Parasite

  There was a new air of confusion to the general chatter in the mall. I’d been too busy focusing on Joyce to notice it before. I twisted in my seat, following her gaze to a little girl outside the boundaries of the food court. She was too young to be on her own—no more than six or seven—and she was half-walking, half-staggering toward the exit. From the way she was moving, she’d hurt her foot recently. If she’d been older, I would have suspected her of having had a stroke. And yet her gait managed not to be the strangest thing about her, possibly because the sight of a little girl towing a fully grown woman bodily along was weird enough to make everything else seem incidental.

  “Helen, sweetie, come on, stop playing this bad game,” said the woman—her mother, judging by the resemblance between them. There were tears running down her cheeks. Her obvious dismay just called the utter slackness of the little girl’s expression into sharper relief. “Let’s go back to Daddy, okay? Okay, sweetie? Please?”

  The little girl—Helen, her name was Helen, and that seemed suddenly very important, although I couldn’t have said exactly why—gave no indication that she’d heard a word her mother said. She just kept plodding forward, moving surprisingly fast considering that she was barely lifting her right foot off the floor. Her mother was dragged along in her wake, unable to stop the girl’s forward motion.

  I heard Joyce gasp. “There’s another one,” she whispered loudly. Her hand stabbed past my face, pointing into the crowd. I turned to look where she was pointing, and saw a man shamble through the gathered bodies, moving with the same unsteady speed as the little girl. Like the little girl, his expression was slack, eyes focusing on nothing in this world… and like her, he was heading straight for the exit.

  “What the hell…?” I stood, taking a step back, so that I was standing next to Joyce. She scrambled to her feet, latching onto my arm with surprising strength. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I don’t know. Food poisoning maybe?” Joyce gave me a pleading look. “It’s not something contagious, is it? There’s not something in the air vents?”

  “You’re the one who works in a lab,” I said, keeping most of my attention on the man and the little girl. “Shouldn’t you know what causes this sort of symptomology?” Helen’s mother wasn’t stopping her, but she was slowing her down, and the man was starting to catch up. I wanted to see what would happen if they saw each other. I wanted to see what they would do.

  “Helen!” wailed the mother.

  Helen plodded ceaselessly on. The man’s longer legs were rapidly shortening the distance between them. He was walking better than she was, although his balance didn’t seem to be as good; several times, I was sure he was going to topple over. But he didn’t.

  And then they were next to each other, and with no more ceremony than a step, they stopped. The little girl turned to face the man, tilting her chin up as she stared into his eyes. Their expressions remained slack, neither showing any emotion as they considered each other. The entire mall seemed to have gone quiet; the only sounds were the music playing softly through the speakers overhead and the pleas of Helen’s mother.

  Unsteadily, Helen extended her free hand toward the man. Just as unsteadily, he reached out and took it, mashing his fingers around hers with so much force that it had to hurt her. She didn’t react. Now hand-in-hand, the pair turned and resumed their trek toward the door, dragging Helen’s wailing mother in their wake.

  They had almost reached the doors when the mall EMTs descended, summoned by someone who reacted better in a crisis than the rest of us. They had no trouble separating the man from the little girl—when they pulled on their joined hands, the pair just let go. They had more trouble getting Helen’s mother to let her go. I think they may have finally threatened to sedate her, because she dropped Helen’s hand and stepped away, pleas fading into sobs.

  Joyce and I watched as both man and little girl were strapped to gurneys and wheeled away, vanishing through an EMPLOYEES ONLY door into the back corridors of the mall. A stunned silence hung over everyone who had witnessed the scene. Several people had their phones out and were snapping pictures of the crowd, like the disoriented faces of the witnesses would somehow provide the answers that none of us had on our own.

  “I think we should go home now,” said Joyce, in a very small voice.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”

  Joyce switched the radio from station to station as she drove, taking her eyes off the road so many times that I was afraid I was going to start hyperventilating. “Traffic, weather, stupid comedy show, traffic, traffic—God!” She slammed her fists against the wheel. “Doesn’t anybody talk about anything important around here?”

