The White Plague (16 page)

“Ah, Mr. O’Day. I have been meaning to call you about your bill: We usually require weekly payment, and it has been nine days… but in the circumstances…” He cleared his throat.

“If you will send someone, I will sign the necessary traveler’s checks,” John said.

“Right away, sir. I’ll bring the bill myself.”

John retrieved a packet of traveler’s checks from beneath the cupboard drawer and was waiting in bed with them when Deplais arrived.

“Girard Deplais at your service, sir.” The manager was a tall, gray-haired man with pleasant, even features and a wide mouth with large teeth. He presented the bill on a small black tray, a pen placed neatly at one side.

John signed ten checks and asked that the surplus be brought to him. “For Consuela,” he explained.

“A jewel among jewels,” Deplais said. “Myself, I would have consulted a doctor, but all’s well that ends well. I must say you’re looking much fitter, sir.

“Then you looked in on me?” John asked.

“In the circumstances, sir.” Deplais picked up the tray and the signed checks. “But Consuela is often correct about the illnesses of guests. She has been with us for a long time.”

“If I had my own establishment in France, I would steal her away from you,” John said.

Deplais chuckled. “A constant hazard in our business, sir. Is it permitted to inquire of your business in Paris?”

“I’m an investment consultant,” John lied. He favored Deplais with a speculative look. “And I’m overdue on an important project. I’m wondering if the hotel could get me a hire car with an English-speaking driver?”

“For what day, sir?”

John consulted his inner reserves – still very weak. But in only four days… Achill Island… the letters. There were things to be done before he dared take his next step. He could feel time pressing on him. Plans would have to be changed. He took a deep, trembling breath.

“Tomorrow?”

“Is that wise, Mr. O’Day? You do look much better, thanks to Consuela’s excellent care, but even so…”

“It’s necessary,” John said.

Deplais lifted his shoulders in a pronounced shrug. “Then may I ask as to your destination, sir?”

“Luxembourg. And then perhaps back to Orly. I am not sure. I’ll need the car for several days.”

“By car!” Deplais was visibly impressed, then: “Orly? You would fly to some destination?”

“I had thought when I was a bit stronger…”

“There is talk of another strike by the air traffic controllers,” Deplais said.

“Then I may have the car take me to England.”

“So far!” Deplais’s tone said he thought his guest profligate.

As did the rest of the hotel’s staff, especially Consuela. 

“These Americans! He will not pay the doctor. Too costly. But he hires a car and English-speaking driver for such a journey. My Americans in Madrid displayed the same species of madness. They scream about
pesetas
and then buy the television so big it cannot be moved except by the technician.”

I think men have always been mostly a dense and unfeeling lot, their emotions covered with scar tissue. They resist the sensitivity and fulfillment that comes from women – the cement that holds everything together. When our keepers leave the speaker switch open, I hear Padraic out there mumbling about which man he’ll take into his Friendship Circle, worrying over the names, now this one and now that. Friendship Circle! They’re all looking for something that’ll put us back together, something to hold them and carry them through these terrible times.

– The diary of Kate O’Gara

B
ECKETT LAY
stretched out, fully clothed, on the spartan cot in his tiny quarters at the DIC. His hands were behind his head and he could feel the lumpy pillow on his knuckles. The only light in the room came from the illuminated clock on the desk near his head: 2:33
A.M.
He kept his eyes open, staring upward into the darkness. When he swallowed it was past a lump in his throat.

Thank God my family’s still safe
, he thought.

That entire area of northern Michigan had been cordoned off by special troops.

We’re going the way of France and Switzerland.

Fragmented.

If he closed his eyes he knew his mind would be filled with memory pictures of Ariane Foss as she lay dying.

“I’m freezing!” she’d kept complaining.

Between the complaints, however, she had provided them with a clinical picture of her symptoms as seen from within by a mind finely tuned to medical details.

The room in the hospital facility had light green walls, a hard plastic floor scored by the frequent applications of antiseptic. There were no windows, only an inset picture of peaks in the Cascades, a thing mostly of greens and blues designed to give the illusion of space beyond this sterile room. Lines of gray-clad wire ran from beneath Foss’s bedding, out over the head of her bed and into a console that linked them to the ivory box of the electronic system that monitored her vital signs. Only one transparent plastic tube ran down from an IV bottle into her right arm: sterile fluid.

