"Here you go." The man handed her the change. She put the bills back in, grabbed the bag, and stepped away from the counter. She flipped over to McKnight's driver's license and froze. It was a California license. She checked the address: 18 Wysteria Drive, Los Angeles. DOB: 04-19-1999. McKnight was smiling at the camera, the expression guarded but happy, her blond hair loose, a thick wave that fell past her shoulders.
Selah looked up and stared out the glass door. McKnight was replacing the nozzle. She was from LA. She must have been twenty when the first War started. The things she must have seen. Now this. Her Base destroyed, her men killed, and here she was in the desert, shepherding a colonel-killing teenager to a distant mountain base instead of looking for her family, her friends. Selah took a deep breath and walked out to McKnight.
"Here you go," she said, extending one of the cups of coffee.
McKnight turned and took the cup and her wallet back. "Thanks." She took a sip and grimaced. "Shit. That's bad coffee." She took another sip, and then took a PowerBar and moved to lean against the front of the Humvee. Selah joined her, sipping on her own coffee. It was bitter and harsh, and she grimaced as well.
McKnight opened a bar and bit a third of it right off. She crossed one ankle over the other and simply chewed, staring at the rising sun. Selah did the same, examining McKnight out of the corner of her eye.
"Can I ask you a question?"
McKnight slowed her chewing, grunted noncommittally, and then resumed.
"My dad. You said he'd been arrested for breaking the censorship laws." Selah tried to keep her voice calm. "Do you know where he is?"
McKnight washed down her mouthful with a sip of coffee and then shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's classified information."
Selah bit her lower lip and restrained the urge to raise her voice. "I haven't known if he's been alive or dead for months. He just disappeared. Can't you tell me anything?"
Something about her voice must have reached McKnight, who was tonguing her lower jaw, dislodging a piece of PowerBar. She frowned and looked away at the horizon. "I didn't learn much. The report was cursory. He's alive though. He'll be held until whatever it was he was going to talk about becomes declassified." McKnight gave her a look that was almost apologetic. "That might take awhile."
"Oh," said Selah. She felt deflated. "I see." She thought for a beat. "Can I use your Omni?"
McKnight snorted and turned back to studying the horizon. Selah sipped her coffee and allowed her thoughts to tumble through her mind. He'd be held until the secrets he had been about to uncover were declassified. The connection between Blood Dust, the military, and the government. The mysterious Hybrid Project that nobody seemed to know anything about. She almost asked McKnight, but then stopped. As if the Sergeant would casually disclose something so classified to her. If she could just learn more, somehow, and publicize it, her father might go free. Not at once, sure, but in time. Some sort of process could be put in place.
In the end, she let her thoughts go. Instead, she simply relaxed and enjoyed the bleak beauty of the view. Silence but for the occasional car rushing down the road. The desert vast and beautiful, the rising sun painting it a shifting palette of variegated hues. The stunted bushes cast long and twisted shadows. The world felt fresh, clean, cool, and scrubbed.
"Come on." McKnight pushed off the Humvee, having somehow already finished her coffee despite how scalding hot it was. "Let's go." She dumped the empty wrappers on the ground and hauled herself up and behind the wheel.
Selah turned and got in as well. When she looked out the window, she saw that the gas station owner was watching them. She met his gaze and he looked away.
Chapter 6
The military research base was tucked away in a pocket canyon high in the Rocky Mountains. They drove along a winding and freshly asphalted two-lane road, driving uphill and through dense phalanxes of evergreen trees which parted on occasion to give them a view of the valley below. Selah had slept through most of the morning, and now she pulled McKnight's jacket tight about herself, burying her chin in the soft wool that lay thick around the collar. McKnight drove with rugged determination, her jaw set, lips pursed, eyes locked on the road and hands at ten and two o'clock. She had been driving for almost ten hours straight, and beyond looking paler and with some purple under her eyes, she seemed to be none the worse for wear.
