The Gemini Virus (7 page)

“Do you recognize this?” he asked Porter.

“Subcutaneous bleeding, looks like.”

“Ben?”

“Correct.”

“And the others had it, too?”

“Yes.”

“Organs, everything?”

“Everything. When they did the autopsy on one man in his early sixties, they said his insides looked like a stew that had been cooking too long.”

Porter issued a tiny laugh. It would’ve been easy to dismiss this as insensitivity, but Beck knew she was merely focusing on the dark humor of it to protect herself. One of her many defense mechanisms.

He studied the ring finger more closely. It looked like the finger of a gorilla.
Even if this man survives, that part of him is already gone,
he thought. It was as if the finger served as a preview for the rest of the body a day from now.

McKendrick’s head lolled to one side, and a narrow string of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to the pillow. Taking a penlight from the bedside table, Beck gently examined the oral cavity. The tongue and gums were decorated with weeping sores of various shapes and sizes.

“Ben, has everyone had these ulcers, too?”

“Yes, to a person.”

In his bent-over position, Beck noticed the extensive bandaging on McKendrick’s right biceps.

“What happened to his other arm?”

“He tried to burn off one of his tattoos.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, when the EMTs came for him, he was locked in his garage trying to burn off one of his tattoos with kerosene and a cigarette lighter. It’s a grinning spider, and he was screaming, ‘It’s going to eat me!’”

“A bit delusional,” Porter suggested.

“I’d say. Severe mental distress.”

“So the infection crosses the blood–brain barrier,” Beck said.

“It appears so.”

“God…”

He gingerly pulled the sheet down to McKendrick’s abdomen. Porter didn’t laugh this time, but instead let out a small gasp. The torso was covered with the same fluid-filled vesicles as the arms. It was like an uneven sheet of Bubble Wrap.

“That, too, is surprising,” Beck said.

“What’s that, Michael?”

“When Sheila and I were talking in the car, we both commented on how it sounded as though you could argue a case for smallpox. But then there were other symptoms—” He pointed to the chest area. “—like this that were inconsistent. Cara, see what I talking about?”

“Smallpox vesicles are usually concentrated on the arms, legs, and face.”

“Whereas these—“

“—are spread evenly across the patient’s entire body.”

“Right.” He set the blanket back carefully.

“They’re burning all the sheets after changing them, too.”

“Good idea,” Beck said. “Where’s the other patient?”

“In the next room here.” Gillette pointed down the corridor.

“I’d like to see her now.”

“Sure. But prepare yourself.”

He let Porter return to the neutral zone first, where she removed her PPE following standard procedure. Facial shield, bonnet, and shoe covers were placed in a burn bag. Then the gown, grasped at the shoulders and pulled forward so the contaminated outside layer was kept away from the body. The gloves came off at the same time, trapped inside the gown. Bare hands were washed in a small sink with microbial soap. The respirator was removed by pulling the rubber strap forward from the back. Finally, hands were washed again.

They returned to the scrub room and put on a fresh set of PPEs—including Gillette. Then they went to the second AIIR.

Beck immediately sensed something different. If the specter of Death were merely lingering in the last one, it had taken up residence here. In the corridor, the microblinds had been fully shut. Inside the neutral zone, Beck saw that the lights in the room were so low, they were nearly off.
Funerary,
he thought.
It has the feel of a funeral
. It was still and silent, save for the soft electronic beeping of the equipment. And, in spite of the microblinds, the patient was kept behind a curtain that someone had pulled all the way to the wall.

Beck glanced back at Porter, who stood behind Gillette with unabashed fear in her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

She only nodded, her gaze fixed on the curtain.

“Okay.”

He was not a man given to melodrama, unlike some he had encountered through the years. They used patients like exhibits in a freak show, through which they could impress and intrigue their audience. Beck despised them with the heat of a supernova, and he countered their toxic effect on the medical profession by performing his duties as nontheatrically as possible.

