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Jason caught the sound of Amy’s whimper when he himself groaned out a quiet ‘no’ stepping from the elevator.

  ‘Someone jump out and yell surprise’, Jason thought. ‘Please jump out’.

  No one did.

  “This is a mistake,” Jason said with rushed breath. He spun and looked behind him. The others barely moved, they were in some sort of state of shock. “This is a mistake.”

  Using the glow from the blinds as a guide, he hurried through the lab, bumping into chairs and other items as he made his way to the end of the lab.

  He heard the call of his name, but he ignored it.

  He had to see.

  Where was everyone? Where were the scientists waiting to greet him? His family? Perhaps they actually woke up early. After all, Malcolm said the door timer started once the first Genesis unit revived.

  At the end of the lab, to the left, was a door. A solid door with window panels on the side. He pushed on the door and stepped into a small reception area.

  No bigger than a bedroom, the room had four chairs and a desk that contained a computer, no power of course. As Jason moved toward the next door, he paused and trailed his fingers across the surface of the desk.

  Dust.

  So much dust his fingers created an embedded mark. He rolled the dirt between his fingers and walked to the double doors in the reception area. He turned the handle.

  “Jason,” Nora called his name.

  He paused. “I have to see. Look at the dust, Nora.”

  “Jason, listen. You only need to look out the window to …”

  “I need to see. I need to feel it.” He clenched his fist and brought it to his chest, then continued on and opened the door.

  He didn’t step into a hall, but rather a lobby, huge and open. It was bright, the sun blasted through the glass wall that he could only assume was the front of the building.

  Through the sunlight he saw the dust, smelled it, and felt the thick humidity. It was hot.

  He let his eyes adjust then turned to Nora. “Are you coming?”

  She nodded and joined him.

  Slowly Jason walked to the glass doors. Hands to the handle he pushed. The door barely budged.

  He pushed harder and finally, with resistance, it opened.

  The door wasn’t locked, weeds had grown through the cracks of the concrete and stopped the door from swinging outward.

  Jason lost his breath when he stepped out into the sun. The heat added to the ‘slam’ of reality and he wheezed inward, trying to comprehend it all as he looked around.

  It was a mainly concrete area, small buildings around a parking lot. But where there was grass it was overgrown. Weeds had grown wildly and high, looking more like odd shaped miniature trees. The seams of the sidewalk were filled with bright green growth. The buildings weren’t clean and shiny, they looked weather worn.

  Not a car.

  Not a sound.

  Not a person.

  After looking around, he raced toward the parking lot and stopped. The view before him was a barren world. Barren … dead.

  “Hello!” He cried out. “Hello!”

  His voice echoed back at him.

  Face tensing with emotions, he spun and looked at Nora. She stood arms held tight to her body.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look at this.” He held out his hand. “This isn’t seven months. It can’t be.” He closed his eyes tight and with a painful realization that things had gone horribly awry, Jason, feeling defeated, released one quiet single sob and dropped to his knees. “What happened to our world?”

  EIGHTEEN – PRECAUTIONS

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a source of support, but Nora couldn’t stay outside. Even with the sun shining, it exuded a sense of gloom and she returned to the small lab type office.

  She felt hollow, empty and hadn’t a clue on how to process all that was going on. A feeling of loss washed over her. Her daughters, her husband. What had become of them? One thing Jason was correct about.

  It was longer than seven months. It had to be. The growth of weeds and foliage was far too great.

  When she returned, John had opened the blinds to all the windows and the room was brighter. The moods weren’t. Grant sat in a swivel chair staring out. Amy was in the corner staring at an empty backpack.

  Malcolm was rummaging through desks, Meredith stood off watching him and John stood by the window.

  “He’s still out there,” Nora said.

  “Yes, well, maybe he is doing that praying thing he was famous for,” John replied.

  “John, please.”

  “He’s kneeling.”

  Nora looked out the window. “That’s not a prayer kneel. That’s a ‘my world is over’ kneel.”

  “Yes, well, emotionally we’re all doing that.” He turned from the window. “How are you?’

  “Numb. Trying to process. Did the lab below decontaminate? Think we should get out?”

  “I estimate it was two hundred feet below. Decontamination will be a fireball that will extinguish quickly, we’re fine. I believe and I also know …” He peered down to his watch. “We have about six minutes remaining. About right now, though, I can use some of that humor you said you had.”

  “I don’t think there is humor in this.” Nora folded her arms tight. She turned her head to the banging of drawers. “Malcolm?”

  Malcolm ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Did these people just up leave or not come to work?”

  “What do you mean?” Nora asked.

  “I mean the dates on papers stop on December fourteen. What the hell. I wish I could get into the computer.”

  “What about the solar …” Nora’s eyes shifted. “Where’s the president.”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked around, as if the president would suddenly appear.

  “Did he go outside?” John asked.

  “No,” Nora replied. “I was out there. He didn’t come out.”

