Pandemic Page 12

  Cantrell shrugged. “I know me some biology. I was premed at Duke.”

  “Jesus. Not the typical life story of a serviceman. How the hell did you wind up in the navy?”

  “Fighting, I’m afraid,” Cantrell said. “I was an angry young black man raging against the inequities of life, even though I’d grown up in the suburbs and had a full ride.”

  “You had a full ride to Duke? You must have been one hell of a baller. Point guard?”

  Cantrell laughed. “If you were white, I’d call you racist. It was an academic full ride.”

  “Oh.” Clarence actually did feel a little racist, which was a strange sensation. “What did you do to get the academic full ride?”

  “Perfect score on the SAT.”

  Clarence hadn’t even known that was possible. He’d taken the SAT once upon a time. His score was less than perfect, to say the least.

  “You had college for free, but couldn’t keep your nose clean. Book smart, but no common sense?”

  Cantrell nodded. “No concept of perspective, actually. But close enough.”

  “So you enlisted?”

  “I did,” Cantrell said. “I was out of options. Thought I’d do the GI Bill and save up enough to actually pay for college on my own, but I wound up in diving school and fell in love with it. I’m sure you’re surprised to hear this, Agent Otto, but in the navy there is no such thing as a dummy diver. You have to be smart just to get in, and smarter to stay alive. In our job, one mistake can get you killed.” He tilted his head toward Clark’s cell. “Or get you infected, apparently.”

  Clarence knew that Cantrell might also be infected, might be just one of Tim’s little pricks away from getting a death sentence of his own.

  “I read your report,” Clarence said. “I didn’t see any opportunity for Clark to get infected, but it would help if you walked me through what happened when you guys picked up the bodies.”

  Cantrell thought for a moment, scratched absently at his throat.

  “Okay, sure,” he said. “When the shit hit the fan, Clarkie and I were ordered to suit up and search for bodies from the Los Angeles. We knew that meant a chance of handling infection victims. Our suits are aquatic BSL-4 arrays — positive pressure, completely internalized air, solid seals, similar to what you’re wearing now, only more streamlined for movement. A modified Seahawk flew us out to the target areas.”

  “Modified? How?”

  “Special lift cage,” Cantrell said. “Same thing we used to retrieve material of interest from the Los Angeles. ROVs from the LA bring up these sealed, decontaminated containers, we collect the containers, get in the lift cage, the Seahawk drops the lift cage near the Brashear’s port side.”

  Cantrell pointed behind him, through his clear cell, across the prep area with its stainless steel instruments, to the wide, horizontal airlock door.

  “The Brashear’s cargo crane picks up the cage and puts it right there,” he said. “In we go, divers, cage, ROV, even the cable the crane uses to connect to the cage. Anything that could possibly touch the sample container, or touch something that touches the container, gets fully deconned. The airlock seals up, completely fills with bleach, destroying any biocontaminants. When the bleach drains, the inner airlock door opens and we take the container to the prep area. Then we go back into the airlock, get another dose of bleach, then the crane brings us up on deck.”

  The decon procedures seemed thorough. And yet, something had still gone wrong.

  “So on the night of the attack, the Seahawk takes you and Clark out,” Clarence said. “What was different?”

  “You mean other than the screaming, the blood and the fires?”

  Clarence paused, nodded. “Other than that.”

  “The ’Hawk’s pilot spotted a flasher on Walker’s SEIE suit,” Cantrell said. “Into the drink we went. She was alive when we found her, mumbling about the people she’d killed and how she’d sabotaged the LA.”

  “So you touched her?”

  The diver rolled his eyes. “No, Agent Otto, we sat back and told her she had nice titties. She was still alive. We were trying to save her.”

  “Do you remember what she said?”

  Cantrell stared back. “You’ve got my report right in front of you. Read it for yourself.”

  The man didn’t want to repeat the words. Why not?

  “But do you remember? Can you tell me?”

  Cantrell sighed.

