AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nodded. “Yearly physical.”
“Hmm. Maybe they shipped to doctors’ offices like retail outlets. Who knows?” Carly continued to sort through the papers while Justin picked up Dagny and engaged her in a rousing game of peek-a-boo. The baby squealed with laughter.
There were more memos about shipments and egg allergies and the legalities involved in sub-contracts but nothing about the Infection. Even for the short period after the Infection began to spread, there was no acknowledgement that Cederna’s shots were providing immunity. Carly sat back in disappointment, and Justin rubbed her back.
“You okay?” Justin’s voice was soft with concern.
“I just thought I’d find something, you know?”
“You did find something. And I’ll help you look through the file cabinets.”
Carly shook her head. “It’s no use. If there was anything important, it would have probably been piled here. Maybe those papers were the ones on top that burned.”
“Perhaps.” From the slight hesitation before he spoke, Carly knew he still didn’t think she’d find a smoking gun or that it would matter, even if she did. But he was willing to help her because he could see it meant something to her. “Maybe it was just a coincidence, honey. Maybe the shots did provide immunity, but they never made the connection. Or maybe they did know but were still afraid to admit they hadn’t made part of the shots, all the way up to the very end.”
“So, they let people die, knowing they had a shot that could keep people from getting Infected?” Were there really people who were that evil or that shortsighted? She guessed the pile of half-burned papers was the answer to that. Someone thought there was a secret that had to be preserved, even when it looked like humanity itself was at an end.
It made her think about what her dad had said while they were watching the news. Was the president still alive? Was he still down there in that bunker, still the president, though there were no armies or cabinet members to carry out his orders? Which version of the shot had he been given?
They stayed the night in the building, pitching their tents for privacy’s sake in the gymnasium with the horses. Carly thought it must have been a nice place to work. Besides the gym, there was an exercise room next door with a large array of elaborate workout machines, half of which Carly had never seen in her hometown gym and had no idea how to operate.
Justin was delighted by the giant cans of food they found in the cafeteria’s pantry and the haul from the building’s snack machines. She hadn’t realized how stressed he was over their dwindling supplies until she saw his relief after finding the food.
Carly didn’t sleep well that night. Her mind was occupied by various theories and scenarios about the vaccine. She remained as still as she could, but Justin eventually sighed and pulled her snug against his body.
“You need to sleep, honey,” he whispered into her ear.
“I know. I just can’t stop thinking.”
“Carly, you’re probably never going to know what happened. None of us will.” Justin kept his voice pitched low so as not to disturb Mindy and Stan. His dark eyes glittered with intensity in the low light. “The people responsible for this plague are likely dead themselves, and we’ll never know who or why.”
Emotion tightened Carly’s throat. She knew that was true, but a small part of her had held out hope, had believed there were answers out there somewhere. “If this were a movie, a hidden box of documents would come crashing through the ceiling right about now.”
“Sorry, honey, but real life rarely gives us all the answers we seek.” Justin brushed a caramel curl behind Carly’s ear and smiled at her, his eyes tender. “Maybe someday, college students will write papers on the Infection the way they did about the Black Death, and maybe archaeologists will uncover important clues about how it spread, which can narrow down its origin. Maybe they’ll even uncover a letter claiming responsibility sent to a newsroom somewhere. But that’s for future generations to find. Right now, we need to find a home in a place where we can settle down and build a good life for our daughter.”
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry I dragged you all this way for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing. You needed answers, and we got a few.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. “I love you, Justin.”
He cupped her cheek. “And I love you, Carly, more than I can say.”
Their days soon fell into a comfortable pattern as they headed south. Stan and Mindy turned out to be excellent traveling companions. Once Justin had shown him a few of the essentials, such as how to build a fire and purify drinking water, Stan turned out to be very helpful. He was also excellent with the horses. Storm liked him almost as much as she liked Justin and would follow him through the woods while he picked up firewood. She even followed him into houses a few times when he went in to scavenge for supplies. After Storm climbed the stairs to the second floor of one of the houses—and was then too afraid to walk back down them—she had to be dragged and pushed by Stan and Justin, while she squealed in terror. After that, she decided human dwellings weren’t all that interesting after all. She stayed outside with her mother, where there might be flower beds to pillage. They were both indignant the humans had begun to take all of the yummy treats from the vegetable gardens for themselves.
Finding food was becoming a real problem the further south they got. The houses on the back roads were often empty before their group reached them. Carly remembered what Justin had told her about dog food the day they met, and she began to feel a vague stirring of unease.
Sam brought them rabbits every day, sometimes more than one, depending on what crossed their path. They weren’t at the point of actual hunger, but seeing the supplies dwindle in the back of the wagon made all of them nervous, especially as they began to encounter people who wanted to trade valuables like ammunition for food.
One afternoon, they came across a pair of bodies lying in the road, dead for less than a day, beside an overturned wagon. Every bit of the food was gone, but other valuables, such as seeds, medicine, batteries, and even a few bottles of lamp oil, lay abandoned in the dust by the road. Carly cried for them; she couldn’t help it. It seemed so wrong that they had survived the Infection and the harsh winter just to be gunned down by thieves. They buried them beside the road, a pair of stick crosses their only memorial.
“No one will ever know their names,” Carly said.
After that, Justin and Stan became much more vigilant. Justin scouted ahead, though Carly hated having him gone. But he alone could move silently through the underbrush and ambush raiders before they could ambush them. And maybe it was due to his efforts they didn’t run into trouble. Carly never asked, and he never volunteered.
It was Dagny who drew the most attention from the people they encountered along the way, and that troubled Carly on some visceral level she couldn’t articulate, even to herself. Babies shouldn’t be something so rare people wept when they saw one. One man offered them a cartload of food and weapons in exchange for Dagny. His wife’s heart had been broken by the death of their own baby during the Infection, and he would have given anything, done anything, to have a baby to give to her. He was convinced that would restore her to her old self. He sobbed as they drove away, and Carly clutched Dagny close to her and kept one hand on the gun beneath the seat. She began to try to hide the baby whenever they saw people, and Sam picked up on her anxiety. He would hop up in the wagon and lay down next to wherever Carly had concealed Dagny as if to assure Carly he would defend the baby with his very life if necessary.
Was it possible the Infection had made people sterile? What else could be the explanation for the lack of other babies or pregnant women on their journey? Why was Carly an exception? Or was it Justin who was the exception?
