The Messenger (25 page)

Barrigar shifts uncomfortably, but Reilly doesn’t move. “We do what we can, Sam, but other players have their own concerns. After all the blood has a value, right?”

“Value?
Value?
What do you mean?” Watterman asks, fearing the very worst. The ultimate worst.

“
Monetarily
valuable,” Barrigar says helpfully.

“Ahh … yes. The blood is valuable. How much would it be worth to you? Save the lives of your family, your children? Sure. Value? Yes, I’ll concede that.”

“Well, what do you think we should say, Sam? ‘Oh, hello, Germany, when you catch these guys, we want their blood, all of it, or as much as you can spare, and definitely before they’re dead, please.’
‘Oh, what do you want that for?’
‘Oh … no reason.’ ” Reilly looks out around the chicken factory. His lips are pressed together in what must be a smile.

“No, you tell them you need it to make a vaccine—”

“It doesn’t work like that. You explained it yourself. It’s the serum, right? It’s like taking antibiotics. The supply is limited. You have to take it repeatedly, you have to top it up.”

“I hope you guys understand the United States isn’t the only one with a chemistry set. Other people have thought about this too. Serum immunology is not so ultra-sophisticated that it hasn’t occurred immediately to hundreds of scientists.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law, Sam. So, let’s suppose we can get Khan for you. Interrogate him. Learn all his procedures. Copy his formulas, secure any stocks he might have, his inventory, all that shit …”

“Oh, brave new world! I’m sure you can see the advantages. I’m sure you remember
PROJECT COAST
.” Something else Sam hadn’t known about until it was too late—another black operation designed to circumvent the treaties: the U.S. and the Brits farming their work out to the South Africans. But then Mandela had to come along and spoil everything.

“Every major league needs a farm team, Sam.”

“Sure. And a biotoxin that could be targeted racially, wow. That’s something that would really play well in the Negro Leagues, I guess …”

“You already answered my question, Sam.”

“I think you had it answered before you flew out here.”

That brings a smile from Reilly, and he pivots and starts to go.

“You’ve got a family, don’t you?” Sam insists.

“Look, Sam. You started all this. You have no one to blame but yourself. When we get Khan, we interrogate him gently and then we get the grand prize. You said it yourself, he wouldn’t do it without a back door. And if anybody gets out that door, it’s going to be us.”

“Sure. And after that, why not recruit him? Get him to be your new drug-design genius. We did it for the Japanese. Unit 731, none of them stood trial for war crimes—”

“Sam, there is a real world, and there is the world as you would like it to be. But you don’t get to pick which one you live in.” And now Reilly turns to leave.

“Or die in,” Sam says, loud enough for both men to hear him, but they only keep walking, leaving Watterman strangling his magazine in his hands.

“Okay, hit it, Orlando …” the techie is saying to her mate. From above there is a sound like a hiss, then sharper sounds. Squeaks and chirps.

“… a little more volume, O-man …”

“What is that?” Sam asks.

“It’s the ambient sound of the rain forest. The psychiatrists say it will make living here more like the real thing.”

Chamai comes bounding out of the situation room, a sheet of pink paper in his hand. Color indicates importance. White is nothing. Purple is ultra-top-secret. Pink is all about action.

Chamai does a slide step when he sees him sitting there. “She’s not in Canada!” he exclaims. He dodges around the techies as they refold their ladder, and thrusts the pink page toward him.

“She killed a cop!” Chamai takes the page back and begins to read aloud:

“From the Office of the West Virginia Highway Patrol … all points bulletin:
‘Wanted as suspect in homicide of Trooper W. H. Preston, one Vermiglio, Daria H., Caucasian, five feet four inches tall, weight one-one-five …’
 ”

It takes four hours before their bus pulls in for another transfer in St. Louis. After they’ve collected their baggage, Nadja takes her into the bathroom. They pick a stall close to the sinks, and she struggles to take off her top while Nadja rummages through the backpack for her thrown-together first-aid kit. She rests her forehead against the partition and closes her eyes. There is the sound of water running in the sink, and then the first touch of Nadja’s fingers causes Daria to gasp.

