Infected

  Using the counter to pull himself to his feet, he slowly stood. His whole body felt very weak, which made him wonder how long he’d been unconscious. In the bathroom with the door half shut, there was no way of telling time; sunlight could not reach down the hall.

  Resting his weight against the sink, he looked at himself in the mirror. “Look like shit” couldn’t describe it. A green-yellow film of vomit caked the right side of his face, matting down his hair. A black-and-blue bump on his forehead stuck out like a unicorn’s starter kit. The dark circles under his eyes were so pronounced they were almost comical, as if he were wearing overdone movie makeup meant for an extra in Night of the Living Dead.

  What really caught his eye wasn’t his face, but the dried-up crap all over his mirror. Rivulets of some odd liquid had dribbled down the glass, then dried in black streaks. Papery chunks of grayish matter clumped on the mirror like old paste, or perhaps a smashed insect.

  Only it wasn’t an insect, and Perry knew that. Memories of the mess on the mirror jostled his fuzzed-out, pain-fogged brain. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was evil. The thing was death, something to be very afraid of. At least it had been something to be afraid of.

  He needed some Tylenol and he needed to wash this filth from his body. Even reaching down to turn on the shower made his head pound. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hurt like this, or if he’d ever hurt like this.

  “Doctor time,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking doctor time.”

  Perry headed to the kitchen for some Tylenol. He moved slowly and carefully, holding his head as if he might stop his hammering brain from falling onto the floor. He looked at the stove’s digital clock: 12:15.

  It took his thudding head a minute to get the picture, and he actually asked himself how the sun could be out at a quarter past midnight, then realized his stupidity with a small sigh. It was 12:15 P.M.—a quarter past noon. He’d slept through work. There was no way he could go in, at least not until his head felt better. He told himself he’d call in and try to explain things, but only after a shower.

  The Tylenol bottle sat on the microwave, right next to the wooden cutlery block that held the knives. His eyes rested on the chicken scissors. Only their brown plastic handles showed, but hidden inside the block of wood were the scissors’ thick, stubby blades that could easily cut through raw meat as if it were paper and chicken bone as if it were a dry twig. They held his fascination for a moment, then he reached for the Tylenol bottle.

  He tossed four pills into his mouth, made a bowl out of his hands and gulped tap water to swallow them down.

  That done, he shambled back toward the bathroom, stripping off clothes as he went. He stepped into the steaming shower and basked in the spray, tilting his head to let the water wash the slime from his hair and face. The stinging-hot water revived his flaccid muscles. The fog in his brain lifted a touch. He hoped the Tylenol would kick in soon—his head hurt so bad he could barely see.

  29.

  MOTIVATION

  Dew refused to cry. Just wasn’t going to happen. It wanted to come out, and he had trouble fighting it back, but no way in hell. He wasn’t in this business to make friends. It hurt, sure it did, but Malcolm Johnson wasn’t his first friend to die in the line of duty.

  How much of this did he have to deal with? How much could he take? How many more people did he have to see die?

  How many more people…did he have to kill?

  He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He needed to reconnect.

  Dew picked up his small cell phone, the normal one, and dialed. It rang three times before she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Cynthia, it’s Dew.”

  “Oh, hi, how are you?” Her words carried history, decades of back story, if you will. Dew and Cynthia had hated each other once, hated each other with a passion that went even beyond what he felt for the enemy during a battle. That hatred was born out of love, deep, all-encompassing love for the same person.

  That person was Sharon, Dew’s only child.

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been a lot better, a lot of times,” Dew said. “But don’t tell Sharon that, okay?”

  “Sure thing. You want me to put her on?”

  “Please.”

  “Hold on one sec.”

  They would never, ever be friends, he and Cynthia, but at least they had respect for each other. They had to, because Sharon loved them both, and when Dew and Cynthia fought, it tore Sharon apart.

  It had been hard to hear that his little girl thought she was a lesbian. But that was nothing compared to the pain and anger he felt seven years later when he heard Sharon and Cynthia were more than “partners”—they had performed some union ceremony or what have you, and they were basically married. Wife and wife. He’d raged, screamed at them both, called them names he wished he hadn’t. Cynthia, of course, had screamed back. She wanted to protect Sharon, Dew understood that now. Cynthia also happened to despise men in general, especially gruff, bossy, unemotional military men—which happened to sum up Dew Phillips in a nutshell. But Cynthia’s constant attacks on Dew, both when he was there and when he wasn’t, took their toll on Sharon. Dew hated. Cynthia hated. Sharon just wasn’t wired that way. Sharon loved, pure and simple.

  It took another two years after the “union” bullshit, but Dew finally understood that this was the real deal for his daughter. This wasn’t a passing fancy—she was going to be with Cynthia for the rest of her life. Once he came to that realization, he did what any good soldier would do—he sucked it up and he got the job done. He’d met Cynthia at what they both called the SDMZ, or the “Starbucks Demilitarized Zone,” and they agreed on an uneasy détente. They could hate each other all they wanted, and nothing could change that, but they agreed to be civil and to treat each other with respect. And over the years, in the process of being civil, he came to understand that Cynthia was a good kid—as far as bull dykes go, that is.

