Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“What are you talking about?” Andrew asked, then she snuggled into him again, twining her arms around his waist, burrowing her nose into his chest.

“God, I’m so glad you’re here,” she crooned, muffled against his shirt.

“Suzette, look at me.” Shrugging the gun over his shoulder and setting aside the flashlight, he tried to tilt her face up. “What are you doing here? How did you get inside the lab?”

“Through the front doors,” she replied, then she snorted laughter. Holding out one unsteady index finger, she mimed punching in a pin code. “I just pushed the buttons.” Her smile faltered, then withered. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m so scared, Andrew, and I heard gunshots outside, people screaming. It was horrible. I didn’t think there was anybody left, no one but me, and that they’d find me somehow. They’d break down the door and kill me.”

“It’s alright,” he said, and she crumpled into him again. He embraced her clumsily, awkwardly. “It’s going to be okay, Suzette.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Do you know where Dr. Moore’s office is?” he asked. “Do you know how to get there from here?” When she nodded, still tucked against his chest, he said, “You have to show me. Right now. Come on, let’s go.”

Stepping toward the door, he pulled away from her, leading her by the hand. Her eyes flew wide with renewed alarm and she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “No, no, oh, no, we can’t go. Are you crazy? They’re out there.”

The way she said this, the emphasis she placed on the word they’re made him frown. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked, cocking his head, meeting her bleary gaze. “Suzette, do you know what they are?”

Because by all rights, she shouldn’t.

She cut her eyes away, burying her face again into his shirt. “Stay with me,” she mumbled. “Please, Andrew. It will be okay. You’ll see.”

“You do, don’t you?” he asked. “You know what the screamers are. You know what Moore did to the soldiers from Alpha squad.”

“It’ll be okay,” she said again, shaking her head, clinging to him. “Another week, maybe two and we won’t have to worry.”

“Why not? Why won’t we have to worry?” Grasping her by the arms, he hauled her forcibly back from his chest. He gave her a sharp shake, rocking her head on her neck, making her cry out miserably. “Tell me, goddamn it. What are you talking about?”

She blinked at him, tearful again, her bottom lip quavering. “The virus will eventually overtake them.”

“You know about Moore’s retrovirus?” he demanded and she nodded.

“I helped him design it,” she whispered. “The restriction enzyme that breaks down the host cell’s DNA, anyway. That’s what allows the virus to encode its own genetic sequence.”

“ What?” Stricken, Andrew shook her again. “You’ve been helping him all along? You knew what he’s been out here doing, and you never tried to stop him?”

“How could I?” she cried. “No, I wasn’t helping him. I told you before, I work with his daughter, not his research. Not anymore.”

“But you used to,” Andrew said. “I saw your picture in the scrapbook Alice made. You used to be Moore’s lab partner.”

She nodded, then uttered a harsh, scraping laugh. “Back when he was just Edward Moore, before he became a Nobel Laureate. That son of a bitch. He wouldn’t have won that goddamn prize if it wasn’t for me. It was my enzyme that made his precious vascular endothelial growth factor work, anyway.”

She flapped her arms furiously and he let her go. Suzette staggered over to her messy blankets and bent over, lifting the vodka bottle off the floor. Tilting her head back, she opened her mouth wide, tongue protruding, and dribbled the last trickles down her throat. When she’d finished, she threw the bottle aside, sending it clattering across the floor, while she yanked another from her box.

“He left me behind,” she told Andrew, unscrewing the cap and pitching it behind her. “Isn’t that just like a man? You dip your dick, then you hit the road.”

“You were sleeping with Moore?”

She tipped the bottle at him, a mocking toast. “When he left Cold Spring Harbor, he left me, too. He said they’d give me his post. Said he’d lined it up for me. You know what I got instead? Fired. This was his idea of making things up to me. This.” She motioned to indicate the room, the lab, and vodka slopped messily over the lip of the bottle top. “Being stuck out in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, U.S.A. playing Nanny-goddamn-McPhee to his half-wit, retarded brat.”

“Alice isn’t retarded,” Andrew said, bristling.

“You know what they had the nerve to tell me at Cold Spring Harbor?” Suzette continued, oblivious to his comment or choosing to ignore it. “That I had a drinking problem as well as a…” She cleared her throat, affected a, exaggerated stuffy, prim expression, her lips pursed, her nose wrinkled. “…‘demonstrated moral turpitude. ’ Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Anyway, they told me that they couldn’t turn over the helm of a multi-bazillion-some-odd dollar bioengineering research facility to a woman with a bottle in one hand and her ex-boss’s dick in the other.” Another long swig. “Never mind you can’t fill a kindergartener’s hand with Edward’s pathetic excuse for a cock.”

Glancing at him now, her brow arched, her lips uncurling in a thin smile. “Now your cock on the other hand,” she murmured, sidling toward him, stumbling unsteadily and marking a meandering path. “I can think of a few places I might fill with it.”

“Suzette,” he said with a frown, even as she reached for him, tickling him lightly along the collar with her fingertips.

“Andrew,” she replied, mimicking his stern tone, then following up with a drunken titter. Setting aside the liquor bottle, she hooked her fingertips beneath his waistband. “Why don’t we start at the top…work our way down?” The tip of her tongue swiped her lips suggestively as she dropped to her knees, trying to ease his pants down with her.

“Stop.” He caught her elbows, his grip tight enough to make her wince, her expression bewildered at first, then pained. “Get up.”

“You’re hurting me,” she whimpered, then she yelped as he hauled her to her feet.

“Tell me about the screamers,” he said. “You said in another week, it would be alright. What did you mean?”

“Let go of me,” she mewled, squirming in his grasp.

“Tell me what you meant,” he snapped.

“The virus can’t be stopped,” she cried. “Once it’s inside you in a large enough dose to overwhelm the immune system, it replicates out of control. The skin growths it causes, the tumors…they’ll cover their mouths and noses, crush their lungs from the inside out, stress the heart to the point of cardiac arrest.”

“You’re saying they’ll die?” Andrew asked. “What’s happening to them, it’s eventually going to kill them? How long until that happens?”

“I told you, another week,” Suzette said. “Maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. But once it’s started, there’s no way to bring it back into check. It’s like trying to find the square root of pi. It’s impossible. It never ends.”

Andrew gave her a little shove, sending her reeling back from him then unslung the M16 from his shoulder. Grabbing Suzette by the elbow again, he headed for the door, hauling her in struggling tow.

“What are you doing?” she whined. Her free hand flapped feebly for the vodka, knocking the bottle off the table, spilling alcohol all over the floor.