(no subject)

[cluegirl]

Title -- Zero Hour; 8:15
By Catt Kingsgrave
Wordcount -- 8792
Genre -- Horror/suspense. Dystopian, perhaps a little bit?
Rating -- Gen, with angst.
Notes -- This is another one of my 'horror-in-negative-space' ideas. It runs counter in execution to the prevailing trends in horror storytelling, but I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing from where I stand. I don't know as how I intend this to be frightening, so much as angsty, disturbing, and worrisome.
Feedback -- I'm looking for a finer touch than 'horror', but I'm not sure what horror fans will think of it. Will they be bored? Will they be amused? Will they feel cheated? I dunno. Really, I'm slinging this out to thee, my preview group, to get a sense, if you can give it, of your impressions as you read. I know that to get it down to publishable length, I've got to wring about 1500 words out of it too, so anywhere you feel is cut-able, please do let me know. Other than that, I'd just really like to know what you think about it, if you can let me know.
Tips -- not on this one, it's not done yet.



Zero Hour, 8:15 am
By Catt Kingsgrave




"I do not believe you." The words were mean, and mad and sorry all at once, and they were out of Chandra's mouth the instant she saw me. "You show up ¬_here_ and expect I'll just drop everything I got to do and bail your sorry ass out of whatever trouble you got into this time?" She gestured at her uniform scrubs, pink and green under her big white lab coat. "Damn it, Rese, I got _work_ to do!" But for all that bluster, Chan still came out from under the hospital's drive-up entrance to meet me by my car.

"You're lookin good, Chan." Mama always did say to start with a sweet word if you're fixin to ask for sugar. "You lose some weight?"

Whoops.

"So help me, Tyrese," she began, her fist coming up under my nose. It looked smaller now than it did when we were kids, but it was probably just as hard as it used to be.

I put up my hands in surrender -- the only protective maneuver that had ever worked when my sister's blood was up. "Don't fuss, okay? I don't need money or nothing, I promise."

She still glared, but it was easier now -- like she'd remembered when we were kids too, before the army and medical school debts and jail and divorces turned us both hard and brittle. "Well, I know you didn't drive out here at two in the morning, and have me paged out of my lunch break just because you needed some sisterly advice." She snorted, folding her arms across her chest and leaning on the Monte Carlo's side like she didn't care what the road dust was going to do to her nice white jacket. "It's not like you ever took a word of advice from we when it really mattered anyhow."

Which I felt was unfair, but I didn't want to waste time trying to disprove it. Instead, I went with, "I do need your advice, Chan." She gave me a look like I'd told her I meant to become a Vegas showgirl, but I went on before she could call me a liar out loud. Again. "I can't explain it to you now. Not here. You need to see it." She was starting to frown again. I shook my head, patted back the dry air between us. "I ain't lyin. It's just something don't make no sense to me, and you're the one who's got the brains to make sense out of it. But it won't do no good for me to tell you. You got to _see_ it to understand, Chandra. Please."

She let that please hang between us for a long time, like she was savouring it. Then she sighed and leaned her head back. "My shift lasts another four hours," she said and stared up at the sky. Not many of the desert stars to count through the parking lot lights, so I figured she was most likely praying for strength. "I got no sick time left after Tambry's asthma this spring..."

Poor kid. After Afghanistan, I knew how my little niece felt, fightin' just to get a breath.

"No, after you get off work is fine," I said. "Better, in fact. Sun'll be up then, so we can see clear without lights."

That brought her around on me again, her finger like a drill sergeant's baton poking me in my weak damn chest. "So help me, Tyrese Roi Voisin, if you bring the law into my life again with this, we are through! You might be my flesh and blood, but I will _not_ lose my children to your foolishness, do you hear me?"

I felt the muscle jump in my jaw, the one warning me that my temper was going. No matter how many times I said I was sorry, or tried to make it up to her, that one screw up wasn't ever going to be forgiven. It hadn't even been my fault, but I'd be paying for it on Chandra's slate until the both of us were cold and dead.

But no. Opening all that up again wouldn't get us anywhere we hadn't already gone a hundred times before, and come away with the same scars to show for it. I took a deep breath, the desert air biting cold into my ruined lungs, and let it out slow. "I ain't doing this with you now, Chandra," I said, hauling open the car door and sliding in behind the wheel. "There's an old abandoned Shell station about 20 miles past Ina on Saddleback road. I'll be there at six, and if you ain't showed up by seven, then I'll know you've made your mind up against me."

"Oh no! You are _not_ layin' this on me-" she began, gearing up to scrap anyhow she could. The 'Carlo's eight cylinders roared out over her fightin' words though, and made her jump clear, like she thought I might run her down.

"Don't you worry, Missus James," I told her over the rough idle, "I wouldn't trust you with a problem that could stand to send me back to jail." I shoved the car into gear, and fixed her with a stare. "So you just come if you're gonna come, and go on home if you ain't. I'll be waiting, either way."


