Текст книги "The Eden Plague"

Автор книги: David VanDyke

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

-16-

Zeke sprayed some lubricant into the mechanism of the door, stuck a big odd key into a hole in the hooded box fitting, and then cranked the handle to the left like on a combination safe. It took two of them to turn the hatch wheel, and three of them to get it closed again from the inside. It was well-made, but it was old. There were manufacturing plates fastened to the inside of the door that said “US Army Corps of Engineers” and “1943” on them.

They drove their little convoy into an unlit tunnel, bored into the mountain at a shallow downward angle. The headlights showed hastily cut living rock, the seams and veins visible as the tunnel descended through layers and lodes. There was crude and deteriorating bracing of riveted steel girders, and the whole thing was faced with rusting steel mesh. This kept most of the rocks out, but there was one part where they had to get out and manhandle some small boulders and rock fall where it had broken through into the open space of the tunnel. This place hadn’t seen any maintenance in a while.

About a quarter mile down there was another huge double door, with a smaller, man-sized one inset into one side. They opened these too, with less difficulty since it hadn’t been exposed to the elements at all. They drove through, into a vast open space the size of an indoor sports stadium, perhaps two hundred yards across and a hundred high. Huge girders braced the roof, and more steel mesh. There were only a few rock falls that had broken through, along with a trickle of water that was forming limestone riffles and tiny stalactites along the rising, sloping wall-ceiling.

Rows of vehicles stood covered in dull green canvas tarpaulins – five-ton and deuce-and-a-half trucks, vintage jeeps, and construction vehicles, things Daniel didn’t recognize that could be some kind of mining and cutting equipment. He saw a row of dusty glass windows along one side, and several doors. Two truck-sized tunnel openings led even deeper.

They got out and turned off the vehicles, but left the truck lights on. Ten people shuffled around the four modern vehicles in the eerie silence, punctuated by dripping water and the sound of engines cooling.

“Cold in here.” Elise rubbed her arms, then pulled someone’s jacket out from behind a seat and put it on.

Daniel suppressed a flash of jealousy as he saw it wasn’t his. He should have thought of that. She had nothing but the clothes she was wearing. He resolved to fix that situation. He resolved to give her whatever she needed.

“What is this place?” asked Roger, peering nearsightedly around through his thick glasses. It appeared the question was somewhat rhetorical, for he started to answer it himself. “Some kind of government bunker, built back in World War Two…but that backhoe is a 1950s model.”

“Right,” answered Zeke. “The Sosthenes bunker was commissioned in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when they thought there would eventually be a chance of air raids on the East Coast by the Third Reich. The Germans had some super-bombers in development that never panned out. Then as that threat waned, the US kept building because of the possibility of the Nazis getting the A-bomb – and because they’d already paid for it. Never underestimate the inertia of a government contract and jobs in a Senator’s home state. It was to be a place for continuity of governance, where the President, Congress and the Supreme Court could maintain function. It was kept active into the cold war, through the changeover to the better known Greenbrier bunker, code named ‘Greek Island,’ in 1961.”

Arthur crossed his arms. “There is no way this kind of construction could withstand a nuclear attack. The whole thing would probably collapse. Glass in the windows? Pathetic!”

Zeke responded, “They had no idea until the first test how powerful an atomic blast would be. It even surprised the scientists working on it. That’s why they built the Greenbrier bunker, after they knew what it would take. Remember, we were stretched to the limit in the Big One. Once it ended, we breathed a big sigh of relief – for about four years. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949 and immediately started to turn the screws with the Berlin blockade. So the US geared up for the Cold War. The government initiated Project Greek Island in the 1950s and once they had that super-bunker, this place got mothballed. Fortunately for us, over the next fifty or sixty years, it got forgotten about too.”

“How do you know they won’t dig up the information on its existence, pardon the pun?” Elise asked.

“Because I searched every database I could access and deleted all references to it. I buried the only hardcopy file I could find in the basement of the Pentagon, and I took the keys out. It’s in the wrong box on the wrong shelf in the wrong vault, in a section that has already been digitized. But the Sosthenes file never was digitized. It was intended to be secret. So barring incredible luck or a tipped-off search taking thousands of man-hours, no one knows about this.”

“Except that mining official.”

“Sure, but all he knows is he ran into some unknown government property bounded by a fence. He never got in. Once I took a look I knew I couldn’t let anyone in on this. I told him it was hazardous waste storage, and if their mining operations got too close they could release toxic materials. And…I kinda let slip something about nerve gas and national security.”

