Allegiance (5 page)

Outbreak - Day 15

Schriever Mess Hall

Colorado Springs,
Colorado

Raven’s breakfast
consisted of tepid, over-sweetened oatmeal and a glass of flavorless powdered
milk that had all the viscosity of air. How anyone choked the stuff down was
beyond her comprehension.

Skipping the brown
morass being passed off as hot cereal, Brook opted to drink her breakfast. She
sipped at the steaming mug filled with what Cade liked to call “Schriever’s
finest brown water,” while her daughter worried the bowl of oatmeal,
concentrating intently on what looked to Brook like an intense game of
stand
the spoon up
.

Looking around the mess
hall, she noticed that the place was nearly empty. Gone were the civilians who’d
made the room full of narrow tables and benches a pain to navigate, clogging
the place up with their disorderly back-and-forth forays through the chow line.

Suddenly she wondered why
the food she had helped liberate and bring back to Schriever wasn’t being
served. Surely
all
of the Pop Tarts hadn’t been consumed already. Then,
for a New York second, she entertained the idea of going around the end of the
steam table, strutting confidently behind the three-man crew, making her way to
the dry storage and
taking
what she had risked her life to help procure.

Though the look on
Raven’s face would have been priceless, thankfully the thought was fleeting and
gone before Brook acted. For the life of her she couldn’t put a finger on why
she was obsessing about Pop Tarts. The problem had roots elsewhere, and this
was how it had started the last time—before she had gone and begged Colonel
Shrill to allow her to tag along on the food run. Only that time her ire had
been directed first at her husband, who was already onboard a helicopter and
halfway to Jackson Hole, and then she had redirected that anger and taken it
out on the inanimate objects in the Grayson billet while Raven looked on in
horror.

But that small itch
needed to be scratched again. The little imp was sitting on her shoulder
telling her how exhilarating it was on the outside, and in less than
twenty-four hours—if Mister Murphy didn’t intervene—she would be getting her
wish. For better or for worse, she and her family would be together without
extraneous forces poking their noses in where they didn’t belong. In a
nutshell, the whole wide world awaited them outside the wire.

Finished with her
breakfast
,
Raven dropped the spoon and looked up at her mom.

With a coffee mug
clutched in a two-handed death grip, Brook stared blankly into space.

Wearing a devilish grin,
the bored twelve-year-old waved a hand in front of her mom’s slack face.
“Hellooo... anyone home?”

The words had no effect.
Pulling out all the stops, Raven conjured up her best hypnotic-sounding voice,
regal and high in tone, and said, “When I snap my fingers, you will let me eat
as much candy as I want.” Raven tried her best to snap her fingers but it was
one of the many grown up abilities she had yet to master.

Brook snapped out of the
daydream on her own, directed a quizzical look at Raven, and then slowly and
methodically glanced over her left shoulder and then her right.

“Why were you staring at
me?” Brook whispered.

Suppressing a smile,
Raven answered coyly, “No reason, Mom.”

Brook cocked her head,
thought about something for a second, and then let it slide. “Let’s go then.
We’ve got family business to attend to.”

She extricated her legs
from under the low-slung cafeteria table. After all the meals she had taken
here, the place still reminded her of elementary school—minus the sloppy Joes
of course. What she wouldn’t give for a steaming, greasy, tangy tomato sauce
and ground beef slathered hamburger bun. And a cold chocolate milk—real—not
powdered. Salivary glands kicking in, she rose and shouldered her M4.

With Raven in tow, Brook
arrived at the door at the same time a pair of civilians entered. A redheaded
girl, who was talking a mile a minute, came through two steps—and a mouthful of
uninterrupted words—ahead of the twenty-something male. He wore a military-style
boonie hat jammed low over a shock of bright red hair.

Brook recognized Wilson
immediately—he was the kid who had driven the Dakota truck during their
foraging mission south of Colorado Springs. And because she was still
embarrassed at how poorly she had treated him that day, she tried her best to
avoid eye contact.
Don’t look over here, do not look over here,
she
chanted in her head.

