Devil's Veil 2

Sterilized

Gregory Keele staggered back, warding off a cloud of brown particulate with raised hands. Being the first to open the fridge door had proved to be a mistake. His hazardous materials suit kept the grainy matter from contacting his skin while his goggles and filter protected his face, but were it otherwise the thought of coming into contact with so much filth would likely have sent Keele into some kind of episode: he couldn't stand dirt, and had an especial distaste for molds and fungi. They were insidious.

But Keele was kitted up, and so felt no distress. Bonnie and Lewis had a good laugh, the two offering their hands to help Keele stand back up. He accepted their aid with thanks and the three took a better look inside the fridge. Some bag lunches remained, two in brown paper bags, and one in a black canvas deal with a zipper running around it. The brown bags were in a state of putrefaction, their contents having long turned into a mushy debris throughout which were threaded pale webs of mold. Thick strands hung from the grating in the fridge to the bottom shelf. Patches of a calloused red-brown material had begun to form at the edges of this concrescence, and the suspended material had pooled into an asymmetrical body at the base of the fridge.

"Jesus. Something new every day, huh?" Lewis whistled as he flashed a pen light into the fridge to get a better look. He sunk one gloved finger into the pulp on the first tier, wiggled it a bit, withdrew it speculatively. "I don't think I've seen this kind before. I've been scooping disgusting shit out of this city for a while, but this... Lord! That smell!" Lewis turned and retched.

Bonnie stepped forward, taking the place her colleague had just vacated. "Better watch that, Lou. Throw up in one of these," she tapped her own filter emphatically, "and your day is going to get a whole lot worse." She took a cursory glance, saw that the crispers were still closed, and reached for one. Someone cleared their voice from the door at the far end of the staff room. An affable young security guard approached, holding a wad of paper towel over his nose and mouth with one hand while clearing the air with his other. Keele stepped forwards so as to prevent the guard from going any further into the room; Bonnie and Lewis appraised the young guard, exchanged a glance, and turned back to their work.

"Hello Phil. It is Phil, right?" asked Keele, knowing full well that he had a good memory for names. It was faces he was bad at.

The guard looked almost grateful, and nodded energetically. "Yeah, Phil. That's right, mister, uh... doctor? Hey, what's the title for a guy like you, anyways?"

Keele laughed politely, and said "Well, our paychecks call us decontamination specialists, but that's a mouthful. Really, Phil, we're just labourers with certificates." From behind him, he heard Bonnie laugh a bit, and he could feel Lewis giving him a mock scowl. Things were a little more complicated than all that, but not by much.

Whatever the truth of the situation, Phil seemed happy, and nodded his agreement. "I don't know about that, sir. Seems like a lot of medical stuff going on with this... well, I mean, what is it anyways?" Phil briefly waved at the fridge with the hand he was using to shield his mouth. "It's like some kind of dirt or mold or something. Right?"

Recognizing the anxiety that was creeping into Phil's voice, Keele sought to comfort him. "Well, I know it looks really filthy, and it smells like the devil itself, but I don't think it will be anything long-term. There might be some panels that need replacing, that sort of thing, but it's looking okay right now. It'll be easy to clean up, too."

Phil ran one hand nervously over his throat while the other went back to shielding his face. "I just mean that, well. I got this tickle in my throat, and been feeling sick for the last little bit. I just wanted to know if this was like one of those black mold things. Like, should I see a doctor? I only ask because the guy who normally works Mondays is actually sick. Really bad bronchial infection." He swallowed heavily. "Or something."

Unsure of how to respond, Keele was relieved when Lewis put on hand on his shoulder. "I'll talk with Phil here, let him know what's going on. You go out to the lot, grab a hand cart from the van, and let's get this thing taped up."

He did so, pausing only briefly to hear a surprisingly loud argument that was spilling out from the human resources department. A middle aged man with balding head, glasses, and a manager's paunch was being escorted through the cubicle maze by a guard. Keele shook his head, ran out to the van to retrieve the hand cart and tarp. Returning to the lunch room, he and Bonnie loaded the fridge onto the handcart, and managed to get a sealing bag over it.