Several of them chuckled. Elise said, “So he thought you were giving him a cover story and it was really old chemical weapons.”

“Yup,” Zeke replied. “So unless all hell breaks loose and the government actually comes out into the open to find us, enlists the public, it’s very unlikely anyone will connect the dots. If they do…at least we have our Alamo.”

“They all died at the Alamo, boss,” muttered Larry.

“Okay, bad metaphor. It’s our Cheyenne Mountain, how’s that.”

“That’s good, that’s an Air Force Base,” Daniel chimed in.

“Smartass blue-suiter. How about I show you the best part.”

“I hope it involves food, because we only got enough for a couple days,” Larry complained.

Zeke’s ever-present grin got wider. “Oh, baby, you have no idea. There’s enough in here for years. Come on, let’s run a jump.” He drove the Land Rover over to a diesel generator sitting by the wall, then hooked up his jumper cables. A moment later he had the machine started, and a faint orange glow started above their heads from dozens of sodium lamps. Not all of them worked, but there were enough. They turned off the car lights to conserve their batteries.

Elise wondered about the diesel emissions until she noticed its exhaust pipe ran up to a hole in the wall. The air in the cavern seemed fairly fresh, too. There must be some natural ventilation, like in those “breathing caves” found here and there.

Zeke walked over to the door at the end of the long row of windows. Vinny went with him. He turned on the lights inside, which were faint and flickering fluorescents. They looked like they wouldn’t last much longer. If they were going to refurbish and use this place, light bulbs were only the first of many things they would need.

“Oh man, this is a trip!” Vinny blurted, looking at the half-century old equipment.

“Yep, and not a computer in sight. Just good old dials, knobs and switches.” Zeke flipped some of the switches and the lights came on in the two big tunnels, stretching deeper down into the mountain. The generator coughed and strained under the increased load. He flipped another two switches and two-thirds of the sodium lamps above their heads went off. There was still plenty of light.

“What happens when we run out of diesel?” Daniel asked him.

“That’s just for temporary use. Let’s go down and get this place running again. Larry, Roger, Vinny, you come with me. We’ll get the hydroelectric plant going. You guys look around up here. There shouldn’t be anything more dangerous than falling rocks. That reminds me – I suggest everyone wear a helmet. If you don’t have one, there are hard hats in there,” he said, pointing to a storage-room door.

It took about four hours but eventually the tone of the generator changed, and a plethora of ancillary lights came on – exit lights over doors, secondary lights in the rooms behind the windows, and the sodium lamps got brighter. They also felt the soughing of a ventilation fan, apparently to supplement the natural air. That would help if they had to run any vehicles. Spooky took it upon himself to turn off the diesel generator, and nothing bad happened. It looked like the hydroelectric power was sufficient.

They’d been keeping busy exploring the cavern and the installations around it. There were locker rooms with showers and toilets, and after a lot of running, the water from the pipes cleared. The hot water faucets even ran fairly warm. There must be a hot spring or something like that.

There were offices with carefully mothballed manual typewriters, sealed canisters of replacement ribbons and bottles of ink. There were airtight boxes with paper and envelopes and manila folders, straight out of the 1950s. There were light bulbs and extension cords and fans and swivel chairs and a whole huge room full of shelves stocked with automotive parts in tinfoil and cellophane packing. There were cans of bearing grease and motor oil and differential oil and paint and ammonia and everything else imaginable. Daniel wondered how much money they could get for some of this stuff online. He knew one source of income they had if nothing else.

Much of it was unusable after all this time, but some was pristine, like the day it was made. He looked at a perfect, shiny set of hubcaps for the 1948 Ford Super Deluxe sitting on its flattened tires in the big cavern. The car itself had 257 miles on the odometer. It would probably fetch a year’s pay at an auction. This place was a museum and a goldmine.

Later on, Zeke showed them stacks of mint gold and silver coins in a vault, placed there to ensure the occupants had money if paper currency collapsed. There were also bundles of uncirculated US bills from the 1940s, which would fetch more than face value to collectors, at least twenty million dollars.

From this Daniel realized why Zeke hid that file. He was as honest and patriotic as the next man but who wouldn’t be tempted by twenty million in ready cash and all these toys? And it was all unknown, a victimless crime, a treasure trove just waiting half a century for someone to put it to use. He felt slightly guilty, but there were far more important considerations.

