I strap my helmet on my head as Mel straps the last hunk of C4 on the gas tank. Dust rises in the distance. The hunting posse is still coming. Flickering red lights blink from every odd crevice on the Ford. I mention that the Fiesta looks suitably festive to Mel, who tosses a pebble at my head. Luckily the pebble is small. Mel has great aim and a good arm. Squatting down and strapping on the jetpack, the familiar weight settles on my back, only alleviated slightly by some low power anti-grav packs. I lock everything in place and begin charging the battery, enjoying the low hum of power waking up.
       Mel squats down and shoulders on her jetpack after setting her helmet on the bumper and strapping on her precious cargo pack. I try not to grin at her tiny little body in all that bulk; she looks pregnant with about eight lumpy babies.
       "Hey, quit laughing, and give me a hand here," Mel grumbles. I can the laughter and offer her my hand. "Ready to fly, soldier?" With only a few undignified grunts, the last of the Smithsonian squadron is ready for action. We smile at each other and bump fists, nut-brown meeting soy-cheese-pallor knuckles, and we press the big-red-buttons on our packs, bending our knees against the shock. Liftoff. This part is always fun. There's no countdown, just a powerful rush of energy pushing us off the ground into the firmament. Below us, and only a few hundred yards behind our previous position, the riders on our six recoil from the tumult of our rise.
       Mel and I rotate in sync to fly back, up, and away, keeping the hunting posse and the car in our sights. The characteristic furry tufts of men infected with the KOALA virus wave in the breeze through haphazard body armor, weapons, and clothes. The scrappy clothes on one rider were scrubs once. That characteristic matte green is easy to see. Another rider is wearing a food service apron, and a third has a blazer visible under hockey pads. When the viral crisis began, I thought the fluffy ears and furry tufts were cartoonishly charming. Assuming I survive, I don't think I'll ever look at fur quite the same way again. The hunters are getting too close to the car now, and we are nearly out of range.
       "Lighting it up," Mel announces through the headset. The Fiesta bursts like a piñata, punctuating the air with reverberating finality. It looks like a fiery exclamation point in the receding horizon: a billowing, black vertical column over a full stop blast radius of body parts interspersed with car shrapnel. I yelp.
       "Joyce, it was them or us."
       "They're sick. We're doctors. It still doesn't feel right."
       I hear a bark of bitter laughter through my headset.
       "No, it's not," Mel is silent for a moment before adding, "for what it's worth, I was trying to scare them back, not blow them up."
       "I know."
       "We used too much C4, or there was more gas than we thought in the reserve tank. At least the fire should distract any more hunters for a while." I activate the binocular filter in my helmet to look at them.
       "The chief is still seated." At the back of the posse, the chief rides his horse with his colors intact, still holding his gun. The KOALA virus drastically rewired 55% of infected men to quickly and painfully lose the bulk of their humanity, but guns still seem pretty easy for them to manage. If the chief is still alive and active, we were going to have to keep looking over our shoulder for a while longer. Of course, we've been looking over our shoulders since Ohio, thanks to this party of KOALA hunters. What else is new? At least we are airborne, and Strategic Command is only a short flight away. Mel and I, we might just make it.
       The jet pack puts an unpleasant pressure on my cervical vertebrae. It's vexing that we weren't able to scavenge a car that had both the gas and the transmission to take us further. In addition to the other inconveniences of the jet packs, they burn your calves. The flight suits have heat shields with extra layering in the calves, but the lowest bidder made them. After about 12-hours, you could start to feel the burn. If we ever visit the beach for fun again, I am going to have a crap bikini body despite my six-pack abs. My legs look too much like a lobster or an armadillo. I expect both of us will need some extra medical attention when we get to Command. "Doctor, heal thyself" only works when the doctor has the requisite supplies.
       Flying through the air is fun. It is less fun flying through the air wearing a bunch of heavy electronics strapped to you, but even that can't diminish the thrill of having wind screaming past your head or flying at eye level with a Branta canadensis. The Canada goose can give you a pretty effective skeptical look, considering they have neither eyebrows nor lips. Something about the sclerotic ring's angle relative to the premaxillary and nasal bones of its skull makes the effect possible. The one flying off my port side is multitasking giving me the side-eye with its onyx bead of an eye while staying aloft in formation.
       "Joyce, let's give the flock some space. We don't need bird flu, too."
       "Affirmative." I nod to the goose as I begin to bank away starboard. Its nictating membrane flicks over the goose's eye, an avian wink in reply.
