All Fall Down (17 page)

‘Thank you. OK …’ He paused, aware that the story he was about to tell would sound far-fetched, even though it was true. He had to be careful how he told it. ‘A couple of years ago my twin brother, Stephen, was killed by a virus – a man-made virus.’

‘Man-made? Do things like that really exist?’

Paul nodded. ‘I used to be sceptical about that kind of thing too. But it does happen. And Mangold was involved. He was funding the guy who made this virus. Because of that, he was partly responsible for my brother’s death, so I need to find him.’

‘This is crazy,’ Rosie said.

‘I knew you’d think it sounded crazy.’

‘No, I meant, a few hours ago, this was just a normal, boring day. Then this Englishman walks into my diner and cracks open the past, then starts telling tales about searching for the man who helped kill his brother with a deadly virus.’

‘Yeah. It’s insane. But believe me, I’ve seen crazier things.’

‘I bet you have.’

The air between them was thick with tension. Rosie was looking straight into his eyes, trying, it seemed, to read him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, standing up again, once more hooking her bag strap over her shoulder.

‘Are you leaving?’

‘Don’t look so worried. I’m only going to the bathroom.’

He sat and waited for a few minutes, convinced she had left the bar and that, unless he went back to the diner and begged her to reconsider, he would never see her again.

But then her reflection appeared in the mirror on the wall, holding two more bottles of beer.

‘Mangold,’ she said, sitting down and pushing one of the bottles across to him, ‘ruined my father’s life. You know, I met him a couple of times, when I was a kid. They used to hold an open day for all the staff and their families every summer.’ She sipped her beer. ‘I gotta admit, I’d sure like to find Charles Mangold too. There are a few things I’d be keen to say to him.’

Paul nodded. There was a fire in her eyes now. It made her even more beautiful, especially when she leaned towards him across the table and he could see the swell of her breasts, her skin aglow with perspiration, a pink flush around her collarbone. He couldn’t help it: he was aroused. He made himself think about Kate, feeling horribly guilty, but telling himself at the same time that it was OK to find another woman attractive, so long as you didn’t do anything about it.

She looked right into his eyes, holding his gaze for a few seconds longer than necessary. ‘I think I know just the person who could help.’

Kate and Annie followed Junko towards the lab, walking briskly to keep up with her. Annie was surreptitiously huffing into her cupped hand, and Kate slipped her a stick of gum.

‘Is it Buckley?’ Kate asked as they entered the changing room and, for the second time that day, began slipping into their safety suits.

Junko nodded. Within minutes, they were suited up and in the lab. Kolosine and the rest of the team were gathered around the windows of the small room in which Kate had sat with Officer Buckley earlier that morning.

Kate edged her way to the front, and gasped with shock. Buckley, who had been lying as still as a corpse earlier, was having a fit. He thrashed about on his cot, limbs shaking violently. His eyes bulged and his tongue protruded from his mouth.

‘He’s having a seizure,’ Kolosine commented, as if he were describing a dance move.

‘But Watoto doesn’t cause seizures!’

‘Could it be a fever seizure?’ Annie asked.

Kolosine looked at her scornfully. ‘No. If this was a small child we might suspect that, but not in an adult. This is something new. This, it seems, is how victims of Watoto-X2 die – the seizure usually finishes them off before the haemorrhaging starts. Less messy, at least. It’s fascinating. I’ve never known a virus cause this kind of violent seizure in an adult before.’

‘Why isn’t somebody in there helping him?’ demanded Kate. ‘Didn’t they send a nurse with him?’

‘He’s beyond help. There was a nurse, but she got sick and had to go back,’ Kolosine said flatly.

Kate moved towards the door. ‘We can at least comfort him. He needs to be turned on to his side, so he doesn’t swallow his tongue. Come on, let me in.’

Kolosine sighed. ‘A proper Florence Nightingale, aren’t you?’

‘Fuck you, Kolosine.’

Though she couldn’t hear anything over the speaker in her helmet, Kate sensed the collective gasp from the other scientists. Kolosine glared at her from behind his visor. She couldn’t remember ever receiving a look of such naked hatred before.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Be a heroine.’

