Infected

10.

She hated herself for feeling this way, but she was thrilled at the chance to examine a fresh body. She was a doctor first, a healer; that had been her training, if not her true calling, and she held the sanctity of life in the highest regard. She knew she should feel upset over the new death, but excitement had washed over her the second that Murray ordered her to Toledo.

Margaret wasn’t exactly happy at another death, of course not, but she had yet to see a body that wasn’t ravaged by days of highly accelerated decomposition. Here she was, seemingly the sole defender against this bizarre affliction, and she’d had almost nothing to study, nothing to work with. To Margaret this wasn’t just another body-the fifth so far-it was a chance to gain headway against a disease with the potential to make Ebola and AIDS look as insignificant as the common cold.

So much could change in such a short time. Sixteen days earlier she’d been an examiner for the Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases’ Cincinnati office. The CCID was a division of the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC. She was good at her job, she knew, but things hadn’t been stellar career-wise. She wanted to move up the ladder, to gain prestige, but at the end of the day she had to admit to herself she just didn’t like conflict brought on by office politics-she simply didn’t have the balls.

Then she got the call to examine a body in Royal Oak, Michigan, a body suspected of containing an unknown infectious agent. When she saw the body, or what was left of it, she knew it was a chance to make a name for herself. Only seven days after examining that body, she had sat down at a meeting with CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence Murray Longworth, and-believe it or not, children-the president himself. She, Margaret Montoya, sitting down with the president to help decide policy.

And now, less than twenty-four hours after a second secretive meeting in the Oval Office, a CIA agent escorted her as if she were some head of state. She absently chewed on a Paper Mate pen, gazing out the passenger-side window as the black Lexus pulled in to the entrance of the Toledo Hospital.

Four remote television vans dotted the parking lot, all close to the front and emergency entrances.

“Dammit,” Margaret said. She felt her stomach do flip-flops. She didn’t want to deal with the press.

The driver stopped the car, then turned to look at her. “You want me to take you in the back way?” He was a stunningly handsome African-American youngster named Clarence Otto, assigned to her on a semipermanent basis. Murray Longworth had ordered Clarence to accompany her everywhere. Mostly to “grease the wheels,” as Murray put it. Clarence took care of all the little things so Margaret could concentrate on her work.

It struck her as funny that Clarence Otto was a full-blown, gun-toting CIA agent, and yet he really didn’t know what this was all about, while she, a midlevel epidemiologist for the CDC, was knee-deep in what might be the greatest threat ever to face the United States of America.

His looks distracted her, so she usually spoke to him while gazing in another direction. “Yes, please…avoid the press and get me to the staging area as soon as possible. Every second counts.”

That was an understatement. In her twenty-year career, she’d examined more bodies for more diseases than she cared to remember. Once a body died the corpse conveniently waited for examination. Put it on ice and it will keep until you’re ready to take a peek. But not with this crap-oh no not at all. Of the three bodies they’d actually recovered, two were already so decomposed as to be of little or no use. The other, which was the first body discovered, had literally dissolved before her eyes.

That was the first hint that something truly disturbing was afoot. Paramedics in Royal Oak, Michigan, had brought in the corpse of Charlotte Wilson, age seventy. Wilson had just murdered her fifty-one-year-old son with a butcher knife. She then attacked two cops on sight with said knife, screaming how she wouldn’t let “a bunch of Matlocks” take her alive. The police really had no choice, and killed her with a single shot. The paramedics reported strange growths on the woman’s body, the likes of which they’d never observed or heard of. They had pronounced her dead on the scene, then called for the morgue to come pick up the body.

Ten hours later, during the autopsy, the strange growths prompted county health officials to call the CDC’s Cincinnati office, which sent Margaret and a team. By the time she arrived six hours after that-sixteen hours after the woman had been shot and killed-the body was already in bad shape. In the course of the next twenty hours, the body disintegrated into a pile of pitted bones, thick mats of an unidentified gossamer green mold, and a puddle of black slime. Refrigerating didn’t slow the decomposition. Neither did flat-out freezing. The factor that attacked the body was unknown and new, an efficient chemical reaction that seemed unstoppable. Margaret still didn’t know how it worked.

Shortly after Wilson’s disintegration, Margaret hit the computer databases scanning for the words triangular growth. She found the record of Gary Leeland, a fifty-seven-year-old man who went to the hospital complaining of triangular growths. Less than half a day after being admitted, Leeland killed himself by setting his hospital bed on fire. The pictures of Wilson, combined with the initial pictures doctors had taken of Leeland, were the reasons that Margaret was here.

