Broken World (Book 6): Forgotten World (30 page)

“This is weird,” Parv says, shaking her head.

“And wrong.” I hoist myself up, nursing my injured arm, and move to the door. Even though I know it’s going to be locked, I try the knob. It does nothing, of course, so I slam my hand against the metal a few times. “Hey! I want to talk to someone! Open the door!”

“Vivian,” Parv whispers.

I turn, and when my eyes meet Parv’s, I almost burst into tears. “This isn’t how I thought this would turn out.”

“They’ll come back in a little bit,” she says. “This is just a precaution.”

I don’t know if I believe it, but I nod and let out a deep breath, trying to blow all the air out of my lungs. Trying to hold it together.

“Let’s get cleaned up,” Parv says, turning toward the bathroom.

It’s the only thing we can do right now, but there’s something about it that seems so wrong.

“Okay,” I say even though I don’t really care how dirty I am right now.

We just need to hang on for a little bit, and then everything will be okay.

27

AFTER WE’RE CLEAN and dressed, we wait. My shoulder throbs too much to allow me put a shirt on, so I sit next to Parv with my head and one arm through the holes. The scrub top covers only half of my upper body, but it’s better than nothing.

“What do you think they did with Angus?” I ask, staring at the door.

“They’re patching him up,” Parv says. “He was bitten a lot. You know what Joshua said about bites and infection. If what that woman said is true, he’s really put himself at risk.”

She has a point: the human mouth is filthy. Angus could get an infection, and after all his injuries, he may need blood. They have all the resources here, and it won’t be long before he’s back on his feet. Then they’ll see that we aren’t infected and they’ll let us out. That’s when they’ll give Megan back to me. They just want to be sure I don’t turn and kill her. So few babies have made it.

My mind spins in circles while Parv and I sit in silence, doing nothing but staring at the door. I think about Axl and Joshua, about Megan and if she’s okay. About Angus, wondering if we made it in time. I find myself wondering what happened to Jim after he fled the farmhouse and thinking about Al and Lila. Then there are the people we left on the bridge, and Anne and Sophia back in Hope Springs. Brady, who couldn’t bring himself to leave his wife’s side. So much has happened. So many people gone. Thinking about it makes my head spin so much that by the time the door opens, I feel dizzy.

Parv stands, but I can’t move. Not even when a woman wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard walks in, smiling. The skin at the corners of her eyes crinkles, but she doesn’t look old. Just tired. Her hair is shockingly blonde and neat. Two soldiers walk in behind her.

“Please,” she says, motioning toward the beds. “Sit down so we can talk.”

“Where are our friends?” Parv asks, not moving.

“My baby?” I whisper.

The woman smiles as she once again motions toward the beds. “Please.”

Parv sits at my side, and the woman smiles again as moves across the room. She takes a seat across from us on the other bed, placing the clipboard on her lap. Still smiling. The expression makes me squirm. It looks like it was painted on her face.

“I’m Dr. Helton,” she says after a couple beats. “We’re working on your friend at the moment, and we expect him to make a full recovery. In the meantime, we wanted to be sure you had the medical attention you needed. It seems you were hurt?” Her eyes move to me.

“Yes,” I say, motioning to my shoulder with my good arm. “I fell as we were running away.”

“We’ll get that looked at. We’d also like to take some blood and administer some antibiotics just to be on the safe side.” She takes a deep breath before saying, “We’re going to need you to strip so we can check for bites or scratches.”

Parv shakes her head. “That seems unnecessary. We’re already being observed, can’t you just wait to see if we exhibit any symptoms?”

“Normally, yes, but we’ve had to change our protocol. Since finding out that people can in fact be immune to this disease, we’ve decided we need to check for infection sights and
then
wait for symptoms. You may have been scratched and not even realize it, which means you could be immune and you’d never know. You’d simply think you hadn’t been infected.” She gives us a sympathetic smile. “I can promise you that it will be very professional. I’m a doctor, after all.”

She may be a doctor, but the soldiers standing behind her are not. I glance their way, but they have their eyes straight ahead. Even with their guns, they aren’t very threatening. It’s a precaution, and I know it. Plus, we don’t really have a choice. They have us in a room. They have guns. If we refuse, they could just force us. It’s better to cooperate.

“Fine,” I say, getting to my feet.

It takes a moment to pull the shirt over my head thanks to my injury, but once I do, I drop it to the floor. My pants follow, leaving me totally naked. They didn’t bother providing clean underwear.

The doctor stands and narrows her eyes on my body, frowning for a second before looking up at my face. “Please turn.”

I obey, lifting my good arm so she can look me over, and the hair on my scalp prickles under her intense gaze and a shudder rips through me. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to strip, and even though I try not to let the memories of Vegas in, they come back anyway. Within seconds, every inch of my body is covered in goose bumps.

My arms and legs are covered in bruises, but there no cuts or open wounds, which should make the doctor happy—or maybe unhappy, if she’s hoping to find more people who are immune.

“Very good,” she says after a couple seconds. “You can redress.”

I bend and pick up my pants, struggling to put them back on with only one arm. Parv helps, and when they’re in place, we do the same with my shirt, once again leaving my bad arm out. The doctor is busy scribbling on her clipboard.

“Your name?” she asks, not looking up.

“Vivian Thomas.”

“Age?”

“Twenty—” I shake my head. “Twenty-one. I had a birthday at some point.”

The doctor nods. “Very good. And you’re the mother of the baby?” Her eyes move up to meet mine.

She knows I’m not Megan’s mother. I remember how round and squishy my belly was after I had Emily. Megan is so young, and there’s no way my body would look like this so soon after her birth. I could lie, but they’d know if they drew our blood.

