Paul McEuen - Spiral

“Screw you. Where is my son?”

Maggie saw a flash of rage cross Orchid’s eyes. She raised her arm and struck Maggie brutally hard in the chest with the base of her open palm, driving it into her sternum. Maggie gasped, the pain radiating outward as though she’d been cracked open. She saw spots before her eyes and was afraid that she would vomit.

Orchid said, “A word of advice. This is not going to be pleasant for you no matter how it goes. It’s your choice how bad it has to be. Now answer my question. How much do you know about the Uzumaki?”

Maggie was still breathing hard, her breastbone throbbing. She couldn’t come up with a good reason not to answer. “Look, before yesterday, I’d never heard of it.”

“Do you know the pathways of infection?”

“Ingestion,” Maggie said. “From what I know, it’s by ingestion.”

Orchid nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “Through the stomach. That is one possibility. But there is another one. Do you know what it is?”

“Inhalation,” Maggie said. “Spores.”

“Correct.”

Orchid picked up the gas mask and placed it on Maggie’s face. She pulled the straps around the back of Maggie’s head, tightening them, making the fit snug. She was methodical, careful, checking the seals with her fingers.

“Blow out,” she said. “It’s important that this fits properly. Exhale as hard as you can. Quickly.”

Maggie quickly exhaled, sending a fresh wave of pain through her chest. The mask swelled slightly but held its seal.

“Again. Harder. First breathe in.”

Maggie slowly inhaled. She smelled the rubber and plastic, heard the underwater sound of the air hissing through the particulate filters.

“Now. As hard as you can.”

Maggie exhaled hard. Again the mask swelled, but the seals held.

“Good.”

Orchid grabbed the table with the Crawlers and pulled it close. She sat down on a stool next to Maggie. Orchid raised her damaged right hand, cupped her fingers, and moved them back and forth. One of the Crawlers, the farthest from the right, skittered forward, bumping into the tweezers laid out in front of them.

Maggie watched, a cold, slack terror sweeping over her.

Working carefully, deliberately, Orchid picked up the MicroCrawler with the tweezers. With her free hand she carefully lifted up the edge of Maggie’s gas mask. She slid the tweezers through the opening, placing the Crawler on Maggie’s cheek. Maggie tried to shake her head, to knock it loose, but she couldn’t. The Crawler’s legs hooked her skin.

No, no, no, no…

Maggie was shaking, her whole body quivering. “Oh, God, no. Please. Stop this. What do you want from me?”

“No. That’s not it at all. There’s nothing you can tell me.”

“Then why?”

“I want proof.”

Maggie was hyperventilating. “Proof of what?” She tugged as hard as she could at her restraints, unable to move. The Crawler loomed over her left eye. She tried to will it away.

Orchid twitched her hand. The Crawler skittered right a fraction of an inch, its legs catching the skin like barbs of a fishhook. Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, tried to brace herself for the pain she knew was coming. She had seen Crawlers tear through leather—her skin would be like paper.

“Ready?” Orchid asked.

Maggie forced herself to open her eyes. She said, “Screw you.”

Orchid smiled, then closed her hand into a fist twice in rapid succession.

Maggie winced, but there was no sharp bite of pain. Instead a slight sound, like a perfume mister. The air inside the mask was suddenly cloudy.

Maggie blinked, coughed inside the mask. The Crawler was motionless on her cheek, its legs holding on to her skin.

What just happened?

Maggie looked to Orchid. Their eyes met. Orchid smiled again.

The mask on her face. The filters were designed to catch particulates. Normally it was to keep dangerous agents out. But here it was meant to keep them in.

“Inhalation,” Orchid said.

The Uzumaki.

The mist was full of Uzumaki spores.

THE PRINCIPALS OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL AS sembled in Camp David’s Laurel Lodge conference room. The mood was serious, no small talk, no joking and jostling. Lawrence Dunne took a chair along the back wall.

The room was long and narrow, with a sloped ceiling and wood paneling on all four walls. A thirty-foot-long wooden table ran down the center. The vice president, the President’s chief of staff, and the national security adviser were on one side, talking in quiet tones. The secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs sat directly across. Clustered at the far end were the directors of National Intelligence and Homeland Security, along with the FBI director, the head of the CDC, and the commander of Fort Detrick. Normally a ring of lesser functionaries would occupy the chairs against the walls, but not today. Today no one was let in the room who wasn’t absolutely essential. Dunne was the only deputy-level staff member present, in the room at the President’s behest.

The POTUS himself entered solo, exuding authority, making it clear to everyone who was in charge. With his Hollywood looks and background as self-made CEO of a billion-dollar Internet services empire, he had run as an agent of change, loyal to no one but the American people, promising to restore the nation to its former glory as the undisputed economic leader of the world. He was addicted to Butterfingers and was a serial sports fanatic, his current obsession being handball. He liked to project a calm, laid-back persona to the public, but he could stand up and dominate a room when he had to.

He worked his way around the table, calling for updates one by one. The Homeland Security chief, Mike Reardon, spoke first, a heavyset man with flat features and weathered skin, more truck driver than bureaucrat. “We’ve got the media under control for the moment. We’re leaking stories that the ATF found marijuana fields at Seneca Depot, and the bombing was a burn. All part of a major drug ring roundup. We told them to expect more arrests soon.”

“No one has connected this to Rochester?”

“We’re connecting the dots for them. The cover story is that the Rochester event was part of the roundup, stopping a shipment to Canada across Lake Ontario.”

Alex Grass, the head of the CDC, spoke next, a dapper man with sleepy eyes. “Dylan Connor is showing symptoms. His temperature dropped. He’s still alert, but he’s having auditory hallucinations.”

“What about the guy from Rochester?”

“Positive. Also, one of the soldiers from Drum that picked him up looks like he has it. The rest we don’t know.”

“We’re absolutely sure it’s the Uzumaki?”

“Three labs independently ran the samples, all with different protocols. I personally supervised the tests at CDC. Toloff at USDA. Arvenick’s people at USAMRIID. Every assay came back positive, three sigma. It’s the Uzumaki.”

The room was quiet except for the background clatter from the displays on the walls.

The President called upon the commander at Detrick, Anthony Arvenick. He was in charge of the operational response in case of a large-scale outbreak. “There’s no doubt, Mr. President,” the general said, his voice grave. “She’s got the Uzumaki. And thousands of those Crawlers. The scenarios range from bad to worse to nightmare.”

“Start with bad.”

“She’s already shown us bad . She leaves the Crawlers in a public place, they bite whoever happens by. But at least we know we’ve been hit. It’s bad, but in this scenario, at least we know. We can do our best to contain it, have a shot at limiting the damage to a small geographic area. The difference between a few deaths and a few thousand might boil down to the direction the wind is blowing.