A kitchenette in the back included a fridge, bare except for a chunk of cheese and a pot of mustard; we found crackers in a cupboard and nervously helped ourselves to cheese and crackers, wondering if we were swallowing plague germs. An industrial clock hung near the refrigerator. One-thirty in the morning. How much time did we have?
Roswell had left the old launch-control console against one wall, its keys turned to begin the launch beneath buttons labeled target 1, target 2, target 3. A framed poster captioned “America Held Hostage” hung above it, showing a beleaguered America attacked by hordes of Muslims, Chinese, Koreans, and Mexicans. Text in red letters over a mushroom cloud screamed, “IT’S 1 MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT, AMERICA. ALMOST TOO LATE TO FIGHT BACK. JOIN PATRIOTS CARE-NOW TO REPEL THE ENEMIES AT OUR GATES.”
Another hatch was in the floor behind one of the couches, its cover locked into place with two arms. After some trial and error, we figured out that they had to be turned in opposite directions at the same time to undo the locks. When we lifted the cover, I lay flat and looked down, shining my flash around into a vast empty pit. I shuddered: this was where the missile had stood, a fat, sleek snake, never sleeping, ready for launch every second of the day.
I got back to my feet. “We’ll climb down there as a last resort,” I said to Cady. “Let’s see what we can find in the lab.”
Back in the lab, what we looked for first was protective gear. Cady and I both put on face masks, bonnets such as surgeons wear, latex gloves.
I went over to the ventilation hood above the fermenters. If they were culturing live pestis, the residue couldn’t be going straight into the atmosphere, or people in the county would be dropping like medieval plague victims. Presumably they were sterilizing the steam or smoke that the fermenters were pouring into the air. At least I hoped they were.
We were roughly forty-five feet below ground, about the depth of a three- or four-story building. I tried to picture the grounds, but what came to mind were the snakes curling up on a hexagonal roof. The giant snake underground calling its young to its side. No, Warshawski: snakes seek out warmth. They had found a warm spot. Above the ventilation hood.
“Our way out,” I said to Cady. “We’re going to dismantle this little science experiment.”
57
Tang Soo
Cady had moved past her panic into a numbed place where she could keep one foot moving in front of the other as long as I stayed upbeat, pumping oxygen into her heart. Our first step had to be to cover the camera eyes. The drawer where I’d found the hammer held a full tool kit, including a roll of duct tape.
Covering the far camera meant standing next to the rats. When I approached, the animals all rushed to the sides of their cages nearest me, squealing and clawing at the edges. They were hungry, and I looked like food. Were they covered with fleas that would jump onto us as soon as the rats died, or would the rats— Enough! My hands, my very skin, trembled with fear.
I found empty cages under the table where the rats were housed. With clumsy fingers I stacked the empties onto each other. My hair was wet under the bonnet as I climbed my makeshift ladder.
Cady stood as far from me as she could while she cut off a piece of duct tape to pass to me. My hands inside their latex gloves were numb with nerves. I dropped two pieces of tape before I held on to one long enough to cover the camera lens. After that, dealing with the camera near the door was child’s play.
We watched the monitor. The man in black was dozing now. The clock on the computer screen read 2:20. It had taken forty minutes to cover the cameras. How much time did we have before the man in black noticed he’d lost his feed to the lab?
We couldn’t find an off switch for the fermenters, so we unplugged a cord that connected them to a massive backup battery. We unplugged another cord that fed the machine with the clanking arms. In the silence that followed, the sounds from the cages filled the room, rustling, squealing.
I put my hands over my ears, pushing hysteria back inside, down to the bottom of my mind. Keep working, keep moving, think only of the next step to solve this problem.
I surveyed the fermenters. We needed to detach them from the ventilator. I didn’t know what would happen if we took the nozzles off the tops, whether they would spew pestis all over the room. I wasn’t convinced that the amount of doxycycline we were taking would protect us from a plague bath. Cady and I hunted in the drawers but finally went to the kitchenette in the equipment center for a box of foil.
