The Dark Water (6 page)

JIMMY

JIMMY'S RUNNING. HE'S HOLDING A WALKIE-TALKIE
IN
one hand and Odessa's hand with the other. The corridors are gray and long and with lights on the floors. Runway lights. Now that he's moving fast enough, he feels like a plane about to take off.

“Turn left,” Veronica crackles through the walkie-talkie.

It all looks the same.

There are no more gunshots, but in some ways, that's scarier. With gunshots, Jimmy reasons, he at least can hear where Sutton and his people are. Without gunshots, they could be anywhere. Even Veronica can't track all their movements, and according to her, they've split up. Some are using the pump to get as much water out of the well as possible. Others are moving down the hallways, methodically kicking in doors, looking. And Sutton, with two armed cronies, is marching straight to Veronica's station. That's what she said anyway.

“Okay, now enter the code into the second door on the right,” she says, and spits out a number. Repeats it so he can get it right. It beeps green, and Odessa opens the door. She's been quiet since they left, but there's not much to talk about. Still, it's a little unlike her.

“Close the door!” Veronica screams, oddly insistent, and he backpedals and slams it. He can hear the lock engaging.

“Great,” she says. Jimmy hears a muffled
thud
in the background. Not a gunshot. Something else.

“What's that?” he asks.

“Sutton. He's outside my door, but never mind. Just hurry. Now you're going to go through a pair of sliding doors and I want you to head to the left,
not the right.
The right will take you to somewhere you don't want to be. Once you're through the door, put on the suits as quick as you can. But be thorough, check each other's seals.”

Jimmy looks around, and sees that they're in a lab. There are microscopes and emergency showers and sinks. There are lab coats on the wall. Jimmy goes through a pair of sliding doors and hits a T junction hallway, except instead of a dead-end wall in front of them, it's windowed, and through the windows he sees cages upon cages. Dogs and cats and mice in aquariums. Some are bouncing around, others aren't moving at all. He's too far away to see if they are sick, or covered in sores, or bleeding.

“I don't like this,” Odessa says. The dogs, as if they heard her, begin to howl.

“Me neither,” he admits. He knows that this is what happens in a lab, but he has a German shepherd and a Siamese back home and he loves them and now he can only think of them aging to death and dying.

To the right, another door, one with a big bright red
4
painted on it.

To the left, a door with a
2
, painted blue. They go that way, press a big red button and the door lifts up, like for a garage. And inside, sure enough, suits. Not hazmats, but clunkier, made of a thick blue plastic that seems sturdier than those the soldiers wore at Westbrook.

Odessa hesitates, so he takes a suit down for her and helps her in, piece by piece. Veronica's been quiet, which means either she's being very patient or she's in trouble. Either way, they take their time, right foot, left foot, zip and seal. The helmet is part of the suit, so all you have to do is zip, Velcro, zip, Velcro. Two layers of suit, three layers of gloves, all built in together.

“If this is for level two, what do you think the suits look like in level four?” Jimmy says, and is gratified to see Odessa smile.

“Probably Michelin Man costumes.”

“And why do they even bother? They have the water around. They can heal themselves from any virus or whatever they get.”

“They'd need too much,” she replies, her voice muffled, her breath leaving a small cloud of fog. “If they had to use it every time they left the room, they'd have run out years ago. They were almost out when we showed up, remember?”

They stand looking at each other, Odessa in her new body, locked away in a mobile plastic kit like an action figure still in its case. There's a lock of her red curly hair covering one of her eyes, and Jimmy has to fight the urge to reach out and try to move it, even with her helmet on.

“You ready?” he asks.

She snorts. “For what? I have no idea what we're doing.”

He makes a face. “Veronica?” he says. The walkie-talkie is awkward in his clunky hands. She doesn't respond. He tries again. Nothing.

“No way,” Odessa says.

“Maybe she's doing something.” Jimmy lifts the walkie-talkie to try again, but Odessa bats his hand down.

“No,” she hisses. “If someone got to her, then you're just telling them where we are.”

