the Devil's Workshop (1999) (19 page)

"How?"

"We need to go back to Vanishing Lake," he murmured.

Fannon turned back to Randall Rader. "Go back to the others, tell them we're getting off this train."

Randall Rader climbed the ladder at the back of the car. They could hear his footsteps overhead as he surfed the cars to the open grainer that contained the others. Fannon turned back to Dexter.

"Welcome, brother, you are now an Acolyte of the Choir. As an Acolyte, you can have a biblical designation. I name you Zophar," Fannon smiled. "Do you know about Zophar?"

Dexter was still shaking. He had lost control of his bowels and was now sitting in runny shit that filled his underwear and was pushing up against his balls. "No," he finally murmured. "Who's Zophar?"

"Zophar was one of Job's friends. In the Book of Job, he learns a great lesson. God allowed Satan to inflict evil onto Zophar, and he lost everything. The Lord questioned Zophar on this loss of position and wealth, and Zophar finally admitted the limits of human wisdom and bowed before the will of God. This is what you are doing right now. With this new humility, Zophar eventually finds everlasting peace, and so, my friend, shall you."

Chapter
16

I can't say exactly how the fire got started," Admiral Zoll said, his rough-hewn voice spilling out over a sea of reporters gathered in his press briefing room at Fort Detrick. "I've explained to you that Dr. DeMille was unstable and that, despite his brilliant work in counter-terrorist biology, he had several bouts with suicide and deep depression. It's hard to understand the choices this kind of psychosis leads to. But let's suppose Dr. DeMille chose to try and destroy a line of research that he had been working on illegally. In so doing, some strain of his experimental virology might have gotten loose. Under this scenario, he could have set the fire to try and contain it. That fire itself became a terrible tragedy causing many deaths, both to people in the town and to many brave soldiers stationed at our research facility there. You all have copies of the suicide note we found in his quarters. Beyond that, I can't comment until more facts are uncovered."

"How much longer will the area be quarantined?" a reporter from AP asked. "Until it's safe."

"Where is Dr. DeMille now?" CNN asked.

"We are assuming that he perished in the fire. However, until we can completely sort out the military Medical Examiner's reports and do all the dental identification, that is simply conjecture. I know you people thrive on conjecture, so please quote me accurately. This is just an assumption."

"The reports of some sort of strange microbe getting loose persist," NBC said.

"Yes, I know. And right now we can't confirm or deny that. If a product of DeMille's illegal research got loose, then perhaps some biological illness could have escaped. Right now we just don't know. We'll have to monitor the area carefully. Twenty-four hours should give us the answer."

"If DeMille's research was illegal, what exactly was the nature of the legal research being done at Vanishing Lake Prison?" a woman from Reuters asked.

"Classified," Admiral Zoll said.

There was an angry murmur from the reporters, so he quickly added, " 'Classified' is not a pseudonym for 'illegal.' There was no underground science taking place at that test site. Most anti
-
terrorist research loses its effectiveness when declassified. For example, as soon as we develop an anti-toxin in a natural environment for a bio-weapon, and the enemy finds out, they simply alter their bio-weapon to defeat the anti-toxin. Much of what we were doing at Vanishing Lake was experimental defense work aimed at protecting the population from waterborne bio-weapons. That lake behaves very much like a water reservoir, which would be a natural target for waterborne toxins. Vanishing Lake is a crater, making it useful for all kinds of deep-water research. It enabled us to test anti-toxins under extreme cold and high pressure. Beyond that, I don't want to comment."

"Was there an ongoing danger to the people living up there?" another reporter shouted.

"Absolutely none. All of the strains we were working with wer
e d
ormant, as required by government health standards. We were simply tracking dormant toxins to see how viruses will react in large, open bodies of water."

"Who is investigating the disaster?"

"We are. The area conceivably contains an outbreak of a non
-
sanctioned bio-organism designed illegally by Dr. DeMille. For health and public safety reasons, the C
. D. C
. in Atlanta and the bio
-
weapons experts here at Fort Detrick will be in charge of the investigation. That's all I can say at this time. Further briefings will be scheduled by the Provost Marshal's Office." He turned and walked off the stage, leaving the reporters with hundreds of unanswered questions.

Admiral Zoll knew that the only way to spin the disaster was to do it in waves: First give them provable facts to appear to be open and honest; later, bore them to death with complicated microbiology.

He moved to his makeup room, where Colonel Chittick and Dr. Lack were waiting. "Fucking vultures," Admiral Zoll said, as he started taking off the thin layer of powder, which he detested, but had come to realize was an absolute necessity in this TV media age. Nothing looked worse during a military Code Blue than a startled Pentagon official with sweat on his upper lip.

"Sir, we have got to open Vanishing Lake to the media," Colonel Chittick said. "We've had a medical quarantine on the area since this morning, but we've found no more infected mosquitoes in the insect traps. It looks as if the fire did its job. The media pressure is building. Lieutenant Nino DeSilva is up there with the remaining Torn Victor commandos we deployed from here this morning. He says that the area seems clear. The longer we hold the press out, the worse it looks."

"Okay, let 'em in. But I want our people with them. I don't want a buncha fucking newsies poking around, diggin' up stuff we can't explain."

"I can restrict their movement with medical quarantine guidelines. They're all spooked by the bio-weapons angle. They don't want to go in there and come out with Black Death."

"We've got to play that one just right," Admiral Zoll warned. "We have to scare 'em enough to slow 'em down, but not so much they sense a huge story and start risking their lives to get it."

Then Captain Wilcox came in and handed Admiral Zoll a fax of a newspaper article.

"What's this?" he snapped.

"Nino DeSilva just sent it to us. It's from a local paper up there ... the Clark County Crier Clark County is about a hundred miles from Vanishing Lake, almost in the Oklahoma panhandle."

