The Sphinx Project (7 page)

He shifted his gaze to Mouse, Briana and Nicole before returning to Mouse. He crawled to his feet. His body seemed to think that the earthquake continued, swaying unsteadily over his feet.

As he emerged from the shadows of the bed, the changes became painfully obvious. The tiny veins that previously lined the whites of his eyes had darkened and spread, bathing them in red. His pale complexion was ghostly.

"Guy, stay right where you are," Nicole said. Her voice was cool, calm and commanding. I hoped there was enough of the old Guy in there to understand.

He didn't even pause. He kept moving toward Mouse, scuttling like a crab, keeping an eye on all of us. He got closer, focusing all of his attention on her.

"Guy, I'm warning you. Stay the hell away from her," Nicole said.

He didn't even flick his crimson eyes in her direction. His hand was clawlike as he reached for Mouse.

I was unable to move, for fear of hurting him. I'd seen what the other creatures had done, of course. Yet I couldn't help but think that just hours ago, Guy had been Guy. The one who helped us escape. He'd played soccer with us on the grass outside the labs, when Mom had still been around to tell her silly riddles.

As his hand lurched forward, less than a foot from Mouse's face, my decision was made. I was about to spring when Mouse took the situation into her own hands. She grabbed a metal-framed chair and swung it at him with all her might. It slammed him right across the room.

A strange look of shock adorned his face, soon chased away by despair as he curled into himself. For a moment he almost looked like a lost child, but in a flash it was gone. Rage suffused his features. A sound of anger creeped from somewhere deep in his throat.

He launched himself forward again, reaching for Mouse's throat.

This time I was ready. I dipped, sweeping his legs out from underneath him with one of my own. I tried to keep the rest of me as far from him as possible.

Nicole was on him right away, pinning him to the ground. He thrashed, lunging at her with his teeth bared. As she evaded his bite, he freed himself. Nicole reached for one of his arms and I grabbed the other. Briana sat on his ankles, preventing him from thrashing his way free.

He pulled and pushed, hell-bent on escaping. He wrenched his arm so hard that I heard a stretching, snapping sound from his shoulder. He didn't even flinch.

He tried to bite Nicole again, but she twisted away. "Get the cuffs."

Mouse dove at the pack, collecting a handful of oversized cable ties from the side pocket. She kneeled, securing several around his ankles before pinning his wrists together. "What are we supposed to do now?"

That was a good question. They'd never trained us for this at the labs. And there was no one else we could trust. No one to help us.

Wait, no one to help? He'd talked to someone yesterday.

"Where's his phone?" I asked frantically, searching for his bag.

I soon found it, tucked beneath the bunks. I dragged it from under the bed and tipped the contents onto the ground. I found the phone, stuffed into a small waterproof pouch among the debris.

I flipped it open, pushing the power button. The screen lit up, a sense of hope flooded me. There wasn't much battery power remaining—the symbol at the top of the screen was blinking orange.

I found three different numbers under the outgoing calls log. Highlighting the most recent, I pushed connect and listened with bated breath. The phone beeped.

It rang three times before someone answered. The person didn't say anything, but I could hear breathing on the phone.

"Hello? We need your help!" I begged.

"Who is this?" the person on the other end rasped. I still couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. I ignored the question, not sure I was willing to trust him or her yet.

"You have to help us, please. Something's happened to Guy. He was bitten by a creature from the lab. There's something really wrong with him."

"There's nothing you can do. There is no cure for the virus, he's one of them now. Kill him, before it spreads further." It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a suggestion. It was an order.

"No, we can't do that."

"You have to. There's no turning back once the virus takes hold. He wouldn't want to be like that."

"And then what are we supposed to do?" I demanded, almost shaking the phone with frustration.

"You run, you hide and you never call this number again."

The call disconnected with a click, leaving me to stare at the phone. The little battery symbol in the corner flashed red before running out of power completely.

