i love pretty women.

“"The fucking deer just took the fucking elevator." Naomi, who was still staring at the closed doors in amazement, didn’t even look at Teacake, still trying to digest what had happened. She murmured, "You said that already." "I think it is a hundred percent worth repeating. The fucking deer just took the fucking elevator." Naomi looked back at the phone in her right hand. She didn’t know exactly what the Defense Threat Reduction Agency did, but it was a safe bet that a Rat King and a deer that knows how to work an elevator were probably right up their alley. She turned her phone around and showed him the website. "We need to call this place." "Be my fucking guest." "Do you mind, with the language?" "Sorry." He was. Anything for her. "Please call them." Naomi scrolled to the "Contact Us" header, clicked on it, and a list of phone numbers popped up. "There’s gotta be a hundred numbers listed here." "Like what?" Naomi thumbed her phone again, rolling past the numbers and job titles. "‘Director,’ ‘Deputy Director,’ ‘Command Senior Enlisted Leader,’ ‘Counter-WMD Technologies’?" Teacake looked around, nervous as hell. "What about, like, green shit leaking everywhere and animals acting all fucked up?" "‘Chem/Bio Analysis Center’? ‘DOJ Radiation Exposure Program’?" From the elevator shaft, they heard an inhuman caterwauling echoing off the concrete walls. They took a step back. "Or," Teacake offered, "maybe we put a couple miles between us and this place and then we call them." "I’m cool with that." Another howl came from inside the elevator shaft. "Stairwell?" Naomi suggested.

“Naomi saw it and stood, slowly, phone in one hand and the other hand held out to the deer as if to say, Wait. You don't make sense. The deer lifted its chin and made a grotesque hacking sound at them. Teacake climbed out out the manhole, slowly, and stood next to Naomi. "What's the matter with it?" he asked. "It's sick. Distended belly." The deer took a couple of steps toward them, hacking some more. Teacake picked up the pry bar he'd used to open the manhole cover. "Don't." Naomi said. "Tell it not to come any closer." She looked at him. "Like I talk to animals?" "Wait a minute," Teacake said. The deer froze again, as if obeying him. Teacake thought. So, okay, sick deer staring at them, but this sick deer was in an underground storage facility, all the way down in sub-basement 1. There's only one way it could have gotten to SB-1. The elevator. "How the fuck did it get down here?" (...) The deer reached the elevator doors at the far end and stopped, looking back over its shoulder at them. Teacake walked even slower, "I'm not getting in an elevator with that thing." At that moment, the elevator doors binged and slid open. The deer turned, as if fully expecting that, click-clacked its way into the elevator, turned back around to face them, and, swear to God, it glanced up at the floor numbers as the doors slid shut. Teacake and Naomi stared. Teacake spoke first. "The fucking deer just took the fucking elevator." Naomi looked around, as if seeing the walls on either side of her for the first time. "What the hell is this place?"”

“"The elevator doors slid open. Sub- basement 1 was supposed to be the only sub-basement, and it had never occurred to anybody to question the need for the number. SB-1 looked just fine on the elevator keypad, as good as any other number. The facility's history as a government installation wasn't a secret, so finding out there had once been other, lower levels wouldn't have been much of a surprise, had anybody bothered to think about it. But to find out there were three of them, and they were connected by an elaborate series of sensors and alarms to a control panel that had been walled up behind the reception desk, you know, that would have raised a few eyebrows. According to the schematic, the top entrance to the tube ladder was located at the end of a dead-end hallway about a hundred feet from the elevator bank. Naomi reached the end first, stopped, and turned around in the white-painted cinder block space. There was nothing there that suggested an entrance, in fact the opposite- everything about this space said, This is the end. There were three larger storage units on each side of the hallway, the big two-hundred-square-foot jobs that were mostly used by factories storing overstocks. But there was no door or hatchway or obvious entrance of any kind, except for a small, narrow cabinet between two units marked STAFF ONLY. Naomi looked from the map, to the hallway, to the map. "I don't get it." "You sure it's here?" She held the map out to him. "Look for yourself." He took the phone, held the map one way, then the other, slid it around a bit. Naomi went to the far wall, the dead end, and smacked it a few times here and there with the flat of her hand. Solid. She knocked, tapped with a fist. "Cinder block", she said, "If it's behind here, we'd need a sledgehammer. Or a jackhammer." "Yeah, I'm not down for that." Teacake turned the phone upside down, looking at the schematic again. He looked down at the floor. That's interesting, man. (...) THWUNG. He'd nearly reached the center of the hallway, and when he brought the hammer down there, it produced a hollow, metallic echo. He looked up at Naomi. She grinned and squatted down on the floor next to him. He held up the phone, swiping to enlarge a certain portion of the screen. "Right there. That semicircle made of dashes, kinda shaded gray, can you see it?" "Yeah, barely." "That's the entrance. They just painted over it."”

