Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
MELODY
“Are you at home?” DeWitt asked, voice tense.
“Yeah. They said they had a bad flu outbreak going around, so they sent us home for now to be safe,” I said quietly, stroking Gabby’s hair but being careful not to wake her up. She was still acting mostly like herself, but she was getting tired out more easily and more often. I tried to ignore it.
“Flu,” he muttered, almost to himself. My brows drew down.
“What’s up, Whitt?” I asked. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll be at your place in ten minutes.”
Apprehension prickled down my spine. Something was wrong. Something big if he didn’t want to just tell me over the phone.
“Alright, I’m here.” He hung up and I eased Gabby’s head off of my lap, settling a pillow beneath her cheek instead.
She sighed but didn’t wake. I kissed her forehead, made sure Leo was tucked in safe beside her, and went to wait for Whitt on the front porch.
He pulled up twelve minutes later and hopped out of the car, barely even putting the thing in park first.
“What the hell is going on, Whitt?” I asked as he jogged up the front steps, urgency written in every tense line of his body. He wrapped me in a quick hug and when he pulled away, I could see how exhausted he looked. Exhausted and…afraid. I swallowed hard.
“Inside,” he said on a rough exhale.
Once in the kitchen, I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. He ran his hands through his hair, making the blonde strands stand up at funny angles.
When was the last time he had a haircut?
I’d known Justin DeWitt for almost a decade, and aside from a handful of times when it wasn’t possible, I’d never seen him without a fresh haircut and a clean shave.
The more I studied him, the more I realized he looked downright haggard right now.
Still handsome, of course, but haggard all the same.
We’d hated each other the moment we met.
We were both competitive to a dangerous degree and happened to be each other’s biggest competition.
That made for a bad combination. We were top of our class at the Academy—me first, him a close second—before both being pulled out for specialized training, where again, we were both in the running for top dog.
We’d been placed on the same Ops Team and were constantly at each other’s throats.
But eventually, we’d been stuck in a particularly sticky (i.e.
life or death, leaning towards big time death) situation together, and we’d emerged friends.
He’d saved my ass, I’d saved his, and we’d both had nightmares about it for years afterward. We’d bonded to say the least.
Since then, we’d both moved on to new jobs, new departments, new lives, but we’d remained forever close.
“Fuck, Mel. I’m not supposed to be telling you this. Hell, I’m not even supposed to know, but POTUS owes me big time…"
“Whitt, I need you to say more words. Coherent ones. Now.” Anxiety was already starting to gnaw at my gut, a numb, cold feeling settling deep in my bones. He took a deep breath and met my gaze.
Keeping his voice low, he said, “There’s something bad coming down the pipe, Mel.
Big bad. The flu outbreaks aren’t flu outbreaks.
We’ve been containing the news as much as possible, but we won’t be able to much longer.
It’s spreading too fast and we don’t know how to stop it. We’re barely containing it right now…”
“Not the flu? What then?”
“We don’t know, exactly. But…” He blew out a long breath, as if steeling himself for what he was about to say. “It’s a near-extinction event, Mel.” My heart stopped beating completely for a long moment before roaring to life again with an ominous thud, going into overdrive. Extinction?
“What…”
“It’s a disease or a virus or hell, maybe the End of Days from the hand of God himself.
People are dying and…fuck, I know it sounds crazy, but they’re coming back to life, Mel.
” I nearly snorted but the look in his eyes told me that this was no laughing matter.
No joke. No trick. “And if that wasn’t fucked up enough, they’re coming back all kinds of wrong. We’re talking horror movie shit here.”
“What?” I breathed. That just wasn’t possible.
Like he said, it was something out of a movie for fuck’s sake.
I looked around the corner at Gabby, making sure she was still asleep.
My blood turned icy as worry and cold hard reason warred within me.
It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. But I knew that Whitt wouldn’t bullshit me on this.
He wouldn’t have come with some crazy, half-cocked notion of something going on unless he had proof—or the word from the very, very top.
POTUS owes me big time…
“I know it sounds batshit, Mel, but I swear to God it’s true.
I’ve watched it happen with my own eyes at the research hospital that officially doesn’t even exist outside of Quantico.
