Until We End (21 page)

“Great plan,” he deadpanned. I ignored him and fixed my stare on my Dad's kitchen window. “I need to you think about this. Your dad is living here. On this base. And you're just going to what? Knock on the door and ask what's for dinner?”

“I'm going to talk to him.”

“And then what?”

I whirled to face him and slammed my palms against his chest. “
I don't know,
okay? I don't know what's going on! I don't know why he's here. But you better fucking believe I'm gonna figure it out.”

I'd
mourned
for Dad. How could he do this to me?

My legs carried me forward, Brooks and all pain forgotten in a rush of adrenaline. I snatched my pistol out of my backpack and gripped it tightly, just in case.

A shadow passed over the kitchen window. I ducked into the darkness. There stood my dad, silhouetted by the lights in his cozy little house, washing his hands.

Before I could think about what I was doing, I was at the back door. I brought up my pistol — the one Dad got me for my sixteenth birthday — and rammed the door with my shoulder so hard it made the windows rattle. A crash sounded from the inside the house, something dropping to the floor and breaking.

I pushed the door again and this time it crashed open, slamming against the wall.

Two steps and I was in the house, facing him. Staring at Dad down the barrel of my gun.

My body shook with the force of my heartbeat, hands unsteady. Sloppy, since I was pointing a gun at the man who'd taught me to shoot. In different circumstances, he'd be disappointed. He'd scold me. After all, some of our best bonding time happened at the shooting range.

Dad was paler than I remembered, still tall, but skinnier. Stubble dusted his cheeks, something he'd never have allowed to happen pre-TEOTWAWKI.

“Cora,” he said, just a whisper.

My heart dropped into my belly. “Hi, Dad.”

I heard footsteps behind me and didn't have to look to know it was Brooks. I could feel him.

“Put the gun down, Cora,” Dad said.

“I don't think so. I think I'm gonna keep it right where it is until I get an explanation.” I tightened the grip on my pistol, willing my hands to stop shaking. “
What
are you
doing
here?”

“I should ask you that. How did you get onto the base? And who's he?” Dad asked, nodding to Brooks.

Brooks interrupted, resting his on my shoulder. “Cora—”

I jerked away. “Don't touch me.”

He dropped his hand. “Cora, please put the gun down.”

“Why? You said it yourself, Brooks. What is Dad doing here?
Here
, of all places?”

Dad looked from me to Brooks, clenched his fists, and then released them. “Are you okay?”

“How dare you ask me that,” I said. “Don't you have any shame? Don't you
know
what you put us through? You don't even know what happened to Coby! I had to
lie to him
for you. I thought you were dead. And now he's gone.” I took a gasping breath and tried to swallow the tears that burned my throat. “
Gone.
And you're doing what, Dad? What were you doing the whole time I was trying to keep us alive? What were you doing while I was
putting myself through hell to search for him?”

“I was trying to keep you safe,” he said. The firmness of his voice surprised me. It had power behind it. The same power from the man who taught me to shoot; the same brilliance of the man who built us a self-contained ecosystem in the backyard. The same love.

“Oh, yeah?” I hated that my voice shook. The tears building in my eyes began to spill over, running hot down my cheeks. “You failed.”

“No, I didn't.” Dad was getting angry. He never raised his voice when he got mad, not like me. He would get quiet.
Beware the temper of a patient man
is what he always used to say.

“
You
failed,” he continued. “You left home, after I warned you against it. Worse, you left home using the highway system when I told you it was too dangerous. And you left Coby unprotected.”

Each word was a stab in the gut. He was right. I knew he was right.

But wait. “How did you know that?”

“Put the gun down and we can talk about it,” Dad said. His expression softened. “Cora. Please.”

My gun arm shook.

All my life I'd depended on my dad and he never disappointed me. He always protected me. But now it felt like he was asking me to stand on the edge of a skyscraper and close my eyes. Life is filled with leaps of faith. He was asking me to take one without a parachute.

