by David Koepp
“And?”
“The name of the guy at ADF-E is Ozgur Onder. He’s not on duty right now.”
“Shit.”
But Abigail wasn’t done. “Better than that. He’s in bed with her, at her place. And he can redirect a KH-11 from his laptop.”
Roberto closed his eyes and promised God that if this worked out, he would never take His name in vain again. “Goddamn!” You know, after tonight. “That’s great. Will he do it?”
“He’s not happy, but he’s doing it. Apparently, it’s something he’s done before, to impress her. On their third date, he grabbed video of them in front of her house, waving up at the sky.”
“Our national security is in good hands. I hope he got laid.”
“It would seem.”
Roberto slowed, his headlights revealing the entrance to a long gravel driveway through a break in the tree line up ahead. “Do we have visual yet?”
“Yes. Nine minutes left of a look-down before we lose orbital view and control passes off to Canberra.”
“Anybody leave the place?”
“One, a little over a minute ago. A woman, late sixties, driving a late-model Subaru Outback. Do you want the license number?”
“If she was able to drive a car, I’m not worried about her. Let it go. Anybody on foot, I need to know immediately.” He turned into the driveway and approached the crest of a hill. He could see the lights of the storage facility glowing just over the rise. He slowed. “I’m pulling into the driveway now. You have Ozgur live?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay with him. Anything you know, I need to know, when you know it.” He reached up to his earpiece to end the call, but then had another thought. “Hey, Abigail?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You know what I have to do, right?”
“Yes, I do, sir.”
“You’re okay with that?”
She paused. “I read the white paper, sir.”
There were good, smart young people out there. Roberto hoped they’d get to stick around to be good old people. It wasn’t so bad, being old. As long as you were with the right person. But better not to think of Annie right now. Don’t tug on that thread, the whole sweater’ll come apart and you won’t do what needs to be done.
“Tell me quick what you found out about the people inside,” he said. Abigail told him what she knew, he made mental notes of what he could remember, and wrapped it up.
“I’ll have to use my cell. That means Jerabek will know I’m here and he might get curious. Watch your back.”
“I always do, sir.”
Roberto hung up. Over the crest of the rise now, he saw the front entrance of the storage place, sticking out from the hillside like a fat lip. Up at the top of the hill, just to his right, he saw a car pulled over at the side of the drive, its trunk hanging open. Not a good sign. In its trunk he thought he detected a slight phosphorescent glow, and traces of more of it scattered out on the hillside behind it. It was faint, damn faint, and he could have easily been wrong about it, but he had a feeling he wasn’t.
Down at the bottom of the drive, a Honda Civic and half a dozen Harleys were parked in front of the main entrance. He turned off his headlights and pulled to a stop a hundred feet short of them. He was halfway between the entrance and the car with the open trunk.
He took a breath, let it out slowly, and got out of the van.
Twenty-Nine
Teacake and Naomi banged through the broken side door of the building, took a sharp right turn, and ran toward the parking lot. “My car’s right here!” Teacake shouted. Naomi could hear his voice, just barely, over the ringing sound in her right ear, but her left ear was still dead. They raced along the side of the building, triggering the motion-detector lights all along the upper part of the wall as they ran. They came around the front, past the Harleys, and were just reaching Teacake’s Honda when a halogen beam flicked on and a commanding voice shouted from fifty feet away.
“STOP.”
The order was clear, and the voice was the kind you don’t argue with, so without even thinking about it, they stopped. They turned toward it, raising their hands in the air.
The flashlight beam was brilliant, piercing, and they both winced, blind to whoever was behind it. There was another light coming from the same spot, and this one was a sharp red beam. Teacake looked down and saw the laser dot right over his heart. As he watched, it flicked over to Naomi and centered up on her chest.
Shoes crunched on gravel as the figure walked toward them, cautious. As the man drew closer and came into the light, he slipped the flashlight into his belt but still held the gun on them. He had a pair of green, owl-like goggles on his head, but not down over his eyes. He was holding an M16 with a laser scope.
Naomi spoke first. It came out more of a shout, as she could barely hear herself. “Roberto?”
