Family Reunion "J" (27 page)

Julian sat at a workstation in the lab, looking at a sample of Simon’s blood. He’d had every intention of grabbing Simon and leaving the facility as soon as he’d recovered enough to stand up, but an idea struck him as he was lying in bed. The fact that Brian wouldn’t have let him leave even if he’d chosen to wasn’t what lead him to change his mind. The idea bouncing around at the periphery of his thoughts was what caused him to reconsider.

The powerful magnets of the scanner had destroyed the nanites in his system. Now he looked at Simon’s sample, and the nanites reacted to the mild magnet he moved under it while examining them on the screen. The actual effect wasn’t the reason for his excitement. The excitement came from the simple fact that it affected them at all. If the magnetic field wasn’t merely a source of power for the nanites, but in addition had something to do with how their programming changed, he might be on to something.

The magnetic wave destroyed Julian’s nanites because there was no structure to the blast of the CT scanner. The magnetic waves blanketed the entire spectrum of frequencies like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. What he needed to figure out was how to apply the right frequencies in the right order to effect a change, more like a surgeon, less like a blacksmith. A frequency modulation test was called for, but he would need many nanites, at all stages of their evolution, which meant capturing some of the turned. They didn’t need to capture anyone immune to the vaccine; they already had a source, Simon.

As long as Julian could keep the test’s pace moderated, he could continue to protect Simon. Not enough blood samples to hurt him, but enough to keep the research moving forward. Every time Julian thought of it, it made his stomach sick. He knew he had stepped over a line, one that he promised himself he wouldn’t. It was the only way for Julian to maintain some control of the project, the mission, and Simon’s life.

The next morning Brian woke him at four a.m.

“Julian, wake up. I have just come from a meeting; we’ve decided to show you something. Come on, get up.”

Brian walked across the room to the corridor and Julian climbed out of bed. He slipped on his shoes and was ready. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, which were getting pretty ripe.

They went to the bank of elevators, and again almost all of the entourage stayed in the hallway when the doors began to close. This time, however, Susan and Lana accompanied them.

Brian accessed a panel at the back of the elevator that Julian had not seen. Once open, he pushed a red button. The elevator sank at an accelerated rate, almost lifting Julian off the floor. It slowed at a rate that didn’t jerk them, but it wasn’t exactly an easy transition. “Takes too long for a smooth ride,” Brian smiled.

“How deep are we?” Julian asked.

“Really deep,” was all Brian said.

The four of them exited the elevator. As they walked, dim lights came to life in their path and just as quickly faded back to dark as they moved on.

They came to a set of double doors, which Susan pushed opened without slowing. They came to a retinal scanner and Brian stepped up and activated it. It scanned his eye and the next set of doors opened. They moved through the doors and Julian smelled the sweet, sour scent that caused his stomach to begin creating bile at a rapid rate. He tasted the sourness at the back of his tongue like a bad wine.

Then lights began to pop on down two rows of cells that Julian correctly guessed were not the only rows in the room. Immediately the shrieking began. Brian donned a pair of headphones, as did the women. Susan turned to him, handing him a pair. Once he had them on, the noise-canceling headphones worked to preserve his hearing.

Brian’s voice crackled out of nowhere. “These are the members of the CDC team who were inoculated and isolated. If we are able to reverse the effects of the vaccine, then they will be invaluable in getting the world back on its feet.”

“What if we cannot?” Julian asked.

“Then we will study them continually to find out how to deal with the billions of friends they have out there.” Brian pointed up.

“How am I hearing you and not the shrieks?”

“The headphones have a bone conduction device. You don’t feel it because of its design. The pressure of the headphones distracts you from the conductor.”

Julian nodded while staring at the translucent creatures banging against the padded bars of their cages. Reaching for the food they craved, the blood. Their eyes were sunken back into skulls that no longer resembled the living humans they once were. The effects of his vaccine weighed on his soul.
How could I have done this to humanity?
His mind cried out in horror. He could see their blood vessels running under their skin, filled with dark, almost black, blood. Most of them had no hair; some still had a wisp on top, or off to one side, but most were bald, male and female alike. In fact, it was hard to tell the sexes apart. Black splotches of something that looked like mold were evident on any bare skin.

Julian jumped back when the one he’d been staring at threw itself against the bars, its jaws opening wider than anything humanly possible.

Brian didn’t laugh, he just nodded at them. “Their nanites have evolved, or mutated, to a point where we felt that the team had a better chance of finding a solution with the nanites in your blood. We also thought that we could examine both of your samples against their samples to find the broken links, but we found nothing we could make any sense of.”

“You motherfucker, Brian,” Julian said through bared teeth. “You played me like a fool. Why did you not just ask me?”

“Because I know you, and I knew you would have to be manipulated to get you to this point. You never would have come to this place on your own. Let’s go get some breakfast, then get started with this.” He waved his hand at the row of cells.

The first breakthrough came almost immediately. It was simple mathematics, at least for Julian. He extrapolated from the base frequencies of light and the electromagnetic wave associated with each of different frequencies. He almost immediately saw the relationship between certain UV frequencies and the severe reaction of the turned.

