by Steve Alten
Patrick closed his eyes, hugging the book to his chest. “Beatrice. My wife’s name is Beatrice.”
Oval Office, White House
Washington, DC
President Eric Kogelo looked up from his desk as one of his senior advisors entered the Oval Office for their scheduled meeting. “Have a seat, I’ll be right with you.” Kogelo continued multitasking, listening to his chief of staff on the telephone while he text messaged the first lady.
The older man with the silky white hair and upturned eyes glanced around the Oval Office, concealing his contempt.
The seat of power. Office of the most powerful man on the planet. And the public still believed it. America was like a chessboard, the president its king, a mere figurehead, capable of incremental moves barely greater than a pawn. No, the real power was not the pieces on the chessboard, it was the unseen players moving the pieces. The CIA maintained editorial influence over every major network, radio station, and print medium in the country. The insurance and pharmaceutical companies ran the medical industry while Big Oil monopolized the energy sector. But it was the military-industrial complex that ran the world, a dark queen whose tentacles reached into almost every politician’s pocketbook and across Wall Street, pulling the purse strings that instigated revolutions, terrorist acts, and ultimately started wars.
He glanced across the room at the oil painting of JFK. Eisenhower had warned Kennedy against the unchecked rise of the CIA and its military-industrial complex. JFK was determined to break up the intelligence agency and “scatter its pieces to the wind.” A month later, the president was assassinated, firmly establishing who was really in-charge. Democracy had run its course, freedom merely a convenient illusion, intended only to keep the masses in check.
President Kogelo placed his BlackBerry in his jacket pocket, turning his attention to his guest. “My apologies. Last-minute details before I leave for New York.”
“Any of these details concern me?”
Kogelo leaned back in his chair. “The secretary of defense will be resigning in three hours.”
“That’s official?”
“He left me no choice. The last thing I need now is a member of my administration tossing verbal grenades at the negotiation table.”
“For what it’s worth, his remarks last week were justified. The Russians would not have sold Tehran ICBMs without China’s approval.”
“Maybe so. But this fire needs to be put out, not doused with gasoline.”
“You are offering me the position?”
“You’ve got the experience, plus you have allies on both sides of the aisle. With everything that’s going on in the Persian Gulf, we could use a quick confirmation. What do you say?”
National Security Advisor Bertrand DeBorn offered a Cheshire cat smile. “Mr. President, it would be my honor.”
Hoboken, New Jersey
5:18 P.M.
“So Shepherd, did you know Hoboken was the site of the very first baseball game?”
Patrick focused on the Jackson Pollack-inspired motif of spaghetti on his dinner plate, still too unnerved by his surroundings to make eye contact with Leigh Nelson’s husband or her younger, less refined sister, Bridgett.
“Elysian Field, 1846. The Knickerbockers versus the New York Nine. We’ve always been big baseball fans. Bridgett loves baseball, don’t you, Bridge?”
“Hockey.” Bridgett Deem chased a mouthful of broccoli with what little remained of her third glass of wine. “At least I used to.” She turned to Patrick. “My ex… he used to get season tickets to the Rangers for me and my girlfriend. Later, I found out he only wanted me gone so he could schtup his secretary in our apartment while I was at the game.”
Leigh rolled her eyes. “Bridge, do we really have to go there?”
“That reminds me of a joke,” stampeded Doug, his segue accompanied by a boyish grin. “Shepherd, have you ever heard the one about the wife who was pissed off at her husband for not buying her a gift on her birthday? The husband says, ‘Why should I waste more money on you? Last year I bought you a grave site, and you still haven’t used it.”
Patrick coughed, concealing a smile.
Leigh punched her husband on the shoulder. “Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to lighten things up. Bridgett’s cool with it, aren’t you Bridge?”
“Sure, Doug. I already knew men were insensitive scumbags, thanks for the contribution.” She turned to Shep. “Barry used to tell me I was his soul mate. For a while, I actually believed him. Ten years, you think you know someone, but the moment your back is turned they run off—”
Patrick’s heart convulsed in his chest as if stabbed by a stiletto. His eyes squeezed shut.