I climbed onto the counter and carefully unhooked a hose from one of the fermenters. Vapor rose from the opening. I quickly wrapped it in foil and taped it tight.
I was breathing hard, my eyes fogging inside the protective mask. One down, eleven to go. One step at a time: Unhook the hose, cap the top with foil, tape it shut. Unhook, cap, tape. My hair was soaking, clinging to my scalp underneath the bonnet. When I glanced at Cady, her face was white, freckles standing out like orange stars.
After we’d wrapped the last fermenter, we carried them from the countertop to the other side of the room, where we stashed them next to the machine with the exterior arms.
I took wrenches and screwdrivers from the tool kit. Glanced at the monitor. Four a.m. The man in black was still sleeping, but someone would come to relieve him. Shifts change at seven usually. Three hours.
“You’ll have to get up here with me,” I told Cady. “That hood is heavy. When I get the screws undone, it’s going to fall on me unless you can help hold it up.”
We moved empty animal cages to the counter so that if the hood came down too fast, they would help break its descent.
The screws seemed almost welded in place. We sprayed with WD-40, we hammered on them, used the wrenches. It took a precious hour, but we finally lowered the heavy hood onto the bed of cages.
“Tang Soo,” Cady said softly.
I looked at her, worried, wondering if she was hallucinating, but she gave a tired smile.
“The karate school I went to as a child, that was what we cried when we finished a kata. I need to rest.”
We went back to the common room. Drank more soda, took another round of antibiotics, washed off in the shower, gave each other permission to sleep for fifteen minutes. I laid the map of America Held Hostage on the floor behind the console—the message of hate-filled fear only added to my own wire-taut nerves.
I fell deeply asleep as soon as I lay down. When my phone alarm jerked me back to life, my legs and arms felt too heavy to move. I looked over at Cady, sleeping soundly on the other couch. Let her rest, I told myself. One of us should have enough stamina for whatever heavy lifting lay ahead.
I pushed myself to my feet, ate another chunk of cheese, returned to the lab. Five-thirty. I removed the tape from the camera facing the rat cages. Its sweep didn’t reach the ventilation hood, and it might buy us some extra time: if the watchers could see the room, they wouldn’t worry that the other camera wasn’t recording.
I climbed back onto the empty cages while the rats mewed nearby. I was starting to feel sympathy with them, all of us locked up down here, underfed and definitely unloved. There was a bag of rat pellets on a table behind the cages. If the way up was clear, I’d feed them before waking Cady.
“It’s okay, boys and girls, we’ll figure this out. One step at a time, one step at a time.”
Maybe it’s a sign of delusions setting in when you’re crooning to rats. I hoisted my tired body onto the counter. Stacked cages directly under the ventilation shaft. Looked up and saw starlight through the scratched glass covering. Tried to stand. And found I was in an opening wide enough to take my head but not my shoulders.
I turned on my phone’s flashlight and held my arm up the shaft, hoping against hope that I’d butted into a minor obstruction. Wrong. The shaft had been designed to keep people and animals out of the silo. A rat could get up and down, maybe a badger, but not anything as big as me.
I wanted to lie on the counter, cry myself to sleep. Cry myself to death. Is this the
way you wish to go into that night? Mewling like a lost kitten while Roswell gloats over your plague-infested body? My cousin Boom-Boom used to chant Julius Caesar before he took to the ice: Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.
I slid off the counter. Third period, coz, a minute on the clock, down by two goals, that’s when you really start to fight. My pep talks weren’t helping. I was demoralized, unable to think.
I stopped at the monitor to check the time. Six-fifteen. The shift would change—the shift had changed. The man in black was sitting upright, another man in black shouting at him. It was a silent movie, but the second man pointed at the computer screen on the tabletop: they could see the lab, they knew that something was amiss. Roswell came into view, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. He started gesticulating as well. The room began filling, men in body armor, men carrying massive weapons.
My heart thudded so violently it shook my chest and arms. I looked around wildly. The rats.
