“Because it wasn’t finished being tested. One day, a scientist left the testing facility not knowing he was infected,” Jim explained. “And the rest is history.”
“Where was the virus developed?” Charlie asked.
“Fort Detrick. It’s in Maryland, about fifty miles or so outside of DC.”
“Fort Detrick?” Andy repeated with surprise. “I’ve read about that place in some of my medical books. I thought that lab was shut down decades ago.”
“Apparently not.”
“How did you learn all this if it wasn’t on the news?” Charlie asked.
“We knew the son of the scientist who accidentally released the virus.”
“Is that this Sean person you were talking about?”
Jim glanced at his cousin. “This is really more Ben’s story to tell, so I’ll let him tell it.”
Ben was still staring at the lit candles in front of him. He swallowed hard. No one spoke once he began to explain.
***
The virus was the best thing that could’ve happened to Sean Taylor. Freed from the laws that society once lived by—laws that were not his own—he could finally fulfill his potential.
He had started at the bottom with everyone else, but as his fellow survivors wallowed in self-pity in their empty homes, he had acted quickly and strategically during those first weeks and months following the outbreak. And he never shed a tear for his parents, and there was no older sibling to mourn during those lonely hours between dusk and dawn.
Sean’s father had once stood in the same room where he now sat, and for nearly an hour, he had been lounging in the plush swivel chair with his feet propped up on the Resolute desk. Sunlight waned through the three windows behind him, the only indication that it was getting late.
This was his first trip to DC since the virus. The condition of the city was shocking. Just getting downtown had been nearly impossible. The roads were still clogged with cars, but everywhere had been abandoned. He had not seen a single soul the entire day.
Taking his feet off the desk, Sean spun around in the chair and stared upward, alternately fixing his gaze on and off the Seal of the President of the United States plastered on the ceiling. He smiled.
Later, he departed the White House by descending the steps on the south side of the building and frowned at the rainbow of spray paint on the white columns. The weeks of anarchy immediately following the virus had taken its toll on several monuments throughout the city, and the White House was no exception. He walked across the South Lawn toward the car waiting to take him back to New York.
***
“His name is Sean Taylor and he controls almost everything in New York, Philadelphia, some parts of Boston, and everywhere in between. He’s a narcissist, he’s manipulative, and…
evil.
I’ve never met anyone else like him in my entire life.
“In the early days after the outbreak, when everyone else was too scared to think, he was already plotting. His father was some general in the Army, so he knew to do things like stockpile weapons and food before anyone else could. And he had a way of getting people to do these things for him. If you thought Nataliya was bad, she’s got nothing on Sean. He made people believe that he cared about helping them and about getting the city working again. And early on, he did work hard, which only convinced everyone that he was someone they could trust.
“You probably remember those early days how age was everything, and the older you were, the more the younger survivors listened to you. Sean knew this, and he soon had a large following of survivors in New York. Then he picked his favorites to become his ‘Directors.’ Directors controlled specific things like food supplies or water treatment or getting power back to the city. There were nine of them in New York, and each was pretty powerful on his own.
“But Sean also knew he needed some of the smartest survivors to get things working again, so he went through hundreds and hundreds of school records at the best schools all over New York and had people find these super-smart kids—ones who skipped a few grades and even some who were in college—and convinced them to work for him. Kids like you, Charlie.”
Charlie cracked a rueful smile as Ben continued.
“The power grid was the first priority, and within a year, most of the city’s power was back on. And it was Sean who made that happen. After that, everyone wanted to work for him. Then he developed a kind of class system for everyone living in New York. The first class is the Directors, with Sean at the top. The next class is the army, or the
Infantry
, as we all called it. Sean started recruiting male survivors twelve years or older. Three thousand were chosen from more than ten thousand volunteers, and they became the Infantry, which has its own ranks like any army, and a Director leads it. Officially, the Infantry is like the police; they’re meant to keep order, but they really spend most of their time spying for Sean and stealing from the rest of the people. People ended up dead when they refused to give up their possessions, but now no one bothers to put up a fight.
“
Fixers
are the third class. All those smart kids that Sean recruited early on were the first Fixers. Then other survivors with useful skills were recruited; mechanics like me and Jim, farmers like you two…” Ben nodded toward Brian and Susan. “…even kids whose parents had taught them to fly airplanes. Anyone with a rare but valuable skill was recruited to be a Fixer, and it was the job of the Infantry to find these people…and they searched everywhere for them.”
“Why did he call them Fixers?” asked Andy.
“Sean didn’t want them to get an inflated sense of self-importance by calling them ‘experts’ or ‘specialists.’ But he never would have gotten where he is today without them. I mean, how many kids do you know who can fly a plane? I didn’t know anyone like that growing up, but Sean managed to find them, and now there’re a couple thousand of them.”
Looking tired, Ben combed his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “One thing Sean insisted on was that every Fixer had to be a male.” He glanced at Andy as an expression of disgust appeared on her face.
“No one in the Infantry and no Fixer has ever been a girl. For whatever reason, Sean thinks girls are worthless except for sex, so about three years after the virus, when the testosterone really started to kick in, he made up the fourth class. He thought it would be amusing to find the prettiest girls in New York and keep them around for him and the Directors. He called them
Helens
because they were all beautiful like Helen of Troy.
“Most of the girls he found resisted at first, but once he starting giving them certain privileges, they changed their minds. They live in nice apartments, wear new clothes, and always have enough food to eat. Some Helens are addicted to the attention they get. Some do it just to stay alive and live better. And since healthy girls are more fun to have around than sickly ones, Sean doesn’t mind giving them these things as long as they do what he wants. And they make his Directors happy, which makes
them
more loyal.
