Chapter 17: Beginning
Perspective: Eddie
The party was nothing like the one we’d had when we first went into clinical trials. That had been a modest get-together, barely even a party. This one was much bigger, a real celebration and an opportunity for Gordon and the others to blow off some steam.
"May not be any of my business, but I think it says something about their relationship that he got into the porn on the side."
I again cursed my superior hearing for letting me unintentionally eavesdrop on other conversations, particularly those I didn’t want to hear, but I couldn’t help noting Gordon’s reaction. Months ago a jab at his guilty pleasures would have made him flinch, but now it seemed he could easily laugh at it.
"Easy, Terry." he chuckled. "I got into it when I was like fourteen, it’s a hard habit to kick."
"And no one said everything on that computer was his." Lana chimed in.
I begged the universe to let something, anything, come in and interrupt. I got my wish sooner than expected.
A blast of staticky white noise came over the PA system, alerting our attention, before a voice said, "All to stations, we have a battalion of AFA coming in. Repeat: Get to your stations!"
It was always surprising to see how quickly Gordon and his followers switched from carefree and relaxed to mission-ready. The excited gathering of partiers formed together and filed out the door quickly. Their livelihood and their brethren were threatened and at once, they were an army, a strike force.
——
Perspective: Gordon
"They’ve gotten desperate." Lana said as we stood in the meeting room. "Every last one of them is coming to wipe us out."
"They’re still a ways away," Kaleb said. "Our scouts picked them up on patrol. We’ve got less than half an hour until they get here. So, are we running, or fighting?"
"We fight." I said. "All of us. Put out the call to every single base and outpost we have."
I dismissed the others and they filed out of the room quickly, but Lana lingered. Suddenly, she threw her arms around me and held me tightly, clinging to me firmly. I did the same, basking in her presence, feeling her fur against mine. We didn’t need to say anything to each other. This was enough.
Minutes later, I was standing with every willing and able soldier we could muster, preparing to tell them that our only plan was to try and hold our own against an onslaught of bigots with guns. It felt surreal, standing there, knowing I was the one leading them into the jaws of almost certain death, but then I looked at Daniel. He was nothing like how he’d looked when he first came in—and not just because he wasn’t human anymore, but because of his eyes. Before they had been afraid, but now they were gleaming with courage and determination.
Eddie might have had some scientific explanation, possibly that our newly changed bodies had caused an increased aggression toward potential threats, and so we had come together to defend ourselves, but I knew it was more than that. This virus had changed more than our faces and our physiology, it had let us become us. It had changed our minds and our hearts and helped us gain a sense of community we had never had before.
"We stand here today no different than any other." I said to them. "This fight could be our last, but how many of us have stared death in the face? How many of us would do so again?"
A cacophony of cheers and yells rose up in response, interspersed with animalistic cries, howls, roars, and other calls as the gathered soldiers raised their fists and their claws.
"We are facing the end." I said, "but also the beginning of something better. If not for us, then at least for our children, for our grandchildren. That’s what our life is, not just the struggle to survive, but the much harder struggle: To make life better for those who come after us. This fight will be the end, one way or another. Let’s make it a good one."
——
Perspective: Eddie
"Eddie."
I turned to see Daniel behind me, though this didn’t surprise me as I’d smelled him coming the moment the door opened. What did surprise me was the look of grim determination on his face and the fact that he had a weapon strapped to nearly every part of his body.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The AFA’s attack—it’s all out." he said. "They’ve sent every last one of their fighters. You need to get yourselves somewhere safe."
He rushed back through the door, as quick as he’d come.
I turned to Jess then and instead of anything strategic or wise, the words that came out were "I love you." It wasn’t what I had planned to say—or maybe I had been planning to say it for ages. But I said it and there it was.
She just nodded, her blue eyes looking into mine.
"I know." she said, though she’d said it with her eyes before she spoke. "You too."
I nodded in return. Of course she’d known, she was smarter than I was, smarter than anyone, but that wasn’t why I loved her or why I told her I loved her. But then she probably knew that, too. She put her arms around me and we lingered in that warm embrace.
Until she pulled away and looked at me.
"So, what now?" she asked.
"Now, we fight." I said.
I began to gather every caustic, corrosive, violent chemical and compound I could think of.
"You want to stay and fight?"
I stopped and looked at her.
"Look," I said. "We made the virus. It’s out. We’re done. I never actually planned this far ahead. Going out like this seems as good a fate as any."
"You’re just going to die?" she blurted. "But… what about us? What about the future??"
