“And how long until the wind dies? Sunset?”
“Probably, yeah. Another three hours.”
I said, “That’ll be plenty of time.”
I noticed that David Brooks was not saying anything. He just trudged toward the building. Rosie followed close behind him.
“But you never know,” Davenport said. “We could all be toast. Any minute now.” He laughed again, in his irritating way.
Ricky said, “Charley, why don’t you shut the fuck up?”
“Why don’t you come out and make me, big boy?” Charley said. “What’s the matter, your veins clogged with chicken shit?”
I said, “Let’s stay focused, Charley.”
“Hey, I’m focused. I’m focused.”
The wind was blowing sand, creating a brownish blur just above the ground. Mae walked beside me. She looked across the desert and said abruptly, “I want to have a look at the rabbit. You all go ahead if you want.”
She headed off to the right, toward the carcass. I went with her. And the others turned in a group and followed us. It seemed everybody wanted to stay together. The wind was still strong. Charley said, “Why do you want to see it, Mae?”
“I want to check something.” She was pulling on gloves as she walked.
The headset crackled. Ricky said, “Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“We’re going to see the rabbit,” Charley said.
“What for?”
“Mae wants to see it.”
“She saw it before. Guys, you’re very exposed out there. I wouldn’t be waltzing around.”
“Nobody’s waltzing around, Ricky.”
By now I could see the rabbit in the distance, partially obscured by the blowing sand. In a few moments, we were all standing over the carcass. The wind had blown the body over on its side. Mae crouched down, turned it on its back, laid open the carcass.
“Jeez,” Rosie said.
I was startled to see that the exposed flesh was no longer smooth and pink. Instead, it was roughened everywhere, and in a few places looked as if it had been scraped. And it was covered by a milky white coating.
“Looks like it was dipped in acid,” Charley said.
“Yes, it does,” Mae said. She sounded grim.
I glanced at my watch. All this had occurred in two hours. “What happened to it?” Mae had taken out her magnifying glass and was bent close to the animal. She looked here and there, moving the glass quickly. Then she said, “It’s been partially eaten.”
“Eaten? By what?”
“Bacteria.”
“Wait a minute,” Charley Davenport said. “You think this is caused by Theta-d? You think the E. coli is eating it?”
“We’ll know soon enough,” she said. She reached into a pouch, and pulled out several glass tubes containing sterile swabs.
“But it’s only been dead a short time.”
“Long enough,” Mae said. “And high temperatures accelerate growth.” She daubed the animal with one swab after another, replacing each in a glass tube. “Then the Theta-d must be multiplying very aggressively.”
“Bacteria will do that if you give them a good nutrient source. You shift into log phase growth where they’re doubling every two or three minutes. I think that’s what’s happening here.”
I said, “But if that’s true, it means the swarm-”
“I don’t know what it means, Jack,” she said quickly. She looked at me and gave a slight shake of the head. The meaning was clear: not now.
But the others weren’t put off. “Mae, Mae, Mae,” Charley Davenport said. “You’re telling us that the swarms killed the rabbit in order to eat it? In order to grow more coli? And make more nanoswarms?”
“I didn’t say that, Charley.” Her voice was calm, almost soothing. “But that’s what you think,” Charley continued. “You think the swarms consume mammalian tissue in order to reproduce-”
“Yes. That’s what I think, Charley.” Mae put her swabs away carefully, and got to her feet. “But I’ve taken cultures, now. We’ll run them in Luria and agerose, and we’ll see what we see.”
“I bet if we come back in another hour, this white stuff will be gone, and we’ll see black forming all over the body. New black nanoparticles. And eventually there’ll be enough for a new swarm.”
She nodded. “Yes. I think so, too.”
“And that’s why the wildlife around here has disappeared?” David Brooks said.
“Yes.” She brushed a strand of hair back with her hand. “This has been going on for a while.” There was a moment of silence. We all stood around the rabbit carcass, our backs to the blowing wind. The carcass was being consumed so quickly, I imagined I could almost see it happening right before my eyes, in real time.
“We better get rid of those fucking swarms,” Charley said.
