Authors: Wil Mara
“So, you didn’t get arrested?” she asked. Her speech was slightly slurred.
“No, but I honestly thought I might.” He set the tray on the wheeled table next to the bed and removed the sheet. One syringe, one vial. They looked ominous somehow, like instruments of torture.
“Is that it?” Porter asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s go. Load me up.”
Beck didn’t move. He simply stood there, staring down at the tray.
“Michael? What’s wrong?”
His eyes went to Gillette, then back. “Cara, Ben did some digging while I was gone. He got on the computer and found some data about the treatment.” He paused again.
“And?”
Clearing his throat, Gillette stepped forward and said, “At the stage you’re in, I’m afraid the antibody is having almost no effect.”
Her smile faded instantly. “Oh.”
“You are, of course, more than welcome to try it,” Gillette added quickly, then felt like an idiot.
What a strange thing to say—“more than welcome,” like I’m inviting her to come use my swimming pool while I’m on vacation
. “But…”
Beck sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. She barely seemed to notice the gesture.
“What if we increase the dosage?” she asked. “Give me the full vial?”
Beck and Gillette looked at each other.
“You talked about that, too?”
“We don’t know what might happen,” Gillette said. “The dosage they’ve been giving people has been relatively low. Because this is a new treatment, there’s a lot we don’t know about it. For people in later stages, the antibody doesn’t seem to do much at all.”
“Increasing the dose could pose certain dangers,” Beck added.
“But what choice is there?” she asked.
Beck looked to Gillette again; then his eyes found the floor and stayed there.
Porter slid her hand out of Beck’s and went to work. She loaded the syringe and injected half of it into a generous vein running along the inside of her left elbow. She flexed her fingers several times to encourage blood flow.
Then she reached for the syringe again. Beck tried once to stop her, but she gingerly removed his hand and said, “Michael, it’s my choice.” It was her tone that surprised them the most, possessing a sagelike maturity neither of them realized she had.
With her thumb on the plunger, she paused to look up at Beck. Neither of them spoke, yet there was some kind of communication going on. Gillette could sense it. Then she pressed down on the plunger until the barrel was empty.
* * *
A moment passed. Then another. Porter eased the needle out of her arm and set it on the tray.
“Now let’s see what happens,” she said, mostly to herself. She was trying hard to be casual about the situation.
“So, how’d you get the stuff?” she asked Beck. “Just walk in and someone handed it to you?”
“Huh? Oh, no. Not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Still watching her carefully, he got to his feet and said, “You would’ve been proud of me. I did a little lying, indulged in some con-artistry.”
“Wow, that does make me proud. I’m also impressed that you pulled it off without getting caught.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was this guy there.…” Beck turned to Gillette. “Do you know Brian Childress?”
Gillette thought for a moment. “The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“I didn’t know him, either. Sheila did, of course. Anyway, he—”
The beeping cut him off. They turned to see a red light flashing on one of the monitors. Porter was still lying in the same position, but something wasn’t right.
“Her pressure’s dropping,” Gillette said, hurrying to her side. “Oh hell…”
Her eyes were wide open but staring blankly at the ceiling. There was an adjustable light over the headboard. Beck flicked it on and shone it directly into her face.
“Pupils are dilated.”
“She’s in shock!” Gillette said.
“Dammit!”
Beck picked up the phone, hit one of the memory keys, and called for a crash team. This would take some time, though, and he knew it—they had to put on their own PPE suits, and that couldn’t be rushed. Emergency or not, healthy employees were not expected to put their own lives at risk.
Porter began choking, although her hands did not go to her throat.
“Oh God, anaphylaxis,” Beck said. “Ben, do you have any—?”
“Getting it now!”
Gillette threw the cabinets open and found an EpiPen—an autoinjector preloaded with adrenaline. He tore apart the protective envelope and administered the shot in the same location Porter had used. The adrenaline was supposed to slow the constriction of the airways as well as reelevate blood pressure.
But it didn’t seem to work—Porter’s blood pressure continued to drop, and her choking became more convulsive.
“Get a respirator!” Beck said. “Fast! Let’s go!”
