Epitaph Road

by David Patneaude

  “Bathroom, maybe?”

  We hurried to the bathroom. It was empty. I was beginning to feel like we were the only ones here. Every door we passed was closed. And locked.

  We ran to Lab Two. It was locked. I knocked. Loud. No answer at first. Then a voice — Dr. Nuyen’s. “Who is it?”

  “Kellen,” I said. “And Tia. We’re looking for Sunday.”

  The door clicked and opened. Dr. Nuyen slapped a magnetic QUARANTINED sign on the outside of the door and pulled us inside. Tia’s face was pale. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  Dr. Nuyen headed toward her desk. “When did you last see her?”

  “Half an hour ago,” Tia said. “Maybe a little longer.”

  “We went outside to talk to my dad,” I said. “Sunday stayed here to get something to eat.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Dr. Nuyen said, sitting down at her computer, touching a screen to life. “I was hoping someone on Team T would let his guard down once the excitement and panic levels rose over Gunderson being followed. So I came back here. And I was right. I was able to fish out a password to access Team T data.”

  “Why?” Tia asked.

  I inched closer to Dr. Nuyen and her display, wondering what she was looking at or for, and like Tia, why she was looking.

  “Curiosity, mostly. I wanted to tie up a loose end before I lost the opportunity.”

  “You need some help?” I asked. “Tia’s good at worming her way into files.”

  I expected her to say she was a scientist, she didn’t need help from kids, but she just mumbled a distracted “no thanks” and something about too many cooks.

  “Why is Team T all male?” I asked, half-afraid Dr. Nuyen would wonder how I even knew about the makeup of that team. Tia gave me an impatient look and a tug back toward the door.

  “Good question,” Dr. Nuyen said. “Availability, maybe. Coincidence, maybe. I hope to have answers soon.” She was concentrating now, barely glancing toward us as we edged toward the door.

  “We have to go,” I said. Now I knew what it felt like to lose someone I cared about — even for a few minutes — and I didn’t like it. I wanted to find Sunday.

  “Set the lock,” Dr. Nuyen said, still staring at her screen. “And leave the sign up.”

  Out in the corridor I glanced left and right, hoping for inspiration.

  “Can we try the kitchen once more?” Tia said. “She told me she was starving.”

  “Why not,” I said. “Maybe she was just on her way from one place to the next when we were there.”

  The kitchen still appeared empty, but it was a big room with a corner we couldn’t quite see from the doorway, so this time we went all the way inside. Nothing. Nobody. I was getting jumpier by the second, not quite believing she’d be this hard to locate.

  Tia picked up an apple from a table and nibbled at it. She took a step. “Yuck!” she said, staring down at her feet, where a half-peeled banana was squashed against the concrete floor. Part of it — a blob the color and texture of pus — clung to her shoe. “Why don’t people pick up their messes?”

  I didn’t answer her. Something else had grabbed my attention. Something silvery and blue, near the banana but under the table where Tia couldn’t see it.

  I walked over and picked up Sunday’s earring and showed it to Tia. “Maybe the banana’s hers, too,” I said, imagining lots of things, all bad.

  “It could be someone else’s,” Tia said.

  “The earring or the banana?”

  “Both?” It wasn’t even convincing for a question. I let her think about it, though.

  “She left here in a hurry,” I said after a bit, trying not to let anything scary come out in my voice.

  “We need to hurry,” she said, tugging me toward the door.

  “Security,” I said once we were back in the hallway. “Sunday must be in with Jimmy, watching the monitors.” Anything was possible.

  The security door was unlocked, which was a relief. And Jimmy was there, still at his console.

  But Sunday wasn’t.

  “Have you seen Sunday?” Tia said. Her voice had tears at the back of it.

  “The other girl?” Jimmy said. “Not since you were all here together.”

  “Not even on the monitors?” I said.

  Jimmy shook his head and gestured toward the walls, reminding me that the screens were all tuned to outside cameras.

  I wondered if that had been the case the whole time we were outside. “But where could she have gone?” I said.

  Jimmy shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. Instead, he looked jumpy.

  “Can you switch some of the monitors back to inside views?” Tia said.