Otto skirted the news vans and the bored-looking camera crews. The unmarked Lexus drew casual glances and nothing more. It pulled up near a back door, but a rogue reporter and a cameraman were waiting there as well.

“What has the press been told?” Margaret asked.

“SARS,” Otto said. “It’s the same story as with Judy Washington.”

Dew Phillips and Malcolm Johnson had found Judy Washington’s decomposed body four days earlier in an abandoned lot near the Detroit retirement home where she lived. Her corpse had been the worst yet-nothing more than a pockmarked skeleton and an oily black stain on the ground. There wasn’t a single shred of flesh left.

“Second case in eight days,” Margaret said. “The press will think it’s a full-blown SARS epidemic.”

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, had been tagged by the media several times over as the next “nightmare plague.” While the disease was potentially fatal, and had racked up a significant body count in China, it wasn’t a major threat to a country with an efficient medical system like the United States. SARS was, however, a contagious, airborne disease, which explained the Racal suits and the quarantine. The bottom line on SARS? Enough of a danger to make people pay attention, but it really threatened only the elderly and Third World countries-and in America, that was never enough to create a panic.

She got out of the car. As a unit, the reporter and the cameraman pounced like a trapdoor spider, a spotlight flicking on and hitting her in the eyes as the microphone reached for her face. She flinched away, trying to figure out what to say, already almost ready to vomit. But as fast as they were, Clarence Otto was faster, covering the camera lens with one hand, grabbing the microphone with the other and using his body to shield Margaret long enough for her to reach the door. He moved with the fluid grace of a dancer and the speed of a striking snake.

“I’m sorry,” Otto said with his charming smile. “No questions at this time.”

Margaret let the door slip shut behind her, cutting off the reporter’s vehement protests. Clarence Otto could handle the media. He could probably handle a lot of things, some of which she didn’t want to know about, and some of which she thought about each night she spent alone in a hotel bed. She suspected she could easily seduce him; even at forty-two, she knew her long, glossy-black hair and dark eyes were part of a look that attracted many men. She thought herself an attractive Hispanic woman-men who wanted her told her she was “exotic.” Which was funny to her, because she was born in Cleveland. Sure, she had some extra baggage around the hips (and who the hell didn’t at forty-two?), and the wrinkles were becoming a bit more prominent, but she knew damn well she could have just about any man she wanted. And she wanted Clarence.

She quickly shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. When she got stressed, she got horny, as if her body knew the one surefire way to relieve mental tension. She was going to examine a corpse, for God’s sake, and she needed to keep her hormones in check. Margaret breathed deeply, trying to control her stress level, which seemed to soar higher with each case.

Almost as soon as she entered the hospital, another CIA agent, this one a middle-aged man she’d never seen before, fell in at her side and escorted her through the empty halls. She figured this guy, like Clarence, knew little of the whole story. Murray wanted it that way-the fewer people who knew, the fewer places from which information could leak.

She entered the morgue, which housed the recently erected portable decontamination chambers. Amos Braun, her only help in this hunt for answers to a biological nightmare, was waiting for her.

“Good morning, Margaret.”

She always thought his voice made him sound like a frog. Or maybe a toad. A drunk toad, slow and growly and maybe with only half his lips working correctly. The beyond-skinny Amos was somewhat effeminate and always the snappy dresser, though about ten years out of style. Most people initially assumed he was gay. His wife and two children, however, provided some evidence to the contrary. He always looked to be an hour or two behind on his sleep, even though his energy never faded.

Amos had been with her in Royal Oak when they’d examined Charlotte Wilson, and every step of the way since. He was one of the best in the business, granted, but he was all she had. She’d asked Murray for more staff, told him she needed more staff, but he’d refused-he wanted to control the flow of information, limit the number of those in the know.

“I’m surprised you beat me here, Amos.”

“Some of us aren’t off gallivanting around with the president, my dear. Becoming quite the celebrity, aren’t you?”

“Oh shut up and let’s get ready. We don’t have a lot of time if this body is like the others.”

They stepped into two small dressing areas concealed by plastic dividers. Inside each area hung an orange Racal suit, designed to protect the wearer against all types of hostile agents. The suits always reminded her of hell, of burned human skin hanging like some satanic trophy.

First she removed her clothes and donned surgical scrubs. She slid into the Racal suit, which was made of flexible Tyvek synthetic fabric, impermeable to air, chemicals or virus particles. The ankles, wrists and neck had intricate metallic rings. With the suit on, she stepped into special boots that had a metallic ring matching the ones on the suit legs. She snapped the rings together with a satisfying springy click, signifying an airtight seal. She then wrapped the seam with brown sticky tape, further sealing off her feet against possible contamination. She did the same with the thick Tyvek gloves, taping herself off at the wrist. Tape was overkill, particularly with the state-of-the-art Racal suit, but after seeing what this mysterious condition did to victims, she wanted all the precautions she could get. Margaret loosely wrapped several layers of tape around her arm; if she accidentally cut the suit, she could plug the leak as fast as possible.

