Germ

by Robert Liparulo

  He scampered away from the hole on all fours, then rolled onto his back, breathing hard. Trees converged high above, forming a leafy canopy through which moonlight seeped like rain. Those tall leaves danced on a breeze that Allen couldn’t feel. Beyond them, faint wisps of clouds drifted by, flush with lunar radiance. Between the canopy and loamy ground, a fine mist hovered, stirring faintly.

  He remembered that the cemetery occupied a patch of land where the slope leveled before dropping off again. It was a disrupted place. Time had seen the surface either collapse in on rotted caskets or swell into great mounds, pushed by unknown forces from below. The result was land as wavy as windblown seas. The wood itself contributed to the sense of fracture. It had moved in to reclaim its estate, sending dense bushes in to obscure toppled headstones, pencil-thin pines to impale graves like vampire stakes, gnarled roots to reach up through the ground like hands of the dead pleading for release from this distressed place.

  Resting now, Allen began to feel every bruise, every cut, every abrasion on his body. His muscles hurt and his lungs burned. Acid churned in his stomach. He couldn’t stay there; he had to find help. He listened for the snap of a twig, the scuff of a shoe. He rose to a sitting position and started to tuck his legs under him. If he stood slowly and walked carefully, he might be able to quietly weave his way down the mountain …

  He stopped.

  The hazy red beam of a laser panned the night air on a plane three feet above his head and stopped on the trunk of a tree six feet away, a burning red dot as vicious as a demon’s eye.

  twenty-two

  Julia woke, still sitting on the bed, her back against the wall. She moved her head, feeling her neck tendons stretch and pop. She wiped drool off her chin. Most likely she had been snoring as well. Drooling and snoring—the only time she did either was when she was exhausted. This time it wasn’t physical but mental and emotional exhaustion she had succumbed to.

  She looked at the clock. It was late, but she needed to check on her mother. If she was having a bad day, she may not have moved from her bed, which meant no food, no drink, no meds. She kept a bedpan handy, but she hated to use it, and having it sit there dirty was to Mae Matheson akin to messing on the carpet.

  Julia rolled off the bed, fished an anonymous calling card out of the Wal-Mart bag, and left the room. She found a phone booth at a gas station a mile from the motel; calling home, she would be more vulnerable to a trace than if she were to call nearly any other number. Mae answered on the fifth ring, sounding groggy.

  “Hi. Are you okay?”

  “Julia? I didn’t hear from you. Where are you?”

  “Mom …” Her voice cracked. Tears marshaled in her eyes.

  Not now. Mom first.

  “Have you been up? How are you feeling?”

  “Oh yes, I’m fine. I made a sandwich and watched American Idol. I’m telling you, if that Jesse wins, I’ll be so angry. He can’t carry a tune in a suitcase …”

  Julia listened, smiling sadly. She could tell her mother was truly feeling okay—not good, but okay—and not just saying it, which she sometimes did even on the worst of days. She didn’t want Julia changing her life to accommodate her illness—at least not more than she already had. But Julia suspected her denials had more to do with kidding herself that she wasn’t as ill as she was.

  “Mom, I gotta go. I won’t be home tonight—something came up.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  No, you don’t, but what you’re thinking is better than the truth.

  “Do you want me to call Homecare?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m fine.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow, then. You know the number if you need help?”

  “I do, but I won’t.” Being stubborn now.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “Love you, honey.”

  She cradled the receiver and held on to it. She wished things were different. But who didn’t? She sniffed, ran the back of her hand over her eyes, got in the car.

  Before she arrived back at the motel, again her mind started grinding through the day’s events, transcribing conversations, forming questions, following leads. She felt overwhelmed by the number of fragments of information to sift through. Her experience had taught her that while all the clues available might not lead to a solution, they always led to another clue. Eventually the solution presented itself. The next clue was somewhere among the known facts; she simply had to find it. She was overlooking something.

