A second panel slid open next to the first. “Please place your equipment inside,” said the house. “Anything that is not contaminated will be returned to you. All fabrics will be isolated and sterilized. Any materials that test positive for contamination will be destroyed. You have five minutes remaining in which to comply.”
“Let’s stop arguing with the creepy house and just do what it says, okay?” I slung my bag into the equipment chute before hauling my shirt off over my head and stuffing it into the clothing chute. “I don’t really feel like getting sterilized today.”
“The things I do for journalism,” muttered Mahir, and took off his shirt.
In under a minute, the three of us were standing there barefoot in our underwear, trying to look at anything but each other. Since we were crammed in like sardines, that wa’t easy. The panel in the air lock door didn’t close until the last of our clothing had been shoved through. “Please place your hands on the test panels,” said the house, voice still mechanically calm. “Your testing will commence as soon as everyone is in compliance.”
“I fucking hate talking machines,” I muttered, and slapped my palm down on the nearest panel.
Getting Mahir and Becks access to their respective panels practically required us to play a game of standing Twister in the hall. I’d never noticed how narrow the damn thing was until I was penned in it. Finally, all three of us were in skin contact with the house security system. Three sets of lights clicked on, beginning to cycle rapidly between red and green.
“We haven’t encountered any contagions between here and the gate,” said Mahir. He sounded uncertain. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t feeling all that certain myself.
“What if that’s the problem?” asked Becks, giving voice to the one thought I was trying desperately not to have. “Maybe that’s why there was no one on the roads—why those men were all wearing masks. Maybe the virus has finally gone airborne.”
“It’s already airborne,” I said. That was true—Kellis-Amberlee is an airborne virus with a droplet-based transmission vector—but it wasn’t the point. Becks wasn’t talking about the passive, cooperative version of Kellis-Amberlee, the one that protects us all from colds and cancer. She was talking about the live version, the one that turns us into shambling zombies who’d eat our own families in order to fuel the virus powering our bodies.
“I suppose we’ll know in a moment, won’t we?” said Mahir. As if on cue, the lights started settling on green. Becks was the first, followed by Mahir’s. Mine kept flashing for a few seconds more, just long enough to start making my chest get tight. Then the light settled on green, and the air lock hissed as it unsealed.
“Thank you for your compliance,” said the house.
I directed my middle fingers at the ceiling.
Mahir and Becks pushed past me while I was distracted by telling the house to go fuck itself, stepping out of the air lock and into the living room where Maggie and Alaric were waiting. Becks ran to hug Alaric, while Mahir stepped off to one side, crossing his arms over his chest and looking self-conscious. I stepped out of the air lock, looking cautiously around.
Inside the house, it was obvious that the shades weren’t just drawn; they were locked down, reinforced with sheets of clear plastic. The floor was practically covered with diminutive bulldogs, the entire pack forced inside by whatever emergency was at hand.
Maggie walked calmly over to me, slapped me hard across one cheek, and then, while I was still staring at her in confusion, throwing her arms around my shoulders. “We thought you were dead,” she hissed, through gritted teeth. “You didn’t call, and you didn’t call, and we thought you were dead. You asshole. Next time, find a way to send a fucking message.”
“How about there’s not a next time? Can we do that, instead?” Maggie wa clothed. I essentially wasn’t, which was making this hug even more awkward than it would normally have been. I extricated myself from her embrace, looking around the room again. “I know we said to close the windows, but I didn’t mean you had to go quite this far.”
“Wait—what?” Alaric pulled away from Becks, looking utterly bemused. “What do you mean? After you told us to close the windows—don’t you know what’s going on out there?”
Maggie studied my face for a moment, horror dawning in her expression. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You really don’t know. You have no idea, do you?”
“No idea about what?” I shook my head. “We haven’t seen anyone since Kansas, but we thought it was just the storm keeping people inside—”
“It’s not just the storm.” Alaric walked across the room with sharp, jerky motions and grabbed the television remote, turning the TV on. He hit another button and the infomercial that had been playing disappeared, replaced by CNN.