EXIT by Jeff Carlson

There were rats in the souffle again. Whole ones, this time. Stevens wasn't being subtle anymore. Fine. These babies were impossible to miss, unlike the little clawed feet sprinkled into last night's dinner.

Last night I'd told Dr. Hallwag that he had twenty-four hours. NORAD refused to give us any more time.

We were down to roughly one hundred and eighty minutes now, with nothing to do but fill our neglected bellies. My squad and I had been gofers, muscle and security for the scientific staff of this subterranean compound; my duties were through; what remained of the equipment had been gone for and muscled into place, and security was only a rude joke.

I poked at a leathery tail jutting up from the middle of my plate (Stevens wasn't being subtle; he was sculpting) and stifled an exhausted giggle. Bad idea to get started. I might not stop.

Beside me at the cafeteria table, Corporal Watters set her fork down with a sudden, precise movement.

Good, I thought, she sees them, too.

"Lieutenant," she said, "Stevens obviously has it or he would have quit this crap. I hoped he was... just making some kind of statement."

"It's your turn."

Watters shook her head. "I took care of Riggs."

"But I did Carrington and Rudowski. I'm one ahead."

She frowned at me, surveyed her plate, then rose and strode toward the kitchen.

"Get me a sandwich while you're in there," I said.

Watters must have been wound tighter than I thought. Her first shot was bad. I heard Stevens scream before she shot him again.

#

The virus - when perfected - had been intended to be a merciful means of conducting war, like spraying enemy lands with an incapacitating form of LSD and then simply walking in. When the fevers and hallucinations wore off, their troops and leaders would find themselves defeated unconditionally. Bloodlessly.

We'd never know which scientist released the proto-forms of the virus, or even for sure if it had been an accident. Did it matter? I had watched the security camera back-tapes as I transmitted them to NORAD, but saw nothing definite. C Block was closed off now, sealed the instant that the sniffers belatedly detected the leak. And I had been too short-handed to send a detail in there merely to search for clues that might not exist.

The situation had been lousy from the start. Most of the people capable of solving the problem, and most of our supplies, were lost in the chaos that ensued before C Block fell forever silent. The staff trapped behind the automatic gates all went violently insane as the proto-viruses made their subconscious fears as real to them as their skin.

Over the past two days, most of my small command had also succumbed. Hazmat suits were no protection. One proto-virus had spread much faster than anyone could have guessed and was now incubating within us all. There was no exit, no salvation, unless Dr. Hallwag pulled off a miracle.

Even then, NORAD might incinerate us with a baby nuke just the same. How could they be certain that we weren't pretending to have conquered the virus, out of desperation?

Three lives meant little, weighed against the possibility of loosing the virus upon the American populace - and the world.

#

Hallwag didn't look up from his microscope when I stepped into his makeshift laboratory, eating a turkey on white. Not much of a last meal, but no mice. I'd checked four times.

He appeared as neat as ever, even wore a red tie under his lab coat like a flower at the base of his neck.

"Doc, you hungry? Take five. Maybe a short rest'll help."

He didn't respond. A centrifuge spun on the counter beside a rack of tissue samples. Some of that flesh was mine. I rubbed at the gauze wrapped around my forearm.

"Doc!" I sprayed crumbs. He leaned back from the microscope and I saw that his face was a pale mask. The neatness of his clothing was inadvertent. "Dinner?" I said, but he shook his head and returned to the microscope.

#

Less than an hour left, the alarms I'd set at the exit went off. Watters and I drew our sidearms and ran.

Hallwag screamed as we stalked toward him. Who knows what he saw, who or what we were in his eyes. "No chance!" he shrieked. "No chance!"

Watters shot him cold.

Hallwag had managed to open three of the locks. One more correct code-keying and the elevator would have powered up, the gates opened. How he'd deciphered my codes I couldn't guess. Maybe he was just that much smarter than me.

Watters and I studied the closed gate for a long time. I almost reached out to the keypad. But the virus would leave with us.

She said, "How about desert, lieutenant? My treat."

We walked back into the compound.