Free The Containment Team by Dan Decker Page A

as much say in these things as she used to.
    Madelyn pushed ahead and out into the lobby as I cinched up the drawstrings at the top of my pack. When I left the stairwell I’d expected Pete and her to be halfway to the door.
    They’d stopped just short of the stairs. A crowd of students had gathered around a television in the lobby—despite the late hour—that was tuned to the news. 
    “Come on, we gotta go.” I grabbed them each by an arm and pulled them towards the door.
    Pete shook off my hand. “Things are worse than I feared.” He pointed at the screen.
    A dark haired woman had heard his comment and was now looking us over. She examined the box Pete held before sniffing and looking away. She would have stepped away from us if she’d have known what we were carrying.
    “What are you talking about?” I asked.
    At least the woman hadn’t been alarmed by the blutom. It was still vibrating, but it was now much more subdued. She had probably just mistaken it for an old black sock. Or maybe a sick hamster.
    “We can’t be sure it’s the same thing,” Madelyn said.
    Words trailed across the bottom of the television screen faster than I could read. I must have been more tired than I thought. I caught something about New York and gathered that there had been a terrorist attack. We were looking at camera footage, but I had come in on the tail end of it and not seen what it had all been about. What I did see was blurry and I could only make out the back of a person running away.
    A talking head came back on. “That was happening all over Times Square tonight.” He paused. “More footage has just come in, be advised it is graphic.”
    Madelyn gasped. She covered her mouth and grabbed my hand.
    It was a man covered in red mucus, his head shedding hair as he ran, just like it had with Veronica. He leaped up onto another man, sending the first sprawling to the ground.
    As he roared and bent down to bite the neck, a dozen more piled on as the footage ended. It was unclear what had happened to the person recording the video.
    Chills ran up my arms and through my neck. I had just assumed we were dealing with a problem that was relatively contained. If the blutom had made its way to New York, there was no telling where it might turn up next. 
    “They didn’t.”
    l almost missed Pete’s whisper in the cacophony that followed as the others in the room reacted. Half a dozen separate conversations started as people tried to digest what it was that they had just seen.
    I grabbed his arm. “What?”
    Pete looked around the room. “Not here.” 
    “You’re little lab project has spread faster than we thought,” Madelyn said, whispering so that only we could here. I glanced at the dark haired woman and hoped she wasn’t still paying attention to what we were saying. Her back was turned to us and she appeared to be listening to a couple of other women.
    The reporters on television had continued to talk and I hadn’t heard anything yet about blutom. If—
    No, when that happened, I didn’t want to be standing here with a box of the stuff on hand. There was no telling how our fellow students would react to such a situation.  
    “Not here!” Pete pushed through the crowd, earning several frowns as he jostled people out of the way. He didn’t cause more than a momentary stir as they returned to their conversations. 
    “There’s more going on here than Slammer’s told us about,” I said.
    “You think?” Madelyn pushed after Pete.
    I didn’t respond as I followed after the both of them, careful to not jostle anybody as I did. Most people thought twice before saying something when somebody Pete’s size passed their way.
    I didn’t have the luxury. At just two inches under six feet, I was average at best. 
    It was cool outside, but not cold. It rarely ever went below fifty-five at night. I pegged the temperature to be somewhere a little above sixty.
    Pete was twenty feet ahead of us on the sidewalk, heading to