by Bryan James
“Of course,” said Kopland, distracted. “Any of the exam rooms. But… don’t use sixteen. We wrapped it up, but… we had nowhere to put Matt, so it’s a little pungent.”
Right. No on sixteen.
Rotting body.
Check.
FORTY-ONE
“ “ “ “
TableOfContentsTableOfContents
Diana and Kopland were still working nearly six hours later, after we had gotten Rhodes moved, cleaned up and re-sedated. Kate had done her best to address the wound, but he would need surgery before being out of the woods. There was no sign of infection yet, so that was a plus. But he was not going to be in fighting shape any time soon.
Our contact with SeaTac was unsettling. We established a link long enough to report our position, and that we had made contact. After that, though, we couldn’t make out any of their transmissions. It seemed frantic on the other side of the line, and the most we could determine was that the herds were close, or had already started to arrive. Remembering the massive numbers on the move in the city, we knew it was a concern. And that we were working against the clock.
Kate, Ky and I took turns in the facility’s small shower, trying as best we could to wash filthy clothes in the sink. The suits we had been provided weren’t necessarily washer and dryer friendly, even if they had had one on site. And they were Gore-Tex, which facilitated an easy wipe off, but a harder deep clean. So in the end, we claimed a spare room, laid down and stole some sleep.
Nearly twelve hours after we arrived, I awoke to the smell of coffee—a luxury I had nearly forgotten in the recent days.
Ky was still sleeping in the small bed next to Kate’s cot, and I unwound myself from the stiff chair at the edge of the room, making my way to the hallway, where Romeo was staring suspiciously at Oppenheimer the cat, who sat unconcerned on the top of a row of cabinets inside the only room with lights on. I blinked groggily at a digital clock on the counter, which read 18:54.
Inside the small room, which had a breakfast table and delicate wooden chairs inside a kitchenette, I followed the smell and sound of the brewing coffee, nodding once to Diana, who was absently stirring her own cup.
“Anything interesting?” I asked, picking up a cup and inhaling deeply before touching the warm porcelain to my lips. I never thought I would savor the experience of coffee that came in a five-gallon drum from a big-box grocery store.
Guess there were a lot of things I didn’t much expect, though.
Walking dead. Apocalypse. Murder rap. Looney bin.
And Twitter.
Didn’t see that coming. What the hell is that about? Who has so much to say in such little space? If you can fit a summary of your most poignant thoughts in that few characters, you needed to work on your ‘thought’ repertoire.
She stared for a moment as I zoned out. Then she sipped her coffee pensively, nodding once toward the counter, where the digital clock sat in front of a box of crackers.
“Waiting for it to bake,” she said slowly.
“Bake?”
My mind conjured images of a blood pie or a vampire making bread.
“We put the plasma through a variety of tests, and we have to wait for the results. Takes time. Dr. Kopland will give you more detail when he wakes up.” She pointed behind her to the fridge. “Food in there, if you’re interested.”
I didn’t wait, making a beeline for the food as my stomach roared in delight.
“How’d you guys end up with so much food in here,” I asked, pulling the door open to cartons of UHT milk, assorted cheeses and dried meats, and some other random, easily stored items.
“We were stocked up a year ago by some guys from the government. I wasn’t here, but the doc told me about it. Boxes of those freeze-dried meals, bottled water, you name it—little storeroom down the hall is full of the stuff. We had taken to raiding it at random in the middle of the night for snacks while we were working, before all this stuff. All the special radio equipment and stuff too. We have a generator that’s been humming’ along nicely since all the shit hit the fan, so that’s been nice. Otherwise, we’d be in total darkness down here. Plus, not sure if the locks on the internal doors—like the one between us and the hospital—would stay closed if the jenny went down. Matt told me it was a different circuit or some crap like that.”
The supplies must have been a precaution. I wonder if they knew, at the time, about the possibilities. It seemed impossible to imagine. Obviously, they didn’t know about what Kopland’s insane father would unleash on the world, but there were other madmen out there—or there used to be. All with the desire and the power to release death on the world in the form of a disease. Stations like these must have been deemed vital to national security.
In a world where people like the senior Kopland could get away with what he did, under the noses of our supposedly omniscient government, foresight like that involved with the simple act of stocking a small lab with food and communication equipment as a precaution seemed otherworldly.
The crackers and cheese tasted amazing. Even as I squirted another layer of cheese—well, more accurately, “cheese-like substance”—onto my dry, overly salted cracker, I realized that objectively, it was horrible. But right now, it tasted like filet mignon covered in beer-battered bacon.
“Have you two tried to get out since the lock-down? Tried to figure a way out of here?”
She shook her head, and leaned back in her chair, eyes rolling slightly and her hand cupped the mug, enjoying the warmth. Her glasses slipped down her nose several millimeters as she looked past me.
“That would be… unwise.” Doctor Kopland walked past me, pulling a mug from the counter and down to the coffee pot. “I’m surprised you didn’t see them on your way in. There are thousands of them in the hospital, even more outside. To release our doors in order to exit—even if we had such ability at hand—well, it would be suicide. They would eventually find a way in, and we could not outrun them all.” He poured a rather obscene amount of sugar into his mug and stirred the high-octane mixture with a butter knife before sipping it.
