Pandemic

  Her dream was always the same — why had it changed?

  The sweat filling her suit … just like the icy lake water had done when she fell out of the Brashear. Her brain had brought the real-life trauma into the dream. And what Perry had said, that was just a reflection of her own fear of infection.

  That was why.

  That had to be why.

  Her dream suddenly came to life again as the same bang-bang-bang sound made her jump.

  No, not bang-bang-bang … a knock-knock-knock.

  “Doctor Montoya?”

  Klimas, calling through the door.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Come in.”

  The door opened. He leaned in, beady eyes staring, smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Ah, you’re dressed,” he said. “That saves some awkwardness. It’s time for your third test.”

  She realized there was a plastic-wrapped sandwich on a plate, sitting on a small table that folded down from the wall. She didn’t remember anyone bringing it in.

  “My … third?” The words cut at her dry throat. “I didn’t take a second.”

  Klimas nodded. “Yes, you did. Passed with flying colors. You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, you were pretty groggy,” Klimas said. He offered her the all-too-familiar white box. “Please put this to good use, then Doctor Feely said you need to see something.”

  A white box. A foil envelope inside. Inside of that, Tim Feely’s little prick.

  I didn’t say my brain … I said yours.

  The dream, so different. She shook her head, chasing away the thought so she could focus on the present.

  “How long was I out this time?”

  “Six hours or so,” Klimas said. “Feely said you could skip a test. Not like you’re going anywhere, right?”

  Six hours … she’d slept for sixteen before … that made twenty-four hours or so since the battle on the Brashear …

  Could infection symptoms start in twenty-four hours?

  Margaret blinked. She was being ridiculous. The battle, the abuse to her body, a dip in the icy waters of Lake Michigan, her wounds — she was just rundown, out of shape. Maybe she’d caught a basic, run-of-the-mill common cold.

  There was one way to find out.

  She reached out and took the box. With practiced motions, she swabbed the base of her thumb and poked herself with the tester before she had time to think about what she was doing.

  Then, she stared at the flashing yellow light. Flashing slower … slower … slower …

  Green.

  She sagged sideways onto the bunk.

  Klimas stepped forward, caught her. “Margaret, you okay?”

  She nodded, weakly. He helped her sit up straight. “I’m fine. Couldn’t be better.”

  He patted her shoulder. “That’s a good soldier. So come on, get up. Doc Feely said you’ve rested enough.”

  He stepped back to the door and held it open for her. She stood, let the blanket slide away. She wore fatigues. When had she put those on?

  That’s a good soldier. She was dressed like one. In the past few days, she had sure as hell acted like one.

  Fuck you, Clarence. I’m better off without you.

  Margaret walked out of the mission module and onto the cargo bay’s gray metal deck. Loud male voices filled the area. A row of closed mission modules lined the far side. In front of her, she saw three neatly stowed black boats, the same ones the SEALs had used to rescue her. In front of the boats, two Humvees on metal pallets that were chained to the deck.

  Behind the boats lay an open area filled with around twenty armed men wearing camouflage uniforms. In the middle of them, wearing fatigues that were too big for him, stood Tim Feely. He’d set up a makeshift lab of some kind. Metal table, and a big metal pot that hung from an improvised tripod made of plastic poles and duct tape. Beneath that pot, three Bunsen burners cast up small, blue flames. A tube ran from each burner to a blue tank strapped into a dolly.

  Clarence stood at the far edge of the circle. He was staring at her. He wore a gray T-shirt, fatigue pants and black combat boots. She wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was thinking how he’d fucked up, how he was now alone. Maybe he thought she’d want to take him back.

  Some of the soldiers sat on crates or chairs, others leaned against cargo and bulkheads, still others just stood there. They were talking and laughing. She saw an open crate, boxes of infection testing kits inside. Used testing units littered the area; what lights she could see glowed green. The men were checking themselves. She knew exactly what would happen if one of those units glowed red.

