Pandemic

  Tim focused on the image of the two left hands. Did one of them look … shriveled?

  “So you think whatever is forming under that membrane might act as a new communication device,” he said. “A walking cell-phone tower or something?”

  “Maybe,” Clarence said. “Or, possibly, the Orbital thought like a general. The units it had on the battlefield didn’t get the job done, so maybe it wanted something new.”

  Margaret closed her eyes, hung her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We have three doses of the yeast, we give one each to Nagy, Austin and Chappas. Then we see what happens.”

  It was time to fess up, and Tim knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “We have two doses,” he said. “Not three.”

  Margaret’s eyes narrowed in confusion, then widened in understanding.

  “You took a dose?”

  Tim shrugged. “If it’s any consolation, it tasted like a baboon’s ass speckled with hot bat guano.”

  Clarence’s gloved hands noisily curled into fists. “You disobeyed orders.”

  “Oh, whatever,” Tim said. “I’m not military, you goon, and what are you gonna do, cut it out of me? We can’t waste all of it on those guys when we don’t even know if it will help them. We need to know if it works on the uninfected, and that’s me.”

  They were angry, sure, but Tim knew he had done the right thing. Not just the right thing, the smart thing. He wasn’t going to take any shit for it. He was ready to stand his ground, argue his case.

  What he wasn’t ready for, however, was Margaret’s reaction.

  She started to cry softly. Tears glistened on her cheeks — she couldn’t reach inside her helmet to wipe them away, so on her cheeks they stayed.

  “Fine,” she said. “Since we don’t have the resources to treat them all, we choose two for the yeast.”

  She looked up at Tim, her wet eyes screaming of hopelessness and anguish.

  He felt small, insignificant.

  “Nagy and Chappas,” she said. “Edmund’s blood is packed with hydras — we’ll try that on Clark since Clark is already so far gone. We’ll apply Edmund’s blood to Clark’s skin. We already know the hydras can replicate if they’re injected directly into the body. This method will let us test if they can also spread by exposure to blood, and, if that works, what impact they have on someone who has triangles.”

  She was writing Clark off, and with good reason. His triangles couldn’t be cut out. Tim had taken X-rays, seen the spiked triangle tails wrapped around Clark’s heart, lying against his arteries. Removing the triangles would kill him.

  Nagy and Austin, however, were in the early stages of infection. It was worth a shot to see if the yeast could cure them.

  Clark, Nagy, Chappas … that left one.

  “What about Austin?” Tim said. “The kid who was crying. Are you going to expose him to the hydras?”

  Margaret sniffed sharply. Her expression changed — she was done crying.

  “We’re not treating him at all,” she said. “We have to know what we’re up against. We have to let Austin’s infection run its course, so we can see what he becomes.”

  She turned and walked out of the analysis module. Clarence stared at Tim for a few moments — maybe because of Tim’s selfish choice, or maybe just because Tim had made his wife cry — then followed her out.

  HOMECOMING

  Cooper stood on the deck of the Mary Ellen Moffett, waiting for the Platypus to close in.

  He was experienced and sure-footed, yet the screaming wind and the rough water made him hold the rail to keep from falling overboard. Steve Stanton’s machine had brought with it bad weather, the worst of the trip so far. Stanton and Bo Pan stood close by, watching carefully.

  Cooper turned to José. “You ready?”

  The Filipino was wearing only swim trunks, flippers, a mask and a snorkel. He gave Cooper a thumbs-up. How in the hell the little man could tolerate frigid temperatures was beyond Cooper’s knowledge.

  “You sure you don’t want a wet suit? That water will freeze your balls off.”

  José smiled. “I am married with two children. I haven’t seen my balls in years.”

  With that, the short man sat on the rail, put his hand tight to his mask and fell backward to splash into Lake Michigan. He surfaced in seconds. He grabbed a buoy that held a cable lead, then turned and swam toward the blinking light of Steve Stanton’s UUV.

  The Platypus sat low in the water. The fuzzy, gray, wet material blended in with both the water and the cloudless night, making it look like a sea monster that might suddenly attack José.

