Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  Yasaka gestured to Clarence’s chair: sit, relax.

  Clarence sat, as did the captain.

  “My apologies for making you wait,” she said. “We’re on full alert, and there were things that required my attention.”

  Clarence waited for Margaret to speak. It was her show, after all; he was just the wingman. When she said nothing, he spoke for them both.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Clarence said. “We understand.”

  “I need to make this short,” the captain said. “I have a ship full of wounded, and I have to report about this meeting to Captain Tubberville over on the Pinckney. He’s the task force commander. So I can answer your questions, but please, let’s get to it.”

  Margaret nodded. “I need to know what happened,” she said. “The timeline. Timelines are very important.”

  Yasaka’s jaw muscles twitched. “Six days ago, at twenty-one-fourteen hours, an ROV from the Los Angeles located an object of interest. The ship commander dispatched a diver to recover that object. The diver wore an ADS 2000, the atmospheric diving suit required for such depths. He disembarked from a dry deck shelter modified for decontamination. The diver recovered the object, then returned to the DDS. While still wearing the ADS, he was sprayed in bleach to kill any possible external contaminant before reentering the ship proper.”

  Margaret leaned forward. “The ROV spotted something special? Sending out a diver was unusual?”

  “Not at all,” Yasaka said. “In fact, this was the six hundred and fifty-second time a diver from the Los Angeles had performed that task. Every two or three days, on average, the ROV saw something the onboard crew couldn’t identify. Whenever that happened, Captain Banks sent out a diver.”

  Clarence wondered if the repetitive, uneventful nature of their job had made the divers sloppy.

  Yasaka continued. “At twenty-one-fifty-five hours that same day, the Los Angeles notified us that the object was a significant discovery.”

  Margaret looked at Clarence, then at the captain. “So if they thought it was significant, why wasn’t it brought up to the Brashear? I was told this ship has a full BSL-4 research lab.”

  Biosafety Level Four… Clarence hated those words. The most stringent safety procedures known to man, used for work with lethal, highly contagious airborne diseases like Marburg and Ebola, shit that could kill millions. BSL-4 suits — the kind Margaret wore to study the alien infection — had positive pressure: if something poked a hole in the suit, air pushed out instead of in, because contact with even a single, microscopic pathogen could mean death.

  “My ship’s facilities are fully compliant,” Yasaka said. “We’ve brought up fifteen objects over the last five years. Scraps of Orbital hull, mostly. Bringing potentially contaminated items up from nine hundred feet below is dangerous, Doctor Montoya, and expensive, so the Los Angeles was retrofitted with a small lab of its own. Standard procedure was to make sure an object was not of terrestrial origin before sending it up.”

  Margaret looked angry, annoyed. “So they found an alien object and they just held on to it for a few days?”

  Yasaka nodded. “If they had found an alien body, or something that was clearly made by little green men, that would have been different. What they found looked like a strange can, so they prepped it and waited until they had enough data to merit the extensive procedures required to send something to the surface.”

  Margaret wasn’t the only one getting annoyed; Clarence could see that Yasaka didn’t appreciate Margaret’s intensity. The captain had a ship full of wounded. Her crew had probably recovered hundreds of dead bodies from the Forrest Sherman and the Stratton. This wasn’t the time for Margaret to grill Yasaka about procedure. Clarence’s job of helping Margaret included stepping in when she was about to burn a bridge.

  “So it was business as usual,” he said. “You would have probably ordered the object to be brought up, but you didn’t get the chance. What happened next?”

  Margaret leaned back in her chair, tried to relax. She’d picked up on Clarence’s cue, knew she needed to back off a little.

  Yasaka folded her hands on her desk. “Three days ago, the Los Angeles reported erratic behavior among the crew. A fight involving a few injuries. I’m afraid there wasn’t much detail. Captain Banks made his scheduled daily report, but he seemed… strange. Agitated, but not angry. He didn’t exhibit any of the behaviors associated with the Detroit disease, nor did any of his crew send a message that they suspected he might be infected.”

  That surprised Clarence. “I’m sorry, Captain, you’re saying that the crew could contact the Brashear without the captain’s knowledge?”