  Goody said Vero was talking about a virus …

  Looking, thinking, trying to understand …

  twenty-three

  The glowing red dot of the laser lingered on the tree an instant, then slid off and continued its sweep over the cemetery.

  Allen hunched down on folded legs beside a massive bush, majestically draped in silky leaves and bejeweled in fat berries. Slowly he turned to look in the direction of the laser’s origin. The bush blocked his view of the assailant’s passage—and concealed him from his pursuer.

  He heard the soft crunching of footfalls moving leftward as he looked up the hill. The assailant was coming down at an angle that allowed a controlled descent, not on the steep course Allen had barreled down. Most likely he was tacking, trying to stay as true to Allen’s course as possible. Then he came into view on the left side of the bush, sixty feet away. A dark figure that seemed too angular and moved too fluidly to be human. No matter where he walked, he remained a shadow, black upon black. Only the bright red point of the pistol’s laser sight at the tip of his right arm broke the inky monotone of the night.

  The figure turned and strode toward him, rising and falling with the crests and depressions of the insane landscape. Mist swirled in his wake, spiking upward, then settling like flames.

  Allen nearly bolted for the edge of the cemetery, where the hill continued its descent back to civilization. For a quarter of a second his muscles contracted, ready to spring. Instead, he inched under the bush, sliding his legs along the ground to avoid jiggling the leaves. He bent himself into a crescent and pushed his torso under the perimeter of the plant, using his hand to gently push the leaves over his hip and shoulder.

  The assailant stopped ten feet from him, miraculously still in deep shadow. His body faced the shrub under which Allen shivered, but his head was rotating back and forth, scanning. Allen held his breath, hoping his body didn’t scream for oxygen too soon, as it had in the hall outside his bedroom. The fierce shadow figure stood there, emitting a sound Allen couldn’t place—

  Chick-chu, chick-chu, chick-chu …

  —and scanning, listening … twenty seconds … thirty …

  Allen’s chest hitched as his lungs started to protest.

  … forty …

  The man spun ninety degrees and strode toward the edge of the cemetery.

  Gasping air as quietly as possible, it came to Allen that it was frustration, not discovery, that had motivated his pursuer’s aggressive approach toward the shrub. The man had realized that his prey could be anywhere in the woods, or even out of them by now.

  Allen lifted a branch out of his way and parted his knees slightly so he was looking through them at the assailant. A black shadow against the darkness of the nocturnal woods. It was as though he had brought the shadows with him, had cloaked himself in a darkness that no light could penetrate. Yet the figure’s physique was obvious. Muscular arms, legs, chest. Tall. Powerful.

  From the way the man’s head was moving, Allen guessed that he was scanning the woods below the cemetery. Then the figure turned around.

  Allen heard a soft metallic click, and the laser flicked out. The figure marched toward him again, taking wide strides that quickly closed the distance between them. He stomped right past Allen, hit the uphill edge of the cemetery, and began the ascent toward the house without slowing. Thirty seconds later, the woods consumed the sound of his passage.

  Fear kept Allen from moving for a long time. Finally he slid out from under the bush and stood.
He looked uphill and saw nothing but black trees, bushes, leaves, and vines advancing toward his house, disappearing into the night. He stared at individual shadows, trying to find one that was man-shaped, hoping he wouldn’t. Shades shifted subtly, by wind, not man. When his unblinking eyes began to tear, he lowered his head, cupping his face in both hands.

  His body ached with a hundred cuts and bruises. His heart hurt from riding so high in his throat. The strong stench of his own perspiration was nauseating. His mind threatened to fold into itself.

  Then he was over it.

  He lifted his head toward the leaf-obstructed sky, inhaled deeply, and resolved to fight, to win, to live. He ran his palm over his side, brushing off dirt and leaves and little twigs that had embedded themselves into his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging debris. The act of standing and squaring his shoulders made him feel less like a kicked dog. He made his way to the other side of the cemetery, then stepped down the slope to begin the trek off this mountain. He picked up speed as he descended, crashing through branches and bushes.

