by Steve Alten
The CO slammed the receiver down. “Ker… rist.”
The MP hesitated. “Excuse me, sir. I brought Captain Kantor as ordered.”
The big man looked up. “Who?”
“David Kantor, sir. We flew him in from New Jersey. Dr. Nelson’s patient—”
“The medic, right… sorry.” The CO turned to David. “Jay Zwawa, welcome to purgatory. Did Colonel Hamilton brief you?”
“No, sir. Only to say my services were needed for something special.”
“If by ‘special’ you mean saving the lives of our president and several hundred diplomats while preventing a global pandemic, then yeah, I’d say this was special.” Zwawa dismissed the MP, then handed David a military file. “The man we’re after managed to acquire the only known vaccine to a biological weapon that’s already infected half the population of Manhattan, killing off a good four hundred thousand by our latest estimates. Turns out the most wanted man in the world is a friend of yours.”
David opened the file and stared at a photo taken three years earlier at a security checkpoint in Iraq’s American-controlled Green Zone. “Shep? You’re after Shep?”
Zwawa signaled to another MP, who escorted a petite brunette across the room, her torso swallowed by an Army parka. “Dr. Leigh Nelson, Dr. David Kantor. Tell Kantor about your patient.”
“Seven hours ago, Patrick escaped an unnecessarily violent military invasion of the VA hospital in Manhattan aboard a medevac chopper. He crash-landed with a box of plague vaccine in Inwood Hill Park. I strongly believe he’s making his way south through Manhattan, heading for the Battery.”
“Why? What’s in the Battery?”
“His wife and daughter.”
David laid the file down on the table, his mind racing. “Shep told you his family was in the Battery?”
“Actually, no. I managed to track them down earlier in the day.”
“We’re sending in an extraction team, Kantor, only we can’t take a chance that your pal won’t flip out and destroy the vaccine. Captain, are you listening?”
David looked up, weary. “You want me to join your extraction team to hunt down Shep.”
“Basically, yes.”
“And what if his wife and daughter are no longer in Manhattan? What if they’ve already left the city?”
“He thinks she’s in the Battery, that’s all that counts. We know he attempted to contact her earlier today. It’s the vaccine we’re after, not your friend.”
David walked around the table to the southern tip of the map, glancing down at Battery Park City. It’s close to Gavi’s school, no more than a few miles. Don’t appear too anxious. Force him to strike a deal.
“One condition… this is it for me. No more deployments, no more stopgaps or reservist action. I want signed discharge papers now, or I’m not going anywhere.”
“Done. Dr. Nelson, why don’t you grab our boy here a couple of sandwiches from the mess tent while we fit him for body armor.”
Financial District, Manhattan
11:22 P.M.
It began with a headache, a dull throb, followed by an annoying purple blind spot. The chills came next, a prelude to the fever. The lump removed any lingering doubts — a small reddish welt about the size of a quarter, growing over a gland, perhaps the neck or armpit, perhaps the groin. By hour two the welt became an annoying purple grape, swelling with blood and pus. The fever raged on, the eyes became glassy. The sweat was unusually thick, laced with a distinct stench. The complexion paled as the buboes blackened, ripening to the size of a small onion, unleashing the Black Death into the bloodstream.
Nausea took over. A gag reflex ignited the vomit — traces of the victim’s final meal laced with blood. The teeth and lips were stained, but vanity meant nothing when everything hurt. The pain was bone-deep. The muscles ached. Internal organs were failing. Hour four arrived, and there was no relief in sight… except death.
The sensation originated in the toes and feet as an icy chill. The numbness rose slowly up the legs, then into the groin. The intestines shut down. The sphincter unclenched, releasing the bowels — one last indignity of the human condition. A reflexive twinge disrupted the victim’s final breath as Death’s cold hand claimed the heart.
The soul abandoned the body. It lingered, but only briefly, drawn to the Light and its warm, soothing sanctuary.
The plague, too, had abandoned the body, its DNA instructing it to seek another victim. It was all too easy. A touch of sweat, an unavoidable sneeze or cough, a noxious breath inhaled, a bloody towel tossed in the garbage. Care was a fleeting concern when one was overcome by grief. Isolation was impossible in a two-bedroom condo in a ten-story high-rise.
Horror was the realization that set in after the first family member passed, leaving behind a fleshy sack of infection that had to be disposed of, coldly and immediately.
A closet? The stench was too overwhelming. The hallway? What would the neighbors say?
Scythe in Manhattan was the Titanic sinking without a solitary lifeboat. There were no miracles to be had, only a steady dose of reality: Death was advancing—
— and there was no escape.
* * *
Shelby Morrison sat on the living-room floor nursing her fourth beer, staring at the scented candle burning on the coffee table. Her girlfriend’s uncle was seated by the living-room window. Rich Goodman taught high-school chemistry. His wife, Laurie, was in the master bedroom with their two young children.
Jamie Rumson was in the guest room. Moaning and retching.
There was no doubt in Rich Goodman’s mind that his niece was dying. The question that burned like a hot cinder in his brain was how many members of his family would she take with her.