“We’re buddies now, right? You’re hungry, maybe you’re sick, let’s get you food.”
I grabbed the bag of feed pellets and spilled it on the floor, made a trail that ended at the bottom of the ladder I’d been carried down. I could hear the men above me start to unscrew the hatch cover. I made my legs carry me, made myself run in a wobbly waddle back into the lab, opened the cage doors, and waddled back across the anteroom to the launch-control center.
I shut the door, slid a heavy lock into place, shook Cady awake. “They’re coming, a whole platoon of them! Get up, we need to go down this other ladder!”
I was screaming with fear. Cady shrank from me. It was gunfire outside our door that finally roused her into motion.
The door was heavy, but we could hear the men bellowing, could hear the shrieking of the rats, who were as terrified as Cady and I were. I hoped they were frightening the men in black.
We started down the ladder underneath the hatch in the far wall as the army outside began shooting out the lock on the launch-control room’s door. Fifteen rungs down, just like the first ladder. My phone battery was dying, but I still had my pocket flash. I shone it around: we were in a tunnel that ended in a doorway about a hundred yards ahead.
We could hear the sounds behind us—the army had made it through the door to the launch-control room and started down the ladder. Fear, adrenaline—something boosted me. I sprinted the last few yards.
The door was locked with an arm that had to be lowered in a quarter turn. Old, rusted. Cady and I had to pull in tandem to yank it down. We wrenched it open and slid through as a volley of bullets struck it. We pulled up the arm lock on the inside, turned around: we were inside the missile holding pen. level 3 was painted on the door in heavy black letters. Old warning signs, the precautions to take before launch, but nothing about the precautions to take against an invasion by insane U.S. patriots.
There was an elevator to one side, but it wasn’t working. We looked at each other, looked at the stairs.
“Tang Soo!” Cady fist-bumped me.
“Tang Soo,” I agreed.
Neither of us asked what we’d do at the top if we couldn’t get out. Die trying. My bravado of Monday night came back to mock me. Lotty would have some stern words for me if I died in this missile silo.
Level 2. We could hear guns blasting on the door into the missile chamber, but it would take them time to get through that mass of reinforced steel. We stopped briefly on the platform to catch our breath. Cady pulled a can of Sprite from a pocket and shared it with me.
“Tell me who my father is. If . . . if this is my last night on earth, I want to know.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “First, promise you’ll save your reactions until we’re safe. There’s no time or energy for histrionics. Agreed?”
She nodded, eyes wide.
“Start climbing.” I waited until she was two rungs up, followed.
“Jennifer Perec and her baby died in August 1983 in a disaster at the protest site. Magda Spirova—you know her name?—a Czech bioweapons expert who fled the Soviet bloc and came to work with Dr. Kiel? She had a baby with Dr. Kiel. Kiel and Spirova were reacting to the bioweapons test disaster. Spirova tucked the baby inside Jenny’s tent. When Lucinda Ferring found you, she thought you were Jenny’s baby. Doris gave you to your grandmother after Lucinda died.”
“I—” She swayed on the ladder above me.
“No histrionics!” I grabbed her ankles. “Climb!”
She shuddered, lurched sideways, but I’d moved up behind her, was leaning against her. “Climb,” I said in my fiercest voice.
She steadied herself and started up again. I followed, patting her legs after each rung: you’re not alone, keep going.
Level 1. As we crawled onto the platform, the door at Level 3 burst open. The men in black started up the ladder. We pulled on the lock to the Level 1 hatch but couldn’t budge it.
“We sit on the edge of the platform and kick them in the head as they come up,” I said. “Unless you have a better idea.”
The men in black fired up at us. The bullets sprayed the concrete platform, and we had to stand up, jump out of the way.
“We stand and kick.” Cady’s face was set in granite lines.
The fusillade echoed and reechoed in the vast chamber. The noise drowned any sound behind us, and Cady and I both screamed as the Level 1 door opened.
Peppy burst through, flung herself at me, and started licking my face.
