Immortality (48 page)

“Keep still,” she said.

Her eyes were concerned. She turned his hand over several times.

“No openings,” she said.

She went to his shoulder. The whole upper area of his arm and shoulder was throbbing and felt wet. A moment later, Mark saw General McKafferty’s face loom behind her and then saw another man with an M16. The General actually looked like he had some kind of pity in his eyes. Mark looked back at Kathy.

“The suit has a tear in it,” she said. “The skin is broken. There’s also a deep contusion.”

“I feel like hell,” said Mark. “A kiss would make it better.”

He knew from the way Kathy’s eyes wrinkled at the corners that he’d gotten a real smile. The attacker’s saliva had mixed with his blood.

“Contaminated,” said McKafferty. “Any direct exposure calls for immediate quarantine. Lieutenant Rivers, I want a medivac here in five minutes.”

“Yes, Sir,” came a female voice in reply.

Mark eyed the General. He had no idea what this man was capable of doing. Cold detachment was in McKafferty’s stare. The pity was gone. Contaminated. He sensed McKafferty no longer considered him human. Had he just been added to the experimental subjects list? Were they going to film seeds burrowing through his brain next? Mark had heard the rules of martial law on the drive from the airfield. They were the same as in Los Angeles. Anyone exposed was not allowed to leave. Kathy took the General’s arm and led him a short distance away from the other soldiers. Mark heard their radios switch off channel.

The pain was fading. He saw Kathy gesturing at the General. More than once, he saw her poke at his chest. Her jabs looked as effective as poking at a wall of rock. She glanced at Mark and a moment later came walking back. She kneeled down next to him and turned off her radio then turned off his. She leaned forward so their faceplates were touching, and he realized, so that the sound of her voice would conduct through the glass.

“You’re coming home to the CDC with me,” said Kathy.

“How am I doing that? This whole place is under military law and I am exposed. You heard the man.”

“The General’s going to help. We’re going to get you a new NBC suit and they’ll destroy this one. You’re going to have to wear the suit all the way back to Atlanta. The General is going to take us out of here on his helicopter. I had to assure him we’d keep you isolated once we get back.”

“What else did you do to convince him to go along with this?”

“Common sense – that you can do more good to end this nanotech virus working at the CDC than sitting on your hands in a refugee shelter.”

“And?”

Kathy shrugged.

“I got the sense he was just waiting for me to ask with enough emotion. He’s got to know he can use this as blackmail. He owns us. One word and you’re shipped off to a camp and I get a visit from the military police.”

Mark didn’t like any of this. General McKafferty came over. He stood there smiling with that ugly face until their radios were turned back on. He helped Kathy up.

“Fucking dirt-eaters,” muttered the General.

“What?” said Mark.

“Dirt-eaters. The bastard thing that attacked you! Some eggheads are saying it’s the result of posttraumatic stress. My guess is the seeds sliced up a different part of their brain and not enough to kill them, so they end up as walking wounded. Dirt-eaters have caused a lot of problems in Los Angeles and New York. Lucky for you, one of my sentries saw what was happening and put the man down.”

A pair of soldiers arrived with a gurney. At first, Mark protested but Kathy insisted. Her logic was annoyingly convincing. She was concerned about the contamination spreading. He needed to keep exertion to a minimum. His heart rate and blood flow would determine how quickly the bacterium could spread through his body and reach his brain. Mark didn’t like that he was starting to feel like a patient. The image of infected COBIC swimming through his blood was something he immediately tried to push from his mind and failed.

They’d been on the road for three hours. The coffee and fried Spam breakfast had left Artie’s stomach feeling raw. Tension was growing as they neared Alexandria. He was afraid they would find a pair of decomposed bodies that were once Suzy’s parents. He tried again to engage Suzy in conversation. She was if anything more withdrawn. The rain had stopped an hour ago. The roads were slick with water and autumn leaves. Sunlight beamed through the branches of naked trees. Many of the streets looked like something from the third world: gutted houses, missing windows, doors hanging by a single hinge, every vertical surface tattooed with spray paint.