  “Where in the world could he …” John stopped and looked beyond Nora.

  She turned.

  The elevator.

  The door was closed.

  Nora hurried to it. “You don’t think?”

  “Unless he slipped out somewhere else,” John said.

  There was a keypad next to the elevator, Nora lifted the cover and pressed the button.

  Nothing.

  She pressed it again.

  “Come on,” she beckoned. “Open … damn it.”

  “Nora,” Grant hurried her way and grabbed her hand. “We don’t know that he’s down there.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. If we are all that’s left.” She kept pressing.

  From across the room, John commented. “Maybe he should have thought of that before he agreed to this population control plan.”

  Nora paused only briefly to glance John’s way and then she returned to hoping on that elevator. “Is no one else concerned?”

  “What if you go down there?” Grant asked. “And he’s not there? Then you are there when decontamination takes place. We don’t know. None of us paid that much attention. He could have slipped out after you. He could be in this building somewhere.”

  “Again,” John said. “What does it matter? He was useless.”

  Nora gasped out. “How can you say that?”

  “He woke up, claimed he remembered nothing,” John said. “And then he tells us the entire plan. He was depressed, remorseful and he came up here and faced a reality he caused. Let him go. If he’s down there, let him burn. But please, for my sake, because I like you, step away from that elevator shaft … just in case.”

  Malcolm said. “I think we should all go outside just in case.”

  “They aren’t going to destroy a whole building in Marshal Flight center, or Redstone,” John stated. “We on a military base. No. It will snuff out.”

&
nbsp; Softly, Grant spoke to Nora. “Come on. Nothing you can do.”

  Hand still reaching to the elevator button, Nora backed up, rolled her fingers into a ball and turned around. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Grant. “Maybe he’s in this building somewhere.”

  “No,” Meredith said. “He took his life. I didn’t see him go down there, but it makes sense. Guilt will do that. None of this turned out as they planned. We see this.”

  A squeaky chair caught Nora’s attention and she looked at Malcolm who plopped back down. He lifted a clipboard and began flipping pages.

  “What are we doing?” Nora asked. “Dazed and confused, sitting around, staring out a window. Falling down emotionally?”

  “I’m trying to find answers,” Malcolm said. “Something, anything that will tell us what went wrong.”

  “The germ went out of control,” John added. “What more do you need to know?”

  “How long we’ve been out? What exactly happened? I mean... really, think about it,” Malcolm said, “How do we know, maybe this base wasn’t just contaminated. You realize there is a nuclear power plant not far from here. What if the germ did more damage, what if power went down before they could secure that plant? There are also a million reasons why this portion of the base is abandoned. We haven’t left this room to find out.”

  “I don’t see you jumping out the door,” John commented.

  “No, because I wanted to see if anything was left behind.”

  Grant spoke up. “Clues to whether or not it is just here or everywhere?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, this is turning up nothing. But I’ll look further.”

  “Times up.” John said. He pursed his lips while staring at the watch. After a moment, he exhaled. “Didn’t feel a thing.”

  Nora looked at him. “How can you be so cold and callous?”

  “I’m not,” John said. “I’m in shock. I’m angry; I’m dumbfounded on what my next step is. I want answers and there are none. Not here. And unfortunately, the only person who has an inkling of what was going on or some sort of answer is two hundred feet below us living the lyrics to a Bon Jovi song and going out in a blaze of glory.”

  Meredith spoke up. “That’s … that’s not necessarily true.”

  “Which part?” John asked. “The Bon Jovi song or the fact that he is below us.”

  “Oh, I believe he’s down there,” Meredith replied. “But I am talking about him being the person with all the answers. That isn’t necessarily true.” She paused. “Because I believe I have answers. I think.”

  NINETEEN – Worst Case

  He hadn’t moved. Jason was still in the same spot, thirty feet from the entrance of the building, knees to the ground, in the center of the overgrown parking lot.

  Questions started to fly for Meredith and at her. Especially from Amy, who suddenly turned angry? She cried out she felt cheated, robbed and misled. “I listened and trusted both you and the president. And you both knew,” she said. “I believed all would be fine. I brought up nothing and now I have to barter my soul for a bottle of water from John.”

  In a sense, Amy was right. Although Nora still hadn’t determined what Meredith knew. She had information, she admitted to it. That alone was a game changer. And in all honesty, it wasn’t Meredith’s fault that she was confidante in the project.

  A part of Nora felt vindicated because she didn’t believe Meredith to be as oblivious as she portrayed convincingly to everyone else.

  But before Meredith divulged her information or theories, Nora wanted to get Jason. He deserved to know.

  Apprehensively she made her way to him. His head was down. Nora recalled her first encounter with Jason. He was a positive person despite his circumstances. He went through quick mood swings after hearing what the president originally said of the Genesis Project. Anger and sadness, but after they subsided, he was hopeful. He had something no one else had... a deep rooted faith.

