Chapter 2 - Strange Happenings
-September 2008
The tension in the voice on the other end of the line was the first clue that something was amiss. There was an uncharacteristic tremor in his deep voice, his normally tough demeanor replaced by a hint of breathlessness, or dare she say it, of fear. The words he was saying, what Olivia was hearing, his orders for her and the others, were something out of a dream, or better yet, something out of her worst nightmare.
He couldn't be serious. It had to be some kind of joke, a bizarre, twisted, test of some sort, which she was just…unable to fathom the purpose of at the moment. That had to be it.
His voice rose rose in volume and intensity, competing with the sounds of screams and shouts of men and women in panic, which roared into focus clearly in the background. The sounds were distracting, making it difficult to focus on what he was saying. She heard a series of loud cracks that sounded suspiciously like gunfire, more screams, some of which sounded almost inhuman, and then the line went quiet.
"Sir?" Olivia said after a moment. "Are you there? Agent Broyles?"
A wave of mind-numbing coldness swept over her as she checked the phone's display.
Call ended.
Olivia quickly re-dialed her superior's number, trying to ignore how her fingers fumbled over the phone's keypad. She rose slowly from her desk as the robotic voice of the Bureau's voice mail system answered after the first ring, and stared out through the slits in the blinds of her office window as its cold voice asked her if she would like to leave a message.
Out in the lab, the Bishop's and Astrid were busy eating the Chinese carry-out that she had picked up on her way back from the Federal Building. Her container of moo-goo-gai-pan was still sitting unopened next to Peter where she had left it, just minutes earlier, before she had received the disturbing call from Broyles.
Peter looked up from his special fried rice, and their eyes met through the office window. His fork had paused in its journey upward, halfway between his container and its final destination. His mouth hung open in anticipation of the coming bite, but slowly hinged shut as the ridge between his eyes furrowed with concern.
Olivia tried to pull her gaze from his but found it to be impossible. Her normally calm, rational mind had ground to shrieking halt as Agent Broyles's message percolated downward, through the layers of adulthood, toward the place where the little girl in her still lived, afraid of the dark and all the un-rational things that resided there, the festering masses of long-forgotten horrors.
The fork dropped from Peter's hand, falling down into the container, then flipped down on the lab table, catapulting sticky rice and bits of shrimp onto her assistant's lap. She saw it all happen in slow motion, could almost see the individual gains of rice in mid-air, flinging end over end. Astrid flinched back from the shower of rice, her gawk of protest directed at Peter falling on deaf ears.
He was no longer on his stool.
It seemed that Peter was in the doorway before the grains of rice has completed their arc. Olivia couldn't fathom how he'd moved so quickly, how he'd seemed to have appeared out of thin air in front of her.
"What is it?" he said.
She blinked, and tried to speak, but no sounds issued from her lips. Her throat was dry, the air in her lungs solid.
"Olivia? …Agent Dunham?"
He took an uncertain step toward her, holding his hands out before him like he was approaching a wild animal. "Who was on the phone?" he said, smartly changing his tactic.
She found her voice, buried somewhere between a rising panic, and a stray thought of her sister, who'd been planning a trip to the museum that day with Ella. They should be back at her apartment already.
"Uhh…that—it was Broyles," she managed to say, shifting her face up to his face. "Something…something's happened—is happening."
"What? Where?"
Olivia took a deep breath. Having gotten those initial words out, the rest followed with only a modicum of difficulty. "He…he was at Boston General," she said, motioning him to step inside the office. "There's been some kind of outbreak…or something. He wasn't very clear before he…he…got cut off."
"An outbreak?" Peter frowned, and then shifted warily on the balls of his feet. "You mean like a virus?" he asked.
Olivia shook her head slowly. "No…" she said in a whisper. "Not like a virus. Let's take a walk."
#
The campus outside the Kresge Building was breezy, with warm gusts blowing in from the east, rustling the collages of red-gold autumn leaves and drifting those that had already been tugged down by time and gravity. Students milled about on the grassy quad in little clumps, young men and women with bright smiles and even brighter futures ahead of them.
They were unaware of what was happening Downtown. Their blissful ignorance couldn't last. Word would reach them, and there would be a panic. It would happen soon. What her superior had described…word of it would spread—and quickly.
"It seems pretty normal out here, Olivia," Peter said from her side. "Are you sure Broyles wasn't just messing with you?" He took a step down from the Kresge Building entrance, looking left and right across the quad, then turned back to her. "I mean, you gotta admit…undead? C'mon…"
Olivia looked over at him sharply. "I didn't say they were undead, Peter," she said. "And neither did Agent Broyles. He said—"
"That there was an outbreak of people previously dead, who no longer were." he cut in, holding up a finger.
"They're not undead, they're—sick or something, Peter. I don't know what it is," she said flatly. "But you will not call them that when we tell the others."
Peter shrugged noncommittally. "Sure, whatever you say, sweetheart," he muttered, scratching at the thick scruff on his unshaven cheeks.
Olivia stepped closer to him. With her on a higher step than him, their eyes were level. "I already asked you not to call me that, Bishop," she said, fixing him with a burning glare. His blue eyes met her gaze without blinking. One corner of his mouth slowly turned upwards. She recognized the smart-ass look he displayed when he was being particularly difficult, and shook her head. "I don't have time for this. People are dying."
She twirled away from him and yanked open the door, then marched back inside. The lobby just inside the entrance was loud and full of students, apparently a class had just ended, and she pushed her way through them, all the while considering whether it had been a mistake to keep the younger Bishop around after the incident with Flight 627 two weeks ago. Not that he wasn't competent, but his smart-ass attitude and his tendency to push her buttons whenever possible made working closely with him difficult on occasion. And with what Broyles had told her, there were going to be rough times ahead for them all. If only Walter's expertise wasn't needed so badly, and now more than ever. It would make her life so much easier.
Fingers closed around her bicep, stopping her progress in the midst of the crowd.
"Olivia…wait," Peter said from behind.
She spun around, tugging her arm free with a sharp jerk.
Peter stepped back, holding his hands up in front of him. The smirk was gone, replaced by a contrite expression she thought might actually be genuine. "I…I'm sorry," he said, nodding back toward the entrance. "That was uncalled for back there." He looked away, exhaling a slow breath. "Sometimes…I say shit without thinking…it used to drive my mother crazy."
His voice seemed sincere, as were his eyes when he finally met her cool gaze again.
"Apology accepted," she said, putting her difficulties with Peter Bishop behind her for the moment. There were far more important matters to deal with in any case. "Now we have tell your father and Astrid…and no mention of undead. I mean it."
"As you wish," he replied with an easy grin, and motioned toward the stairwell down to the basement. "After you, Agent Dunham."
Olivia moved down the stairwell to the basement, feeling Peter's presence following behind her. He was a confusing man. Not for the first time, she wondered why he had chosen to stay and help her. He had been all too eager to leave before him and his father had cured John of his sickness. It seemed like a good time to ask him.
She stopped at the bottom of the steps, and turned back to him. "Why did you stay?" she asked. "After we cured John. You could have walked away."
