Final Epidemic (27 page)

“But what?”

“Well, Mr. President,” Krewell said, “as I said, the symptoms and antibody signatures of both are identical. We won’t know which virus is activating the disease, the VIX or the killer flu.”

The President clearly did not understand the implications. After a moment, his national security advisor spoke up.

“What Dr. Krewell means, sir, is that we won’t know with certainty if the plan is working,” Carson said. “Not until it’s too late to do anything else. Except die.”

Outside Helena, Montana
July 23

His leg, where one of the shotgun pellets had torn out a chunk of flesh, stung under the dressing he had improvised. He had easily stopped what little bleeding there had been. But now, after two hours spent parked casually in the vast parking area of a modern-looking rest stop, the wound had stiffened somewhat.

It hurts,
he thought,
but worse—it is embarrassing. Forced to run like a rabbit, by a woman whose brains were all but pouring out of her ears! Ah, Ilya—it is well your old comrades are not here to see this, and to laugh at your ineptitude.

He had been caught up in the dance of interrogation, too preoccupied in planning the rhythms and the choreography of pain to pay attention to the noises she must have made as she approached the tableau. Only the sound of the shotgun’s pump mechanism—
hear
that
once, and survive it, and you never forget again,
he told himself wryly—only that sound had penetrated the exclusive relationship he had begun to establish with the man. He counted himself lucky to have escaped through the low underbrush with only this scratch as a souvenir.

The car was back on the interstate now, cruising at a speed only slightly above the posted speed limit. It was an untroubled drive on a fine road—particularly, he thought, one built through these most impressive mountains. Ilya considered himself a fair person, and ungrudgingly admired the quality of the highways he had found in this country. With the possible exception of the Autobahn, which he had driven a few months earlier while on another assignment, he had never seen finer roads.

Ilya regretted the lack of time with the man. He had resisted strongly, though the Russian had anticipated this from a fellow professional. But the breaking point certainly would have come; both of them knew it, he was certain. It was this shared knowledge, this . . .
intimacy
that had accounted for his inattention to his surroundings.

Unfortunate.
He nodded silently.
On so many levels.

Still, he now knew—almost for certain—that the CIA was working hand-in-glove with the federal police. This, he knew, was unusual for Americans. With only a few exceptions, they typically performed as wolverines locked in the same cage. Cooperation was rare, mutual animosity usually fierce.

So this Trippett and his play-soldier militia must have great significance to them too,
he thought.
Even more interesting, if they are looking for this man, it is because they themselves do not have him. He is still a viable threat, and my assignment is still unresolved.

No matter. He would look, and he would find Trippett. And then he would ask him the questions his employer wished answered. Ilya had no doubt the man would gratefully provide the information that was required, at some point in their conversation.

In his experience, almost everybody did.

State Hwy. 241
Mielcarz, North Carolina
July 23

For Deborah Stepanovich, her eyes burning and her hands shaking in near exhaustion, the four hundred-plus miles she had traveled in the past seven hours had been a trip through hell.

It had not lacked for demons—many of them, she understood, of her own imagining, though that made them no less frightening. Neither had it lacked for sulfurous flames, a particularly vivid, dark orange corona against the black summer sky over several of the cities she had skirted.

Since leaving Virginia, Deborah had scanned the radio frequencies. Most were static filled, or—to her mind, worse—dead air. The few radio stations that were still broadcasting told tales of martial law, of riots breaking out even in smaller cities. There was little about the flu that she considered “news”; but the broadcasters still on the air made up for that shortage with an excess of rumors and wild conjecture.

Deborah had consulted her road atlas frequently, avoiding the main roads and skirting any city of significant size. She had skimmed the eastern edge of the Alleghenies, and their
imposing bulk seen through her passenger window felt comforting and serene.

