H.A.L.F.: The Makers (34 page)

“Are there guards there like I thought there’d be?” Thomas’ voice crackled in Jack’s ear.

“Double grounded? Yes, sir, will do.”

“Two guards, then? And Alecto is there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. You know what to do. I’ll let you know when I’ve uploaded the false feed. Let me know when you’ve secured our package.”

Jack was glad to have something to do with his hands while he waited. It wasn’t a guitar, but at least the busywork helped keep his mind off what was going to happen. If all went as planned, the Zissnine would put Price and Davis into a deep sleep. Thomas had said they’d wake feeling like they had the worst hangover of their lives. Jack was glad the Zissnine was sleeping gas and not poison. He wasn’t opposed to using deadly force if he had to protect himself or someone on his team, but he’d rather avoid bloodshed if possible.

Jack was ready to pull wires. He almost reached his grabbing tool into the hole in the wall when he remembered that he had to make sure power was cut to the circuits he was working on or he’d get a nasty jolt. When he’d practiced this step in Thomas’ house he’d just gone to the circuit-breaker panel and shut off the correct circuits. He couldn’t do that here.

He tried to reach Thomas on the intercom link. “Ed? Come in, Ed.”

No reply.

“Ed? I need you to cut power to this circuit so I can pull wires.”

Nothing.

The twitchy stomach was back.

Erika hoped that without the Conexus in charge of their journey, the trip home would be more pleasant than the trip to the future had been. She got no such luck. If anything, it was worse. She now understood why the Conexus had put them to sleep for their first time travel.

Time was stretched and compressed, as they were. Though it might have lasted only a few seconds, it was also eternal.
Are we going to end up in an even more distant future Earth, more desolate than the last?
As the dark and cold of the quantum vacuum enveloped her, Erika passed out.

A loud pop roused her from the sleep imposed on her by lack of oxygen. Her head felt like it was in a vice. Her ears rang. There were sounds, but of what she did not know. Sounds were muffled and gurgly as if she were under water.

The pressure eased. The stretching ended and she was once again ensconced in a bright light.

Erika closed her eyes to shield them from the blinding light. Her neck dripped with sweat though her arms were prickled from the cold. She wanted to open her eyes – to see what place the orb had taken them. But she was afraid to look. This trip was a one-way journey. If they ended up anywhere other than Earth in their own time, they were hosed.

She mustered the courage to open her eyes. Her vision was blurry. She blinked rapidly and looked around. There was a blob to her right and one on her left. The cobwebs in her mind cleared along with her vision. It was Ian on her right and Dr. Randall to her left while Tex stood in front of her.

“Is everyone okay?” Dr. Randall asked.

His voice warbled as though Erika’s ears were filled with honey.

“We’re alive,” Ian said. “Too soon to tell if we’re okay.”

Tex remained quiet though he appeared to have come through the travel without further injury.

Though the ship’s door remained closed and there were no windows, they could see through the walls to the outside. The landscape was familiar. The ground was the color of a honeyed latte dusted with sage-green bushes and cactus. The sky a brilliant blue edged with wispy white clouds.

And two figures approached the ship cautiously, covered from head to toe in white hazmat suits.

“How do we open the door?” Erika asked.

Before any of them had a chance to look for a control, the side of the ship opened and a ramp extended. As soon as the doors began to open, the two white blobs stopped their approach.

“Do you think we’re on Earth?” Ian asked.

“It appears so,” Dr. Randall answered. “I suggest that we exit together and form a ring around Tex to reduce attention on him.”

They slowly progressed down the ramp. Erika breathed in the rich air deeply. Her lungs had burned from lack of oxygen, but the pain was gone. She sucked in another breath of warm, dry, oxygen-rich air. Her head cleared. Her brain’s cells rejoiced to be fed well again. Her skin prickles disappeared. The sun was bright and warm on her skin.

Dr. Randall stopped about five feet away from the two people dressed in hazmat suits. Another fifty yards back from them were a half dozen green military trucks and about a dozen more people all dressed in the same hazmat suits. All of them except for the two that approached had AK-47s trained on them.

“Who are you?” the man in the hazmat suit asked.