  She nodded. “The navy knows what could be down there, Agent Otto. Procedures were in place that would allow anyone to raise a red flag if something seemed amiss with anyone on the crew, including the captain.”

  “But no one raised a flag.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Yasaka said. “We now believe that the captain was infected, and he either sabotaged the red-flag system before anyone could use it, or put guards at the various red-flag stations, preventing anyone from calling up. His report about the fight was the last communication we received from the Los Angeles.

  “At twelve hundred hours on the day of the battle, we attempted to perform our daily, scheduled communication with the Los Angeles. We received no response. Sonar told us the Los Angeles was just sitting there at eight hundred feet, not moving at all.”

  Yasaka paused. She licked her dry lips, then continued. “We were trying to figure out what to do next when the Los Angeles fired on the Forrest Sherman. No warning. At that range, the Sherman had no chance. The Pinckney was the first to respond — Tubberville ordered counterfire, but the Los Angeles managed two more torps before she sank. One hit the Stratton, sinking it, and the other damaged the Truxtun.”

  The captain sat back in her chair. She stared off at some invisible thing in her stateroom. “Since then it’s been a nonstop process of recovery and aid.” Her voice was low, haunted. “I’ve got a hold full of dead sailors stacked up like goddamn firewood. We’ve been ordered to burn the bodies — their families don’t even get to say good-bye.”

  She shook her head, blinked rapidly, sat up straight. “One of my recovery teams — in full BSL-4 diving gear, before you ask — found the bodies of Lieutenant Walker and Petty Officer Petrovsky and brought them aboard. Those divers are in containment cells for observation and won’t be released unless you give the green light. Walker and Petrovksy are the only two crewmembers recovered from the Los Angeles, which means over a hundred bodies are still on the bottom. I pray to God that we haven’t missed any.”

  Clarence wasn’t a religious man, but he’d match that prayer. One severed hand, floating to the surface, escaping detection, bobbing toward shore… if that happened, all the containment efforts could be for naught.

  “We’ve sent UUVs down to get eyes on the Los Angeles,” Yasaka said. “They only came close enough to get visual confirmation that she’s destroyed. The Brashear has two ADS suits onboard. Tomorrow, we’re sending a diver down to try to recover the object.”

  Clarence’s stomach churned. Margaret already had to autopsy the infected bodies. If Yasaka’s divers succeeded, Margaret would also have to deal with the object that had started this whole slaughterfest.

  The captain stood. Clarence rose immediately. Margaret stood as well.

  “I have to get back to my crew,” Yasaka said. “Doctor Tim Feely is waiting for you in the research facility, belowdecks.”

  “He’s an M.D.?” Margaret asked.

  “Degrees in genetics and bioinformatics, actually,” the captain said. “But the man sure as hell knows his medicine. He saved a lot of lives in the battle’s aftermath. He’s a civilian researcher from Special Threats, Doctor Montoya, like you. Hopefully you’ll get along, because you’re going to be here for a while. I’ve been told Walker and Petrovsky — and the object, if we find it — are too risky to ship to the mainland.�
��

  Margaret nodded. “That’s right. Every bit of travel, every exchange, there is a small chance that something will go wrong. A plane crash, a car wreck, a helicopter’s emergency landing… if even the tiniest speck of the pathogen gets out, it could spread too fast to contain.”

  Yasaka sighed. “And then we start dropping nukes.”

  Clarence saw Margaret look down. Her face flushed. He knew she’d taken that the wrong way, that she thought Yasaka was blaming her for Detroit, blaming her just like the rest of the world blamed her.

  “Right,” Margaret said. “If it gets out, we start dropping nukes again.” She looked up, stared back at Captain Yasaka. “It’s been five years. If the disease had the ability to swim away from this location, it would have done so by now. This task force is a floating isolation lab. We have to make sure nothing leaves.”

  Yasaka nodded, slowly and grimly. She knew the stakes. Clarence recognized the look in her eyes — Yasaka didn’t think she would ever set foot on land again.

  Clarence hoped she was wrong.

  If she wasn’t, he and Margaret would die right along with her.