Once inside the room, Kate hesitated. Buckley was writhing and crying out, shaking like someone was sending two thousand volts through his body.

‘Sod this,’ Kate muttered, and she ripped aside the plastic sheet that sealed the cop inside the isolator, bending to manoeuvre him on to his side.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ she whispered as his terrified eyes met hers. She held on to him, shocked by the violence of the tremors, wishing she could do something, anything, to stop his suffering.

She clutched him for a long time, her eyes squeezed shut. Eventually, he went still. She opened her eyes and looked into his face. She wouldn’t be able to feel his pulse with her thick gloves on, so she put her visor close to his face, as if they were kissing. There was no mist on the visor. No breath.

She looked up as she became aware that Kolosine was tapping furiously on the glass. He spoke to her – shouted at her – through the radiocom, filling her helmet with fury.

‘You’re contaminated, so we are leaving the lab. Wait for us to exit then come through. Make sure you put your suit into the disposal bin and scrub your whole body.’

God, she wished she could mute him. She watched as Kolosine led the others out of the lab, Junko and Annie both looking back at her, frowning behind their visors. A great wave of exhaustion crashed over her.

She forced herself to look down at Officer Buckley before exiting the lab.
You need to freeze this image in your mind,
she told herself.
Because this is it. This is the reality of what’s out there.

This is what you have to beat
.

Dawn broke, and Kate had barely slept. This was only her second full day at the lab and already the pressure to find the vaccine was becoming unbearable. For a while she lay fretting under her incongruously twee patchwork quilt, reliving Buckley’s dreadful last moments, feeling physically sick with the responsibility resting on her shoulders, and the shoulders of the rest of the team. Bright morning sun streamed through the thin calico curtains, and Kate put the pillow over her head to block it out.

When she had emerged from the lab after decontaminating herself, Kolosine had sent her to her room, like a naughty child. She had spent the time poring over her research paper, hoping it might reveal to her some elusive detail that could help solve this puzzle.

Finally giving up on sleep, she got up and set off for the breakfast room, taking her laptop with her. She was re-reading her research paper for the tenth time when the epidemiologist walked in, a huge mug of coffee in one hand and a large laptop in the other. He looked utterly haunted.

‘Hi …’ she said. ‘How are you getting on?’

William shook his head and took a big swig of the coffee. ‘Got a minute? I’ll show you.’

He pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, pointing at his computer screen. His hair was sticking up in all directions, as though he’d just got out of his bed – although Kate suspected he hadn’t been near it all night.

‘This is my first graph, the epidemic curve so far,’ he said, indicating a steeply inclined green line. ‘Number of cases – y-axis; date and time of onset – x-axis. Look at that rate of infectivity – have you ever seen anything this bad?’

Her jaw dropped at the evidence.

‘I had active surveillance here, here, and all over this region, up till last night,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘The internet went down at about eleven p.m., and hasn’t come up again since. No ethernet, certainly no wi-fi. Nothing. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this data hasn’t got any more positive overnight … Anyway, see you later. I need to get on. Let’s hope that your antibodies live up to their hype, eh?’

Kate couldn’t even raise a smile as William left the room. She had never felt such a panicky, desperate anticipation.

Junko came in and sat down opposite her, looking tired, but serene and still immaculate.

‘How are you?’ Junko asked.

‘Worried.’

‘You look it. Me too. We have so little time. I have been in the lab all night, examining the blood samples from Officer Buckley.’ She shook her head to indicate the apparent futility of her night at the microscope.

‘I’m so worried about my son,’ Kate said. ‘He’s in Dallas – it’s not going to be long before the virus spreads from coast to coast … I can’t believe I was gullible enough to allow him into the country. I believed them when they told me it was contained on the reservation.’ Junko was quiet, and Kate imagined she was thinking about her family in Japan. She envied Junko the knowledge they were so far away – but how long would even they be safe?

‘The cause of death … the seizure – you haven’t seen that before with Watoto?’ Junko asked eventually.

