Prep For Doom Read online

  He slammed the textbook and notebook on the desk and looked up to glare at Karen for good measure. She flared her nostrils and returned her focus to the lame research she and Steven so proudly fawned over. Michael swore to his friends that his parents were really virgins, and he was conceived in a petri dish. Some days he believed it himself. He curled over the English book and tapped his pen against the desk.

  Steven yelled, “Michael.”

  He looked up and tossed the pen onto the desk as he pulled the book into his lap and leaned back in the chair. His leg bounced with anticipation as the computer on the desk smugly stood guard over his twitching fingers. Michael glanced at his parents then slid the keyboard tray into position. He placed the textbook over his hands and stared at the pages while his fingers worked the keys below. He shifted his eyes in time to see Karen walking toward the office. A quick Ctrl-Alt-Del locked the computer screen, which thankfully was out of sight of parental observation. He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat as she neared the door but stopped just outside. She studied the dry-erase board mounted on the wall next to the opened office door and popped the lid off a marker. She made a few notes, replaced the lid with a palm slap, and glanced at Michael. She pointed at the book in his lap then spun on her heels, her lab coat swaying behind her like an angelic cape. Saint Karen Phelan—using all her heavenly powers for good to thwart the powers of evil bacteria. The eternal good girl. Michael scowled and unlocked the computer again.

  His first attempt at hacking the security room produced no results. He tilted his head and smirked. They’ve upped their game since our last encounter, he thought as he started round two. The thrill of the chase quickened his heart rate and he had to suppress a celebratory hand clap when the security room monitors blipped onto his screen. He chuckled as he shook his head and sighed with victory. He almost felt sorry for the poor bastards on duty that day. It wasn’t personal—just a cat-and-mouse game with a bored, under-stimulated teenager too smart for sentence structure or solving for x.

  The laboratory telephone rang its shrill request for communication. Michael’s startled knees hit the keyboard tray and launched the textbook onto the floor. He scrambled to pick up the book and lock the computer screen before his mother answered the phone that hung next to the dry erase board outside the office.

  “This is Dr. Phelan.” She paused and braced herself against the doorframe. She gasped, “What? But how?” Michael studied her paling face and strained to hear her muffled words. “Sweet Jesus, okay, let me think. How long ago?” She turned to the clock over the door and swallowed hard. She shook her head. “That’s too much time. That’s…” Her eyes fell to Michael’s as the weight of the call draped across her shoulders. She turned her back to her son and snapped her fingers at Steven. She waved frantically to come to her, tilted her mouth away from the phone and said, “It’s AVHF.”

  “And?” Steven shrugged and twirled his finger.

  “It’s out, Steven.”

  “Out? Out where?” His face screwed in confusion.

  “Here!”

  He took a step back and rubbed his head. “That’s impossible,” he whispered, the bewilderment etching new features in his face. “How long? How long has it been out?”

  Karen nodded to the person speaking on the phone. “Yes, I understand. We’ll get right on it.” She hung up the phone and buried her hands in her hair. “Twelve hours, give or take.”

  “Okay, okay, CDC is probably already working on containment. We’ll… Karen, listen to me, now. We’ve got the vaccine, so we just need to get busy, ‘kay?”

  She looked at him slowly and nodded. “Right. Right…” She stumbled toward her workstation.

  Steven stepped into the office with Michael. “Something pretty serious just went down. Don’t worry, we can handle it, but just…just lay low in here, okay?”

  “What’s AVHF, Dad?”

  Steven winced and shook his head. “I don’t have time to get into it right now, but please just do what I ask. No smart-mouthing, no pen-tapping. Just be as quiet as you can while we do our thing.”

  Michael nodded and watched his father close the door, something he never did. Michael racked his brain trying to remember the details he’d chosen to ignore while his parents participated in cryptic shop talk at the dinner table. When he thought their line of work was interesting, he tried to crack the code. When he decided they were both lab geeks, he tuned them out. AVHF… AVHF… He slipped his hands onto the keyboard and used the closed door to his advantage.

