Pandemic Page 91

That, or he was drunk. Drunk, and safe, isolated from everything, surrounded by trained killers who thought he was the bee’s knees.

Tim was lucky, after all. If that luck held, he could just stay right here, in this very safe place, until Cheng’s grand plan ran its course.

A HUSBAND’S ROLE

Clarence Otto stood on the Coronado’s rear deck. No wind for a change, just the oppressive cold. He stared out at the setting sun, wondering what might happen next.

He’d survived. Margaret had survived. Tim Feely had survived. Black Manitou was leading the effort for mass production of inoculant. By any measure, Clarence had succeeded in his assigned mission. Murray would probably try to give him a medal for the effort.

But Clarence didn’t want a medal … he wanted Margaret.

Onboard the Carl Brashear, the woman he’d fallen in love with had returned. She’d been decisive, insightful, tireless and brilliant. She’d been her old self, her fighting self.

And now? Now she wouldn’t see him.

All day long she’d stayed locked up in her mission module. He’d tried to get in to talk to her, but through the closed door she’d told him to go away. She sounded scared. She sounded alone.

For the last five years, whenever she’d felt those emotions she had come to him. He had comforted her, or at least he’d tried. She was his wife. His job was to protect her, help her through any problem no matter how great. At the end of the day, no matter how he sliced it, that was a mission he’d failed.

The sun finally ducked below the water, leaving only the residual glow of pink clouds to reflect against Lake Michigan’s tall waves.

Maybe tomorrow he could talk to her. Maybe he could make it all up to her.

If he worked hard enough at it, if he apologized enough, then maybe … maybe … they could repair the damage they had done to each other.

Maybe they could be together again.

DAY SEVEN

ACTUALIZATION

Clarence Otto had to die.

They all had to die.

All of them … all the humans.

Margaret had turned off the lights in her bunk module. She sat alone in the dark, thinking. She finally understood. Why had she fought against this for so long? It was so obvious. People had turned the earth into a cesspool of hatred and waste, had taken the gift of winning evolution’s grand game and pissed it away.

She got it now. She understood. The Orbital had tried to fix things, it had tried to do …

… to do …

… to do God’s work.

Not the God she had thought she’d known in the naiveté of childhood, or any of the thousands of randomly invented supernatural beings that caused people to slaughter each other throughout history. No, a real god. A god with the power to send ships across space. The power to change human beings into something else, something new.

Something powerful.

Humanity had shit all over this planet.

It was time to remove humanity, time to let the world start over.

Margaret hated them. She wanted to walk out of her little cabin and stab the first person she saw. Maybe find a wrench, bash them in the head again and again until bone cracked, until she saw the bloody mess that was their brains.

She wanted to kill Clarence.

She wanted to kill Tim.

She wanted to kill the sailors, the SEALs, sink this fucking ship and put them all on the bottom so they would never hurt anyone ever again.

Margaret stood. The thought of taking life thrilled her, infused her with excitement, made her vibrate and bubble with pure energy.

Who would be first?

She reached for the door handle, then stopped.

They outnumbered her. If she killed one of them, maybe even two or three, the rest would certainly get her. She couldn’t let that happen, because she was meant for something greater.

Margaret’s former self had tried to second-guess the Orbital, tried to figure out what strategy would come next. She’d never even considered its latest tactic: create an infectious agent that the cellulose kits didn’t detect.

An infectious agent that turned brilliant humans into converted leaders.

Leaders who could pass undetected among the humans. Leaders who could infiltrate human organizations. Leaders who could gather the troops of God together, make them operate as an organized unit.

Margaret could do all of those things. She had been chosen for it.

How ironic that Clarence turned out to be right after all: Margaret Montoya wasn’t a soldier — she was a general.

All she had to do was bide her time and wait for her army.

She wasn’t contagious. Her infection gave her that knowledge. No tongue triangles, no blisters with dandelion seeds, nothing that could reveal her true nature. That made perfect sense: if she showed those telltale symptoms, the humans would kill her. Not being contagious was actually a form of camouflage.

For now, while trapped on this ship, she had to blend in. She couldn’t kill anyone. She couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary. She had to wait. She had to be … calm. Like Cantrell had been back on the Brashear. Not at first, no; he’d been jittery, paranoid. He must have been very close to finally realizing his role, just as Margaret now realized hers.

The Orbital must have engineered new crawlers that could penetrate BSL-4 suits. That was the only logical answer. It wouldn’t take much, just a microscopic hole, barely detectable if it was even detectable at all. Was that how Clark and Cantrell had become infected? Yes, that made sense, and when they were submerged in bleach, maybe the pressure change caused a tiny bit to leak through … that explained why they both reported smelling it.

Chapter end