

“Can we go?” Felicity asked.

“I think so,” he said. “Jesse?”

“I'll lead,” I said.

He reached for his night-vision goggles and passed them to me but I declined them. “I'm used to the dark,” I said. “And these streets. Come on, it's not far.”

 

“One more block south, at the intersection,” I said.

“Rockefeller Center?”

“St. Pat's.”

 

We squatted down behind a burned-out van. A flash of light in the sky illuminated the charred metal panels.

“What was that?” Felicity asked.

She was answered by a dull rumble, followed almost instantly later by heavily falling snow.

“Thunder snow,” Paul said.

“What?” I asked.

Another flash. I could make out the lightning this time, then the deep rumble of thunder closely followed. Snow fell in a thick heavy blanket.

“It happens sometimes,” he said. “A thunderstorm, but it snows instead of raining—it means the weather system is unstable, and it's gonna be a rough night.”

A RIP-CRACK right above us, so loud it made the three of us jump and Felicity screamed; the lightning hit at the same moment.

“How long will this last?”

“Maybe an hour,” he said. “Reckon the snow'll keep coming, though.”

As well as the bolt of lightning there was a low, drawn-out rumble.

“One more block?” I said.

The two of them were huddled close to me.

“I'll lead this time,” he said, his night-vision remaining on his head, useless amid the flashing light-show above. “We won't be able to hear much, but they won't have their night-vision on either—may even force them inside a building for a break.”

 

St. Patrick's Cathedral was a solid slab of dark and cold, intermittently broken by blades of colored light shooting through the stained glass.

“Where?” he asked.

“Down by the pulpit,” I replied.

We moved quickly—there was no time to light candles but the interior was made less sinister by the flashlight mounted on the end of Paul's assault rifle, the piercing beam reaching into the darkest shadows.

“Wait here,” he said. He took off his backpack and passed us each a clunky black object made of plastic and rubber. “And put these on.”

The three of us pulled up our gas masks. Paul did up our straps and checked the seals. He gave me a thumbs-up, passed me his assault rifle, and went the last few paces with the light of a glowstick to guide him.

Another flash, followed several seconds later by thunder—the noise seemed to enter through the hole in the ceiling and reverberate around the cavernous space.

“Is it blowing over us?” Felicity asked, her voice shrouded in mystery via the gas mask.

“Yeah.” We watched as Paul reached the spot where the missile was and started to take samples. I saw him hunched over, working by the dull light. Another flash of light, this time it took nearly ten seconds for the thunder to sound.

“Do you really think that so many people could have sheltered in places like this?” Felicity asked me. “Half a million?”

“We did,” I said, thinking back to when I'd first seen Felicity: it was on a tiny video screen, the diary-type entry she'd made in her parents' apartment, and that's where I'd viewed it, only a day after she'd left; I'd managed to stay at 30 Rock twelve whole days before properly venturing out. “We lasted it out for nearly two weeks.”

We watched Paul place a small black box into his pack, then head over.

“True,” she said. “But—but we've seen such little evidence of survivors, certainly not on the scale that my brother said they expect to receive in quarantine over the next few days.”

“Maybe most of them gathered in big spaces,” I said. “Refuge areas.” Hell, I'd thought about that enough times, that possibility. It would drive me crazy to think about it now.

Paul joined us; he took off his mask and we followed suit. “Got it—let's move.”

 

All his samples were in bagged containers and secured in his padded backpack. I could feel them moving close behind me as we ran to the first corner north. How could I convince them to leave me out here? I wanted to go and find Caleb, trap him, put him somewhere secure until this antidote was ready. If my home was gone, I needed to do this—I had to
right
something. I had to
do
something.

We stopped at 52nd Street.

The thunder was fainter but there were still deep flashes of lightning somewhere high above in dark clouds as the heavens continued to fall in sheets of snow.

From the cover of a building's corner, Paul surveyed our path north.

As Felicity and I huddled a few feet behind him, I noticed bumps in the snow: frozen bodies, real life snowmen and -women.

“Felicity,” I said, close to her ear. She turned. “I can't—”

“Now we head back, careful as we can, same drill,” Paul said as he came over to us. “Quiet, wary, no risks.”

Another big flash of lightning lit the scene around us for a couple of seconds, clear as day.

To the west on 52nd, a group of Chasers. Beyond them, a cleanup squad.

In that moment, all hell broke loose.

B
ehind us, the screams of Chasers and the thudding of bullets were punctuated by a long, low growl of thunder.

We ran. Paul was faster than me, and Felicity nearly kept pace.

Glass shattered around us and bullets zapped.

Paul skidded to a halt behind the fallen facade of a building across the street and we crashed in behind him. Another stream of bullets tore at us, sending up plumes of concrete dust from our barricade. I pointed across the street and we kept ground-close as we ran to more cover.

“Can't you call them off?” Felicity screamed as we raced behind some massive granite columns, hugging the facade of the building as we headed south.

