The Aegis Solution (65 page)

Her feet slipped from the pedals which halted instantly. "This can't be," she said aloud, not
comprehending why they would not continue their rotation under Maxwell's power.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

The bird was singing its monotonous song, even louder now, although Tillie could still not see
where it was perched. Turning her head to face the shore of the pond, she saw that it was now dense
with the smoke from the picnickers' barbeque pits, the people and the grills no longer visible. Just the
smoke. Thickening and moving lazily toward her across the water.

The sunlight on the bare skin of her legs and arms, only moments ago feeling warm and
comforting, now seemed to bake her. She realized she was sweating.

"Let's find some shade," she said to Maxwell, turning back. The seat beside her was empty. She
searched the water around the boat, unexplainable terror gripping her heart and kneading it as a baker
would work a mound of dough on his table.

"MAXWELL! MAXWELL!"

Her shouts went unanswered. As she thrashed about in the seat wildly, her eyes swept over the
water all around the boat, and she repeatedly yelled her brother's name. The thick smoke from the shore
reached her, making her desperate search of the water's surface impossible, and burning her throat and
eyes. Tillie's throat was so irritated she could no longer call out his name, uncontrollable coughing
racking her.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

Now completely enveloped in the heavy gray smoke, unable to speak and, in fact, unable to draw
a breath without her throat clenching closed in reaction, she decided she must get off the boat and swim
to the shore.

Maxwell is already there, she thought to herself. Able to see absolutely nothing around her but a
gray curtain, Tillie moved, from memory, to dive off the paddleboat to her left. Twisting around and
bracing her feet on the bottom, she pushed off. But rather than plunging into the cool water, she was
stunned by an impact from her shoulder slamming into something metal and very hot.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

Her shoulder blazing with pain from the jolt, and her eyes squeezed tightly shut to avoid the smoke,
she tried to crawl over the side of the small boat, careful to avoid whatever it was she had crashed into
a moment before. Confusion filled her mind as she crawled. The edge of the boat should have been
mere inches from her, yet she was crawling and crawling but not reaching the side, not reaching the
water.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

Born of despair, her crawl became a scramble forward, her hands searching to avoid another
obstacle. Risking a quick look, she opened her eyes and saw that the smoke was thinning. No longer
attempting to understand or visualize her surroundings, she hurried forward. The smoke continued to
lessen and she could see that she was on a flat, gray surface. To her right was a vertical concrete wall.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

She followed the wall, scraping her knees on the rough texture beneath her, until she had gone far
enough to escape the smoke completely and she was able to finally draw in a deep, purging breath. Her
throat and lungs, still burning, rebelled at the influx of air and triggered another series of violent coughs.
Tillie dropped to the surface and leaned against the wall, waiting for the coughing to stop.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

When it finally subsided and she was able to draw several moderate breaths, her head cleared and
she understood that she was on the roof of Aegis, not in a paddleboat floating on a pond somewhere
else. Panting as she assimilated the details of her surroundings, she realized that the fire in the barrel
must have gone out, and the charred wood at the bottom must have begun to smoke. She must have
been asleep. The rest of it, the pond…the boat…Maxwell…the popcorn and hamburgers and the bird,
had all been a part of her dream.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

"Except the bird, I guess," she muttered to herself. Her mind, climbing the rest of the way out of
the dreamworld she had created, reacted. "A BIRD?"

Jumping up, she looked in the direction of the sound. Perched on the parapet wall, not ten feet
from her, was a wren, its head jerkily swiveling back and forth, its beak opening.

Chirp…chirp…chirp!

This mundane denizen of the desert might as well have been the mythical Phoenix. She stared at
it, as if mesmerized, her mouth agape; she had not seen a bird…any bird…at Aegis in years. Not since
the wind had begun.

Slowly, she pulled her eyes away from the sight of the bird, slipped off her hood, and tilted her head
back, her eyes sweeping upward. The sun had risen and she saw a beautiful, clear blue sky. Still in
disbelief, not trusting her senses, Tillie tore off her gloves, opening her hands wide, palms upward, and
extending her arms as far as she could.

"It stopped! IT STOPPED!" The last, an exuberant shout, filled the glorious silence of the still air,
her outburst startling the wren and causing it to fly upward and circle above her.

Her breath coming in quick and shallow gasps, her heart beating as rapidly as a trip-hammer, she
lowered her gaze and looked across the massive roof of Aegis, no longer cluttered with debris. She now
understood her other sudden discomfort in the dream. With the absence of the frigid downdraft, she
was hot, sweating beneath the parka and layers of clothing she wore. The Arizona sun beat down upon
her and upon the roof, warming the air over Aegis as it had not been in years. In the quiet, she could
hear the structure beneath her feet popping and cracking, the sudden temperature change expanding
the elements of the building.

Tillie stripped off the parka, tossing it down on the roof. She then shed the extra shirts and pants,
until she was down to a single, regular layer of clothing. Although she was still very warm, she basked
in the feeling of the sun on her face and arms. From the direction she had crawled, the fifty-five-gallon
barrel was enshrouded in smoke from the smoldering fire, as there was no longer any wind to whisk it
away.

Turning to the parapet, she looked out over the desert. Even though the sun was still fairly low in
the sky, it was working its thermal magic on the desert air, producing a small dust devil in the distance
to the west. She knew that she should head toward the hatch, go down below, and tell everyone that the
wind had stopped. But she wanted just one more minute first.