Artie turned left on Bishop Street; Suzy’s parents lived on this block. He slowed to a crawl, trying to recognize the house. Thankfully, the last few miles of houses had appeared untouched. He wondered how much longer that would last. He stopped short as Suzy abruptly swung opened the car door. She was out and running toward a house he now recognized. She reached the front door and knocked, then tried the knob, then started banging. He killed the ignition, leaving the camper angled half out in the road. By the time he got to the house, Suzy was going around to the windows trying to peer in. She had her hands cupped over her eyes.

“They’re not answering!” she cried. “Why won’t they answer?”

“Shhhh, baby. Come here.”

Artie put his arms around her. She was tense and struggled against him.

“They’re probably not home. That’s all. They could be anywhere,” he said.

Artie sat her down on the steps and then went around the house checking every window himself. They were all locked. The back door was locked. He looked through a side window of the garage. There was a bare concrete floor. They own a single car and it was gone. This was the first good sign all day. He went around to the front. Suzy was back at a living room window trying to see inside.

“Their car’s gone,” he said. “They might have gone out to get something or they could have been evacuated. Everything’s locked tight.

Artie walked to the curb to check the mailbox. Suzy followed him. The box was empty. He looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was abandoned.

“The only way in is to break a window,” he said. “Do you want me to do that?”

“Can’t you just jimmy something?”

“No, it’s either break a window or kick in a door. The window will be a lot easier to fix.”

Suzy hugged him and started crying.

“What if they’re inside?” she said.

Artie led her back to the front steps. He looked around the foundation for a rock. He found a cluster of river stones used for landscaping a hedge.

“We’re gonna feel really dumb when they show up five minutes from now,” he said.

Suzy smiled meekly. Her cheeks were damp with tears. Artie carefully broke a side window and tapped out the remaining shards instead of opening it. He didn’t want to set of a burglar alarm. He laid his jacket over the windowsill and climbed through.

The inside of the house looked lived in. Magazines were scattered on a coffee table. The air smelled of carpet powder. He spotted a burglar alarm panel. It was unarmed. He thought about checking the upper floors but knew Suzy would be kicking at the door in a couple more seconds. He’d seen enough and was convinced the place was empty. He twisted the dead bolt and opened the door. Suzy’s eyes skimmed over his face checking for signs of bad news.

“Looks like they just stepped out,” he said.

She glanced around quickly and then went straight for the stairs. Artie caught up with her half way to the top. All the doors on the second floor were open. Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Some hangers were on a bed. Suzy went to her mother’s closet. She started going through dresses, then shelves, then shoeboxes.

“The suitcases are gone and so is my Mom’s favorite dress. I think one of her coats is missing, too.”

Artie sat down on the bed. He felt tired. His sinuses were beginning to ache. He worked his knuckle in small circles against one of his temples. The pressure relieved some of the aching. Suzy had started going through drawers and closets. She found a jewelry pouch hidden inside a secret place in her mother’s vanity table. Inside the pouch was an antique locket and chain.

“She left it behind for me. I know it.”

He watched her open the tiny locket.

“The picture’s still there,” she said. “It’s the three of us when we lived in Jersey. I think I was five then.”

Hours later, Artie was hungry. The house now looked like a burglar had carefully worked it over. Suzy dropped onto the couch beside him. She looked smaller somehow. She had gone over every inch of the place.

“Why didn’t they leave a note?” she murmured.

~

Traffic was light. They were ninety miles south of Alexandria. Night had fallen hours ago. Artie pulled the Volkswagen off the two-lane highway onto a service access. This was the fourth one they’d tried. His eyes were sore. He was exhausted. The path was made of dirt and barely wide enough for the camper. A hundred feet in, the dirt road widened into a circle and then angled out to the main road again. He cut the lights and the ignition. This was exactly what he’d been looking for. They were out of sight from the roadway but could get back to it in a hurry by two different routes if they had to flee.