We all turned, and set off for the shed.
Nobody spoke.
There was nothing to say.
As we walked ahead, some of those small birds that hopped around the desert floor under the cholla cactus suddenly took to the air, chittering and wheeling before us. I said to Mae, “So there’s no wildlife, but the birds are here?”
“Seems to be that way.”
The flock wheeled and came back, then settled to the ground a hundred yards away. “Maybe they’re too small for the swarms to bother with,” Mae said. “Not enough flesh on their bodies.”
“Maybe.” I was thinking there might be another answer. But to be sure, I would have to check the code.
I stepped from the sun into the shade of the corrugated shed, and moved along the line of cars toward the door of the storage unit. The door was plastered with warning symbols-for nuclear radiation, biohazard, microwaves, high explosives, laser radiation. Charley said, “You can see why we keep this shit outside.”
As I came to the door, Vince said, “Jack, you have a call. I’ll patch it.” My cell phone rang. It was probably Julia. I flipped it open. “Hello?”
“Dad.” It was Eric. With that emphatic tone that he got when he was upset.
I sighed. “Yes, Eric.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’m not sure, son.”
“Will you be here for dinner?”
“I’m afraid not. Why? What’s the problem?”
“She is such an asshole.”
“Eric, just tell me what the problem-”
“Aunt Ellen sticks up for her all the time. It’s not fair.”
“I’m kind of busy now, Eric, so just tell me-”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“Just tell me what’s wrong, son.”
“Never mind,” he said, turning sulky, “if you’re not coming home, it doesn’t matter. Where are you, anyway? Are you in the desert?”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“I talked to Mom. Aunt Ellen made us go to the hospital to see her. It’s not fair. I didn’t want to go. She made me anyway.”
“Uh-huh. How is Mom?”
“She’s checking out of the hospital.”
“She’s finished all her tests?”
“The doctors wanted her to stay,” Eric said. “But she wants to get out. She has a cast on her arm, that’s all. She says everything else is fine. Dad? Why do I always have to do what Aunt Ellen says? It’s not fair.”
“Let me talk to Ellen.”
“She isn’t here. She took Nicole to buy a new dress for her play.”
“Who’s with you at the house?”
“Maria.”
“Okay,” I said. “Have you done your homework?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, get busy, son. I want your homework done before dinner.” It was amazing how these lines just popped out of a parent’s mouth.
By now I had reached the storage room door. I stared at all the warning signs. There were several I didn’t know, like a diamond made up of four different colored squares inside, each with a number. Mae unlocked the door and went in.
“Dad?” Eric started to cry. “When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope by tomorrow.”
“Okay. Promise?”
“I promise.”
I could hear him sniffling, and then through the phone a long snarff sound as he wiped his nose on his shirt. I told him he could call me later if he wanted to. He seemed better, and said okay, and then said good-bye.
I hung up, and entered the storage building.
The interior was divided into two large storage rooms, with shelves on all four walls, and freestanding shelves in the middle of the rooms. Concrete walls, concrete floor. There was another door in the second room, and a corrugated rollup door for truck deliveries. Hot sunlight came in through wood-frame windows. The air-conditioning rumbled noisily but, as Mae had said, the rooms were still hot. I closed the door behind me, and looked at the seal. It was just ordinary weather stripping. The shed was definitely not airtight. I walked along the shelves, stacked with bins of spare parts for the fabrication machinery, and the labs. The second room had more mundane items: cleaning supplies, toilet paper, bars of soap, boxes of cereal, and a couple of refrigerators filled with food. I turned to Mae. “Where are the isotopes?”
“Over here.” She led me around a set of shelves, to a steel lid set in the concrete floor. The lid was about three feet in diameter. It looked like a buried garbage can, except for the glowing LED and keypad in the center. Mae dropped to one knee, and punched in a code quickly. The lid lifted with a hiss.
I saw a ladder that led down into a circular steel chamber. The isotopes were stored in metal containers of different sizes. Apparently Mae could tell which they were just by looking, because she said, “We have Selenium-172. Shall we use that?”
“Sure.”