Gillette found one on the top shelf. Beck took it from him and put it over Porter’s nose and mouth, then began frantically squeezing the rubber bladder.
Her blood pressure kept dropping.
“Oh please … no, please don’t.” Beck’s eyes filled with tears and began streaming down his face, dampening the PPE mask. “Cara, come on! Come
on
!”
He continued pumping until the monitor issued a steady electronic note. Beck looked up to see the double zeros on the screen.
“
NO
!”
He pumped faster now, begging and pleading with the gods for mercy, but to no avail. After a time, Gillette stepped in and took the respirator out of his hands.
Beck stared into Porter’s eyes, still wide open, and searched for a sign—any sign. When it became obvious there would be none, he set his head down on hers and wept mightily.
She was pronounced dead by the leader of the crash team five minutes later.
TWENTY-FOUR
“… wake up, wake up!”
Shalizeh lay in his private tent on his side, lost in a thick and dreamless sleep, as the desert winds howled outside. The one who came in to rouse him was named Khalil. He was the youngest member of Lashkar and had been around for only a few months. He was cocky as hell, which irritated some of the older members. But he was immunized because Shalizeh liked him. Confidence and arrogance would serve the boy well, Shalizeh thought—and, if properly manipulated, could be a useful asset at the right time.
“My leader, please!”
Shalizeh’s good eye popped open first, followed by the dead one at a gruesomely slower pace. The good one shifted wildly about while he regained his bearing on reality.
He turned abruptly, as if shocked. “What? What do you wake me for?”
“Vehicles are approaching from the south! Look, please!”
The boy held out a pair of night goggles. Shalizeh threw off his blankets and took them. Peering through the slit in the tent, he saw it—a military convoy led by four Hummers and two covered troop trucks, then a few more too blurry to identify.
“Wake the others, tell them to prepare for battle.”
“Yes, right away. What will you do?”
Khalil instantly regretted the question—it was not his place to ask such a thing, and he knew that before he had a chance to stop the words from spilling out. He prayed Shalizeh would understand he was asking only out of concern for the man he admired so deeply.
Shalizeh sensed this and smiled. “I am going to retrieve the rest of the weapons and explosives. If we are to go down, we will take as many of them with us as possible.”
There was a flicker of uncertainty in Khalil’s eyes, as if “going down” wasn’t exactly what he’d signed up for. Then he smiled back, and the arrogant sparkle came into his youthful eyes. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Good. I will return in a moment.”
Shalizeh hurried outside, crossed the compound, and kept on until he reached the river. He did not hesitate before wading in, ignoring the fact that he and his men pissed and crapped in it every day. Once on the other side, he continued through the underbrush until he reached the foothills. The entrance to the cavernous network was slightly larger than an ordinary doorway and obscured by a pair of acacia trees. He turned and took one last look—in the neon glow of the tilted moon he could see his men hastily loading their rifles and crouching behind the gentle ridge that drew a perimeter around the southern edge of the settlement. The convoy was close now, and he wondered how in hell they finally figured out where he was.
He ducked in, the air thick with an earthy pungency, and began down the main passage. There was a flashlight on a ledge, and he grabbed it. The armory was about thirty yards along, in a chamber on the right. He’d had his men dig it out until it was large enough to hold everything they brought, plus extra space for assets that he planned to acquire but never did.
He went past it without so much as a glance.
A few minutes later he came to a sharp right-hand turn, then a second that went left. Fifty feet farther on was a final curve.
Almost there …
He pivoted sharply and broke into a run. He began laughing out loud, unable to help himself.
Then he stopped.
The second entrance—which he thought of more as a private exit he hoped he would never need—had been filled in. Large stones, hundreds of them, now blocked the way. He appraised it with the light beam several times, up and down, up and down. His heart begin pounding.
How did this happen?…
No time to think about it now. He turned and began running as fast as his robes would permit. If he could get back to the first entrance, he might be able to crawl through the underbrush until he reached the other side of the mountain. If need be, he could grab a few grenades and a rifle on the way.
As he came up to the armory, he heard the discordant rattle of gunfire, then caught the acrid scent of carbonite. Spotlights swirled in and out of view from the opening. He froze, afraid to move any closer.
