“Beverly, if this explodes, I want you to drag my body to safety,” I said. She looked up at me and wagged her tail. “Good dog,” I said. Beverly sat down.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was an index card printed in an oddly uneven font that smudged when my thumb touched it. The letters were faintly indented, and I realized it had been composed on a typewriter—something I’d only seen in the hospital records department, where some very specific types of paperwork had to be written on carbon paper. It was just one line of text:
The broken doors are open; come and enter and be home.
Underneath was a street address in the city of Clayton, about an hour’s drive from San Francisco. I looked at it without saying a word for several minutes, until the text began to twist and slip away from me. That was my cue. I tucked the paper into the pocket of my bathrobe, pulling my phone out as I turned to walk toward my bedroom.
“Dial Nathan,” I said.
It was time to follow the map, whether or not it was going to get us lost.
I had to sacrifice a lot to get to where I ended up. As with so many other things in my life, while I may have regrets, I am not sorry. I made my choices. I knew what they had the potential to cost me. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d made other decisions, if I’d looked at certain possibilities and said “this is not worth the price.” I’m only human, after all. I’m allowed to have doubts every once in a while.
I will say this, without reservations: the choices I made meant that when the time came for Steven Banks to throw someone under the bus, there was no one else getting dragged along with me. I’m the one whose name went to the FDA when they questioned our research protocols. I’m the one who gets blamed for every irregularity in the research process. But because I made the choices I did, I had no weak spots for them to exploit. I was armor-clad. I got away.
I have regrets. I would have to be a monster not to. But I am not sorry.
—FROM CAN OF WORMS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SHANTI CALE, PHD. AS YET UNPUBLISHED.
I wondered when you were going to reach the falling-out questions. It always seems to wind up here, like this is the true north of every interview’s course. All right, here it is:
Shanti Cale and I parted ways over ethical differences. She was responsible for certain early development phases of the Intestinal Bodyguard™, and she made the decision to cut certain corners that could have resulted in some very bad things happening. Luckily, we were able to catch and solve those issues before they ever made it out of the lab. That was still the beginning of the end for me and Shanti, as a partnership, and as friends. I couldn’t trust her after that. I really view that as the greatest tragedy of my success. Richard’s resignation was heartbreaking, but he’d been having emotional problems for years. We all saw the writing on that wall. Shanti…
I loved her very much, as a friend and as a colleague. I never really believed she’d betray me. I still can’t understand how I could have been so wrong.
—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.
Chapter 11
AUGUST 2027
I was dressed and ready to go when Nathan pulled up in front of the house. Beverly’s dish was full, and there was a note on the refrigerator to keep my parents from getting worried if they got home before I did. I didn’t say anything about Mr. Carson and the others, or about the visit from SymboGen security. I felt funny about that, but if I started going into details, I’d wind up writing everything down, and there wasn’t time. I could explain when we were all together again.
Nathan honked the horn. When I’d called to ask him if we could go, I’d told him not to bother getting out of the car. The sound still made me jump a little, my stomach squeezing like a fist. Were we making the right decision? Should we really be running around with people who used quotes from obscure children’s books in casual conversation, and played cloak-and-dagger games for no good reason?
Did we have a choice?
Nathan honked again. No, we didn’t have a choice. Devi was dead. If we wanted answers, we’d have to take them wherever we could find them.
I locked the door behind me as I left the house, slinging my messenger bag over my shoulder one-handed. I was dressed for a clandestine meeting, in jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and running shoes—in case we found a reason to run—with my hair pulled into a ponytail.
Nathan looked over as I practically threw myself into the passenger seat. He blinked. “Sal? Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’ll explain on the drive.”
“Okay.” Nathan reached for the GPS. “What’s the address?”
I read it off for the system. “There’s also another quote that sounds like it’s from that book you were talking about.”
“Don’t Go Out Alone?”
“Yeah, that one.” I held up the card, and recited more than read, “ ‘The broken doors are open. Come and enter and be home.’ ”
Nathan started the car. He didn’t say a word as he pulled out of the driveway. I slowly lowered the card, blinking at him. He wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the windshield, where the glowing red printout from the GPS displayed at eye level.
I frowned, not sure what I was supposed to say, or what—if anything—I’d done to upset him. I wasn’t the one who wrote the note. I wasn’t the one quoting the book.
Finally, Nathan sighed, and said, “ ‘Some lies better left untold; some dreams better left unsold. The broken doors are open. Come and enter, and be home. My darling girl, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.’ ” He glanced my way. “It’s from the middle of the book, where the boy and girl who’ve gone out alone together—don’t ask me how that works, I was a kid, I believed it completely—have reached the broken doors, and everything is about to get bad. It’s sort of a welcome. And it’s sort of a warning.”
“I’m a little disturbed that our secret source for secret things is communicating with us via quotes from a children’s book that no one but you has ever heard of,” I said. “It’s weird and I don’t like it.”
