She suddenly realizes that she does not have much time. The power might go out again, and if it stays off, she will have no way to survive.
She begins to take stock of her surroundings. Most of the desk drawers are stuffed with paper records, logs, office supplies and old manuals. The bottom desk drawer contains a half-full quart bottle of whiskey, an almost full carton of cigarettes, a condom, a heavily dog-eared copy of Juggs, a package of salted peanuts, and a clipboard holding some sort of training schedule. She removes the peanuts and devours them greedily.
Lovely, she thinks. The only things I have lots of are cigarettes and pornography.
One of the storage bins holds flashlights, which she removes, tests and sets aside.
But no guns or other weapons. Petrova knows that the security staff carries at least a billy club and a TASER, but Jackson either has these items on him, lost them during the fight with Baird, or discarded them afterwards. That just leaves her golf club, next to which she places a small steel fire extinguisher and a box cutter tool.
Petrova finds the bathroom adjacent to this main room and uses it, smoking a second cigarette on the toilet with the door open and the light off. For a few moments, the smoking dampens her hunger.
She snaps her fingers, stands up and flushes. Pausing at the sink, trying not to look at herself in the mirror, she hurriedly washes her face and hands, and dries them with paper towels. Then she goes back to the operator station.
The security system, she realized, must include a way to prevent the migration of airborne microbes and toxins in the event of an emergency.
After several minutes, Petrova shuts off the HVAC system with a primitive cry of triumph. Instantly, the air-conditioning stops breathing ice over her skin. Soon, the air will get stale, but at least she won’t be freezing anymore.
This small act of control gives her a sense of optimism and fuels her courage.
“I am very sorry, Sandy,” she says to the screen, then flips the image.
To get out of here, she must either escape or be rescued.
Don’t look behind you
Marsha Fuentes lies twitching and wincing on the floor in one of the aisles in the auditorium. Lucas is in the elevator lobby, blinking and sniffing the air. Saunders is in Laboratory West, pacing back and forth. Stringer Jackson is still standing at the mirror, rocking back and forth, his ruined eye weeping mucus. Drool dribbles from his lips.
He has turned.
Down in the lobby, the beautiful blonde appears to be arguing with some of the men in her mob. She holds a pistol in her hand, which she taps against her leg as she talks. The people down there have figured out that when the Institute went into lockdown, not only was the lab sealed, so was the entire building. They are upset about it.
Behind the woman, Petrova can see a group of people lying on the floor in the corner. Lyssa victims. Some of the mob are sick and getting sicker. But none of them appear to be going Mad Dog. At least, not yet. She reminds herself that with standard airborne Lyssa, the odds are very low.
The woman is now waving the pistol over her head and pointing at the sick people. The men walk away sheepishly.
Reluctantly, Petrova tears her eyes from the screen. If she is going to be rescued, she has to act fast. She gathers up the fire extinguisher, which she intends to use as a missile, and her golf club. The box cutter she puts in her pocket as a weapon of last resort. She takes a deep breath in front of the door, hesitating.
It is either this, or get back under the desk.
She takes off her shoes to make less noise while she walks, opens the door and gingerly steps outside.
The hallway is empty, except for the bodies, and dead silent. She hurries past Sandy Cohen, who lies like a marionette with her strings cut, her limbs at odd angles and her grinning head facing the wrong way. Further down, she scurries past Baird’s body, lying on its side like a downed bull. Footsteps echo down distant hallways.
Turning the corner, she creeps up to the bathroom where Sims still lies on the floor, his stiff body propping open the door. Stringer Jackson is inside.
Now for the hard part.
She darts by the open door, willing herself not to be noticed.
Immediately, Jackson begins snarling.
“Oh damn,” she says, breaking into a run.
Behind her, the door is flung open, slamming against the wall with a loud bang, and Jackson spills out of the bathroom snorting and growling, stumbling over Sims’ body.
Petrova looks over her shoulder, slowing down, and sees Jackson recover and begin loping towards her, his eye leaking yellowish-green sludge, bellowing a nasal ka ka ka sound through slavering jaws.
As a scientist, she knows all sorts of facts about the human body. For example, she knows that human jaws, clamping down to bite, can exert more than four thousand pounds per square inch.
Moments later, she comes to a sliding halt in front of her office. Slipping in, she slams the door, locks it and puts her weight against it, praying for it to hold.
But Jackson does not try to break the door down. Instead, he begins growling and pacing. She can hear him sniff at the air, sensing that she is there. She is trapped again, and this time, she has no access to the security system.
Petrova puts down the golf club and fire extinguisher and sits at her desk. The act is so familiar to her that for a moment, she feels like everything is back to normal. Her PC’s screensaver displays a screen-sized image of her, Christopher and Alexander looking up at the camera, grinning. Christopher took the photo himself, holding the camera at arm’s length over their heads. Alexander, held in Petrova’s arms, is reaching up towards the lens. The photo was snapped with a digital camera near the end of a perfect day in Central Park. The image holds her, transfixed, for several moments.
Jackson shoulders the door during his pacing, startling her.
Time to get to work. She picks up the phone, which blares a loud rat-tat-tat signal. Same with the handset to her fax. A wave of sweat breaks out on her forehead and armpits. Her first dead end.
She opens her hard drive and tests her connection to the email server, which appears to be working, giving her a connection to the outside world.
Smiling now, she opens the secure FTP site the CDC set up for them to share their work. It is also operational. She grabs everything she can find related to her discoveries, doing a broad data sweep, and dumps it all onto the server.
While it is uploading, she writes an email to her contacts at the CDC and USAMRIID, cc’ing as many people in the virology community that she can think of, summarizing her findings and stating that she has a pure sample of the Mad Dog strain. She tells them that she and her colleagues are close to producing a formula for a vaccine but a mob has entered the building’s lobby, locking them in, and they require rescue. Then she clicks send.
It is a simple plan, but she believes it will work. By now, the world outside must know that the Mad Dog strain is the real threat. The Centers for Disease Control will want a pure sample. She has a sample, as long as the power does not fail for good and spoil it. In particular, they will want a vaccine, which is why she lied and said they were close to producing one.
So now all she has to do is wait for the government to come and rescue her. A simple plan.
Unless her contacts are all dead.
Unless there is no CDC or USAMRIID anymore.
Unless somebody else has already done the research she is offering.
Her stomach growls. Petrova opens a drawer in her desk and pulls out her purse. Rooting around inside, she produces a box of orange-flavored Tic Tacs, pours what is left into her palm, and rapidly devours them. She does the same with a pack of gum, gnawing the flavor out of it and then swallowing it whole.