A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds) by Stephen Colegrove

Wilson. “I’m not scared of rabbits.”
    “Ha!”
    “I just really hate rats.”
    “You get used to them. Add some hot peppers and they taste fine.”
    “That’s it. I’m going to be sick.”
    Wilson took her hand and she didn’t pull away. They continued down the corridor and passed a collapsed cafeteria. Wilson saw an intact door on the right, with Virology B148 printed on a metal sign.
    Badger shoved the door open with a grunt and shadows scattered. She reached to the floor and held up a dusty green rucksack.
    “How about this?”
    “Kira, you’re the best.”
    In the room were metal desks and several file cabinets. Many of the drawers yawned open, empty and toothless. On the walls were large diagrams of chemical structures. Next to faded pictures on a desk a nameplate read “Dr. Gregory Allen.” Wilson opened all the desks and felt inside each cabinet drawer.
    Badger held up a few papers. “Take a look at these.”
    The images had only faded slightly and had a medical theme. One showed a man’s arm next to a thin white cylinder. In another, blue-gowned men bent over an operating table.
    Wilson tapped the photo. “They’re cutting into his arm.”
    “A name-giving ceremony? With all these people around?”
    “This is from the old days. Everyone got their real names when they were born. No, it’s probably to put in or take out that implant.”
    Wilson flipped through the sheets of paper. He found unfamiliar diagrams of the human body, line charts, and pictures of men in a forest connected to boxy, silver machines. Men ran through fields and climbed a mountain ridge. A group of men in swimming briefs stood beside a lake. Wilson held his fingers over a few wooden buildings and it looked like the lake on the other side of Old Man.
    Badger scraped the point of her knife across a desk and yawned.
    Wilson rapped his knuckles on a locked metal cabinet, without looking up. “If you need something to do, open this drawer.”
    Badger yanked it off with an explosion of dust and paper. The passage of time had left only a ghost of text on the pages.
     
    ... of the President, all military bases including Altmann have been on lockdown since ... H1N2 betavirus cases in Denver and Boulder ... family members not already ... for 8 hours, the incubation ... Continuity of Operations ...
     
    Another sheet was filled with lines. Wilson recognized addresses––the old way to organize and locate places. Everything went into the rucksack.
    They moved back into the corridor, Wilson with the lantern and Badger holding a table leg as a makeshift club. After what seemed like hours of stumbling over the uneven floor of the tunnel, Wilson spotted the rusted sign of a floor plan on the wall.
    “Over here!”
    Bits of rust fell to the ground as he moved his finger along the sign. “We’re probably here.” He traced a right angle. “The main entrance is back the way we came.”
    Badger kept her back to him and watched the corridor. “Not a good idea.”
    “Okay––this symbol is a stairway. We could go down a level, double back, and use another set of stairs to go up.”
    Wilson held the pistol as he opened a door marked “Stairwell Access.” It opened easily and they moved carefully down the dusty steps to the Level Two door. Badger kicked it open and brown rats scrambled for cover.
    She held her nose. “More of your lizard food.”
    “And I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”
    He used a white handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose from the stench of ammonia. Rats scrambled into the dark and spun tails into holes as Wilson and Badger followed signs along the tunnel to “Hyperion.” After a long walk and a half-dozen squashed rodents they came to an intersection.
    “What’s that read?” asked Badger.
    “Engineering and Test Platforms. It means lots of machines.”
    They turned right toward “Test Platforms” and met another jumble of earth and rock. Badger scrambled through a gap at the top and helped