Cold Storage

by David Koepp

  Yes, get as close to them as you can as soon as you can, yes, please.

  So Mike had moved. He was confident, he had a purpose, which was more than he’d been able to say for a long time. The locked front door of the storage facility hadn’t deterred him; he’d found a side door with a glass panel in it, smashed it with a rock, and wriggled through. The broken glass didn’t hurt that much when it sliced up his arms, and when he landed on the other side of the door and stood up, he’d been delighted to see the deer through the broken window, standing at the edge of the woods ten yards away, staring at him.

  Mike was thrilled. He’d felt bad about the deer for two days, but there it was, alive, and—somehow he knew this—it was on his side. He’d opened the door, held it wide, and the deer trotted inside the building. Together, they walked the halls of Atchison Storage for a good twenty minutes, looking for Naomi but not finding her, or anyone else for that matter. They’d moved on, wordlessly, to the basement, taking the elevator down a level to continue their search. She had to be here somewhere. Mike and the deer had the same imperative—find a human and infect it, repeat as many times as possible until you’re dead—and goddammit they were going to carry it out. He was going to be good at something.

  It was when they’d reached SB-1 and the elevator doors opened that Mike had frozen up. Because there he’d heard her voice, coming from around the corner, talking to Teacake, and the 49 percent of his brain that still contained useful human feelings like guilt and remorse kicked into overdrive. He remembered what he’d done and that he’d fled, and that he had a child, somewhere, whom he had failed to father. As Naomi’s voice drew closer, Mike had pressed his body back, against the wall of the elevator, out of sight next to the control panel, and prayed to be anywhere but here. Prayer is a powerful psychic force, more powerful even than Cordyceps novus, or at least it was for those sixty seconds or so. Mike cowered in the elevator, out of sight, able to temporarily fight back the urge to go get them.

  When the deer walked back into the elevator and Mike was able to push Door Close, a wave of relief washed over him. He wouldn’t have to see her again, he wouldn’t have to face the weight of his sins. They’d reached ground level and the deer—God bless you, you beautiful, intrepid creature!—had strode out of the elevator toward the pair of humans, swelled up, and done its level best to coat them in fungus.

  But it failed. And the religious rebellion in Mike’s brain was quashed under the boot heel of Cordyceps novus, which simply said, Next man up! and pushed Mike forward to do his biological duty.

  Now Naomi waited for him to answer her questions. Any of them, really.

  He blinked, just looking at her.

  Teacake tried like hell to figure this out. “Are you okay, man?” he asked Mike, but Mike just opened his mouth and then closed it again. Teacake turned to Naomi. “You know this guy?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated, because she hated saying it.

  “Yeah?” Teacake was waiting.

  “He’s my kid’s dad.”

  Mike opened and closed his mouth three times, clicking his teeth.

  Teacake took that in, then turned back to Naomi. “Uh—for real?”

  Mike moved toward Naomi. “Open your mouth.”

  She took a step back. “What?”

  Teacake stepped in front of her, holding a hand out to Mike, palm out. “Whoa, dude, what kind of shit are you talking, what’s the matter with you?”

  Mike opened his own mouth wide, as if stretching out his jaw muscles, then clicked his teeth at Naomi again. “Open your mouth.”

  Of all the unpleasant things Naomi had seen and heard tonight, this was perhaps the unpleasantest. What the hell was wrong with her that she had ever given this jerk the time of day, much less conceived a child with him? Why was he now heaving his stomach in and out, like a cat trying to bring up a hairball? And why was he reaching around behind his back?

  Teacake had been around guns in the military and spent his fair share of time on the rifle range, but mostly he saw a lot of movies, and he knew there was only one reason to make that gesture, ever. It wasn’t because you had a sudden itch at the top of your butt crack. While Mike sucked his gut in and out and closed his right hand around the handle of the .22 he’d shoved into the waistband in the back of his pants, Teacake studied the geography. Mike was between them and the exit, but just behind them was the open hallway that led to units 201 through 249, and at the end of that was the jog to the right, maybe that would buy them enough time, some units had dead bolts on the inside and they both had phones, so maybe—

  Mike wedged words in between the heaves. “Open”—heave—“your”—heave—“mouth”—heave.

