trembled. Seven was no age at all. A baby.
I hated myself for this.
“Is your dad Charles Grey?” I asked, trying to take the edge off my voice and utterly failing. I wasn’t prepared for this even though I knew that Grey had brought his family into the lab with him.
“Yes,” Mikey said, almost making it a question, unsure of what kind of answer would placate this big, mean stranger with the funny costume and the gun. Then he found another splinter of courage and lifted his chin. “Are you here to hurt my dad?”
“Why would I want to do that, kid?”
“I don’t know. ’Cause he said you were.”
Christ.
“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I said, and hoped that it wasn’t a lie. Of course, this was coming from a guy holding a loaded gun. “But I do have to talk to your dad.”
“I’m scared,” said the kid. His face was still paper white with fear.
“It’ll be okay.”
“I’m scared of my dad,” he said.
I wanted to peel off my hood and put my sidearm away and give this kid a hug, get him outside this madhouse. I knelt in front of him.
“Why are you scared of your dad, Mikey?”
“He keeps yelling,” he said. “Yelling and crying. I don’t like it when he cries.”
Swell.
“Listen, Mikey … can you take me to him?”
“No! You’re going to hurt him.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists, but the action looked more like he was tired than crying. In the harsh fluorescent lighting his pale skin looked almost green.
“I’m not here to hurt your dad, kid.”
He stared up at me, his face filled with doubt; then his eyes shifted away toward the door. “I’m scared to go back in there.”
“I’ll be right with you, kiddo,” I said as I straightened.
The kid sneezed and I instantly jerked back from him and made a grab for the BAMS unit. The light was no longer green. It glowed orange.
Mikey wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I have a cold.”
“How long have you had a cold, kid?”
He sniffed. “I don’t know. I just got it, I guess.”
“Today? Did you wake up with a cold?”
“No.” He sniffed again and there was a fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead. “I keep sneezing and I can’t find any tissues. I think Mommy used them all.”
“Does your mom have a cold, too?”
“She sneezed so much she had a nosebleed.”
“Where is she? Where’s your mom?”
He looked around for a few seconds, like he was trying to orient himself. “Isn’t she here?”
“No. Where is she?”
He sneezed again. I held the BAMS out to try to catch some of the spray.
The light changed from orange to red.
Everything in my gut turned to greasy ice water.
“I … don’t know,” Mikey said distantly. “I think she went to lie down. She had a nosebleed.”
Mikey wiped at his nose and stared at the drops of blood on his wrist. He looked at me, confused, wanting and needing an answer. He was swaying slightly, as if there was a strong breeze. Beneath his freckles his color was bad. Definitely green, with dark red splotches blossoming on his cheeks.
I heard a click in my ear and then Church’s voice: “Deacon for Cowboy, Deacon for Deacon, copy?”
“Go for Cowboy,” I murmured, stepping away from the boy. The kid stood there, clearly unsure of where he was. Blood ran from both nostrils and he didn’t appear to notice.
“Cowboy,” Church said, “we’re receiving the telemetry feeds from the BAMS unit. Be advised that the room is now officially compromised. Repeat, you are in a hot zone. We’re getting V-readings.”
I stepped away and touched my earbud. “What kind?”
“Dalek is matching the readings with the facility’s database and—”
Another voice cut in. Dr. Hu. “Cowboy, be advised, the kid appears to be infected with a strain of QOBE.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s something they were working on at Fair Isle. Quick Onset
“Say again?”
Church’s voice cut back in, “The boy has Ebola.”
A cold hand clamped around my heart.
“Then it’s in the main air supply. Talk to me about containment, ’cause I’m outside of the Hot Room.”
“We’ve got the exterior vents draped and we’re sealing them with foam. Nothing can get out.”
“Does that include me?”
“We’re airlifting in a hyperbaric decontamination module. We’ll soft-dock it to one of the doors. You’ll be okay as long as your suit seals are intact.” He sounded almost disappointed.
The kid couldn’t hear the conversation. He was using his sleeve to blot blood from his nose. At first I thought he was remarkably calm, but when he glanced at me I could see that his eyes were already starting to glaze with fever.
“That’s nuts,” I whispered. “Ebola has a five-day incubation—”
“Not QOBE,” said Hu. “It’s a bioweapon engineered to hit and present within minutes to hours. Introduce it into a bunker or secure facility and everyone in there dies. Without living hosts an insertion team in HAMMER suits can infiltrate and gain access to computers and other materials. Infection rate is ninety-eight point eight; mortality rate among infected is one hundred percent.”
“Tell me that someone else cooked this up and that we were just working on a cure.”
There was silence on the line, and then Hu said, “Grow up, Cowboy.”
“We’ll talk about that when I get out of here,” I said softly, though it occurred to me that Hu probably wouldn’t have made that comment if he thought there was a snowball’s chance of me getting out.
“What’s my time frame here?” I asked.
Church said, “You’re fighting the clock. If the boy has just started showing symptoms, say one hour before you’re alone in there.”
“Deacon,” I said, “tell me one thing. Did you know about this?”
“That it was being studied? Yes. That it was off the leash, no.”
What remained unsaid was whether he would have sent me in here regardless. I think we both knew the answer to that.
Second day back on the fucking job.
I turned back to the kid. “C’mon, Mikey … let’s go see your dad.”
The kid sniffed again and turned toward the nearest door, but he blinked at it for a moment, his face screwed up with uncertainty.
“What was I doing?” he asked distractedly.
“You’re taking me to see your dad.” My voice almost cracked.
“Oh … okay.”
He reached for the knob, turned it the wrong way several times, and then wiped his nose with his wrist. When he reached for the doorknob again there was a long smear of blood on his wrist. Mikey finally opened the door and walked through, and I followed, torn between the demands of the mission and the horror I felt for what I was seeing.
I was watching a child die.
