Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  Margaret closed her eyes briefly, gathered herself. There was no time for those thoughts.

  “Clarence, which one was the killer?”

  Clarence pointed his gloved hand at a thick-chested man in the second cell in the left row, the one just past the prone Clark.

  “Chief Petty Officer Orin Nagy,” Clarence said. “Killed two men with a pipe wrench. They were trying to give him the cellulose test.”

  Nagy stood ramrod straight, fists at his sides, staring out at Margaret with rage-filled eyes and a smile that promised pain. He had a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. Blood trickled from a purple welt on his forehead. His gown’s short sleeves revealed arms knotted with long muscles, skin dotted with faded tattoos. He looked like a navy man from a ’60s movie.

  He didn’t seem to notice the wound on his head. Margaret felt fear just looking at the man, at meeting his dead, psychotic stare.

  “We’ll need to put him under and dress his wound,” she said, then gestured to the crying boy. “And him?”

  “Conroy Austin,” Clarence said. “The last one is Lionel Chappas. Both of them were found on the same testing sweep that triggered Nagy’s attack.”

  She turned to Tim. “Is the outbreak just on the Pinckney and the Brashear? Any infected on the other two ships?”

  He shook his head. “The Truxtun and the Coronado haven’t reported any positive results. That’s not surprising for the Coronado, though — the crew and the SEALs onboard haven’t been allowed to interact with anyone at any point. They weren’t even allowed to help rescue people after the battle. The task force has upped the cellulose testing schedule to every two hours. Captain Yasaka reported that there are new deliveries of testing kits being flown here to make sure we don’t run out.”

  The Pinckney had 380 crewmembers. That ship alone now required forty-five hundred tests a day. That would wreak havoc on the crew’s sleep, causing people to be tired, irritable… sloppy. But if the increased testing caught any other infected personnel before they became contagious, then maybe there was still a chance.

  Maybe, but she doubted it.

  “Tim, as soon as you split the culture for Clarence, split it again. Four ways. Keep one as a new starter culture — we’re going to use the other three on the three new men, see what happens.”

  She had no idea what effect ingesting the yeast would have on someone who was already infected. There was a possibility it could kill off the infections growing inside of them, though, and that was reason enough to try.

  Tim turned to face her. “Three doses for them, or three doses for us? They’re already infected — we don’t even know if the yeast will do that much for them. But we get that yeast in our system, right now, and within a few hours we’ll have enough cellulase in our blood that the infection probably can’t take root. If we do become exposed, the infection is stopped before it even starts. A dose now will last us about a week, I think, but by the end of that week I’ll have cultured far more and we’ll be able to take booster doses. It makes way more sense to take it ourselves, Margo.”

  Was he right? Did it make sense to use themselves as guinea pigs? She’d been witness to what the disease did to people: she would kill herself before she let it change her. Tim was offering another alternative. But there wasn’t enough yeast right now to give herself a dose and to know if it might be a cure for those already infected. Every second mattered.

  “These men are infected now,” she said. “If there’s a chance the small amount of yeast we have will help them, we need to do it. Besides, that’s data we need to capture and send to Black Manitou before…”

  Before it’s too late is what she started to say.

  Tim’s eyes narrowed with frustration. “It’s too late for them. We are the ones that can stop this thing, Margaret. We are the ones that need to live, not a bunch of grunts.”

  She winced at the use of that word. She’d called Clarence the same thing. Margaret looked at Clarence, saw the sadness in his eyes — but he didn’t object to Tim’s statement. She knew Clarence was doing his own kind of math: the military math of acceptable losses, of choosing the greater good. He didn’t care about himself, she knew, but he obviously wanted her and Tim to be protected, to keep working as long as possible.

  Margaret had tuned the crying boy out, but he suddenly grew louder. The suit comms were on a private channel — the young sailor couldn’t hear Tim’s statement of doom, but perhaps he’d read the look on Clarence’s face.

  Two options, neither of which promised success: save herself, or try to save these men? She clenched her jaw tight, and made her decision.

