Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  David seemed to know where he was headed, and he strode down the hall in front of both of them, this time with a purpose. The inmates were supposed to have been moved from all the cells where anyone had gotten sick, and David was already rummaging through his briefcase looking for his fancy compasses. He was ready to weigh and measure, and Jordan could see now that he had been from the moment they had set foot in this place.

  So he followed behind and took the opportunity to sneak a look at Jilly - she practically glowed. That was just damned annoying. She should be haggard; she hadn’t slept enough; she was in the middle of a high pressure situation. And she glowed.

  Calling the CDC in front of the inmates and the cops had been a truly stupid move, and even now Jordan couldn’t figure out why Jillian hadn’t thought just a little further ahead on that one. But he had glared at her, twice, mouthed the words to her to either shut-up or leave the room, and she either hadn’t seen him at all or was putting in an Oscar-worthy performance of ignoring him. Since he was certain she wasn’t that caliber of an actress he truly believed she hadn’t seen him. And here he was dealing with the flak, while she glowed. Bitch.

  David was inside one of the cells, crawling around on his hands and knees and no longer looking anything like the physician he was dressed up as. His scrubs were blackened in long smears down the top, one knee was actually sporting a small tear, and both were ground deep with . . . well, Jordan couldn’t identify the source of the dark stains and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He decided to catch up with Jillian and see if she had seen anything worthwhile yet.

  She smiled a brilliant smile, out of proportion to her surroundings, as he walked up. “What have you got?”

  “Nothing.” His files were tucked under his arm, as inactive as they were useless. “You?”

  She shook her head, her ponytail moving from side to side as if to second what she was saying. “It’s all here, but there’s nothing new.”

  Jordan stretched his neck one way then the other, and left Jillian behind, not that she even noticed, as he went off to wind his way back to the warden’s office. He found the warden with the framed photograph from his desk propped across his knees. “Sir, it’s not that bad.”

  Frank smiled. “I know it’s not. You’ve done a good job of putting all our minds at ease. But I can’t help think about them. You know . . . when something like this comes up . . .”

  “Yeah, I do know.” For just a moment he paused. Then, decision made, he plowed ahead. “My father is in the same situation. I do understand.”

  The warden simply smiled, and asked what he could do to help. Jordan got to make his day by asking to use the phone, then booking the entire staff in the wing at the hotel they were staying in. The CDC could ride his ass for expenditures, if and when he survived this thing.

  He left the office and wound through the long hallway yet again to find Jillian standing still in one of the cell rows watching David’s backside as he crawled from corner to corner, measuring, mapping, and muttering the whole time. The arrogant bastard might have been happy to know Jillian was staring at his butt, but Jordan wasn’t about to give him the pleasure. He touched her sleeve and she slowly pulled her gaze away from the ass molded in green cotton. “What?”

  “Anything left to do?” Besides stare at David?

  She shook her head. “I’ve got vitals on all of them, and blood draws. That’s already boxed and waiting.”

  “Call for pickup?” He kept his voice low, but David wasn’t listening anyway. He was lost in the world of his rocks. Jordan wondered if concrete and cinderblock qualified igneous or sedimentary, but he didn’t dare ask.

  “No pickup. The mobile lab will run it when they get here in 12 hours. Our one live patient is already at the hospital on a ventilator.”

  “Robert Willins?” The man she had rushed to as he was passed out on his bunk. Jordan already knew that was the man’s name, and maybe he felt just a little facetious because he knew Jillian wouldn’t.

  Jillian simply ignored the question. It passed like light through glass, and left no feeling of satisfaction for having asked it. As though he had never spoken she changed the subject, “Shall we head back to the hotel and sleep? We’re going to be neck deep when the crew arrives.”

  He felt the yawn coming only well after it was too late to stop it, and even before he managed to close his mouth Jillian was biting off her own yawn.

  “David said not to wait for him. He’ll catch a ride later.”

  “Sweet.” He turned away from her face at her last glance back to David. Allowing her to make their goodbyes to Carter, he simply headed down the long hallway toward the exit, only barely cataloguing a muttered response and wondering if the blond geologist might look up later and wonder where they were. Well, he’d figure it out fast enough.

  The adrenaline that had been fueling him barely held while he drove back to the hotel. When they arrived she shuffled along behind him, until he slid the magnetic key card into his door and was surprised when she followed him in.

  There was only the one king-sized bed, and Jilly bee-lined for it.

  The foolish words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “This is my room.”

  “Haven’t you noticed? I always sleep in with you.”

  “All right.” He didn’t want to change things, but his mouth again got ahead of his brain. Why? When she was ogling David’s ass? Whispering with him on the flights? “Why?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  He was almost afraid of the answer. A small part of him sprung with hope, but the rest of him tamped that part down, and Jordan just shook his head.

  “Ever since McCann, I’ve been afraid to sleep alone.”

  He nodded. It was the best he was going to get. Although that had to have been the last answer he would have expected. “Climb in.”