  By the time he was halfway down, a plan had begun to form. When he saw the first glimmer of electric lights through the trees, he knew what he was going to do.

  twenty-four

  “Evidence!”

  Julia said it out loud to the empty motel room.

  If someone wanted to warn the CDC about an impeding bio-attack, wouldn’t he bring some kind of evidence to prove he wasn’t a nut?

  She thought back to her last conversation with Goody. He’d reminded her that their communication was not secure. He’d said he was injured. She’d warned him of the compromised SATD signal. He’d said he’d turned off the tracking device. Wait. First he had said he was in a phone booth. But why would he have said that? She’d thought he was reiterating the unsecured status of the line, but it wasn’t like Goody to state the obvious. And it had come at an odd time, after she informed him of the SATD problem. He’d told her to hold on, had left her hanging for half a minute, then came back with that cryptic message about the phone booth.

  That was it! It was cryptic.

  I’m in a phone booth.

  No. I’m in the phone booth. Okay. That phone booth.

  Then he had said it again. Emphasizing the sentence’s importance? Yes, but something else … something …

  He had not repeated the first sentence verbatim. No I’m the second time …

  I’m in the phone booth. In the phone booth.

  He’d meant “It—the evidence—is in the phone booth, the one you will know about if I don’t make it back to retrieve the evidence myself.”

  That had to be what Goody wanted to say. She knew how his mind worked. Everything fit. Some kind of evidence was in that phone booth, and she was going to get it—as Goody had intended her to— right now. She dashed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Atropos fumed. He stood in a thick copse outside Parker’s

  house and watched two cops pound on the door. The cruiser had been pulling into the drive as he came around the house after coming back up the hill, where he’d lost his quarry. He had ducked into the trees just as the headlamps swung past his position. After a long moment, they tried the knob. One cop, a woman, stepped off the tiled stoop and shined a beam around the grounds. It panned over Atropos’s hiding place. He didn’t budge. The other officer joined her. They surveyed the home’s huge facade, whispering. Another flashlight snapped on. The two moved away from Atropos’s position and rounded the far corner, sweeping their lights across windows, bushes, the yard.

  Parker had reacted much more quickly than he’d expected. The man’s survival instinct was calibrated high. Atropos liked that, the challenge of it.

  He looked down at the pistol in his left hand and unscrewed the silencer from the gun’s barrel. The sound-suppressing coils inside had absorbed too many shots already to remain effective. He dropped it on the ground, pulled another one from his jacket pocket, and attached it. Then he tucked the massive gun into a custom nylon holster under his left arm, where he hoped it would stay. Perhaps now that Parker had escaped, he still had a chance to use the gauntlet on him.

  He flexed his gauntleted fist. Chick-chu, chick-chu.

  He looked at his watch, then back up at the house. Parker was long gone, at least for now. But a guy like that, living in a place like this by himself—he loved his stuff. He’d be back, probably later tonight. Atropos would be waiting.

  For now, he had another target to pursue. No current location, but he had some ideas, some places to check.

  Moving out into the yard, he turned to make sure the police officers hadn’t reconsidered their plan to circumnavigate Parker’s residence. A faint glow of flashlights played against the trees on the far side of the house, growing fainter, moving away. He walked along the hedge, following the drive back to the street, where he’d stowed his rental between other cars a few blocks away.

  twenty-five

  “Hello?”

  “This is the BellSouth automated operator. Will you accept a collect call from—”

  “It’s Allen! Pick up!”

  “Press 1 to accept. Press 2 to deny.”

  “Hello?”

  “Press 1 to accept. Press 2—connecting now.”

  “Stephen! It’s Allen … Hello? Stephen?”

  “I’m here. Just a little surprised.”

  “It’s that kind of night. I need you to—”

  “Where are you? Why’d you call collect?”