His eyes met those of the balding man he had seen being yelled at earlier, who now clutched a cardboard box filled with office trinkets. The man was smiling strangely, as if bemused by Keele's own mummery. Slamming the back door shut, Keele chatted with Bonnie while they waited for Lewis to finish hosing himself off behind the building. Lewis had a bristly salt and pepper beard that chafed under his face mask, so he never wore it any longer than was absolutely necessary. Bonnie would often hang out the passenger side window, shouting jibes at Lewis and hurrying him up, but Keele never joined in. He was patient; he could wait.

***

The suits and van were being decontaminated, and Keele had just finished in the showers. He almost regretted having to put on his clothes again. Everything felt so scrubbed, so surgical, as if the air itself crackled with new energy because of his cleanliness. It was sterility, and therein lay its strength. Keele glanced at his wristwatch, a painless reminder of an already annulled marriage. The two had married young, stayed together the better part of three years, then parted amicably. They still met up to hang out every now and then.

The time was about a quarter to five, and his shift would be over soon. Having already taken care of the day's work, he didn't see much point in returning to his desk, and so decided to wait for Bonnie and Lewis at a picnic table just outside the front doors. He wasn't idling for too long before his colleagues came out, already chatting together. Lewis waved him over, and the three talked as they went to their cars. It was quickly determined that they would meet up at a nearby pub for appetizers and cocktails. Keele waved goodbye, climbed into his dark blue Corolla, and flipped past radio stations until he landed on classic rock. Singing along with half-remembered refrains, Keele let Lewis turn in front of him, and the trio were on their way.

Once they were seated and had ordered drinks, the three went through the time honoured tradition of airing their grievances. Keele had reflected on the the less desirable aspects of this performance before, concluding that it could only be described as unintelligible. At best. One of the three would launch an opening salvo – it didn't really matter which – by griping about the biggest elephant in the room. Today, that salvo was enthusiastically launched by Bonnie, who, being an archetypal Bonnie, began the day's proceedings by heckling Keele.

"That was a pretty smooth save you had today, eh, Greg?" Drinks arrived, and Bonnie seized her blue concoction with zest. "I know you don't like dirt, but I thought you were going to get into a fighting stance or something."

Keele laughed and was readying a riposte when a fourth member joined their clique: a lean woman with ash blond hair sidled in beside Bonnie, providing a rather cartoonish contrast against the swarthier, rounder brunette. "Sorry for nudging myself in here, but I overheard you talking... you're from Priestly too? Hi, I'm Charlie. From the dungeon."

Lewis and Bonnie nodded knowingly and welcomed Charlie to the table, while Keele pantomimed a spit take. "I'm sorry. The dungeon?"

Bonnie slapped the table hard, while Lewis winked at Charlie. Looking back at Keele, Lewis adopted the guise of the patriarch and informed him that the dungeon was a lab that was owned and run by Priestly. It was only two blocks away from dispatch, but most people walked right by the innocuous building with its red brick facade. At any rate, most of the samples taken by the decontamination crews were sent to the dungeon for processing. Even the data that was perpetually being recorded on their electrical scanners was sent back through the dungeon's servers.

"I mean, come on kid, did you think it was magic?" Lewis laughed again.

"Leave him alone, you two. He can't be blamed for not being an old war horse like the rest of us," Charlie said kindly. "It's funny running into you guys here. I wanted to talk to you tomorrow morning anyways." Seeing their curiosity piqued, and further sensing an interruption from Bonnie, Charlie pressed on. "Well, not you specifically. I mean, just the team that did Agora. Those samples are anomalous... it was either a technical error, or... or you guys may have found a new entry for our ever growing list of contagious things that live with humans."

The trio assured Charlie that no technical errors had been made. Truces were drawn following renewed calls for drinks, and by the time the nachos arrived they were plotting to show up to work early the next day. Charlie would have time to check out the fridge from Agora, while Keele and Bonnie would ensure all safety precautions were met. Lewis opted out, claiming conscientious objection to any plan that involved his waking early, but he did say he would stop by the centre on the way home and make sure no one would disinfect the fridge until they got another look at it.

Everyone departed on the best possible terms, if perhaps a bit woozier than would otherwise have been preferred. Keele drove home with no complications, and tumbled into his apartment near ten o'clock. He set his alarm for the agreed upon hour, and watched some Netflix before passing out. He couldn't remember what it was, but it was something from his early childhood, something from the 1990s: vibrant, pointless, and strange.

