Infected (7 page)

“I’m surprised you beat me here, Amos.”

“Some of us aren’t off gallivanting around with the president, my dear. Becoming quite the celebrity, aren’t you?”

“Oh shut up and let’s get ready. We don’t have a lot of time if this body is like the others.”

They stepped into two small dressing areas concealed by plastic dividers. Inside each area hung an orange Racal suit, designed to protect the wearer against all types of hostile agents. The suits always reminded her of hell, of burned human skin hanging like some satanic trophy.

First she removed her clothes and donned surgical scrubs. She slid into the Racal suit, which was made of flexible Tyvek synthetic fabric, impermeable to air, chemicals or virus particles. The ankles, wrists and neck had intricate metallic rings. With the suit on, she stepped into special boots that had a metallic ring matching the ones on the suit legs. She snapped the rings together with a satisfying springy click, signifying an airtight seal. She then wrapped the seam with brown sticky tape, further sealing off her feet against possible contamination. She did the same with the thick Tyvek gloves, taping herself off at the wrist. Tape was overkill, particularly with the state-of-the-art Racal suit, but after seeing what this mysterious condition did to victims, she wanted all the precautions she could get. Margaret loosely wrapped several layers of tape around her arm; if she accidentally cut the suit, she could plug the leak as fast as possible.

They didn’t understand how the infection spread. Other than shared symptoms, there seemed to be no connection between the five known victims. It might be spread by contact via some unidentified human carrier; via airborne transmission (although that seemed very unlikely based on the fact that no one exposed to the victims contracted the infection); via common vehicle transmission, which applied to contaminated items such as food, water or any medication; or via vectorborne transmission, the name given to transmission from mosquitoes, flies, rats or any other vermin. Her current theory was far more disturbing: that it was being intentionally spread to specific targets. Any way she sliced it, however, until she knew the transmission mode for certain, she wasn’t taking any chances.

When Margaret came out from behind the curtain, Amos was already waiting for her. In the bulky suit with no helmet, he looked particularly odd—the suit’s helmet ring made his thin neck look positively anorexic.

She’d had to argue with Murray Longworth to keep Amos. Murray actually thought she could figure out a completely unknown biological phenomenon all by herself. She needed a full team of experts, but Murray wouldn’t hear of it.

She needed Amos’s expertise in biochemistry and parasitology. She knew the former discipline was vital for analyzing the victims’ bizarre behavioral changes, and she had a nagging feeling the latter would be increasingly significant. He was a smart-ass, but he was also brilliant, insightful and seemed to require little or no sleep. She was desperately grateful to have him.

Amos helped her with the bulky helmet, locking the ring to create the seal around her neck. The faceplate instantly fogged up. He wrapped her neck seal with the sticky tape, then started the air filter/compressor attached to the suit’s waist. She felt a hiss of fresh air; the Racal suit billowed up slightly. The positive pressure meant that in case of a leak, air would flow out of the suit, not in, theoretically keeping any transmission vectors away from her body.

She helped Amos with his helmet.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. Her voice sounded oddly confined inside her helmet, but a built-in microphone transmitted the sound to a small speaker mounted on the helmet’s chin. External microphones picked up ambient sound and transmitted it to tiny built-in speakers, giving the suit’s wearer relatively normal hearing.

“Sounds fine,” Amos said. His froggish voice came through somewhat tinny and artificial, but she understood his words clearly.

The hospital didn’t have an airtight room. Murray had provided a portable one, a top-secret Biohazard Safety Level 4 lab. Margaret hadn’t even known such a thing existed until Murray acquired it from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. USAMRIID probably should have been the ones studying Brewbaker and the others, but since Margaret already knew, she got to run with the ball. Biohazard safety levels ran from one through four, with BSL-4 being as bad as it got.

