The Brain Eaters

Chapter 13

Dena Falkner spent an uneasy weekend. By Friday she was having second thoughts about her promise to Dr. Kitzmiller that she would say nothing about the accidental spraying from the Biotron helicopter and about what happened to Stuart Anderson. Kitzmiller’s forceful personality had blunted the resolve she had built up when she went in to see him, but once out of his aura, her doubts grew.

The night visit of Lloyd Bratz to her house was fresh in her memory. She could not forget the haunted look in his eyes or the appalling story he told of the events in the Biotron infirmary.

Hoping to give her nerves a rest, Dena left the office early Friday and drove north to Shawano Lake where she rented a cabin. There, with no radio and no newspaper, she tried to tune herself into nature and forget for a little while the world’s man-made troubles. Early Saturday morning, and again on Sunday, she had rowed out onto the lake and drifted there, watching the fishermen in the other boats.

Always in the past a mini-vacation like that at the lake had refreshed her. This time it did not work. By Sunday evening her nerves were strung tighter than ever.

Now, Monday morning, she walked into her office at the Biotron plant with a gnawing premonition that bad news awaited her. Things began to go wrong almost immediately.

The first thing she noticed was that the agenda for the Monday meeting was not on her desk. The Monday meeting was a ritual at Biotron, with representatives from all operational departments taking part. The agenda was always waiting on the desks of the participants when they came in on Monday. Not this Monday.

The point was not that the meeting was so vitally important. Seldom was anything discussed that could not be handled in the normal course of daily business, but the meeting gave a certain structure to the week, and it allowed the participants to clear away the weekend’s cobwebs before tackling new problems.

Dena picked up the phone to call Jimmy Lohnes, the division PR man who usually brightened the meetings with his sardonic humor. She punched out Jimmy’s three-digit extension and heard nothing but the crackle of static for a full fifteen seconds before there was a click and an unfamiliar voice answered.

“Switchboard.”

“I was trying to get five-three-one.”

“Sorry, but there’s a glitch in the PBX, and we have to route the calls manually. It would happen on the day we’re shorthanded for technicians.”

“Isn’t that always the way,” Dena commented.

“Murphy’s law. What was that number again?”

“Five-three-one.”

The instrument buzzed in her ear, and the voice of Jimmy’s secretary answered.

“Mr. Lohnes’s office.”

“Hi, Adele, is Jimmy in yet?”

“Oh, hi, Dena. No, he called in sick this morning. Flu or something. Anything I can answer for you?”

“I just wondered if he got his meeting agenda. Mine wasn’t delivered.”

“Uh-uh,” said the secretary. “The messenger hasn’t been around yet. Some problem in the mail room, I guess.”

“Typical Monday. Thanks, Adele.”

Dena hung up and doodled aimlessly on her calendar pad. No big deal. They would have the meeting without an agenda; that was all. It wouldn’t matter much, but the small break in routine troubled her for some reason she could not name. It was like an itch that was just out of her reach.

Carol Denker, with whom Dena shared the small office, had not come in yet. Carol was never late. It was yet another deviation from the normal day. As the junior in their section, Carol did not have to attend the meetings, but she and Dena habitually took coffee breaks together, swapping complaints about the quality of the company coffee and anything else that popped into their heads. Now Dena would have to have her first cup of the morning alone. It was one more small annoyance.

She walked out of her office and through the open bay to the coffee machine. She dropped in her quarter and walked back with the plastic cup of steaming brew. She thought the office seemed unusually quiet. The muted jiggety-jiggety of the Selectric typewriters was softer than usual, and the voices of the young Biotron employees who sat out in the bay were subdued.

Dena went back in and sat down at her desk. She sipped gingerly at the hot coffee and idly scanned the desks outside through her glass partition. She frowned, put down the plastic coffee cup, and leaned forward.

No wonder it was quieter that day. There were a lot of people missing out there. One desk of four was unoccupied.

A chilling thought hit her. She picked up the phone and punched out the extension for personnel. After another delay through the manual switchboard, she heard Personnel Manager Ian McCollough answer the phone himself.

