The Skunge (29 page)

"Yeah, your head of security seems a little jumpy."

"Oy, that Crantz is something else, alright. But he and the rest of the locals is what we're stuck with for now. That's why we don't let them wear guns—hell, half of them probably wouldn't pass a decent background check. No time for interviewing what with the end of the world looming and all. Now," he said, dropping into a chair, "put on some coffee and let's talk treatment."

"Gee doc, I don't know, will my HMO cover all this?" Arneson said.

"If you're willing to help out your Uncle Sammy, you'll find we are willing to spring for the best health care that even money can't buy. You'll get the same level of care as state senators, congressmen and NRA lobbyists."

"Wonderful," Sugar said. She doubled over in a fit of coughing, leaning on Arneson's arm for support. "Can I get Jennifer Aniston's hair stylist?"

"Well, now you're just talking crazy."

"But seriously, Brayle. What are we supposed to do? I came here to get help, not give it. I've done my service." Arneson shared a look with Sugar. "After this, I'm done with government work. I've lost my taste for it."

"Well, quite frankly, even given what little information I have so far, I can say that you're going to be invaluable. With the time-line you're describing, you should be far more advanced in your infection than you are. But you're lucid, non-aggressive, and you look great."

"Flatterer," Sugar rasped.

"Just so. In fact, the sooner we can get you in for some examinations, the better. I'm talking tomorrow morning, if at all possible."

"Sure."

"If," Arneson said, "we discuss ground rules first. I need to see a list of the tests, and who—"

"What my Neanderthal boyfriend is trying to grunt is that
I
will, of course, be free to refuse anything I see fit. Are we clear on that, Mr. Brayle?"

"Doctor Brayle. That title cost me almost a hundred grand, and by God I'm going to get some mileage out of it. And yes, we are clear as can be." He shook his head at Arneson. "You poor man, have you made
any
decisions since you and she hooked up?"

"Not many."

"I didn't think so. And, now, for posterity—" he touched an icon on the phone and set it down on the table between them. The face glowed with blue cool. He leaned forward. "Tell me everything."

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

After a few days, Brayle invited them on a tour of Juniper Ridge.
Nothing fancy
, he said,
but the place is plenty big, and we don't want you getting lost.

Phase One, the ground floor, held boardrooms, offices, all the trappings of a modern office. They used it enough to keep it lived in, and hosted a fair number of meet-and-greets and public-awareness events. On Halloween they opened up the foyer for trick-or-treaters.
Mostly trick, of course
, Brayle said with a wink.

Phase Two was the floor where the real work of Juniper Ridge took place. It was underground (when Arneson asked again how far down, Brayle only smiled and wagged a long finger at him), and much larger than the building above. Living quarters for the technicians, scientists, security, IT personnel, doctors, nurses, even a schoolroom for staff who wanted to live in and homeschool.

"How many families are here?" Sugar asked.

"Oh, not too many," he said. He looked at his phone. "Looks like the Hanlons moved out to a townhouse a couple months ago, so that leaves three families with kids." He eyed her over his glasses. "And now that the proverbial shit has hit the very substantial fan, they are the lucky ones. The FEMA camps and high-school gyms they're using as emergency shelters don't seem like much fun, based on the news." He gestured for them to follow him down a corridor to one of the fully-stocked media rooms, complete with a huge flat-screen, gaming consoles, even a pool table.

"So what's downstairs from here?" Arneson asked.

"Phase Three is mostly server farms and data storage. Miles of cable and cold air. The place is lousy with the kind of guys who spend half their lives spot-welded to a computer keyboard, and the other half watching Monty Python and lobbing Simpson's quotes at each other. I used to be one of those guys, in my flaming youth, before I became the dynamic and powerful middle manager you see before you. I try not to go there too much."

"Is there a Phase Four?"

Brayle shook his head. "Nothing but old records down there. History."

"I've never been a fan of history, myself." Arneson said.

"You'd be surprised at what you can learn by looking at the past."

As they walked (Sugar limping along, leaning occasionally on Arneson to keep up), he told amusing stories about this technico and that one; he walked them through room after room of giant, eerily silent supercomputer clusters the size of sub-compact cars. They all looked the same to Arneson, but Brayle exclaimed over each one and waxed on about their various capabilities and duties.

At one point Brayle commandeered a small electric cart, like something from a golf course.

"Step right up folks. Hurry, hurry: so much time and so little to do. Next stop: the Docks!"

The Docks turned out to be an enormous receiving bay, built to accept delivery of supplies and equipment to the hidden layers of Juniper Ridge. It was the size of an aircraft hangar, echoing, and floored with coated cement. Huge shipping containers sat stacked in colorful profusion, alongside various tractors, heavy machinery, and a fleet of unmarked white pickup trucks. Black cart tracks scored the floor, converging at various tunnel entrances that led out of the Docks. Arneson pointed out the tunnel doors to Sugar; they featured enormous steel doors that looked like they belonged on some medieval castle rather than a top-secret Black Ops site.

"Those are something, aren't they?" Brayle said. "They can withstand anything up to and including a medium-yield nuke. These tunnels and the elevator system are the only way into Juniper Ridge. Both can be locked down in seconds, but the Docks are special; we have to move a lot of heavy ordnance in and out, all the time. Those tunnel doors are built to withstand hell or high water. Both, if necessary."

Trucks arrived in the parking lot aboveground, and after passing through a round of security measures, proceeded to a designated area. There, steel clamps would hold the truck in place while it was lowered underground.