I wanted to trust him. To hand him my gun and let him fix everything.

I settled for tucking my gun into the band of my jeans and saying, “Okay.”

Dad let out an audible breath. “Let's sit down.”

He led us into living room, his shoes squeaking against the tile floor, and sat on a red couch. A chessboard, the game halfway over, sat on the coffee table. White was winning.

I perched on the edge of a recliner, staring at Dad. He was thinner than before, hair grayer, face more lined. But he was still my father. I knew his features as well as my own. We had the same blue eyes and wide mouth. I was his daughter — I came from him. And I'd missed him so much.

“How much do you know?” Dad asked, his words careful. “About the virus.”

“Probably as much as anyone else,” I said. “I've seen bodies. Watched someone die from it. The scientist at the shelter said no one really knows much about it.”

Dad leaned forward. “You've been to the shelter? You were admitted?”

My hands trembled. “Yes.”

“Did they take your blood?”

Did he know something was wrong with me?

I nodded slowly.

“No,” Dad groaned, covering his face with his hands. “
No.”

“Cora,” Brooks said, “what's happening?”

“There's something wrong with my blood,” I told him.

“Nothing is wrong with your blood,” Dad said.

“But there has to be. They said I'd been vaccinated,” I said, shaking my head. “Against the virus. But that's not possible.”

“It is possible,” Dad said, dropping his hands and looking up at me. “You
have
been vaccinated.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, recoiling. “No vaccine exists.”

“Yes, it does.”

“That's impossible. Even the scientist at the shelter said they were still trying to make one.” I shot up from my seat and started pacing, shaking my hands out to stop their trembling. I turned back to face him. “Why are you lying to me?”

“There is a vaccine,” Dad said. He drew in a long, uneven breath. “I helped engineer it. Just like I helped engineer the virus.”

Time slowed. My lungs stuck at an inhale, unwilling to give up their air. My heartbeat hesitated; even the blood flowing in my veins seemed to pause for a moment.

I took a step back. “You're crazy.”

Brooks startled me back to reality. “What the fuck,” he said, “are you
talking
about?”

“It was my work,” Dad said. “Here at the hospital on base.”

The weight of Brooks' hand on my shoulder stifled me. I shrugged it off. “This is
insane
,” I said. “If a vaccine existed, then all those people wouldn't have died. Everyone would've had it.”

“The virus isn't a mutant flu strain like they said it was on TV, Cora. It was a weapon designed for biological warfare,” Dad said. “Indestructible, immune to every antibiotic and antiseptic. I was part of a small team of international scientists who took part in its creation.”

“No,” I said. “I don't believe it. Why are you saying these things, Dad?”

Dad continued with his story in spite of me. “It took almost a decade to engineer the virus, and by the time we quit, we knew it was still imperfect. So when the higher-ups requested a vaccine, we were confused. Why waste the time and money to find a cure for a failed weapon?”

Dad rubbed his face and sighed. “When we engineered the vaccine, we didn't design it for mass-production. In hindsight, I don't think we could've done it any differently. The virus is so intricate. It required an equally complex vaccine.”

His eyes got a faraway look, like he wasn't seeing me. Two tears tracked down his face.

“It was expensive. So expensive, I was sure they'd deny us funding. But they wrote us a blank check. Can you imagine that, the government giving a blank check to a bunch of scientists and doctors?” He focused on my face for a moment before his gaze slid away. “I knew something was wrong. We spent hundreds of
billions
of dollars researching it, and in the end, we were only able to come up with a relatively small batch of the vaccine.”

My stomach clenched. It explained everything, when I let it sink in. Why Dad was so obsessed with preparing for the end of the world. Why he'd created such a huge stockpile, and the greenhouse in our backyard. Why he'd gone to such great lengths to be sure I could defend myself.

Dad really did know the world was going to end. He'd known it all along.

“Do you understand that you're in danger now, Cora? Now that they know you've been vaccinated?” he asked me, his haggard face coming alive with intensity. “Do you understand what this means?”