  CASA DE FEELY

  Margaret thought the lower areas of the Carl Brashear were much like the top floor — or deck, or whatever they called it — a lot of gray paint, a lot of metal, neatly printed warning signs all over the place.

  After the meeting with Captain Yasaka, a twentysomething lieutenant had been waiting for her and Clarence. The lieutenant had led them out of Yasaka’s stateroom, past the wounded packed into every available space, and had taken them amidships to a door guarded by two young men with rifles. The men carefully checked her ID, Clarence’s and even the lieutenant’s, someone they clearly already knew.

  Very meticulous, very disciplined.

  The lieutenant held the door open for them.

  “Doctor Feely will take it from here,” he said. “Just go down the stairs.”

  Clarence thanked the man. Margaret said nothing. Clarence went down first. Even on a secure ship, he wanted to make sure it was safe for her.

  The steep, switchback flights were more ladder than stairs. The same gray walls, but no wounded here because there was nowhere to put them. Margaret found the descent eerily silent.

  The last flight opened up to a small room. Gray walls lined three of its sides. A white airlock door made up the fourth. Through a thick window in the middle of the door, Margaret saw a short man reach out and press an unseen button. She heard his voice through speakers mounted on top of the airlock.

  “Welcome-welcome-welcome,” he said. “Casa de Feely is happy to have you, Doctor Montoya.”

  Feely had thick, blond hair that seemed instantly out of place in a military setting, although judging from the way it stuck up in unkempt bunches he clearly hadn’t washed it in days. Maybe he had a pair of holey sweatpants just like she did. If not, hers would have fit him: they were the same height, although she probably weighed a bit more than he did. His brand of skinny came from lack of sleep and lack of food rather than exercise. The thing that really caught her attention, though, were his eyes — alert but hollow and bloodshot.

  She’d seen eyes like that many times, when looking in the mirror after a forty-eight-hour on-call stint from her doctor days, or during the marathon sessions she and Amos had put in when they’d tried to cure the infection.

  Clarence rapped his knuckles against the glass.

  “You going to let us in?”

  “Absolutely,” Feely said. “Just as soon as you take my little prick.”

  Clarence scowled. “Excuse me?”

  Tim pointed down. “At your feet,” he said. “Cellulose test. Be a pair of dears, won’t you?”

  At the base of the door were two small, white boxes, each about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Clarence picked one up and opened it. He looked, then showed the contents to Margaret: sealed alcohol swabs and a metal foil envelope.

  She opened the envelope, expecting to see the cheek-swab analysis device she and Amos had invented. Instead, she saw a simple, six-inch plastic tube, white, with three colored LEDs built into it: yellow, green and red.

  Margaret held it up. “You don’t use the swab test anymore?”

  “You’ve been on vacay for a while, I take it,” Tim said. “Yours was susceptible to false-positives if the test subject had recently eaten plant material. Considering the level of concern in this joint, I didn’t want some guy getting shot because he had a piece of spinach stuck in his teeth. The one you’re holding is a blood test. Spring-loaded needle. Just press it against your fingertip.”

  Clarence huffed. “Are you serious? We just got here.”

  Tim nodded. “While I may have the natural good looks of a late-night TV host, I assure you I’m serious. I’m negative and I mean to stay that way.”

  Smart thinking. Margaret thought of a line she’d read in a book once: perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. She liked Tim already.

  Margaret opened an alcohol swab, rubbed down the pad of her thumb, then pressed the tube’s tip against it. She heard a tiny click, felt a sharp poke. She lifted the tube, looked at it: the needle had retracted. A small smear of her blood remained on the unit’s flat end.

  The yellow light started to flash. She had a brief, intense flash of fear… what if she’d already caught the disease? What if the light turned red? The yellow flashing slowed. The tiniest mistake could make her change, turn her into a killer, it could—

  The green light blinked on.

  Margaret let out a long breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She was right back in it again, dead center in the hot zone.

  Clarence picked up the second box, repeated Margaret’s actions. In seconds, his test flashed green.

  The airlock door slid open with a light hiss of air. The blond man stepped out. He all but ignored Clarence in his rush to offer Margaret an overly excited handshake.

