R. Ruggiero - Brushfire Plague

He moved rapidly to the desk and rifled the contents of the desk drawers. He found a random collection of papers, bills, clipped articles, and the other items you’d expect to find on a desk. She had an old-fashioned large desk calendar, which was largely unused. However, there was a post-it note written in bold red letters: “Project Reset Meeting.” It was stuck on a day just one week prior to the outbreak. The post-it had the company logo of Admonitus written across the bottom. Written in hard to decipher black ink underneath the big red lettering was a room and a location. The meeting had been held at the Admonitus headquarters.

He spent the next five minutes quickly combing the room for anything else of interest and then ten more after that sweeping through the rest of the house, which all proved fruitless.

When he finally made it back to the front door, Dranko was as jumpy as a cat on a hot griddle. “Find anything?”

“Not as much as I wanted. But, we need to find out about something called ‘Project Reset’.”

“How are we doing that?”

“We need to go to Admonitus’ headquarters. I don’t have time to waste,” Cooper said intently.

Dranko grinned, “I thought we’d end up there before the day was out. That was why I brought these along,” he said, tapping his twin .45s affectionately.

What they saw when they turned to leave left both of them breathless.

Julianne Wheeler had just rounded the low stone wall that lined her front yard and was stumbling toward the house. A bright red seam had been opened across her forehead and blood dripped down, covering half of her face. Her left arm hung limply at her side, a gash almost half a foot long was outlined in crimson. Bruises had already welled up on her other arm and on her chin. Her ragged gait was matched by her trance-like gaze that was fixed on the ground directly in front of her. She hadn’t looked up, as she lumbered toward them.

The two men exchanged a quick look of surprise and then went into action. Cooper ran outside to help her.

His movement broke Julianne’s trance. She jerked back, raising her hands in a pitiful defense as the rank look of terror filled her face.

He slowed his movement and held his own hands up, palms forward, “It’s OK, Julianne. It’s me, Cooper. Remember? I’m here to help you.”

She wavered, trying to process what he was saying. He continued, “You need help, Julianne. Let me help you.” He did his best to offer a comforting smile.

Then, he was upon her and she collapsed into his arms.

A half hour later she regained consciousness. They had propped her up on the couch and covered her in warm blankets. Her wounds had been dressed and fortunately, neither of the gashes required stitches.

Cooper was seated next to her on an oaken chair that he had pulled up next to her.

She blinked up at him and whispered weakly, “Wh…what happened?”

Cooper smiled down at her, “We were hoping you could tell us. You just stumbled here.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together as memory returned. Her eyes filled with tears. “I was attacked. For a bag of canned goods. A brick or a rock to the head and a knife to my arm.” The tears now ran freely down her face.

Cooper touched her arm in sympathy, “I’m sorry.” She continued weeping.

“This was supposed to be clean, quick. Not like this. Not like this, at all,” she muttered between sobs.

“What wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Cooper asked.

Abruptly, she sat up. “Oh, never mind. It’s too late now. What were you doing here anyway?”

“I wanted to learn more about what happened at Admonitus.”

She shocked him by bolting to a standing position, wobbling unsteadily on her feet in doing so, “You have to leave. You have to leave now.” She stammered, anger mixed with near panic.

Cooper stood up and offered his hands up in a defensive position, “Calm down, Julianne. I just have a couple of questions.”

Her face flushed, red replacing the pale look she had worn just moments before. “You’ve just got to go. Now. It’s all too late to talk about,” she screamed hysterically.

He was stunned and yammered, “My God! Calm down. I just want to help you!”

She shook her head back and forth ferociously, her hair swinging in a wide arc despite the grime and blood that had dried in it, “No, no, no! I’m beyond help, don’t you get it,” she pleaded. “With what I’ve done, we’re all beyond help now!” With that, she slumped back into the sofa, clasped her face in her hands and sobbed uncontrollably.

Cooper backed away and shot a glance at Dranko who had been standing sentry-like at the front door. He shrugged his shoulders in response.

Cooper remained for a few moments debating what to do next. He was torn between deep sympathy for her, confusion, and raging anger for the mysteries she presented without any solution. Finally, resigned, he spoke to her, “OK. We’ll leave. But, here is my number, call me if you need anything.” He hastily scribbled his number on a Post-It note that lay on her entry table.

Julianne flapped her hands about her, as if waving off pesky gnats at a mid-summer picnic, “Go. Please go,” was all that she said.

Cooper left bewildered, dumbstruck by what he had just witnessed.

Once outside, Dranko offered a one word explanation, “Shock.”

Cooper found it lacking. His curiosity about what had been going on at Admonitus was rising rapidly. When he reached the car, he tried home on his cell phone. Thankfully, the call went through. The report, however, was haunting: fever rising.

As Dranko drove west towards the city’s high tech corridor, Cooper fiddled with his pistol. As he inserted and removed the magazine, repeatedly, he knew he was burning off nervous energy as much as anything else. His mind kept turning what little he knew over and over in his head. His stomach churned as he considered the notion that these people had known about the plague before it had started.

If the people at Admonitus knew about this before it started, it was damning. Why hadn’t they warned anyone? Cooper clenched his fists and gritted his teeth as he considered the deaths that could have been prevented with just a little foreknowledge. Elena. He racked the slide on his pistol, chambering a round.

“How much further?”

“Just about five more minutes, brother,” Dranko responded. “What’s the plan when we get there?”

Cooper returned a twisted grin, “Simple. We’re gonna find someone in charge and make them talk. I want to know just what the hell is going on.”

Cooper had Dranko drive past the Admonitus facility so that he could do a little reconnaissance. It was a nondescript, low-slung cluster of one story buildings that looked similar to any other office park spread out across America, but particularly popular in areas with high-tech companies. Gentle, rolling, lawns created a campus-like setting with benches and picnic tables scattered about. The buildings were made of gray concrete, with large banks of windows covering a good portion of the walls. The windows were darkly tinted so it was impossible to see inside the buildings.

The parking lot was almost completely deserted. Notably, a large black Mercedes sedan occupied a parking spot up front, underneath a large sign that declared “President’s Parking, Only.”

“You see that? Luck could be on our side,” Cooper remarked, gesturing to Dranko.

“Or just his fortune ran out and he’s lying dead somewhere else,” he responded sardonically.

Cooper just shook his head at his friend’s pessimism, “Remind me not to let you buy my lottery tickets next time.”