All this because a tiny little biological machine simply wants to live.
If the virus could think and speak, it would say it has a right to try to multiply, to fight for dominance, to survive. Survival, in fact, is the virus’ sole purpose. It is designed to survive. That is what makes it so strong. It was virtually the first form of life on the planet, and it will be the last.
But it is not better than us, she thinks. Stronger, maybe. But not better.
Can a virus make its human puppets paint a sunset, for example, that reflects the soul of the real thing? Possessing mind but not thought, does it understand the concept of science, progress, the betterment of the species? Has it ever looked up with its borrowed eyes at the stars and wonder if there are other planets that can support life, perhaps life it can talk to? Can it understand charity or love or empathy or mercy? Has a Mad Dog, roaming the streets feverishly searching for a new host, ever felt anything in its extremely short life span beyond a toxic level of pain and rage?
They do not deserve to take it all from us. They are just machines. Living software. They will kill everyone and destroy everything, only to die off themselves and disappear as fast as they came, leaving despair and ruin behind. And this security equipment and all the other human machines will simply lie here rotting for years under layers of dust, perhaps to be picked up generations later by uncomprehending descendants.
It is unfair—
A sudden burst of anger gives her just enough strength to move her hand.
With great effort, she reaches across the carpet. Her body follows, as slow as a snail, but as determined. Fear weighs down on her with its own special gravity, and she wonders if she will make it. But soon she is standing, looking into the security screens, where she sees Sandy Cohen lying broken on the floor outside.
Dead.
We are just meat to them, she thinks. They consume us and throw away the wrapper.
Even the air feels heavy in her lungs.
If you do not want to die here, get busy doing something else, she tells herself.
Her eyes flicker to a pack of cigarettes on the desk. Jackson was a smoker. Petrova quit four years ago, before she got pregnant with Alexander. Has not touched one since.
Just one, she decides. To help me think.
Petrova ignites the tip of the cigarette and inhales deeply, feeling guilty about it in part, strangely, because she is doing it in a public place. In more ways than one, ingrained habits die hard. She coughs. She inhales again and does not cough. Like riding a bike. Within moments, the head rush assails her brain.
So much for quitting, she thinks. It was agony to quit, and she is throwing it all away for three quarters of a pack of Marlboro Lights. And not even menthol, which she prefers. On the other hand, between the epidemic and the Mad Dogs, she doubts she is going to see an abundance of cigarettes anywhere anytime soon. Perhaps forever.
She suddenly realizes that she does not have much time. The power might go out again, and if it stays off, she will have no way to survive.
She begins to take stock of her surroundings. Most of the desk drawers are stuffed with paper records, logs, office supplies and old manuals. The bottom desk drawer contains a half-full quart bottle of whiskey, an almost full carton of cigarettes, a condom, a heavily dog-eared copy of Juggs, a package of salted peanuts, and a clipboard holding some sort of training schedule. She removes the peanuts and devours them greedily.
Lovely, she thinks. The only things I have lots of are cigarettes and pornography.
One of the storage bins holds flashlights, which she removes, tests and sets aside.
But no guns or other weapons. Petrova knows that the security staff carries at least a billy club and a TASER, but Jackson either has these items on him, lost them during the fight with Baird, or discarded them afterwards. That just leaves her golf club, next to which she places a small steel fire extinguisher and a box cutter tool.
Petrova finds the bathroom adjacent to this main room and uses it, smoking a second cigarette on the toilet with the door open and the light off. For a few moments, the smoking dampens her hunger.
She snaps her fingers, stands up and flushes. Pausing at the sink, trying not to look at herself in the mirror, she hurriedly washes her face and hands, and dries them with paper towels. Then she goes back to the operator station.
The security system, she realized, must include a way to prevent the migration of airborne microbes and toxins in the event of an emergency.
After several minutes, Petrova shuts off the HVAC system with a primitive cry of triumph. Instantly, the air-conditioning stops breathing ice over her skin. Soon, the air will get stale, but at least she won’t be freezing anymore.
This small act of control gives her a sense of optimism and fuels her courage.
“I am very sorry, Sandy,” she says to the screen, then flips the image.
To get out of here, she must either escape or be rescued.
Don’t look behind you
Marsha Fuentes lies twitching and wincing on the floor in one of the aisles in the auditorium. Lucas is in the elevator lobby, blinking and sniffing the air. Saunders is in Laboratory West, pacing back and forth. Stringer Jackson is still standing at the mirror, rocking back and forth, his ruined eye weeping mucus. Drool dribbles from his lips.
He has turned.
Down in the lobby, the beautiful blonde appears to be arguing with some of the men in her mob. She holds a pistol in her hand, which she taps against her leg as she talks. The people down there have figured out that when the Institute went into lockdown, not only was the lab sealed, so was the entire building. They are upset about it.
Behind the woman, Petrova can see a group of people lying on the floor in the corner. Lyssa victims. Some of the mob are sick and getting sicker. But none of them appear to be going Mad Dog. At least, not yet. She reminds herself that with standard airborne Lyssa, the odds are very low.
The woman is now waving the pistol over her head and pointing at the sick people. The men walk away sheepishly.
