Jacob's Odyssey (The Berne Project Book 1) (33 page)

I grabbed my backpack. "Let's go," I told them. Becky had stopped crying, but her eyes were still red and swollen. We got out of the truck and I locked it. And as I walked past the bed of the truck, I set the keys as casually as I could in the back corner of the truck bed. I wasn't sure why I did it.

Four steps led up to a large steel door. The door was a good three inches thick, painted pewter gray. I went up first to check things out. He held the door open with one hand and cradled an automatic weapon with the other. He was my age, maybe a few years older, and he was all business. His eyes were narrowed in concentration. He had a lean, hard build and a tight face with a sharply delineated jaw line.

A few feet back from the door stood a slender man in chinos and a crisp burgundy polo. The man had thick, silvery hair that was neatly trimmed. It looked to be a fresh cut. He smiled easily at me as I stood in the doorway. He had one of those comfortable-in-his-own-skin smiles. He radiated relaxation and a quiet confidence. He wore aviator-style wire-rimmed glasses. And if you threw a suit on him, he could easily pass for a corporate officer. He looked to be in his fifties and looked fit. The only hints to his age were the silvery hair, a web of fine wrinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes, and a few thread-thin creases across his neck.

He looked as if the apocalypse had never touched him.

I stepped aside and let Sarah and Becky into the building, then I followed them.

"We're so glad you made it. Please come in. My name is Lukas Melzer. That's Lukas with a k," he said. "I'm a consultant with the Homeland Security Department."

Melzer stepped forward. "And you must be Sarah," he said warmly, extending his hand. Sarah hesitated before reciprocating. He took her hand and placed his other hand on top of hers in a reassuring gesture. Sarah stared at the enormous, open room behind Melzer.

Melzer held Sarah's hand a moment longer before letting it go.

The room was dominated by a maze of drab gray office cubicles filled with computers and other office paraphernalia. There were three long rows of cubicles divided into sections of four by vertical and horizontal hallways. The ceiling was a good twelve feet high, giving the room a cavernous appearance. A bank of offices lined the left side of the room.

Becky leaned into her mother's side and wrapped her arms around her.

Melzer nodded sympathetically in the direction of Sarah's eye. "That must hurt," he said. "Maybe we can do something for it."

"It's fine," she said.

Melzer shrugged and turned his attention to Becky. "And you must be Becky. How are you, young lady?"

Becky forced a half smile and pressed her head into her mother's side.

"Well, that's all right. We've certainly been looking forward to meeting you, Becky. We understand you're a very special young girl."

The security man closed the door quietly and locked it. The door had a simple knob lock and a large vertical deadbolt toward the top. He slid the deadbolt up into its chamber and pulled the deadbolt knob over to secure it in its slot, and he picked up a security bar off the floor and placed it against the underside of the door knob.

Melzer noticed the bat handle sticking out of my backpack. "And you are...?" he asked me.

"Jake," I told him.

Melzer smiled and offered me his hand and I shook it.

"Very nice to meet you, Jake," he said. "Please call me Lukas."

"I'll do that," I told him.

And then he looked around and seemed puzzled. "Excuse me. I thought there were supposed to be four of you."

Sarah and Becky stiffened.

"Our friend didn't make it," I told him.

He seemed to sense our discomfort. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

We all stood there awkwardly for a moment.

Melzer raised his arm usher-like in the direction of the offices to our left. "Let me show you where you'll be staying and you can get settled in and relax for a while. We'll be leaving first thing tomorrow morning."

We followed Melzer. Coleman trailed silently behind us.

I was surprised to hear Melzer say we'd be leaving. I knew the idea of moving to a secure location had been suggested in the text message, but I couldn't grasp the idea as real, and I had difficulty reconciling the idea in my mind. All along I'd been dead set on getting to the cabin, and not going there felt like a betrayal. Getting to the cabin had been my sole focus till Sarah and Becky and Raj had showed up. Now my mind was scrambled, and I didn't know how I felt about anything.

Melzer led us to the first two offices toward the front of the room on the left. Just past the offices was a stairwell door that led up to the top two floors. Along the front wall of the room, there was a cafeteria to the left, his and her rest rooms in the middle, and double doors to the right that led to the reception area.

