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“Teacake and Naomi stared in horrified fascination. From this closer perspective they could see the deer had numerous gunshot wounds to its head, and one hindquarter appeared to have been completely crushed and then reinflated, somewhat off-shape, The deer's belly seemed to expand as they watched, and its once-spindly limbs had taken on the shape of piano limbs. Naomi held her hands out, one toward the deer and one toward Teacake. "Just- just- just" Teacake looked at her, his voice an octave higher than usual. "Yeah?" "Don't- don't- don't" "Are you talking to me or to the thing?!" She wasn't sure. The deer took another few steps forwards them, and they, in turn, took a few steps back. They continued to back away, moving toward the T-junction of the hallway. (...) The deer kept moving toward them, and Teacake and Naomi continued to back up until they reached the cinder block wall at the end of the corridor. They could have turned and run in either direction, but that would have meant tearing their eyes away from the unnatural spectacle that was unfolding in front of them, and that they could not do. The deer was still swelling, its body creaking and groaning and snapping on the inside. It was puffing up like a water balloon at the end of a hose; there were just a few seconds left before its gut let go. Naomi and Teacake were directly with in its spatter radius and didn't realize how close they were to a certain and painful death. But at the very last moment, Naomi's four-year-old daughter, Sarah, stepped in and saved both of their lives. For the last three months, Sarah had been deep in the throes of a Willy Wonka obsession. Sarah, and therefore her mother, had watched the 1971 version of that movie, in whole or in part, more times than Naomi cared to count. (...) Naomi knew every line, every lyric, every part of it by heart, and the parts she knew best were the parts that scared Sarah. The parts where she needed her mama to come over and sit down and pull her onto her lap and stroke her hair and tell her it was all just pretend. Naomi didn't mind. She actually liked her kid best of all in those moments, because those were the times she felt like a halfway-okay mother. The scary parts of Willy Wonka were some of the most peaceful moments of Naomi's life, which of course, made her feel guilty. Does my kid have to be terrified and clingy in order for me to be happy? Well, no, but sometimes it helps. What mattered now was the part of the movie that scared Sarah the most: when Violet Beauregarde stole the Three-Course-Dinner Gum and began to swell and blow up into an enormous blueberry. Sarah would cover her eyes and scream in panic, "She's going to pop! She's going to pop! Mama, she's going to pop!" The deer was going to pop. Naomi grabbed Teacake by the arm and hauled him to the side, pulling him around the corner and slamming them both up against the wall, hard, just as the deer's overtaxed frame gave out. It isn't accurate to say that the deer burst, like Mr. Scroggins and Enos Namatjira's uncle had. This was different. One second the deer stood there, swollen nearly to round, like Violet Beauregarde. And the next second, the deer was not standing there, but the ceiling, floor, and walls of the hallway were painted with thick, foamy green fungus. Naomi held Teacake pressed firmly against the wall, inches out of the line of fire, safe behind their blast shield when the goo flew.”

“"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.”