 

 

-17-

Daniel and the rest spent the next day moving in and trying to get the basics working in the bunker. Months of effort stretched in front of them if they were to live here long term.

They found a residence level, with over a hundred individual rooms. There were open bays that could house many more people in less comfort. Elise and Daniel took rooms well away from each other. Daniel didn’t trust the emotions born of those first intense moments, and he figured Elise didn’t either, so he would give it time, but they did spend a lot of time together, talking around their feelings, spiraling closer.

Struggling with not letting their physical desires for each other take over, Daniel realized more and more how much they were slaves to their own biology. There was an old saw about “if you don’t control your passions, your passions control you.” Daniel resolved to remain his own master, no matter what the Eden Plague did to him. He wasn’t about to jump in the sack with someone too soon. He’d done enough of that when he was younger. Besides, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just because of the Plague...and did he really want to risk her getting pregnant?

They – the two of them, and the rest – ate almost every meal together in a cafeteria with a kitchen attached. Right now food preparation consisted of dumping cans into saucepans and heating up the contents.

After a few days Zeke called a meeting for dinnertime, and they gathered there at one long table. He talked on his feet, pacing up and down, while everyone ate. “We have electricity, food, heat, air, and supplies. We need to discuss our next move.”

“What ‘we,’ Kemo Sabe?” Larry quipped.

Laughter from the older people. Elise and Vinny looked confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Daniel told her. Probably had barely even heard of the Lone Ranger.

“Seriously. What are we going to do?” Zeke said.

A long silence. A raised hand.

“Yes, Roger?”

“We need to set up a lab again. We need equipment. An electron microscope. DNA sequencers. Computers.”

“Noted. You three scientists draw up a wish list.”

“We need to set up the satellite dish, get comms up. We need internet, preferably tap into a landline somewhere,” said Vinny.

“Ditto. Make a list. You’ll be on the shopping team.”

Daniel crossed his arms. “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? These are details. We need to discuss the bigger questions.”

“Such as?”

“Identity. Policy. Strategy. Structure. What are we? Are we just a bunch of outlaws? Are we an A-team? A township? Does everyone start bringing their families in here? Or do some of you who can, go back to a normal life and keep this knowledge to yourself? Because any one of us could blow the whole thing wide open, and get everyone buried deep in government black.”

Zeke blew air past his lips. “All right, good questions. Anyone?”

Elise said, “I think I speak for all of the former INS employees when I say we want to stay here for now and resume our research. This involves the fate of humanity. I don’t trust Jenkins or the government to handle it right. As long as this doesn’t turn into some kind of freaky cult, I don’t care much what the policy and strategy is. Not right now.”

Skull spoke. “We need to agree on some ROE, though. Rules of Engagement. Such as, no one they are looking for can leave the bunker unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“He’s right,” Daniel said. “That means me and the INS people stay. And, nobody tells anyone else about the situation without everyone’s agreement.”

“Everyone? That’s cumbersome,” Zeke said.

Daniel responded, “Okay, then majority agreement? Right. I’ll start first. My dad lives a couple of hours from here. He has his own plane and some land. They will probably be watching him because of me, but we can agree in advance that he can be told and he will eventually come in, but only when we are sure it’s safe.”

Nods all around.

“And I know Zeke is waiting to say what he wants, so I’ll say it for him. His family. Wife and two kids. The longer we wait, the more likely they will connect him to me and the harder it will be to get them here. Zeke?”

“Yeah. What DJ said. I want them brought here. And my mom. She’s in a home with Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t even know me anymore. I don’t mean to sound cold-blooded but we might as well try the Eden Plague on her. She’s just in God’s waiting room right now anyway. It would be worth whatever side effects if her mind was restored, even for a couple of years.”

“Everyone okay with that?” Daniel asked.

Vinny said, “Why don’t we just all agree that any immediate family that will be brought here, and we trust, can come in. But don’t tell anyone that’s going to stay on the outside.”

“See, there’s policy. Agreed?” Daniel asked. Everyone did. “Is there anyone that plans to go back to their life and forget about all this?” Daniel looked in Skull, Spooky and Vinny’s direction. They were the big question marks.

“No way,” says Vinny. “This is the coolest thing since forever. I always wanted to live outside the law and hack into anything I wanted. My family is Uncle Tran’s, so I’m just speaking for myself.”

There were nods and quiet mumbles of approbation. Everyone looked at Spooky, expectantly.

