At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Page 4

  Those people were dying, crushed to death, in an attempt to get into the hospital. And they would probably count it a worthwhile death if it made the hospital open their doors.

  “They’ve been doing this for three hours now,” a voice said, and a moment later the screen split and a newscaster appeared on the right-hand side, her face gaunt and worn. She’d made a courageous attempt at makeup, but her eyeliner was haphazard and the cherry red lipstick she’d applied was smeared.

  A year ago, Garrett would have laughed and joked that she’d been kissing someone before she went on-air. Now he thought she’d probably had her hands up to her mouth in shock…or had been coughing blood. That thought gave the bright red lipstick an entirely new meaning, and he felt a sudden wave of sickness wash over him.

  The newscasters had once been the people in charge of putting a nice face on as they gave the world its news. Now they were the almost-dead, being propped up behind a desk to tell America that the country was coming to an end.

  “A rough count is one thousand, though some say the crowd started at around five times that many,” she continued in her broken voice. “Many have died. Many have been trampled. And law enforcement can’t get into the crowd to save those who might be still alive on the ground. Those on their feet are too angry. Too vicious.”

  Garrett’s eyes flew back to the footage at the hospital, searching for the people she was talking about, and suddenly he saw something he hadn’t seen before. Cops, all of them in riot gear, their visors pulled down over their faces, shields up in front of their bodies. They were coming in from the side, trying to push the crowd sideways, away from the doors of the hospital. Perhaps toward the alley on the other side, Garrett thought, where they could be corralled. Kept from killing anyone else.

  But what do they want? he wondered.

  “They want treatment,” the newswoman answered, as if she’d heard him. “Dallas International has many MRI machines, three to a floor on the top five floors of the hospital. They’ve been treating those who can afford the treatment. These people…”

  Her voice faded away, and Garret’s eyes swiveled back to her. Her expression was even more haunted now, as if she was unsure exactly where her loyalty should lie. With the news as she’d been told to report it? Or with the truth?

  “These people just want treatment,” she said, beginning to sob. “Why should the rich get the treatment when so many of us are sick? Why should it be only the rich who have the chance to live? They were the ones who brought this on us! They were the ones who got those damn—”

  The screen suddenly cut to a full shot of the people at the hospital, the reporter gone from sight, and Garrett let out a slow breath. Not hard to imagine what had happened to her. Even in the midst of disaster, the powers that be didn’t like people who told the truth.

  Not when they’d prepared a story to cover their asses.

  When the picture of the studio came back there was a man in the woman’s place, looking only slightly more polished than she had. He was sitting straight up, though, and had his emotions firmly under control.

  “This is Pete Smith, reporting for the Dallas Nightly News,” he said firmly. “We’ve just received word that another hospital in the area has been bombed…” His voice broke at that and he stopped for a moment, then continued. “Bombed by what law enforcement believes to have been a terrorist group. The group has contacted Dallas PD with a message. ‘We know the virus is a government conspiracy. We know you’re trying to kill the citizens of this country. Give everyone access to the cure or we’ll strike again.’”

  The man put the paper in front of him down and turned his eyes up to the camera.

  “The Dallas PD has no comment at this time and has not yet communicated to the media how they plan to address this situation.” He put a hand up to the bud in his ear, listened for a moment, and then nodded. “We’re going to go to Sally Abrams now, in Atlanta. Sally, you’re on the ground there at the source of a crash, is that correct? What’s happened?”

  The screen flashed suddenly to a suburban neighborhood, the trees tall and green in the background, the street a wide, straight avenue with colonial-style houses in browns and reds marching down it.

  In the middle of the screen stood a red-haired woman who must have once been truly beautiful. But that had been last year. Now she was faded, as if someone had sucked all the color out of her. She nodded gamely at the anchor’s words and held a microphone up to her mouth.

  “That’s right, Pete, I’m on the ground here in Atlanta, where there’s been a terrible crash.”

  She gestured to the camera, which spun dizzily to the left, and Garrett gasped and pushed the chair backward. The screen was now taken up with fire and explosions, with what was left of at least fifteen houses visible behind the flames.

  Sticking up into the sky was what was left of a commuter plane.

  “Air traffic control tells us that both pilot and co-pilot fell sick during the flight,” the reporter went on. “They attempted to get all the way to the Atlanta airport before anything happened. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it. Everyone on board the plane was lost, along with at least fifty people here on the ground. Authorities are estimating the death toll to be over five hundred.”

  Garrett grabbed the remote and hit the power button, horrified and disgusted. He didn’t want to see anything else. He didn’t want to know about anything else. He was already sorry that he would have those pictures in his head for the rest of his life. And there was a part of him that couldn’t quite believe that any of it was actually happening. This was all too horrible. All too… Well, it was like something from a book. Something from a movie.

  He just couldn’t comprehend that it was happening in real life.