“Hello, McCollough here.”

“Hi. Dena Falkner.”

“Hi. How are you? Excuse the confusion, but I’m all alone here. Secretary and receptionist both out sick. Must be something going around.”

“That’s what I was wondering. Are there a lot of people out today?”

“About twenty-five to thirty percent absenteeism,” McCollough said. “Every department’s understaffed. Have you heard if we’re having the Monday meeting?”

“I don’t know,” Dena said. “Did you get your agenda?”

“Negative. I’ll have to miss it anyway, with no one to answer the phone here. Look, I’ve got to go. All my lines are flashing.”

Dena slowly hung up the instrument. Now she was getting worried. The unusual absenteeism that morning might be a coincidence, but she did not think so. It was time for another talk with Dr. Kitzmiller. This time she would not let him put her off the track.

She picked up the phone once more, listened to sixty seconds of crackles and beeps, and dropped it back into the cradle. It would be better handled in person, anyway. She walked out of her cubicle and left the building, heading for Kitzmiller’s office. Not the “friendly” office but the spartan quarters back by the laboratories, where he did his real work.

A security guard sat at the receptionist’s desk outside the unmarked office door. He stood up when Dena approached and moved casually between her and the closed door.

“Can I help you?”

“I’d like to see Dr. Kitzmiller.”

“Sorry, the doctor’s not available.”

“Would you tell him I’m here, please? Dr. Dena Falkner.”

“Sorry, Dr. K was very explicit. He’s not available to anybody.”

Dena looked at the closed door, then back at the impassive guard. “He is in there?”

“Oh, yes. Locked up by himself. No interruptions, he says. Absolutely. If you want to leave a message, I’ll give it to him when he comes up for air.”

Dena chewed her lip. “Where’s the receptionist who usually sits here?”

“Search me. Somebody said she called in sick. You want me to tell Dr. K anything?”

“No,” Dena said. “No, never mind.”

She stopped back in her own office long enough to lock up her desk; then she left the building and headed for the parking lot.

Automatically, she reached into the glove box but found no cigarettes. She remembered then that as part of her weekend rest cure at the lake she had thrown out the package, deciding it was a good time to quit for good. Like hell it was.

She drove to the Rexall store in Wheeler and bought a carton of Carltons. Very low in tars, she told herself. Next best thing to not smoking. She would get serious about giving them up when things had settled down a bit.

As she took the carton from the clerk, her eye fell on the newspapers stacked on the counter. A small headline at the bottom of the Herald’s page one leaped out at her:

MYSTERIOUS SEIZURES STRIKE COAST TO COAST

Dena took a paper from the top of the stack and noted that the reporter’s name was Corey Macklin. She paid for the newspaper and the cigarettes and carried them out to her car. There she lit a Carlton, inhaled gratefully, and read the story. When she had finished, she read it again, then tucked the newspaper down between the seats and started the car. She swung out onto the highway and, after a stop at her house to pack a small bag, headed for Milwaukee.

While most of the operations in the offices of the Milwaukee Herald had returned to their normal apathetic pace, Corey Macklin and Doc Ingersoll formed an island of excited activity. Corey sat in shirt-sleeves at his desk, typing furiously as he wrote and rewrote his story to fit the late reports Doc was bringing in from the wire services. He was also busy fielding telephone calls from all over the country. With his original by-lined story on Hank Stransky, then the follow-ups, Corey had become the “authority” on the mysterious wave of violent seizures. He put off most of the callers with vague answers. It was his story, and he was not about to share it.

City Editor Porter Uhlander came out of his office once and started toward Corey’s desk. When he saw all the activity there, he changed his mind and retreated, massaging his stomach.

“Porter looks more dyspeptic than usual this morning,” Doc Ingersoll observed through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“It’s the story,” Corey said. “He was supposed to kill it, but it wouldn’t die.”

“Like Dracula,” Doc said.

“Yeah. What’s the total number of cases now?”

