Epitaph Road

by David Patneaude

“Long story,” Dad said. He gave Miller a short version, but enough to let him know that we weren’t junior moles.

  “Unbelievable,” Miller said, but he looked like he believed it. “You think it’s really going to happen?”

  “Cops are everywhere,” Gunny said, “and I’m not talking about our little constables pedaling around on their bikes. Something’s up. These kids have probably saved your life.”

  Miller studied us again, but this time there was more to his expression than hostility and suspicion. He looked almost grateful. “You’ll want to talk to Wapner, then,” he said, stepping back. “Go on ahead. If he won’t take you in, let me know. That means I won’t be welcome in there, either. I may just want to grab some supplies and follow you into the hills.”

  “We’ll do that,” Gunny said. He started the truck forward again. We moved across the clearing and approached the crack in the outcropping. Moss and lichen covered most of the stony surface. Far back, the cleft widened, then narrowed to the black crease of a cave entrance. Next to that opening I could just make out what appeared to be a metal box mounted on the rock. It was the same gray color as the stone that surrounded it.

  We skirted the wall and more house-sized rock formations, slowly half circling into deep shade. Ahead of us, in front of a dense barrier of evergreens and bookended by two soaring cliffs, a low cinder-block building came into view.

  Could this possibly be the lab, the fortress?

  Gunny drove past the entrance and stopped at the side of the little building. He turned off the engine, got out, and unlocked the door of a red metal box mounted on a thick pole. Inside was a phone. He picked it up and punched a series of buttons. “Gunderson,” he said after a moment. “I need to talk to Dr. Wapner.” He listened for another moment. “I’d prefer he come out,” he said. “I have Winters with me, and as I’m sure you’ve seen, we’re not alone.”

  Dad stepped out of the truck. “Stay where you are for now,” he told us. Gunny replaced the phone, locked the door of the box, and joined Dad nearer the front of the building, waiting.

  In less than a minute I heard the clicking sounds of opening locks. And then a man — Dad’s height, thin, receding gray hair buzzed a centimeter from his scalp — appeared from around the corner.

  “What is it?” he said impatiently to Dad and Gunny. “I have work.” He had an accent, but I couldn’t place it.

  “My son and his friends brought us some news we thought you’d want to hear, Dr. Wapner,” Dad said.

  For a moment the doctor turned his attention to us, to Tia and Sunday especially, before refocusing on Dad and Gunny. “What is it that couldn’t wait, that told you it was permissible to bring outsiders here?”

  Dad explained the whole thing, most of it anyway, from our arrival on. He carefully left out anything about the work of the lab — the vaccine. Officially, it was still a secret. The doctor asked us questions from time to time. He seemed to be warming to us.

  “We wanted to warn you,” Gunny said. “And we wanted to ask you for refuge from the Bear.”

  “I appreciate the warning,” the doctor said. “If they know where we are, if they’re aware of the nature of our research — and this quarantine decree tells me they may well be — they could come here with their plague. They could try to do us in with it, put an end to everything we’re doing.

  “Your coming here tells me one other thing: neither of you is the person who tipped them off. Because I’m certain someone did tip them off. But who?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Dad responded with a functional one. “What about allowing us to stay?”

  “Do you know what we’re doing here, Winters?” Dr. Wapner asked. “Gunderson?” When their only answer was a half-guilty, half-embarrassed silence, he continued. “I suspect just the fact that we have this research facility where it is may have given you some idea of our work.”

  “I’ve had my suspicions,” Gunny admitted. “I’ve kept ’em to myself, except for Charlie here.”

  “That’s commendable,” Dr. Wapner said. “But what are they?”

  Gunny told him what he “suspected,” but he didn’t mention snooping around for his information. He told the doctor he just put two and two together.

  “You’re exactly right,” the doctor said. “We’ve developed a vaccine. We’re also developing a treatment for unvaccinated males who are exposed to Elisha.”

  “You haven’t said whether you’ll let us stay,” Dad said, not letting loose.