“I’m Dr. William Randall, former chief scientist for the A.H.D.N.A. program, recently retired.”

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hazmat registered any recognition of his name or the program. Whether it was because they were playing it cool or because they truly had no idea who he was, Erika didn’t know.

Mrs. Hazmat took a few steps closer and asked, “Why were you in that ship?”

Dr. Randall continued to field the questions. “That’s a rather long story and highly classified. Before we get into that, we all are in dire need of medical attention. Answers to your questions will have to wait.”

The man pushed a button on his wrist and pulled it to his face. “They’re human. Quarantine situation. Yes, full containment.” He put his wrist down. “You will receive medical attention, but you must first be debriefed. Come with us.”

Ian stepped forward on the other side of Erika. Mr. and Mrs. Hazmat took a few steps backward.

“Look, the who we are and why and how we got here is a very long story. We’ll share it with you over a coffee someday. But we need medical help first. Now.” As if to punctuate his point, Ian passed out and face-planted on the sandy ground a few feet from Erika.

Ian couldn’t have planned it any better if he tried. Mr. Hazmat got back on his comm and told someone on the other end of his radio connection that they needed an ambulance. “Yes, immediate status change. Full containment but with medical evac.”

While he radioed, Erika knelt on one side of Ian while Dr. Randall knelt on the other side. Dr. Randall felt his wrist for a pulse. He glanced up at Erika. “He’s still with us. But his pulse is slow and weak. Likely severely dehydrated.”

Erika looked to Tex. “Can you help him?”

Tex stared at her evenly. “He simply needs hydration. I cannot help him with that.”

Tex was even more distant than usual and had a nearly hostile tone. Erika wanted desperately to speak with him alone and try to understand what was going on with him. But it would have to wait.

Erika took Ian’s hand in hers and stroked his hair. She put her lips next to his ear and whispered, “We’re home. Hang in there. It will be okay soon. We’ll all be okay.” She brushed his hair. His skin was dry and paler than she’d ever seen it. Ian had pushed himself too hard to help them escape. But his reserves were spent. If he didn’t get help soon –

Dr. Randall stood and stepped closer to Mr. and Mrs. Hazmat. “What organization are you with? D.A.R.P.A.? N.S.C.?”

Mrs. Hazmat said, “Actually, we’re CDC.”

Dr. Randall breathed a loud sigh of relief.

“Thank God.” He spoke quietly. “Look, you have to listen to me. The military will want to take us to a military facility. It is imperative to both national security and the health and welfare of every American citizen that you stall that. We’ve been exposed to a deadly virus that a – terrorist organization – intends to disseminate into the general population. I need to speak with Dr. Montoya from the CDC office in Phoenix immediately.”

The man said, “You know Dr. Montoya?” He looked skeptical.

Dr. Randall nodded. “I implore you. Before you hand us over to the military, you need to get word to Dr. Montoya that I’m here and that I need to see her. Please. If you buy us some time on this, it will save countless lives.”

Dr. Randall’s clothes were filthy rags that hung on him like a sack over a skeleton. His glasses were so dirty, Erika didn’t know how he saw through them, and they were crooked on his face. He looked like he’d escaped from an insane asylum.
If I was them, I wouldn’t listen to him.

But the woman pulled her wrist to her face. “Get Dr. Montoya over to medical unit A. She needs to see someone.”

Within a few minutes two white ambulances arrived, bouncing over the washboard road and throwing up a cloud of dust. They were completely devoid of markings on the outside such as a town or county name. The men and women in them were dressed in the same full-body hazmat suits. They spoke to Mrs. Hazmat for a few seconds then got a gurney. They scooped Ian onto it and had an IV started before they even got him through the doors of the ambulance.

“I’m going to ride with Ian,” Erika said. He once again teetered near the brink of death. She hoped that if she held his hand, it would tether him to life.

Dr. Randall patted her hand. “I’ll stay with Tex. I need to make sure they don’t hook him up to a saline IV.” He smiled wanly at her.

He looked so tired. Erika hoped he would accept medical attention for himself after he got Tex squared away.

Tex stood behind Dr. Randall. He was staring off into the distance as though he was asleep or maybe in the midst of a daydream.