The blood drained from Leigh’s face. “Bridgett, help me with the dishes.”
“I haven’t finished eating.”
His left arm announces its return. The limb bathed in lava. Flesh melts down his forearm. His fingers drop off, covered in acid. A rubber mallet pounds the back of his skull. His body spasms. Breathe, asshole!
The back door plowed open, unleashing the Nelson’s seven-year-old son, Parker, the boy’s presence diverting intrusive eyes from his internal struggle.
“Mommy, you’re home! I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. How was the science museum?”
“Good. Autumn got in trouble again.” The boy’s head swiveled to face the stranger. Striking blue eyes focused on Patrick’s empty left sleeve. “Mommy, where’s his arm?”
From the hot darkness behind his squeezed eyes amid the dripping flesh and clenching heart, a voice whispered desperately into Patrick’s brain. Get out!
“Honey, it’s all right. This is Patrick—”
“Bathroom!” He was on his feet so quickly it startled the boy. He hugged his mother.
His father pointed until he could find the words. “Hall. On the left.”
Patrick moved through purple spots of light in gelled air beneath muscles barely his to control. Half-blind, he entered the bathroom and sealed himself within the porcelain sanctuary. Blotches of perspiration had soaked his clothes. The pale man with the long, matted brown hair returned his distant glare in the mirror. Muted rants from the kitchen violated the small voice in his head as manic eyes searched for a taped note that was not there.
Thoughts pulled away to eavesdrop on the blathering Hispanic woman.
“Go on, Autumn! Tell your father what you did.”
“Leave me alone!”
“I will leave you alone if you ever run away from me like that again!”
“Sophia, please.”
The screaming child twisted free of the woman, knocking over Patrick’s plate of spaghetti. She evaded her father’s grasp and escaped down the hallway, screaming bloody murder as she stomped up the stairs to her room.
“Autumn, come back here! Doug?”
“Not me, Leigh. She needs her mother.”
“I cannot control her, Mrs. Nelson,” the au pair blustered. “She refuses to keep her seat belt buckled, she runs away when I speak to her. She is too hyper a child for someone my age to handle.”
“It’s getting late, I should probably go.” Bridgett squeezed her sister’s shoulder, suddenly grateful her marriage terminated without children. “Dinner was delicious, I’ll call you tomorrow.” She lowered her voice. “Did you want me, you know, to drop Patrick off at the hospital?”
“Patrick!” Leigh handed Parker to her husband and hustled down the hallway to the sealed bathroom door. “Shep, you okay?” No answer. Her heart skipped a beat. “Shep? Damn it, Shep, open the door!”
She twisted the knob. Surprised to find it unlocked, she stole a breath and pushed her way in, readying herself to scream CALL 9-1-1, all the while cursing her career choice and the self-indulgence and ignorance that has led to—
— empty.
She checked the window. Sealed and locked. He’s still in your home. Find him fast before…
&nb
sp; Exiting the bathroom, she took the stairs two at a time. Frantic, she searched Parker’s room, then her master bedroom and bath. She checked the walk-in closet. Under the king-size bed. Nothing but her daughter’s stuffed animal.
A kernel of thought blossomed into a parent’s worst nightmare. “Autumn…”
Mother bear raced across the hall into her cub’s bedroom. The Dora the Explorer lamp on the child’s desk illuminated the two inert figures entwined on the bed.
Doug joined her in silence.
Patrick’s head was propped by pillows. His eyes were closed. Curled up on the one-armed man’s chest was the Nelson’s daughter.
Two troubled souls. Comforted in sleep.
Frederick, Maryland
10:05 P.M.