They didn’t understand how the infection spread. Other than shared symptoms, there seemed to be no connection between the five known victims. It might be spread by contact via some unidentified human carrier; via airborne transmission (although that seemed very unlikely based on the fact that no one exposed to the victims contracted the infection); via common vehicle transmission, which applied to contaminated items such as food, water or any medication; or via vectorborne transmission, the name given to transmission from mosquitoes, flies, rats or any other vermin. Her current theory was far more disturbing: that it was being intentionally spread to specific targets. Any way she sliced it, however, until she knew the transmission mode for certain, she wasn’t taking any chances.

When Margaret came out from behind the curtain, Amos was already waiting for her. In the bulky suit with no helmet, he looked particularly odd-the suit’s helmet ring made his thin neck look positively anorexic.

She’d had to argue with Murray Longworth to keep Amos. Murray actually thought she could figure out a completely unknown biological phenomenon all by herself. She needed a full team of experts, but Murray wouldn’t hear of it.

She needed Amos’s expertise in biochemistry and parasitology. She knew the former discipline was vital for analyzing the victims’ bizarre behavioral changes, and she had a nagging feeling the latter would be increasingly significant. He was a smart-ass, but he was also brilliant, insightful and seemed to require little or no sleep. She was desperately grateful to have him.

Amos helped her with the bulky helmet, locking the ring to create the seal around her neck. The faceplate instantly fogged up. He wrapped her neck seal with the sticky tape, then started the air filter/compressor attached to the suit’s waist. She felt a hiss of fresh air; the Racal suit billowed up slightly. The positive pressure meant that in case of a leak, air would flow out of the suit, not in, theoretically keeping any transmission vectors away from her body.

She helped Amos with his helmet.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. Her voice sounded oddly confined inside her helmet, but a built-in microphone transmitted the sound to a small speaker mounted on the helmet’s chin. External microphones picked up ambient sound and transmitted it to tiny built-in speakers, giving the suit’s wearer relatively normal hearing.

“Sounds fine,” Amos said. His froggish voice came through somewhat tinny and artificial, but she understood his words clearly.

The hospital didn’t have an airtight room. Murray had provided a portable one, a top-secret Biohazard Safety Level 4 lab. Margaret hadn’t even known such a thing existed until Murray acquired it from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. USAMRIID probably should have been the ones studying Brewbaker and the others, but since Margaret already knew, she got to run with the ball. Biohazard safety levels ran from one through four, with BSL-4 being as bad as it got.

The portable BSL-4 lab was small, designed to fit inside existing structures. Its flexible walls were set up within those of the morgue, almost as if kids had set up a large white, plastic tent in their parents’ basement. She knew exactly what she’d see in the small space, as she’d left very specific instructions for Murray. She’d find a stainless-steel morgue table with a full drainage system to capture Brewbaker’s liquefying body, a computer for sending and receiving information on a completely closed network, and a prep table with all the equipment she’d need, including a stack of BSL-4 sample containers that could be completely immersed in decontaminant solvent in the airlock, then shipped off to other BSL-4 labs for analysis.

Margaret and Amos entered the airtight room through the flexible airlock.

Inside, Dew Phillips was waiting-and he wasn’t wearing a biosuit. He stood next to the charred body laid out on the steel table. It was horribly burned, especially around what was left of the legs.

Margaret felt anger wash over her; this man could be contaminating her lab, impeding any work she might accomplish now that she had an actual body and not a disintegrating pile of rotting black flesh. “Agent Phillips, what are you doing in here without a biosuit?”

He just stared at her. He pulled a Tootsie Roll from his pocket, unwrapped it slowly, popped the candy into his mouth, and then dropped the wrapper on the floor. “Nice to see you, too, Doc.”

Dew’s deep green eyes resembled the color of dark emeralds. His skin was pale, his face stubbled and haggard, his suit wrinkled beyond all repair. His mottled scalp shone under the harsh lab lights. Age hadn’t affected his body, not much-it looked rock solid under the wrecked suit.

“Answer my question,” Margaret demanded, her voice mechanized by the suit’s small speaker. She hadn’t liked him from the start, hadn’t liked his cold demeanor, and this incident wasn’t helping change her opinion at all.

