Authors: A.R. Wise
“Might want to hold off on the pleasantries, Willy,” said Hero.
“Why? What’s the matter?” asked William.
“I’ll let the old bat tell you.” Hero picked up Beatrice’s Louis Vuitton and dropped it on the black countertop, beside one of the sinks where he’d cooked up the bombs that had been used to demolish a portion of the lower level of the base. He unzipped the bag and searched for the woman’s tablet PC. He took it out and set it on the counter, forced to do it all with one hand since his other wrist was cuffed to Beatrice. “Go on, Bea. Let him know the truth.”
“It’s not as duplicitous as you’re making it seem.”
“Fine, I’ll tell him.” Hero pointed to the black tablet. “They already have a cure, Willy. They’ve been bullshitting you, and I’d bet it’s because they were planning on killing you off too.”
“Is that true?” asked William.
“No,” said Beatrice.
“Like hell it’s not,” said Hero. “When I told her we weren’t leaving this place until we had a cure, she told me right away that there already was one.”
“That’s great news,” said William.
“Yeah, sure,” said Hero. “But you’re not seeing the big picture here, Willy. The Electorate was keeping it a secret from you and the others out here because they planned on killing you off.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” said William.
“Thank you,” said Beatrice. “At least there’s one person here with a level head.”
“Willy, wake the fuck up, brother. They have you here working on The Noah Initiative, and they never bothered to tell you they had the cure already. We’re talking about the same people that released a virus that wiped out six and a half billion people. What makes you think you’re not next on the list?”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.” William chuckled as he spoke, but there was trepidation in his voice. “Is it?”
“Of course not,” said Beatrice.
“Think about it, Willy,” said Hero. “I’d bet your friends in The Electorate were just waiting until they were able to get their Dawns out of here and then they would’ve flipped the switch that would release the fuckers in here with the virus. The less survivors that know about this whole project the better. Right, Bea?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions…”
“Yeah, but I’m right more times than not.” Hero tapped his temple and then pointed at Beatrice. “I’ve got you figured out, dragon lady. Just like how the soldiers like our buddy Jeff in the control room didn’t know the truth about the original virus, Willy here hasn’t been clued in to the endgame. Little did you expect the fourth horseman to ride in and fuck up your plans.”
“Look,” said Hero as he glanced up and put his hand under his chin, miming the statue of The Thinker. “I’ll make a guess here, and you tell me if I’m right. I’m willing to bet all of The Electorate members are going to be headed out for their final transfers real soon. Right? Probably a lot quicker than anyone else.”
“Well yes,” said Beatrice. “But that’s only because we were the first to be brought into the program, not because of any sort of…”
“They stepped up the transfer dates,” said Willy, a slight edge of shock to his voice.
“Yes,” said Beatrice, “but only because of the problems we were having with Jerald. Not because we were planning on releasing the virus early. We don’t even have the ability to do that remotely. I can show you on my tablet if you’d like. None of us have the ability to control the facilities remotely anymore. They took those functions away almost two decades ago. You know that, William. What this buffoon is saying doesn’t make any sense.”
The old biochemist’s eyes darted between Hero and Beatrice. “
Actually, it makes a lot of sense.”
Hero laughed and clapped, jostling Bea’s arm. “Looks like you’re busted, Bea.”
William sat heavily on a stool as he pushed the power button on the tablet. Seconds later the screen flashed as it turned on, illuminating his face with blue light. “I’m going to message one of the members of The Electorate.”
“It won’t work for you, William,” said Beatrice. “It’s coded so that only members of The Electorate can use it.”
“Fine,” said Hero. “Then I’ll put a fucking gun in your mouth until you do what Willy says.”
“
I just want to open up a dialogue with the other members of The Electorate,” said William. “I want to see if they respond to a question from you about when the Noah Initiative is supposed to be released.”
Hero jiggled his pistol and smiled at Beatrice.
“God damn it,” said Beatrice, displaying uncharacteristic anger. She thrashed her arm in frustration until Hero forced her to stop. “Fine. Fine. It’s true. God damn it, it’s true. But it’s not what it appears to be.”
“Never is,” said Hero. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Willy, but your friends were planning on murdering you.”
“Everyone who knew the truth about the virus had to die,” said Beatrice. “Even The Electorate. The final transfer to the Dawns is as good as being dead. We set it up so that the Dawns’ memories of the truth about the virus would be blocked. Those memories could be triggered under certain emergency situations, but the goal was to erase it from history. We knew that if the truth was out there, then it would’ve tainted our legacy. It would’ve led to our lineage questioning the rules we set in place for them. It could’ve destroyed everything we worked to achieve.”
William stuttered, his voice little more than a whisper. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe this.”
“Welcome to the club, Willy,” said Hero. “This crew’s not going to be happy until they’ve fucked over the whole damn planet.”
“William understands,” said Beatrice. “He knows that without this crew,” she mocked Hero’s term, “there would be no planet left at all.”
She groaned and shook her head before waving her left hand in the air, signaling that she was sick of the conversation. “None of it matters anyhow. Just give me the computer and we can get the details on the cure. If you have samples of the original vaccine, we can use it to make the new ones fairly quickly.” She held out her hand to William and motioned for him to hand the tablet over.
William put his hand on the computer’s screen and slid it back, away from Beatrice. The color had drained from his face, making the gaunt man look even frailer than usual.
“What’s the matter?” asked Beatrice. “We need to get the vaccine incubating as soon as possible, William, if we’re going to save the two of you.”
