Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

Moments later, she comes to a sliding halt in front of her office. Slipping in, she slams the door, locks it and puts her weight against it, praying for it to hold.

But Jackson does not try to break the door down. Instead, he begins growling and pacing. She can hear him sniff at the air, sensing that she is there. She is trapped again, and this time, she has no access to the security system.

Petrova puts down the golf club and fire extinguisher and sits at her desk. The act is so familiar to her that for a moment, she feels like everything is back to normal. Her PC’s screensaver displays a screen-sized image of her, Christopher and Alexander looking up at the camera, grinning. Christopher took the photo himself, holding the camera at arm’s length over their heads. Alexander, held in Petrova’s arms, is reaching up towards the lens. The photo was snapped with a digital camera near the end of a perfect day in Central Park. The image holds her, transfixed, for several moments.

Jackson shoulders the door during his pacing, startling her.

Time to get to work. She picks up the phone, which blares a loud rat-tat-tat signal. Same with the handset to her fax. A wave of sweat breaks out on her forehead and armpits. Her first dead end.

She opens her hard drive and tests her connection to the email server, which appears to be working, giving her a connection to the outside world.

Smiling now, she opens the secure FTP site the CDC set up for them to share their work. It is also operational. She grabs everything she can find related to her discoveries, doing a broad data sweep, and dumps it all onto the server.

While it is uploading, she writes an email to her contacts at the CDC and USAMRIID, cc’ing as many people in the virology community that she can think of, summarizing her findings and stating that she has a pure sample of the Mad Dog strain. She tells them that she and her colleagues are close to producing a formula for a vaccine but a mob has entered the building’s lobby, locking them in, and they require rescue. Then she clicks send.

It is a simple plan, but she believes it will work. By now, the world outside must know that the Mad Dog strain is the real threat. The Centers for Disease Control will want a pure sample. She has a sample, as long as the power does not fail for good and spoil it. In particular, they will want a vaccine, which is why she lied and said they were close to producing one.

So now all she has to do is wait for the government to come and rescue her. A simple plan.

Unless her contacts are all dead.

Unless there is no CDC or USAMRIID anymore.

Unless somebody else has already done the research she is offering.

Her stomach growls. Petrova opens a drawer in her desk and pulls out her purse. Rooting around inside, she produces a box of orange-flavored Tic Tacs, pours what is left into her palm, and rapidly devours them. She does the same with a pack of gum, gnawing the flavor out of it and then swallowing it whole.

There are no emails from Christopher in her in-box.

She tries the Guardian website, but there are no stories. The website is up and running, but no stories have been posted since yesterday. What could this mean?

Other news sites carry stories of riots, some with video showing Mad Dogs chasing down screaming people, dragging them to the ground and mauling them. The stories are few in number and poorly written. Other sites, such as YouTube, have either crashed or been shut down. The social networking sites are flooded with frantic pleas for help.

She cannot give up hope that her family is alive, but after several minutes, she stops her search for hard news as she is getting nowhere and only wasting time at this point. She wants to return to the Security Command Center as soon as possible, as that is where she left the flashlights. She can live without food, even water, for days, but the idea of being trapped here without light is horrifying.

If things are as bad outside as she thinks they are, the power will eventually go out.

She just has to somehow incapacitate or get past Jackson. And, if it is not too much trouble, stop by the employee lounge long enough to pick up some food out of the machine that Hardy broke open, so she does not starve to death.

She listens for a moment. Jackson has stopped pacing. The corridor is quiet.

Petrova slowly rises from her chair and tip-toes to the door. Still nothing. She gets down on the floor and tries to look under the door. Slowly rising to her feet, she gingerly places her ear against the wood to listen.

From inches away, she can hear a sudden loud, guttural snarling.

“Oh,” she whispers, backing away.

She wishes that she had planned further than sending email to CDC and USAMRIID.

But she has an idea.

You are stronger than us, she thinks, but we are smarter than you.

Going back to her computer, she brings up a letter and sets it to print a hundred copies. Within moments, the printer begins churning out pieces of paper.

For several moments, she stares at this mundane routine with something like longing, then tip-toes back to the door, holding the fire extinguisher and golf club. Putting the club down, almost without thinking, she abruptly jerks open the door and steps aside.

Jackson roars into the room, races to the desk and knocks the printer onto the floor, where it lands with a loud crash.

Petrova stands there stupidly for several moments, unable to believe her plan worked. She jumps outside and slams the door before Jackson throws himself at it, pounding and clawing and kicking and yelping in a mindless fury.

She backs away from the door, panting.

Dr. Lucas is standing almost next to her, blinking without his glasses, sniffing the air.

He begins to growl.

Petrova left the golf club inside the office. She aims the fire extinguisher and sprays him with a jet of white foam pressurized with nitrogen, hoping to blind him.

The scientist coughs and sputters for a moment, pawing at his stinging eyes and yelping, then goes berserk, waving his arms wildly around his head and biting at his hands and forearms, flinging foam in all directions. Petrova can only watch in amazement as his teeth rip cloth and tear away pieces of flesh, soaking his face and arms with blood.

More than four thousand pounds per square inch.

Backing up step by step, she finally turns and runs, leaving Lucas to howl and tear at his clothes and flesh in his blind rage. By the time she returns to the Security Commander Center, she is shaking so hard that she can barely open the door.

On the screen, the beautiful blonde is holding up a sign that says, you made me do this . Next to her, several worried-looking men are forcing the other National Guardsman, his arms still tied behind his back, to his knees.

Petrova watches, transfixed by this new drama.

Throwing the sign down, the blonde marches to one of the Lyssa victims lying on the floor, a young girl, and rubs her hand all over the girl’s face until her hand is slick with mucus. She holds the hand high over her head, showing it to the camera.

“Oh,” says Petrova. “No, no, no. Please do not do that.”

As she marches back, her mouth moving soundlessly, the soldier’s eyes go wide and he begins to struggle struggling wildly against his captors, who can barely hold him.

The blonde smears the snot over his face and lips, then begins scribbling on the piece of poster board, which she holds high for Petrova to see: only you can save him.

“We do not have a vaccine, you stupid bitch!” Petrova screams, throwing the fire extinguisher against the wall. “Stop killing people!”

The rage boils up inside her, comes pouring out. She races to the security system’s graphical interface and begins studying it.