  “Gas the cells, knock these men out,” she said. “We know the infection has mutated. One or more of these men could have the strain that makes those strange cocoons. We put them under, get samples from all of them before we administer the yeast.”

  Tim shook his head. “We need to get the hell off this boat is what we need to do. We’re still clean. Can’t Secret Agent Man call in an evac for us? Let’s get out of here before some psycho kicks in the door and swings a wrench at our heads!”

  She took two steps toward him. She meant to stand face-to-face, but forgot about the clear visors, which thwapped together.

  “Feely, we need to see exactly what strains these men have. We’ll get tissue samples from each of them, then you divide the yeast, just like I told you to. In a day or two, you’ll have enough yeast for us to take it ourselves. We need to act now, because these men can’t wait.”

  “What we need to do next is save our own asses, Margaret.”

  “How about we save the world, Feely? Can you stop being a selfish little prick long enough to focus on that?”

  He couldn’t hold her stare. He looked off, sniffed, then nodded his head.

  “Voice command,” he said. “Feely, Tim. Activate gas in cells three, five and six.”

  The men couldn’t hear him, but they knew something was up. Austin and Chappas stood. Chappas pounded on the glass, screaming to be let out. The scream didn’t last long. Colorless, odorless gas filled their tanks. Within seconds, Chappas and Nagy slumped to the floor.

  Margaret looked at Austin Conroy. The boy was still crying, his cheeks puffed out, his lips pursed into a tight little pucker. He was holding his breath. Wet, pleading eyes stared at Margaret.

  Tim looked away. Margaret did not.

  The boy held on for almost thirty seconds, but his crying broke his lips apart and he drew in an unwanted breath. His sobs slowed, then stopped. He fell back onto his bed.

  “All right,” Margaret said. “Let’s get to work.”

  TIMELINES

  That bitch was crazy.

  Tim prepared the yeast culture for Clarence. Sure, that had to be done; it only made sense to get it to Black Manitou. Maybe someone could re-create his work from data alone, maybe not — sometimes getting that first engineered organism to produce was more art than science. He’d spent years perfecting his skills and techniques. Douchebag Cheng might fuck it up if he had to re-create from scratch, so sending him an already successful culture, yeah, that was the right thing to do.

  But test the yeast that remained on a bunch of poor fuckers who were already infected, instead of just taking it themselves? Crazy. Margaret was willing to sacrifice her own safety for a shot at helping those guys. Maybe Tim had been wrong about her — maybe she and Mr. Flag Waver really did belong together, living happily ever after in the Land of Idealism & Platitudes. He sealed up the fist-sized canister for Clarence. Inside was enough living yeast to start a hundred new colonies.

  That left the remainder to be divided four ways: one quarter to continue the base colony, and one quarter each for Nagy, Austin and Chappas.

  Tim stopped. Why didn’t Margaret want to use some on Clark, the man who was already showing triangle growth? Clark was a lot farther gone than anyone else. Maybe she was going to drain the hydras from Edmund, put those in Clark.

  He eye-tracked through his visor menu, called up the su
rveillance feed from Clark’s cell. One look showed it wouldn’t be long now. Six bluish triangles with inch-long sides were clearly visible under his skin, a slit near each point running toward the center.

  Four days into Clark’s infection. The timeline seemed to vary slightly with every victim — every host’s body responded differently — but if the general track record held true, those triangles would hatch today. Clark’s containment cell would be home to six hatchlings, their inch-high triangular bodies supported by long, black tentacle-legs.

  Then what? Someone would have to go in there, put the hatchlings into smaller cages. Those cages would be shipped to Black Manitou. Cheng’s group would study them, look for weaknesses.

  And Clark? He’d just be dead.

  Tim licked his lips. He had an overpowering urge to get off this ship. But if he did, what then? If the infection somehow reached the mainland, then Tim was fucked anyway. Everyone was fucked.