“But we'll be on the monitors.”

Odessa shrugs, a barely noticeable gesture in the suit. “If I were Veronica and Sutton was trying to get in, the last thing I'd do is keep the monitor focused on places I didn't want him to see.”

“But we don't know that!” Jimmy says.

“What do we know?” she asks. “We know she sent us here. We know to put on these suits. And we know that she mentioned monkeys. So let's go with what we know, okay?”

Jimmy takes a few breaths to calm down. The suit isn't helping. But Odessa's right. He glances up at a camera along the wall, then jumps and knocks it to the right. He smiles at her, proud of himself, and she smiles back, which is all the reason he needs to keep going.

• • •

They leave the door open and quickly discover that this part of the lab is better equipped. Bigger rooms, crazier machines. Electron microscopes are nothing when compared to the MRI room. Mr. Kish wasn't joking; the Westbrook alums
funded
this place. It's better than a hospital. They open doors and check out each room, not sure what they'll find or where they'll find it.

At the far end of the hallway, past a number of small white rooms, some with dentist-style chairs, others with silver tables, and one with a colorful carpet and kid's toys, there's a thick, heavy-set door. A crosshatched window is fixed three-quarters of the way up, and through that Jimmy can see more cages, bigger ones. Small hands poke through the cages and hold on to the bars.

“This must be it,” he says to Odessa.

“Now what?” she replies.

“I have no idea. That's what Veronica's for.”

“So, are the monkeys, like, really sick or something? Is that why we have to wear these suits? Are we supposed to hope they find and bite and infect Sutton and his men?”

Jimmy cranes his neck, trying to see more of the monkeys. He realizes that he doesn't recognize the type, that aside from apes like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, and monkeys like um, baboons, he's pretty clueless.

“Dess,” he says, trying to work out the logic while he speaks, “if these monkeys are testing water that's supposed to stop killer viruses, then it makes sense that they would have killer viruses here too, right? Like Ebola and Marburg. Maybe they have
the
virus somewhere in here, the one that made us like this . . .”

“Yeah,” she replies, opening the door, apparently ready to get this over with. “But this is minimum security. I bet these ones are safe and the infected ones are past the door marked with the big four.”

“Then what are we supposed to do with them?”

“Just trust Veronica, okay?” Odessa replies, looking over her shoulder. “She got us this far.”

Jimmy clamps up, annoyed. He's never liked following orders.

Inside, the room's bright and the noise is loud. The monkeys, agitated, move back and forth in their cages, which are bigger than he thought—they're set back into the wall a good ten feet. They're smaller than chimps, but still a decent size. Long hair on the head and neck, a light brown that turns gray as it moves down the body and toward the belly. Several of them are screaming, baring their teeth. A few of the bigger ones stare, wide-eyed, mouths open. Like angry stoners.

“This is intense,” Odessa says, looking at the cages.

Jimmy thinks that's code for her not wanting to be here. He's always been good at reading Odessa. “Why don't you go back out into the hallway and close all the doors down the corridor? We don't want the monkeys getting lost. Go ahead of me and make sure their path is going to be straight, cool?”

“I can do that,” she says, grateful.

“But remember,” he replies, smiling at her, “they might come running, so go hide in the corner, okay?”

“See you soon,” she says, gently touching the clear glass in front of his face.

And then she's gone.

• • •

Jimmy takes stock. There's a walk-in fridge. More steel tables. Even through his filtered mask, it smells like a vet's waiting room. Jimmy walks to the far end of the cages, which are set atop each other, ten by five. Fifty monkeys. What did Veronica send them here for? To just wreak havoc? Jimmy supposes it will help, though he hates the idea of a monkey getting shot. Look at these guys, he thinks. Even screaming they don't deserve that.

He stands in front of a cell marked
HENRY
, where a bigger guy is staring Jimmy down. He puts his hand on the lock and begins to count down from ten, giving Odessa a little more time to get ready.