‘No. Normally, the victim dies after they start to bleed. They don’t bleed to death, but their organs fail. So this deviation in the virus is very strange.’ Kate spoke quietly, as if to herself. ‘Very strange. We need to take a closer look, see how this virus compares to the known Watoto strain.’

Junko sipped her coffee. ‘I’m already running comparisons – that’s one of the things I did last night. We’ve already sequenced the DNA, and Watoto and Watoto-X2 appear to be exactly the same. There is nothing I can see that would indicate why this new strain is more fatal. And why it kills through a seizure rather than bleeding.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t matter,’ Kate said. ‘The vaccine – if we manage to develop one – will work on both.’

‘Yes. In theory. Unless there is something else …’

She trailed off, deep in thought. Kate waited for her to emerge from her trance, but before she did, Kolosine burst into the room and headed straight over to them.

‘Maddox, upstairs, now.’

Kate pushed herself to her feet, explaining to Junko, ‘He needs another sample of my blood to create a phage display. I’ll catch you later, Junko, I’m going to stay in the lab after I’ve had the test.’

Twenty minutes later, blood taken, Kate peered into the electron microscope, examining the familiar form of the Watoto virus. It was like looking at her own face in a mirror, she knew it so well. Except the virus didn’t change, didn’t get older, didn’t frown or get tired. Today, it felt as if her nemesis was stronger than her. It was winning.

Junko was right. The new strain appeared identical to the common strain that Kate had caught in Africa, the one that had killed her parents. So why was it even more deadly and why did it act so fast? If Kate had caught this strain of Watoto all those years ago, she wouldn’t be sitting here now.

Staring at the virus’s worm-like shape, she had a niggling feeling that the answer was right in front of her if she could only see it. She had told Junko that perhaps the new qualities of the virus didn’t matter, that essentially they still had to create a vaccine for the same organism. All the same, if they could crack the puzzle of why the two strains appeared to be identical yet killed their victims in different ways, they would be able to solve the whole thing. Then again, if Kolosine’s tests were successful maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about it. There was no reason why her antibodies wouldn’t work against this new strain as well as the old.

He was at the other side of the lab, pacing back and forth beside the machine that, he hoped, would give him the answer. Kate’s blood sample, which had been left on a chip for an hour so that the antisera could incubate, was now being subjected to a barrage of tests inside the machine. If all went well, the peptide – the correct lock they needed to create a vaccine, as she had explained to McCarthy – would light up and they would be able to take the relevant antibody and use it to create more
antibodies – enough to vaccinate everybody.

The air in the lab crackled with tension. Kolosine wouldn’t allow anyone else near him or his precious machine. Inside his suit, she could see beads of sweat rolling off his forehead. She exchanged a worried look with Chip, who was seated at one of the computers.

‘How are you getting on over there?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’ve never tested so many samples in such a short space of time. I’m pretty much seeing double – but nothing useful is showing up. Nothing. Every time I manage to think of a new hypothesis, it comes to nothing. I feel like banging my head against the wall.’

‘Know the feeling,’ said Kate glumly.

Paul rapped twice on Rosie’s front door and waited, looking around at the neighbourhood, his eyes shielded from the sun by a pair of sunglasses he’d picked up at a drugstore on the way over. It was a neat, pretty block mostly comprised of white clapboard houses with apple trees in their front yards and swings on their porches. It was one in the afternoon, the precise time she’d told him to come over, as she needed to get to her shift at the diner, but his knocking went unanswered.

Paul checked his watch. He became aware that he was being scrutinised by a snowy-haired man in the front yard of the house next door, which was considerably larger than Rosie’s, though identical in every other way. The man was tinkering with a sprinkler system that sat at the centre of his immaculate lawn.

‘Afternoon,’ Paul called, raising his hand and wondering at the same time if Rosie had changed her mind and was hiding inside, waiting for him to go away.

The man nodded coolly and turned back to his sprinkler.

Paul was about to knock again when the door opened and Rosie beckoned him inside. Her hair was damp and a towel was draped haphazardly over the back of a nearby chair.

‘I’m sorry. I just got out the shower.’