Epitaph Road (17 page)

“What kind of stuff are they doing?” Sunday asked.

“Huge. Covert. Strictly outlawed.” He paused again. “If PAC knows about it, it's an automatic and immediate target.”

“They'll kill every male on the peninsula just to shut down a lab?” I said.

“I'm sure they would,” Dad said. “But that's the ironic part. Several people working on the project are women. So even Elisha might not halt the operation. PAC is going to have to come in with old-fashioned methods — guns and bombs and bulldozers and whatever else they have at their disposal — if they want to stop what's going on.”

Guns and bombs and bulldozers.
To me, a place that might attract that kind of attention didn't sound like the best choice for refuge-seekers. “So tell us why we're going there,” I said.

“It's a lab, but it's also a well-designed fortress,” Dad said. “And there's food, water, places to sleep.”

“What
is
going on there?” I said. Sunday never got a real answer to her question. It was everyone's question now.

We turned right, almost stopping as we moved from pavement to what must have been shoulder, then rough, rutted surface. Gunny accelerated, and we started uphill. Even with the almost-opaque cloth of the tarp over my head, I could tell that we'd moved from sunlight to shade. Instantly, the temperature dropped.

Finally, Dad answered me. “I guess it's not a secret now,” he said. “I've never been officially told, but Gunny's done some inside security. He's seen a few things and snooped for others.”

The truck bounced through a washboard curve, and Dad raised his voice. “He told me the lab is developing a vaccine for Elisha's Bear. If it works, and Gunny says it's a whisker's breadth away from completion, they can vaccinate every male on earth. Women will still have the upper hand, but they won't be able to stage these accidental outbreaks anymore.”

“A vaccine,” Tia said. “They wouldn't allow it.”

“They couldn't use Elisha as a weapon,” Sunday said.

“How did they find women who would do the research?” I asked, wondering how long Dad had known about, or at least suspected, the original conspiracy.

“They had to look for brilliant women who were sympathetic to the idea,” Dad said. “They searched for those few who were qualified to do the work and who didn't believe in what PAC was doing.
Had
done. The Fratheists were helpful in singling out scientists who could be approached safely. Gunny says it took a long time to recruit all of them.”

“How did they develop the vaccine?” Tia said.

“I'm not a scientist, Tia,” Dad said. “But I know they got their start by exhuming bones and tissue from some of the mass grave sites.”

“With more help from the Fratheists?” I said. “At Epitaph Road?”

I felt him shrug. “Maybe.”

“Can they immunize you and Kellen?” Tia said. “And Gunny?”

“That's crossed my mind,” Dad said. “But I don't know if they've reached the point where they can try it on humans.”

The truck continued to bounce along, twisting and turning, mostly uphill.

Finally, it stopped. I heard Gunny's door open, and an instant later he was dragging the tarp off of us. “I think you're okay without this now,” he said. “Ride up front, Charlie?”

In answer, Dad jumped over the tailgate and landed softly on the stripe of greenery that marked the center of the road. “I think I've bored these guys enough,” he said. “And my bones are ready for a rest.”

Dad and Gunny climbed into the cab and we started off again. It was good to breathe fresh air, but now that there was no excuse for being hip to hip with Tia, staying close felt awkward. She must not have seen it that way, though. She stayed put. Our hips continued to enjoy each other's company. Mostly.

Just when I thought this road couldn't get any skinnier, we left it, taking another turn onto what was not much more than a path, an almost-accidental serpentine channel through tree trunks and underbrush. The stubborn growth pressed in, twanging past the mirrors, scraping against the sides of the old pickup. Sunday, Tia, and I stuck to the middle of the bed, where low limbs and whiplike twigs wouldn't take a toll on our skin.

After another ten minutes of wooded twists and turns and bumps, we moved out into a clearing. The truck stopped, but Gunny and Dad stayed put. So we did, too. Gunny honked his horn three times.

A moment later, from an opening in the face of a giant pumpkin-shaped outcropping fifty yards in front of us, a man emerged. He was dressed in camouflage — browns and greens and tans — head to toe. He carried a rifle, angled across his chest. At least it wasn't pointed at us. Yet.

Camo-guy marched over to the truck, eyeing us the whole time. A step away from Gunny's window, which was rolled down, he stopped. He was short but built like a block. “Gunny,” he said. “Charlie.”

“Miller,” they chorused.

“What brings you up here on your own dime?” Miller gave us — especially the girls — a long and suspicious look, as if we were spies. “And what about the kids?”

“Long story,” Dad said. He gave Miller a short version, but enough to let him know that we weren't junior moles.

“Unbelievable,” Miller said, but he looked like he believed it. “You think it's really going to happen?”

“Cops are everywhere,” Gunny said, “and I'm not talking about our little constables pedaling around on their bikes. Something's up. These kids have probably saved your life.”

Miller studied us again, but this time there was more to his expression than hostility and suspicion. He looked almost grateful. “You'll want to talk to Wapner, then,” he said, stepping back. “Go on ahead. If he won't take you in, let me know. That means I won't be welcome in there, either. I may just want to grab some supplies and follow you into the hills.”

“We'll do that,” Gunny said. He started the truck forward again. We moved across the clearing and approached the crack in the outcropping. Moss and lichen covered most of the stony surface. Far back, the cleft widened, then narrowed to the black crease of a cave entrance. Next to that opening I could just make out what appeared to be a metal box mounted on the rock. It was the same gray color as the stone that surrounded it.

We skirted the wall and more house-sized rock formations, slowly half circling into deep shade. Ahead of us, in front of a dense barrier of evergreens and bookended by two soaring cliffs, a low cinder-block building came into view.

Could this possibly be the lab, the
fortress
?

