Demitria Lunetta - In the End

I remember Doc’s look, his feral glee at the thought of having found a vaccine. I shake my head just as Ken did, trying to rattle that mad image out of it. No. Not even Doc is crazy enough to risk injecting Florae-infected blood into the veins of people he only thinks have been successfully vaccinated. If he’s wrong—

Then the blood in my own veins turns cold, remembering Pete’s panicked whisper to Tank about the fate of another of Doc’s thugs.

Made him into a damned Florae .

I can barely say the words. “Doc is testing Brenna’s blood,” I say. “He’s testing it on those people in the Yard.”

“Show me where he is,” I order Ken. “Now.”

“Amy, calm down!” Jacks yells.

“Don’t you understand what’s going on?” I scream. “We’ve got to stop this before it’s too late!”

Ken nods but eyes Brenna. “She shouldn’t be left alone.”

I turn to Jacks. “Can you stay with her?”

“If you’re going out there, I want to go with—”

“No,” I say. “I can fight a Florae if I need to. Brenna can’t. You need to protect her.”

“I need to protect you ,” he says, grabbing my wrist. “You’re the one I—”

He stops himself, hesitates, and then leans in. My heart leaps to my throat as I think he’s going to kiss me again.

But then he just whispers, “Just . . . get back here alive.”

He’s so close, a strange, tingling sensation pours through me, all the way to the ends of my toes.

“I will,” I tell him. “I promise.”

I follow Ken into the corridor and around a corner. There’s a surprising lack of guards around, but when we head out into the Yard, I see why.

Doc has tasked the guards with rounding up people and keeping them in line. He’s set up lights, utilizing the power from the wall. The standing lamps look out of place and cast an eerie glow across the yard. We watch as Doc administers a shot on a woman, then pushes her to a guard to move her along. As Ken and I approach, one man refuses the injection. Doc nods to a guard, who brings down the butt of his rifle in the man’s face. Doc injects him, and the patient is dragged to the side.

Ken and I run past the guards. One tries to stop us, but Doc waves us through. “Ah, Ken,” he says, “you’ve come to participate in my case study? I can use the help.” Doc’s eyes have gone glassy, a sickening grin plastered to his face.

Ken eyes the syringe in Doc’s hand. “What the hell are you doing?”

“The vaccine. It’s effective. I’m injecting all these people with that bitten girl’s blood. A meaningless test, but protocol is protocol. The i ’s need dotting, the t ’s crossing. I know she’s immune. And if she’s immune, even though she’s a carrier, everyone else given the vaccine is also immune. I mean, I couldn’t go out and get a live Florae, could I? Much too dangerous. Believe me, I know.”

“How does that make any sense?” Ken asks desperately. “The girl didn’t change, but that doesn’t mean the vaccine was effective. There could be any number of other factors in play. But one thing we do know is that she’s a carrier.”

“Oh yes, she is, certainly,” Doc tells us happily. He takes a bottle out of his pocket, pops the top, and pours some pills into his mouth. He pauses and swallows with a shake of his head. He turns back to us. “I ran her blood. The same bacteria we find in the Floraes is in her, fully developed, and yet she remains unchanged.”

I cringe as he gives another man a shot. “If the vaccine is ineffective,” I say, “doesn’t that mean that all these people are now infected?”

The man who was knocked out with the rifle begins to shake where he lies, unconscious. I pull out my gun and take a step back from him. “Ken . . . ?”

“It’s started,” Ken whispers, unbelieving.

I look around the Yard. How many has Doc infected? Some people change in minutes, others hours. How can it be contained? Another man drops to his knees, his hands to his ears. He screams, his skin turning from sunburned-brown to dark-yellow to yellow-green. When his hands fall away from his head, one ear tumbles to the ground, bouncing off the hard concrete. The other ear hangs loosely, attached by a thin piece of flesh. I stare, horrified. I’ve never seen anyone actually change before.

Ken comes to his senses before I do. “We can’t contain this, not now. Our only hope is to leave.”

“Leave? Where?” There’s nowhere left to run.

“I’ll contact New Hope, tell them about Brenna. They’ll send a hover-copter for us.” He grabs my hand. “Come with me. Kay would want you safe.”

“And Jacks,” I say, and he nods. We’ll get out and take Brenna to New Hope.

Ken pulls me back toward the wall, but the panic has begun. Someone runs into us, knocking me onto my stomach. When I roll over, Ken has disappeared, and a man stands over me, salivating. He hasn’t changed completely yet, but he’s close—his ears and nose are gone, his skin a pale pea-green. His eyes are tinged with yellow, but they aren’t yet milky and useless. They burn with a fire I’ve seen before in Floraes who haven’t yet lost all their sight. Hunger.

He is no longer a man. He is a monster. He’s one of Them.

He lunges greedily for me, and I don’t allow myself to hesitate. I can’t consider the fact that this creature was a man just seconds ago. I grab my gun, take aim, and shoot. His head snaps back from the impact and he falls over. Another Florae rushes to his side and begins to feed on him.

I scramble to my feet, pull up my hood, and prepare myself for a fight—knife in one hand, gun in the other. In the increasing frenzy, the lights that Doc had set up are knocked over and extinguished. I wish I had my Guardian glasses, but I left my pack with Jacks in the examination room. In the bottom of my belly I feel a familiar quivering.

Fear.

I’ll be fine, I tell myself sternly. I lived for years in the shadows. I’m not afraid of the dark. It will make it easier to avoid the Floraes and get back inside.

Suddenly the Yard is filled with a burst of brightness. The spotlights in the guard towers have been turned inward. I silently curse the light. The guards are at least trying to destroy the Floraes, though. The sound of gunshots fills the air, making it hard to hear anything, to remain alert.

I sidestep a man on his knees, holding his ears, his face contorted in pain. Auditory sensitivity, one of the first signs he’s been infected. I level my gun, but I can’t bring myself to shoot him. He’s still a person. A man rushes toward me on my right, and I prepare for his assault, taking the fighter’s stance Kay taught me, but the man is only trying to escape. He dashes past me and starts banging on the door behind me to get inside the walls. I throw my back against the wall a few yards away from him, every muscle tingling, ready to fight any Florae that attacks.

One moment the man is pounding on the door, screaming in panicked desperation, and the next another volley of gunfire assaults my ears and the man drops to the ground. I sprint down the wall away from the door—the guards are taking down every threat to their quarantine. I can only hope Ken made it inside before the guards decided to shoot anyone trying to escape past the wall.

I need to reach my cellblock and figure out what to do from there. Jacks and Brenna should be safe inside.

Keeping my back to the wall, I circle the exercise yard, which has deteriorated into utter chaos. Only a few of the bitten have turned into full Floraes; most are in varying degrees of change and writhe on the ground in pain. One man I pass stares at his green arms, unbelieving. Another holds his nose in place as he pulls clumps of hair from his head.