Mira Grant - Deadline

“There was an outbreak,” said Alaric, taking up the thread where Dr. Abbey left off. “The security footage was mostly destroyed, but what we have indicates that it must have started in the gym. Maybe someone pushed themselves a little bit too far and had a coronary. We’ll never know.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Dr. Abbey.

An outbreak is never good, but an outbreak on a sealed campus is close to a worst-case scenario. The healthy would be locked in with the infected until someone could come and let them out, and the mop-up would probably take weeks, if not months, after which the school would almost certainly be decommissioned for several years while they waited for the hazard level to go down again. “What was the student body size?”

“About eleven thousand,” said Dr. Abbey. “It was a larger school before they closed it to nonresident students. Add another three hundred or so for the faculty and staff.”

“How many got out?” asked Maggie.

“None,” whispered Kelly.

“None,” echoed Dr. Abbey. “See, the outbreak started near the school walls, and they were located on a hill that made it difficult to get to the campus any way but via the main road. Whoever was in charge that day—whatever genius was at the switch—decided that it was too dangerous to try for an evacuation. That the infection was already too close to breaking out. So they called down the wrath of fucking God on that little school.”

“I remember that,” said Becks, sounding faintly awed. “We studied it when I was in training. Almost all the security footage went missing, even the stuff that should have been beamed straight into the Health Canada and CDC databases. It was just gone.”

“Except for the pieces that somehow ended up on private servers,” said Alaric. “I’ve seen some of the footage. It’s clearly an outbreak, but it doesn’t look…”

“It doesn’t look that bad,” said Dr. Abbey. She seemed to have regained a bit of her composure. She looked challengingly around at our little group before she continued: “It looks like the sort of thing you handle with an insertion team and a general quarantine. Not by ordering a firebombing on Canadian soil. My husband was in that school. He called me fifteen minutes before they hit the news, and he was laughing . He said there was ‘a little ruckus’ near the track, and that he’d be home in time for dinner. Told me to get an ice pack ready for the bruises left by all those blood tests they insisted on running. Everything was fine, and that was after the outbreak started. But they treated it like the end of the goddamn world.”

“So you went rogue?” I asked.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Dr. Abbey shook her head. “I tendered my resignation immediately. They refused it. Three times. Said that I was a ‘valuable researcher,’ and that they’d be happy to give me the time I needed to get my affairs in order before I returned to work. So I got my affairs in order. I packed my things, I emptied out my lab, and I left while they were still congratulating themselves on being so understanding in my time of need.”

“You quit,” said Kelly.

“You never started,” countered Dr. Abbey. “Don’t you look at me like that, you little Barbie girl with your big moral ideals that go out the window as soon as think you know best. My husband died because a bomb was cheaper than a cleanup squad. That’s the simple truth of things. Joe died because somebody didn’t want to pay the bill. His sister,” she jabbed her finger at me, “died because you people won’t do the research into the reservoir conditions that needs to happen if we’re going to survive this damn virus. As a species, and as a society. You may think you’re doing the right thing, and hell, you may even be right, but when you don’t let anyone watch over your shoulder, how the fuck are the rest of us supposed to know?”

Kelly took a slow breath, visibly calming herself before she said, “I wouldn’t be here if I was still willing to play by their rules.”

“And again bullshit.” Dr. Abbey slid off the desk, taking a quick step forward. “You don’t make them, but you’re sure as shit defending them, and it’s time to stop. Because if you’re far enough off the reservation to be sitting here, they’re not going to let you come back. It’s cheaper to drop the bomb than it is to offer medical assistance, remember?” She leaned in until her face was almost up against Kelly’s, and said, voice suddenly soft, “I was you, once upon a time. Remember that. I was you , and the organization you still believe in made me who I am now. They’ll do the same to you, if you don’t get smart in a hurry.”

Kelly gaped at her. Before any of us could formulate a response, Dr. Abbey was turning and striding off down the hall. Joe lumbered to his feet and went trotting after her, nearly knocking Maggie over in the process. The rest of us joined Kelly in gaping.

We were still staring when she shouted back, not turning, “I want you people out of my lab in ten minutes!” Then she was gone.

I glanced at Alaric. “I think I like her.”

I think I do, too, said George.

Becks eyed the rest of us with poorly restrained impatience. “Well?” she asked. “Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“That part’s easy.” I smiled, slowly. “We have a conspiracy. Let’s go bust this fucker open and see what comes tumbling out.”

But when the springtime turns to dust

(A thousand shades of blood and rust)

And everything is ash and stone

(Contagion writ in blood and bone)

Then what exists to have or hold?

(What story, then, has not been told?)

Let this be my sacred vow

(Oh Mother Mary, hear me now): I will not fail, I will not fall

(Though Heaven, Hell, and Chaos call).

We are the children of the Risen.

This world our home, this prayer our prison.

—From Dandelion Mine , the blog of Magdalene Grace Garcia, April 16, 2041

I am officially tired of camping. I am tired of eating fish. I am tired of watching the boys wander around scratching themselves and pretending that we’re “roughing it” while living out of a van that’s better appointed than many mobile homes. I am tired of shooting zombie deer that wander past our safety zone. Well, okay. I’m not really tired of that part. That part is pretty cool. Suck it, Bambi.

So I’m going to do something else today. No, I’m not going to tell you what; you’re going to have to tune in and find out for yourself. But I promise you, you’re going to have a blast .

—From Charming Not Sincere , the blog of Rebecca Atherton, April 16, 2041

Twelve

Most major cities have their own CDC offices, although three out of four are just satellites, built mostly to keep people calm. The big offices are rarer, and they’re the ones with the real resources—they’re the ones where things get done . The nearest big office was smack in the middle of Portland, which conveniently put it less than an hour’s drive from Dr. Abbey’s lab.

Less conveniently, we couldn’t exactly pull up stakes and go running straight to the CDC to start shaking them down for answers. “They’re a government agency,” said Becks. “It’s their job to make things confusing.”

“Besides, if we just go charging in there, we’re all going to die,” added Alaric.

“I hate trying to argue with you when you use logic on me,” I said. The sun had dipped substantially lower in the sky while we were getting our Virology 101 from Dr. Abbey, and the shadows were long enough to have become menacing. Sunsets were considered beautiful before the Rising. Now they just mean night is coming, and staying out after dark is a good way to get yourself killed. “We need to get in there. We need to plant some bugs and see if we can knock the CDC off balance enough to tell us anything.”