  “Yeah. She said, I took out the reactor. Then she said, They bit me. I killed them. I shot two of those bastards.”

  Clarence read from the statement. Cantrell had it word for word.

  “Okay, so what happened then?”

  “The ’Hawk dropped the collection cage,” Cantrell said. “Clark and I put Walker inside, then got in with her. We were just about to return to the Brashear when the pilot spotted a second body. Clark and I went back into the drink. Petrovsky was eviscerated, among other significant damage. We loaded him into the cage.”

  A cage normally meant for two divers and a container had four people in it, two of them infected. Clarence wondered if there was something to that.

  “Did you continue to search for bodies?”

  Cantrell shook his head. “Command wanted the Seahawk to return and look for survivors from the Forrest Sherman. No part of the helicopter had touched us or the bodies, if that’s what you’re wondering. The ’Hawk dropped our cage into the water, Brashear’s crane took us up, we got in the airlock just like normal. This time, however, there were two man-size, airtight containers waiting for us. We loaded the bodies into the containers. Feely was talking to us at that point. We went through the bleach bath, then carried the body containers to the morgue trailer.”

  Clarence called up Feely’s report. Cantrell’s recall matched the report exactly, as if he were reading directly from it. All except for one thing.

  “It says here that when you entered with the bodies and went through the decon bath, you smelled bleach.”

  Cantrell paused. “Of course I smelled it,” he said. “They bathe us in it. The suits smell like it when we’re done.”

  “I’m not talking about when you’re done. You’re quoted in the report as saying, I smelled bleach during decon step. Maybe a seal leaked.”

  Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. Was that a look of … anger?

  “That is not accurate,” he said. “Maybe I typed it wrong.”

  “So you didn’t smell bleach when you and Clark were submerged in the decon tank?”

  Cantrell shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

  Clarence reached out into air, called up Clark’s report on his HUD.

  “Clark also reported smelling bleach,” Clarence said. “He was worried the suit would fill up with it.”

  Cantrell clapped his hands together once, spread them out. “There you go, Agent Otto. Clark told me that right after we finished. I was exhausted. I must have put his words down as mine.”

  Clarence studied the man. That explanation sounded perfectly logical. A battle, a high-risk recovery of infected bodies … that kind of stress could lead to significant fatigue, the blurring of memories. But Cantrell seemed to have a near-photographic memory of the event, all except for that one detail.

  Had the vector somehow got inside Clark’s suit through a broken seal or a tiny tear that also allowed in a small amount of bleach? If Cantrell was now lying about smelling bleach, he was doing so because he knew evidence of a tear would lengthen his time in the cell. Or could he actually be infected and trying to protect himself? So far, though, Cantrell had tested negative.

  Clarence felt he was missing something … but what?

  “Let’s go over the entire day again,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you? Like you said, it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

  PHOTO BOMBING

  Margaret had thought diving back into this world would be hell. She’d thought working on the bodies of infection victims would further stir up the ever-present me
mories of Amos Braun, of Perry Dawsey, of Dew Phillips, of Detroit and everything else that had turned her life to shit.

  But she didn’t think about any of those things.

  In fact, almost as soon as she began the examination, those thoughts faded away. She didn’t think about anything but the work. And, most important, she didn’t think about Clarence.

  In that way, at least, donning a BSL-4 suit and standing next to a body that had the potential to wipe out the human race was kind of … well, it was kind of nice.

  She slowly ran her gloved hand over Candice Walker’s body. A meticulous search. She had Tim’s report up on the right side of her visor. She was getting the hang of the eye-track navigation; as she found torn pustules and other marks on Candice’s body, she checked to see if Tim had logged them. Maybe he’d missed something. Or, maybe something had grown after he’d completed his initial exam.

  Margaret heard a rattle: the heavy, compact Stryker bone saw moving against a prep tray. Tim was cleaning Petrovsky’s powdered bone and that thick rot from the blade, preparing to use the device on the skull of Candice Walker. Petrovsky’s rot was accelerating now. Most of his skin looked black and wet, and it was already sloughing off at his left shoulder to show the sagging, decomposing muscles beneath.