  “No.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Dr. Wapner’s orders. And anyway, there’s secret stuff going on in the labs.”

  “How about the corridors?” Tia said. “All the rooms that aren’t labs?”

  “You’re welcome to check those yourself.”

  I was about to ask him once more if he’d seen her on the monitors if not in person, maybe following us outside, when I heard a noise. Tia heard it, too. I could see it on her face. It was the same kind of noise I’d thought I heard earlier, coming from the holding cell at the end of the room. A woman’s muffled voice. I looked. Dim light filtered out from a window again, but it wasn’t the one on the far left.

  It was the window on the far right.

  “Who —?” Tia began, but at that moment the room erupted with sound: first a horn, then a stranger’s voice, bloated with excitement, over the sound system.

  “Helicopters! Three helicopters, crossing the perimeter at high speed. Heading your way! ETA less than three minutes!”

  “I’m nearly back!” Wapner’s voice, urgent. “I’ll secure the main door. Jimmy — check all other openings, airways, and filters. All personnel on outside security, disperse immediately. Get as far away from the lab as possible.”

  Jimmy sprang up and raced out the door.

  A heartbeat later a thunderous explosion sent a shudder through the room. The floor quaked and rolled. The walls trembled. Debris sifted down from the ceiling. Were the helicopters here already? Had someone set off a mine?

  Tia’s fingers dug into my arm. Dust dulled her dark hair. I was wobbly but frozen, thinking of Dad, closer than anyone else to the lab. If the helicopters were still on their approach, he had less than three minutes to get his stubborn ass out of harm’s way. But Wapner would be securing the door, shutting out Dad and everyone else. Could Dad make it to the cave in three minutes?

  What about Gunny?

  The door swung open, and for an instant I was wondering how Jimmy had gotten back so quick. But it wasn’t Jimmy; it was Dr. Nuyen, breathing hard. She was covered in chalky grime. She was wearing a small backpack, also covered.

  “What was the explosion?” I asked.

  “Me,” the doctor wheezed. “I blew the filters. You two have to get out of here. Now.”

  “You blew the filters?” I said.

  “We can’t leave Sunday,” Tia said.

  “You can’t help Sunday,” Dr. Nuyen said. Her eyes shifted to the end of the room, the far right holding cell. “You need to get out.”

  We didn’t get out. We sprinted to the cell. Tia pounded on the door while I twisted and pulled futilely at the doorknob. Over our noise, I heard something from inside the chamber. Tia continued to pound while I kept turning and tugging and Dr. Nuyen tried to pull us away.

  A palm pressed firmly against the inside of the wire-crossed glass. The top of a head appeared. The blond hair was matted down but familiar.

  Too familiar.

  Sunday’s face rose above the bottom of the window frame. It was pasty-white and sweaty. Her green eyes were teary and terrified. A silver hoop earring with a small blue stone hung from her left ear. Her right earlobe, empty, was smeared with dried blood. She mouthed a word, and even if I couldn’t have heard her frightened voice through the sealed doo
r, I’d have had no trouble deciding what that word was.

  “Run.”

  Her face disappeared. For a moment her hand lingered, pressed against the glass, as Tia sobbed and my stomach tightened into a throbbing knot.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Tia wailed.

  “I’ll tell you,” Dr. Nuyen said. “On the way out.”

  God’s hand is mighty, and to our dim instincts, indiscriminate;

  it sweeps away fine grain as well as useless chaff

  and disease-ridden vermin,

  leaving behind bare fields and pregnant seeds

  and the smell of rain on the horizon.

  — EPITAPH FOR FATHER TERRANCE FITZGERALD

  (JULY 21, 2003–AUGUST 14, 2067),

  BY SISTER CECILIA MARIE SANDUSKY,

  PRINCIPAL, ST. JOSEPH ACADEMY,

  DECEMBER 17, 2068

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dr. Nuyen dragged us away, and a blood-chilling moment later we were running out the door and down the corridor, Tia crying and me sick. And scared. What had happened to Sunday? What was happening outside?