“I cannot bring my own family. Too many friends, brothers, uncles, cousins, my people. Unless they all come. So I go back. I am the man on the outside. Maybe there is a time I will bring my people in. Or send in some of them. Agree?” Spooky looked around anxiously, an unusual emotion for him to show. Everyone nodded.

Zeke said, “Done. Skull?”

Skull sat impassively, his arms crossed like Daniel’s. “I have to think about it,” he said. Stares turned his direction, some hostile.

Daniel didn’t want the man to be driven away. He had to keep peace. “Just as long as you don’t give up our secrets, I’m okay with that,” he said.

The rest of the group followed his lead, accepting. Skull’s expression might have thawed a trifle.

Larry spoke up. “Well, I’m infected, so I ain’t goin’ back to live. But I’d like to go back home for a while, see who might be good candidates. And I got my eye on a honey but it ain’t a done deal yet. I got a sister and she got kids, and then there’s my mom and dad. All right?”

Nods all around.

Zeke clasped his hands together, rubbed them briskly. “That’s settled, then. Because they’re at the most risk, the first expedition is to get my family. Then we can get anyone else’s. Who’s coming with me?”

The discussion sorted itself into two parts. The A-team composed of Skull, Larry, Spooky, and Zeke would go get his family. Once they were secured and en route to the bunker, Larry and Spooky and maybe Skull would go get Larry’s relatives, and possibly some of Spooky’s. The rest would stay at the bunker, with Vinny doing the shopping trips, and get the place in order.

-18-

Right before the mini-A-team left, Elise sought out Zeke. She watched from the doorway for a minute as he suited up, before disturbing him. “Here. Protein bars. Stick ‘em in your pockets.”

“Thanks, doc.” He took them, stuffing them into various places in his clothing.

“I’m not a doctor.”

“Closest thing we got, right?”

“No, that would be Daniel. I’m just a scientist, I never practiced on anybody.”

“Except for injecting people with the Plague.” Zeke grinned. “Like the Swiss Army knife of combat medicine.”

“Funny you should say that. Take this too.” Elise handed him a zippered pouch.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

“Syringes? See, you’re a doc. What’s in it?”

“Like you said, Eden Plague. From my saliva.”

“But I can just bite anyone I need to.”

“I think this will work faster. Bigger dose. And it might have its uses.”

He opened the pouch, looked at the two preloaded syringes wrapped in padding. “Okay.”

Elise took his hand. “Good luck, Zeke. I’m looking forward to seeing your wife and Ricky and…”

“Millie.”

“Right. “ She smiled crookedly. “Bring them back safe. I’m tired of being the only woman here.”

He hugged her like a father, like a brother. “Thanks, Elise. I will. Take care of DJ.”

***

Zeke and Larry took the Land Rover, Skull and Spooky the Cherokee, a natural division. On the way Zeke and Larry hardly stopped talking, reminiscing about missions and comrades, friends and golf games, women and bars.

The other two drove in relative silence, listening to the radio and making a few comments about the road. They all had their secure radios but kept them in push-to-talk mode.

Eight hours later the pair of SUVs pulled into a truck stop at the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Carolina, just after dark. They sent Spooky in for food.

Zeke opened up a disposable cell phone, activated it, and called a special set of digits. He entered a code and his home number. This process masked the call, routing it through an offshore international service, nearly impossible to trace.

“Hi, Cass, it’s me. How’re the kids?”

“Everything's green here, Mister J.”

Zeke’s blood chilled. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll be gone for two more weeks.” He rambled on about family concerns couple of minutes before hanging up. Disposing of the phone, he switched his secure radio to voice-activated mode.

“They’re under surveillance. My wife gave me the code for ‘being watched.’ I told her to expect extraction at two a.m.”

“Damn, Sam, you got that girl well trained,” Larry chuckled.

“Actually, she got me trained. I never told you what she did before, did I?”

“Not really. State Department or something?”

“Well, I did meet her at the US Embassy in Moscow. I was there as a military attache. She was deputy station chief.”

“She was Agency?”

“Yup. In the ultimate tradecraft training ground city. She’ll be fine. We just have to make a plan to get them out and break contact. That means we have to locate the surveillance and shut them down.”

Skull chuckled. “Does that mean I’m weapons free now that DJ Do-Right is out of the picture?”

