Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

“How many people are in this house?” Whitman asked.

Crispen shrugged. “Maybe a dozen. Normally we would’ve moved ’em out of here but your people said to sit on ’em instead, keep ’em here.”

Whitman nodded. “They’ll need to be quarantined, just in case. Where’s the subject?”

“Through here,” Crispen said. He flicked on his own flashlight—the house had no working lights—and gestured down a short hallway. Two more cops stood at its end, flanking a closed door.

“Do you know who called this in?” Whitman asked.

“One of the other junkies—he’s pretty messed up. We have him in the kitchen. Bites and scrapes all over him; though with this sort… who knows—could be completely unrelated. We, uh, haven’t been able to get a statement yet.”

Whitman could well imagine. If the symptoms were bloodshot eyes and aphasia, probably everyone in the house was a potential subject. “Alright,” he said. “I’d better go in and take a look.”

“The one in there’s pretty psycho. I’m not sure it’s safe—”

Whitman cut him off by pulling the Taser out of his jacket. “I’ll be okay.”

The cop looked at the weapon in Whitman’s hand and just shrugged.

The door wasn’t locked. It looked like someone had kicked it open at one point and it had never been repaired. Whitman stepped inside the dark room and moved his flashlight carefully across the furniture. He saw a dresser with no drawers, a broken television set. On the far side of the room a pile of blankets had been heaped on the floor. It was moving. Just rising and falling slowly, as if someone was under there, breathing.

“What’s your name?” Whitman called out, in case this was a false lead. “I’m Whitman. I’m here to help. Can you speak to me? Can you tell me your name?”

There was no response. The pile of blankets kept breathing. Whitman took a step closer. “I need you to say something,” Whitman announced. “Can you come out of there? Are you sick?”

The idea of reaching into those blankets with his hands made Whitman’s blood run cold. Somebody had to make an assessment, though, and he’d drawn the short stick. He looked around for a piece of wood, for anything he could use to push the blankets back. For a second or two he moved the flashlight away from the blanket pile.

When he looked back the subject was up and running across the room, straight at him. In the flashlight beam the subject’s eyes were so red they glowed.

Whitman had a moment to register what was happening. Most of that time he spent thinking to himself, teeth, nails, open sores —the things you had to stay away from, the things that could get you contaminated.

He saw the teeth all right. They were yellow and broken and they snapped at the air and they were coming right for his throat.

He brought the Taser up but never had a chance to fire it. The subject lashed out with both arms, knocking Whitman’s hands away. His flashlight spun free of his grip and Whitman felt a hundred and twenty pounds of stinking flesh collide with his chest, knocking him down, spinning him sideways.

He felt those teeth meet around his gloved hand. Felt them press down.

There was a gunshot, incredibly loud and bright in the dark room, and then people were running and shouting and Whitman’s heart beat so loud in his ears he was sure it would burst. He recovered himself and scrambled to his feet, raced out the door, down the hall, following the back of one cop who was running away from him, running toward the front door of the house, and then they were outside in the blinding sunlight. He threw one arm over his eyes but kept running. Ahead of him the street sloped down a hill, cheap houses and check cashing stores on either side, high tension wires strung overhead. He saw the cops, all three of them, and then he saw the subject, for the first time getting a clear look.

It was a woman, no, a girl of no more than twenty, dressed in nothing but an open flannel shirt and a stained pair of panties. In the sunlight her eyes just looked bloodshot. She staggered down the hill, her legs not quite working properly, her face turning in one direction, then the other. Her hair was a dark thicket of tangles that barely moved as it swung around.

Crispen and his men had drawn their guns and were shouting for her to stop. Whitman cursed as he dashed past them. If she got away—if she ducked into an alley—they might never find her again. He didn’t waste his breath shouting at her. What was left of her brain wouldn’t be able to make sense of words. He got as close as he dared and lifted the Taser, pointed it at her back.

She started to turn, to look at him, and she was hissing. Ready to fight.

He pulled the trigger. The two tiny barbs went right through her shirt, and the Taser made its horrible clacking sound. She dropped to the pavement, twitching and kicking, but she didn’t scream. She didn’t make any sound at all.

Behind Whitman, Crispen came running up, his weapon held in both hands. “You got her,” he said, over and over again, “you got her,” and Whitman could hear the relief in the cop’s voice.

“This time,” Whitman said. “Yeah.”

Atlanta, GA

Dan Philips watched from an observation suite as they brought Subject 13 in. She was alive—that was good. It was crucial.

Twelve bodies lay in a morgue deep inside the CDC complex that was Philips’ headquarters. Twelve bodies, or what was left of them. Bit by bit, organ by organ, they were being dismantled, their cells broken down in centrifuges, their bacterial and viral load analyzed by legions of technicians with scanning electron microscopes. But dead bodies could only tell you so much.

On his television screens Philips watched his field agent sign the new subject in. Nobody bothered to read her any rights or even give her any comforting words as she was shoved into a negative pressure room. Nobody touched her if they could help it. They’d bound her hands behind her back and put a plastic mask over her mouth. She was a known biter and the CDC didn’t mess around with those.

The room was kept at a slightly lower atmospheric pressure than the corridor outside, so that when the door was opened air flowed in rather than out—hopefully making sure any pathogens she carried stayed inside with her. No one was allowed into the room without wearing a level two biohazard suit. Cameras on the walls tracked her at all times, and other instruments monitored her body temperature, her heart rate, and her blood oxygen levels.

Director Philips had been a neurosurgeon, once, a long time ago. Now he had the perfect hair and twinkling eyes of a politician. He didn’t smile as Whitman stepped into the observation suite. For a long while they just watched the subject together.

Not that there was much to see. Once the suited technicians left the room, she seemed to simply collapse. With no one to bite or attack, she just crouched on the floor—ignoring the bed they’d provided for her—and rocked back and forth in what was obviously a self-comforting gesture.

Eventually, Philips cleared his throat. “You must have made record time.”

Whitman nodded. Of the twelve bodies in the morgue, not a single one had died of natural causes. Ever since they’d alerted the police networks to the new disease, Whitman was called in every time the cops found a potential subject. But it could take him hours, even days, to arrive after he got the call. The subjects were so violent the police usually had to shoot them to keep them from hurting anybody. Cops didn’t mess around with biters, either. “I was close by, and we had a helicopter ready to lift off. Everything kind of came together.”

“This is what we need,” Philips said, sighing in relief. “This is what we need to beat this thing, I know it.”