The farmhouse sat on twelve acres in rural Frederick County. Built in 1887, the home was structurally sound, its former residents having buttressed the foundation, replaced the roof, and renovated the stone-face exterior. There still remained much work to be done — the rotting barn was an eyesore in desperate need of demolition — but the new owner, in her final trimester of pregnancy, has had little time for anything other than work and readying the nursery for her unborn child.
Mary Louise Klipot had purchased the home on a short sale when the bank had foreclosed on the previous owners. The location was ideal — isolated yet close to several shopping malls and only a twenty-minute drive to Fort Detrick.
Andrew Bradosky had moved in two weeks after proposing.
* * *
“…with Bertrand DeBorn accepting the responsibilities of acting secretary of defense on this, the eve of a global summit. Joining us now is FOX news political analyst, Evan Davidson. Evan, in your opinion, what impact will President Kogelo’s eleventh-hour decision to dismiss his secretary of defense have on tomorrow’s summit?”
Mary entered the living room from the kitchen, carrying a steaming mug of hot chocolate in each hand. She passed a cup to Andrew, who was kneeling by the fireplace, adding another log to the dying embers. “Darling, see if this is hot enough.”
He sipped several swallows of the hot beverage, wiping whipped cream from his upper lip. “Mmm, that’s good. Mary, can we finish our conversation?”
Mary half sat, half collapsed in the cushioned rocking chair, her lower back aching.
“I told you, Scythe should be ready by March, April the latest.”
“April?” Jabbing at the embers with a poker, Andrew ignited the log, then sat on the fireplace stoop facing her. “Mary, timing is everything. By April, we could be involved in a full-scale invasion. The last thing we want is the CIA deciding they can replace us—”
“Andy, in case you forgot, the baby’s due in a few weeks.”
“The doctor said January.”
“The doctor’s wrong. Besides, I’m taking off at least six months to nurse.”
“Six months? Mary, come on, the future of the free world’s at stake!”
“Don’t be such a drama queen. Anyway, I was just kidding. Scythe’s way ahead of schedule. Now finish your hot chocolate so you can rub my feet.”
“Geez, you had me scared.” Relieved, he drained the mug, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “But cereal… surreally… surr…” Andrew dropped to his knees, the numbness in his lips creeping up his legs. “Wha… huh—?”
“No worries, darling, the paralysis probably won’t affect your breathing… assuming I measured the dosage correctly. You did say you weighed 182? Oh, dear… I forgot about your asthma. Is it getting hard to breathe?”
Mary sipped her hot chocolate, wincing slightly as Andrew Bradosky’s forehead struck the maple wood floor.
PART 2
End of Days
Lost Diary: Guy de Chauliac
The following entry has been excerpted from a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written by surgeon Guy de Chauliac during the Great Plague: 1346–1348.
(translated from its original French)
Diary Entry: December 20, 1347
(recorded in Avignon, France)
Death advances upon the world.
For a year now, its shadow has moved west from China across the Asian continent. It has infiltrated Persia through the Mongolian trade routes and infected the Mediterranean seaports. Villagers fleeing the Great Mortality report tales of horror one-noxious breath and another is felled, one touch of infected blood and sickness takes an entire family to the grave. God’s wrath is nowhere and everywhere at once, and there seems no escape.
Word of a spreading sickness reached Europe after the Mongolian army lay siege on Caffa (translator’s note: Present-day Feodosiya, a Black Sea port in south Russia). The invaders must have brought the sickness with them, for on the dawn of victory they became so ill they were forced to retreat over the Eurasian steppe… but not before they poisoned Caffa with the remains of their dead, tossing the infected bodies over the city’s fortifications.
