I followed the beam to a hole in the back wall large enough for a man to crawl through, a pile of brick bits scattered on the floor below. TJ approached it and I said, “Hey, let me get Owen. This operation needs a gun—”
“You’re gonna want to see this. Check it.”
I very slowly edged closer, trying to see into the jagged hole. “Is there another room back there or—”
“Look.”
A tunnel. Leaking, muddy and twitching with insect life. It was lined with red brick and arched at the top, extending to infinity. It was maybe five feet wide and high, but much of the space was filled with ancient, rusting iron pipes that ran along the walls.
He said, “Old steam tunnel. To service another building.”
“What other building?”
“Don’t know. Maybe one that’s not even there anymore. Crawl in there and find out.”
“No, thanks. We know it ends past the perimeter, though. And outside where anybody patrols. Man or robot.”
“Because your dog got in through here.”
“Yep.”
For the benefit of the woman waiting tensely in the hall, TJ said, “ALL CLEAR IN HERE, GIRL! WE’RE COMIN’ OUT!”
I headed for the door and said, “Am I allowed to call a quarantine-wide meeting, or is Owen the only one who gets to do that?”
“Well now wait, why does this need a meeting?”
I stopped to face TJ just short of the door to the hallway. I lowered my voice and said, “To … see who all wants to try to escape from this freaking prison?”
“You want everybody to know about this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Even the reds?”
“I don’t think the color teams means anything outside these fences, TJ.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about taking a hundred and fifty or so high-risk patients out of quarantine.”
“Now, come on. The ‘red equals high risk’ thing, that’s just talking about the new people, right? Everybody out there has been spider-checked.”
“Owen hasn’t. A lot of people haven’t. They had you check all the new arrivals but a lot of people got grandfathered in because when we suggested a check of everybody, Owen started waving his gun around.”
“But if they haven’t, you know, monstered out by now then we know they’re not—”
“You sure about that? We got no idea when Carlos got infected. The girl you almost missed, she was walkin’ around like you and me, parasite and all, for a week or so. Isn’t that what she said? How many more like her could we have in here? Think about that, now. You lead somebody outside these gates, you’re responsible for whatever they may do once they’re out.”
“But if I leave uninfected people behind and they get incinerated if the air force nukes this place, then I’m also responsible.”
“That’s right.”
“Goddamnit, TJ.”
“Listen. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say they intend to turn this whole facility into a crater. What that means is, somebody’s got to get them to change their mind about that. Whoever gets out of here, the first thing they got to do is get the word out to the chain of command that there’s innocent people in quarantine, uninfected. So that group that gets out, it’s got to act as a representative of what’s inside. Got to put a good face on the quarantine. So it’s got to be people we know are clean. They’re gonna be our ambassadors to the outside world, right?”
“But we don’t know how much time we have—”
“I’m not done. If, on the other hand, we help infected leak out into the town and they start wreaking havoc, and multiplyin’, then the same dudes looking at a map with a little red circle around this hospital are gonna draw a bigger red circle around this whole town. Right? And you think your girl is out there. And John, and whoever else in this town you care about.”
“That place that makes those Cuban sandwiches.”
“Yeah, Cuba Libre. You had their coffee, man? No way we can let ’em bomb that place.”
“You see the waitresses?”
“Mmmm-hmm. Whoever does the hiring there, he definitely an ass man.”
“All right, all right. So who gets to go?”
“Well, see, Spider-Man, now there’s a tough-ass decision we got to make.”
* * *
Seven people were waiting for TJ and me out in the hall outside the boiler room. In addition to Hope, Wheelchair was there, along with Corey (the curly haired kid who’d come in on the truck earlier), an old guy whose name I didn’t know, Lenny (a short balding white guy who looked like Vizzini from The Princess Bride) and the two women who heard the commotion and wandered in from the break room.
We told everyone about the tunnel, and the two bodies. Old Guy said casually to TJ, “Which wall is it on, nigger?”
Without blinking TJ said, “North.”
