Page 33 of A Wilderness Within

Dozens of angry passengers were storming the shops in the airport terminal. Men and women fought over neck pillows, bags of chips, bottled water, magazines and expensive travel gear like headphones. Stunned, Caroline watched the violence, the men and women hurting each other. At this rate, they’d kill each other before the virus got them. The thought flitted through her mind on dark wings.No one would survive this.

Six long days later corpses were draped over uncomfortable chairs near airport gates. Bodies slumped against inside shops or restaurants. Dozens more were piled up in the restroom stalls. The thick, cloying smell of death was an invisible cloud in the terminal. Not a single body stirred, not a single chest rose and fell except hers. Caroline knew she had to be immune. She’d encountered the sick and dying hourly in the past week and hadn’t been able to avoid their touch, their saliva or breath.

Now she lay alive, exhausted, inside a boarding ramp tunnel. She’d managed to break through the security door that morning, desperate to find one place where she could feel alone and breathe clean air. She used her backpack as a pillow, restlessly turning again and again as she struggled to sleep. She’d tried to read a few books and magazines, but that meant she had to wade through the bodies and feel those glassy, sightless eyes following her wherever she went to find something new to read. It wasn’t worth it anymore. Nothing was.

I just want to fall asleep and never wake up.

She prayed nightly, to have her pain and fear taken away so she could just fade into nothing. Dying was easy for everyone but her, it seemed. Her body fought, drawing in breaths, refusing to give in, and she greeted the bleak winter dawn each morning with exhausted eyes and a weary, broken heart.

She was in that twilight place between wakefulness and sleep when suddenly she glimpsed the distant sway of a flashlight in the darkness.

“Anyone alive out there?” The voice seemed to come through a distant tunnel, and for an eternity Caroline lay there, unable to move.

“Anyone alive?” The call was closer now.

“Here!” The word struggled to escape her chapped lips. Her back spasmed from long hours on the hard floor. She was weak with hunger and dehydration—not from Hydra-1 but because the food and water they had been promised had stopped arriving a full day ago after the last person expired in the terminal.

“Hello!” The call bounced off the walls of the jetway as she crawled on her hands and knees.

“He–here,” she tried to shout. A beam swung her way, and she threw her hands up, covering her sensitive eyes in the dark.

“Hands down. Show your face!” the man demanded. He was wearing a hazmat suit, and his voice came through a speaker near his chin.

Caroline lowered her hands, showing him her face. She had no telltale flush, no fever… No Hydra-1.

“Step this way,” the man commanded.

She followed his voice, stepping around the bodies of passengers. Her gaze drifted south, and she saw a child wrapped in her mother’s arms, both dead, their faces sunken and eyes cloudy. Something inside Caroline broke then. Like when she’d once knocked over a favorite vase and the pieces scattered across the ground, too small to ever be put back together again. She could only kneel among the shards, mourning the loss, the permanency of it.

“This way. You need to be tested.” The man in the hazmat suit led her through the terminal to the security exit that had once been crowded with people. A few bodies littered the area, and a man was still pressed up against the glass, but he’d been dead for days, Caroline guessed. Beyond him, through the protection of the glass, she saw the woman from the CDC and a few police officers waiting nervously.

“One survivor confirmed,” the man leading her reported. “No sign of infection.”

“Take her to the quarantine zone,” the CDC woman said.

They led her toward a pair of distant doors that had been locked and sealed at the far end of the terminal, past the security exit. She was taken into a room where she was stripped of her clothes and belongings and forced into a chemical bath designed to kill any viruses or bacteria on her skin.

Then she was transported to a research hospital and escorted to a hospital room. A nervous-looking nurse left her a pair of scrubs on the bed before dashing out the door. A man in a hazmat suit drew a blood sample, hair sample, and saliva sample before leaving her alone with a tray of food and a few bottles of water. She ate everything and drank every bottle, to the point where her stomach felt like it would burst. Then she collapsed back on the bed and sank into a sleep so deep that not even the nightmares could chase her.

“You are the lone O’Hare survivor?” Lincoln asked, holding his breath. He had known about that incident. Adam had briefed him about it while everyone was still at the White House.

“You heard about me?” Caroline’s cheeks reddened, and it reminded him how long it had been since he’d kissed her. Too fucking long. But he’d let his pride override his lust these last three weeks. He’d been unable to protect her. He’d failed at the very mission that had kept him going. And he’d gotten shot by a bunch of fucking amateurs. There was nothing worse to a man’s ego than being unable to look after himself. Caroline had handled everything, and that had filled him with a bone-deep shame. His arm was getting stronger, and he’d soon be able to protect her again and prove that he was worthy of her.

“I’d only heard there had been a confirmed survivor. The CDC worker there reported back to the vice president, Adam. She called you ‘the hope for all mankind.’”

“The hope for all mankind?” She blushed again. “I’m not the only survivor. You survived too.”

He shrugged. He’d been lucky, that’s all. He could have died a thousand times over the years, fighting for his country secretly, behind the scenes. This was just another brush with death. Lincoln had never wanted to claim recognition for any of that. He only wanted to find peace within himself and banish the demons of his past.

“What happened after the quarantine? I remember hearing that you were escorted to the research facility for testing.”

“That was the plan,” she said with a sigh. “I arrived at a private research hospital just outside Chicago. But I was only there a few weeks before Hydra-1 wiped out the staff. I was abandoned. I just woke up one morning in my room and could hear machines and alarms beeping. When I went outside to see what happened, I found that most of the staff had left and the rest were dying. Someone delivering supplies to the hospital was infected and spread the disease. It happened so fast.”

“I know.” He thought of those final days in the bunker, the way the disease had spread until only he and Adam were left.

Flashes of being back in that hallway, of seeing the mummified bodies of his friends, his team. Then later, hearing Adam weakly call his name. The sweat on his fingers as he raised the gun to his best friend’s head. He would never vanquish that demon—it would linger like a stain upon his soul forever.

“It’ll be nightfall soon. We should stop.” Caroline’s voice broke through the rush of dark thoughts clouding his mind.

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