Immortality (18 page)

Velcro straps chafed against her ribs. She unbuttoned her shirt to readjust the bulletproof vest. The body armor that she wore underneath her blues was just another tool of her job. The vest was one of the better models made from a mix of Spectra-Shield and Kevlar 129. The material was much lighter weight than pure Kevlar but still padded her torso, giving her a muscular look that wasn’t real. Department policy did not require vests for beat cops, so it was something she had to purchase herself if she wanted one. Kenny had bought it for her. The vest had cost him over a thousand dollars. He’d made her promise to wear it every minute she had that uniform on. She had no intention of breaking her word. The vest made her feel safer. Her partner had warned her about the superman complex that a vest could give her. She was certain that it hadn’t affected her judgment.

Sarah crinkled her nose. There it was – the aroma de jour. The bedroom was starting to smell of burnt toast, eggs, and bacon grease… and something else… maybe oven cleaner? Below them on the first floor was
The Acropolis,
a Greek – American diner. She turned down the radio and heard the two brothers who ran the grease pit yelling or arguing in their native tongue.
Another month,
she told herself; then, she and Kenny and Ralph would be out of here. With her paycheck added to Kenny’s, there would be enough to rent a small house including a yard for Ralph to play in.

Sarah went through the living room searching for her keys. She had already looked everywhere. This was her second sweep of this room. The apartment was decorated with clean but threadbare furniture. Sarah was proud of what she’d accomplished with so little. She had meticulously collected each piece by scouring flea markets and used-furniture stores. She started turning over cushions hoping the keys had slipped between.

Kenny snuck up on her and grabbed her from behind. She squealed. They tumbled onto the couch. He was wearing jeans and no shirt and was fresh from the shower. He carried a scent of baby powder.

“That’s assaulting an officer, Mister,” she said. “You want me to take you in?”

“Will you handcuff me?”

“Maybe for your birthday,” she said. “I’ve gotta go.”

Sarah untangled herself from him and got up. He pretended to pout. She kissed him on the forehead and barely escaped his arms as he made a fresh grab for her. After another ten minutes, she found her keys in the refrigerator on top of a six-pack of cola. On the way out, she gave Kenny a long kiss, then bent down to let Ralph lick her face.

“Glad you said goodbye in that order,” said Kenny. “Dog germs, yuck!”

“Ah, Ralph, you know he doesn’t mean that. Daddy loves you.”

“When are you getting off tonight?”

“Five o’clock shift, but I’ve got classes later.”

The huge Rottweiler rolled onto his back to get his belly scratched by Sarah. His tongue hung out to one side, forming a pink slab that curled at the end. Kenny looked disappointed that she’d be home late. There was an uncomfortable silence. They’d been through it all before. Sarah wished she could spend more time with him, but she needed to work hard if she was going to get her degree in two more years. The Bachelors in psychology was not only something that fascinated her, it was also a ticket into federal law enforcement; and her grades, which were all A’s, didn’t hurt.

~

The police firing range was inside the basement of an old National Guard fort, long since converted for police use. Sarah pushed a nine-millimeter bullet into the clip, then inserted the clip into the stock of her Beretta. She thumbed the release lever down. The gun-slide jumped forward with a reassuring sound of metal colliding with metal as a bullet was chambered. She put the gun into her holster, then drew into a one-armed stance. A shiver brought memories of the night chills. In rapid fire, she emptied the clip into the silhouette of a man. All fifteen rounds were gone in under eight seconds. A ragged hole the size of a coffee coaster was missing from the man’s chest. The smell of cordite and gun oil swirled around her. The shiver was forgotten. She knew the feel of her gun intimately. She had fired the Beretta thousands of times. She could feel the subtle changes in trigger pressure as she squeezed toward the point where the hammer-catch would release, capping off a round.

Sarah gazed at the target with its perfect hole. She smiled to herself. That ought to throw off the scoring curve. She knew she was the best marksperson on the force. She’d been handling guns since the age of ten and had gone out hunting with her dad and brother every chance she got.

