Geoff North - How the World Ends

Louie pushed the gurney with all of his strength into a wall less than ten feet from the stunned DSC employees. Canisters toppled over and clanged against the floor. Somebody started screaming, but the noise was cut off as Louie stepped back and slammed the door shut. His fingers shook as he tried inserting the security key into the wall control panel. It finally slid in, and Louie punched the five digit lock code in. He leaned up against the doors and exhaled the breath he forgot he was still holding. “Okay,” he whispered, “I’m no fucking scientist.”

Louie took the elevator back up to level 2. He grabbed two hard bran muffins from the cafeteria and headed for the security control room. He sat into a chair facing multiple surveillance monitors. Maybe HR was right. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and stuck with what I was good at… Security software. Monitoring… watching people. Louie typed on a keyboard and the monitor directly in front of him lit up. It showed a view from behind the reception desk on level 10. He typed some more, and the monitor next to it flickered into life.

“What the fuck?” He leaned forward and made sure the video feed was set on live mode. Louie tossed a half-eaten muffin aside and slammed his fist against the desk. “Why aren’t they dying?” The gurney had been set back up on its wheels. Tom Braden was placing the last canister back in its slot. He was moving carefully, but didn’t appear all that terrified. Others were gathered around him, shaking their heads and talking amongst themselves. Louie couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they definitely weren’t suffering. They weren’t choking and frothing at the mouth. “What’s wrong with you morons?” He yelled at the screen. “That’s frickin’ Ebola and smallpox floating in the air around you!”

Tom finished his task, looked up into the camera, and gave it the finger.

Louie grabbed the microphone headset and slipped it over his ears. He toggled an audio switch and swore. “You pompous asshole! Think you’re so much better than everyone else. I could’ve done what you did. I could’ve been a research scientist instead of a software technician if I’d really applied myself.”

Braden’s eyebrows furrowed together and he pursed his lips. “I don’t think so, Louie. You lack the most basic understanding of the work being done here.”

“I understand enough to know you’re all going to be dead in a few hours.”

Tom shook his head. He stared into the camera with pity, as if looking into the eye of a child. “We’re not going to die any time soon. The canister samples don’t pose much of a threat with the outer seals removed. If you were aware of proper disease control procedures, you would’ve known there was a second seal inside each of those containers. Those secondary seals can only be reached and released with one of these.” He produced a pen-shaped object from the pocket of his lab coat and held it up to the camera. “Don’t go getting any more stupid ideas, Louie. There’s only half a dozen of these in the entire facility, and even with full security clearance, I guarantee you’ll never gain access to them.”

Louie stared at the screen with his mouth open. A piece of muffin fell from his lips and bounced onto the keyboard. “You were supposed to die. I was going to sit here and watch it happen.”

Richard came into view beside Tom. “Give it up, Louie. Open these doors up and let us out.”

“No way, Jose… not a fricking chance.”

“It’s not too late. We can forget all about this. For Christ’s sake, we’re trapped in here like animals.”

Louie leaned back into the chair. “You don’t want out, Richard. There’s nothing left above. There isn’t even a way out to the top. We’re all caged animals, I’m afraid. Why don’t you get Tom there to unlock the canisters all the way and speed up your end?”

“You little bastard.”

Louie squirmed back even further. He was safe where he was, but seeing the big man’s leering face in the screen brought back memories of being tormented by all the bigger guys in his past. Louie had been five and a half feet tall since he was sixteen, and not much heavier than a starving dog. He’d been bullied his entire adult life, and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. A greasy clump of black hair had worked free from his ponytail. He brushed it back over his head and stared at the face on the screen. “Call me what you want, it doesn’t change how things are. You and all the rest are going to starve to death down there, and I’m going to watch.”

Tom pushed Richard out of view. “Please, don’t do anything rash. Let’s talk this over.”

“I’m done talking. I’m done being pushed around. I’m through with taking orders from assholes and being made fun of behind my back.” Louie tore the headset away and threw it against a far wall. “So maybe I would’ve sucked as a research scientist… fuck it. I’ll find something else for them to chew on.”

He ran from the control room and headed back for the elevator. There were other levels with more secrets he didn’t know shit about. Louie was no scientist, but he had plenty of drive, and total clearance throughout the facility.

Louie discovered a hundred more canisters on level 5. They were useless to him without the pen key in Braden’s pocket. Level 6 consisted mainly of offices and about a million boxes of filed papers. Louie hadn’t been there often; security passes were minimal, and the only service calls he’d made were to replace faulty keyboards and frozen desktops. Level 5 was where all the lethal stuff was stored. The entire staff used to joke how dangerous 5 was by holding their breath in the elevator as it passed between 4 and 6. The joke was on us , he thought, kicking a box of reports out of his path on the way back to the elevator. You couldn’t be in a safer place on earth just feet away from the most horrendous diseases known to man.

That’s why Winnipeg was the perfect location for such a dangerous goods facility. It was in the middle of nowhere—literally smack-dab in the center of Canada—nestled into the ground with miles of solid rock beneath. There were no earthquakes in this part of the world, no volcanoes erupting, no hurricanes blowing. It was prairie land with little or no chance of geological upheaval—besides having a nuclear bomb dropped on its doorstep. And even that hadn’t proved disastrous; the canisters were still safe, even with Louie’s suicidal tampering.

He needed to find something else—something fast-acting and lethal—so Louie took the lift down to level 7. It was a level he’d always tried to avoid. This was where they’d conducted experiments on living specimens; mice, rats, cats and dogs, all sizes and all ranges. There were creatures on 7 as small as mites and as big as sheep. They all shared one thing in common—eventual extermination. Louie liked animals, and he detested the way they were treated here.

He made his way past the outer offices and medicinal storage rooms. With a swipe of his key Louie pushed through a final heavy door and stepped into what the DSC employees had lovingly nicknamed the zoo . It was dark inside, with only the dimmest of red emergency lighting. A chimpanzee jumped forward to Louie’s right and screamed, bashing its fists against the thick wire mesh of its cage. Louie jerked away from it and bumped into the cage opposite. Something big and hulking started growling from within. It lunged at Louie and smashed its wet nose into the metal. Teeth scraped along the mesh, and the animal started to bark, drowning out the monkey’s wails. A dog , he thought. It’s only a dog, and he can’t hurt me behind there . It was a Rottweiler, or had been one once. The thing frothing against its cage was built more like a Greyhound, emaciated to the point where all that showed was ribs and teeth. Most of its brown coat was missing, fallen out in chunks and clumped up against the bars.