Inside, Stadler’s apprentice, Lewis Malstrom, pounded his hands on the glass futilely. He stood there with Anna, Terrence, and Gilberto — all fellow Bio3 staffers. Mouths agape. Lewis plucked at the glass and slid down, hugging the buffer wall in despair. Lewis laid there for some time — a fitful banging on the glass punctuating the silence. Outside the revins wandered around, looking through the tent, rummaging around the cold storage locker, flipping through Stadler’s few things. The scalped and bloody revin sat on a rock, quiet, looking at Lewis. Soon, the sun began to set and the revins picked up and scattered into the night, leaving the locker behind. It had become unlatched during the chaos, and Lewis stared at it. Gilberto came back to Lewis and comforted him. Lewis raised his fist to him and yelled:
“GET AWAY FROM ME!”
“Lewis, we need to talk. We need to figure this out.”
“What’s there to talk about? Stadler had the primary! He’s dead. He’s fucking ripped apart! “
“I know man. I know. We need to talk about options.”
“Ha. Options. What are we gonna do? We might as well open the locks and just get it over with.”
Anna and Terrence backed up slightly as the argument erupted. Beside Anna and Terrence was a small girl — about 10 years old. Anna’s daughter, Becca. The girl moved with an awkward gait, stepping from one side of her mom’s waist to the other and looking up at her curiously. Her right shoe had a thicker layer of sole than the other. Anna nervously pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail with a hairband from her wrist. The girl watched her mom’s nervous fidgeting before tugging at Anna’s shirt. Terrence, a native Pima with soft expression alit from an imposing frame, held the girl’s hand and comforted Anna as they watched Lewis and Gilberto argue. Terrence chimed in, a calm in his tenor:
“You’re wrong Lewis. We have the secondaries. He might not have been out there long enough, but we have a chance. We just need to get that locker and…”
“ARE YOU A DOCTOR? Huh, Terrence? Can you operate the assay? NO. I suppose you can’t. Huh. Well shit, I suppose we just go mosey out there in the open, breathe in the virus, and get the locker, huh? And then we’ll have the sample. To do what with? Nothing. BECAUSE NONE OF US CAN TEST IT! We have no way of knowing if that vaccine works now. That sample out there is worthless now.”
“Berto could test it, Lewis.”
It was true. Gilberto had some experience with the immunoassay tests. He could try. He had tested for some metastatic antigens in animal illnesses. He could try. Lewis pounded the glass and the lights went out. Anna shuddered next to Terrence.
“What happened?”
“There’s a generator disruption. We need to get to the SOC. Now.”
The group of Bio3 friends shuffled through the dark halls of the final sanctuary, their footsteps lit by dim LED security lights near the floor. They began to run. They sprinted past the atrium and into the cafeteria. A sign ahead said “<SOC GYM>” and they ran left. Lewis came to the Security Operations Center door first and began nervously tapping a password into a keypad on the wall. The keypad lit up green and the door popped open.
Lewis plopped down in front of a monitor bank as the others shuffled in and Gilberto slammed the large steel door shut. The emergency lights came on in the SOC room as the monitors powered up. Lewis wondered aloud:
“Okay, okay. What do we got going on?”
The static of the monitors faded and the cameras focused on the perimeters of Bio3. Nighttime had fallen and the pictures were dark. Gilberto squinted at the monitors:
“Zoom in on the generator yard.”
Lewis nodded and pointed at the screen.
“There. The emergency lights are on in the yard. Gate is locked. I don’t get it. I can see the generator fan blowing. It’s on.”
‘Then it’s a wiring thing. Scan around some more.”
Lewis switched between cameras and scrolled around the perimeter and the inside cameras. He talked aloud, to no one in particular:
“I still don’t see…wait. Shit. “
Lewis looked down at the desktop monitor and a flashing signal coming from the cliffs.
“It’s Stadler.”
“What? He’s dead. What are you talking about Lewis?”
“It’s his remote.”
Lewis scanned up to the cliffs and turned the infrared on the camera. A bloom of revin warmth blurred the screen. Hundreds of them. One of them was holding the blinking signal.
“They have it.”
Stadler’s remote interface was his connection to Bio3. He could monitor the lifelines, message his colleagues, and control almost all operational systems across the facility.
“One of those fucking things has his remote and is messing with the systems. We gotta shut down the remote interface.”
A rectangular light flashed on the monitor in front of Lewis. Gilberto chimed in:
“That’s the shipping area. What signal is that? Is that the main corridor?”
“I don’t fucking know goddamit.”
“Click on it! It is. Oh god. There’s an O2 light. We’re breached. We gotta seal off. The air, Lewis. We can’t…”
“I know. Go back to the gym with everyone and seal off.”
Lewis and Gilberto looked at each other above the flashing monitor.
“What do you mean? Let’s all go, yeah?”
“No. I gotta get Stadler’s locker. It’s open, man. We need to get it and test it now or else its ruined, and then we’re lost. No way we’re gonna send anyone else out there.”
Lewis got up to run out. Anna and Terrence stood back, confused. Gilberto grabbed him and chided:
“You can’t go out without an O2 mask. Let’s find one.”
“Stadler had the last one. In his tent. I’ll get it. Let me go. I gotta go.”
Gilberto watched him run out — his eyes glossing over in a helpless despair.
Lewis ran through the dark hallways of Bio3 and smelled creosote for the first time in years. Like rain on desert soil. He followed the scent around flashing alarm lights and turned a corner and saw the starlit sky of Sonora in front of the east visitor bay. He barreled towards the emergency exit and burst into the night sky. The air filled his lungs and he took a deep breath and surrendered his lungs to the blight. Ahead and to the right he saw an emergency light spotlighting the visitor parking. An old Jetta with UofA vanity plates laid listless in the lot, cobwebs and rot infesting its paneling. Lewis darted past the lot and around the corner, beneath a ridge, and saw Stadler’s viscera.
Lewis took a step then turned to face the revin horde descending the ridgeline from above. The half-scalped mutilator walked slowly behind the rest, eyeing Lewis as he looked in horror at the inhuman mass moving towards him. To the right, Stadler’s body and the locker.