They shared a can of Vienna Sausages and a can of spaghetti, both warmed over a tin of sterno. There was apple juice to wash down the candlelight dinner. They slept in the back on the floor. The rear seats had been jettisoned the other day to make room for additional supplies. They kept warm by wearing their coats and cuddling under a quilt and two blankets. The temperature had dipped rapidly with the sun. Artie considered occasionally running the engine to warm the inside, but he had no way of knowing how far it was to the next working gas station.

In the middle of the night Artie stirred. He felt something was wrong; then he heard a distant sound, like the rumble of hundreds of engines at idle. He opened the door. The outside sheet metal was like ice. His skin adhered to it. He carefully pushed the door closed until it clicked. Suzy didn’t stir. The sound was louder outside. He took a few crunchy steps. His breath formed clouds in the moonlight. He shivered and, for the first time in years, wished he had a cigarette. Whatever was out there scared him. He put his hand over the bulge in his coat to make sure the gun was still in its shoulder holster.

Artie moved carefully through the trees and brush. He could see road lights moving up ahead. The ground cover was crisp from the freezing cold. He kept behind cover while angling toward the highway. The noise of his shoe snapping a single twig immobilized him for minutes until he was sure no one was close by and had heard him. After an endlessly slow and tense progress, he’d picked his way to within a dozen feet of the pavement. He knelt low to keep from being spotted and peered out between a lattice of branches. A column of cars, trucks and military vehicles were moving at about five miles per hour. There were heavy armored vehicles with gun turrets. Their weight shook the ground as they crawled past. Searchlights probed the tree line. Slivers of light licked through the branches, illuminating things well behind him. Disembodied voices came and went. He was certain it was the Pagans. A collection of motorcycles rumbled past, followed by armored Humvees. He was watching a Halloween parade of the damned. A thin shard of spotlight cut through the trees and glowed white hot on his chest like a laser. He froze, not even breathing.

Kathy had been pushing herself for over 24 hours without sleep. After their return from Lake Superior, she’d ordered blood and spinal fluid drawn from Mark. The first spinal fluid test had come back positive for COBIC; so had the second and the third. Oddly, the blood tests were all negative. His brain and spinal cavities were saturated with infected bacteria while other areas of his body appeared to be clean. Even though seeds could easily penetrate the blood-brain barrier, whole COBIC bacteria could not. The presence of COBIC in his spinal fluid while absent in his blood could not be explained by normal blood circulation from an infected bite that was only 24 hours old. The only clinical explanation was that Mark had been infected long ago. She had run every available medical test on him. Other than COBIC, he was healthier than he should be, given his age and pre-existing medical problems. A soldier standing next to Mark had died during the kill zone while Mark had not. She was convinced infected COBIC had been inside Mark prior to the Duluth kill zone, and that made him just like Gloria Martinez. And just like Gloria Martinez, Kathy had no clue why he was alive. She felt she was missing something obvious, some tiny but critical detail.

Thoughts about Mark’s condition and their intimacy had left her frightened that he might have infected her. She’d submitted to the same tests as Mark and had received a clean bill of health, but was still worried. What if she was infected in some way that didn’t show up? She could easily imagine this smart bug evading hypodermic needles which were probing and sampling its environment.

Mark’s acceptance of his condition surprised her. He was sealed in an airtight bubble of a room that was more like a prison. In every way, he had become a lab specimen just like Gloria Martinez. She’d expected anger or depression. Instead, without missing a beat, he’d asked for a computer and for one of the lab techs to be assigned to work exclusively for him.

She looked at a window on her computer screen. Inside the window was video surveillance from Mark’s isolation cell. His medical telemetry was in a second window. Mark was working with his computer. His back was to her. He had on a shirt, a sweater vest, and jeans. She remembered how his eyes looked. He had such strong eyes. Since they’d slept together, she’d tried very hard to bury her feelings. There had been moments when they were talking that she’d wanted nothing more than to hold him and promise that he would get through this. Walls of glass separated them and she knew it was a lie to say that everything would be all right. She suspected it was something that she needed to believe more than he did. He’d already started discussing ways the seeds inside him might be triggered with the unspoken result being his death. She couldn’t stand it.