Dew chewed for a moment, cold eyes staring into Margaret’s. “I got up close and personal with this guy. If he’s contagious, I’ve got it, so what’s the point in putting on a human condom?”

She walked up to the table and examined the body. The fire had briefly touched the head, burning away all hair and leaving a scalp dotted with small blisters. A twisted expression of wide-eyed rage etched the corpse’s face. Margaret suppressed a shiver, first at the very picture of lunacy on the table before her, then at Dew Phillips, who had looked straight into this horrid expression and pulled the trigger three times.

The arms and legs were the worst, burned to blackened cinders in places. Where the skin remained, it was the leathery greenish black of third-degree burns. The left hand was nothing more than a skeletal talon covered with chunks of cindered flesh. The right hand was in better shape, almost free of burns, an oddly white area at the end of a shriveled, carbonized arm. Both legs were gone below the knee.

The corpse’s genitals were badly burned. Second-degree burns covered the abdomen and lower torso. Three large bullet wounds marked the chest, two within inches of the heart and one directly over it. Smears of blood were now bone dry, flaking away, leaving whiter spots on the scorched skin.

“What happened to his legs?”

“He cut them off,” Dew said. “With a hatchet.”

“What do you mean, he cut them off? He cut off his own legs?”

“Right before he set himself on fire. With gasoline. My partner tried to put him out, and got a hatchet in the belly for his troubles.”

“Jesus,” Amos said. “He chopped off his own legs and burned himself?”

“That’s right,” Dew said. “But those nice bullet holes in his chest, those are mine.”

Margaret stared at the corpse, then back up at Dew. “So…does he have any?”

Dew reached down and turned the corpse over. For some reason it surprised her to see he wore surgical gloves. He flipped the body over with minimal effort-Martin Brewbaker hadn’t been a big man, and much of his weight had been consumed by fire.

The wounds were much worse on Brewbaker’s back, fist-size holes ripped open by the. 45-caliber bullets, but that wasn’t what caught Margaret’s attention. She unconsciously held her breath-there, just left of the spine and just below the scapula, sat a triangular growth. It was the first growth she’d seen live, and not as a picture, since her examination of Charlotte Wilson. One of the bullet wounds had ripped free a small chunk of the growth. Flames had caused even more damage, but at least it was something to work with.

Amos leaned forward. “Are there any more?”

“I thought I saw some on his forearms, but I’m not sure,” Dew said.

“Not sure?” Margaret stood. “How can you not be sure? I mean, either you saw them or you didn’t.” She noticed Amos wince behind his faceplate, but it was too late.

Dew stared at her, anger visibly whirling behind his dead eyes. “Sorry, Doc, I was busy looking at the fucking hatchet the bastard was burying in my partner’s stomach.” His voice was slow, cold and threatening. “I know I’ve only been doing this shit for thirty years, but next time I’ll pay better attention.”

She suddenly felt very small-one look at the body and she’d forgotten all about Dew’s partner laid up in critical condition. Jesus, Margaret, she thought, were you born an insufferable bitch or did you have to work at it?

“Dew…I’m sorry about…about…” The name of Dew’s partner escaped her.

“Malcolm Johnson,” Dew said. “Agent, husband, father.”

Margaret nodded. “Right, of course, Agent Johnson. Well…I’m sorry.”

“Save it for the medical journals, Doc. I realize I’m supposed to answer your questions, but you know, all of a sudden I don’t feel so swell. Something about the smell in here is making me sick.”

Dew turned and headed for the door.

“But Dew, I need to hear how it went down! I need all the information I can get.”

“Read my report,” Dew said over his shoulder.

“Please, wait-”

He slipped out through the airlock and was gone.

Amos went to the prep table. Among other instruments, the prep team had left them with a digital camera. Amos picked it up and started circling the body, taking picture after picture.

“Margaret, why do you let him walk all over you like that?”

She turned on Amos, her face flushing with anger. “I sure didn’t see you standing up to him.”

“That’s because I’m a pussy,” Amos said. He snapped another picture. “I’m also not in charge of this shebang-you are.”

“Shut up, Amos.” In truth, she was happy to see Dew leave. The man had an aura about him, a sense that he was not only a death dealer, but one waiting impatiently for his own demise as well. Dew Phillips gave her the willies.

She turned back to the body and gently, ever so gently, poked the triangular growth. It felt squishy underneath the burned skin. A tiny jet of black ooze bubbled up from one of the triangle’s points.

Margaret sighed. “Let’s get rocking. Excise samples of the growth, and let’s send them out for analysis right away-the body has already started rotting, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

She picked up Dew’s Tootsie Roll wrapper, dropped it in a medical waste bin, cracked her knuckles through the large gloves, then got to work.