It’s…bad.” He quickly explained what happened, the symptoms of the initial illness and the insanity that came after.
“It’s going to start spreading beyond our ability to control the news soon.
And when that happens…they’re going to take extreme measures to try to stop it from getting too far too fast.”
“Extreme measures?” I echoed in question. I already knew the answer, but I squeezed my eyes shut waiting for him to respond all the same, needing to hear the words out loud.
“They’re going to bomb the most populated areas. That’s where the most cases are being seen, of course, in the big cities. They think if they do that, it’ll be enough. It won’t be,” he added quietly, “but they have to try.”
“Jesus,” I breathed, my heart thundering in my ears, but entire body feeling numb and cold.
“I don’t know exact dates, but it’ll be soon.
A week, maybe two. Mel, this is…it’s bad,” he said again.
“It’s scary. I’m telling you that I’m fucking scared.
” I met his eyes and saw it there again.
Fear. Fear like I’d never seen in Whitt’s eyes before.
Even when we’d been locked in that cell together, tortured, thinking we were going to die, there hadn’t been fear like this…
That forced all doubt away, silencing that part of my mind that refused to accept that something like this could be real.
It was real. It was happening. I needed to accept it and move on to the next phase: preparation.
That’s why Whitt was there, I knew. To give us time to prepare, to give ourselves the best chance at survival.
“You need to leave. Pack up as many supplies as you can, get Jonah, take that little girl—” he pointed towards the living room and his voice broke, my chest cracking at the sound.
I knew how much he loved Gabby too, like she was his own flesh and blood.
“—and get as far away from the city as possible. Go to the lake house, and take as many backroads to get there as you can. Once it starts, it’s going to go fast. Too fast.”
I forced breaths in and out of my lungs.
I glanced to a picture on the fridge of our last trip to the lake house, taken just as Gabby’s fish made its break for freedom and Jonah was falling off of the dock.
It was mostly in middle-of-nowhere territory, deep in the woods on a large lake with the closest neighbor at least a few miles away.
Even the nearest real town was an hour, anything closer than that were just mom-and-pop convenience and bait shops.
If we needed to avoid people—and fucking bombs apparently—it was a solid choice. But…
“Whitt, I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“I know, Mel.” His voice was tight with understanding and pain and misery.
“But you have to. You have to take her and just…do the best you can for as long as you can.” Now the breaths wouldn’t come no matter how hard I tried.
The aching in my chest was nearly unbearable.
I tried to lock my mind down and compartmentalize everything.
I couldn’t lose it now. I had to be strong, for Gabby and for Jonah.
I had to get them through this, no matter what.
“Look, I know your instincts are going to tell you to warn others, but you can’t, Mel. If people knew what was coming…” He let out a shuddering breath. “You have to play this one close to the vest. It’s a shit call, but it’s the right one, trust me in this. Jonah and no one else, got it?”
“I understand,” I said, already making a plan and several back-up plans, a running list of supplies, and mapping out different possible routes out of town in my head.
“What about you? Tell me you’re leaving.”
“I’m heading to meet my brother and his family down at granddad’s old farm as soon as I leave here.
Car is already packed.” Good. The farm was in Podunk, North Carolina, so they should be safe.
From the bombs at least. Fuck, I still couldn’t really make myself think about what else was coming.
I knew it without Whitt having to spell it out: widespread panic and desperation and violence.
“Ok, good. Give Lila a hug for me.”
He pulled me into a bear hug then, squeezing me so tightly, like it was the last time he would ever do it. I realized with a cold, sinking feeling that it probably was.
“Stay safe, Mel.” He pulled away and held me at arm’s length. In a gruff voice, he added, “You know I love you, asshole.”
My eyes watered. This was goodbye, though neither of us would dare say it. We shared a look, one that said so fucking much with no words needing to be spoken.
“I love you too, jackass.”
I hugged him one more time because I couldn’t not hug him one more fucking time, and when I pulled away, he gave me a warm smile, wiping a tear from my cheek.
“Survive, Mel. Do whatever it takes. I mean it—whatever it fucking takes. Things are going to get really bad before they get even a little bit better, but I know you can make it through this, Mel. I fucking know that you can.”