Just a Couple of Days (39 page)

“Why haven't you left?” I asked, pointing to the remote. “You have the means. What do you need me for?”

“Escape is not my present objective.” She pursed her lips in determination. “I followed my orders in good faith, and that bastard Kiljoy sent me in to die and made me into a scapegoat. I'm not expendable in anyone's equation but my own.”

“Revenge?”

“I'll turn the other cheek until someone tries to kill me, Doctor. Then all bets are off, and I take karma into my own hands. I have to be sure he gets what's coming to him.”

“He's already a wreck. The Pied Piper virus is loose. His weapon failed its field test, which, incidentally, I see no reason to believe he was behind. Why would he test it on Americans?”

“I don't know why you doubt it. That's standard operating procedure in weapons development. We've tested thousands of chemical weapons and mind-control agents on our own soldiers and citizens. We've injected them with radioactive isotopes just to see what would happen. When the Manhattan Project achieved its objective, the planners went ahead and tested the first atomic bomb over the Nevada desert, even though the physicists weren't certain that it wouldn't ignite the planet's atmosphere. Then they field-tested it over the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“But there's no vaccine. Why test a biological weapon on domestic soil when there's no cure?”

“Impatience. He's dying.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I've seen his medical record. His heart is on its last few pumps. He's had two heart attacks already, and he was scheduled for open-heart surgery in mid-November. I don't think he expected to survive to see the completion of the project.”

I looked at her dubiously.

“I'm a spy,” she said. “I don't just spy on who they tell me to. I cover my ass. I'm telling you, he orchestrated the release of the virus so he could see a field test of Operation Small Change before he died.” She drew close to me. “Think about it, Doctor. He's been directing this project for the last thirteen years. Testing the virus on prisoners was only the beginning of the human trials, and as you've seen, they weren't terribly predictive about its field utility. He's dying, and he needed to know that he did something meaningful. He figured it would work, and he'd get his satisfaction.”

“At the cost of thousands of lives?”

“I was expendable,” she shrugged. “So were the subjects, including your best friend. It doesn't matter if it's one, two, or thousands. You give the authoritarian mind far too much credit, Doctor.”

“What about you?” I challenged her. “Volt was apparently expendable for your purposes.”

Agent Orange pointed her finger at me. It was threatening and not at all playful. “Understand one thing, Doctor. Kiljoy murdered Volt. I didn't even know what was happening at the time. After Kiljoy gave me the order to activate the deviation
device, I drugged Volt. That's why he had the hiccups when Tynee called to tell him to pick up the four of you at his office, and that's when I started to feel suspicious. I left Volt tied up outside the limousine and went to investigate what the hell was going on. I did not know the compound was going to be sterilized.”

I apologized for my implication, and she nodded severely.

“If you wish to escape, leave a pencil on your desk pointed toward the door. I'll contact you. Otherwise, stay the hell out of my way, and I advise against any dumb ideas you may have of thwarting me.” She turned and walked toward the door. “You had a good dog, Doctor. Kiljoy slaughtered him, too. What more proof do you need?”

She slipped silently behind the door, exactly as a spy should, and left me profoundly stupefied. I sat motionless, paralyzed by implications and possibilities. I only snapped out of my daze when my gaze happened to focus on my right hand lying listlessly on my lap. I looked at it a good long while before I was flabbergasted by the sudden recognition that I was inexplicably clutching the very disk with which Agent Orange had threatened to blackmail me five minutes ago.

 

138
Despite my rude awakening and subsequent confrontation with my own cowardice, sleep returned quickly to me and offered me peace in its gentle embrace. I must have dreamed madly the rest of the night. I remember none of it, but I awoke feeling fully refreshed and possessed of a clarity of thought I had not experienced since before I ever noticed its absence. The first thing I did was walk over to my desk and clear its surface of everything but a pencil pointed directly toward the
door. I was busting the hell out, come what may.
Que será, será
, as my father used to bellow as he made me Italian toast.