Zeke sighed, exasperated. “Alan, if we kill their people it will raise the stakes tenfold. Right now daddy Jenkins is trying to keep everything hush-hush. Dead Feds, or even contractors, will force him to fess up to his superiors and they’ll come after us like a pack of hounds.”

“Joking, boss, joking.”

“I hope so. If you have to shoot, wound them. One of us will bite them if we have to.”

“Why don’t you do that anyway? Won’t that screw them up? Get them fighting the disease instead of us?”

A long, thoughtful pause. “Interesting idea. Maybe when we get back we should start trying to weaponize this thing. Create a delivery system. Darts or something. See if it can be put in a water supply. So we can make good on our threats.”

“Hmm.”

Spooky returned with the food.

“How do you think they connected you with Markis?” Skull asked Zeke.

“Good intel work. Assemble a database of all his associates. Cross match with things like, ‘Did he treat them in the field?’ ‘Are they at home or out of town?’ Stuff like that.”

“I hate intel pukes,” Skull growled.

“Only when they’re on the other side.”

“I hate them all.”

Zeke exchanged silent looks with Larry. He shrugged.

“Let’s focus on our five-meter targets, shall we? We make a sweep of my neighborhood. Locate the surveillance. Make a plan. Ready?”

Affirmative grunts and sounds.

They drove into Fayetteville. Zeke led them to an unused corner of a large, well-lit gas station. “This is our ORP. Make your sweep, maintain commo, meet here.”

The SUVs split up, approaching Zeke’s suburban middle-class home from two different directions. They quartered and searched the blocks, looking for vehicles with the telltale signs of a surveillance team: being parked on the street, not in a driveway; extra antennas; roomy models, like vans or big SUVs; too-black windows; sitting heavy and low on their suspensions; magnetic business logos, the kind that can be slapped on and peeled off easily. There were many clues if one knew what to look for.

It didn’t take long. Skull spotted them first, and called on the tactical net. “I got a cable service truck on your street. Old van, new paint, UHF and satellite antenna, barrier between the driving and cargo compartment. Parked between houses.”

“That’s probably it. No cable technicians working this time of night.”

“Do they ever work?”

“Ha ha. We going in light or heavy?”

“No way to sneak up on them. If you want them deactivated, we have to do it heavy.”

“Understood. Rally now at the ORP.” They met back at the gas station.

Zeke said, “We need a shock truck. Spooky?”

“If we can find it, I can steal it.”

“Okay, spread out, report when we got one.”

It took them twenty-five minutes to locate a suitable truck, a flatbed two-ton. Spooky had it gone in sixty seconds. Skull drove. They talked over their plan of attack on the way.

Zeke and Larry pulled up at the end of the alley that ran behind his house. “In position.”

“Roger. Commencing shock run.”

Skull put the truck into gear, coming around the corner nose-on the surveillance van. At the same time Spooky drove the Cherokee around the opposite corner, slowly, focusing the watchers’ attention on him as they looked out the back window.

The shock truck was going forty when its heavy steel bumper smashed into the nose of the van. Impact drove the vehicle several car-lengths down the street, coming to rest on its side.

Spooky pulled up in the Cherokee. He and Skull jumped out of their vehicles, charging the van. Through the shattered back window they could see broken electronics and camera equipment, and two men lying amid the wreckage, moving weakly. The shock had jumbled them like mice in a paint shaker, and the smell of leaking gasoline wafted through the mess.

Spooky stepped through the opening and pistol-whipped each in turn, ensuring unconsciousness. Then he pulled out the syringe Zeke had given him and pumped half of the contents into each. “Get them out, Skull.”

“We should let ‘em burn,” he grumbled, reaching in to drag the men out with Spooky’s help, tossing them roughly onto the closest suburban lawn. He keyed his mike. “Van and team out of commission and infected. We’re extracting; people are already coming out of their houses.” Skull popped a smoke grenade and tossed it into the van. The flaming smoke mix soon ignited the dripping gasoline and the vehicle caught fire with a whoosh. By that time they were around the block and heading toward the ORP.

Zeke and Larry had already pulled through the alley up to his house’s back gate, blasting twice on the horn. Zeke exited, fastening the barrier out of the way, and then bolted inside. A moment later he ran out, carrying a skeletal boy wrapped in a blanket. Larry held the door open. Right behind him followed an athletic woman of about forty and a girl of eight.

“Hi, Cass. Hi, Millie,” Larry rumbled.

“Hi, Mister Larry!” piped the girl.

Cassandra nodded to Larry, handing him a suitcase.

