Emma: Part Three (9 page)

“Max!” Emma shouted his name with obvious relief. He crossed the distance between them in determined strides, and she rushed into his arms. He crushed her in a powerful embrace, bending low to breathe in her sweet scent, before letting her wiggle out of his arms. She scanned his face and ran her hands over his chest and down his arms as if cataloguing his injuries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She touched the bruise on his cheek. Her fingertips moved down his neck and along the scrapes on his exposed skin and left a trail like wildfire. “Are you sure?”

He nodded stiffly.

“Where is Jack?”

“He had to stay in the field.” When they were home alone, he would tell her more. “Are you all right? I heard about your run-in with that soldier.”

“He didn’t touch me. He could have hurt Rio badly, though,” she added with wide eyes. “She bounced across the floor when he swatted her away.”

Max glanced at Gage who seemed even more irritated upon hearing that. Eve would have Gage by the short and curlies once she heard about her precious daughter being treated so badly.

“Adam rescued us.” She smiled at the scarred engineer watching from the corner of the room with arms still crossed in front of his chest. “I think we’re going to get along fine in his shop.”

Max wasn’t so sure about that, but he sent Gray a grateful look. “Thank you.”

“I gave you my word that I’d look after her while you and Jack were gone.” It was that simple for Gray. His word, once given, was never broken. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got work orders backing up in the shop.”

“Thank you,” Emma said with a smile. “I guess I’ll see you on Monday morning?”

Gray nodded and left the room without another word.

Wanting to get this interrogation over with, Max guided Emma to one of the chairs. She gripped his hand as they sat down side by side. He tried to imagine this experience from her limited point of view. She had seen so little of the outside world since her birth. Thrust onto the outpost, she had experienced the best—and the worst—that his cyborg world had to offer her.

Gage moved to the corner where he could watch things play out from a different angle. He seemed to like skulking in the shadows and keeping everyone on edge.

Roman placed his metal briefcase on the table but pushed it aside. He placed his tablet in front of him before activating the video and voice recorder. He made a brief statement about the date and the occupants of the room. “Emma, my name is Dr. Roman Kodorovsky. I’m an epidemiologist and biochemist, and I’m attached to the SICO unit. Do you know what SICO is?”

She nodded. “Rio and Adam explained it to me this morning.”

“Good.” The interrogation prepared, he tapped at the screen of his tablet and explained, “I’ll be asking you some questions about your family, your medical history and your farm. It might be a bit tedious, but I hope you’ll bear with me.”

“Okay,” she said quietly, her voice tremulous.

“Can you tell me about your family?”

“What specifically do you want to know?”

“Tell me about your paternal grandparents.”

“Well…my grandparents fled Houston during the outbreak. The settled out here and started the farm.”

“Did they ever talk about the types of people they met during their journey?”

“They didn’t share many stories about that time. I always sensed it wasn’t something they wanted to discuss. I imagine it was pretty traumatic for them.”

“I’m sure it was,” Roman murmured. “What did they do before they left Houston? Where did they work?”

“They were in college. I’m not sure if they had jobs or not.”

“And did your grandparents live anywhere before the farm?”

“They lived in Borden’s Crossing for a year or two and then staked a claim on the land and built the farm.”

“Here?” He placed the tablet on the table and expanded the screen with a flick of his fingers. The satellite view of Emma’s farm came into view.

She leaned forward for a better look. “Yes.” She extended her finger toward the screen but pulled it back at the last second. “May I touch this?”

“Of course,” Roman said, gesturing to the tablet. “You can draw on it if you’d like.”

Hesitantly, she dragged her finger along the screen and drew a square around the perimeter of her farm. “This is how the farm looks today, but originally, before Dad was born, they had claimed all of this.” She drew a much larger square. “It was thirty or forty acres, I think. It was too much land to patrol and keep safe so they finally cut it down to the farm as it exists now.”

“Were there any other families or individuals on the farm with your grandparents?”

“I’m sure there were. There were a lot of survivors stumbling west for years.” Emma hesitated and then asked, “Why?”

