Page 30 of Spread Me
Nkrumah shuts the door behind him before he can finish saying what the storm isn’t. Kinsey doesn’t blink until the keypad beeps twice, promising that the lock has slid home.
The entire time Jacques was on his way out, she waswaiting for a tell—waiting for the creature he is to reveal itself to her. A wink, a glance, a slipped detail. Her attention pools in her own legs, her belly, the back of her neck; she searches for her own arousal like it’s a pin dropped on thick carpet.
She doesn’t find anything but a closed door.
When the three of them are back inside, Mads locks the exterior door behind them. Nkrumah lets out a shaky sigh. Kinsey turns to the two of them and crosses her arms. “Okay. Time to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Nkrumah laughs.
“It is?”
“I think it’s obvious what we’re going to do, Boss,” Nkrumah says, her voice flat with certainty. “We’re going to die.”
Nkrumah carries a laundry basket down the residential hall. She’s barefoot, stepping carefully, moving silently. She walks with her knees bent and her hips low. Her eyes are on the floor.
She almost makes it to the end of the hall when a door clicks open behind her. She winces, closing her eyes.
“Oh, hey, are you doing laundry?” Jacques asks, poking his head out of the bedroom he shares with Saskia.
“I’m doingmylaundry,” Nkrumah replies. “Mine and Domino’s. Our roomonly.”
“Can I throw something in there? Just one second.” He disappears into his room, ignoring Nkrumah’s furious groan.
Mads opens their door at the sound of swearing. “What’s going on?” they ask, their voice sleep-fuzzed. When theyspot the laundry basket in Nkrumah’s arms, their eyes light up. “Someone’s doing laundry?”
“No. I’m throwing everything in this basket out into the desert. Don’t—” She gives up as Mads emerges into the hall, bed linens wadded in their arms.
“Thank you so much,” they say warmly, dropping their bed linens on top of hers and Domino’s. “So nice of you.”
Nkrumah glowers at them. “I hate this game. I did not agree to play this game. It’s not funny and it never has been.”
But it’s too late. Kinsey opens her door and rains underwear down onto the pile of bed linens. Jacques comes back out with a pile of stinking, sweat-soaked shirts. Saskia shoves socks down into the overfull basket.
“Nkrumah, you are just the best,” Domino purrs. “We appreciate you so much.”
Nkrumah kicks the basket down the hall, toward the canteen, where the tiny washing machine will take all day to work through the several loads of laundry that have been compressed into the basket. “You’re all hanging your own sheets up,” she calls over her shoulder. “And next time I catch one of you on your way down the hall, you’re gettingallmy underwear. Just you wait.”
Mads blows her a kiss. “Thanks!”
The three of them sit on the floor. Nkrumah’s back is to the residential hall; Mads’s back is to the canteen hall. Kinsey’s back is to the lab hall.
None of them wants to have their back to the door they just closed on Jacques.
“Let’s try to stay realistic,” Mads says. “I know this is scary, but there’s no reason to think we’re all going to die.”
Nkrumah slouches, flicking the keycard rhythmically with her thumb. “It’s weird to me that you said ‘let’s stay realistic’ and then followed that immediately with something that has absolutely zero grounding in reality. We have every reason to think we’re all going to die, Mads. I don’t know if you noticed, but three of our colleagues are gone, the weather is fucked, and all of us are losing the ability to cope.”
Kinsey swallows. “We might be able to get our people back, though. We might be able to cure them.”
Nkrumah closes her eyes. “Why do I have to be the voice of reason? They’ve been replaced. Replaced means dead. That thing Domino found in the desert,” she adds, her eyes snapping open again to fix on Kinsey, “killed them. Do you understand? They’re dead. And we’re next. Unless we leave, which…”
Kinsey meets Nkrumah’s unforgiving gaze. “Which we can’t. It’s still storming out there, even if the wind has been quiet for the last hour or so. It’s high in the atmosphere right now, but it’ll drop.”
“That’s why the sky is still red,” Mads says with slow-dawning comprehension. “Domino told me about this once. The storm is moving fast enough to lift sand up into the stratosphere.”
“But it can’t stay there for long,” Nkrumah says. “It’s incredible that it’s stayed that high for so long already.”
As if on cue, there’s a soft patter on the ceiling. It dies away fast, like a brief scattering of early rain before a storm, but the three of them freeze. Kinsey doesn’t doubt that they’re all thinking of Jacques.