  We reached the hub just as the hatch opened and someone started down. I looked up. It was Wapner. We accelerated, angling down the C hallway. Smoke hung in the air. Debris covered the floor. And I realized where we were heading: the hidden exit to the tunnel that ran to Dr. Nuyen’s forest phone booth. I slowed down long enough to scoop up a long piece of twisted metal framework.

  When we got to the end wall, I waved the strip of metal in front of the lens, hoping the explosions hadn’t wrecked the mechanism.

  They hadn’t. The overhead door opened, the ladder began to drop. Slowly. Too slowly.

  “Margaret!” It was Wapner, hurrying down the hallway. “What happened here?” he shouted.

  “Get back, you monster!” Dr. Nuyen yelled. “I have a gun, and I’ll use it!”

  I’d seen no gun, but something in her voice made me believe she had one. Wapner hesitated, long enough for Dr. Nuyen to boost Tia onto the descending ladder and make sure she started up. I was next. I scrambled on and up, pushing Tia ahead of me. Before my head reached the ceiling, I looked back and saw Wapner start toward us again, then stop as Dr. Nuyen reached in her backpack for that gun.

  I kept moving. I heard our rescuer behind me. Tia leaped onto the floor above us and I rolled after her and stumbled to my feet. The light was feeble here, but I could make out a square of rough wood flooring and two lamps marking the perimeter of the little room we were in and the entrance to a narrow tunnel.

  Dr. Nuyen popped through the opening. She punched a button and the ladder began to move up.

  “Go!” she ordered, and we did, racing for the tunnel with her on our tail.

  “What about Sunday?” Tia cried over her shoulder.

  But before Dr. Nuyen could respond, my talkaloud crackled to life. “Dr. Wapner!” an unfamiliar male voice said. “Nash here. Dr. Nuyen’s trashed the computers. She’s left with all the backup data on Formula V.”

  “What?”

  We kept running. Overhead bulbs gave us just enough light to avoid tripping. Jagged watermelon-sized rocks lay on the rough floor of the tunnel, forcing us to weave and jump, splashing up cold water from dark puddles. I glanced back, but the curve of the tunnel prevented me from seeing the door. Or anybody climbing through it. Dr. Nuyen had fallen behind. She seemed to be struggling.

  “Status on Formula T data?” Wapner demanded over the talkaloud.

  “Secure,” Nash said. “We have the backup.”

  “Take the data,” Wapner ordered. “Head for the A exit with the other men ASAP. I’ll meet you there.” His voice came in bursts, as if he was moving now.

  “The women?” Nash said.

  “Confined, Jimmy?” Wapner said. “Exposed?”

  “Yessir,” Jimmy’s voice answered. “Except for the two on the run.”

  “They’re with the boy,” Wapner said. The boy. Me. “Who’s near the C egress?” he added.

  “Through the trees, two minutes by foot.” Gunny’s voice.

  “Get there in one minute,” Wapner said. “When Dr. Nuyen and the brats emerge —if they emerge — take the data. But no prisoners.” No prisoners. My brain sent a message to my legs: faster, faster.

  A pause on Gunny’s end. The faint sound of a long breath. Then more purposeful breathing. He was heading somewhere. “Will do.”

  “You’re in the control room, Jimmy?” Wapner said.

  “For now. But I ain’t waitin’ forever.”

  “What’s going on in the sky?” Wapner said.

  “Cameras vertical. Nothin’ yet.”

  “Monitor for thirty more seconds. Then join us at the exit.”

  We kept running while I tried to breathe, while I attempted to digest everything I’d heard. For a long moment all I heard were our footfalls.

  I lifted my talkaloud and pressed a button. “Dad?”

  Nothing.

  Where was he?

  “Dad?”

  Nothing. Tia reached back and took my hand. We dodged and jumped together, with Dr. Nuyen farther back now.

  “Choppers!” Jimmy roared. “Three of ’em. A hundred yards up and dropping. Directly over the building.”

  “Riflemen nearby?” Wapner asked.

  No response.

  “Shoot them down!” Wapner ordered.

  “They’re dumping something!” Jimmy said. “Cylinders!”

  “Pan down!” Wapner said.

  “They’re hitting!” Jimmy said. “Shattering. All over the building. Right above the corridors. They’ve pinpointed the airways!”

