H10N1 (26 page)

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked John.

“Like what? ‘Michael’s a slacker’?” John looked her right in the eye. “I knew you would eventually make the discovery for yourselves.”

Then he glanced from face to face, looking for forgiveness. “I guess I should have told you. It’s just that I never took much offense to Michael’s work ethic. Remember, I don’t work in the garden either.”

“But you have a legitimate excuse,” Rick said.

“Maybe not in Michael’s mind.”

Wheeling around, Judith took a step toward the door, a murderous glint in her eyes, like she intended to barge into the conference room and stab Michael, and his plasma screens, and maybe even the upholstery on his chair.

Rick raised his hands to stop her. “I already took care of it.” Then he made the mistake of knotting his hands into fists to demonstrate.

“You hit him?” Sanchez asked.

“Yeah. Because he’s been farting around all day while we work!”

Rising from her chair, she walked toward him. Her eyebrow was cocked for a fight. “And this altercation had nothing to do with our discussion earlier?”

Rick jutted out his chin. “Absolutely not.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Taeya drifted on her blue air mattress, letting the cool ocean water wash the sweat off her body. She’d been burning up out in the garden when Rick suggested they take a break.

His head popped out of the water and he swam over.

“This feels great,” he said, propping his elbows on the mattress.

She gave him a lazy smile.

Cupping a handful of water, he dribbled it on her stomach, letting it pool in her belly button. She reached up and pulled his face down for a kiss. It started out gentle, but the more he got into it, the more her air mattress tipped.

He was going to dunk her into the ocean. Giggling, she tried to push away, but when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t Rick, it was Michael. He pressed his lips so hard to her mouth that she felt his teeth.

She struggled to break away, but Michael gripped her arms and yanked her into the water. Still locked in the awkward kiss, she felt Michael pulling her down to the bottom of the man-made ocean.

A fish swam between their faces and suddenly the kissing stopped.

“That was an angel fish,” Michael said. “From the pomacanthidae family. There are twenty-three separate species of tropical fish in our ocean.”

How was he able to talk under water? Wasn’t he running out of air like she was? She looked up and saw that the water’s surface was far away. She broke free from his grasp and kicked her feet. She had to get to the top. She had to get a breath.

But the harder she stroked with her arms and kicked with her legs, the farther the surface seemed. Her lungs burned, her heart pounded. She swam harder, straining with each stroke. But just as she saw the blue mattress within her reach, Michael grabbed her foot and pulled her back down.

Taeya woke up, gasping for air. Her heart was racing. Even after several breaths, she couldn’t shake the panic. She struggled to sit up, but it felt like water was weighing her down. And a hammer was banging, making her head throb. Was she still in the dream?

In the dim light of the digital clock, she saw Rick on his back, sucking in air just like her.

Were they dreaming the same thing?

She shook him. “What’s …happening?” she gasped.

It wasn’t her head that was pounding; someone was banging on Rick’s apartment door. Is that what woke her up?

Rick struggled to stand, but his wobbly legs nearly buckled under him. “What the hell is going on?”

Gripping the metal rail on the spiral stairway, Rick led Taeya down the steps. When he opened his door, John tumbled in. He was barking like a seal again, the way he had that day with his asthma attack in the garden.

Were they all having some kind of cosmic reaction to the same dream?

“Sickbay,” she croaked.

Between them, Rick and Taeya dragged John down the hallway, his toes scrapping along the carpet, his head wobbling. Each time he tried to suck in a breath, it sounded like his last.

Taeya was doing her best to keep John propped up and moving, but her knees were sagging. She was panting like she’d just run a 5K. She heard an annoying beep, beep, beep, but she was too confused to understand what it meant.

Once they got into sickbay, Taeya snapped an oxygen mask over John’s mouth. He sucked in a couple breaths before yanking the cup off and handing it back to her. When she tried to refuse, he slapped her hand away.

“The air’s turned off,” he gasped. “You need to breathe this, too.” He pressed the oxygen cup to her mouth and she took a deep drag. Then she handed it to Rick.

“How can the air be off?” she wheezed.

“I don’t know.” John was laboring for air again. Rick held the cup over John’s mouth, then moved on to Taeya before taking another breath himself.

