VINDICATION

Chapter 17: Success


A few days later, early in the morning, Zim walked into the lab, his nose buried in a handful of papers. When he looked up, he saw Dib sitting at the lab table, wearing nothing but his pajama bottoms, his hair still sleep-rumpled. He had a cup of coffee sitting next to him on the table, and he was looking over some kind of grayish paper.

When he heard Zim come into the lab, Dib turned and smiled brightly at him. “Quick, you gotta see this.” He gathered up the newspaper as Zim approached, holding it out so he could see the headline on the front page.

OUTBREAK!

“It worked.” Dib beamed, turning to the second page. “Look at the statistics…” Dib looked like he was two seconds away from dancing around the lab. “I can’t believe it…it has a 90% fatality rate…”

Zim grinned, reading the article over Dib’s shoulder. “It’s spread over the city. How is that possible?”

Dib grinned from ear to ear. “It was spread by the carrier when they found her body.”

Zim’s eyes widened. “She’s dead?”

The human nodded. “As of 48 hours ago, yeah…” A sadistic leer crept across his face. “Payback’s a bitch.”

There was a glint in Zim’s eyes, and they narrowed slightly. “So it’s effective, then.”

“90% effective, which is pretty damned good for a sample.”

Zim grinned wider, his teeth showing. “Yesss…” he hissed. “Excellent.”

Dib nodded, stretching and then taking another sip of his coffee.

Zim went over the computerized map of the Earth’s surface that took up an entire wall of the lab, raising himself up on his spider-legs and running his fingers over one of the locations. “There is a missile silo in Colorado, yes?”

Dib looked up from the article he was reading. “Yes, there is. Why do you ask?” He held his breath when he saw Zim standing high on his spider-legs. Dib had always been spellbound by the delicate mechanical beauty of them on the rare occasions that he had seen them.

The Irken pursed his lips. “How long does it take for the disease to…kill the host?”

“It depends, but from what I’m reading, no more than 36 hours.”

“How contagious?”

Dib ran a hand through his hair. “Well, it looks like it can be contracted from the host even after death, plus the bacteria themselves are airborne, so I’m guessing it’s pretty contagious.” He stood, walking over to where Zim was standing on his tentacles. “What are you planning?”

Zim lowered himself to the ground again, the legs retracting into his pak once more as he grinned deviously. “I want to clear out the entire military installment. I want access to those weapons.”

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