Reluctantly, Petrova tears her eyes from the screen. If she is going to be rescued, she has to act fast. She gathers up the fire extinguisher, which she intends to use as a missile, and her golf club. The box cutter she puts in her pocket as a weapon of last resort. She takes a deep breath in front of the door, hesitating.
It is either this, or get back under the desk.
She takes off her shoes to make less noise while she walks, opens the door and gingerly steps outside.
The hallway is empty, except for the bodies, and dead silent. She hurries past Sandy Cohen, who lies like a marionette with her strings cut, her limbs at odd angles and her grinning head facing the wrong way. Further down, she scurries past Baird’s body, lying on its side like a downed bull. Footsteps echo down distant hallways.
Turning the corner, she creeps up to the bathroom where Sims still lies on the floor, his stiff body propping open the door. Stringer Jackson is inside.
Now for the hard part.
She darts by the open door, willing herself not to be noticed.
Immediately, Jackson begins snarling.
“Oh damn,” she says, breaking into a run.
Behind her, the door is flung open, slamming against the wall with a loud bang, and Jackson spills out of the bathroom snorting and growling, stumbling over Sims’ body.
Petrova looks over her shoulder, slowing down, and sees Jackson recover and begin loping towards her, his eye leaking yellowish-green sludge, bellowing a nasal ka ka ka sound through slavering jaws.
As a scientist, she knows all sorts of facts about the human body. For example, she knows that human jaws, clamping down to bite, can exert more than four thousand pounds per square inch.
Moments later, she comes to a sliding halt in front of her office. Slipping in, she slams the door, locks it and puts her weight against it, praying for it to hold.
But Jackson does not try to break the door down. Instead, he begins gro
wling and pacing. She can hear him sniff at the air, sensing that she is there. She is trapped again, and this time, she has no access to the security system.
Petrova puts down the golf club and fire extinguisher and sits at her desk. The act is so familiar to her that for a moment, she feels like everything is back to normal. Her PC’s screensaver displays a screen-sized image of her, Christopher and Alexander looking up at the camera, grinning. Christopher took the photo himself, holding the camera at arm’s length over their heads. Alexander, held in Petrova’s arms, is reaching up towards the lens. The photo was snapped with a digital camera near the end of a perfect day in Central Park. The image holds her, transfixed, for several moments.
Jackson shoulders the door during his pacing, startling her.
Time to get to work. She picks up the phone, which blares a loud rat-tat-tat signal. Same with the handset to her fax. A wave of sweat breaks out on her forehead and armpits. Her first dead end.
She opens her hard drive and tests her connection to the email server, which appears to be working, giving her a connection to the outside world.
Smiling now, she opens the secure FTP site the CDC set up for them to share their work. It is also operational. She grabs everything she can find related to her discoveries, doing a broad data sweep, and dumps it all onto the server.
While it is uploading, she writes an email to her contacts at the CDC and USAMRIID, cc’ing as many people in the virology community that she can think of, summarizing her findings and stating that she has a pure sample of the Mad Dog strain. She tells them that she and her colleagues are close to producing a formula for a vaccine but a mob has entered the building’s lobby, locking them in, and they require rescue. Then she clicks send.
It is a simple plan, but she believes it will work. By now, the world outside must know that the Mad Dog strain is the real threat. The Centers for Disease Control will want a pure sample. She has a sample, as long as the power does not fail for good and spoil it. In particular, they will want a vaccine, which is why she lied and said they were close to producing one.
So now all she has to do is wait for the government to come and rescue her. A simple plan.
Unless her contacts are all dead.
Unless there is no CDC or USAMRIID anymore.
Unless somebody else has already done the research she is offering.
Her stomach growls. Petrova opens a drawer in her desk and pulls out her purse. Rooting around inside, she produces a box of orange-flavored Tic Tacs, pours what is left into her palm, and rapidly devours them. She does the same with a pack of gum, gnawing the flavor out of it and then swallowing it whole.
There are no emails from Christopher in her in-box.
She tries the Guardian website, but there are no stories. The website is up and running, but no stories have been posted since yesterday. What could this mean?
Other news sites carry stories of riots, some with video showing Mad Dogs chasing down screaming people, dragging them to the ground and mauling them. The stories are few in number and poorly written. Other sites, such as YouTube, have either crashed or been shut down. The social networking sites are flooded with frantic pleas for help.
She cannot give up hope that her family is alive, but after several minutes, she stops her search for hard news as she is getting nowhere and only wasting time at this point. She wants to return to the Security Command Center as soon as possible, as that is where she left the flashlights. She can live without food, even water, for days, but the idea of being trapped here without light is horrifying.
If things are as bad outside as she thinks they are, the power will eventually go out.
She just has to somehow incapacitate or get past Jackson. And, if it is not too much trouble, stop by the employee lounge long enough to pick up some food out of the machine that Hardy broke open, so she does not starve to death.
She listens for a moment. Jackson has stopped pacing. The corridor is quiet.
Petrova slowly rises from her chair and tip-toes to the door. Still nothing. She gets down on the floor and tries to look under the door. Slowly rising to her feet, she gingerly places her ear against the wood to listen.