My upbeat and confident mood was at considerable odds with that of everyone else that morning in the observation lounge. I mirrored their grim faces well, I thought. Their faces were so unsmiling that it would not have been hard to convince me that they had never grinned in their entire life. I, on the other hand, quite enjoyed myself, parodying their behavior for no one's amusement but my own.

To be certain, they had more than ample cause to be upset. All contact with the world outside of the cozy dungeon had been lost. According to the trembling General Kiljoy, who seemed to have turned into a feeble old man overnight, this in all likelihood implied that the Pied Piper virus was running rampant across the country and the continent.

“Wasn't there any contingency planning for this?” Tynee asked. “I mean, they had to have realized that escape was at least a remote possibility.”

“What about internationally?” Miss Mary added. “Is the rest of the world going to declare North America a no-man's-land?”

“Negative.” General Kiljoy shook his head. “They weren't blind to the possibility of escape, but their primary response was offensive. A permanently incapacitating biological agent was released on domestic soil. For all they know, for all
we
know, the virus was released as a terrorist attack against our nation.”

“What kind of a counterattack could they possibly launch if they don't even know who the perpetrator is?”

“The only counterattack possible when playing with ultimate weapons.”

Tynee paused. “MAD? Mutually assured destruction? Are you kidding me? Did they let other nations know this?”

“Other nations would assume it. The United States of America is not about to just vanish from global geopolitics without a fight. If we go down, the enemy goes with us, whoever the hell and wherever the hell they may be. That's the way the game is played. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, the release of this virus constituted the first shot of World War III. Agents were immediately dispatched to every nation on Earth with copies of the virus to be released in the event of containment failure. Containment failed. It's unmistakable.”

“What are you saying?” Miss Mary coughed to cover up a hoarse giggle. The grim-grin phenomenon reared its goofy face. I saw Tynee smirk as well. I let an honest snicker escape my own lips.

General Kiljoy's mouth bounced into an enormous grin, then back to a bulldog frown, and back into a grin again, snapping up and down like a flexible yardstick. “Well,” he shrugged limply, choking back a chuckle and swallowing some tears. “It's the end of the world as we know it.”

 

139
There we were, talking about the day's news, the end of the world as we know it, the collapse of civilization, Armageddon or what you will. General Kiljoy hobbled to the bathroom to retch some more as soon as he spoke the words. Tynee couldn't accept it, scratching his head and counting his fingers. Miss Mary pillaged the cabinets, counting her remaining stash of cigarettes. Ratdog yawned and lay down. I poured myself a drink, rum,
thick and rich. It was the first thing in the morning, but what the hell, it seemed appropriate to the occasion. I tried to think of a toast to share with me and myself, but all I could think of was Blip's favorite cheerio, “To excellence in human communication.”

And how, old friend. Bottoms up.

 

140
I poured myself another and, wanting to check on the status of my pencil, excused myself to my laboratory. I was immensely pleased to see that she had received the message. This was apparent because she left the pencil balanced on its eraser, pointing straight up. This clandestine communication gave me immeasurable satisfaction. Topic aside, the process gratified some part of me that fashioned secret agent fantasies and then presented them to my consciousness in daydreams. There had certainly been plenty of this sort of activity around me lately, but that was exactly the problem. It was
around
me, poking at me like a cattle prod while I cowered and jumped and rubbed my smarting ass. This time, with this pencil, I knew the code. I understood the subtext. I was in on the secret. The bus was coming, and I knew the driver.

I was sipping my rum in a euphoric haze of self-congratulation when the door was flung open. In marched Tynee, and he wasted no time getting to the point.

“Have you made any progress at all in your assignment?” His demeanor suggested that he thought we were back in his office, and I was his underling.

“Nope.” I drained the rest of my glass and paused as the alcohol washed over my brain like the first warm breeze of an ersatz springtime. “It's impossible. It took years to create it, and it
would take at least as long to develop a vaccine, and that's with an entire research team.”

