Hissers II: Death March (29 page)

Olive stared back, heaving breaths. “Guess they didn’t like being duped.”

SUNDAY 9:14 AM

“Thank you thank thank you,” the white-haired scientist exclaimed. Her cheeks were sunken and her skin was pale. All of the scientists, five of them total, looked about two minutes from death. And
Connor guessed it wasn’t a far-off diagnosis.

“Is there air in here?” he asked. He didn’t need the blue prints of the building to know that they’d just sealed the doors on the air tight room once again.

“For now, yes.” The bald man in the white coat spoke with a German accent, seemed to gulp air like it was a drug. “The room would have filled up when you opened the doors. Enough to last a little bit. But I can see in your eyes the question you fear to ask. Will it run out? If the wires in the keypad outside are still secure, then we can still open the doors. If not, then you have just joined us in eventual death.”

“Dr. Klaus is a dramatic,” the white-haired woman said.

“And Dr. McGowan here is too calm to be human. Did you not feel the dizziness and constricted lungs just minutes before our friends showed up? It is likely going to happen again.”

“Then we’ll deal with it when it approaches, Marcus. For now, we have other matters to discuss.
” Dr. McGowan turned toward Doug. “Namely, who are you people and how did you find us. Was it our signal?”

“It was,” Doug said. “We heard it out in the desert. Can’t say we were the only ones but I can’t say anyone else is coming either. Bunch of scientists in a lab…not exactly high priority
for the military when monsters are ravaging the land.”

“What is the military doing? W
e haven’t heard any news since—”

“Nothing,” Connor said. The military was the last thing he wanted t
o discuss right now, and he certainly didn’t want these people thinking of them as friends. Not until she could look at his disk and see what information could be pulled from it. “I was with them. Am and I both were, and all they’re doing is corralling people like cattle.”

“They’re not even doing that anymore,” Am said. Som
ething in her voice told Connor she was leaving out something she didn’t want to think about. She was seeing something in her mind’s eye and it was tearing her apart. “They’re just shooting anyone and everything. My parents…” She drifted off and Connor now realized what it was. The military had killed her parents. Had they turned or were they murdered under the guise of saving the many by sacrificing the few?

“Military is scarce anyway,” Doug said.
“All we see are abandoned transport trucks.”

Dr. McGowan shook her head in disbelief.
“But surely the Navy is okay? They’re not even on land.”

“Hate to tell you,” Olive said, “but those things are in the ocean too. They don’t need to bre
athe so they just walk along the sea floor it seems.”

“My God.”

Doug pointed to the red doors. “You’ve got power in here. I can understand a circuit being severed on a keypad and locking you in, by why no air? This is a…whatdycallit…a safe room?”

“A clean lab,” Dr. McGowan said. “It’s a steril
e environment. At least it was at one time. Air was indeed pumped in through an outside filtration system which shut down when the building’s power shut down.”

“No one thought to have access to that air down here when they built this,” Olive asked? The way she shook her head said these scientists were idiots.

“Of course,” Dr. Klaus said. “It should have pumped in when we overrode the external power, gone to the solar backup, but it does not, you see. We believe the filtration system is itself damaged. It is not on the roof but on the side of the building. Easy for something to crash into it. This would explain the reasoning of no air when we turn it on. And so we choke instead.”

“No one is going to choke to death,” Doug said. “We’ll figure this out.”

“You came to save us?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose. Also came to find this kid here. Connor.
He’s the real reason we’re here.”

Dr. McGowan sized up Connor. “What’s special about you, Connor? What brings you to our labs?”

“Did you know a janitor named Fitzgerald?”

“I’m afraid not. I didn’t talk to the cleaning staff much. I was busy studying synapse lapses in field mice and searching for a way to introduce reuptake inhibitors
into them to increase memory function.”

Blank stares all around.

“She drugged mice and put them in mazes,” Dr. Klaus said, ribbing his colleague.

“Yes. Alzheimers research was my field.
And Dr. Klaus here—”

“I drugged mice and filled their brains with cancer.”

“And he says I was the cruel one.”

“To run in a maze all day, this is not cruel?

“I knew that janitor.” One of the other researchers approached their pow wow. He was also emaciated, wearing spectacles and balding, but he was almost shorter than Am. “Hi. Dr. Hall. This is my assistant, Adam. We knew Fitzgerald. He was also a bit of a handyman. Fixed the shelving unit in our office. Were you his friend?”

“No,” Connor replied. “Didn’t know him. Not sure I wanted to.”

“Good, because he was an asshole. Last I heard from him he was trying to steal money from his ex-wife. Said he’d been in contact with the daughter he abandoned, said her mother had money and he was going to get it somehow. What a piece of crap he was. Poor girl. I don’t wish paternal abandonment on anyone, but this girl is lucky her father’s dead.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yeah, and now he’s armless. See?” He pointed to the severed arm on the ground near the door. “That was him reaching in. See the prison tattoos on his knuckles. Says BEER. Like I said, a piece of crap. His daughter should thank this plague for getting rid of him. Except that I guess he’s not really gone.”

Connor
wanted to kick that arm. Here Nicole had wanted nothing more than to have her father back in her life, and the scumbag was only using her. “Except that she wouldn’t thank this plague, because it killed her too.”

Dr. Hall frowned.
“You knew the daughter?”

“Yes. Nicole. It’s why we’re here. She thought her father could help us…somehow?”

“A janitor?” Dr. McGowan asked. “Help you with what?”

Connor removed the baggie
from his pocket, held it up in the emergency lighting so that the drive was visible through it. “This.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the plague.”

