David Koepp - Cold Storage

Teacake squinted. He had an odd conversational style, this guy, and he ended every sentence with that weird, half-open mouth, like he was trying to smile but his lips kept getting stuck to his teeth.

“What are you doing here, Mike?” Naomi jumped in. “What the hell happened to that thing ?” She pointed to the mass of goo that Mike had just walked through, then looked back at him, noticing the sleeves of his shirt were soaked red with blood that oozed out of a series of long, jagged cuts running up the lengths of both arms. “And what the hell happened to your arms ?”

That was way more interrogation than whatever was left of Mike’s brain could handle. He’d been feeling pretty good outside, especially when he saw Naomi’s car and realized there was another human being in the immediate vicinity. Not just any human, but one whom he knew and could get close to. That’s something I should do, right? he asked the feeling in his head. That’s something I should do right away, isn’t it?

Oh yes, the feeling told him. Cordyceps novus, after the failure in Australia and the limited success with Mr. Scroggins, had lost interest in height as a prerequisite for contagion and had now seen the wisdom of lateral mobility.

Yes, get as close to them as you can as soon as you can, yes, please.

So Mike had moved. He was confident, he had a purpose, which was more than he’d been able to say for a long time. The locked front door of the storage facility hadn’t deterred him; he’d found a side door with a glass panel in it, smashed it with a rock, and wriggled through. The broken glass didn’t hurt that much when it sliced up his arms, and when he landed on the other side of the door and stood up, he’d been delighted to see the deer through the broken window, standing at the edge of the woods ten yards away, staring at him.

Mike was thrilled. He’d felt bad about the deer for two days, but there it was, alive, and—somehow he knew this—it was on his side. He’d opened the door, held it wide, and the deer trotted inside the building. Together, they walked the halls of Atchison Storage for a good twenty minutes, looking for Naomi but not finding her, or anyone else for that matter. They’d moved on, wordlessly, to the basement, taking the elevator down a level to continue their search. She had to be here somewhere. Mike and the deer had the same imperative— find a human and infect it, repeat as many times as possible until you’re dead —and goddammit they were going to carry it out. He was going to be good at something.

It was when they’d reached SB-1 and the elevator doors opened that Mike had frozen up. Because there he’d heard her voice, coming from around the corner, talking to Teacake, and the 49 percent of his brain that still contained useful human feelings like guilt and remorse kicked into overdrive. He remembered what he’d done and that he’d fled, and that he had a child, somewhere, whom he had failed to father. As Naomi’s voice drew closer, Mike had pressed his body back, against the wall of the elevator, out of sight next to the control panel, and prayed to be anywhere but here. Prayer is a powerful psychic force, more powerful even than Cordyceps novus, or at least it was for those sixty seconds or so. Mike cowered in the elevator, out of sight, able to temporarily fight back the urge to go get them.

When the deer walked back into the elevator and Mike was able to push Door Close, a wave of relief washed over him. He wouldn’t have to see her again, he wouldn’t have to face the weight of his sins. They’d reached ground level and the deer— God bless you, you beautiful, intrepid creature! —had strode out of the elevator toward the pair of humans, swelled up, and done its level best to coat them in fungus.

But it failed. And the religious rebellion in Mike’s brain was quashed under the boot heel of Cordyceps novus, which simply said, Next man up! and pushed Mike forward to do his biological duty.

Now Naomi waited for him to answer her questions. Any of them, really.

He blinked, just looking at her.

Teacake tried like hell to figure this out. “Are you okay, man?” he asked Mike, but Mike just opened his mouth and then closed it again. Teacake turned to Naomi. “You know this guy?”

“Yes.” She hesitated, because she hated saying it.

“Yeah?” Teacake was waiting.

“He’s my kid’s dad.”

Mike opened and closed his mouth three times, clicking his teeth.

Teacake took that in, then turned back to Naomi. “Uh—for real?”

Mike moved toward Naomi. “Open your mouth.”

She took a step back. “ What? ”

Teacake stepped in front of her, holding a hand out to Mike, palm out. “Whoa, dude, what kind of shit are you talking, what’s the matter with you?”

Mike opened his own mouth wide, as if stretching out his jaw muscles, then clicked his teeth at Naomi again. “Open your mouth.”

Of all the unpleasant things Naomi had seen and heard tonight, this was perhaps the unpleasantest. What the hell was wrong with her that she had ever given this jerk the time of day, much less conceived a child with him? Why was he now heaving his stomach in and out, like a cat trying to bring up a hairball? And why was he reaching around behind his back?

Teacake had been around guns in the military and spent his fair share of time on the rifle range, but mostly he saw a lot of movies, and he knew there was only one reason to make that gesture, ever. It wasn’t because you had a sudden itch at the top of your butt crack. While Mike sucked his gut in and out and closed his right hand around the handle of the .22 he’d shoved into the waistband in the back of his pants, Teacake studied the geography. Mike was between them and the exit, but just behind them was the open hallway that led to units 201 through 249, and at the end of that was the jog to the right, maybe that would buy them enough time, some units had dead bolts on the inside and they both had phones, so maybe—

Mike wedged words in between the heaves. “Open”— heave —“your”— heave —“mouth”— heave .

The gun came out, but Teacake had already turned and taken off, pulling Naomi along with him. The vomit that Mike finally succeeded in dredging up from his gut spewed a good eight or nine feet, but fell short, splatting on the cement in the spot they’d just vacated.

Teacake and Naomi turned the corner as Mike raised the gun, fired a shot at them, and took a chunk out of the cement block near their heads.

Neither one of them had ever been shot at before. It was not enjoyable. They raced down the corridor, no words, just flight, and could hear the anguished, angry cry of Mike as he chased after them. The only way out of the building was back the way they’d come, back where the guy with the gun and the barf and the exploding deer were, so that wasn’t happening. Teacake’s mind did the mental math and didn’t like the numbers, not one bit, these hallways were long, and wasn’t nobody could outrun a bullet. He’d be willing to take his chances if it were just him—what were the odds that pukey weirdo could actually land a shot on a moving target while running? But that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take with Naomi’s life.

He took the next corner hard, pulled them both to a stop in front of unit 231–232, a sweet combo unit eight feet wide and sixteen feet deep. He zipped the master key up off his hip, flicked the lock open, and yanked the door up a couple feet off the ground.

Naomi knew the only option when she saw it. She dropped to the floor and rolled under the door, into the darkness on the other side. Teacake didn’t open the door any farther; he didn’t want to in case he had to close it quickly and lock her in, which he was fully prepared to do. If Mike had been rounding the corner already, he would have done it and fought the fucker one-on-one, gun or no gun, but when he looked back the hallway was clear, though Mike’s semihuman cries of rage were coming this way fast.