Captain Paul stood. “Shiva knew ‘Prometheus.’ It’s the loopholes that fit round our necks and hang us all in the end.”
Desi froze. “You’re sure she got through the barricade?”
“She had the password. We’ve blown up uncooperative citizens because they came out too far in their rowboats and yet —”
“Shite!” It was Desi’s turn to pace. “If she got through with the Sutr-Z virus, there might be no safe place. I only left Dungarvan because I thought there’d be someplace better!”
“A British frigate called the Iron Duke was tasked with a search of a container ship called the Gaian Commander several days ago. They used the password and we let them through the barricade. An officer named Wiggins from that boarding party became ill soon after. At first it looked like Sutr-X, but the symptoms were atypical. I sent him to Dr. Merritt yesterday. At the time, I thought he was the only virologist left alive who definitely wasn’t a terrorist.”
“Where is he?”
“The Americans have a massive military encampment with some refugees they’re experimenting on.”
“Experimenting on?” Sinjin-Smythe frowned.
“His words, Doctor. He knows all about London and he wants to formulate a defense before the virus mutates in the United States. Merritt thinks he can come up with a vaccine against Sutr-Z if they can crack Sutr-X.”
“I’ve got to get to America, Captain. As soon as possible.”
“That will prove difficult at the moment. I can’t spare any planes. Sutr-X took most of my pilots. The one long-range helo is already gone and, with refueling stops, won’t be back until at least tomorrow.”
Sinjin-Smythe had missed his ride by one day.
“You can’t spare one jet?”
“Our flight crews were devastated by the Sutr flu, Doctor. What assets I have now must patrol the barricade. Container ships can do twenty-eight…maybe thirty knots. The Gaian Commander won’t get far.”
Sinjin-Smythe put his head in his hands.
Desi stepped behind him and squeezed his shoulder. “You saw London yourself, Craig. You know she has to be stopped before she spreads it farther.”
“I know.” Sinjin-Smythe looked up. He had tears in his eyes. “Captain Paul, tell me about this Wiggins’ symptoms.”
“Your Dr. Merritt will examine him. That helo will arrive…” — he looked at his watch — “about now.”
It’s a fight to devolve from monster to man
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Jack whispered.
Jack, Anna, Jaimie and Theo were huddled tight in the tent, their faces inches apart. A guard stood outside.
“I don’t know, Mom,” Anna said. “Will we really do better on the road? At least they’re bringing in food and if Merritt’s right, this is a fort. He’s an arrogant prick, but you saw the fear in his eyes. He’s expecting an attack.”
“Don’t believe him,” Jack said. “He’s just trying to scare and control us. Merritt wants a dog on a leash. He’ll use Jaimie at the gates. He’ll use Jaimie until he’s exposed to enough sick people that he’ll catch the flu, too. With all the people crammed in here, it’s a race to see what starts up first. Maybe it’ll be Sutr. Maybe typhus will get us.”
Jaimie perked up, recalling an entry from a medical dictionary he read when he was six. Typhus was also called camp fever and epidemics often followed disasters or war. The bacillus begins with a body louse. The louse bites. The human scratches the itch and unwittingly rubs the louse’s feces into the wound. Jaimie suddenly felt itchy all over his body, but he was afraid to scratch.
“We told Mrs. Bendham we’d be back tonight,” Jack said. “Maybe the guards will let us out to go get her. We’ll tell them we have to go get our things. Once we’re on the other side of the gate, we’ll run.”
“Mom!” Anna said. “That’s a good plan if they’re idiots, but their job description is ‘guard’! There’s no way they’ll let us out of here now.”
Their guard, a heavily bearded Marine named Abrams, opened the tent flap. Anna and Jack jumped in surprise, thinking they’d been overheard.
“Hey!” Abrams said. “I’m supposed to take your son to Dr. Merritt’s lab now. You can come to serve as, uh, interpreters, he said.”
“Doing what?” Jack asked.
“I follow orders, ma’am, but Captain Ogilvy said the little kid died. He said you’d know what that means.”
“Slavery unto death,” Theo said.