Numbness began to spread from my chest and into my limbs like a fungus. It was too big to think about. To even imagine. Lonnie, that little girl in a pink dress. Piles and piles of bodies. Mountains of them. People all over the world, dead because of my Dad.

I couldn't speak.

“How did she get it?” Brooks asked. “The vaccine, how did Cora get it?”

Dad looked from me to Brooks reluctantly, pain and shame digging lines into his face. “By the time we'd finished designing it, I knew something was wrong. This was years ago, right after her mother died. If something horrible happened, if there was some accident, I couldn't bear the thought of losing Cora and Coby. They were all I had left.”

“You stole it,” Brooks realized. “The vaccine. You stole it and gave it to Cora. And her brother, too?”

Dad nodded. “I fudged the stock numbers and brought two of the vaccines home. I gave them the shot while they were sleeping.”

Coby. The virus couldn't kill him. A massive weight life off my chest, and in its freedom, my heart raced. He would be safe from the virus — but not from people like Mitchell.

“Who else got it?” Brooks asked.

“I don't know,” Dad said. He shrugged. “Higher ups in the government, I assume. A few millionaires and billionaires, I know. Valuable people.”

“Did you get one?” Brooks asked.

“Yes.”

Brooks didn't get one. I looked back at him, the corners of his tawny eyes creasing as he concentrated, and tried to imagine them dull and milky. Dead. The image sent an electric shot of panic through my heart.

“But how did the virus get out in the first place?” Brooks asked. I marveled at him. How easily he stuck to the facts, gathering information, while my world was ripped apart. “You make it sound like the release of the virus was purposeful, but I can't believe that.”

Dad spread his hands. “I don't understand it either. It was a secure lab. No unauthorized personnel could have possibly accessed it. But I wanted to be sure my children were safe from it.”

I wanted to hug him, screaming
thank you
for my life and Coby's. To lay my head on Dad's shoulder and cry, have him rub my back and tell me everything would be all right, he was here now, he had always protected me, and he'd keep on protecting me. But what he was saying… what he had done… it was too big for me to think about.

“You engineered the virus. So you know all about it. How it works,” I said, needing to say the words out loud. Dad nodded. “Then why are some people dead and others still living?”

“It affects different people at different speeds. Some begin exhibiting symptoms as soon as the virus is incubated, while others don't fully succumb for weeks.”

“The incubation period, how long is it?” Brooks asked.

“Six weeks from exposure.”

Little Didgy was right. Smart freakin' kid.

“What about the scientists at the shelters?” I asked. “Do they know anything about the vaccine at all?” Mitchell, no matter how much hell he put me through, was trying to do the right thing by searching for a cure. I knew that, no matter how bitter the pain in my hip made me.

The yellow walls of the living room made Dad's dark circles stand out in sharp contrast to his sallow skin, and when he spoke, his voice was bone-tired. “They don't know anything.”

“How could you—“ I choked on the words, sputtered, and let them die in my throat. My hands fell to my sides. Tears dripped off my cheeks and fell onto my collarbone, soaking my shirt.

But something else hovered in the periphery of my mind, something that felt like having a word stuck on the back of my tongue.

“Why so long for the incubation?” Brooks pressed.

Dad cleared his throat and gestured to the chessboard on the coffee table. “Do you play chess?”

Blood speckled black-and-white tiles. The crown of the white queen stained red.

“Yes,” Brooks said tersely.

“It's exactly like chess. First, you position your pieces. Or, in this case, the infected. Then you make your move. It was strategic. Remember, the virus was designed to be a weapon first.”

I closed my eyes so I didn't have to see my dad, didn't have to feel the pain, disgust, love and longing that surged through me when I looked at him. I wanted to scream at him. And I wanted to hug him, tell him how much I'd missed him, kiss me on top of the head and wish me a good night.

I craved that closeness. And I felt a guilty sickness for wanting it from him, this man who was my father, and who had a hand in killing an impossible number of people.