Pandemic Page 26

“Nice suit,” Tim said. “Not many suits in lab work. I don’t suppose you can do anything down here that’s actually helpful?”

“You never know,” Clarence said. “Sometimes shooting people is a useful skill.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Oh, great, an action hero. That will come in handy among all the dead bodies. Come on in. Let me give you the tour. After you, m’lady.”

She stepped into the airlock, faced an interior door. Clarence and Tim followed. Margaret glanced around, saw drains in the floor and the familiar nozzles and vents — the airlock doubled as a decontamination chamber.

“The lab complex has a slightly negative internal pressure,” Tim said as he shut the exterior door and cycled the airlock. “Anything punches a hole in the wall, outside air comes in, any cooties we might have don’t go out. Plus when you need that extra-clean feeling, this baby gives you a little chlorine, a little sodium, a little oxygen … all the things a growing boy needs.”

Clarence’s nose wrinkled in a look of confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Bleach,” Margaret said. “The nozzles spray bleach.”

Clarence looked annoyed. Maybe he felt dumb for not getting Tim’s reference. Clarence hated to feel dumb.

The internal door opened. After so much battleship gray, Margaret was surprised to see white walls and floors. Framed prints added color, as did potted plants.

“This is the living section,” Tim said. “All the comforts of home while floating on an inland sea.”

The place looked like the lobby of a small, posh hotel: couches, chairs, a table with a chess set ready for play, a huge, flat-panel monitor up on the wall. Soft overhead lighting made things look, well, cozy. It didn’t feel like being on a military ship at all.

The decor seemed to bother Clarence. “Nice,” he said. “Good thing you don’t have to put up with the same conditions as the enlisted men who are taking care of you.”

Tim nodded, missing the dig. “Tell me about it, brother,” he said. “This place makes the time somewhat passable.”

He walked to a picture mounted on a wall. It was an emergency escape diagram, a long, vertical rectangle broken into three squares. The top was labeled Living Quarters, the middle Lab Space, and the bottom one Receiving & Containment.

Margaret noticed that all escape routes led back to the airlock they’d just exited. Just one way in, and one way out.

Tim pointed to the top square.

“That’s where we are now,” he said. “Living Quarters consists of ten small bedrooms, communal bathrooms, the room we’re standing in — I call it the Rumpus Room, by the way, because who doesn’t want to have a Rumpus Room — a kitchen with our own food supply, and a briefing room that doubles as a whoop-ass movie theater.”

He pointed to a green icon on the right side, on top of a line that divided the Living Quarters from the Lab Space below it. The Lab Space square contained three long, vertical rectangles. Margaret recognized the symbols: research trailers, ready-made modules that could be hauled by a semi or shipped as cargo. She felt a shudder — the trailers were probably similar to the MargoMobile where her friend Amos Braun had died a horrible death at the skinless hands of Betty Jewel. The rectangle on the left was labeled Morgue, the one in the middle Analysis, and the one on the right Misc.

Tim tapped the green icon. “This is the second airlock, the one that leads to the lab section, another step down in negative pressure. Keep them pathogens where they belong, my grandmother always used to say. Suits are in that airlock.” He turned to Clarence, smiled. “Real suits, my friend, the kind that matter.”

Clarence ignored the gibe.

Tim turned back to the map, traced his finger down through still another green icon. “This airlock leads from the lab space to the Receiving and Containment section. That’s where they brought in any material recovered by the Los Angeles. It’s a cool setup, you’ll dig it. It’s also where we keep any living subjects, which includes the two navy divers who retrieved the bodies of Walker and Petrovsky.”

He rubbed his hands together. “So, y’all ready to get to work, or do you want to take a little nap before we go in? Maybe powder your noses? I have a little single malt in the theater, if you want to wet your whistles.”

“No,” Margaret said quickly. “I don’t need a drink. The bodies, are they affected by the black rot?”

That was the thing that made it so difficult to work on infection victims. The crawlers set off a chain reaction that caused cell death on a massive level. An unrefrigerated body could decompose in just thirty-six hours, becoming little more than a mass of sludge that sloughed off the skeleton.

Tim shrugged. “Walker’s body is okay, but Petrovsky is already showing signs of liquefaction. By tomorrow I think he’ll be blood pudding.”

Like always, a ticking clock held sway over everything.

Margaret nodded. “Then let’s get to work.”

FAKE FUR

“What the fuck is that thing?”

Jeff Brockman had such a way with words, although Cooper had to agree with the sentiment.

The Mary Ellen Moffett’s deck lights lit up Steve Stanton’s strange machine. The lights wouldn’t be needed for long: the sun was only minutes from sliding up on the horizon, its glow already turning the low-hanging clouds a pinkish-orange. Five-foot swells continued to rock the boat, but at least the wind had finally died down. When the sun did rise, Cooper hoped the temperature might climb into the double digits.

Chapter end