  Dr. Wapner eyed the girls again. His expression made me want to keep right on going, into the farthest hills. “Certainly. But if we’re going to add you five and be under siege for two weeks, we’ll need someone to go back to town to get food and supplies.”

  “The cops are on the lookout for Charlie,” Gunny said. “They don’t care about me — I’ve already passed under their microscope. I’ll go.”

  “You’re sure?” Dad said.

  “Perfectly,” Gunny said.

  “I’ll be the real hero, then,” Dad said. “I’ll haul the stuff in when you get back.”

  “And we’ll help,” Sunday said.

  “Come with me,” the doctor said.

  We followed him through the door. The walls, with open, half-empty shelves here and there, were simply the interior faces of the exterior’s gray block walls. Just inside was a cabinet filled with flashlights, headlamps, night-vision goggles, binoculars, a spotting scope, radios, talkalouds, and other electronic stuff I didn’t recognize.

  There were no people here, no computers, test tubes, books or papers, no jars of mysterious fluids, no monkeys — northern owl or otherwise — in cages, electrodes planted in their shaved skulls or jammed down their throats, measuring their lung function. The doctor closed the door. The only light came from overhead tubes.

  Dr. Wapner printed out a supply list and handed it to Gunny. “I’ve modified the amounts to reflect a three-week period and twenty-one people,” he said, “in case the rest of the security staff chooses to stay. Use our usual account number at the co-op.”

  “Right,” Gunny said.

  “What about the vaccine?” Tia said. “You said you’ve developed a vaccine. Could you give it to Kellen and his dad, and Gunny before he goes to town? The PAC women might bring Elisha early if they think word is getting out.”

  “We have a vaccine,” the doctor said. “All of the male scientists of Foothills have injected it in themselves to determine if there are adverse effects. Three days later, we’re all still standing. What we don’t know is whether it will be effective against the full-blown disease. The women we have working here are trying to replicate Elisha in its most virulent form, and they’re close. But until they do, until one of us is exposed, we won’t know for sure.”

  “Would it hurt to give it to us?” I asked him.

  “Not based on our experience.”

  “Can you do it, then?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t know why not,” Dr. Wapner said. “It may not provide you with any protection should Elisha’s Bear find us, though.”

  “We won’t expose ourselves on purpose,” Gunny said. “But we’ve got nothing to lose, as far as I can tell.”

  “Let’s proceed, then,” the doctor said. His expression brightened. He went to the middle of the room, where a large multicolored rectangular rug that had seen better days lay at an angle. He bent down and swept it back. Underneath it was a square door made with the same unfinished wood as the floor. He lifted the door as we gathered around. Gunny hung back. He’d been down there before, I decided. Inside security. Snooping.

  Descending from the floor was a steep wooden staircase. At the bottom was another floor — smooth pea-green concrete, well lit — but that was about all I could see. “Wait here,” Dr. Wapner said, and started down the stairs agilely as if he’d done it a thousand times.

  He disappeared. We waited. I thought about getting jabbed with a needle. But then I thought about Gunny going to town to face the cops and may
be Elisha’s Bear on the loose. I thought about being totally helpless should the Bear penetrate the lab’s defenses, about dying an agonizing death, and I decided a needle wasn’t a big deal.

  Voices rose from the depths: the doctor, a man or two, a woman or two. I couldn’t make out the words. They sounded foreign, like something from an ancient movie about Nazis.

  A moment later, Dr. Wapner was on the stairs. He arrived in the room with a small plastic box holding three hypodermic syringes. The needles looked like tree trunks. Was I really going to just let this guy — doctor of what? — stick one of them in me? Was Dad okay with it?

  The doctor set the box on the desk. “Who’s first?” he said, and Gunny rolled up his sleeve and offered his arm. Wapner rubbed on disinfectant, then plunged in the needle and emptied the syringe. Dad was next. He got through it without a grimace and gave me a reassuring smile. At least that was what I thought it was. I stepped up, trying to appear brave for the girls. But I couldn’t help squinting my eyes, looking away, waiting for the jab. It was done before the temptation to run took over. I imagined weak or dead (I hoped) little Elisha bugs beginning their journey through my body.