“Stop it,” Nadja says, and continues probing, stepping around behind her and unsnapping her bra, helping her to lean over against the door so she can get a good look.

“You’ve broken a rib … You need a doctor.”

“No …” she says. It comes out as just a negative-sounding groan.

“No? Okay.” Nadja straightens quickly and Daria groans gain. “You need something for the infection. Understand?”

Daria stays silent.

“Okay. We use this—” Nadja holds up a wad of alcohol-soaked paper towels. “But we have to clean it. Clean every day. This is the only way. Still, you might die. Because you don’t listen to me.”

Daria says nothing.

“Okay. Inhale. And keep quiet now, I don’t want the police coming in here.” Nadja begins to squeeze the pus out of the hole. Daria responds with a deep groan, like a cow lowing in the moonlight.

“You’re infected already. It’s all red. I can tell.”

Daria just shakes her head slowly.

“It’s none of my business how you got this way. What happened, did you fall down?”

“Yes.”

“On something sharp?”

“Yes.”

“And the tip broke off … maybe a piece from a fence, an old iron fence, you know?”

Daria says nothing.

“Okay, hold on …” Nadja squeezes once more and dabs on the alcohol. Holds her around the waist as she presses wadded-up paper towels against the wound. Involuntarily Daria writhes, in turn forcing Nadja to press harder, only making it worse. She takes a great breath and manages to cling there against the door to the stall.

There is the sound of footsteps, someone in flip-flops. A woman comes in.

“It’s okay, I am helping her.”

The woman only hesitates a split second, and then starts walking over. She is short and nut-brown, and looks as if she has been carrying coca leaves on her head for ten or twelve centuries and then was beamed down to the St. Louis bus station.

“She’s okay. We don’t need—” Nadja starts to fend her off, but
the woman boldly inserts herself between them. “Her boyfriend hit her—”

“I fell … on a fence,” Daria says at the same time.

The woman sniffs at the alcohol, then presses her fingers against the edges of the wound. For Daria it seems to hurt less, or maybe she has simply learned how not to wriggle when someone is repairing an infected bullet hole in her side. Nadja steps back while the woman goes to work. A moment later the woman says something to Nadja and looks back to the front.

Nadja does as directed and hangs there in the entrance while the woman replaces the dressing with rolls of paper towels and a deft corset of tape intended to hold Daria’s rib in place.

The woman’s cool birdlike hands flit around her breasts; the tape is pulled tight. When it’s over the woman mutters something consoling, heads back to Nadja, smiling and making a universal gesture—fingers to her lips and blowing out a breath. Nadja hauls out her pack of cigarettes and the woman takes two and leaves.

Nadja watches Daria as she straightens, steps away from the stalls, and, reaching out and letting the wall guide her, walks the length of the sinks. “You can walk?”

“Mmm …”

“Okay. Let’s go …”

She walks like Frankenstein at first, then gains a little confidence when she doesn’t simply fall down. Nadja takes her arm and they shuffle across the terrazzo floor of the St. Louis bus station. A deep breath before passing through the glass doors and then out on the platform to flash their tickets to the driver.

His name is Carl and he’s no dummy. Been with the company for six and with Trailways for another eight back in the day, and he can spot the addicts and the smokers and the drunks. He tolerates whatever it is the girl has got, because the tough blonde is obviously taking care of her, and she hasn’t vomited all over the seats.

“Sometimes it’s a good thing to be a little blind,” his daddy used to say. “And sometimes a little deaf,” his mom would shoot back.
He grew up in a comedy act, but they were right enough. You see problems, you get in a huff, let your blood pressure go through the roof, and first thing you know, you’ve let other people’s problems get into your own life. No … stay in your own lane, he thinks.

And even if the world is going to hell, the moon is coming up, and it’s a fine night for a drive across Missouri.

D
aria wakes, carefully slips out of her seat and tests her ability to walk, one foot at a time. Loosening up all the way up the length of the bus in the blue-gray morning light. The front row is abandoned, maybe because it’s easier to sleep in back, where the lights from oncoming traffic don’t shine in your eyes.

