Suddenly he heard himself say, “That would be difficult to do because I don’t like rice.”
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t the correct answer, but already he’d forgotten the question. Nothing mattered except the black insect on her neck. Why couldn’t she feel it digging under her skin?
“Dr. Shaw.” A voice called from the doorway.
Tate’s entire body jerked before he saw the man. His head was shaved and gleamed almost as bright as his long white coat. Tate had to look away. The brightness hurt his eyes. Just as they were starting to focus, the light sent stars and sparks like electrical surges, and he knew he couldn’t trust them.
“I’m in the middle of a test,” Dr. Shaw told the man.
“It’s gotten worse.”
“Can you please wait a few minutes, Richard? I’ve just started.”
“For God’s sake, you didn’t give him the serum, did you? It takes seventy-two hours to leave the system. And we need to leave now.”
“Calm down, please.”
Tate couldn’t decide if she was talking to him or to the man, because she was staring directly at him.
“They’re talking about landslides. We really must evacuate.”
“I’ve lived through hurricanes, Richard. This is just rain.”
But now she left Tate and joined the man at the door. They didn’t bother to keep their voices down. In fact, they seemed to forget about Tate. They didn’t even notice that he was panting now and wiping erratically at his eyes, sweat pouring down his face.
“The water is almost over the bridge.” Richard sounded panicked. He was loud and gesturing. “If we don’t leave now, we risk being stranded here.”
Dr. Shaw was turned away from Tate and he could no longer see the insect on her neck. He began checking his own hands and arms.
“We can’t just leave behind all of our research material. We’re safe here,” Dr. Shaw was telling Richard. “This place is built like a fortress.”
Tate tried to see if there were any bugs on the man. His eyes were finally settling down when he saw a flash of green-and-black fur behind the doctors. It looked like a small monkey running up the hallway.
“Well, I’m leaving. With or without you.”
“That would be a mistake. Let’s talk about this.” She glanced over her shoulder, and when she called out to Tate, it sounded like a bellow echoing across the small room. “I’ll be right back, Daniel. Stay right here.”
She joined the man in the hallway and tried to close the door. When it didn’t seem to fit the frame, she opened it wide.
“See, that’s not a good sign,” Richard told her. “Doors and windows tend to stick right before. It’s bad, I’m telling you. We must leave.”
This time she pulled the door with such force it slammed.
Tate sat listening to the thump-thump of his heart. It was beating inside his head, and he put his hands over his chest to make sure his heart hadn’t moved. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the doctors had left. It could have been minutes. It could have been an hour. Then a loud crack jolted him off the table.
It sounded like an artillery shell. Was that possible?
He crawled under the examination table, his body scrambling in twitches and jerks. He listened for more artillery shells. The room started to sway and tilt. Was it the drug? Had it screwed with his equilibrium? His ears popped, and instead of the thumping of his heart, he now heard only a rumble.
He felt it, too. A vibration rattled the doctor’s instruments, shaking them off the tray. The floor tiles lifted and rolled beneath him, and Tate grabbed on to the examination table.
That’s when he saw the whitewashed walls crack and buckle. They were actually caving in, as if a bulldozer was on the other side shoving them in. Tate felt something coming down from the ceiling. He ducked his head back under the table. He watched, not sure whether to believe his eyes. It was raining dirt and gravel. He could smell the wet earth.
The rumble grew to a roar. Forget the bulldozer, a freight train was headed down on top of him. He covered his head with his arms and curled into a tight ball.
More crashes. Metal shrieked. Light fixtures exploded.
In the darkness Daniel Tate couldn’t see. The floor became a roller coaster. He clawed to hold on to the steel table as the world shattered and roared and collapsed on top of him.
2.
Florida Panhandle
Ryder Creed had been up for two hours by the time his hired man climbed out of the double-wide trailer. Truth was, Creed didn’t sleep much. He’d awakened in the dark and found himself down in the kennel curled up in the middle of his dogs, his head on the belly of his oldest, Rufus.