       A bullet whizzes past my cheek, just when we had the sky to ourselves. I scan the ground as I roll away, trying to see the shooter. Far below, a dozen KOALA riders trail behind the chief, or at least someone wearing the chief's attire. Wow. They regroup fast. We've only been flying for a couple of hours. I know our smoke trail is easy to follow, but c'mon, this beggars belief. If we burn fuel doing evasive maneuvers, we risk falling short of Command. We might be close enough to radio for backup, but that is supposed to be a last resort. Gunning our packs to outrun them might work, but the flight trail would still lead them to us. Incapacitating them is the best of our bad options, but small arms at this range aren't very effective for that. Back in Cleveland, I had used the last small missile in my jet pack to get us out of a similar fix. Did Mel still have hers? I can't remember.
       "Missile?"
       "One. Can't miss." That's what I thought.
       "Covering fire?"
       "No. Save the ammo. Drosophila pattern?" Ah. That had worked before.
       "Affirmative," I reply.
       Mel counts down, and on three, I dive toward the riders, dodging in close, swooping over and around them. One rider shoots another when I pull out of his bullet's trajectory. I'm pretty good at what I do. Luckily, so is Mel.
       "Go!" Mel said, and I know she fired. I fly level with the chief, bobbing along just in front, keeping his attention fixed on me until I spot the missile just above his head. Then I gun the pack to power climb. I see the chief's golden eyes widen as my pack screams upward, just one of those moments when time slows to a crawl. The fur stands up on his big, fluffy ears. He half turns, sees the missile, and half-twists, throwing himself from the horse, rolling away from the impact as it throws his horse head over tail in a broken heap. Those genetic modifications for speed, agility, and reaction time are really all they were cracked up to be. The DOD contractors hadn't messed up that part of the KOALA project. The chief, and most of his reassembled posse, are not going to ride away unscathed. Through my helmet, I can see the KOALA hunters twitching on the ground in the blast radius. At least most of them are alive. Most will recover in time. My tank has fuel yet; with luck, we might make it to Command before our legs charbroil.
       We land on a slope several hundred feet down from the coordinates. Back in the Fiesta, Mel and I had agreed that we'd approach Command on foot to prevent our jet trail leading anyone paying attention straight to the stronghold of the U.S. government. This is a sensible plan, a patriotic and noble plan, but I know that schlepping all this gear up the peak will suck, even with the small anti-grav units turned on to lighten the load. Oh well.
       Mel and I are on the side of the peak in a small clearing between rocks and stubby, ancient trees. I raise the eye-shield on my helmet and look out at the vista. Beautiful forests spread beneath the shadow of the mountain. The clouds look wispy and are tinged seashell pink. I don't hear anything but the wind rushing around the peak. Mel slurps down some water. An audible rumble escapes my tummy. Mel cocks an eyebrow at me over her water pouch.
       "Yeah, it's snack-time." I take a jerky stick out of my suit pocket and begin munching away. There's nothing like exhaustion, fear, and hard physical labor to make anything taste absolutely scrumptious, even something you wouldn't otherwise like. Used to be, I didn't eat jerky. Back when we had choices, I never touched the stuff even if you paid me because of all that salt and fat. I would have friends over; we'd drink craft beers, play music, and make massive batches of trail mix with peanuts, granola, dried pineapple, dried apple, pine nuts, and dark chocolate chips. I still dream about that trail mix and those cooking nights. Then everything went to crap, my friends all died or were turned by the KOALA, and now I eat jerky. Worst part? Now I like the jerky. If that's not some kind of Stockholm syndrome, I don't know what is.
       "Hey," Mel said.
       "Yeah?"
       "Are you brooding over there?"
       "Yeah. A little. How can you tell?"
       "Shoulders. Now, stop it, Joyce. Let's get walking."
       Mel is very practical. Maybe one day I'll acquire some of that practicality. Mel has lost as much as me, probably more for all I know. I look at her shoulders. The pack obscures most of her frame. They appear to be level, maybe a little hunched forward with the effort of climbing. Each step is sure, ascending the rocky, gravelly ground of loose stone. This is impressive enough. I feel like the ground is shifting beneath my feet and that one wrong step will send me, my jetpack, and the all-important biomedical research flying boots over brains down the peak in an epic, rather cartoony, crash.
       "Mel."
       "Joyce."
       "Do you ever think about what happens after?"
       "After? Which 'after' are you referring to?"
       "After we take the research to Command. After we deploy the cure. After people heal. What happens then?"
       "That is a lot of 'afters' to be asking about. Just keep walking."
       "That's not an answer."
       "I agree that it's a quandary. Just keep walking."
