by David Walton
“The president and his staff are all on board now, and the DEA, FBI, and CDC are starting to flood the affected areas. I’m just afraid it’s not going to be enough. I’ve been recommending he declare a state of emergency and deploy the National Guard, but no one’s willing to take that step yet.”
“It won’t take long. Once the CDC sees how fast this thing is spreading, they’ll want to shut down every road in the country.”
“I’m just afraid that by the time they do, it’ll be too late.”
By the time we reached the ER, Mei-lin was coughing violently and looked pale. The symptoms had come on quickly, but then she had probably breathed in enough spores to infect an army. Her lungs must be coated with them, each taking root and prompting a surge of immune response. It occurred to me that such a large exposure might very well kill her before the fungus could take hold. Her clothes were still wet from the sprinkler, and she shivered uncontrollably.
She used her access to walk straight past triage and into the back, where she found Lauren, a painfully thin, forty-something woman with dyed blond hair and a serious expression. Lauren took control, stripping away her wet clothes and getting her warm and dry. She started the antifungal IV Mei-lin had asked for, but drew the line on restraints.
“You don’t need to be tied down for a pulmonary mycosis,” Lauren said.
“I’ll explain everything,” Mei-lin said. “Just do it, please, before I change my mind.”
“Change your mind? You’re freaking me out, here, Mei. You’re not in any danger of—”
Mei-lin ignored her, using her right hand to strap her left to the rail. “Neil?” she said. “Please?”
“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” Lauren said. She tied the strap around Meilin’s other hand. “Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Ankles, too,” Mei-lin said.
When Lauren had reluctantly complied, Mei-lin gave her a quick summary of what she had inhaled and what the symptoms were likely to be.
“Give me a consent form,” she said. “I don’t want to be taken off of this until I’ve had a full course of treatment, no matter what I tell you, no matter how I beg or threaten to sue, you hear me? A full course.”
Lauren, still suspicious but rattled by her vehemence, agreed.
“Find someone who can study the spores we collected,” Mei-lin said to me. “The best option for ending this thing is to find a cure.”
“You should do it,” I said, but she dismissed me with an annoyed gesture.
“I’m compromised. I can’t study it; you could never believe what I told you. I can’t even advise you, because I might steer you wrong.”
“The antifungals,” I said, indicating the IV. “If they work, then you’ll be back on your feet . . .”
She shook her head. “The one constant with fungal infections is how easily they can come back. That’s why we tell people to take the medication for years. People think it’s gone because they’ve felt fine for months, and they stop taking the pills. Next thing you know, they’re back in the ER, and the infection’s twice as bad as it was the first time around.
“Fungus is remarkably similar to us, biologically—much more so than plants or bacteria. It makes them great sources for pharmaceuticals, but it also makes it hard to devise drugs to attack them without also attacking healthy human cells. Often, antifungals will simply halt the growth of the fungus, not eradicate it. Which is why it’s so easy for them to come back.”
She paused for a fit of coughing. When she caught her breath again, there were tears in her eyes. “You can’t trust me anymore,” she said. “Yes, I hope this course of treatment will cure me. Yes, I hope I’ll be up and about in a few days and in full control of my own mind. But even if I am, you won’t know for sure. The best thing you can do for me is to find someone who can continue this research without me.”
I nodded. I felt bad leaving her, though I expected she had friends in the hospital who would see that she was well cared for. I took one last look at her, arms and legs tied down at her own request, and felt a surge of admiration. “I won’t give up,” I said. “I won’t stop fighting this until I’ve found a way through.”
“Get moving, then,” she said. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”
Lauren caught me on my way out of the ER. “Is this for real?”
“It is,” I said. “Everything she told you, about how this organism works, is true. Don’t take her off that medication.”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “That dosage is high. Like, really high. I would never give a patient her size that much.”
“I guess she wants to be really, really sure she kills it.”
“She might just kill herself instead.”
I looked her in the eyes. “Trust her,” I said. “Don’t change the dosage, and don’t stop the treatment. No matter what she tells you.”
Lauren held my gaze for a beat. “Okay,” she said finally. “Okay. I can do that.”
CHAPTER 24
I wanted to get back to Fort Meade, but I couldn’t leave the hospital without first visiting my father. I found my way to the orthopedic floor, and from there to his room. It seemed a mirror of the room I’d just left, with my father strapped to the bed instead of Mei-lin. He was asleep, but my mother still stood next to him, in practically the same place as when I’d left them that morning.
I circled the bed and gave her a hug. “How’s he been?”
“Calm,” she said. “Mostly lucid.”
“But?” I prompted.
“He says he’s sorry about attacking Dr. Chu. But I don’t think he really is. It comes across more like a ploy, like he’s trying to get me to sympathize with him, so I’ll untie him or let down my guard.” She took a deep breath, then let it out with a little hitch. “I think it’s getting more of a hold on him.”
I watched his chest gently rise and fall. “We have to keep our hopes up. This is just a new kind of sickness, one we don’t understand well yet.”
