Invasion (39 page)

Harlan made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “This whole area around here all the way to within a few miles of Paswell is honeycombed with underground facilities. It was supposed to be a big secret, but the Native Americans knew about it.”

“It’s an operational lab?” Sheila questioned. This indeed was too good to be true.

“It had been mothballed in kind of suspended animation,” Harlan said. “It was built back at the height of the cold war but then deemed superfluous when the threat of germ warfare coming to the USA diminished. Except for a few bureaucrats who kept the thing stocked, it was pretty much forgotten about; at least that’s my take on the situation. Anyway, after all this trouble started, I got into it and cranked it up to speed. So to answer your question: yes, it is an operational lab.”

“And this is the entrance?” Sheila questioned. She leaned out over the rim of the opening and looked down. There were lights below. The ladder went straight down about thirty feet.

“No, this is an emergency exit plus an air vent,” Harlan said. “The real entrance is closer to Paswell, but I’m afraid to use that lest I be seen by some of my former patients.”

“Can we go inside?” Sheila asked.

“Hey, that’s what we’re here for,” Harlan said. “But before a tour I want to cover the van with a camouflage tarp.”

They all climbed down the ladder to a white, high-tech corridor illuminated by banks of fluorescent lights. From a storage locker at the base of the ladder, Harlan got out the tarp he’d mentioned. Pitt returned topside with Harlan to give him a hand.

“Pretty cool,” Jonathan said to Sheila while they waited. The corridor seemed to stretch off in either direction to infinity.

“Better than cool,” Sheila said. “It’s a godsend. And to think it was built to help thwart a germ-warfare attack by the Russians and instead is to be used to do the same thing for aliens is truly ironic.”

When Harlan and Pitt returned back down, Harlan led them off in what he said was a northerly direction.

“It will take you a while to orient yourselves,” he said. “Until then I recommend you stick together.”

“Where are the people that kept this place up?” Sheila asked.

“They came in shifts like the guys that used to man the underground missile silos,” Harlan said. “But after they got infected, I guess they either forgot about it or went off someplace. The talk in Paswell was that a lot of people were going to Santa Fe for some reason. Anyway they’re not around, and by now I don’t expect them.”

They came to an air lock. Harlan opened it and had everybody climb into a chamber. Inside the chamber were showers and blue jump suits. Harlan closed the door, then twisted some dials. Air was heard entering the lock.

“This was to make sure none of the biological warfare agents got into the lab except in biohazard containers,” Harlan said. “Obviously that’s not our worry now.”

“Where does the power come from?” Sheila asked.

“Nuclear,” Harlan said. “It’s kinda like a nuclear submarine. The whole place is independent of what’s going on topside.”

Everybody had to clear their ears as the pressure built up. When it was equalized with the interior of the lab, Harlan opened the inner door.

Sheila was flabbergasted. She’d never seen such a laboratory in her entire life. It was a series of three large rooms with walk-in incubators and freezers. Adding to her astonishment was the fact that all the equipment was state-of-the-art.

“These freezers are a little scary,” Harlan said, tapping one of the stainless steel doors. “They contain just about every known potential biological agent, both bacterial and viral.” He then pointed toward another door with large bolts like a walk-in safe. “In there is a library of chemical agents. One of James Bond’s villians would have had a ball down here.”

“What’s through those doors?” Sheila asked, pointing to pressure-sealed hatches with round porthole windows.

“That goes into confinement rooms and a sick bay,” Harlan said. “My guess is that they considered such a
facility necessary in case any of the people working in here succumbed to whatever they were trying to vanquish.”

“Look!” Jonathan said, pointing toward a row of black discs positioned beneath an exhaust hood.

“Don’t touch those!” Harlan said anxiously.

“Don’t worry,” Jonathan said. “We know about them.”

Everyone walked over and looked at the collection.

“They can do more than infect people,” Sheila said.

“Don’t I know,” Harlan said. “Come with me. Let me show you something.”

Harlan led everyone to a short corridor off of which were several X-ray rooms as well as an MRI scanner. He opened the door to the first X-ray room. Inside the machine had been twisted out of shape as if it had been melted and pulled inward.

“My God!” Sheila said. “This looks just like what happened in a room in the student overnight ward. Do you know how this happened?”

