Pandemic Page 25

Very meticulous, very disciplined.

The lieutenant held the door open for them.

“Doctor Feely will take it from here,” he said. “Just go down the stairs.”

Clarence thanked the man. Margaret said nothing. Clarence went down first. Even on a secure ship, he wanted to make sure it was safe for her.

The steep, switchback flights were more ladder than stairs. The same gray walls, but no wounded here because there was nowhere to put them. Margaret found the descent eerily silent.

The last flight opened up to a small room. Gray walls lined three of its sides. A white airlock door made up the fourth. Through a thick window in the middle of the door, Margaret saw a short man reach out and press an unseen button. She heard his voice through speakers mounted on top of the airlock.

“Welcome-welcome-welcome,” he said. “Casa de Feely is happy to have you, Doctor Montoya.”

Feely had thick, blond hair that seemed instantly out of place in a military setting, although judging from the way it stuck up in unkempt bunches he clearly hadn’t washed it in days. Maybe he had a pair of holey sweatpants just like she did. If not, hers would have fit him: they were the same height, although she probably weighed a bit more than he did. His brand of skinny came from lack of sleep and lack of food rather than exercise. The thing that really caught her attention, though, were his eyes — alert but hollow and bloodshot.

She’d seen eyes like that many times, when looking in the mirror after a forty-eight-hour on-call stint from her doctor days, or during the marathon sessions she and Amos had put in when they’d tried to cure the infection.

Clarence rapped his knuckles against the glass.

“You going to let us in?”

“Absolutely,” Feely said. “Just as soon as you take my little prick.”

Clarence scowled. “Excuse me?”

Tim pointed down. “At your feet,” he said. “Cellulose test. Be a pair of dears, won’t you?”

At the base of the door were two small, white boxes, each about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Clarence picked one up and opened it. He looked, then showed the contents to Margaret: sealed alcohol swabs and a metal foil envelope.

She opened the envelope, expecting to see the cheek-swab analysis device she and Amos had invented. Instead, she saw a simple, six-inch plastic tube, white, with three colored LEDs built into it: yellow, green and red.

Margaret held it up. “You don’t use the swab test anymore?”

“You’ve been on vacay for a while, I take it,” Tim said. “Yours was susceptible to false-positives if the test subject had recently eaten plant material. Considering the level of concern in this joint, I didn’t want some guy getting shot because he had a piece of spinach stuck in his teeth. The one you’re holding is a blood test. Spring-loaded needle. Just press it against your fingertip.”

Clarence huffed. “Are you serious? We just got here.”

Tim nodded. “While I may have the natural good looks of a late-night TV host, I assure you I’m serious. I’m negative and I mean to stay that way.”

Smart thinking. Margaret thought of a line she’d read in a book once: perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. She liked Tim already.

Margaret opened an alcohol swab, rubbed down the pad of her thumb, then pressed the tube’s tip against it. She heard a tiny click, felt a sharp poke. She lifted the tube, looked at it: the needle had retracted. A small smear of her blood remained on the unit’s flat end.

The yellow light started to flash. She had a brief, intense flash of fear … what if she’d already caught the disease? What if the light turned red? The yellow flashing slowed. The tiniest mistake could make her change, turn her into a killer, it could—

The green light blinked on.

Margaret let out a long breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She was right back in it again, dead center in the hot zone.

Clarence picked up the second box, repeated Margaret’s actions. In seconds, his test flashed green.

The airlock door slid open with a light hiss of air. The blond man stepped out. He all but ignored Clarence in his rush to offer Margaret an overly excited handshake.

“I’m Tim Feely,” he said. “Biology, mostly, but also regular-old doctorin’ when it’s needed.”

His hands felt soft.

“I’m Margaret Montoya.”

He threw his head back and laughed. A genuine, I don’t care what anybody thinks laugh. In a bar or on a date, this one would be quite the charmer.

“I know who you are,” he said. He turned to Clarence. “As if I don’t know who she is, right?” He turned back to Margaret, his moves twitchy, like a bird’s. “Everyone knows. You’re the woman who saved the world. Thanks for that, by the way.”

He wasn’t being sarcastic — he meant it, said it with real admiration. On the Internet and the news talk shows, no one thanked her. But this man had.

Tim bowed with a flourish, gestured toward the airlock. “Come one, come all, to the midnight ball. Fuck am I glad to have some help down here.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said. “That’s quite a welcome.”

“I try, I try,” Tim said. He tilted his head toward Clarence. “Who’s the stiff?”

Margaret noticed that Tim was trying — and failing — not to stare at her breasts.

“Agent Clarence Otto,” she said. “My husband.”

Tim looked Clarence up and down, and not in the same way he’d scoped out Margaret.

Chapter end