~***~


Arizona's one of the last places in the States where you can openly wear a sidearm on the street. Sure, you might have a very friendly officer of the law inquiring into your travel and leisure plans if you do go about with your Smith & Wesson hanging out, but just so long as you aren't trying to conceal it, or openly threatening anybody with it, you won't wind up in jail just for having it, like you would in New Orleans.

Unless you've done time as a guest of your Uncle Sam's correctional system, that is. Apparently any little conviction on a man's record is enough to make John Law seriously question his good intentions where firearms are concerned. Go figure. Not that that slows anyone down so long as there's Wal Mart, Flea Markets or Yard Sales to be found. Shotguns are as easy to find as rattlesnakes in the Sonora Desert, if a man should decide he wants one.

Which I don't. Or rather, I hadn't. After the previous night, I found myself wanting a trench broom pretty bad. But it's one thing to hit an all night Wally World for cigarettes at 4am. Askin for a 12 gauge pump and a box of slugs at that hour is a whole different proposition, even for Tucson. And that was the very least of the reasons why I needed Chandra; she had a gun.

She'd picked it up two years back, when those freaks with Operation Salvation kidnapped four nurses and a surgeon from the ER at Northwest because they heard someone once did an abortion there. Me, I figured Chandra's job at the hospital pharmacy put her in more danger than a hypothetical dead baby and a bunch of kooks, but either way, when she asked me to find her a piece, I was only too happy to call in a favor on her behalf. Then I took her out into the desert and taught her everything the Army drilled into me about how to wear it, how to clean it, how to draw it, and how to kill someone with it if you had to. Scared as she was, my big sis would have done my Drill Instructor proud. Not only did Chandra James _have_ a gun, she knew how to use it, and best of all, she wouldn't be breaking parole by carrying it, either.

Assuming she decided to show up, of course.

There was a part of me that almost hoped she wouldn't. Because then my next step would be easy. Wrong, probably, stupid almost definitely, but it wouldn't be complicated at all.

But that part of me was outweighed by the part of me that was a selfish bastard who didn't want to stand up to what was bound to be his next great fuck up all on his own. Sure, it'd hurt like hell to learn that my last living kin had given up on me just like the rest of the world, but in the long run, it might be cleaner. No, simpler. No. Well, for the best, anyhow, if she didn't come.

When the sun came creeping down the Tucson Mountains, painting the slopes pink and gold long before it showed over the desert to the East, I was making plans to go relieve a Home Depot of as much nitrogen fertilizer as I could manage. Then a smudge of dust and rust came over the prow of the hill, and put that easy, stupid answer out of reach for good.

The shameful truth? I've never been so glad to see a Camry in my life.

I keyed on the 'Carlo and pulled into the turnout, then gunned out onto Saddleback road just as Chan was slowing down to turn. I knew better than to give either of us a chance to speak before there was something bigger and more immediate than old grievances for us to talk about.

Whether Chan agreed or not, she didn't let the Camry's little engine keep her from catching up and sticking to my tail as I led her up into the pink-stained foothills.


~***~


"What in the name of God is this?" Chandra asked when we stopped, half an hour later.

I slammed my door -- unlocked, keys in the ignition just in case. "I'm guessing it was a traveler's motel back when it was built," I said, eyeing the squat, dust coloured building with its five chipped grey doors. "God knows why they'd build one out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe there was supposed to be a highway up here or something. I don't know." I went around to the 'Carlo's trunk, and fetched out my big five cell maglight from under the tire iron. "Now though? Now it's a problem, is what it is." I pointed the mag at the far end from the parking lot, where the motel's low single rooms gave way to a wider footprint that spoke of living, not just of sleeping and showering. "That's the way in." Then I stopped, remembering. "You don't have none of those vinyl gloves in your car, do you?"

Her eyes narrowed, but I guess she was done asking questions for a while, because she just nodded and went around to her own trunk. She came back around snapping the purple cuffs in place -- a second pair in her hands, which she shoved at me without a word. I also noticed with more than a little relief, that she had put her pistol onto her belt unasked.

"All right," she said, "You got me here. Now show me what this is all about."

I had been a little worried what she would think when she saw the door of the caretaker's apartment around back, but it turns out I didn't need to worry -- Chan was too distracted to notice the crowbar marks on the splintered frame. "Is that some kind of satellite dish?" she asked, staring out across the bare dirt and weeds between the main building and the metal shed dug into the hill behind it.

I nodded. "Pretty sure it is. Military uses something like this for advanced troops when there's no real telecom system where they're going. This one's bigger though. New, too. You can still see the shine."

"And the rest of that stuff up there?"

"I don't know about all of it, Chan," I said, sorry I had to admit it. "That's part of a radar array though. Behind it's a wind meter, and I think that one there is a microphone. Those two might be special frequency antennas, and that one in the back, I think may be a telescope of some kind."

