Epitaph Road

by David Patneaude

  The screens on the third wall, behind us, monitored the logging roads on the way in, beginning with the turn from the highway. As we watched, Gunny’s rusty old truck appeared on a screen and disappeared again. I realized they’d known someone — Gunny, at least — was coming the whole time we were on our way in.

  “Everything okay, Jimmy?” Wapner asked the security guy.

  “Smooth,” Jimmy said.

  “You’ve alerted all outside personnel? Scrambled the sleepers?”

  “Twice, just to make sure.”

  “Can you go vertical with half of the outside building cameras?” Wapner asked, but it wasn’t a question, it was a directive. “And switch all interior shots to exterior feeds?”

  “Sure.” Jimmy fidgeted with some controls, and the first four screens on the opposite wall segued from clearing to trees to mountains to broken clouds as the cameras panned skyward. On the wall to our left, the views of inside rooms vanished completely. In their place appeared new scenes of the grounds — woods, open areas, roads — in the vicinity of the lab.

  “Good,” the doctor said. “Leave everything as is until further notice.”

  “Will do.”

  “You’ve got the whole horizon and above on those four monitors?” Dad asked, studying the screens on the opposite wall. He seemed as interested in this stuff as the rest of us were. It was obvious he hadn’t been in here before today.

  Tia and Sunday were transfixed, too. I’d never been around them when they were this quiet. But in addition to their being wrapped up in the technology and our surroundings, I had a feeling Wapner’s attention had them dampened down — nervous and uncomfortable. And I didn’t blame them.

  “I’ve gone to wide-angle,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got one-eighty coverage in all directions. A seagull comes over the treetops, we’ll have its picture.”

  While everyone else was studying the monitors, I glanced over at the wall to our right. Except for two more screens mounted high and showing what looked to be highway approaches, it was mostly bare. But below the monitors were four full-sized metal doors with locks and latches and small single windows, their thick glass crisscrossed with heavy wire. A faint light showed behind the window of the door in the far left corner. I casually sidled in that direction, hoping for a peek inside, picturing imprisoned monkeys.

  But Wapner caught me. “I’ll save you the trouble, young man,” he said sharply, and I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Jimmy tensed in his chair, as if I was about to do something drastic. “Those are holding cells. They’re vacant. For now.”

  His last two words sounded like a threat. I nodded and moved back to the group, wondering why the light was on in one of them if they were all vacant. The creepy feeling I was getting wasn’t helped any by the fact that just as we were leaving the room, I swore I heard a noise coming from the direction of the far door. A muffled voice. A human voice. A woman’s. Or girl’s. I looked around at the other faces, though, and saw no reaction. Had I imagined it?

  We returned to the hub of the underground, and Dr. Wapner took us down hallway C, another corridor full of closed doors with different lab numbers on them. “There are scientists at work behind some of these doors,” he announced, breaking off a murmured conversation with Dad, “but it’s necessary to maintain sterile conditions in all of them and quarantine in some. So you’ll have to use your imaginations. Think of a group of dedicated people working sixteen hours a day for little remuneration but the eternal thanks of society.”

  “If PAC really knows what’s going on here,” I said under my breath to the girls, “this place has a short life expectancy. Maybe we should think about leaving, going on up to the mountains, where we wouldn’t have a target on our backs.”

  “It looks like these guys are prepared for anything,” Sunday said, and I guessed that was her vote for staying. And in a way I could see why. Here there were comforts and food. Out on the trail we’d have little of either. Tia looked less sure about this place, but I knew she wouldn’t leave Sunday here by herself.

  “Women’s sleeping quarters,” Wapner said, turning back to us and gesturing to a half-open door on our left. “There are two unclaimed bunks in there, all made up and waiting for you young ladies.” He gave them the closest thing to a smile I’d seen from him so far. “And right here,” he said, pointing to another half-ajar door directly across from the first one, “is the men’s sleeping area. Plenty of room in there for you and your dad, Kellen. But he won’t be joining you for a while.”