  “Hi, Daddy!” Sharon’s voice, unchanged from the time she was five. Well, that was bullshit, and Dew knew it, but that’s exactly what his ears heard every time she talked.

  “Hi, sugar. How are you?”

  “I’m doing great. I’m so glad you called. How are you?”

  “Tip-top. Couldn’t be better. Work is going well.”

  “You’re still doing the desk job?” He heard the worry in her voice.

  “They’re not making you go out in the field anymore, right?”

  “Of course not, at my age? That would be crazy.”

  “It most certainly would.”

  “Listen, sugar, I only have a minute. I just wanted to call and hear your voice.”

  “Well here it is. When are you coming to Boston again? I want to see you. We can go out, just you and me.”

  Dew swallowed. If a gutted Malcolm Johnson wasn’t going to make him cry, he sure as shit wouldn’t let the waterworks go over a phone call with his daughter.

  “Come on, sugar, you know I’m okay with Cynthia now. We’ll all go out, spend some time together.”

  Dew almost laughed when he heard Sharon sniffle. Whereas he could hold back tears seemingly forever, she cried if the wind blew funny. “Yeah, I know, Daddy. And you have no idea what that means to me. What it means to us.”

  “Stop with the crying already. I got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.”

  “Bye-bye, Daddy. And be careful. You might get a splinter from that desk.”

  Dew hung up. He took one deep breath, and then the emotions faded away, pushed back to their normal hiding place. That was what he’d needed, to reconnect with the why of what he did. It was for her. It was for a country in which his daughter could live as she pleased, even if that meant living with another woman, even if her father hated it, and hated her mate, with all his heart. There were many places in the world where Sharon would have been killed—or worse—for doing what came naturally to her.

  Was that cliché? To keep on fi
ghting, and killing when need be, because America was the greatest nation on earth? Probably, but Dew didn’t care if the reasons were good, logical or even cliché. They were his reasons.

  And that was enough.

  30.

  MR. CONGENIALITY

  Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto stood as Murray Longworth entered the commandeered office. Murray shook everyone’s hands, then all three sat. Murray, of course, sat behind the big desk.

  “What have you got for me? We got you a relatively fresh one this time. I trust that an unrotted body gave us some clues as to what the hell these things are?”

  Margaret led the charge. “It didn’t stay ‘unrotted’ for long. All the tissue is gone. Only his skeleton is left—it looks the same as the remains of Judy Washington and Charlotte Wilson. We have the liquefied remains, but I think we’ve learned all we can from that material. Before Brewbaker fully decomposed, however, we were able to gather some valuable and disturbing information. First of all, we believe the growth isn’t a modification of tissue, but rather it’s a parasitical organism.”

  Murray’s face wrinkled in mild disgust. “It’s a parasite? What makes you think that?”

  “Just as with Charlotte Wilson’s case, the growth itself was already decomposed. We could get nothing from it, but we found structures in the surrounding tissue that made us classify it as a parasite. The growths are tapped into the host’s circulatory system, drawing oxygen and possibly nutrients from the blood.”

  Murray stared at her, like a limestone statue just beginning to show the effects of wind, rain and erosion. “What you’re telling me is that these triangular things are alive, that they’re not part of the victim but rather a separate, living creature?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So why are the ‘hosts,’ as you call them, going nuts?”

  “We found excessive neurotransmitter levels in the brain,” Margaret said. “Neurotransmitters are the substances that pass signals from nerve cell to nerve cell, allowing the body to communicate with the brain and vice versa, as well as allowing the brain to function. Dopamine and serotonin, in particular, were at extremely high levels. Excess dopamine is implicated in severe schizophrenia, and excess serotonin can cause psychotic behavior and paranoia. We also found extremely high levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine throughout the brain. These two hormones are vital to the fight-or-flight response, key in reaction to emergencies and perceived threats. They also cause some of the physiological expressions of fear and anxiety. When the hormones exceed normal levels, anxiety disorders are very common.”

  Murray nodded with understanding. “So these parasites make people go crazy by increasing neurotransmitters?”

  “Right,” Amos said. “But there’s more. The parasite grows structures that mimic human nerves. We found such structures in the area surrounding the growth, but we found traces in the brain as well, particularly in the cerebral cortex and the limbic region.”

  “What’s the limbic region?”

  Margaret answered. “It’s a cluster of areas including the thalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala, among others, that is thought to control emotion and comprise the basic structures for memory storage and recall. The growths in that area may have been some kind of endocrine system for secreting the excess neurotransmitters. Based on case studies of excess dopamine in the limbic region, hosts may develop extremely acute paranoia. That’s consistent with the behavior observed in Brewbaker, Blaine Tanarive, Gary Leeland and Charlotte Wilson. But if the growth was actually artificial nerves, it may have had another purpose—it’s possible the parasite was somehow wired into the brain.”

  Anger flashed in Murray’s eyes. “Oh come on. I agree with your ‘drug delivery’ theory, that makes sense, but wired into the brain? What are you saying, that this isn’t just some chemical overdose, that the parasite is somehow controlling the host?”

  “It is a possibility,” she said.

