Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  The shelving unit began to fall and then came to an abrupt stop as the top shelf crashed against the opposite wall, and the whole thing was angled across the width of the corridor, barricading the door. Boxes tumbled from the shelves, piling onto the floor underneath.

  When Eliza kicked the door open a few seconds later, the door opened a few inches before its edge rang against the metal posts of the shelving unit.

  Logan stepped back. There was a guttural scream from the opposite side of the door, and this time the door swung open with enough force that the posts of the shelving unit bent inward.

  The door slammed open again, and the bend in the posts deepened.

  And again. This time, one of the posts cracked. It wouldn't hold for long.

  Logan turned away.

  He knew exactly where he was. He'd spent the past month learning every possible way in and out of the facility.

  The corridor was plain and functional, dull white walls and a concrete floor underneath a ceiling of paneled insulation and florescent tube lighting. There were no doors leading to other rooms or corridors. There was only one way out: a ladder bolted to the wall at the far end, leading to a hatch in the ceiling. The hatch led to the surface.

  Logan ran to the ladder.

  Behind him, there was the repeated clang of metal on metal as Eliza used the door to smash through the barricade.

  CHAPTER 51

  Eliza felt metal bend and weight shift as she forced the door open with a final steady exertion of strength.

  And then she was through, climbing over the tangle of metal shelves and the mound of cardboard boxes. She was sweating and breathing hard. Blood ran from the wounds on her face.

  The corridor was empty, Logan was gone. She had expected this. Logan's only option now was to run. He was unarmed and wounded and outmatched. She was armed with a knife and a gun. She was stronger and faster. Her wounds, while ugly, were superficial. She could still manage half a smile and that was all she needed—half a smile, while she stood over Logan and watched him die with his guts spread out around him.

  Cold wafted from the opposite end of the corridor, where a ladder was bolted to the wall. Eliza walked to the ladder. It led up, through a hatch and into a small square hut. The hatch was open, so was the door to the hut. Cold air and dull sunlight filled the small room.

  Through the open door, she could see a line of sign posts marked with orange blazes, leading away from the facility, out into the valley. Alongside the line of posts, she saw a dark figure on the white landscape, small in the near distance, getting smaller as he moved further away. Logan.

  Eliza shivered. She had stripped down to her base layer when she'd come inside, and that was all she was wearing now, a skintight layer of synthetic fabric designed to wick sweat. The subzero temperature was painful on her hands and face and scalp. If she went outside dressed like this, the temperature would incapacitate her within minutes. She thought of the woman she'd killed a few hours earlier, turning blue in the snow as blood had retreated to the deepest parts of the body, abandoning the extremities, the muscles, the brain.

  Eliza looked around the hut and her eyes settled on a bulky rucksack hung on a peg on one of the walls. She opened it and found a parka, snow pants, goggles, mittens, an assortment of dry clothes packed inside. A kit left for anyone forced to use the hut as an emergency exit. A kit that Logan could have taken with him if he hadn't been in such a rush to get away.

  She half-smiled with her ruined face, knowing she'd caused Logan to make this mistake, that his fear of her had driven him out into the cold.

  She stripped off the sweat-soaked clothes she wore and put on a fresh base layer, then an insulating layer and the parka. She abandoned the gun, which already had ice forming at the muzzle. The only items of her own that Eliza kept were her boots and knife.

  She wrapped a shirt around the lower half of her face, set the goggles over her eyes, and tightened the hood of the parka.

  She stepped out of the hut, knife held in a warm, mittened hand.

  CHAPTER 52

  Logan jogged to the next signpost and stopped.

  A hundred yards behind him, the door to the hut was an empty rectangle of shadow, any movement inside invisible in the darkness and distance and vision-blurring cold.

  He'd waited inside the hut and listened to Eliza slamming the door against the barricade. He'd stood near the open door, trying to adapt his breathing to the subzero temperature outside, trying to prepare himself for that first breath of real cold.

  When he'd heard her footfalls coming down the corridor below, he ran outside, moving at a hard pace that increased his heart rate, a pace that would push blood to the far corners of his body, to his hands and feet and fingers and toes, the parts of him that were now painfully cold as he stood still and waited.

  His heart rate slowed and his blood retreated inward, leaving in its wake a creeping numbness, a feeling like his body was begging him to keep moving.

  He stomped his feet and beat his hands against his chest, forcing his heart to pump harder. The wound in his left triceps was a cold ache.

  He kept his eyes on the empty door of the hut.

  Come out, he thought.

  He was dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing inside, boots and cargo pants and a thermal shirt. Inside the hut, he'd added a fleece sweater that was meant to be worn as a middle layer and might have been enough had the temperature been thirty or forty degrees warmer. He'd put on a mask and a pair of thin gloves because exposed skin would freeze within minutes. He'd put on sunglasses to shield his eyes from the wind and sunlight that reflected off the white landscape. Unlike fingers and toes, eyes would not freeze from exposure, kept warm by a network of blood vessels and insulated by bone, muscle, fat, and skin.