“I make it thirty-four verified plus uncounted rumors. There’s stilla few authentic reports coming in, but the big freak-out seems to have been Friday.”

“I wonder if thirty-four is enough for the Department of Health and Human whatever-it-is to take notice,” Corey said.

“They’ll probably wait until the victims form a political action committee,” said Doc.

Corey smoothed out on his desk a map of the United States he had bought on his way into the office. With a red felt-tip pen, he made a dot at the location of each of the new reported cases of violent seizure. Three areas of the map were speckled with the red dots — New York, Milwaukee, and Seattle — but there were isolated incidents in Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon, and Chicago.

“You’re probably right,” Corey said, “but I’d hate to think our entire government is run by assholes like the one I talked to in Washington.”

“When you’ve been around as long as I have,” Doc told him, “you’ll learn that the asshole factor in government cannot be overestimated.”

One of the high school girls who worked at the Herald during the summer approached the desk.

“Mr. Macklin?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a lady outside asking for you.”

“Asking what?”

“She wants to see you.”

“Get her name and number.”

The girl hesitated. “She seemed, well, kind of upset.”

“I’m upset, too. The whole world’s upset. Tell her I’ll get back to her.”

The girl seemed about to say more, but Doc Ingersoll gave her a tiny shake of the head and she went away.

“Probably wants us to send somebody to cover her garden club,” Corey said, intent on the map. “You say the new outbreaks are slowing down?”

“So it seems. We had twenty Friday and Friday night, seven Saturday, five Sunday, and just two so far today.”

Corey frowned. “Damn. I kind of hate to see our epidemic peter out.”

“You would have loved the black plague,” Doc said.

Corey looked at him. “What the hell, I’m not killing these people. I’m just writing the story.”

“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Doc intoned.

The high school girl returned. “Uh, the lady says it’s really important.”

“I’ll bet,” Corey said. “Tell her I’m tied up interviewing the pope.”

“She says she’s a doctor of biology or chemistry or something like that. From Biotron up by Appleton, you know.”

“Oh?” Corey looked up, interested for the first time.

“She says it’s about the people who’ve been going ape. The ones you been writing about.”

“Tell her I’ll be out in a minute.”

When the girl had gone, Corey spoke to Ingersoll. “Biotron — isn’t that a fertilizer plant?”

“Also pesticides. It’s a division of Global Industries.”

“Government contracts?” Corey asked.

“I suppose. Smell something?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s go talk to the lady.”

His years as a reporter had taught Corey the error of forming preconceived pictures of people he had not met, but he was not prepared for Dr. Dena Falkner. Somehow the combination of chemistry and biology gave him a mental image of an angular woman with a sharp nose, rimless glasses, and sensible shoes. What he found waiting rather impatiently in the outer office was an athletic-looking young woman with great legs, a good chest, and that powerful combination of caramel-blonde hair and brown eyes.

“I’m Corey Macklin,” he said, feeling the pull of the liquid brown eyes. “And this is Doc Ingersoll.”

“I’m Dena Falkner.”

She extended a slim hand and shook with each of them in turn. Corey found her grip firm and cool.

“I’ve read your stories on the strange seizures people have been having,” she said.

“Yes?”

She drew a deep breath and plunged in. “I think it may have all started with an accident at the Biotron facility just over two weeks ago.”

Corey stared at her as though his oyster stew had just yielded up a pearl. He said, “Let’s find an office where we can talk.”

They found an unused conference room and took seats at the table, Corey and Doc Ingersoll on one side, Dena on the other. Corey made scribbled notes as Dena related what she knew of the events at Biotron, and Doc asked pertinent questions. She told of her concern over the sudden disappearance of Stuart Anderson and Dr. Kitzmiller’s subsequent evasive response to her questions. She told them about the link between Andrea Olson Keith, the first Seattle victim, and the area sprayed by the Biotron helicopter. Corey added what he knew of Hank Stransky and DuBois Williamson, placing them both in the same area at roughly the same time.