Peter started back at the question, clearly caught off guard. It pleased her that he was taken aback, that she could surprise him, genius and all.
"Oh…well, you seemed like you needed help," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "And I needed a job…seeing how you destroyed any chance of me salvaging my reputation back in Iraq." There was no blame in his voice, just statements of fact, as he saw them, at least.
Olivia studied his face, looking for signs of subterfuge, and again, he seemed to be sincere. "Good," she said, and then turned and hurried to the lab entrance with another word or glance back at him.
Let him stew on that, she thought, throwing open the wooden door and hurrying inside with Peter in tow.
Walter and Agent Farnsworth were sitting next to each other, finishing up their dinner. The junior agent was giggling at some remark from the elder Bishop. She had bubbly laugh, almost musical, as Walter had called it before, much to her embarrassment. At least they seemed to be getting along well. The two of them looked up expectantly as they hurried across the lab.
"What's going on Agent Dunham?" Astrid asked, dropping her chopsticks into her empty carton. "Do we have another case?"
"Not exactly…," Olivia replied. She wet her lips, and then turned to Walter. "Earlier today, a man died in routine surgery down at Boston General."
"How awful!" Walter said earnestly. "I'm very sad to hear that, Agent Dunham. Was he a relative of yours?"
"I wasn't finished, Walter," she said. "A few minutes after the pronounced time of death, he…uh, the dead man that is—he bit one of the nurses standing near the operating table. On the wrist." she finished in a rush.
"Say what?" Astrid said. "Can you repeat that, Agent Dunham?"
Walter's face twitched, and his mouth dropped open. "Oh…now that is curious," he said. "And then? What happened next?" His face became animated, eager, almost childlike in his anticipation as he rubbed his palms together.
Olivia swallowed, hearing the loathing in Broyles's voice again. "The dead man attacked the surgeon, and two other nurses in the operating room, all of whom were bitten as well. Though their bites weren't fatal in and of themselves, they were all dead less than hour later…" She paused as Astrid let out a squeak, and her hand flew up to her mouth.
"What happened to the…the…not-dead man?" Walter asked, rising slowly from his stool. His voice was sharp, intense, and rose in volume. "Is the corpse still animated? Is it self-aware?"
"Let her finish, Walter," Peter said, holding a hand toward him. "There's more to hear."
Walter relented with nod, and then motioned impatiently for her to continue.
"The three nurses and the surgeon who were bitten…after their deaths, they—came back also, and attacked anyone nearby." Olivia said. "Boston General, along with all the other hospitals in the city, are being quarantined until we can figure what's going on. According to Agent Broyles, this same phenomenon is happening at all of them. The patients who die—they don't stay dead."
"Oh my god…" Astrid said, covering her face. "I think I'm gonna be sick…" The junior agent rushed to nearest trash can and thew herself down on front of it, and began retching loudly.
Walter seemed stunned by the revelation, frozen in place, eyes distant, one hand on his forehead. He muttered unintelligibly to himself under his breath. Olivia exchanged glances with Peter, who shrugged.
"Walter, have you heard of anything like this happening before?" she asked. "Or do you have any idea why it could be happening now?"
There was no reply, no sound at all in the lab, other than Astrid, whose heaving into the trashcan was growing weaker by the moment.
"Walter!" Peter said, stepping close to his father and putting hand on his shoulder.
At his son's touch, Walter blinked, and then looked manically between them. "I…I have no idea," he said. "It shouldn't be possible…"
"You don't say," Peter said dryly. "Now tell us something we don't know."
Walter ignored his son and stepped closer, his eyes sharp on her own. "Agent Dunham, if what you're saying is true…these quarantines you spoke of—they…they won't work," he told her. "The genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak. In fact, I believe it was never in the bottle to begin with."
"What exactly are you saying, Walter?" Peter said, exchanging an uneasy look with her.
"I'm saying that we should begin making preparations at once," he replied. His voice sounded grave as Olivia had ever heard it. She glanced at Peter, who looked confused and shrugged as his father hurried away from them, moving toward the back of the lab.
"Preparations for what?" Olivia called after him.
Walter stopped and turned back to them. "Didn't I mention it?" he said, shifting his gaze around the lab. "Why, preparations for the end, of course."
"The end of what?" Peter said, narrowing his eyes. "Will you just tell us what you're thinking?"
"…Of everything," Walter replied. "Don't you see? Whatever is causing this…this phenomenon…outbreak, or whatever you want to call it—if it's not just a local event, and is happening everywhere, then one can easily extrapolate the rate at which—"
Peter sucked in a sharp breath. "He's right…" he said, turning toward her and rubbing at his temples furiously. His face was turning paler by the second. "In the U.S. alone, the daily death rate is something like six-thousand a day, and that's just of natural causes, like old age, car accidents, and plain old murder. Worldwide, it's over one-hundred-fifty-thousand…"
Walter nodded his agreement. "Yes…you begin to see the problem we face," he said, sounding grim.
Olivia felt her stomach roll violently, and glanced over at Astrid, who was just sitting on the floor next to the trashcan in a daze. Her eyes were vacant. It was possible she would be joining her there soon.
"You…you can't know that!" she insisted angrily, shaking her head. What the two of them were implying…it simply couldn't be true. The world…civilization couldn't just come to an end. She refused to believe it. "You haven't even examined one of the bodies yet! Agent Broyles was going to have one corpses brought here for study—"
"And have you heard from him lately?" Walter said quietly. "He was downtown, was he not? That's a lot people trapped inside a small area. Think of it this way, Agent Dunham. How would you go about killing something that's already dead?" He paused as if waiting for her reply, then continued. "We're going to be on our own, if we're not already, mark my words."
Her hand dropped to the gun at her belt, seeking its comfort as the floor seemed to rock beneath her. How would you go about killing something that's already dead? The words repeated in her mind cyclically, until the tumblers stopped on an image of her sister's face.
Rachel. Ella.
As the realization that her sister's family was at her apartment struck, and what that meant if what Walter said was true, loud voices and a rush of bodies passed by in the corridor outside the lab.
Their eyes met for a stunned moment as Olivia looked from Walter to Peter and then down to Astrid, who seemed to have recovered from her ordeal. After a moment, a silent decision was made and they rushed as a group over to lab's small group of windows, set up high on the exterior wall.
Outside, the portion of the quad visible through the window was a scene of chaos, with students racing across across campus in a mad stampede of young women and men. Olivia even saw several older people whom might be faculty among them hurrying as best they could toward their vehicles.
Walter took one look out the window, then hurried into the office, muttering under his breath.
"Where are they all going?" Astrid said with a frown, standing on her toes to see over the ledge. "And why so suddenly?"
"I don't know…" Olivia said, keeping her eyes on the crowd, in particular a stream of young people scrambling up the steps to the entrance of one of the larger on-campus dorm halls. Another rush of undergrads were trying to exit the building at the same time, and much pushing and shoving ensued.
"That doesn't look good," Peter said, pointing toward the dorm hall she'd been watching. "Somebody's gonna get trampled."
"I see it," Olivia frowned. "Maybe we should do something—"
"Listen to this!" Walter said loudly, hurrying out of the office.
