Page 5 of Spread Me
“Coyotes don’t have six legs,” Domino replies. “And three tongues.”
A gust of wind rattles the base, and everyone looks up, as if they’ll be able to see the encroaching sandstorm through the ceiling. There’s no point being vigilant about something as inevitable and unpredictable as a wall of sand hurtling across the desert. But they’re all being vigilant anyway. They can’t help it. They’re just animals in a little box hoping to finish out the day without dying.
Kinsey keeps her eyes on the ceiling to prevent herself from looking through the exam room window again. “We don’t know what the specimen is. But last time I checked, we’re scientists. Figuring this kind of thing out is what we’re here for,” she says. “We’ll document everything. Write a paper. Saskia and Nkrumah can do the conference circuit.”
“Why do they get to do the conference circuit?” Mads grumbles.
Saskia aims a wink at Nkrumah. “Because we’re a good team.”
Jacques heaves into the trash can again.
“Fucking hell, Jacques.” Kinsey tries to make her voice playful, but it doesn’t work. “Can you get it together?”
“Sorry,” he says into the depths of the trash can. “I don’t feel s’good.”
Mads frowns. “You’re not usually still throwing up this late in the day.” They look at him with what Kinsey thinks of as their doctor-face: watchful, assessing, a calculator made flesh. “J, anything else going on with you? Do you have sunstroke?”
“Don’t think so?” Jacques looks up blearily. His lips are white. Crimson circles like vaudeville rouge stain his already-ruddy cheeks. His eyes shine with an unwholesome glassiness.
Kinsey stares at him, yearning flooding her belly. She presses her thighs together hard.Stop it,she tells herself.Stop it stop it stop it.
Mads stands abruptly. “Everybody out of this wing,” they announce. “Now.”
Nkrumah doesn’t budge. “What? Why?”
“Jacques made unprotected contact with the specimen, and now he has a fever,” Mads says.
“You can’t know he has a fever just by looking.”
“I can and I do. That”—Mads says, pointing decisively at Jacques—“is a fever. We have to quarantine until we know if whatever he’s got is contagious. I’ll treat him, but the rest of you have to go.”
“But animal-to-human transmission is—”
“Not that rare, especially these days,” Kinsey interrupts, her voice mortifyingly husky. She hopes they’ll all think she’s sick. “Saskia, I believe your second doctoral thesis…?”
“Yes, that was my focus,” Saskia says, her voice tight with restrained enthusiasm. Kinsey can tell she’s holding herself back, trying not to get too excited about the opportunity to discuss her deep interest in the subject—and she doesn’t entirely succeed at the effort. “Kinsey’s right. Climate change has escalated the ability of viruses and fungal infections to achieve zoonotic spillover and—”
“Right,” Kinsey cuts in. She knows she should let the team hear Saskia out, but she feels like she’s going to climb out of her skin with impatience. “You all know the rules. The doc says the Q word, that’s it. If Domino read Weatherman right—”
“I did.”
“—then it sounds like that storm would keep us inside anyway. We’re under quarantine until further notice. Use the time to, I don’t know, meditate on the nature of lizards. Mads, you want me to run and grab you some gloves from the lab?”
Mads gives her a long look. They both know that Mads should be taking Jacques into the exam room, should be getting gloves and a mask from the drawers in there, should be leaving Jacques inside with a roll of duct tape so he can seal himself in with whatever illness is currently working its way through his system.
But they can’t do any of that, because the specimen is in the exam room, and the specimen is alive.
Saskia sways on her feet. “Actually. Wow. I don’t feel great, either. I feel… weird.”
Mads releases Kinsey from the butterfly pin of their gaze. “‘Weird’ means sick. If you feel weird, go to yourquarters. Isolate as much as you can. The rest of us, the name of the game is ‘abundance of caution,’ yeah? Those of us who aren’t ill will drop food outside your doors every ten hours, but otherwise, we’ll avoid the residential wing as much as possible. We’ll sleep on the couches in the canteen tonight. We can use the lab bathroom.” No one audibly groans at the prospect of using the strange, tiny toilet that sits behind a thin partition in the lab next to the eyewash station, but an aggrieved glance travels quickly around the room. Mads ignores it. “Maybe if we isolate, whatever this is will only hit some of us.”
“Good plan,” Kinsey says, trying not to talk too fast or seem too eager. “I feel a little strange too. I’m going to head to my bunk. Domino, keep an eye on Weatherman as long as you can, yeah? Also, we should probably burn that shirt just to be safe. Toss it in the biohazard bin when you get a chance?”
Domino flips her a good-natured middle finger. “Feel better, Boss.”
She nods to them. “Good luck, team.”
Everyone veers off. Kinsey slips into her room.