“I really expected you to go with ‘secret source for secret secrets’ there, and I don’t like it either, but I don’t see what choice we have,” said Nathan. “She’s the only person who seems to know what’s going on.”
“Yeah.” I studied him sidelong. The dark circles under his eyes didn’t surprise me, but I didn’t like them, either. Not sure what else to say, I asked, “Is someone taking care of Minneapolis? I was worried about her this morning.”
“I’ve contacted Devi’s family, since they’re local. They’re considering their options.” The bitter way he said that made it plain he didn’t expect them to come for Devi and Katherine’s bulldog. “In the meantime, Minnie is with me. My building manager says she can stay for a little while, given the circumstances, even though I’m not supposed to have pets.”
“I think… I think that’s a good thing. I’ll feel safer knowing you have a dog with you,” I said slowly. “Given the circumstances and all.”
Nathan glanced at me again. “Sal? What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath. “Something happened with Beverly this morning,” I said before I began, haltingly, to explain the events that had started with Beverly standing stiff-legged and growling in the backyard. It took longer than I expected. Even with me refusing to leave anything out, Nathan kept asking me questions, making me back up, and finding the things I wasn’t saying. By the time I finished, I was trembling all over, a deep, bone-weary shake that seemed to start somewhere deep inside my chest and radiate from there. I stopped talking. I couldn’t find anything else inside myself to say.
Nathan said it for me. “You did the right thing,” he said. “I don’t know that I would have had the presence of mind to call SymboGen, but after what happened last night with Devi… I wouldn’t want to involve the police with three of them when th
ey were in their mobile state.”
There was no question as to who he meant by “them.” I shuddered, the memory of the woman on the back porch rising, uninvited, behind my eyes. “It was freaky. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Like I said, you did the right thing. SymboGen is more equipped to deal with this sort of situation than anybody else. I just wish I knew what made them surround your house like that. I haven’t heard anything about that behavior. It makes me a little nervous, to be honest. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t want me to get hurt either, so I think we’re in agreement.” I placed a hand on his arm. “It’s going to be okay. This lady will have the answers that we’re looking for, and then you’ll know how to start treating the sick people, and all of this will go away.” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. We might find out what SymboGen was hiding about the sleeping sickness; we might even find a way to treat the people who were afflicted. But no answers were going to bring Devi back. My own example notwithstanding, the dead were beyond the reach of modern medical science.
Nathan nodded grimly. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, and kept driving.
The GPS led us off the freeway and into a rundown section of a city called Concord. From there, we drove through increasingly worn-looking streets toward our final destination. This was the heart of the Bay Area’s extended suburban sprawl, communities that grew up around San Francisco and the ports during the state’s big boom period—a period that once seemed like it was going to last forever, according to a documentary I once watched on California’s history. California had the natural resources, it had the space, and it had the drive to keep its population growing until they ran out of room. I guess they never expected to run out of cheap gas and good weather while they still had space to cram in another housing development.
Most of California’s suburban areas had gone one of two ways: they had returned to their agrarian roots, or they had begun dying a slow death through attrition and neglect. Most of the farmland around Clayton was still owned by the United States military, and so they’d gone for option number two. We drove almost three miles and didn’t pass more than a dozen cars. One old man pushed a shopping cart full of his worldly possessions along the sidewalk in front of a deserted Kmart with big yellow CLOSED banners in the windows. Everything else was still.
“We’re almost there,” said Nathan. He turned off the main road into a small shopping center where a thrift store clung to life next to a feed store as closed as the Kmart. He drove past them both, gritting his teeth as the broken pavement of the parking lot caused the car to shudder and bounce.
An abandoned bowling alley filled the back third of the lot. Nathan circled around behind it, parking out of sight of the street. I blinked at him. He shrugged and turned off the engine.
“I don’t think we necessarily want to attract more attention than we will just by being here, do you?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. Unfastening my belt, I slung my bag back over my shoulder and got out of the car.
The air was hotter and drier in Clayton than it had been in San Francisco. I glanced at my piece of paper and then at the address painted on the back door of the old bowling alley, reassuring myself that we were really in the right place. We were. Nathan walked next to me as we approached the building, which gave no signs of being occupied. Leaves on the nearby, half-dead trees rustled in the wind. Everything else was still. We stopped just short of the bowling alley door.
“Should we knock?” I asked.
“I don’t see how else we’re going to get inside,” he said.
I swallowed hard, nodding. Then I stepped forward and rapped my knuckles lightly against the wood. I stepped back again, and we waited for someone to come to the door. And waited. And waited.
When almost ten minutes had gone by, Nathan stepped forward. He knocked much more authoritatively, almost pounding on the door. Still, no one came to answer it. When another ten minutes had gone by, he turned to me, frowning. “I think someone’s playing with us.”
“I think you may be right,” I admitted. “We should get going.”
“Agreed,” he said. Both of us turned then, to face the car, and stopped when we saw the woman sitting on the hood.