SUNDAY 9:29 AM

Ten minutes later they were all crowded around one of the lab
’s computers as the youngest of the scientists, a Dr. Aja, sat tapping the keyboard. The faint thudding of the hissers pounding on the red doors continued to keep everyone on edge.

“
We saw some of it at Olive’s place,” Connor said. “Bits and pieces of something.”

“It’s true,” Olive corroborated, “I saw it. Don’t know what it was but I saw it.”

“I’m getting nothing,” Aja said. “The drive is so damaged I….I don’t think I can…” he lost his words as he typed. “Did you get this wet?”

“About a dozen times.” Connor ran his hand through his stringy hair, as if to punctuate the fact he still had sea salt in it.

“Well…it’s dead. I can’t get it to load.”

“Take it out and let me see it,” Hall said. “It’s possible it’
s a corroded bit on the circuit board.”

“I was submerged in the Pacific,” Connor said sullenly. “I have been in rivers and in mud and jumped through trees and windows and have been kicked and scaled cliffs
and…and….and I dunno what else.”

“But it was always in the bag?” Aja asked.

“Not always. I hate to say it but the odds that thing are working are slim to none. Still, I hoped…”

“You come here from far away, yes?” Klaus asked. “How far?”

“From Castor. It’s…..who knows. Hundreds of miles. It’s been weeks, over a month I think, since the outbreak.”

“And you keep this drive with you always as you run, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it was meant for you to take it. It is meant to be seen. Why else doe
s it stay with you all this way? Because it is here for a reason, and you are its guardian. So to think now, after all this, you will accept defeat, is a sentiment I will not accept. Come, we let Dr. Hall open it and see. He is the bomb with engineering.” Dr. Klaus smiled and rubbed Connor’s shoulder. “I learn that saying on the Internet. My son used to say a lot. The bomb.”

Am wanted to ask about Dr. Klaus’s son but knew better. The answer was already written on his maudlin smile.

Dr. Hall took the drive and brought it over to a black table. He extracted a handful of tools from a silver drawer and used one to crack open the drive’s case. Despite the racket coming in from the hallway, everyone seemed to watch Dr. Hall the next couple minutes as if nothing else in the world existed. He tinkered and probed at the drive with a tiny stylus, then put it under a large magnifying glass on a flexible arm.

Am
felt Connor sidle up next to her, his breath just beside her ear. She turned to him, bit her lip, smiled. “Hey. The creepy German guy has a point. Nicole died for this. Seth died for this. You carried it all the way here. It’s got to still work. I know it.”

“
Since when are you the optimist?”

“Since I found myself trying not to sweat the small things. Losing everything you love will do that to you.”

“Not everything,” Connor whispered, but she heard him and she smiled even wider.

“Good news, guy.” Dr. Hall pointed at the drive.

“You can fix it,” Doug asked. “Will it work?”

“Well, I think. The memory chip is good and t
he connector wires are still intact. The problem is the soldering has been ruined. If we can secure the chip again it should work. In theory anyway. Should take me a minute to fix it. Now where do we have solder?”

“There’s all sorts of tools in the cabinet on the wall,” Dr. McGowan said.

It took Dr. Hall another minute to locate what he was looking for, and everyone resumed holding their breath as he went to work. When he was done, he tapped the drive to make sure the chip was safe, and handed it back to Dr. Aja.

“Everybody pray,” Olive said. She didn’t even wince when the ceiling bucked.

“More of ’em are inside.” Doug moved to the red doors and watched the howling faces through the window. “If they knock out that keypad again though, I guess it won’t matter.”

Amanita crowded in next to Conn
or as Aja placed the drive back into the Computer’s USB port. A window popped up on the computer, asking if they would like to format the drive. “Holy Moly,” Aja said, “it works. It works! Just need to bypass the reformatting, see if I can locate the files and….here! I see it.”

“You see, boy!” Klaus tousled Connor’s hair. For the first time in ages, Amanita watched Connor laugh. He glanced at Olive for approval. The woman came over and
hugged him. Why this made Amanita jealous was beyond her. Olive was an adult, not someone Connor would be interested in. Or would he? She certainly was beautiful. What boy wouldn’t want to be with someone like that?

“We did it, Am!” 

Before she knew what happened Connor had his arms around her, squeezing her so tight she thought her eyes would pop out.

“We did it.”

“You did it, Connor.”

“No
, Am,
we
did. We all did. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. I’d be in the Washington River gorge, or shot dead on a farm field in Wallingford.”

“What are you seeing?” Doug asked. “I mean, is that something that’ll help us?”

Dr. Klaus and Dr. McGowan huddled over the computer monitor, tracing certain items with their fingers. “It’s a lot to go through,” McGowan said, “but this is research unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

“See here,”
Klaus said, studying a mathematical equation on a document that may as well have been written in alien for all Am was concerned. He sat in front of a separate computer at an adjoining station; the computers in here were on a LAN and he could play with the files as well. “This here is a grafting molecule. I know it well. We try to use them here for our own research but they are highly unstable. They change without warning. Somehow this team found a way to keep it in stasis long enough for it to assimilate, but according to the notes I see here that they have their problems with it.”

“This is a recipe of some sort.” McGowan leaned back from the monitor and looked at her co-workers. “They bound a drug in a synthetic virus. An unstable one. Who would be so
dumb as to put this in a human?”

“The military
,” Connor said. “Which is why I hid it from them. They built this and it killed everyone and if we just give it back they’ll keep using it. Tweak it or whatever. But they’ll use it.”

“No one can say if that’s the case, Connor, but I suppose it doesn’t change the fact that it
was man made to induce grafting.”