"A telescope?" She gave me a look. "I guess that'd be pretty valuable, wouldn't it?"

I ignored her jab, and pointed at the roof-eaves over our heads. White metal clips wrapped the flashing around and under, held tight with heavy screws. "This side of the motel roof is covered with brand new solar panels. Just this side though. Nothing you could see from the parking lot or the road."

That caught her attention, and like I knew she would, Chandra turned to take stock of the hotel's back side. Brand new doors, shiny under the powder coat, but not one of them showing a knob to the outside, and only two of them where the other side showed five; windows and the remaining doorways bricked down to barely more than peepholes, where they weren't replaced completely by ventilation grids; brickwork repointed, sound and sure, and looking nothing like the wreck we could see from the road. At the far end of the yard, under the nearly-dry cistern that didn't clear the rooftop, squatted a waist-high plywood shack.

"Where are the dogs?"

"Don't know," I told her true. "Chains are there, collars still attached and buckled shut, but there ain't no food or water bowls over there at all. No fresh crap either, far as I can see."

She turned back to me, mad again. "Who turns dogs loose to starve way out here in the middle of nowhere?"

I shook my head, not sure where to begin with that one. Instead, I switched my flashlight on, and led the way inside the gloomy apartment. "Lights don't work," I told her, playing the beam about so she'd know where the tripping furniture was -- not that there was much to trip over. A broke down sofa with a bed pillow down one end; a coffee table with one corner propped up on books; an easy chair that looked like it'd sprout weeds if it ever got wet and put out into the light. The rest was cheap bookshelves.

The only daylight coming in through the door behind us, and through the window in the kitchen door. Near as I could tell it, the kitchen had the only window left in this whole place that looked east without plywood in the way. I went and put myself in front of the kitchen door, then handed the mag light over to Chan. "You look around," I told her, "but don't touch nothing, okay?"

"_I_ didn't come here to steal, Rese," she said, but I noticed she did tuck her jacket back so it didn't hang over her gun, all the same. "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"Just look," I said. "Look around, and tell me what you see."

There's a kind of a sigh women know how to give, makes a man feel like every single kind of a fool, and Chan dished it out good just then. "I see a boring white guy's man cave," she said, playing the beam along shelves of encyclopedias -- three different sets, all complete, near as telling. "No little boy keeps a full set of Junior Science Handbooks this nice, let alone in order..." she trailed off when she got round to the next shelf down the wall. "Biology," she said after a moment. "Virology, Chemistry," each name was a light-sweep of a different shelf. "Meteorology, Pharmaco- Jesus, Rese, I have half of _these_ textbooks from my senior year in school.

I nodded. "Yeah, you never did throw anything out. What's all that stuff over there?"

"Looks like diagnostic manuals. Rare diseases, epidemology... from here on up, it's all cell biology and genetics."

"And this one here?"

She peered. "Looks like engineering. Electrical, maybe. Or computers. Could be chemical engineering too, I guess. There's some on nanotech, but that could be anything these days. It's all over the map, cause it's cool right now."

Nanotechnology. I kept my breaths shallow and didn't look into the kitchen. Not yet. "What about those? No, on the shelves in front of the books, I mean."

She shrugged. "Rock collection. Lots of fossil hunters out here in the desert."

"Except they ain't rocks," I told her, nodding at the really big one on the coffee table, cracked like a bell around an empty center. "Not rocks from Earth, anyhow. Meteorites can be worth as much as gold, if you can find the right buyer."

She didn't ask how I knew, just whistled through her teeth. "And he's got... what, thirty or more just lying around here?" Then she shook it off, and gave me the look again. "Okay, so we've got a filthy rich, boring white braniac who lives way out in a converted secret hideout in the desert, probably on account of his poor social skills. It's creepy, I'll admit, but so's the two of us going through his stuff." She came up to face me, and pointed over my shoulder with the light. "What's in there, some kind of mad science lab?"

I couldn't help glancing down the long, dim hallway behind her as I shook my head. "Kitchen. We ain't going in there."

"Why not? We're here already."

"Because we ain't got respirators," I told her, moving aside so she could see through the glass set into a door that would have looked at home in the pastel halls of her hospital, "and I don't know what all that might do to us if we get it inside us."

She peered in, wary and frowning, but then laughed. "Huh. Looks to me like someone was storing up his flour in mason jars and dropped one."

"Flour ain't that colour yellow, Chan."

"Cornmeal then." She didn't sound sure, just impatient.

I caught her hand away from the door handle, and stepped in to block it again. "Not that yellow. I done enough KP to know what cornmeal looks like."

"Curry powder then. Or mustard."

"You'd smell it then from here."

