“It was weapons development…at least at?rst…that’s what I heard.”
“You’re a scientist?”
She laughed. The laugh turned into a cough, which sprayed blood down her front and onto the blanket. Jubal and Fiona took a step back. When she could breathe again, she seemed to have more energy. She said, “I’m Army. Systems Analyst. I was assigned to Groom Lake Proving Grounds to assist on the project. They were trying to develop something called a quantum bomb.”
Oh, that sounded promising.
“What was it?” Fiona said.
Renee shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what happened?” Jubal felt the?rst?ares of panic in the back of his mind.
“I know what happened,” she said. “I just don’t know what a fucking quantum bomb is. It doesn’t matter. They couldn’t make it work.”
The woman closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She didn’t speak.
“It’s okay,” Fiona said. “She does this sometimes.”
Jubal rocked back and forth on his toes. He wanted to grab her and shake her awake, to demand answers, to?nd someone to blame. But he stood there with his?sts clenched at his sides.
“Renee?” Fiona said. “Are you still with us?”
The yellow and red eyes opened again. She stared at Jubal for at least a full minute. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” she said. “The dead army.”
“What? No-”
“Yes. In your dreams. Just like her.” She nodded to Fiona.
His dreams? Two nights ago he had dreamed, but he didn’t remember much. Something about a?gure in red, maybe. And this morning, hadn’t there been a dark group of?gures marching across the desert, like A dead army.
He looked at Fiona.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Jubal shook his head. Two or three people dreaming the same thing wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe it.
“Forget about my dreams,” he said. “What’s the dead army?”
“First I have to tell you about the lab,” Renee said. “About the work.” Her face glistened in the low-wattage light from the lamp on the end table. As he stared at her, Jubal could see blisters swell and burst, leaking yellow? uid. She didn’t seem to notice. He wondered if she even felt it at this stage of her illness.
“Do you know anything about string theory?” Her voice had lost a little volume. He had to strain to hear.
“I thought you weren’t a scientist,” he said.
She tried to smile, which caused further cracking of the skin on her lips. Blood oozed out from the new wounds.
“I’m not. But I’m not a dummy, either. A lot of the folks at the lab talked. And I listened.”
“String theory has something to do with gravity and black holes, right?” Fiona said.
“You’re teacher’s pet today,” Renee Spencer said. “It does, indeed, concern black holes and gravity and quantum physics. Imagine a guitar string stretched across all of space and time, connecting everything there is. Now imagine playing different notes on that string, accessing different times and different universes.”
“That’s string theory?” Jubal said.
“Hell, no. I’ve barely given you the outline of the outline. I don’t understand all of it myself. And I don’t think I have a lot of time left to explain it, do I? No, don’t bother to answer. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it, too. So let’s get to the point.
“When the scientists at Project Magellan tried to build their little quantum bomb, I think they were trying to develop something that would explode over an enemy force and just send them…somewhere else. They couldn’t get it right, though. But one failure leads to another discovery, and they found a way to build a gate.”
“What kind of gate?” Jubal said.
Renee coughed up blood, runny with pus. Fiona wiped Renee’s lip with a tissue. The coughing grew worse, becoming a hack that Jubal thought would never stop. But?nally it did.
“Renee?” Jubal said.
“I don’t know what kind of gate, but it sure wasn’t made of white pickets.” She laughed weakly at her own joke, then coughed some more. The woman breathed shallowly, her eyes?uttering.
“I…in the control room when…it happened.”
Renee swallowed repeatedly. Discolored drool ran from her lip. A boil on her neck burst, the liquid running onto a bath towel that Fiona had placed beneath the woman’s head.
“Explosion. Yellow…smoke. Or mist.”
Jubal and Fiona waited expectantly.
“Screams. Terrible screams,” Renee said, gulping her words. She continued, her voice growing fainter as she spoke. “I ran to my car. I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life. There were more explosions, terrible ones, but I got out of there. Then…”
“Yes?” Jubal said, pitying the poor wreck, no longer aware of the worsening smell of decay and sickness.
“The rest is…hazy. My car broke down, so I hitchhiked anywhere to get away. Got sick. So sick. So…”
Renee’s eyes closed. Her breath hitched in her throat.
“The dead army,” Jubal said. “Tell us about the dead army.”
Her eyes opened to yellow-red slits.
“Your dreams…are real.”
Jubal turned to Fiona. “What does that mean? My dreams are real?”
“Just what she said, Jubal. She thinks there’s an army tromping around somewhere. An army of…the dead.”
“What?”
Fiona nodded, her arms crossed, looking very serious.
A burst of laughter erupted from Jubal. The laughter continued for some time until he noticed the tears on Fiona’s face.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” he said, wrapping his arms around his?ancee and patting her back. “I just?nd it hard to believe; I mean, c’mon. Zombies? Maybe ‘dead army’ just means the US Army is out rounding up the dead from this epidemic.”
Fiona’s head shook on Jubal’s shoulder. “You heard her. She had the same dream that I had. And that you had; I know you had it-I saw it in your eyes when she mentioned it. Something weird is de?nitely going on, and I’m so scared, Jubal.”
Jubal held her tighter and let her cry into his shirt. He happened to glance over her shoulder at Renee.
“Oh, shit.”
Fiona pulled away. “What?”
Jubal went to the woman on the couch and stared into her face.
“Renee’s dead.”
“How do you know for sure? Feel her pulse.”
“Hell, no. I ain’t touching her. But I know dead when I see it, and she’s dead.”
“What’ll we do, Jubal? What is going on?”
“Let’s go to the kitchen. You can get some coffee brewing, and we’ll think this thing through.”
They both shambled into the kitchen like lost souls. Jubal was beginning to feel numb from too little sleep and too much drama. He felt as if the world around him had become surreal, as if he were walking through some strange nightmare version of Serenity.
I hope I’m not having a nervous breakdown. Not now, when everyone needs me.
Then he thought of his dad, and Damon. They would never panic in a situation like this. At least he liked to think they wouldn’t. But he doubted if they’d ever had to deal with an emergency of this magnitude.
Jubal pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and slumped into it. He watched Fiona go to the counter upon which sat the coffee maker. As she swung a cabinet door open for the can of coffee, her hair swung aside for a
