The Remnants of Science

Day 18 – No Safe Haven

Dr. Evelyn Carter was no longer a scientist.

She was just another lost survivor, trudging through the backroads of rural Georgia, trying to figure out where she could go next.

She had spent eighteen years of her life inside research labs, studying diseases, hunting for cures, believing that science was the unshakable foundation of civilization.

Now, science was useless.

There were no more labs.

No more governments to fund research.

No more teams of experts working around the clock to save the world.

The CDC was gone.

The world was dying.

And Evelyn was just… another lost soul, wandering through the wreckage of what used to be.

She wasn’t alone, but she might as well have been.

After escaping the fall of the CDC, she had fled with six other survivors—mostly former scientists, a few security personnel—people who had once believed in logic and reason.

Now, they barely spoke.

They moved through the backroads in tense silence, checking every house and abandoned gas station they came across for supplies.

Most places were already stripped bare.

The world had already picked itself clean.

Evelyn pulled her tattered coat tighter around her shoulders as she walked beside Julian Cross, the only person in the group she still trusted.

"How long are we going to keep doing this?" Cross muttered, kicking at a loose rock on the pavement.

Evelyn adjusted the strap of her backpack. "Until we find somewhere safe."

Cross let out a bitter laugh. "There is no ‘safe,’ Carter."

Evelyn didn’t argue.

Because she wasn’t sure if she believed it either.

By sunset, they reached a small rural clinic, its windows shattered, its parking lot littered with abandoned cars.

The sign out front read:

Harrisville Urgent Care – CLOSED

The group stopped at the entrance, exchanging wary glances.

Evelyn tightened her grip on the crowbar she had picked up two days ago.

If they were lucky, the place had medical supplies.

If they weren’t lucky…

It had something else.

"Stay close," she murmured as she stepped inside.

The clinic was dark and silent, the air thick with the smell of dried blood and rot.

Evelyn’s pulse quickened as she stepped past the overturned chairs in the waiting room.

Cross moved beside her, flashlight in hand, sweeping the hallway with its weak, flickering glow.

"You think we’ll find anything useful?" he whispered.

Evelyn didn’t answer.

Because she had already noticed something wrong.

The walls were smeared with bloody handprints.

A single, rust-colored word had been scrawled across the front desk.

“NO CURE”

Evelyn felt a cold weight settle in her stomach.

She knew that phrase.

It was the same thing desperate patients had screamed at her during the last days of the CDC.

"No cure, no hope, no future."

Cross must have noticed it too, because he muttered, "Shit."

Evelyn forced herself to move forward.

They had come this far.

They couldn’t leave empty-handed.

The exam rooms had been ransacked, their cabinets hanging open, their contents either looted or destroyed.

The pharmacy shelves were empty.

And then—

In the last room at the end of the hall, Evelyn found him.

A man in a lab coat, slumped in a chair, his head tilted back against the wall.

His face was pale and hollow, his eyes sunken and lifeless.

A dried pool of blood stained the floor beneath him, trailing from a gunshot wound in his temple.

Evelyn swallowed hard.

He had been a doctor, just like her.

And when he realized there was nothing left to save, he had put a bullet in his own head.

Cross exhaled slowly beside her. "Guess that tells us everything we need to know."

Evelyn’s throat was tight.

She didn’t look away from the dead man’s empty eyes.

"Is this what I’ll become?"

"A scientist with nothing left to study. A doctor with no patients. A survivor with no reason to keep going."

She forced the thought down and turned to Cross. "Search him."

Cross blinked. "You serious?"

"He might have something useful."

Cross muttered something under his breath but knelt beside the body.

A moment later, he pulled something from the dead doctor’s pocket.

A folded map, its edges stained with blood and sweat.

Cross unfolded it, eyes narrowing as he scanned the markings.

"What is this?" Evelyn asked.

Cross turned the map toward her.

A location had been circled—somewhere deep in the mountains, far from any major cities.

Beside it, in shaky handwriting, someone had written:

‘THEY’RE STILL WORKING.’

Evelyn’s breath caught.

She stared at the words, her mind racing.

Could it be possible?

A research facility still intact? A place where scientists were still trying to fight this thing?

Was it just a desperate fantasy…

Or was this the first real hope she had seen in weeks?

Cross met her gaze. "What do you think?"

Evelyn set her jaw.

"I think we have a new destination."

By the time they left the clinic, the sky was dark, and the air was thick with approaching rain.

Evelyn held the map tightly, her fingers curling around the paper like it was the last solid thing in the world.

For the first time since the CDC fell, she had a direction.

A goal.

If there was even the slightest chance that scientists were still working toward a cure—

Then she had to find them.

Because if she didn’t…

Then maybe Holloway had been right.

Maybe science really had lost.

And if that was true, then what the hell was she still fighting for?

Evelyn refused to accept that.

She had lost her lab.

She had lost her colleagues.

She had lost the world she once knew.

But she wasn’t done yet.

She took a deep breath, looking west.

Then she kept walking.