  Three of the men raised cups to their mouths and drank. Their faces scrunched up in disgust. One of the men — Bosh, who had been prepared to shoot her — bent over at the waist, as if he was about to vomit. As men do, the others all hooted and hollered, playfully mocking him for being weak.

  A short man with the worst excuse for a mustache she’d ever seen leaned in, shouted at Bosh.

  “Oh come on, D-Day,” the man said. His name patch read RAMIEREZ. He was shorter than everyone present except for Tim.

  “Admit it,” Ramierez said. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had some random, hot goo in your mouth.”

  “Only his mom’s,” said another man, this one big enough to make Clarence look small, almost as big as Perry Dawsey had been. His name patch read ROTH. “Especially when she had the clap!”

  The other men laughed loudly, relishing Bosh’s discomfort. He gagged again and almost lost it, which made them shout at him even more.

  Bosh stood, his big eyes watering. “Oh my God,” he said. “I’d rather lick the pus from an infected camel taint than taste that again.”

  Klimas cleared his throat loudly. The men all reacted immediately, their eyes snapping first to him, then to Margaret.

  “Gentleman,” he said, “we have company.”

  The men immediately straightened, quieted down. They all grinned at her, beaming with admiration — all except Bosh, who looked quite embarrassed.

  Tim gave a dramatic bow. “M’lady, welcome back.” He stood straight. “Good to see you tested negative.”

  She nodded. If she hadn’t, she would have died in her bed, and everyone knew it.

  Bosh took a half step forward. “Ma’am, I’m sorry if that comment was offensive.”

  He looked mortified. Somewhere, out there, was a mother who had taught this young man to always be a gentleman, probably backed that up with several swats to a younger Bosh’s behind.

  Margaret couldn’t let him suffer. “It’s okay. I actually like camel-taint pus in my martinis, but it’s an acquired taste.”

  The soldiers laughed, and the tension evaporated.

  Clarence didn’t smile. He just stood there, staring.

  The stink of Tim’s kettle drew her attention. She walked up to it. It steamed a little. Inside, she saw a thick, light brown broth. It wasn’t boiling, but whitish bubbles clung to its surface.

  She looked up. “Good thing you brought that yeast with you, I see.”

  “Lucky me,” he said. “Who’d have thunk it?” He looked like the cat that ate the canary. He’d risked his life to bring the yeast with him. She’d thought he’d wanted to save it for research purposes, to make sure a second colony existed outside of Black Manitou, but this made more sense and meshed with his selfish personality — if he was going to be immune on a ship full of heavily armed soldiers, he wanted to make sure they were just as immune as he was.

  “You brewed up quite a batch,” she said. “And I see you have no compunction about giving these men something that’s completely untested?”

  Tim shook his head, a gesture that said, Don’t even try to judge me, sister.

  “Their choice,” he said. “Come on, Margo, the worst that can happen is they get a wee bit gassy.”

  He had a point. Tim had ingested the concoction over twenty-four hours earlier, and he s
eemed fine. Worst-case scenario, really, was that it might make people a little sick. Best-case scenario: immunity from the horrific infection.

  Klimas stepped closer. “As I said earlier, Margaret, my men and I came into direct contact with you, Tim and Agent Otto. If any microorganisms survived the bleach spray, then we were also exposed. Considering we just had to shoot at our own countrymen, we chose to take our chances with Doctor Feelygood’s camel-taint pus.”

  Margaret’s eyebrows raised. “Doctor Feelygood?”

  Tim nodded, a huge grin on his face, the grin of a nerd who knew he’d been taken in and genuinely accepted by the coolest kids in school. “That’s right,” he said. “Seems Commander Klimas is a fan of Mötley Crüe.”

  Tim dipped the ladle into the smelly broth. He poured the contents into a cup and offered the cup to her.

  “All my genetic tinkering has given this vintage quite the lovely bouquet,” he said. “Hints of chocolate and elderberry, I think.”

  The soldiers watched, waited for her reaction. All of a sudden she found herself in a bizarre variation of a fraternity hazing ritual — drink if you want to be one of us.