Gunny drove past the entrance and stopped at the side of the little building. He turned off the engine, got out, and unlocked the door of a red metal box mounted on a thick pole. Inside was a phone. He picked it up and punched a series of buttons. “Gunderson,” he said after a moment. “I need to talk to Dr. Wapner.” He listened for another moment. “I'd prefer he come out,” he said. “I have Winters with me, and as I'm sure you've seen, we're not alone.”

Dad stepped out of the truck. “Stay where you are for now,” he told us. Gunny replaced the phone, locked the door of the box, and joined Dad nearer the front of the building, waiting.

In less than a minute I heard the clicking sounds of opening locks. And then a man — Dad's height, thin, receding gray hair buzzed a centimeter from his scalp — appeared from around the corner.

“What is it?” he said impatiently to Dad and Gunny. “I have work.” He had an accent, but I couldn't place it.

“My son and his friends brought us some news we thought you'd want to hear, Dr. Wapner,” Dad said.

For a moment the doctor turned his attention to us, to Tia and Sunday especially, before refocusing on Dad and Gunny. “What is it that couldn't wait, that told you it was permissible to bring
outsiders
here?”

Dad explained the whole thing, most of it anyway, from our arrival on. He carefully left out anything about the work of the lab — the vaccine. Officially, it was still a secret. The doctor asked us questions from time to time. He seemed to be warming to us.

“We wanted to warn you,” Gunny said. “And we wanted to ask you for refuge from the Bear.”

“I appreciate the warning,” the doctor said. “If they know where we are, if they're aware of the nature of our research — and this quarantine decree tells me they may well be — they could come here with their plague. They could try to do us in with it, put an end to everything we're doing.

“Your coming here tells me one other thing: neither of you is the person who tipped them off. Because I'm certain someone
did
tip them off. But who?”

It was a rhetorical question. Dad responded with a functional one. “What about allowing us to stay?”

“Do you know what we're doing here, Winters?” Dr. Wapner asked. “Gunderson?” When their only answer was a half-guilty, half-embarrassed silence, he continued. “I suspect just the fact that we have this research facility where it is may have given you some idea of our work.”

“I've had my suspicions,” Gunny admitted. “I've kept 'em to myself, except for Charlie here.”

“That's commendable,” Dr. Wapner said. “But what are they?”

Gunny told him what he “suspected,” but he didn't mention snooping around for his information. He told the doctor he just put two and two together.

“You're exactly right,” the doctor said. “We've developed a vaccine. We're also developing a treatment for unvaccinated males who are exposed to Elisha.”

“You haven't said whether you'll let us stay,” Dad said, not letting loose.

Dr. Wapner eyed the girls again. His expression made me want to keep right on going, into the farthest hills. “Certainly. But if we're going to add you five and be under siege for two weeks, we'll need someone to go back to town to get food and supplies.”

“The cops are on the lookout for Charlie,” Gunny said. “They don't care about me — I've already passed under their microscope. I'll go.”

“You're sure?” Dad said.

“Perfectly,” Gunny said.

“I'll be the real hero, then,” Dad said. “I'll haul the stuff in when you get back.”

“And we'll help,” Sunday said.

“Come with me,” the doctor said.

We followed him through the door. The walls, with open, half-empty shelves here and there, were simply the interior faces of the exterior's gray block walls. Just inside was a cabinet filled with flashlights, headlamps, night-vision goggles, binoculars, a spotting scope, radios, talkalouds, and other electronic stuff I didn't recognize.

There were no people here, no computers, test tubes, books or papers, no jars of mysterious fluids, no monkeys — northern owl or otherwise — in cages, electrodes planted in their shaved skulls or jammed down their throats, measuring their lung function. The doctor closed the door. The only light came from overhead tubes.

Dr. Wapner printed out a supply list and handed it to Gunny. “I've modified the amounts to reflect a three-week period and twenty-one people,” he said, “in case the rest of the security staff chooses to stay. Use our usual account number at the co-op.”

“Right,” Gunny said.

“What about the vaccine?” Tia said. “You said you've
developed
a vaccine. Could you give it to Kellen and his dad, and Gunny before he goes to town? The PAC women might bring Elisha early if they think word is getting out.”

“We have a vaccine,” the doctor said. “All of the male scientists of Foothills have injected it in themselves to determine if there are adverse effects. Three days later, we're all still standing. What we don't know is whether it will be effective against the full-blown disease. The women we have working here are trying to replicate Elisha in its most virulent form, and they're close. But until they do, until one of us is exposed, we won't know for sure.”

“Would it hurt to give it to us?” I asked him.

“Not based on our experience.”

“Can you do it, then?” Dad asked.

“I don't know why not,” Dr. Wapner said. “It may not provide you with any protection should Elisha's Bear find us, though.”

“We won't expose ourselves on purpose,” Gunny said. “But we've got nothing to lose, as far as I can tell.”

“Let's proceed, then,” the doctor said. His expression brightened. He went to the middle of the room, where a large multicolored rectangular rug that had seen better days lay at an angle. He bent down and swept it back. Underneath it was a square door made with the same unfinished wood as the floor. He lifted the door as we gathered around. Gunny hung back. He'd been down there before, I decided. Inside security. Snooping.

Descending from the floor was a steep wooden staircase. At the bottom was another floor — smooth pea-green concrete, well lit — but that was about all I could see. “Wait here,” Dr. Wapner said, and started down the stairs agilely as if he'd done it a thousand times.

He disappeared. We waited. I thought about getting jabbed with a needle. But then I thought about Gunny going to town to face the cops and maybe Elisha's Bear on the loose. I thought about being totally helpless should the Bear penetrate the lab's defenses, about dying an agonizing death, and I decided a needle wasn't a big deal.