***

Keele arrived at work a half hour earlier than normal. He whistled artlessly while grabbing his brief case and a six pack of donuts that he had picked up for Bonnie and Charlie. The two were minutes behind him, and they exchanged brief greetings at the picnic table. Bonnie ate a donut while Keele apprised Charlie of the rules for examining an active contaminant; the advisory was at least half performance, as Charlie's profession required that she know the same rules even better than Keele did, but both of them played their parts.

It was determined that they would probably not have to suit up for a mere inspection. Nevertheless, every one of them had seen fit to wear some kind of protection. Bonnie and Charlie each wore handling gloves, as well as goggles and air filters. In addition to those precautions, Keele endured Bonnie's gibes and Charlie's curious glances long enough to don a long sleeved shirt and coveralls. They entered an air cooled warehouse, and he lead Charlie to the object. Unsealing the bag it was in, they folded it down so that Charlie could open the door. A bilious odour surged forth.

"Oh, no! Oh, sweet Jesus, no!" Bonnie exclaimed, making a face at Keele. "Mmmh, no! What is that? It smells like a hangover, like... shoot. It smells like vomit, is what it smells like. Like that gutty old meat smell."

Charlie weathered the smell, peering into the fridge while she dug out a pen light. "But there's something else, too, isn't there. Something with a bite. Familiar, but nauseating. Damn. It looks like the icebox got shook up in transport." It was true. The top grate had been jarred in transport, had fallen loose as a result, and punctured the top of the crisper. It was from this that the terrible smell issued forth.

"Vinegar," Keele corrected, motioning Charlie away from the fridge while he took hold of the crisper door. He wrenched it open, almost spilling its contents out over the concrete warehouse floor. Inside was a mealy mass of fibrous green, brown, and whitish tissues. It looked about twelve centimetres deep, and what they had previously taken to be mold proved to be a mycelium so thick it looked like cotton. A number of mushrooms sprouted from this mass, which evidently served as a substrate. Keele stared, thinking of it: the mycelium was necrotizing tissue even now, literally decomposing organic matter into constituent nutrients while he watched. Insidious.

The caps were wide, round, and shallow. Two tines projected from the centre of each cap, resembling horns. The caps were about four inches in diameter and three inches in height. The caps were predominantly of a deep brownish red colour, excepting the edges where it graded into a sickly yellow white. They were covered in over a dozen small pores that would occasionally discharge a runny pink fluid. This fluid collected at the edges of the mushroom and dribbled off in loosely connected membranes that ran very slowly once the fluid set. Semi-ossified webs made of the dried liquid littered the areas around the larger caps.

Charlie reached down and gently lifted the cap of one of the mushrooms, inspecting its underside. Her eyes were alight: every person there understood the novelty of the fungus before them, but Charlie was actively involved in mycological research. She half-muttered something about a thesis, then pulled out her cell phone and started taking quick notes. Seeing her so enthused made Bonnie nostalgic and moved her to speak.

"I'm going to reopen my ecology texts, see if I don't," she vowed, setting her broad face in determination. Nobody disputed her, and Keele knew well that she would be replete with ecological wisdom by next week. At any rate, there wasn't much sense in trying to say anything right now; there were mushrooms present, and jokes to be made. Bonnie obliged, and finished her last thought. "And if I don't study them at home, I'll study them at the next Weezer concert."

Charlie appeared to be shocked, Bonnie laughed knowingly, and Keele smiled at Bonnie's consistency. The three shucked their protective gear – Keele took a few extra minutes to spray himself with disinfectant - and went back to the picnic table so that Bonnie could have a smoke before work. They arrived just in time to see Lewis and his wife Heather guiltily looking up from eating the last of the donuts. Bonnie made introductions, informing Charlie that they had to be thankful to Heather for indirectly discovering the new fungus. After all, it was Heather who had got them the contract with Agora.

Inoculation

Two weeks passed by. Charlie had been keeping everyone in on the loop, meeting with Keele, Bonnie, and Lewis several times each week. The fungus proliferated at an unprecedented rate, and she and Bonnie would exchange observations and predictions at a rapid clip; Bonnie had kept to her word, and could bandy terms with Charlie quite easily. Even Lewis was getting involved, forgoing his annual obsessions with fantasy sports in order to spend more time with the Founder's Group, as Charlie laughingly described their cohort.

