He tried to empty his mind and enjoy the ride, but all that he could think of was their group pillaging and destroying what somebody else had built.
Maybe it was time he pointed the Indian west…just keep traveling until there was nothing but open ocean before him. He knew he could pull it off.
He could make it.
But then what? Fight to scratch out a survival on one of the most densely populated coastlines? Well, previously most populated. Today, perhaps not so much. At least, not with people. Ragers, for sure, but definitely not people. The West Coast was the first to get hit hard and the news seemed to take great joy in showing all of the people in California being attacked by their friends and neighbors. It seemed to take a few days before the news agencies realized, this wasn’t some huge joke. By the time they took the reports seriously, it was too late. The virus had spread and was quickly becoming a global phenomenon.
Squirrel’s mind wandered until the sign for Rio Rancho caught his attention. He took a hard right and headed toward uncertainty. The odds were slim that the smoke had come from this far away, and even slimmer he’d discover the source, but it got him away from the others and gave him a chance to feel the road beneath him, away from the pressures of being trapped in a group of thugs and criminals.
Away from being a trusted and high-ranking member of the thugs and criminals.
He sighed heavily as he saw the outskirts of town appear before him. “City of Vision, huh?”
He slowed the bike and tried to take in the remains of Rio Rancho. At first glance, it was just another sleepy desert town. Adobe buildings everywhere. Trash and debris scattered across yards and blowing across the road in front of him.
“This town is a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” he muttered as he continued driving.
He thought he caught the faint scent of smoke and slowed the bike. He glanced from side to side, hoping to see something that pointed out the source. It didn’t smell like a campfire. It was different…almost chemical. For a moment, his mind returned to when he was a rookie with the Sheriff’s Department. He had been called out to work a traffic accident with the municipal police. One of the cars had caught fire and…the small whiffs of smoke that he caught reminded him of that.
“Somebody burn a tire?” He goosed the bike and continued down the main highway that dissected the town. He scanned for any signs of smoke or fire. Nothing stood out, although there appeared to be a haze hanging over the city.
He pulled to the side of the road and shut the engine off. He stepped off the bike and looked around. He licked his finger and held it in the air. There wasn’t a breeze to be found. If the fire had occurred here, it would stand to reason that the haze was the result.
But where?
The mountains that bordered the town didn’t appear that far away, but he knew that looks were deceiving. He would no sooner be able to locate the source of the fire from a mountain vantage point as he would if he simply drove street by street.
He groaned to himself and mounted his bike again. “Street by street it is then.” He fired the Indian up again and pulled out slowly, sniffing the air as he rode.
Vivian held back the urge to vomit. The orderly waited patiently behind her while she reviewed the video stream herself.
“There’s more, ma’am, but…I think you can see for yourself what happened.”
She swallowed hard and closed the lid on the laptop. “Tell the lab members to stand down from Level Three Protocols.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The orderly reached for the laptop and she held her arm out to stop him.
“No, I’m going to hold on to this for a while longer.”
“Ma’am?”
“I think we need to reiterate to those working in the lab the dangers of…of our subjects.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The orderly stepped away and Vivian watched him enter the lab. A moment later the personnel under her command began stripping the bright yellow rubber suits off.
She sat back in her chair and tried not to remember what her eyes had seen. The orderly had removed the gene therapy subject and placed her in the holding ward. While there, he took it upon himself to inject the subject with a high dose of anesthesia and then decided to have carnal relations with the test subject.
During the act, the test subject awoke, her high metabolism having burned through the anesthesia. She then began thrashing, and in his haste to climb off her, she was able to drag a nail across his midsection.
“Of all the ways to get infected!” She threw a coffee cup across the room and took little satisfaction in it shattering.
She stood and peeled the rest of the chicken suit from her form, then marched into the lab. She tried to take a moment to calm down and failed miserably.
After a stern lecture, it was decided that no one person would be allowed to be alone with any of the test subjects. Regardless of intent, if anybody accidentally became exposed, there needed to be somebody on hand to report it to the others.
She couldn’t understand how anybody could be so depraved and in the very next minute walk back into their work station as though nothing had happened. She knew the infected operated almost entirely from the ID, or possibly the reptilian portion of the brain, but an uninfected human? The depths that humanity could stoop still amazed her.
Charles had to add his two cents. “Seriously, Vivian. We’re all adults here. We’ve worked unsupervised for so—”
“This is nonnegotiable. If for no other reason, to protect the rest of us.” She took a deep