  “Do we need to pull over so you can calm down?” I asked the question as calmly as I could, but my hands were pressed against the dashboard so hard the skin on my fingers was bleached bloodless white. My stomach felt like it was turning backflips. The only thing stopping me from giving in to the urge to throw up was the knowledge that it probably wouldn’t improve her driving.

  “No! I’m fine.” She stabbed the search button with her index finger, sending the radio skipping to the next station.

  “—doctors are baffled by a spate of what appears to be a new form of viral sleepwalking. Five victims of this ‘sleeping sickness’ have already been admitted to Bay Area hospitals. While the experts insist there is no evidence that this illness is contagious, it seems fairly obvious that something must be causing it, as none of the known victims have any history of narcolepsy or somnambulism—that’s falling asleep without warning, and walking around while you’re sleeping, for those of us without a medical degree. There is no word yet on whether the Centers for Disease Control—”

  I leaned forward and turned the radio off. Joyce yelped.

  “I was listening to that!”

  “You were getting upset by that,” I corrected. “Let’s get home and talk to Dad. He’ll know if something is really going on, and you won’t wind up scaring yourself half to death before we fully understand the situation.”

  Joyce glared. I looked impassively back, trying not to twitch at the fact that she wasn’t paying enough attention to the road. Finally, as I expected, she relented.

  “I hate it when you’re reasonable,” she grumbled. “You should be freaking out.”

  “You’re freaking out enough for both of us,” I said. “I just want to know what I’m going to be freaking out about before I waste energy freaking out about the wrong things. Conservation of panic is important.”

  “Pretty sure we’re not having a panic shortage, Sal.”

  “I don’t care. You’re still not turning that back on until we’re home. If you kill us both because you’re too busy being upset at the radio to keep your eyes on the road, I’m never going to speak to you again.”

  Joyce glared again before turning and looking resolutely out at the road. I closed my eyes, pressing myself back in my seat, and tried not to think about the cars around us. We passed the rest of the drive that way. I relaxed when I felt the car take the familiar turn into our driveway, and opened my eyes when Joyce turned the engine off.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “You should be,” I said, before I thought better of it.

  “What?” Joyce turned to me, eyes wide. “What did you say?”

  “You know I’m not okay with that sort of stuff.”

  “I said I was sorry! Don’t freak out on me.”

  Somehow, her sheer wounded indignation was the final straw. “Believe me, I’m not freaking out. If I start freaking out, you’ll have to sedate me to get me to stop,” I snapped, and opened the door, barely remembering to undo my seat belt before I stormed away. Joyce could carry her own damn bags. I was done being the helpful big sister for the day.

  Mom and Dad were in the living room. They both looked up at the sound of the front door slamming, and for a moment, I saw that flicker of wary unhappiness that I thought of as the tracks of
the old Sally—the one whose moods apparently made my panic attacks look like a fair trade in terms of “daughter we can live with.”

  “Sal?” said Mom carefully, standing. “Honey, are you okay?”

  Somehow, making her look at me like that just made the day worse. I shook my head and walked over to embrace her, pressing my face into her shoulder. Alarmed, she closed her arms around me.

  “Honey, where’s Joyce? Was there an accident?”

  I shook my head, not lifting it from her shoulder. I heard Dad stand and walk over to us. He didn’t say anything. That was probably for the best. At the moment, I wouldn’t have been able to answer him.

  The door banged open again as Joyce came stomping in, dropping her bags with a series of rustles and thuds before she demanded, “Turn on the news!”

  “Joyce, what’s going on?” asked Mom. “Why is your sister so upset?”