Olivia turned from away the window. Walter had the small clock radio from her desk gripped in one hand, the black cord trailing out behind him as he rushed over to the cabinetry and plugged it into the nearest outlet.
"What is it?" she said, crossing over to him.
Peter and Astrid followed after her, forming a half-circle around the radio as the sound of AM radio static filled the air. Walter adjusted the tuner for a moment, and then a man's voice came into focus, the voice of the practiced newscaster, maintaining his stoic delivery despite the unsettling nature of the subject being reported.
…receiving confirmed reports of gunfire from in the vicinity of Boston General and other area hospitals, as well as a growing wave of violent attacks on civilians throughout the greater Boston area, which appear to be random in nature. A source in the Mayor's office has indicated that the FBI, along with the Center for Disease Control, believe there may be terrorist attack underway, possibly chemical or biological in nature, which causes a violent and paranoid reaction in those whom are affected. Residents of Boston and the surrounding communities are being asked to remain in their homes until further notice to prevent any misunderstanding with local law enforcement, who are on high alert. I repeat…
Walter flicked the radio off. "This is it," he said softly. "It's already begun…"
Silence filled the lab as they exchanged nervous glances, broken by the occasional creak and groan of the old building and the white-noise hum of the ventilation system in the background. In the hall outside the lab, several straggling students passed by the lab doors, their excited voices lingering behind them long after they had passed by.
As the voices faded to quiet, Astrid shook her head. The motions were sharp and indignant. "Guys…this can't be for real." she said, cutting the air in front of her with the edges of her hands. "This…this…can't be happening. When people die—they're dead. They don't get up again!"
Olivia heard the panic rising in the other women's and sympathized completely. She was having difficulty processing it all as well. Their training—and life in general, didn't account for a situation like what Walter suspected was happening. It was against common sense, it was against nature itself.
"Agent Farnsworth…let's just wait until we hear from—" she started, but was interrupted by the squealing of tires outside the building, followed by a loud crunch of metal.
Peter rushed back to the window and looked outside. "Shit…" he said in a grim voice. "That looks really bad." He glanced back over his shoulder as Olivia and Astrid joined him at the window once more.
In the interim from when she had last looked outside, the avenue that ran along the perimeter of Harvard Yard had grown thick with vehicle traffic. Cars and trucks were zooming past at far greater than normal driving velocities, swerving and dodging pedestrians who had abandoned any pretense of using the painted crosswalks. The flow of traffic was headed west, away from the city.
Through the iron-wrought fencing that ran along the sidewalk, Olivia could make out a silver minivan and a brown SUV locked together in a death-spiral of twisted metal at the fork in Massachusetts Avenue around MacArthur Square. Wisps of smoke or steam were rising from the crumpled hood of the SUV, where it was pressed into the bent-inward drivers side door of the minivan. There was a crowd of people around the interlocked vehicles and another, smaller crowd not too far away them, huddled over something lying on the street.
Olivia focused on the smaller crowd. Several of the Good Samaritans were kneeling down, bending over a still form on the pavement.
"I think someone might've been hit," Olivia said, and shifted her gaze to the accident itself. Whomever had been driving the minivan, she suspected they were not in good shape. A young woman wearing a pair of high, leather boots and blue jeans covered by a dark coat was standing near the car accident, talking on her cell phone. The woman gestured at the scene frantically as she spoke. "I'm gonna check it out." she told the others, and then moved toward the lab's back door, which led directly to the outside.
"I'm coming with," Peter said, following after her.
"Agent Dunham!" Walter said as she pushed open the door.
Stopping at the threshold, Olivia gripped the door-frame and turned back to him, halfway in, halfway out of the building.
"Be…very careful," he said slowly, nodding his head and massaging the palm of one hand in a furious manner. "Don't get too close, either of you."
Peter's gaze was disturbed as they exited the building together.
#
Vehicles were beginning to pile up behind the accident as they arrived at the scene. Impatient honks and shouts from impatient drivers filled the air as pedestrians streamed through line of cars and trucks, slipping through the spaces between bumpers. The crowd around the accident had thinned out, with only several of the onlookers remaining. The drivers door of the SUV was open, and an older man with graying hair was sitting against its back bumper with his face in his hands. Rivulets of blood were dripping his nose onto the pavement—the damage from the expanded airbag which she could see hanging limply from the steering wheel. He was shaking his head as a woman, the same woman she had seen on the phone earlier was crouched down next to him, obviously inquiring about the extent of his injuries. Olivia heard her tell him that she'd already called 911.
The man seemed okay as far as she could tell, other than his bleeding nose, so Olivia turned her attention to the minivan, and its driver, whose head was just visible over the SUV's hood through the broken glass of the van' door. It was a woman, she thought, and grievously injured, judging from her stillness and the blood which coated her face, dribbling downward from an injury somewhere beneath a mass of dark curls. She approached the minivan and looked in through the spider-webbed windshield. The van's driver-side door had been smashed inward, crushing the drivers seat, as well as the woman's left side, arm and leg. From her position at the front of the minivan, Olivia could see that the woman's shirt was drenched in blood, and several unpleasant-looking protrusions pressing outward against the fabric from underneath as she sagged against the seatbelt holding her in place. She thought the woman's side might have been pierced by a piece of metal framing from the door as well.
With a sigh, Olivia shook her head sadly. There was nothing she could do for the poor woman—the fire department would be needed to extricate her from the wreckage with the jaws of life.
"Olivia!"
She turned at Peter's insistent shout, and found him standing next to several people crouched down next to the still form she had seen from the window. He waved her over with crooked fingers as they made eye contact.
Moving to his side, Olivia stared down at the unmoving body of a young man, little more than a boy, she thought from his youthful face, splayed out on the pavement. A student. There was a backpack lying nearby, forgotten on the pavement. His right leg was bent below the knee at an unnatural angle, quite obviously broken. Other than the deep scratches on his face and underneath his torn sweatshirt, left behind from the rough surface of the street, she could could see no other injuries, though that didn't mean much. She was no medic after all, and he wasn't moving. Taking a closer look, she noticed blood leaking from one ear and the corner of his mouth.
A tear-streaked young woman, about the same age as the boy, was sitting in the street near his head, watching as another woman, older, with long, gray hair pulled back into a low ponytail, bent over the boy's chest. She noticed a light blue scrub-top peeking out from under the woman's coat as the she examined the young man's eyes, pulling back the lids with her thumb. She heard the older woman tell the younger that she was nurse.
"The girl said the minivan ran the light at Massachusetts and Church," Peter whispered in her ear. "It just missed her and hit her boyfriend. They never saw it coming."
Olivia nodded, pulling away from him slightly. "Someone's already called 911," she told him, watching as cars began pulling out line and accelerating on the shoulder around the accident. The flow of students from campus behind them was beginning to trickle to a stop. "The driver of the minivan is seriously injured, possibly dying. I don't think there's anything we can do here."
Though it made her feel useless, it was the truth. Her status as an FBI agent gave her no jurisdiction over civilian matters such as routine traffic accidents, fatalities or no. That was strictly local police matters, and they guarded their territory jealously. Her old partner, Charlie, being a former cop himself, had always had a good rapport with them, but she normally encountered cold shoulders. That she was young, and a woman on top of that, was generally not a point in her favor.