“No!” he answered. “They're on their own comms gear.”

“Surely you can—”

“Flic, we can't risk it,” he said to her. “There's something going on here, some kind of cover-up, way back up to the general. We have to get these samples back, so I can head straight to the USAMRIID team to work up the antidote, got it?”

She nodded.

My thoughts of Caleb remained, but I had to see these guys back first. I knew these streets. Another flash of lightning, another volley of gunfire punctured the scene around us. Paul turned and fired a stream from his rifle—perhaps giving our pursuers something to think about:
We're not an easy target, we're not Chasers, we're technically on the same side
—well, maybe.

The cleanup crew was having none of it: the windows above us blasted out, raining safety glass.

“We have to get off the streets!” I yelled into Paul's ear above the thunder.

The storm was moving away with a drawn-out moment of final torment.

“Come!” I replied, leading the way along a dark street. Felicity dragged behind me as I pulled her along by her hand, keeping close to the buildings on our left and using the shattered remains of vehicles on the street to provide cover.

We crossed Madison Avenue.

Another flash.

A yell, close by.

Paul.

“No!” Felicity screamed.

We helped him to his feet. I dragged him as well as I could—he'd been shot in the thigh. We rounded the corner onto Madison and I guided them down into a subway station below us, the curtain of heavy snowfall left behind.

I switched on the flashlight on the end of Paul's assault rifle. Down we went, silent but for Paul's whimpering.

He fell to the ground in a heap; both Felicity and I were spent.

“We . . . have . . . to keep moving,” Paul said, propping himself up with the aid of a turnstile.

In one hand I held out Paul's rifle; I hefted his arm around my shoulder and we entered the main hall of the station.

Hundreds of faces, staring back at the light.

 

Chasers—the docile kind—watched us wide-eyed. A gaunt sea of pale expressionless faces.

“Jesse?”

“It's okay,” I said, and we pushed and shoved our way through the mass towards the platform. Some moaned and groaned, some were clearly close to death, and the smell . . . “This way.”

The subway tunnel seemed intact as far as the flashlight would penetrate, knee-deep water obscuring the floor beneath our feet. The Chasers watched us at first, then soon went back to their grazing. At the end of the platform we found an open janitor's closet-cum–staff bathroom.

“This will do,” I said. I managed to put the broken door back in place and latch it shut behind us. We sat Paul down, and he cracked another couple of glowsticks. He pulled bandages from his pack, a kit with syringes and vials, and a tourniquet.

“Is it—”

“I'll be fine,” he said to his sister.

I shone the flashlight on the wound as he wrapped it up.

“Okay,” he said. Felicity helped him elevate the limb onto a bucket as he eased himself down. “I'm done.”

“Can you move on it?” I asked.

He winced in pain. “No, not all the way back to the quarantine zone—”

“Paul—”

“Not with them out there, Flic.”

“He's right,” I said. “It'll get us all killed.”

“So . . . what do we do?”

“Can you wait for first light?” I asked. “Once those cleanup guys are gone?”

He looked up at us and his sister whimpered because we both knew his answer: he couldn't make it, and those samples had to get back to the QZ fast.

 

“I'll go.”

They weren't listening, they were arguing. Arguments, even now, after all this—only human nature, after all. I switched off the flashlight and the sudden darkness startled them, extinguishing their conversation. I switched it on, and they looked almost guilty.

“Nice one, Jesse,” said Paul, with a smile.

“I said I'll go,” I repeated. “Paul, I'll take your pack back to the quarantine zone, via the zoo entry. I'll send help back here for you.”

Paul nodded.

“No,” Felicity said. “We can't split up. We can do this: Paul, the three of us can—”

“No, he's right,” Paul said. “He can send help, a medevac. I'll be good for a few hours, but hurry, and tell them my injury.”

“But—”

“Flic, I know these streets, I can do this,” I said. I picked up Paul's backpack and put it over my shoulders. I passed him his assault rifle but he refused it until I insisted. In exchange, he passed me his pistol, which I tucked into the side of my belt. “I'll be as quick as I can. Don't move, but if you have to for some reason, I'll come back here with help and stay here until you can somehow make it back to this spot.”

“We're not goin' anywhere,” Paul said. He handed me his night-vision goggles, which I clipped onto my helmet. Felicity hugged me and saw me to the door.

“Help will be here soon.”

 

Outside the snow continued to fall, the lightning infrequent and the thunder now just a far-off rumble. No sign of those soldiers. I ran north fast, stopping at corners, weighing up the right moment to dash across the streets as lightning flared, saturating the night-vision.

I was at 57th and Madison. With so much snowfall, there were no footprints. It was eerie looking through these things with their otherworldly greenish tint.