Sarah removed her hearing protectors and safety glasses. She’d been on the range for almost an hour. It was time to get back to patrol duty. Trent was probably already waiting in their Black and White. As she headed toward the exit, she spied Sergeant McCormick making an intercept line toward her. She felt anxiety in the hollow of her chest, much like a deer must have felt sensing the wolf. She knew what was happening. Trent had warned her. Some of the cops had a tradition of trying to initiate the younger females in the backseat of a patrol car. McCormick was the defending champ, not that any of them had ever scored except in their own sick little minds. His claim to fame was that he’d supposedly nailed two rookies, both now conveniently long gone from the force. The history was all big talk and lies, but the harassment was not. A patrolwoman named Kacy Jefferson, who was already gone from the force, had complained to her brother-in-law who was a District Attorney. The game had retreated underground for a time, with memos flaming and one officer on administrative leave.

McCormick reached the steel door the same time Sarah did. Somehow he’d managed to corner her. The maneuver must have been something genetically programmed into cavemen.

“Mayfair, you’re really good with that pistol,” he said. “I’ve been keeping a special eye on you.”

“You’re pretty good yourself, McCormick.”

“Do you think you can show me some of your tricks?”

“Sure anytime... You know I shoot all-pro at the situation contests. Took third place last year in the state finals.”

Somehow his hand ended up on one of her hips. His finger hooked into her belt loop. He tugged at her a little and smiled. With his crew-cut hair, he looked like a Nazi rapist.

“No kidding,” he said. “State finals huh? Hey, have you ever fooled around with a machine gun? I’m asking ’cause a few of the guys and me have a range set up on my uncle’s farm near Newton. I’ve got a nine-millimeter UZI, full auto. We’ve killed a bunch of old cars and refrigerators. It’s righteous stuff. You and me could take a drive up there after work and mess around.”

“Take your hand off my hip,” said Sarah.

McCormick’s eyes narrowed in what must have been Neanderthal cunning. He looked amazingly stupid and dangerous. He tugged on the belt loop again. Sarah was breathing rapidly. She tried to pull back from him. His hand stayed in place.

“Shooting that UZI ’ll be real hot,” he said.

“Do you have a problem with English?” said Sarah. “TAKE YOUR HAND OFF MY HIP!”

“Ah, baby, don’t be like that.”

A deep voice broke in, “Leave her alone, McCormick.”

Sarah looked up and saw her partner Trent. The man was at least fifty pounds heavier than McCormick and it was all thick muscle. By any standard Trent was a large man. His skin was a rich chocolate brown and his eyes were hazel. He smiled warmly at her. Over by the firing line, a few of the guys started to snicker. McCormick’s hand vanished from her hip.

“Hey, just getting to know the rookie,” said McCormick.

“Uh huh...” said Trent.

“McCormick you’re such a loser,” called one of the guys from the firing line.

Artie wandered through the museum drinking in the paintings and sculptures. The afternoon crowds had been thin, even for a rainy workday. He stood alone in the exhibits gazing at the dreams of Monet and Renoir. He remembered a time years ago when he and Suzy had first wandered these halls. They had stopped in a vaulted passage between two exhibits. Her hands had been hooked around his elbow, her perfume lingering in the air. She had leaned close and whispered ‘I love you Artie’. It had been the first time she’d said those words. The feelings of that moment were forever etched in his mind. He had come back to this place many times since then, mostly when he needed to think.

The rain outside was worsening. Artie could feel the weather. There was a cold dampness growing in the air. He stood before his favorite Monet and was unmoved. Though his eyes stared, his mind was far away. The chemical accident in Alaska was troubling him. Things were not making sense and it was personal. He had an uncle who worked in Anchorage for the Department of Fish and Game. Uncle Peter was there to monitor the long-term effects of the Exxon spill and clean up.

Artie had been watching the eight o’clock news the night of the accident. He’d picked up the phone while the first reporter was still talking. On the screen was an aerial view of soldiers in chemical suits sorting through a wreckage of bodies and fractured packing crates. His uncle had answered on the tenth ring. Everything had been okay then. The accident had been some ten miles away and downwind. His uncle had told him that a quarantine encircled the area and martial law had been declared.