Peter looked past her at the minivan and shook his head. "You think that news report was what caused that crazy rush?" he said.
"I don't know what else it could be…" she replied, and then listened as sirens sounded in the distance. Looking up the street, she expected to see a fire truck or ambulance approaching as the sounds grew closer, but instead saw a line of police cruisers flying through the intersection a block away, heading east toward the city. The sight sent a tingling chill racing down her spine.
"I know this might sound a little cliche, and maybe even a little unmanly," Peter said in a low voice. "But uh…I've got a bad feeling about this."
Olivia listened as the sirens faded to silence. She looked the other direction, down the street, hoping to see emergency vehicles coming from the other direction, even though she knew they wouldn't be driving to a scene without sirens.
Surely they couldn't all be busy at that moment.
"I don't think it's too unmanly, Peter," she said absently, pushing her hair out of her face. She knew what he was talking about though, and could sense it as well. There was an odd feeling in the air, as if the moment were poised on the brink, and could tip into normalcy or into disaster with only the slightest nudge from either side. She had felt that way before, during cases and on raids, usually right before something would go wrong. "In any case, I know what you mean."
Their eyes met, and she found the uneasiness she'd been feeling reflected in his gaze. He had a razor-sharp mind and a quick intuition, she'd noticed them both before. They were some of Peter Bishop's more attractive traits. Not that she was interested in his traits, be they attractive or not, but his unwilling help had been crucial in saving John's life several weeks ago. Since then, he had proven himself worthy of his government paycheck and more, in his guardianship of Walter and in the assistance he'd provided in several of the strange cases they'd worked on together since then. Even if he could be a massive pain in the ass when he wanted to be, which was completely random, as far as she could tell.
Olivia broke the eye contact first, and looked around the scene of the accident once more, sensing a sharp rise in the tension suffusing the area. It was like a slight change in the air pressure on the surface of her skin, or the subtle sensation of passing from darkness into light. Whatever was going to happen, it was going be soon, one way or the other. She realized she was holding her breath, and let it out in a slow, steady stream.
Then it happened.
The nudge.
A short, muffled shout rang out behind them, the sound carrying just above the sound of the passing cars, still driving on the shoulder around them.
Spinning around, she searched for the source of the noise, but saw nothing out of place at first glance. The SUV driver was on his feet, pacing near the rear of his truck, holding a white towel or handkerchief to his nose. He was talking with another passerby, a stocky man in a bright red jacket, who had approached while her back had been turned. Both men seemed oblivious to the sound that both she and Peter had heard moments ago. The woman with whom he'd been talking with before, the one who had called 911, was nowhere in sight.
"Look!" Peter said, throwing an outstretched hand toward the front of the minivan.
Through the shattered windshield, movement could be seen in the front seat. She took a few steps toward the van, squinting in at the driver, whom she had assumed was dead, or close to death. The woman's head now appeared to be bowed over a dark something in her lap, moving from side to side. Moving closer still, she noticed something else that was different.
The minivan's passenger door was open. She was sure it had been closed before.
Increasing her her pace, Olivia hurried around the front of the van to the open door.
"Olivia…" Peter said from behind her. "I don't think you should—"
Whatever else he said didn't register as the interior of the van came into view. A pair of trendy, tan leather boots and the jean-covered legs inside them were kicking weakly, hanging over the edge of the passenger seat. She recognized the boots. The van's driver had her hands twisted in the young woman's dark coat, holding the woman's head close to her chest. The driver's face was buried in the other woman's neck, almost as if she were crying on her shoulder. A low, voracious gnawing sound, a sound that would haunt her sleep, emanated from the front seat. It was a distinctly chewy rumble, that was utterly un-feminine, and almost animal-like, she would think later.
She couldn't seem to process it, or put what she saw inside the van together in any rational way. The wet, raspy chewing sound, and the sight in front of her, were not things that should be associated with each other. Not in a rational world, at least.
Peter stepped up next to her. "What the fuck?" he said, peering in through the open door.
At the sound of his voice, the driver lifted her head.
The face that swiveled slowly in their direction was something out of a nightmare. What struck Olivia first were the woman's eyes. They gleamed with an unnatural, bright yellow-gold color that turned her stomach as they swiveled in their sockets in a robot-like manner. The blood from the wound on her scalp was already beginning to dry and crust over, and it cracked and flaked off as the woman bared her teeth, swallowing down a ragged sinew of torn flesh that hung from her blood-strained teeth, inhaling it like limp spaghetti.
"Holy shit…" Peter hissed. He took a step back and lifted his hands to his head. "It's really happening…"
His voice spurred her into action, driving away the strange blankness that had taken hold of her. She grabbed a leg, and yanked the helpless woman free of the driver's grasp.
Or rather, she tried to pull her free. The driver's grip was viciously strong, and refused to let go of the other woman's torso.
"Help me, Peter!" she said over her shoulder at Peter, who seemed just as wide-eyed and stunned as she had been. "Grab her other leg!"
She gave him some room as he reached and grabbed a boot, which pulled free at once, then grabbed the leg and pulled, putting his weight into the effort. The woman came free, banging her head on the edge of the door as the three of them fell back on the pavement. Inside the van, the driver lunged across the passenger seat, reaching out with both hands. The woman's teeth were bared in a horrifying snarl that made her hair stand on end. Olivia noticed that the driver's left arm was mangled, yet the fingers still moved freely.
"Close it!" she said, trying to disentangle herself from the woman, whose weight was lying limply across her legs. "Close the door!"
The fingers closed on the edge of the seat, and the woman—the thing that she had become, pulled itself closer, over the passenger seat toward them.
Peter rolled free of them and dove for the bottom edge of the van door. He swung it shut with considerable force from his knees, then fell forward on his hands, breathing hard.
She scrambled out from underneath the stricken woman, and then rolled her over onto her back. Above her, there was a scratching sound as the woman scraped her long nails on the window, leaving bloody trails behind on the inside of the glass. Her face pressed up against the window, and her teeth snapped futilely at its surface. There was no intelligence in the woman…or the thing's face—Olivia wasn't sure what to call her—but there was a certain awareness in the woman's eyes, instinctual and carnivorous. The woman made no attempt to open the door, and showed no signs of stopping her useless gnawing at the window.
Judging herself safe enough for the moment, she looked over the other woman, the Good Samaritan whom they pulled free. There was a horrific wound in the meaty part of her shoulder, close to her neck, that was bleeding profusely onto the pavement. Her eyes were closed, but she was still alive, and drawing in uneven, rapid breaths.
"How is she?" Peter said, crawling over to her. He took a look at the wound on her shoulder and winced, then put a hand on her forehead. "Her skin's clammy, cold…I think she's going into shock." Pulling his hand away, he glanced over at her. "We need to get her to Walter, before she…" He trailed off, shaking his head in deliberate way which she didn't particularly care for.
"Before she what, Peter?" Olivia said, rising to a crouch next to him. She pulled off her jacket and pressed it into the wound.
