The Immortalist (21 page)

Cricket jerked open a drawer full of instruments. “Time to go in. Brain first.”

Cricket directed Hank to part Yolanda's hair away from the crown of her head while she made a scalpel incision from ear to ear. The cut edges were bright red but did not bleed. As Cricket undermined the skin with the blunt end of the scalpel, the front and back parts peeled away easily in Hank's hands, folding inside out over her eyebrows and nape. Between the scalp and skull was something resembling red currant jelly. Cricket explained that normally a tough connective tissue tied the scalp and its muscles to the bone underneath. In Yolanda's case, it had almost completely liquefied.

Hank heard a high-pitched whine as Cricket started a small rotary saw. “This is a Stryker saw. A diabolical weapon of terror in Hollywood movies. In reality, it's specifically designed to be harmless. The teeth just oscillate a short distance back and forth, so it can only cut through a hard surface like bone or a plaster cast. It won't cut skin or muscle at all.”

Cricket began sawing through the top of the skull. When she had made a complete circle, she asked Hank to lift the upper part of the skull, like the lid of a pot, while she used the scalpel to free the bone from the dura mater, the tough outer covering of the brain. The dura mater dropped away at the merest touch.

“Meningitis,” noted Cricket. The soft, wrinkled brain flattened out in the bowl of the skull, like half-set Jell-O. “A normal brain looks grayish pink. This is almost brick red in places. Here, at these projections along the side, the brain tissue is disintegrating.”

“So this could be some kind of brain virus?”

“Encephalitis? Possibly. It definitely has attacked the brain. A number of things can do that. Herpesvirus, TB, meningococcus. What we're seeing could explain Yolanda's headaches and crankiness the night of the banquet.”

Cricket cut out a tiny piece of the side of the brain and placed it in a container of formaldehyde solution. While Hank replaced the skull lid and folded the scalp back into place, Cricket switched the microphone back on.

“The meninges are extensively inflamed. The brain itself is brightly erythematous, suggesting acute inflammation, most prominently in the frontal and temporal lobes. The anterior poles of the temporal lobes in particular are friable and admixed with a yellowish exudate.”

Next came the chest and abdomen. Cricket made a large Y-shaped incision, starting from Yolanda's shoulders and continuing all the way to her tuft of pubic hair. Hank wielded a common garden pruner to cut through the rubbery bridges of cartilage that connected the ribs to the breastbone. As soon as Cricket lifted off the breastbone, a surge of blood gushed onto the table.

“There it is,” she gasped.

“What?”

She pointed to a deflated plastic balloon that projected through a hole in Yolanda's windpipe. “The air tube I inserted poked its way right through the trachea. That should never happen. The rubber tube is soft, and the trachea is reinforced by these rings of cartilage.” Cricket touched a gloved finger to the edges of the hole. The trachea crumbled into pieces.

“It's like her insides are dissolving,” said Hank.

“Unscientific—but accurate.”

With Hank using a pair of surgical spreaders to hold the chest cavity open, Cricket collected samples from each of the organs, dictating as she went:

“A large quantity of free blood is noted in the mediastinum, extending into the neck, and dissecting extensively through soft-tissue planes. There are large pleural and pericardial effusions. The heart is grossly unremarkable. The lungs are heavy and dark red in color. The small airways are filled with blood, which exudes at any cut surface. Only the apical portions of the lungs contain air.”

“She was drowning in her own blood,” said Cricket. “But her heart kept working up to the end.”

Hank removed the spreaders and held them to one side as Cricket prepared to cut through the pale muscles of the abdominal wall. The skin was stretched so tightly around Yolanda's swollen abdomen that it split wide-open where it had been cut. Hank should have seen what was coming. All it took was a tiny nick of the scalpel to release a gush of pressurized bloody fluid. Hank leaped back in panic as the geyser shot toward him, drenching his whole front. His heart stopped, until he remembered he was wearing a biosafety suit, one that Cricket had meticulously inspected.

“That fluid is called ascites,” explained Cricket. “It's a sign of liver failure.”

The liver had done worse than fail. It had vanished. When Hank slid open the spreaders, nothing remained but a pool of dark brown syrup with a few floating chunks of tissue. The stomach and intestines were almost black instead of their natural pink.

When Cricket cut into the large intestine, bright red blood poured out. “Just as I expected. A massive intestinal hemorrhage. This is what we saw pouring onto her sheet.

“The liver, spleen, and pancreas are nearly liquefied. The intestines show perforations that discharge fecal matter into the peritoneal cavity. On section, the mucosal surface is almost confluently covered with petechial hemorrhages. The lumen of the descending colon and rectosigmoid is filled with bright red blood. The kidneys are severely edematous. There is scant blood-tinged urine within the urinary bladder. The intrauterine cavity is largely eroded by purulent inflammation that extends through the cervix and into the upper vaginal vault.”

“Look at this.” Cricket tapped her scalpel where she had made a cut into the uterus. “This is different from all the other organs. See how the infection is worst on the inside of the uterus and vagina? It's as though it were working its way outward from there.”

“What's so important about that?”

“This could be the place where it all got started.”

“You mean it's an STD?”

“STD from hell.”

And that was all. Cricket pulled a sheet over the mangled corpse and finished her dictation:

“Impression: fulminant viral infection with hemorrhagic features. Although virtually all tissues of the body are affected, there appears to be a unique predilection for the brain and lower genital tract. I suggest that the vagina and uterus may in fact have been the portal of entry into the body.”