Her glance flicked to the wire-strung glass again and I knew she was taking in the bright gold heaps on the metal island, the slashing drifts across the counters and stove heaping up in soft mounds where it poured off onto the floors, and glittering with glass shards. There was a fine golden film all over the room, like pollen two days after a rainstorm -- you could even see it clouding the glass if you thought to look. Who buys that much fuckin' curry powder if he lives all alone out in the desert, anyway?

"Well, what is it then, some new kind of drug we'll be seeing on the streets in a few weeks?"

I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes at her needling. "I don't _know_, Chan, that's the point." I took her shoulder, and turned us both to face the long hallway. The next piece of the whole tangled puzzle was just through door number one, and I knew it would have questions enough to distract Chan from the strange powder in the kitchen.

And I told myself, as I led her toward it, that it was probably just seeing the kitchen in the daylight that made it look to me like there was so much more of the stuff than when I'd come and looked around last night.


~***~


The third room of the caretaker's apartment was probably once a bedroom, but whoever had carved the hallway out of the hotel rooms and bricked up the windows and doors hadn't cared much about sleeping.

Chandra stopped in the doorway and gave a low whistle. "This is one hell of a research lab, Tyrese," she said, wandering in to get a better look at the tall banks of machinery clustered along the walls. The room filled up with light the moment she crossed the threshold, but she didn't let me drag her back out.

"Leggo," she snapped, swatting my hand off her sleeve. "It's just a motion-activated switch, is all. We got those at the hospital, to save power." I let her go as ordered, but backed out into the hallway while she did her poking around. This was her kind of place, not mine.

"Looks like this was where the juice from the solar's going, huh?" Chan said, switching off the flashlight, and peering inside one of the machines from the open top. I didn't think so, but then I'd seen the rest of what was down the hallway, and she hadn't. I held my peace and let her look.

She tried the computers, grunting when each of them came up with a black screen flashing just one white line no matter what she tapped on the keyboard. "Looks like he formatted the C drives," she said, glancing into the file cabinet's empty drawers before leaning on the side of it and surveying the room with a hard eye. "So he's out here in the desert alone and cut off, with a library of tedxtbooks, a mess in his kitchen, and a lab any hospital or university would kill to get ahold of. So just what was he researching?"

I shrugged and took the mag light back from her. "I was hoping you could tell me, Chan, you're the brains of the family."

She didn't smile, just shook her head. "Can't say just looking at the equipment, Rese. I mean I can't even tell what all of this even _does_. Some things I recognize from school, or I've seen at the hospital, but not all of it. I'd need to see his research notes to make a guess, and even then..." she shrugged. "I'm just a pharmacist. I deal with the science after it's been turned into medicine."

"You're still the best I got," I told her, nervous in the doorway. The lab looked clean, but I already had a pair of paper-thin lungs to prove just how dangerous science could be when it got off the leash.

"So what are we thinking about all this?" Chan asked, eye down to a big microscope. "You thinking he's doing some kind of dirty? Drugs, or bombs, or bio weapons or something?"

I could tell she wanted real bad for that to be all sarcasm, but she knew me too well, and I knew her too well, and neither one of us bought it. "Come on," I said, and backed down the hallway. "You'd best come see the other rooms."

She tried to keep that smirk up, make like I was funning her and she wasn't buying, but the next room down was all tile and steel, high narrow tables, and great big drains. She couldn't keep it up.

"Tyrese, those are coolers," she said, pointing out two rows of little square doors in the wall. "Those are mortuary-"

"I know." I told her, not going in. "There's a freezer next room over too. A big one. Takes up the rest of the room left from these."

"A freezer," she said, flat. "What's in it?"

"Don't know," I told her, turning my back on her and her eyebrow, "Didn't look inside. Come on."

Her squeaky hospital shoes didn't follow me down the hall, but I wasn't surprised. Chan never did like questions she couldn't answer, even if that answer didn't bring no good to anyone. I'd used to be like that too, but the army doesn't like its grunts asking any questions that don't amount to "How high, Sir?" After awhile, you stop asking them, and just make up your own mind while you're jumping.

I was in the furnace room, checking out the gas feeds on the rusty old incinerator when she caught up with me. "Tyrese, who is this guy?" she asked, quiet now, not so sure of things. "Who is he to you? Why are we here?"

"This thing's near as old as the building," I said, swiping spider webs out of my way so I could go around the back side, "Guess it must be hard to get one like this new without attracting attention, huh?"

Chan's lips pressed. "Tyrese."

"I don't know anybody who could get hold of something like this, not even with a big pile of 'don't ask questions' laid down in advance." I picked up a couple sheets of paper that'd drifted back between the incinerator and the wall. There were more underneath, but I couldn't reach them. "All that medical stuff back in the lab, and... that other room; Volga does that stuff all the time. Craw and Hernandez too, if you paid them enough. Lab equipment's easy."

"Ty-"

"Only if someone like that sells a bunch of machinery for cash, then they expect to be seeing some new dope on the streets before long. No new product, and after awhile people start to wonder. And start to want some insurance you ain't working a sting."