58
Ci Sono
I clutched Peppy’s fur, but she couldn’t possibly be there: she was looking after Nell Albritten. I was dying. In the middle of the gun smoke and noise, I was being granted a vision of my dog. I held out my arms, sure that if Peppy were here, my mother would soon arrive.
“Gabriella! Gabriella, ci sono, ci sono.”
“Not Gabriella,” a man grunted. “Lou and me. You gals need to be out of here—now.”
Thick arms lifted me. A black man, mole on his temple, I knew him. “Ed?” I said. “Peppy?”
“Ed it is. Dog’s right here. Get the little gal, Lou, let’s hump.”
We were passing clumps of uniforms. Peppy whined and barked, staying so close to Ed that he stumbled over her. Someone snapped orders at Lou and Ed to stop—Cady and I had to answer questions—but the two men kept pushing ahead. My feet banged into the faces and backs of people in uniforms who were hustling past us.
We moved into fresh air. Helpless tears ran down my face. Air. I’d thought I would never see daylight, breathe fresh air again. Lou and Ed quick-marched to the road, to a convoy of squad cars. I saw their truck, pinned in the middle, with its slogan breathing new life into old metal.
“Maybe you can breathe new life into old detectives.” I could hear the manic edge in my voice as I started to laugh.
“Steady now, Warshawski,” Ed said. “You got this dog worried enough without you falling to pieces on her, you hear me?”
“Bernie?” I said. “Bernadine Fouchard?”
“Little spitfire? She’s safe. Deke Everard picked her up on K-10. She tried to break his nose before he persuaded her he was with the angels.”
I laughed, weakly, a laugh that hurt my ribs. Ed laid me on the backseat of the cab, Cady in the front seat, where she’d passed out as soon as Lou strapped her in.
Peppy jumped in next to me and kept licking my face and hands. Ed climbed into the truck bed while Lou started the engine. Someone ordered Ed and Lou to stop—a cop or FBI, or maybe someone from the army, because suddenly soldiers seemed to surround us.
Lou said, “You’ll have to shoot all of us, because these women aren’t going anywhere but straight to a doctor. You want to talk to them, that will be when the doc says you can. No, don’t go flashing that badge at me, because I’m not impressed.”
And then we were bumping across corn stubble, driving away from the convoy. I was asleep before we reached the main road.
59
Entertaining Visitor
s
Sleeping, waking, sleeping, a beeping near my left ear. I opened my eyes and saw a monitor, green lines on a charcoal screen. Seven a.m.
“No, it’s too late, the shift is changing.”
I choked out the words and tried to sit up. My legs were so heavy that shoving them over the edge of the bed exhausted me. By then I was surrounded by women wearing masks who were pushing me back into bed.
I was flailing in panic, lashing out.
“Victoria! Victoria, be calm. You’re safe. Lie back, I’m here.”
“Lotty? Lotty! How did they trap you? We have to leave now!”
“Liebchen, I’m your doctor, I’m keeping you safe. You’re in the Lawrence hospital. You’re in an isolation ward until we’re sure you’re free of plague. These nurses are taking good care of you. Lie down, you’ve pulled out your IV lines.”
My breathing slowed; I was looking at nurses in masks, not Roswell’s criminal army.
“Cady, is she okay, is she ill? I gave her hard news. Birth mother. Not Jenny Perec.”
Lotty sucked in a breath. “I see. She keeps crying, wanting to know if her grandmother is still her grandmother. What is the name? Gertrude Perec? I will seek her out.”
I was back in the cocoon of sleep before the IVs were back in my arms, but Lotty’s presence was a tonic. I started waking, sitting, drinking fluids, and by Saturday, when my blood work came back clean of any Y. pestis, I was allowed out to the visitors’ waiting area. Lotty was keeping the law at bay for another day, but she thought I should talk to Nell Albritten.
The old woman was in an armchair, the Reverend Bayard Clements next to her, Lou and Ed standing nearby.
“Turnabout is fair play, young woman,” Albritten said when I thanked her for making the trip. “You saw to me, my turn to see to you.”
Fallout Page 40