  Tim stopped, looked up. “Uh, Doctor Montoya? What are you looking for?”

  “Triangles,” she said, turning her attention back to Walker. “I’m looking for any skin growths that would show triangle infection.”

  “I checked for that. She doesn’t have the triangles or any Morgellons fibers indicative of a fizzle.”

  A fizzle, Amos’s name for an infection that didn’t quite take hold, resulting in red, blue or black fibers growing out of the host’s skin.

  Margaret stopped and stared at Tim. “You don’t mind if I look again, do you?” She wasn’t going to have Feely second-guessing her. She already knew his report showed no growths on Candice, but something didn’t add up. Triangle victims often cut into themselves, but Candice didn’t have triangles. She had crawlers; crawler hosts didn’t mutilate themselves. So why had Walker cut off her own arm?

  Tim met Margaret’s gaze. He slowly raised a gore-slimed, gloved hand in front of his visor, making a monotone noise as he did. When his hand moved in front of his eyes, he made a crashing sound, held the hand still.

  The world is in danger, and this asshole is playing games?

  “Tim, what are you doing?”

  “Raising my blast shields,” he said. “Your death stare will not take me down, Vader.”

  For the second time that day, she laughed. There were two dead bodies on the table, both infected with a potentially world-killing pathogen, and Tim Feely made her laugh.

  He lowered the hand just enough for his eyes to peek over. “Am I safe?”

  “For now,” Margaret said. “Stop playing.” She pointed to the ravaged stub of Walker’s severed arm. “Your initial report said she did this to herself?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you know?”

  Tim started tapping at the air. He was calling something up on his HUD, but the action still seemed odd; it made him look crazy.

  “Here’s how,” he said. He grabbed the air in front of his face, made a tossing gesture in Margaret’s direction. Inside her visor, Tim’s report shrank down to a tiny icon at the lower left. Her vision filled with a series of images.

  A reciprocal saw, the long device so ubiquitous in the construction field: red, industrial-plastic handle, just big enough to hold with one fist; the same plastic on the saw’s thick body, where the other hand would cup it from underneath; the blade guard and finally the blade itself, eight inches long, designed to slide back and forth so fast you couldn’t even see its jagged points.

  Margaret reached out into the air, swiped left to right. The next picture showed Candice Walker’s left fingers wrapped around the saw’s handle. The saw lay across her chest, the blade against the severed stump of her right arm. Margaret looked through her visor, down at the real thing, then refocused on the image — if Candice had cut herself, the angle of the wound was exactly right.

  The third picture showed a close-up of gouges in Candice’s ulna — a failed cut, one that hadn’t gone through. The saw blade sat neatly in the groove, a perfect fit.

  She swiped again to see the fourth and final picture: a smiling, biosafety-suited Tim Feely holding the saw and leaning down by Walker’s face. He was giving a thumbs-up.

  “Feely, you really are an asshole,” Margaret said. “You play with the dead?”

  He shrugged. “There was no one else to play with. But now you’re here.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  Another crass innuendo. Maybe that was his way of dealing with the pressure of the situation. Or … or maybe he was actually interested. Either way, she didn’t have time for it.

  Thoughts of Tim Feely’s advances faded away. The missing arm still didn’t add up. If Candice had the crawlers, and crawlers that took over her brain, then why did she mutilate herself when no other known crawler host ever had?

  “There’s something different about Walker,” Margaret said. “Are you finished processing Petrovsky’s brain?”

  Tim nodded. “I am. It’s turning into black goop, but there was enough to see that it was riddled with the crawler mesh. If that ever happens to me, hopefully your hubby will put me down like the dog that I am.”

  She didn’t know if Tim was serious about that request or just talking to deal with the stress. He had no way of knowing Clarence had done exactly that to infection victims in the past, and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again.