Cricket shut off the microphone. “We're done here. Let's decontaminate.” She led the way to a disinfectant shower in the corner of the room, where the two of them rinsed the gore from the outside of their suits. They then left Bay 5, passed through a second disinfectant shower, and entered the inner changing room. Only there were they able to remove their helmets and breathe room air.

“What happens now?” Hank asked.

“Jean will have the body placed in an airtight capsule and shipped to Fort Detrick. They'll hold it until the tissue analysis is finished, in case they need to do an autopsy of their own. In the end, she'll be cremated.”

Hank shook his head grimly. “I hope I never see a thing like that again. It's like a bomb went off inside her.”

“Welcome to my world.” Cricket smiled as she held open the biohazard container while he dropped in his helmet and gloves. “Thanks for being there with me.”

“How could Yolanda have even been alive through all that?”

“Because of me. Life needs just two things to keep on going: a heartbeat and oxygen. I pumped her full of drugs and fluids to force her heart to go on pumping, and I made a machine breathe for her. As you can see, I didn't do her any favors. If she had died on the floor of her bungalow, the disease wouldn't have gone this far.”

“It scares the shit out of me, Cricket.”

“It should. Viruses like this don't come out of nowhere. And they don't exit quietly after a single act.”

“Are you saying someone else could get this?”

“I'm saying someone else already has it.”

“What?” Hank shuddered. “Here on campus?”

“Yolanda Carlson's sex partner, for one. Any idea who that was?”

Hank shrugged. “I didn't know she was seeing anyone.”

“Until we know what's going on, we'll need to quarantine the whole institute.”

“Charles'll have a coronary. This is Methuselah Vector Week.”

“It can't be helped. I'll contact CDC now and alert them to the situation. The results of the tests Wig Waggoner and USAMRIID are running should come back by first thing in the morning. Before anyone starts coming in to work. Then we'll be ready to act. Even Charles will see the light.”

“And if not?”

“We have only one thing to be afraid of, and you and I have just seen it. This virus must be kept from spreading to the outside world. At all costs. Nothing else matters. Not the Methuselah Vector. Not anything.”

“You know, you talk just like Charles sometimes. Uncompromising. Absolute.”

Cricket shrugged. “Not me.
That
is the absolute,” she said, pointing back toward the autopsy bay. “This virus we're dealing with doesn't have a mind. It doesn't ask why it exists or whether its nature is good or evil. All it is is a clump of molecules. It feels no pity for the weak, no fear of the strong. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't even pause to eat. All it wants is to renew itself, over and over, in a relentless geometric progression, until it fills every corner of the world.”

Cricket unzipped her biosafety suit and turned on the outer soap-and-water shower. “Charles Gifford is the least of our worries.”

Eight

NIEDERMANN FELT LIKE
A CONVICT CONDEMNED
to be shot at sunrise. As he threw his head back and drained a shot glass of Scotch, he wondered how he could have been so stupid as to get stuck in this position. The text from Phillip Eden pulled no punches:
Meet me at Export Office, 30 Rockefeller Center, 2:00 p.m. No excuses. Your career is on the line.

He could guess what it was about. Red Armbruster and Rod Baer had misunderstood his instructions to hold off until Friday and had set the fateful showdown in motion. With their ten percent of the voting stock in Eden Pharmaceuticals, they had exploited an obscure clause of Eden's corporate charter and called for an emergency stockholders' meeting, to be held on Saturday. Although Niedermann himself had urged them to make the call, he had done that yesterday, when it seemed the whole world was going his way. Now he had nothing but a squirt gun in his hands. The votes he controlled amounted to barely twenty percent. Nowhere near enough.

In desperation he thought about calling Elaine back in Glencoe and baring his soul to her. In Illinois it was only 1:00 a.m. and she might still be up. But what could he say? That he had put everything they owned on the line—house, savings, IRA? That if things went against him on Saturday, the whole family could wind up on the street?

Saturday?
Hell, even that was wishful thinking. Unless he came up with a damned good counteroffense, his execution would take place tomorrow.

Eden was the kind of CEO who ruled through fear. A Princeton graduate, he talked like a street thug. Headquarters back in Chicago was like one big conspiracy center, with Eden playing everybody against each other, and everyone's job constantly on the line. Niedermann had worked there so long, he had accepted it as the normal way of doing business. But six months at Acadia Springs had changed his outlook. Fear was unknown here. Over a thousand scientists worked their butts off without anyone giving them orders at all. Sometimes they worked alone, sometimes together. The only payoff they looked for was knowledge—something that was worthless unless shared.

The Methuselah Vector would bring in a windfall bigger than anyone had ever seen. Not just of money, but of brains. The best and brightest from around the world would be knocking down the doors trying to get in on the excitement. The company had to be worthy of that, like one of those Silicon Valley outfits that were almost college campuses. But Phillip Eden and his outmoded way of thinking stood in the way. He had to go.

Right now, though, it looked as if Niedermann had done little more than commit professional suicide. He had struck at the proverbial king and failed to kill him. He was debating whether to drink himself into oblivion when he felt the buzz of his cell phone in his pants pocket. Flipping open the phone, he saw an incoming call. The ID said
LUCKY 7
.

He took a deep breath.
Loscalzo!
The one man who had the power to turn shit into gold.
Let's hope to God he's got something.

The voice that greeted him had a nasal tenor quality. “Mr. Niedermann, it's Dom. I'm at the back door. I didn't want to wake anybody.”

“Be right there,” Niedermann whispered back, as though old Emil Weiszacker's ghost might have had his ear cupped to the keyhole. Pocketing his phone, he hurried to the kitchen. Through the back window he saw a short, black-haired man in a brown leather jacket.