Spirits were high. The four of them were involved in the discovery of something new, work was steady if not growing, and pay day did dawn. Lewis announced a mixer and barbecue at his house that Saturday night, and the rest was automatic. Rides were arranged, favours exchanged, and booze was transported. Charlie had offered to give Keele a ride, who accepted with gratitude. However, as he leaned in towards the passenger door, he glanced at the back seat. There was a profusion of fast food wrappers, some open pop bottles, and a bird's nest of clothing.

He snapped his fingers, stood up, and told her he had something to do for a neighbour before he went to the party. Charlie smiled, sympathized with his loose memory, and told him she would see him there. He drove to Lewis's house in his own car. The party was well underway, with an eclectic mix of people whose varying temperaments and expectations kept Keele on his toes. He recognized several of his coworkers. Heather's friends were also in attendance, and Keele was introduced to several marketing types and a number of educators whom Heather had met in PTA.

All in all it was a very nice party.

***

Wednesday morning saw Keele being woken up by the buzzer to his apartment. Looking groggily at his cell phone, he saw that the time was close to five in the morning. He depressed the button for receiving calls from the lobby, his hand resting heavily on the speaker. Bonnie's voice came booming over, a shrill staccato that jolted Keele awake.

"Hi Greg! Good morning!" Static punctuated every soft consonant, she was a lisping drive through window. "Oo hoo! Hey! We had... we all had ideas. Just call in today, Greg, baby! Just call..." Bonnie was interrupted by another person yelling behind her.

Keele took the opportunity to steady himself: having just been roused from deep sleep, he found it harder to maintain his usual unctuous adaptability. Choosing to affect a jocular tone, he pressed the send button and said "Bonnie, you're too much. I'll cover for you at work today. You just be sure to call in, alright?" He heard something resembling agreement and went back to bed.

True to his word, he made sure to tell everybody that he had seen Bonnie the night before, and that she looked very ill. He had no cover story for Lewis, who had also called in that day. But the company assigned him two new jacks who seemed alright. Further, Keele proved to be the senior member on the team, and that was alright, too. After work, he shared a pint with the new guys, then headed out. He had texted Bonnie at lunch to let her know he'd swing by that evening.

***

Pulling up outside Bonnie's bungalow, Keele could hear music coming from the basement windows. The sound was muffled by stone and glass, but it was obviously being played at incredible volume. He switched off the ignition, started to pull off his driving gloves, then stopped and took a second look at the house. Every light on the ground floor was on. The basement windows were dark. He saw no movement through the big windows framing Bonnie's living room. Choosing to keep his gloves on, Keele stepped out of the car and went up the front steps.

He rapped loudly on the door, smiling as he did so. Someone once told him he had a policeman's knock, stern and intrusive. No one answered. He raised his hand to knock again, then, detecting a break in the music, placed his ear against the door instead. Clearly audible voices emerged from the direction of the kitchen. He thought he heard a dog barking. Suppressing a flush of anxiety, he opened the front door, taking care to lift the knob so as to lighten the pressure on the door's hinges. His efforts paid off. The door opened in perfect silence.

Keele stifled a gasp upon entering. The house was disgusting: furniture was piled high with laundry, discarded takeout boxes, open cartons of milk and juice. There were no flies. Taking one step back, he placed a hand down on a decorative table to steady himself. His hand encountered a slight yet definite resistance, and slipped on something viscous. Keele raised his hand to see a thin membrane of runny reddish fluid suspended between his thumb and forefinger. Several long, sickly fibres hung suspended inside of it.

Picking his way over an overturned chair, Keele threaded his way past several potted plants that had been upset over the floor and crept towards the kitchen. From his position at the front entrance, he could see that the cellar door was ajar. A yawning darkness. The music had stopped. Laughter bubbled up occasionally, and the murmur of conversation was as consistent as the tides.

Keele stopped short. He was perhaps two meters from the door when one of the voices drifted up. "Greg? Is that you?" Something barked; someone giggled. "Are you up there?" Holding his breath and stepping softly, Keele carefully retread the path he had just taken. Heading back to his car, he shed his gloves and left them on the lawn.

***

Several days later, Keele was surprised to find that he was looking at the clock frequently. He was impatient for lunch; Bonnie was at work, and Charlie was stopping by, so the three would be able to get together for the first time in over a week. Bonnie had only been in two days in that time. Both times Keele had stopped by her station to chat, but her responses were confusing or irritable. Lewis hadn't been seen in over a week, his wife Heather calling in every day with increasingly creative excuses for his absence.

