Be careful, George cautioned. Push her too far and she’ll freak out. We need her to stay calm, stay cooperative, and keep talking.
“I thought she’d already told us everything,” I muttered, as Kelly started running to catch up. Alaric cast a glance in my direction, but didn’t say anything.
You’re not that dumb.
There was nothing I could say to that. I kept walking, assessing the buildings surrounding us as I moved. I wasn’t exactly expecting a big sign that said ILLEGAL VIROLOGY LAB HERE, but it would have been nice. The buildings in the IT complex seemed to be essentially identical, all square, boxy, and in reasonably good repair, as long as you weren’t judging by the paint jobs. The building closest to us even had its original set of cell tower repeaters bolted to the roof, their narrow antennae making a familiar lightning-jag outline against the afternoon sky.
I stopped in my tracks. Looking bemused, Alaric did the same. “What year did we go to block-by-block private cell towers? Anybody know?”
“Uh… two thousand twenty,” said Alaric, after a long pause to do the math inside his head. “I remember when they put ours in.”
“Uh-huh. This is a pre-Rising complex. So who installed that?” I jerked a thumb toward the antennae.
Alaric’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Over here, guys.” I waved for the others to join us and started up the cracked pathway leading to the building door. Locked. No real surprise, that; if I were running an illegal biotech lab, I wouldn’t exactly want scavengers or thrill-seekers dropping in on me unannounced. I rapped my knuckles against the metal of the door itself, hearing the echoes they sent ringing dully into the space beyond.
No one answered. That really wasn’t a surprise, either. “Maybe we should shoot the lock out,” suggested Becks.
I gave her a dubious look. “Did you just suggest discharging a firearm into a door that may be attached to a lab? Like, ‘explosive chemicals and weird machinery and God knows what else’ lab?”
Becks shrugged. “At least we’d be dhe s something.”
“We are doing something. We’re getting inside.” I knocked again. After a several-second pause, I cleared my throat, and shouted, “This is Shaun Mason, from After the End Times. We’re here to speak to Dr. Abbey. Is she available? It’s about the reservoir conditions.”
The echoes of my knock were still ringing when the door swung open, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that looked more accidental than anything else. She was wearing an electric orange T-shirt that read DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of my chest.
“Got any ID?” she asked. Her voice was light, even charming, with an accent I couldn’t quite identify. She followed the question with a pleasant smile that didn’t warm her eyes. This was a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if she thought we were giving her reason.
Not the friendliest greeting ever, and yet, not the least friendly, either, said George. Kelly gasped, either in shock or indignation. I wasn’t sure which, and I really didn’t care; it gave me something to respond to that wouldn’t convince the woman with the large gun that I was insane right off the bat. That could come later, when she no longer had a weapon aimed at us.
“Hush,” I said, making sure to slant my eyes toward Kelly, to at least give the impression that I was talking to her. Looking back to the woman in the doorway, I asked, “May I reach into my jacket for my press pass? I promise to do it slowly.”
“Fine by me,” she said, still smiling. “Joe! Come over here, boy.” The largest dog I’d ever seen came ambling up behind her, its flapping jowls oozing strings of gooey white saliva. Its head looked like it was bigger than my chest. That may have been shock speaking, but there was no way I was going to volunteer to do the measurements. It didn’t help that the damn thing was solid charcoal black, making it look unnervingly like the classic hellhound.
Kelly drew her breath in again. This time, I didn’t blame her. Even Becks gasped, and I heard Maggie mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “Holy shit.”
“Joe, guard,” said the woman with the rifle. The massive canine obediently padded out onto the walkway, standing between her and the rest of us. It wasn’t growling, glaring, or doing anything else actively hostile; it was simply standing there, being enormous. That was more than enough.
Reaching slowly into my jacket, I asked the most sensible question I could come up with under the circumstances: “Lady, what the fuck is that?”
That’s right. Antagonize the woman who accessorizes with Cujo. I was tired of being the only dead one in this relationship.