The answer was all of them… unless he acted coldly and decisively. And that was the dilemma, for what was the cost of survival? My soul… to save my family. Do it now before the debate is moot… the girlfriend first.
Rich Goodman picked up the brass candlestick, blew out the candle—
— and whacked Shelby Morrison hard on the back of her head. The blow fractured her skull with a gut-wrenching craaack. The thirteen-year-old’s forehead struck the kitchen table as it followed the body’s deadweight onto the floor. Dark blood pooled like pancake syrup along the linoleum, a bone fragment causing the wound to spurt like a whale’s blowhole, splattering Goodman’s left cheek and sweater.
Goodman tore the garment from his body and doused his face with dishwasher liquid and water. He stepped over the girl to access the kitchen window. For an infuriating minute and a half he struggled to release the double catch before he worked each prong with two hands and managed to fling the frost-covered window open.
An arctic wind whipped through the apartment, blowing out the candles.
Goodman dragged Shelby’s body off the floor, blood dripping everywhere. Making haste, he half tossed, half shoved her corpse headfirst out the window, her midsection balancing precariously over the ledge. Grabbing her ankles, he coldly flipped the girl out the open apartment window.
Ten floors. Thirty-two feet per second.
The body struck the sidewalk with a pulse-jumping thud.
Goodman backed away, trembling yet somehow feeling a sense of accomplishment. His shoes slip-slid in blood as his criminal mind, entering its adolescence, raced to catch up with the deed. Clean the blood first! No, no… do that after you toss Jamie. Then clean, bleach, and fumigate. Gloves… you’ll need gloves and a mask.
Goodman rummaged beneath the kitchen sink until he located a pair of women’s rubber gloves and a small stack of cloth filter masks last used when he painted the kitchen six years ago. Dousing the gloves in bleach, he headed for the guest room—
— ignoring the queasiness building in his gut and the fever rising in his bloodstream.
Washington Heights, Manhattan
12:03 A.M.
They had followed Riverside Drive for several miles, their silence heavy against the backdrop of wails and agonizin
g screams hurled into the night from the neighborhoods to the east.
The cacophony of human suffering unnerved Patrick. Shards of memory flashed across his mind’s eye, each image harnessed to a specific emotion that had defined the moment.
Purgatory at Fort Drum. Endless training. Burning hatred. Like sulfur.
Deployment. Transport plane. Kuwait’s desert heat. Annoyance as they were herded into tents like sheep.
First night. Air-raid sirens. Scuds. Fumbling with his gas mask. Two more alerts. No sleep, no food, just liquids. Body armor and mask and hundred-degree heat. Combat is a terminal sauna. Confusion as his body had shut down. Anxiety as the medics tore off his flak jacket to administer fluids.
Baghdad. The sound of air being torn as an AK-47 round zips close by. Welcome to the show, rookie. Bone-rattling 155mm shells. Ears ringing. Nostrils burning from white phosphorous and oil.
Blood flows from an injured comrade. He dies as Shep fumbles to wrap the gushing mortal chest wound in gauze. An Iraqi mother clutches her armless infant… a husband his butchered spouse… a child her lifeless mother. This is the war the politician can never allow his fellow countrymen to see, a reality that energizes demonstrations and forges peace.
For the rookie soldier, combat replaces hatred with doubt, patriotism with questions.
Home is a million miles away, combat an island of loneliness and fear and confusion — confusion over right versus wrong, good versus evil, morality redefining itself with every passing moment. Eventually the rules simplify — to get home you have to survive.
To survive, you have to kill.
The village is on the Euphrates River, the locals rural, most having never seen an American before. The man and his son are rushing toward Patrick, their intent as alien as the Farsi phrases they are shouting from their mouths. He motions for them to stop, but his mangled translations are ignored. The distance is closing, the threat of a hidden explosive imminent as he enters their kill zone.
His weapon spits out a round of hot lead. The father goes down.
The son, all of nine, kneels by his murdered parent in disbelief, reality slowly bleeding into cognizance… churning into rage. The Iraqi youth sprints toward the invader who has stolen his father and perhaps the rest of his family, all in the name of a cause he cannot possibly fathom.
Life is conceived in an instant and ends in an instant. The boy’s proximity defines him as a threat. The rules of survival are simple.
Patrick shoots the boy, reuniting him with his father.
Time passes in a vacuum. It is like that for animals. Shep has devolved into a subhuman grunt, a tool of the military establishment, intended to be used but not interviewed by the press, seen but never given a voice. Day becomes night, the dreams of a better life gradually fading into nightmares that force accountability of the soul. The mind is placed on life support, just as the military always intended. Creativity is vanquished, along with the memory of his wife’s face and the child he’ll never hold again in his arms — a relationship stunted in its infancy.
The geography changes. The first tour is over. Two weeks in detox, pretending to be Patrick Shepherd, and now he’s back in Boston—
— alone.
The town house is cold and empty. His wife and daughter are long gone. There is no note, but the soldier already knows the story: The misery he has sown he must now reap.
