Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

by Mira Grant

  “I do,” I said. “One of my people found them at a swap meet.” That was a bit of an untruth—I had found them myself, while I was vaccinating kids from the local survivalist community. But my stall had been set up at the local swap meet, and I’d been paid in trade for my services.

  “The bags haven’t been opened?”

  “I checked the glue myself.”

  Tessa worried her lip between her teeth for a moment, clearly thinking it over—or pretending to, anyway. The money I was offering her wasn’t great, but the expense of smuggling a box of Lego figures through the back channels our little underground had developed would be at least twice her fee. I was offering her a fair deal. She just didn’t know what I was offering her a fair deal for. “What’s the situation?”

  “I found someone on my property today.”

  “Everyone finds people on their property. If they’re not dead when you find them, they are shortly after. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, first problem is that I didn’t find a zombie, I found a person. She was lucid and capable of coherent speech. We’ve done a base-level blood test on her—she came back as clean as you or me. I’m doing full blood work, naturally, but I don’t expect it to show me anything different.”

  Tessa smirked. “When you say that ‘you’ are doing full blood work, you mean the many attractive young people who labor in your nasty laboratory are doing full blood work, yes?”

  “What’s the point of having many attractive young people working for me if I can’t make them miserable from time to time?” I shrugged. “It’s part of my job as a mad scientist to turn them against the world through whatever means necessary. But we’re getting off the subject. She showed up looking for me.”

  “What?” Tessa sat up a little straighter. “She knew you were there, and she didn’t run like a person with a shred of survival instinct? I like you, Doc. You pay on time and you send the bonuses you promise. But I ever found myself sharing space with you, I’d get the fuck out.”

  “I’m flattered, truly,” I said dryly. “She thought I was a man, which tells me she was going on reputation and not any real data. Can’t stop people from talking unless you use a rifle, and that gets messy. Hard to maintain a business when you kill everyone who knows who you are.”

  “Fair, but that still doesn’t explain what she was doing there,” said Tessa. “Not too many people go looking for you on purpose. Fewer who don’t know that they’re looking for a woman from the land of the traffic cones.”

  “My fashion sense is not up for debate,” I said. “I have pictures. She’s in pretty bad shape, and she’s lost enough weight that she’s in danger of organ failure, but you should be able to start facial recognition based on what I can give you. Five hundred if you can tell me who she is, fifteen hundred if you can tell me who sent her and how deep I should bury the body. You get the Legos either way.”

  “Five hundred for a name, a thousand for a background, and fifteen hundred if I get you the rest,” countered Tessa. Her smile was wide enough to show the silver cap on one of her teeth, glittering in the light from her monitor. “A girl has got to eat, and growing boys need to eat even more.”

  “Fair,” I agreed. I hadn’t expected to get away with any less, but that was the thing about dealing with Tessa: If I didn’t bargain, at least a little, she felt cheated. We all have our little quirks. “How fast can you get started?”

  “For you, Doc, and for those Lego figures, I can start right away. Transmit whatever you’ve got to my usual drop box, and I’ll get to work. Pleasure doing business with you.” The picture blinked out, leaving me looking at my desktop background.

  I smiled. The game, as some old dead dude once said, was definitely afoot.

  3.

  “Report.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe, trying not to look impatient. It was harder than I expected, maybe because I was impatient. I wanted answers—not out of fear that our guest would hurt me or my employees somehow, but because she was the most interesting thing that had happened since the Masons left. Mad science may be a little more fun and fancy-free than the boring mainstream kind, but that doesn’t make it exciting on a day-to-day basis. If anything, mad science steals the excitement from a lot of things that should be exciting, like surprise fires, stabbing people with needles, and the occasional ceiling octopus.

  “I’m not sure why our guest isn’t dead,” said Jill, looking up from her computer. “If you told me that this was all a joke, and that you’d given me a faked-up blood sample to see whether I was paying attention, I would believe you. I’m just saying.” She paused, watching me expectantly.

  I raised my eyebrows and waited.

  Jill’s face fell. It was a complicated expression, beginning with the muscles around her eyes and finishing when her chin dipped slightly forward, almost hitting her chest. “My God, you’re serious,” she said. “This is a living person’s blood.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” I said. “Report. Now. Before I lose patience.”

  “Um, right. Okay. Her iron levels are ridiculously low—if she’s not normally anemic, she definitely is now. She’s malnourished. I don’t think she’s had a decent meal in weeks, which is probably how she’s been able to medicate herself this far.”

  I raised my eyebrows for a second time. “Medicate herself…?” I prompted.

  “You said she came here looking for pills, right? Well, there’s a reason for that. This girl is drugged to the gills, and some of the shit she’s taking I’ve never seen on the open market. I mean, she has the usual assortment of psychotropic drugs—there’s some LSD, some magic mushrooms, all those fun things you don’t want your sister doing—but there’s also a couple of synthetic cannabinoids that I don’t even recognize. She came back positive for JWH-018, and that hasn’t been on the drug circuit in years. It’s mostly used for therapy and pain management in people who are so sick that they don’t need to be lucid anymore.”