  He'd left Eliza the parka, goggles, and warmest layers of clothing, because the only way this would work was if she followed him out here. Force your enemy to fight on your terms.

  During the past weeks he'd stashed gear at every exit. Some had enough gear to outfit a half-dozen people for the cold. Others, like the one he'd just come through, had a single rucksack packed with the bare essentials, because there were a limited number of extra parkas and masks and insulated pants and he'd had to prioritize. He'd had to decide which exits were more likely to be used in an emergency. He'd had to come up with a plan.

  And, like always, things hadn't gone according to plan.

  He thought of something Barnes had said to him:

  "We don't really hire you for the jobs we think will go smoothly and quietly. We hire you because you know who to shoot when a plan goes to shit."

  He thought of a conversation he'd had with Holden:

  "What is your specialty?"

  "Improvisation."

  Which was exactly what he was doing now. Running with whatever pieces were left of the plan, trying to assemble something new.

  He waited, staring at the empty door of the hut. He needed to stay close enough that she would see him when she stepped outside. A gentle breeze threatened him with the full force of the murderous cold.

  He jogged to the next signpost, and then the next, unable to bear standing still any longer.

  He glanced at his watch, strapped on the outside of his sleeve. The face had been cracked during the fight inside, but the display was readable and everything was functioning. He'd started the stop watch when he'd taken that first step outside the hut, like a runner at the starting line of a road race. He'd been outside ninety seconds. With these clothes, in this temperature, Logan estimated he would last fifteen minutes before hypothermia took hold and his body temperature started to drift outside of that narrow band of normal that human life depended on. Death would not be immediate, but he would be unable to defend himself against his enemy or save himself from the cold.

  On his wrist, the stopwatch approached two minutes.

  He jogged backward, keeping an eye on the open door.


  Finally, at two minutes and thirty-one seconds, she emerged. She was dressed for the cold in the clothing he had left for her, a blade held in her mittened hand.

  Logan waited until he was certain she had seen him, and then he ran, following the sign posts with the orange blazes, heading toward the abandoned campsite in the distance.

  ***

  At six minutes, Logan's arms and legs began to feel heavy. Despite the hard effort and the hammering of his heart, blood had started to retreat inward, leaving his muscles starved of power. He was now working harder and moving more slowly. His hands and feet were painfully cold. He balled his hands into fists and pumped his arms, fighting off numbness.

  ***

  At eight minutes, every part of Logan's body was cold. He glanced back and saw that Eliza had reduced his lead by a third. She was much, much faster than him, but she was conserving her energy, traveling at a steady pace that was designed to wear him out instead of run him down, letting the cold do the work.

  ***

  At nine minutes Logan began to shiver as his body attempted to generate heat through involuntary motion. His teeth chattered. His nasal passages felt stiff and dry, like he was breathing through two straws wedged into the front of his face. His throat was constricted and his breathing was ragged. The ground was rough with frozen tracks from snowshoes and cross-country skis from his previous trips out here, and his feet stumbled as he forced them forward one at a time. It was maddening, to be so cold and so close to death and forced to move so slowly. He wanted to scream. He fought to keep his feet and his thoughts moving in a straight line.

  ***

  At twelve minutes there was laughter, mere steps behind him.

  He whirled around, knowing he was already dead, the flood of neurochemicals in his brain unlike anything he had ever felt before. Pure terror, beyond panic.

  His heels tripped on uneven ground, but he managed to stay on his feet.

  There was no one behind him. Nothing behind him but a line of sign posts with orange blazes and white ground that was rough with old tracks from snowshoes and skis. He was in a low area at the base of a hill, his destination just beyond that hill. He was alone. The laughter had been a hallucination. A waking nightmare.

  He couldn't decide if it had been Eliza's laughter, or the laughter of the cold.

  His body shook violently. His teeth rattled inside his mouth. His hands hurt, but they were still cold, not yet numb.

  He looked back. His vision was blurred but he could clearly make out the orange blazes on the sign posts, and he could see the movement of a dark shape in the near distance, getting closer, the knife in her hand bright in the sunlight.

  ***

  After fourteen minutes he arrived at the abandoned campsite.

  His thoughts argued to go through every door he passed, telling him to go inside and get warm, at the very least stop and find a coat or a blanket or mittens. Logan ignored these thoughts. He zeroed in on a familiar hut near the center of the campsite.

  Those last moments became a series of simple tasks that took every ounce of concentration and strength he had left.

  He clubbed at the latch on the door with a numb hand.

  Shouldered his way inside.

  His fingers were stiff and bloodless and numb, like frozen sticks growing from his hands. He had to guide his grip by sight, because he had lost all feeling, all dexterity.

  He pressed his fingers to the clasps of a black case and pushed with his arm. The nail on his middle finger bent and ripped from the nail bed, but he felt no pain and there was no blood and the clasp snapped open. He used the injured finger for the second clasp instead of risking damage to another one.

  He cradled the weapon in his arms.

  Knelt at the doorway.

  Threaded a finger through the trigger guard.

  Took aim.