The road rose sharply over a final incline and then curved around a flinty shoulder to penetrate into the miniature canyon, leaving the broad valley behind. The slopes here were steep and furred thickly with trees. Cold air razored in through McKnight's open window. The Humvee's display showed that they were but minutes from their destination, and Selah watched the luminous lines on the windshield as each curve they took corresponded to a turn on the map.
"Why is this base way the hell out here?" she asked. Proximity was making her nervous. "Must take them hours to get stuff delivered, or go home after work."
"Isolation is its own form of security," said McKnight, her voice dry, and then suppressed a sudden yawn that seemed to take her by surprise. "And most of the people live on base. Excuse me." She covered her mouth and blinked away tears.
"Oh," said Selah. "And... what do they research here that's so dangerous?"
"Before the war it was communicable diseases. Ebola, SARS, the ultra-flu. I think they've been focused on other stuff since then." Another yawn ambushed the Sergeant. "God damn," she said, straightening up in her seat, and then yawned a third time.
Selah fought down a sympathy yawn, and then stared intently at a square white sign that rolled past on their left that read: USAMRIID.
"U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases," said McKnight before Selah could ask. "You Sam Rid for short. We've arrived." They drove around the last curve, and then slowed at the sight of the security checkpoint. It was light in comparison to what Selah had seen at the LA Base, a standard six foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire and a black and yellow crash barrier in front of a closed gate, a squad of four soldiers standing before it with machine guns slung over their shoulders.
McKnight slowed down, threaded the Humvee through two sets of cement blocks on the road that forced her to approach in an S-curve, and then stopped before the gate. Another couple of soldiers emerged from the security booth and one of them stepped up to her window.
The man was young, with skin so pale that Selah could trace the veins beneath his jaw and under his eyes.
"First Sergeant," he said, straightening and saluting her crisply. McKnight returned the salute and he relaxed and unclipped an Omni from his belt. "Quiet drive?"
"Quiet enough," said McKnight, handing over her ID. He took it, slid it through a slot in his Omni, and then scrolled quickly through whatever came up. He nodded and peered in at Selah. "This your cargo?"
"Yep."
The soldier rounded the Humvee. Selah lowered her window. His eyes were surprisingly beautiful, gray irises flecked with darker spots, his eyelashes long. They seemed out of place in his plain, hard face.
"Ma'am," he said, holding up the Omni.
Selah obliged by leaning forward and opening her eyes wide for the retinal scan. There was a slight flash, and then he lowered it and checked the screen. Frowned as he flicked the screen with his finger, scrolling down through her record. She wandered idly what it said. What conjectures, what truths, what lies? He frowned, shot her a quick appraising look, and then nodded and stepped back.
The gate slid back and the crash barrier rose. The soldiers moved aside and the Humvee rolled gently forward, rocking over the speed bumps. The narrow canyon opened up into a natural bowl, and McKnight drove past a series of two-story buildings that were long and low, gray amalgams of bunkers and cheap residential units. It was a small base, a tenth the size of the one in LA. They drove past housing units, then a couple of three-story office buildings, past a number of generic and unremarkable beige hangars by a small concrete expanse on which a half dozen helicopters sat, rotor blades sagging, and then up to a large four-story edifice at the center of it all.
This final building seemed to be the true base, the keep at the center of the castle. There were no windows in its sides and it was surrounded by another fence, this one fifteen feet tall with a dramatic ditch dug around its outside and bales of razor wire settled along the Y-spokes at its top. Within the fence was nothing but smooth dirt right up to the building's walls, and Selah saw that each of the building's corners boasted a gun turret.
McKnight stopped before a second gate and again her ID was scanned, though this time they subjected her to a retinal check. Selah underwent one as well, and then they were waved through once more. McKnight parked the Humvee before the massively reinforced iron doors and leaned back with a sigh.
"All right." McKnight looked over at her. "Ready?"
"Sure," said Selah. "What for?"
The front doors opened and a man in civilian clothing emerged, two soldiers flanking him. "That I don't really know," said McKnight. "Look sharp." The Sergeant opened her door and got out. Selah followed suit.
