Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  The boat rapidly slowed to a stop near her, its bow wave pushing her back. A black man — no, a man wearing blackface — pointed a black rifle at her, screaming to be heard over the gunfire. “Identify yourself!”

  “Muh… muh…” Her jaw chattered so hard it hurt her teeth.

  “Identify yourself!”

  “Muh… Margaret… Montoya!”

  The point of the rifle lifted. The man leaned forward and reached, grabbed her life jacket and pulled her toward the boat.

  “I’m Commander Klimas,” he said as he yanked her up. “Stay down and don’t move.”

  She felt a strong hand push her, not to harm her but rather to hold her still. Margaret found herself in the bottom of the raft, lying against a soaked and shivering Tim Feely. Most of his suit had been cut away. A black blanket covered his shoulders. His bloody scrubs clung to his body. He clutched the container of yeast tight to his chest.

  The deafening guns continued to roar, to spit tongues of flame up at the sky. Shell casings rained down, bouncing off her visor, landing in the boat or hitting the surrounding water where they vanished with an audible tsst.

  She saw a knife move near her face, then a rapid tugging on her suit as someone cut it away in long shreds. A long, heavy blanket was thrown on top of her, tucked around her shoulders.

  The boat shot forward, smashing against the tall waves, rolling her against black-booted feet. She sat up, knees to her chest, pulling the blanket close to try to fight off the cold that rattled her body.

  “Where is Clarence?” She screamed to no one, to everyone. One of these men had to know. “Agent Otto, where is he?”

  The unmistakable plunk-plunk-plunk of bullets smacking into the boat.

  Something hammered into her right thigh, made the muscles numb — she was trying to get her bearings when the numbness quickly faded, replaced by a branding-iron pain that seemed to singe her femur.

  Wincing, fearing the worst, she opened the blanket to look at her leg. Blood poured from the wound, hot against her ice-cold skin, matting her scrubs to her thigh. She grabbed the thin fabric of her pants and ripped — a long gash ran from a few inches below her hip down to midthigh. The bullet hadn’t penetrated, only grazed her.

  A man landed hard in front of her, black face tight in a grimace of agony, left arm across his chest, left hand clutching at the back of his neck. Blood poured out from between his fingers, looking just as black as everything else.

  She forgot about her leg, lurched forward to help the soldier.

  “Tim! Come here!”

  Tim stuffed the yeast canister into his scrub top, then leaned over the wounded man, trying to keep his balance as the boat rose up and smashed down again and again and again. Tim’s hands probed the back of the man’s neck.

  Margaret wiped her cold, bloody fingers against her soaked scrub top, then slid them along the man’s throat, looking for additional wounds.

  “Clear and breathing,” she said. “How bad is the wound?”

  “The bullet took out most of the posterior musculature on the right,” Tim said. “The jugular and carotid were spared, but he has significant hemorrhaging from the wound. I think the brachial nerve plexus is gone.” Tim sounded calm, of all things. Margaret briefly wondered why he’d gone into research — the man had been born for this.

  Gunfire roared around her. She sat up higher, hands searching the man’s combat webbing for something that felt like a flashlight.

  Again a hand came down from above, grabbed the back of her neck, tried to force her flat. Her palms pressed against the bottom of the boat.

  “Stay down!”

  The boat hit hard against a wave: it felt like driving a car into a wall. The hand came off her for a second. She pushed up and swung her right elbow back as hard as she could, felt it clonk into something both hard and soft.

  “I’m a doctor, goddamit, let me work! And give me a fucking light!”

  Plunk-plunk-plunk, another string of bullets stitched across the small boat.

  She felt the hand reach down again, but this time it pressed something against her chest: a small flashlight. Margaret flicked it on and scanned the man’s body; he might have other wounds that were even worse.

  The boat hammered across the waves, repeatedly rising up hard then dropping to smash against the concrete surface.

  She found nothing.

  “No additional wounds,” she said, then handed the light to Tim.

  That strong hand on her yet again, on her shoulder this time. Klimas, the SEAL who had pulled her in, knelt next to her.

  “Agent Otto is in the other zodiac,” he said. “He’s okay.”

  She felt a burst of relief, albeit a brief one — she had her hands full trying to save a life.

  Tim adjusted his grip on the wounded soldier. “He’s still breathing, he’s moving his legs, and I think the major vessels are intact. He can survive this if we can control the bleeding.”

  “Cease fire,” another voice called out. “Cease fire!”

  The gunfire stopped, leaving only the driving snow and the howling of the wind.

  Klimas stood. “Recovery complete,” he said. “We’re clear.”

  From high above, she heard the loudest sound yet. She looked up in time to see a flicker of flame heading behind them, toward the Pinckney and the Brashear.

  A missile.

  She looked away just before it hit and became a deafening, temporary sun that lit up the surface of Lake Michigan.

  The task force was done for. Captain Yasaka, Cantrell, Austin, Chappas, Edmund, all the crew from both ships and the Truxtun as well — all gone.

  So, too, were the last of the hydras.

  A black-gloved hand dropped a black canvas pouch in front of her. It was about twice the size of a paperback. She looked up, saw the black-faced Klimas looking down.