The double doors were solid oak and had thick, vertical deadbolts at the top similar to the back door. A barricade of tables and chairs and computers were crammed up against the double doors. Even though the double doors were the most vulnerable part of the building, there was little to worry about. The infected would have to get through the front doors in the reception area first before they could ever get to the double doors. And Melzer told us it would be easy to isolate the infected on the first floor. The only access to the second floor came via the elevator in the lobby or the stairwell. And Melzer mentioned they had a security bar for the stairwell. No one would be able to get past the stairwell door with the security bar in place. If the infected somehow breached the building, we'd simply move to the second floor, securing the stairwell door with the security bar, and escape via the helicopter.

Sarah and Becky and I were the sole lodgers on the first floor. Both Coleman, the security guard who'd let us in at the back door, and Alvaro, the other security guard, roomed up on the third floor. Alvaro was also the pilot. Melzer mentioned them both by name but never introduced us. They alternated doing security sweeps of the building, the top three floors and the basement. But there was little to do since there was only the front door and the back door to worry about.

The back door was virtually impregnable, and Coleman and Alvaro couldn't check the front door since they'd barricaded the double doors leading to the reception area. But they conducted their security sweeps anyway. Melzer told us their most important job was going up on the roof. They would go up every half hour checking on the movements of the infected in the area.

Melzer had taken an office on the second floor to be close to the two scientists who shared the lounge on the second floor. The labs were located on the second and third floors.

Sarah and Becky took the office nearest the stairwell and I took the office next to theirs. It would only take us a matter of seconds to get to the stairwell if the need ever arose.

They'd brought in a second couch from one of the other offices for Sarah and Becky's room so they'd have enough room to sleep. And they pushed the desk and the chairs up against a wall so they'd have more room. The offices were only slightly less drab than the cubicles. The walls were a soft avocado green and the carpet a light beige. The outer walls of the offices had large opaque windows that let some light in yet offered privacy.

My office had a desk and a leather swivel chair and then two chairs in front of the desk along with a couch. Two file cabinets stood in the corner with a mix of rustic-hued plastic flowers carefully arranged in a jade vase sitting atop one of them.

I tossed my backpack onto the couch and sat next to it. I tried not to think about Raj. I felt out of sorts, disoriented. We'd stepped into a new world and I didn't know what to make of it.

I took one of my t-shirts out of the backpack and pulled off the two long sleeve tees I'd been wearing. I did it with great care. My shoulder still ached.

After I put a fresh t-shirt on, I dug my iPad out of the backpack and checked to see if the internet was still alive and it was. I checked the usual sites but found nothing of interest, so I turned the iPad off and stretched out on the couch.

I felt exhausted and numb and my body ached all over. I rolled over and buried my head in one of the throw pillows. I did my best not to think about Raj and what had happened back at the house, but the scene burrowed its way into my mind nonetheless. I knew Raj's death wasn't my fault, and I wasn't going down that self-judgment road again. Not this time. I'd done everything I could. Raj didn't have to open that door. If he hadn't opened that door, he'd be alive and well. Raj had a choice to make and he made it, and that was on him, not me.

And then I thought about being up at the cabin. And I let images of the cabin and the stream and the woods drift before my mind's eye. Not even a minute passed before I was asleep.

*****

It wasn't long after I'd awakened that I first heard him. I had awakened adrift in a haze and several moments passed before I realized where I was. I'd slept for a solid three hours and was surprised to have slept for so long. I attributed the deep sleep to feeling completely safe for the first time in a long time.

Though his strident yell was severely muted by the thick walls of the building, I knew it was him. The sound came from the street side of the building opposite the offices. More infected would be coming, drawn by his hypnotic call, but I wasn't worried. Being in the building gave me a sense of security. It was as if we were no longer a part of his world.

I had been standing in Sarah and Becky's room when I heard him. Becky had glanced in the direction of the sounds but she either didn't hear them clearly enough or didn't connect them to the Swimmer. At least she didn't look concerned. Sarah didn't seem to notice at all.