  “I’m sure they have,” Wapner said. I heard other voices in the background now, excited male voices. He was with Nash and the other men. I pictured them climbing the other ladder, escaping into the other tunnel.

  “Dad!”

  Nothing.

  A big saw-toothed rock loomed up ahead, right in the center of our path. Tia and I skirted it on either side.

  But a long moment later there was a cry from behind us.

  We stumbled to a stop and looked back. Dr. Nuyen was down, writhing on the floor. She was holding her leg.

  We raced back to her and knelt down. The rocky floor stabbed at my knees but I barely noticed. Even though she was wearing long pants, I could see there was something wrong. Her lower leg was angled, and when Tia pushed up the pant leg, blood flowed everywhere. A sharp spear of white bone protruded from the skin.

  “You have to go,” Dr. Nuyen said, trying to breathe.

  “We’ll carry you,” Tia said.

  “There’s no time.”

  I helped her to a sitting position. I couldn’t look at her leg. Even in the gloomy light, her face was already pale.

  “Sunday,” Tia said. “What happened to Sunday?”

  “Elisha — the Biblical Elisha — had two bears,” Dr. Nuyen said, and for a second I was sure she’d gone delirious from shock. Two bears?

  But she went on, rapid-fire. “Their Formula T — the one the men worked on — isn’t a treatment for males already exposed to Elisha. It is Elisha.” Her voice was weak, but there was weight behind each word.

  “But for females.” Quick breaths, shallow.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “They want to decimate the world’s female population. They have to be stopped. You have to stop them.”

  “You didn’t know?” I said.

  “None of us imagined this. Me. Rebecca Mack. Your mother.” Strangled breathing attempt. “If we had any idea, Formula T would have been our priority. I would have gone after it harder. Or we would have just buried this place.

  “Just after you left me at the computer, I stumbled across the truth,” she wheezed. “And equally terrifying news: they’d moved from lab animals to human subjects.”

  “Sunday?” Tia said.

  “Sunday. Before her, Kate, Team V’s little Fratheist lab assistant. Wapner said she’d had a death in the family.” She shook her head.
“He was right.” Her eyes closed. “Now they’ve exposed the others on Team V.”

  Below her ankle, her shoe and the ground surrounding it were soaked with blood. I remembered the far left door in security, the light in the little window. I pictured Kate the Fratheist lab assistant dying behind the door.

  And Sunday.

  The doctor opened her eyes. “Once you get out of here you’ll find a fail-safe box on the closest large fir.” Deep breath this time. “Both combinations are 8667. You have to push the button. Fast. No second thoughts. No hesitation.”

  She struggled out of her backpack and handed it to me. “The vaccine data is in there. Get it to your mother. Wapner has the Formula T data — and probably the concoction itself — and he’s racing for the other exit.” She took a shallow labored breath. “It’s up to you to make sure he doesn’t leave the tunnel.” She squeezed my hand.

  Tia and I lurched to our feet and took off. I didn’t want to look back.

  “Tell Merri I love her!” Dr. Nuyen said faintly. Then she urgently added something that sounded like “alone but merry.” The confusing meaningless words were the last ones I heard from her.

  Elisha turned to the young men who were mocking him,

  and cursed them in the name of the Lord.

  Then two she-bears rushed out of the woods,

  and tore the offenders to pieces.

  — 2 KINGS, 2:24

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Running hard, I fingered my talkaloud. “Dad!” I said. “Dad! If you’re anywhere near the tunnel A exit, you can’t let Wapner and his guys out. They’ve got an Elisha formula for females. They killed Sunday with it . They killed Sunday!” I hurdled a big rock and stumbled but managed to stay on my feet and keep up with Tia. “But if you’re in the tunnel, you have to get out. You have to!”

  No answer. Where was he? My chest ached, I was exhausted, but I tried to stay focused. I didn’t want to end up like Dr. Nuyen.

  “No worries, Kellen.” Dad. Dad’s unreasonably calm voice on my talkaloud. “I’m safe. You find a safe spot, too.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’ll talk soon.”

  Nothing more. But I felt recharged.