Cold Storage

by David Koepp

  She was awake now, that was for sure. The first report from the .22 had done the trick. This place was an echo chamber and there was no mistaking a gunshot. Mary had sat up, wide-awake for the next half dozen shots, which fully answered the question Did I dream that? No, she had not. Someone was shooting out there from somewhere up above her. Who the hell was robbing a storage facility in the middle of the night, and why were they killing people to do it? That made no sense to her at all.

  Or maybe, she thought, it was one of those crazy mass shooters you see all the time, but that made even less sense—didn’t they want to kill a lot of people? Wasn’t that sort of the whole point? She’d never seen more than two people in this place at a time. Mary had sat stock-still for the next fifteen minutes or so, not daring to leave her locked storage unit, but there was no way she was going to be able to go back to sleep either.

  When the roar of the motorcycles echoed from outside, she’d heard voices in the hallway, a lot of voices, and she’d started trying to come up with a plan. Staying in here all night until the situation resolved was probably the best idea, but what if there were people in danger? What could she do about it? A better question—what would Tom do? She looked at her husband’s things, sorted and piled so neatly and lovingly on the metal-and-particle-board storage racks she’d ordered off Amazon and assembled all by herself. She tried to put Tom in her shoes.

  Because Tom would definitely do something.

  Twenty-Four

  Nearby, Teacake and Naomi had been sorting through plans of their own ever since they’d heard the sound of the Harleys. They’d heard Mike’s footsteps as he headed off down the hallway, apparently drawn by the sound himself. Teacake had come to a conclusion about it all that he was unwilling to be moved off of.

  “This is like some kinda zombie shit.”

  Naomi was feeling more reasonable. “Okay, first of all, zombies are not real.”

  “Zombies are real. Zombies are a hundred percent real.”

  “No, they’re not, Travis. That’s TV. That’s movies.”

  “Yes, and some really fucking excellent TV and movies, I’d like to point out, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Zombies are totally real, they’re based on this shit in Haiti, it’s like common knowledge or whatever. It’s dead bodies they make into slaves with magic. I cannot believe you don’t know that. And you want to be a vet?”

  She looked at him. “Do you actually believe that is what’s going on here? Haitian magic?”

  “What? Fuck no. I’m not an idiot.” He was getting impatient.

  “So what is your point?”

  “I said this is like some kinda zombie shit, as opposed to exact zombie shit, which I understand is, like, not a thing in Kansas, okay? Whereas, i.e., that is to say, in reality here tonight, there is some growing green fungus and a Rat King and an exploding deer and a dude that wants to throw up in your fucking mouth.” He made a gesture that said his point was proven.

  “Right. And?”

  “The thing—whatever it is—it’s spreading. It wants to spread. Call it whatever you want, but the thing is in here, in this building, and it wants to get out there, into the world. So what are we gonna do about it? Twenty years from now, when you and me are sitting around the fire and our great-grandchildren are asking us what we did way back in the great big zombie war, what are we gonna be able to tell ’em?” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to stop her and kept talking. “And yeah, I know, my math doesn’t add up on the great-grandchildren thing, so don’t even start.”

  She wasn’t going to quibble with his math; she had been about to point out that he had just assumed they were going to have children together. But that seemed beside the point, and kind of sweet anyway, so she let him keep going.

  “We gotta go out there and stop that dude before he throws up in somebody else’s mouth.”

  “Why do we have to do it? The guy on the phone said he’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

  “Yeah, and who is that, exactly?” he asked. “A guy on the phone who talks a big game? A lady at Fort Belvoir who had to hang up on you and call you back on her cell phone? Why would she do that? These are fucking amateurs, man, they’re just as scared as we are. I don’t know why, but they are. Now, if you’d talked to Colonel Dick Steel or whoever, and he said there were a half a dozen Sikorskys flying in here with missiles armed and playing ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ on big speakers, I’d maybe wait around and let that happen. But I don’t think we have time to sit here hoping a couple freelancers show up and don’t get eaten before they get out of their own car. We gotta go out there and do something.”