  José put his hands on the foam surface, pulled it in close. The cable lead had a hook on it, which he threaded through an eyebolt sticking out of the Platypus’s back. José yanked the connection to make sure it was secure, then gave Cooper a thumbs-up.

  Cooper looked up to the crane’s tiny pilothouse, where Jeff was waiting. Cooper flashed a thumbs-up of his own. Jeff nodded, then worked the controls.

  The winch whined as it reeled in the cable, lifting the UUV high. Water poured down from the machine’s foam covering, first in a triangular downpour, then a thick stream, then drips and drops as the crane pivoted, bringing the UUV over the Mary Ellen’s deck.

  Jeff lowered the machine. Seconds after the Platypus touched down, a wave caught the Mary Ellen broadside, tilted the boat severely and splashed a high spray of water across the deck. The Platypus skidded starboard, heading for the edge.

  Cooper rushed forward, one hand on the rail to keep his balance. With the other, he grabbed at the wet, gray machine — he couldn’t get a firm grip on the slippery surface. Then Bo Pan was there, throwing himself on top of the Platypus. Steve grabbed the tail; his feet slid out from under him and he fell hard on his ass, but he held on tight.

  The two men seemed to have it; Cooper took a quick look to make sure José was safe — he was, already climbing up a rope ladder — then pulled the Platypus toward its storage crate. Jeff came out of the crane cabin and also grabbed hold.

  Another wave rocked the Mary Ellen, but four men gripped the UUV and it wasn’t going anywhere. They slid it into the custom-built storage crate, then locked the crate shut. Cooper and Jeff strapped down the lid.

  The Platypus was secure.

  Cooper smelled something. He looked at his hands, then sniffed them — ugh, like dead fish, or worse. He wiped his hands against his jeans.

  Bo Pan had something in his hands: a black tube, about the size of a travel mug. The old man unzipped his jacket and stuffed it inside. He headed for the door that led below, moving as fast as he could in the rough conditions.

  Steve followed close behind.

  Cooper felt a strong arm slap down hard around his shoulders.

  “Hey, Coop!” A smiling Jeff screamed to be heard over the wind. He sniffed his free hand and wrinkled his face in disgust. “Coop, that thing smells like your old girlfriend’s cooch.” Jeff started laughing, as if he’d just made the wittiest statement in all of history.

  “Funny,” Cooper said. “Let’s get out of this mess. Time to head for Chicago. And dibs on the shower.”

  Just a few hours more, and the Mary Ellen would be free of her strange guests. Cooper and Jeff could head back to Benton Harbor, pay off a shitload of debts, and they’d never have to worry about this whole strange incident ever again.

  HATCHING

  It wasn’t fair.

  No time … no time …

  Margaret knew she had the tools to beat the monster, to put a sword deep into its heart, but the monster was already breeding, already spreading.

  She stood in the containment area, walking up and down the aisle. Ten clear cells, each with an occupant, all unconscious. Full house. Four more tests had turned up positive on the Carl Brashear. The men had been delivered to the clear holding cells. Another six positives reported from the Pinckney — those sailors were dead, executed on the orders of Captain Tubberville, their remains already incine
rated.

  Although all the captives were unconscious, their bodies continued to change. Austin’s metamorphosis had kicked into high gear. Even worse, Clark’s triangles were hatching.

  Tim had bailed, said he had other things to do. She was done arguing with him. Clarence, however, was there, right by her side.

  “Margaret,” he said, “are you sure you have to watch this?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  Someone had to be there with Clark, even if he was so doped up he had no idea what was going on. She’d exposed him to Edmund’s hydra-filled blood, naively hoping for a miracle. The hydras had begun to reproduce almost immediately. She didn’t know what, if anything, would happen next.

  “Clarence, if you don’t want to watch, I understand.”

  He shook his head. “If you’re going to endure it, then I’ll endure it with you.”

  A noble gesture coming from a man who had left her. That was his nature, though — he’d have done the same for anyone he was assigned to.

