Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

“I guess not.”

Fiona’s chin falls to her chest, and her head begins to bob. When she looks up again, tears stream down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to kill the boy, Lisa. Or anyone.”

“You poisoned them, Fiona.”

“They needed to be sick, yes. But I expected the reactions to be treatable. I thought…” She clears her throat and wipes her eyes. “I thought they would recover.”

Lisa’s phone dings with another notification, and she looks down to see a text from Eileen that reads, “In the lobby.”

Before she even looks back up, Lisa catches a blur of motion out of the periphery of her vision. Cold water splashes her face as ice cubes smack painfully off her cheek and forehead. By the time Lisa is able to wipe the water from her eyes, Fiona is up and sprinting for the patio door.

Lisa jumps up, but her foot slides on a stray ice cube. She grabs the table to steady herself and pushes off just as Fiona yanks open the patio door and darts through it.

Heart in her throat, Lisa squeezes through the closing door.

Fiona still has three good strides on her. She doesn’t slow as she hurls herself at the patio’s raised glass railing.

“No!” Lisa cries, diving toward Fiona, who’s more than halfway over the top.

Landing hard on her right knee, Lisa catches Fiona by the calf of her dangling leg.

“Let me go!” Fiona kicks wildly at her with her other leg, slamming Lisa in the chest and almost slipping free.

Despite Fiona’s kicks and the throb of her knee, Lisa clings on to the woman’s ankle. Pulling as hard as she can, she rolls away from the railing.

Fiona resists for several seconds but then her grip slips, and she topples down hard on top of Lisa.

Lisa blindly throws her arms out around Fiona’s chest and holds on with all her might.

Fiona’s hot breath fills her face and her spittle lands on her nose as she cries, “Let me go,” repeatedly while struggling with the frenzy of a deer tangled in fencing.

“Stop!” a man yells, and Lisa suddenly feels Fiona being pulled out of her grip.

She rolls over and pops up to a sitting position to see the bartender on top of Fiona, pinning her to the ground.

“Calm down!” he tells the still-struggling Fiona. “Everything’s going be OK.”

But the way Lisa sees it, nothing really will be.

CHAPTER 62

The grounds are lovely. Walking paths, ponds, and little gardens with benches are scattered throughout the sprawling wooded property. Inside, it smells of fresh coffee and baking. If Lisa didn’t know better, she would’ve assumed the converted old mansion was a high-end bed-and-breakfast instead of a hospice for the dying.

The room is west facing with a peekaboo view of the ocean through the trees. Angela sits propped up in the bed. Her cheeks are skeletal and her eyes deeply sunken, but her smile is amused and still vibrant. “This whole place looks like the backdrop for a photo shoot in some Lands’ End catalog,” she says. “But I like it here. Cliché that it is, it’s kind of peaceful.”

“And the family?”

“They like it, too.” Angela motions to the pullout couch across the room. “Howard can sleep over. When he’s not being overly emotional. That lovable old wuss.”

Lisa leans forward in her chair and takes her friend’s bony hand in hers. “He’s a keeper.”

Angela meets her gaze. “I should’ve probably told you sooner that my chemo was a bust. But I was worried you’d kick me out of the office if you knew I was on my last legs.”

“Are you kidding? You kept me sane through the worst of it.”

“Being back on the job during the outbreak…” Angela clears her throat weakly. “It gave me a sense of purpose. Kept me out of this place for an extra week or two. Thank you.”

“I’m the one who’s thankful. Honestly, Angela. No idea what I would’ve done without you.”

“Enough! My ass doesn’t have room for any more smoke blown up it.” Angela chuckles. “So where are we at?”

“A mixed bag,” Lisa admits. “We’re officially three weeks into the outbreak as of today, and the latest count is forty-nine dead among a hundred twenty-two infected. But the good news is that in the last three days, there have only been four new cases and one death.”

“Strange times in Public Health when we consider one death as good news,” Angela says. “How’s the Neissovax campaign going?”

“It’s picking up steam. Yesterday was the fourth day of the reopened clinics, and we had over four hundred people through.”

“So they’re coming back?”

“Yes, but there’s still so much distrust out there. To reach true herd immunity against this meningococcus, we need to vaccinate eighty percent of Seattle’s youth. But we’re miles away from that target.”

“It’s going to take time, Lisa. Fiona did a lot of damage.”

“Yes, she did,” Lisa says.

A week has passed since Fiona’s arrest and the authorities went public with the news of the tainted vaccines. There was only one more case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome reported in that time—an eleven-year-old girl, who was already recovering. Only one of Fiona’s victims, Darius Washington, died directly from the poisoning, but no one knows how many families were scared out of vaccinating their children because of her. Some might have died as a direct result of not being vaccinated, while others might still suffer from how much Fiona’s sabotage impeded efforts to immunize the rest of the community.

“It’s not only Neissovax. Or Seattle.” Angela sighs. “Imagine how many people might be reconsidering all types of other vital vaccines because of her fraud.”

“The irony is it wasn’t even over her anti-vax beliefs,” Lisa says. “Not primarily. In the end, she just wanted to make Delaware pay for the death of her husband. Simple vengeance.”

“People are so fucked,” Angela mutters, and then looks at Lisa with a penetrating gaze. “Speaking of husbands, how’s it going with yours?”

Lisa hesitates. “I found a condo. I’ll be moving out at the end of the week.” She