  “Trauma kit,” he said. “Save him.”

  She nodded.

  Thoughts of Clarence, the battle, the dead, the hydras, even the awareness of her shivering body and her own wound faded away as she and Tim Feely went to work.

  THE SELECTION PROCESS

  In the deepest points of Lake Michigan, the water temperature remains steady at just a few degrees above the freezing point.

  The intense cold hadn’t stopped the apoptosis chain reaction from affecting the Los Angeles’s dead crew, but it had slowed the process enough so that plenty of rotting meat remained on their bones. Meat, for example, that was on the severed leg of one Wicked Charlie Petrovsky.

  When the Platypus ground its way past that leg, slimy flesh sloughed off onto the machine’s acoustic foam covering. This coating of partially rotted tissue contained thousands of cyst-encased neutrophils.

  As the Platypus returned from its mission, the regular, mechanical vibrations of its fins and inner workings caused the neutrophils to come out of hibernation. The microscopic organisms shed their cyst coats and prepared for the touch that might give them a host. When Cooper Mitchell, Jeff Brockman, José Lucero, Steve Stanton and Bo Pan worked to secure the Platypus to the deck, Charlie-slime smeared onto exposed skin — the neutrophils found their new homes.

  The five men had no idea what had happened. They had no idea what was coming next.

  The neutrophils secreted chemicals to make microscopic fissures in the hosts’ skin, then slid through those fissures, penetrating deep inside. The little bits of crawling infection sought out stem cells, tore them open and read the DNA within.

  It was there, at that initial point of analysis, that the neutrophils chose the role of each host.

  One host had a genetic disposition for increased size — significant height, heavy bone density, above-normal muscle mass — so the crawlers in that host programmed stem cells for one of the two new designs.

  Another host’s genes showed significant indicators for high intelligence. Extremely high intelligence. For this host, the neutrophils chose the other new design, a design that would be the true masterpiece of t
he long-lost Orbital’s bioengineering efforts. The neutrophils rapidly changed their form, shedding cellulose to become a microorganism made from normal human proteins. Then, they converted stem cells to produce millions of copies of themselves. From there, all would head straight for the host’s brain.

  The genetic makeups of the final three men were unremarkable. They were normal. For those three, the crawlers chose between three random options — these men would become a kissyface, turn into a hatchling factory or swell up with gas, soon to pop and spread the infection wherever their spores would reach.

  In twenty-four hours, one of the hosts would become contagious. In forty-eight hours or so, all of the hosts’ brains would start to change. Sometime past seventy-two hours of incubation, they would start to recognize each other, realize that they were all members of a new species, a species above and beyond humanity.

  Roughly ninety-six hours after infection — in just four days — they would not only recognize each other, they would start to work together.

  Work together… to spread.

  DAY FIVE

  A LITTLE PRICK

  Margaret slowly awoke. Darkness, save for the lights of medical equipment. She lay on her back, blankets pulled up to her chest. She started to rise, but a bodywide ache froze her in place.

  “Oh, man,” she said.

  The last time she’d felt like this was the day after her first Boxercise class — everything hurt. This was what she got for years of sitting on her ass. But at least her muscles had served her well enough to get out; she was alive, which was more than could be said for most of the poor souls on that task force fleet.

  She was in what looked like yet another trailer. A kind of trailer, anyway — this one was small, barely big enough for two field hospital beds, cardiorespiratory monitors, ventilators, a rack of IV pumps, a spotlight, and compact cabinets packed with supplies. An IV line ran into her arm.

  A man lay in the other bed. She didn’t recognize him. Margaret did, however, recognize the wound area — this was the SEAL she and Tim had worked on. They had saved this man’s life. That felt good. It seemed ridiculous to feel that way, considering the hundreds of bodies now at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and yet, it mattered.

  She slid her hospital gown down over her shoulder. As she’d suspected, not that bad of a wound at all. Eight stitches. Could have been so much worse.

  Could have been and probably was: she’d been exposed. She might test positive in a day or two, possibly even less considering she didn’t know how long she’d been asleep.

  Margaret flipped the blanket from her leg, looked at her thigh. It had been neatly dressed. Black ink on the white bandage… was that writing? She slowly lifted her leg for a closer look.

  For a good time, call Tim.

  Margaret laughed, and even that hurt.

  The trailer door opened. A man stepped in. He wore fatigues printed with a pixilated digital pattern of gray, black and blue. Nice-looking man: pale, pink skin, a heavy jaw and a chin that would have got him work in Hollywood were it not for his beady eyes, which seemed to be just a bit too close together. His right eye had a bruise under it.

  The man shut the door. He took off his camo hat and held it behind himself with both hands. He stood between the beds, mostly because there wasn’t enough space to really stand anywhere else. He stared at her, as if he expected her to know who he was.

  “Hello,” Margaret said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  He smiled. “Don’t recognize me without my makeup?”

  The voice brought it home — it was the SEAL who had yanked her out of the water, covered her body with his own as bullets rained down around them.

  “Klimas, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Commander Paulius Klimas. How are you feeling?”

