The Omega Virus

Chapter 10

-CHAPTER 10-

In my rage I felt the blood drain from my face while Travis just shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. My soul felt cold, frozen with utter disbelief. He looked like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar-that cookie jar being perhaps the entire world.

"Who are they?" I demanded.

He didn't answer and his silence was deafening. He looked out the little kitchen window above the sink as if he wanted to fly away-far, far away. I bet he did. The coward!

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you Travis! Who are they?" I demanded.

Still he was silent for a long while; his deep brown eyes were moist and looked like wet dirt when he finally met my gaze.

"The government." He said quietly.

I laughed hysterically. This man was a delusional lunatic who I had made the mistake of mistaking for a sane and caring man.

"Don't play games with me. The government is dead. Gone! Caput! So I repeat, who are they?" I shouted. He looked like he would refuse me the answers I wanted, but I was prepared to go as far as it would take to get those answers. I wondered how much pain this man would take before he would talk. I wondered if I was in fact really prepared to go that far. But I had to be.

He tensed, perhaps sensing my dark thoughts. Then he walked over to the dining room table, pulling the chair out which made a horrible scraping noise, as if he was too weak to simply lift it properly. He sat down heavily. "The government is not dead, nor gone, nor caput my dear. Perhaps there aren't televisions to broadcast their presence or newspapers to declare their every misdeed, but mark my words Mercy: the government is alive and thriving. Even more, it refuses to die."

With arms crossed I took my place across the table from him. "But you don't have the cure, so what could they possibly want from you? Explain fast, because time is ticking and when you're done, I plan on going after them-with or without you."

"Then you're a fool."

"And yet I'm not so foolish as to boast of wisdom." I retorted vehemently. "You'll not go alone, and if you would only listen you would see that I am not completely void of a plan."

"First tell me what I want to know, then I'll decide if I trust you enough with any sort of plan." I spat out, barely containing the urge to leap over the table and rob him of his last breath. He looked at me with disbelief as if I was an angel that has fallen from the grace of heaven. "So then, tell me: If you don't have the cure, what could they possibly want from you?"

In answer he tapped his temple with his finger. "I may not have a cure yet, but it's in here, waiting to be discovered." He said with a hint of pride he couldn't quite conceal.

"Explain." I said looking at him with a bitter almost palpable resentment. His so-called knowledge had cost me and the entire world for that matter too much.

Sighing, he began to speak, his shoulders drooping as if he couldn't bare the weight of his tale...and perhaps it was indeed so.

"After Eve, the virus was contained-or so they thought-for a few months. The hospital in which she had been was barred and quarantined, the military surrounded the place...but Eve had escaped. She was quite unlike those who followed. As Patient Zero, she retained a trace of her humanity; she clung to it refusing to let it go. She was in transition, but the transition halted and had gone into a sort of stasis."

I gasped. He'd said before that I had reminded him of his precious Eve, but at the time I hadn't thought he had meant it so literally.

"After her first 'awakening', I would catch only traces of her and then brief glimpses...but each time she escaped. She is incredibly fast. Her eyes mesmerize you into a frozen scared awe, they would shine with a surreal, unnatural blue and always void of love. I could see she was full of pain, anger and animalistic cruelty. Still, she fought the virus-at least she tried." He stopped, put his head in the palm of his hands and let out a groan, breathed deeply then continued. "Anyway, each time I got close to her and looked into those eyes of her, I knew I had to redeem myself. There is no other option. There was only one way to do this and that was to find the cure. To accomplish that I had to have several samples of her blood. So I kept searching for her, fully prepared with tranquilizers and chains. I did. I got her, Mercy-God forgive me, but I took captive my own daughter." He sobbed so bitterly that his sorrow felt to be as contagious as that blasted virus...yet like Eve, I resisted.