“I think so,” Harlan said. “I tried to X-ray one of those black discs, and it didn’t like it. This may sound crazy, but I think it created a miniature black hole. My guess is that’s how they get here and how they leave.”

“Cool,” Jonathan said. “How can they do that?”

“I wish I knew,” Harlan said. “But I’ll tell you how I explained it to myself. Somehow they have the ability to generate enough internal energy to create an instantaneous huge gravitational field so they subatomically implode.”

“So where do they go?” Jonathan asked.

“Now you have to go way out on a limb,” Harlan said.
“And perhaps subscribe to the wormhole theory of the cosmos. In that scenario they’d be in another parallel universe.”

“Wow,” Jonathan said.

“That’s a bit too much for me,” Pitt said.

“Me too,” Sheila said. “Let’s get back to the lab.” As they returned she asked: “And there’s mice and myeloma cells available down here for monoclonal antibody production?”

“We’ve got more than mice,” Harlan said. “We’ve got rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, and even a few monkeys. In fact, half my time is taken up feeding the guys.”

“What about living quarters?” Sheila asked. As tired and dirty as she was, she couldn’t help but think about the pleasure of a shower and a nap.

“This way,” Harlan said. He lead them out into the main corridor and through a pair of double doors. The first room they came to was a gigantic living room, complete with a large screen TV and an entire wall filled with books. Next to the living room was a dining area adjacent to a modern kitchen. Beyond the dining room and leading off a central corridor were multiple guest rooms, each with its own bath.

“Hey, this is okay,” Jonathan said, seeing that each bedroom had its own computer terminal.

“This is good,” Pitt said, eyeing the bed. “This is very good.”

ONCE CASSY HAD GOTTEN AWAY FROM THE INSTITUTE
, she’d been able to find a car with ease. There were hundreds of them simply abandoned as if many of the infected
people weren’t interested in them any longer. The people seemed to prefer walking.

As soon as she got to a phone she’d tried calling the cabin. After letting the phone ring twenty times, she’d given up. Obviously no one was there which could only mean one thing: they’d been discovered. Such a realization had been heartbreaking for Cassy, and for over an hour she’d sat in her commandeered car feeling depressed to the point of paralysis. Her wish to at least speak once more with Pitt and the others had been thwarted.

What finally pulled Cassy from the depths of her torpor was a sudden stinging sensation in her nose followed by a series of violent sneezes. Instantly she knew what was happening; the symptoms of the alien flu were starting.

Cassy went back to the telephone, and despite knowing it was in vain, tried calling the cabin again. As she’d expected, there was still no answer. But as the phone rang she thought that there was at least a small possibility that even if the cabin had been discovered, one or more might have gotten away. That was when she thought about what Jonathan had been so patient to teach her: logging onto the Internet.

By the time Cassy got back to the car, the discomfort she felt in her nose had spread down to her throat, and she began to cough. At first it was only a clearing of her throat, but it quickly progressed to a cough.

Cassy drove into the town. There was still some traffic, but it was slight. In contrast there were thousands of people walking about and busily involved with all the necessities of life. A lot of people were gardening. Everyone was smiling, and there was little conversation.

Cassy parked the car and got out onto the sidewalk. Although many businesses were still functioning, others were deserted as if the employees had just stood up at some arbitrary time and walked out the door. Nothing was locked.

One of the empty businesses was a dry-cleaning store. Cassy went inside but didn’t find what she was looking for. Instead she found it next door in a copying concern. What she wanted was a computer connected to a modem.

Cassy sat down and activated the screen. When the employees had left they hadn’t even turned the equipment off. Remembering Jonathan’s Internet name, Jumpin Jack Flash, Cassy began typing.

“THIS IS ALL YOU HAVE?” SHEILA ASKED HARLAN. SHE WAS
holding a small vial of clear fluid.

“That’s it for now,” Harlan said. “But I got a batch of mice with the hybridoma cells implanted in their peritoneal cavities as well as a bunch of cell cultures cooking in the incubator. We can certainly extract more of this monoclonal antibody. But it’s only weakly active. I’d much rather try to find a more avid antibody-producing cell.”

