Pandemic Page 5

  Margaret flipped to the next page, then hissed in a breath. A dead girl wearing battered, blood-streaked dark-blue coveralls. A lieutenant in the navy, based on her insignia — a highly trained adult, although her face looked all of eighteen. The girl’s right arm was a horrid sight: seared flesh and protruding, blackened bone. Extensive blood loss made her skin extremely pale. She had a bruise under her right eye and a long cut on her left temple.

  Margaret thought of the first time she met Perry Dawsey.

  He had been a walking nightmare. A massive, naked man, covered in third-degree burns from a fire that had also melted away his hair, leaving his scalp covered with fresh, swelling blisters. His own blood had baked flaky-dry on his skin. A softball-sized pustule on his left collarbone streamed black rot down his wide chest. His knee had been shredded by a bullet fired from the gun of Dew Phillips. And worst of all — even more disturbing than the fact that Perry clutched his own severed penis in a tight fist — the look on his face, those lips caught between a smile and a scream, curled back to show well-cared-for teeth that reflected the winter sun in a wet-white blaze.

  Perry, mangled almost beyond recognition. This girl — correction, this naval officer — much the same.

  Margaret shuddered, imagining a saw-toothed blade as a buzzing blur, jagged points scraping free a shred of skin or a curl of bone with each pass …

  “Did the autopsy confirm she died from blood loss?”

  Murray frowned. “You’ve been out of the game longer than I thought, Doc. We didn’t do an autopsy yet. The Los Angeles had a mission to recover pieces of the Orbital. You remember the Orbital, right? The thing that made the most infectious disease we’ve ever seen, a disease that turned people into psychopaths? The thing that made little monsters that tried to open a goddamn gate to another goddamn world? The thing that forced us to nuke the Motor City to stop that gate from opening?”

  Margaret felt her own lip curl into a sneer. “Yes, Murray, I so need you to fucking remind me about the fucking Orbital.”

  She felt a hand on her arm. Clarence, quietly telling her to ease down.

  Murray leaned forward. He spoke quietly, trying to control his rage. “Apparently, you do need a reminder,” he said. “Before Lieutenant Walker died, she admitted to sabotaging the engine room of the Los Angeles. She also admitted to shooting and killing two men. Her corpse and the second body, that of Petty Officer Charles Petrovsky, are in a Biosafety Level Four facility inside the Carl Brashear. They are infected with the same goddamn disease that could have wiped us all out five years ago, that made the crew of the Los Angeles fire on U.S. ships. So no, genius, we haven’t done an autopsy yet. For that, we need the best. We need you.”

  Margaret cleared her throat. She’d asked a stupid question and been properly slapped down for it. “You said the Los Angeles found something?”

  “Look at the last photo.”

  It was a photo of an object she didn’t recognize, some kind of beat-up cylinder sitting on the gray, lifeless lake bottom. The diver or photographer had rested a ruler close by: the cylinder was about five inches long, two and a half inches wide. It was frayed in places, as if it were woven from a synthetic material; like fiberglass, maybe. Detritus and some kind of mold had taken root within the fibers, making the object look fuzzy, almost alive.

  “This is from the Orbital?”

  “Maybe,” Murray said. “An unmanned probe discovered it six days ago. Five days ago, it was brought onboard the Los Angeles using the most rigorous decontamination and BSL-4 procedures known to man.”

  Clarence took the photo. “Not rigorous enough, apparently.”

  Murray nodded. “Three days ago, the Los Angeles’s commanding officer reported problematic behavior among the crew. We’re sure that was the beginning of the infection incident.”

  Margaret could only imagine how horrible that must have been. A submarine, hundreds of feet below the surface … those people had been trapped in there, nowhere to run.

  Clarence handed her back the photo. She stared at it, amazed that she was probably looking at an actual piece of alien hardware. The most significant discovery in human history — a discovery that had already delivered death and promised much more of the same.

  “This object,” Margaret said, “is it now onboard the Carl Brashear?”

  Murray shook his head. “It remains in the Los Angeles. The sub was struck amidships. The object was in the forward compartment, near the bow. That area appears to be flooded, but otherwise intact. We’re still dealing with fallout from the battle. Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll figure out how to go down and get it out.”