Before he could respond, a high-pitched wail, followed by shrieks of terror mixed with pain rang out behind them, coming from the area where the struck pedestrian was being tended by the gray-haired women in blue scrubs.
They jumped to their feet together, just in time to see the girlfriend backing away from her prostrate boyfriend, clutching one hand against her chest. Blood trickled from between her fingers, and she seemed on the verge of fainting.
"He bit me…" The girl was saying to no one in particular as she stumbled away from them. "He bit me. He bit me…"
Down on the pavement, the boy who'd been struck suddenly sat up. He pulled the startled nurse onto his lap and sank his teeth into her neck before she could react. Blood sprayed out in a crimson, showery mist as he ripped her throat away, coating the crowd of men and women standing close by—the majority of whom were dumbfounded by the sudden attack and wiped the blood from their faces in a daze, staring at their hands stupidly. One brave man stepped forward and grabbed the nurse, pulling her from the voracious boy's grasp. Before he could drag her far, the boy reached out and tripped him up, dropping the man and woman to the pavement. With a lunging crawl of surprising quickness, the boy was on top of the man, biting into the thick muscles of his thigh. The man cried out, trying unsuccessfully to pull free of the boy's clutches.
A cry went up from the stunned onlookers, and then chaos took hold, with men and women fleeing the scene in all directions as fast as their feet could carry them. Tires squealed and horns honked as the dispersing crowd began to impede the flow of vehicle traffic, which had happily adapted to the shoulder to make passage around the accident.
It had all happened so fast, like dominoes falling one after another. Three people had been attacked before Olivia had taken even a single step to stop it, if there had been any stopping it in the first place. She wasn't sure what she could have done differently. It was a question that would haunt her for days to come.
A man rushed past her, racing around the minivan toward the boy who was busily dining on the older man's leg.
With a start, she realized that the running man was Peter, from the brown corduroy jacket streaming out behind him. "Peter!" she said, finally breaking free of her shocked paralysis. She followed after him, with her hand dropping to the butt of her gun.
Peter ignored her shout, sprinting straight at the older man and the boy. For a moment, she thought he planned on diving on top of him, which made her blood run cold, but instead he reared back and kicked the crazed boy in the side of the head with an audible grunt of effort. The sound of the impact was a low, heavy-sounding thud of boot striking flesh and the crack of breaking bones. The force of the blow knocked the boy aside, sending him sprawling onto his back a short way away from the older man, whose struggles had grown feeble. He let out a groan and fumbled for the wound in his leg.
A large pool of blood was already forming underneath the man, and she guessed that an artery in his thigh had been ruptured by the boy's attack. She stopped at his side side and crouched down, feeling for a pulse at his neck. It took her a moment to find, but it was there, if very weak, and growing weaker by the second. The man was going to be dead very soon if the flow of blood wasn't stopped, and she had nothing to staunch it with.
From her crouch next to the dying man, she looked over at Peter, who had continued past the boy to the sidewalk. The section of Massachusetts Avenue they were on had been under construction in recent days, the sidewalk repaired and several sections of the street itself. Some of the construction material had yet to be removed from the sight and was sitting in a pile next to the iron-wrought fencing encircling Harvard's campus. He moved straight to the pile and bent down, searching among the length of wood and metal left behind.
What the hell are you doing, Peter? she thought, watching him for a moment, and then turning her attention back to the prostrate victim. His hands lay at his side, unmoving and limp on the pavement, though he was still drawing uneven breaths.
She heard a raspy breath intake of breath, and looked over at the body of the boy Peter had kicked. He was beginning to stir again, twisting his torso and turning himself over onto his stomach. His sickly yellow eyes locked on her face, and he began pulling himself toward her and the dying man, digging his fingernails into the rough surface of the street. The boy's jaw dangled from his upper lip, broken and evidence of the force of Peter's blow. He wouldn't be biting anyone else.
Enough is enough, Olivia thought angrily, and reached for her service weapon. Other than herself and Peter, there were no other civilians in the area, even the SUV driver had abandoned his vehicle. Before she could do more than pull the gun free, a heavy piece of lumber crashed down on the back of the boy's head with a nauseating crunch, driving him face-first down onto the pavement, where he remained still.
Looking up, she found Peter standing over her. In his hands was a length of wood—from the construction material, she surmised—about four feet in length. One end was covered in blood and bits of flesh. He looked pale and shaken by what had happened—was happening.
"You okay?" he said, meeting her eyes.
"Yeah…" she lied. Nothing about any of the entire situation was okay. "You?" she asked, sliding her gun back in its holster.
He swallowed and nodded affirmative, and then turned his attention to the dying man. "What about him?" he said. "He got bit, right?"
There was something about the way he asked the question, the way he hefted his piece of lumber that she found very disturbing. "Yes, he did." she said. "He's not gonna make it if we can't stop the bleeding. We need to get him to your father."
Peter grunted and shook his head. "He's dead, Olivia," he said. "There's nothing we can do for him."
"He's still breathing, Peter," she said, rising from her crouch and stepping close to him. "What do you want us to do? Leave him here to die?" Her voice rose in volume as she spoke, and ended in a shout. "I won't do it!"
"He's gonna turn into one of those things!" Peter said, not backing down an inch. "Did you not hear what Walter said? There is nothing we can do!"
She glanced down at man lying on the street. The pool of blood was flowing across the pavement toward a nearby rainwater drain. It was amazing that he was still breathing, from the sheer amount of blood he'd lost already. "We don't know that for sure…" she insisted, "Walter can't know that for sure!"
She looked around the scene of the accident, surprised by the quiet. They were alone in the street, with not pedestrian or a car moving toward them from, either direction. At some point during all the commotion it had simply ceased.
Where the hell is the ambulance, the police? she said to herself. How can this be happening?
"I'd say it's a pretty good guess at this point, wouldn't you?" he replied, gesturing down at the bodies on the ground. His eyes went wide as he looked up again, his gaze going over her shoulder. "Look out!" he shouted, and shoved her to the side roughly.
Olivia tripped over the dead boy's legs and fell back on her rear, while Peter readied his board as the woman they'd pulled from the minivan lurched toward them in what appeared to be a drunken half-run. The woman's teeth were bared, and her eyes were glazed over with the same yellowish color the minivan driver and boy's had taken on. In her peripheral vision, the nurse whose throat had been torn out began to stir.
Peter swung his board at the dark-coated woman as she rushed toward him, striking a blow across the side of her head. The blow was glancing, and while it slowed the woman momentarily, it did not stop her progress completely. The woman staggered to the side, blood pouring from the wound in her scalp.
"Get away from her, Peter!" she said, pulling her pistol free as he prepared to take another swing.
He stepped back, away from the woman at the tone of her voice, and she noticed he smartly kept his board ready if needed.
The woman's head swiveled toward her, the yellowed eyes locking onto her seemingly vulnerable position on the ground for an instant, and then the woman lunged toward her, arms outstretched and grasping.
Olivia brought her pistol up and fired without aiming. At that close range there was no way she could miss, and miss she did not. The first bullet struck the woman in the chest, slightly off center towards her heart, spraying blood in the air. Though it was a killing shot, the woman kept moving, utterly unaffected by the hole in her chest and the bloodstain rapidly spreading underneath her flapping coat.