       "C'mon, Mel. Seriously. What is the point of this? Why bother if we don't have an after planned?" I deactivate my anti-grav unit, lower the pack, and stomp my foot. Mel stops. I can see her shoulders tighten and relax as she takes a breath. I take deep breaths to hold in the feelings, but it doesn't really work, word puke just spews out of me, "We have come so far and seen so much horror, and now we're here, I can't remember the point of this. What's the point, Mel?"
       "The point? The point is to save lives! You don't like the KOALA virus? That's peachy. Nobody does. But you, Joyce, you and I can do something to help. Our sisters in science found this cure with us, and I'll be damned if we don't take it to where it will do the most good to the greatest number of people. Now quit your hand-wringing and keep walking."
       "You're talking proximate goal. What will those lives do? I'm having an existential crisis here about ultimate intentions. Will the lives we save make good decisions well? Will our country learn anything sound from this crisis about environmental humility, kindness, justice, and equality? Will humanity? Or are we just going to keep being the same greedy, tribal obsessed killers as ever?" Tears stream down my face, and my flight suit is itchy when wet. I wonder if those scrubs, aprons, and blazers were itchy, too. Mel goes to run her fingers through her hair in frustration, encounters her helmet, and settles for beating her fists on her helmet instead.
        We used to discuss literature. It used to be our hobby back in the Smithsonian. We used to recite things from memory. That's hard to do, to get each phrase just right. This fight is the most talking we've done since this mission began.
       "Joyce. You're right to be scared. You are. That said? If you want people to make better decisions and make the future we both want to see, we have to have people alive to do it. I do still think people are worth saving. I know you do, too. So, come on. Let's save them together, okay?" Mel holds her hand out to me. With a deep breath, I grasp it, and we hug. It's a super awkward hug with all the gear, but it is nice all the same. We get walking again.
       The sun is almost below the horizon. The gloaming time on the peak is now, that time of twilight and possibility. The coordinates are mere feet away. Why was that no comfort?
       "Does something feel wrong to you?" Mel asks.
       Thank goodness. "I thought it was just me being morbid."
       "We're within a quarter-mile of the coordinates. How come nobody has met us? Where are the sentries?"
       "Good questions."
       "Get ready."
       "For what?"
       "Anything bad, Joyce." Unfortunately, that's a long list at this point.
       We creep up, at least as much as we can wearing this gear, to the base of a small rise to look at an ordinary rock face. No big blast door, no blinking lights, and nothing that looks like a camera. Disappointing. It's not the entrance I imagined.
       "What do you think, Mel?" In reply, Mel picks up a rock, whips around, and hurls it straight behind us down the slope. Rather than bounce off another rock, we see the pebble hit the chief KOALA over his left eye. I didn't even hear him. He is bloody, so much of the extra hair on his left side is burned away that he looks almost normal, aside from the incredible burns. A few brass buttons wink in the light under a bandolier he's wearing. His canines are bared, and he brandishes a machete. We open fire as he starts to charge, aiming at the ground before him to scare him back. The chief begins to falter. A soft electronic sound, barely audible above the gunfire, reaches my ear just as I feel hands grab my upper arms and pull me backward. I realize Mel and I are maybe only a foot or so from our previous position when I hear a sharp snap. Blinking sweat out of my eyes, I can see a view of the KOALA chief peering around the peak in confusion, but it's wavy, like through a tank of water or an antique window. Looking around as my eyes adjust, I can see two levels of sentries, some with sniper rifles on the highest positions. No wonder no one came to meet us. They watched our entire approach through a projected camouflage of energy; we never saw anything but mountain rock. Mel's eying everything, too. Every weapon is trained on us but more in wariness rather than actually covering us. No one speaks. I can hear the KOALA chief grunting as he pokes at the energy with his machete.
       "'But in the end, it's only a passing thing... this shadow.'" Mel quotes.
       "'Even darkness must pass.'"
       "We made it up the mountain, Joyce." We fist bump, and no one shoots us for moving, so that's a plus.
       Suddenly, my knees sag. The anti-grav units are starting to fail under the weight. I become conscious of a white-hot heat in my calves. Muscle exhaustion or burned epidermis? Probably both. An armed, suited team is there to catch me and Mel as we collapse. My eyes are closing, or they're blurred with tears, I'm not sure. I think there might be cheering, but I have some tinnitus, so maybe not. We are carried across the blacktop to the blast doors. Yeah, we made it. The chief is alive. The cure data is safe; maybe he can be the first field test subject. Maybe we can have a nice, relaxing spell of quarantine before we have to face the really hard part. As rough as this trip was, I know that healing society is going to be much tougher. Picking up the pieces always is.