Arneson stared at the docks so long that Sugar had to tug on his arm to get his attention.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

Arneson took one last look at the docs, his gaze seeming to take in everything at once, then smiled and looked at here. "Just admiring the setup," he said.

Brayle watched the exchange, bemused. "You ain't seen nothing, yet. Shall we move on?"

"Lay on, Macduff," Sugar said, smiling.

As they continued the tour, the conversation turned back to the Skunge.

"So far, this disease—or symbiont, to be precise—has defied every branch of science we've thrown at it. Nothing touches it. Of course, we're working like the devil, but right now we don't have much. No surprise there, we're almost always caught flat-footed when he next Big Thing arrives. The flu pandemic in 1918, HIV, SARS, H1N1. Something big pops up, it teeters on the edge, and either we get lucky and it tips back and burns out, or it tips the wrong way and explodes."

"I remember the Bird Flu and Coronavirus, the news reports. People were packing up their houses and heading for the hills."

"And I won't say they didn't have a good reason. Computer models are so sophisticated now that we can run every possible case in the amount of time it takes to make coffee. Hell, even my phone can do that. And let me tell you: the worst case scenarios…well, they'll turn your hair white."

"And the Skunge? What do the computer models say about it?"

Brayle just looked at them and shook his head.

The industry at Juniper Ridge was impressive, even though there were fewer than two hundred people. They kept a small staff, Brayle said; dozens of small, agile teams of three or four, with no rules or boundaries on what they could work on—so long as it benefited the Project.

"The Project," he said, making sure Sugar and Arneson heard the capital letter, "is nothing less than the survival of the human race. Nothing else matters; not destroying the Skunge, not developing a vaccine, not rehabilitating victims and teaching them to crochet tea cozies. The simple, brutal, survival of the species—that is the Project."

Arneson, Sugar and Brayle stood at a railing, overlooking one of the main work areas. A dozen illuminated work tables sat in rows, each with a few workstation terminals, tablets, and equipment so arcane that Arneson couldn't guess at their function. Teams of scientists circulated from table to table, breaking apart, then coming back together, splitting into component parts. It reminded Arneson of high school Biology class; examining shifting, slithering amoebas through a microscope.

One work-table had been laid out with a mat of Skunge—they were dissecting it, examining the remains under microscopes, and feeding it into large sampling canisters. Twisting, colorful graphs and diagrams danced across the screens. Analyzing. Detecting.

"Did you…" Sugar said, gesturing at the mat. Brayle smiled without humor.

"We cut it off of an infected gentleman." At Sugar's look, he sighed and smoothed his hair back. " He was dead, I'm sure he didn't mind too much." He waved his hand over the industry arrayed beneath. "This is the big time, kids and turtles. The big show. The extinction event we've been waiting for. Playing nice is no longer an option." Brayle gazed down, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth. Like a man who has seen his fondest dream come pass; one that might involve crushing more than a few enemies underfoot.

Watch out, Doctor Brayle,
Sugar thought.
Pride goes before a fall. And it looks like you have a long way to fall.
"So why you, Doctor Brayle? Why here?"

"We have a little experience with this kind of thing." Brayle held up a hand to forestall their questions. "All of which, of course, is classified. And not much help in the current situation, to be honest."

"And do you have plans to stop it?" Sugar crossed her arms.

Even if we
can
stop it, we may choose not to. I don't call the play on these things, but the scuttlebutt from uphill is hinting that this might be…assimilated, instead of trying to stamp it out."

"Of course we need to stop it. It kills people." Sugar stared at Brayle as if he had…well, as if he had caught some strange disease and starting growing tentacles.

"I agree with you," Brayle said. "I want to cure it worse than anyone. Well, present company excluded, I suppose. The real question of course, is this:
can
we beat this thing, or is the smart move to let it run its course?"

"Run its course? What does that even mean?"

"What it means is this: you can dig a wildfire out, kill it with water, or dump chemicals on it until it suffocates and dies. But sometimes, you can let it go; it burns so hard and so fast that it exhausts itself. It leaves a few scars, and renders whole areas uninhabitable for a while—but in the end, it will be gone. What about that?"

"The problem with
that,
Brayle, is that we're the fire." Arneson's hands were white on the railing. "I won't be suffocated, and I won't burn out or fade away. I'm still a person."

"Of course." Brayle's eyes were hidden behind the reflection of the lights in his glasses. "But the Skunge is more than a parasite, and more than a symbiont. It doesn't just live off you, or feed off you. It consumes you." He smiled grimly. "Sure, you're human now—but for how long?"

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

"I'm scared." Sugar's eyes shone in the semi-gloom. Fibers of the Skunge glowed with muted green light, scrawling idiot patterns across her face. The Skunge had come roaring back over the past week, and now it had invaded every part of her body again. Sugar had advanced the theory that it was Juniper Ridge itself that was exacerbating it. Arneson secretly wondered if it was the attack by the Skunger in the elevator.

"I know. It won't take long." Arneson squeezed her hand, feeling the crawling, fleshy fibers answered by those in his own flesh.

The machine looked like an enormous steel barrel with rotating sections inscribed with esoteric medical language and symbols. Twin rows of black glass embedded in the sides. It sounded like an earth-moving machine when it started up. Twin concentric barrels inside the main body spun in opposite directions, surrounding a bench for the patient. Sugar lay there, looking small and frail. Her hair fanned out around her face and dripped to the floor in twin golden falls.

Brayle waved Arneson back to the control room. Rather than the banks of glittering lights and flickering switches, as Arneson would have expected, instead there was a single keyboard, mouse, and a cinema-display screen. It would have looked at home in George Lucas' office,