  He looked at his yeast, the result of years of work combined with the dumb luck of Candice Walker’s bizarre immunity. His yeast secreted the killer cellulose that slipped through the gut barrier to enter directly into the bloodstream. Theoretically, anyway — Saccharomyces feely had yet to be tested.

  A human trial. That’s what was needed. An uninfected human trial.

  He again focused on the video feed of Clark. Tim didn’t want to end up like that, with things growing inside of him, things that would rip out of his body, tear him to pieces.

  Tim eye-tracked the menus, zoomed the camera in on the triangle embedded in Clark’s right shoulder. A gnarled, nasty thing. A living, blackish-blue cancer just beneath the skin.

  And then, the slits vibrated… they opened.

  Three eyes, black as polished coal, seemed to stare right into the camera, seemed to look right at Tim. Alien eyes, demonic eyes, eyes filled with murder.

  Tim nodded.

  “Yep, that does it,” he said. He reached out, wiped his hand right to left, clearing the video from his view.

  “Yes indeedee dodee, that certainly fucking does it right fucking there. Fuck you, Mister Triangle, fuck you right in your fucking face, fuck you very much.”

  Tim returned to dividing up the yeast into four cultures of equal size. He knew what he had to do. If Margaret didn’t like it, well, then that was just tough shit.

  TWATTER

  Twenty-five miles south of the task force, the Mary Ellen Moffett rocked gently from three-foot swells. Compared to most of the trip since leaving Benton Harbor, Steve Stanton considered it damn near a dead flat calm.

  He watched his laptops. Bo Pan was lying on the bed. Steve didn’t want to look at him. Maybe the old man had the gun pointed at Steve’s back; maybe it was better not to know for sure. Steve felt sick, twitchy — the stress was grinding him down.

  If the Platypus didn’t make it back…

  A laptop beeped.

  “Contact,” Steve said.

  Bo Pan scooted out of his bunk, stood at Steve’s right. Steve leaned a little to the left, an instinctive reaction that he checked before he fell off the edge of the chair.

  The old man bent closer. “Did it get the container?”

  Steve pointed to the screen.

  @TheMadPlatypus: Bottle in hand at the microphone stand.

  “It got it,” Steve said. “Holy shit, it got the thing.”

  Bo Pan thumped him in the back. “Genius! Steve, you are a genius!”

  Steve laughed, the giddy feeling that rolled through him undeniable and unquenchable. For just a moment, he forgot about the old man with the gun, forgot about the danger of an alien disease. Had he really just beaten the entire U.S. Navy? Everything had gone according to plan. The Platypus had the small container holding the alien artifact and had left behind ten pounds of C-4 to blow the submarine’s nose to bits and cover its tracks.

  Bo Pan thumped his back again. “This is very good. Are there movies? Can Twatter show us what the Platypus saw?”

  For the first time, the old man had used the proper name for Steve’s creation.

  “Yes, but we shouldn’t send the movies,” Steve said. “You told me the navy had stepped up activity, remember?”

  Bo Pan nodded. He’d made several short, intense cell-phone calls about an angry uncle from Cleveland, which was his handler’s code name for navy ships.

  “Then we should wait,” Steve said. “The Platypus will reach our boat in a few hours. The military has to be scanning for any kind of communication. If we broadcast anything before the Platypus gets here, there’s a chance the military will pick off that signal.”

  And if they did, what then? Could they triangulate, find the Mary Ellen Moffett? Steve was an American citizen… the thought had never crossed his mind before, but would he be tried for treason?

  The moment of elation passed. He’d achieved his objective, but what now? Bo Pan was standing right next to him. Bo Pan, the man with the gun. And as for beating the world’s superpower? Maybe they’d trace this back to him anyway, somehow, no matter how good he’d made his encryption.

  Steve wanted to go back to the family restaurant. He wanted to see his mother, listen to his father talk about how hard things had been when he was a kid. Steve wanted to roll forks and knives in napkins, snap the heads off a thousand green beans. He didn’t want to go anywhere near his creation ever again.