“I’m just trying to get an idea of what types of exposures your family has had.”

“Exposure? To what?” Emma reacted with confusion.

Roman sidestepped the question. “Tell me about your mother.”

“Um…she was born on the Keaton Compound. Her father was Leonard Keaton’s foreman.” She glanced at Max and added, “Leonard was Laird’s father and Leila’s grandfather.”

“The Keatons are salvagers, yes?” Roman had obviously done his prep work.

“Yes.”

“Were your mother’s people from Houston?”

“No. They were big time Preppers and had thrown in with the Keatons when all hell broke loose.”

That piece of the puzzle helped Max put together a better picture of Emma’s childhood and her family. The state of her family’s armory finally made sense. She came from old school survivalist stock, and it damn sure showed in the way she had beaten the odds out there on her own.

“And your mother spent all of her time on the compound or did she go out on salvaging runs?”

“She made trips to New Town and Borden’s Crossing but stayed close to home mostly. Salvaging has always been a man’s domain.” A funny smile curved her mouth. “Well—it was until Leila came around.”

Roman’s eyebrows arched. “Leila?”

“The youngest Keaton,” Max explained. “She’ll feature heavily in the report I’m going to submit later today.”

“I see.” Roman glanced at his notes again. “Let’s go back to your grandparents for a moment.”

“All right.”

“Did your father have any siblings?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My grandmother had complications during her pregnancy with my father.”

“She died?”

Emma shook her head. “No, but they chose to not have any other children.”

Roman narrowed his eyes. “They had no conjugal contact?”

Emma made a face. “I don’t know. My grandmother passed away before I was born so I don’t have any idea what their private lives were like.”

“How did she die?”

“She was killed in an accident in Borden’s Crossing a few weeks before my parents were married.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Some yahoo drunk on moonshine lost control of his vehicle and plowed into a café there. My grandmother and seven or eight others died.”

“You’re an only child,” Roman switched gears without warning.

“Yes.”

“During your physical, you mentioned to Dr. Freedmore that your mother died in childbirth and the child was lost also.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember her pregnancy?”

“I was only three or four. I sort of remember her having a big belly and not being able to climb up on her lap because there wasn’t much room.” Emma went quiet as the memories seemed to consume her. “I got sick around the time that Mom went into labor. I had a fever, I think, and I just remember there being a lot of panic and noise in the house. My grandfather was with me most of the time.”

“Do you know what caused your fever or illness?”

“I think it was an infection.” Emma reached up and touched her opposite arm. “I still have the scar from falling and cutting myself.”

Max had seen the scar, of course, but it hadn’t registered as important in any way. It looked like a regular run-of-the-mill healed-over cut—but the spark of interest in Roman’s eyes left Max wondering if there wasn’t more to this.

“Do you remember how you cut yourself?”

“I probably fell off of something while climbing or tripped. I was a clumsy kid.”

“And your mother died while you were sick?”

“Yes.” Emma ran her finger along the edge of the table.

“Do you remember anything about her funeral?”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “That’s a weird question.”

“Bear with me, please,” Roman replied.

“I missed the funeral,” she said, “but I remember that it was so cold that the ground had frozen. Dad and Grandpa couldn’t dig a proper grave. They set up a funeral pyre.”

Roman’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “They cremated her?”

“Yes.” Emma seemed to shrink in on herself.

Max finally broke into the interrogation. “Where is this going, Roman? What do Emma’s parents and grandparents have to do with this? Why do you want to see her scar?”

“Tell her,” Gage ordered, his deep voice deceptively calm as it emanated from the shadows. “She needs to know the truth.”

“Emma,” Roman said carefully, “when you were brought on base by Max and Jack, you went through the quarantine process. After your physical exam, one of our medics drew several vials of your blood for testing.”

“I remember,” she said, her fingers tightening around Max’s hand as she seemed to relive that traumatic day. Seized by the guilt of what he’d put her through, he placed his other hand on top of hers, capturing it between both of his in a soothing gesture.