  “I’m Tim Feely,” he said. “Biology, mostly, but also regular-old doctorin’ when it’s needed.”

  His hands felt soft.

  “I’m Margaret Montoya.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. A genuine, I don’t care what anybody thinks laugh. In a bar or on a date, this one would be quite the charmer.

  “I know who you are,” he said. He turned to Clarence. “As if I don’t know who she is, right?” He turned back to Margaret, his moves twitchy, like a bird’s. “Everyone knows. You’re the woman who saved the world. Thanks for that, by the way.”

  He wasn’t being sarcastic — he meant it, said it with real admiration. On the Internet and the news talk shows, no one thanked her. But this man had.

  Tim bowed with a flourish, gestured toward the airlock. “Come one, come all, to the midnight ball. Fuck am I glad to have some help down here.”

  “Thank you,” Margaret said. “That’s quite a welcome.”

  “I try, I try,” Tim said. He tilted his head toward Clarence. “Who’s the stiff?”

  Margaret noticed that Tim was trying — and failing — not to stare at her breasts.

  “Agent Clarence Otto,” she said. “My husband.”

  Tim looked Clarence up and down, and not in the same way he’d scoped out Margaret.

  “Nice suit,” Tim said. “Not many suits in lab work. I don’t suppose you can do anything down here that’s actually helpful?”

  “You never know,” Clarence said. “Sometimes shooting people is a useful skill.”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “Oh, great, an action hero. That will come in handy among all the dead bodies. Come on in. Let me give you the tour. After you, m’lady.”

  She stepped into the airlock, faced an interior door. Clarence and Tim followed. Margaret glanced around, saw drains in the floor and the familiar nozzles and vents — the airlock doubled as a decontamination chamber.

  “The lab complex has a slightly negative internal pressure,” Tim said as he shut the exterior door and cycled the airlock. “Anything punches a hole in the wall, o
utside air comes in, any cooties we might have don’t go out. Plus when you need that extra-clean feeling, this baby gives you a little chlorine, a little sodium, a little oxygen… all the things a growing boy needs.”

  Clarence’s nose wrinkled in a look of confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bleach,” Margaret said. “The nozzles spray bleach.”

  Clarence looked annoyed. Maybe he felt dumb for not getting Tim’s reference. Clarence hated to feel dumb.

  The internal door opened. After so much battleship gray, Margaret was surprised to see white walls and floors. Framed prints added color, as did potted plants.

  “This is the living section,” Tim said. “All the comforts of home while floating on an inland sea.”

  The place looked like the lobby of a small, posh hotel: couches, chairs, a table with a chess set ready for play, a huge, flat-panel monitor up on the wall. Soft overhead lighting made things look, well, cozy. It didn’t feel like being on a military ship at all.

  The decor seemed to bother Clarence. “Nice,” he said. “Good thing you don’t have to put up with the same conditions as the enlisted men who are taking care of you.”

  Tim nodded, missing the dig. “Tell me about it, brother,” he said. “This place makes the time somewhat passable.”

  He walked to a picture mounted on a wall. It was an emergency escape diagram, a long, vertical rectangle broken into three squares. The top was labeled Living Quarters, the middle Lab Space, and the bottom one Receiving & Containment.

  Margaret noticed that all escape routes led back to the airlock they’d just exited. Just one way in, and one way out.

  Tim pointed to the top square.

  “That’s where we are now,” he said. “Living Quarters consists of ten small bedrooms, communal bathrooms, the room we’re standing in — I call it the Rumpus Room, by the way, because who doesn’t want to have a Rumpus Room — a kitchen with our own food supply, and a briefing room that doubles as a whoop-ass movie theater.”

  He pointed to a green icon on the right side, on top of a line that divided the Living Quarters from the Lab Space below it. The Lab Space square contained three long, vertical rectangles. Margaret recognized the symbols: research trailers, ready-made modules that could be hauled by a semi or shipped as cargo. She felt a shudder — the trailers were probably similar to the MargoMobile where her friend Amos Braun had died a horrible death at the skinless hands of Betty Jewel. The rectangle on the left was labeled Morgue, the one in the middle Analysis, and the one on the right Misc.