Chapter 7

@CDC: Our researchers have traced the Hydra-1 virus back to a microbe found in horseshoe bats in China. Bats have unusual immune systems. Their hollow bones, like those of birds, don't produce immune cells in their marrow like other mammals. Therefore, they can carry exotic and unique microbes that sometimes merge with ones found in mammals and can mutate into pathogens that can be transmitted to humans.

Lincoln suppressed a shudder at the thought of Caroline having witnessed something so awful. He'd seen terrible things, things that would give even the devil himself nightmares, but he had been trained to deal with them. Soldiers were no stronger than civilians like Caroline. They reacted the same inside to anything awful, but they were trained to push aside any feelings until it was safe to deal with them, long after the threat was over. But nothing in his years on Delta Force had prepared him for the end of humanity.

During a supply run a few days ago, he'd passed by the stadium that hosted the College World Series, and he'd seen the small city of medical tents and stretchers. The endless rows of bones and mummified remains covered the field where the Red Cross and FEMA had tried to set up triage stations. He'd seen the bodies in the streets, the bodies in cars in the middle of the freeways, in the hotel rooms, and in houses. The looks on the faces of the ones who still bore a passing resemblance to people were emotionless, their slack features empty in a way that would haunt him forever. As he'd stood watching the wind whistle through the medical tents on the baseball field, he felt something fracture inside him. He'd given up. He had let go of his hope foreveruntil he had seen Caroline.

In the midst of all these endless wintry skies, Caroline had burst into his life like a bright beacon of hope that poured in through the clouds, like brilliant and defiant sunlight. She was his hope, his only hope which meant he could never let her go. He'd protect her from the world. She'd likely hate him for trying to protect her, but he wasn't going to back down. Like a wild wolf who'd come across a helpless kitten, he'd somehow defied the urge to be a predator and instead would protect her like the sacred discovery she was.

He hadn't known what to expect when he'd come to the surface, but to see humanity had vanished had frightened the hell out of him. Any survivors he could only assume had lost their compass of morality, leaving them directionless resulting in lawlessness. This new world would have only one rule: fight for survival, fight for your needs to be fulfilled, whatever those needs were. Hunger, thirst, lust, greed. He'd expected to come across a war band straight out of Mad Max rather than someone like Caroline.

We had so many warningsso many trumpets sounding that the walls of Jericho were tumbling down. Epidemics had struck before, but nothing like this. The proverbial levee had broken, and the floodwaters were rushing over it with no end in sight.

We will all succumb and drown in the darkness of our hearts.

He glanced over to her now. She was watching him, and her hazel eyes were almost brown in the dim lights.

She looks so young, so innocent. How the hell has she survived this long?

"Where were you when it started?" he asked.

She didn't immediately answer, but the shadows flashing across her eyes warned him that whatever answer she was about to give him wouldn't be the full story. The horrors she'd seen would stay inside her.

"I was in Chicago. The airport. I got trapped there trying to get home for the holidays."

"Trapped?"

She nodded. "Yes. There was a man who came in from La Guardia who'd shared a plane with a man from Paris who they think might be patient zero or close to." She shivered and looked down at her hands. Her fingers plucked the decorative fringes of the blanket wrapped around her.

"You're truly immune then?"

She nodded again. "He coughed on me. I left the line, and he infected the woman at the desk. She collapsed within a few hours. It was terrifying. We were trapped like rats, falling sick by the dozens while they sealed us off from the rest of the world. I understand it, I do. But they sentenced us to die." Her voice cracked with emotion, and Lincoln knew she was close to breaking. He wasn't used to sharing his own stories, but what did it matter now if he talked? She needed to know she hadn't been alone in her fear and her suffering.

"I was in Turkey when I heard the rumors of the virus in China and Pakistan."

Her gaze focused back on him as he sat down on the opposite end of the couch.

"Turkey? What were you doing there?"