She had felt herself in personal danger only once, when halfway across North Carolina a two-vehicle covey had suddenly appeared in her rearview mirror. The first, a rust-dappled pickup truck, had spun from a side road seconds after she had sped past. Behind the pickup, a Firebird had fishtailed onto the pavement in turn, their wheels spitting gravel and dust.

Her stomach had dropped as the vehicles mushroomed in her mirrors, and for the first time Deborah wished she possessed a gun, even a knife. She pressed harder on the accelerator, but when she looked up again the pickup was so close she could read the letters on its grille:
F RD
, it read, the missing letter like a gap-toothed leer.

And then the truck swerved to the side and roared past with a broken-muffler flatulence that she felt even through her closed windows. Before her mind could register this fact, the other car shot past; from the Firebird, a girl who could not have been older than twelve waved excitedly from the passenger seat.

Deborah Stepanovich blew out the breath she had not realized she was holding, and willed herself to stop trembling. There was a moment of elation that flooded through her; then she felt the old anger rise—not surprisingly, at Beck.

Her temper flared.
Damn him!

For an instant, she thought about what could have happened, what she had expected was about to occur; vivid images, some of them pornographic in their violence, flashed across her mental cinema.

He should have been here to help. But he never was, not when I needed—

She stopped short.

“Is this what it felt like, Beck?” she said aloud. “Is this what is was like out there in your world? Every day, every minute?”

She had seldom thought about that side of it.

But Katie is in danger and I—

Again she stopped herself.

I’ve spent my adult life without his help.

“And I did pretty fucking well on my own,” Deborah said, again aloud, and was surprised at how much she savored the profanity. Despite herself, she smiled. “All on my . . .
fucking
own.”

She drove on, not knowing there was a smile on her face.

Deborah saw only a few other cars before dusk fell, and none of them took any notice of her.

Outside Gaffney, South Carolina, Deborah filled her fuel tank at a BP station. There, she found that an executive order prohibiting fuel sales simply translated into a per-gallon black market price that roughly approximated that of single-malt Scotch.

The terms were non-negotiable: cash in hand. Deborah did not flinch as she handed the attendant two hundred-dollar bills, which he folded into his pocket with a nervous grin. But she supervised, tight-lipped and intent, as he filled the tank. She spoke sharply at the end, and glared until he topped off the last few ounces. She even pretended not to hear what he muttered as he replaced the hose in the pump.

Then she drove off, her stomach fluttering and her heart pounding madly.

Deborah swung far to the east of Atlanta, figuring to avoid whatever structures might be in place there, whether by law enforcement or those who defy it.

But even the most reasoned plans go awry in the face of reality; none of the alternate routes she traced on her map took her toward her destination. She pressed on for a while on roads that ran, more or less, due south; twice she found herself lost, even with her map open on the passenger seat beside her.

Finally, just before the nighttime darkness grew complete,
Deborah looked up through her windshield and mentally sighed. Above her idling Mercedes, the sign at the crossroads intersection pointed west. A blue-and-white shield gleamed in her high beams.

Interstate 85 it is, I guess,
she told herself.
Here goes nothing.

Ninety minutes later, she was one of the handful of vehicles speeding along the concrete ribbon of the interstate. To the north, a faint flickering glow marked where the skyline of Atlanta should have been; apparently, electrical power had failed, at least in the central business district. Her detour had added a hundred miles, and brought her only a dozen or so miles south of the metropolis.

But Deborah was past Atlanta now, and closer to where she knew, in her heart, Katie waited for her arrival. She sped up, slightly, at the thought.

She glanced at the sign as it flashed past.

MONTGOMERY
,
ALABAMA
, it read, 192
MILES
.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida
July 23

If he pulled back the black-out drape slightly, Ray Porter could look out over the football field a scant fifty yards away. Occasionally he saw movement, dim figures moving ghostlike amid the canvas village. Most then disappeared into the darkness of the field, bearing what he assumed were stretchers.