  The prison was swarming with them. The bubbles were here, they were all growing, and they were all over. David almost grinned. This was a hot spot among hot spots. And, in a new phenomena that hadn’t let him get any sleep, they were growing fast enough that he could come back to one end of the hall and start all over getting new reads on almost every one. Previous growth rates had been on the order of a few feet a week. These guys were showing growth in a matter of hours.

  And, as he came back down the hall, he couldn’t suppress a grin. Some of the reversals were fusing. And damn if that wasn’t the hot news of the millennium. His Dad would sit back in his chair and have a heart attack. In fact he just might call the old man and personally deliver a little comeuppance to Mister Superiority.

  Just then a person, man or woman he couldn’t tell, fully decked in the yellow hazmat suit, walked in at the far end of the hall. It waved, but whether or not it smiled was lost in the slight reflection off the surface of the protective face shield it wore. David made what he estimated was a friendly face and waved back before turning and rolling his eyes. Those suits wouldn’t protect against magnetic fields. Anyone who wore them was just kidding themselves.

  So here he was in his torn green scrubs crawling the dirty floors and ignoring the human smell that was here, and about to be overrun by the highly trained idiots in the yellow suits.

  The suit approached him and the face shield’s technology finally made itself useful, the glare disappearing as the man got closer. “You Dr. Carter the second?”

  “Yup.” The second, of course, as always. He was certain that his getting out of their way was exactly what the suits wanted, since this one even pointed to where one of the guys had volunteered to drive him back to the hotel.

  David nodded and began the arduous task of gathering all his equipment together. Another suit, this one female, and beautiful - a shame he was too exhausted to care - offered to help him. He didn’t want anyone touching his things, even without the clumsy thick gloves.

  Almost thirty minutes later, he had gathered all the stuff he needed and left the meters that would continue to record in his absence. But th
ey had been roped off with the CDC's own stand back tape, and signs, hand printed Touch Me and Die on sheets of yellow legal paper. They swung just a little in air currents that they could feel even though he couldn’t.

  He pushed a weary and very dirty hand through his hair, noticing again that there was just a little less of it than last month.

  Flipping open his cell phone he saw the hour for the first time that morning. Already nine thirty. Damn. He dialed his father. His personal cell, the number that only David and every important scientist in the world had. His father had told him point blank once that David didn’t have the number because he was a good scientist, but because he was the senior Carter’s nearest blood relation. With a sour smile he decided that this call could only feel better if he had actually roused the bastard from sleep. And while he waited for the ringing to stop, he suffered the brief moment of weight in his chest like he always did before his father’s voice said, “Hello, David.” He never said the words, but the tone clearly begged the question of why he was being bothered.

  “Dad.” He didn’t say anything more, knowing that the term was bothersome in itself and knowing that his father knew he couldn’t escape it. Of course, the great irony being that no one had ever been farther from being a ‘dad’ than this world-renowned scientist.

  “What do you want, David?”

  And he just started speaking, letting all the events of the past few days spill out. He broke about fifteen federal and contract laws that the CDC had specifically reviewed with him, but he didn’t care. He came awake to the sound of surprise in his old man’s voice. Though even the fact that he was surprised by his son’s success was irksome.

  David held the conversation as he rode back to the hotel and wandered through the lobby. The elevator dinged but David walked in and just kept talking. Let the line get cut off. He arrived at his room and tried the key, but it didn’t open. He tried again. Then, wrapped up in the conversation with his father, he tried a third time. This time the door opened, although not from his key. The door handle practically flew from his fingers, startling him just long enough to realize that Jordan had opened it from the other side. He looked like death warmed over and David said so.

  “Thanks.” Jordan ran a hand through his hair, although he only proceeded in making it stick up more than before. His face was as rumpled as his t-shirt and boxers, and he didn’t seem to come fully awake.

  “Guess I got the wrong room.” David said, turning his key card over, already knowing that the answer wasn’t there. His attention, at last, turned back to the phone conversation with his father. “No, I’m trying to get into my hotel room. Anyway, the reversals are melding. What do you think of that?” Not like he gave a crap in hell what the old man thought of it. He should have just said, How do you like them apples?

  “What!” This time it was Jordan, looking more awake in his eyes if not the rest of his appearance. “Who are you talking to?”

  “My father.” He said, and then into the phone. “No, I’m talking to one of the doctors here.”

  “You can’t talk to anyone about this!” Jordan shook his head, although he made no motion to grab the phone away from David.

  He just covered the mouthpiece. “Trust me, my old man will be too livid that I found it first to tell anyone what he knows. He’ll take it to the grave, and that ain’t that far away.”

  The look on Jordan’s face was the look of good little boys and girls who were not only taught to respect their elders, but actually did.

  A soft voice came from back in the room. “Jordan?” It was feminine and groggy with sleep and David smiled, making a fist for a mock punch on the arm. The good doc had gotten himself some Nevada ass. The only question was, did he have to pay for it?

  His father was speaking into the cell phone, the age in his voice telling of the distance the sound traveled, even though the phone itself told no such truths. “Yeah, Dad. I’ve got to go.” And with that he hung up on his father, the sole purpose for the call already achieved.