“No, we had work to do. Even now, we’re hoping that my research applied to the problem will be beneficial. I’m fairly confident we can build from the vaccine, and solve this problem, now that we have your samples. It’s a… difficult… problem, but not insurmountable. My father…” His apparently habitual pause as he considered words was longer here, more studied. “My father had a particular type of intelligence. A particular type of skill, to be sure, but unsophisticated.”
“Why do you say that?”
He rounded the table, and leaned against the counter next to me, so that we were both staring away from the doorway and toward the far wall. A small picture on the wall of a pastoral scene in Ireland or Scotland was a tiny window into a world that used to exist.
“This… plague. It is virulent and sophisticated in its own right. It’s fast, but not too fast. It’s incredibly transmissible. It’s almost perfectly designed to spread. It even has a radioactive quality—one that, I know you have already determined—allows its victims and hosts to sense one another, but which also plays into making the vaccine operate. These are marks of a complex virus.” He took a sip, pulling a lip back to savor the taste, his beard retaining small droplets of coffee. “But not perfect. Far from perfect.”
I guffawed loudly.
“Doesn’t have to be perfect, though, does it, Doc? It’s doing okay out there, believe me.”
He nodded seriously.
“Yes, it is. But a virus is more lethal when it’s simple: single-minded and unstoppable. The focus in designing this one was on making the element that they located in Israel into a weapon. To making the symptoms—and the resulting state—transmissible an
d infectious. To allowing this element to be exploited. And they succeeded. They took this element, and made it into a plague that spreads, without the need for more of the original element, which was particularly tricky.”
“But…?” I drew it out, halfway joking.
“It can be beaten. Or, rather, it has been beaten. By your wonderful wife—I’m so sorry, by the way. She designed a vaccine that used the element’s properties against it—triggered a reversal of sorts. Instead of allowing the element to destroy the cells of the body with the unique interplay of radiation and biology, as it was apt to do left on its own, she designed a switch. A very simple pathological switch—one that turned those properties of the element, and of the infection itself, into an advantage.”
I was out of crackers.
I looked at the tube of cheese and then at the doctor out of the corner of my eye.
No judgment here.
I squeezed the cheese directly into my mouth.
“Gross,” said Diana under her breath as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger.
“Wha bantaj?” I asked, mouth full. Swallowing quickly, I clarified. “What advantage, this strength and speed and sense augmentation? Yeah, it’s nice, but it’s going to kill us, remember?”
“Well, since you’re here now, I highly doubt it, but even so. Let’s assume you die in the next five minutes—”
“Thanks.”
“—you would have died several weeks ago, if not earlier, right?”
“I suppose so. But seems like robbing Peter to pay Paul and all that.”
He shrugged.
“In my world, measurements matter. By any measurement, you are alive now because of that vaccine… no matter your current predicament. If not for your wife’s work… well, we’d have much less to be thankful for right now. If I’m correct, and I anticipate that I am, the effects that you’re experiencing are nothing more than an unchecked acceleration.”
“In other words…” I asked, hoping for the short version.
“In other words,” he said, picking up the large sugar container and tipping it over the coffee mug in my hand. White granules started to drop into the lukewarm brown liquid. “Your wife designed a vaccine that countered the infection by strengthening the body—by using the element’s unique capabilities to strengthen rather than kill.”
The grains continued to tumble into the mug. The bottom of the cup was full, and the sugar had overtaken the coffee. The cup was half full.
“The body is currently on a mission—it’s producing strength and energy and pouring it into your body, like this sugar into your mug.”
The sugar poured out faster, threatening to overtop the rim.
“If it doesn’t stop, you’ll run out of capacity. You’ll run out of physical ability to receive this strength. So your body needs a simple signal sent to it.”
The sugar was millimeters from pouring over the sides of the cup.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Simple,” he said, sliding his finger over the small hole at the top of the container.
“Stop.”
The cup was full to the rim, but not a grain had fallen over.
“We just need to tell your body to stop. It needs one more switch. It needs to be told when enough is enough.”
I stared at the sugar in the cup, idly touching the top with my finger.
“Is that coffee?” Kate’s voice was soft and tired, and she smiled weakly as she walked into the room. Kopland smiled tightly at me and grabbed my arm once as he squeezed out of the tight space into the hallway.
“That’s what they tell me,” he said, walking toward one of the offices.
FORTY-TWO
“You given any thought to our exit strategy?”
She was sitting in the uncomfortable chair in which I had spent the night, long legs draped over the edge, hands enjoying the warmth of the mug of half-consumed coffee. There was a definite chill in the air in this facility, likely owing to a climate control system that was being operated on generator power, and a lack of windows.
