The Missile

Inspired by Michael Crighton's "The Andromeda Strain". Written in November 2007 for a school magazine that never got off the ground.

I swear we never meant for this to happen.

***

It started in D.C., of course.  D.C., where everything starts.  Sometimes Edelyne wondered if the world had begun in D.C. and civilization had spread from there.
It started in D.C., when President Jackson-Hart passed a bill granting twelve billion dollars to a would-be research facility in Death Valley.  Everyone should have known then that something bad would happen.  The name, the name! Who would pick a place called Death Valley for a scientific research facility?
But they did, and it was built underground.  The structure was completed within months, several people were hired to help maintain it, and Edy and a number of her colleagues were either transferred to Death Valley or hired to do research there.  Edy was hired right out of college.
She liked the work, at first.
At first.
And then she realized what exactly they were doing.
They—she and her colleagues—were working on weapons.  They were researching weapons with which to conduct biological warfare.
She couldn’t believe it.  She knew that her country’s relations with several other countries had been strained recently, but biological warfare? She just didn’t believe it.
So she blocked it out and went about her work, pretending to herself that the viruses she studied and experimented with had real scientific value.
Then her country declared war on the Pole-Spanish Empire, and she chilled at the news.  She knew what the weapons would be.
She knew.

***

I’m alone.  Gods, I’m so alone.  And I know I won’t be here much longer, because eventually, it will catch up…

***

Six months into the war.
Edy was spending most of her time in Death Valley, working.  Her heart wasn’t in it anymore, she knew.  She had heard that they would soon release the viruses that Edy had researched into the atmosphere in a missile, headed for the heart of the Pole-Spanish Empire.  They had been modified to permanently evolve into a harmless form when they passed over open water (how this had been accomplished, Edy didn’t know), so in theory there was no threat to Edy’s country.
They were building permanent quarters for the scientists, to keep them safe in case the Pole-Spanish Empire retaliated, which of course they would.  This was war.
Then things went wrong.
The missile died 10,000 feet in the air over Fort Wayne and crashed a mile outside Albany with the wind blowing west.
Disaster.
All of Albany, excluding an elderly woman in a nursing home who was called Rose Muller and a homeless teenager named Jordan Zhu, died within five hours of the virus landing, after a fever and a bout of vomiting.
Widespread panic.  People tried to evacuate, but very few made it out of the country before the virus struck their town.
Edy watched the news on the facility television, feeling sick.
Everything was her fault, and soon she would be among the dead.

***

I deserve to die.  Why don’t I go out like Gina did, and sacrifice myself to the virus? Well, because Gee was insane and prone to odd, suicidal thoughts, but still.  My victims deserve it.

***

But a week later, the virus was in California, at the edges of the country, and Edy wasn’t dead.
She was, however, terrified.
Some of her colleagues, torn apart by grief for their families and innocent victims, stepped out into the virus-filled air and died.
Edy contemplated it more than once, but she had always been a coward and so did not go out into the desert.
Death Valley, she thought after hearing of another colleague’s suicide.  How apt.
Four months after what Edy’s friend jokingly called V-Day, she still wasn’t dead, but the food was running out.  She wondered when it would be safe to go out again.

***

I wonder what they think of us? We were supposed to cure them, to help them fight off disease—to help them live.  What do the survivors think of us now?

***

It was five months in when the scientists in the Death Valley facility who were still alive were called to an important meeting.
There were only thirty of them left now, out of the original sixty that had manned the facility.  Thirty out of sixty.  Half left.  It terrified Edy—how diminished their numbers had become!
The president of the facility, a handsome man only five years older than Edy called Samuel Morales, received them with a grim face.  He told them that he had received word last night that the Phoenix facility had been attacked and exposed to the virus, and those who hadn’t died on exposure had been brutally killed.  The President had died from exposure, and only two scientists—a young woman, Myra Gallo, and her husband, Richard—had survived exposure, and had avoiding death by hiding in the safest place in the facility, which was not disclosed in the video they had sent.  Richard had been the one to tell Morales of the attack, and could tell him only this, as Edy learned from watching the vidscreen that played Richard’s taped message to Death Valley:
“He’s young, maybe only eighteen, maybe younger.  He’s Asian, black hair, dark eyes, tan skin.  Skinny, very skinny—bony almost—and tall.  I think he’s around five eleven.  He’s angry, Sam, he’s pissed as hell at us for killing everyone.  My Gods—he killed the President, Sam! He killed Jackson-Hart! He—“ And here Richard had broken off, the importance of this hitting him only now, and the tape ended.
Morales had turned to his colleagues with a serious face, and told them to be careful.  The attacker was probably coming next to Death Valley, for if he had known the location of the other facility, he no doubt knew the location of this one.
Edy was terrified.
What if he found them?

***

My mother is dead.  She was the one who gave me my love of science.  She encouraged me to do well in school and seek a scientific career.  Oh, Mother, I killed you with it.  I killed her.

***

It wasn’t long—maybe three weeks—before Edy heard the alarm sound for the first time in all her time working at the facility.
She knew what had happened before Morales burst into the recreation room and told them.
The killer had broken in.
She fled, running blindly down the hallway, seeking safety in one of the rooms that bordered the long corridor.  She found it in a dark room, where she curled up inside a maintenance closet and held herself together, even as she trembled in utter terror.
She deserved this, she knew.  She had killed a country.  She deserved this death.
And yet, she didn’t want to die.  Part of her screamed, Not yet!
There was nothing she could do, though.  The teenager would come and he would expose them to the virus and he would kill them.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but it felt like hours.  The monotonous passage of time was broken finally as she heard a door hiss open in the silence of the floor.  It was followed by a scream, piercing the quiet and deflating it like a knife into a balloon.
Edy shook but kept silent, waiting for her turn.

***

He’s coming.  I can hear the screams.  Everyone knows they’re going to die now.
I’m so sorry… 

Author's Note

ignore that this is almost two years old

Reviews

[D. Pesek]

I'm glad I read this after Death Valley. If I had read this first, I feel that the suprise of Death Valley would have been ruined. This was good, but I do have one question. How is this teenage killer immune to the virus? He travels between facilities without dieing.