  He glanced at his phone, laying fully charged on the desk, and lunged for it. If things were that bad in Dallas—and in Atlanta, evidently—what was going on in Oregon? And how close were his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew?

  It should have been a twenty-hour drive from where they were to his bunker. Twenty-four hours even if they’d taken time to stop to get food, though he hoped to hell they’d been smarter than that. Restaurants held too many people. And the more people they’d had access to, the greater chances they’d get sick.

  His mind snagged on the worry that they’d get sick anyhow, and that they’d arrive sick. What would he do if that happened? Should he make them stay above ground for a full twenty-four hours, to see whether they started to show any signs of sickness, before he let them come down? Could he do it? It was the smart thing, perhaps, but these people were his family. His only family.

  He was moving toward the elevator before he thought fully through the plan, his mind already on the phone call he needed to make. A quick jab of the finger and the elevator was opening, a thirty-second ride and he was at the surface.

  This time, he didn’t even think about the decomposing body he jumped over on his way out into the driveway. He just wanted to hear his sister’s voice. Hear her tell him that she and her family were okay.

  “Hello?” she croaked in answer to his call.

  “Where the hell are you?” Garrett asked. “You guys could have been here by now. How close are you?”

  A sob was his only answer, and at that moment, Garrett knew. He knew that they weren’t coming. Knew that something horrible had already happened. He hadn’t been in time to save them.

  “Zach caught the virus,” she said brokenly. “He’d been with his friend a few days earlier, but I hadn’t wanted to tell you. I don’t think I wanted to believe it myself.”

  “And?” Garrett asked quietly.

  “Dead within ten hours. The hospital was so crowded that I couldn’t even get him to the emergency room. Not that we would have been able to afford the MRI, anyhow. But, I mean maybe they would have treated him anyhow, you know? If we’d just tried harder. If we’d just…”

  “Kady, it’s not your fault,” Garrett said quickly. “You can’t blame you
rself. None of this is your fault.”

  Her silence told him that she didn’t believe him, and that she’d go on blaming herself for this until the day she died. He very carefully didn’t finish that thought. The truth was far too painful.

  “We’re not coming,” she said finally. “Jon and I.”

  “Kady—”

  “Garrett, we’re not,” she said firmly. “We’re contaminated, and you know it. Even if we wanted to come, we wouldn’t be able to. The roads are too backed up. Everyone is trying to escape, and no one is managing it. We wouldn’t even be able to get out of town. And we’d bring the sickness with us if we did.”

  Garret wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her—or pull her right through it before she could tell him no. He wasn’t hearing this. He wasn’t going to let her desert him this way.

  “But if you—”

  “Garrett!” she shouted. “We’re already sick. Both of us. And I won’t put your life in danger. If this is the last thing I get to do, at least I’ll know it was something that was truly worth it. I’ll finally get to protect you instead of the other way around. I love you, little brother. Please stay safe.”

  She started coughing, then, and Garrett could hear the blood in it. Hear the wetness of the cough that meant her lungs had already started to give up the fight.

  “Kady…” he moaned, wishing with everything in his body that he could wrap his arms around her one more time, take away the pain, make her better. Wishing that for just a moment, life could be as simple as it had once been, when his only concern had been to get her home safely after school.

  But things had turned too dark. And he didn’t have the power to save her anymore.

  “I love you, Kady,” he murmured. “I would have moved the world itself to save you.”

  “I know,” she breathed. “I love you too. And I want you to live. Promise me that you’ll live. Promise me that you’ll do big things and live life to the fullest and enjoy every minute of it. Promise me that, and I can go in peace.”

  Garrett pressed his lips together. How could he promise that when he had no control over anything anymore?

  How could he not promise it, when it was his sister’s dying wish?

  “I promise,” he whispered, keeping the sobs at bay for another moment.

  “Thank you,” she whispered back.

  And then she was gone, leaving only horrible, empty silence behind.

  A deep, gaping wound opened up where Garrett’s heart had been.

  He hung up the phone and swallowed heavily, trying to process the end of that conversation. Trying to feel around the hole that had suddenly appeared where his heart had been. Then he started to force himself to move. Standing here mourning his sister and her family wasn’t a good idea. It just made him a bigger target—for both rioters and the sickness they were running from.

  He didn’t want to go back into the silo. He didn’t want to go on with his life. But he’d made his sister a promise, and he meant to do everything he could to keep it. Even if that meant putting her death out of his mind for the time being, until he could deal with it later.

  On his way back to the bunker, he saw the dead boy in front of the door. His thoughts went to his nephew. If that were Zach, Garrett would give him a decent burial.

  Garrett went into the bunker, gathered supplies, and was back outside wearing a gas mask and on a mission. He carefully wrapped the body—without touching it—in a tarp and dragged it into the desert. Then he spent the next hour gathering stones and covering the body. The ground was too hard to dig, so the rocks would have to do.