The air was brisk and cold. A thin, vicious wind cut through the open front of her jacket and made her pull it close. Scrunching her shoulders around her ears, she stepped around the front of the Humvee to join McKnight as the older man approached them. He was in his sixties, tall and lean, and he moved well, as if he exercised frequently or still played a sport. His face was colorless, his hair cut short, but not in the military style, and he wore a faded button-up shirt and corduroy pants the color of loam.
"Sergeant," he said, nodding to McKnight, "And you must be Selah Brown. I'm Lt. Colonel Wigner, director of this facility. Welcome. Word of your arrival has preceded you. I'm eager to see if the rumors are true."
Selah glanced uneasily at McKnight, and then gave a half shrug. "Thanks. Did General Adams talk to you?"
"No." Wigner blinked. "Not directly. Though from what I gather, the decision to send you here has been a contentious one. Still, all's well that end's well, wouldn't you say? Come. Let's get inside where we can talk. Thank you, Sergeant."
That last was a dismissal and Selah felt a knot of worry tighten in her gut as McKnight snapped to attention and saluted. The thought of going into this fortress of a building without her was not a comforting one. Selah began to slide out of the heavy leather jacket so as to return it, but McKnight climbed back into the Humvee before she could do so. Selah hesitated, and then pulled the jacket back on. The Hummer's engine rumbled to life, and without sparing Selah a glance, McKnight drove out of the inner compound.
Selah followed the Lieutenant Colonel into the building. He asked her about LA, about what had happened at the base, and she answered with a minimum of words. Her attention was instead focused on the building itself and how durable it seemed. Almost as if prepared for a full-scale assault or a bombing. The front doors were ponderous, massive, but swung easily enough when shoved. An inch of solid steel, thought Selah, examining them as she stepped through. That would slow down even a wave of vampires.
They passed into the lobby beyond, which looked more like a doctor's waiting room than anything else. Plastic bucket seats lined the walls and a central coffee table showed a spread of science and chemistry magazines. Posters on the wall displayed encouraging aphorisms beneath images of smiling scientists.
Applied Knowledge = Wise Action
read one, a grinning man in a lab coat dripping a fluid out of a massive pipette into a beaker.
The Supernatural is Merely Unexplained Phenomena
read another, showing a petite Asian woman in blue doctor scrubs looking up from a microscope.
They passed through to a hallway beyond. The linoleum floors gleamed as if freshly washed, and the walls bore endless portraits of donors, doctors, and military figures, all of them framed in the same faux-gold.
"The USAMRIID is the Department of Defense's leading force in medical biological defense research. Our sister base is out in Maryland, and this lab has been up and running for, oh ... four years now." Wigner's voice had settled into a comfortable cadence, as if recounting these facts were something that gave him distinct and quiet pleasure. "President Hanover signed the initial order to have this lab created in response to the discovery of the vampire threat, but it was only under President Lynnfield that the funds were actually allocated and construction completed." He beamed at her as if she were nine years old, and she looked away, uncomfortable.
"Where are we going? What's going to happen to me?"
"You, my dear, are going to be staying with us for awhile. You're safe here. That's what matters."
Selah slowed down and Wigner turned to face her as she stopped. "Am I a prisoner?"
He gave an uncomfortable shrug. "Technically, you're in a gray area. You're under military jurisdiction, but your sentence for murdering Colonel Adams has been stayed in light of the potential properties of your blood. What happens next will depend in large part on whether the claims coming out of Miami are true, and what potential we think you may hold for helping us in the war effort."
Selah looked from Wigner's face to the two soldiers that stood behind her. They didn't meet her eyes, instead looking down the hallway.
"So I'm a prisoner."
"Selah." Wigner leaned back on his heels. "It's all a matter of perspective. I believe you were slated for execution before the higher-ups intervened. You should be grateful to be here instead. This could present you with an opportunity to clean your slate. Depending on what we learn over the next few weeks, you may play a very important role in the future of this nation."
Selah didn't know how to respond to that. She looked up and down the bland hallway. She was inside the fortress now. Under guard. What had she expected? She examined her hopes critically and realized that she had naively hoped to meet General Adams here, to have been welcomed with open arms, treated as an ally, a friend. Foolishness. She shook her head.