Then came the low, grinding roar of a large motor. It seemed to be very close.
Impossible,
he thought.
How could any of those vehicles cross the river?
This was denial, and he knew it—the river was no more than two feet deep in this area, and the Hummers, at the very least, could roll through it with no problem.
A much louder noise filled the tunnel, and he lifted his flashlight to see more stones being pushed into the entryway with what appeared to be a bulldozer.
Shalizeh ran forward, screaming,
“
NO! NO
!”
The stones kept piling up, the excess spilling inside like pudding, until only a small hole at the top remained. Then the bulldozer roar suddenly dropped to a low hum.
Shalizeh waited, listening. For a few moments there was nothing. Then, the crunching of footsteps just outside.
“A gift from America,” someone said in a refined Farsi dialect. Then the sound of shattering glass inside.
Shalizeh shone the beam in that direction. There were glittering shards everywhere—and three small orange objects. He came closer, and this time both eyes widened. They were rubber stoppers, the kind used on medical vials.
My God …
The notes of the bulldozer’s engine went up an octave again, and Shalizeh, as if trying to outdo it, screamed at the top of his lungs. It took only a moment to finish the job.
Outside, Mushir Garoussi stood nearby, watching passively. When the last stones were in place and the entrance fully sealed, he wiped his hands together and said, “Okay, good.” He then checked his watch. “I give it less than two minutes.”
A young corporal standing behind him said, “I’m sorry, sir, but you give
what
two min—?”
In spite of the solid rock that separated Garoussi and his men from their prisoner, the single gunshot Shalizeh used to take his own life pierced the night air with chilling clarity.
The corporal jumped; Garoussi just smiled. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the bulldozer operator. “Okay, Rashid, dig him out now. We’ll need the body for identification.”
Rashid nodded and moved the rig forward again. As he did, the corporal found he had another question—“Are you not concerned about being infected?”
“By distilled water?” Garoussi replied. “No, not really.”
Then he laughed out loud.
TWENTY-FIVE
Beck stood toward the back of the small crowd, hearing the priest yet not hearing him. A faint voice in a faraway place, as if in another room.
“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.”
He was reading from Ecclesiastes; Beck knew the passage well. He’d heard it growing up in Sunday school, heard it at his mother’s funeral, and heard it during a dozen other services around the world. All part of his ongoing flirtation with death, in a profession that often required him to walk the nether-line between mortality and the endless deep that lay beyond.
“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to harvest.”
He and Cara had never talked about religion, he realized while sitting on the airplane this morning. Of the myriad topics they covered, religion was one they simply never got around to. It seemed to be her job to launch the conversations about life and philosophy and all that. They had spent a fair share of Sundays together, and she showed no inclination toward worship. She didn’t wear any religious jewelry, didn’t carry a copy of the Holy Bible or the Torah or the Koran in her suitcase, like some people he knew. Once, while investigating an outbreak at a wedding in Arizona, she seemed to regard the church as any other structure. She didn’t dip her fingers in the holy water font when she entered, didn’t bow before the altar at the end of the center aisle. Just moved in and out as needed; it may as well have been a garden shed. Had religion let her down, too? he wondered.
Why not, everything else had.…
It had befallen him to call her relatives. This was never formally discussed between him, Ben, and Sheila; it was simply assumed he would be the one to do it. Tracking them down hadn’t been easy. He was unsurprised to learn they were scattered across the country and rarely kept in touch with one another. Indifferent, insensitive people in a disjointed mass of dysfunctionality. Most of them barely remembered her, gave their condolences over the phone but wouldn’t commit to anything more. One cousin in California cut the call short because he had a boat race to prepare for. Beck immediately put him on his Biggest Jerks I’ve Ever Met list. Cara’s stepfather was more dumbfounded than anything else. Her mother had passed away several years before, and the new husband had never been interested in the daughter. He wanted a relationship based on more traditional features, like beer and sex. He didn’t know how to handle the situation—or, rather, how to get out of it with the least amount of hassle—so Beck helped by simply relaying the details of the funeral then hanging up.