“I’m not,” I say, “But her mother died shortly after she was born, and she asked me to take care of Megan. She was my closest friend.”

The doctor nods again. “I appreciate the honesty. It’s important in times like these because it lets us know who we can trust. Even a small lie looks bad when things are already precarious.”

“I understand,” I whisper.

The doctor turns her gaze to Parvarti. “Now you.”

My shoulder is still throbbing, but at least it’s back in its socket. Thinking about how they had to put it back causes me to break out in a sweat. At least it was quick. Now I’ve been ordered to rest and keep ice on it—something I never thought I’d see again—while we wait for someone to come draw our blood. We’re still clueless about what’s going on with the others, although I can only assume Joshua and Axl have met the same fate that we have.

“Three days seems excessive,” Parv says. “I think twenty-four hours would be enough to let them know we haven’t been infected.”

“They’re being cautious,” I say even though I agree with her.

Parv nods twice while she gnaws on her bottom lip, and when her eyes turn my way, the worry in them is so visible it takes my breath away. “Do you think we have any reason to worry?”

“Honestly,” I say, letting out a deep breath, “I have no clue. I hope not, but we both know anything is possible in this world.”

Parv nods again, and we go back to sitting in silence. Eventually, someone comes in to draw blood and administer a shot of antibiotics, once again giving us little to no information about our friends.

Dinner is brought to us. We sleep. Breakfast comes the next morning, waking me from dreams of zombies chasing us and a baby crying. Parv and I talk little and sleep a lot, and soon day two in quarantine is gone. We never see the doctor again, and every person who comes in is different from the last one, making me wonder exactly how many people they have living in Atlanta. Definitely more than the hundred in Hope Springs, which is mind-blowing to me. I can’t believe this much of the population has survived, but I guess Joshua’s theory about the East Coast could be true: maybe the survivors fared better because so many of the initial victims of this virus were cremated before they had a chance to come back.

Sometime after lunch on day three, the door opens unexpectedly. I sit up too fast, expecting to see another person in uniform, and when Axl steps in, I almost burst into tears.

“Axl!”

I scramble to my feet, pushing aside the slight ache in my shoulder when I throw myself into his arms. I haven’t been away from him for this long since my time at the Monte Carlo, and the emptiness that had started to settle in my stomach suddenly fills as his arms wrap around me. We kiss, ignoring Parv and Joshua, who steps in right behind Axl.

“You okay?” he whispers against my lips.

“I am,” I say, nodding. “I’m okay. Did they let you out?”

“They’re letting us all out,” Joshua says. “None of us are infected.”

A couple disinterested soldiers lean against the wall in the hallway, but no doctors. I still haven’t seen the woman who came and stripped me, or the one who took Megan.

“What about Angus and Megan?” I ask, looking back and forth between Axl and Joshua.

“Don’t know yet,” Axl says. “We’re gonna find out, though.”

He glances toward the soldiers, who push themselves off the wall.

“When you’re ready,” one says, sweeping his arm to the left.

“We’re ready,” Axl snaps.

The men lead us back the way we came, but instead of taking us to the lobby, they turn down another hall even longer than the one we just left. It ends at a door with a glass window, and through it is a tiny room, no bigger than a closet, and a second door. On the other side of that room is Angus. Lying on the table. He doesn’t seem to be conscious, and he’s hooked up to more tubes and monitors than I can wrap my brain around. The sheet over him is pulled up to his waist, and his chest is bare, revealing bandages covering his many bite marks. A couple doctors wearing masks stand at his side, but I have no idea what they’re doing. One tube, attached to Angus’s left arm, is bright red, but it’s hard to tell if they’re giving him blood or taking it away.

“What’s goin’ on?” Axl grunts, reaching for the door.

Even though I’m sure it’s locked and there’s a second door separating us from Angus, the solider steps in front of Axl. “Dr. Helton will be out to speak with you in a moment.”

Axl frowns but steps back, his eyes focused on his brother.

After a couple minutes, one of the doctors looks up. I recognize her from the day she came and asked us to strip, and right away my suspicions are back on the surface. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know something here isn’t right.

Dr. Helton says something to the man at her side before heading our way. She steps into the little room and seals the door behind her. A fan roars to life when she pushes a button, and we all wait while she removes her mask, gown, and gloves. When the fan kicks off, she pushes a couple buttons, and the door in front of us pops open, filling the air with a whooshing sound that reminds me of a seal breaking.

The doctor steps out. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”

“My brother,” Axl growls.

“We treated his injuries, but his heart stopped,” she says, turning to face the door. “We managed to get it started, but I’m afraid it was too late.” She rips her eyes off Angus and turns her gaze on Axl, and the expression in her eyes is so unemotional that it makes my blood turn to ice. “I’m afraid he’s brain dead.”

I move closer to Axl’s side, wondering if he understands what that means. He doesn’t blink, but maybe he’s just in shock.

After a few seconds Axl says, “He’s dead?”

“We’re keeping him alive. I know it sounds callous, but we need him. Or his blood, anyway. Thanks to your brother’s sacrifice, we are on our way to creating a working vaccine. It will change our lives. Give us hope for a future. Ensure that babies live after they’re born.”

“What about my baby?” I say.

The doctor’s eyes move to me, and she nods. “She’s safe and well, and now that you’re out of quarantine you’ll be reunited. We had to be sure you weren’t a danger to her, and we wanted to draw some blood. Compare it to Mr. James’s and see if there were any similarities between the two. She will also be a big help in our fight to rebuild humanity.”

“I wanna see my brother,” Axl says.

I expect the doctor to refuse, but she moves toward the door. “Of course. You have a right to say goodbye.”

She punches in a code, and the door once again pops open. Axl steps forward but stops and grabs my arm.

“Come with me.” He doesn’t look my way.