  Margaret took the cup, felt the broth’s warmth through the plastic. Inside, thick bubbles floated on the milky yellow surface. It smelled like wet gym shoes stuffed with wilted cabbage.

  She looked around the room. “To the SEALs,” she said, and brought the cup to her lips.

  They shouted in encouragement as she tipped her head back, letting the whole cup’s contents slide into her mouth. She sensed the warmth a moment before she experienced the taste. Her stomach heaved and she gagged, but the men were watching her — if they could do it, so could she.

  Margaret pinched her nose shut, braced herself, and started swallowing. It took three gulps to get it all down.

  She gagged again, but nothing came up. She lifted the cup high, laughing at how close she’d come to vomiting.

  Klimas was the first to smile wide and pat her on the back. He wasn’t the last. Everyone did.

  Everyone except Clarence. He just lowered his head, turned and walked deeper into the cargo hold.

  NEUTROPHILS

  Bo Pan slept. His body did not.

  Thousands of crawlers worked their way up his nervous system, following the electrochemical signals along the pathways, heading ever closer to the source of those signals: the brain.

  But the crawlers weren’t the only microorganisms moving through his body.

  Hundreds of thousands of neutrophils navigated in a different direction, moving down his arms, searching for his hands. In particular, for his fingertips.

  There they would stay until Bo Pan touched something: a tabletop, perhaps, or a door handle, maybe a mug or a glass. The neutrophils could survive on that surface for a day or two, three at the most. If fortune smiled upon them, someone else would touch that same surface long before their time expired.

  And when that happened, the neutrophil would stick, it would burrow, and it would go to work on its new host.

  THE EVER-PLEASANT DR. CHENG

  One of the Coronado’s mission modules was a small teleconference center. Paulius referred to it as the “SPA,” an acronym for “SEAL Planning Area.”

  Margaret sat at the room’s conference table, Tim to her right, Clarence across from her. A flat-panel monitor hung on one end of the module, the image split down the middle: on the left, Murray Longworth in Washington; on the right, Dr. Frank Cheng in the research lab on Black Manitou Island.

  Murray looked like he hadn’t slept in days. But then again, he always looked that way. His tailored suit hung looser than she remembered it, as if he’d lost even more weight in the three days since Margaret had last seen him.

  Three days? Had all this happened in just three days?

  Murray’s body looked like it might fail him at any moment, but his eyes burned with undiminished intensity. He was close to winning, and he knew it.

  As for Cheng’s fat face, Margaret could barely stand to look at it. While she had hidden away in her home, Cheng had been climbing the ladders of both the CDC and the Department of Special Threats. In the CDC, he was the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. That made him the top dog there for dealing with the alien infection. If Tim’s yeast worked, if it provided immunity, Cheng would be a shoo-in to become the CDC’s next overall director.

  As for the Department of Special Threats, the organizational chart wasn’t as neatly defined. Murray put people into roles as needed. There was no doubt, however, that Cheng was the DST’s number one scientist. Frank Cheng answered to Murray Longworth, to the president of the United States, and to no one else.

  All Cheng’s power and status could have been hers. All she’d had to do was take it, but she’d chosen the coward’s way out.

  Or maybe … maybe Cheng had tricked her somehow. Had he? And had someone helped him?

  Margaret looked across the table, at Clarence. Clarence, who had allowed her to stay home all that time. Had he worked with Cheng to keep her out of the picture?

  She chased away that random, illogical thought, wrote it off to exhaustion. She rubbed her eyes as she listened to Cheng speak.

  “We are making progress,” he said, his fat face split by an arrogant smile of self-satisfaction. “I’ve perfected the genome of the YBR yeast strain.”

  Tim held up a finger. “Excuse me? The what strain?”

  Cheng’s smile faded. “The YBR2874W strain, Doctor Feely. Properly named — Y for yeast, B for chromosome two, R for right arm, 2874 for strain number and W for coding strand.”

