A few agonizing minutes passed but there was no shot. The waiting was unbearable. An hour later we knew she had probably turned. The virus would’ve completely overwhelmed her immune system, destroying her frontal lobe, shutting down her higher brain functions. The only thing left for her body to do was to become a host for the virus and spread the infection. But maybe Jack wasn’t ready to accept that. I can’t blame him. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to put a bullet in the person you love. It’s just not right. If I was Jack, I wouldn’t be able to do it. No way. Not in a million years. So we gave him all the time he needed. Kenji went down the hall and checked on our barricade a couple of times just to make sure it was still holding. He said it was intact but they were still trying to break through.

“They won’t stop,” Doctor West said. “The virus is relentless.”

A couple of hours later Jack burst into the room. He was smiling and crying. “Guys, she didn’t turn! She’s not sick!”

I immediately looked at Doctor West to see his reaction. He looked doubtful.

“Are you sure?” Kenji asked. “How do you know?”

“She’s completely fine. The bite on her leg is even starting to heal. I cleaned it up and even poured some vodka from the mini bar on the wound just to make sure. She said it stung like hell, which I figured is a good thing, right?”

We were shocked. I looked at the doctor once more to see if I could read his expression, but he still seemed to be in disbelief.

“Come on. See for yourselves,” Jack said.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Maybe Jack had completely lost his mind; maybe he was still in denial. That wouldn’t surprise me. I still felt like I was in denial. But this went against everything we’d seen the past couple of days. It went against everything Doctor West had told us and what Kenji had seen at the immigration center. This virus was supposed to be one hundred percent lethal. Was Jack telling the truth? Maria was the one person he loved more than anyone else in the world, the one person he loved with all of his soul. Had watching her die and then turn into a monster finally pushed him over the edge of sanity?

We entered the room cautiously, but to my surprise Maria was sitting up in bed. She looked sleepy but better than I expected. She had even regained her color. She looked fine.

“Hey guys,” she said, her voice sounding rough. “Sorry to scare you like that.”

“How are you feeling?” Kim asked.

“I feel like I’m alive,” she joked.

“It’s a miracle,” Kenji said, smiling.

Doctor West slowly moved closer to get a better look at Maria’s wound. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “For months we’ve been trying to slow this thing down. Nothing has worked.”

“So she’s not sick?” I asked.

“I feel fine,” Maria reassured us.

“We can’t be certain,” Doctor West said. “But she’s not showing any of the observable symptoms, the loss of motor skills, the skin discoloration, the aggressiveness. There’s no bleeding. Nothing.”

Maybe it really was a miracle.

I wanted to jump on her and give her a hug and yell at her for not being more careful. I was such a mess inside. One minute I thought I was losing one of my closest friends, one of my only friends in the entire world, but now she had been given a second chance. I’m not sure if I believe in god anymore, but if there is such a thing, then this was his work.

Kim sat down on the bed next to Maria, but Doctor West told her to be careful. “We can’t be sure she’s immune until we do a definitive test. Like a blood test for example.”

I shuddered at the thought of blood tests. “Hey, the last time someone mentioned doing tests they wanted to harvest our organs.”

“Guys, this is huge,” Kenji said. “If Maria is immune we need to get her to safety. She could hold the key to an anti-virus or even a cure. We could stop this thing before it gets any worse.”

“Any worse?” Kim said. “How could it get any worse?”

“Imagine if the virus spread overseas. Imagine it spreading through a country with a population like China or India. We can stop that from happening. We have a huge responsibility. And that means we need to get upstairs right now. It’s no longer safe on this floor. If we get to the penthouse suite we should be able to defend ourselves a lot better.”

“But won’t we be trapped up there?” Kim asked.

“Not necessarily. According to the blueprints we looked at earlier, there’s a secondary stairwell on the other side of the building. There’s more than one luxury suite in this hotel, but they’re all on the upper floors. The good thing about the penthouse is that not only does the stairwell lead directly to the room, but the elevator does as well. So that gives us two exit points if we get into trouble.”

“But doesn’t that give the room two entry points as well?” Kim said. “Making it twice as exposed?”

“We’ll have to secure the stairwell, obviously. But the elevator should already be locked. I’m pretty sure you need a key to get up there from the ground floor.”

“I’m with Kenji on this one,” Jack said. “We need to regroup. And we still need to stock up on supplies if we’re going to make the trek out west. If we hole up in the penthouse, it’ll give us a chance to plan this thing properly. And we might as well do it in style.”

It was a majority vote in favor of the penthouse. Kim was against it because I think she was still thinking about all those slasher films she had seen where running up the stairs meant a certain death. But ultimately, she trusted the group.

Kenji led us to the other side of the building where the second emergency stairwell was located. He opened the door carefully, stepping inside the stairwell with the shotgun raised and ready to fire. Kim was behind him with the handgun.

They looked up and looked down. It appeared to be empty.

“Is it safe?” I asked.

“Shh,” Kenji and Kim said in unison.

They had their heads turned to the side, listening.

“I think it’s clear,” Kenji said after a few minutes. “Let’s go.”

We climbed the stairs to the penthouse. Jack had to carry Maria because she was too weak to walk. When we finally arrived, Kenji told us to move back. Kim stepped up beside him and together they moved inside the room with their weapons at the ready.

Once they were satisfied we were the only occupants, they called out to us.

The penthouse had a huge open plan living room and for some reason everything was white. The leather couches were white, the marbled floors were white, and the curtains were white. There was a grand piano over by a fully loaded bar and they were both white. Even the throw rugs on the floor, which looked like they were made from some kind of endangered animal, like a snow leopard, or an alpaca, were white. I guess who ever they hired to do the interior decorations wasn’t a fan of color.

The room looked completely different from the other night. Maybe because it was daytime now, or maybe because the curtains were drawn back and we could clearly see the ruins of Sydney Harbor. There were fresh columns of smoke rising from other areas of the inner city as well. The Sydney skyline looked like a poster from a disaster movie.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Kim said.

In the distance, I could see a massive aircraft carrier heading back out to sea. “Where do you think it’s going?”

Kenji shook his head. “I don’t know.”

We could also see helicopters flying over the city skyscrapers and I suddenly felt very exposed. “I think we should close those curtains.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Kenji said.

Kenji and I moved quickly, closing all the blinds and curtains, making sure no one could see in. We didn’t want to leave anything to chance, not after what happened back at the catamaran. Afterwards, I felt a little better, but I don’t think I’d ever be able to relax while we were right in the middle of Sydney, right in the middle of a warzone. At any moment, we could be spotted by a sniper or a helicopter flying past. Or eaten by a horde of infected psychopaths. We needed to plan our escape as soon as possible.

“All right guys, we need to move fast,” Kenji said, wasting no time. “Those things are everywhere downstairs, which means the infection has spread right throughout the city. We need to get out of here. But we need to be smart. We need to plan it right. Because once we leave this room, once we leave this building, there’s no turning back.”