With that in mind, he brought the curtain back casually. As the patient came into view, however, his heart began pounding. From the corner of his eye he saw Ben lower his head and cross himself. Cara, her defenses stripped completely away now, said unevenly, “Oh my God…”

It was a woman in her late twenties to mid-thirties. Beck drew this conclusion mostly from her dark hair, which lay long and thick on the pillow. It had no visible streaks of gray or silver, nor did it bear the odd shades of artificial coloring. It was likely the only part of her anatomy still in its original form.

The face had been so radically altered that it was impossible to envision what she once looked like. The pustules ranged from marble-sized to a few that were as big as golf balls. One hung from her cheek with a sickening heaviness. Her eyes and mouth were partially open, as if she was awake but no longer possessed the ability to react. Her skin was an uneven dark purple now that the subsurface bleeding had reached an advanced state.

Beck checked her vital signs. “What’s keeping her alive?”

“I have no idea,” Gillette said, “but it won’t be much longer.”

The bedsheet, Beck noted, was different from McKendrick’s in that it covered her body all the way to the chin. It also had dozens of pale-colored moisture spots, the result of constant vesicle bursts. He had no doubt the nursing staff changed the bedding at the required intervals—they simply couldn’t keep up with the rate at which her body was deteriorating.

“Why is it bloody right there?” Beck asked, pointing to a spot alongside the woman’s midsection. It looked about where her hand would be lying. He also noticed similar spotting on the opposite side.

Without waiting for an answer, he leaned down and carefully lifted the bedsheet. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw next.

First, there were piles of sloughed skin everywhere, blistered and crusted and sticky. They were literally sliding off her body like meat from the bones of a slow-cooked roast, then accumulating in small heaps.

The blood, Beck discovered, was running from a stomach wound that had been stitched shut and was covered by several layers of gauze.

“What happened?”

“A large kitchen knife,” Gillette said.

Beck turned back to him, incredulous. “She was
stabbed
?”

Gillette swallowed visibly. “She did it to herself, Michael.”

Beck’s eyes widened slightly. Porter was frozen.

“She had—” His voice became wobbly. “—she was seven months pregnant.”

These words hung in the air for eternity. No one breathed or even moved. The electronic beeps ticked off the seconds as time temporarily lost all meaning.

Gillette cleared his throat. “Her husband said he awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of her screaming. She was trying to cut the baby out in order to save it from the infection.”

A tear ran down Porter’s face and stained her respirator.

Gillette took a deep breath. “She killed the child when she stabbed it.”

Porter, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen, studied Beck carefully. They had been in similar situations, and his reaction never ceased to fascinate her—not only was he not crying; he barely appeared affected at all. If anything, he seemed
angry
. Although she couldn’t see it under his respirator, she knew his jaw had tightened, his lips pressed together. And his eyes took on a blank, distant stare that was a little frightening. He had never once raised his voice to her, never even became mildly irritated—yet there was some type of rage dwelling inside him. She was sure of this. In spite of the kindness and generosity, in spite of his gentle manner and boundless patience, there was a dark side to the man.
Hatred,
she always thought.
He hates human illness more than anyone I’ve ever seen.
And she thought she caught a glimpse of it at times like this. What she had not been able to determine, however, was how it got there in the first place.

Gillette’s cell phone twittered. He reached up and pressed the button on his Bluetooth earpiece, which neither Beck nor Porter had noticed because it was covered by the bonnet. The conversation didn’t last long.

“Fourteen more deaths,” he said, “including one in Avenel.”

“Where’s that?” Beck asked.

“About thirty-five miles from here.”

For the first time since Cara Porter had known him, Beck swore out loud.

“This thing could grow, Ben.” He kept his voice low even though there was no one else around. “This could be the one. It has all the traits.”

“I know.”

“It could take millions. And developing a vaccine could take years.”

Gillette nodded gravely.

“I know.”