“Everyone else in the city is a
Dreg
. They’re the biggest group, but they’ve got no power. Life for them is based entirely on a system of reward and punishment. If you do something to piss off the Directors, the Infantry, or even some of the Fixers, the water and power in your house gets shut off and your food rations are cut, or you’re sent to one of the prisons Sean reopened. But if you do something to help him, like ratting out a neighbor for lying about the number of people living in their house in order to get bigger food rations, then you get rewarded. It all brings out the worst in everyone. No one knows who they can trust, and as long as everyone remains suspicious of one another, there’s no chance of anyone banding together to revolt.”
With his forehead glistening with sweat, Ben took another sip of water. It was as though he’d suddenly aged ten years in the last few hours. After a final sip, he said, “Everyone just walks around the city like zombies, too scared to wake up.” Then he put down his water and abruptly stood up. “I’m going for a walk. Jim, you can tell them the rest.”
Without another word, he picked up his rifle and left the house, confusing everyone by this sudden halt to the story. When Andy started to rise from her chair to go after him, Jim motioned for her to leave him alone.
“You have to understand,” he began, “Ben was a Director and one of the few people Sean really trusted. He blames himself every day because he turned a blind eye to Sean’s behavior for so long. But he had a good reason. See, Ben had a younger sister. Her name was Karen.”
***
The roads on the Capitol Beltway and I-95 heading north were riddled with potholes, and with every jarring hit to the car’s suspension, Sean’s patience dwindled.
The driver, a Dreg with connections, had forgotten to bring extra containers of gas for the drive back to New York, and with two hundred miles to go, only a quarter tank was left.
Sitting alone in the backseat, Sean leaned forward until his face was within inches of the driver’s right ear. “I’ll give you ten minutes to find more gas after we run out. If you don’t find any by then, I’ll leave you on the side of the road.” He leaned back in his seat and rolled down the window. The summertime humidity was oppressive, but turning on the air would only burn more precious fuel.
The driver said nothing as fear in the form of beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes, causing him to swerve the car slightly and strike yet another pothole.
“Go ahead. Hit another one,” Sean barked as the Infantry officer sitting beside the driver grasped the handle of his holstered pistol.
The driver quickly steadied himself. However, an hour later the gas tank ran dry and the car died between Wilmington and Philadelphia.
“Really?! How stupid are you?!” Sean mocked the driver. “You didn’t even
try
getting off the highway and checking a gas station. Get out of my car!”
Stepping outside, the driver began to beg for mercy and apologized incoherently before urinating in his pants, but Sean gave him no notice and went to the trunk. He grabbed a long-range push-to-talk radio and transmitted a few instructions to someone at the other end. Then he grabbed a small bag containing food and water from the back seat before signaling to the officer.
The officer removed the gun from his holster and fired once at the blubbering driver. The bullet struck his abdomen, guaranteeing a slow and painful death. He slumped to the ground, writhing in pain. Sean and the officer continued walking along the highway for a few miles until another car arrived.
***
“Karen survived the outbreak like the rest of us. She and Ben were very close. The three of us were close, which was lucky for me since I was an only child. Ben’s always been more like a brother than a cousin, and Karen was no different.
“Unfortunately, she was also a diabetic who needed daily shots of insulin, but with the supply shrinking, it became a big problem for her. We stocked up as much as we could, but there was only so much we could find, and it wasn’t as if Karen was the only survivor with diabetes.”
“We left Virginia a few months after the outbreak to find more insulin and stayed in Philadelphia for about six months. By then, Sean was close to turning power back on in New York, which we often heard rumors about, so we decided to go there next.
“We found a decent apartment in Queens, and few weeks later, Ben was approached by someone about fixing cars. We repaired a few of the abandoned cars in our new neighborhood, and soon we were both given positions as Fixers. It was nothing different than what we did in Aspen—but being a Fixer meant that you got better housing, more food, and medicine. So Karen never ran out of insulin.
“By the time we finally met Sean, we’d already been living in New York for more than a year. I remember the day because it was Karen’s fifteenth birthday. We’d moved into Manhattan by then and were living right off Fifth Avenue in this huge apartment probably worth millions back in the day. We had some friends over and there was even a birthday cake. And suddenly Sean showed up with some of his friends. He seemed normal enough, but you could tell right away that he was intelligent. We didn’t know why he came but later found out he wanted to meet Karen. She was a very pretty girl, and he’d heard about her from his friends. Ben and I were protective of her because of her diabetes, but also because boys were always chasing her, even before the outbreak.
“But Karen was always shy around strangers, so when she met Sean, she didn’t say much to him. Then a few days later, he asked Ben to become the Director of Transportation, which Ben accepted only because it would help Karen get her insulin. He had a few hundred people assigned to him, including me and a few other Fixers, but the majority were Dregs. They worked hard and learned quickly...we were all learning. Ben and I might be good with cars, but we didn’t know anything about fixing an entire subway system, which became his responsibility. But we did it. It took us months, but we finally got it working, which made Sean very happy. After that, he began to confide in Ben more and told him about plans to expand to Philadelphia and Boston. But Ben never trusted Sean, especially when he began selecting girls to become Helens. Some of the other Directors told Sean to choose Karen, but he refused, and at the time I wanted to believe he did it out of respect for Ben. She had just turned sixteen and had boys chasing after her left and right, but the only one she showed any interest in was this kid named Tim.