He ignored me and changed the subject. “General Kiljoy's lost it,” he said, pointing to the door. “What are we going to do?”

“We?”

“This could be the end of the world, Fountain! We need to pull together.”

“It
is
the end of the world,
Tynee
. And they
have
pulled together.”

This gave him brief pause, but he quickly pushed reality out of the way. “I have to see things with my own eyes. I've suggested to General Kiljoy that we take a little field trip upstairs. The limousine is practically indestructible, and it's hermetically sealed. We'd be perfectly safe inside.”

“General Kiljoy agreed to this?”

“As much as he was able.”

“And Miss Mary?”

He nodded.

“Why are you inviting me to come along?”

“The four of us need to stick together. This situation is,” he paused, “unprecedented.”

I didn't know what Tynee expected to find upstairs, but I was more than willing to get out of this dungeon. I shrugged. Perhaps this would be my chance to escape.

“Are you ready then?”

“Right now?”

“Do you have something else to do?”

“Well, can you give me a few minutes?” I asked, thinking about my journal. It only existed on disk, and I would need to print out a hard copy.

“For what?”

“I don't know. What's the rush anyway? Just give me a few minutes. I'll meet you in the lounge.”

Tynee left without replying, and I assumed it was agreeable. No sooner had he left than Agent Orange landed directly in front of me. I might have been startled if I wasn't intoxicated. As it was, it merely flumbled me.

“I pointed the pencil up for a reason,” she said.

I looked up at the ceiling and saw two small eyebolts from which she must have been suspending herself. “Sorry,” I answered, chastising myself for missing the secret clue.

“Listen, I have to get to the limousine before the rest of your party. If you're cooperating with me, stall as long as you can. I can't give you the remote control because I'll need it. But you'll still have a chance to escape if you can get Kiljoy's remote once the limo leaves the compound. Just do it as soon as possible, because that limo isn't going to get very far. Press the big red button, remember?”

As soon as I nodded she was gone, out the door without a word or a sound. What a marvelous woman. She moved with a remarkable lack of noise. She could have done a backflip wearing a cowbell and not made a sound. Some people learn to tinker with nucleotides, some people learn to walk quietly, I suppose.

 

141
The printer tossed out page after page of my manuscript as if they were no different from any academic paper I had tapped out in my years. Perhaps it was correct. I wasn't even sure why I was printing it out in the first place. It would be utterly useless where I was going. After all, who would read it?
What the hell am I doing, anyway? When I began writing this, the situation was not quite so out of hand. It was still possible that someone else would read it someday. Now, I'm writing what would appear to anyone else on the planet as utterly unintelligible hieroglyphics. Nevertheless, I was and still am clinging to my words, like a child clinging to the side of a bridge over a swimming hole, trembling, knowing I'll do it eventually but still afraid to jump and join my friends frolicking below.

If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?
What of this pestiferous piece of folk wisdom? It implies that the decision of one's friends was foolish, possibly lethal, as in another version of the same question,
If all your friends jumped off the Empire State Building, would you?
Consider, however, if that actually came to pass. Putting teenage peer pressure aside, as a settled and mature adult, what if every friend you had in the world decided to jump for it? Would you join them?

More to the point, what if every human on the planet except a few cavemen had contracted a virus that destroyed their linguistic abilities and thereby altered their fundamental experience of consciousness? Would you join them? There is absolutely no possibility of potentially making friends with your cellmates or anyone else. You are condemned to spend the rest of your life hanging out with three ogres underground. Do you jump? Do I?

If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?
This poor question has been browbeaten into thinking she's a rhetorical question, a question never intended to have an answer, in fact, a statement in disguise. It is my intent to put an end to that linguistic legerdemain. The answer may be unsettling, but it is also thrilling and perfectly obvious, at least with the above
qualifications. I do my matchmaking as much for their sake as for my own. And so, may they live happily ever after.