The woman's eyes never blinked or wavered, and at that realization, she felt a true panic beginning to take hold for the first time since arriving at the scene of the accident.
Walter had been right. She heard his voice, echoing in her head once again.
How would you go about killing something that's already dead?
A mind-numbing fear began to permeate through her nerve endings, one by one as a stupor settled over her, sapping away her strength. The gun dipped in her hands, suddenly feeling as if it weighed ten tons. She could hear Peter shouting in the background, his words overruled by the beating of her heart, which was thumping drum-like in her ears. The woman wobbled closer. With a supreme effort, she brought the gun up again and fired again and again, squeezing the trigger in rapid repetition. Spent shell casings plinked on the asphalt. She unloaded the pistol's entire clip into the woman's upper body in her panic. The recoil drove the barrel upwards until a bullet decimated the leering grin, leaving a bloody mess behind.
The creature—Olivia could no longer think of it as a woman—dropped like a sack at her feet, head rebounding against the pavement. She—it—the thing was dead, finally. She wasn't sure whether it had been the sheer amount of damage she had done to it, or something else that had stopped it in the end.
Breathing hard and still full of adrenaline, she fell back on her elbows, and turned toward Peter just in time to see him cave the back of the nurse's head in with his piece of lumber, dropping her back onto the spot from which it had attempted to rise. He smashed the board down on its head again, and then let the bloody instrument fall to the street with a clatter.
"Are you okay?" he asked her once more. His voice was calm, almost mechanical.
Olivia nodded, not quite able to speak yet. The fear that had nearly overwhelmed her was only just starting to recede, leaving a deep scar behind she would not be forgetting anytime soon, if ever.
Without hesitation, he moved over to the older man who had been dying, and dragged him over the open drivers door of the SUV by his hands. With a grunt, he bent and lifted the man underneath his shoulders, and then shoved him up into the driver's seat.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, climbing to her feet. "Peter!" she said when he didn't reply, or even look in her direction.
"I'm making a point, Olivia," he said, glancing back at her for a moment. "Two points, actually."
In the time that his blue eyes met hers before he look away, she sensed a barely-contained fury bubbling beneath his gaze, saw it in his angry movements as swung the man's legs into the cab and slammed the door shut.
Realizing her gun was still drawn, she ejected the empty magazine as she walked over to him and slipped it in her pocket, then pulled a fresh one from her belt.
"A point?" she said, sliding the new magazine in place and chambering a round. "Your father was right, I admit it." She lowered her head, not wanting to see the look on his face. Apologies never came easy for her. "I'm sorry, alright? I…shouldn't have doubted—"
"No…" Peter cut her off with an emphatic shake of his head. "There's nothing to apologize for. That isn't the point."
"Then what—"
"Just watch," he said, tapping the window of the SUV.
Glancing between him and the man inside the cab, she shrugged, and slid her pistol back into its holster and waited for him to make his point.
The anger seemed to have faded from Peter's posture, and she wondered at its source. They had just witnessed the most disturbing thing she had ever seen, been attacked and nearly killed, yet she didn't think that was cause of his fury. And though he claimed it had nothing to do with her doubting of his father, it had definitely been directed toward herself. A new thought crossed her mind then, one which was completely ridiculous—he knew about her and John—but made sense when looked at from a certain point of view.
Perhaps he'd been scared, she realized. Not for himself but for her. No one liked to be scared. When the woman had kept coming after she'd shot her the first time…she'd let her gun drop. He'd been screaming her name, she remembered that clearly. Had there been more than concern for a colleague in his tone? Had there been desperation in his voice? He had pushed her out of the thing's way, after all, stepping in between herself and it.
There was no way to be sure, of course, short of asking him, which she could never do. But if were true…it was something to think about, in private at least. She covertly glanced over at his profile, at his unshaved scruff and strong jawline. He was certainly not an unattractive man. Or not…she shouldn't be thinking about it or him that way, especially at that moment, after what they had just witnessed. It was not the time or the place. Besides, she had John, and had gone through hell to save his life. Peter had even helped her do it. And he was a pain in the ass, her ass specifically, most of the time.
"Look." Peter's voice drew her from her frivolous thoughts. "You see?" he said, tapping the window again with the back of his fingers.
Inside the SUV, the man was moving in the front seat, his head pivoting in their direction. His eyes were yellow-gold.
"What am I supposed to see?" she said, flinching back, feeling her heart rate spike as the man thew himself at the window, biting at its smooth surface, much the same as the female van driver had before him.
"That you couldn't have helped him, Olivia." he replied in quiet voice, gazing at her intently. "He was dead the instant he got bit by that thing. There was nothing you could have done. Not for him—or for any of these people." He threw a hand toward bodies scattered around them on the pavement. "Do you understand now?"
Olivia's mouth went dry at the unexpected amount of tenderness she heard in his voice, so unlike the Peter that she was used to in the lab. It hadn't yet occurred to her that she could have somehow stopped what had happened, but that he knew her well enough already to guess that she would later was telling. Her skin began to grow hot under his scrutiny, and she nodded slowly and turned toward him, ignoring the light scraping coming from the SUV's window.
"Peter, I…I—" He seemed closer to her than he had been, and her gaze kept dropping down to his lips, which were parted slightly. His breath was coming out in a shallow pant, or was that her own? It was difficult to think when his full attention was focused on her as it was. What was he doing to her, and where had it come from out of the blue?
John's face suddenly bloomed in her mind, the way it had looked back when he'd been sick. "I understand." she said stiffly, and quickly stepped away from him. "I know I couldn't have stopped this, you don't have to tell me." She scrubbed her hands across her face, then slid them back through her hair, tucking the loose ends behind her ears comfortingly. "What was the other point?"
"That is," he said, pointing at the man-thing in the SUV. "This is real Olivia, if you get bit—that's you. You become one of them." He paused then, as if assessing his words effect on her. "You…didn't get bit did you?" There was a slight note of panic in his voice, and he reached out for her, as if he were planning on inspecting her for wounds himself.
She stepped back out of his range. Letting him touch her at that moment was out of the question. Whatever had just happened between them, it had to be due the adrenaline, making it through a terrifying situation together. It was a normal, human reaction. It had to be.
"No. I'm fine," she told him, "I wasn't…wasn't bit." In image flashed across her vision then, bringing back her panic tenfold. There had been a girl! She'd been clutching her hand. It had been bleeding. "Oh no…where's the girl?"
"What girl?" Peter frowned with confusion.
"The one who was with the boy!" Olivia said, spinning on her heels and searching the area. "He bit her! Right before he attacked the nurse! Peter, we have to find her."
The two of them spread out, splitting up to search the immediate area, quickly moving to the end of the block in both directions down Massachusetts Avenue for the missing girl, to no avail. When they joined up again several minutes later, Peter approached, shaking his head as moved toward her down the sidewalk. His face was grim.
"Nothing. There's no sign of her," he said. "She's gone, Olivia."