She slides into the seat and watches the Missouri highway rush toward them. A minute or two later a woman, older by two decades, with a leathery face and a thick sweater, walks up from the back and stands there supporting herself with both hands on the seat backs.

“Hey, Carl,” she says to the driver.

“How’re you doing?”

“Not too bad. At least it’s not raining …” They both laugh for some reason, then fall silent. The woman looks down at Daria. “Not too long now,” she says to her, and heads back.

The sun is just rising, and the bus pushes its own shadow over the pavement as they rush into the blue distance. Carl has to turn off the interstate at Marshall, and the act of stopping wakes up most of the passengers.

The sky is rosy to the east, and the new sun is blinding as the
door opens with a little pneumatic hiss and they straggle forth to find the bathrooms.

The break takes five minutes and then they are moving again. She lets Nadja sleep and sets up camp right behind the driver, where she can watch the road over his shoulder. They talk in whispers and stare together out at the open highway.

“Are you all right?” Carl asks her. “You were a little rocky there for a while.”

“Yeah, but I’m fine now.”

“Good,” Carl says, and falls silent for a half dozen miles. “I was listening to the radio, talking about all the influenza, you know?”

“Yes?”

“It’s not nearly as bad as they make out on the news. A lot of people get one of these bugs and it blows right over.”

“That’s good,” she says.

“Maybe that’s what you had.”

“Maybe,” she says. And after a moment, “I hurt my side.”

“Oh, that’s it.”

“Playing soccer.”

“Those things, an injury like that, you gotta be careful …”

“I know. You can’t do anything at all, you can’t bend, you can’t cough …” Daria says.

“No. Maybe you got away with one.”

“I hope.”

She sits in the front seat, wondering if she’s gotten away with one, and if it will just blow over, and if somehow she can just keep going, just get away from the entire American government, which must be on her trail by now.

“Life and death. You know, it’s an arbitrary situation,” Carl says. He tells her he sees a fatal accident sometimes twice a week. Someone skids, someone else brakes too late, someone forgets to fasten their seat belt. “It’s nothing to do with being ready for it,” he says.

“No …” she agrees. “You can’t be ready.” She is as ready as it is humanly possible to be, and still she is trying to run away from it. Why not just take Officer Preston’s gun and bring this last act to a close?

“It’s the absurdity of life,” Carl says. He falls silent for another
long stretch. Ahead there is a great green sign spanning the road; the rosy sun behind them illuminates it so that it glows above the American West.

The Kansas City bus station is just waking up, and it is not a good time to change her bandages. People stoked with coffee and cigarettes are flocking to the washrooms and evacuating their bodies of wastes from the day before. There is no privacy. The most she and Nadja can do is lurk down at the end of the sinks and lift the edge of her top.

“That looks pretty good,” Nadja says. “Okay, tell me what it feels like if I press here—” She uses her fingertips to explore the large patch of gauze.

“Just leave it. I’m okay …”

“Yah … maybe that’s best. Leave it for when we get to my sister Paula’s.” Nadja lets her top fall back down. Daria takes a tentative breath. No tears. She got through that.

“You’re a tough cookie. You’re going to be okay,” Nadja tells her. “Come on …”

They set up camp in the coffee shop and try to figure out how to navigate to Paula’s from the bus station. Nadja throws herself on the kindness of strangers and inquires about Kansas City life and culture down to the tiniest detail. They are leaving a trail a mile wide, Daria thinks as she sips her coffee—there is no espresso. As long as it’s black enough, she can handle it.

Someone leaves a
Kansas City Star
on the next table, and Daria picks it up and tries to find out what’s happening.

She reads through the paper. The hospitals in Kansas City have been operating under their own triage criteria, and suspected smallpox cases are urged to remain at home and make contact with medical authorities by telephone. To minimize the possibility of an outbreak in the Kansas City region, the safest method is to dispatch public health workers door-to-door rather than spread the virus by having people travel in to visit the clinics. “We all have to remember that we have only two verified cases here in the metropolitan area,” a local politician says.