  “Why don’t you just tell me the hosts are possessed by evil demons, Doctor Montoya? I’m beginning to suspect I made a serious mistake by putting you in charge of this. How the hell can you expect me to believe a parasite can control people, make them do all those horrible things?”

  “We didn’t say the parasite used people like some kind of robot,” Amos said. “However, there are parallels found in nature where parasites modify the host’s behavior. For example, there is a trematode that parasitizes a species of mud snail. To complete its life cycle, the trematode must pass from a snail to a sand flea. The trematode larva somehow forces snails to high ground, out of the water, where the snails will die. It makes them commit suicide, if you will. At that point the trematode exits the snail and enters a flea. Think also of the thorny-headed worm, which starts in a cockroach and moves on to a rat. To facilitate the change, the worm actually makes the cockroach less aware of danger, so it is more likely to be eaten by a rat. Then there is the—”

  Murray held up his hand, cutting off Amos’s next example. “I get the point, Doc. That’s riveting stuff, really it is, but snails and fucking roaches are a hell of a ways away from human intelligence.”

  “Behavior is merely a chemical reaction, Mister Longworth,” Amos said. “Human behavior involves more complicated reactions, but they are reactions nonetheless, and if a snail or—as you so eloquently put it, an effing roach—can be manipulated, then so, too, can a human.”

  Murray rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if some monster headache pounded the inside of his skull. “You know, I came here hoping for some good news, but this just gets worse every second. Okay, so someone out there has created a parasite that can manipulate human behavior. When the hell are you two going to give me something I can use?”

  “Mister Longworth, this is something incredibly advanced,” Margaret said. Her voice grew cold and angry. This man wanted simple answers, yet there were none to give. “We’re talking a high degree of technological superiority. If this is an engineered organism, someone out there is so far ahead of us it’s difficult to conceive. To put it another way, if this parasite is engineered, we’re in a lot of trouble.”

  Murray scowled—it was clear that additional complications were not welcome. “What do you mean ‘if ’?”

  “I suspect, and I should note that Amos disagrees with me, that this psychopathic behavior may not be intended, but is actually a side effect. The possibility remains that this is some kind of natural parasite, or if not natural, then it was not specifically designed to make people crazy.”

  Murray shook his head, then stared at the plaques on the wall. “It’s a weapon, Doctor Montoya, and a damn good one at that. Don’t make this so complicated you can’t see what’s blatantly obvious. You handle the chemicals and such, and leave the strategic analysis to me. Now, I need ideas from you on how to fight this thing. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Actually, Margaret had several suggestions, most of which involved a sledgehammer and Murray Longworth’s ass, but those she kept to herself. “There are a couple of things we need to do. First, we need to expand the staff. We need some psychiatrists on board.”

  “Why?”

  “All the hosts have shown severe behavioral disorders. If we’re going to learn how this thing works, we need a living host. We need a bigger staff and we need it quick, particularly a neurobiologist and neuropharmacologist. A psychologist might help us figure out how to handle deranged victims. And in the long run, we need to learn how to combat the parasite’s effects, possibly with drugs that modify behavior by countering the neurotransmitter overdose.”

  “I don’t think adding staff is a good idea, Margaret.”

  “We need these people, and we need them now. We could lose control of this any second. Information control is one thing. Letting a plague break out on our watch is another.”

  Murray’s fingers drummed the desktop. “Fine. I’ll start looking for people. I don’t need to tell you again just how secret this whole operation is, so I’m not going to have someone f
or you tomorrow or the next day. What have you got that I can use now?”

  “Brewbaker had a small growth with colored fibers growing out of it,” Margaret said. “This symptom is consistent with a condition called Morgellons disease. We think that the fibers are a parasite that died, but parts of it keep working. The fibers are made of cellulose, a material common in plants but not produced in any way in humans.”

  “Are the fibers conclusively connected with the triangles?”

  “They are,” Amos said. “The structure of the triangles is the same material as the fibers—cellulose. There is no way it’s a coincidence.”

  “And if you have the fibers,” Murray asked, “then you have the triangles? You’re going to go psycho?”

  Margaret leaned forward. “No, that’s not the case. It seems people can have the fibers and not develop the full-fledged parasite.”

  “And we haven’t seen the triangle growths before, not before the last few days? The CDC doesn’t have anything on it?”

  “Not that we know of,” Margaret said. “That doesn’t mean there haven’t been, or aren’t currently, more cases. They may have existed. We just didn’t find them.”

  “So the fiber thingies have been around for a few years, but the triangles are new,” Murray said. “Sounds like whoever is making the weapon is getting better at it.”

  Margaret swallowed. If she was going to get her way, now was the time. “The CDC may have information on Morgellons, including potential time lines of the condition and maps of people claiming to have this disease. We need to talk to Doctor Frank Cheng, who’s leading the investigation.”

  Murray leaned back in the director’s chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  “We can’t get the CDC involved, Margaret. That’s why I lifted you out of that organization.”

  “We have to talk to this man,” Margaret said. “It’s possible they have a database on this. If we’re lucky, they are tracking symptoms, dates of infection and other data that could potentially lead us to other parasite victims.”