"No. Just admiring your butch look." I tried to be light, but the truth was that I felt incredibly uncomfortable in the kitchen with all of them around me. I kept thinking of Charley, and how swiftly they had attacked him. I wasn't hungry; I just wanted to get out of there. But I couldn't see how to do it without arousing suspicion.
Julia went to the refrigerator, opened the door. The champagne was in there. "You guys ready to celebrate now?"
"Sure," Bobby said. "Sounds great, a little mimosa in the morning ..."
"Absolutely not," I said. "Julia, I'm going to insist you take this situation seriously. We're not out of the woods yet. We have to get the Army in here, and we haven't been able to call. It's not time to break out the champagne."
She pouted. "Oh, you're such a spoilsport ..."
"Spoilsport hell. You're being ridiculous."
"Oooh, baby, don't get mad, just kiss me, kiss me." She puckered her lips again, and leaned across the table.
But it seemed like getting angry was the only move I had. "God damn it, Julia," I said, raising my voice, "the only reason we are in this mess is because you didn't take it seriously in the first place. You had a runaway swarm out there in the desert for what-two weeks? And instead of eradicating it, you played with it. You fooled around until it got out of control, and as a result three people are dead. This is not a goddamn celebration, Julia. It's a disaster. And I am not drinking any fucking champagne while I am here and neither is anyone else." I took the bottle to the sink and smashed it. I turned back to her. "Got it?"
Stony-faced, she said, "That was completely unnecessary."
I saw Ricky looking at me thoughtfully. As if he was trying to decide something. Bobby turned his back while he cooked, as if he was embarrassed by a marital spat. Had they gotten to Bobby? I thought I saw a thin black line at his neck, but I couldn't be sure, and I didn't dare stare.
"Unnecessary?" I said, full of outrage. "Those people were my friends. And they were your friends, Ricky. And yours, Bobby. And I don't want to hear this celebration shit anymore!" I turned and stomped out of the room. As I left, Vince was coming in. "Better take it easy, pal," Vince said. "You'll give yourself a stroke."
"Fuck off," I said.
Vince raised his eyebrows. I brushed past him.
"You're not fooling anybody, Jack!" Julia called after me. "I know what you're really up to!"
My stomach flipped. But I kept walking.
"I can see right through you, Jack. I know you're going back to her."
"Damn right!" I said.
Was that what Julia really thought? I didn't believe it for a moment. She was just trying to mislead me, to keep me off guard until ... what? What were they going to do? There were four of them. And only two of us-at least, there were two if they hadn't already gotten to Mae.
Mae wasn't in the biology laboratory. I looked around and saw that a side door was ajar, leading downstairs to the underground level where the fermentation chambers were installed. Up close, they were much larger than I had realized, giant stainless spheres about six feet across. They were surrounded by a maze of pipes and valves and temperature control units. It was warm here, and very noisy.
Mae was standing by the third unit, making notes on a clipboard and shutting a valve. She had a rack of test tubes at her feet. I went down and stood beside her. She looked at me, then shot a glance toward the ceiling, where a security camera was mounted. She walked around to the other side of the tank, and I followed her. Over here, the tank blocked the camera. She said, "They slept with the lights on."
I nodded. I knew what it meant, now.
"They're all infected," she said.
"Yes."
"And it's not killing them."
"Yes," I said, "but I don't understand why."
"It must have evolved," she said, "to tolerate them."
"That fast?"
"Evolution can happen fast," she said. "You know the Ewald studies." I did. Paul Ewald had studied cholera. What he found was that the cholera organism would quickly change to sustain an epidemic. In places where there were no sanitary water supplies but perhaps a ditch running through a village, the cholera was virulent, prostrating the victim and killing him where he fell from massive overwhelming diarrhea. The diarrhea contained millions of cholera organisms; it would run into the water supply and infect others in the village. In this way the cholera reproduced, and the epidemic continued.
But when there was sanitary water supply, the virulent strain could not reproduce. The victim would die where he fell but his diarrhea would not enter the water supply. Others would not be infected, and the epidemic would fade. Under those circumstances, the epidemic evolved to a milder form, enabling the victim to walk around and spread the milder organisms by contact, dirty linens, and so on.
Mae was suggesting that the same thing had happened to the swarms. They had evolved to a milder form, which could be transmitted from one person to another. "It's creepy," I said.
She nodded. "But what can we do about it?"
And then she began to cry silently, tears running down her cheeks. Mae was always so strong. Seeing her upset unnerved me now. She was shaking her head. "Jack, there's nothing we can do. There's four of them. They're stronger than we are. They're going to kill us the way they killed Charley."
She pressed her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. But I couldn't comfort her. Because I knew she was right.
There was no way out.