* * *
Ogilvy met the Spencers at the first checkpoint and escorted them to Merritt’s lab. It was another VIP suite with a glass wall overlooking the camp. The layout was almost identical to Merritt’s office, complete with a bar. However, this room contained lab equipment, a large microscope and three huge freezers. The floor was tile and the smell of bleach hung in the air.
At the far end, by the window, a Royal Navy pilot stood beside a man draped with a thin white johnny shirt. The patient lay strapped to a steel table. Restraints at his ankles, head and wrists pinned him.
As soon as Jaimie saw the man on the table, he thought of monarch butterflies on display in cases at a museum.
An oxygen mask covered the patient’s face and a rag was tied fast to blindfold him. Atop the mask, a plastic respirator was duct taped in place. The patient mumbled, but his words were so muffled, he was unintelligible.
Theo led the way forward, followed by Jaimie, his mother and sister. The man on the table must have heard the movement. He strained to raise and turn his head. He pulled at his restraints and another croaked word escaped his throat. It sounded vaguely like he had yelled, “Ham!”
Dr. Merritt sat at his laptop, heavy-lidded from fatigue. “Ah, the Spencers! Which of you can communicate with the boy best? I’d rather have fewer bodies in the room as I work.”
“We all stay, Daniel,” Jack said. “We’re a package deal and we stick together.”
“To the end,” Theo said, his voice heavy with a tone Jaimie took to be an implied threat. Somehow, his father’s presence made him feel confident. Jaimie mimicked his stance: hands on hips, feet planted slightly apart, chin out and daring Merritt to make a wrong move.
“You still don’t get how it works with Jaimie,” Anna said. “My brother has autism. We don’t communicate with him. He communicates with us on his schedule.”
“Conversations by approximation,” Theo said, not for the first time.
“What you don’t seem to understand is you’re part of my team now,” Merritt said. “You will find a way to be useful to me.” He moved to the man on the table and picked up another clipboard. “Meet Mr. Adam Wiggins.”
The virologist looked up from the clipboard at the man in uniform. The airman stared at the patient with a look of great concern.
“You, with the cow eyes. I have paper on him. I don’t have any on you.”
The man straightened. “Geary, sir. I’m the pilot sent from the HMS Illustrious. I’ve worked with Lieutenant Wiggins on several deployments. He’s a good man. I hate to see him like this.”
“Ah. Tell me what you told Captain Ogilvy. I want to hear it in your own words.”
The man cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Wiggins appeared to come down with the Sutr flu after a routine search of a container ship. He was found collapsed and spiked a fever. We thought he was in for it, but within an hour, the fever broke and he seemed fine. The ship’s medic said his temperature was a little low, in fact.”
Merritt flipped through Wiggins’ chart. “Is that all?”
Geary shook his head. “He started talking more. Rambling. It was odd. No fever, but he talked like he had a fever and the words made no sense. Not really. There were a few words about his family early on. Then he was obsessed with the Hope diamond for an hour or so. I got the feeling he was trying to meditate or something, trying to focus.”
Merritt shrugged, unimpressed. “Your medic must’ve misread his thermometer. Sounds like febrile delirium.
” The virologist examined the chart more closely. “Later it was echolalia and word salad? Hmph.”Merritt seemed vaguely amused, playing to his audience. “Repetition of words comes up with autism, James, but you’re so quiet I don’t suppose you’ve made your family suffer that. Mr. Wiggins, here, is too young for Alzheimer’s, even early onset.”
“Sir? Wiggins has served since he was not much older than that boy. With the depleted uranium in the armor and the ammo and PTSD and maybe Gulf War Syndrome…I’m just thinking, with the fever, mightn’t — ”
“Nonsense. The world is full of terrors. Doesn’t mean the rest of the thousand slings and arrows flesh is heir to will stop coming.”
“Sir?” Geary looked perplexed.
“He’s showing off,” Theo said, “and worse, butchering Hamlet.”
“Your friend has schizophrenia,” Merritt said. “I’m only concerned with Sutr, but all diseases rage on.”
Anna stepped forward. “What did your friend say?”
“Word salad!” Merritt brayed. “It means — ”
“I know what it means,” Anna said. “When my brother speaks, it often doesn’t make sense at first. I’m an expert at decoding word salad. It doesn’t always mean nothing. What did he say?”