Reality comes crashing in, the pain ripping apart his heart. Somewhere the souls of a hundred thousand dead Iraqis are smiling as the real torture begins.
He self-medicates. His friends come by, but the Patrick Shepherd they once knew is dead. The Red Sox inquire, but the image of the nine-year-old boy intervenes. He sells the house and moves into a bad neighborhood, just to be left alone.
Uncle Sam finds him eight months later. He is missed in Hell.
Deployment number two begins…
* * *
“Patrick, open your eyes! Patrick, look at me… can you hear me?”
“Virgil?”
“You went into a stupor. You were hallucinating again, weren’t you?”
Hot tears poured from his eyes.
“Patrick?”
“I can’t… sorry. Let’s just… let’s keep moving.”
“Son, you can’t run away from your own head.”
“No! You don’t talk about this, you just… you deal. You just deal with it and move on.”
“Only you haven’t moved on. Your family’s moved on, but not you.”
Ignoring the old man, Shep continued walking south on Riverside Drive.
“Stop playing the victim, Patrick. Victims are like worms, they prefer to live out their lives under a rock. It’s easier in the darkness.”
“Maybe the darkness is what I deserve.”
“Spoken like a true victim.”
“Leave me alone, shrink.”
“If that’s what you wish, we can part ways here. Your soul mate was convinced you still had something positive to offer the world. I guess she was wrong.”
The words cut deep. “She really said that?”
“It’s the only reason I’m here.”
Shep turned to face the old man, his vision blurred by the tears. “I killed a child. He was as close to me as I am to you, and I shot him… right after I shot his father.” Shep wiped snot from his watering nostrils. “I’m not a victim, I’m a murderer. How do I cleanse that from my soul?”
“You begin by taking responsibility for your actions.”
“Are you deaf, old man? Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“What I heard was a confession. Guilt and self-loathing will not help you, son. If you really want to change, if you want to bring the Light back into your life, then you have to take responsibility for your actions.”
“How? By going to confession for the rest of my days? By talking to a shrink?”
“No. You take responsibility, not by exiling yourself in pain but by transforming from being the effect to the cause, by making a positive difference in other people’s lives. Within you lies the force of giving, sharing, loving, caring, being generous. No matter what you’ve done, there is still good inside you. ”
“You don’t get it. Making a difference is why I enlisted. I sacrificed everything… my family, my career, fame and fortune, all to right a wrong… to protect my country!”
“A righteous man, surrounded by chaos, corrupted by his environment.”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps you should have built an ark?”
“Yes. Wait… what? Did you say an ark?”
“You’re not familiar with the story of Noah? Noah was a righteous man born during a time of great corruption, only he had to confront difficult obstacles in his life, both in his heart and in the real world. Like you, Noah was far from perfect, but he lived within a world so completely corrupted by avarice — the excessive desire for wealth — that he stood out from all the others. The Book of Genesis calls these people the Nephilim, the fallen angels, men of renown. Giants. Decode the passage, and we gain a clearer picture. To the common man they were giants, not in their physical size but in their influence. They were the equivalent of the power brokers who have corrupted Wall Street and Washington, using fear and warfare to make themselves even richer. That they considered themselves to be on a higher plane of existence defined their arrogance, and by their rule man was corrupted, all to appease their unquenchable thirst for power and possessions. The physical world became a very dark place, void of the Creator’s Light. And so the Creator sought out the brightest light — Noah — warning him that He would wipe man from the face of the Earth unless things changed. Noah attempted to warn the people, but they refused to listen. And so the Creator instructed him to build an ark so he might save his family and repopulate the world with a new generation who would seek fulfillment through the Light… through the act of treating one another with kindness the way God had intended.”
“It’s a nice story, and you spin it like a
true psychiatrist, but come on… animals lining up in pairs. A flood that covered the world? I’ve never taken any of those Bible stories literally.”
“The Bible stories were never meant to be taken literally. The entire Old Testament is encrypted, each Aramaic passage revealing a vital truth about man’s existence, the ancient wisdom intended to instruct man on how to remove chaos through transformation by reconnecting with the endless Light of the Creator.”
“How come I never heard of this ancient wisdom?”
“It remained hidden for most of the last four thousand years. Only now, as we approach the End of Days, has the knowledge become available to everyone.”
“And the story of Noah… what’s the hidden meaning there?”
“We could spend weeks on the subject, so I’ll give you the broad strokes that relate to your particular situation. According to the encrypted wisdom, every person who comes into our lives represents an opportunity for growth, salvation, and fulfillment. Noah built the ark as the Creator commanded, but he did so seeking revenge against those who had wronged him. As such, he never attempted to convince God to allow him to save anyone besides his own family. Building the ark was a test of transformation, and Noah failed miserably, accepting the elimination of the world’s populace, refusing to offer the fallen ones an opportunity at redemption.
“The story of Noah happened on two levels. In the Malchut, an Aramaic term that refers to our physical world, there was an actual cataclysm that wiped out the populace. On a spiritual level, Noah’s entering the ark represented the Light of the upper worlds entering the physical universe, the positive energy destroying the negative energy.”
