“Ah, good to hear from you,” Lars said. “My roommate the guard was none too eager to put me on the phone. Did you come up with a diagnosis for Rose Marie?”
“Lars, we did. But that’s not why I’m calling.” Henry sighed. “It’s gone, Lars. The MHS is gone. Someone took it.”
Erie, PA
“Where is it!” Lars raged at Ace. After his phone call he had stormed past the guard and screamed Ace’s name in the street until the leader arrived and pulled him aside.
“What are you screaming about?”
“Where is it?” Lars asked again. “You know what I am talking about.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Let’s try this again. You were with Homeland Security, you know if it, you know the location, you are the logical culprit. Where is the MHS?”
“I don’t have that.”
“The hell you don’t and you show me where it is.”
Ace laughed. “If I did have it, why would I show you where I’m keeping it?”
“Because you brought me here for it. I’m not here to be a doctor, I’m here for the MHS. Isn’t that right? Now if you have it, you damn well better show me where you have it. Because if you are going to keep us all, all of us around the world’s most deadly germ, I need to make sure it is secure! Your little ‘dominate the world’ plan will go out that window if that germ stands an inkling of escape. Now, I’ll ask again. Where… is…it?”
“I should have known,” Lars said, smacking his head. Something was up with the Diary Queen, it drew too much attention and had two guards on the building.
It was empty as Lars followed Ace across the small store and to the back. “How ironic. A place that symbolized something so sweet holds something so bitter and deadly.”
Ace said nothing. He unlocked a door and left it open for Lars, and stepped into the room.
Lars followed. “You’re keeping it in the basement of Dairy Queen?”
“I’m keeping it safe and secure and you’ll see that.” Ace led him across the empty basement and to a single silver door.
It was apparent it was a walk in cooler.
“This door is air tight,” Ace said as he opened it.
“Do you just have the virus perched on a shelf next to old produce?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Me? You have a deadly virus down here and you call me ridiculous?” He stepped inside.
“Pull the door closed,” Ace instructed. “We won’t be locked in.”
The freezer was emptied except for a single, small stand up freezer placed in the center of the room. Ace placed his hand on the lid. “They’re in here.”
Lars walked to the case and hesitated in his reach for the lid.
“Go on, check to see if they’re safe. I assure you they are,” Ace said. “They aren’t just glass tubes. The vials are inside metal tubes as well.”
“The antidote?”
“There as well. Look for yourself.”
Lars lifted the lid. The stand up freezer had a shelf inside, and placed on it were five metal tubes and five vials. “There should be more.”
“There should be,” Ace replied. “That’s why you’re here. I need you to make more antidote.”
Lars laughed. “How would I have the means to do that?”
“I’m working on that.”
“We’re not even sure the antidote works.”
“It does,” Ace said. “I know for a fact. I was pulling the vials and I dropped one of the metal cases. When I went to retrieve it, I notice the top had broken and the vial inside had smashed. I was exposed. I immediately took the antidote. As you can see, it worked.”
“How unfortunate.” Lars shut the lid to the freezer. “This is insane. You realize that, right? Destroy this now.”
Ace shook his head. “I won’t do that.”
“Do you honestly plan on using that?”
“If I have to, yes.” Ace nodded. ‘How do we know what’s out there, on the other side of our borders? Outside our country? We don’t.”
“I can almost assure you, it isn’t people waiting to start a war or kill us. Not now and not for a long time. My God, an influenza pandemic has decimated our world. Billions are dead. Our country, this country, is struggling to hold on to what life remains, and you want to possibly use a weapon that can kill off what remains of this country or a good part of it.”
“No, Lars. I don’t want to use the weapon to kill off this country,” Ace said. “I want to use the weapon to control it.” He walked to the door and opened it. “Let’s go.”
“You’re insane. Completely and utterly insane.”
“Actually, I think I’m pretty smart.” Ace motioned his hand for Lars to walk out. “I mean, it takes smart man to think of this as a means to get what he wants.”
“No it doesn’t. It takes a cold blooded killer to even conceive the idea.” Lars walked past him.
Damon, NY
They made it back faster than they took to get there, but once they got to the hospital and settled into the quarantine area near the Ebola patients, time dragged.
It seemed as if it took hours, when actually it was only a little over one.
Mick sat in the hall, his elbows to his knees, face buried in his hands. All he could think about were his boys. He thought for the longest time about their lives and how it was possible he would never see them grow up. He was angry; it was never his intention to cause them any more pain. All he wanted to do was ensure they had a future, one without the threat of a deadly virus wiping them out again. At least one controlled by man.
Briggs showed up shortly after Doc had drawn Mick’s blood. At first he bolted down the hall with childlike enthusiasm, sputtering off about how Lars gave them vital information on how to infiltrate the camp. He was proud of how easily he deciphered the message. And then Briggs finally noticed where they were and put two and two together.
They talked the entire time they waited on Doc.
“And you’re sure?” Briggs asked.
“Positive. We need to infiltrate that camp, with minimal loss of life to civilians, take out his entourage and get that germ. Top priority. That’s what needs to be done and I know my part.”
“But—”
“No buts. If you were me, what would you do?”
“I don’t know, Mick. I don’t know if I’d give up hope.”
“With this thing? Is there any hope?” Mick asked. “No. I don’t want my boys to know if I’m sick, I don’t want them to even think I’m sick.”
“But you never know what can happen. You don’t. Look, we had people who should have died of the flu, they didn’t. Miracles happen.”
Mick chuckled. “Why does that sound so odd coming from you?”
“You don’t know me,” Briggs said. “Get to know me. You’ll see. Rethink—”
“No.” Mick grunted and stood. “God. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this. Why didn’t I just listen and stay home with the boys? Why did I decide to take this stupid road trip?”
“To save them. To save your town.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it was psychic. Maybe it was fate. God’s intervention. Who knows? But had you not taken the road trip, you would have not known what was out here. How do you know Lodi isn’t supposed to be the recipient of the missing virus? You could have been sitting ducks and anything could have happened to your town. Why? Because you believed that all was good in the world, you never would have seen the bad coming.”