Perimeter

by M. A. Rothman

  She took a seat by herself, and the bus began moving.

  For a long time, the only sound was the hum of the engine as the bus moved ever forward. With the windows painted black, she had no idea where she was going, and her phone continued to have zero bars.

  She did not like this. Not at all.

  ###

  After a long ride—Kathy wasn’t sure how long, because she fell asleep—the bus jolted to a stop. The front door opened with a hiss, and the passengers piled out. A couple of them whispered to each other in Spanish, which only intensified Kathy’s feeling of isolation. Not only did she not understand what they were saying, but these two people had each other to talk to. She had no one.

  Outside the bus, the sun shone brightly on a drab brown world of barbed-wire fences, soldiers with guns on their hips, and blocky concrete buildings.

  It looked like a refugee camp.

  Surrounded by high fences, she stood in line, waiting. The people ahead of her were being interviewed by some Spanish-speaking soldiers in fatigues when a soldier motioned to catch her attention. “May I have your name?”

  She approached the soldier, who was wielding a clipboard and pencil. “Katherine O’Reilly.”

  The soldier looked at his clipboard. “Got you right here. Miss O’Reilly, welcome to Camp X-Ray.” He held out a small plastic bin. “Please put your personal belongings in here. We’ll return them upon your departure.”

  “I can keep my cell phone, right?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the soldier said with a sympathetic tone. “But don’t worry. You’ll be provided with everything you need.”

  With a deep shuddering breath, Kathy placed her phone—her last connection to civilization—in the bin, along with her purse, which contained her hairbrush, deodorant, and all manner of other things she’d regret not having. “Do you know how long we’ll be in here?” she asked.

  The soldier shrugged. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really wouldn’t know. I’m just here to log you in and get you assigned to a bunk, and you are…” He ran his finger down his clipboard. “…in room fourteen in the women’s barracks.” He handed her a key strung on a necklace-like chain.

  The women’s barracks. Did that mean she wouldn’t see her father? She looked around the fenced-in area, and though she saw others dressed in civilian clothes here and there, she didn’t see him. As she stood in the middle of this bleak camp, it took every ounce of her control just to breathe normally.

  She found herself passed down the line to another soldier, a woman who took her temperature. As her forehead was being swiped, Kathy saw a cart full of suitcases being wheeled away.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but my suitcase is on that cart.”

  “It’s okay,” the soldier reassured her. “We’ve got your room assignments and will put your things in your room. Welcome to Camp X-Ray.”

  The soldier finished with her, and Kathy found herself left alone. She hadn’t even been told which blocky building was the woman’s barracks. As she looked around, confused, a voice yelled, “Pumpkin!”

  Her eyes instantly welled up with tears. “Dad!”

  She ran to him, threw her arms around him, and cried on his shoulder.

  He hugged her tight. “My God, baby girl, why did they bring you in here? Was it—oh, baby.” He held her at arm’s length, tears running down his cheeks. “It was from that time you accidentally drank my water.”

  Kathy’s throat tightened, and she could only nod.

  He squeezed her tight once more. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to affect you.”

  ###

  At least eight technicians were busy in Juan’s lab as he entered. The new team had hit the ground running, and Juan was relieved. He’d given them a lot of work to do.

  He approached one of his new team members. “Good morning, Kevin. How are things going?”

  “Good morning, Dr. Gutierrez. We’ve just completed the metabolic panels and have some results.”

  Juan sat on a stool. “Kevin, first remind me what we have under test and then give me the results.”

  “Yes, sir. We have one hundred and fifty lab rats under test. Fifteen have been given the minimum dosage only once; fifteen others were given the maximum dosage only once. The remaining one hundred have been split into five groups of twenty, each of which has received daily dosages of the viral agent for the last seventeen days. Each group at a different level.”

  Juan nodded for him to continue.