The portable BSL-4 lab was small, designed to fit inside existing structures. Its flexible walls were set up within those of the morgue, almost as if kids had set up a large white, plastic tent in their parents’ basement. She knew exactly what she’d see in the small space, as she’d left very specific instructions for Murray. She’d find a stainless-steel morgue table with a full drainage system to capture Brewbaker’s liquefying body, a computer for sending and receiving information on a completely closed network, and a prep table with all the equipment she’d need, including a stack of BSL-4 sample containers that could be completely immersed in decontaminant solvent in the airlock, then shipped off to other BSL-4 labs for analysis.

Margaret and Amos entered the airtight room through the flexible airlock.

Inside, Dew Phillips was waiting—and he wasn’t wearing a biosuit. He stood next to the charred body laid out on the steel table. It was horribly burned, especially around what was left of the legs.

Margaret felt anger wash over her; this man could be contaminating her lab, impeding any work she might accomplish now that she had an actual body and not a disintegrating pile of rotting black flesh. “Agent Phillips, what are you doing in here without a biosuit?”

He just stared at her. He pulled a Tootsie Roll from his pocket, unwrapped it slowly, popped the candy into his mouth, and then dropped the wrapper on the floor. “Nice to see you, too, Doc.”

Dew’s deep green eyes resembled the color of dark emeralds. His skin was pale, his face stubbled and haggard, his suit wrinkled beyond all repair. His mottled scalp shone under the harsh lab lights. Age hadn’t affected his body, not much—it looked rock solid under the wrecked suit.

“Answer my question,” Margaret demanded, her voice mechanized by the suit’s small speaker. She hadn’t liked him from the start, hadn’t liked his cold demeanor, and this incident wasn’t helping change her opinion at all.

Dew chewed for a moment, cold eyes staring into Margaret’s. “I got up close and personal with this guy. If he’s contagious, I’ve got it, so what’s the point in putting on a human condom?”

She walked up to the table and examined the body. The fire had briefly touched the head, burning away all hair and leaving a scalp dotted with small blisters. A twisted expression of wide-eyed rage etched the corpse’s face. Margaret suppressed a shiver, first at the very picture of lunacy on the table before her, then at Dew Phillips, who had looked straight into this horrid expression and pulled the trigger three times.

The arms and legs were the worst, burned to blackened cinders in places. Where the skin remained, it was the leathery greenish black of third-degree burns. The left hand was nothing more than a skeletal talon covered with chunks of cindered flesh. The right hand was in better shape, almost free of burns, an oddly white area at the end of a shriveled, carbonized arm. Both legs were gone below the knee.

The corpse’s genitals were badly burned. Second-degree burns covered the abdomen and lower torso. Three large bullet wounds marked the chest, two within inches of the heart and one directly over it. Smears of blood were now bone dry, flaking away, leaving whiter spots on the scorched skin.

“What happened to his legs?”

“He cut them off,” Dew said. “With a hatchet.”

“What do you mean, he cut them off? He cut off his own legs?”

“Right before he set himself on fire. With gasoline. My partner tried to put him out, and got a hatchet in the belly for his troubles.”

“Jesus,” Amos said. “He chopped off his own legs and burned himself?”

“That’s right,” Dew said. “But those nice bullet holes in his chest, those are mine.”

Margaret stared at the corpse, then back up at Dew. “So…does he have any?”

Dew reached down and turned the corpse over. For some reason it surprised her to see he wore surgical gloves. He flipped the body over with minimal effort—Martin Brewbaker hadn’t been a big man, and much of his weight had been consumed by fire.

The wounds were much worse on Brewbaker’s back, fist-size holes ripped open by the .45-caliber bullets, but that wasn’t what caught Margaret’s attention. She unconsciously held her breath—there, just left of the spine and just below the scapula, sat a triangular growth. It was the first growth she’d seen live, and not as a picture, since her examination of Charlotte Wilson. One of the bullet wounds had ripped free a small chunk of the growth. Flames had caused even more damage, but at least it was something to work with.

Amos leaned forward. “Are there any more?”

“I thought I saw some on his forearms, but I’m not sure,” Dew said.

