Strain Read online

  Rhys’s throat tightened at the idea of leaving Cady and Caleb, even now, but he nodded, blinking rapidly and hanging his head as he turned to go inside. Darius fell in step beside him.

  “Can you not call me ‘son’?” Remembering how snippy he’d been with Xolani, Rhys made an effort to be a little more polite. “Father Maurice used to call me that.”

  “Okay.”

  “There a reason you’re following me?”

  “Gotta make sure you don’t haul off and attack anyone else.” Rhys couldn’t tell from the soldier’s wry expression if he was serious or not. “Bags of clothes are in the chapel. Didn’t know which room was yours, and my people had to get to work locking things down.”

  All but the front row of pews had been stripped from the chapel to make the fires, just like he’d suggested. Rhys wondered briefly what they’d used to break them down into scrap wood; he hadn’t seen any saws or sledgehammers. Against the wall was a garbage bag full of clothes and a large backpack that looked military issue.

  “Find a few changes that’ll fit you,” Darius said, gesturing toward them. “Leave the rest; you won’t have room to carry it. Choose big. You could stand to put on some weight, and if you do, you might need something larger than what’ll fit you now.”

  “Okay.” Rhys nodded and tried not to feel self-conscious over Darius’s presence as he tried on the clothes, since he had no idea what size he wore. He chose two pairs of jeans that were just a little too large. They had to be belted to keep from dropping off his hips. Most of the T-shirts hung loosely, but he took some anyway, as well as a pair of sweats. There were a bunch of socks and several pairs of hiking boots that looked almost new. He found the ones that fit him best, figuring he couldn’t outgrow those.

  He also took every pair of underwear, regardless of the size. Despite the grief of this abysmal day, he couldn’t help but be pleased at the presence of those. It had been years since his last pair—so small the elastic had bit into his skin and left blisters—had fallen apart.

  “So, who are you people?”

  “Used to be Army, back when there was an army. Now we look for survivors and hunt revs.”

  When he was dressed, Rhys followed Darius to the industrial-grade kitchen where the monks—who had fled the monastery before Rhys had ever arrived—had once made the cakes and confections they’d sold to keep the monastery self-sustaining. That operation had been the reason Father Maurice had urged them to seek shelter there; they had staples laid away in large quantities. With careful rationing and supplements from the garden and orchard, those staples had lasted Rhys and the others almost seven years.

  Darius’s people were perched on the stainless steel tables and counters, eating a combination of vegetables and fruits from the garden in the courtyard and dried rations they had brought themselves. For once there was light in the monastery after sunset; they had brought lanterns with them and placed a few around the kitchen.

  Jacob was there, as well, turning on the charm, yukking it up with several members of the squad as if he hadn’t just lost his family hours before. The sound of his voice made the throbbing in Rhys’s head worse. Jacob paused only long enough to give Rhys a scathing look before ignoring him completely. Rhys dismissed it as someone offered him a strip of smoked meat, the smell of which turned his stomach. He murmured a polite refusal and stuck to a handful of nuts from the trees in the orchard.

  He turned his attention back to Darius after he’d swallowed, picking up the thread of their conversation. “What do you do once you find them? Survivors, I mean.”

  “Quarantine ’em, make sure they’re not infected with Beta or Gamma before sending them on to join the rest.”

  “Beta?”

  “What you’d call the Rot,” Xolani explained. “Gamma’s what makes the revenants.”

  “I’ve never heard them called that, though I knew they were different versions of the same virus.”

  “How much do you know about where they came from?”

  “I was just a kid when we went into hiding. Father Maurice just said it was God’s punishment for, you know, immoral . . . stuff.” He blushed, unwilling to get into what particular sins Father Maurice had claimed the plague was punishment for.

  Xolani and Darius scoffed in unison.

  “My father—God rest his soul—was often confused about many things.” Jacob looked almost sheepish. “Rhys has apparently been paying too much attention to him.”

  Rhys turned his head with an incredulous stare. Seven years at the monastery and Jacob had never once said anything that indicated he wasn’t in perfect lockstep with every one of his father’s opinions.