Seemingly heeding her
telepathic command, Wilson glanced at her weapon and kept his eyes downcast.
Meanwhile, like a monkey on Red Bull, the teenager chattered on.

Raven stepped aside to
make way for the redheads.

Home free
, Brook thought as the pair passed by on her
right. Then, as if in slow motion, his gaze flicked up and met her brown eyes.

Her stomach clenched.

He stopped abruptly, and
like he had run into an old, long lost friend blurted out, “
Brooklyn Grayson
...?”

She nodded and felt the
blood drain from her face.

Raven scrunched her brow
and shot her mom the universal look that said,
Who in the hell is he?

“It’s me...
Wilson!
”
he exclaimed. With an explosion of scarlet hair, he took off the boonie hat and
repeated himself. “
Wilson
... and how have you been, Missus Grayson?”

“I’m fine...” she lied.
“This is my daughter, Raven.”

Silence.

“Where are your manners,
Raven
?” Brook uttered through clenched teeth.

Raven faced the tall
young man and answered shyly with a forced, “Hi.”

“Hi Raven, I’m Wilson.”

“You said that
already...
three
times.”

He winked at Raven, then
motioned towards the redhead girl on his left. She was half a foot shorter than
he and trying her best to avoid the introduction. “This is my
little
sister, Sasha,” he said.

“
Wilson
,” she
cried. “Did you have to say it that way?”

“Hi,” replied Raven, who
by now was warming up to the idea of meeting the strangers.

Brook smiled and offered
her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you Sasha.”

“Yeah... me too,” Sasha
replied with all of the sincerity of an IRS agent. Then, turning towards Wilson,
she demanded they go.

“
Bye sis
,” he
said with a smart ass waggle of his fingers that could be construed as nothing
but a blatant shooing motion. Obviously glad to be rid of his sibling, Wilson
continued on without missing a beat. “I’ve heard a
lot
of talk about
your husband recently.” He paused for a tick. “
And...
about what
really
happened to Ted. He didn’t die in the barracks
outbreak
... Ted found out
from Nash how William really died... and then
hanged
himself. And that
was a direct result of your on-the-fly diagnosis of Pug. Hypothesizing,
correctly it turned out, that he had that dual personality thing going on,
which led to us collectively putting two and two together and then
unwittingly
sending Ted into an emotional trap... at least unwittingly on
my
part.”

There was a short
silence. Brook’s jaw tremored but she remained silent.

“If you ask me,” Wilson
went on, “Ted should have been allowed to continue believing that William died peacefully...
not told that his partner had been shot in the face while in the madman’s
presence. By Pug... Francis, whoever the hell he thought he was when he pulled
the trigger and then set the infirmary on fire.”

“I had no idea Ted would
learn the truth,” Brook whispered. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wanted
revenge, I guess.”

“The truth of the matter
is that you withheld information,” Wilson said sharply. “The
antiserum
,
your
brother,
and God only knows what else. Same as lying. So, now it’s
time for you to come clean. What did
you
know and
when
did you
know it?”

Brook swallowed, processed
the information, yet said nothing.

Sensing she was being
exposed to a whole lot of information that was supposed to remain locked down
in the grown up
need to know
files, Raven tried to remain invisible so
she could collect more
Intel
as she’d heard her dad call secret stuff.

“I’ve been
hoping
to run into you for the past two days now,” Wilson went on. “Apparently the few
of us civilians who survived the
outbreak
can’t be seen rubbing elbows
with the Army folk. Now me and Sasha are staying where the scientists used to
live. Nicer digs... a little
haunted
though. Like someone left some
unfinished business. And seeing as how I now know most of what really happened
the day after Pug and the rest of us got here...I understand why you’ve been
avoiding me.”

