Mercury Striking (The Scorpius Syndrome #1)(9)
Something told her she’d been wrong.
Chapter Four
It is a miracle the earth survived the violence of space, and it’s a bigger miracle that humans have survived the earth.
At the end, we will pass the way of the dinosaur.
—Dr. Franklin Xavier Harmony
Jax rubbed his gritty eyes and left Lynne in his room, already planning how to best use her. He strode down the worn concrete stairs to what had always been a crappy alcove that served as the entrance to the upper two floors of the rent-controlled brick building. The first floor had consisted of a free medical clinic, soup kitchen, and offices for attorneys down on their luck. When he’d created the Vanguard headquarters, he’d changed the clinic into a triage infirmary, the soup kitchen into a soldier cafeteria, and the offices into his war rooms. He’d tossed legal books out in favor of weapons.
Well, he’d actually burned them for fuel. The old laws no longer mattered.
Then he’d promptly punched doorways between the three areas for better access.
He hit the alcove, turned to go through the new doorway to the soup kitchen, which was dead empty at the hour of dawn. The smell of burned tomatoes followed him as he skirted tables and rickety lawn chairs for another new doorway, this one to the former waiting room of the clinic.
Banging echoed from the back of the suite, so he crossed behind the dented reception desk. He found his man in a room that used to be the lunch room of the clinic. A blue halogen lantern gave off an otherworldly glow in the small space. “How much B do we have now?” he asked.
Tace Justice, dressed in full combat gear, glanced up from a microscope they’d found at a junior high several months ago. It rested on a surprisingly smooth wooden table in the center of the room, across from a counter lined with other medical supplies. “Finished the inoculations for this month, except for yours, and this is it. We’re out, kaput, done.” He stood and grabbed a syringe. “Since you’re here, let’s wrap this up.”
Jax grimaced and tilted his head to the side.
The needle slid in, and fire flamed through his neck. “You have the finesse of a fucking elephant,” he muttered.
Tace shrugged. “I was a field medic, not a doctor or a nurse. Take it and shut up, or go to the main infirmary for civilians in the center of Vanguard territory.”
Jax scrubbed both hands down his face and glanced at a child’s drawing of a distorted blond guy with his head open taped to the wall. “Is that supposed to be you?”
“Yep.” The Texas twang deepened. “Not sure what it means, and the open head is a little creepy, but it’s nice the kids found some crayons.”
“Lena?” Jax asked with a sigh.
“Of course.”
The little girl often found a way to wander into military headquarters to give presents, and Jax had a drawer in his quarters of oddly shaped and painted rocks she’d showered on him. “They need to do a better job of keeping the kids inner territory.”
“Then you should go inner territory more so folks can see you,” Tace said.
Jax avoided going beyond his command unless absolutely necessary and stuck to the perimeter of the seven square blocks, making sure their defenses stayed shored up. Barbed wire fencing protected the entire territory, which was a trick he’d learned from serving at several military bases, and he didn’t want to discuss going inner territory. “We’ve been getting shot up with B for months. Is there any chance our own bodies will take over production of the vitamin so we don’t need the shots?”
“Hell if I know, and so far, the new data hasn’t helped. Nobody knows about Scorpius.” Tace winced. “I can just affirm from my own review of the public documents initially sent out by the CDC that vitamin B, in this concentrated form, provides a protection so that if somebody contracts Scorpius, they might live through it. The B seems to keep the bacteria from spreading in the body. By testing those who have confessed to being survivors, the CDC discovered the Scorpius bacteria localizes just in saliva and blood.” Tension rode his words. “Of course, most survivors don’t tell me the truth about it in our community, so I don’t know who has been infected.”
In his past life, Tace had been an army medic after having grown up on a Texas ranch with several siblings, all of whom had succumbed to Scorpius. Now he gave off a vibe of being one with the universe and at peace. But he was a damn good medic who at least somewhat understood Scorpius and vitamin B.
Jax grimaced as thunder rolled again. Shit, they needed rain but not bad wind. “It’s a vitamin,” he muttered. “Vitamin fuckin’ B.”
Tace blew out air. “The B vitamins deal with dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which has something to do with hormones and empathy. That’s all I know.”
Jax scratched his stinging neck. “Have you had much of a chance to go through the data we took from the CDC outpost and contracted labs in the area?”
“We went through it for medical data, but some of it was pretty confusing.” Tace stretched his shoulders. “Why?”
Jax rubbed his chin. “Lynne Harmony thinks she might be able to find a concoction that creates B in the blood so we won’t need constant injections. She’s not telling me everything, but I think she was truthful about that.”