Margaret closed her eyes briefly, gathered herself. There was no time for those thoughts.
“Clarence, which one was the killer?”
Clarence pointed his gloved hand at a thick-chested man in the second cell in the left row, the one just past the prone Clark.
“Chief Petty Officer Orin Nagy,” Clarence said. “Killed two men with a pipe wrench. They were trying to give him the cellulose test.”
Nagy stood ramrod straight, fists at his sides, staring out at Margaret with rage-filled eyes and a smile that promised pain. He had a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. Blood trickled from a purple welt on his forehead. His gown’s short sleeves revealed arms knotted with long muscles, skin dotted with faded tattoos. He looked like a navy man from a ’60s movie.
He didn’t seem to notice the wound on his head. Margaret felt fear just looking at the man, at meeting his dead, psychotic stare.
“We’ll need to put him under and dress his wound,” she said, then gestured to the crying boy. “And him?”
“Conroy Austin,” Clarence said. “The last one is Lionel Chappas. Both of them were found on the same testing sweep that triggered Nagy’s attack.”
She turned to Tim. “Is the outbreak just on the Pinckney and the Brashear? Any infected on the other two ships?”
He shook his head. “The Truxtun and the Coronado haven’t reported any positive results. That’s not surprising for the Coronado, though — the crew and the SEALs onboard haven’t been allowed to interact with anyone at any point. They weren’t even allowed to help rescue people after the battle. The task force has upped the cellulose testing schedule to every two hours. Captain Yasaka reported that there are new deliveries of testing kits being flown here to make sure we don’t run out.”
The Pinckney had 380 crewmembers. That ship alone now required forty-five hundred tests a day. That would wreak havoc on the crew’s sleep, causing people to be tired, irritable… sloppy. But if the increased testing caught any other infected personnel before they became contagious, then maybe there was still a chance.
Maybe, but she doubted it.
“Tim, as soon as you split the culture for Clarence, split it again. Four ways. Keep one as a new starter culture — we’re going to use the other three on the three new men, see what happens.”
She had no idea what effect ingesting the yeast would have on someone who was already infected. There was a possibility it could kill off the infections growing inside of them, though, and that was reason enough to try.
Tim turned to face her. “Three doses for them, or three doses for us? They’re already infected — we don’t even know if the yeast will do that much for them. But we get that yeast in our system, right now, and within a few hours we’ll have enough cellulase in our blood that the infection probably can’t take root. If we do become exposed, the infection is stopped before it even starts. A dose now will last us about a week, I think, but by the end of that week I’ll have cultured far more and we’ll be able to take booster doses. It makes way more sense to take it ourselves, Margo.”
Was he right? Did it make sense to use themselves as guinea pigs? She’d been witness to what the disease did to people: she would kill herself before she let it change her. Tim was offering another alternative. But there wasn’t enough yeast right now to give herself a dose and to know if it might be a cure for those already infected. Every second mattered.
“These men are infected now,” she said. “If there’s a chance the small amount of yeast we have will help them, we need to do it. Besides, that’s data we need to capture and send to Black Manitou before…”
Before it’s too late is what she started to say.
Tim’s eyes narrowed with frustration. “It’s too late for them. We are the ones that can stop this thing, Margaret. We are the ones that need to live, not a bunch of grunts.”
She winced at the use of that word. She’d called Clarence the same thing. Margaret looked at Clarence, saw the sadness in his eyes — but he didn’t object to Tim’s statement. She knew Clarence was doing his own kind of math: the military math of acceptable losses, of choosing the greater good. He didn’t care about himself, she knew, but he obviously wanted her and Tim to be protected, to keep working as long as possible.
Margaret had tuned the crying boy out, but he suddenly grew louder. The suit comms were on a private channel — the young sailor couldn’t hear Tim’s statement of doom, but perhaps he’d read the look on Clarence’s face.
Two options, neither of which promised success: save herself, or try to save these men? She clenched her jaw tight, and made her decision.
“Gas the cells, knock these men out,” she said. “We know the infection has mutated. One or more of these men could have the strain that makes those strange cocoons. We put them under, get samples from all of them before we administer the yeast.”
Tim shook his head. “We need to get the hell off this boat is what we need to do. We’re still clean. Can’t Secret Agent Man call in an evac for us? Let’s get out of here before some psycho kicks in the door and swings a wrench at our heads!”
She took two steps toward him. She meant to stand face-to-face, but forgot about the clear visors, which thwapped together.
“Feely, we need to see exactly what strains these men have. We’ll get tissue samples from each of them, then you divide the yeast, just like I told you to. In a day or two, you’ll have enough yeast for us to take it ourselves. We need to act now, because these men can’t wait.”
“What we need to do next is save our own asses, Margaret.”
“How about we save the world, Feely? Can you stop being a selfish little prick long enough to focus on that?”
He couldn’t hold her stare. He looked off, sniffed, then nodded his head.
“Voice command,” he said. “Feely, Tim. Activate gas in cells three, five and six.”
The men couldn’t hear him, but they knew something was up. Austin and Chappas stood. Chappas pounded on the glass, screaming to be let out. The scream didn’t last long. Colorless, odorless gas filled their tanks. Within seconds, Chappas and Nagy slumped to the floor.
Margaret looked at Austin Conroy. The boy was still crying, his cheeks puffed out, his lips pursed into a tight little pucker. He was holding his breath. Wet, pleading eyes stared at Margaret.
Tim looked away. Margaret did not.
The boy held on for almost thirty seconds, but his crying broke his lips apart and he drew in an unwanted breath. His sobs slowed, then stopped. He fell back onto his bed.
“All right,” Margaret said. “Let’s get to work.”
TIMELINES
That bitch was crazy.
Tim prepared the yeast culture for Clarence. Sure, that had to be done; it only made sense to get it to Black Manitou. Maybe someone could re-create his work from data alone, maybe not — sometimes getting that first engineered organism to produce was more art than science. He’d spent years perfecting his skills and techniques. Douchebag Cheng might fuck it up if he had to re-create from scratch, so sending him an already successful culture, yeah, that was the right thing to do.
But test the yeast that remained on a bunch of poor fuckers who were already infected, instead of just taking it themselves? Crazy. Margaret was willing to sacrifice her own safety for a shot at helping those guys. Maybe Tim had been wrong about her — maybe she and Mr. Flag Waver really did belong together, living happily ever after in the Land of Idealism & Platitudes. He sealed up the fist-sized canister for Clarence. Inside was enough living yeast to start a hundred new colonies.