“It’s not important,” he said to himself. “They dropped a fricking thermonuclear warhead on the city. Of course things aren’t going to run perfectly after that... It’s to be expected.” He was half-jogging by the time he made it to the elevator. He inserted the security card into the slot next to the door and waited for the little green light to grant him access. It did, and the door slid open noiselessly. Louie stepped in and inserted the card into another slot on an inside panel. It made a satisfied buzzing sound and the touch screen menu appeared directly above. There were ten subterranean levels in the Winnipeg Disease Study Center; level 1—the floor immediately below the surface—was inaccessible. It likely no longer existed, blasted into oblivion along with everything above it. Louie was on level 2, where workers took their breaks and ate their lunch. He needed to travel further down, past levels 3, 4, and 5—to the extra-secured floors where all the nasty stuff was stored.
Louie had stolen the security card from Tom Braden when news arrived the bombs were on their way. It wasn’t actually stealing; Tom’s card had dropped to the cafeteria floor during the big rush. Louie had planned on returning it to him once they were all safely tucked away in the emergency living quarters of level 10. But Louie had hung back. He hadn’t gotten into the elevator with Tom and the others. Someone with a security level as high as Tom’s had obviously gone with them because Tom hadn’t returned to search for his card.
That same card now granted Louie total access to the entire facility. All ten levels were lit up in cold blue on the touch screen. He pressed 8 and felt the slight lift in his body as the elevator started its descent. Tom Braden was one of the top DSC research scientists; he could go anywhere above ground and below. Louie Finkbiner was a security software technician, and his access throughout the facility up until three days ago had been extremely limited... until wonderful fate presented him with an opportunity. He had never fully understood why the DSC hadn’t granted him higher access; he was after all, the guy that coded all the security cards and made the doors lock. Why couldn’t they have trusted him with a level 4 security card instead of a level 1? If it wasn’t for guys like me, this place would hardly run at all.
The door slid open and Louie stepped out into level 8. “Fuck you, Tom.” He pocketed the card and headed down the hallway. Louie Finkbiner was a technician no longer. “I’m a scientist. I’m a scientist.” He had on multiple occasions met with Human Resources and expressed an interest in disease research. The HR reps had laughed at Louie, told him he was more suited for software than science. Concentrate your efforts on fixing computer viruses, they’d said, not human ones.
No one was laughing at him now. Louie had deactivated all the security cards except Tom’s. The scientists and their assistants, the kitchen workers, the janitors, the office workers, and the goddamned HR reps were all trapped on level 10, and they weren’t going anywhere without Louie’s say so. He punched the card into a slot with a little more force than necessary next to a door marked COMMUNICABLE LEVEL 5 STORAGE. This was where the really bad stuff was kept. Samples of the nastiest diseases known to man were stored here; Ebola, smallpox, bubonic plague, and a hundred more Louie had never heard of.
Louie made his way past the security stations where workers once checked in and checked out to make sure they had followed proper decontamination protocols, and that nothing entered that didn’t belong, and nothing left. He went past the showers and locker rooms, and through three more security check points using Tom’s card before arriving to the actual storage area. Louie found a storage transport gurney and started opening vacuum-sealed doors. He started removing metal canisters from their rubberized resting trays and placed them into the fitted openings of the gurney. He didn’t bother with a hazmat suit—he didn’t even put on gloves. The sample containers were made of tough stuff, and Louie felt quite confident he wouldn’t be contracting any horrible diseases all that soon. Besides, he didn’t have the time to follow the rules. The facility was shutting down, and he had to complete his experiment before the power cut off altogether.
He exited Communicable Level 5 Storage, picking up a fully-charged Taser from one of the security stops along the way, and pushed his loaded gurney back to the elevator. Louie travelled down to the tenth level and entered out into a spacious reception area. There was no one to greet him, and even if there had been, he was positive the greeting wouldn’t have been friendly. The thirty-eight DSC employees remaining in the facility were trapped beyond the area Louie was in, locked behind a final vacuum-sealed door leading off to cramped living quarters. They had enough food and water to last half a year but wouldn’t need even a week’s supply. They would all be dead within the next two or three days—perhaps sooner. It all depended on how quickly Louie’s explosive mixture of a dozen different diseases took to spread.
He pushed the gurney up in front of a wide set of double doors. Louie had the locked the doors from eight levels above when he felt fairly certain that everyone would be stowed safely on the other side. That had been four and a half days ago. Louie hadn’t communicated with any of them since.