  “We did a blood chemistry workup on all of the specimens, immediately before and after dosing, and then every three days. The basal metabolic rates are up, but other than that, we’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary. Iron, bilirubin, protein, thyroid, glucose, potassium, albumin, calcium, BUN, creatinine, electrolyte levels… everything is normal.”

  “What about variances in body temperature?” Juan asked.

  “Temperatures spiked after day one, as you know, but they’ve remained steady ever since.”

  “Were we able to detect any antigens in the bloodstream? What about antibodies? Are we getting any lymphocytic reactions?”

  “No, sir. Which is odd, especially on the ones getting daily doses.”

  Juan sighed and nodded. “I guess I was hoping we’d see something… a fever isn’t enough to keep someone in quarantine.” Tapping his fingers on the lab bench, he wracked his mind, wondering what else to look for. And suddenly it hit him. “Of course!”

  “Sir?”

  Juan sat back down and smiled. “Oxygen levels. That’s what we need to look at. Back in my lab at AgriMed I saw variances in oxygen absorption. What if we put our little guys in chambers to see if we can detect anything different in their exhalations?”

  “How about plethysmography chambers?” Kevin gave him a crooked smile. “I happen to know a department that just got in a pallet of those. They’re going to fix them up to measure ethanol metabolism.”

  Juan laughed. “Now I’ve heard it all. The FBI has mouse breathalyzers. But yes—we can use something exactly like that.”

  “Then with your permission, I’ll go grab them before they realize what’s going on.”

  “Go for it. If someone asks, say I needed it and to take it up with the deputy director.” Juan shrugged. “What’s the worst they can do, fire me?”

  ###

  Kathy sat next to her father, her back against the fence, her legs stretched out in front of her. They both watched as another bus pulled in. “Dad, how long have you been in here?”

  “It’s been three days now. See that?” Dad pointed at the unmarked bus. “Another handful of people who were part of this godforsaken medical trial.”

  “Dad, it wasn’t godforsaken. You’re cured, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose. But at what cost?”

  “Does Mom know where we are?”

  Dad sighed deeply and patted Kathy on her leg. “Pumpkin, I don’t know. I just pray she’s not throwing a fit. You know how she can get when she’s not getting her way.”

  Kathy lightly bounced the back of her head against the chain-link fence and frowned as nearly a dozen people climbed off the bus. One of them was carrying an infant.

  “My God,” said Kathy. “That looks like an entire family.”

  Her dad nodded. “At least they’re together.”

  She knew he was thinking about her mother. He’d told her that he’d had no contact with her since arriving here.

  “Where are they all coming from, I wonder.”

  Dad sighed. “Argentina and Brazil mostly. There are a few I met from California and one guy from the DC area.”

  Kathy wrapped her arms around her knees. “Has anyone told you what’s wrong with the treatment? Why we’re really in here?”

  “Pumpkin, I’m not really sure why we’re here. So far, all anyone’s done is swipe my damned forehead to verify my temperature. And honestly, I don’t think these people even know. Trust me, I’ve as
ked. If nothing else, it seems to me these Air Force folks are just trying to make the best of a crappy situation. The food’s pretty decent, certainly not like your mother’s cooking, but it’s better than any of the crap I was fed by the Army. But…” he said, “I do think I know where we are.”

  He pointed to the north. “Do you see that big expanse of white?”

  Kathy put her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “Is that a big salt flat?”

  “It is. And I’m pretty sure the mountain behind it is Bald Mountain. We hiked up there once when you were a kid. Do you remember that?”

  “I think so… kind of.”

  “Anyway, that means that salt flat is Groom Lake—in which case we’re only an hour or two from home.” He chuckled.

  "Dad, what’s so funny?”

  “Well, when I was a kid, there used to be rumors about this area—that it housed some secret Air Force base that was hiding aliens. Well I haven’t seen any aliens, but I guess we’ve confirmed the part about the secret Air Force base.”