The zoo was about eight blocks away to the north-west. I could make it within half an hour at this cautious run-stop-check-run pace, and have the major at the arsenal building send a med team back within an hour. So many times had I passed this intersection, the waypoint between the zoo and Caleb's bookstore just a block to the east. I had to see. Five minutes, tops. A look and I'd done what I could, right?

The pack on my back was light but I felt its weight with every step; failure to return was not an option, not at all. The thought of what was on my back, that it could somehow be synthesized into an antidote to the worst of this, saving Caleb and countless others like him, was spurring me on as much as the need to send help back to those two below the street. I took off at a sprint.

 

No
...

The bookstore was burned out, still smoldering and aflame in places. Most of its windows had shattered and glass crunched on the snow underfoot. On the single piece of glass that remained in the door was a painted symbol that fluoresced in the artificial glow of my night-vision goggles. The work of the so-called cleanup crew, no doubt. What did that symbol mean for Caleb? I wondered.

There was a noise behind me.

I turned, pulled my pistol and fired in one motion.

A man. I'd fired high. It spooked him; he ran. I recognized the gait, the clothing, the quick glimpse before he'd turned. Caleb.

 

He was ten paces away when I set off at a flat-out run after him. He must have feared those soldiers, for good reason, and figured that I, in this outfit, was one of them returning to finish the job.

I tripped because the goggles limited my view of my feet. I flipped them up and ran, momentarily blind in the near-complete darkness of the snow-filled night. My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. He was just ahead of me. I could hear him huffing and puffing and panting his way forward—he'd grown weak or tired.

“Caleb!” I yelled.

I stopped and from the silence and stillness I guessed that he must have too. I walked slowly forward, expecting to see him materialize before me, stepping through the dense curtain of snow. He was not there.

Lightning shattered the thick blur in front of me. In the murk, I saw the figure of my friend creeping through the broken doors of a department store. I paused, just content to watch him, as if he were an ordinary guy, picking his way over rocks at the beach or something, nothing in mind but the need to explore. But no matter how long I stayed there I couldn't guarantee reclaiming the humanity in my friend—it may have been lost forever.

So I got to my feet and followed him.

Inside was a darkness so complete that I couldn't make out where the labyrinth of aisles and counters began and ended. I'd only ventured a little way in but as I retreated to the safety of the front doors I tripped over abandoned bags and baskets, empty cash registers, and endless power cords snaking into a jumble of wires.

“Caleb?” I called, quietly. “Caleb—”

There was a shuffle to my right, then a crash. I smiled. I couldn't see Caleb yet but I saw the racks of clothes he'd disturbed tumble to the mess on the floor. I flipped down the night-vision and the world around me became that now-familiar green-tinted dream. I scanned the space around me—nothing but more racks and displays of now-defunct luxuries.

I retreated to the doors, my boots making loud footfalls. My heart raced, not at the possibility that Caleb might surprise me, but at the thought that he wouldn't. Maybe I really
had
lost him this time.

More illumination from the wild sky outside lit my path as I crunched my way across, past the windows, to the far side of the store. I passed a storeroom behind a big sales counter. Inside it was dark, of course, but it appeared to be empty. It would do.

I made a lap of the store, keeping the front doors in view so I wouldn't lose my bearings, taking care to make as little noise as possible. I just had a feeling that he must be here, somewhere. I kept a steady watch, and listened carefully. And then—

Breathing. Soft, rhythmic, human. Right next to me.

I squeezed the pistol tight in my right hand, then, with my left, reached out into a forest of hanging clothes—and pulled Caleb out.

He fell onto me, pushing down to try to knock me backwards. His hands clawed at me. His fetid breath burned hot against my face. I swung my right arm out so the pistol clocked him on the side of the head, and kept swinging. He rolled off me in a heap. I knelt up, ready to hammer again at him if I needed to. But he seemed subdued. Not out cold, but that only happened in movies. He was dazed but full of tremors.

I returned the gun to my belt, and dragged him across the tiled floor by his ankles. He moaned slightly as his face and skin connected with bits of broken debris. At the storeroom I pushed him inside as far as I could. Quickly, I backed out and pushed some steel clothes racks between the doors and the sales counter, to stop them from opening outwards. He was imprisoned there, my friend; a fact which only I knew.

He rattled the doors, in anger or desperation—both, I guess.

“Caleb, this is for your own good!” I told him, trying to reassure us both.

There was more noise from the storeroom in response. I rifled among the looted drawers of the counter, and found a big marker pen. In big, bold letters I wrote across the doors: MY INFECTED FRIEND CALEB IS IN HERE—PLEASE GIVE ANTIDOTE. I signed my name, as if to reinforce my pledge and promise.

Now, I had to get back to the quarantine zone.

 

Back at Fifth Avenue, I ran north. So close. The weather had eased, and the streets looked marginally less angry than before. From the shadows of an apartment block awning, I scanned the road ahead. The coast seemed to be clear.

I didn't see or hear a movement. The next thing I knew, I was shot in the chest.