Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain) (3 page)

Chapter 4 – Savannah

“
You can’t be serious, Dorian!” Doctor Silvers scoffs. Something—a stack of papers maybe, from the sound of it—slams down onto the surface of the desk.

I
’m tempted to peek my head around the corner to get a better look at what’s going on. As far as I can tell, it’s only Cole’s father and Dorian Harris—his second-in-command—in the office, and tempers are clearly running a little hot. Arguments and extreme differences of opinion seem to follow Dorian wherever he goes.

The two of us haven
’t gotten along since Cole brought me and Zack back here to live with the Veritas Initiative, disregarding Dorian’s decision to leave us and dozens of other refugees to fend for ourselves after escaping from the United Militia. I was lucky that I was only stuck in that place for a matter of days. There wasn’t enough time for anyone to start me in on the same regime of testing and experiments they had inflicted on Zack and the others. Starved, beaten, and even infected with the Z-virus, they were treated like less than animals. We were all in pretty bad shape when Cole convinced his people to liberate the Militia’s research and get us out of there. And Dorian left them all to die because it would have been too much of an inconvenience to do anything more. Dorian is a prick.

I
’m still surprised to see him fighting with Doctor Silvers though. They seem like a pretty strong team. Cole’s dad takes the helm on the science side of things while Dorian runs the day-to-day, surviving-the-zombie-apocalypse stuff.

“
We’ve discussed this before, Mitchell. It’s time we bring this to the rest of the group.” He pauses and the silence weighs heavily on the room. We all wait to see who will speak next. I’m hoping it will be whoever feels the need to summarize the entire situation in order to get me up to speed, but that’s probably not going to happen.

“
What’s the hurry?” Doctor Silvers finally responds, but all of the anger is gone from his voice. He sounds tired and far more uncertain than he ever lets himself appear in front of me and Cole. “We’re making progress.”

“
Are we though? Every promising case turns out to be another lost cause. We cure them, but they have yet to get any
better
.”

My mind reels, attempting to piece together what it is they
’re discussing, as Dorian continues his rant.

“
Why?” Doctor Silvers argues. “We can’t rush into decisions like these. There’s no looming deadline or budgeting issues. We’re doing okay. We’ve got everything we need.”

“
Except results.” While Cole’s father sounds tired and resigned, the force of Dorian’s conviction rings through in his voice. He believes in what he’s saying. “With the team we’ve got here, there’s so much more good we can be doing.”

“
You don’t think what we’re doing here is helping?” Doctor Silvers asks, aghast. “We’ve saved lives!”

“
Not nearly as many as the ones we’ve destroyed. And now we’re stuck. We need help.”

Sure
, I think,
everyone needs help
. I wish it were that easy. It’s not like we can go and ask for government assistance. Help like that doesn’t exist anymore.

“
Look, I know you’re already running late, and I won’t keep you any longer. But I’m calling a meeting three days from now and we’re going to talk about this. With everyone.”

Someone
’s hand makes contact with the doorknob two feet away from me, twisting it to the right. The door stays closed, giving me time to jump back from my spot against the wall. “The United Militia could be our best hope, and we can’t ignore that any longer, Mitchell.”

My mind barely has time to register the comment while I frantically try to find somewh
ere to hide. Crap. Crap. Crap. I can’t just stand here; they’ll know I was listening. But there’s nowhere to go. There’s one option left to me.

A
s Doctor Silvers starts to talk again, I reach out and knock gently on the door, cutting off whatever he was about to say.

“
Yes?” The door swings open right away and Dorian stares down at me. “Savannah. What a surprise.” His forehead creases in a way that tells me the surprise isn’t a pleasant one. My words freeze in my throat. “Can I help you?”

“
Cole and I…uhh—coffee. Um. Doctor Silvers was supposed to meet us at his office.” Bumbling like an idiot works in my favor. Dorian cocks his head back into the office toward Cole’s dad, not even asking how I knew where to find him. I’m probably blushing right up to my ears, but neither of them seems suspicious of my sudden arrival, just annoyed.

Running his hand over the black scruff of his beard, Dorian leans in briefly toward
Doctor Silvers and whispers something I can’t make out. Am I supposed to back away and give them some privacy? I have no idea, so I wait and try not to stare. I’m dying to know why they’re discussing the United Militia. The little I heard will be enough to drive me absolutely crazy until I can get some more answers. Are they the people Dorian wants to ask for help?

“
We’ll talk later,” Dorian mutters before taking off down the hallway at a brisk clip.

Cole
’s dad looks over his shoulder into the office and then back at me, blinking like he’s already forgotten I was there. His eyes look exactly like his son’s—not brilliant green like Cole’s, but like Ethan’s, Cole’s older brother. Ethan left Veritas to join the United Militia. Something that no one around here ever talks about.

“
Right, right. Time to get to work. Sorry about the delay.” Doctor Silvers pushes his glasses back up from the bridge of his nose and takes off down the hallway in the opposite direction of where Dorian went.

The two of us walk in silence. He keeps pursing his lips together like he wants to say something, but he obviously isn
’t going to make
me
his confidant, so he keeps quiet as he makes his way expertly through the halls. I’ve never done well with awkward silences and want to say something. Anything. It takes all of my restraint to keep my mouth shut. I know as soon as I speak, trying to make small talk, something else will slip out and give away my eavesdropping.

