She checked her notes. Twenty-eight positive and nine negative, a roughly three-to-one ratio. It was a decent proportion, perhaps even a bit high on the negative side, although she realized it was possible that those numbers could be artificially inflated with the inclusion of non-study participants, migrants who happened to have found their way to the encampment under the bridge but weren't part of the study group. There was no way to know how many of those people had been inadvertently caught up in the sweep.
She found herself wishing she knew more details about the study. What sort of analysis did the company have planned for them? Blood work and x-rays seemed obvious. Maybe even a cat scan or two. And without the oversight of the usual regulatory agencies, who would determine whether the study was a success? How would it be measured? Eradication of disease? Survivability? What about longevity?
And that didn't even address the molecular and cellular questions. Would they look at enzyme production? What about genetic analysis? Telomere shortening? Did the nanites even affect those things, or were they strictly extracellular? It seemed scary to think they might alter the expression of genes and proteins.
Finally, there were the nanites themselves. How would they be evaluated? Would someone look at how efficiently and accurately their biocodes were employed? Was that even possible? Would the tiny machines be extracted, dissected, disassembled? Could they be sorted? Is that what she had found in those bottles in the lab in China? Or had those been precoded for injection?
Now she wished she'd asked Kurtz more questions when she had had the chance.
An hour and a quarter now, and still no Norstrom. She dropped the pen onto the notepad and pushed herself away from the scope.
"Monsieur Cheong?" she called out through the lab doorway into the darkened part of the medical center. "Allô?"
She didn't expect him to answer, as he had gone off to coordinate setting up the temporary quarters inside the gymnasium with Emily across the hall, so the silence which greeted her was not unexpected. And yet . . . .
She slipped out of the lab and into the treatment area. The motion sensors responded to her movements, illuminating the room ahead a half second after she stepped into it. Same for the triage and waiting areas. That small delay, as if the shadows were reluctant to leave, caused her to hesitate uncertainly in the doorway each time. She knew it was silly, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. And she didn't like the way the lights remained on behind her so that she stayed backlit in each of the doorways for a moment, an easy target for anything waiting for her in the darkness.
Nothing is there, Angel. Do not be so silly.
Cheong had propped the door to the hallway open with a stool to allow Norstrom to come and go as he collected the samples. She could see it at the other end of the room. The darkness from the unlit corridor meant no one had been there for at least the past five or ten minutes. And she heard no sounds to suggest anyone was anywhere out there now.
"Allô?"
Behind her, the ceiling lights blinked out in the cytology lab with an audible click, leaving only the meager glow from the lamp on the scope and its scattered reflections from a dozen different shiny surfaces. A moment later, the treatment rooms went dark. She stood alone in the puddle of light in the triage area. The darkness around her felt like an unfathomable gulf squeezing her.
Moving swiftly, she made her way to the door and stopped just shy of entering the hall. Across the corridor, she could make out the observation windows overlooking the gymnasium. The lights inside were also dark.
"Allô? Norstrom? Monsieur Cheong?"
There was still no answer. And still no sounds.
She was starting to feel agitated now, wondering where the hell everyone had gone.
The hallway light snapped on without her moving, startling an involuntary yelp out of her as she stepped back. The sound of muffled voices drifted to her ears. She stepped through the door and into the hall.
A couple of the refugees had emerged through the propped doorway to the theater, thirty or forty meters away. Standing there, they seemed as unsure of themselves as she was, but seeing them brought her a measure of relief. For a moment, she had had the irrational fear that she was entirely alone in the bunker and that it was locked down and she'd be stuck inside of it for the next five years.
Once more she felt silly for entertaining such a ridiculous thought, and she chastised herself for being so on edge when there was absolutely no reason to be. Nothing would hurt her down here; the bunker was built to protect, not harm.
"It is okay," she called out to them, and hurried over. "Please, go back inside. I will be right there."
They hesitated, but then slipped into the theater ahead of her.
"We are waiting for many long minutes," a young man told her. "No one tells us what we do now, so we wait."
Many of the refugees lay snoozing on the floor or were draped over the thickly cushioned chairs. The rest appeared too distressed to sleep.
"Where are the guards?" she asked, looking around. Neither they, nor Emily, nor Cheong, were present. Nor was Norstrom. It was his absence which troubled her the most. He was supposed to be here collecting samples. Where could he have gone?
"When was the last time you saw anyone?"
"Only maybe twenty minutes," the boy replied. "I don't know. Could be more. Woman come in to tell men to come with her and leave us alone. She say we are to stay here few minutes."
"What about the man who was collecting blood samples?"
"He went, too. He take blood in there, then go with woman." He pointed to the projection booth.
Angel pushed open the door and peered inside. The room had a manual light switch, and she flicked it on. On the counter was Norstrom's bag, the rack with several filled tubes glistening darkly red beside it.
If he had finished collecting the samples, why hadn't he brought them to her in the lab? And where could he and the other people have gone? Why would they just leave the migrants alone without telling her?
"Did they take the elevator?"
The boy turned and spoke to his companion in Arabic, and the second boy nodded and replied. "Yes, he think they did. He hear elevator come before."
"Okay, just . . . . Just wait a minute. Stay here."
"But we are tired. Why we cannot use phone? We try this phone on wall, but it not working. I wish to see my mother or father. I have not seen them in many days. Will we all get together soon?"
She held up a hand to cut him off. She didn't have time to tell him he would never see his parents again. And she didn't want to be the one to tell him they were almost certainly dead, that there was a seventy-five percent chance they had killed others before they themselves were killed.