For a tick Brook stared
at him, and then she breathed out and closed her eyes. She heard the clank of
service on ceramic. The sound of an industrial dishwasher, sloshing and
whirring on ad nauseam, emanated from somewhere in the back of the kitchen.
Voices engaged in small talk, serious sounding words and everything
in-between—all drowned out by the sound of her rapidly beating heart and the
heavy rush of hot blood flooding her head. Sure she could handle getting dirty.
Shooting Zs... No problem. They weren’t human anymore. But dealing with the
truths that Wilson had just spewed in front of her... Big steaming piles of
righteous words that cut to the bone—it was almost too much for her to process,
let alone answer to.

“Mom, are you OK?”

Brook tried to breathe
normally, to calm herself down so she could respond. Short shallow gulps
brought air into her lungs. She longed to sit down but her limbs wouldn’t
answer the signals from her brain.

Still waiting for a
response, Wilson shifted on his feet and moved aside to let an airman, who had
just entered from outside, slip between them. He crossed his arms, hoping for
an apology.
Anything but silence
, he thought.

“Truth hurts... huh,” he
stated. “The
outbreak
the other night wasn’t isolated to the civilians’
barracks. Sash and me were right here,”—he pointed at the floor—“ and we saw a
man get his throat torn out. People are talking, and it doesn’t take an effin
rocket scientist to connect the dots—just a former Fast Burger manager—and I’ve
been all ears.”

“Yes. Yes it does. The
truth hurts more than you know,” croaked Brook. “I’m truly sorry. I wronged you
on so many levels. Some of those things I wasn’t even supposed to know.”

“Cade?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “If
you knew half of the things that I know my husband has done for this country
over the years you’d understand why I couldn’t say anything.” She paused and
gazed down at Raven, who appeared to not be listening. She was kind of lost in
her own pre-teen world.

Wilson’s eyes bored into
hers.

“In case you haven’t
been keeping score,” Brook added, “just in the last week the President
authorized the use of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil...”

“Forty effin miles from
here. And you think that hasn’t crossed my mind, lady? I’m twenty, not
stupid... but for what it’s worth, I forgive you. Doesn’t bring Ted back
though. But I still forgive you.”

Brook drew Raven close
and swallowed hard, choking back tears. “Why?” she mumbled.

“Because I saw how you
disregarded your own safety and rushed to help that little girl. And then how
you handled it when things went sideways... that speaks to your character.”

How old is this kid?
thought Brook. Because what he’d just said made
him seem wise beyond his years.

“Wilson... your
breakfast is cold,” Sasha called out, her shrill voice carrying across the mess
hall.

He said nothing, turned,
and reluctantly joined his bleating kid sister.

Then, as Brook and Raven
made a second attempt to leave the mess hall, the flat light of summer burst
through the door, and in followed another young person. She stood an inch or
two taller than Brook, and wore her raven black hair braided into a ponytail
that tickled the small of her back. The young woman’s silver nose ring, boldly
tattooed arms and black painted fingernails shored up Brook’s first impression:
the beautiful creature had to be nearly two decades younger than her.
Where
are they all coming from?
she asked herself. And then suddenly she felt
old. Not wise and worldly from her three and a half decades on planet Earth.
Not wily and resourceful because she had kept herself and her young daughter
alive in the face of so much adversity. No. In the younger woman’s presence, she
just felt old. Then, out of the blue, she thought about her mom. Not the Omega-infected
being that
used
to be her mom. Brook had worked very hard at purging
that final awful image from her memory—the one featuring the bloody corpse
dragging itself down the carpeted hallway in her childhood home in Myrtle
Beach. No, the thought that had just popped into her head wasn’t visual. It was
her mom’s soothing voice repeating a favorite saying that she had never
attributed to anyone in particular. It wasn’t Ralph Waldo Emerson or Louisa May
Alcott, it was simple and to the point just like her mom had always been, and
she had uttered it at the last birthday Brook had attended and every one prior.
‘Brook my dear,’ she used to say. ‘I’m not sixty; I’m eighteen with forty-two
years of experience.’ It was a piece of wisdom disguised in joke form, and
always delivered with a happy cackle and a wink.