  The gun came out, but Teacake had already turned and taken off, pulling Naomi along with him. The vomit that Mike finally succeeded in dredging up from his gut spewed a good eight or nine feet, but fell short, splatting on the cement in the spot they’d just vacated.

  Teacake and Naomi turned the corner as Mike raised the gun, fired a shot at them, and took a chunk out of the cement block near their heads.

  Neither one of them had ever been shot at before. It was not enjoyable. They raced down the corridor, no words, just flight, and could hear the anguished, angry cry of Mike as he chased after them. The only way out of the building was back the way they’d come, back where the guy with the gun and the barf and the exploding deer were, so that wasn’t happening. Teacake’s mind did the mental math and didn’t like the numbers, not one bit, these hallways were long, and wasn’t nobody could outrun a bullet. He’d be willing to take his chances if it were just him—what were the odds that pukey weirdo could actually land a shot on a moving target while running? But that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take with Naomi’s life.

  He took the next corner hard, pulled them both to a stop in front of unit 231–232, a sweet combo unit eight feet wide and sixteen feet deep. He zipped the master key up off his hip, flicked the lock open, and yanked the door up a couple feet off the ground.

  Naomi knew the only option when she saw it. She dropped to the floor and rolled under the door, into the darkness on the other side. Teacake didn’t open the door any farther; he didn’t want to in case he had to close it quickly and lock her in, which he was fully prepared to do. If Mike had been rounding the corner already, he would have done it and fought the fucker one-on-one, gun or no gun, but when he looked back the hallway was clear, though Mike’s semihuman cries of rage were coming this way fast.

  Teacake dropped to the floor. As he hit the ground, he saw Mike’s feet come around the corner, they were only about ten feet away, and he heard the sharp cracks of three wild gunshots and the clang of bullets hitting metal. Teacake’s view of the feet spun over, upside down, as he rolled under the door and into the storage unit, then the feet were right outside the door and Mike’s hands were reaching down to rip the overhead door open the rest of the way, and Teacake knew he’d miscalculated, just by a few seconds, but it was enough, he’d fucked this up, he was in no physical position to get up and pull the door down before Mike succeeded in ripping it open the rest of the way, shit, great plan, asshole, he’d led them straight into a dead end, a sealed storage unit, they were cornered.

  But Naomi was on her feet already, of course she was; she’d leaped to her feet as soon as she’d come through. She was up and braced and had both hands on the door’s center handle—She got leverage on you, motherfucker, Teacake thought—as she put everything she had into it and slammed the door down so hard the clang echoed all the way down the hall.

  Mike howled in agony, his hands crushed underneath the metal lip of the door, pinned there for a moment. Naomi pulled it back up three inches, not out of sympathy, but just to let him get his sorry-ass hands out of there. Mike yanked them back, Naomi slammed the door again, and Teacake, now on his feet, threw the metal locking pin at one end of the door, then darted over and threw the pin on the other.

  The two of them stood in the pitch dark for a few sec
onds, breathing heavily, listening while Mike yowled and raged in the hallway outside. He banged on the metal with both fists; it rattled and clanged. He fired another half dozen gunshots at it, and dimples bloomed on the inside of the door as bullets slammed into the thin metal. Mike kicked it, then he tried like crazy to open it again. Light from outside streaked underneath as the door lifted and fell, but it would rise only a half inch, and the steel pins at either end had no intention of ever giving more ground than that.

  Teacake spoke first, still out of breath. “So that’s Dad, huh?”

  “I know, right?”

  Outside the door, it went quiet. They waited.

  After almost a minute, they heard footsteps as Mike walked away. They waited another thirty seconds, then they both pulled out their phones and the screens lit up their faces.

