Plague

CHAPTER 32

They pulled to a stop in front of what had been a massive grocery store, something like Wal-Mart but with a name Sam had never heard before, and parked near the front in handicap parking. Benjamin stepped out without saying anything.

“You sure you want to do this?” Duncan said when they were alone in the car.

“Rather than just sit at home and read about what’s going on on Twitter? Yes.”

They got out and followed Benjamin inside through the automatic doors. The grocery store had been rearranged in a way that all the goods were up against the walls. The floors were cluttered with desks and cubicles but they weren’t staffed with more than half a dozen people. Samantha recognized one of them as the FBI agent she had met earlier.

“You know he’s with the FBI, right?”

“Who, Billy? Yeah we know. He’s one of the good ones, though. He’s been helping out now here and there. Damn good at everything too if you ask me. Isn’t that right, Billy?”

He came over, a smile on his face as he bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment. “Glad I could be of service.”

“What’s a federal agent doing helping these people out?” Duncan said.

“I suppose I could say the same thing about a military scientist.” He looked to Sam. “Or a CDC field agent. You didn’t like the thought of being shipped off and leaving everyone here, huh? Me neither. But if you’ll excuse me I have a couple of things I need to follow up on in our itinerary.”

“Our itinerary? You’re coming to Peru as well?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, a wide grin on his face.

“Don’t worry about him. I want to introduce you to everyone else. I’m heading down with you guys as is Cami over there-wave hi, Cami-yeah, her right there. So it’ll be the five of us.”

“And what exactly is the plan?” Duncan asked.

“We’re going to find this woman and bring her back to the States. We have a few physicians in DC that are ready to analyze why she survived when no one else did. If we can do that, we can save a lot of lives.” He looked to Duncan. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. But if you do, you gotta pay your own way. I’ll be covering the ticket for Dr. Bower.”

“No,” Duncan said, “I don’t want her in debt to you for anything. I’ll pay for both our flights. Sam, I need to talk to you a sec.” He took her by the arm and they stepped aside out of earshot. “This is crazy.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes, let the pros handle it.”

“I’m a pro. I’m a field agent. This is something I was actually planning on doing until they decided that it would be better to let everybody die.”

“Sam, look at these people. They’re nutballs. That girl over there can’t be more than eighteen. These are the people that think the CIA killed Kennedy or that the moon landing happened at a set in Hollywood.”

“That might be true, but all they want to do now is find a patient that could help us come up with a vaccine.”

“We might not have needed another vaccine if these guys hadn’t destroyed the shipments we got!”

“There’s no proof they did that. Besides, Pushkin said it’s unlikely the standard smallpox vaccine was going to do anything anyway.”

“But we won’t know that because they destroyed it.”

“I didn’t do that,” Benjamin said.

Duncan turned to him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want. We’re all going to LA on that plane and then we have a flight chartered for Mexico. You can come if you want to. We could use your expertise. That girl that you said was eighteen is a doctor from John Hopkins who’s risking her life and her job to come with us and investigate this survivor. Show a little respect before you start criticizing.”

Duncan looked to the young girl. He saw the screen of the mac she was working on: it was a computer model of the smallpox virus. A program was molding and sculpting the virus into different mutations.

“She may be noble, but you’re not. I know you, Ben. I know people like you. Your type. Your motives are pure and your means destructive. I’m coming, but the only reason I’m doing it is so Sam isn’t alone with you.”

He smiled. “The more the merrier.”