From inches away, she can hear a sudden loud, guttural snarling.
“Oh,” she whispers, backing away.
She wishes that she had planned further than sending email to CDC and USAMRIID.
But she has an idea.
You are stronger than us, she thinks, but we are smarter than you.
Going back to her computer, she brings up a letter and sets it to print a hundred copies. Within moments, the printer begins churning out pieces of paper.
For several moments, she stares at this mundane routine with something like longing, then tip-toes back to the door, holding the fire extinguisher and golf club. Putting the club down, almost without thinking, she abruptly jerks open the door and steps aside.
Jackson roars into the room, races to the desk and knocks the printer onto the floor, where it lands with a loud crash.
Petrova stands there stupidly for several moments, unable to believe her plan worked. She jumps outside and slams the door before Jackson throws himself at it, pounding and clawing and kicking and yelping in a mindless fury.
She backs away from the door, panting.
Dr. Lucas is standing almost next to her, blinking without his glasses, sniffing the air.
He begins to growl.
Petrova left the golf club inside the office. She aims the fire extinguisher and sprays him with a jet of white foam pressurized with nitrogen, hoping to blind him.
The scientist coughs and sputters for a moment, pawing at his stinging eyes and yelping, then goes berserk, waving his arms wildly around his head and biting at his hands and forearms, flinging foam in all directions. Petrova can only watch in amazement as his teeth rip cloth and tear away pieces of flesh, soaking his face and arms with blood.
More than four thousand pounds per square inch.
Backing up step by step, she finally turns and runs, leaving Lucas to howl and tear at his clothes and flesh in his blind rage. By the time she returns to the Security Commander Center, she is shaking so hard that she can barely open the door.
On the screen, the beautiful blonde is holding up a sign that says, you made me do this. Next to her, several worried-looking men are forcing the other National Guardsman, his arms still tied behind his back, to his knees.
Petrova watches, transfixed by this new drama.
Throwing the sign down, the blonde marches to one of the Lyssa victims lying on the floor, a young girl, and rubs her hand all over the girl’s face until her hand is slick with mucus. She holds the hand high over her head, showing it to the camera.
“Oh,” says Petrova. “No, no, no. Please do not do that.”
As she marches back, her mouth moving soundlessly, the soldier’s eyes go wide and he begins to struggle struggling wildly against his captors, who can barely hold him.
The blonde smears the snot over his face and lips, then begins scribbling on the piece of poster board, which she holds high for Petrova to see: only you can save him.
“We do not have a vaccine, you stupid bitch!” Petrova screams, throwing the fire extinguisher against the wall. “Stop killing people!”
The rage boils up inside her, comes pouring out. She races to the security system’s graphical interface and begins studying it.
“You want to come inside,” she mutters in disgust, her accent thickening. “This is what you want. We shall see.”
She clicks an icon on her screen, which turns from red to green.
On the screen, the crowd of people appear startled, then burst into cheers, laughing and hugging and pointing at something that is happening off screen. The blonde looks down at the soldier, who stares at the floor. Alone among the cheering mob, they are weeping.
The people are pointing at the elevator lobby. They have won against the stubborn scientists who have been hoarding a vaccine.
Chapter 10
You know, my dad. . . .
Mooney sits on the floor next to his sleeping bag in the classroom that First Squad has claimed as a sleeping area, airing his feet and cleaning his carbine. After a lot of firing, a good cleaning is necessary. He wants his weapon functional—not ready for parade—so he is field stripping and cleaning it fast. Around him, some of the other boys are doing the same, getting ready for action. The room stinks of sweaty socks and cleaning solvent.
Wyatt swaggers in carrying a plastic garbage bag with his left hand. Behind him, Mooney sees one of the boys from Second Squad mopping the floor out in the hallway, whistling while he works. Everybody is dying, the world is ending, but the Army likes things clean, Mooney tells himself. It will be a nice, neat, orderly Armageddon. The last man alive, please turn out the lights.
“Booty,” says Wyatt, spilling the bag’s contents onto the floor in front of Mooney—a small mountain of half-melted candy bars, cartons of juice, warm cans of soda, and pancaked Twinkies, cupcakes and donuts.
The boys whistle, eyeing the loot enviously.
“What do you think, Mooney?” Wyatt says, offering one of his lopsided grins that make his large brown Army glasses—the type the boys call BCGs, or birth control glasses, since there’s no way in hell of getting laid while wearing them—appear crooked on his face.
Mooney studies his comrade for a few moments while he swabs his gun barrel with a cleaning rod and patch. He is starting to feel like he has adopted Private Joel Wyatt, although he is not sure why, since he basically can barely stand the screwball soldier at this point. Or maybe Wyatt has adopted him, and he is not strong enough to resist: Joel Wyatt can be like a force of nature. In any case, when you feel like you are going to die soon, you tend to start feeling pretty forgiving about things. All the irritating stuff stops being real and no longer matters. Just ask Billy Chen about how much he sweated the small stuff before he ate a bullet.
“Where’d you get all that, Joel?” says Ratliff.
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