  The debate bounced back and forth for another minute or two. Teacake had by now played Griffin’s messages and knew it was him and his lowlife biker buddies who had arrived, probably to pick up the stolen merchandise. It was all Teacake’s fault, of course, because he’d been unwilling to bend the rules, yet another example of doing the right thing and getting screwed because of it. But he and Naomi finally agreed that Griffin and his friends, though admittedly detestable, were human beings and didn’t deserve to die. Or, if they must, it would be great if they didn’t spread a deadly fungus to the rest of the world on their way out. They agreed that starting with a phone call made sense.

  Teacake hit Call Back on Griffin’s last incoming call to him and waited. The phone rang twice before Griffin answered. He was talking before the phone got to his mouth, so it picked up midsentence. “—you fuckwit you ever ignore my calls again and I’ll fucking fire you think this is some kinda fucking game I promise you it—” and then his voice faded away again as he lowered the phone and hung it up, also midsentence.

  Teacake looked at the phone. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “He’s just such an asshole. I’m always kinda taken aback.”

  “He hung up?”

  Teacake nodded and called again. It went straight to voice mail. Teacake lowered his phone, stumped. “I have to admit, I did not see that coming.”

  “Did he sound all right?”

  “Well, he sounded like a jerkoff. So I guess it was him and he’s all right. Let’s get to him before your friend does.”

  “He’s not my friend,” she said, indignant.

  “Whatever. The guy you had a baby with. Let’s stop him.” He went to the door and threw the bolt on one end. She stepped in front of the bolt on the other end, not done talking about this yet.

  “He has a gun.”

  “He has a .22. Yes, a .22 can fuck you up, but the magazine only holds ten rounds, and I think he used them all.”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Because while we sat here for the last fifteen minutes I counted ’em in my head. One in the hallway, when we were running away from him. Three outside the door, when I was rolling under it. And six that he shot at the door after we had it locked. Look, you can see where every one of ’em hit.”

  She looked up and, indeed, there were six little dimples, spread out over a three-foot area in the metal door, where the slugs had dented the outside. She was impressed.

  Teacake continued. “So, he can’t shoot us, right? He can only barf at us or blow up on us, but if we stay far enough away that’s not gonna matter. We get Griffin and whatever shitheads he showed up with to clear out, keep your baby daddy inside this place—”

  “Please stop that.”

  “—and wait for the cavalry to come. If they know what they’re doing, then boom. We saved the world. Or at least eastern Kansas.” He paused. When a good salesman knew he had a kicker, he always saved it till last and used as few words to express it as possible. Teacake knew he had it, so he took a suitable pause and then deployed it. “And your kid too.”

  Naomi looked at him, touched.

  Teacake went on, and this was the part that meant more to him than all the rest. It was the part he hadn’t realized until he got almost all the way through his speech and understood why he was selling so ha
rd, why he was campaigning for the right to open the door and go risk his life when he didn’t absolutely have to. This bit came from the heart.

  “Look, I know they pay us for shit here, but this place hired me straight outta jail, and nobody else would do that. I’m supposed to take care of it, and for once in my life, it would be nice to not fuck something up. This is my one job, and yes, it’s a shitty one, but it’s the only one I’ve got or that I’m gonna get. You don’t have to come with. I’ll leave, you lock the door, I’ll come back and get you when it’s clear.”

  Naomi looked at him, and she thought, It’s funny. Some things improve with closer inspection. He sure did.

  She threw the bolt on the other side of the door and, together, they pulled it up over their heads and stepped out into the hallway.

  Immediately, Teacake was proven right about one thing—the gun must have been empty, because Mike had left it behind, on the floor where he’d sat. They started down the corridor. They’d taken only three or four steps when Naomi’s phone buzzed.

  She signaled to Teacake, stopped, and answered it, whispering, “Still here.”

