12. 12
I couldn’t wash myself, the tremors were so severe, and Elias had to step into his usual role as caretaker. I felt guilty. I felt useless. But the more I needed from him, the more he gave, and I watched as the work centered him.
No matter how desperately he wanted to be, Elias wasn’t the type of man who could play house, cooking dinner and watching movies in the evenings. He needed a goal, some grand scheme to save the world, and without his agenda he might begin to fall apart.
This wasn’t new for him. As a child, his parents were the world he had to save.
Ensuring they ate, cleaning them up, and driving them to the hospital when they overdosed was his job, no matter how unfair it was to him.
The perfect candidate for his work, a long history of selflessness transforming into an extreme savior complex, Elias was most comfortable in this role.
I didn’t want to be another problem for him to fix, but the fear he’d help me suffocate unleashed in full force. Debilitating. I was frozen, unable to do more than blink.
My limbs were no longer my own, and I didn’t recognize my own voice when I tried to speak, my lips not opening enough for the words to come out.
I looked on, over my own shoulder, as Elias dried and dressed me in his clothes.
He grabbed my hand, trying to pull me forward, but my feet refused to cooperate.
Rather than leave me in the bathroom, he picked me up, and I was dead weight over his shoulder. He tried to lay me gently on the bed, but I wasn’t willing to help him out. He kneeled, leaning forward, and was able to get my bottom on the edge of the mattress, and I fell to the side from there.
Elias didn’t leave the room at first, gathering discarded clothes into a pile, eventually sliding open his closet to reveal a gun safe. He stood there, his hand lingering on the keypad as if unsure he wanted to open it.
Pressing the keys with his index finger, the safe beeped, and he opened the door and pulled out a large rifle. “I didn’t want to need this again,” he murmured, grabbing it in his hands. He left the room, and I followed the sounds of his footsteps, nearly mapping out his path in my mind.
Tears were flowing freely now, and squeezing my eyes shut to stop them didn’t work. They spilled onto my cheeks anyway, soaking the bed beneath me. We couldn’t go back. The vaccine wasn’t real, it hadn’t been tested, and I had one breakthrough after months of research. It just wasn’t enough.
I hadn’t done enough.
To start, I couldn’t understand how we would get back to Richmond, surely someone had been deployed there to limit the virus’s spread.
We were wanted persons, and I imagined our photos were being sent to every soldier and police force in the country, and if we were caught I doubted they’d let us live.
Elias and I had taken turns the past few days, relying on each other, though he definitely had done more for me than I’d been able to do for him.
What I needed now was for him to stop. Stop packing, stop cleaning his guns, and stop thinking that we could save anyone else.
This idea he had, this need to save the world, was going to get both of us killed.
He told my father that he would keep me safe.
He’d just told me he wouldn’t let me die.
Fury replaced hysteria.
“Elias,” I said, sitting up, my voice rough.
He jogged into the room, giving me a small smile when he noticed I was moving again. The smile faded as he took in my wet face.
“I’m not going back there,” I said, half telling and half begging. “I’m not doing it.”
“It’s our only way out of this.” His voice was gentle.
“No, this,” I said, gesturing to the cabin around us. “This is our way out. We’re here already.”
“They’re never going to stop looking for us.” He walked over and sat down next to me, feet flat on the floor, and I turned my head to look at him. “This isn’t the answer. If it was, we’d stay here. Forever.”
“Then we run somewhere else. We can hide in an old copper mine in the U.P. or something,” I offered. “Or maybe we can run to Canada. Get a flight somewhere to a country that doesn’t extradite to the United States.”
“You know we can’t live like that,” he said, shaking his head. “If we disappear, they’re going to come for your parents.”
“My parents have nothing to do with this,” I spit.
“No, but they have everything to do with you,” he argued. “You go missing, someone high up makes a call, and your parents are dead. They will hunt you, and burn everything around you until you give in.”
“Then I can’t,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s not that I won’t, it’s that I can’t do it. I made a sliver of progress toward a vaccine, we have nothing to give whoever called you.”
“It’s not just about us. We could save a lot of people,” he urged.
“I don’t care.”
“Is that so?” He asked. “Then why choose your line of work? Were you hoping to create Super Malaria and wipe out developing nations yourself? Is that it? You’re jealous you didn’t create this virus first?”
A ridiculous thing to say. I didn’t answer. He didn’t deserve one.
“That’s what I thought,” he continued, standing up. “We go in there, barricade ourselves in, make the vaccine, bottle it up, and get the fuck out.”
I looked up at him from my place on the bed. “Who called you, Elias? Who is making us do this?” I asked, my voice low.
“The President,” he said.
“The fucking President?” I asked, my voice shooting up an octave. “The President of The United States?”
“The one and only,” he answered.
“The Commander in Chief called to tell you that if you don’t deliver him a vaccine he’s going to kill us?”
“In a way, yeah. I don’t enjoy putting my life in danger,” he said, throwing his hands up. “In six months, I’ll get a call that North Korea or something is experimenting with bioterrorism and I’ll have to go clean that up, too.”
“And if you were to say no, what, they just shoot you in the head?”
“It’s heavily implied I’ll be charged with treason or they’ll threaten someone I know in some capacity.” He sighed. “I’ve learned not to argue, and just do my job.”
“I’m really thinking we should run because I’m not willing to let that be my future.
” I couldn’t be owned by the government for the rest of my life.
Sure, I’d have a better support system than Elias had, but it was clear what his work had done to him.
He was miserable, only attempting to hide behind his jokes and routines.
“What happened to me will not happen to you. You’re too valuable. You’ll get a cushy job in a lab, and you’ll work on saving the world. Safe and happy and compensated very well.”
“You’re pretty valuable and look at what they make you do.”
“I’m great with a gun. I can kill anything. I listen to instructions. I’m like a G.I. Joe, you just move my arms around and tell me what to do. That’s not you,” he said.
“You’re more than that,” I countered.
“Not to them.”
“The President is ordering us to do this? Or we die?” I asked.
“That sums it up, yes.”
I walked to my stolen backpack and pulled out the laptop. “I guess you need to get the SSD out of this.”