  They were going to bring it up. Of course they were.

  “Nuke it,” she said. It shocked her to hear those words come out of her mouth, but it was the only way to be sure. Massive ecological damage was a small price to pay for ending the threat. “Do it now. Today, Murray, before it gets out.”

  Clarence cleared his throat, a tic of his when he was about to politely contradict her.

  “Margo, that’s a big step,” he said. “The biggest. And it’s not like we have a nuclear torpedo — they’d have to figure out how to deliver a nuke and put it right on the money.”

  Her eyes never leaving Longworth’s.

  “They don’t have to deliver it because it’s already there,” she said. “Right, Murray? There’s a nuke onboard the Los Angeles? Probably about five megatons, enough to completely sterilize everything in a hundred-yard radius?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a small, wry grin; the master was proud of his pupil. He rubbed his jaw, looked off. Margaret sensed that he had already suggested nuking the site, maybe suggested it to the president herself, and he’d been overruled.

  “Destroying it isn’t an option,” Murray said. “If we grab it now, at least we have a chance at containment.”

  He was a puppet speaking the words of his controllers.

  “This isn’t about containment,” Margaret said. “The military wants it. They want to see if we can get some genuine alien technology. Great choice on the risk-benefit analysis, Murray.”

  He shifted in his seat. “Spare me a lecture, Doc. It’s not my choice. I’ve got my orders. We need to know how that object affected the crew — is this the same thing we saw before or a new phase in the disease’s development? Finding that answer could literally save the world.”

  Margaret looked down at the pictures. She tidied them up, then slid them back into the envelope.

  She held the envelope out to Murray.

  “I already saved the world,” she said. “Twice. I can’t, Murray … I just can’t.”

  He struggled to stand. He leaned on the cane, took a step closer to her. His eyes burned with fury. She could see his too-white dentures.

  “You hide in this house like a coward,” he said. “You’ve seen horrible things? You’ve done your part? So have I. So has Clarence. So have thousands of other people, and they keep on doing their part. You have a knack for understanding this thing, Margaret. You are the only reason we stopped it last time. You. So how about you pull your head out of your ass, put your pity party to bed, pack a bag and come with me, because I don’t care if you saved the world once, twice, or fifty fucking times” — he shook the cane head at her, the ceiling light glinting dully off the brass helix — “your job isn’t done. You got the short end of the stick, Margaret. Maybe you’re not a soldier, but you man the wall just like the rest of us.”

  Not a soldier. She looked at Clarence. For a moment, she wondered if he’d talked to Murray earlier, if they’d set that up together, but the look on his face said otherwise. Her husband was ashamed he’d said that to her.

  She loved him. If this thing got out, he would die. So would she. So would everyone.

  You got the short end of the stick, Margaret.

  Murray was right. She hated him for it.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  Clarence stood. “We’ll be ready in thirty minu
tes.”

  “Hell no,” Margaret said. “The area is possibly contagious. There’s no benefit to putting you at risk.”

  I can’t take seeing you every day; I can barely even look at you right now.

  Clarence started to say something, but Murray clonked the bottom of his cane on the floor.

  “Stop this,” he said. “You two handle your relationship issues on your own time. Otto is going with you.”

  She turned on the old man. “Hold on just a damn second. If you want me there, then you —”

  “He’s coming,” Murray snapped. “Doc, you are the only choice for this job, but forgive me for being an insensitive prick when I say that you might not be playing with a full deck. Otto has been taking care of you for years. He’s the best qualified to keep you focused.”

  “Great,” Margaret said. “So you’re assigning a babysitter?”

  “I’ll assign a midget with a whip if that’s what it takes to keep you from reading blog posts about yourself for fifteen hours a day.”

  Margaret fell silent. Murray knew all about how far she’d fallen. Of course he knew. Clarence had probably told him.

  Murray reached out and took the envelope from her.

  “Get packed,” he said. “A car will be here for you in fifteen minutes.”