She stepped back out to the hallway and looked in both directions. Both ends were still dark. She couldn't tell if the elevator doors were open. She supposed not, as there was no light spilling out from the car. She hurried down to it, hoping the numbers over the door would tell her on which level the car was on. When she arrived, she saw that P1 was lit. Someone had taken the lift to the surface. But who? And why?
She pushed the call button, then slapped the doors in frustration when nothing happened.
"Norstrom?" she called out. "Cheong?"
The faint sound of a chime reached her, but although it seemed to be coming from down the hall, she placed her ear against the elevator doors. The chime repeated, a short jangly ring, and this time she was certain it wasn't inside the shaft. It was coming from back down the hall.
It sounded a third time, slightly louder than before, and the boy emerged from the theater. He held up his hand, and the chime came again, louder still. "It is phone," he called down to her. "You answer it?"
Angel froze. "Don't touch it!" she shouted. "Don't—!"
But the phone slipped from the boy's grip and landed with a thump onto the carpet. He didn't seem to notice. His body had gone rigid. It shook once, then stilled.
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END OF BOOK 2
BOOK 3 AVAILABLE SOON
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THE FLENSE: ICELAND
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LOCKDOWN
(a standalone story in the world of THE FLENSE)
SUMMARY
When her elementary school goes into lockdown, a third grade teacher shifts into survival mode. But she'll soon discover that the children under her charge pose as much risk as any threat waiting outside her door.
EXCERPT
Allison Mullins was convinced that the three-quarter-inch gap beneath her classroom door would be the death of her.
That's what she always said, anyway, complaining to anyone who would listen: "The rain blows in and makes the linoleum slippery. You don't know how many times I've almost fallen because of it."
Once, a few weeks after the term started, she told her fiancé that as soon as the weather turned cold, rats would start coming in. James laughed and kissed her on the lips in that way that turned her bones to jelly. He told her he doubted anything so large could squeeze through such a small space.
"Spiders or cockroaches, maybe," he said. "But not rats."
She knew he was only teasing, but the offhand remark stuck with her. Images of vermin would pop into her mind at the most inopportune moments, like the time they were making love in their tiny one-room apartment.
She told the janitor about the gap, but he punted the issue up to Maintenance, who said the work order had to come down from the principal. The principal promised to install some foam weather stripping the first chance he got.
But each morning she'd come in to find that nothing had been done about it. She'd have to sweep out the dead leaves that had blown in overnight. She even took to tweezing apart the little aggregated piles with her fingers, searching for evidence of vermin—mouse droppings and such.
Afterward, she'd scrub her hands raw in the scalding water from the sink in her en suite bathroom, even though she'd worn disposable latex gloves. She worried about the diseases that might be lurking in the filth.
There hadn't been any droppings. Not yet, anyway, but she knew it was inevitable. The rats would come in sooner or later, drawn by the warmth and the food her third graders left in their desks or dropped onto the floor. And with them would come the germs. She adored the kids and knew they didn't mean to be messy. It was just the way they were. In fact, she often told her colleagues at staff meetings that she had the best classroom in the whole school.
But then she'd remember the door and say, "If it weren't for that damn gap."
And the other teachers would make sympathetic noises and pat her on the shoulder, as if to show their solidarity.
But none of their doors had gaps.
[END OF EXCERPT]
Get LOCKDOWN as a standalone story
or in
The Doomsday Chronicles anthology
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Tanpepper Tidings Newsletter
THANK YOU FOR READING
THE FLENSE: ICELAND
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If you like post-apocalyptic and dystopian worlds,
check out S.W. Tanpepper's epic cyberpunk series GAMELAND:
http://www.tanpepperwrites.com/gameland
Books 1 and 2 are free!
Golgotha (prequel)
The Series:
Episode One: Deep Into the Game
Episode Two: Failsafe
Episode Three: Deadman’s Switch
Episode Four: Sunder the Hollow Ones
Episode Five: Prometheus Wept
Episode Six: Kingdom of Players
Episode Seven: Tag, You’re Dead
Episode Eight: Jacker’s Code
Velveteen
Infected: Hacked Files from the GAMELAND Archive
Signs of Life (Jessie’s Game Book One)
A Dark and Sure Descent
Dead Reckoning (Jessie’s Game Book Two)
AVAILABLE IN DIGITAL AND PRINT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the devoted staff of Brinestone Press, who helped put this book together and get it out to you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saul Tanpepper is a writer of speculative fiction for teens and adults. A former molecular geneticist originally from Upstate New York, he now calls Northern California home.
If you enjoyed Book 2 of THE FLENSE series, then you'll want to check out the companion series, BUNKER 12, which follows the apocalyptic events detailed in THE FLENSE. You may also enjoy the GAMELAND series, an epic cyberpunk adventure through a post-apocalyptic world in which zombies are used as avatars in a twisted live action game for the amusement of the rich and privileged. Sign up for the Tanpepper Tidings for a free starter library. Find out more about Saul and his titles:
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The Flense: Iceland
by Saul Tanpepper
Copyright © 2016 by Saul Tanpepper
All rights reserved.
May 31, 2016 by Brinestone Press, San Martin, CA 95046
Cover credit K.J. Howe © 2016
Photo licensed from Depositphoto.com
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LICENSE NOTES
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
http://www.brinestonepress.com
Tanpepper, Saul (2016-05-30). The Flense: Iceland
Brinestone Press Digital Edition (rv160831)
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Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2) Page 32