  Jill stopped to take a breath. I didn’t say anything. I had the feeling she was just getting warmed up.

  I was right. She continued, “The worst of it—apart from traces of what I think is probably cocaine, and the Ecstasy, and did I mention the PCP? Because she’s also on PCP—is the synthetic ergine. Someone went to the trouble of coming up with a new derivative of shit that already fucks you up so bad that you can’t tell up from down, and then they pumped this poor girl full of it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they just wanted to see what would happen. But I can tell you this: If you wanted to take the trip of a lifetime, all you’d need to do is lick one of her blood panels.”

  “Since you’re recommending that I lick her blood panels, I’m assuming she doesn’t have hepatitis or anything fun like that?”

  “Nope, no fun diseases, except for the omnipresent Kellis-Amberlee,” said Jill, far too cheerfully. “I’m running immunity panels on our last samples now, but as she shows no signs of a reservoir condition, I don’t think she’s going to be another Shaun Mason. Sorry about that.”

  “He was one of a kind,” I said.

  Jill snorted.

  Calling Shaun Mason—or more appropriately, Shaun Mason’s immunity to the fully amplified form of the Kellis-Amberlee virus—“one of a kind” was a bit inaccurate. He had been exposed at great and intimate length to someone whose body generated antigens, due to the presence of a live-state viral reservoir condition. As a consequence, his own body had learnt how to fight the virus, and did just that when he was exposed. It was a neat trick, and probably one that could be replicated by hundreds, if not thousands of people and large mammals around the globe. I just didn’t have access to any of them, and my banked supply of Shaun’s blood was running low.

  Kellis-Amberlee was the reason that Jill wasn’t serious when she told me to lick our guest’s blood panels. Everyone on the planet is infected, including our mystery woman, and as soon as her blood had been removed from her body, the virus that slumbered there had woken up and started goi
ng about its business. It was a surprisingly good preservative, maybe because the blood was never allowed to fully “die.” It was also a biological hot agent rivaled by very few naturally occurring diseases. One drop and we’d all lose our minds in the most literal and permanent of fashions.

  “Will she live?”

  Jill bit her lip, worrying it for a moment between her teeth before she said, “I’ll be honest: I don’t know. We’ve got her set up on a saline drip for the dehydration, and we can set up a feeding tube if she doesn’t wake up soon, but if she doesn’t get some body mass back, she’s not going to pull through. Even if she does…the withdrawal from the drugs she’s been taking would be hard on someone twice her size. As skinny and malnourished as she is, they could easily kill her.”

  Well, crap. “Can we synthesize something that will take the edge off? I don’t mind playing methadone clinic if it gets us a healthy person at the other end.”

  “Why?” Jill frowned. “I know you like a mystery, but there’s such a thing as going too far. We didn’t invite her here. Make her comfortable, provide palliative care, and if she dies, she dies. She didn’t become our responsibility just because she collapsed in front of you. If you’d taken Joe out an hour later, she would have died and risen, and you wouldn’t be trying to save her. And did you forget the part where she tried to shoot your dog? Shit. You’d fire half the staff for raising their voices to Joe. Why do you want to save someone who tried to hurt him?”

  “I’d fire the staff—including you, Jill—for raising their voices to an animal that they know is friendly, well-trained, and not a threat,” I said. “This woman didn’t know any of those things. A giant carnivore came bounding through the woods, and she reacted like someone who enjoyed being among the living. I can’t fault people for trying to stay alive. Not when everything we teach them is focused on survival. As for the rest…I was a doctor before I became anything else. The first rule we were taught in medical school was ‘Do no harm.’”

  That wasn’t quite true. The first rule we were taught in medical school was “A cadaver is not a toy.” Even though the bodies we used for practice were pickled and sterilized to the point of becoming virtually useless for any fine diagnostic work, they had still started out as living people, and they deserved our respect. That was what separated us from the zombies. We could still show respect for the things that shared our world. Even if sometimes that respect took the form of a clean death.

  “So?”

  “So if we let her die just because we didn’t invite her over for popcorn and a movie, we’re doing harm. This is an opportunity to practice medicine. Not mad science, not virology research, just medicine. The old-fashioned kind, where you start off with someone who’s sick, and you finish up with someone who’s well.”

  Jill’s eyes narrowed. “Sorry, boss, but I know you too well to believe this degree of altruism. What’s the real deal?”

  “The real deal is, she found us somehow. Someone told her that we were here to find, and that if she wanted drugs, she should come looking.” I felt my expression harden. I made no effort to soften it. Jill had seen me at my worst, and she hadn’t run screaming into the night. She wasn’t going to run now. “I need her alive, and I need her lucid enough to tell me what brought her to our doorstep, because whatever it is, it’s not going to happen again. Do you understand? Now, keep running those blood tests, and whatever sort of methadone clinic we have to become, that’s what we’re going to be. We’re going to save her life if it kills her.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jill, and twisted back around to her computer. The conversation was over. I had my information, and she had her orders. Now all we had to do was save a life.

  4.

  Mystery girl was still unconscious when I returned to the viewing area, Joe sticking by my side like a happy, tail-wagging shadow. Not-Daisy jumped at the sound of my footsteps, and jumped again when she saw Joe. I frowned at her.