  A secret Air Force base. Where no one would find them. Surrounded by barbed wire, with no explanation why, and no idea what these people had planned for them.

  Kathy leaned her head against her dad’s shoulder. “God, I hope this is all over soon.”

  ###

  Juan had assigned Jennifer Green to be the lead tech in the biocontainment lab. She loved that work, and unlike him, she didn’t mind the inconveniences involved with all the safety gear.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid the biocontainment lab altogether. Today he’d gone in there to set up thermal imaging cameras, and now he and Jennifer were studying the results.

  “Do you see this?” he said. “The toxic mice in the biosafety cabinet are about the same temperature as the dosed ones, but do you see how much further the heat projects off of them?”

  Jennifer lumbered over to him in her pressurized suit and studied the camera screens. Her voice came through the speaker in Juan’s suit. “That is strange. The infected mice have a run-of-the-mill thermal profile; they’ve got a fever, but the temperature gradient drops off like normal. But waves of heat are coming off of those toxic guys.”

  “Their caloric consumption is off the charts. I guess all that energy has to be expended in some way. Have we tried putting a sterile petri dish in there with some agar to see what we’ll get?”

  “No, but we wouldn’t be able to grow any virus we caught outside of a host—”

  “That’s the point. We don’t know what the hell these things are giving off. Is it some kind of virus? A bacterium? Some chemical compound that dissipates when the animal dies?”

  “One way to find out.” Jennifer turned to a supply cabinet and pulled out a stack of sealed petri dishes. Each held a thin layer of translucent agar.

  “Great. Open one of them in the biosafety cabinet near the toxic mice. Let it sit there for a minute or two, and then we’ll take a look under the microscope and see if there’s anything to be seen.”

  Jennifer used remote grippers to push the petri dish forward into the safety cabinet, unwrap the seal, and lift off the lid. She was just starting to move it closer to the toxic mice when she gasped.

  The solid gelatin had already begun to react.

  “Oh my God.” Jennifer gasped.

  Juan felt a chill race through him. “Do you see how fast that discoloration is happening? Pull it away and put the lid back on. I want to see what the hell just happened.”

  Juan heard Jennifer’s breathing through the speaker and he patted her on the back. “Deep breaths, I don’t need you passing out on me. Just use the remote tools like you have been and everything’ll be fine.”

  Jennifer pulled the dish back, then used tongs to put it on the stage of the high-powered microscope. She flicked on the monitor so they could both see the results, then zoomed in on one of the darkened spots.

  “It looks like mold.”

  Juan shook his head. “Too quick for mold. Then again, I’m willing to believe just about anything at this stage.”

  Jennifer dialed in the objective lens to a higher resolution, then adjusted the focus. “Did the agar melt? But there’s not that much heat involved. We just verified that.”

  “It could be a chemical reaction. Zoom in closer.”

  “Okay, I’ll move to maximum zoom. Field of view is one micrometer. Hang on. Focusing is getting tricky.” She fiddled with the microscope’s controls. “There. That’s definitely not algae we’re looking at.”

  Juan stared at the circular cell Jennifer had managed to zoom in on. “It looks almost like a lymphocyte. But what are those string-like protrusions—”

  “One of the strings moved!” Jennifer yelled.

  Juan looked up at the camera in the ceiling. “I hope you people are getting this!”

  They continued to monitor the strange cell for another five minutes. Twice more, one of the protrusions wiggled.

  “What do you think?” Jennifer asked, finally breaking the silence.

  “I think you don’t want to know what I think,” Juan said. “Let’s just say that if that’s what I think it is, we have an animal with an immune system that not only defends, but attacks. Which would also explain why there was no chemical toxicity detected after the host died.”

  He shuddered at the thought of an immune system that could attack at the cellular level.

  “It would probably look like a case of anaphylactic shock,” he said quietly. “And that’s a battle our bodies aren’t trained to win.”

