“She’s so cold,” Brandon said.
“I know.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where’s Mom? Does she know?”
“I let her sleep.” Brandon would find out the truth soon enough, but at the moment Ash needed him to focus on helping his sister.
Though Josie’s breathing was shallow, he could still feel her chest move up and down.
“It’s okay, baby,” he whispered over and over. “It’s okay.”
“She’s not getting any warmer,” Brandon said after a few minutes.
“Just keep hugging her.”
They were still holding her like that when the front door of their house smashed open. Ash could hear people running into their living room.
“Who is it?” Brandon asked, fear in his voice.
“I called the paramedics before I woke you,” his father said. “Let’s just hold on to your sister until they tell us to move. Okay?”
“Okay, Dad.”
Ash expected the EMT crew to come into the bathroom at any moment. But when no one appeared, he yelled out, “We’re back here! In the bathroom! We need help!”
Footsteps pounded in the hallway, but still no one came.
“We need help! We have a sick girl here!”
Finally, he could hear them approaching the bathroom door. He tilted his head back so he could see into the hallway.
First one person appeared, then two.
But the relief he should have felt was overshadowed by confusion. The people moving into the bathroom weren’t dressed in EMT uniforms. They were wearing biohazard suits.
What happened after that was a blur of images.
His daughter rolling out of the house on a gurney under a plastic tent.
Ellen leaving, too, only the plastic that covered her was a black bag.
And people, dozens of them, all dressed in the same biohazard outfits.
He didn’t know how long he and Brandon had sat on the couch while all this was going on, but it seemed like hours.
Three things he did clearly remember from after that point.
He recalled being led with Brandon out to a truck that had some sort of isolation container on the back. As they crossed the front yard, he heard another cry, this one not of pain or fear, but anguish. Loud and uninhibited. Looking up, he realized theirs wasn’t the only house with an isolation truck out front. There was one parked in front of every home on their block.
The second thing he remembered came several hours later, after he and Brandon had been separated and he’d been put in some kind of cell.
“Captain Ash.” The voice came out of a speaker in the ceiling.
“Where are my children?” Ash asked. “They need me!”
“I’m sorry to inform you, Captain,” the voice said, still calm, “but your daughter died three minutes ago.”
“Josie?” he whispered. “Take me to her! Please, let me see her.”
There was no response.
“I have to see my daughter!”
When the voice next spoke several hours later, it was to inform him that Brandon had also died.
That was the third thing he remembered.
2
Dr. Nathaniel Karp stood with his arms crossed, watching the center monitor. There were three other people in the room with him: two technicians and a guard, all of whom had the highest-level clearances within the project.
The feed in the monitor came from cell number 57. Inside the cell, Captain Daniel Ash continued to pace back and forth, his temper seeming to swing from angry to desperate to devastated and back again with each crossing.
Overlaid across the bottom third of the monitor were Captain Ash’s vital signs. Dr. Karp noted that the captain’s heart rate was elevated, and that his temperature had risen half a degree, but that was understandable given the circumstances. What interested the doctor more was that the captain seemed to be showing no signs of the illness.
The doctor glanced at the other video screens. Seventeen additional cells were currently occupied by neighbors of the Ash family. When they’d first been brought in, they were all like the captain — agitated, but healthy. Now, though, every single one of them was displaying symptoms of infection.
Dr. Karp looked back at Ash’s monitor.
So what makes your family different, Captain?
Ash had been as exposed as anyone else when the spray was released on the three streets that made up the Barker Flats Research Center housing area. But it had not affected him at all. Just like it had not affected his son.
Brandon, was it?
The immunity had obviously been passed down through Ash’s ancestors, and not his wife’s. Preliminary results indicated she was one of the first to succumb. Unfortunately, whatever gene was in play within the Ash family, there was an apparent gender component to it. The fact that Captain Ash and his son had remained immune, while the captain’s daughter had not, was definitely something that needed to be investigated.
In many ways, the girl, Josie Ash, was the most interesting. By all accounts, she had gone through the same stages of the infection as the other victims, but not long after she’d been brought in, she had started to show improvement. And now, seven hours later, her temperature was almost normal.
Still, it bothered Dr. Karp. If the immunity affected the sexes differently, any vaccine they might be able to develop from the Ash family could potentially have the same drawbacks. He was sure the female population of the project would be far from excited if they had to go through the same hell the Ash girl had. There was also the very real possibility that, though the girl was now getting better, she might have suffered some internal damage to her organs while the disease had a hold of her. That would be unacceptable.
No, the gender component would have to be identified and eliminated. If that turned out to be impossible, then KV-27a would not be the answer and further testing would have to take place.
“Dr. Karp,” one of the technicians said.
The doctor acknowledged the man with a look.
“We’ve lost the patients in cells 18 and 31. Five other cells are trending toward termination in the next thirty minutes, and the remaining ten sometime over the following two hours.”
Dr. Karp nodded once, then looked back at Captain Ash. He was sitting on his bunk now, his head in his hands. His heart rate had come down a bit, and despite the fact they had been pumping the virus directly into his cell since he arrived, there was still no sign he was getting sick.
“Call me if anything changes,” the doctor said.
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Karp walked out the door and down the hallway toward the rooms where the children were being held.
As soon as the girl was stable enough, they would move the two Ash kids to a facility outside San Francisco, where observations could continue and the doctor’s team could do more extensive testing to determine the source of the immunity. A day, maybe two at most.
Their father, on the other hand, would not be making the trip. A team would continue to keep him under observation there at Barker Flats, waiting to see if the virus broke through and compromised his system. Dr. Karp was convinced it wouldn’t, but they had to do their due diligence. If in a week, maybe ten days tops, Ash was still healthy, he would be terminated and his body thoroughly examined
Dr. Karp reached the boy’s room first. The guard at the door opened it without being asked, then stood aside.
Brandon Ash was sitting at a small table, an untouched bowl of cereal in front of him.
“You should eat,” the doctor said.
“I’m not hungry,” Brandon mumbled.
The doctor approached the table. “I have good news.”
Instantly, the boy brightened. “My father?”
“Your sister, Josie.”
“Oh,” the boy said, unable to keep his disappointment completely out of his voice.