  Hacking into his parents’ lab notes had never been much of a challenge. They used the same passwords for email, bank accounts, and thankfully, their lab notes. He scanned recent notes and found nothing of interest, so he backed up six months and scanned the notes until the acronym flashed. He scrolled up and read words that chilled his blood. “Viral… high mortality rate… airborne… death within twenty-four hours of exposure.”

  He whispered, “And this shit’s out?”

  Slamming desk drawers and shouting erupted in the lab. Steven shouted at his wife, “Karen, will you please stop?” Michael rolled the chair away from the desk and strained to hear.

  “The vaccinations are gone, Steven.”

  “Did you look…”

  “I looked everywhere, Steven. They’re gone!”

  The loud clicking of angry fingers working a keyboard filtered under the door and into the office. “Jesus…where are the files?”

  Karen Phelan stormed into the office with sheer panic and hatred brewing in her eyes. “What have you done, Michael? Where is it?”

  Michael’s eyes bulged as he looked from his enraged mother to his disbelieving father. “Do what? I didn’t do anything?”

  “Where’s the file, Michael?” She spat his name. “This is no high school game. This is life and death. Where’s the file?”

  Michael looked at his father. “I…I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Look at his face, Karen. He’s clueless. And he doesn’t even know about the vaccinations.”

  “You have thirty seconds to replace that vaccination file, or so help me…”

  “I didn’t do anything, Mom! I didn’t take your stupid files!”

  She flared her nostrils and backed away from the desk. “Well, they’re gone.” She pushed past Steven and slammed the mouse at a different workstation to boot a different computer. “The research is gone, the vaccinations are gone. Everything—gone.”

  Steven walked around the desk and grabbed Michael by the shirt. “Did you take those files?”

  Tears pricked Michael’s eyes as he stared into his father’s wild eyes. “Dad, I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know I screwed around before, but this time it’s not me.”

  Steven released his grip and glanced at the computer screen holding the Phelans’ research notes. He pointed at the screen. “Really? You’re caught red-handed, Michael. Put the files back. I can’t tell you how serious this is.”

  Michael whispered, “I know. I know how serious. I read the notes. Just now, I mean. Dad, I didn’t take the files, I promise. Did you…did you create a vaccine for AVHF?”

  Steven walked to the door. “You’ve got one minute. Put them back.” He slammed the door.

  Michael swallowed the lump in his throat and took a deep breath. He turned the chair and tried to shake off the looks of hatred from his parents as he processed what they’d said: There was a file, it’s not there now, and that’s bad.

  Vaccination file. That’s what his mother had called it. AVHF… outbreak… death after twenty-four hours… vaccine. Someone stole the vaccine?

  In the lower left hand corner, a black shadow caught Michael’s eye as it slid from one camera angle into the next. He leaned over the keyboard tray and squinted to make out the details. They’d slipped out of the security office, but they weren’t in any uniform Michael had seen before. Realization washed over him as three men in black riot gear slipped into the last cam
era frame right outside the Phelan’s lab. Michael’s shout of warning to his parents was drowned out as the men burst through the lab door and shouted orders at the Phelans. Michael slid under the desk and tried to calm his pounding heart and rapid breath so he could hear.

  “Get down! Get down, now!”

  Steven Phelan shouted, “Jesus, guns? Karen, do it!”

  Karen screamed, “Was it you? Are you in on it? You can’t do this! We have to—”

  A shot rang out followed by a wretched moan by Michael’s father. “Oh god, oh god, no. Karen.”

  Another shot ended Steven’s mourning and made an orphan out of Michael. He buried his face in his elbow and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear, here.”

  “Grab the lady. I’ll get Dr. Phelan. Stax, watch the hallway and put Gridley on standby to wipe the security tape.”