  “Bo Pan, when you have the container… can I go home?”

  The old man laughed. “Soon, my young hero. Go tell the owners of this boat that as soon as the Platypus returns, we are leaving.”

  Steve looked up at the smiling old man.

  “Leaving? For Benton Harbor?”

  Bo Pan shook his head. “No. For Chicago.”

  GAMBLING

  Clarence stood in the airlock of the control room, fumbling with the biosafety suit’s awkward seals and latches. He just wanted to get the thing off and sit down for a few minutes.

  He’d carried the canister of yeast out of the living quarters, gone up the long stairs to the upper deck, all the while wearing the suit. Yasaka had positioned armed guards around him, even established a kill zone — approach Clarence Otto, and you would be shot. He’d carried the yeast to the helipad, handed it directly to a similarly suited man in a waiting Seahawk helicopter. That man had given Clarence something in return: a small, gray, airtight case.

  Only when the Seahawk lifted off had Clarence looked around and taken in the dozens of men and women — all exposed to the open air — staring at him like he was a visitor from another world. He was even wearing a space suit, so to speak. They stared because they knew that he was safe, and they were not.

  New case in hand, Clarence had headed back down. Decon through the living quarters airlock, keep the suit on while entering the lab area, decon again, climb to the control room airlock, decon a third time, and finally he was free.

  He fell more than sat into the console’s comfortable chair. The gray case still had some bleach and disinfectant beaded up on it. Clarence brushed the wetness away, then opened it.

  Inside, a bulky cell phone.

  “Aw, Murray, you shouldn’t have.”

  He’d seen this kind before. The bulkiness came from the encryption hardware loaded inside. The phone bypassed all ship communication, used the normal cell-phone signal available this far from shore. Sometimes spy hardware used secret satellites, gear that cost millions, and sometimes it just used what was available.

  He flipped it open. It had one number programmed into it. He dialed.

  On the other end, the phone rang and rang. Clarence was patient. He closed his eyes, almost fell asleep — just like that, almost nodded off — then stood up, bounced in place trying to chase the fatigue away.

  On the other end, Murray Longworth finally answered.

  “Took you long enough,” he said. “Did you stop to jerk off before calling me?”

  “Twice,” Clarence said.

  “The vaccine on its way to Black Manitou?”

 
“It’s not a vaccine,” Clarence said. “But yeah, it’s on the way.”

  “Good. I’ve seen reports from Yasaka and Tubberville. The task force is compromised. I want to hear it from you, Otto — what are the odds of this thing being fully contained?”

  Clarence closed his eyes. He felt for the chair, sat back down. Murray was the hangman, and he was giving Clarence just enough rope to make the noose. Murray did not play games. He wouldn’t hesitate to put the entire task force on the bottom if it meant stopping the infection’s spread. That Murray asked him — not Tubberville, not Yasaka, but him — was a high honor, a mark of ultimate trust; trust that Clarence Otto would tell the truth no matter what the cost.

  “The odds are zero,” he said. “Margaret and Doctor Feely both think the genie is out of the bottle and we can’t put it back in. Even if their inoculant works, there’s no way they can make enough in time to stem the tide.”

  Clarence didn’t have to see Murray to know the old man’s head dropped, that he probably rubbed at his eyes as he tried to deal with the news.

  “Damn,” the director said. “I was truly hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

  That was as close as Murray Longworth would come to an apology. And why should he apologize? He’d made the right call. Command meant that you put people at risk. Sometimes, you sent them out knowing full well they wouldn’t come back.

  “Had to be done, sir,” Clarence said. “Yasaka and Tubberville might surprise us, but you need to prepare for the worst.”

  “I’ll make arrangements,” Murray said quickly, which meant he’d already mapped out a contingency plan. He’d likely had that plan in place before he’d ever sat in the living room and asked for Margaret’s help.

  “Now the hard question,” Murray said. “How about you and Margaret? Are you…”

  That was a first: Murray didn’t know what to say. The almost expression of actual sentiment was almost touching.