“Not sure?” Margaret stood. “How can you not be sure? I mean, either you saw them or you didn’t.” She noticed Amos wince behind his faceplate, but it was too late.

Dew stared at her, anger visibly whirling behind his dead eyes. “Sorry, Doc, I was busy looking at the
fucking hatchet
the bastard was burying in my
partner’s
stomach.” His voice was slow, cold and threatening. “I know I’ve only been doing this shit for
thirty years,
but next time I’ll pay better attention.”

She suddenly felt very small—one look at the body and she’d forgotten all about Dew’s partner laid up in critical condition.
Jesus, Margaret,
she thought,
were you born an insufferable bitch or did you have to work at it?

“Dew…I’m sorry about…about…” The name of Dew’s partner escaped her.

“Malcolm Johnson,” Dew said. “Agent, husband, father.”

Margaret nodded. “Right, of course, Agent Johnson. Well…I’m sorry.”

“Save it for the medical journals, Doc. I realize I’m supposed to answer your questions, but you know, all of a sudden I don’t feel so swell. Something about the smell in here is making me sick.”

Dew turned and headed for the door.

“But Dew, I need to hear how it went down! I need all the information I can get.”

“Read my report,” Dew said over his shoulder.

“Please, wait—”

He slipped out through the airlock and was gone.

Amos went to the prep table. Among other instruments, the prep team had left them with a digital camera. Amos picked it up and started circling the body, taking picture after picture.

“Margaret, why do you let him walk all over you like that?”

She turned on Amos, her face flushing with anger. “I sure didn’t see you standing up to him.”

“That’s because I’m a pussy,” Amos said. He snapped another picture. “I’m also not in charge of this shebang—you are.”

“Shut up, Amos.” In truth, she was happy to see Dew leave. The man had an aura about him, a sense that he was not only a death dealer, but one waiting impatiently for his own demise as well. Dew Phillips gave her the willies.

She turned back to the body and gently, ever so gently, poked the triangular growth. It felt squishy underneath the burned skin. A tiny jet of black ooze bubbled up from one of the triangle’s points.

Margaret sighed. “Let’s get rocking. Excise samples of the growth, and let’s send them out for analysis right away—the body has already started rotting, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

She picked up Dew’s Tootsie Roll wrapper, dropped it in a medical waste bin, cracked her knuckles through the large gloves, then got to work.

RUMBLIN’, STUMBLIN’, BUMBLIN’

“That was a bullshit call!” Perry’s booming voice joined the fused protests of the other bar patrons. “There’s no way that’s interference!”

While hooting and hollering football fans packed the bar, there was a noticeable space around Perry and Bill’s table. The narrow-eyed scowl etched on Perry’s face was the same one he had unconsciously worn on the football field. The other patrons cast frequent, discreet glances his way, keeping an eye on his huge, tense form as if he were some predator that might snap at any moment.

The ten-foot projection TV screens of Scorekeeper’s Bar & Grill blazed San Francisco’s crimson jerseys and gold helmets along with Green Bay’s tradition-rich green and yellow. The slow-motion replay showed a perfect spiral descending toward a Packers receiver, then the 49ers defensive back reaching up and swatting the ball away.

Perry screamed at the TV. “You see that?” He turned to stare in disbelieving anger at Bill, who sat calmly sipping from a Budweiser bottle. “You see that?”

“Seemed like a good call to me,” Bill said. “No bout-a-doubt-it. It was practically rape when you look at it.”

Perry howled in protest, beer spilling from his mug as his hands moved in accordance with his speech. “Oh, you’re crazy! The defender has a right to go for the ball. Now the Packers have a first-and-ten on the friggin’ fifteen-yard line.”

“Try to keep some of that beer in the mug, will you?” Bill said, taking another sip from his bottle.

Perry wiped up the spilled beer with a napkin. “Sorry. I just get pissed when the refs decide who’s supposed to win and don’t just let them play.”