Headlights appeared and the roaring of an engine sounded at the end of the alley, accelerated toward them. Cass shoved Millie into the Land Rover, while Larry reached for his shotgun under the seat.

Muzzle flashes sparkled from both sides of the oncoming vehicle, and Larry’s twelve-gauge roared over and over. Zeke hunched over Ricky, shielding him with his body, while Cassandra drew a pistol from the small of her back, taking cover behind the door to return a rapid hail of bullets.

The headlights wobbled, then skewed leftward as the oncoming vehicle bucked and rolled down the alley with a grinding crash of metal. Cassandra reloaded while Larry ran at the smoking wreck of a Suburban. He looked inside, seeing two men unconscious. He reached in, taking their guns and tossing them into a nearby garbage can, then knelt down among the wreckage.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said aloud to himself, then bit them each in turn. “Feel like a freakin’ vampire.” He returned to the Land Rover.

Larry was almost there when he heard an anguished sob, choked off, then a high keening. He leaped forward, shotgun searching for a target, but there wasn’t anything to shoot.

Cassandra knelt over Zeke, who lay stretched out on the ground. Millie stood there wailing, her small hands tangled in her hair, pulling. Larry pushed her gently aside, confident the Eden Plague would make it all right.

Not this time.

Zeke’s eyes stared sightless at the glowing suburban sky. Blood and brains leaked from the hole in his head. Cassandra stroked his face, crooning, “No, no, no…”

Larry cursed, a string of bitter vulgarities. “Come on, Cass, he’s gone. He’s gone. More might be on the way, we have to get going, we have to break contact.”

Cassandra growled with frustration, muttering under her breath, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch! Help me get him in. We’re not leaving him.”

Together they rolled Zeke in a blanket, then manhandled his body into the back of the SUV. Larry drove them away from the scene as rapidly as he could without attracting attention.

“What was that?” asked Spooky over the radio.

“They got Zeke. Lucky head shot. He’s gone,” Larry answered miserably.

Silence. Then, “Shit.”

“Meet at the ORP. We still have to get Zeke’s mom.”

“What?” asked Cassandra. “Why? She’s in a facility. What can we do?” Her face was a frozen mask of iron control.

“Because we can cure her Alzheimer’s, we think. It’s a new thing. But if we cure her we have to take her with us because if they find out we did, they will turn her into a guinea pig in a lab somewhere.”

Cassandra digested this as they met at the ORP. “All right, I’ll tell you where to go. Do you think they’ll be watching her?”

“We have to hope not. They can’t be everywhere.”

Twenty minutes later they pulled into a complex labeled “Green Pastures Managed Care Home.” They took her out the back way in a wheelchair, dodging a sleepy staff, and got her into the vehicle.

The return trip to the bunker was a smooth surreal nightmare. Ten bags of truck stop ice packed Zeke’s body in the back of the Cherokee. Larry drove the Land Rover, silent, bleak. Zeke’s mother Beulah sat buckled into the front seat, humming softly to herself for a while before falling asleep. Cassandra sobbed from time to time, an arm around each of her children in the back seat. Millie slept most of the way, which was a relief; it wasn’t real to her.

About two hours out, Ricky spoke up. “I’m hungry, mama.” He reached up to grasp her arm.

“Ricky!” She took his hand in hers, feeling the strength of his grip.

“Mama, I’m hungry. I’m really hungry.”

“Cass,” Larry said. “Cass, he has to eat. It’s really important. Here.” He rummaged in a cooler between the seats. “Have him drink this protein shake.”

“That’s not for kids!”

Ricky started to cry, clutching his stomach. “Unnhh.”

“Please, Cass, trust me! It’s what he needs. Zeke must have given him the cure before he…before he got hit. It burns energy and food.”

Cassandra made her decision to trust Larry, grabbing the can and opening it with the flip-top. She put it to Ricky’s lips.

He grabbed the can with both hands and guzzled it down.

“His hands are strong! That’s amazing; just yesterday he would never have been able to pick up that can!”

“I know,” Larry said. “It’s a miracle, a God-blessed miracle. I’m so sorry about Zeke. But this stuff…it’s gonna fix Ricky and it’s gonna fix Beulah and a lot more people in the world. We’ve got this place in the hills, you’ll see it soon…” He went on explaining, bringing her up to date on what had happened.

She listened with half an ear and half her mind, lost in the wonder of her son’s recovery.