Chandra braced her arms over her chest and snorted. "So one of your criminal friends told you to come out here and case the place?"

"Nobody sent me, Chan."

"Oh, so you just took a notion to drive out here and-"

"I'd be living a lot better if I was on anybody like that's payroll," I bit back, and shoved the big iron door out of my way. Its handle was the only shiny part of it. "It was a friend of mine who came out."

"A friend of yours?"

"They do still let you have those, even if you've been in jail," I replied, climbing at last out of the incinerator's shadow. She had the grace to look shamed, at least. "Ray told me about this place last Sunday. Bragged that he was getting paid just to run a case on it, and he'd square with me once he was back. Then three days go by, and his girl comes asking did I see him, or know where he's got to. Well, I knew where he'd got to, so..."

"So did you find him when you came out here and broke in yourself?" she asked, scared, but with her mad coming back on because she didn't know nothing else to do with it.

I dug a hand into the incinerator's maw, and dragged out a fist full of silky dust, floating ash, and gravel. "I can't exactly tell, Chandra," I said as the stuff poured, slithered, and rattled through my fingers. I told myself it wasn't teeth that felt so jagged slipping past my knuckles to thud into the thick bed of ashes.

"Jesus, Rese," she shut her eyes, turned her head to breathe. "This ain't right! We got no business being here. I'm going-"

"Not yet," I said, wiping my hand on a stained towel by the gas feed gague. "You ain't seen the important part yet."

She took another breath to fuss, but stopped when I picked up the fire axe I'd found behind the furnace. "What d'you want that for?" She asked in a voice that made me glad I'd wiped the axe clean before bringing it out. She didn't back away from me, but it was plain she wanted to.

"Makes me feel better, having it," I told her, and propped it, lumberjack style on my shoulder. "Less you wanna let me borrow your .32..." She scowled, and I fetched out a grin. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"My hand to God, Tyrese Roi Voisin," she said as she followed me back out into the hallway, "if any of your no good criminal friends jumps out at me, I will shoot you and him both!"

She meant it for almost a joke, but I wasn't smiling. "You better mean that." I said, and led the way toward the dead end.


~***~

Someone had joined up the last two rooms of the motel across the end of the long hallway, but this work wasn't the same as the work outside. This was hasty, sloppy, done by someone who didn't know the first thing about masonry. Mortar drooped out between the courses, and whoever had done it hadn't bothered with a level or a plumb, but just stacked the cinderblocks up and hoped they'd stand. There wasn't a door either -- not a proper one. Instead, there was a two and a half foot square hatch up near the ceiling, blocked shut with a two by four slotted across it. There was a padlock on a gate latch drilled into the masonry to secure the bar in place too, but the lock wasn't closed. Hard to do that up from inside, I guessed.

"What's inside there?" Chan asked when I played the light over the door. I shushed her, and she flinched quiet instead of cussing me, which was proof that she was good and scared, just like me.

"He taped a note up on the hatch," I told her in a whisper as I handed over the maglite and went to right the ladder I'd kicked over earlier. Quiet, slow, careful not to let the metal scrape. "You go on up and read it."

She gave me a *look*, but I waited it out. I wasn't crazy, and maybe I wasn't smart as she was, but that didn't make me stupid. Your unit can be up to its ass in little green men with ray guns, but the first man to call 'em aliens is in for psych eval and a discharge without pension. I wasn't gonna be the one to put a name to it.

Eventually, because somewhere inside she either did trust me, or because she figured I was too cussed stubborn to give her an answer, Chandra made that noise with her teeth that meant she was gonna give me my way of things, but wanted me to know she wasn't being played. And then she went to the ladder, put her soft hospital shoes on the first rung, and stared me in the eye. "You better hold the light," she said, and when I took it, she pulled out her gun, pulled back the hammer in slow, single clicks, and went up to the hatch one-handed.

I kept the light on the paper, but watched her face as she read. Suspicion first, but that had been there all along. Soon it softened though, melted into confusion, and then alarm. Then she read the last line, and her face closed up tight as a prison door. "Oh hell no," Chan said, low and loud and mad as hell in the close darkness, and she turned on the ladder to glare down at me like the maglite wasn't even there. "You did NOT bring me here to shoot down some poor deluded-"

That's when it hit the door. A scrabbling rattle of nails on the wood that bashed the bar against its cradle and scared Chandra around with a shout that turned into a scream when the ladder went out from under her. I couldn't blame her -- I'd made just about the same sound when it happened to me -- but I did catch her rather than letting her bust her ass on the gritty floor. I held her to my chest, walked us both backward from that rattling, shuddering hatchway, and the thing that grunted and clawed behind it. One of us was shaking. I didn't want to guess who.

