“Okay… all right,” Justin stammered. Cake’s “Stick-shifts and Safetybelts” blared away on the intercom, the runaway beat only adding to the tension in the air. “How much?”
C-45 squatted on the gleaming tile floor ten feet away, baring yellow teeth. Mahoney’s breath caught like a jagged stone in her chest. The big macaque twitched in agitation. She didn’t want to do anything to add to it. A small dose of ketamine would have little effect on him at all. Not quite enough might throw him into wild hallucinations and make him even more difficult to control.
“I’d be happy with two hundred milligrams,” Mahoney whispered, hoping that would be enough to mean a permanent lights-out. She kept the heaving animal in her peripheral vision, fearing direct eye contact would be perceived as a threat.
Justin came across the intercom, interrupting a wild guitar riff. He was flustered and stuttering. “B… biggest one… I mean, the only darts we have hold forty cc’s.”
“Then fill up three, but be quick about it.” Mahoney edged toward a plastic broom leaning near the cages.
C-06, the other macaque, bounced and screeched in his enclosure, using his gnawing stick like a club to pound the metal door. He was egging his friend into fight.
“Okay,” Justine said after what felt like an eternity. “Got ’em.”
Mahoney turned slowly, grabbed the broom, and stepped backward toward the wall. She was surprised to hear the sound of the heavy airlock whoosh open behind her. Justin had defied her order and come in the room.
Now, she had to worry about an enraged monkey and a dumb-ass with a runaway libido.
C-45 went berserk at the new arrival. He’d never responded well to men and the sight of Justin threw him into a fit of shrieking leaps around the room. Needle-sharp claws, capable of shredding the rubber suits, clicked as the thirty-pound bundle of muscle and teeth slid across the bright tile.
“I told you to stay out!” Mahoney snapped.
“This… this is all my fault,” Justin stammered. “You have to let me help.”
“It is your fault,” Mahoney said, fear keeping her anger at bay for the moment. “Now that you’re here, how do you feel about shooting the Dist?”
C-45 had climbed up on top of the cage stacks and now paced back and forth, two feet above their heads-in the perfect position for a flying attack.
“I’m a deadeye,” Justin said.
He was showing off again. That was good. It might help to calm his nerves. Megan didn’t think it was wise to explain the dire consequences if he missed. This was not the time to mention the fact that no matter how this little adventure turned out, Justin’s tenure as her assistant was finished.
So far, he’d been smart enough keep the air pistol hidden. Macaques had remarkable brain capacity to go along with their sharp teeth and angry dispositions. C-45 had been tranqed before. He was sure to attack at first sight of the Dist.
“Okay, Deadeye…” Mahoney kept her breath low to keep her face shield from fogging now that she was re- breathing the moist air already in her suit. She could taste the bitterness of her own fear. “As soon as you take the shot, he’s gonna go crazy. I’ll fend him off with the broom while you reload and hit him again…”
“I’m locked and loaded, Doc,” Justin said with far too much swagger to suit Mahoney. “Say when.”
“Now!”
Megan was vaguely aware of a soft whooft when the dart left the barrel. A nanosecond later, the macaque erupted into a screaming ball of rage. Though Justin had fired the pistol, C-45 locked in on her. The monkey launched from the top of the cage, lips pulled back in a screeching “Kraaaaa! ”-intent on ripping away Mahoney’s throat.
She sidestepped, feeling the bump as the monkey brushed her left shoulder to crash into the stainless steel table behind her. A thousand-dollar centrifuge, full of test tubes, crashed to the floor, adding another danger with the broken shards of glass. She prayed her suit hadn’t been shredded as she spun to face the irate macaque. No time to check now. She could not allow this living buzz saw to get behind her.
Claws clicked as C-45 scrambled on the smooth steel to gain its footing. Thankfully, the bright yellow plume of Justin’s first dart hung from the pink skin of its thigh.
Mahoney didn’t wait for the animal to turn before she drew back the broomstick like a baseball bat and swung with all her might. The unwieldy suit made it difficult for her to get much power, but the swat sent C-45 reeling against the far wall.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” she panted, holding the broom in front of her in both hands, pointed toward the ceiling like a broadsword. “This little bastard wants to kill me.”
“Locked and loaded, Doc,” Justin said.
The macaque spun on its heels, sliding sideways across the floor in midturn. Fangs bared, it sprang straight for Mahoney.
“Shoot!”
Justin was as good a shot as he said he was. The second dart hit C-45 center chest catching him in mid-jump with a pink plume. The macaque went limp and fell just inches from Mahoney’s face.
The double dose of ketamine wasn’t quite enough to put the agitated beast to sleep, but it slowed him enough that Megan was able pin him to the floor with the broom.
“Hit him with another one,” Mahoney panted. Lightheaded, she was breathing more CO2 than oxygen.
“Another one will kill him.”
“Damn you, Justin.” Mahoney clenched her teeth. “Quit arguing with me and put another dart in this little son of a bitch. I don’t know what kind of bug we gave him, but I’m not gonna go to the Slammer because you let him bite me.”
Justin fired another dart. C-45 slowed, and then lay still.
Mahoney held the broom in place another thirty seconds, then staggered back to reattach her suit to a coiled hose from the ceiling. Across the lab C-06 screamed and yipped, driven mad from watching the death of his friend. Mahoney drew three deep breaths of sweet air and then double-checked the door to the other macaque’s enclosure.
“Dr. Mahoney…” Justin’s voice was feeble in her earpiece-wobbly, like he was about to cry. “I think I have a little problem…”
Mahoney turned expecting to find C-45 alive, on the verge of attack. What she saw chilled her even worse.
Justin stood dazed with the Dist-Inject pistol dangling loosely in his right hand. Sticking from the bicep of his blue protective suit was a yellow-plumed dart. It was the first dart he’d fired into the macaque-the dart with a large gauge needle that was certain to contain blood and fluid from C-45.
Mahoney must have knocked the dart loose when she used the broom-and it had landed in Justin’s arm.
“Did it break the skin?” she asked, immediately forgiving Justin all his stupid mistakes. She shooed him toward the door and the decontamination chamber, where they’d be able to remove his suit and get disinfectant on the wound.
“Oh yeah,” Justin whispered. “Hurts like it went to the bone. What’s next, Meg… amputation?”
Justin was still half joking. She had to let him know how serious this was so he’d listen to her and follow her instructions to the letter. When she didn’t answer immediately, he looked up with terrified, childlike eyes.
Mahoney yanked the dart out of his arm, keeping the sharp end pointed carefully away.
“Seriously, Megan…” His voice shook as the gravity of his situation-and his own mortality-slowly dawned on him. Boyish brown eyes, the same eyes that had so often ogled Mahoney, shot around the lab, as if looking for an escape route. He was now absent any emotion but terror. “What about VSV? I read about a woman in Hamburg who got a needle stick and she was okay.”
“Well…” Mahoney didn’t want the boy to give up hope, but she couldn’t lie to him either. Treatments with vesicular stomatis virus were experimental at best. A female scientist in Germany had indeed lived after a contaminated needle stick, but there was no way to be sure if she ever actually contracted the Ebola virus in the first place. “Let’s just follow this through with the best protocols we have,” Megan said.
“Okay.” Justin hung his head, sniffing, tears dripping of the end of his nose. “Tell me the truth though. I mean it. Is this going to kill me?”