  ###

  As Juan walked out to his car—after yet another sixteen-hour day—Paul Hutchison jogged toward him from the parking lot and waved. “Dr. Gutierrez! Juan!”

  Juan stopped. “Paul?”

  Despite being in his sixties, the head of security for AgriMed jogged comfortably toward him and only stopped when he got to within ten feet. “Dr. Gutierrez, let’s have a talk.”

  Hutchison spoke with a casual tone, but something about his body language set Juan on alert.

  “What’s going on? Is there—?”

  Hutchison put his finger to his lips and motioned for Juan to follow him away from the building.

  A heavy foreboding weighed on Juan as they strode farther away from the sidewalks and parking lots that skirted the FBI buildings.

  Once they’d reached some predetermined distance from any living beings, Hutchison stopped, motioning for Juan to get closer.

  Juan approached until they were practically breathing each other’s air.

  Hutchison pulled out a handheld electronic device.

  “Juan, I’ve got something you need to hear. But before I play it, you need to understand something. Don’t ask where I got this, and never mention this to anyone. Because I can assure you, it’ll be your hide, not mine.”

  “Wait a minute, maybe I don’t want to hear this.” Juan tensed with a wave of trepidation. What in the world could be so important compared to what he was already dealing with?

  “You really don’t have much choice. This is something that reads on what you’re doing, and they’re not telling you everything.”

  “They? Who? You mean the FBI?”

  “They. I mean they. Listen, and you’ll understand.”

  Hutchison pressed a button on the device, and a recording played.

  “What’s our status? Is everyone rounded up?”

  The man’s voice was familiar, but Juan couldn’t place it.

  “Almost,” said a second voice, also a man. “We’ve collected nearly everyone out of South America, and the British have agreed to send theirs over as well. We’re expecting them all to be here by the end of next week. We have a few stragglers that we’re tracking down on the West Coast, but the quarantine site in Nevada should be able to house them without too many problems.”

  “Problems.” The first man laughed. “You don’t know shit about problems. I killed the project with the Ge
rmans and now I’ve got a buttload of people carrying a deadly virus that your people assured me wouldn’t get out of hand. But now, look at what I’m faced with.”

  “I understand, Mr. President.”

  Juan’s eyes widened. That’s why the voice was familiar.

  “We’ll have them all in secure facilities,” the second man continued. “Nobody’s going to know.”

  “Are you retarded? We’ve got families in those quarantine centers, right? Kids. Women. Men. What if one of them wants to get frisky? You going to assure me that we’ll be able to control these loose ends forever?

  “Try separating a family. Try stopping some horndog from getting busy with one of the hotties. And if one of them gets pregnant, you think you’ll be able to force an abortion? Shit, who even knows if we can abort these monstrosities. Might need to just off her right there, and then what? And you’re telling me you’re going to be able to keep this quiet?”

  Juan’s stomach gurgled and he broke out in a cold sweat.

  The second man sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I am, asshole.”

  “So what do you suggest, sir?”

  “Do I really have to spell things out for you?” The president made a spitting sound. “When you finally get everyone in a secure facility, we need an accident to occur. A big, fiery one. You get my drift, soldier?”

  Juan bent over and hurled up his dinner.

  “Yes, Mr. President. Is that an order?”

  “An accident. That means no traceability. And yes, that’s an order.”

  Hutchison stopped the playback. “Now you know what’s at stake.”

  “But, I—”

  “This isn’t about you, Dr. Gutierrez.”

  Juan’s hands were shaking as he wiped his face. “What do you want me to do?”

  Hutchison’s ice-blue eyes were cold; he seemed unfazed by what they’d just heard. “I want you to realize that this isn’t about curiosity, and it’s not about your research. This is about stopping that virus. Lives are at stake. I’d estimate it’ll take no more than ten days before all of those people can be gathered in one spot. And when that happens, the big fiery accident occurs and the world forgets those people ever existed.”