  It was Abigail, ten minutes on the dot since she had last called. “Good. Just checking. Is your situation unchanged?”

  Naomi hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We left the locker.”

  Abigail paused, thinking. “I am at a loss as to why you would do that.”

  “There are more people here now. We gotta tell ’em.”

  “How many people?”

  “I don’t know. Call me back.” She hung up and looked at Teacake. “She was not happy.”

  Teacake shrugged. “Who is?”

  The Last Thirty-Four Minutes

  Twenty-Five

  The loading of the Samsung boxes had gone pretty well so far but was taking longer than Griffin wanted. The renegotiation had slowed everything down. After all the work of finally selling these bozos on the TVs, that prick Ironhead had tried to lower the price to $75 at the last minute. And it wasn’t like he did it quietly either—everybody heard, and everybody wanted the same. Ironhead was good at this; they didn’t call him Ironhead just because of the bike he rode. He worked in sales at IRT and negotiating was second nature to him, so he’d waited till they were standing in the unit, took one look around at the overstock, and knew he had Griffin over a barrel. They haggled for a couple minutes, but Griffin’s head was throbbing by this point, and the idea of everybody walking out of here and leaving these things was unthinkable. So $75 it was, the grand total take-home for the night was going to be $450 instead of $600, but whatever, Griffin took it.

  The TVs were heavy and awkwardly shaped, so it took two people to carry them out, one at a time. Cedric and Wino had taken the first one out, Cuba and Garbage the second, Shorty and the Rev the third, and Griffin and Dr. Steven Friedman had made two trips already. Ironhead had somehow managed to cast himself in more of a supervisory capacity and was leaning against the inside wall of the unit grabbing a quick vape when Mike showed up in the doorway.

  Mike stood there for a long moment, his breath wheezing in and out. He stared at Ironhead, who looked back at him. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Mike didn’t answer, just stared. Ironhead blew out a cloud of smoke. “I asked you a question, dickhead.”

  Mike still didn’t answer. Ironhead took a step forward. “You are about to have a serious problem, man. Privacy of the eyes, motherfucker, either you take two steps back and look away from me right this fucking second, or I will bounce your head off that wall till it goes pop. You understand?”

  Mike turned away and looked down the hallway, not because Ironhead told him to, but because he heard voices. Cedric, Wino, Cuba, and Garbage were headed back from their first load to the truck, coming for more, and they were drawing close. They saw Mike, but he took a few steps back, giving them plenty of space. Ironhead assumed he had managed to intimidate the psycho who’d been staring at him.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said to Mike as the others came back into the unit to get another TV. Cuba looked over her shoulder, recognizing the weirdo who had watched them earlier. His shirt was even tighter than before, two of the buttons already popped over his swollen midsection, and a couple others looking like they were about to give way.

  “What does that guy want?” she asked Ironhead. “I saw him before.”

  “Fuck if I know. Don’t worry about him. Just keep going, we don’t got all night.”

  Cedric had seen enough of Ironhead’s bossy behavior over the years to be sick of it. “When are you gonna grab one, you lazy piece of shit?”

  “Hey, I’m coordinating. You should be thanking me. I should be charging you a commission for the money I saved you.”

  From outside, they heard shouts, two voices somewhere far away, and they looked again, past that weird staring guy, but didn’t see anybody. Ironhead turned back to the others, waving them along with some urgency. “Get a TV, come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  There was a low tearing sound, like a sheet ripping in half, and they all turned at the same time. Mike was back in the doorway, and the sound had come from his midsection. His stomach lining, stretched beyond its elastic capacity, had finally separated from the stomach wall and was now a free-floating mass of viscous jelly inside his abdomen.

  He had less than ninety seconds to live.