  “Sore.”

  He nodded. “I can imagine. You went through quite an ordeal. I have a message for you from Director Longworth. He sends his best and said that Doctor Cheng is making excellent progress cultivating the yeast. He also said you’re to rest, and that he’ll video conference with you tomorrow. Which you can do right from the Coronado, by the way.”

  Ah, that’s where she was.

  “I don’t remember coming aboard.”

  “You passed out,” he said. “Right after you and Doctor Feely” — Klimas nodded to the unconscious man in the hospital bed — “stabilized Levinson here.”

  Passed out? Blood loss, fatigue, concussive damage, shock, stress… probably a combination of all of it.

  “How is Doctor Feely?”

  “Fine,” Klimas said. “He treated your leg. He was rather insistent about it, actually. He’s been sleeping ever since. Agent Otto is awake though, and he asked about you. Would you like me to bring him in?”

  Why, so he can whisper more lies about how he loves me?

  “Tell him I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t want to see him. How long have I been out?”

  “About sixteen hours, ma’am.”

  That word, ma’am: it made her instantly feel old.

  “Call me Margaret, please. Do I look like a ma’am to you?”

  He shrugged. “Except for the people under my command, every woman is a ma’am and every man is a sir. It’s not my fault I was raised right. And please, call me Paulius.”

  She nodded once. “Very well. Paulius, I want to thank you and your men for rescuing us. It might not mean much, but I owe you. If I can repay your bravery, I will.”

  He laughed lightly.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “I was just about to say the same thing to you.” He nodded toward the unconscious Levinson. “He’d be dead if it wasn’t for the bravery of you and Doctor Feely.”

  Margaret felt suddenly uncomfortable, embarrassed. “Our bravery? You came in like something out of a movie. I’d have drowned without you. Or been shot. Or blown up. Or burned. Take your pick.”

  Klimas shook his head. “When the bullets fly, most people hide behind us. Trust me, I’ve done this before. Margaret, you took a bullet, then — under enemy fire — you and Doctor Feely saved my man’s life. That’s behavior I would have expected from a trained SEAL, not a civilian.”

  She knew a man like Klimas wouldn’t make light of comparing someone to a SEAL. His words seemed to make her more aware of the ache in her thigh.

  “I didn’t get shot,” she said. “Well, I did, but… are you a Monty Python fan?”

  Klimas smiled. “ ’Tis just a flesh wound?”

  She nodded.

  “You got shot,” he said. “End of story.”

  He grew serious, leaned forward just a bit. His eyes carried a certain coldness. Commander Paulius Klimas was polite, sure, but he was still trained to take life whenever ordered.

  “You saved one of ours,” he said. “If you need us, we’ll be there.”

  His intensity frightened her. These weren’t just words — she knew that if she was in trouble, this man would kill for her.

  Klimas stood straight, smiled. The moment of gravitas was over.

  “Besides,” he said, “I know you’re a fighter.” He pointed to the bruise under his right eye.

  She remembered lashing out, her elbow hitting something. Her face flushed red. “I did that?”

  “First shiner I’ve had in years.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

  She was hungry. “A sandwich would be good.”

  “I’ll get food in here for you right away. Anything else?”

  Margaret gestured to the small trailer around them. “What is this room?”

  “It’s called a mission module,” Klimas said. “Instead of building everything in as a permanent part of the ship, the Coronado has space for modules that serve different purposes. This one, obviously, is a medical module. My unit has several — bunk modules, weapons maintenance, mission prep, that kind of thing. We’ve
cleared out a bunk module for you, so you’ll have private quarters.”

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not, I can’t put your men out.”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Normally, you’d get a stateroom, but we’re restricted to the hold in hopes of providing some separation between us and the crew.”

  “You mean between the crew and anyone who had contact with me, Clarence and Doctor Feely.”

  Klimas shrugged. “Tomato, tomahto. We’re in this together now. At any rate, the decision has been made — if you don’t sleep in the bunk room, it will sit empty.”

  “Thank you, Commander. At least I know chivalry isn’t dead.”

  His expression changed. For the first time, he looked uncomfortable.

  “There’s one more thing,” he said.

  Her eyes shot to his hip, to the holster there and the pistol in it. She hadn’t given it a second thought… until now.

  “You have to test me, right?”

  Klimas reached into a pocket of his fatigues and pulled out three white boxes. The number surprised her.

  “Three?”

  He nodded. “One for you, one for Levinson and one for me. All my men are testing every three hours. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to go first.”

  He offered her one of the white boxes. She stared at it. There was only one door into the mission module; by standing between the beds, Klimas had blocked the only way out. If she tested positive, he would kill her.

  But if she did see that red light, did she really want to live?

  She reached out and took the box.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  Seconds later, she stared at the blinking yellow light. Slowing, slowing…

  Green.

  Klimas smiled. “Only twenty-three more or so to go, right?”

  She ran through the math in her head. “Yeah, three days ought to do it. We’ll know by then.”

  Margaret sagged back into the bed. She still felt exhausted — the unexpected moment of intense fight-or-flight response hadn’t helped.