“Why now, Henry?” I asked. “You ran away! Five? Six years, now? Stanford left not long after. Not a peep until maybe ten months ago. I heard he walled himself up a subdivision somewhere for a while. But he’s back. And now you’re back. With this.” I ran my fingers along the key code generator, and pulled it to my side of the table. “Why now?”
“You tell me,” he said, playing me, as infuriating as ever. I stared him up and down. He had more gray hair and one less arm, but little else seemed to have changed.
“One of the last known samples of the virus that killed nearly half of the world’s population is one hell of a bargaining chip, Henry. So what do you want?”
“I’m not here to bargain,” he said. “I’m here to take it off the table.”
“I’ve been sitting on that thing this whole time,” I said, trying and failing to restrain my anger. “Me. And my people. Pushing the Andersonville myth, scaring off the scavvies, fighting the fucking Hunters, keeping the virus hidden from men like Stanford. Me, Henry!”
“And what if you had been able to get in?” he said. He reached over to the key code generator. He pushed it toward me. “What then?”
I took a breath. I had to maintain my cool in front of Rory and the men. I said, “You’ll never get it out of the camp.” I let the gunshots in the street outside the window punctuate my statement.
“I’m not takin’ it out, Pam” Henry said. “We’re gonna destroy it. You and me. We’re gonna initiate the containment vault’s biosafety protocols. Bleach it down. Burn it up. Something we should’ve done a long time ago.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said, but he was. He was very serious. Something had changed in him, after all.