  Margaret stroked Candice Walker’s hair one more time. In a few moments, Tim would slide a scalpel across the back of her scalp, then flip the scalp down over her face so he could use the Stryker saw to open her skull.

  She heard a click in her helmet speakers, then, Clarence’s voice.

  “Margaret, can you and Doctor Feely hear me?”

  “I can,” she said. She looked at Tim, who gave a thumbs-up. “So can Tim.”

  “Good,” Clarence said. “Listen, I’m finished with Cantrell’s interview. There’s some things I want to talk about.”

  “So get in here,” Margaret said.

  “Uh, can I report from the control room? This suit, I’ve been in it for two hours.”

  Tim rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, but make it fast,” Margaret said. “We’ll keep working until you’re ready. Tim, call up the images of crawlers from both Petrovsky and Walker. Let’s take a look while we wait.”

  RED HOT MOMMA

  For most of the last five years, Tim Feely had enjoyed collecting a huge paycheck and not doing a whole lot to earn it. He worked hard at whatever anyone asked him to do — well, at least he made it look like he was working hard — but he had harbored a hope that this infection crap was over forever, and that his black-budget gravy train would last for decades.

  Obviously, he’d been wrong. This shit was real. If the infection got out, it could literally end the world. Like it or not, he was smack-dab in the middle of it.

  But it wasn’t all doom and gloom: he got to work with Margaret Montoya. The Margaret Montoya. She didn’t understand what a legend she had become in scientific circles. For reasons Tim couldn’t fathom, she seemed to be concerned with what regular people thought, people who knew nothing about science, nothing about how her genius had saved their uneducated asses.

  Plus, she was fine. Margaret wanted to pretend that she and Clarence were solid, but Tim sensed friction. A marriage cracking at the seams, if it hadn’t already shattered. Tim liked his women older, smart and powerful: Margaret was all three. He was helping save the world, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep the game afoot. Pursuing a sexy woman gave him an edge, helped distract him from worrying about the fact that he’d probably never leave this ship alive.

  While that pansy Agent Otto got out of his suit, Tim made good use of the time.

&nbs
p; “Okay, Doctor Montoya,” Tim said, “I’ve queued up the images of dead crawlers from Petrovsky and Walker. Ready for the side-by-side comparison?”

  “I am. And please, call me Margaret.”

  “Can I call you Red Hot Momma?”

  “You may not,” she said. “The crawlers, please?”

  Tim eye-tracked through his HUD menus, called up the prepared video, then grabbed and tossed it at Margaret so that both of their visor displays showed the same thing: a side-by-side progression of dead crawler images. Walker’s were on the left, Petrovsky’s on the right.

  Margaret made a clucking sound with her tongue as she thought. “Walker’s crawlers, they’re in an odd state of decay. Almost like they were … melted.”

  At first glance, the crawlers all looked similar to oversized nerve cells: each consisted of a large, roundish end with dendrites that extended, split, and split again like tree branches; a long, thin central body, or axon; and finally a tail end that spread out in thin axon terminals. Closer examination, however, revealed that the crawlers were actually made up of modified muscle cells that could reach, that could grab and then crawl toward the brain.

  Tim had been far too busy to do any comparative analysis. Lives had been at stake. As he looked at the images side-by-side for the first time, he saw immediate differences.

  “Walker’s aren’t decomposing the same way as Petrovsky’s,” he said. “Petrovsky’s crawlers have spreading clusters of black spots, starting small and expanding, like a banana that’s just starting to go bad. With Walker’s, the cell damage looks uniform, like something is affecting them all at once. You hit the nail on the head — they look like they’re melting. You didn’t see anything like that in your prior work?”

  Margaret shook her head. “No, we didn’t. We studied Carmen Sanchez through the whole crawler-infection process. Nothing like this in him, or in Betty Jewell, and she was in an advanced state of the apoptosis chain reaction. This … this is new.”