  “I’m on my way,” Gunny said. He hugged the girls, he shook hands with Dad, and he shook hands with me. His grip lingered, and I became more and more aware of his scars and calluses and beneath them, his strength and warmth.

  “Beware of strange women,” Dad said as Gunny went out the door. Gunny didn’t respond. He pulled the door shut behind him, and we were cut off again from the outside air, the sunlight. In here, it smelled of disinfectant and sweat and fish.

  Dr. Wapner locked the door. “We have showers downstairs,” he said as if he’d noticed the smell, too. “If you want fresh clothes, I believe we have something that will fit all of you, and a washer and dryer for the clothes you’re wearing.”

  “Really?” Sunday said as if he’d just offered her a trip to an exotic tropical island. I thought about Puerto Verde and Grand Cayman and another lab — Brighter Day — and those northern owl monkeys again. How different from those monkeys were we? I felt a chill.

  Sunday began moving toward the opening in the floor. Tia followed, I followed. I didn’t care that much about a shower or clean clothes, but I was definitely curious about what was down those stairs. I rubbed my arm where the giant needle had entered. It was a little sore, but when I looked I didn’t see any sign of damage — no bruising, no blood vessels pulsing with tiny foreign bodies.

  “The rifle will have to stay up here, Charlie,” the doctor said, sounding friendlier now. “No arms in the lab area, security or not.”

  Dad gave him a look, like he was ready to protest, then shrugged and took the rifle out of his pack and leaned it against the wall. It was short-barreled but mean-looking, all black, a magazine big enough to hold dozens of shells. I’d never seen Dad shoot a gun of any kind — I’d never even seen him with a gun — but he looked comfortable with this one, reluctant to let it go. He’d told me once about pirates, men who “catch” their fish by stealing from other boats. Dad got his rifle after a friend’s catch was pirated at gunpoint.

  I was surprised by what greeted us at the bottom of the steps. The staircase ended in the middle of a small room, but long, well-lighted corridors branched off from it in four directions like the spokes of a wheel. They reached much farther than the perimeter of the room we’d just left. I realized that the upstairs building was just an entryway, a false front for the real thing.

  Doors, most of which were closed, lined the hallways. Dr. Wapner shut the overhead hatch, bolted it from the inside, and moved around us to lead the way down the corridor that lay straight ahead. An A was painted above its entrance. The other hallways, in clockwise rotation from where we were standing, were B, C, and D.

  “Where does the air come from?” Tia asked, and I could see why she was curious. With nothing but dirt and rock and roots over our heads, with no windows and a single door leading out of here, I had this claustrophobic feeling pressing in on my chest.

  “We have ventilation to and from the outside world,” Wapner said. He pointed to a grilled opening high on the wall. No light showed through. “Of course, everything is filtered to screen out the finest dust, the most microscopic forms of bacteria and viruses and toxins.”

  He stopped at the first open door and invited us to look in. It was a big bathroom, three toilet stalls on one wall, three shower stalls on the other. Sinks and mirrors lined the remaining two.

  We continued on, passing a laundry room, then a kitchen with the latest in appliances, a bar in the center, and a long table near one wall. A couple of plates with half-eaten sandwiches sat on one end of the table. I realized I was starving. I was tempted to walk over and wolf down the leftovers. “You’re all welcome to return here as soon as we finish our little tour,” Dr. Wapner told us, apparently reading my mind. He seemed relaxed, almost carefree. I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. Besides all the obvious scientific stuff, of course. “There are provisions in the refrigerator and cabinets.”

  We doubled back along the corridor, got back to the hub, and took a right down another hallway, corridor D . The sign on the first closed door said LAB ONE. We passed it by and went to LAB TWO. The doctor gave the door a sharp rap, and a moment later the latch clicked and the door opened. And the tour group was face-to-face with a woman. She smiled, but she didn’t look happy. She looked harried.

  She also looked familiar, in an everyday-face-in-a-strange-place kind of way.

