Zetter took a moment with that. “Fair enough,” he said. “We don’t see things from exactly the same perspective, but I take your point.”
“Which leaves us where, General?”
“In the middle of a grave national crisis. Everything else aside, all bullshit aside, Officer Fox, the infection is still out there. Contained for the moment but still out there, still a major threat. You know that this is a bioweapon, one designed by Cold War scientists and then redesigned by Dr. Volker. If we stand any chance of eradicating it, then we need to have his research notes.”
“Why the fuck are you bothering us about this? Go ask Volker for them.”
“If that was a possibility, Officer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that right now we can’t locate Dr. Volker.”
Dez felt the floor tilt under her. She staggered into one of the classrooms, checked that it was empty, leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor.
“Officer Fox—?”
“Didn’t he … didn’t he leave any records?”
“None that we have so far been able to find,” said Zetter.
“How the hell are you idiots allowed to run a country? I should have voted for a clown college. They’d at least have a reason for being this stupid.”
“I don’t want to debate politics, Officer Fox. We need what’s on Mr. Trout’s flash drives.”
A thousand thoughts raced through Dez’s head. None of them were good. Most were way across the line into paranoia, but she felt justified in thinking every one of them.
“Tell you what, General,” she said, “how about you do this? How about you airlift us the hell out of here? Take us to Pittsburgh or Philly or somewhere other than where people are eating each other. How about you do that and then we can talk about the flash drives.”
“You know we can’t risk that. You have to understand that.”
“Sure. Have a nice day, General. Thanks for calling.”
“Wait!”
“What?” she barked.
“We can’t take you out. You have to understand that. We don’t know enough about this disease to guarantee that it’s safe to bring you out. Until we look at Dr. Volker’s research notes we don’t know all the ways in which this thing can be communicated. We have concerns that anyone coming into close contact with the skin or blood of one of the infected might be at risk. We don’t know if someone can carry the infection without developing obvious symptoms. There are a lot of things we don’t know and until we do, we need to keep you in isolation. Surely you can appreciate the severity of this, surely you can understand the necessity of—”
“Okay, okay, yeah, I get it. Fuck.”
“So letting us have the flash drives is the quickest and surest way to help us understand this enough so that we can get you out of there.”
“I get the logic, General, but pardon me if I don’t trust your motives worth a wet shit.”
The general sighed. “Is there something else I can do for you that would encourage you to do the right thing here?”
“Fuck you.”
“Officer Fox, I—”
“No, General, fuck you. In fact, fuck you and that asshole in the White House, and fuck everyone else who had a hand in this. Fuck a
ll of you. All of you. Am I making myself clear? Is any of that getting through? You deserve to burn in hell.”
General Zetter’s response caught her totally off guard. He said, “I know.”
A sob broke in Dez’s chest. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, wincing at the effort not to see anything, even her own thoughts.