  Teacake looked at his first. “Griffin called me eleven times.”

  “Do you really give a shit right now?” she asked.

  “Yeah, just, I need to keep this job.”

  “You’ve mentioned.” She squinted at her phone, which was still showing the DTRA website. “There’s a number for a place called Fort Belvoir.”

  “Fort Belvoir? That’s an army base.”

  “Should I call it? Or the cops?”

  Outside the door, they heard the faint patter of footsteps approaching again, fast. Someone was running straight toward them. The footsteps abruptly stopped as the someone launched himself into the air, there was a split second of silence as he sailed toward the door, and then the corrugated metal shuddered with a tremendous vibration as he slammed into the middle of it, denting it inward ever so slightly. But the door held fast.

  They could hear Mike’s body crunch to the cement floor outside and he let loose an animal cry of frustration, a shriek that sounded unlike anything produced by human vocal cords.

  Teacake looked at Naomi. “Yeah. Call the fucking army.”

  Twenty

  The runway rushed up at him and Roberto stretched one last time. He’d moved around as much as he could on the flight, but at sixty-eight his body stiffened up a lot quicker than it used to, and in surprising areas. Wait a minute, I pulled a muscle in my ass? How does that even happen? He and Annie talked about it all the time; they’d started to strain muscles in odd places or trigger back spasms by doing formerly uncontroversial things like, oh, standing up or opening a jar of peanut butter. That was the last thing he needed tonight, some pop-up infirmity to slow him down, and thirty thousand people die as a result.

  The plane landed and taxied toward the far hangar, the one the airstrip at Leavenworth saved for visiting dignitaries and emergencies. Thanks a lot again, Jerabek, way to keep it all low profile. Roberto couldn’t wait to get off the government plane, drop his cell phone in a Faraday bag to block signal detection, and fail to call in for a good four or five hours. Until this was sorted. “Sorted”—he’d picked up that expression in London too and always loved it. Sorted. Handled, dealt with. Everything put in its proper place, quietly and efficiently, like a clerk in an office. Well, this one wouldn’t be quiet, but it would be thorough as hell, if all went according to plan. Permanent. Sorted.

  He looked out the window and saw the open doors of the far hangar. The lights were on inside, but it appeared to be empty, just a large expanse of gleaming floor. There was a van parked in front and a figure in a dark coat standing beside it, a cloud of smoke curling up above the person’s head, backlit by the fluorescents inside.

  The pickup truck with the airstair reached the plane just as it came to a stop. Inside, Roberto was already at the door. The copilot met him there with just a nod, no loose talk. That was one thing he missed about the service. Pleasantries were kept to an absolute minimum, which felt honest, and God knows it saved time. They both waited a few seconds for the tap-tap-pause-tap from outside, then the copilot flicked a few switches, pulled the handles, and the door sucked inward and rotated open. The copilot gave another nod and a tight “Good night, sir,” and Roberto stepped out into the four A.M. Kansas mist.

  He hurried down the metal stairs, returned a salute from the airman at the bottom, and walked across the tarmac toward the van. He closed the distance between himself and Trini, and each of them was struck by how much older the other one looked. He hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, which meant Trini was in her seventies by now. Her health habits had never been good, and they had not improved, judging by the bright red glow at the end of the Newport Menthol King she was inhaling. The cigarette didn’t stand a chance.

  Roberto reached her and stopped. He looked around the empty tarmac. “No base security escort?”

  “Told ’em to buzz off and go back to bed.”

  “And they did?”

  She nodded. “I’m persuasive.” She went into a hacking cough and held up a finger—Hang on.

  Roberto waited until she finished. “How is it possible you’re not dead yet?”

  She shrugged. “Too mean.” She turned, opened the driver’s door, got in, and slammed it shut. Roberto walked around, eyeing the boxy white Mazda minivan with disdain, and got in the passenger side.

  He settled into the white fake-leather passenger seat. “Cool wheels. This is your personal ride, right? You don’t expect me to drive it.”