  “Jason,” she called to him softly. “I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re praying.”

  He didn’t turn around. His voice cracked softly. “Praying.” He shook his head and laughed emotionally. “Nora, I don’t think I have a prayer to say.” He slowly swayed his head and looked over his shoulder at her. “From the time I was a child, I believed in God. I preached His word for as long as I remember. Give it to God was a stock phrase of mine. Give it to God.” He laughed again. “At first you know, I was mad because Man and Science took it from God’s hands. But now … I’m torn. I’m torn between being angry at the God I gave my life to and angry at myself for believing in a fairy tale.” He slowly stood to his knees. “The God I worshipped would not let this happen.”

  “I have news for you,” Nora said. “Probably not a news flash considering what you did for a living, but the God you worship, if all those stories are true, He has a pretty good track record of doing this.”

  His eyes widened as if to say, ‘I can’t believe that just came from your mouth’.

  Nora shrugged. “I’m just saying. And I’m here to ask you to come in.”

  “I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “Just don’t pull a President Thomas.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means ...he’s dead,” Nora said. “He went down to be part of the decontamination process. He couldn’t handle this. None of us can. I’m not. It seems surreal, like I’m so displaced from my life, my world, that to me this isn’t earth, that this isn’t reality.”

  “Look around Nora, its reality.”

  “Here. We don’t know what’s beyond here. And … Meredith knows some things.”

  “We discussed this. She doesn’t.”

  “No, actually,” Nora said. “She does. She said it and we’re waiting on you to hear what that is.” She held out her hand. “Let’s hear what she has to say and then we can figure out our next step. Staying out here, looking at this, is not the answer. We need to find our answers. But we need information to get there.”

  “Do you really think Meredith has it?”

  “She has something.”

  After a moment of debate, Jason took her hand and they went back inside the building.

  Despite the fact that John said he felt nothing, he did indeed feel a slight vibration under his feet. The explosion below had to be intense. The president, if he were caught in it, felt nothing, His pain was over.

  John didn’t see him go down the elevator and couldn’t figure out how he did so without being noticed. But what were the options? He ran amuck around the building? For what purpose? He had no supplies. The logical deduction was that he committed suicide.

  In John’s mind, President Thomas was useless. He had knowledge, but he was weak and broken. Marshal Flight Center was a starting point for John, not an end, and the last thing he needed was a weak person following him North. And North was exactly where John would head, back home, once he figured out how to get there.

  “All of that,” Meredith pointed to the boxes and supplies John took from storage. “Is needed. You didn’t take it all but you took at least one from every box, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Three years ago, I was asked to come up with a worst case scenario theory,” Meredith explained. “Because of my work, NASA pulled me in, right here, to this compound for a meeting. I honestly believed it had something to do with space.”

  “Worst case scenario, Dr. Hassleman,” the director asked her. “What would be the situation if six astronauts returned from space to find the earth had been wiped clean from a plague?”

  “That would be impossible,” Meredith said. “Everyone on earth? No. There would be survivors. There would be those who didn’t get it, It would appear, though, that the world was empty.”

  “What would be the obstacles for them?”

  “How long are we talking about? Is the plague or virus still in the air, are they completely safe from being victims. If it were long enough for it to be safe, then they face
a whole different battle.”

  “How so?”

  “First let’s look at the emotional side. Their family, friends, civilization in general, gone. They will be desperate and in disbelief until faced with the reality and that reality would be to seek the truth and find resolution with family. Therein lies the next problem. Every resource, already in place, will be useless. If it is years, then food on the shelves is bad. Water is a problem. They’d have to rely on ground sources. Any animals that remain are deadly and they could possibly be without weapons. How would they find their families? Unless every member of every family is within walking distance of their landing site, they’re out of luck. Gasoline will be bad, batteries… dead, horses, if they could find them would be wild.”

  Meredith emerged from her recount of the meeting and said, “Then they asked me to make a list. What would be needed for them? Honestly, I thought they were doing a just in case scenario with all the recent space exploration.”

  John said, “Plausible. I’d think the same way. Did you do the list?”

  “Of course. It took me months. I was thorough. I told them the supplies would have to be stored airtight or some way to preserve. Everything down there was on my list, John, everything in that storage. Those solar batteries are for vehicles somewhere on this base. Where? I don’t know.”

  Jason asked. “So you knew all along?”

  “No.” Meredith held up her hand. “I’m guessing on the solar batteries because they were on my list. Power vehicles similar to the rovers they place on planets. If the batteries were there, the vehicles are somewhere. All those boxes were in an airtight preservation room, that door opened when the units released. The design is called the time capsule vault.”

  John spoke up. “Summer’s design. She did it years ago, so that in case the world was destroyed and aliens found it or people in the future, they could taste and experience all that we had. You acted like you didn’t know her.”

  “When we discussed Summer,” Meredith stated. “I was frightened to say anything. And I would have, had the president not stepped in and talked.”