  “I’m in town, but I don’t have any money.”

  “That’s a first.”

  “Listen—”

  “Allen. Is this about Mom and Dad? Dad? Is he okay, man?”

  “Dad’s fine. Mom’s fine. Everybody in the whole world is fine except me. Just shut up a second and listen, will you?”

  “That’s the Allen I know. Go ahead.”

  “I need you to come get me. Right away.”

  “You need me? Never thought I’d hear that. Are you hurt? You sound—”

  “Whoa! You’re moving your mouth again … Sorry. Look, physically, I’ve suffered a few lacerations, bruises, but I’m not seriously injured … yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “I’ll explain later. You need to come get me right now. This very minute. Pick me up at the Texaco at the corner of McCallie and Dodds. You have a running car, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Allen. I have managed to purchase a car and actually keep it running.”

  “What kind?”

  “What?”

  “What kind of car!”

  “A Vega. Seventy-four. Hope it’s good enough for you.”

  “What color?”

  “Maroon … and orange and gray. The passenger-side door is blue. The hood’s kinda reddish, pinkish—”

  “Corner of McCallie and Dodds.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And, Stephen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bring some extra clothes. You know, shirt, slacks, shoes. Some underpants.”

  “This I gotta see.”

  Stephen Parker cradled the phone slowly. Spontaneity was out of character for his brother. So what was this? Had he been robbed? Carjacked, more likely these days. But why not call the cops? Or one of his friends? Stephen hadn’t been one of them for years.

  He probably had been with someone he shouldn’t have—the wife of a colleague maybe—and had to keep her involvement quiet. Or the husband had done the damage, and now all Allen wanted was for the situation to go away.

  He sat on the edge of his rumpled bed and pulled on an equally rumpled flannel shirt.

  He stood and walked into the two-room cabin’s main living area, dropped his hulking weight into a nappy old chair, and grabbed his well-worn cowboy boots. Physically, Stephen was more bear than man: His bones were big and broad, arranged to a height of six foot five—all of it wrapped in thick bands of muscle. His body was nearly covered with a dark pelt of thick, curly hair; it exploded from hi
s face and hung like an animal that had latched on and died. His face, as much as it showed, was bearish, too, with thick features and kind, heavily lidded eyes.

  He moved into the area of his home that served as a kitchen, duly designated by the floor’s pocked and stained linoleum; no covering at all protected the rest of the cabin’s plywood floors from the feet that trod on it, or in turn protected the feet from it. From the cupboard under the sink he withdrew a paper grocery sack. In the bedroom again, he packed the bag with clothes and rolled the top closed.

  He snatched a ring of keys from a nail by the front entrance and vent out, pulling the door shut but not locking it. He bounded over the crumbling wood step that he kept meaning to repair.

  Heading to his car parked between the narrow space between the small church he led and his cabin, his thoughts returned to his brother. They hadn’t even spoken in eight, nine months. They had nothing in common except their parents.

  Allen thought Stephen had betrayed the family name by rejecting a career in medicine. Following the path forged by their father and grandfather was not only a privilege; it was expected.

  Oh well, Stephen thought for the thousandth time. He’d tried being philosophical with his family, then pragmatic and pleading; in one end, it always came down to disappointed resignation: Oh well.

  He reached the car door and stopped, throwing his big, hairy head rack to look toward the sky. “Lord,” he said out loud, “whatever’s happening with Allen, let me do right by him. And more important, let me do right by You. I thank You, Lord, for giving me this chance.”

  He folded his body into the small seat of the Vega. He used it mostly to pick up supplies in town and visit parishioners; otherwise, he didn’t stray too far from the church. The starter chattered and whined before finally turning over and spurring the engine into action. A cloud of black smoke erupted from the tailpipe and engulfed the vehicle. Stephen punched the accelerator to escape the fumes, spewing sand and pebbles back at the smoky beast as it disappeared into the woods along the thin dirt drive.