Melt

by JJ Pike

  “Well, not plastic per se,” said Baxter. “As I said…”

  Alice held up her hand. “You’re going to need to be precise, but not pedantic.”

  Baxter’s reaction said she did not take kindly to being reprimanded, but she was a pro. She was paid to take a licking and keep on ticking. That’s what the hefty pay check was for; to allow upper management to speak plainly without worrying about their employees’ feelings.

  Baxter adjusted her lab coat and went on. “The building—both the structure and the infrastructure—is made of a superfluity of materials that will contain some kind of plastic. It’s not just the water pipes or the coating on the electrical wires we need to think about, it’s the insulation between the walls, the epoxy-lined floors, and the paint on the steel beams that hold the place upright.”

  “Wait, what?” Alice hadn’t thought about paint.

  “I’m hoping MELT will eat the paint and leave the steel.”

  “Hoping?” The longer Baxter talked, the worse it got.

  “We’ve been running some tests. Plastic, as you know, breaks down under heat.”

  Alice stopped herself from delivering the “duh” her eldest daughter would have delivered.

  “If you have a plastic kettle, you’re drinking a certain amount of plastic with every cup of tea. That’s why I, myself, only use a copper kettle on the stove.”

  “I’m listening,” said Alice.

  “We don’t know if MELT might drive the plastics from the paint into the steel beams. We had no clue the compound was so virulent. We didn’t see this coming so we didn’t test for secondary breakdown.”

  It had a name already. Non-plastic materials that had merely been coated with plastic, bending under the onslaught of MELT, had a name. “Secondary breakdown.” It gave Alice the chills. The building could collapse as they sat and talked about what MELT might or might not be able to do.

  Baxter continued, her voice flat and ominous. “Neither do we know if it’s spreading outward, horizontally, using the insulation to leapfrog even further into the building. It looks, to the naked eye, as if MELT is only working with gravity, eating its way down the building, but we can’t be sure. We’re trying to cauterize the outer edge of the spread but we barely have the tools necessary.”

  “We need to relocate. That lab is stacked to the rafters with MELT, am I right?”

  Baxter nodded.

  Alice found her mouth moving, even though she knew she was stating the obvious. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

  Baxter nodded. “They’re sending me to Chicago.”

  “They are?”

  “To set up a new lab. We’re going to be testing MELT for the foreseeable future. It has the most amazing potential.” Baxter was preternaturally chipper. Alice didn’t like it. Still, each to their own. If that’s how she coped with disaster, so be it. “So long as we can get this incident under control, we’re going to be golden.”

  It was the “so long as” part that had Alice worried. “Let’s say we can. Let’s say we figure out how to cauterize MELT from around the edges of the pit it has dug through this building and ensure that it hasn’t infected the insulation or anything else that is outside that hole, then what do you propose we do?”

  “Then we line that hole with steel and fill the steel pipe with concrete. Finito. I want a double-barrier against MELT’s advance.”

  Baxter made it sound so easy, but there were a million things that could go wrong and they both knew it. “I want to see it. I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “There’s nothing to see,” said Baxter. “It’s a hole that drops through several floors and shows no signs of stopping.”

  Somewhere in the back of her brain, Alice had started to chart the hole’s course, and the lines of progression were zig-zagging off the page. She had a tendency towards “calamity-brain,” as Bill called it. Perhaps what she was seeing in her mind and what was happening on the ground were different beasts. Or, better yet, one was out of control and the other was a localized event that in no way matched the unraveling crisis that dogged her thoughts. “I need to see it.”

  The Professor shrugged. “I’ve got my best people on it, but if you want to inspect the site yourself, I guess I can’t stop you.”

  “What about the child? Can we stop MELT from doing any more damage?”

  “I was on my way to see her when you called me up here,” said Baxter. “We can swing by the pit and then jog over to the hospital.”

  “The pit?”

  “Jan van Karpel’s name for it. Those Norwegians aren’t known for being overly-cheery.”

  The two women made their way to the doors in an uncomfortable silence.

  “I understand there were further incidents at Mount Sinai,” said Baxter.

  “So I was told,” said Alice.

  Baxter rested her hand on the door, preventing Alice from leaving. “Get them away from genpop,” she whispered.

  Alice frowned. “Genpop?”

  Baxter nodded. “Anyone who’s touched Angelina and been exposed directly to MELT needs to be away from the general population. You’re the only one who gives a damn about anything other than the bottom line, Alice.” Her tone was urgent, but she never raised her voice above a whisper. “Management is willing to roll with a certain amount of collateral damage. A couple of dead nurses? Well, worse things happen in Manhattan every day. But they won’t simply die. They’ll pass it on first. Whatever MELT has become can be passed from human to human on contact. The lawyers didn’t want me to tell you…”

  Alice leaned close to her colleague, her voice matching Baxter’s whisper. “Is the place bugged?”

