Mount Dragon

plasmid. I know it all by heart, but I want to go through it once more, just to be certain.”

“Let me help you,” said de Vaca. “Maybe between us, we can find something.”

They began to read in silence.

Roger Czerny lay on his bed in the quarantine room, looking at Brandon-Smith sitting, against the far wall. Pouting, as usual. He loathed the sight of her more deeply, more thoroughly, than he ever had any other person in his life. He loathed the fat dough-boy biohazard suit she wore, loathed the whining sarcastic voice, loathed the very sound of her breathing and whimpering through the intercom. Because of her, he might die. He was furious that he had to share the quarantine room with her. With all the money GeneDyne had, why hadn’t they built two quarantine rooms? Why stick him in with this fat, ugly woman who bitched and moaned all day long? He was forced to watch her every bodily function, her eating, her sleeping, her emptying her shit bag, everything. It was intolerable. And everything was so complicated, just taking a piss or trying to eat dinner while maintaining the sterile environment. When he got out of here, he thought, unless they did something really nice for him—a hundred-grand bonus at least—he was going to sue their asses. They should have given him a rip-proof suit. It should have been part of the procedure. It didn’t matter that they’d given them both fresh bluesuits. They had locked him in with his own would-be murderer. They were liable as hell, and they were going to pay.

On top of everything else, they wouldn’t tell him the results of the frequent blood tests. The only way he’d know anything was when the ninety-six hour waiting period was up. If they let him out, he was clean. If not ...

Shit, he thought, it was going to take two hundred to make up for this. Two-fifty. He’d get himself a good lawyer.

It was ten o’clock. The lighting was dim, so he knew it had to be evening, not morning. That was the only way he could tell in this prison. He thought, once again, of his one visit to a hospital, ten years earlier. Emergency appendectomy. This was like a hospital, only worse. Much worse. Here he was, a hundred feet below the ground, sealed in a small room, no way out, with a roommate that—He opened and closed his mouth several times, hyperventilating, trying to ease the panic that came bubbling toward the surface.

Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. He shifted on his bed and pointed a remote at the television that hung from the ceiling. “Three Stooges” reruns. Anything to get his mind out of there.

A soft beep sounded and a blue light began blinking high on the wall. There was a hiss of compressed air escaping; then the doctor, Grady, squeezed through the hatchway, the bulky red emergency suit hindering his movements. “That time again,” he said cheerfully into the intercom. He took Brandon-Smith’s blood first, inserting the needle through a special rubber-sealed grommet in the upper arm of her suit.

“I don’t feel good,” Brandon-Smith whined. It was what she said every time the doctor came. “I think I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

The doctor checked her temperature, using the thermometer inserted in her suit.

“Ninety-eight point six!” he piped. “It’s the stress of the situation. Try to relax.”

“But I have a headache,” she said again, for the twentieth time.

“It’s not time yet for another shot of Tylenol,” the doctor said. “Another two hours.”

“But I have a headache now.”

“Perhaps a half dose,” said the doctor, fumbling in his suitcase with gloved hands and administering the injection.

“Just tell me, please, please, if I have it,” she pleaded.

“Twenty-four more hours,” the doctor said. “Just one more day. You’re doing fine, Rosalind, you’re doing beautifully. As I told you, I’m not being given any more information than you are.”

“You’re a liar,” Brandon-Smith snapped. “I want to talk to Brent.”

“Relax. Nobody’s a liar. That’s just the stress speaking.”

The doctor came over to Czerny, who presented the side of his suit in resigned anticipation of having his blood drawn.

“Anything I can do for you, Roger?” the doctor asked.

“No,” said Czerny. Even if he pushed past the doctor, he knew there were two of his fellow guards stationed directly outside the quarantine area.

The doctor drew the blood and left. The blue light stopped blinking as the hatchway was sealed. Czerny went back to the Three Stooges, while Brandon-Smith lay down, falling at last into a fitful sleep. At eleven, Czerny turned off the lights.

He awoke suddenly at two. Even though it was pitch black, he felt, with a shiver of horror, a presence hovering above his bed.

“Who is it?” he cried, sitting up. He fumbled for the light, then dropped his arm again when he realized the form at the end of his bed was Brandon-Smith.

“What do you want?” he said.

She did not answer. Her large frame was trembling slightly.

“Leave me alone!”

“My right arm,” said Brandon-Smith.

“What about it?”

“It’s gone,” she said. “I woke up and it was gone.”

In the dark, Czerny pawed at his sleeve, found the global emergency button and punched it savagely.

Brandon-Smith took a small step forward, bumping his bedframe.

“Get away from me!” Czerny shouted. He felt the bed vibrate.

“Now my left arm’s going,” she whispered, her voice strangely slurred. Her whole body began to shake. “This is strange. There’s something crawling inside my head, like tapeworms.” She fell silent. The trembling continued.

Czerny backed up against the wall. “Help me!” he cried into his intercom. “Somebody get the hell in here!”

Two recessed bulbs in the ceiling snapped on, soaking the chamber in a dim crimson light.

Suddenly Brandon-Smith screamed. “Where are you? I can’t see you! Please don’t leave me!”

Over his intercom, Czerny heard a peculiar wet sound that was almost instantly smothered by the dying buzz of a short circuit. Looking up in sudden horror, he saw wrinkled gray brain matter thrusting against the inside glass of Brandon-Smith’s faceplate. And yet she remained standing for the longest time, still twitching, before she slowly began to topple forward onto his bed.

PART TWO

The horse barn stood at the edge of the perimeter fence, a modest metal building with six stalls. Four of the stalls held horses. It was an hour before dawn, and Venus, the morning star, shone brightly on the eastern horizon.

Inside the barn, Carson watched the horses drowsing in their stalls, heads drooping. He whistled softly and the heads jerked upward, ears perked.

“Which one of you ugly old cayuses wants to go for a ride?” he whispered. One horse nickered in return.

He looked them over. They were a motley lot, obviously locally purchased, ranch rejects. A goose-rumped Appaloosa, two old quarterhorses, and one grade horse of indeterminate breeding. Muerto, Nye’s magnificent Medicine Hat paint gelding, was gone, apparently taken out by the Englishman on one of his mysterious rides even earlier that morning. Guess he’s had enough of the place, too, Carson thought. Though it seemed a strange time for the security director to be leaving the grounds. Carson, at least, had an excuse: the Level-5 facility was still closed, and would remain so until an OSHA inspector arrived the following day. Carson couldn’t work if he wanted to.

But even if the Fever Tank had been open for business, there was no way Carson was working this day. He grimaced in the dark, overripe air of the stable. Just when he’d decided it was irrational to blame himself for Brandon-Smith’s accident, she’d died of exposure to X-FLU. Then Czerny had been removed in an ambulance, virus- free but incoherent. The entire Fever Tank had been decontaminated, then sealed. Now there was nothing to do but