“Is this some kind of computer malfunction?” Rick asked.

John shrugged as he took another hit off the mask. “As soon as I woke up, I came to your room.”

“Let’s check it out.” Grabbing the cart handle, Rick rolled the oxygen tank to the door. As soon as he opened it, the beeping started again. “It’s coming from the conference room.”

The high-pitched signal made it hard to concentrate. Weaving unsteadily, Rick and Taeya got John to Michael’s computer. The monitor was flashing all kinds of red lights and warnings.

Taeya rationed oxygen while John fumbled at the keyboard. She’d let him have two or three good drags of air before she gave Rick one quick hit. But the extra oxygen didn’t help. John tried a few passwords, but couldn’t get in. And he couldn’t get the alarm to stop.

“Okay, screw this,” Rick snapped. “Can you get the air back on from the basement?”

John nodded. Slinging John’s arm over his shoulder, Rick hauled him to his feet. He trundled both John and the oxygen tank to the elevator across from the kitchen. Taeya careened ahead to hit the call button.

She didn’t want to think about how the air got turned off, or why they were locked out of Michael’s computer. At least not until she could breathe again.

The minute the elevator door opened to the basement, cool fresh air hit them in the face. After a couple deep breaths, the wooziness faded, the spots in front of Taeya’s eyes disappeared. But John wasn’t pulling out of it as fast.

Rick grabbed a tall bucket and brought it back for John to sit on. Taeya forced his head between his knees.

“Just take it slow and easy,” she told him. “Don’t rush it.”

But John waved them both away. “You must check on the others.”

Rick flew ahead of Taeya, taking the steps two at a time. He was standing at the edge of the garden when Taeya caught up with him.

She froze. There was no light-headedness. No confusion. The farm had plenty of air, too. So it was just the habitat that had been closed off?

“Goddamn that Michael,” Rick fumed.

Up on the catwalk, the double doors burst open. Devin stumbled out with Mai over his shoulder. Judith wobbled out seconds later with Kat, wrapped in a sheet.

After propping open the bottom doors with a couple shovels, Rick rushed up the metal stairs. Devin was just returning with Carol. Was she unconscious or dead?

Taeya gave her mouth-to-mouth while Judith pumped her chest. With a throaty gasp, Carol sucked in a breath, and then broke into a hacking cough. Rick sprinted to the kitchen for water.

Leaning back on her heels, Taeya glanced at Mai. She was teetering on one of the wrought-iron chairs, and babbling about the children in the east wing. She must not have had the ocean dream.

Rick returned with a pitcher of water and cups. By that time, Mai had stopped worrying about orphans and Carol was breathing steadily. But circling the café tables, Kat was muttering and jerking like she’d just come down from a bad trip. Pulling out a chair, Rick got her seated and pushed a glass of water into her hands.

Mai rested her chin on her palm. “I can’t believe that prick tried to kill us.”

Taeya felt the deck vibrate when the air handlers kicked back on.

“Thank God,” Rick said. “John’s in his zone again, too. Now all we have to do is find Michael and tear him apart.”

No one expected to find him in his room. Eventually a search party combed the wilderness biome. They found Michael on the beach, curled up under a blanket, his head nestled on a pillow.

How did the man’s mind work? When he woke up and everyone was dead, was he going to do the work himself? Or had he been on the radio, looking for new recruits? Taeya remembered seeing him gaze out the window the other day. Had he been expecting someone?

Drawing her boot back, Judith let Michael have it right in the kidneys. He screamed and rolled onto his back. But when he looked up and saw Devin and Judith and Rick hovering overhead, he scrambled onto his hands and knees to crawl away.

Devin grabbed his head like a bowling ball and yanked him to his feet.

“I didn’t do it,” Michael whined. “I swear I didn’t.”

“Do what?” Rick asked.

“I don’t know.” Michael’s eyes were wild, jumping from Judith to Devin to Rick. “I woke up and felt woozy so I came out to the beach to sleep.”

Gripping Michael’s shirt collar and waistband, Devin drove him head first into the stone steps at the edge of the beach. His face hit with a thunk.

