The Fall: Victim Zero (6 page)

The bullet, in those first few microseconds of impact, began to spread and tumble. The shockwave it sent through David's brain damaged the microscopic cilia threaded through his nervous system and brain tissue. Not enough to kill Chimera yet, but enough to stun the entire parasitic system. Had the impact ended there, Kell and Sandy—whose real name was Burt Grigsby, much less poetic—would have had ten or fifteen seconds to finish the job themselves.

The bullet had momentum, though, and did not stop there. The shallow head of the bullet with its hollow point and shaped walls bloomed like some hideous flower as it broke through the wall of the skull. The shock of impact was nothing compared to the physical presence of the round itself, shedding inertia within the confines of white and gray-matter filled brain case by pure friction.

Chimera, delicate and wispy, didn't stand a chance.

For the men observing, it took a fraction of a second. David began to fall even before the exit wound fountained chips of skull and brain from the back of his head. On a layman's level, Sandy (who was also Burt) understood that shooting someone in the head equals death.

Kell was able to apply what he knew of Chimera to the observation in front of him, and understood the deeper revelation. If more of these things popped up, and they surely would, the only reliable way to stop them was to damage the brain.

Four hours and a dozen tests later, Kell was certain they were all royally fucked.

Karen sat next to him in the isolation room—now cleaned spotless—as Kell went over his own test results.

“How bad is it?” Karen asked as she pulled the baby away from her breast.

“
Bad. I was probably the first person exposed to David after Chimera went airborne, and we've got no way of knowing how long ago that was. The Boston lab is testing their people, but most of them are coming up clean so far. That means it happened here. Call it less than six weeks, and whenever I was exposed during that time, Chimera has fully infiltrated my system.”

Her gaze fell on the empty booth beside them. “So...if something happened to you, if you...”

“If I died,” he finished for her. She was tough, but no one on the planet had the experience needed to harden them against this situation. Who could? “Yeah. I'm pretty sure the same thing would happen to me.” He left unsaid that his contact with Karen and Jennifer almost guaranteed the same was true for them, but his wife was razor-sharp. She didn't miss much.

“
You think it's going to be this way for everyone, don't you? Me, the baby, people everywhere.”

With a shiver, Kell nodded.

“Jesus,” Karen said.

“
Well, yes, he
did
come back from the dead, but I don't think the cases are related.”

Karen's mouth fell open in shock, and she laughed hard.

He smiled at the sound, musical and pure. “I remember you laughing at me on our first date,” he said. “I was trying so hard to impress you, but my pants were too short and I didn't have time to change from the lab. You pointed to that stain on the front of my shirt and told me I'd spilled ketchup on it. When I told you it was a mixture of blood and cerebral fluid from a dissected test subject, you thought I was joking, trying to gross you out.”

Karen laughed harder from the memory. “You were so awkward. Tall and strong as a football player, but quiet and such a damn nerd. All you could talk about was work, you kept remembering you were on a date and blurting out 'you're beautiful!' and got all flustered. God, that was painful to watch.”

Kell chuckled. “I can't believe you gave me a second chance. The first date was so bad, I went home and beat myself up for two days until you finally called me.”

Karen shifted the baby around and leaned against her husband, laying her head on his arm. “I'd say I knew right then you were the one for me, but you know that isn't true. I thought you were cute and sweet, and so different from the men I'd dated before. So smart, but so clueless. You went on about cells and gene sequencing and never a word about yourself.”

He smiled down at her. “So you're saying I only got that second date because I was too much of a nerd to talk about me?”

She smiled back, but there was sadness in it. “No. Because I wanted to know what made you tick. Most guys talk about their accomplishments or the expensive things they've bought. You told me—and I'll never forget this—that you'd just figured out how to resequence a chunk of DNA the day before. Like it was something anyone could have done. You were passionate about what you did. I wanted to know where that passion came from.”

She stood and leaned in close, kissing him on the mouth. “I wondered if you could be that passionate about a person,” she said with a wink. “Turns out you could.”

Kell took in the scent of her, that unique combination that makes every person unique. It was the smell of clean skin and expensive conditioner, subtle perfume and freshly pressed suits. Maybe not amazing or especially romantic, but singularly
Karen.

He looked past her, eyes falling on the small inner room that had housed a decent man a few hours before, and the moment was broken.

“We've got to get out of here,” Kell said.

Karen followed his gaze. “Yeah, this room is kind of creepy.”

“No, not the room or even the lab. We need to leave the city. Maybe the state. It's only a matter of time before this thing goes nuclear, and Cincinnati was exposed first. This is ground zero.”

Karen agreed, and they worked their way back to Kell's office, where Jones had set up a compact command center in their absence. The man was working furiously, tapping away at a keyboard while holding a phone to his ear with one shoulder. He looked up at them as they entered, acknowledging them with a slight nod, and held up a finger.

“Yes, sir, we're keeping an eye on all the morgues and funeral homes. We've sent instructions to the hospitals, nursing homes, everywhere we can think of. If someone dies, they'll be diverted to the staging ground immediately. Yes, we have teams set up to handle the...disposal. More boots on the ground would be helpful, yes. We're equipped to handle a large workload, but the setup is still underway. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Jones hung up the phone and stopped typing. “What can I do for you?”

Kell glanced at his wife, who nodded.

“
We think it's best if we leave the city,” Kell said. “You and I both know eventually this is going to be outside your control. I'd rather my family not be here for that.”