  “Dr. Wapner has asked me to take on some security duties, since I’m up here anyway,” Dad explained to me. “There’s no point in me just hiding out when I could be on the grounds, watching for intruders.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “What if PAC comes?” I said. “You’ll be safer down here.”

  “It’s my job, Kellen,” he said. “And I’ll be okay on top. I’ll keep my distance from any strangers. If Gunny’s got the balls to go off to Afterlight by himself, I can at least go up and scout out the woods.”

  Gunny. So that was it. When Gunny had volunteered to go I could tell that Dad felt like a shirker. Now he wanted to make up for it. “Gunny doesn’t have a kid,” I told him, before I realized that Gunny could have twelve kids and I wouldn’t know it.

  “Your father’s not going topside because of what Gunderson is or is not doing,” Wapner said. “Your father has a duty. He wants to help protect what we’re trying to accomplish here.”

  Dad nodded. Halfheartedly, I decided. But he set his backpack inside the men’s bunk room, gave me a quick hug, and headed down the hallway and toward the stairs. “I’ll see you soon, Kellen,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I must get back to my work,” Wapner said to us. “You’re free to return to any of the rooms or spaces I’ve shown you. Those that are off-limits will be locked, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally going somewhere you’re not wanted. You can shower, rest, eat, whatever. If you go outside the antechamber upstairs, however, your safety will be much more precarious than it is in here. Especially yours, Kellen. If you leave the premises, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Sunday said.

  Wapner gave her another smile, creepy this time, and she actually smiled back. Like she wasn’t repulsed. But nearby, touching me, Tia cringed. “I’m happy to hear that, my dear,” he said. He turned on his heel, strode down the corridor, turned right, and was gone.

  “Lecher,” I said, picturing the Wapner leer.

  “What?” Sunday said.

  “He’s a dirtbag,” I said, and Tia stuck out her tongue and scrunched up her nose in disgust.

  “I thought so, too, at first,” Sunday said. “But now I think he’s just a weird scientist. I think he’s nice underneath. He’s letting us stay.”

  “Maybe,” I said absentmindedly, still distracted by my run-in with Dr. Nuyen and the question of what to do about her. Should I tell the girls? What exactly was there to tell at this point? So far, all I had was a handful of suspicions.

  I decided it would be better to talk to Dr. Nuyen before I said anything to anyone, but to do that I had to ditch Tia and Sunday. I needed to get back to Lab Two. For my own curiosity’s sake, at least, I needed to find out if Merri’s mother was the spy. After that, I’d have another decision to make.

  Fortunately for me, I didn’t need to figure out how to get away by myself. The girls were both eager for showers — before getting something to eat, even — and they said good bye and closed the door to their sleeping area in my face.

  I threw my backpack in the men’s sleeping quarters and headed down the hall and back to corridor D. The door to Lab Two was closed when I got there. I tried the knob. It turned, and the door opened.

  Across the room, Dr. Nuyen sat at a desk, studying me. “I thought you’d return,” she said. “Either you or Wapner. Close the door, please.”

  I eased the door shut behind me. She motioned me nea
rer, until I was standing by her desk. I glanced around at the walls and ceiling and spotted what looked to be a couple of small cameras mounted in upper corners of the room. I already knew they weren’t being monitored, but I couldn’t help being apprehensive.

  “No worries,” she said. “The cameras are lit when they’re transmitting.”

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “Sit,” she said, gesturing to a nearby chair.

  I pulled the chair closer and planted my rear. “Where’s Merri?”

  “Safe. Nowhere near here.”

  I felt relieved by a fraction. “Are you the spy?” I said. “The one who told PAC about this place?”

  “They’ve known about this place for a long time, Kellen,” she said. “PAC has eyes and ears at Afterlight and every other throwback settlement. They sent me here because of what they knew.”

  “Why didn’t they bring in Elisha when they first heard about it?” I asked. “Or they could have just blown up this whole complex and everyone in it.”

  “That’s not PAC’s style. We wanted to monitor the research. We wanted to see if a group of ragtag men and a few gullible women could really develop a vaccine.”