  “There were these people at the mall, I think they were sick.” I lifted my head to see Joyce grabbing the remote off the coffee table. She clicked the TV on, flipping channels until she landed on CNN. They were airing a story about reality-star salaries. She snarled. “Why aren’t they saying anything? I’m going to my room. Maybe the Internet will have a clue.” She whirled and went stomping out of the room. Her bedroom door slammed a few seconds later.

  I pulled away from Mom. “So what was that you were saying last week, about how I used to be the dramatic one? Can we have a re-vote on that title?”

  “I think that might be a good idea.” Mom looked down the hall toward Joyce’s room. “What happened? Did you two have a fight?”

  “If they’d had a fight bad enough that Joyce would be looking for it on CNN, I think we’d be down a daughter, Gail,” said my father reasonably. He was usually the reasonable one. Mom was a lot more like Joyce, only older and slightly less inclined to drag me to the mall when I didn’t want to go. “What happened, Sal?”

  I sighed. “I wanted to talk to you about this anyway. See, there was this little girl…”

  It didn’t take me long to explain what we’d seen at the mall. Mom and Dad listened without comment until I was done. I shrugged, spreading my hands. “That’s everything. It was weird, and sort of scary, but it really upset Joyce. The way she was driving scared the hell out of me, and it was like she didn’t even care. All she wanted to do was get home and find out what was going on. We were supposed to talk to you, but she didn’t even wait. I don’t get it.”

  “She was probably worried about a biochemical attack on the mall,” said my father.

  I blinked. Joyce had mentioned something in the air vents… “Dad? Is there something I should know?”

  My father—Colonel Alfred Mitchell, United States Army, former director at USAMRIID and current director-slash-lab manager of their San Francisco research center, which is how my entire family wound up with the earliest specialized versions of the SymboGen implant—looked at me for a long moment without saying anything. Finally, he sighed, and said, “We didn’t want to worry you.”

  “You know, that’s one of the most worrying things anyone ever says.”

  “I know.” He paused before saying, “There have been a few isolated events recently. Unique pathogens showing up in inhabited areas. Nothing we can solidly say points to terrorist activity, but…”

  “Enough that when we see people sleepwalking in broad daylight, you jump to bad conclusions,” I said. “How long have you known about this?” I paused, and added, “How long has Joyce known?”

  “Sal—”

  “Didn’t you think this might be something I’d want to know about, too?”

  “It’s not public knowledge, and given your current condition, it seemed best not to upset you,” Dad said.

  I stared at him. “It’s been six years since the accident. How long does this get to be my ‘current condition’ before it becomes just the way I am? I mean, really, I’d like to know, since I guess I’m going to have to wait until we hit that day before you’re going to start treating me like an adult, instead of like a child you have to protect.”

  “Sal, that isn’t fair,” said Mom.

  “I didn’t mean your memory loss, Sal,” said my father. I frowned. He shook his head. “I meant SymboGen.”

  Understanding came suddenly. It did not come kindly. “You think SymboGen is involved in this?”

  “Honey, I don’t know what I think. What I do know is that it’s a big, scary world out there, and I can’t protect you from it.” He looked toward Joyce’s room. “I need to go check on your sister.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You do that.”

  Mom took my arm as Dad walked down the hall. “Let’s go make some tea.”

  I thought about shaking off her hand, but experience told me that would be a bad idea. If I started acting like a child, she’d just work harder to treat me like one. “I’m not so delicate that you have to hide things from me,” I said.

  “I know. It’s just your father’s way. You were used to it before… before.” She stumbled a little, sidestepping the issue of my memory loss with her usual awkwardness. Even after six years, it hadn’t gotten any easier. “He needs to be sure of the facts before he really starts frightening people.”

  “He told Joyce.”

  “Joyce works in his lab. I’m not sure he could avoid telling her.”

  “She’s just an intern.”

  “Even interns have to understand what they’re doing.” Mom let go of my arm, pushing me gently toward the kitchen table. I sat down. “I’m pretty sure we have some rosemary shortbread left over from last night. It’s always better on the second day, don’t you think?”