"So, are you going to do it? Or should I?" Briana had been standing directly behind my shoulder.

I shook my head. "We're not killing him."

"Well, what do you suggest then?"

Gazing at Guy, still thrashing in his bindings, memories raced through me one after another. It was like that moment they speak about, those final seconds where your whole life flashes in front of your eyes. Except it wasn't my life, it was his.

"I can't do it," I stated. No matter what he was now, Guy was the closest thing I had to a dad. The closest any of us had.

"It's okay," Nicole said. She stood up, wrenching the still-wriggling man up with her. "I'll do it."

"Can't we just leave him out in the trees? Phone someone and tell them where he is?" I knew I was clutching at straws, but I couldn't let it happen without at least trying to think of a better alternative.

"What if he gets free? What if the scientists find him and take him back to the lab to study? What if somehow the virus mutates? He could begin infecting animals, which means it could spread faster. We need to do this."

Nicole's reasoning was sound, but it didn't help. My throat tightened and tears prickled at the back of my eyes.

I turned as Nicole and Briana yanked Guy to his feet. He continued to fight them every inch of the way. I may not have been able to see him, but I could still hear him.

Mouse's arms wrapped around me, holding on tight. I couldn't halt the gasping breaths as the sobs sent shudders through my body.

"Wait!" I yelled urgently, remembering something important.

I pulled away from Mouse, sprinting toward the others on the far side of the parking lot.

They paused, their expressions obvious as they turned to me:
shut up and hurry up
.

I caught up in no time. Careful to avoid his gnashing jaw, I removed his silver dog tags. I left his wedding ring securely on his finger. These were ours to remember him by. Although not a religious person, I silently said a quick prayer that he'd find his family again where he was about to go.

The girls dragged him into the trees until they were completely obscured from view. I didn't ask any questions about what they were going to do. I didn't need to. I returned to our rooms and began packing.

Mouse and I didn't see anyone as we methodically loaded our stuff into the back of the car, nor when a small aftershock shook the earth. I turned on the car radio, hoping for something to distract me from memories of Guy.

"How many earthquakes have there been this year?" I asked, trying to sound normal while fighting back tears.

"That aftershock makes it six," Mouse replied. "What's with that? We've never had this many before."

"They're really spread out too. We're not even in South Carolina anymore."

"You never know, the Mayans could have been right," Mouse said.

"The Mayans?" I asked, swinging the last of our bags onto the vehicle.

"Yeah. They prophesized that on December twenty-first, twenty-twelve, the world would end. There's a cult that believes them and they're doing the whole 'the end is nigh' thing. I read it in that book," she explained.

"That's really reassuring…"

We said nothing more as we reentered the room. It was bare now except for Guy's bag, his belongings still strewn across the ground where they'd been unceremoniously dumped in my search for his phone. I kneeled, sifting through them.

The phone had been tossed on top and I put that to one side to start a trash heap. Most of the items in the pack made it to the 'useful' pile. Searching his wallet, I withdrew a handful of credit cards, which we kept, along with the remaining twenty-dollar bills and several pictures.

I barely glanced at the images. Seeing his face intermingled with those of his late wife, daughter and us caused tears to well up again. I tossed them onto the 'keep' pile and moved on in an attempt to stop myself crying again. Nicole and Briana came back in as I was dumping the trash into the can.

Nicole ran her gaze over the room before ordering us into the car. She was only a few minutes older than me, but she was always meant to be our leader. She had the backbone I sometimes lacked. To be honest, it had always been a relief not to be responsible for the hard decisions. However, sometimes it would be nice to have more of a say.

As I was about to leave the room, I hesitated. Spinning, I retrieved the phone from the trash can before hurrying out to the car.

We climbed in, Nicole taking the wheel, me beside her and the others in the back.

"Where are we going?" Briana asked.

"Away from here," Nicole stated, putting the car into gear and reversing from the parking space. "Away from South Carolina. I say we head to a big city, somewhere we can hide out and figure out what to do next. We're still too close to the lab here."