From his chair close beside her bed, Beckett could keep an eye on the monitor and on the patient. Her lips moved. No sound; eyes closed. Lips moved again, then:

“There was that odd sort of disorientation at the onset,” she whispered. “You got that?”

“I got it, Ari.”

“With Dorena, too? What does she say?”

Beckett moved a swing-arm lamp closer over the notebook in his lap, made a note. “We’ll have a report from Joe presently,” he said.

“Presently,” she whispered. “What’s that mean?”

“In an hour or so.”

“I may not be here in an hour or so. This thing’s fast, Bill. I can feel it.”

“I want you to think back,” Beckett said. “What’s the first thing you experienced that you suspect may have been a symptom?”

“There was a white spot on the instep of my right foot this morning,” she said.

“White spots on extremities,” Beckett wrote.

“Nothing earlier?” he asked.

She opened her eyes. They looked glazed and the eyelids were swollen. Her skin had the pale, bloodless look of death. Almost the color of the pillow beneath her head. Her baby-doll features were bloated, the curly hair tangled and sweaty.

“Think back,” he said.

She closed her eyes, then: “Ahhhh, no.”

“What?” He bent close to her mouth.

“It couldn’t have been,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Day before yesterday I woke up horny as hell.”

He leaned back and scribbled in his notebook.

“You writing that down, too?” she whispered.

“Anything at all could be important. What else?”

“I took a bath and… Jesus! My gut aches.”

He made a note, then: “You took a bath.”

“It was odd. The water never seemed hot enough. I thought it was the damn conservationists, but there was lots of steam and my skin turned red. Felt cold, though.”

“Sensory distortion,” he wrote, then: “Did you run any cold water over yourself?”

“No.” She moved her head slowly from side to side. “And I was hungry. God, I was hungry. I ate two breakfasts. I thought it was just all this upset and… you know.”

“Did you check your pulse?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t remember. God, it bothered me, eating that much. I’m always worried about gaining weight. Where’ve you got Dorena?”

“Just down the hall. We’ve rigged a UV gantlet and antiseptic sprays in a passage between the two rooms. We thought it was a good idea… just in case…”

“In case one of us makes it and the other doesn’t. Good thinking. I don’t think I’m going to make it, Bill. What’s that stuff in the IV?”

“Just fluid. We’re going to try some new blood in a few minutes. You need white-cell stimulation.”

“So it hits the marrow.”

“We’re not sure.”

“When I saw that spot on my instep, Bill, I think I knew right then. My guts felt like a block of ice. I didn’t want to think about it. You notice the spot on Dorena’s hand?”

“Yes.”

“Do a good autopsy,” she said. “Find out everything you can.” She closed her eyes, then snapped them open. “Was I unconscious very long?”

“Just now?”

“No! When you brought me in here.”

“About an hour.”

“It hit like a ton of bricks,” she said. “I remember you sitting me on the edge of the bed to help me into the gown, then – whap!”

“Your blood pressure went way down,” he said.

“I thought so. What about the other women in the DIG? Is it spreading?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Shit!” She was silent for a moment, then: “Bill, I don’t think your antiseptic gantlet will be much use. I think men are the carriers.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” He cleared his throat.

“How much fever?” she asked.

“First high and now it’s low-grade – ninety-nine point seven.” He looked up at the monitor. “Heartbeat’s one forty.”

“You going to try digitalis?”

“I’ve ordered some lanoxin but we’re still debating it. It didn’t do much for Dorena.”

“The autopsy,” she whispered. “Look for fibroblasts.”

He nodded.

“Got a hunch,” she said. “Liver feels like a used football.”

Beckett made a note.

“You try interferon… Dorena?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Might as well have been water.”

“Noticed my nurse was male,” she said. “How bad is it with the other women?”

“Bad.”

“What’re you doing?”

“We closed the isolation doors. We’re lucky this whole damned complex was designed to resist the spread of radioactive contamination.”