  Baxter nodded.

  Alice’s blood ran cold. Her own company was withholding vital information as well as spying on her. This was not going to end well.

  Chapter Ten

  Bill had barely slept, but he needed a clear head in order to keep everything on schedule. He chugged down a couple Tylenol with his morning coffee rather than the heavy-duty meds he knew would make him groggy.

  With his left hand out of commission, Bill needed the kids to step it up. They were used to taking care of the animals, so he wasn’t worried about the chickens not being fed or the horses not being exercised. But they were moving into another phase now: a crack-course in readiness. The pemmican had all been ruined, so they were going to have to stockpile way more food. The bear attack had left him feeling vulnerable in a way he’d rarely felt vulnerable before. They’d done okay, but his throbbing hand was testimony to the fact that they weren’t solid on all fronts. He found he wanted more of everything, not just food. More tools, more weapons, more spiked and sharp and solid things to buttress them against any and all invading species.

  Being in the boonies meant they couldn’t just hop on down to their local Home Depot or Lowe’s and get more hurricane lamps and propane stoves and bales of twine. First up, there were no hardware superstores within a 30-mile radius and secondly, the mom-n-pop-shop hardware stores that were close by would notice if one family waltzed in and bought every last thing on their shelves. Questions would be asked then, ones that he didn’t feel much like answering.

  He had shifted the plates off the dining room table and spread out a huge map of the area. He circled each town with a population larger than 5,000 then added a color code to indicate what kind of supplies they might expect to secure there.

  “We’re going to split up into three groups. Paul and Sean you’ll head south, Petra and Aggie I want you to go west, me and Midge will go east.” He got his map ruler out, measured 50 miles north of their location, then used his protractor to draw a circle. He drew a line from their location, due north, then two more lines, one east-southeast and the other west-southwest, to cut the pie into thirds.

  “Mom would approve,” said Petra.

  Bill felt an ache in his chest. He missed Alice more than he could put into words. It wasn’t just that their little slice of heaven in the
woods had undergone a bear attack and he’d sustained a serious injury, or that Midge was starting to act up just a little. It was that he missed the sound of her, the way she laughed, the smell of her skin when they had been for a dip in the swimming hole down at the bottom of the meadow. It was her sass and snark and good sense. It was everything. He missed everything about her. He pushed aside his worries about her being under so much pressure. She was going to be fine. She thrived in a crisis.

  He turned back to his map. It made his heart glad that Petra saw her mother’s influence in his new plan because it was true. This was what Alice would want them to do: plan. She hadn’t called again. Bill had to chase the disastrous visions that clouded his brain back under the couch. It didn’t mean anything other than she hadn’t called. He couldn’t allow himself to make up stories about what was going wrong. What you don’t know, you don’t know. Leave it at that.

  “I meant the peace sign,” said Petra. She pointed at the map. She was right, he’d drawn the ’60s symbol for peace. It was well before his time, but the hippies had a point. Peace is always better if it’s an option. He was personally more of a modern hippie crossed with a wannabe-survivalist. An independent thinker who would avoid conflict for as long as it was possible, but strike hard if he or any of his clan was attacked. Roosevelt said it best, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” He wanted to be sure they had the biggest, baddest sticks of all. He had no clue what was coming their way, but he was going to be ready.

  “I’ve made lists of what I need you to get and I expect you to get all of it. Don’t limit yourself to your assigned town, drive further if you need to. But, above all else, do not draw attention to yourself.”

  He handed Paul and Petra a wad of cash each.

  Petra raised her eyebrows. “Dad, this is a lot of cash. I mean, a serious lot of cash.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can go wild. Just means I don’t want there to be a trace.”

  Paul scanned his list. “We’re each buying a Dutch oven?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Three Dutch ovens? Isn’t that overkill? I mean, extra water filtration supplies I get…calcium hypochlorite and the gravity-fed water filters…that all makes perfect sense to me, but Dutch ovens? We can’t all be cooking at the same time.”

  “One,” said Bill, elbows on the table, “we can and we will. We have a lot of prep to do here. And two, think about trading down the road. If things go down—and we’ve always known that they might—we need to be the suppliers, not the buyers.”

  Paul and Petra nodded in stereo. It was one of those twin things. They didn’t need to look at each other, but they were in sync. He wondered for the millionth time what that must be like, whether they read each other’s thoughts, how they were coping being at different universities. But these were questions for another time; when things had calmed down and gotten back to normal. If they ever got back to normal.

  Sean read over the list, his mouth hanging open. “I don’t know what half these things are or what they do.”

  “Paul will explain. We need to get going.”

  “There’s no liquor on the list,” said Sean.

  Bill stopped dead. “You’re 18. There will be no liquor.”

