Sick

8

James Ellison was a dead man, and he knew it.

After guiding Captain Ash and the other man — a man whose name he never knew — to the exit and making sure they got out, his plan had been to return to the supply closet where he’d left Sergeant Causey after he’d drugged the man’s coffee. He had a second, weaker dose that he was going to take himself so that they’d both be found unconscious together.

He had been on his way there when he heard Major Littlefield’s voice in the distance. He pulled out his radio and turned it up just loud enough so he could listen in on the conversation.

What he heard made his blood turn to ice. The door to cellblock 50 had been left open. He’d been sure he closed it, but apparently the lock hadn’t engaged. It was his biohazard suit — it made it hard to hear the click of the latch.

Though Ash and the other man had still been in the facility when the emergency power came back on and the dosing cycle started again, they were so far away at that point, there was no chance the bug could have reached them before they got outside.

He, on the other hand, was toast.

He told himself the reason he needed to get out of there was because someone had to report in the fact that Major Littlefield was no longer in the picture.

His cell phone was in his bag in the observation room, and therefore permanently unavailable, so he would have to find an out-of-the-way pay phone. After he made the call, he could stumble into the desert and die, hopefully from exposure before the bug took him down. That was the best plan he could come up with.

But while the information about Major Littlefield was important, it would also be something the others would learn soon enough without him.

The coming Protocol Thirteen firestorm—that was the real reason he turned and ran.