Angela couldn’t answer him. They remained silent and watched the clouds build over the ruined skyline of their city. Even Angela’s step-father had nothing to say.
Chapter 16
“I am a scientist.” The more he said it, the realer it became. “I am a scientist.”
Louie Finkbiner walked along the underground corridor repeating the words over and over. The florescent lights above flickered, and Louie quickened his pace. They said this place was built to last. They said it could withstand anything. That was the third time this morning the lights had done that.
Louie had wondered the first time if it was just coincidence, that a single bulb or perhaps the ballast he was sitting under simply needed replacing. That had happened in the washroom while he was on the toilet. He could see it happening there; washrooms weren’t considered essential areas. It happened again when he went to the cafeteria for an early lunch. There had been no one working there at the time—kitchen employees had been evacuated to the lower levels four days before—and Louie had to make his own sandwich and heat his own bowl of soup. The lights had flickered there, too, but not just the ones above his head—they had flickered throughout the entire cafeteria.
“It’s not important,” he said to himself. “They dropped a fricking thermonuclear warhead on the city. Of course things aren’t going to run perfectly after that… It’s to be expected.” He was half-jogging by the time he made it to the elevator. He inserted the security card into the slot next to the door and waited for the little green light to grant him access. It did, and the door slid open noiselessly. Louie stepped in and inserted the card into another slot on an inside panel. It made a satisfied buzzing sound and the touch screen menu appeared directly above. There were ten subterranean levels in the Winnipeg Disease Study Center; level 1—the floor immediately below the surface—was inaccessible. It likely no longer existed, blasted into oblivion along with everything above it. Louie was on level 2, where workers took their breaks and ate their lunch. He needed to travel further down, past levels 3, 4, and 5—to the extra-secured floors where all the nasty stuff was stored.
Louie had stolen the security card from Tom Braden when news arrived the bombs were on their way. It wasn’t actually stealing; Tom’s card had dropped to the cafeteria floor during the big rush. Louie had planned on returning it to him once they were all safely tucked away in the emergency living quarters of level 10. But Louie had hung back. He hadn’t gotten into the elevator with Tom and the others. Someone with a security level as high as Tom’s had obviously gone with them because Tom hadn’t returned to search for his card.
That same card now granted Louie total access to the entire facility. All ten levels were lit up in cold blue on the touch screen. He pressed 8, and felt the slight lift in his body as the elevator started its descent. Tom Braden was one of the top DSC research scientists; he could go anywhere above ground and below. Louie Finkbiner was a security software technician, and his access throughout the facility up until three days ago had been extremely limited… until wonderful fate presented him with an opportunity. He had never fully understood why the DSC hadn’t granted him higher access; he was after all, the guy that coded all the security cards and made the doors lock. Why couldn’t they have trusted him with a level 4 security card instead of a level 1? If it wasn’t for guys like me, this place would hardly run at all.
The door slid open and Louie stepped out into level 8. “Fuck you, Tom.” He pocketed the card and headed down the hallway. Louie Finkbiner was a technician no longer. “I’m a scientist. I’m a scientist.” He had on multiple occasions met with Human Resources and expressed an interest in disease research. The HR reps had laughed at Louie, told him he was more suited for software than science. Concentrate your efforts on fixing computer viruses, they’d said, not human ones.
No one was laughing at him now. Louie had deactivated all the security cards except Tom’s. The scientists and their assistants, the kitchen workers, the janitors, the office workers, and the goddamned HR reps were all trapped on level 10, and they weren’t going anywhere without Louie’s say so. He punched the card into a slot with a little more force than necessary next to a door marked COMMUNICABLE LEVEL 5 STORAGE. This was where the really bad stuff was kept. Samples of the nastiest diseases known to man were stored here; Ebola, smallpox, bubonic plague, and a hundred more Louie had never heard of.
Louie made his way past the security stations where workers once checked in and checked out to make sure they had followed proper decontamination protocols, and that nothing entered that didn’t belong, and nothing left. He went past the showers and locker rooms, and through three more security check points using Tom’s card before arriving to the actual storage area. Louie found a storage transport gurney and started opening vacuum-sealed doors. He started removing metal canisters from their rubberized resting trays and placed them into the fitted openings of the gurney. He didn’t bother with a hazmat suit—he didn’t even put on gloves. The sample containers were made of tough stuff, and Louie felt quite confident he wouldn’t be contracting any horrible diseases all that soon. Besides, he didn’t have the time to follow the rules. The facility was shutting down, and he had to complete his experiment before the power cut off altogether.
He exited Communicable Level 5 Storage, picking up a fully-charged Taser from one of the security stops along the way, and pushed his loaded gurney back to the elevator. Louie travelled down to the tenth level and entered out into a spacious reception area. There was no one to greet him, and even if there had been, he was positive the greeting wouldn’t have been friendly. The thirty-eight DSC employees remaining in the facility were trapped beyond the area Louie was in, locked behind a final vacuum-sealed door leading off to cramped living quarters. They had enough food and water to last half a year, but wouldn’t need even a week’s supply. They would all be dead within the next two or three days—perhaps sooner. It all depended on how quickly Louie’s explosive mixture of a dozen different diseases took to spread.
He pushed the gurney up in front of a wide set of double doors. Louie had the locked the doors from eight levels above when he felt fairly certain that everyone would be stowed safely on the other side. That had been four and a half days ago. Louie hadn’t communicated with any of them since. His walkie-talkie had squawked a few times after the first few hours, but eventually went silent. That would’ve been his boss, Richard Sheffield—in charge of all security—trying desperately to raise one of his staff. Richard never should’ve left his office, Louie thought. He never should’ve sealed himself away with all those other poor suckers and left the control room unattended.
Louie had taken Tom Braden’s card and headed straight for the main security control center. There he had disabled all the keys and sealed off the emergency living quarters. Richard, of course, would’ve tried exiting with his key, but he would’ve been as helpless as all the others. Louie snickered. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Richard; he was a good boss, but picturing the so-called security chief trying to explain to everyone that his key wouldn’t work must have been hilarious.
“Not funny, Louie,” he scolded himself. “Those people have been cooped up long enough. They’re probably worried sick not knowing what happened to all their loved ones.” He chuckled again. “Worried sick… they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”