CNN had reported nothing about quarantines and martial law, which was odd; and still days later, all that was on the news were commentators rehashing what everyone already knew. The story of the year – and no one was covering it with any depth.

Artie had tried to call his uncle the next day and been unable to get through. Since then, he had tried dozens of times. The recorded messages had varied: all circuits were busy, lines temporarily out of service. He had contacted the telephone company, misleading them into thinking he was the district attorney and needed to get through as part of a criminal investigation. No matter who he talked to, their story had been the same. The lines were overloaded with traffic. There was nothing anyone could do. He had called the airlines; all flights were booked for the next two months. A strange collection of evidence was building. He had no idea what it all meant, but he had a feeling something was deeply wrong.

He had no way to go there, no way to call there. Someone had put a glass bubble over Anchorage. There had to be other people experiencing the same problems. Why wasn’t that on the news? Suzy had told him not to worry. He’d kept silent for days. He knew people would think he was a paranoid, someone who saw conspiracies under every rock; but more and more, he believed that was exactly what was going on. He’d thought about flying to British Columbia, and from there driving to Anchorage, just so that he could know the truth. He wondered if there were roadblocks at the city limits; or worse, maybe he could enter but never leave.

Escape

The sun cast long shadows through Mark’s office. Soon it would be night and the sky would be glowing with a full autumn moon. Something very big, sounding like a subway moving slowly through a station, had just rolled past his closed door. He looked up from his computer. So much activity was going on inside the facility. The pace of work was becoming frenetic. Since the discovery of smaller, previously undetected kill zones all over South America, the facility had been the scene of one lab reorganization after another: people were being reshuffled, equipment moved. Everyone involved now believed this killer had been active for months, maybe even years. The pattern of kill zones was one of escalation, and no one believed they had seen the worst. The unspoken fear was that countless small kill zones had been occurring undetected for some time in North America which meant the infection could be here all around them. The wall of arrogance between the industrialized northern hemisphere and the less developed southern had been shattered. Gone was the safety of considering this an exotic non-domestic disease.

Mark had been at the BVMC lab for three days. During the last twenty-four hours, he’d been obsessed by a peculiar discovery of COBIC’s ability to cloak itself from the immune system of higher animals. There was no Darwinian advantage for the microbe to be able to cloak itself from a danger that didn’t exist in its normal environment. Why did COBIC have this characteristic? A theory suddenly dawned on him and the idea was as startling as it was obvious. The invisibility wasn’t from active camouflage or some other special ability. There were no chemical factories cranking out cloaking molecules that matched the bacterium’s temporary host. COBIC was not a chameleon. The bacterium was simply invisible. It was a ghost. The genetic structure of the bacterium was so primitive that much of its DNA sequences could be found embedded in all living things. This creature was like the seed from which all higher life had grown. For an animal’s immune system to attack the microbe, it would also have to be in some ways targeting its own body.

Mark set his glasses down on the keyboard. It was ironic. Evidence that the bacteria’s DNA sequences were embedded in higher organisms was part of what had won him his Nobel Prize. COBIC was one of the earliest life forms on earth. How could he have not considered the implication for all these years? COBIC was a natural born invader, a natural born carrier. The bacterium’s DNA was coded for stealth. Something terrible was coming to the world. He could feel it. Was COBIC-3.7 bringing extinction to its children a billion generations removed?

By accident, they now had a sustainable colony of the COBIC-3.7 bacteria taken from victims. One of the techs had placed an entire sample pipette in a bacterial incubator to thaw for processing later that day and had forgotten about it. The incubator was a lightless box that was temperature and humidity controlled. A day later, when the pipette was found and examined, they’d discovered almost ninety-five percent of the COBIC had reanimated. The animals placed under a microscope died within an hour, but those left in darkness remained alive. After a little more experimenting, they confirmed that the bacteria died when exposed to light but lived indefinitely in darkness. Light aversion was not a normal quality of COBIC; in fact, the bacteria normally required light to thrive. Mark was unable to explain it; and worse, he was not finding the usual correlations in his growing list of unexplainable things. Every time he thought about the list he could feel something nasty coiling up in his stomach.