  He used smaller rocks to create a rough cross at one end of the makeshift grave, then said some words he remembered from his mother’s funeral. He stood for a moment in silence, then turned and walked away, trying to ignore the tears in his eyes.

  When Garrett got back into his bunker and hit the power on the TV again, anxious for something—anything—to take his mind off of what had just happened, he was surprised to see nothing but static. Confused, he changed to another channel, and then another… only to see more static, and on one, a message that read: “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.”

  He whirled around to the computer and quickly typed in a search on the open window, regarding the media and what was going on. The article that came back was succinct and to the point, written by someone who didn’t have time to try to make his readers feel better.

  The media and all its various pages and outlets had quite suddenly disappeared. Wrung out after reporting the horrors, and depleted of its employees and reporters, the press had quite literally deserted the American people to the disease, sentencing them to a world where they would know even less about what was coming for them—and when.

  Chapter 8

  July 1

  Garrett had been scouring the Internet for two weeks as he tried desperately to figure out what the hell he was going to do, and so far, he had come up with exactly zero ideas.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He’d come up with many ideas. It was just that none of them were even remotely workable. He put them down to the sheer fear and horror he was living with—and the lack of any other human contact. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since the day he said goodbye to his sister, and he didn’t really even count that as truly speaking. No media outlets had come back online since then, though that didn’t mean he’d stopped looking.

  He clicked the TV on again and started surfing through the channels. Static, static, static. An old re-run of some sort of court TV show that he might have once found interesting and even amusing. Static. Static. A sitcom. And more static. They weren’t even running the daytime talk shows that gave you advice for how to lose weight anymore.

  “They’ve all given up,” he murmured, sinking once again into the chair that had become both seating area and bed in the last two weeks.

  He’d been able to read some news through Internet sources, of course—first-hand descriptions of things that were going on above ground. Blogs with all the latest conspiracy theories. Nothing solid. Nothing useful.

  Just the ongoing idea that society itself was crumbling, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  He had been able to find one final broadcast from one of the major national news stations. It had been playing on repeat on one of the news sites online, and he thought he’d probably watched it at least one hundred times. It never stopped being scary.

  “It is believed that 75 percent of the American public has perished,” the man said quietly, all hope gone from his eyes. “Another 15 percent are estimated to be infected at this point. Ninety percent of the population is surely lost.”

  Ninety percent. Ninety percent. A once-thriving country had been decimated in the space of months, and that report had happened two weeks ago at this point. God only knew how many people were left now—or whether anyone was left at all. For all he knew, he was one of the only people still alive in this country. Almost certainly one of the only people who hadn’t had any sort of exposure to the disease, given his absolute isolation.

  But that isolation was starting to feel like a curse more than a blessing. Yes, he had plenty of provisions, and would still be able to stay here for years, if he set up a system to distill his own water, which was the first thing he would run low on. That wouldn’t be so hard, he thought, given the fact that he had ready access to power and plenty of food. The lack of human interaction, though…

  That was the part that was killing him. Not knowing what was going on up there was one thing. He could get a good enough idea through the Internet and the blogs he was reading. But it had been weeks now since he’d heard a live human voice, and even longer since he’d seen another person. And he was starting to see why castaways made friends with the trees and rocks around them. Human beings weren’t meant to be on their own. He’d never been an overly social person, and he certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to keep people in his life. In fact, he’d always t
hought of himself as a committed introvert.

  But even introverts needed other humans around them. He’d never realized just how much he needed other people until suddenly there were none.

  Now… He glanced at the computer screen in front of him, and the photos of the mass graves that had been dug in Idaho, where they seemed to have lost almost the entire state’s population. Was the U.S. completely gone? What about the other countries of the world?

  It was an enticing thought. Because his patience was growing thin, and he just wasn’t willing to spend much more time down here. He certainly wasn’t willing to stay down here for the rest of his life. At this point he was going to go crazy long before he ran out of supplies.

  On top of that, there was the promise he’d made his sister. The promise that he’d survive. That he’d make something out of his life. That he’d go on and do big things.

  None of that was going to happen from this bunker. So what exactly was he going to do about it?

  “Run,” he said firmly, getting to his feet.

  He was going to run. He wasn’t sure where, yet. Mexico, perhaps? It was the closest border, and if the Mexican authorities had done their job and closed the border quickly enough, then restricted anyone from crossing at all, he thought they might have been okay.

  Sure, it could be a fool’s errand. If people had wanted to get into Mexico—and they’d been desperate enough—chances were they’d done it. But Garrett had been watching news reports for weeks straight and hadn’t seen anything about the virus reaching Mexico. He’d have to start his life all over again, build a new identity, make a new job for himself, meet new people.

  But that had stopped scaring him. After all, there was nothing left for him here.

  If he got there, maybe he’d be safe. Maybe it would all be okay. Yes it would be hell to get there, and a long, hard trip. He’d have to avoid cities like the plague—literally—and avoid any human interaction, but the border wasn’t that far away. His truck would make it.