  That was her way of saying that the conversation was over. I wasn’t quite ready to let it go. “Mom, should I be scared right now?”

  “I don’t think it would do any good, and that means it’s not worth wasting the energy.” Mom got down the cookie jar and a tin of loose-leaf tea. “Now why don’t you tell me how the trip to the mall went, up until those people showed up?”

  I sighed. There was no way I was getting anything else out of her. “Well, first Joyce dragged me through every shoe store in the place…” I began.

  Reciting the minutiae of our trip to the mall took very little of my attention. Mom fixed tea, and I kept talking. I couldn’t stop thinking about the look on that little girl’s face, the dead-eyed blankness that still projected a type of unwavering determination, like all that mattered in the world was getting to that door. The man had looked the same way, and they’d known each other through the fog.

  Whatever was going on, it was bigger than Dad was admitting, maybe big enough to justify Joyce’s panic. It was definitely a hell of a lot more important than shoe stores and shopping. Mom put the shortbread in front of me, and the summer afternoon ticked inexorably by, like so many others before it, like so many more that hadn’t arrived yet.

  I don’t remember what we talked about. None of it mattered, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the little girl.

  It wasn’t until I went to bed that night that I realized I’d been hearing the drums all day.

  … in biotech news, a patent for a lab-created organism has been filed by genetic research leader SymboGen. The patented organism, dubbed “Diphyllobothrium symbogenesis,” is a form of modified tapeworm hybrid. The representatives from SymboGen, led by Dr. Steven Banks, have successfully demonstrated that this hybrid cannot arise in nature, and more, that the modifications to its genome have resulted in several medically and scientifically useful changes to the overall organism.

  Rumors that SymboGen is already petitioning the FDA for permission to begin human testing of the D. symbogenesis organism have yet to be confirmed. This would represent a dramatic escalation of the normal timeline for research of this type. Sources inside the company say…

  —FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PARASITOLOGY, PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2015.

  San Bruno officials have as yet made no statement relating to the strange events at
the downtown San Bruno Mall, although one mall employee has reported a strange smell in the area of the second-floor public restrooms. Sources indicate that a gas leak of some kind may have triggered the strange behavior in the five individuals affected by what locals have begun calling “the Sleeping Sickness.”

  All five of the victims of this strange outbreak have been hospitalized, and are being held in quarantine pending further updates on their condition…

  —FROM THE CONTRA COSTA TIMES, AUGUST 7, 2027.

  Chapter 4

  AUGUST 2027

  The morning dawned bright, early, and awkward. Joyce was sullen and refused to talk during breakfast; Mom was already gone by the time I got up. I had an e-mail from Nathan apologizing for not calling me the night before; there had been a sudden surge of patients at the ER, bad enough that it overwhelmed the normal doctors and caused them to call as many specialists as they could lure out of their labs. As a staff parasitologist, Nathan was accustomed to doing ER rounds—there were medical conditions that could be alleviated by making adjustments to the patient’s SymboGen implant, and others that could kill the implants, requiring them to be extracted immediately, before decomposition could set in. There were very few medical emergencies that could be improved by having two and a half pounds of dead tapeworm decaying in the patient’s gut.

  I might have thought that the influx of patients was somehow related to what Joyce and I saw at the mall, but he was using the code words that meant “accident.” I didn’t like to think about car crashes, and so he avoided discussing them with me in any specific terms. He invited me to come to the hospital for lunch. Since I didn’t have to be at the shelter that day, I wrote back saying I’d be there. Anything to get out of the house.

  Dad and Joyce were leaving for work at ten: unusually late, but a concession they were sometimes able to make when I needed a ride. They dropped me off six blocks from the hospital, at a little florist’s shop I’d discovered during my outpatient physical therapy. The shop always had terrible roses. They made up for it by having some of the most beautiful orchids I’d ever seen—but that wasn’t their specialty: McNally’s Flowers specialized in carnivorous plants.