"You really think we have one?" I asked. She paused, looking uncertain. "Even back at the beginning, we knew we would end up behind bars for what we did. Best case scenario, we claim the virus was an experiment that went wrong and got out."
She flinched at this, because of course this was somewhat true, the first virus did get out unexpectedly. That was how all this started. I wondered for a second if the AFA or the FSF would even exist if the virus had released on time and as a non lethal strain, as we’d planned.
"But then we would have been jailed for negligence anyway." she said, nodding slowly. "I know. I just thought…"
"I would love to have a life after this." I said. "Even better, a life with you. But what kind of life will that be if the others are gone? I care about Daniel and Gordon, too."
She looked up and I saw that same determination come over her.
"Okay." she said. "Let’s go."
We emerged into the sun and after my eyes adjusted, I saw something that took my breath away: An army. The FSF was out in full force, hundreds of soldiers gathered to protect their own, and more still joining them from other camps.
I looked around and saw the people I had come to regard as my closest friends facing the fight of their lives. The determination shining in Gordon’s eyes assured his allies and enemies alike that this would be his last fight against the AFA, whether or not that ended in victory. He would lead his people to freedom or he would die trying, and they were prepared to follow him there, Daniel included. There was a fire in the kid I hadn’t seen but once before; when he had first been transformed as patient zero of the second strain. He was the living embodiment of our determination, not only the culmination of our team’s work and years of scientific theory, but the picture of determination and courage bestowed on him by Gordon. He had been shaped by us both and it showed.
——
Perspective: Daniel
This wasn’t how I saw my life going, and certainly not how I saw it ending, but I was glad it had swung in this direction—not a thought I figured I’d have, staring out from behind a bastion, waiting for an army.
I didn’t know how things would go once the fighting started, but I did know this: I was ready. More ready than I’d ever been for anything. I would fight, and if it came to it, I would die here for my people. Because that’s what they were; Beneath the scales, the claws, the fangs, beneath the aggression and the instinct, they were people, as worthy of a fighting chance as anyone.
Then it happened. I felt it: A shift. There was a rumble in the Earth I could feel in my toes, a rumbling sound I heard in the distance. The animal side of me recognized it long before my logical brain found out what it was: AFA vehicles heading our way. The others recognized it too, the instinctive warning systems of hundreds of different species kicking in. There was a tension that fell over our entire battalion, as if we had collectively sensed the danger and closed ranks.
"Get ready!" Gordon called out.
A cloud of dust came into view, kicked up by a squadron of rolling vehicles, appearing through the dense trees beyond the fortress walls.
Then, I heard Gordon quietly whisper to himself, "Here. We. Go."
And everything broke loose.
The sound of a thousand gunshots ripped through the air, followed by the crack of an explosion as the first AFA vehicle hit a landmine. Hundreds of them surged forward, but we stood our ground. I dropped into instinct mode: Pick a target, fire, repeat. Pick a target, fire.
A surge of fear rose up like a wave, threatening to swallow me, but I swallowed it instead. I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life, more afraid than I knew it was possible to be, but my courage overtook that fear. I struggled to stay in control of the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me, the fear, the shock, the exhaustion. A bullet struck the wall right in front of me, just inches below my chest, and I barely even registered it. An explosion went off several hundred feet away and I felt the shockwave knock the air out of my chest like a punch to my whole body.
There were yells from the others, shouting orders, alerts, cries for help, but I could hardly hear any of them.
"Taking fire, northwest corner!" one yelled from my radio. I glanced in that direction, but couldn’t see shit, so I focused on my own fight.
A group of AFAs advanced, so I grabbed a grenade, yanked the pin, and lobbed it. I ducked behind the wall again and took a breath, the air smelling almost sickeningly of metal and smoke. My mouth was so dry it felt like I hadn’t had a drink in years.
Feet away, I locked eyes with Gordon. He was a warrior, more of a fighter than I’d ever be, but he was terrified. The fear wasn’t on his face, which remained a stolid mask of determination, it was in his eyes, embedded deep in his soul. I nodded to him and he nodded back, knowing that nod might have been a goodbye. Then I turned back to the fight.
——
Perspective: Gordon
The training I’d received helped me point and shoot. That was it. The other 80 to 90 percent of the chaos, the hell around me, I was utterly unprepared for. Lana could have trained me my whole life and I would still have been unprepared for most of this shit.
I hefted my automatic rifle and pointed it at anything, everything, that seemed like a threat. If a soldier came at us, I fired. If a vehicle came at us, I switched to the rocket launcher. The thing had a hell of a kick.
I couldn’t even remember why I was here or what I was fighting for. Not half an hour ago there was a party. And now we were going to die.