“Tex?” She waved her hands in front of his face.

He moved his head slowly in her direction, looked at her, blinked then returned his gaze back to the distant spot on the horizon. It was as though he didn’t even know her.

“You coming?” one of the medics in the ambulance with Ian asked her.

Tex had been through so much.
Maybe he’s not as okay as I thought he was.
But she would have to worry about it later. Ian needed her.

She jogged to the ambulance, and the medic lent her a hand and pulled her into the back. She crawled in and knelt on the steel floor next to Ian and took his hand in hers again.

His eyes fluttered open but only for a few seconds. But it was long enough for him to register that she was there. His lips curled into a small smile that faded as he passed back into the dreamless sleep of unconsciousness.

The medics didn’t use sirens or lights. They drove as fast as they could on the bumpy dirt road, but they couldn’t go more than about thirty without risking bouncing Ian too hard. The bouncy ride made Erika’s right shoulder ache where she’d held the butt of the rifle. She was relieved when the ambulance finally turned onto a paved road.

The paramedics asked her questions about Ian’s health history. Had he had measles? A history of chest pain or asthma? Her patience wore thin with what seemed like irrelevant questions.

“Look, you’re wasting time with these stupid questions. Let me help you get to the important stuff. He got infected with a nasty virus, okay? It nearly killed him. High fever. And see those sores on his face? They were filled with blood. He even had blood oozing out of his eyes and from his nose. See the stains there?” Erika pointed to Ian’s face. “And to make it all worse, we were – he was – deprived of food, water and medical treatment for a really long time. It’s sort of a miracle that any of us made it.”

The questions continued anyway. “Where were you held? Where were you when they infected him?”

“I don’t know. It was – well, we weren’t shown where we were.”

Another medic took over the interrogation. “Was it near here? Were you in Arizona?”

Technically, they were in Arizona. The fact that it was thousands of years in the future? Well, they didn’t need to know that bit. “Yes. We were in Arizona. Near Ajo.”

The medics looked relieved. One of them said, “That’s good news, anyway. At least it’s not a new outbreak.”

New outbreak?
“Wait – you’ve seen this virus before?”

They ignored her question but pressed her to answer more of their own questions about Ian’s symptoms. A part of her wanted to tell them to stick it. If they weren’t going to answer her, why should she answer them? But Ian’s life hung in the balance, so she forced her hardheadedness to the side and answered as best she could. Her answers were mainly from memories of her own reaction to the virus rather than observation of Ian.

Erika had assumed that they’d landed in a remote area and that it would take hours to get to a hospital. In Arizona, if you weren’t in one of the major cities, you were at least an hour from a medical center.

But within fifteen minutes, the ambulance stopped. One of the paramedics handed her a bag with a white hazmat suit in it.

“You’ll have to wear this, miss.”

“But –” If Erika told them that she’d already had the virus, there’d be no need to wear the stupid suit. “I’ve already been exposed. You saw me holding his hand. I’ve touched him – kissed him even.”

“Sorry, ma’am. Protocol. You can’t go in without one.”

“But I’ve already had the virus.” She didn’t see any point in wandering around looking like a marshmallow.

“You got the virus – and survived?” The paramedic sounded incredulous.

“Yep. Sick as a dog, but I got better.”

He handed her the suit anyway. “Look, we can’t take any chances. Until you’ve been tested and your story pans out, you gotta wear the suit like everyone else we bring in. No exceptions.”

Erika grudgingly took the hefty suit and donned it. She wasn’t about to let Ian out of her sight.

The medics swung the back doors open, and at least a half dozen people in the same white hazmat suits hovered just outside the doors. There was no sign of Dr. Randall or Tex.

They quickly pulled Ian out and wheeled him across the pavement toward a large complex of buildings. Someone gave Erika a hand down. Her legs were shaky, but even without food, she was feeling much better with plentiful oxygen to breathe.

People peppered her with questions and took notes with gloved hands on small pads of paper. She looked around and tried to answer them, but her head swam again. The complex of buildings was familiar to her. Brick buildings she’d seen before. Concrete paths she’d walked before. It made no sense for them to take Ian inside on a gurney. He needed medical attention.
Why are they taking him inside our school?