Plague (25 page)

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, you didn’t. You just made a judgment without any evidence. Hardly seems fitting a scientist, doesn’t it?”

Sam noticed that Duncan was full
-
on blushing. She considered Benjamin Cornell. He appeared
wiry
and was shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was clearly anxious about something and it made her worry. But there was also kindness in his eyes. She could see it sparkling through
the
passion he had for his cause.

“I have no quarrel with you two,” Benjamin said. “You both do good work. But you work for monsters. Still, we all have to work for somebody I guess
,
so I don’t blame you for it. But I think what you’re doing here is wrong. It’s just plain wrong, even evil. I don’t know how you, Dr. Adams, can sleep at night doing what you’re doing.”

“What exactly do you think I’m doing?”

“Government evasion is cowardly, Doctor. Let’s at least be honest with each other, even in the lies.”

“Ben, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Benjamin stared at him quizzically a moment and then recognition
dawned on him and his face lit
up as a grin came over his lips. “They haven’t told you, have they?” he said in almost a whisper.

“Told us what?”

“You’re leaving the island.”

“We knew that.”

“No, not just you. Everyone. The military, the CDC, everyone. This island will be quarantined and the people on it will not be allowed to leave. They didn’t tell you that?”

Sam and Duncan looked to each other and Sam said, “He’s lying.”

“Call Ralph and ask yourself if you don’t believe me. They’re pulling everybody out and cutting the supplies. These people are supposed to survive on their own.”

Sam turned around and went back into the building, Duncan following behind her. She rode the elevator up to the t
op floor and found Ralph’s suite
. She knocked but he wasn’t in. They went back down to the restaurant near the lobby and saw Ralph sitting by himself, sipping a beer. They sat across from him.

“Tell me it isn’t true,” Sam said.

“You’re leaving, Sam. That’s all there is to it.”

“Not that.”

He glared at her a moment. “Then I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ralph, we’ve known each other a long time. I can tell when you’re bullshitting me.”

He nodded, looking down to his beer and absently peeling off the label. “Who told you?”

“Benjamin Cornell.”

“Little prick. If I find out who leaked it to him I’ll have their asses.”

“I don’t believe this is happening. And you’re so calm about it. Like it just happens every
day.”

“How would you like me to be, Sam? We’re talking about the deadliest virus in history coming out of the jungle and infecting this island. Thank God it was an island and not Los Angeles or Seattle. This is an extinction event. Agent X is the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs
. We can’t risk its release no
matter the cost.”

“This is
…
I can’t believe we’re even talking about this. Ralph there are
hundreds of
thousands of people on this island that aren’t infected.”

“And I feel for them, I really do. But there’s nothing that can be done.” He leaned back, taking a sip of his beer. “Besides, I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. The military’s taken over. They think it’s a national security threat, which it is. This is the official decision.”

Sam shook her head. “We’re the monsters Cornell thinks we are.”

Ralph laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. What did you think this job was, Dr. Bower? As a physician you make life and death calls. What does it matter if it’s
over one person
in an ER or on the scale of an island?”

“Ralph, please, don’t do this.”

Duncan
jumped in,
“There are alternatives. We can request volunteers, not just from here, from
all over.”

“And what happens if one of those volunteers gets infected and we don’t catch it when they decide to come home? Do you have any idea what a virus like this could do in a major city? Pushkin’s run the numbers. With
in
ten days, fourteen percent of the population of the United States would be infected. Within
twenty-five
days, it would be s
ixty percent. Within a month
, ninety-eight percent would be infected. We’re not talking H1N1, we’re talking Armageddon.”

Samantha rose. “There are some things you don’t do
,
even at the risk of your own life. You’re giving these people a death sentence. And I can’t be a part of it.”

“You want to quit? Quit. It won’t change anything. You’re still on that plane.”

“
I’m going to stop this.”

“Feel free. I think it’s probably time for you to learn that there are things beyond your influence.”

Duncan gen
tly put his hand on her arm
. “Let’s go, Sam. There’s nothing we can do here.”

As they walked out of the restaurant, Sam kicked over the trashcan outside and began to pace.

“Feel better?” Duncan said.

“What can we do, Duncan?
These people are all going to die. They asked for help from their government and we’re going to abandon them.”

“Sometimes
there is nothing you can do. You just have
to
do the best you can and hope it works out.”

She shook her head, her thumbnail in her mouth as she paced back and forth across the hotel’s entrance. “There’s got to be something
…
we’re not helpless in this.”

Benjamin Cornell was waiting on the hood of a car and he hopped off and came over to them. “So?”

They didn’t respond
and h
e grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin
;
it was filled with melancholy. As if he were sad he had been proved right.

“I thought so,” Benjamin said.

Duncan was about to grab Sam and leave when
Benjamin
heard her say, “There has to be something we can do.”

“There is,” Benjamin said.