The headline read:

Under that was a brief description of Hollywood Mike's death. Admiral Zoll scanned the article, then read part of it aloud:

" .. Twenty-two-year-old Michael Brazil, known among hobos as 'Hollywood Mike,' jumped aboard the Southern Pacific westbound freight to avoid the huge forest fire that was consuming Vanishing Lake. Yesterday, he and his companion were aboard the freight for the short distance to Badwater, Texas. Sometime after that ride, Hollywood Mike began having trouble swallowing, the Southern Pacific spokesman said. According to his hobo friend, he could have crushed his larynx getting on the train. They jumped off at the Badwater switching station to seek medical attention. Before they could get a doctor, Michael Brazil died.' "

Admiral Zoll looked up at the men standing in the makeup room. "Trouble swallowing ... son-of-a-bitch! The bug is out of the containment area."

"Sir," Dr. Charles Lack said, "we need that body. If that dead hobo had the Pale Horse Prion, it's still inside him. It's a protein. It doesn't break down. It's like DNA--it'll still be there ten years from now. All our research, all the years of study, could be in jeopardy if somebody draws half a cc of blood or cerebrospinal fluid. If they know what to look for and get their hands on that body, we could lose control of this strategic weapon."

"Tell Lieutenant DeSilva to take his four men and get over to ... where the hell is it?"

"Badwater, Texas," Captain Wilcox said.

"Badwater, Texas?" Admiral Zoll repeated softly. "Not a good omen."

"Are you Roscoe Moss?" Stacy Richardson asked when he opened the door of his motor home.

"Yes ma'am," he answered.

"I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute about this article that was in the newspaper." She showed him a copy of yesterday's Crier, which had the account of Michael Brazil's death.

He glanced at it. "Ain't much t'tell," Roscoe said. "Mostly it's all in there. He was supposed to be a big movie producer's son. I sent the body down to Government Camp and I heard they put it on a plane, sent it to the coroner in Santa Monica, California, this afternoon."

"Oh," she said, and seemed disappointed.

"I do something wrong?" he asked, momentarily stunned by her beauty.

"I was hoping it would still be up here, that's all."

"Well, it ain't." He smiled at her. "I got some coffee in the pot. It's just recooked grounds, but if you want some ... it's hot."

"Thanks," she said.

He led her into the motor home, which was littered with souvenirs. He had dragged the old GMC bus all over West Texas during his three years on the rodeo circuit, right after he got out of the Marines. He had a few pictures on the walls, shots of him riding Brahma bulls. Bull-riding had been his best event until
a t
wo-ton monster named Evil Thunder had gored him, taking half of Roscoe's stomach and his short rodeo career in one gruesome moment.

"The article said that the train rider was having trouble swallowing/' Stacy said. "I was wondering, if you saw that, could you describe it to me?"

"He was dead by the time I got there," Roscoe said. "That's what the other guy said."

"The other guy?"

"The other hobo."

"Oh yeah, right. He's mentioned in here. Did he tell you anything else?" Stacy asked.

"He told me that the kid banged his throat getting on the train, but he was lying. Doc Fletcher down in Government Camp checked the larynx and he said nothing was broken."

"Why do you think he lied?"

"Don't know why. He was a scruffy-looking bird. Both a' them looked and smelled like hell. Just a minute, I'll show you. I
think I got a picture a' the kid" He moved to a table an
d p
oked around in some papers. "I hadda send a picture by fax to his father's office at Paramount Pictures Corporation. Can you believe that? A movie producer's son livin' a hobo's life. Don't add up."

He turned away from the stack of papers he'd been looking through and went into the back of the motor home to continue his search.

Stacy had gone without sleep for almost twenty-four hours. After the hobo with the silver hair had killed the soldier on the baseball diamond, she had hidden in the hills around Vanishing Lake until morning. Then when the County Sheriff's helicopter came in with the news trucks, she had used the confusion to trek over the hills to Highway 16 and hike out. Stacy had been in Bracketville, drinking coffee at a diner, trying to figure out her next move, when she saw the article in the Crier. She rented a car and drove straigh
t t
o Badwater. Now, as she waited for Roscoe to get Michael Brazil's picture, a wave of fatigue hit her. She shook it off, determined to go on.

Stacy was worried about a lot of things. She was sure Pale Horse Prion had escaped at Vanishing Lake, but she didn't know what the incubation period was. There was no way to tell when a mosquito vector had bitten an afflicted victim like Sid Saunders, so there was no way to set the clock. She also knew that if the Prion was in the blood there was the possibility of secondary infection. If, for instance, a noninfected mosquito bit an infected victim, by sucking up the blood and then injecting it into another healthy person, the Prion might be passed. During a medical procedure it could also be passed. For this reason, she wanted to warn any doctor attempting an autopsy, as well as warn the other hobo.

She could hear a drawer opening and closing in the bedroom of the motor home. While she waited, she wandered around and looked at the rodeo pictures that were up on the walls. Shots of a younger Roscoe Moss, one hand high over his head, the other holding the bull knot. They were impressive photographs. She turned as he reentered and handed her a Polaroid headshot of Michael Brazil. The hobo's eyes were open, but he was dead.

"There it is," he said.

She looked at the picture and immediately recognized him as one of the hobos who had cleaned up the raccoon mess at the Bucket a' Bait. "I'll be damned," she said.

"You know him?" Roscoe asked.

"Not really," she replied. "The other one was named Lucky?"

"Yes ma'am. Had the D
. T. S
right in my office. Not much left there, I'm afraid. Long hair, busted-out tooth. Wouldn't tell me his last name, just wanted to get the hell out of here 'fore the cops showed up."

She tapped the Polaroid against her thumb. "You mind if I keep this?"