FOUR

Dennis Jensen leaned against the doorway between the kitchen and the living room of his small Cape Cod. He had the cordless phone pressed to his ear and his blue Arrow shirt pulled out of his cotton trousers. His tie and jacket for work were hung over one of the chairs at the small table where he and his family had just finished breakfast. He would not be using them today, however, as he had already called out sick. It was just after eight thirty, and a beautiful blue day was beginning to form outside. Neither he nor his wife, Andrea, took much notice of this—every shade and blind in the house was shut, as they had been for days.

“Yeah, okay. Sure, sure. I appreciate it, Elaine. Love you, too. I’ll let you know what’s happening. Bye.”

He thumbed the
OFF
button and turned to Andi, who was standing in the living room with her arms wrapped tight around herself. She had also called out sick and was wearing sweats and a T-shirt.

“What did she say?”

“There are about a hundred and thirty deaths now for sure,” he said. Andi shook her head. “And more cases are coming in all the time. Every hospital has full staffs working around the clock, and they’re still asking for help from other places. But everyone’s scared. No one wants to touch the infected patients. Three doctors and eight nurses have died already. You can hardly blame them.”

They turned back to the TV, which was on the New Jersey Network. NJN had been broadcasting the story with increasing frequency, and yesterday it was asked by the governor to provide information around the clock:
the Death Network
.

“And they don’t have any idea what it is yet, right?”

“No. But they’re pretty sure it’s not smallpox, anyway.”

“Well, that’s good news, I suppose.”

“Elaine said the Centers for Disease Control is leading the investigation. The World Health Organization is working with them, too.”

“Terrorists?” Andi asked. “Al-Qaeda? Another Bin Laden?”

Dennis shrugged. “She said she hadn’t heard anything about that, either.”

“Do they know goddamn
anything
?”

Andi rarely used profanity; one of her duties in the marriage, it seemed, was to make sure
he
didn’t. This was a sign she was nearing a meltdown.

“Not much, it seems.”

Dennis moved alongside her and watched the next report: another five deaths in Long Branch, a shore town about an hour south of them. One of the victims was a twelve-year-old boy who had just made his first honor roll. Andi started sobbing. When the little boy’s school picture flashed on the screen, Dennis lost it, too.

*   *   *

They first heard about the outbreak three days earlier. While driving to his job as an insurance-claims analyst, Dennis heard something on the radio about the sudden death of two police officers in Ramsey after they found a body hanging in an apartment. The report was mercilessly graphic, talking of giant, weeping pustules and hunks of blackened skin. One of the officers shot himself with an unregistered rifle he kept in a drop-ceiling in his basement. It sounded gross enough to make Dennis want to set down his iced coffee for a moment, but he picked it up again when the broadcaster moved on to stock futures and baseball scores. He dismissed it by the time he pulled into the parking lot—just another scratchy note in the endless dissonance of media symphonics.

He mentioned it casually that evening as he and his family were unwrapping their Wendy’s. Andi hadn’t heard anything about it. She was an HR director at an injection-mold facility and was usually on the move from the moment she walked through the door. She was also more inclined to listen to music during her fifteen-minute commute than the news. She shuddered at the thought of bodies covered in huge, oozing blisters while their organs dissolved; “gross” had never been her thing.

She was going to make a comment when she became distracted by their seven-year-old daughter, Chelsea, who needed help opening a packet of barbecue sauce. Chelsea preferred it over honey mustard when she had chicken nuggets, which made her father proud. Their other child, Billy, was five and hadn’t yet been introduced to the manifold delights of barbecue-flavored anything. The conversation then shifted to Billy’s daily adventures at kindergarten, and the story was forgotten.

It reentered their lives the next day when Andi heard two of her coworkers talking about it in the kitchenette. The infection was now in Mahwah, a small town set between Ramsey and the New York border. Someone was found unconscious in a supermarket stockroom, covered with running pustules. It was one of the night-shift employees, a kid recently graduated from high school and working for minimum wage until he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. Andi felt a chill blow through her when one of the people in the conversation said with a laugh, “At least he won’t have to worry about his future anymore.” She knew the guy who said it, privately thought of him as a jerk. So did everyone else in the company. Big surprise.