  Tim slapped his hands on the table in an exaggerated bit of outrage. “Oh no you don’t, Chubby. Naming goes to the discoverer or creator, and I be both. We already have a proper name, you blowhard, and that proper name is Saccharomyces feely. But you can call it the Feely Strain, if you like. Note the repeated emphasis on the word Feely, as in, you feel what I’m cookin’?”

  The teleconference screens let people in different parts of the world make actual eye contact, let Cheng look Feely right in the eyes.

  “Naming nomenclature is an established practice, Doctor Feely,” Cheng said. “Many researchers are involved in this project. We wouldn’t want to disassociate them from any credit by putting only your name on it.”

  And with that, it was instantly clear that Cheng’s decision was about disassociating someone. He intended to take the credit for Tim’s brilliance, for Margaret’s discovery of the new cellulase, for everything, even though he’d been safe on Black Manitou Island while Margaret and Tim had been shot at, nearly blown up and almost drowned. Cheng couldn’t grab all the glory if the strain was named after Tim.

  Tim leaned back in his chair. He smiled, laced his fingers behind his head, and looked at Murray’s monitor.

  “Director Longworth, perhaps you should arbitrate this disagreement,” he said. “As our impartial third-party observer, who is right? Cheng … or me.”

  Murray stiffened. Tim seemed so confident, almost as if he had something on Murray, or as if the two had worked out a backroom deal.

  The director waved a hand in annoyance. “Fine. Cheng, you wouldn’t have had anything to work on in the first place if it weren’t for Feely’s work. The yeast already has a name, so use it and let’s move on.”

  Tim rocked slowly in his chair, smiling wide at Cheng.

  Cheng’s fat cheeks quivered with anger. “Very well. We’ve initiated an intensive incubation program to increase the yeast cultures that were delivered yesterday. We’ve also, as I mentioned earlier, altered the genome to create additional strains — some of which, I might add, show far more potential to be our magic bullet.”

  Margaret wasn’t surprised. Cheng was a climber and a glory grabber, no doubt, but he was no fool and he had a small army of scientists at his disposal. Creating multiple strains was the logical approach. The more weapons they developed, the better chance of having one or two that would devastate t
he enemy.

  “Developing variant strains is mandatory, Doctor Cheng,” Margaret said. “But that doesn’t address mass production. How are we going to make enough of this stuff to dose over seven billion people?”

  Cheng’s easy, arrogant smile returned. Margaret knew he’d come up with an original idea, one he’d be entitled to claim as his own.

  “Breweries,” he said.

  Margaret’s eyebrows raised … not just an original idea, a brilliant original idea.

  Clarence looked from Cheng to Murray to Margaret — he didn’t understand what Cheng was talking about.

  Tim leaned back in his chair, surprised. He looked almost disappointed that Cheng had thought of it and not him.

  “That’s great,” he said. “How many breweries are involved?”

  Now it was Murray’s turn to smile. “Most of the breweries in America, Canada and Mexico are onboard. President Blackmon’s been on the phone nonstop with beverage company executives. Believe me, she’s quite convincing.”

  Tim shook his head slowly. “Well, spank my ass and call me Sally,” he said. “Cheng, I always thought you were a smelly, stupid douchebag with the integrity of a five-dollar whore, but you know what? You’re not stupid at all.”

  Cheng started to give a nod of thanks, then stopped, unsure if he’d just been insulted.

  Clarence looked at Tim, then to the screen, then at Margaret again, anywhere for an answer. “Sorry, can someone tell me what’s happening? Breweries?”

  Tim slapped the table again. “Beer, man. People have been using yeast to make beer for, shit, well since before we started recording history. We don’t need to build production facilities for” — he turned to look at Cheng — “for Saccharomyces feely” — Tim turned back to Clarence — “because all over the world there are places already equipped to brew yeast cultures around the clock. Those places are called breweries.”

  Cheng’s face was reddening. Tim had refused to let the man have his moment of triumph; Cheng couldn’t help but chime in.