  Her heart raced. Maybe that was from the Adderall, not the situation, but the situation was enough to give anyone a coronary.

  Austin lay on the floor of his cell. Brown fibers were sprouting from all over his young body, slowly crawling across his skin, sticking to both the metal grate deck and the clear glass walls. If she stood still and watched carefully, she could see those fibers moving, see new fibers pushing out of his body. It was like looking at time-lapse footage of a growing plant. At this rate, he’d be covered in a matter of hours. She was uploading a live feed of that to Black Manitou, making sure the information would survive even if things got really bad.

  She was also sending live video of Clark. His triangles had started moving a few minutes ago. Blinking, twitching and jiggling as the tentacle-legs hidden inside him started to flex, to push, trying to drive the creatures out of the man’s body.

  Margaret had seen a hatching once before, when three of the monsters had torn out of a woman named Bernadette Smith. Clark’s hatching seemed different … like something was wrong. The black eyes that had stared out with visible hate, visible intelligence, now widened, shut tight, widened again.

  Almost as if the creatures were in pain.

  The triangles started to lurch, to push against Clark’s pale skin. Out and back, out and back, a little farther each time, stretching his skin so taut it reflected the lights from above.

  He lay there, unconscious thanks to the anesthesia — a mercy for his final moments.

  Clarence shook his head. “This is awful.” His voice cracked with the strain. The horror show had gotten even to him. She reached her left hand out to the side, slowly, until it brushed against his. Without hesitation, he held her hand tight, their gloved fingers linking together.

  The triangles jumped harder, so hard the man’s prone body shook, made his straps snap, made the solid metal table rattle like a snare drum.

  This was the reason Perry Dawsey had cut into himself, over and over. He’d sensed this was coming and done what no man could do, what Clark hadn’t had the chance to do.

  One of the triangles stopped jumping. It was on Clark’s left abdomen. The man’s skin sagged like a sock with a tennis ball inside. The hatchling wasn’t moving. Its eyes looked … lifeless.

  The one on his shoulder started to vibrate.

  Her fingers clamped down tighter on Clarence’s.

  The shoulder triangle’s eyes widened, bulged … then one eye popped in a tiny splash of black and green. The triangle kept twitching but no longer pulled against the stretched and torn skin. It spasmed like a moth caught in a spider’s web.

  She looked at a third, this one on his muscular thigh … it was swelling.

  “It works,” she said, barely able to believe the words herself. “It’s the hydras, has to be … they’re killing the hatchlings.”

  The sound of fists pounding against glass startled her, made her jump away. Clarence didn’t let go of her hand.

  Chief Petty Officer Orin Nagy, the man who’d killed two people with a pipe-wrench, stared out. Madness wrinkled his face into a twisted mask. He’d been gassed and should have been under for at least another two hours — how the hell had he woken up?

  He pointed at her.

  “Your little trick won’t work on me, bitch! I know you put something in my belly, but you know what? I’m fucking fine, thanks for asking!”

  Had his crawlers overcome the anesthesia? Counteracted it, somehow?

  A slight pull on her hand — Clarence, pointing into Clark’s cell. The hatchling on Clark’s thigh had swollen to water-balloon proportions, triangular sides bowed outward against taut skin.

  Skin and triangle alike ruptured, spurting purple and black and red a foot into the air before it splashed down on top of his thigh, sticking like thick mucus.

  Then another pop, and another.

  Then, nothing. No motion at all, not from Clark, not from his triangles … just the slow, oozing drip of blood and viscous fluids pattering down to the floor of his cage.

  “Jesus,” Clarence said. “What do we do now?”

  She had failed to save Clark, but his death wasn’t in vain — now she had a weapon, even if she did not yet understand how to use it. His death had served a greater purpose.

  Margaret turned, met the crazed stare of Nagy. His death would also serve a purpose. And in truth, the man he’d once been had died days before.

  “I’ll tell you what we do now,” she said. “We find something that will put Nagy under, and we dissect his brain so we can see if Tim’s yeast did anything to him.”