Geary looked morose. “I don’t know what he said to the docs on the Illustrious when they examined him, Miss, but with me, it was a list: Ham. Bacon. Canadian bacon. Rasher. Gammon. Sowbelly. Pork. Pancetta. Roast pig. Sweet and sour. Tenderloin. Pulled pork sandwiches. Tonjiru and chops.”
Everyone stared at the pilot, even Jaimie.
“How did you do that?” Jack asked.
Geary shrugged. “The Lusty is patrolling somewhere off the coast of Ireland. All across the Atlantic and three refuelings, Wiggins has been running through that list. I listened like it was a game to pass the time. Then I shut off my headset for awhile because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I went through the list with him to stay awake since gassing up in Newfoundland. It’s drilled into me bloody skull!”
Geary turned to Anna and smiled. “It was funny and then annoying and then funny again toward the end of the trip, but I was pretty punchy.” He shrugged and, maybe it was bravado, gave her a flirtatious wink.
“What have you fed him?” she asked.
“My crew just gave him IVs so he stayed hydrated.”
Anna frowned. “He may be hydrated, but he’s starving for protein. When women are pregnant, they have cravings because that’s what their bodies need. Your friend is starving for protein.”
The man with word salad, Jaimie thought, is obsessed with meat. The skewed symmetry pleased him.
Merritt threw his hands up. “Enough of this! I need data if I’m to stop the new strain from hitting here. Whatever this man’s problem is, he’s no zombie. He has no fever! That’s the cardinal sign we know! You’ve wasted your trip, fuel and my time. You should have brought Sinjin-Smythe instead! Your captain must be seeing zombies everywhere to send this specimen. He’s no zombie. He can talk!”
“That man sounds very hungry to me,” Theo said. “What do you say, Jaimie?”
Jack snatched a mask from a nearby box and held it out to Jaimie. “Does the man on the table need a mask, Jaimie? Is he infected with Sutr?”
The boy stepped toward the man on the table. He watched the patient’s aura ebb and whirl. The crimson was so pure, it was clear the man was single-minded. His energy was high with potential, like a coil packed so tight its spring would be like a detonation when it was unleashed. And the black? The wasps swam through Wiggins in a perfect figure eight, seething and ready. Wiggins simmered with venom. Unlike the disorganized energy of humans, the effect was divine. Jaimie was sure he’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Merritt stalked to his computer and stabbed a button. “You’re unmuted. You see this mess?”
Dr. Craig Sinjin-Smythe peered out from the screen. “No fever so, I agree, it can’t be Sutr. Dan, if you saw what I saw in London…when they strike, they’re no better than rabid dogs. It’s psychotic violence beyond belief. Anyone with Sutr-Z couldn’t lie there and talk about pork chop recipes.”
“I know, Craig.” Merritt let out a sharp, callous laugh. “Everyone knows zombies can’t talk. Tell the captain of the Illustrious that I need at least one true Sutr-Z specimen and I need you here.”
“You told Captain Paul I should be keel hauled.”
“Well, I guess if you were working with bio-terrorists, you wouldn’t be in the sad state you are now. You’ve survived this long, you might as well make yourself useful. I don’t want to see what happened in London and Dublin break out in Indiana, am I clear? Whatever micro-biologists are left, I need them. I’ll settle for you.”
Jaimie reluctantly turned his gaze from the man strapped to the table. He looked to his mother, his father and his sister. Jack watched the computer screen, baffled by all this talk of zombies. But Theo and Anna caught the boy’s nearly imperceptible nod.
Jaimie walked forward and told his first lie. He held the mask out to the pilot. Without thinking, Geary took the mask from Jaimie. When he looked up and saw Anna’s face, he knew what it meant.
“Oh. Oh, no,” Jack said. “Jaimie! Jaimie! Get away from him!”
Merritt turned and ordered the pilot to put the mask over his face. “Guards! Guards! Mask! Mask!”
