It Only Takes One Bullet Part 6

(Warning: This Chapter is rated Mature and may contain material unsuitable for readers under 18.)

Jack held Jessica tight in his arms. Everyone in the base was standing around them, those who were left. The numbers were starting to dwindle down to a hand full of women and men, but at the moment they were standing beside Jack. In front of Jack was a window where his wife laid on the other side slowly dying. The doctor had put her under to stop the pain, but it would be only a few hours now until she was gone.

There was no way to stop the Beast.

Jessica wasn’t crying in Jack’s arm. She had already seen enough death to know there was no point in shedding a tear. If she started to cry for her mother, then she would have to cry for everyone else in her family who died in front of her. The tears would never stop flowing. She would be crying for the rest of her short life. She didn’t want to cry, not now nor with all these people around her.

But Jack didn’t care anymore. He was letting the waterworks flow, balling his eyes out as he watched his wife breath slowly. She had a harder time breathing and soon would choke to death from the fluids building up in her lungs. She wouldn’t feel a thing thanks to painkillers the doctor had her on.

The doctor came out of the room not wearing a gas mask or anything else to protection himself. He rubbed the bridge of his nose looking dead at Jack and said, “If you want to go in you can.”

“Doc?” Someone questioned from the group.

He didn’t look over to the voice but did tell everyone, “It doesn’t matter anymore. If Emily got sick here, then it is already in the air. The chance of every one of us having the Beast is high. This is it, ladies and gentlemen; I don’t think anything is going to save us.”

“What about Felix?” Someone yelled.

“Yeah, Jack, what about your supercomputer?” Someone else asked.

But Jack didn’t hear their words or if he did, he no longer cared what they were asking. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Emily and start for the door where the doctor was standing. The doctor stepped out of the way with Jack still holding Jessica.

Once he was in the room, he set his daughter down and slowly walked over to the bedside of his dying wife.

“Alright,” Thomas Holiday yelled to everyone, “back to work, the show is over. Move it.” Thomas’s voice grew in volume with a powerful god-fearing authority in it as he shouted, “MOVE IT” once more. No one dear disobey his orders, and they all rushed out of the hallway.

He glanced back at Jack before leaving the man alone with his family.

Jack held Emily’s hand kissing it and crying beside her. All he could say was how sorry he was for doing this to her. It was his fault for bringing Felix into the world. If only he had listened to her all those years ago.

“Jack, you can’t play God.”

“I’m not,” he shot back, “I’m doing what God made us to do. I’m creating something.”

“You’re trying to create life,” Emily said late one night after they got back from a dinner party. They both had a little too much wine, and Jack knew he shouldn’t have been driving, but the realization only came to him after he was in the car. They made it home safe, but Jack was going to make sure to keep an eye on how much he drank next time.

“A new life,” she said, “and only God can do that.”

He didn’t listen, and Felix was up and running the very next day.

“I’m sorry,” he said holding her hand.

“Daddy,” Jessica said pulling on his arm, “it’s okay.”

“What?” Jack asked her.

“Mommy is going to Heaven with granddad and grandma,” Jessica said trying to smile, but the sadness of the room fought back against her rising lips.

Jack padded Jessica on the head shooting back his hand and asking, “Honey, do you feel okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you feel okay? You look like you are sweating, daddy.”

“I’m fine, but you’re warm,” Jack told her, but he couldn’t trust himself right now. His mind was filled to the breaking point with stress, and it could easily be playing games with him. He raced around the room looking for a thermometer, found one, and then stuck it right into Jessica’s mouth.

She frowns but knew better than to put up a fight. The thermometer beeped, and Jack read the black numbers on it. She was a little warm but not by much. He couldn’t recall if she was always that warm or not. Emily was the one who could touch Jessica forehead to tell if she was sick. It was a power all mothers seem to have.

“I’m fine, daddy,” Jessica said.

“Okay, okay,” Jack said looking back at his wife watching her chest rise and fall. She was still alive but was that a good thing? Wouldn’t the right thing do would be to put her out of her misery?

He stepped away from the bed not believing his own mind when to putting a bullet in his wife’s head.

“Don’t let me die painfully,” she told him after the news of the virus reached everyone in the world.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked her looking over at his wife.

“I want it to be quick,” she said with a dead cold stare.

“Right,” he said looking around the room for a moment. He found a gun sitting on the table where the doctor’s notes laid in a stack of papers. He glanced back at Jessica forcing a smile on his lips and then kissing her on the forehead. He wasn’t going to let the Beast get her either. He wasn’t going to watch her slowly die in the same way as her mother. He wouldn’t allow the agony of what he brought into the world to eat his child from the inside out.