“Sam, we’re ending this conversation. We’re not helping
him
do anything.”

Sam ignored Duncan. “What?” she said to Benjamin.

“Iquitos, Peru,” he said. “The woman that survived. They’ve cancelled the expedition to find her. Only one known survivor of this thing and they’re going to completely ignore her.” He glanced around and saw Ralph Wilson leaving the building
,
surrounded with men in suits, discussing something. Ralph saw them and shook his head before entering a
Jeep
. “I’m not going to ignore her,” Benjamin said. “Why don’t you come with m
e and meet some of our people to talk this over
?”

“No,” Duncan said. “Sam, this guy is a borderline terrorist.”

“Why, because I don’t accept everything my government tells me?
My father fought in Vietnam, young kid of seventeen. He was so patriotic he lied about his age to fight. He got sprayed with
Agent Orange
by his own government and died of cancer nine years later.
That’s the government you work for, Dr. Adams. So don’t you dare tell me I’m the terrorist.”

“Stop it
,
you two,” Sam said.
“Duncan, I’m going to go with him. Are
you
coming with me or not?”

“Sam—”

“No, I’m
not
sitting by and watching these people die. I have to do something.”

“Why? You don’t even believe in a God
;
what does it matter to you if these people die?”

“It matters to me because I’ve devoted my life to helping people. God or not
,
I couldn’t live with myself if I just went back to Atlanta and pretended like these people didn’t exist.” S
he turned to Benjamin. “Be honest with me: why do you want me to come?
”

“An honest question
,
and I have an honest answer: This woman may not come back with us. She may not even want to talk to us. But I think I can convince her to give us some blood and tissue samples, or maybe the hospital still has some. But I need a laboratory, a very advanced laboratory in a BSL
4
environment to analyze them.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Let’s go.”

As Sam was climbing into Benjamin’s car, Duncan ran over and got into the backseat. “I’m coming, but I’d like to make it official that I think this is a mistake.”

“
Duly
noted,” Benjamin said, starting the car and pulling away.

CHAPTER 32

They pulled to
a
stop in front of what had been a massive grocer
y store
,
something like Wal-
Mart but with a name Sam had never heard before
,
and
parked near the front in handicap parking
.
Benjamin stepped out without saying anything.

“You sure you want to do this?” Duncan said when they were alone in the car.

“Rather than just sit at home and read about what’s going on on Twitter? Yes.”

They got out and followed Benjamin inside through the automatic doors. The grocery store had been rearranged in a way that all the goods were up against the walls. The floors were cluttered with desks and cubicles but they weren’t staffed with more than half a dozen people. Samantha recognized one of them as the FBI agent she had met earlier.

“You know he’s with the FBI, right?”

“Who, Billy? Yeah we know. He’s one of the good ones
,
though. He’s been helping out now here and there. Damn good at everything too if you ask me. Isn’t that right, Billy?”

He came over, a smile on his face as he bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment. “Glad I could be of service.”

“What’s a federal agent doing helping these people out?” Duncan said.

“I suppose I could say the same thing about a military scientist
.” He
looked to Sam
.
“
Or
a CDC field agent. You didn’t like the thought of being shipped off and leaving everyone here, huh? Me neither. But if you’ll excuse me I have a couple of things I need to follow up on
in
our
itinerary
.”

“Our
itinerary
? You’re coming to Peru as well?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, a wide grin on his face.

“Don’t worry about him. I want to introduce you to everyone else.
I’m heading down with you guys as is Cami over there—wave hi
,
Cami—yeah, her right there. So it’ll be the five of us.”

“And what exactly is the plan?” Duncan asked.

“We’re going to find this woman and bring her back to the States. We have a few physicians in DC that are ready to analyze why she survived when no one else did. If we can do that, we can save a lot of lives.” He looked to Duncan. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. But if you do
,
you gotta pay your own way. I’ll be covering the ticket for Dr. Bower.”

“No,” Duncan said, “I don’t want her in debt to you for anything. I’ll pay for both our flights. Sam, I need to talk to you a sec.” He took her by the arm and they stepped aside out of earshot. “This is crazy.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes, let the pros handle it.”

“I’m a pro
. I’m a field agent. This is something I was actually planning on doing until they decided that it would be better to let everybody die.”

“Sam, look at these people. They’re nutballs. That girl over there can’t be more than eighteen. These are the people that think the CIA killed Kennedy or that the moon landing happened at a set in Hollywood.”

“That might be true, but all they want to do now is find a patient that could help us come up with a vaccine.”

“We might not have needed another vaccine if these guys hadn’t destroyed the shipments we g
ot!
”

“There’s no proof they did t
hat. Besides, Pushkin said it’
s unlikely the standard
smallpox
vaccine was going to do anything anyway.”

“But we won’t know that because they destroyed it.”

“I didn’t do that,” Benjamin said.

Duncan turned to him. “I don’t believe you.”