  “Well, that’s bullshit,” Xolani said flatly. “Beta’s a mutation of a virus known as Bane Alpha. Gamma’s a second mutation that sprang from Beta. The Beta and Gamma strains coexist in an infected person, though only symptoms of one will manifest, which means exposure from revs can spread either one.”

  Rhys frowned. “So . . . there’s a third virus? The, um, Bane Alpha?”

  Darius and Xolani shared a tense glance Rhys couldn’t interpret, and the rest of the conversation in the kitchen quieted.

  After a moment, Xolani narrowed her eyes at Darius and set her jaw almost defiantly, turning away as though ignoring some silent argument he’d made. “Exactly,” she answered Rhys. “Though technically it’s the first virus. The wellspring, as it were. McClosky’s Bane, named for the general in charge of the R&D brain trust at the Pentagon whose brilliant idea all this was.”

  Rhys blinked. He recalled reading about those sorts of things years ago, back in the bunker before they’d left Montana. The neighbor who’d owned the bunker had been something of a conspiracy nut, and his books had been a lot more interesting than the ones Rhys’s mom had brought for his homeschooling.

  “It was a weapon?” He tried to remember what the books had called it. “Bio—Biolog—”

  Xolani nodded. “Biological warfare. Yes. It started with a bit of genetic engineering called Project Juggernaut. It was an attempt to engineer a virus that—when it delivered its genetic payload and began replicating in the RNA—would rewrite certain genes to make the infected subjects superhuman. They would have radically increased in strength, stamina, reaction speed, and so forth.”

  Rhys set the remaining half of his handful of nuts aside, uneaten. The pounding in his head was making him queasy. “Wait. They gave that to their enemies? Why would they do that?”

  “No, not the enemy. Well, not entirely. Bane Alpha was meant for our troops. They wanted more effective soldiers, see? They were having a recruitment crisis that started way back in the early twenty-first century. More than twelve years in Afghanistan. Nearly as many in Iraq. Syria. Iran. Venezuela and Guatemala. Libya. Palestine. Iran again. Russia, and so on.” She sighed tiredly, packing up the uneaten rations. The soldiers who were finished eating began to do likewise. “There wasn’t a day in over a century that we weren’t occupying at least one country, and often more. The economy was shit, the national debt was astronomical from more than a hundred years of insupportable military budgets, and people were tired of us fighting wars we couldn’t win in places they couldn’t give two shits about. Unless they reinstated the draft—which would have been political suicide for anyone in charge—the military had to make do with fewer troops than they actually needed.”

  Rhys nodded slowly. That part, he knew. His mother had covered history—particularly recent history—thoroughly. “Did they succeed? In creating the super soldiers?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “I don’t understand. How would that turn into the Rot?”

  “Because the virus was designed with a second purpose—to weaken the enemy. Imagine you’re one of these super soldiers, and you’re wounded in battle. Maybe even killed. Any force strong enough to do that needs to be weakened, either to slow their offensive or cripple their defense. So when the infected troops were wounded, the Alpha strain in their blood would mutate into
a Beta strain, which would infect enemies within contact range—and part of the mission was to make sure they got into contact range.”

  Rhys’s eyes widened. “How is that possible?”

  “Short version is that exposure to air and the clotting agents in an open wound would trigger the mutation. It was an utterly idiotic plan destined for disaster, but they thought they could keep it under control.” Xolani shook her head, a long-suffering sigh expressing her opinion of that idea. “At any rate, enemies would then take it back home with them to infect their comrades. Beta was airborne as well as blood-borne and highly contagious, which meant they could spread it easily. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent or fatal. Just a bad rash and a flu-like malaise for a while, nothing more. Enough for our guys to get in, wipe them out, and leave or set up shop and take over while they were weakened.”

  “Oh.” Rhys hesitated, trying to make sense of it. The kitchen had gone virtually silent, the attention of the strange soldiers a little disconcerting. “But wouldn’t that end up making our soldiers sick, too?”

  Darius shook his head, giving Xolani an irritated look. “Alpha gave them immunity.”