“"It’s a concrete floor, Travis." "Weird to hear my real name." He kept moving, kept tapping the hammer on the floor. "Sorry," she said. "It bothers you?" "Can’t decide." Yes, he could, and he already had. It didn’t bother him; he loved it. His heart skipped a beat every time she said his name. He couldn’t wait till she said it again. Please say it again, just one more time?”

“Teacake shined the light up the ladder, assessing the climb ahead of them. "You want to go first this time or—" He didn’t see the kiss coming, and if he had the moment to live over again, of course he would have done his part differently. One second he was looking up and talking, and the next he felt her lips on his cheek and her hand on his other cheek, turning him softly toward her. Then they were kissing—well, she was kissing him, really—and it was a soft and sweet and full-lipped kiss, just the right kind. It was over before he’d had a chance to get his bearings, and maybe for that reason it was the perfect first kiss, the kind that leaves you feeling fresh and alive and wanting another one exactly like it. Because he could not help himself, he spoke. "Wait, what?" She smiled. "Thank you. That was bizarre and cool." Without another word she turned away and started climbing back up the ladder toward the top. Teacake grinned. Some things you just couldn’t call. "So are you, lady." He shoved the flashlight back in his pocket and followed her.”

“"We have a serious problem here. There's this virus, or a fungus-" "Right on the second one. I know all about it. Are you somewhere safe right now?" "We're locked in a storage unit." "Okay. Could be worse. Stay in there." "No kidding. For how long? Are you sending people?" "Has anyone come into direct physical contact with it? You'd know if they had because they'd have- "Yes." Roberto mouthed shit silently. Trini looked at him as often as she dared while driving at seventy miles per hour over Centennial Bridge." "Hello?" Naomi asked. "Yes, I was just calling something up on my screen," he lied. "How many people have been infected?" "Just one, I think." "And is that person still inside the facility?" "Yes. He keeps trying to get in here. Where we are." In the background, he heard more shouting- the ranting guy was at it again. Naomi conferred with him quickly, said, "Okay, okay, okay," and came back on the line. "Also, there was a deer. A deer was infected." "Where is the deer now?" "It blew up." "Outside or inside?" "Did you hear me? I said it blew up." "Yes, I heard. Can you tell me where it blew up?" "In the hallway." Her tone said like that matters, but Roberto breathed a sigh of relief that it was still inside the building.”

“"We have a serious problem here. There's this virus, or a fungus-" "Right on the second one. I know all about it. Are you somewhere safe right now?" "We're locked in a storage unit." "Okay. Could be worse. Stay in there." "No kidding. For how long? Are you sending people?" "Has anyone come into direct physical contact with it? You'd know if they had because they'd have- "Yes." Roberto mouthed shit silently. Trini looked at him as often as she dared while driving at seventy miles per hour over Centennial Bridge." "Hello?" Naomi asked. "Yes, I was just calling something up on my screen," he lied. "How many people have been infected?" "Just one, I think." "And is that person still inside the facility?" "Yes. He keeps trying to get in here. Where we are." In the background, he heard more shouting- the ranting guy was at it again. Naomi conferred with him quickly, said, "Okay, okay, okay," and came back on the line. "Also, there was a deer. A deer was infected." "Where is the deer now?" "It blew up." "Outside or inside?" "Did you hear me? I said it blew up." "Yes, I heard. Can you tell me where it blew up?" "In the hallway." Her tone said like that matters, but Roberto breathed a sigh of relief that it was still inside the building.”

“She smiled at him. It was hard not to find Teacake moderately charming. She noticed the badly inked snake wrapped around his right biceps, but let it pass without comment. His ink was his business, and she’d seen enough to know where that kind of sloppy tattoo probably came from. He noticed her noticing, and he saw the slight change in the way she looked at him. A tiny lowering of her shoulders, the minutest tilt of the head away from him. It was always the same. If women were smart enough to know him, they were smart enough to not get to know him any better. Shit. Why did he bother? (...) He looked at her for a long moment, and the voice in the back of Teacake’s brain that had been trying to get a hold of his attention finally broke through. See?! the voice said. I told you there was a beep! Teacake looked at Naomi, his eyes lighting up with the realization. "Your side too?"”

“There was a second there where Teacake could look into her eyes from up close without coming off as creepy, a second where it was just gratitude and connection. The first half of that second was thrilling- her eyes were home, they were the only place he ever wanted to be, and the last lines of the only poem he knew flitted through his mind- A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent. But then came the other half second, and his mind was no longer at peace, it felt only sorrow. Because he knew no matter how she felt tonight, no matter the thrill or danger or exhilaration of discovery, inevitably tomorrow morning would come, those feelings would fade, and she would realize they couldn't possibly be together.”