“Your blood panel revealed an anomaly we can’t explain. Another vial of your blood was sent to my personal lab at Camp Victory so I could test it myself.”

Emma swallowed anxiously. “And?”

“And you have antibodies that shouldn’t exist,” Roman said, his voice carrying the gravity of what he was about to reveal. As if disbelieving it himself, he explained, “Your blood carries natural antibodies to the Zed virus.”

Max’s breath caught in his throat. Was that even possible? For years, the med teams had desperately searched for a cure or a vaccine against the virus. Most of their work was hush-hush and classified, but Max had heard things about their research and failed trials. Every test subject had died. The experiments had ended in spectacular and horrifying failure.

Max looked at Emma. She had gone stiff with shock and fear. Leaning toward her, he asked, “Emma?”

“I can’t… I mean… Is this real?” She searched his face. “Do you believe them?”

He nodded reluctantly. “They wouldn’t have mobilized a SICO team if they weren’t positive about your test results.”

She gulped. “Natural antibodies? That means I was exposed to the virus, right? Like when you get chicken pox as a kid? And what? I just fought off the infection?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” he said. “There were antibodies in your bloodstream, but I also believe you may have been born with altered DNA. You were definitely exposed to the Zed virus at some point in your lifetime.”

Touching Emma’s face, Max turned her toward him and searched her gaze. “Emma, you don’t remember anything about being bitten or scratched?”

She shook her head. “I swear I don’t.”

Remembering Chloe’s quip back in Purgatory, he said, “This morning, a woman attacked Jack for killing her husband after he had been bitten last night. She wanted to see if he would fight off the disease. I said she was crazy, that no one ever survives a bite, but someone in Purgatory disagreed with me. They made a remark about your family—”

Emma rolled her eyes and huffed. “Not that again!”

“Not what again?” Roman asked, his interest piqued.

“There’s this stupid old story about my grandmother,” she said with obvious distaste. “It’s some crazy line of bullshit about her being bitten when she was pregnant with my dad and—”

“If she survived the bite,” Roman interjected, “it’s possible that your father was born with natural immunity to the virus. Maybe it changed his DNA in some way—and he passed that on to you.”

Max wasn’t sure he liked the excited tone to Roman’s voice. He knew what these SICO docs were like. If they got their hands on Emma…

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her forehead, seemingly distraught. “It can’t be true, right? I mean that story is crazy. It’s insane.” She dropped her hand. “If it was true, my father would have said something to me.”

“It’s possible he didn’t know,” Roman said. “It’s possible his parents—your grandparents—told him the stories were bullshit, too. They wouldn’t have wanted to test their suspicions because the risk to your father would have been outrageously high. And even if your father had known or suspected he was immune, he might have decided not to tell you that you might have inherited his immunity because he didn’t want you to have an inflated sense of safety. If you’re immune, you might not have been so cautious. You might not have survived as long as you have.”

“Or perhaps he wanted to protect you,” Gage argued, still hidden in the darkness. “Families keep secrets for all kinds of reasons. A man protecting his only child is a good reason to keep his mouth shut.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Your home was attacked and overrun by zombies,” Gage stated matter-of-factly. “Haven’t you wondered why? It’s possible that someone—an enemy—has heard the same story that Max did today. Maybe they want you dead because you’re a risk to their endgame. Maybe they wanted to see if you’re really immune and then kidnap you for their own nefarious reasons.”

Emma shrank back as Gage described the ugly possibilities and pressed into Max, seeking out his heat and protection. He willingly gave it, drawing her in closer and draping his arm around her shoulders.

“Emma, may I see your scar?”

“Um…” She shifted anxiously in her seat. “I suppose.”

Roman left his seat and came around to their side of the table. He crouched down in front of Emma who had twisted in her seat to give him better access to her arm. She seemed reluctant to let go of Max’s hand but she needed it to roll up the sleeve of her shirt.

Gage stepped out of the shadows for a better look at the scar that Roman was prodding and studying. “Well?”