Charlie arrived closer to closing than to lunch, but she and Bonnie were in bright spirits. The three went to the cafeteria, and Charlie offered them both homemade bento boxes. Bonnie removed the lid with a flourish, dramatically smelled its contents, and placed it beside Charlie's in the staff microwave. Keele looked down at his: it was a shallow container divided into four sections. Three of these held strips of meat or grilled vegetables, and the fourth was a sort of trough with a macrobiotic slurry in it. His analysis of the material was cut short by a shuddering wave of revulsion. A palpable stench emitted from the microwaves.

Keele looked around, saw that he was not alone in his nausea. Through tear soaked eyes, he witnessed a half dozen others holding their shirts over their faces, staggering towards exits or the microwave in an effort to escape the smell. But others were gathered around Bonnie and Charlie, curious and asking questions. Recipes and the like. Keele caught a glimpse of Charlie's box just before he ducked outside. She had a sort of steak facsimile made from finely sliced mushrooms, arranged like cold cuts on a bed of lettuce. Everything looked wilted and wrong.

Keele left work early that day, claiming an onset of influenza. For the rest of the week, this, combined with his well established misophobia, allowed him to wear an air filter at all times. Similarly, he was able to find excuses to be out in the van, in suit, or in decontamination for most days. Over the weekend, his buzzer and phone were in constant use. Lewis and Bonnie would call on him, stopping by multiple times a day, at all hours.

One bright Saturday morning, he found a fully formed bicuspid in his lobby; there were two complete toe nails lying on the pavement beneath the passenger side door. Close examination revealed a grainy particulate smeared across his door handles that resembled the whorls of a fingerprint. He checked the back seat thoroughly, as well as the trunk, rinsed the doors with some bottled water, then ran some errands. He installed new locks on his apartment door that same night.

Immunity

Fully six weeks had passed since Gregory Keele opened an infected refrigerator in the staff room of Agora Marketing. Business had been booming in the interim; it was a good time to be in mold, but the office was showing signs of fatigue. The dungeon had been shut down for the better part of three weeks now, and workers were expected to either identify contagions on site, or to administer universal remedies and hope for the best. Most workers found it easier to affect the latter. At least half a dozen employees were home sick on any given day, and the remainders had come to carry themselves with the belligerent entitlement so common to the overworked.

Keele was not particularly troubled by any of this. He was happy to get the overtime. He made a habit of wearing his decontamination suit constantly, in the interests of saving time for his next deployment. Whatever bug was spreading, it had the perverse effect of bringing his coworkers closer together: many of his colleagues adopted his behaviour, and on any given day the office had at least three or four people in it wearing gloves, air filters, or even their full coveralls. It gave Keele a sense of community, he and his brethren uniting against a common foe. He smiled at the thought and began the day's correspondence.

It was not too long before Keele's attention was broken by the sound of a thick sheaf of papers being dropped on his desk. Startled, he glanced up and saw one of his colleagues resting on the desktop, a folder beside him. His voice was muffled by the air filter he wore, a look now more familiar to Keele than the man's own face. "We've got a bad one, Greg. Something... something kind of important, you know? To do with, well, with the company, I guess."

Keele picked up the folder and leafed through it. It was a request from the city to inspect and decontaminate the home of one Lewis and Heather Connor. He breathed out heavily, thinking that it had been at least three weeks since he had seen either Lewis or Bonnie. The late night calls and early morning visits had petered out, and Keele never found a reason to check up on them. It didn't seem safe, so he hadn't bothered.

At any rate, Keele was now the most experienced decontamination specialist that the office had, and it fell on him to at least investigate the site. It would be on him to treat the matter with some discretion. He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and stood up. He called on a rookie to assist and they took a company van to Lewis's house.

***

The drive out to the suburbs took a while, and felt much longer. Keele's partner stared out the window most of the drive, or texted with friends on his phone, and so Keele daydreamed. He remembered a call from a few nights before.

The phone had rang, sometime between four and five in the morning. He had been ignoring early morning calls, but some intuition had made him answer. Charlie was on the other end. She sounded hysterical, explaining between fits of laughter that she was using her one phone call to reach him from the drunk tank. She was barely coherent.

Then she burst into tears and just said she was sorry. Over and over again, until Keele quietly replaced his phone on its charger, ending the call.