“It’s so strange to have him back.” She turned away and faced the window. “He talks to me as if these last three years never happened. He remembers details about our engagement, our marriage, about you and Paul and Julia being born. He sits there and reminisces with me, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I mourned him already. A year ago, I would have given anything for him to have a conversation like that. But now? I don’t know. I can’t even tell if he’s really the same man.”
“He is,” I said. “Despite everything, no matter what has damaged him physically, that’s still the man you married. Behind the Alzheimer’s, behind this new infection, there’s still the core essence of who he is. That’s always been there, whether we can see it or not.”
Mom wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s just wishful thinking, Neil. I’m sorry, but it is. What you call ‘me’ is just a pattern made of neurons and synapses and electrical impulses. When the pattern changes so much that there’s no continuity with what came before, then you can still call it ‘me’ if you want, but it’s not the same person. The old pattern is gone.”
“Not true,” I said. “The pattern changes all the time, for everybody. I’m not the same person I was when I was two years old, but it was still me. I’m not a new person every moment, just because I change. The two-year-old me thought completely differently, made different decisions, believed different things—I can’t even remember what I did or thought then. But that little Neil was still me, and I’m still him. Dad might have experiences that change him, even drastically, even so much that he doesn’t remember what came before. But it’s still him.” My voice caught a little. “That’s still Dad.”
A ragged cough brought my attention down to the bed. Dad was awake, and he looked confused. His gaze darted around the room, as if he didn’t know where he was. When he saw me, his eyes flew open wide, and his jaw clenched. He body turned rigid, and his hands slapped erratically on the metal rails.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me,
Neil,” I said, afraid he didn’t recognize me.
“I know who you are. You shouldn’t be here. Go away.”
I sat on the rolling stool next to his bed. “What do you mean? Of course I should be here. I’ll come every day, until you’re well again.” I tried to take his hand to calm him, but he pushed me away impatiently.
“Where’s Paul? He was just here.”
I whirled to face Mom. “Paul was here?”
“No,” she said. “He’s confused. You saw him on the television, Charles, remember?”
My dad scowled. “When is he going to get here?”
I felt an irrational surge of the old jealousy at my dad’s preference for Paul, but I pushed it down. “I don’t know where Paul is,” I said. “But I’m here.”
“You’re here,” he echoed. “You think you’re my only real son, eh?” The muscles in his neck stood out, and his tapping on the rail grew louder and more chaotic.
“Don’t say that. Paul’s sick, just like you are. We’re going to get you both better.”
“I don’t need to get better. I’m just fine. You think you can do a mess of random science experiments and fix me? Most original research shows errors, you know.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? You don’t like Dr. Chu examining you?”
“Of course not. I’m not sick. Let me out of here.”
I turned to Mom. “Is this what he’s been like?”
She shook her head. “No, no. He’s been calm, reasonable.”
“I’m right here,” Dad said, hands slapping against the rails. “Don’t ignore me. I’m telling you, that doctor’s mockery of research should end!”
It was such a strange phrase. I started to reply, then hesitated, running his words through my mind . . . mockery of research should end. I had grown up with my dad hurling word puzzles at us across the dinner table, puzzles that could often be solved by noticing an odd sentence structure or word choice. Sometimes he would mix palindromes into his speech just to see if we would notice. I started running some of the awkward phrases he’d just used through my mind.
. . . my only real son, eh . . .
. . . mess of random science experiments . . .
. . . most original research shows errors . . .
. . . mockery of research should end . . .
I felt a chill go down my spine. The words in each phrase began with the same series of letters: M-O-R-S-E. My eyes snapped to my father’s hands, still tapping away on the bed rail. Three short taps, followed by three long ones. The letter S, then the letter O. My father, my real father, was in there somewhere. And he was trying to communicate.
Morse code was a common device in the simple ciphers and cryptograms my dad had taught us as kids, and Paul and I had spent a summer sending secret messages to each other using the buttons on a pair of cheap walkie-talkies. It had been a while since I’d looked at the Morse alphabet, but like riding a bike it came flooding back.
I expected three short taps again, completing an S-O-S distress code, but the next signal was one short, one long. The letter N. I snatched a pad and pen from the counter and started scribbling.
“What’s happening?” my mom asked, but I put a finger to my lips. “Wait.”
Three long taps. Another O. One short, one long. Another N. Then one short, two long, one short. P.
S-O-N-O-N-P. It wasn’t making any sense yet, but it was clearly intentional. I kept writing.
Another O, then a T, then a U. I stopped trying to figure out the message and just wrote down the letters as fast as he tapped them.
Without stopping, my father lifted his head, trying to see my paper. “What is this? What are you writing?”
I ignored him, continuing to write. My mom looked over my shoulder. “Neil? You’re making me nervous.”
When the pattern started repeating itself, I stood and beckoned for her to follow me into the hallway. Once we were out of earshot, I said, “He’s resisting, Mom! He’s still in there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Morse code! He was tapping out a message. There’s a part of him that’s still unaffected by the fungal parasite.” I tried to work it out, talking to myself as much as to her. “The unaffected part must have some access to the speech centers, because he hid a message in his speech. But it must not have full control.”