Roberto stopped. “Naomi?”
Teacake wiped more blood from his dripping, injured ear. “Do you mind?” he said, gesturing down at his chest, where the red dot had recentered itself over his heart. “I’ve had about enough of fucking guns pointed at me, okay, fucker?!”
Roberto lowered the rifle. “And you must be the other guy.”
Teacake looked around the parking area, the driveway, the hillside. “Where’s the rest of your crew, man?”
Roberto took a moment. “I’m it.”
“You’re it?” Naomi shouted.
Roberto looked at Teacake. “Why is she shouting?”
“Gunshots. A .45, next to her ear. I think she can hear a little bit in the right.”
Roberto looked at the building. “Who’s got a gun in there?”
“So far, everybody but us.”
Roberto nodded and hoped Trini still knew how to pack.
WHAT WAS ESPECIALLY SWEET ABOUT THE MINIVAN WAS THAT BOTH the side doors could slide open electronically, and the back hatch went up too. Teacake had been singularly unimpressed by the white Mazda when Roberto first led them toward it—“You gotta be kidding me, they sent one guy, and he’s in a fucking Hyundai or whatever?”—but he’d come around as soon as the doors opened and he saw the array of military crates inside. The first one Roberto opened held one of the hazmat suits, neatly folded, with its dead-faced helmet staring up at them like a Scream mask. The next several cases were standard Navy SEAL gear: a tactical vest, Ka-Bar knife, Heckler & Koch machine pistol, sniper rifle, half a dozen breaching charges for removing iron doors that might stand in the way, and a surprising number and variety of MREs. Trini was a mom, and she worried about people getting hungry.
But there’s nothing that really catches your attention like a nuclear weapon. Naomi’s eyes had fallen on the half-barrel-sized backpack immediately, and its obvious age, military origin, and strange shape gave it away as the joker in the deck. “What the hell is that?” she’d asked. But Roberto declined to answer right away, arming up instead.
Given all that had transpired in the past four or five hours, they required very little bringing up to speed. Roberto told them what he knew about the fungus, and they were already perfectly aware of its lethality. After Roberto was satisfied that they were both uninfected, there was a brief period of debate during which he unconvincingly offered them the chance to leave. But that argument had collapsed under the weight of reality—there were now as many as seven infected humans inside the storage facility. The three of them out here, three of the only people on the planet who had seen Cordyceps novus in action firsthand, were the ones who truly understood the need to eradicate it right here and now. And Roberto couldn’t be in two places at once. The only way to pull off his plan was with someone upstairs, making sure no infected bodies left the building, while the others went back down to sub-level 4.
“Back downstairs?” Teacake asked. “Are you crazy? To do what?”
Roberto reached in and pulled the pack forward, feeling his back twinge again. How long would it take him to learn that leaning at bizarre angles and trying to mo
ve heavy weights was a bad idea, from an orthopedic standpoint? This time he felt the pain shoot out from his sacroiliac and radiate all the way down his right leg, a hot searing feeling that reached his big toe. The muscles of his lower back, having voiced their objection, released their hold on his spine after a few seconds. But their point had been made. Roberto bent his knees and dragged the pack carefully to the edge of the cargo area. He stopped and thought for a long moment. There was no escaping reality. He could bob and weave for as long as he wanted, but eventually it was going to punch him in the face. He decided to stop dancing with it.
He turned and looked at Teacake and Naomi. “You’re going to have to place the device.”
Naomi, who had most of the hearing back in her right ear, picked up that part clearly. She stared down at the half-barrel shape. “What kind of device?” she asked.
“Think of it as a big bomb.”
“How big?” Teacake asked.
Roberto gave it to them straight. “Point-three, five, ten, or eighty kilotons. It has a selectable yield.”
Naomi closed her eyes, her fears confirmed, but Teacake went through the motions of pretending he had not seen that one coming. “It’s a nuke?! A fucking suitcase bomb?”
“No, it isn’t a suitcase bomb,” Roberto said, irritated, as he strapped on the tactical vest. “There’s no such thing as a suitcase bomb. What kind of invading ground force carries suitcases?”