“UV light,” he said as he strode into Brian’s office that afternoon, not even bothering to knock. Brian looked up from his computer screen. “Huh?”

“UV light, we can use it to repel the turned,” Julian continued. “That is only the beginning of the story, though. I am on the right track. I may be able to reprogram the nanites by varying specific electromagnetic signals. It may take months to develop the right code, but the biggest problem will be how to deliver it.”

“I’ll get two teams together to follow up on the UV light aspect of this so you can concentrate on the other,” Brian said as he examined the papers that Julian had brought him. “I will also give you the best I have on the coding, and we’ll put a team together to begin looking at methods of delivery. This is excellent work, Dr. Ruegg.”

Julian turned away, heading to the lab, but stopped and turned back. “Brian, none of this would have happened if it were not for my mistakes. I will die with the blood of the entire world on my hands regardless of whether we can reverse this. But I will die trying, I promise you that.”

Brian didn’t disagree with him. Instead, he just nodded. “I know, Julian. I know.”

Jay found Auddy at the car park, lying on the hood of her pickup. She climbed up next to her and lay back against the windshield.

“Hey.”

“Hey, sorry for losing it in there.”

“It’s not a problem. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Auddy stared off at nothing. “No, I’m scared every minute of the day, mom. I can’t sleep, or if I do sleep I dream about Danny attacking Mrs. Honaker. My stomach is constantly in a knot. Just about every time I eat, I puke. I don’t know if I can keep going like this.”

“I know it’s hard, but you have to keep going. If not for yourself, do it for me. I need you Auddy, I need Mark and Patty, and I need your dad.”

“How do you keep from being scared though?” Auddy asked, almost pleading for an answer.

“You don’t. I’m scared to death, mostly that I will lose you. You just have to take it day by day, or hour by hour. Just survive the next hour, don’t worry about next week or you’ll become overwhelmed.”

“I look at these people and they all seem to be, like, I don’t know, unfazed by it all.”

Jay chuckled at that. “Believe me, that isn’t the case. Tami told me she almost pees herself every time she hears a door bang shut. We’re all scared, Auddy. Remember what your dad used to tell you at night, when you’d wake up and think there were spiders in your room?”

This made Auddy smile. “Yeah, ‘shut the hell up and go back to sleep.’”

This made Jay laugh outright. “No, well, maybe after the fifth or sixth time you rousted him from bed, but I meant the thing he used to tell you to get you to go back to sleep. That all you have to do is pretend to be brave, and if you keep pretending long enough you won’t be scared anymore.”

“News flash mom, it didn’t work then, and I doubt that it’s going to work now.”

Jay put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “Well, if you can’t pretend that, then pretend that no matter what, your mom is a badass and she won’t let anything touch you.”

Auddy snuggled down into Jay. “Thanks mom, it helps just getting it off my chest. At least I know I’m not the only one who’s afraid.”

Jay stroked her hair and they stayed like that for a few minutes, just lying there in the warm evening air.

“Come on, it’s going to start getting dark in a few,” Jay said as she slid off the hood of the truck. “We need to get back.”

By the time they returned, it was closing in on sunset. All the perimeter guards had come in and a new shift was making their way to the roof to begin the night watch. Ben saw them come in and he waved them over to his table.

“Jay, I need you and Auddy to take a watch tonight. Say, the four a.m. to eight a.m. shift?”

Jay looked at Auddy, who nodded that she would help. “Sure, but we need to be brought up to speed about what to expect.”

Ben shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything you know about the crazies. Like, how did you figure out the UV light thing?”

“Pure luck actually. We’ve been adding onto this building since the original store opened back in 1990. The building inspectors came out here about twice a year to make sure that we were getting permits and keeping everything up to code. Last year they told me I needed to replace all my parking lot lights, because the ones we had were mercury vapor lights and the protective coating was disintegrating. I argued that no one was going to get sunburned from them, but they told me to change them. So, I began the process. I got most of them done, but other things came up and, well, the whole northern parking lot never got done.”

He got up and went to the counter to get another cup of coffee, returned, and continued. “When this all started we lost a lot of people to the ‘crazies’ as you call them. We figured out early on that it had something to do with the vaccine. We are an untrusting lot and believed the vaccination program the government was pushing was not something in which we wanted to participate. We almost changed our minds there toward the end as we lost many friends and acquaintances to the South African flu, but before we could make it to the doctor to get our shots the whole thing broke open.”

“What’s that got to do with the lights?” Auddy asked impatiently.

“Oh, sorry, got a bit off track there. Anyhow, we noticed the crazies would not go into the northern parking lot. They would only attack from the south. Gerald was the one who finally came to realize why. We tested his theory by wiring several of the UV lights up to all of the buildings, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“What about the lights you fixed my SUV up with? Those aren’t the parking lot lights.”

“No, they aren’t. When we told Richard about our discovery, he told us he knew of a place north of Bennettsville that manufactured grow lights and sanitary lights. That’s where we got those.”