#
They hurried back across the quad toward the Kresge Building as Olivia pulled out her phone and tried Agent Broyles's number again.
A robotic voice informed her that it was sorry, that all circuits were busy, and she dropped the phone to her side before it could tell her to try again later.
This is isn't happening, she thought, running a hand through her hair. She suspected it was a phrase she would be saying to herself frequently in the coming days.
"You still can't get through?" Peter asked, furrowing his brow.
Olivia shook her head. "No. I'm gonna try the land line when get back to the lab," she said, glancing back over her shoulder. Two thin columns of black smoke rose in the air, visible over the top of the trees. "Are you sure that won't spread?" she asked him. "I don't think that was a good idea, Peter."
"Yeah…they'll be fine," he said offhandedly, looking back also. "What choice did we have? We couldn't just leave them there like that. The fires are almost out in any case. A couple of burning cars are the least of our problems at the moment, wouldn't you agree?"
She grunted noncommittally.
That was the understatement of the year. The fact that no emergency personnel—be it police, fire department, ambulance service, or anyone at all, had ever come to investigate her gun shots or the two vehicles burning blatantly in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, not to mention the three corpses she'd left behind as well, was much, much more worrying. She'd been unable to reach anyone in authority at the Federal Building, or get through to either Agent Broyles, Charlie, or John, which was unheard of. All circuits were busy. And on top of all that good news, there was an infected girl loose somewhere in Cambridge, which was something she could have stopped—despite Peter's pep talk—if she'd been on the ball. That the infection would spread was not an if, but a when.
It was a certainty.
They moved silently past the bench her and Peter had sat together on several weeks ago. She had been upset, had blown up at him in the lab, and had retreat to the isolation and anonymity of the bench in the midst of the bustle of students moving about the quad. He had found her and had touched her hand. It had been a unconscious gesture on his part, impulsive, as was his nature, but it had had a calming effect on her.
She had never mentioned it to John. He wouldn't have understood. He'd never understood the need for, or approved of her new civilian partner and his father. He had been furious when they'd been split up after his recovery from the Flight 627 incident—a Bureau policy regarding partners who became involved—and that he was now partnered with Charlie, who was a close friend to both of them, had been only slightly mollifying.
Back then, she'd thought her life couldn't get any more complicated, with her sudden and strange promotion, and the even stranger cases Broyles had brought her to investigate alongside Peter and Walter Bishop.
She had been wrong, she realized, looking around the eerily empty Harvard campus. All around them, the old buildings were lighting up as the sun went down, the ornate sidewalk lights flickering to life, in preparation for the evening classes that would, under normal circumstances, be starting any minute. There was not a soul in sight however—other than Peter and herself—and no sounds to be heard either, not even a distant honk or shout, just soles of there shoes scraping on the rough concrete of the sidewalk and a feathery breeze sweeping in from the east, rustling the leaves on the trees and mussing her hair. To the south, the always-in-the-background rumble of heavy truck traffic on I-90 was ominously absent, which more than anything else, made no sense to her.
The world couldn't just come to a stop, could it?
It was surreal, and she was grateful another person was present, or she might have thought she was dreaming, or perhaps still hallucinating in Walter's tank.
"Well, I could have just shot them, you know," she said when they reached their destination. "We didn't have to burn the cars with them."
"True, you could have," Peter replied as they climbed the steps up to the Kresge Building's entrance. He reached for the door handle."But then we wouldn't know that fire can kill them also. Think of it as an experiment," he said with his familiar smirk as he held open the door.
She had no response to that, so she moved past him into the building. The lighting in the lobby was dazzling, painful on the eyes, the silence echoing and uncomfortable.
They exchanged an uneasy glance, and she sensed he didn't care for the ambiance of the space any more than she did, so they hurried toward the stairwell to the basement as one in a moment of unspoken communication.
#
Inside the the lab, they found Agent Farnsworth seated at her workstation, with Walter hunched over her shoulder chewing on a red vine. Both were staring at her monitor intently. The two of them looked up as the door banged open at their entrance.
"Peter!"
"Agent Dunham!"
The scientist and the junior agent hurried toward them, the former almost bouncing on his feet, the latter looking pale with fear.
"Where have you two been?" Walter said. "You're missing all the excitement!"
Peter pulled off his jacket and tossed over the back of a chair. "Believe me, Walter," he said. "We haven't missed a thing."
Astrid frowned at his statement. "I heard gunshots a while ago, a lot of them," she said worriedly. "Was that you?"
"Yeah," Olivia replied, leaning against a counter-top, feeling utterly exhausted all of sudden. She forced the tiredness away. "That was me. What have we missed? Have you heard anything else?"
"Just looping news reports on the CNN's website," the junior agent said. "It's not good news. They're talking about evacuating, warning people to stay away from all major metropolitan areas. I haven't been able to reach anyone at the Federal Building."
"I was right!" Walter grinned happily. "The phenomenon is happening everywhere, just as I predicted!"
"You don't have to sound so thrilled about it, Walter," Peter said through a yawn. "We know you were right, we just experienced it firsthand."
"What?" Astrid gasped.
"You must tell me everything that happened. Quickly, son!" Walter said at the same time. "All our lives could depend on it! You mustn't leave out a thing."
Olivia listened for a moment as Peter began telling their story, then moved away away from the group, heading toward her office. He was was good storyteller, and was welcome to it. She had been there, and had no reason or want to re-live the experience. One time was quite enough.
Once in her office, Olivia closed the door behind her, then sat down behind her desk and leaned back in the swivel chair. She let her eyes slide shut and relaxed, rubbing her temples and slowing her breathing to steady, even pace. She needed a moment to recharge her batteries, to clear her mind of the driving terror that had been lurking just out of view over her shoulder, ever since the dead boy had sat up and torn the nurse's throat out.
The mind wasn't meant to witness horrors like what had happened, at least hers wasn't. She kept her eyes shut, holding back tears that threatened to spill over. It took a minute or two—possibly as many as ten—before she was able to open them again without worry of falling into mad hysterics, unbefitting her position as a Special Agent of the FBI. It was a relief that she had her training to fall back on. She wondered how Peter was dealing with it all so well, so seemingly unaffected.
Perhaps his former line of work had left him better prepared to deal with senseless violence than she would have guessed. She watched him for a moment through slats of the office window blinds, observing his mannerisms from her unseen vantage point as he spoke with his father and Astrid of their little adventure out on Massachusetts Avenue.
He was normally an animated speaker, constantly moving his hands about as he spoke. It was a habit she herself was guilty of, a habit which brought on the occasional bout of self-consciousness, in which she tried to correct the quirk only to find herself doing it again once she shifted her focus away from herself.
There was no animation in his movements at that moment. In fact, she noticed that was standing quite still, one hand gripping the edge of the countertop he was leaned up against, the other rubbing incessantly at the back of his neck. It took her a moment, but then she saw what she was looking for.
His knuckles were white where he gripped the table, the tendons on the back of his hand standing out prominently from the pressure he was exerting.
Olivia smiled faintly, and then sighed at the sight. She found it a comfort that she wasn't alone in her fear.