***

Keele carefully threaded the van through the preponderance of obstacles surrounding Lewis's house. Lewis and Heather lived near the end of a cul-de-sac, the entrance to which had been blocked by bright yellow barricades. A police cruiser sat nearby. Keele showed them his credentials and explained why they were there. The officers waved him through, shaking their heads when he tried to make some polite enquiries.

Keele passed by another police cruiser, two uniformed officers standing outside it and taking notes as they spoke to one of the neighbours. Keele saw the manic red-blue of an emergency services vehicle that was parked across the street. Pulling alongside the front lawn, Keele and his workers were immediately set on by several municipal workers wearing respirators and latex gloves. He rolled down the window to talk to them, and to get a better view of the house.

Heather's car had smashed through the garage wall, its hood poking out into the bright summer sunlight. All the windows in the house had been painted over with black paint, or had garbage bags taped over them. He heard someone make a sharp exclamation from the back of the house, followed by a retching. The noise obscured much of what was being said, but Keele could make out something about a pet cemetary, or roadkill, or some such. His reveries were interrupted by one of the municipal workers, who was tapping out a rhythm on the roof of the van.

"I asked you a question, bud. What are you doing here? We've got this wrapped." The worker, clearly the spokesperson for their own group, glowered through Keele's window at him. The man was quite large, well over six feet tall, with a thick head made more vicious by the onset of male pattern baldness. Keele smiled unconcernedly; he kept a loaded gun under his seat.

Holding the folder out, Keele jerked a thumb at Lewis's house and explained that they were there to decontaminate the house. The municipal worker took the folder and thumbed through it quickly, scowled once, and returned it. "Bit late, don't you think? This is way past your jurisdiction now... house is beyond saving. Hell, it's being condemned. Prior inhabitants had a meth lab, or some damned thing going on. That shit gets into everything, can't be cleaned out. So, nuke and pave."

Keele was nonplussed, and took another glance through the folder. It was true: the original call had been received a little under two weeks ago. Why in the hell would they only be getting this now? Keele turned his head to explain the situation to his rookie, who pulled his filter off and made an irritated noise. Keele ignored him and turned back to the municipal worker. "Look, I can see that this is turning into a typical administrative cluster fuck. But if we head back without anything, that's our ass, you know? Isn't there some way we could just get in to take a sample?"

The foreman considered this for a moment, then nodded. He gave Keele a stern glare, then said "I'll tell you what. Get in there, take your samples, and leave without touching anything you don't need to. I don't want to be a pain, but this isn't just a city thing anymore. So don't screw around in there."

Keele fished out their testing kits, slipped on his full decontamination suit, and had his cadaverous assistant do the same. They entered the house, Keele taking the lead. It was terrible. Thick strings of fibrous mycelium extended from roof to floor, running throughout the walls like tendons. Massive piles of sawdust and wet cardboard had been left around the house to grow soggy and fetid with decomposition. The sinks were filled with unidentifiable organic tissue, and Keele clearly saw several fragments of bone. The youth barely removed his filter in time to rush out to the lawn, throwing up everywhere.

Keele quickly scraped some of the mycelium into a container, then motioned to the other worker that they were good to go. The two of them picked their way to the front entrance, passing a door that was slightly ajar on the way. It lead to the cellar. Keele shuddered. He took a step towards the door, repositioning himself so he could look through the thin crack between the hinge and frame. There was a light on in the cellar, and he could clearly see the staircase leading down.

Hesitantly, Keele bumped the door open; silently, Keele stepped onto the landing and eased himself down the stairs, making sure that his weight settled on the far edge of the stair closest to the wall. Halfway down the stairwell one could see the basement through a gap between the descending stairs and the roof of the cellar. Crouching to get a better look, he could just make out the end of a love seat, thick with the terrible white threads he had seen above. Around its base was a pulpy mass of reddish brown material, from which sprung several of the horned mushrooms he had first encountered so long ago at Agora Marketing.

Absurdly, improbably, a shoe stuck out from the bottom of the pulpy mass.

Keele could hear two voices speaking, low and muffled. Inching his face forward, he could just make out the back of a figure. His heart stopped: the person wore a white NBC suit marked by the insignia of the CDC. The person shifted something in his arms, and leaned over to set down what looked like a backpack made up of two metal cylinders. A hose connected the cylinders to a device that looked similar to Keele's own decontamination sprayer, but it had a thicker barrel and the head was blackened by char.

"That's not what I'm saying," the figure stated, clearly continuing an argument from before Keele had arrived. "I'm just wondering... I mean, does he feel anything? It? Does it feel?"