  Trini shook her head and put it in gear. “Oh, you’re a real beauty.” She hit the gas, cut the wheel, drove right through the open airplane hangar, and came out the far side. She took a left and headed for the Pope Avenue exit from the base.

  “Seriously, Trini, I’m concerned. Didn’t you get lung cancer about ten years ago?”

  “I do not have lung cancer, you inconsiderate prick, and I never have. I have emphysema, which is completely different and a hundred percent survivable.” She took another drag on her cigarette.

  “Could you at least open a window?”

  She opened his, and it sucked all the smoke right past his face.

  “Come on.”

  “Sorry.” She closed it and opened hers instead. “That tootsie from Belvoir sounded like you put the fear of God in her. What did you tell her?”

  “Tiny bit of the truth.”

  “Yeah, well, that’d do it.” She gestured toward the rear of the minivan. “It’s all there.”

  Roberto turned and looked in the back. The rear seats were folded down and there was a tarp thrown over several storage crates that looked like about the right size and amount. “Including number seven?”

  She shook her head. “We have to stop and pick that one up.”

  He looked at his watch. “Are you kidding me? You know we’re critical, right?”

  There’d been a shift in their power dynamic about twenty years earlier, when Trini stopped advancing in rank and Roberto continued his upward trajectory. He’d given the orders to her after that, not that she really cared all that much.

  She turned to him now, offended. “The balls it takes for you to complain. Two hours ago, I was asleep. Now I’m driving you around at four A.M. with half a dozen contraband items that could get me sent to prison for the rest of my life.”

  “So, what would that be, like three or four days?”

  She laughed until she hacked so hard she almost had to pull over.

  He smiled at her. “Do you miss it?”

  “Like crazy.”

  “Which part?”

  She gestured back and forth between them. “This stuff. The bullshit.”

  He enjoyed it too and hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. “Gordon’s dead,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. It was a beautiful service.”

  He looked at her, annoyed. “How does everybody know this except me? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Not my job to call around every time somebody dies. I’d never get off the fucking phone.”

  Well, that was true. Roberto looked out the window for a moment, trying to remember the last time he’d seen or talked to Gordon, but he couldn’t call it up. He returned to the present and turned ba
ck to Trini. “You know, you actually look pretty good, kid.”

  “I look like hell, fucker, and you know it. You look great. Sorta over-the-top handsome, as usual. Like a Mexican Ken doll. I picture you with no private parts.”

  “Don’t picture that.”

  “What should I picture?”

  “Why do you have to picture anything at all?”

  She shrugged. They reached the main gate and she opened her window the rest of the way, throwing a stern glance at Roberto. “See if you can shut up for a minute.”

  While Trini signed them out of the base and discharged a wave of Newport smoke into the guard shack, Roberto took the Faraday pouch from his jacket pocket and opened the double-grade, military-tested fabric. Just as he was about to drop his phone inside, it buzzed. He looked at the screen. The number had a 703 area code. He plugged one ear, hit Answer, and listened for a moment.

  A woman’s voice spoke. “Hello?”

  Roberto listened. He heard the sound of wet tires on pavement on the other end.

  “Two minutes,” he said into the phone. Then he hung up.

  He went into the weather app on his phone, entered Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and saw that it was raining there. Satisfied the call came from where it said it was and had not been put through a rerouter, he dropped the government-issue cell phone into the Faraday bag and zipped it shut. He pulled his laptop out of his backpack, slipped a card into one of the free USB ports, put in a Bluetooth earpiece, and called up the DeepBeep site he’d accessed on the plane. He typed in the phone number that had just called him on his phone. It was answered on the first ring, but Roberto spoke first. “You’re outside now?”

  Abigail’s voice replied. “Yes. In the rain.”

  “Trini was here when I landed, and heavy. Well done. I don’t need anything else.” He was about to hang up, but Abigail spoke again.

  “There’s been a development.”

  Roberto tensed. “What kind of development?”