Sheila, Pitt, and Jonathan had taken showers and rested briefly, but were too wired to sleep. Sheila was especially anxious to get working and had urged Harlan to show her everything he’d done.

Jonathan and Pitt had tagged along. Pitt was having trouble following Harlan’s explanations, whereas Jonathan didn’t even try. Since he hadn’t had much biology, it all sounded like Greek to him. Instead Jonathan
ignored the others, sat down at one of the many terminals available, and started typing.

“I’ll show you two the process used to select B lymphocytes from emulsified mouse spleen,” Harlan said. “Provided you show me the virions you and Jonathan’s mother isolated.”

“We’re not positive the virions are in the tissue culture,” Sheila said. “We just suspect they are. We were just about ready to isolate them.”

“Well, we can find out simply enough,” Harlan said.

“Oh my God!” Jonathan called out suddenly.

Shocked by this outburst, everyone looked across at Jonathan. His eyes were glued to the monitor.

“What’s the matter?” Pitt asked nervously.

“It’s a message from Cassy!” Jonathan cried.

Pitt practically vaulted over a lab bench to get to Jonathan’s side. He stared at the monitor with wide eyes.

“She’s typing into the mail drop this instant,” Jonathan said. “I mean this is a real-time phenomenon.”

“This is fantastic,” Pitt managed.

“What a cool girl,” Jonathan said. “She’s doing just like I taught her.”

“What’s she saying?” Sheila asked. “Is she saying where she is?”

“Oh no!” Jonathan said. “She says she’s been infected.”

“Damn!” Pitt agonized, gritting his teeth.

“She says she’s already experiencing the first symptoms of the flu,” Jonathan continued. “She wants to wish us good luck.”

“Contact her!” Pitt shouted. “Now, live, before she signs off.”

“Pitt, it’s no use,” Sheila said. “It will just make it more difficult. She’s infected!”

“She might be infected, but obviously she’s still Cassy,” Pitt said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t be wishing us good luck.” He forcibly nudged Jonathan aside and started typing furiously.

Jonathan looked up at Sheila. Sheila shook her head. Although she knew it was wrong, she didn’t have the heart to stop him.

FOR CASSY THE IMAGE ON THE MONITOR WAS INTERMITTENTLY
blurry. As she’d typed the tears had come. Closing her eyes for a moment and wiping them with the back of her hand, she tried to get herself under control. She wanted to leave one last message for Pitt. She wanted to tell him that she loved him.

Opening her eyes and returning her hands to the keyboard, Cassy was about to type her last sentence when a live message popped onto her screen. She gazed at it in astonishment. It said: “Cassy, it’s me, Pitt. Where are you?”

IT WAS THE LONGEST FEW SECONDS OF PITT’S LIFE. HE
goggled at the monitor and willed it to respond. Then as if answering a prayer, the black characters began popping out of the luminous background.

“Yes!” Pitt shouted while punching the air with a fist. “I caught her. She knows I’m here.”

“What is she saying?” Sheila ventured. She was afraid to ask because she was sure this contact was going to lead to heartache and trouble.

“She’s saying she’s not too far from here,” Pitt said. “I’m going to tell her to meet me.”

“Pitt, no!” Sheila shouted. “Even if she’s not one of them now, she will be shortly. You can’t take the chance. You certainly can’t expose this lab.”

Pitt looked over at Sheila. His emotional pain was palpable. His breaths were coming in short gasps. “I can’t abandon her,” he said. “I just can’t.”

“You must,” Sheila said. “You saw what happened to Beau.”

Pitt’s fingers were poised above the keyboard. He’d never felt such heart-wrenching indecision.

“Wait,” Harlan said suddenly. “Ask her how long it has been since she was stung.”

“What difference does that make?” Sheila said angrily. She felt irritated that Harlan would interfere at such a moment.

“Just do it,” Harlan said. He walked over to stand behind Pitt.

Pitt typed the question. The answer came back instantly: about four hours. Harlan looked at his watch and bit the inside of his cheek while thinking.

“What is going on inside your head?” Sheila demanded, looking Harlan in the eye.

“I have a little confession to make,” Harlan said. “I wasn’t telling the whole truth about those black discs. One of them did sting me when I was out collecting the last batch.”

“Then you are one of them!” Sheila said with horror.