  “We could put them in the office.” Panic raced through Michael’s body. He eyed the small, rectangular window near the ceiling and knew he’d never make it without being seen.

  “Nah, it’s supposed to look like they ran. They’ll be found in there. Come on. Clock’s ticking.”

  Michael stifled the whimpers clawing at his throat as he envisioned his dead parents being discarded like yesterday’s trash. Dead parents. Looks of hatred. They died thinking he betrayed them over some stupid hack job that never happened. The last look from his mother seared into his mind—her wild eyes, disgusted. His peacekeeping father, the man who championed him and confided behind Karen’s back that Michael would probably end up being the top computer wizard for NASA or something. Dead. Uncertain if his son had committed the ultimate hack at his expense. Witness to his wife’s murder just seconds before the gun leveled at him.

  Scuffing boots returned to the lab floor. “We gotta clean up this blood.”

  “Report in and tell them phase two is complete. We ditch the riot gear, suit up like PFD security, and wait for further orders.”

  “’Kay, that’s got it. With eight minutes to spare. Tell Gridley he’s good to wipe the security tape. It’ll be like they never showed up today.”

  Michael’s mouth went dry. He stood right in front of the security camera this morning and flipped off the guards. They had to have infiltrated the security office after the Phelans arrived for work, or they’d have known Michael was in the lab. He’d have to wipe the recording before they found out, before they found him. Michael shoved his grief deep into the caverns of his soul and felt the tip of revenge prick his fingertips. A swell of rage brewed in his chest as all the pieces fell into place. Missing vaccinations and files, outbreak, dead scientists, assassins fabricating their exodus…the outbreak was no accident, and this was a cover up.

  He waited for the laboratory door to close and slid from under the desk. Out of habit, he glanced through the window to see his parents’ whereabouts and winced. He bit his trembling lip and swiped his eyes with his sleeve. He moaned as he looked at a picture of his parents on the desk, a picture that he’d never noticed before. He slid the frame into his backpack and centered the keyboard over his lap. The clock in the room grew louder and louder with each passing second. He was faster, smarter, and more familiar with back-dooring the security system than whoever this Gridley fellow was, and Michael had some reckoning to do. He started with the most obvious camera—camera six—just outside of the lab. His fingers flew across the keyboard as sweat weaved through his curls. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” Lines of records populated the screen, and Michael scrolled through screen after screen of stored footage from the camera. He slowed the scroll as he neared the date stamp beginning at midnight. The files were divided into four-hour increments.

  12:00-3:59 a.m.

  Page end.

  He slammed the page down key and shoved his palms into his eyes. The recordings from 4:00-7:59 a.m. and 8:00 on were gone. Michael felt the tickle of the crosshairs that just fell on his head.

  He shoved his things into his backpack and scanned the office for evidence of his presence that morning. He flipped the pack around to zip it and stared into the portrait faces of his parents. Back when they thought he was a wholesome kid with a cute fascination for computers. Back when he thought they were nothing more than washed up biology majors creating the next big hand sanitizer. Before they accused him of virtual genocide. Before they were murdered and hidden from him forever.

  He couldn’t save them, but he could save the data.

  His nostrils flared as he slammed the backpack onto the floor and guided the keyboard tray over his lap. Michael logged into his online file storage site, encrypted the keystrokes and enabled security alerts for possible breach while he hacked into his parents’ backup history. He flipped screens to the live security monitors to see if his death squad was en route, but no one approached. He returned to the lab backup, cracked the security measures, and waited for the files to load. He switched screens and saw on camera one, near the front of the building, two men in black riot gear running down the hallway.

  Michael’s heart pounded, his breath whistling through his teeth. “Oh god, oh god…” He rocked as he watched the lab data slowly populating one line at a time. Years of research data, lab notes, trials, and findings combined in one-day increments over at least five years.

  He watched the men advance from camera two to camera three as the data from the current year slowly appeared on the screen. February, March, April, May…June. Michael sighed and picked a random day to open and scan.