  Rhys took that in, his mind still churning to process all this new information. “But the Rot is deadly. It’s not just a rash and a flu.”

  “Yes.” Xolani looked grim, zipping her pack shut with a hard jerk. “That’s because in that hundred-plus years of nonstop warfare, standards at the top got pretty damn lax. Someone cut corners to rush things through the testing phase, so the live trial went to shit once it was deployed in the field. No one really knows what happened. There wasn’t ever time or manpower to figure it out. Best theories are that it was influenced by another virus, something local to the region of Russia where Alpha was first administered to a battalion of test subjects—who ended up calling themselves Jugs, for Project Juggernaut. Or possibly it was affected by radiation from all the uranium that ended up floating loose around there. At any rate, it didn’t do what it was meant to do. The rash became necrotic lesions, and what was intended to be an exhausting malaise was so severe and debilitating that the infected victims were left pretty much catatonic, trapped inside their bodies while their tissues decayed.” Rhys wiped a hand over his mouth, the nausea redoubling. He’d known the Rot was bad, but hearing it described that way sounded a lot worse.

  Xolani continued. “But before all this became apparent, some wounded, Alpha-infected troops brought it home when a bureaucratic snafu sent them back to the States to recuperate instead of into quarantine, so Beta started spreading back here, as well. That’s when reports of the Gamma mutation first appeared. There were probably revs in Russia, too, but the military just managed to hush it up.”

  “Well, it’s wonderful you folks came along when you did!” Jacob said brightly, right on schedule. Obviously Rhys had been the center of attention for longer than Jacob found tolerable. “Who knows what would have happened to me—us—otherwise?”

  Rhys managed to avoid rolling his eyes. Barely. “What is going to happen to us? Are you going to quarantine me and Jacob like you do the other survivors you find?” That would be just great, stuck with Jacob alone, without even Cady there.

  Darius sighed. “No. We’re not taking you back to base and putting you with the other survivors.”

  Something in his voice made Rhys’s head snap up. “Why not?”

  “Because there’s very little chance—statistically speaking, zero, really—that you’re not infected.” Xolani’s eyes passed between Rhys and Jacob, gentle and full of pity. “I’m sorry. You took a faceful of blood there, kid, and even if you hadn’t, your proximity to those revs was too close. Both of you.”

  “Oh.” Rhys swallowed hard. The voices became fainter as a low humming grew steadily louder in his ears. His headache kicked up another notch with the increased force of his pulse in his temples. “I’m still going to die. Okay.”

  There was something wrong with his numbed acceptance of that fact, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. After all, he’d known he would die from the moment Father Maurice ordered him to use himself as bait to distract the revs so the rest of them could get away.

  Then he looked up in alarm, and the humming in his ears became an unnerving drone. A cold sweat prickled his skin. He felt dizzy, and his head throbbed mercilessly. “You have to kill us. Both of us. Now. We’re endangering you.”

  Everyone shuffled.

  “What?” Jacob squawked in alarm and started protesting, but Rhys had no attention to spare him. His eyes were fixed on Darius and Xolani, who were having another silent conversation made up of glares. His knees felt weak, and he gripped the edge of a stainless steel table for support.

  “Don’t worry.” Xolani never took her eyes off Darius, though she spoke to Rhys. “You won’t infect us.”

  The droning turned into a deafening claxon, and dark spots began to spread across his field of vision. His whole body tingled like every part of him was falling asleep, except his head, which hurt so terribly he almost wished they would kill him.

  “Oh. You’re the Jugs.” He gave a short, hysterical giggle. “Guess that explains how you broke up the pews, then.”

  The terra-cotta tile floor leaped up to smack him in the face before he could decide what he thought about that.

  “If you won’t do it, Darius, Titus will.”

  Rhys awoke on a pew in the chapel with the same old odors of decay filling his nostrils. From the way Darius towered over him, he didn’t have to wonder how he’d come to be there. Xolani stood almost nose to nose—well, nose to shoulder—with Darius, though she broke off arguing as soon as Rhys opened his eyes. Titus was there, too. He was barely taller than Xolani, and he looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. He leaned against a wall, scraping under his fingernails and paring them down with a pocketknife.