I didn't let her speak, didn't let her go until we were back out in that bachelor-nerd living room again, surrounded by bookshelves and space rocks, with the sunlight pounding in like a searchlight through the door. She turned in a circle when I let her go, gun in both hands as she stared around her like she hadn't seen them right the first time she was in there. It was harder to hear the thing in the back out here, but it wasn't impossible, and I watched her flinch just a little when the door gave a last rattle and then fell still.

"What's in there, Tyrese?" she asked me, eyes white all the way around, "What is in that room?"

I had to shake my head -- my chest was still too tight to speak without coughing. "Didn't look," I managed after a minute, "not after I heard it. For all I know, it's him, just like his note said."

She shook her head, shook it so her braids whipped around her face. "No. No, damn it, no, this is the real world, Rese. There ain't no Frankenstein, and there ain't no Mr. Hyde, and there ain't no zom-" She bit the word off hard, then gave me a look like a cornered dog would do. "Swear you didn't write that note. Swear you didn't get me out here for some kind of sick-"

I put up both my hands to her. "I will swear on anything you want, Chandra. Anything."

Maybe it was the hands, or maybe she realized on her own that she was still holding the gun out at the floor like someone in the room needed shooting and she just hadn't decided who yet. She clicked the hammer back down and slipped it into the holster, and I let myself relax just enough to explain.

"I showed you this because I needed to know if you'd see the same thing I saw in it when I came here last night and found it like this. And you do." She shook her head again, but I wasn't buying anymore. "You do. You don't like it, and you wish you didn't see it, but you do. The books. The meteors. That powder in the kitchen. The machines in the lab, Chan, the freezers. The goddamned incinerator!" She turned away, muttering, ready to storm off, but then we heard the hatch rattle again, and whatever was behind it groaned long and low. "The dogs, Chandra," I said into the silence after it stopped. "What happened to the dogs?"

She stared at me hard then, looking for hell in my eyes, showing mean, fighting terror in her own. Then my sister cussed, turned on her heel, and marched out the door like she had an ass that needed whipping somewhere else. I followed, tired now, feeling every thud of my heart, itching in every rasp of breath that scraped past the fist of pain under my sternum. I'd have to slow down if I didn’t want an attack. This was no place to run out of air, this far from help. I'd have to let her go, believing the worst of me. Again.

But instead of stomping off toward where we'd left the cars, Chandra turned down along the backside of the building, crushing weeds into the gravel underfoot. She stopped at the doghouse, but instead of stooping to look inside, she just turned back and gave me an impatient look until I brought her the maglite.

"There's got to be some kind of ventilation," she said when she took it from me. "That's a metal roof up there, and there must be some way to vent the heat and bring in fresh air. You can't lock an animal that big up in a closed room without killing it."

You could, if it wasn't an animal, or if it wasn't something that the desert sun could kill, but I kept that thought to myself and let her go look anyway. It might've been easier to talk about little green men.

When she found nothing but cinderblock all around the back end of the place, it didn't do a thing to slow her down. "It's gotta be up on the roof then," she said. "You go get that ladder from inside, and I'll get up there and take a look-"

"No."

"I'm lighter than you are, Rese, don't argue."

"I ain't arguing with that. I just ain't doin it." She pressed her lips and puffed up, but I cut her off before she could start on me. "There's no point, Chan. It don't matter what this guy did to that cell to make it hold him… or whatever he thought he was gonna need to hold in there. Point is, he made it! He made a holding cell on the back of his... whatever you wanna call this place. And now there's something locked up in it. Maybe it's him, or maybe it's something he made, or maybe it's something he made sick, but there's. Something. In. It." I stopped, took a breath slow, and not near as deep as I wanted to. "And I ain't letting you get up above it on that roof."

She stared at me again, and I told myself this time she was seeing something she didn't see before. "Rese, why did you bring me out here?" she said at last.

I sighed, scrubbed my face with my hand. "I told you why."

"Then tell me again, because I need to understand what I am doing here!" She swung her arms wide, the maglite just missing the wall as she turned. Scared. Mad too, but mostly just scared now. And because she was always the smart one, I just told her so.

"I needed to watch you see it," I said. "I needed to watch you see what I saw, just the same way I saw it, watch you put all the same pieces together I did, so I'd know I wasn't crazy. So I'd know that note up there was the truth, and somebody had to do it, just like he asked." I stared at her for a long moment, then told her the truest thing I'd ever said in my life. "But I did not bring you here to shoot him down. I would never ask that of you."

She swallowed, hard. "But you're gonna use my gun to shoot him, aren't you?"

She was thinking of ballistics now. And how that gun was probably not very legal, or very clean, because I'd got it for her, and didn't tell her where. She was thinking of a corpse found in the desert, and her and me in trace amounts all over the place. And she was thinking of the police at her house, blue and red lights flashing off her neighbor's windows when the uniforms banged on her door.

I shut my eyes, and fought to get another breath. Then, "There was one thing different," I told her.

