Spiral (34 page)

49

MAGGIE WAS RUNNING OUT OF TIME
.

She strained against the cuffs on her wrists. Two feet away, on the little table, lay the pair of tweezers that Orchid had used the day before. They were a pitiful weapon, but if she could get her hands on them, it might just be enough.

The skin on her right wrist tore, rolled back. The blood was slick, acting as lubrication between flesh and metal. A few more minutes and she’d be there. If Orchid would stay away just a few minutes longer.

Maggie was very close.

If only Orchid would stay away.

THE LAST TWELVE HOURS HAD BEEN A TERRIFYING JOURNEY
. A descent into madness, and then, incredibly, a return to sanity. Orchid had infected her with the Uzumaki, then left her overnight in complete darkness. For hour after interminable hour, Maggie had grown increasingly frantic, trapped inside the claustrophobic gas mask, trying to scream, trying to escape the corpses grabbing at her.

Hours later, Orchid had returned and switched on the lights, dispelling for the moment her ghostly attackers. Maggie had let loose with a string of curses like she’d never uttered. She’d howled, called Orchid a bitch and a whore, screeched all the ways she’d like to kill her. A demon possessed her that had little relation to the self that Maggie had known.

Orchid had opened her backpack on the bench, reached inside. Maggie had kept up the invective, only stopping when she saw what Orchid held in her palm. A glass vial filled with her grandfather’s glowing
Fusarium
fungus.

Orchid had taken some of the multicolored stringy fungus and mixed it together with a liquid in a test tube. With a hypodermic, she’d pulled the liquid up inside, then injected it into Maggie’s stomach.

Then Orchid had left.

Over the next few hours, Maggie’s shakes had continued, with mad visions of Crawlers tearing apart her son and corpses grabbing at her. But after a while, she’d noticed a change. The hallucinations were lessening.

The crazy itching, the homicidal fantasies. The corpses. All retreated further with every passing hour. Orchid would return for a moment, closely observing her movements. She would take Maggie’s temperature, as well as a blood sample, which she stored in a small refrigerator.

Maggie could tell that Orchid was pleased.

The glowing fungus.

“Your grandfather,” Orchid had said.

Maggie thought of the glowing fungus on the piece of wood: the prize that Liam had left at the end of the letterbox trail.
That’s
what they were meant to find. That’s what Liam had left for them. Her grandfather had created an antidote for the Uzumaki.

He had created an antidote for the most dangerous biological weapon ever developed. Because of it, she wouldn’t die here, unhinged and alone. The progress of the Uzumaki could be stopped. Because of her grandfather.

As that understanding took hold, Maggie was overcome with emotion. Profound awe, a tremendous respect and admiration for her grandfather, and a relief that soaked her entire body. He had succeeded in doing, all alone, what all the scientists at Detrick couldn’t accomplish.

But soon enough, Maggie’s relief dimmed. Slowly, a darker knowledge had taken root inside of her.

Orchid had the cure.

Connor’s law: you have the cure, you have a weapon.

MAGGIE PULLED AS HARD AS SHE COULD, IGNORING THE
searing pain. One last, vicious yank and her hand popped free. She opened her fingers, the muscles obeying, though she could barely feel them.

A noise. The door opened at the top of the stairs.

She grabbed the tweezers off the table and quickly put her hand back down, as if her arm was still handcuffed.

She forced her breathing to slow, nice and easy.

One chance.

Orchid came down with a gun drawn, as she always did. She saw Maggie, ran her eyes up and down her, then holstered the gun in the small of her back and flipped the snap closed.

Maggie tried to control her breathing as Orchid took a fresh needle from the plastic pack, attached it to the syringe. To draw Maggie’s blood.

Maggie went over it again and again, rehearsing the moves in her head, trying not to completely freak out. Finally Orchid turned, needle in hand. She came toward Maggie as she had each time before.

Maggie watched her rhythm.
Get ready. Get ready. Get ready
.

Orchid stopped before her, syringe in hand.

Then Orchid hesitated, looking down to the floor.

Oh, shit
. She had seen blood dripping off Maggie’s wrist.

Orchid looked up, into Maggie’s eyes. Maggie shifted her grip on the tweezers, holding them in her fist like an ice pick.

She went for it. With a great sweep of her arm, Maggie jammed the sharp end of the tweezers into Orchid’s face.

Orchid screamed, twisted her head and body to the right. That sealed Maggie’s fate. Maggie released the tweezers and reached for Orchid’s handgun. But when Orchid twisted to the right, her body blocked access to the gun. Either by chance or instinct, Orchid had cut off Maggie’s only hope.

Chance or instinct, it didn’t matter. Orchid stepped back, the tweezers impaled in her cheek, leaving Maggie grasping at air with her one free hand.

“I’ll kill you!” Orchid bellowed, blood streaming from the wound. She pulled out the tweezers and threw them across the room.

Orchid stepped back, wide-eyed and panting. She picked up a strand of rope and rushed Maggie, grabbed her free arm and tied it down. Maggie fought, but Orchid was much stronger.

Once Maggie was secured, Orchid picked up the glass sphere. Maggie was shocked to see that it was filled with Crawlers. Orchid tossed a spool of thin wire over a bar in the ceiling and rigged the ball so that it dangled over Maggie, inches from her face.

Orchid moved her gloved hand, and the Crawlers came to life. They were manic, running like a nest of crazed spiders. The noise was a high-pitched cacophony, thousands of razor-sharp legs scratching wildly at the glass.