  “And now you have.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve given it to us.”

  “You think so?” I recognized her expression. It was the one she’d worn whenever she saw Merri and me together and pitied me for believing her mature sophisticated daughter was actually interested in me. “You think your friend Dr. Wapner is really looking after you, protecting you from Elisha’s Bear?”

  “He said you haven’t tested it against the real disease yet, so he can’t be sure it will be effective.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “But now he’ll have his opportunity to find out.”

  I nodded, not sure what she was trying to tell me.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “PAC is about to present us with an unexpected opportunity to test the vaccine under the actual conditions for which it was developed. The good doctor is outside now, inoculating the rest of the security people, just as he did you and your dad and Gunderson. Except only half of you will have gotten the vaccine. The rest of you, the control group, will have to settle for only an extra few milliliters of saline passing through your bodies, at least until the next time you relieve yourselves. Or the Bear arrives. Whichever comes first.”

  “Half?” My mind raced to register what she’d just told me. “Which half?”

  “Only Wapner knows.”

  “Dad could be in the control group? Gunny?”

  “Either. Both. Neither.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m inside. I can’t be in the test. Wapner says bacteria and viruses can’t get in here.”

  “True. Unless the filters are sabotaged, or PAC, as you suggested, simply blows up the place. And don’t let him send you outside on an errand, or psych you into going out on your own.”

  “He just told me to stay inside, where I’d be safe.”

  “And he had your trust, didn’t he? Wapner is a fanatic, but he knows human nature as well as he knows human disease.”

  The room suddenly seemed colder. I felt chilled, outside and in. My stomach rolled from hunger and lack of sleep. And terror.

  Rain still falls, night still descends,

  sun still rises over fertile front-yard beds,

  rosebuds still dilate, exhaling familiar perfume,

  Mrs. Sims still totters by, filling her withered chest,

  and peers around the yard for a sign of little Billy —

  a flying ball, a cloud of dust, an infectious smile.

  Everything is the same.

  But nothing is.

  — EPITAPH FOR ARMY CORPORAL WILLIAM (BILLY) BODINE

  (JANUARY 8, 2047–AUGUST 9, 2067),

  BY LISA BODINE, HIS MOTHER, AND PATRICK BODINE,

  HIS FATHER (DECEASED),

  DECEMBER 16, 2068

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “What’s going to happen now?” I asked her.

  “That’s partly up to you,” she said. “If you tell Wapner what you know about me, I’m sure he’ll lock me up. At the very least. I haven’t done anything to impair what’s gone on here, but he’d be afraid of that, afraid of me cooperating further with PAC.”

  I allowed her to stew about what I was going to do. I didn’t know myself. “What about PAC?” I said. “When are they coming? And why is Wapner acting as if nothing is going to happen, as if he’ll just be able to carry on?”

  “I’d like to know the answer to that last question. But I know he has confidence in the security of this place. And if it looks as if it’s going to fail, he’s got two secret backdoor escape routes.”

  “Where?”

  “Doors hidden behind panels at the ends of corridors A and C. I used the C door to get out at night and make my calls to PAC. To your mother.”

  My mother. In it up to her ears.

  “Which brings me to your other questions,” she continued. “I don’t know exactly when PAC is coming. It’s not easy for me to get away discreetly. I haven’t talked to your mother in more than a week, when I let her know that it was now or never. That the vaccine, as far as I could tell, was ready to step out on its own and change the world. But from what she told me then, and what you’ve said, it sounds like tomorrow. Possibly sooner.”

  Sooner. And Dad was out there, fully vulnerable, maybe. Dr. Nuyen didn’t look afraid of what I might do with what I knew, but I decided to reassure her anyway. “Wapner’s a creep,” I said. “I’m not telling him anything.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “That makes my life easier.”

  “The damage is already done anyway.”

  “Damage? You’ve studied history, Kellen. Would you really want to live in a world where men were in charge again?”

  “You think women are perfect? Your big boss, for instance? And a vaccine wouldn’t put us in charge. It would just make it harder to slaughter us.”

