Pandemic Page 29

The second chain reaction had the same effect on the infection’s cellulose structures. Instead of apoptosis, infection’s cells produced a cellulase. Cellulase dissolved cellulose, the cell swelled and burst, spreading the cellulase catalyst to surrounding cells, and so on.

The Orbital had hijacked human systems; Tim was trying to turn the tables and do the same to the Orbital’s creations.

“Speaking of grunts,” Clarence said, appearing to refer to Tim’s comment about grunt work but intending it as a slap-back at Margaret’s insult, “What does Saccharomyces mean?”

“Yeast,” Margaret said. She felt her face heat with shame. No matter how bad she and Clarence fought, there was no valid excuse to insinuate he wasn’t smart, that his work didn’t matter. When she was fully rational, she knew that. Problem was, that man made her irrational far more often than she cared to admit.

She tried to shake it off, turned to face Tim. “Yeast, that’s smart. Modify their germline DNA so that subsequent generations produce that cellulase catalyst, and you’ve got an endless supply of something that kills the infection. Any luck?”

Tim shook his head. “Close, but no cigar. I was able to get the yeast to produce the catalyst, but that catalyst is toxic to the yeast as well. The engineered yeast die before they can reproduce, so we don’t even get a second generation, let alone the massive colonies needed to secrete the amount of catalyst we’d need.”

Clarence fidgeted in his bulky suit, pulling at the blue material, trying to make it settle on him better.

“So, Doctor Feely, it’s just you down here,” he said. “Captain Yasaka mentioned you also helped with the wounded. How much sleep have you had?”

Tim frowned, made a show of counting on his gloved fingers. “Let’s see, carry the one, divide by four, and … Alex, the question is, what is zero?”

That didn’t surprise Margaret, not with the number of wounded up above.

“No sleep,” Clarence said. “You on drugs or something?”

“If by drugs you mean Adderall, Deprenyl and/or Sudafed — mostly and, though — then yes, I am on drugs.”

Margaret saw Clarence taking a deep, disapproving breath. She put her gloved hand on his arm.

“Clarence, relax,” she said. “Any doctor pulling a triple shift might do the same.”

He turned to her, disbelieving. “Have you?”

“More times than I can count. I had a life before I met you, you know. And apparently a life after.”

If he wanted to make snide comments, she could do the same. The words caught him off guard, stung him. They also piqued Tim’s interest. Margaret wanted to kick herself for the slipup, for exposing personal problems at a time like this. She had to stay on point.

Tim grinned at Margaret. “Come on, it’s the scheduled time to give my little prick to the two divers. After that, we can touch bodies. Dead bodies, that is.”

Clarence sighed again, and Margaret couldn’t blame him.

GOD’S CHOSEN

Chief Petty Officer Orin Nagy had always dreamed of serving in the navy. The big ships, seeing the world on Uncle Sam’s dime, the service, the career — he had wanted all these things.

He hadn’t wanted to murder people, though.

Until now.

Now, he wanted to murder a lot of people. Ever single person he saw, in fact.

The biosafety suit made him sweat. It also bounced his own voice back to him when he talked, made him sound strange.

“Lattimer, John J.,” he called out, reading from the list on the clipboard as he’d been instructed to do. “Cellulose test.”

Four wounded men were lying on the floor in the corner of the bunk room. They were too wounded to do work, but less wounded than the men who occupied the actual bunks. Second-degree burns covered one man’s arm. Another sailor had a red-spotted bandage wrapped around his head, something straight out of a shitty war movie.

Orin wanted to shoot them. Stab them. Maybe stomp down on their throats and watch them suffocate to death. But for now, he had to keep up appearances.

“Lattimer, John J.,” he said again. “Which one of you is Lattimer, John J.?”

The one with the head bandage raised his hand.

Orin pulled a cellulose testing kit out of the bag slung over his shoulder, handed it over. Orin knew he wasn’t human anymore, but he could still appreciate the irony that he was one of the sailors testing people to see if they were infected.

His turn was coming soon enough. He’d managed to dodge his last test, when he’d already realized God had chosen him. Orin had pretended to fall, jabbed the end of his testing stick into a sleeping man. It worked: his test administrator had been distracted, had been counting down names on the list, looking for the next testee. If it had been business as usual aboard the Brashear, the administrator would have been eyes-on, carefully watching the results. But it wasn’t business as usual; God had seen to it to place hundreds of extra men onboard, many severely wounded, creating confusion, making people lose focus.

Still, Orin knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to fake his way through the next test. They, the humans, they would find out about him, and they would try to kill him. That test was scheduled in two hours.

In thirty minutes, his shift in the suit was up.

That would give him ninety minutes to touch as many people as he could, to spread the gift that he’d been given.

Then, maybe, he could answer that burning, churning need in his chest.

Chapter end