My mother looked horrified. “You’re telling me there’s another mind taking control of his brain?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “In most people, the fungal cells and their original brain seem to harmonize. One mind, one set of thoughts and intentions, only skewed toward what benefits the parasite. But Dad is holding onto some part of himself, actually splitting his mind, like in a multiple personality disorder. Maybe it’s the Alzheimer’s that makes it possible, I don’t know. Or maybe the parts of his brain he used for word puzzles were so well-traveled, the fungal pathways couldn’t improve their efficiency.”
Mom raised her hands in frustration. “If he’s communicating with us, then what did he say?”
I flipped the pad around and showed her what I’d written:
S-O-N-O-N-P-O-T-U-S-O-P-E-N-S-E-A
“Open sea?” she said. “Does that make sense to you?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I started writing it down in the middle, so it wraps around.” I took the pen and hastily scribbled the full message, starting at the beginning and leaving blanks between words. I turned the pad around again to show her:
OPEN SEASON ON POTUS
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“It means I need to warn the president of the United States.”
I called Andrew and told him about my dad’s message.
“But how could he possibly know such a thing?” Andrew objected. “He’s been tied to a hospital bed, right? You’re not going to tell me this infection makes people telepathic now, are you?”
“Nothing of the kind,” I said. “But I suspect if you analyze the broadcast of my brother’s interview with Nancy Sheridan on CNN, you’ll find the same message in Johurá whistle language or something similar. Maybe Paul hums a few bars of something, or whistles, or, I don’t know, pitches his voice up and down while he’s talking. I didn’t hear the whole interview. But take a look. I don’t know how many thousands of viewers that show has, or how many of those are infected, but I think we need to warn the president right away.”
Andrew gave a deep sigh, and I could hear the strain in his voice. “This isn’t happening,” he said. “I knew I should have taken that job with Boeing. I’d be in Seattle right now, and none of this would be my problem.”
“It’s going to be everybody’s problem, if we don’t find a way to turn it around,” I said. “There’s no reason what happened in Colombia and Brazil can’t happen here, too.”
“I know, I know. I’ll get the Secret Service on the phone.”
“Remember, anybody could be infected. There’s no such thing as a trustworthy individual anymore, not unless they’ve been scanned for the fungus. The Secret Service agents currently on duty with the president are probably okay, or they would have tried to kill him already. But anyone new coming on duty needs to be scanned. Anyone who talks to him needs to be scanned.”
“I know,” Andrew said. “This is bigger than just us, now. SecDef has a whole staff of Army docs working on a fast and accurate test now, so we don’t have to rely on PET scans. Ronstadt instituted the verified-command initiative at the meeting this morning. It’s an emergency system requiring all commands to be issued formally in writing and be verified by private key. That way all commands can be tracked, and we can be certain some rogue colonel, say, isn’t taking over a whole department as his own private workforce.”
It sounded like a terrible idea to me, certain to slow the quick communication of real commands and not actually prevent the bad ones. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying so, however. “Good luck,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Ba
ck in the hospital room, my father’s hands lay still. I squeezed his shoulder. “Keep fighting, Dad.”
I gave my mom a hug. “Stay with him. Don’t lose hope.”
On my way out of the room, I felt a wave of exhaustion come over me. I checked my watch and was startled to see that it was seven o’clock. I realized I hadn’t eaten a bite all day. I wanted to get back to Fort Meade, despite the hour, but I knew if I didn’t get some food I was going to crash sooner or later.
I made my way down to the hospital cafeteria. The tables were mostly empty. I saw an elderly couple, a teenage boy with what was probably his mother, and a young woman eating a salad by herself. She was strikingly pretty, with dark hair in a long braid on one shoulder, and a narrow, expressive face. Another day—maybe another life—I would have contrived some reason to sit near her and start a conversation. At the moment, the energy required to do something like that seemed as far beyond me as flying to the moon.
The dinner selections were mostly picked over. I passed on the dregs of a corn chowder, ignored the somewhat wilted salad bar, and settled for chicken fingers and some curly fries. I sat as far away from the other patrons as I could get. As soon as I took the first bite, my body realized how hungry I was, and I wolfed the food down.
My hands shook. I tried to hold them still, but soon my whole body was shaking. My chest convulsed painfully. I didn’t even know what was happening until the first strangled sob burst out of my throat. I put my head in my hands and bottled them up as best I could, embarrassed to cry in public, but my shoulders shuddered uncontrollably.
I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept or eaten properly for a week, and probably not terribly well before that, either. But I knew that wasn’t all there was to it. I had just seen a man trapped in his own body, fighting his own mind for dominance and getting a message out to the world like a prisoner tapping on the walls of his cell. Or like a doomed sailor trapped in a sunken ship, tapping desperately on the steel hull for an unlikely rescue.