  Jaws dropped open, but only Ironhead managed to get a couple of words out. “What the f—”

  He cut off, because all at once Mike’s stomach collapsed inward as his body forced his insides up, through his throat, into his mouth, and out into the air at twenty-five miles per hour. That’s not very fast for a car, but for puke it’s super quick, and it covered the distance between Mike and the rest of them in less than a second. Certainly, it was less time than any of them had to react, and the spray of the droplets was wide, so they were all caught and contaminated by the blast. They screamed, staggered back, and Mike reached up, slamming the overhead door and slipping the padlock back through the hole—he wasn’t exactly sure why, but he knew he had more work to do and needed them to stay out of the way.

  The evolved form of Cordyceps novus inside Mike was racking up one positive growth experience after another, and now it had learned the value of not detonating a host’s body at the very first opportunity. Mike’s spread of the fungal mass had proven just as effective via vomit as it would have been by the fruiting burst of his entire body, plus it had the additional advantage of leaving him somewhat intact and mobile for at least another sixty seconds.

  The fungus was an excellent student. It learned.

  From inside the storage locker, Mike heard shouts and screams, but they were contained. They just needed to stay that way for a minute or two. Mike didn’t have much left inside; he was consuming and expelling himself rapidly, and he had to make sure that what little there was left of him went to a good cause.

  The other humans.

  He turned toward where the shouts had come from.

  LESS THAN TWO MINUTES EARLIER, NAOMI AND TEACAKE HAD COME out of the storage unit. Naomi had answered Abigail’s call, hung up on her, and they’d pressed on, making their way cautiously down the corridor. Naomi’s phone buzzed again, but she ignored it this time, hit the button on the side and sent the call to voice mail. From up ahead, they heard voices. Teacake moved to an intersection, leaned around the edge, and looked down the next hallway, where he knew Griffin kept the storage unit with the stolen TVs.

  The unit was about fifty feet away, and he could see the door to it was wide open. Mike was standing in the open doorway, looking inside, and Teacake could see shapes inside the unit, four or five people. They were doing something, but they sure as hell weren’t paying attention to Mike, which was what they should have been doing. Naomi came around the corner as Mike started to suck his gut in and out. They both knew what was coming next and shouted at the same time to the poor bast
ards inside the unit—look out, get away, get the hell out of there—but they were too late. They could only watch as Mike’s stomach emptied itself and the fungus sprayed into the storage unit. They watched as he reached up, slammed the door, locked it, and turned to them.

  He stared at them for a moment.

  Then he ran at them.

  From the looks of Mike’s decomposing body, it didn’t seem like he’d be capable of running, but he was, in a rapid, shambling sort of way, coming at them hard and fast. He was already too close for them to turn and run themselves, and Teacake realized, with some regret, that his grand heroic plan had consisted of almost zero real ideas. Leave the unit, tell the others, save the earth? Honestly, that was a for shit plan, it didn’t deserve the word plan, it didn’t deserve to be mentioned in the context of real plans. He’d convinced Naomi, this totally decent woman and awesome mother who actually mattered on this earth, to leave the safety of their hiding place and step out into a dangerous situation with no concrete strategy and nobody but him, the Planless Wonder, to protect her. Teacake heard his father’s voice in his head, telling his idiot son the same thing he’d told him for the last fifteen years.

  “If you didn’t have shit for brains you’d have no brains at all.”

  Mike was only a second away from them now and Teacake squatted low, to lunge himself at their attacker, to at least block him long enough so that Naomi would have time to run. He tensed his legs, ready to spring forward.

  Naomi heard the gunshots first, because they came from a foot and a half behind her left ear. They were so loud they burst her left eardrum and temporarily deafened her in the right.

  A Glock 21SF .45 automatic has been standard issue for the Kansas Highway Patrol since 2009. Nobody really had any idea why they felt they needed quite that much firepower, but the last people who would complain tonight were Teacake and Naomi. Six slugs from the .45 whistled past Naomi’s head, over Teacake’s shoulder, and slammed into Mike’s chest with such force that they reversed his course of motion. They lifted him off his feet, blew him back two yards in the air, and dropped him to the cement floor, dead. His fungus-riddled body was in such a state of disrepair and disarray that he nearly disintegrated on impact.