Feeling a little better, she reached for the land-line phone on her desk. Her fingers hesitated above the dial pad, and at the last moment, she dialed the number to her apartment, instead of the Federal Building as she'd originally intended.
She had to make sure her family was safe first.
Olivia held her breath as the phone rang once, twice, three times. She had to be there. She had to.
Her sister answered on the fourth ring.
"Rachel, it's me," she said after her sister's tremulous hello.
"Olivia!" Her sister's voice was frantic. "Where are you? What's going on? They're saying on TV that there's been some kind of attack! That we should evacuate on one channel, and to stay indoors on another! Ella is going crazy, I…I don't know what do!"
"Rachel, I'm gonna need you to listen to me very carefully…" Olivia said, trying to project her calmness over the connection. Her sister had always had a bit of a fragile mental state, and the situation had to be pushing her to her limits. "Is everyone there okay? Ella, Greg? They're both fine?"
"Yeah…they're both okay," Rachel replied, and then snuffed her nose. "Olivia, what is going on? Has there been an attack?"
She didn't answer right away. Telling her sister everything that had happened would undoubtedly drive her mad, yet she had to be prepared for the worst.
"Olivia?"
Perhaps a safe middle ground could be reached. "We're not really sure what's happened right now," she told her after a moment of indecision. "Rachel, listen to me…listen to me very carefully. You need to stay inside the apartment until I can back there, or you hear from me again. Don't go outside, for any reason."
"So it's true then?" Her sister's voice rose an octave. "Oh my god, oh my god…oh my god…Liv, I don't know—"
"Rachel!" Olivia said, raising her voice. "You have to calm down—this is not helping. I'm going to be there just as soon as I can. Rachel?"
Rachel's sobbing and incoherent utterances seemed only to increase, and a moment later another voice, a male voice came over the line.
Greg.
"Olivia?" he said, having obviously taken the phone from her distraught sister. "What the hell is going on?"
Her relationship with her brother in-law was chilly, to say the least, but she thought she could trust him with this task at least. Last she'd heard, the two of them had been doing better, which was to say, he wasn't abandoning her and Ella on a regular basis or hadn't been seeing any other women lately. She didn't know for sure there had been other women, but all the signs were there.
"Greg?" she said. "Listen to me. I…I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but until I know more I need you to keep Rachel and Ella inside the apartment. Don't let them out, or let anyone in."
"Is is really that bad?" he said, sounding doubtful.
"…I don't know," Olivia answered. "It could be… Listen, I have a spare pistol in my bedroom. In a safe in the closet. There's ammo there as well." She hesitated, then gave him the combination. "Greg…I'm serious—don't let anyone in. Not anyone. There should be plenty of food for a few days…maybe a week, while we get this sorted out. You got that combination?"
"A week?" Greg sounded outraged by the idea. "You gotta be kidding me. What are we supposed to do locked in here for a week? We're supposed to be back in Chicago before then…"
"I hope I'm wrong, and that this was all for nothing," she said, ignoring his remark. She ground her teeth, her irritation with her sister's husband rearing its head. Had the man not been paying attention at all? "Just in case, you got that combination?"
"I got it," he said, sounding unhappy as he repeated it back to her.
She wondered if he would do as she asked. He wasn't exactly known for being compliant from what her sister had told her.
"Let me talk to Rachel again."
There was some talking in the background that she couldn't quite hear as the phone exchanged hands.
"Olivia?" She sounded a little better, a little more in control of herself.
"Rachel?" Olivia said. "Greg knows how to use a gun doesn't he?"
"Umm…yeah," Her sister sniffled. "I think so—him and his friends talk about them a lot, at least."
"Okay. Good." He would have to do. "How is Ella?"
"She's in the spare bedroom right now…lying down." More sniffles carried over the line. "I managed to calm her down a bit. I told her you were coming home."
"Rachel…I don't when I'll be able to get there," she said, getting up from her chair and glancing out at the others. Peter and Astrid were looking her way through the window. Walter had vanished, probably to his storage room. She had noticed he seemed to hang out in there a lot. "It might not be for a few days…can you wait that long? You have to stay strong, Rachel. For Ella's sake. Can you do that?"
"I…I guess I have to—don't I?"
"Yes, you do," she replied. "I'm sorry I'm not there for you and Ella, but…I…uh, I just can't come home yet. I'm sorry." Her office door opened, and Peter stepped inside. "Rachel, I have to go now." She felt a lump beginning to lodge in throat painfully, making it hard to breath, to speak.
"No. Wait. Olivia—"
"I love you, you and Ella both," she said. "Tell her I said that. Goodbye, Rach."
She hung up before her sister could respond, and then fell back in her seat. She covered mouth with one hand, pinching her nose painfully for several moments. The band of pain squeezing her throat slowly dissipated, and she pulled her hand away, meeting Peter's narrowed eyes.
"Family?" he said quietly, taking the seat across from her.
"Yeah," she said quietly, and wiped at her eyes. She had never mentioned her sister to him before, or really told him anything personal about herself, family included. "My sister and her family. They're visiting from Chicago this week."
Peter nodded as if that made sense. "Why don't you go to them?" he said. "You could bring them back here. At least until we figure out what's going on, you know?"
Olivia lowered her head. The lab was the last place a girl Ella's age should be. They were going to be right in the middle of it—of whatever was happening. It was no place for a girl, or for her sister.
"I…I think they'll be okay for a few days," she told him. "I stocked up on food before they showed up. They should be good for a while." They had to be good. They had to be okay. Anything else was not acceptable.
Peter nodded again, then opened his mouth as if to speak. It hung open for brief moment, and then he swallowed, not quite meeting her eyes. "Sure. That makes sense," he said. "We can always go get them later…if we need to."
"Yeah…"
She got the sense that he'd been about to say something entirely different, but had changed his mind at the last moment. It was good that he had. Her family was her business, and had nothing to do with him.
"So…have you tried reaching Broyles again?" he asked after an uncomfortable silence.
"No, not yet," she said. "What did Walter and Astrid say about what happened?"
"Walter?" he chuckled unevenly. "He didn't say anything. Just went into one his moods, said he didn't want to be disturbed, that he had to think. Astrid looked like she was gonna be sick again." He scratched at the scruff on his cheek roughly. "I know why no one ever showed up outside, at least."
"Why?" she demanded.
"This thing, this disease, infection, whatever you want to call it—Downtown is infested with it," he said. "Those cops we saw? That's where they were all headed. There was some kind of mob."
"What kind of mob?" she said, and leaned forward in her chair. "How could it have spread so fast?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. I guess it just takes one bite." He got to his feet. "I'm gonna go find some food. You want any?"
"No. I'm fine," she said, picking the up the phone. "Maybe a little later. Right now, I have to get hold of Broyles, or John, or Charlie, or anyone at the Federal Building. Someone has to know what's going on, have more orders for us."
Olivia dialed Broyles's phone, then John's, then Charlie's, before dialing each of their desks at the Federal Building. When no one answered, she repeated the process, and then repeated it again. When she looked up, Peter was gone. She had never even heard him leave. Hopefully he had found some food, she thought, and then resumed her phone calls.
Somebody would have to pick up, eventually.