“Hey!” Taeya yelled, trying to get someone’s attention, but that mob mentality was gripping all three of them.

Michael clambered up the steps, trying to stay ahead of Judith’s boots. As he stumbled through the savannah, Michael had the nerve to insinuate that John had been in the conference room late last night, like he was the one who had turned off the air. Taeya was almost tempted to slap him herself.

He was working on yet another lame excuse when he saw Devin crank open the hatch door. Michael blubbered about how sorry he was, that he didn’t know what had gotten into him.

“I think I got too high,” he told Devin. “That pot just made me crazy.”

Devin shoved Michael into the hatch.

“Don’t do this,” Michael pleaded. “Give me another chance.”

“You’ve had too many chances already,” Rick snarled. “I’d say you’re damn lucky we’re giving you a head start.”

“You’ve got ten seconds,” Devin said. Then he pushed on the heavy metal door.

When Michael tried to keep the door from closing, Judith stomped on his fingers with her boot.

“Please!” Michael screamed, blood and spit spewing from his battered mouth.

The door clanged shut. Taeya heard Michael inside the hatch, wailing. “It was an accident!”

Devin cranked the hatch wheel tight. “The clock’s ticking, bro.”

Judith was already on her way upstairs to turn the lasers back on.

“Now this is the kind of wager I wouldn’t miss for the world,” Rick said, racing to the windows in the game room.

From the doorway, Taeya and Mai watched Michael explode out of the hatch and scramble for the perimeter before the lasers cut him down.

Mai muttered a faint “Yeah,” and pumped her fist.

* * *

Taeya escaped to the café table at the end of the catwalk. The rest of the crew was high-fiving and backslapping as they made their way to the kitchen for breakfast. Propping her elbows on the wrought-iron table, she buried her face in her hands. The air felt heavy with moisture from all the waterings Judith had given the garden. As Taeya inhaled the mugginess she felt nauseous.

She’d stood by as Devin shoved Michael into the hatch, and didn’t say a word when Judith smashed his fingers with her boot. When that door clanged shut, Taeya’s heart cheered.

It wasn’t until Michael reached the perimeter safely that she noticed she’d been holding her breath. Hoping, like the others, that she’d get to witness his death? The realization of such hatred made her physically ill.

She felt the tremor of footsteps on the catwalk and glanced up to see Rick with two mugs of coffee. He placed one in front of her before sitting.

“Rough morning,” he said.

“If we hadn’t come here,” she said, “none of this would have happened.”

“What?” Rick sputtered.

“We showed up, and everything fell apart.”

“Oh, for chrissake!” He banged down his cup. “What are you thinking? If only you’d gotten to that parking garage five minutes earlier, you’d have come out here without me or Judith or Devin?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“So, did you mean, if you hadn’t personally come here, everything would have been hunky-dory? Kat providing blowjobs, Mai putting up with Michael’s shit, John working his ass off keeping this place running?”

A month ago, Taeya would have spewed her frustration right back at Rick. But she understood him better now. Reaching out, she laid her hand on top of his.

“I just think we could have handled his ‘dismissal’ a little more …diplomatically. Didn’t that whole scene smack of mob rule?” When he looked away, she gently massaged his hand. “Isn’t that who we’ve been criticizing? The looters and burners and robbers?” Her voice cracked. “This morning we became those people.”

With his foot, Rick scooted Taeya’s chair away from the table, then pulled her into his lap. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he held her close. She laid her head on his shoulder, and for the first time, she noticed Devin and Judith.

Devin shuffled toward the table, his shoulders slumped. “Mind if we take our share of criticism?”

Judith made a couple feeble attempts to justify why they’d gotten carried away. And Taeya agreed that their military background didn’t emphasize diplomacy. It was strictly a kill or be killed mentality.

Given Michael’s erratic behavior, their only choice was to remove him. Taeya didn’t dispute that. It was the way they’d become a lynching party.

“Haven’t we seen enough of that?” Taeya asked.

“Yes, we have.” Mai’s bamboo sandals slapped on the metal grate. “And I guess I could spend the morning in self-flagellation for not trying to stop it, either.” Her voice rose to a shout. “But I’m starving! So can we get to work?”