William’s voice was meek when he asked, “I take it the cure is based on the Tempest strain.”
Beatrice frowned and shook her head. “I’m not one of the scientists. I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s based on the experiments that occurred in the facilities after the original virus was released.”
“Yes,” said Beatrice, confounded by his reluctance. “What does that matter?”
William looked up at Hero, but stayed quiet.
“What’s up?” asked Hero. “What am I missing here?”
“There’s something she’s not telling you,” said William.
“Shocker,” said Hero.
“William, we don’t have time for this…”
“He deserves to know,” said William with force, displaying a spark of anger.
“Know what?” asked Hero.
“He does not need to know any…”
“Shut up,” said Hero as he jerked at the cuffs that connected his left wrist to Beatrice. “What do I deserve to know?”
“We discovered very early on that the immune systems of African Americans reacted differently to the vaccines. It wasn’t a surprise, since there are a lot of differences between Anglo-Saxon and African ancestries. You’re certainly familiar with Sickle Cell Anemia,” said William.
“Sure,” said Hero.
“Well, that’s an example of what I mean. At first we thought it wouldn’t be an issue, and that with just a few minor alterations to exposure we could create a vaccine that would work just as well for people with African descent. Unfortunately, we were never able to perfect the formula.”
“So you fuckers really did it?” asked Hero. “You created a virus to kill the black man, just like you tried to with AIDs.”
“Oh give me a break,” said Beatrice.
“What?” asked Hero. “Is it crazy to believe in world-wide conspiracy theories all of the sudden?”
“It’s not what it seems,” said William. “They tried desperately to figure out a cure that would work on everyone. In fact, the original Dawn program had people of all races in it. It wasn’t until after the first tests that we discovered the problem. They had to abandon the original Dawns entirely, and no one wanted to do that.”
“
He’s telling the truth. It was like abandoning our children,” said Beatrice. “It was awful.”
“What did you do with them?” asked Hero. “Did you kill them?”
“God no,” said Beatrice, offended. “Of course not. We did what we could to ensure they had the best lives possible. We put them in good homes.”
“That’s how we ended up figuring out that the vacci
ne sometimes had an unexpected effect on people with African ancestry,” said William. “It turned out that some of the Dawns that had been placed in homes were transferring their immunity to the people that lived with them. It was a huge discovery, but we didn’t even know it was happening until after the original virus was released.”
“So that’s what you were up to,” said Hero. “When I first met my wife, she was being held in one of your facilities. They were running tests on her.”
William nodded and looked down, as if ashamed. “She’s lucky to have survived. Not many did.”
“Does this mean I’m going to die?” asked Hero.
“Not necessarily,” said Beatrice. “The vaccine works on some Africans just fine, but not all.”
“And sometimes the vaccine can delay the spread of the
disease,” said William. “We were able to push back the onset of the virus on some of the healthier subjects by several months.” He shook his head and grimaced. “But I don’t think you’d want to live like that. It was a painful existence for those poor souls. The virus would eat them from the inside out, trying its best to kill them any way it could. I honestly don’t know how they managed to stay alive as long as they did. The cartilage in their bodies turned to jelly. Their bodies just started to fall apart as the bones disconnected. ”
“Well that’s just fucking great,” said Hero.
A speaker crackled from above as a man’s voice interrupted them. “Levon, William, you guys need to get up here.”
“Who’s that?” asked Beatrice.
“Jeff,” said William as he got up and walked to the intercom near the entrance. “He was one of Jerald’s men that was supposed to take us into custody, but he convinced him to defect.” William smiled at Hero.
Beatrice rolled her eyes and smir
ked. “Seems like you have that effect on people.”
“I told you,” said Hero. “You’ll learn to like me too.”
William clicked a button on the intercom. “What’s wrong?”
“A helicopter just landed outside,” said Jeff.
“Is it Jerald?” asked William.
“Not sure,” said Jeff. “I’ve locked down the facility, but it’s not going to take Jerald long to figure out what happened here.
I’ll switch us over to the lowest power settings, but I’ll see if I can keep the surveillance on the surface running so we can see what they’re up to.”
“They were able to get past the security last time,” said Hero. “Can’t they just do it again?”
“No,” said William. “We disabled the outdoor generator, so they can’t get in as easily this time.”
“All right, then why do you still look so worried?” asked Hero.
“Because we’re running things on their power grid. That’s why Jeff is going to try to power us down, so we don’t cause a spike on their grid. We have minimal generators down here, just enough to power the containment lab. We couldn’t risk a build-up of carbon monoxide down here.”
“So what’s that mean?” asked Beatrice. “Can he get in or not? If we have enough time, I can get The Electorate to send out reinforcements.”
“If they cut our line to their grid, then we’ll be stuck down here with the generators with barely enough power to keep emergency lights on. The purifiers will shut down, and so will all of our equipment.” He looked at Hero and said, “We won’t have time to incubate the vaccine.”
“Then stop standing there staring at me,” said Hero. “Get your ass to work!”
Left Behind
Chapter Eleven – Secrets
3
days before the start of the apocalypse
Laura Conrad is in bed as her husband enters.
“We need to talk.” David walked into the bedroom
after putting Annie back to bed. She’d already gotten up three times, and it was always his job to wrangle her back to her room.
“What’s up?” asked Laura as she lay in bed,
the bottom of her book on her chest. She didn’t look up, still reading as her husband came back to bed. Tawdry novels were her guilty pleasure, and once she started reading one it was often hard to tear her away.