Ogilvy burst in and another guard, rushing the pilot, skidded on the tile. If they’d asked nicely, Jaimie was sure Geary would have cooperated and gone with his captors, indignant but peaceful. Instead, Ogilvy and the guard descended on him. Captain Ogilvy grabbed an arm. The guard already had his baton out, eager to use it.
Wiggins writhed on the table. The veins in his arms stood out against sinew as he strained at his restraints.
Jaimie watched the dance of energy among the combatants, fascinated. Ogilvy and the guard were propelled by fear as Geary’s fear rose to do battle with confusion. But the man on the table was Hunger. The patient on the table was Id. Jaimie admired his purity.
Jaimie bent close and spoke a single word by Wiggins’ ear. Then the boy pulled the blindfold away. Wiggins’ met the boy’s gaze. The rigidity through his body went away for a moment. Wiggins turned his head, eyes wide, waiting.
So few enter that battle, very few can.
Sinjin-Smythe spotted the danger first and, half a world away, screamed incoherently into his microphone. At first he thought Wiggins was seizing and his eyes were rolled up. The virologist gasped as it dawned on him that he was looking at the patient’s bright, white irises.
“The patient’s eyes are white!” Sinjin-Smythe yelled.
Merritt did not hear his colleague’s shouts of warning. Everyone was focused on the fight.
The patient mouthed two words to the boy that Sinjin-Smythe couldn’t quite catch amid the din and confusion. The man on the table stared at him through the computer screen as he spoke.
Only Sinjin-Smythe saw the boy, his back to the camera, as he pulled the straps on the patient’s legs free. As soon as that was done, the man stiffened again and his heels drummed on the steel table. The boy released the strap on the patient’s right wrist. Wiggins did the rest to free himself. He removed the restraint from his other arm in one swift motion. Next came the mouthguard. It only took a few seconds. Wiggins jackknifed up and stood on the table.
Sinjin-Smythe watched as Wiggins paused, only a flicker, to look at the boy. The man leaped and screamed a word that sounded like it had been filtered through gravel.
The boy was motionless as a statue as Sinjin-Smythe yelled into his mic. “Merritt! Merritt!”
Gunshots.
A high, warbling scream.
The boy still did not move.
Sounds of a struggle.
A crash and tinkle.
Sinjin-Smythe heard a distant alarm and, closer, the laptop’s microphone picked up the sound of heavy breathing.
Dr. Daniel Merritt came into the frame
for a second before another crash.
What the doctor saw next happened so fast, he almost missed it. A hand appeared next to the camera. It was a woman’s left hand wearing a diamond ring. Whoever the woman was, she snatched up a keycard attached to a red lanyard.
The picture spun and the connection ended. When Sinjin-Smythe tried to call back, no one answered.
* * *
On the Illustrious, Captain Paul, Desi and Sinjin-Smythe watched and rewatched the video. Sinjin-Smythe had thought to record the call. They played it forward and back and in slow motion until they sorted out what had occurred.
“What does this mean?” Captain Paul asked.
“Mean?” Desi said. “I can tell you what happened, but I’m not sure it means anything.”
Sinjin-Smythe straightened and rubbed his face. “I can tell you, Captain. What happened was that bloody zombie picked up Dr. Daniel Merritt and threw him through that glass wall and escaped. Just before that, I’m pretty sure, as he leaps off the table he screams the word ‘pig’! Before that, with that boy? I don’t know what the hell was going on.”
“It would take a lot of torque to throw a numpty that size, Doctor,” Desi said.
“All bets are off, Desi. That’s a new type of zombie and unless they can contain it at that camp, the virus is loose in America.”
“What shall we call this new type?” Captain Paul asked.
The doctor sighed heavily. “First it was the slow build of Sutr-X. Then the quick and disastrous mutation to Sutr-Z.”
“Z for zombie,” Paul said. “Ridiculous, and yet…”
“We’re out of alphabet, Captain. We’ll have to loop back. Since it talks and it seems quite superior to previous incarnations, you can call this thing Sutr-A, as in Alpha.”
“Fits,” Desi said.
“I’d go even more linear.” The virologist refilled his glass. “I’d call it Extinction.”
Desi shook his head. “Marvelous. We’re in for it now, aren’t we?”
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 43