Dena concluded with the nighttime visit of Lloyd Bratz. She repeated what he told her of Stuart’s fate in the Biotron infirmary and Dr. Kitzmiller’s request for silence.

“I’m glad you decided to talk after all,” Corey said.

“As a matter of fact, it was sort of decided for me. This morning there were an unusual number of people missing at the plant. Called in sick, I was told. When I went to Dr. Kitzmiller to ask about it, he suddenly became unavailable. Something is going on, and when I saw your name on a story about the seizures across the country, I thought this might be the place to start checking.”

Doc asked, “Do you think there’s a connection between the sick calls at Biotron and the botched spraying job?”

“There might be. It seemed worth looking into.”

Corey spread out his notes out on the table along with the map of the United States. The three of them sat in silence for a minute, studying the papers. They all looked up at the same time.

Corey said, “Doc, does this sound to you like it sounds to me?”

Ingersoll lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of his last. He inhaled, coughed, and wiped a hand over his face. “What it sounds like is that Biotron sprayed some kind of poison into the air that infected three people who happened to be on the road driving by, or in Hank Stransky’s case, working on a construction job. Three people plus one copter pilot, according to Dena’s story. Those people suffered this crazy seizure just about a week after their exposure. They, in turn, infected an unknown number of others who were stricken about a week after the original three victims.”

“And if those people each infected others,” Corey said, “the possibilities are staggering. If this doesn’t sound like an epidemic, I’m Rona Barrett.”

“Wait a minute,” Dena said. “There were other people exposed at the same time. Lloyd Bratz was in the helicopter with Stu. There must have been other men working with Hank Stransky. Andrea Keith was in a car with her grandfather, and the New York man, Williamson, was driving with his wife. As far as we know, the others weren’t affected. Why?”

Corey turned to Ingersoll. “Doc?”

“Search me. If it was something sprayed into the air at Biotron that caused the initial infection, it just means some people are susceptible and some aren’t. Why, I can’t tell you.”

“Where do we go from here?” Dena said.

Corey began gathering up his notes. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to my desk to rewrite this story. I’ve got something now that even Nathan Eichorn will have to admit is good for a page-one series.”

“Just a minute,” Dena said.

Corey looked up, surprised by the sharpness in her tone.

“Is that all this means to you … a news story?”

“Well, of course I know people are dying and all that, but my job is to tell the public about it.”

“And maybe build your reputation at the same time?”

“Look, lady, I’m a reporter. This is the way I make my living.”

“Well, I didn’t come here just to give you a page-one by-line. I came because I thought you might help me get to the bottom of this and just possibly save a few lives.”

“I’m all for saving lives,” Corey said, “but I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

“You could come with me to the authorities for a start.”

“What authorities? The police? The first thing they’re going to ask is what crime has been committed.”

“There are other agencies … The government,” she said a little doubtfully.

“Like the Department of Health and Human Services? Let me tell you the response I got from those fine civil servants.”

When he finished relating his conversation with the Washington bureaucrat, Dena looked crestfallen.

“There must be somebody,” she said.

Doc Ingersoll spoke up. “What about the EPA?”

“You mean the people who keep our rivers safe for the snail darter?” Corey said.

“Why not? It sounds to me like this falls under the category of environmental protection.”

“It’s worth a try,” Dena said.

Corey sighed. “Okay, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for government agencies.” He checked his watch. “It’s too late to get any action out of them today. Are you going to be in town tomorrow?”

“I’ll stay over if it will help.”

“I’m not going to tackle another bureaucrat by myself,” Corey said. “Your degrees may swing a little weight.”

“I’ll meet you here at eight,” Dena said.

“That’s a tad early.”

“I don’t think we ought to waste any more time, do you?”

“Right. Eight o’clock it is.”

Dena nodded to the two men and left the office.

Corey looked after her. “She’s bossy, but she’s cute.” He began gathering up his notes.

“Are you going to do that rewrite?” Doc asked.

Corey thought a moment. “Maybe I’ll hold off until we talk to the EPA tomorrow. It’s not likely, but they just might give me a new angle.”