  HIGHWAY TO HELL

  Cooper Mitchell stared at the accounting program on his computer screen. He willed the numbers to change. The numbers didn’t cooperate.

  The force is not strong with this one …

  He looked at the company checkbook. Specifically, he looked at the check stub, frayed edges lonely for the check that should have been there.

  “Goddamit, Brockman,” Cooper said. “How many times do we have to go through this?”

  There was no information on the check stub, of course — Jeff never bothered to do that. Maybe this would be one of the lucky times when he hadn’t spent that much, when he actually came back with a receipt, when his impulse purchase wouldn’t make their account overdrawn. Again.

  Cooper rested his elbows on the messy desk, his face in his hands. The dented, rust-speckled metal desk took up most of the small, cinder-block office. The “Steelcase Dreadnaught,” as Jeff called it. It weighed some 250 pounds. Cooper could barely budge the thing; Jeff had once picked it up by himself, held it over his head just to prove that he could. The desk had been here when they’d bought the building and would probably be there when they sold it.

  Which, if they didn’t get a client soon, would be within weeks.

  Their building bordered the St. Joseph’s River, but the office’s only window didn’t offer that view. Instead, it looked out onto a bare concrete floor. The place had been a construction company garage once; maybe the window was where the foreman watched his people toil away, loudly growling get back to work! every time someone slacked off. The tall, deep shelves lining the walls were filled with diving gear (some functioning, most not), welding rigs, heavy-duty tools and other equipment. He and Jeff hadn’t used some of the pieces in years, but in the underwater construction business you never got rid of something that was already paid for. Never knew when you might need it.

  In the middle of the shop floor sat Jeff’s pet project: an old, sixteen-foot racing scow that he had been meaning to fix up for the last five years. The boat, of course, had been purchased with one of the mystery checks. That check had bounced. Jeff still got the scow, though. Since the day they’d met in the third grade, the man could talk Cooper into damn near anything.

  Jeff had put in all of eight or nine hours on the scow before he got bored with it, moved on to the next shiny object. But not a day went by when he didn’t talk about making it pristine, selling it for a huge profit. Jeff loved the thing. Cooper wondered if someone would buy it as-is. Maybe it could bring in enough to make that month’s payment on JBS’s only ship, the Mary Ellen Moffett.

  Maybe, if anyone was buying. In this economy, no one was.

  Through the window, he saw the building’s front door open. Jeff Brockman walked in, carrying a blue SCUBA tank under his left arm. A few brown, windblown leaves came in with him, one sticking to his heavy, shoulder-length hair of the same color. From his right hand dangled an overstuffed white plastic bag — take-out food.

  Cooper forced himself to stay calm. A new tank? Maybe Jeff had found it. Maybe he hadn’t spent money they didn’t have on equipment they didn’t need.

  Yeah, and maybe Cooper would suddenly find out he was a long-lost relative of Hugh Hefner and had just inherited the Playboy Mansion.

  Jeff Brockman strode into the tiny office, blazing a smile that said I totally hooked us up!

  “My man,” he said. “Wait till you hear the deal I just scored.”

  Cooper pointed to the open checkbook. “A deal you paid for with that?”

  Jeff looked at the checkbook, drew in an apologetic hiss.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry, dude. I know, I know, you told me a hundred times. I’ll fill in the stub thing right now.” He looked around for space on his desk to set the food. “The receipt’s in my pocket. I think. Or maybe I left it at the dive shop.”

  Cooper stared, amazed. Jeff moved a stack of bills aside, cleared a space to set down the bag. Through the strained plastic, Cooper counted five containers — had to be enough food there to feed a half-dozen grown men. And the odor … Italian. Fuck if it didn’t smell delicious.

  “It’s not about the stub,” Cooper said. “Well, yeah, it’s about that, too, but, dude, we don’t need a new tank!”

  Jeff looked the part of rugged entrepreneur: the hair, the two-day stubble, the wide shoulders, and the blue eyes that made meeting girls at the bar so easy he didn’t even have to try.

  He smiled. “Coop, buddy, I got a great deal. We’ll need to replace my tank in a couple of years anyway, so I actually saved us money.”