“Dude, you know what I mean. It’s a—”
Roberto cut him off. “Yes. It is.” He turned to Naomi. “You asked if we had a contingency plan. This is it. You saw how that fungus spreads. How fast and how far and how lethal. A group of us have spent thirty years thinking about this. Precautions have been taken. Arrangements were made. This is the only way.”
Teacake looked at Naomi, who seemed calm, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re gonna kill everybody in eastern Kansas.”
“We’re not going to kill anyone. Detonation will be hundreds of feet underground. This immediate area will be irradiated, and they’re gonna sell a lot of bottled water around here for the next twenty years, but there will be no atmospheric fallout, and the problem will be solved. Once everything sorts out, we’ll all get awards. Let’s just hope they aren’t posthumous.”
“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” Teacake said.
“No. He’s right.”
Roberto smiled at Naomi, strapping the Ka-Bar knife to his thigh. She’d sounded smart when he talked to her on the phone; he was glad it was true. He turned to Teacake and looked him up and down. “How much can you deadlift?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred?”
Roberto looked doubtful.
“What? Is that too much?”
“We’ll find out,” Roberto said. “You two are going to carry this down to sub-level 4 and activate the triggering mechanism. I’ll show you how. I’m going to stay up top and remove any infected organisms that try to escape the area prior to detonation.”
“‘Remove’?” Naomi asked. She knew, but she asked anyway.
“I’m going to kill them,” he said. “I’m going to execute people whose only crime is that they were exposed to a deadly fungus. Would you rather do my part of the job or yours?” They didn’t answer. Roberto continued. “After you start the timer, you’ll have between eight and thirteen minutes to get back up here, get in the van, and get at least half a mile away.”
“Eight to thirteen?” Naomi asked.
“The timer duration is unstable without a mechanical wire.”
Teacake was aghast. “So it could blow up at any fucking time?!”
Roberto looked at him and repeated himself, keeping his tone neutral. “The timer duration is unstable.”
Teacake looked at the backpack, incredulous. “What did they used to say to the poor fucking grunts they sent out with these?”
“‘Tell your parents that you love them.’”
“And they still did it? Blew themselves up?”
“No, Travis, no one did it. These were never used. You would have heard about that in school. But people were willing to do it, because they thought the future of the world depended on it. Which it does. Right now.” He picked up the Heckler & Koch, slapped a fresh magazine into it, and straightened, using every inch of his height advantage over Teacake in an attempt to inspire. “E-3 Seaman Meacham, you’re what I’ve got right now, and frankly it’s more than I expected. You were on a ballistic sub, so you’re no dummy, and you know at least the fundamentals, if you weren’t too stoned in recruit training. I suspect you’re a much better soldier than the ‘General Discharge, Honorable Conditions’ they gave you. C’mon, Squid, why don’t you prove it tonight?”
Travis looked at him, stunned. “How’d you know—?”
“We had your first names and your place of business, these aren’t state secrets.” He turned to Naomi. “I know you’ve got a child at home, Ms. Williams. But that pack is fifty-eight pounds, and Travis can’t get it down the tube ladder by himself, not safely. Can you shoot a gun?” She nodded, sort of. Roberto took a Glock 19 from an open case, loaded it, and turned it around, offering it to Naomi handle first. “Travis will have his hands full, so you’ll watch both your backs. You’ve got a twelve-shot magazine, a trigger safety here, and a thumb lock over there. You need to flip both of them to pull the trigger. Once you’ve pulled, each shot requires another pull, but the safeties won’t re-engage unless you take your finger off the trigger. Got it?”
She nodded, taking the gun. She’d never held one before and had always hated them on principle. She still did. “I’m not going to fire it,” she said.
“You will if you need to,” Roberto replied.
“I doubt it,” she said.
Roberto continued. “When you put somebody down, you aim for the chest, it’s the biggest target. Wait till they get close enough and you won’t miss. Two shots in the chest, then, once they’re on the floor, another one in the head. No more than that. That’s four people per clip. Count your shots. If you get below three shots left, you change clips. Understood?”