Resting her arms on the top edge of the parapet wall, feeling the warmth from the sun already
baked into the concrete, she laid her chin on the top of her arms and continued to watch the lazy
progression of the dust devil as it drifted closer to Aegis.

Since she had not grown up in the desert, the mechanics of the slender tan funnels were unfamiliar
to her. The few she had seen in the past had always looked more defined, more crisp. This one more
closely resembled a broad column of dust, dissipating rapidly above the ground and leaving a trail in the
air behind its path. And there was something odd at its base…at its leading edge, something she could
not quite identify. She pressed harder against the wall, leaning her head farther forward and straining
her eyes, when suddenly she was able to discern an object at ground level, moving toward her at what
looked like a fast pace. Within another minute, the vague object clarified and a jolt of adrenaline
electrified her.

"Oh, my God!" she gasped.

Unable to tear her eyes away for a moment, not even allowing herself to blink, she watched as the
color of the object resolved to a bright yellow, the form itself emerging as an SUV. Her entire body
tingling with excitement, she forced herself to watch the approaching vehicle long enough to be sure,
to be absolutely certain that she was not imagining what she saw.

A minute passed, then another, before Tillie spun away from the wall and ran as she had not run
in years, sprinting for the access hatch.

EPILOGUE

And so this band of survivors emerged from Aegis, much as travelers would step out of their craft onto the soil of a
new and foreign planet: their minds filled with questions; their hearts torn between fear of what they would discover as they
ventured forth from their sanctuary, and hope for the new world, the creation of which had fallen to each of them to
accomplish.

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, this new core of humanity would bifurcate their time, their attention, and their
efforts. To begin with, there was much that needed to be done. The monumental and the minuscule aspects of the idle
infrastructure, which lay dormant, waited patiently for the touch of a human hand to bring them back to life...as if the
members of a family were, at long last, returning to their shuttered home after an extended absence. Within their cohort,
the group would learn that all of the knowledge and all of the skills, required to breathe artificial life back into the systems,
devices, and machinery of the once pervasive population, were present within their ranks.

Still, while they applied their efforts to the repairing, cleaning, and reactivation of their old, yet new, home, not a day
passed when they did not ponder and discuss the myriad questions raised by the cataclysm itself, and the innumerable
incremental events which allowed for their very survival.

Some of the party were obsessed with finding the answer to one question: who had been responsible for the creation of
the pathogen? A team, led by Elias and Leah, found their answer, and assembled a list of names which would then be
vilified for generations. Having provided nothing other than the satisfaction of their curiosity, the list was put aside for
posterity. They each concluded that there had existed a truly evil cabal on the Earth, a malignant assemblage who very
nearly caused the extinction of mankind; however, none of them would ever know that, had some mysterious hand swept
those vile men and women into the sea, others would have eagerly arisen, others with an identical nefarious goal. And the
cataclysm, rather than being averted, would have merely been deferred.

The day-to-day efforts continued. Neighborhoods and communities were reclaimed and brought back to life, as the
individuals among the band grappled with other questions. Most wondered why they were selected to live, while so many
perished. The psychologists within the group repeatedly explained that they suffered from survivor's guilt, and eventually
counseled them to a tacit acceptance.

Others believed that their presence within Aegis prior to the cataclysm was serendipity, a random, chance occurrence
and nothing more, as was the collapse of the entrance to Aegis on the first day of the epidemic. Their friends argued the odds
against the many coincidences, but to no avail as these individuals clung to their belief.

Some needed to understand the nature of the pathogen. Eventually, they uncovered only the mechanics of it, without
ever ascertaining the recipe itself. That would remain unknown and unknowable for all time. Again, they stored away the
details they possessed for study by future generations.

They asked if they were truly safe from the pathogen, whether it had been fully eradicated from the Earth. In time,
that, too, was answered. The malignant organism was no more.

They queried as to why the vaccine did not protect the perpetrators as it had been designed to do, and then so
thoroughly tested to guarantee its efficacy. The answer, they decided, was that a fluke mutation in the pathogen made it
immune to the vaccine.

Furthermore, the group wondered if there were other survivors, other places like Aegis in the world, which had also
been protected. They found that there were, that they were not alone.

As these survivors progressed in the re-establishment of a society outside the walls of Aegis, nearly all of their questions
were, over time, answered. Would it be best if they were to remain together as a group, or should they scatter throughout
the countryside? What must they do to ensure that another global calamity would not occur at some point in the distant
future? What form of government was appropriate for them? Or was a government needed at all? Resources were once again
abundant and there was such vast open space that conceivably all of the survivors on Earth could so disseminate that rarely,
if ever, would they see another person, unless by choice. During darker moments, all of them asked whether they were worthy
and deserving of this chance they had been given.

As the once overwhelming aggregation of questions was whittled down, the emphasis in the daily activities and thoughts
of the survivors shifted to the immediate, the temporal, concerns of life. And yet, as they put behind themselves the queries
and the quests for answers, and focused their attention on the future, one nagging question remained, one which could never
be explained away as a fluke…a coincidence…a random act of nature…or a deliberate deed by man, and that was the
wind: the cascading, tumbling avalanche of air from the bitterly cold regions of the upper atmosphere, the downdraft which
held the pathogen at bay and protected this small and fragile group of men and women. For no matter how long they may
wonder, how long they may search, the one answer they will never find is that the hand which begat this wind was mine.

John Wilson Chapman