Old Guy nodded thoughtfully and said, “That’s what I thought. Same boiler used to service the other buildings, before they tore down the old hospital and built this one up on top of it. Probably, oh, fifty or sixty years ago. Now back in those days, if a black so much as brushed past a white woman on a sidewalk, they’d have had him hung by torchlight come nightfall, but of course a lot has changed since then. Me and my friends, we had a bluegrass band back in the 1960s—”
“I think Racist Ed is right,” said TJ. “How far to the other end, Ed?”
“Oh … you’re talking about half a mile of tunnel there, Porch Monkey. Long way to crawl. I couldn’t make it, on these knees. You know the workers back then would have a cart they’d lay on, and there was a pulley system and you’d just lay on your back and then down at the end you’d have a big strong nigger turning a crank—”
“Well there’s no pulley system in there now, so we got to make some knee pads, or else all our knees will be hamburger by the time we get out the other end. But if Racist Ed is right, there may be seven- or eight hundred meters of tunnel there; that’s a long stretch to crawl over brick and mud. If you’re in pretty good shape I bet you could make it in twenty minutes, if you’re not, and you got to constantly stop and rest your knees, you could be an hour gettin’ through there. So first question is, who’s up for it? Show of hands.”
Everyone but Racist Ed.
“That’s eight of us, and that’s a pretty big group already. If I could pick the optimal number to take on this mission I’d stop right here—”
“I’m not leavin’ without Terry,” said the bald guy. “If it comes to that I’ll stay behind.”
“I wasn’t finished! What I was sayin’ was I don’t expect any of you to leave loved ones behind, but that’s all you can take.”
Wheelchair said, “We gotta tell Dennis and LeRon.”
Hope said, “Katie and Danni…”
TJ said, “Okay now see we’re getting up to more than a dozen people now, take some time to think about it but you get very much beyond that and it goes from a group sneaking through to get the word out to an all-out prison break that’s going to provoke a full armed response. No way we can go with more than fifteen people—”
“What about the sick people? And the doc?” said Hope.
TJ sighed and rubbed his head. “What about ’em?”
“Katie’s one of the nurses. She said some of the sick are so bad off that they’re not going to last long if they don’t get to a real hospital. The diarrhea is so bad they’re getting dehydrated.”
“Babe, how are they gonna crawl through a half mile of tunnel if they’re that sick? What if they get halfway through and can’t go no farther? We got no way of getting them out and they’re clogging up the tunnel for everybody else. It’s narrow, real narrow. There’s pipes all around. You’ll see.”
“And what about the doc? He’ll have to know.”
“Why does he have to know?”
“Well for one he’s going to notice Katie gone when she doesn’t show up to the second floor to help, and if we don’t tell him where she went, he’s going to waste time looking for her. Two, we’re going to need to take some stuff with us. Bandages, basic first aid. Doc has all that up there. And we’re out of the … mouthwash. We used the last of it today. We need to take some with us and that means we need the doc to make it.”
I said, “Actually she makes a good point with people being noticed gone. Everything is going to fly into turmoil when Owen and the rest notices a bunch of us missing. People will think we got eaten or something. That could turn ugly if it becomes a witch hunt.”
TJ said, “Yeah, we’ll leave a note.”
“Saying what?”
“I’ll think of something. Fuck, man. Look. We come back and we meet out in the hall in one hour. Hope, go get Katie and tell her that if they have sick people up there who can’t last a single more day but are still somehow capable of crawling for a half mile through the freezing mud, then we’ll take them. Dave, go see the doc and get him to make up a jug of mouthwash. But you got to have him put it in something that’s not going to leak when it’s banging around in the tunnel.”
I said, “Okay do you know where the doctor is right now? Or if not, what he looks like so I’ll know when I find him?”
TJ stared at me. “The doc? Marconi?”
“Wait … he’s here?”
“Where else would he—Ah, you’re pulling that unfrozen caveman shit. Yes, he’s here. And he don’t sleep. Didn’t you go talk to him after you got back from the hole? Like I told you?”
“No…”
“You need to go now, man. He’s been asking about you.”
* * *
“The situation is much worse than I had thought,” said Dr. Marconi.