At three, though, an alarm goes off. It's loud and blaring and a spinning red light, like on a cop car, twirls above the door. It scares the crap out of him. All along the cages an additional lock springs into place, sealing the monkeys in. Jimmy looks at Henry, but the monkey just goes apeshit.

Odessa,
he thinks. And runs.

• • •

She's at the end of the hallway, her body splayed on the floor. The thick metal door at the entrance is almost down the wall, only a few feet above her, held in place by a cart. On the cart, crushed, is a microscope. The wheels on the bottom are bent off, and Jimmy can see the whole thing trembling beside her. If it gives, the door will drop and cut her in half.

“
Dess!
” Jimmy screams, hurrying down the hall, cursing his clunky suit.

She rolls over, waves for him to come, seemingly okay. Jimmy doesn't even have time to feel relieved. He plunges onto the ground next to her, where she's peering out underneath the door. The cart groans next to them.

“What happened?” he says.

“I don't know,” she replies, checking whether something's coming. “One minute I'm standing in the hallway, the next, this door is closing by itself. I put the cart under, but it's not going to hold long.”

“I didn't get the monkeys,” Jimmy says.

“I don't think it's about the monkeys, Jimmy,” Odessa says, pointing at the
BIOHAZARD LEVEL
4
door across the hall. It's been sealed by a mean-looking steel wall. Above the door is another spinning light, flashing in their eyes. “I think Veronica sent us here to save us. To lock the doors behind us. The monkeys were a stupid trick to get us here.”

“What, why?”

“To protect us, obviously. I caught the door because I didn't want to be locked in, but maybe she's right. Maybe we should ride this out.”

Jimmy looks at her. Her eyes are wide and blue behind her mask. She wants this all to end. The cart, next to them, groans against the weight. There's still a few feet free beneath the door. If they want to leave, they have to go now.

“That's not how it works, Dess. Mia needs our
help.
If we don't help, then she's going to come back from wherever the hell she is and find ten guns pointing at her face.”

“We need to take care of ourselves,” Odessa says, having a fit that surprises him. The door groans.

“Dess,” he says gently, “we have to help them. We have to get out of here.”

She's crying. He can hear it.

“You know that if Sutton wins, we aren't going to be safe here. How long can we stay? What do we eat? It's just as dangerous here as it is out there, only the danger will take longer to get to us. You need to trust me, Dess. We have to go.” Jimmy feels something in his voice, a conviction stronger than anything he's ever felt in the huddle at a football game. Odessa sees this. She stares into his eyes, and finally she takes his hand and he knows she's with him. She's always been with him. He realizes then that she didn't object to save herself. She wanted to save him.

He grins, about to help her through the opening when he hears something. A soldier walks into the junction and immediately checks out the closed
BIOHAZARD
door across the way. Jimmy pulls Odessa back frantically, and they slide behind the cart, out of the gunman's view.

Jimmy's breathing too hard, his suit's fogging up. He wishes he had a needle or scalpel or something useful he could actually expect to find in a lab.

The soldier comes closer; Jimmy can see his black combat boots peeking underneath the door. The soldier crouches, the tip of his machine gun coming into view, and with no other plan in place, Jimmy lunges past the cart, grabs the barrel of the gun and pulls as hard as he can.

Maybe it's the surprise, maybe it's leverage, or maybe it's his newfound strength, but Jimmy hears the soldier's face smash into the other side of the door, and watches him fall flat on the floor, gun glittering with him. Jimmy takes a fistful of the man's shirt and tugs him under, then, with his enormous padded fist, slams him once, twice in the face until the soldier's nose bursts bloody and his eyes roll back.

“Did you kill him?” Odessa asks. Jimmy blinks. Of course he didn't, but he's surprised he knocked him out so easily.

“Get under the door, Dess. Be careful. Make sure there's no one else out there.”

Jimmy unstraps the machine gun from the unconscious body and searches him. He finds a canteen. Flashlight. A handgun. A knife. A radio. He takes the handgun, and then slides under the door. Jimmy gives the trembling cart a kick and the door slams down, locking the soldier inside.