  CHAPTER 53

  From a distance, the huts had looked like some natural feature of the landscape. She'd been surprised when she'd seen the first one up close and saw that it was a manmade structure, some kind of village or camp, long abandoned.

  There was an open door up ahead, but Eliza wasn't sure if it was a decoy, if Logan had actually gone through that door or if he'd opened it and then hid somewhere else. She'd lost sight of him for a minute, on that final uphill push.

  The world around her was quiet and still.

  For a moment she regretted that she had let Logan run, that she hadn't dashed after him and cut his hamstrings during the first minute of her pursuit. But there was no point if he didn't suffer some. And it was fitting that Logan would die here, in a forgotten, isolated place, not unlike the island where they had first met, where he had killed Daniel.

  She moved among the frozen walls of the village, approaching the empty door with caution, the knife held in an underhand grip.

  She stopped, sensing the change in the air around her, some base-level instinct that her makers had coded into her brainstem, by purpose or by accident, telling her that something was wrong.

  Then the white walls of the structures around her exploded with fire and noise.

  Muzzle flashes chopped through clouds of shredded insulation. Eliza felt the first round slam through her body and her world disappeared inside a cloud of red.

  CHAPTER 54

  Logan let go of the trigger and the guns went silent.

  Outside, a filthy cloud hung in the air—ice and snow and dirt and blood and pulverized insulation, all kicked up by the heavy caliber rounds. There was almost nothing left of Eliza. She'd been at the center of the four-way crossfire from the heavy machine guns. Pieces of her were scattered all over the ground.

  The machine guns had been taken from the crashed drones. Logan had made some modifications and mounted them on tripods inside the huts, behind weakened sections of walls. He'd set this up at the abandoned campsite, where there was plenty of distance and hilly terrain to shield the facility from stray rounds. He'd planned on using this setup in case the facility came under attack, a gauntlet to lure an enemy squad into as he and the others made their escape.

  Logan leaned the marker against the side of the door. He activated the heat lamps with a pedal switch on the floor. He pulled a blanket off a hook and wrapped it around his shoulders. He paced the room, feeling his body thaw, knowing he would need medical treatment, grateful that half the people on staff at the facility were doctors.

  Logan stayed inside the hut for a long time.

  When he left, he never returned.

  EPILOGUE

  1.

  It had been fifty-one days since a new case of infection had been reported, and three weeks since anyone had died from the disease. The production facility was operating on two shifts a day, down from three. Treatment was being stockpiled. The city-wide quarantine had been lifted eight days ago. Every day, the signs of what had happened here were being pushed out of the present and into the past, becoming part of history.

  Zoe watched the time change from 8:59pm to 9:00 to 9:01. She was in her office, the Paradime campus spread out alongside her behind large glass windows. The only light in the room was from her computer screens; the sun had set hours ago, without her noticing.

  A keyboard shortcut brought up a messaging app and she sent Holden a message, asking where he was, when he would be done with what he was doing. He replied seven minutes later, saying it was going to be a while. He was with his lawyers. He'd spent most of the past week with his lawyers. There was a mile-long list of charges brought against him. He had ignored nearly every law there was about the development, manufacture, and distribution of a pharmaceutical. There was another mile of civil suits, people and companies suing him for a thousand different reasons.

  He was keeping her out of it, the way he was keeping everyone out of it, ensuring the consequences fell on his shoulders and his alone. Part of it was to protect the company—to show that the decisions and actions were Holden's personal crusade and no
t Paradime's corporate policy. The other part was Holden's stubborn moral compass, a refusal to share the punishment with anyone else. Zoe admired this about Holden. It also annoyed her to no end.

  At Paradime, workdays didn't end so much as they were abandoned. Zoe closed her laptop and left.

  The atmosphere on campus was peaceful. Zoe passed people walking alone, or in pairs, or in small groups. She kept to herself. She thought of going to one of the gyms and working out. She thought of having a late dinner or a beer. Instead she went back to the dorm room that she'd been sharing with Holden; once they'd started spending every night together, it made sense to free up one of the rooms so someone else could have it.

  The room was a mess, clothes piled on top of furniture or left on the unmade bed, charging cables tangled on the floor, empty cups and water bottles crowding the desk and dresser.

  She washed up and brought her laptop to the unmade bed and spent thirty minutes answering emails and glancing at reports, weeding out simple tasks in her overstuffed inbox. Anything that required more time and attention got flagged and filed, to be dealt with tomorrow.

  Eventually she closed her laptop and put her head back on the pillows.

  She hadn't seen Logan in person since the day he'd left Paradime for Antarctica. That was months ago. The city had still been under quarantine when he'd handed control of the facility over to the CDC's security forces. Unable to return to the Paradime campus with the quarantine in effect, he'd flown back to the east coast, back to his apartment. They'd talked a few times on the phone and through video calls.

  She looked at her phone, cradled in a charging station on her nightstand. She didn't reach for it, even though there were so many things she felt she needed to say or ask: about the weeks they'd shared a bed, about what had happened at the facility, about what he was doing right now and what he would do next.