"It doesn't matter! And no... I mean, how could they... How could it feel anything?" This speaker was hidden by the angle from which Keele could see. The tone was not exhausted or contentious though, and it took Keele a second to realize that the second person was afraid. Afraid of the basement, afraid of the thing they were discussing. "We just do what we're told, alright? Burn, bag, and box."

The first speaker reflected on this and shouldered his pack again. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered, prodding the shoe with the nozzle of his flamethrower. Keele screamed, once, shrill and short. The two figures bolted to the bottom of the stairwell. They pointed at the door behind him, shouted at him, cited jurisdiction and told him to get out before they had him locked up for treason.

Keele didn't really catch everything they had said. The entire drive back to the office took place in a kind of fugue. He had no room in his mind for anything other than what had made him scream. When the nozzle of the flamethrower shifted the canvas top of the rotting sneaker, Keele had seen inside it. There lay the remains of a human foot, puffy pale flesh split by a seam of fungal bloom, and its toes had curled in response to the stimulus.

***

Keele sat at his desk in his newly acquired corner office. It rightfully belonged to his boss, but Keele didn't think he would mind. As a matter of fact, his boss was waving to him now from just outside the window. Barefoot and fancy free. Most of the office could be expected to be out there on any given day, lying in the sunlight or lounging in rain in the hours between noon and three. Neither seemed to bother them very much, and Keele saw no reason to question them. He had never really understood what people found to be entertaining anyways. The only difference between before and now was that he no longer needed to expend effort on pretending otherwise.

At this moment, Keele was working on a crossword. He swore softly when the material of his gloves smudged the ink of one of his answers. He wore a bright white NBC suit, of the same kind sported by the people investigating Lewis's house. He never took it off outside of the home, and only shed it when he was safely showered off and standing inside a broom closet he had converted into a decontamination booth by covering it in tarp and disinfectant. He ate big breakfasts to sustain him through the long work day where he no longer ate at all. At home, he could ensure he ate from freshly opened cans that had themselves been disinfected; at work, no such provision existed. Coffee and tea were okay, provided he was very careful in the boiling of water.

All in all, things weren't that much different, except that Keele's colleagues were easier to work with. Well, that and his morning commute had become hell, with all the city work going on. Every second road seemed plagued by road crews, police escorts, all kinds of junk. But still, things could be worse.

***

Gregory Keele woke up, stretched, and rose out of bed. After showering he got into his NBC suit and walked out into an expansive living room with enormous bay windows that overlooked the city. He had never thought of himself as materialistic, but the penthouse vista was a marked improvement over his old fifth floor bachelor's pad. Leaving his gloves and helmet off for the while, he poured a cup of coffee and thought over the day's routine.

He didn't need any groceries or toiletries, having stocked up several days ago. He had enough ammunition for the two firearms he kept in the house, these being a long rifle and pistol. Keele had never been a gun nut, but he knew enough to match the calibres of ammunition to those of the gun; he would have asked the proprietor for some assistance, but hadn't expected much help from a man who was excitedly pulling teeth from his own head as easily as Keele might wipe dust off his shoulder.

The teeth never bothered him. It was the finger nails. When some engine of the contagion would lose a finger nail, and from that fleshed aperture a pale, questing tendril would slowly unfurl from a congerie of fungal tissue. That still made him cringe.

Finishing his cereal, Keele deposited the bowl in a sink filled with heavily sanitized water and went to the balcony to look over the city. Police barricades dotted the streets, and even the area outside the building he was using for shelter was a hodgepodge of pylons, barricades, and wrecked vehicles. Lone individuals or small groups teetered from street to street, some proving sociable and organized, others less so. An intermittent chatter of firearms signalled the ongoing efforts of the national guard. Keele had no idea if he was inside one of the demilitarized zones or not. It didn't really matter.

It was almost time for work. He donned his gloves and helmet, slung his rifle over his back, and took the pistol in hand. Keele checked the peephole, threw the locks, and entered into the hallway, pressing the button that would signal the elevator. The familiar bell signalled its ascent. The lift often had the infected in it, or uninfected people demanding sanctuary. It didn't matter which. He had one rule for all visitors. Keele watched the doors attentively, taking up a perfect three-point position with the pistol. Sometimes the elevator took a while, but that was fine. He was patient; he could wait.