  “I didn’t mean for me,” said Sean. “I meant for later…”

  Bill frowned. Was the kid saying he thought they would be up here for three years?

  “If things go south and there are riots or whatever and people are on the run—not that I think that’s going to happen, but let’s say it is a possibility—we’re going to need to trade. You need luxury goods that people can’t get easily. The liquor stores will be high on the list for looters, right? So if we stock up, we could have a corner on the market.”

  Bill grinned. It wasn’t bad thinking. “Perhaps next time,” he said. “First, we need to take care of our own food security. Bartering and trade agreements come later. Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

  The family piled out of the house and into their old, beat-up cars and trucks and were bouncing down the driveway with their lists in hand. Bill wasn’t worried. He trusted his kids. He knew they wouldn’t let him down. They’d hunt high and low and by the time they made it back to the cabin, they’d be ready for the restock to end all restocks.

  Midge counted raptors circling above them, hovering and hoping for roadkill. She had a running commentary which didn’t require Bill to do much more than grunt occasionally. That was a good thing because he needed to think. Without knowing what kind of disaster they were facing, he needed to prep for every eventuality. He knew it couldn’t be a terrorist attack or an EMP or anything like the start of a land-based war in the States, because that would have hit the news and there had been no reports of anything unusual happening in Manhattan.

  He knew enough about Alice’s work to know that there were going to be chemicals involved, but what kind of chemicals and why they might send her into a panic was a puzzle. She’d been so psyched. She’d worked at Klean & Pure Industries for close to eight years and the build-up to the release of their prize product had consumed at least seven of those years. Was it a spill she thought might be carried on the wind? Couldn’t be. That, too, would require them to bring in the authorities. Was there something that needed to be hushed up? What?

  The road curved to the left and opened up onto a magnificent vista. These country drives never got old. The river snaked its way through the valley, languorous and wide at this point. He wasn’t going to interrupt Midge so they could talk about the early settlers and what it would have taken to make their way across this beautiful but inhospitable terrain, even though she would have been captivated. She was so happy in her happy little bubble, counting eagles and peregrine hawks. How easily we forget, he thought, with our luxury vehicles and paved roads. We have no clue how hardy those people were.

  He patted the steering wheel of his 1987 Buick LeSabre. He had deliberately kept the old vehicles around, even though they got appalling gas mileage, because he didn’t want to be tracked. All the modern cars had some way for someone to find you and he did not want to be found. Or followed. Or traced. It was all in line with Alice’s “under the radar” philosophy. Keep your head down and your nose clean and make sure no one can find you if you don’t want to be found; and while you’re keeping a low profile, prepare for the worst of humanity to come at you. That’s what she believed down to her core. And, though Bill didn’t agree 100%—most people, in his experience, did good if you gave them a chance and a little encouragement—he was happy to give Alice whatever she wanted to help her feel safe in the world.

  Bill pulled into a gas station and patted Midge on the knee. “Munchkin, I need you to run inside and give the man $20 for pump number 3.”

  Midge didn’t need to be told. She was already opening the door and heading for the cashier’s little glass booth. Self-sufficiency, it was the cornerstone to their kids’ upbringing. They needed to know how to do things—real world things like change a tire or mend a sump pump or fix shingles on a roof—just as soon as they were able. He laughed at the image of Midge with a tire iron in one hand and the spare in the other. He was getting ahead of himself.

  Once they were tanked up, he spread the map out over the hood of the car and hitched Midge up beside it on the hood. “Want to tell me where we’re going?”

  Midge was sucking her thumb. A sure sign she was missing her mommy. She hadn’t sucked her thumb for over a year. “That way?” she said, drawing her finger along the main road to the nearest dot on the map.

  “Let’s do that, then,” said Bill.

  His phone rang and he dug it out of his jeans’ pocket. It was Alice. “Hon. What’s going on?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said. Her voice was strained. Not at all like her. “How’s the skunk problem?”

  Bill stood to attention. “Skunk” meant “Listen up, we’re talking in code now.” She never said anything truly important over the phone. And she was right not to. Everyone who’d done
even the most basic research knew that the NSA had AI listening in for code words. And who knew what those code words were anymore? They could be arrested for anything without the right to protect themselves, especially if there was national disaster headed their way.

  “Well,” he said, imitating his “relaxed and happy” voice as best he could. “They’re not giving us much of a problem at the moment.” He hoped that signaled that he understood what she wanted them to do. That he was on top of it. That the kids were all safe and they were getting ready for the very worst disaster imaginable.

  “Good,” she said. That was not good. She had drawn out the “o’s” for too long. That was bad. There was something he didn’t know, but she needed him to know. “Because we wouldn’t want them getting into the plastic containers or wraps or seals, like they did last year.”

  Bill scratched his head.