“Some,” I said doubtfully. “But I need more information on the door controls. Obviously, in order to get to the roof for a helo evac, we will need to leave the building. Can’t go out the way we came in, since the lockdown affects that door too. According to Diana, we can go through an access door out of this facility into the main hospital, since that’s not considered external and isn’t locked down…”
“That’s something…”
“… where thousands of those things are waiting…” I continued.
“Oh, right. Forgot that part.” Her voice was flat, humorless.
“… and can try to get to the security control room, via the ventilation system. That’s our only shot of unlocking the doors and getting out, whether we go to the roof, or try for another location. Only problem with that is that we have to go into the main hospital for about fifty feet, since the ventilation system here doesn’t cross over into the main building, for obvious reasons.”
“So either way, we have to breach that door?”
I nodded, taking a sip of my now-cold coffee and grimacing.
Maria used to drink the stuff stone cold. I couldn’t stand watching it. Coffee had to be hot. Otherwise, it was just water with bits of bean in it.
Outside the door, Ky skidded to a halt, Romeo fast behind her.
“Guys. Come on. Doc says he’s got something for you.” Her eyes were wide and her smile huge.
In the largest of the laboratories, next to a softly glowing computer, Kopland sat reclined in a chair that seemed vintage compared to the modern decor of the rest of the space. A carpeted pad and polished wood armrests were a stark departure from the sleek, black ergo chairs and white table tops. He was holding a single vial in his hands, eyes staring at the thick liquid as it passed slowly back and forth as he rocked the vial on its side.
“Doc?” I said, interrupting. He looked up and smiled, and Diana slipped into the room after us with two syringes and a small wad of gauze.
I chuckled at the latter. I guess she hadn’t learned yet.
“We may have it, here,” he said, eyes bright. “To use an electrical analogy, I have installed a ‘switch’—it will tell your bodies that enough is enough. Essentially, it will bring you back to a stasis. In theory, you will retain your resistance to the bites, your immunity, and probably your strength.” His voice toned down slightly as his smile faded.
“I am afraid, however, that there is a high likelihood that the other… side effects… may be permanent. I can tell your body to stop killing itself by over-producing adrenaline and over-stressing the heart—these are simple instructions. It will affect how much extra strength you have, but your healing capabilities and your above-average strength should abide. However…”
“Shit, doc. Are you telling me we’re going to permanently be fucking vampires?”
He looked shocked at the comparison, then thoughtful.
“Well, you won’t need blood to survive, but you may permanently retain an aversion to direct sunlight. It has to do with the levels of radiation in the element—there’s no way to remove that component while retaining bite immunity.” He paused, corners of his mouth dipping in a disappointed way.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at Kate, and we simply shared a long gaze.
“So… the thousands of troops that have already received this, and the thousands more that will… the entire human military will only be able to fight in the night time?”
He nodded.
“Well, yes. But they won’t turn. And they will have augmented abilities. This is what we can do. We can keep the vaccine from killing its subjects. This is what I can offer.”
He stood up, gesturing toward the chair that looked so out of place.
“This was my father’s. He studied in it all through college and graduate school and into his first few jobs. He swore by it as a lucky seat. A charmed device. He gave it to me as encourage
ment. He never thought I’d amount to much, and he never thought I’d be as renowned as him.” He paused, smiling sadly. “He’s right on that count, I suppose, given everything that has happened.”
His beard twitched as he rubbed his face.
“Every day I sat in that ugly piece of crap, thinking about him. Hating him. Wishing that someday, I could prove myself to him. Believe me, Mr. McKnight, I tried. I suppose he can’t be beat.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper.
“But I tried. God help me I tried.”
His shoulder was tense in my grip as I reached out, my voice no longer containing the irritated edge as I realized I was being unfair.
“You’ve given us a chance. Maria gave us an infinitesimal chance to survive, and you just tipped the scale. Darkness, light. It doesn’t matter. We’ll fight them until we can’t anymore. I promise you that.”
As if to emphasize my words, the lab was suddenly shrouded in darkness as a loud klaxon-like beep accompanied a switch to emergency lights and we were all shrouded in red.
“Uh, I didn’t mean darkness now,” I muttered, looking around.
To my left, Kate held up a hand.
“Did you hear that? Sounded like a door opening.”
“Doc?”
“I’m not sure… Diana…?”
“Gotta be the jenny, Doc. We’ve been living on borrowed time for a week now.”
“Ky, go check on Rhodes. Kate, let’s check it out. Doc, where’s the door to the hospital?”
“I’ll show you. Diana, prepare the injections,” he said, handing her the vial. As an afterthought, he explained as we walked out of the room. “I’ve also prepared an integrated solution with the vaccine and my additions. It can be administered to anyone who wishes it. I have also begun the process of aerosolizing it.”
We passed the room where Ky nodded once as she sat down next to Rhodes, who was moving slightly in his bed, the drugs finally wearing off.
“Meaning that we can administer it faster?”
“Meaning,” he said, reaching the end of the hallway and pushing open another thick door, taking us into another, slightly darker and very short hallway that turned sharply to the right. “That you could spray it from an airplane or a helicopter, like you were dusting a crop, and anyone that inhaled it would benefit from the effects.”