An hour later Sarah and I were sitting on a couch in a medical room on the second floor. She had found a first aid kit in one of the cabinets and was ministering to my arm. Before she tended to the wound itself, Sarah had tested the range of motion in my shoulder. Even though my shoulder was still sore, I managed to rotate it a full 360 degrees. I did feel some pain when I raised it up all the way, but at least I had full range of motion with it.

After she'd tested my range of motion, she cleaned the wounded area and tended to the splinters still embedded in my arm. Turns out the three splinters I'd pulled out earlier weren't alone. Sarah had found a pair of tweezers and a needle and doused them in alcohol and pulled a few splinters from my arm. Then she inspected the wounds closely with the needle, carefully separating the skin to find any leftover slivers hiding in the wounds.

I did my best not to flinch as she pulled them out.

Becky wasn't with us. The door to the medical room was open and I could see Becky looking through a microscope. She had made friends with the younger virologist and was being entertained by the scientist out in one of the labs. All the labs had glass walls except for a few feet of drywall at their base.

Before Sarah and I had made our way to the medical room, Melzer introduced us to Drs. Nardone and Flanagan. Both specialized in virology and immunology, and the two scientists were as different as night and day.

Dr. Nardone looked to be in her fifties. She had dusty brown hair well on its way to gray and wore reading glasses with braided chums. And while she wasn't overweight, her body seemed to have settled and become sluggish from decades of sedentary lab work. During the introductions, Dr. Nardone stood stiffly in her white lab coat, looking impatient. Her thin lips were shut tight as if she had lockjaw, and occasionally her eyes would dart here and there around the room. She seemed uncomfortable, and as soon as the introductions were over, she quietly went back to work without so much as a word.

The other virologist's name was Dr. Amy Flanagan. She had wavy light red hair and a smattering of freckles below her eyes. Her freckles were so light, they were barely distinguishable from her facial skin. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was fresh and friendly and had an infectious smile and hit it off with Becky right away.

Sarah was studying my wound closely, her face no more than a few inches away. She had located another sliver and moved the tweezers into the wound with exacting precision.

"I heard him," she said casually.

I wasn't sure what she was talking about. "Heard who?" I asked.

She squeezed the splinter, pulled it out steadily and examined it. "I heard Raj," she said quietly. "I know he let them in."

Sarah dropped the sliver into a waste basket she'd set next to the couch.

I didn't say anything. What could I say?

"Why do you think he would do that?" she asked. Then she pulled away from her handiwork and I could feel her eyes on me. I turned to face her. Sarah's face was smooth and calm, yet I could sense an underlying angst behind the calm exterior.

"I don't really know, Sarah. Maybe he thought he needed to prove something to himself."

I thought it was as close to the truth as I could come.

"He was being selfish," she said peevishly.

Then she broke eye contact with me and looked into her lap. Her hands had settled there in a meek posture. Her shoulders were slumped and huddled tight into her body as if she were cold. She seemed lost somewhere in her thoughts. Then her lips curled inward and the veneer of calm that had defined her face just moments ago began to break apart. The wavy worry line came first, then her eyes became crimped and narrow, and I could see the pain clearly written in them. And her chin began to tremble as it had so many times in the past twenty-four hours, and she started crying in a low, soft whine.

I instinctively reached for her and put my hand on her shoulder and she leaned softly into me. Her body shook and the whines soon turned into a soul-rending howl. Its intensity unnerved me. I wasn't used to overt displays of emotion and felt ill-equipped to deal with them. I could feel myself stiffen and I did the only thing I could think of—I placed my injured arm lightly across her shoulders.

Becky appeared in the doorway of the office, her face twisted in concern. She ran to the couch and sat behind her mother and embraced her lightly from behind and began to lovingly rub her mother's back.

We comforted Sarah for maybe twenty minutes. After a while, her cries turned into soft sobs. Eventually, she became quiet other than an occasional sniffle. Then she straightened herself and brushed the tears back from her face.

"I need to finish treating your arm," she said, as if nothing had just happened.

"Okay."

A sudden, familiar awkwardness cropped up between us.

Becky stretched out on the couch and settled her head onto her mother's leg.

Sarah cleaned the wound again and applied some Polysporin to it. Then she bandaged it up with gauze and tape and unfurled my rolled-up sleeve back down over the bandage.