She blinked, distracted just enough to glance over at the building's open door when I nodded back at it. "When I got here last night, looking for Ray, there was one thing that wasn't how you saw it today. The bar wasn't down over that hatch all the way. Everything else was the same but for that. And the smell." She glanced at the blank wall, her brows down low, her eyes darting. "The blood," I added, in case she was lying to herself. "Maybe the door standing open all night aired it out. I don't know. But I do know this place smelled like blood last night, and that it was me who dropped that bar down over the door before I kicked the ladder down last night. And that's why I got to do something about it now."

"No-"

"Yes, Chandra!" She wasn't ready for me to shout at her, and I made use of her shocked silence to push on. "The people who paid Ray to come out here and look around aren't gonna leave things go at not hearing back from him. They're gonna send someone else to see where their money went, and that someone else might not bother to read the note. They'll open up that hatch to see what's inside it, and not know they got to shoot for the face to kill it. Hell, they might not even get a shot off if that thing's as fast as it sounds. And then whatever's in that room will be outside of it, and I don't know what would happen after that, but from the way this crazy fucker wrote that note, I know that I do *not* want to find out!" I let that lie a second, then pushed it home harder. "And neither do you."

She breathed in forever, just like our momma used to do when she was praying for strength. Then she managed to roll her eyes, and loosen her grip on the maglite a little. "This is crazy. You don't really believe this crap, do you, Rese?"

"I've seen crazier things turn out true," I told her, and watched her face while she remembered what I looked like when I got back from my final tour. What I sounded like in the hospital, drowning in every breath, still tasting the gas that had wrecked me no matter how much clean air the tubes pumped down my throat. No way to make words out of the nightmares that woke me every time I tried to close my eyes.

"That was just…" She couldn't say it. "This is-"

"Just more of the same. Different delivery mechanism don't make this weapon any less dangerous, and Al Quaeda's been making nerve gas in caves for twenty years or more. Just as deadly as anything we had, without any military contract funding at all." She looked sick, guilty, and ready to take a bite of that just to try and turn me away from what we both knew was really at stake. "So let's take it as truth that I do believe this thing in the room is what he said it would be. That I do believe he can spread the infection he's created to other people if he's allowed to get near them. Let's just say I do believe it. Chandra, how the hell could I walk away from this and wait for someone else to let him… it, out?"

"You pick up a phone, is how! You pick up a phone, and you call the cops!"

I scoffed. "And tell them what? There's a zombie they got to come shoot for me? Or maybe I should tell them this is a meth lab, so the cops they send in here unprepared can be the next victims?"

"Then you call the army," she insisted. "You call the CDC, and Homeland Security, and you let someone who's trained to do it come in and-"

"Come in here, box it up, study it, and refine it so it turns up on another battlefield. So it gets loose in a research base and kills the soldiers they sent to collect the sample in the first place." My voice was shaking, and I bunched up my fist hard to stop it. She didn't need to know that much. "I gave my life to this country, thinking I would do my duty and be rewarded for it. All I got was used, and a cold hard look at how this man's army is just as much about profit as any Senator or CEO. They can't be trusted with it, Chan, none of them can. This has to end here."

"It can't end here," she said, and finally, finally she sounded like she might be listening. "Rese, you can't un-know something. Even if you kill patient zero in there, torch his lab and smash up whatever won't burn, it might not be over." I closed my eyes, and heard her shoes crunching toward me over the gravel. Then she put her hand on my arm, and said, "What if it's already out, Tyrese? What if there's a patient one now, and he isn't in that room? Your friend could be exposed already, out there spreading this thing to patients five, or twenty, or a hundred. And if that's what happened, you'd have burned up all his notes, his samples, his readings. You'll have destroyed everything they'll need to figure out how to stop it."

"Or to do it better next time."

"Damn it, this isn't about politics, Tyrese!"

I shook off her arm at that, smoothed down the sleeve of my shirt, and said "Nothing isn't about politics anymore," I told her, and turned back toward the open door again. "I called you out here to help me make up my mind what I needed to do. You've done it now. You don't have to stay for the rest."

She rushed around to plant herself right in my way, fists on hips, feet out wide, and glaring. Daring me to push by her. "You ain't given me a single reason why I should go anywhere, Tryese Voisin!"

"And here I'd thought I hadn't given her a reason to stay," I answered, but she put up her hand for me to talk to, and rolled right on.

"You think you're gonna go get gas out of that generator in the shed, or bust up the feed pipe from the furnace, and then light it all up if you manage to shoot that thing in the head, don't you?" I nodded, and her eyes lit up with triumph. "All right then, assuming you don't miss, and assuming a bullet to the head will actually kill it, after the brush fires last year the fire marshalls'll be all over this place soon as the smoke gets spotted from town. They'll put it out before anything much is unrecoverable, and they'll turn what they find over to homicide, because that's what they DO when there's a dead body in a burning building out in the desert. And what are they gonna find when they do the autopsy?" She poked my sore chest with a finger, and said, "You, that's what."