  Darius’s jaw flexed. “Why are you so fucking set on this?”

  Rhys blinked as Xolani gave Darius a glower. “Because he’s just a kid.”

  “What’s going on?” Rhys tried to push himself up on the pew, mortified at having passed out again.

  Darius glared back at Xolani, his gaze dropping to Rhys for a second. “Nothing. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Sorry about that. I don’t know why—”

  Xolani turned and shushed him, her mannerisms brusque as she reached down to check his pulse and then lifted his eyelids to examine his pupils. Her touch was gentle despite her callused fingertips, not to mention her irritation. “It’s the concussion. And you’ve had a lot of shocks today, Rhys. I’ve seen bigger, tougher guys than you face-plant under less stress.”

  The solicitude felt good. It brought to mind his mother again, and for a moment, Rhys was humiliatingly certain he would start to cry. He blinked it away, shaking off her touch.

  “You were talking about me?”

  “Yes, we were.” Xolani ignored Darius’s frustrated growl.

  “You’re trying to decide who’ll kill me.”

  “We’re trying to decide whether or not to attempt to save you. Or more specifically, who’s going to do it.”

  “Save me?” Rhys bolted upright, the motion setting his head throbbing again as he stared at them in astonishment. “There’s . . . there’s what? A vaccine? A cure? Tell me!”

  “Not a vaccine, no.” She sighed, tugging at her braid. “Look, this is all purely hypothetical. We’ve never had an opportunity to test it. But, like we said, people infected with the Alpha strain are immune to Beta and Gamma. Problem is, there’s no stockpile of Bane Alpha left. That was lost or destroyed years ago. And there’s no use exposing you to our blood because then it’ll just mutate into Beta.”

  Darius stalked away, pacing the chapel, then spun to face off with Xolani again, ignoring Rhys. “There’s also the question of whether or not we want to make any more Jugs. I mean, how many super-humans can we have running around before some psychopath ends up infected and tries to take over everything?”

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nbsp; Xolani gave him a long look that Rhys couldn’t read. “A valid point, but you can’t stick your finger in the dam on that one, Darius.”

  “Fine. But it’s not a good life. We don’t get to have homes and families, except the ones we make with each other.”

  “Oh, don’t you dare talk to me about the lack of family. You’re not the one who takes care of our people when they get knocked up.”

  That seemed to give him pause. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Still, the fact is, we’re too dangerous. But if we can destroy everyone who’s infected before we die off ourselves, well, then Bane’s gone. It’s over. Eradicated.”

  Rhys tried not to be hurt. “You’d rather let me die than make that take any longer than it has to.” It was the second time today someone had summarily decided to sacrifice his life for the greater good. He should be getting used to it by now. Maybe it would be selfish for him to expect Darius to do anything else. He blew out a resolved breath when Darius didn’t respond. “I guess that makes sense. Not like it matters anyway, if there’s no, um, Alpha strain left, right?”

  “Oh, there’s a way. Again, hypothetically.” Xolani patted his knee. “But we have to start now if we’re going to do it. Tonight.”

  Darius snorted. “What’s this ‘we’ shit?”

  “How?” Rhys demanded at the same time.

  “The Alpha virus only mutates to Beta when it’s blood-borne and exposed to air and an open wound. That was a deliberate choice on the part of the virologists who designed it. They didn’t want friendlies accidentally exposed to Beta by, say, kissing or sex. In fact, the Jugs were to be quarantined except for combat situations. We weren’t supposed to have contact with civilians at all because it’s transmissible as Alpha in semen and vaginal fluids.”

  Rhys stared at her, blushing to hear a woman talking about semen. Then he went cold and dizzy. “What are you saying?”

  “She wants me to fuck you,” Darius snapped.

  “Or me.” Titus shrugged, tucking his pocketknife away, as though Xolani had volunteered him to make dinner, not . . . do what Darius had just blurted.