Briefly, Porter wondered whether what they carried was alive or dead. He could not tell. The lights that the engineers had strung between the tents hung like a pale yellow necklace carelessly tossed, its weak glow waxing and waning with the fitful surges of the generators.

Here, in the elementary school gymnasium they had converted into a testing facility, illumination was anything but scarce.

No,
Porter thought, and behind the acrylic faceshield of the physician’s breathing apparatus his lips twisted wryly.

That’s not quite accurate.

It was light that was plentiful—an otherworldly blue-white light that filled every corner of the gymnasium with a cold glare. As for illumination—
well,
he thought,
we’ll see how much of that we have here soon. Very soon.
Porter let the
curtain drop, snapping the dark UV shield back over his helmet’s faceplate before he turned back to the room.

“Dr. Porter? We’re ready to start.”

The voice was pitched low, but even so the physician could hear the near-exhaustion in the tone. It was not, Porter knew, a good sign. The whole team had been working nonstop, first on outbreak evaluation and then—after CDC had been advised that Fort Detrick was sending a very special package for Porter’s people to live-test—on preparing a jury-rigged containment system. They were all tired.

And tired people make mistakes.

Which we damn well can’t afford,
Porter reminded himself wordlessly.
Certainly not with this damnable stuff.

Porter had been briefed on the virulence of VIX and on the potential it carried for both good and ill. Of course he knew “Major Barbara” Jones—biological research and epidemiology are part of the same elite circle; everybody called her that, albeit behind her back—and during the conference call they had patched between Washington, USAMRIID, CDC-Atlanta and here, the Army researcher had been unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

“The lab work is sound, Ray,” Jones had insisted. “VIX will
definitely
stimulate the immune system in any subject, even one already infected with your H1N1-Florida virus. You should see hyperproduction of antibodies within an hour of VIX exposure—and because the base virus was the parent organism for both VIX and your killer flu, the antibodies should be effective on both.”

Ray Porter had grunted, a noncommittal response he hoped sounded professional. But when he spoke, he had carefully avoided the word “cure.”

“As a theory, I concur,” Porter said. “As a treatment therapy, Barb—well, I have concerns. VIX may work or it may not. But if it escapes and makes it into the general population . . .” He paused, leaving the words unsaid. “A
live-subject test in the kind of field conditions we face here is very, very risky.”

“Riskier than what? Than flying an infected subject out of the contagion zone to test up here?”

“That’s simply not going to happen, Doctors.”

It was a new voice, one that Ray Porter had known belonged to the only person with the power to make this decision final. The voice spoke firmly, in the manner of one accustomed to commanding others.

“Dr. Porter, you will devise a suitable containment there, in Fort Walton Beach—one that will prevent VIX from posing an immediate threat outside. No, please don’t interrupt, Doctor. You will receive a sufficient supply of VIX to test its effectiveness on persons already infected with the killer flu; you will use as many subjects as needed to obtain results that will be representative of the U.S. population as a whole.”

The voice had softened, and for a moment Ray Porter felt a twinge of profound sympathy for its owner.

“People will die as a direct result of your tests, Dr. Porter. For that, I accept complete responsibility.” Then the tone hardened again. “You have your orders. Make the arrangements, and proceed.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Porter had said, but the connection had already been broken.

Now, only a few hours afterward, Ray Porter turned from the shrouded window to survey the school gymnasium his team had labored to turn into a microcosm of Level 4 containment. The ultraviolet lights had been commandeered from tanning salons they had found in the Yellow Pages, rewired and configured in a ring around the gym’s center court.

The lights surrounded a bubble of clear vinyl that in its original incarnation had been designed as a low-cost greenhouse; it had come from a garden supply store a few blocks south, as had the hand-pump sprayers now being used on its exterior surfaces. Empty gallon jugs of household bleach
littered the far reaches of the parqueted floor. Other elements—ductwork, blowers, and more—had also been incorporated, Rube Goldberg–like.