I looked over at Lana and saw her white fur covered in dust and debris. I saw the same fear in her eyes that I’d seen in Daniel’s and I realized that fear didn’t go away, no matter how many times you were in a fight. Was she feeling as untrained as I was?
My brain scrambled to remember everything at once. Where in the hell am I? What other weapons or vehicles do these guys have? What gun am I using? Am I even behind cover?
I had to remind myself to breathe.
I had been the FSF’s point man forever, but this… This was unlike any mission. I’d call it intense, but that doesn’t cover it. There isn’t a word intense enough to describe the raw chaos.
Then everything dropped into a lull. The fight sputtered out and I saw a single AFA truck pulling away. Was it over…?
I looked at Lana, but she was just as shocked and confused as me. It clicked then that I was supposed to be the one reassuring everyone else what was going on, even though I had no clue.
A silence dropped over the battlefield, the air tinged with dust and metal. A shout went up from our ranks, growing into a cheer, and only then did it hit me: We won.
——
Perspective: Eddie
The sound of the gunfire outside died down. Jess and I looked at each other. Two options, I thought: Either we won and the AFA is gone, or we lost and they’re on their way to kill us.
"The AFA is retreating." Gordon’s voice said over the radio, sounding exhausted and relieved. "Repeat, the AFA is retreating."
We both sighed audibly. The logical side of my brain told me to move on, figure out what was happening next, but at the moment I was just glad to be alive. I put my arms around Jess and relished that feeling for what felt like forever and yet still too short when it ended.
I heard footsteps running down the hall and turned in time to see the lab door burst open, Jason stumbling in.
"Oh, thank God." he sighed, seeing us. "Where the hell were you guys? When you didn’t come to the transport truck, I thought—"
"We’re fine." I sighed.
"Jesus, Eddie." he laughed. "They did it. The bastards actually did it. I mean I didn’t see myself, but I heard them over the radio—there weren’t more than a few AFA guys left when the dust settled."
"They did it." I said. The words sounded so strange coming out of my mouth.
Of course this didn’t mean the fight was over. The AFA might have been gone, but their sentiments and ideals weren’t. They wouldn’t be gone for a long time, and that fight would be harder, but for now I just focused on the fact that this battle was won. No one else needed to die, at least not for a long while.
"Jess…" I said, turning to her. "We did it."
For some reason, it wasn’t until that moment that it hit me that they weren’t the only ones who were successful. Cooped up here for months, I hadn’t given a thought to the lives outside the base, to the world beyond, but we had accomplished our goal. The second strain was out in the world and everything had changed. We did it.
——
Perspective: Daniel
"Commander, Sir." I said as Gordon turned and saw me. "Glad to see you made it through."
His eyes shone with relief as he pulled me into a hug. He stank of sweat and blood, but I didn’t care. I hugged right back.
"Damnit, it’s good to see you, Daniel." he laughed.
"Well, I was trying to kind of be formal, with the—"
"Yeah, I know, I don’t care." he said. I laughed and hugged him tighter for a moment more before he released me and patted me on the shoulder.
"Did we really do it?" I asked.
Gordon clenched his jaw and gazed off into the distance.
"I really don’t want to push my luck, but yeah, I think we did." he sighed.
"So, uh… now what?" I asked.
"Sir!" a shout called. I turned to see a golden-furred cheetah run up to Gordon, holding a radio.
"We got this off of one of the AFA. It’s tuned to military frequency."
Dismay crossed Gordon’s features and my heart fell.
"You’re saying the AFA put out a call to the Army…" he said.
"That’s what we figure." the soldier said with a nod. "We sent out some scouts, but if the AFA did contact the military and reveal our location… we don’t have a lot of time. We need to know what to do."
"Gather everyone, get to the transports." Gordon said quickly. "We’re leaving."
The soldier nodded and ran off.
"We’re leaving?" I asked. Gordon looked at me.
"We only just fought off the combined force of the AFA." he said. "The military has more resources and better training."
"Right, no," I said. "I… wasn’t suggesting we fight."
"You… want us to turn ourselves in?" he asked.
"You said it yourself; the AFA is gone. There’s no more fight, no more reason for us to be here." I said. "We can’t just run from them forever."
"No," Gordon said. "and we won’t. We’ll go in… but only when I’m damn sure every last AFA agent is dead or behind bars. If the ones that escaped manage to rally others, or make their fallen friends into martyrs…"
"All of this would have been for nothing." I said, nodding.
"We have a lot of wounded." he said. "They’ll need help moving them into the transport vehicles."
"Right behind you." I said.
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