Patient Zero

Chapter Eight

U.S. Route 50 in Maryland / Saturday, June 27; 4:25 P.M.

THE DRIVE BACK to Baltimore gave me time to think, and the thoughts I had weren’t nice ones. I wanted to kick Church’s ass for busting a big wet hole in my peace of mind. He had made me fight a dead guy.

A. Dead. Guy.

I think I logged forty miles of my trip with that thought playing over and over like a skipping record. It’s kind of a hard thought to get past. Me. Dead guy. In a room. Dead guy wants a piece of me. Find a comfortable chair for that to sit in.

Javad was not alive when he attacked me. I may not be a scientist but one of those bottom-line factoids everyone-Eastern, Western, alternative health, all of them-will agree on is that dead guys don’t try to bite you. In movies, yeah okay. Not in Baltimore. But Javad was dead, so there was that. Another twenty miles blurred by.

What was it Church had said? Prions. I had to look that up when I got home. What little I knew was Discovery Channel stuff. Something related to Mad Cow maybe?

So, okay, Joe if it’s real then make some sense of it. Mad Cow and dead terrorists. Bioweapons of some kind. With dead guys. DMS. Department of Military Sciences, sister org to Homeland. What kind of math does that make? I put the new White Stripes CD in the deck and tried to not think about it. Worked for nearly four seconds.

I pulled off the road, went into a Starbucks, ordered a Venti and a chocolate chunk cookie-screw Church, what does he know about cookies? I paid the tab, left my stuff on the counter, went into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and then threw my guts up in the toilet.

I could feel the shakes starting to come back, so I washed my face, rinsed my mouth out with handfuls of tap water, pasted on my best I-didn’t-just-kill-a-zombie expression, and left with my coffee.