  “You may want to think about taking up yoga,” I said. “It’s very calming, and if you’re going to flinch every time I come into a room, you need some calm. You can also talk to Tom about the many restorative benefits of marijuana. As long as you’re not stoned when you’re supposed to be working, I don’t care. This isn’t the CDC.”

  The shadow of her guilt moved across her face so fast that I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t already been watching for it. Not-Daisy wasn’t going to be one of my long-term employees; I could already tell, just from the way she reacted to things—or didn’t react to them. It was for the best, really. People as high-strung as she was didn’t do well in a lab like mine, where losing control for a minute could result in your life coming to a swift, sticky end. She’d be better off with the CDC, where she would do her research from behind six layers of security, and never need to see how the sausage was made.

  “I just didn’t expect you, is all, Dr. Abbey,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m so jumpy. The octopus thing this morning really threw me off.”

  “Barney does what Barney wants,” I said. “Just wait until what he wants is to sneak into your quarters in the middle of the night and turn the light on and off for an hour. He’s a big adventure in tolerance. What’s the situation with our guest?”

  “No change,” said not-Daisy. She sounded relieved to be back on something that resembled familiar ground. She knew how to watch an unconscious woman remain unconscious. That was fairly normal CDC fare.

  “Good.” I motioned for her to get up. “Go on. Back to whatever you were doing when I had you pulled for this duty. Scrub something, or culture something, or whatever it is they have you assigned to this week. I can watch her sleep.”

  Not-Daisy stood—a little too quickly—and started for the door. I let her get halfway there before I cleared my throat. She froze. Smart girl.

  “I don’t recommend trying to send any e-mail right now, however. We’re on high alert, thanks to this woman’s presence, and it’s entirely possible that an innocent e-mail to a friend or family member could get flagged as something that it wasn’t. A coded transmission to the CDC, for example. I know they’d be very interested in our guest. And I know I’d be very interested in finding out what someone could have said that would activate that flag. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “Good. Because while I don’t pay enough for absolute loyalty, I am very, very dedicated to security. It’s what separates us from the animals. Enjoy your assignments, Zelda. We’re glad to have you working with us here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she repeated, and scurried out of the room without looking back.

  “She isn’t going to last the month, Joe,” I said, settling into the seat she had so recently vacated. The one-way window into the observation room gave me a perfect view of the bed where our mystery woman slept. An IV was connected to her right arm, held in place with pieces of surgical tape. The needle was the size we always used, but she was emaciated enough that it looked like it was going all the way through her arm. I didn’t envy whoever Tom had deputized to get her IV started—although knowing Tom, he had probably done it himself. He didn’t like leaving things to chance.

  A catheter snaked out from under the blanket. As her body was rehydrated, involuntary urination became a risk, and no one wanted to clean that up. Luckily, she was starved enough that there was no need to really worry about other waste products. Can’t shit if you don’t eat. And other inspirational proverbs that were never going to catch on.

  She looked peaceful, lying there on her back with her eyes closed. Someone had wiped most of the dirt from her face, revealing pale skin with an almost purplish undertone. There were freckles on the bridge of her nose. That seemed incredibly sad to me, for some reason. Whoever she was, whoever she had been before she stumbled, half starved, to my doorstep, she was the sort of person who freckled when she went out in the sun, and must have spent her life drowning in SPF-40. The fact that she wasn’t burnt now told me that she
had traveled mostly at night; she’d been filthy enough when I found her that she definitely hadn’t been keeping up any sort of skin care regimen.

  “So who are you, strange girl?” I asked. “Why are you here? Why did you come looking for me?”

  She didn’t answer. She just slept on.

  Chapter 3

  Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

  There are people who will tell you that the ends justify the means, right up until they’re talking about their own ends. Then, suddenly, morals and ethics matter. Funny thing, that.

  —Dr. Shannon Abbey

  Good morning, class. Who’s ready to learn?

  —Elaine Oldenburg

  1.

  “Dr. Abbey?” Not-Daisy’s voice was soft, almost hesitant, like she was afraid that I was going to sic Joe on her for daring to come near my office. For a moment I entertained the fantasy of doing precisely that: unleashing my faithful hound and shutting her up before she found a way to tell the CDC about our mystery guest. I’d always been fairly relaxed about the presence of spies and infiltrators. No matter how often I moved the lab, being connected to the supply chain meant being vulnerable to discovery: The CDC was always going to find me, and having found me, they were always going to send their people in to try to learn what I knew.

  Most of the time, what I knew either wasn’t worth reporting, or wasn’t worth protecting, or was hidden behind closed doors and managed by my more loyal staffers. But something like our mystery woman had been vulnerable to discovery from the start. How do you hide a stranger who falls out of the forest and virtually lands on your head? The answer was sadly simple. You didn’t. Mystery girl had been sleeping for two days, and we’d managed to block all of not-Daisy’s attempts to message her government masters in that period. But we weren’t going to be able to stay on high alert forever. Eventually, either not-Daisy was going to get something past us, or we were going to have to make a decision about her probable retirement situation.