For a moment he didn't answer. He was conditioned not to speak of his missions under any circumstances. But it didn't matter now. None of it mattered. The country he had protected and fought for was an empty shell now. The halls of the White House were empty, and the chambers of the Supreme Court were vacant. The Capitol Building was gathering dust. Everything, the good and the bad, was all gone.

He cleared his throat. "I was in the First Special Forces Operational Detachment, what you probably know as Delta Force. We were trying to find a way into Syria to kill their president. The people up top were sick of them gassing their own people, and he wanted that monster gone."

The faces in the pictures on the walls witnessed his confession, but their lips were sealed, their graves topped with snow.

"Delta Force? That's top-secret stuff, like the SEAL teams?"

"Yeah, the SEALs are navy, Delta's army. But similar. We do covert missions, things that, if done right, the world never knows about."

Caroline shifted on the couch, moving closer to him. "I thought you might be military."

"Oh? What gave me away?" he asked, genuinely interested. Not that he had been hiding his military position, but he was certainly curious to know how a civilian would view him.

"Aside from your clothes, it's how you move. The way you looked around when we stepped outside of the store. What do you guys call it, situational awareness?"

Lincoln scratched his beard, thinking back to last night. He'd had one mission. Secure the girl. Protect the girl. Nothing else mattered. There had been no fear except in losing her.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked. "I mean, how did you get from Turkey to Omaha?"

Lincoln wasn't sure how much he should tell her. Adam's loss was still too deep and fresh, too much of a nightmare. That was a burden no one else should have to carry.

"I was assigned to presidential detail and flew back with my team. We met the acting president in DC and then flew to Omaha. It's not much of a secret these days that we had a huge bunker here."

"The president is dead, isn't he?" She bit her lip and said, "Both of them, I mean. I remember when President Whitaker died. I heard on the radio that Vice President Adam Caine took over. But if you're here, he must be gone too."

"Yes." The single word cut his throat to ribbons.

Caroline continued to stare at him. Misery twisted an invisible knife in his chest. He didn't want to talk anymore.

"You should probably sleep now. To mend your ankle, you need to rest. I'll rub on the tendons around your ankle bone to keep any scar tissue from knotting around it, or you'll never regain your full strength and mobility."

He knew she wanted to argue, but he saw the weariness overwhelming her. There were lines carved into her face, her pain exacting a toll upon her. For an instant he tried to imagine her laughing and carefree, no ghosts lingering in her gaze, no sorrow furrowing her brow, her lips no longer wilted in a frown. Grief and loss had made a mirror of her beauty, a darker version, yet he sensed that her joy, if she ever claimed it, would make her stunning beyond imagining.

He stood, collected her and the blankets in his arms, and carried her once more up the stairs to the master bedroom. He'd left a battery-powered lantern up there by the nightstand.

"Turn it off and on with this button." He showed her the button on the base of the lantern.

"Thanks." She settled deeper under the blankets, and he walked to the door and had nearly closed it when she spoke.

"Lincoln" Hearing his name on her lips made his body tense. "Thank you for finding me."

"You're welcome," he said.

"But seriously, I'm not sleeping with you." The light, almost playful petulance in her tone cracked a smile on his face.

He chuckled. He suspected that in time instincts would take over. It was all humanity had left. Drives and hungers. The chemistry was there. He had seen it burning in her eyes when he'd come down in a towel after his shower. She'd looked at him with that ancient animal magnetism reflected in her gaze. He would wait as long as it took, but he knew she would succumb sooner rather than later. They might well be the last two people on earth someday. And it would be awfully lonely if she denied her body what it wanted, what it craved.

He closed the bedroom door and returned to the kitchen to collect one of his lanterns. Then he checked the locks on all the doors, and finally, only then did he trust himself to sleep. He didn't want to tell Caroline that he had seen fires on the horizon tonight. They weren't campfiresthey had been the fires of burning houses. Those kinds of fires meant men were nearby. Dangerous men. They'd have to move if he saw fires any closer. And they would keep moving until he found a safe place for her to rest and recover.

But they would never be truly safe, never again.