  She smiled. Only a little, but she couldn’t help it. She hoped the infected still had some degree of communication, at least a shred of their inexplicable telepathy. She wanted them to know she was about to kill Nagy … first him, then all of them.

  SELF-MEDICATION

  Tim knew what was going on in the cells. That didn’t mean he had to watch. If his yeast inoculant didn’t work, that could very well be him in one of those cells, with some jackass doctor or scientist calmly watching monsters tear out of his body. Maybe they would take notes. Maybe they would frown sadly at his imminent demise.

  For the moment, his talents were best used elsewhere. He sat alone in the analysis module, taking advantage of the opportunity to examine his biosurveillance results. He’d set up two algorithms: the first to scan the medical records of the seventeen confirmed positives, look for any commonalities or recent trips to the ship doctor; the second to analyze prescriptions and over-the-counter sales of medicine taskforce-wide.

  Six of the seventeen infection victims had visited ship doctors. There could have been more than that — all medical staffers were impossibly overworked taking care of the wounded, and there was no way of knowing if they’d properly tracked visits.

  Of those six, though, there was an instant commonality: they had reported to the infirmary with complaints of headaches, body pain, sinus drip, and sore throats. Minor things, especially at a time like this. The docs had prescribed ibuprofen and cough suppressants. Basic treatments for common ailments. So common, in fact, that most people with aches and a sore throat wouldn’t talk to a doctor at all — they’d just tough it out.

  Tough it out, or, self-medicate.

  He called up his second algorithm, the one that data-mined records of all medical supplies across the entire task force.

  When the results came up, he felt a cold ball of fear swell up in his stomach, felt a panicked tingling in his balls.

  He had to tell Margaret.

  CONSUMER HABITS

  Margaret and Clarence sat in the theater/briefing room, waiting for Tim to come in and deliver his urgent news.

  She had just watched a man die, yet she felt … excited. Walker’s hydras were a weapon, a contagious weapon. They spread via contact with blood. If pustules formed on Edmund, she would test those as well but she already knew that would also result in contagion.

  The hydras killed the infection, b
ut what else did they do? Hopefully she would have enough time to study that, find out what the side effects might be.

  So far, Tim’s yeast had produced no noticeable effect on Chappas. It was several hours into the test, yet they had no way of knowing what the catalyst’s effects might be, if there were any at all. Maybe they’d get lucky with Chappas; maybe the yeast would cure him.

  She’d dissected Nagy’s brain herself, found it thickly webbed with the crawler-built mesh. Tim’s hypothesis seemed correct: once the crawlers reached the brain, it was too late.

  But that didn’t change the possibility that the yeast could inoculate the uninfected. Sooner or later they would have to test that theory. Since Tim had selfishly helped himself to part of the first precious batch, Margaret wondered if he might volunteer. Somehow, she didn’t see that happening. Tim was an excellent scientist, but he was also a coward. He didn’t have an ounce of Clarence’s self-sacrificing nature.

  Speak of the blond-haired devil: Tim rushed into the room, more wide-eyed than ever. He smelled of sweat. He carried a laptop, information already displayed on the screen.

  Margaret stood. Her legs ached. Her whole body ached. “So what’s this critical information, Tim?”

  He handed her the open laptop.

  “I found a significant indicator for infection,” he said. “We can probably detect outbreaks across larger populations, and do it even before victims would test positive for cellulose.”

  Margaret looked at the screen: a chart showing purchases of cold medication? Clarence came up to stand by her side, read as well.

  At first, she didn’t understand the significance, but then it clicked and clicked hard.

  Clarence shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “People buying cough drops and ibuprofen shows that they’re infected?”

  “Not on an individual basis,” Tim said. “But in the bigger picture, yes. It’s how the CDC can spot a flu outbreak, based on an abnormal spike in sales of medicine that treats flu symptoms. Seventeen people on this flotilla have tested positive so far — shortly after the battle, six of them reported coldlike symptoms of headaches and body pain.”