  Cooper stood up, slapped his desk hard enough that the thick metal thoomed like a cheap gong.

  “You don’t save money by spending it, Brock!”

  Jeff’s good humor faded away. His expression hardened. They hung out together all day, most every day, and that familiarity made Cooper forget that Jeff had thirty pounds and four inches on him, made him forget that Jeff carried layers of muscle built over a lifetime of construction and demolition jobs, made him not really see the little, faded scars on Jeff’s face collected from the fights of his youth. That expression, though, made Cooper remember those things all too well.

  “Coop, I own half of this company. I think I can take a little money to treat us once in a while, bro. I don’t need permission to write a check.”

  “No, what you do need is enough money in the checking account to cover the check. I can’t believe you’d be so stupid.”

  Jeff nodded. “Stupid, huh? Was I stupid when I convinced my brother to get you into that medical trial? Was I stupid when I somehow kept this business going while you were in the hospital for six months? Maybe it was just a miracle we didn’t go out of business, maybe it wasn’t because I worked two goddamn jobs to keep us afloat so you could get your goddamn life back.”

  Cooper’s face flushed. He looked away.

  It was almost hard to remember what the lupus did to him: the fatigue, the swollen joints, the chest pain … all of it had threatened not only his ability to work, but his life as well. Jeff had stood by him. Jeff had called in all the favors he had with his brother, a doctor in Grand Rapids, to get Cooper into an experimental gene-therapy trial. The trial had worked. Most of Cooper’s symptoms were gone. As long as he went in every three months for booster injections, the doctors told him the symptoms would always be gone.

  Still, the past was the past, and if they didn’t do things right, there wouldn’t be a future.

  “Come on, man,” Cooper said. “You know I’m grateful for that, but it doesn’t help our business right now.”

  Jeff reached up, flipped his hair back. “Saving your life doesn’t help our business? You ever saved my life?�
��

  Oh, now it was Jeff who wanted to forget how things had been? He wasn’t the only one who could lay a guilt trip.

  “Brock, my family is the only reason you have a life, bro.”

  As soon as Cooper said the words, he wanted to unsay them. There were some places friends just didn’t go, no matter how mad they got.

  Jeff and his brother had come from a broken home. When their father finally left them and their alcoholic mother, the boys had little guidance and even less help. Jeff’s brother had been sixteen; he’d been old enough to make his own way, to attack life and take what he wanted. Jeff, however, had been ten years old — he’d been lost. Cooper’s mom had all but adopted him, given Jeff love, support and discipline when his birth mother provided none of the above. Jeff had spent at least half his high school years sleeping at Cooper’s place. To say the two of them had grown up together was more than just a figure of speech.

  Cooper felt like an asshole. He could tell Jeff felt the same way. They’d both gone too far.

  Jeff sighed. “Hungry?”

  He opened the bag of food, offered Cooper a Styrofoam container.

  One sniff told Cooper what it was. “Roma’s green tomato parmesan?”

  Jeff raised his eyebrows twice in rapid succession. “Who’s your friend?” he said. “Who’s your buddy? I am, aren’t I?”

  Cooper laughed. He couldn’t help it.

  “Just because you’ve got a dead-on impression of Bill Murray from Stripes doesn’t mean we’re not broke.”

  “Broke, schmoke,” Jeff said. “Something will come up. You gotta think on the bright —”

  From Jeff’s pocket, his cell phone rang: the three-chord-crunch opening of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”

  He answered. “JBS Salvage, we got the skills if you got the bills. This is Jeff himself speaking.” He listened for a few seconds. “You’re right outside? Sure, come on in.”

  Jeff slid the phone back into his pocket and smiled at Cooper. “See? God provides, my son. A potential customer is coming in to talk to us.”

  They walked onto the shop floor just as the main door opened. In came a skinny Asian kid. Early twenties, maybe. All of five-foot-eight, with shiny black hair that hung heavy almost to his eyes. His dark blue hoodie had BERKELEY on the chest in block yellow letters. A gray computer bag hung over his left shoulder. From the way the strap dug into the sweatshirt, it looked like he was carrying a lot more than just a computer.