She nodded.
Roberto looked at them. “You two may have started the night as minimum-wage security guards, but you’re ending it as a Green Light Team. America’s finest. Now put on the suits.”
Thirty
At that moment, there existed on Earth four distinct colonies of Cordyceps novus, each with its own chromosomal characteristics, growth rate, and ambitions for expansion. Deep underground, in sub-level 4, the original colony, or more accurately the original American colony, remained in a multiplication phase, though its growth had plateaued since its expansion into the hallway outside the cell in which it had first escaped from the biotube. In terms of organic nutrients, the rats it had infested and fused together were far and away the most abundant source of fuel, but that had been exhausted. The Rat King mass was already in stasis, the precursor to decay and disintegration. A tributary of growth was making its way across the dry cement floor, toward a puddle of water beneath one of the sweaty overhead water pipes that made up the cooling system, but it hadn’t reached it yet. Once it did, it was hard to predict the fungus’s reaction, since it had never encountered water in its pure form before, only as a component of a human body. Safe to say it was going to like it, but it wasn’t there yet.
This colony of Cordyceps novus was a bit like Reno, Nevada—popular once, but limited by location and climate, and not anywhere a serious person would want to go.
Aboveground, on the hillside behind Roberto’s van, was the second colony, the one C-nRoach1 had founded a little over fifteen hours ago. This colony had begun in the trunk of Mike’s car, where it still maintained a strong presence. But after the deer and Mr. Scroggins had taken off, the fungus had to content itself with feeding on old towels, steel, rubber, and other unsexy fuels.
More successful was the outpost begun by Mr. Scroggins when he had exploded at the top of the tree. It had spattered in all
directions and fallen to earth as far as seventy-five feet from the tree itself. It currently thrived on the moist, humid forest floor, spreading at a rate of three to four feet per hour. It was a nearly ideal environment for the fungus, but its expansion was held tenuously in check by the lack of carriers with rapid and independent locomotion. The whole area was just one stray coyote or ill-fated squirrel away from boomtown status, but for the moment the fungus had to be content to continue its leisurely but steady growth here. Still, given enough time, there was no telling how far its sprawl would spread.
This colony was similar to Los Angeles—slow, inevitable, and in no one’s best interests.
On the main floor of the storage facility, the third colony was enjoying the least success. Spread out over the cement walls and floor, the Jackson Pollock painting that was once Mike Snyder was now largely inert, at least by human time standards. It wasn’t dead or even dormant, but its growth had slowed to a barely perceptible rate. The floor and walls were made of Portland cement, the industry standard, composed primarily of lime, silica, and alumina—about as nutritious for a growing fungus as a sand sandwich. Still, Cordyceps novus was no stranger to adverse conditions—it had grown its way out of a biotube; it could certainly handle a hallway. It festered and burrowed and shifted as best it could, but the kind of booming growth it had experienced when it first entered Mike’s living body was long over. Maybe it would get lucky, hit a vein of ironstone somewhere in the cement floor in ten years or so and enjoy a comeback, but until that happened, it was going nowhere fast.
In urban terms, this third colony was Atlantic City. Used to be a big deal, dead on its feet now.
As for the fourth colony—that was another story.
In 1950, Shenzhen, China, was a fishing village with three thousand inhabitants. By 2025, twelve million people will live there. In terms of rampant, unchecked, dangerous growth, there’s no place on earth like it. Except for what was going on inside unit G-413 at Atchison Storage.
From the moment Mike’s wide-patterned projectile vomit had launched from the open doorway, the fungus had found abundant organic nutrients. The spray had landed on all five of the occupants of the locker, but Cedric, Wino, and Garbage had been caught openmouthed. Infection was immediate in their cases, and the fungus penetrated the complex substrate of their biological systems with zeal and aptitude. It produced immediate and exponential growth. Ironhead and Cuba, who had no cuts, crevices, or orifices through which the molecules could enter them without effort, were a few minutes behind. Cordyceps novus had to deploy Benzene-X to first burn a pathway through their pores, which took a bit longer.