The Apocalypse Games by D L Richardson

Author:D L Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D L Richardson

***

After the funeral service, as with after every funeral service anywhere on the planet, there was food. Kelly grabbed a cup of coffee from the counter where a spread was laid out. She took her cup and walked over to stand beside Reis, who was in the foyer staring up at the now-blank screen.

“Why the scowl?” Kelly asked him. “Are you pissed at the workers for fleeing?”

“Hell no. The building was falling down all around them. Of course they had to get out of there.” He frowned at the mug in her hand. “I told you not to drink anything.”

“Yeah, but you never said why.”

The shrug of his shoulders indicated he had something to say but didn’t want to. In the thirteen years she’d known him, she’d yet to develop the ability to read his mind, although she’d come close a few times, but that had been through luck. Mostly she took stabs in the dark and prayed she hit something. Like now.

“We played with people who were dead and it makes you uneasy,” she said. At least she was rewarded with a furtive glance, so her stab in the dark had paid off. “Makes me a little uncomfortable, too. Ash was my friend. Sasha was Jack’s girlfriend. They were as alive to me as you are, and yet it’s possible they were never alive at all.”

Kelly took a sip from her cup and almost spat it out. Her time in the pod had severely affected her taste buds, or else the coffee was as bad as it tasted.

“Does this taste like ash to you?” she asked Reis, waving the mug under his nose.

Reis grabbed the cup and tossed the contents into a pot plant. “I told you not to drink anything.”

Before he could explain, Reynolds burst into the room and her face was red and wild like she’d been running from wolves. She was talking into a radio. Kelly overheard words like ‘contagion’ and ‘outbreak’.

“Time to go,” Reynolds yelled. “Everyone grab your gear. Now!”

“What’s going on?” Kelly saw a wall of people rushing past on their way to their bunks. She stepped out into the crowd but she was pulled back against the wall by Reis.

In a low voice, he said, “We needed to make sure NASA wasn’t going to search us when we left. So we spiked one of the coffee mugs to make it look like one of us, or all of us, might have a virus.”

“You poisoned people.”

“Not plural. Just one person.”

“Who?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Kelly pulled out of his grip. “One. Twenty. Does it matter? Reis, what were you thinking?”

“That we needed to get out of here with the supplies that we stole. The poison isn’t harmful.”

She shook her head. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? Causing trouble like none of the rules or consequences apply to you. What if NASA quarantines the lot of us?”

Kelly followed the source of the commotion, which led her to the kitchen, where she discovered Paige bent over and vomiting into the trash can.

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