She was tiny enough that for a moment I thought she was a kid, but her figure and the casual straightness of her posture gave lie to that. Her hair was short, blonde, and streaked with strawberry pink. She was wearing denim overalls, combat boots, and nothing else, unless you wanted to count the knots of ribbons she had clipped in her hair. She was beaming at the two of us like we’d won a prize.
“Hi!” she said brightly, and slid off the hood. “You must be Sal. Ooo, and that means you must be Nathan. Gosh. I thought you’d be taller. I bet you get that a lot, don’t you? That you should be taller. Not you, I mean, Sal, you’re just like I figured you’d be, but I’ve also seen you before, so I guess that’s cheating. I’m Tansy. Did you know that SymboGen totally tried to follow you here? Because they totally tried to follow you here, even though you’re not supposed to have a following detail anymore. Don’t worry, they lost your GPS signal when you crossed Treat Boulevard, but you should be careful about that sort of thing if you’re going to be sneaking around behind their backs, which you so are at this point. Congratulations!” She stopped talking, finally appearing to realize that she wasn’t pausing long enough to let either of us get a word in edgewise. “Oh, and also, you know. Hi. Welcome, and all that stuff.”
“Who are you?” asked Nathan.
Tansy smiled indulgently. “I just told you, silly. You should really try to keep up if you want to come out of this with all your sane bits still in the order they started out in. What’s the password?”
“We don’t have a password,” I said. “We came here because—”
“Oh, I know why you came here, and I know what you want to learn while you’re here, but what I need to know is whether you know what the password is, because that’s what starts the next phase, which is… hang on a second, I’m not good at this part.” Tansy paused, dipping a hand into her pocket and producing her phone. She checked the screen before beaming at the two of us. “The next phase is me letting you inside.”
“And if we don’t know the password…?” I said slowly.
“If you don’t know the password, that means I get to decide what to do with you. I don’t know what that would be, exactly, but I’m pretty sure it would hurt. Did you know that nerves are like, really densely packed on certain parts of the body?” Tansy’s eyes grew wide and earnest as she spoke. Her irises were two different colors, one brown, one a slightly unnerving shade of blue. “It’s cool, because it means it takes longer for pain to stop happening if you focus there. Other places go numb way, way too quickly. Like the fleshy part of your thumb. You’d think that was a great place to target, given how meaty it is, but you stop feeling things there way too fast.”
“Uh,” I said.
“ ‘The broken doors are open—come and enter, and be home,’ ” said Nathan, spitting the words out quickly.
Tansy beamed. “My darling girl, be careful now!” she said. It didn’t sound like she was quoting. It sounded more like a message meant directly for us. “And don’t go out alone. You remembered the password!”
“You provided excellent incentive,” said Nathan.
“You know, that’s what Doctor C says? She says I’m the best incentive.” She bounded forward, sweeping me into a hug before I had a chance to react. “It’s so nice to finally meet you! I’ve been hoping for this for ever and ever and ever, but Doctor C kept saying I had to wait, and so I waited, but it was hard.” She pushed me out to arm’s length, bicolored eyes wide and grave. “It was so hard. Don’t make me do that again, okay, Sal?”
“Um,” I said. Being restrained by people who clearly weren’t operating under my definition of “sane and balanced” was a new experience for me. Something told me that pulling aw
ay still wouldn’t be a good idea. “I’ll do my best, but I didn’t know I was making you wait this time. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay! I forgive you!” She pulled me into a second, shorter hug. This time, when she let go, she let go completely, and went skipping toward the bowling alley. She produced a key from the pocket of her overalls and unlocked the door before turning to beckon us forward. “Well? Come on! We’re not getting any younger out here!”
“I suppose the broken doors really are open now,” Nathan said, looking unsettled.
I took his hand. “You’re not going alone,” I said.
Together, we followed Tansy into the bowling alley.
She closed the door behind us.
Inside the bowling alley turned out to be a dark, windowless antechamber. Once the door was closed, there was no light of any kind. Nathan squeezed my fingers, hard. I had to wonder whether he, like me, was worried about the fact that we were shut in with a woman who had a questionable grip on reality and had already threatened to hurt us both if we didn’t say what she wanted to hear. More and more, this whole expedition was feeling like a bad idea.
“Don’t move,” said Tansy. “The floor’s a little rotten in here, and you wouldn’t want to wind up in the basement. There are black widows down there.”
“This day just gets more and more delightful,” muttered Nathan.
“Doesn’t it just?” said Tansy. There were footsteps to my right, followed by a click. The overhead lights came on, shining dully through a thick layer of dust. Tansy was standing on the far side of the room, and beaming brighter than the lights. “Do you like it? Helps your eyes adjust, since we don’t want to flash-blind anybody, and leaving the dirt on means that anybody who managed to break in wouldn’t realize there was anyone in here. Until they hit one of the rotten patches on the floor and went to the basement to visit the spiders, and then I bet they wouldn’t care that there was anyone in here. The spiders can be really distracting when they want to be. Anyway, come on! Doctor C told me to bring you to her as soon as you got here.” She opened another door, this one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, and started through.