Orchid roughly grabbed a hammer from a nearby bench and held it high, her eyes wide, her teeth bared. Her entire body shook with anger. “Your son is infected with the Uzumaki. Did you know that? He must be half dead by now. He’ll be dead by the time I deliver the cure to the Chinese and Japanese. Your protector, Jake? I’m going to shoot him in the face.”

Maggie fought against her restraints. Orchid loomed over her, snarling like a crazed animal. “Get ready for the moment. Your protector is dead. Your son is mad. The Uzumaki is spreading everywhere.” She clacked the hammer against the glass sphere. “I break this open and they fall on you, cut through your eyes, crawl inside your goddamn skull, and feast on your brain. And I will enjoy watching you die. I will revel in it.”

50

“WHERE IS MAGGIE?” JAKE DEMANDED, HIS HANDS ON KITANO’S
throat. “Tell me, you son of a bitch—
where is Maggie?
”

“Kill me, but it will cost you Maggie Connor’s life,” Kitano said. He pointed to the phone. “Pick it up.”

“Tell me now.”

“I do not envy you,” Kitano said, a sudden clarity in his eyes, as if the demons had bizarrely departed. “You are a Tokkō, but your sacrifice is hollow, nothing. It is your fate. Pick up the phone.”

Jake pushed Kitano away and grabbed the iPhone.

The screen flickered, sprang to life. The image was like a kick in the chest. A close-up of Maggie, her eyes darting, panicked, her mouth taped closed. Above her head hung the glass sphere filled with Crawlers. They were swarming inside, thousands of them.

Orchid’s voice came from the phone. “You’re the expert, Jake. How long will she last?”

“You hurt her and—”

Orchid cut him off. “Get Kitano here in fifteen minutes. Follow the UAV. Or in fifteen minutes she’s dead.”

THE TRAIL STEEPENED, AND JAKE HAD TO HALF DRAG, HALF
carry Kitano. The UAV shadowed them, turning in circles a few hundred feet overhead. They were on a large island, ascending from the water’s edge up a thin, rocky trail. The rowboat was far below. Kitano’s delirium had returned, worsened. He was now shivering, raving in both English and Japanese, half frozen from the cold.

“I have been dead for sixty years,” he said, as Jake dragged him on. “My mother gave me the cloth, the death service. Since then I have been bones. I have been nothing. Wandering the earth for sixty-four years, desiring filth, eating filth, consuming filth. I have been a hungry ghost.”

“Shut up,” Jake said. Kitano refused to tell Jake anything more about Maggie or the release of the Uzumaki. His words occasionally made sense but more often were incoherent, rambling diatribes about the war.

Jake was increasingly certain Kitano had been infected. He had all the symptoms, the sweats, the smell, the manic delusions. But if he and Orchid were in league, then why would he be infected? Could Orchid have double-crossed him?

However it had happened, if Kitano was infected, there was a good chance Jake was as well. He didn’t feel anything yet, but he’d been around Kitano for only a few hours.

The trail opened up on the left, the trees thinning and then gone altogether. Jake found himself on the crest of a long, U-shaped band of cliffs. A suspension bridge hung above river water rushing toward a dramatic waterfall, the water breaking into mist and spray as it dropped. The old slats creaked as they crossed the bridge. Hundreds of feet below was a marsh protected by steep walls on three sides and connected to the Saint Lawrence on the fourth. Geese were everywhere. A few hundred suddenly took to the air, a wall of flapping wings rising up, circling not a hundred feet from them, squawking and twisting as they rose. Kitano seemed hypnotized by the sight.

A wave of dread swept over Jake as he followed Kitano’s gaze to the thousands of tiny shapes. Thousands and thousands of geese, more than Jake had ever seen. He felt as if the ground were about to give way beneath him. Kitano and Orchid had not randomly chosen this spot.

Faster, Jake. Go faster
.

“No more filth,” Kitano mumbled. “I am ready to die. To fulfill my destiny.” He began to shake. Jake didn’t know how much longer the old man would last.

Jake glimpsed a patch of red through a break in the trees. The door of a cabin.

Dragging Kitano with him, he sprinted for the building, heart in his throat.

The UAV was circling like a vulture.

He reached the cabin door and pulled it open. No lock. Just a simple latch.

The cabin was nearly empty, the corners full of dust and cobwebs. In the center of the room was a carefully folded garment, brilliant white. On top was a short Japanese sword with a carved wooden handle and a shorter polished steel blade.

Seeing the sword, Kitano pushed past Jake, but Jake shoved him back. Kitano fell to the floor in a heap.

Jake picked up the sword. It had a wooden handle with a black Japanese symbol stamped on it. What the hell was this doing out here?

Kitano’s eyes were fixed on the sword. “Give it to me.”

“Where’s Orchid? Where’s Maggie?”

“Give me the sword.”

Weapon in hand, Jake stepped back outside, scanning every direction. At the clearing’s edge was what looked like the entrance to an underground storm shelter. Jake spotted footsteps in the snow near the entrance.

“Give me the sword!” Kitano said from behind him.

Jake grabbed him and pushed him along the snowy path to the storm shelter entrance. He paused and grabbed the tiny thread implanted next to his left eye. Pulling the tripwire sent an electric shock through him, as though he’d grabbed a live wire. He momentarily saw spots but steadied himself.

He guessed he had ten minutes, fifteen at the outside, before the bombs started falling.