  “It would be a giant step in the wrong direction.” She labored to take a deep breath, trying to hide her efforts with a mask of calm even while that mask colored. Her eagle eyes remained on me. “Women are far from perfect,” she continued. “Some individuals have done unspeakable things. But women haven’t — and won’t — put all of humankind in jeopardy. Men, on the other hand, took this planet and its inhabitants to the brink of the abyss. Dr. Mack and her PAC mates found a difficult and painful way — but the only way — to bring us back.” Her eyes shifted from me to her watch. “But I don’t have time to debate you. I’ll just thank you again for not saying anything. If that’s still your intention.”

  “I’m doing it for Merri, not you.”

  “That’s fine.” She considered me again. “She really liked you, you know that? I didn’t think so for most of the time we were all living together; I thought she’d just discovered a new toy. But she was upset when we left so abruptly, and the main reason was you.”

  I was halfway surprised, even considering the note on the wayfarers’ wall. Part of me wondered if the doctor was telling the truth. She could be lying to keep me on her side. But it didn’t feel like a lie. I decided to believe her story. This one, unlike Wapner’s tall tale about the vaccine, wouldn’t cost me. Or Dad. “Girls,” I said. “They just find me irresistible.”

  Dr. Nuyen managed a smile. “Like the young woman you arrived with, for instance?”

  “Tia.”

  “I was thinking of the other one. Sunday. She couldn’t take her eyes off you.”

  Sunday? And this woman was supposed to be brilliant? But I remembered the library, the conversation when Sunday and I were alone, her sticking up for me later, volunteering to come along with me on this crazy dangerous journey. I thought she’d become just a friend. Just a loyal friend. But maybe the doctor knew what she was talking about. For a moment I questioned my feelings toward Sunday. But I didn’t need another compli
cation right now.

  I decided to get back to what really mattered. “Is there a way I can communicate with my dad?”

  “I’m sure he took a talkaloud with him. You could get him on that. But the frequency is unsecured. Anyone on the lab network, including Wapner, can listen in.”

  “How did you call out?”

  She glanced at her watch again. “PAC set me up with a satellite phone in the woods. I sneak out, take a short hike, walk up to a big cedar, reach inside a hollow space in its trunk, and pull out a phone. It’s like something from an old spy movie.”

  “So we wait?”

  “You wait. I have work to do. The other women are expecting me to help them put the finishing touches on more vaccine and get it ready to move if we have to, along with data and instruments.”

  “You’ll still help them?”

  “It’s why I was hired, but from here on out, what I do for Foothills is strictly for show. My job is to help PAC bottle up this threat.” She gathered together some papers and headed out the door, leaving me alone and pondering what to do next.

  I noticed her computer screen was still alive. It was cluttered with icons, most of which were numbered and lettered with meaningless (to me, at least) labels. In the top right corner, though, was a mound-shaped icon I could at least make some sense of. It was labeled FOOTHILLS PROJECT.

  I touched it. An organizational chart with names and titles and photos and contact information appeared. Dr. Wapner headed the chart. Below him were three sets of people: Team T, Team V, and Security. Four male scientists and a male lab assistant were on Team T. Four female scientists, including Dr. Nuyen, and a female lab assistant were on Team V. Dad’s name and photo were included on the ten-man security team roster. Gunny and Miller were also there.

  At the base of each lab team grouping was a label: GENERAL INFORMATION. I touched the one for Team T. In its place a small padlock appeared, along with the words PASSWORD PROTECTED, FORMULA T TEAM ACCESS ONLY, and a box for password entry.

  I left it and pressed the Team V GENERAL INFORMATION label. Instantly, it was replaced with the words CURRENTLY LOGGED ON, and a moment later the screen filled with a page of notes, headed with the word VACCINE. I skimmed through it. It was the introduction to an article on the origins and objectives and parameters of the project. I scrolled to the last page. At the bottom was the word DATA. I touched it. Another padlock icon and the words FURTHER ACCESS SECONDARY PASSWORD PROTECTED, FORMULA V TEAM ONLY appeared.