David Koepp - Cold Storage

WHAT WAS ESPECIALLY SWEET ABOUT THE MINIVAN WAS THAT BOTHthe side doors could slide open electronically, and the back hatch went up too. Teacake had been singularly unimpressed by the white Mazda when Roberto first led them toward it—“You gotta be kidding me, they sent one guy, and he’s in a fucking Hyundai or whatever?”—but he’d come around as soon as the doors opened and he saw the array of military crates inside. The first one Roberto opened held one of the hazmat suits, neatly folded, with its dead-faced helmet staring up at them like a Scream mask. The next several cases were standard Navy SEAL gear: a tactical vest, Ka-Bar knife, Heckler & Koch machine pistol, sniper rifle, half a dozen breaching charges for removing iron doors that might stand in the way, and a surprising number and variety of MREs. Trini was a mom, and she worried about people getting hungry.

But there’s nothing that really catches your attention like a nuclear weapon. Naomi’s eyes had fallen on the half-barrel-sized backpack immediately, and its obvious age, military origin, and strange shape gave it away as the joker in the deck. “What the hell is that?” she’d asked. But Roberto declined to answer right away, arming up instead.

Given all that had transpired in the past four or five hours, they required very little bringing up to speed. Roberto told them what he knew about the fungus, and they were already perfectly aware of its lethality. After Roberto was satisfied that they were both uninfected, there was a brief period of debate during which he unconvincingly offered them the chance to leave. But that argument had collapsed under the weight of reality—there were now as many as seven infected humans inside the storage facility. The three of them out here, three of the only people on the planet who had seen Cordyceps novus in action firsthand, were the ones who truly understood the need to eradicate it right here and now. And Roberto couldn’t be in two places at once. The only way to pull off his plan was with someone upstairs, making sure no infected bodies left the building, while the others went back down to sub-level 4.

“ Back downstairs?” Teacake asked. “Are you crazy? To do what?”

Roberto reached in and pulled the pack forward, feeling his back twinge again. How long would it take him to learn that leaning at bizarre angles and trying to move heavy weights was a bad idea, from an orthopedic standpoint? This time he felt the pain shoot out from his sacroiliac and radiate all the way down his right leg, a hot searing feeling that reached his big toe. The muscles of his lower back, having voiced their objection, released their hold on his spine after a few seconds. But their point had been made. Roberto bent his knees and dragged the pack carefully to the edge of the cargo area. He stopped and thought for a long moment. There was no escaping reality. He could bob and weave for as long as he wanted, but eventually it was going to punch him in the face. He decided to stop dancing with it.

He turned and looked at Teacake and Naomi. “You’re going to have to place the device.”

Naomi, who had most of the hearing back in her right ear, picked up that part clearly. She stared down at the half-barrel shape. “What kind of device?” she asked.

“Think of it as a big bomb.”

“How big?” Teacake asked.

Roberto gave it to them straight. “Point-three, five, ten, or eighty kilotons. It has a selectable yield.”

Naomi closed her eyes, her fears confirmed, but Teacake went through the motions of pretending he had not seen that one coming. “It’s a nuke ?! A fucking suitcase bomb?”

“No, it isn’t a suitcase bomb,” Roberto said, irritated, as he strapped on the tactical vest. “There’s no such thing as a suitcase bomb. What kind of invading ground force carries suitcases?”

“Dude, you know what I mean. It’s a—”

Roberto cut him off. “Yes. It is.” He turned to Naomi. “You asked if we had a contingency plan. This is it. You saw how that fungus spreads. How fast and how far and how lethal. A group of us have spent thirty years thinking about this. Precautions have been taken. Arrangements were made. This is the only way.”

Teacake looked at Naomi, who seemed calm, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re gonna kill everybody in eastern Kansas.”

“We’re not going to kill anyone. Detonation will be hundreds of feet underground. This immediate area will be irradiated, and they’re gonna sell a lot of bottled water around here for the next twenty years, but there will be no atmospheric fallout, and the problem will be solved. Once everything sorts out, we’ll all get awards. Let’s just hope they aren’t posthumous.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” Teacake said.

“No. He’s right.”

Roberto smiled at Naomi, strapping the Ka-Bar knife to his thigh. She’d sounded smart when he talked to her on the phone; he was glad it was true. He turned to Teacake and looked him up and down. “How much can you deadlift?”

“I don’t know. Two hundred?”

Roberto looked doubtful.

“What? Is that too much?”

“We’ll find out,” Roberto said. “You two are going to carry this down to sub-level 4 and activate the triggering mechanism. I’ll show you how. I’m going to stay up top and remove any infected organisms that try to escape the area prior to detonation.”

“‘Remove’?” Naomi asked. She knew, but she asked anyway.

“I’m going to kill them,” he said. “I’m going to execute people whose only crime is that they were exposed to a deadly fungus. Would you rather do my part of the job or yours?” They didn’t answer. Roberto continued. “After you start the timer, you’ll have between eight and thirteen minutes to get back up here, get in the van, and get at least half a mile away.”

“Eight to thirteen?” Naomi asked.

“The timer duration is unstable without a mechanical wire.”

Teacake was aghast. “So it could blow up at any fucking time?!”

Roberto looked at him and repeated himself, keeping his tone neutral. “The timer duration is unstable.”

Teacake looked at the backpack, incredulous. “What did they used to say to the poor fucking grunts they sent out with these?”

“‘Tell your parents that you love them.’”

“And they still did it? Blew themselves up?”

“No, Travis, no one did it. These were never used. You would have heard about that in school. But people were willing to do it, because they thought the future of the world depended on it. Which it does. Right now.” He picked up the Heckler & Koch, slapped a fresh magazine into it, and straightened, using every inch of his height advantage over Teacake in an attempt to inspire. “E-3 Seaman Meacham, you’re what I’ve got right now, and frankly it’s more than I expected. You were on a ballistic sub, so you’re no dummy, and you know at least the fundamentals, if you weren’t too stoned in recruit training. I suspect you’re a much better soldier than the ‘General Discharge, Honorable Conditions’ they gave you. C’mon, Squid, why don’t you prove it tonight?”

Travis looked at him, stunned. “How’d you know—?”

“We had your first names and your place of business, these aren’t state secrets.” He turned to Naomi. “I know you’ve got a child at home, Ms. Williams. But that pack is fifty-eight pounds, and Travis can’t get it down the tube ladder by himself, not safely. Can you shoot a gun?” She nodded, sort of. Roberto took a Glock 19 from an open case, loaded it, and turned it around, offering it to Naomi handle first. “Travis will have his hands full, so you’ll watch both your backs. You’ve got a twelve-shot magazine, a trigger safety here, and a thumb lock over there. You need to flip both of them to pull the trigger. Once you’ve pulled, each shot requires another pull, but the safeties won’t re-engage unless you take your finger off the trigger. Got it?”