"Can we go somewhere with a beach?" Mouse piped up from the back. "Please? I've always wanted to see one."

Like money, we knew what beaches were. We'd seen pictures of them but had never actually been to one.

"I vote for the beach too," Briana volunteered.

"What do you think?" Nicole asked, turning to me.

"Let's go to the beach." It felt strange to be consulted on decisions. I pulled out Guy's big map book, paging through it. "What about this one?" I handed it to Nicole.

"Sounds good." She handed it back to Mouse and Briana, who readily agreed. It was perfect. A big city to get lost in, on the other side of the country with a long coastline. We could disappear completely.

"Los Angeles it is," Nicole stopped at the intersection, looking left and right. "So, which way?"

"Left."

"We need to find an ATM," Briana said from behind us. "In case they cancel the cards. Remember when your Mom's bank canceled hers and she couldn't buy her medicine?"

"We need gas too. We're running low."

We stopped at the next town. An ATM was easy to find—there was one on the corner by a shoe store.

"So, um, how does this thing work?" I asked, standing in front of it. I looked back and forth between the machine and the card. The other girls crowded around me, observing over my shoulders.

We argued back and forth until we finally managed to get five hundred dollars from the card. We'd tried for more, but the machine had said that was the daily allowance.

We used all of the cards, withdrawing the maximum amount from every one. Guy was lucky no one had ever stolen his wallet, since he'd left the pin numbers taped to the cards.

We returned to the car, stopping by a gas station before leaving the small town far behind us.

"I wish we could fly. Surely it couldn't be that hard to get hold of a plane," Briana whined when we were again seated in the car.

"You've only ever flown simulations. There is no way I'd step foot in a plane under your control," Nicole replied.

No one else said anything, opting instead to read magazines and stare out the window.

"Nicole." Mouse and Briana were asleep in the back seat so I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"One day, if we have the chance, I want to go back to South Carolina."

"Why?" She appeared to be a little perplexed. Her eyes momentarily flicked away from the road to look at me.

"Mom wasn't like us. She actually had a family. I want to see where she came from and if we have anyone left." I stared at my hands. The others might understand, or they might not.

Nicole and I were the only ones who'd grown up with our mother around. Technically, she wasn't even our biological mother, but she carried us, gave birth to us and raised us until she passed. Mouse and Briana had been abandoned by their carriers at birth, no strings attached, although we know money changed hands. None of us had biological family anymore.

"And if we find out she had family, then what? Do you think they'd want to know us? We aren't actually related to them. Would they even believe us if we told them we were her children? And if they do know about us, they might turn us over to the lab," Nicole answered, a hint of scorn edging her voice.

I turned away as flames encased my vision. Why did Nicole think it was so wrong to want to find out about Mom and her family?

Staring out the window, I thought about Mom and Guy. The labs had taken away our childhood, and now because of them we'd lost the last person who cared for us. I couldn't do anything about Mom, but I could sure as hell try to make it up to Guy.

Chapter Nine

The journey passed with the speed of a snail. Seeing as none of us had a driver's license, we thought there'd be less chance of getting pulled over if we avoided the highways. It got even more tedious when we passed into Alabama.

Something was wrong; although no houses had cars in their driveways, the streets were empty. Shop doors were closed and windows boarded up.

To begin with, the damage was minor—missing roof tiles, smashed glass, an uprooted mailbox. But soon the destruction became a lot harder to miss, and it got worse the farther west we drove.

Driving into the wreckage, we stopped in front of a sign set in the middle of the road. Sand bags surrounded the base, holding the fluorescent orange board upright. Bold black letters declared the area a disaster zone.

"So what do you think? Keep going, or backtrack and take another route?" Nicole asked from the passenger seat.

"Just go straight through," Briana said, obviously bored.

I steered around the sign and our right wheels mounted the pavement. Something splintered beneath the tires, but I paid it no heed.