As the chief physician to Pope Clement VI, I have been tasked with tracking the plague’s advancement. Caffa is a major seaport. Based on our most recent reports, I have surmised that sometime in the late spring of this year, sailors infected with plague left Caffa aboard Genoese merchant ships, bound for the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. Mariners practice costeggiare, a method of sailing that keeps them in perpetual sight of the coastline. Stops would be frequent, allowing the sickness to spread from port to port. One of the infected Genoese ships apparently reached Constantinople sometime last summer. Like Caffa, the Great Mortality spread quickly through the city. A personal contact, a Venetian physician I trained with at the University of Bologna, sent word to the Holy See that the streets in Constantinople were littered with the dead and dying. His letter describes high fever, a coughing of blood, and a stench that reeks of death. Welts soon appear, red at first, then swelling to black, some as large as a ripe apple. With each new dawn, the physician found another dozen infected, by sunset he buried another family member or neighbor until the despair and fear became so overwhelming that he had to flee Constantinople altogether. His description of a surviving father being too afraid to bury his own child brought tears.
By late summer, the papacy learned that the pestilence had advanced as far south as Persia, Egypt, and the Levant, and as far north as Poland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, and Romania. While these reports cannot be verified, all of us live in fear of Death’s impending arrival.
On 14 November, the Pope summoned me to his chambers to inform me that plague had struck Sicily. The Holy See’s contact, a Franciscan friar named Michele da Piazza, claimed the sickness arrived on European shores a week after twelve Genoese galleys made port early in October. Belowdecks were found dozens of dead crewmen — all infected. Those still alive entered Messina, spreading the sickness to everyone they came in contact with before they, too, died. The friar reported black boils on the necks and groins of the inflicted, along with the coughing of blood and fever, usually followed by violent, incessant vomiting. Within days of being infected, every victim had died.
My own dread is compounded by anger. Despite the approaching Death, the Holy See remains more occupied by its ongoing feud with the King of England, who seeks to rule the Iberian Peninsula one French coastal city at a time; as well as Clement’s ongoing quarrel with Rome, from which the papacy was removed several Popes past.
It is inarguable that the greed of an elite few has kept Europe cast in decades of endless war. Corruption has taken the Church, and the people have lost trust. Bouts of famine continue to ravage the countryside, — a result of decades of failing crops due to incessantly harsh weather conditions that began when I was but a child.
Many say we are cursed, suffering God’s wrath. I say our corruption, greed, and hatred for our fellowman, spewed through religious dogma, has paved the way for our own self-destruction.
Decadence now rules the Palais des Papes, war the papal states. Roving bands of condottieri attack Europe’s villages, while the fortified cities have become cesspools
of neglect. Influenced by politics, the Holy See has ruled it a sin to bathe, its orthodoxy backed by a conservative medical faculty of Paris, their determination made not on scientific fact but by their desire to remain in conflict with the more liberal traditions of Rome and Greece, who consider personal hygiene a cardinal virtue.
There is nothing virtuous about living in Avignon, where the commoner shares a bedchamber with his livestock. Each day, animals are slaughtered in the public streets by butchers, the blood and feces left to feed the flies and rodents. Rats are everywhere, their scourge feasting in the filth of Avignon and Paris and every city under the influence of the Holy See, overwhelming the homes of peasants in the countryside.
It is amid this stench of corruption that the Black Death approaches our once-great city.
May God have mercy on our souls.
— Guigo
Editor’s Note:
Guy de Chauliac, also known as Guido de Cauliaco, was attending physician to five Popes during the late thirteenth century and is regarded as the most important surgical writer of the Middle Ages. His major work, Inventarium sive Chirurgia Magna (The Inventory of Medicine), remained the principal didactic text on surgery until the eighteenth century.
BIO-WARFARE PHASE I: INSEMINATION
“Well, I just got into town about an hour ago…
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light,
Or just another lost angel… city of night
City of night, city of night, city of night…”
— The Doors, “L.A. Woman”
December 20
New York City
8:19 A.M.
(23 hours, 44 minutes before the prophesied End of Days)
Manhattan: an island Mecca, surrounded by water.
The Harlem River rolled south past the Bronx, widening into the East River — whitecapped behind a fierce four-knot current. The Statue of Liberty beckoned to travelers across New York Harbor. Farther north, the waterway became the mighty Hudson, the river separating the Big Apple from the northeastern shoreline of New Jersey.