  He clicked on the file, the box opened—no files. He went back a month—no files.

  The men advanced into camera four, and Michael knew if he didn’t leave now, he would never leave alive. He enabled a deleted data recovery option and held his breath as he watched the green bar press closer toward completion. He opened Outlook on Steven’s machine and started a new email. He scanned the saved contacts until he found one with CDC as the company and selected the name.

  Subject: READ IMMEDIATELY

  This is Michael Phelan. My parents are dead and their research destroyed. The link below will hopefully contain what you need to stop this thing if it uploads before they catch me. If I survive, I’ll come to you.

  The data recovery box flashed on screen saying, “Data recovery completed.” Michael clicked on the box and found the research files. He clicked on the file from the day before, selected, “Restore” and changed the output location to the online site. He clicked, “upload” and flipped to the security screen. Camera six showed two men motioning to each other as they planned to enter the lab. Michael squeezed his eyes shut and clutched his backpack to his chest. The file was six percent uploaded with an estimated time of four minutes remaining. Michael copied the link to the website and pasted it into the body of the email he drafted as the door to the lab slammed open and the men stomped across the floor. His shaking hands struggled with the mouse, and tears blinded him. He blinked hard and let them wash the keyboard below.

  The doorknob turned slowly. Michael inched the mouse toward “send” and moaned when the men slid the door open slowly like a cat toying with its prey. The upload file glowed green with twenty-seven percent completed. He tried to steady his hand and dragged the mouse back across the screen to send the email.

  “What are you doing, son?”

  Michael wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. His voice cracked, “Research.”

  “Aren’t we clever?” The larger of the two men raised a middle finger and ran it up and down the bridge of his nose then blew a kiss at Michael. “Very clever, indeed.”

  Thirty percent completed.

  Michael right clicked the security camera hack from the taskbar and ended transmission hoping to clear some bandwidth for the upload. “Nice gun.”

  “You’re going to have to come with us.”

  “I can’t leave, sir. My parents will be back any minute to pick me up.” Thirty-four percent.

  The other man scoffed and started around the desk. “Let’
s see your research.” Michael flinched and hit the show desktop function.

  “Sorry, I was just logging off.”

  The first man nodded and said, “Yes, you were.” He yanked the power strip out of the outlet, and the computer went black.

  I never hit send. He stared at the black screen and his reflection. Screens like the one in front of him always represented a lifeline, a way out. A place to escape when the world around him was unsatisfactory. Yet the vulnerability of the machine was that it relied on the power strip. Unplugged, it was just a black box showing the reflection of a boy with a gun slowly inching its way toward his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of his parents—their life’s blood was poured into their work then splattered across the lab floor. He’d lived his short life in front of his computer and any second now, his blood would spray across his father’s.

  He lowered his head and stared again into the picture faces of his parents. They dragged him to the Grand Canyon on a family vacation three years earlier—the last family vacation they took thanks to Michael’s deviant online behavior and their demanding jobs. The nerds. The lab geeks. The social know-nothings. They knew what he thought of them, and they never once corrected him. Never tried to change his opinion. They’d made a vaccine to stop a deadly disease; Michael changed grades in high school Biology for fifty bucks a person so football players could be eligible to play next year. Judging by the statistics in his parents’ research, all but two of those players would be dead in a few days, and the unspent money was hidden in a video game case in Michael’s room. And, the heroes of the day, the Phelans, were dead.

  A blast of air hit his forehead from the air conditioning vent above. He envisioned his mother’s ghost clawing through the vent to smooth his hair and touch his face one last time. An apologetic caress from the other side admitting that she knew he hadn’t betrayed them. A tear slipped from his face and dripped down onto hers in the picture—the last tear she would wipe away.

  He heard the second hand pounding away the last few moments of his life followed by a round entering the chamber of the gun next to his head. “Say hi to your folks for us.”