David Wong - This Book is Full of Spiders

“I’ll take you to it. No bullshit. But we got to get outta here first.”

“I agree.”

“And I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that they’re not gonna agree to release us, even if you wave your badge at the dude guarding the door.”

Falconer said, “You’re right, for once. But I don’t know if you realized it, but these assholes picked the single most fucked up building in a hundred mile radius in which to set up their ad hoc HQ. They have generators in the parking lot and power cables draped through windows and boxes stacked everywhere. I’m thinking they have not had time to work out exactly what they would do in the event of something unexpected. Like a fire.”

“We’re totally on the same page here. Let’s burn this shit down.”

Falconer closed his eyes, let out a steadying breath and said, “ No , we just need some smoke. Enough to make them go through the process of carefully moving aaalll of these patients and staff and shit out of the building. All those guys in their bulky-ass space suits tripping over cables, patients tryin’ to escape. And in the confusion, we slip away. Now, if I go out there now and occupy as many staff as I can with some ruse, do you possess the resourcefulness to sneak away and create a nice, smoky but controlled fire in a trash can somewhere? Without fucking it up?”

John looked him dead in the eye and said, “Throw some rubber gloves in there, it’ll smell just like an electrical fire.”

I marched Molly into the hallway, intending to ask if anybody had seen her around before. Hell, maybe she’d been here from the start and we’d just missed each other. I got my answer without asking—as soon as we stepped into the hall a dozen people gathered around and said, “How’d you get a dog in here?”

Molly wasn’t talking. She just panted and wagged her tail and let everyone pet her. She was filthy, mud caked on her legs and chest. Was there a spot to dig under the fence unnoticed? Both fences?

It only took ten minutes for word to filter down to the yard, and for Owen to call a meeting because apparently he could do that in his role as Only Guy With a Gun, according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Shortly thereafter, at least a hundred people were huddled in the yard around the fire pit. The night air was cold as shit, so we all huddled around the smoldering coals and blackened, smoking rib cages, rubbing our hands together and hoping nobody was secretly taking our picture. Kind of hard to run for office later with a photo circulating of you warming your hands over a pile of glowing skulls.

Owen had the automatic in his hand, but wasn’t threatening with it. In this setting it seemed more ceremonial, like a gavel. He said, “I don’t like it. It don’t make sense. That’s a big dog, it ain’t like a squirrel gettin’ past the sensors and shit out there. Dog probably weighs a hundred pounds, if it can make it through, a dude can make it through.”

I said, “Well, awesome. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out, right? Maybe there’s a place you can dig under the fence after all, out of sight of the—”

“Dipshit,” interjected Owen, “we have been around and around that fence. It’s all we got to do, all day, bro. No, there ain’t no good place to cross the fence. There ain’t any storm drains, there ain’t any big sewer pipes like in the damned Shawshank Redemption. ”

I shrugged. “Well I personally observed this dog, in town, eating a burrito, after the hospital was locked down. She was on the other side of that fence and she didn’t come in on the last truck. So…”

“Speaking of which,” Owen said, “What are we supposed to do with it?”

I said, “Why do we have to do anything? To be clear, there’s no indication that dogs can get infected, right? So we’re not worried about that end of it?”

TJ said, “No, dogs don’t get it. Animals and kids, they don’t get it.”

Owen said, “You’ll bet your life on that? All of our lives?”

I said, “So, I’ll check her mouth.”

“That ain’t a hundred percent, neither.”

“So, what, you want to put her down? She’s our ticket out of here.”

“Our ticket outta here is keeping this place safe and secure until we hear the all-clear. There ain’t no reason in the world to make a jailbreak even if your dog leads us to a magical train platform that hauls us all to Hogwarts.”

Everyone stared at Owen until he said, “I told you, I got a kid. Fuck off.”

I said, “Your ‘let’s remain calm and stay put’ speech would be a lot more convincing if you weren’t giving it in front of a pile of burning skeletons. So, we kill the dog because maybe she’s not a dog and maybe she’s some new kind of undetectable monster. We gonna us that same standard on the next human who walks through those gates? Where does that shit end, Owen? Government shows up to give the all-clear and it’s just you and a mountain of bones?”

Owen had no rebuttal for this and I have to be honest, I detected relief in his face. He didn’t want to have to shoot a dog.

“She monsters out, and it’s your ass.” Owen stuffed the gun into his pocket and apparently that signaled that the meeting was adjourned. The reds huddled among each other and the greens headed back inside.

I walked with TJ and said, “There’s somethin’ else to this, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions or anything. Molly really belongs to my girlfriend, Amy. I think Molly showing up here, it’s not coincidence. I think she was sent here, as a signal to me. John and Amy—hopefully just John, I guess, with Amy in some safe place—I think one or both of them are out there, and are trying to bust me out or trying to show me how to sneak out.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Means I have to figure out what the plan is. But I feel like they definitely have a plan.”

Somewhere beyond the fence, an explosion lit up the sky.

Johnsprinted across the asylum parking lot screaming, “SHHIIIIIIIT!”

Black smoke poured through the house-sized hole that had been blown in the gymnasium wall. Screams and gunshots chased him. Nearby, a car windshield shattered. There was another explosion, and the shock wave threw John to the ground, scraping his palms on the pavement. Falconer grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him to his feet.

They made it to the Porsche parked a block away and ten seconds later were tearing through the streets of Undisclosed, drawing the attention of every gun-toting spaceman they passed. And there were a lot of them, clusters of them seemed to populate every corner.

Falconer growled, “That was liquid oxygen , dumbass! That’s why those tanks had those huge orange warning stickers all over them. They use it in rockets.”

“I didn’t know! Jesus.”

“You didn’t know oxygen burns? Where did you go to school?”

“Here! Look around! It’s a shithole!”

The Porsche smashed through wooden barricades set up in the street, and on the other side was a ghost town.

Broken glass in the streets. Garbage piled on the sidewalk. The Porsche turned down an alley and John realized that what was crunching under the tires like gravel were brass shell casings from machine guns.

John said, “Holy shit. Is everybody dead?”

“There’s a twenty-four hour curfew outside the Green Zone. Inside those barricades we drove through, they’ve still got military doing foot patrols. But out here, it’s lockdown. Nobody on foot, just armored Humvees making sweeps every now and then. Anyone seen roaming the streets out here is presumed infected and either shot or hauled off to quarantine, depending on how far gone they are.”