  With a smile, he turned to congratulate Jordan, but as he opened his mouth the voice came again. “Who is it?” And this time, as she came more awake, he recognized the cadence.

  Jillian.

  Oh well, she’d tire of Abellard soon enough, right? “By the way, your team showed up in their yellow suits about an hour ago. ‘Night.” He went down the hall enjoying the brief sounds of “oh shit!” and “the pager!”, before the door clicked closed on the cozy scene gone awry.

  Jordan was very afraid of the gnawing in his gut. His father had mentioned that Lindsey and Kelly were ill, but changed the topic as soon as he knew that Jordan had already been notified. It was Sunday again, and Jordan had heard the hiss of the waffle iron in the background of the call, making the Nevada heat all that much more unbearable.

  There were eight more prisoners sick this morning, even though they had removed everyone from the bubbles. Maybe they had just been in for too long. Maybe David’s numbers, which Jordan had leaned his head across the tapes to read, were indicating that this was another phase.

  A voice shouted from off to his right and Jordan began to jog to the zippered tent where the metallic voice was coming from. When he arrived, a yellow suit was standing over a prisoner, the man’s arm cuffed to the gurney he was on.

  The voice came again, filtered through a microphone inside the head piece and a polarizing layer of fear. “He’s down!”

  “Back off!” Jordan shoved the nurse aside, wishing he could claw the suit off of her and make her be human, make her participate in this. But he couldn’t and he knew he had no right. Even through the refraction of the plexi-paned face plate he could see her perturbed expression. But he didn’t care.

  His left hand grabbed for the wrist not cuffed to the bed, already feeling for a pulse, even as his right hand grabbed the stethoscope from around his neck and with nimble fingers spread the earpieces, popping them into his ears. By the time he had the bell of the scope on the prisoner’s slow moving chest, he had found the pulse, and was counting it. Although far too slowly. In another second he had ascertained that the man’s breath sounds were as weak as his pulse and he was slipping.

  Another practiced action put the stethoscope back where it had begun, draped around his neck, and brought the flashlight from his right pocket. A quick move had the light snapped on and shining into dull green eyes held open only by his own fingers.

  He sighed, knowing that it was too late. But he practiced his Jillian maneuver and shoved it to the furthest corner of his mind swearing it wouldn’t bother him, and dove back into the task at hand.

  He turned to check the other two sleeping patients in this tent, realizing that they, too, were barely responsive. They weren’t categorized as comatose yet, but their pupils were slow to respond to his flashlight, their respirations depressed, their pulses slower, indicating a heart that was overburdened and giving up. Son of a bitch.

  Ducking through the zippered entrance, opposite the one the nurse had left through, Jordan walked out away from the soft burr of the fans and into the light, feeling the heat start to suck at him again. But he gathered his voice and called for portable ventilators and oxygen tubing.

  In just a few minutes mechanics showed, his voice having carried easily in the still desert air, unencumbered by the electronics of a microphone. But they carried none of the equipment that was their job. “We got almost nothing.”

  “You’re kidding.” Jordan snapped, biting back the words that in a few weeks it might be their families that would need the ventilators and tubing. “I don’t care what you have to do. There has to be a hospital or a company with the machinery. Find it. Appropriate it if you have to.”

  The two men managed to produce one ventilator, and within five minutes their big truck rolled out of the prison yard and cleared the gates without much in the way of a security check, kicking up desert dust on the way into town.

  The nurse was called back to help hook up the slowly sinking pa
tient to the last ventilator. All three of the men in the tent got oxygen tubing and prongs delivering the last tanks of O2 to their lungs. They worked quickly and efficiently, without speaking. You didn’t get to be on a CDCP field team without knowing your stuff. And you certainly didn’t get snapped at by the doctor and not get pissed at him.

  Jordan wanted to conjure up some regret. But he was flat out.

  Jillian held the page out to Jordan. Her back ached and her shoulders couldn’t bear the weight of the world any more. Jordan didn’t reach out to take it, just gave a little shake of his head as he carelessly peeled first his green cotton scrubs top, then the t-shirt underneath. For a moment her mother’s voice popped into her head, warning her about casualness and sex. Somewhere inside Jillian laughed. She was a physician, and a naked male form was nothing other than a body, especially when she could see the bone deep weariness from the outside. Jordan tossed the shirts aside and met her eyes, a motion without words to read the fax page to him.

  But Jillian shook her head. She was ready to cry, and losing ground every day. Only David seemed to still be enjoying plowing headlong into whatever hell awaited them. In the half hour she had napped while Jordan added to the charts in the room next door, she had been plagued and finally jolted awake in a cold sweat by the nightmares that found her whenever she slept alone.

  Yet right now she wasn’t asleep. And this nightmare in print wouldn’t give up. But Jordan would have to read this with his own two eyes, and those eyes peered at her from above dark smudges, read her face, and saw her refusal with the stiffening of her arm again motioning the paper to him before finally he took it.

  Jillian followed where his vision tracked on the page, saw his features contract on the first few smeared words from the archaic fax machine. Then she saw him twist, and she knew. His gaze didn’t trace the rest of the paper, he just looked up, piercing her with his eyes.