  “This is Dr. Margaret Nuyen,” Dr. Wapner said, and instantly I knew why she looked familiar. Just as it jarred me breathless, she focused in on me and it hit her, too. I could see it in her eyes. They widened and then went into communication mode. And the message she was sending me was Don’t. Don’t say anything. And to verify the message, just in case I had any doubts, she gave her head a whisper of a shake, a bare side-to-side twitch.

  “Dr. Nuyen is one of our lead scientists,” Wapner said. “She’s as responsible as anyone for the vaccine you just received. I told her about the news you’ve brought us, and she agrees with me that we need to show you every aspect of our hospitality.”

  While Dr. Wapner introduced the girls and Dad to Dr. Nuyen and they exchanged canned pleasantries, I found myself staring at her face and imagining her a year, then twenty years, younger — I saw her daughter Merri in her — and pretending not to stare at the same time. Why had it taken me more than a second to recognize her? She looked pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen her, when she was my housemate. She still had an Asian face, she still spoke English with an Aussie accent. She even sounded like her daughter.

  For a long but too-short moment I thought about Merri. Up-close body-to-body amorous visions danced in my head.

  I was introduced. I nodded hello, as if Margaret Nuyen was someone I’d never seen before today, a stranger. But what was she doing here? And why didn’t she want anyone to know we’d met? It wasn’t like I really knew much about her. She was a scientist. She had a daughter a couple of years older than me. She used to live in the same house I lived in. Oh, and there was the breathing problem. That was about it. Anything incriminating there? Anything Dr. Wapner didn’t already know? I doubted it. But I’d go along with her. I had no reason to rat her out or whatever. Not to Wapner anyway. Not yet.

  Thank you for not fixing that leaking bathroom faucet

  before you left me;

  now I lie awake at night,

  listening to the drip-drip-drip of our lives,

  thinking of you.

  — EPITAPH FOR RANDALL RESER

  (AUGUST 21, 2010–AUGUST 15, 2067),

  BY CALLIE RESER, HIS WIFE,

  DECEMBER 14, 2068

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Behind Dr. Nuyen, Lab Two didn’t look much like a lab, at least not the lab I kept seeing in my head. In the murkily lit room were desks, tables, computers, papers strewn about and taped to the walls or tacked to bulletin boards.
Not much else. Which in a way was a relief. At least there was no chance of renegade Elishas escaping from test tubes or canisters and floating over to the door, where we were still standing.

  Neither doctor invited us in for a closer look, and a moment later we were moving again, proceeding down the hall. I gave Dr. Nuyen what I hoped was a reassuring backward glance, and she tried to smile. The smile wasn’t convincing, which made me think of something Dr. Wapner said when we were still outside, his rhetorical question of who tipped off PAC about the work this lab was doing.

  Was Dr. Nuyen the spy? The traitor?

  It would make sense. She was a well-known medical research scientist and she knew my mom, an upper-echelon official from PAC and soul mate of the angel of death herself, Rebecca Mack.

  A coincidence? I found myself doubting that.

  I needed to talk to Dr. Nuyen, I decided. I needed to give her a chance to tell me if she was involved in leaking information, or at least look her in the eye when she heard my question and came up with an answer, whether it was the truth or a lie. But could I find her again? And get her alone?

  Our next stop was a closed door marked SECURITY. The doctor hesitated for a moment, then turned the knob and cracked the door wide enough for him to peer in for a long beat. Finally, he motioned for us to follow him through, managing to casually get his hand on Sunday’s shoulder as he herded us inside. I was surprised when she didn’t recoil.

  A youngish red-haired guy sitting at a console in the center of the room nodded in our direction. “Dr. Wapner,” he said, and went back to his work.

  Three walls were alive with monitors. Those on the wall to our left showed interior shots — several rooms in the lab, men working in some, women in others, a couple of angles from inside the little upstairs room.

  Lab Two — Dr. Nuyen’s space — wasn’t showing.

  Across from us were monitors displaying outside views: the exterior of the building from all sides, the rock outcroppings, the spot where the narrow road emptied into the clearing, a variety of shots of the surrounding forest.