If it weren
’t for all of the questions spinning around in my mind, I might have found it funny how quickly Doctor Silvers finds his way back to his office. The whole trip takes less than three minutes. If I’d made a right instead of a left on my own, I probably would have found him right away.

The two of us stop in front of the open door to his office. Cole is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, surrounded by
several mounds of paperwork. I knock out a quick rhythm on the doorframe until he finally glances up, looking slightly bewildered.

“
Hey. Sorry we took so long. Looks like you’ve made a good start.” I step into the room and Doctor Silvers follows close behind me, handing off everything he’d been carrying to his son before sitting down at his two-tiered desk.

Cole immediately starts sorting through whatever crucial assignment we
’ve been tasked with today. I’m about to sit down with him and attempt to help when he looks up at me, his eye briefly hopeful. Right away, his expression falls. “What happened to the coffee?”

Monotony was the theme of the day, and I
’m practically asleep at my dinner plate. Not from exhaustion, but from complete and utter boredom. I’m pretty sure that my brain has gone into standby mode, waiting for something to bring it back to life.

I finished up my shift with
Doctor Silvers around four once our to-do list had been reigned in again. There were still stacks of paper and portable hard drives that needed to be cataloged, but we managed to impose some method on all of the madness. All thanks to me. It was really quite humbling to have done such important work that will do so much for the betterment of humanity. I can sleep well tonight knowing that I made a difference. I mean, the world’s population is quickly dwindling down to nothing, but we can’t ever be expected to function without office assistants.

I spent the entire day wanting to bang my head against a filing cabinet. Every time I
tried to start up a conversation with Cole, his dad would look up from his desk and shoot one or both of us a withering glare that made it perfectly clear what he thought of our chitchat.

Whenever my minded started to wander, I would mime obscene death sc
enes to Cole, who could tell I was going slowly crazy. He finally managed to come up with an excuse to get me out of there a little early. I will be forever grateful for that boy. He had to stay later to finish transcribing some medical documents but he didn’t really mind. He actually likes that kind of stuff.

Still, it would have been nice to have someone to eat dinner with. I pick at my macaroni for a few minutes and am about to head out to the medical center for my results when someone walks up to the ta
ble, blocking my light.

“
Hey, Savvy.” I look up at Liam as he drops his dinner tray down across from mine. “Mind if I sit?”

“
Go for it.” I can wait a few more minutes before heading out. Doctor Nickles didn’t think she’d have my results for at least another hour anyway. And Liam saved my life, so I can’t exactly turn him away.

“
So, how are things?” I ask while one of the guys sitting close by sticks his hand out to greet Liam with some kind of bro handshake I’ll never get the hang of.

“
Same old,” he answers before moving to sit down with me.

I
’m still surprised how easily the two of us get along, considering how we met—with Liam killing his infected girlfriend to save me—but I’ll take it.

The two of them had been traveling together for months, right from the
first outbreak in Cleveland, where Liam and Zarah were from. She was bitten. He’s never filled me in on the rest, probably because I’ve never asked, but somehow he ended up with the Militia, though I got the feeling it wasn’t by choice.

We met while Zack
and I were waiting for Cole to find a way to get us into the Veritas Initiative. I’d been out looking for water when I was attacked by a super-Z. I don’t know if I was off my game that day or if she was
that
good, but I was going to lose the fight—and probably my life. And there he was. Liam jumped in and did something unimaginable—killing the zombie, his Zarah. To save me. At the time, he thought she was already a lost cause. He didn’t know about Veritas or that they were close to restoring people like her. I’m sure he still lives under the weight of that decision every day.

I can
’t help feeling guilty every time I see him. I try not to let it show though. We’ve all got memories we need to survive, and he doesn’t need the reminder.

“
I thought you were going to be gone for another few days,” I say.

Because Liam was in perfect health when we first showed up on the Initiative
’s doorstep, they put him to work right away, using his military training to their advantage. Sometimes he’s gone for days at a time, working with two other guys to bring back any valuable information about what’s going on in the area.

“
I thought so too.” He takes another bite before continuing. “We were supposed to go on a run for the doctor to bring in some more…patients. We were a day late getting back though, so they sent some other guys.”

“
Well good. That sounds dangerous.”

Liam rolls his eyes. “
We know what we’re doing.”

“
So you’re sticking around for a few days?”

“
Actually, we’re going out in two days to try and bring back some new supplies. There’s some machine they want.” A grin slowly stretches on his face. “That reminds me,” he says, putting down his fork. “I’ve got something for you. I was over at the medical wing…”

I groan sympathetically, but my heart has
already started racing. I have a pretty good idea what he’s brought me.

“
I have to go by there every time I come back in,” he continues. “Pretty much twice a week I’m subjected to a very up-close-and-personal inspection of my entire body. Apparently no one can be trusted to report injuries or bites by themselves, even though we know it’s not a death sentence anymore.”

I clear my throat to cut off his rambling. “
And…”

“
And I think they’re looking to send someone else out with us on our next run.” Liam reaches behind him and pulls something out of his pocket with a flourish. “I believe you were waiting for this?”

It
’s an envelope. Exactly the same kind I always see sitting around on desks and counters in the medical center.

I snatch it out of his hand. He trie
s to duck out of the way at the last second but I know how he works and I want the answers to my test too badly to draw out this game.

“
Nice try,” I say before ripping open the small manila envelope, holding my breath.