“Think any of ’em will make it?”

“Too early to tell.”

“Any idea how it got in here?”

“Any of us could have brought it in. Lepikov thinks it was him. He says he can’t make any contact with his home in the Soviet Union.”

“Danzas is from Brittany,” she whispered.

“But he hasn’t been there for a long time.”

“Lepikov,” she said. “He got all kinds of briefings before being sent over here. Godelinsky complained about it. Specialists, envoys…”

“Lepikov believes he had a low-grade infection.”

“You have any symptoms?” she asked.

“A small case of the sniffles and a slight fever, but that was five days ago.”

“Five days,” she whispered. “And already I’m dying.”

“We think the incubation period may be as little as three or four days,” he said. “Perhaps even shorter. It may take a couple of days for a man to become an active carrier.”

“Benign in men, fatal in women,” she whispered, then stronger: “That Madman is one sick son-of-a-bitch! They still think it’s O’Neill?”

“Nobody doubts it anymore.”

“You think he’s a carrier, too?”

Beckett shrugged. No sense telling her about Seattle and Tacoma. She had enough on her plate. “I’d like to cover your symptoms one more time.”

“One more time may be all we have.”

“Don’t give up, Ari.”

“Easy for you to say.” She fell silent for almost a minute, then: “Loose bowels that morning I felt so horny. Then thirst. Dorena have that, too?”

“Identical,” he said.

“The headache. Jesus, it was bad for a time. Not so bad now. You giving me any painkiller in that IV?”

“Not yet.”

“My nipples ache,” she said. “Did I tell you to do the best damn autopsy of your life?”

“You told me.”

Danzas tiptoed in and whispered to Beckett: “Dorena just died.”

“I heard that,” Foss said. “That’s another thing, Bill. Acute hearing. Everything’s so goddamn loud! Can you get me a rabbi?”

“We’re trying,” Danzas said.

“A fine time for me to go back to… Damn! My fucking stomach’s on fire!” She stared past Beckett at Danzas. “That Madman’s a dirty sadist. He must know how much agony he’s causing.”

Beckett considered telling her what they had discovered, that most women lapsed into coma and died without waking. He decided against it. No sense revealing that the efforts to keep Ariane alive were prolonging her pain.

“O’Neill,” she whispered. “I wonder if his wife felt any…” She closed her eyes and fell silent.

Beckett put a hand to the artery in her neck. He nodded toward the monitor above her bed: Blood pressure sixty over thirty. Pulse dropping.

“Every antibiotic we tried on Dorena only worsened her condition,” Danzas said. “But perhaps we could try some chemo –”

“No!” It was Foss, her voice surprisingly loud and shrill. “We agreed… shotgun for Dorena, nothing for me.” She turned a glazed stare toward Beckett. “Don’t tell my husband about the pain.”

Beckett swallowed past a lump. “I won’t.”

“Tell him it was easy… very quiet.”

“Would you like some morphine?” Beckett asked.

“I can’t think with morphine. If I can’t think I can’t tell you what’s happening to me.”

A male nurse in army blues with a white jacket entered the room. He was a young man with flat, pinched features. His name tag read “Diggins.” He stared fearfully at Foss’s still figure.

Beckett looked up at him. “You find a proper blood type with a low-grade infection?”

“Yes, sir. He’s a confirmed bladder infection. He’s already on bactrim.”

“White-cell count?” Beckett asked.

“Doctor Hupp said it was high enough. I don’t have the numbers.”

“Then get him in here. He just volunteered to give blood.”

Diggins remained standing in position. “Is it true, sir, that we’re all carriers of this thing? All the men down here?”

“Likely,” Beckett said. “That donor, Diggins.”

“Sorry, sir, but there’re a lot of questions being asked out there… the doors being sealed and all.”

“We’ll just have to sweat it out, Diggins! Are you going to get that blood donor in here?”

Diggins hesitated, then: “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

Diggins turned on one heel and hurried from the room.

“Discipline’s going to hell,” Foss said.

Beckett looked at the monitor: Pulse eighty-three, blood pressure fifty over twenty-five.

“What’s my blood pressure?” Foss asked.