Surprisingly, Jones nodded. “I agree. More important, my superiors agree. You and your team are our best shot at finding some kind of long-term solution. We're going to send you to a mobile CDC unit we've had set up about fifty miles northwest of Des Moines. It's relatively low population, so it should be safe when this...plague finally hits.”

Relief flooded over Kell. “Thank you, thank you so much. I'll call my parents--”

Jones held up a hand. “I'm afraid not, Doctor McDonald. This is need-to-know only. Spouses and children, that's the limit, and I had to fight to get that. But I know the only way any of you would go and still be willing to do any work is if your wives and husbands and kids are safe, too.”

It made sense, but the mechanical way Jones said it still grated. “Your compassion is boundless, Agent Jones.”

The other man stared at Kell for several seconds. “Sarcasm noted, Doctor. You should probably start packing. It's nearly midnight now, and a car will take you to the airport at six sharp. You can call your parents if you want, but don't tell them any details. We'll be listening.”

Kell swore under his breath but nodded. There was only so much you could do, and the rest was in the hands of fate.

Chapter Six

As Kell and his family piled into a large SUV for their trip to the airport, surrounded by agents who would travel with them, a woman several miles away was in the midst of having a very bad morning.

Her last bad day, or at least the last one she would be aware of.

In an outbreak event, the person initially infected with a pathogen is referred to as
Patient Zero,
the point of origin. Kell would have called David Markwell his patient zero, but Chimera was unique; it didn't kill. It didn't do much of anything negative while the infected person in question still lived.

The pathogen in this instance existed in a two-step state; one was harmless and indeed somewhat helpful, the other dangerous beyond belief. For the first, Kell would have been correct—David was patient zero for the Chimera strain he carried.

For the second, however, a victim was required.

Margaret French, Maggie to her friends, walked down the street. She huddled insider her heavy coat and fought the growing nausea that hit her in the car. It was a brisk morning and one she'd have rather not spent much time ambling in, but the parking lot outside the office where she worked was packed day and night. The perils of having a lot in that part of the city.

Each day she parked several blocks away and walked to the office. Today was her early shift, and she was responsible for coming in two hours before the rest of her coworkers to check balance sheets and answer emails accrued the night before. It was thankless and dull, but it paid the rent.

Maggie had no idea that while she slept, agents had carefully collected all the freshly dead in the city. She didn't know—couldn't know—that their greatest worry was a person dying suddenly and away from help. A corpse alone, waiting for the plague to reanimate it, a time bomb poised to set off a chain reaction.

Of all the important things Maggie didn't know, the most important was also the most personal. She was a time bomb herself.

The aneurysm could have gone at any time, but fate, being a tricky bitch on the best of days, chose that morning to hit the detonator on Maggie French.

It was over blessedly fast for her. The aneurysm was larger than most and unusually deadly. Maggie was hit with sudden back pain and a sharp spike in her nausea. She leaned against a building in an effort to stay standing, but the pain overwhelmed her. The world tilted, time slowed down, and her brain began to fuzz out.

She lost consciousness within seconds, and fell against the brick wall she was leaning on.

Her brain died a quick death as the blood so vital to its function seeped into the ether surrounding her internal organs. Maggie felt only that flash of pain before the darkness took her, then little as her abdomen filled with fresh, hot blood through her ruptured aorta.

The thing that rose on that empty street twenty minutes later felt no pain at all.

They were delayed, and Kell wanted to scream. Instead he leaned over Jennifer and made stupid faces at her.

“
What's the problem?” Karen asked the driver.

“
Plane is late,” the man replied. “Don't know why. We're waiting here until we have clearance to leave.”

Karen snorted. “We need clearance to even head over there? Is there some reason we can't just go and wait at the airport?”

The agent turned in his seat. “Something about Agent Jones thinking you're a flight risk, actually.”

She laughed in his face. “Wow. That's paranoid. There are four of you. You have guns, for Christ's sake. What are we going to do, go on the lam hauling our newborn daughter with us, dodging bullets?”

The agent bristled. “I have my orders, ma'am. We have confirmation the plane will be landing and beginning refuel in approximately half an hour. We'll be on our way when she touches down.”

It was closer to forty-five minutes before they left, and even then they had to redirect; an accident closed off the route they were going to take to the airport. The driver, unfamiliar with the city, relied on his GPS to direct them through their alternate route. After the thing told them to turn a few seconds late for the fourth time, he finally listened to Kell and Karen, who knew their way around the city quite well.

“Look, just take a left and we'll head down Auburn. I can get us to 71 from there,” Karen directed as Kell sat quietly, looking impassive but feeling amused at how his wife managed to overwhelm even government agents. None of them seemed willing to argue with her in the face of their own cluelessness.

“
We'll have to cross into Kentucky, of course. That's where the airport is, and 71 will take us there,” she repeated to their blank expressions. With an irritated grunt, the driver followed her instructions, and they were off.

It had been exactly sixty-four minutes since Maggie French fell.

In that time, the shambling corpse that had been Maggie had attacked three people. Those three worked their way toward larger gatherings, which were few and far between this early in the morning, but enough folk were out and about over the intervening time to create a fair amount of havoc.

Kell would have been interested to see the correlation between time of death and time of reanimation, if only in a horrified but morbidly fascinated sort of way. By the time the vehicle carrying him and his family came within three blocks of the outbreak, more than forty people were dead and better than half already risen. The police were on scene, but the callers, unable to deal with what they were witnessing, called it a riot.