"I know how to-"

"You ain't got no kind of a plan doesn't end with your sorry ass in jail for something or other, Tyrese and I will not let that fly!" she shouted. "You might be the dumbest fucker ever to break parole with a can of beer, but you are my *brother*, dammit! Mama would cuss me in heaven right now if I walked away and let you shoot yourself in the foot like this!"

I blinked at that, not sure I could possibly be hearing what I thought -- what I wanted to hear in her voice. Then I swallowed, and handed her just enough rope to either pull me up, or to hang me with if that's what she wanted. "All right then, you're so smart, suppose you tell me how we get this done?"

That stopped her for just one second, and surprise made a showing in her eyes, like she'd thought I was gonna fight her to the gristle like we used to do as kids. Then she smiled, but only just a little bit. "You're gonna go and light up that incinerator first. Turn it up as high as it can go, and just let it cook so it's ready to burn up whatever we put into it." She reached for my arm, led me along in the building's shadow, pointing to the shed next. "Then you're gonna get up there and disable all of that equipment. I don't care if you take off all the wiring, or just hit it with a crowbar, I don't want any of it to work when we leave. I'll be inside while you're doing that."

"Boxing up his research notes?" I saw where she was going now, and though I didn't like it much, I understood why she'd step that way.

"And as much of his samples as I can. So if this isn't contained, if we do need to figure out exactly what he's done here, there'll be someone in the world who has a place to start." No point arguing with that voice. Chan had got it directly from our mama, and it was just as unmovable in the second generation as the first. The message was plain; if she was gonna trust me enough to let me do this, then I was gonna have to trust her enough to let her hedge the bet. "Now I know that lab equipment's valuable, but it's too heavy and bulky to take along, so-"

"Serial numbers," I answered, then shrugged at her look. "If we're talking about things that can be traced to us, then we don't want to have anything with a serial number on it. Good chance most of this stuff was stolen at some point or other anyhow." I swear she must enjoy that frown she gives me more than anything else in the world. But if she wasn't gonna call me a dumbass again, I wasn't gonna dig for it. "So you get what you want to take into your car, and wait out there while I-"

"No." She stopped us both outside the main door, and her face had never been more serious. "This is gonna take both of us, Rese. And I'll do the shooting."

"Chan, the army might have kicked me to the curb, but it taught me how to hit a moving hostile target first. I'm the better shot. I should do it."

"Oh yeah? While you're taking the bar off the hatch with one hand, and falling off the ladder with the other? Is that when you should do it?" I hate when she does that thing with her head. She knows this, I'm pretty sure. "That thing is fast. Plus, it's either real big, or else it can jump high enough to hit that little door, and hit it hard. What chance do I got out here if it gets past you, and my gun's inside?"

"If you get in the car and have the engine running, you can-"

"Dumbass. The whole point of this is to kill that thing, not to let it out and give it something to chase straight back to a population center."

"I was gonna say you could run over it. If you use my car instead of that plastic toy you drive, you might not even bounce off."

I took it as a victory that she took a moment to think about that before shaking her head. "Nah. Too many ways that can go wrong. My idea's better."

I gave her the chin, and said, "Prove it."

Her eyes sparkled like a little girls as she told me how she meant to. She always did like being right.

So that's how we got here, I guess. Me with my lungs aching, and a dozen cuts on my arms and hands, cause busting up machines so bad they can't be fixed again ain't as easy as folks think; her with her face all sweaty and gritted up with dust from the boxes. The furnace is in a race with the sun to see which can turn this old wreck into a death trap first, and that thing in the cell has been groaning and pawing at the door nonstop for the last hour. It don't seem like it's getting tired at all, but the good Lord knows I am.

Chandra knows it too. That's why she kept the gun, I think, why she's made me take the fire axe and go down the hall while she sets her shoulders against that crooked wall to wait. I'm the bait, because she knows she'll pull that trigger when it comes out and goes for me. And she also knows I'll beat that damned thing down to pieces with this axe if it don't fall to her glazer rounds, because I will not let it have her. And she knows maybe if she wasn't right in here with me, sweating and scared in this desert madhouse, then maybe I wouldn't fight it hard enough to beat it.

She's making me care, and I know it. She's been doing that for years now, but I figure this time I'll give her her own way, and forgive her for it. Maybe she's earned it. Maybe I have too. Ain't neither one of us saying what else she might need that gun for, once the thing in the room's all taken care of, but I know both of us have thought it. And she knows I trust her to. She knows it.

Chandra's got the pole up in place, ready to push the bar out of the way. The thing's gone quiet behind its plywood hatch. It knows, I'm pretty sure, or it thinks it knows, what's gonna happen next.

"All right," I tell her, and my voice echoes off the walls, telling the thing inside where to look once it's out. "We go in three. Two. One…"