The Judas Virus

by Don Donaldson

  FAIRBORN STARTED THE tape rolling. There was Lansden and his own voice: “Dr. Lansden, I’ve read your very interesting . . .”

  He watched and listened to the replay carefully, but everything that sounded like gibberish earlier remained that way. The tape reached the part where Lansden kept saying the man with him in Kazakhstan was named Ember. Then Lansden’s eyelids began flickering.

  No. Not flickering, because sometimes they remained closed for a beat or two.

  On the tape Lansden said, “Course mode.”

  “I don’t understand,” Chris said.

  Lansden slapped the sheet and said it again: “Course mode.”

  What was he trying to say?

  Ann came in with his tea. “What are you doing, dear?”

  “Trying to make sense of this tape.”

  Ann leaned down to look, but the tape had gone beyond the recorded images.

  Sam briefly explained the situation and rewound the tape. As he played it again, Ann stood by his side, her hand on his shoulder. When the tape reached the end, Sam hit stop, then started rewind.

  “What do you think?” Sam asked.

  “I think course mode means Morse code.”

  Sam’s mouth gaped in amazement at how stupid he’d been. That’s exactly what it meant. “You’ve done it,” Sam said. “He’s telling us the name we wanted by blinking in Morse code. Thank you.”

  “Happy to help, dear,” Ann said. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  OUTSIDE, WHERE HE’D heard everything that had been said, TR dropped to the ground. Believing that he knew what Fairborn would do next, he got out his knife.

  MORSE CODE. LORD. Pretty soon I’ll need a walker for my brain, Sam thought, hurrying to his computer and turning it on. This was not the kind of performance he would ever let himself forget, but for now, he was so interested in deciphering the name, he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He didn’t know anything about Morse code, but it should be easy enough to find what he wanted on the Internet.

  In just a few seconds he was looking at the first page of results the search engine had given him for Morse code. He chose the fourth entry, “A Morse Code Primer,” and waited for the page to appear.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  A small box appeared on his screen advising that he had been disconnected.

  He looked at his DSL box and saw that his broadband light was now flashing red, and there was no service light at all.

  Muttering and threatening to change to another Internet provider, he picked up the phone.

  Dead.

  Damn. The one time when he really needed a phone line, it was down. And it was too late tonight to do anything about it. He considered trying to at least convert Lansden’s eyelid movements to dots and dashes on paper, but then, thinking he’d be better able to do that after reading a little about Morse code, he shut everything off and went to bed.

  SITTING ON THE cool ground with his back against the house after cutting the phone line, TR was pleased to see the light that had been spilling from Fairborn’s study window suddenly go out. While he waited for the couple to fall asleep, his thoughts took him back to the day he’d first been called TR, the hated nickname that even his own mind wouldn’t free him from.

  HE HADN’T CRIED during the taunting, but now that he was alone, the tears flowed. Embarrassed at the way he looked, he left the roadside and followed the path into the woods that would take him home the long way.

  His route soon took him past the place where the high school kids brought their dates and did bad things in their cars. Friday and Saturday nights after ten o’clock were the best times to be there, and if you were careful and there was only one car, you could sneak up and watch them through the window. On those nights, back in his bed, thinking about what he’d seen, he found it impossible to sleep or keep his hands from his private place.

  Today, walking past the spot, he saw, through his tears, a book of matches that looked clean and fresh enough to still be good. He picked up the matches, pulled one free, and scraped it across the igniter strip. He watched the resulting flame until it crept so close to his fingers he had to drop it. Then he took off his pants and threw them on the ground.

  It took a few seconds for the second match to ignite his pants, but he was soon standing in front of a smoking little poplin fire. After watching the pants burn until they were almost completely consumed, he took off his shirt and tied it around his waist so his tattered shorts were partially covered. Then he headed for home, ready at an instant to leave the path and take cover should anyone come along.

  The woods ended about thirty yards from his house, which meant he’d be exposed for only the time it took him to bolt across the yard. He took a deep breath and started running.

  Thirty yards . . . twenty . . . ten . . .

  He reached the house and dropped to his knees. With practiced skill, he skittered under the house and crab walked to the boards he’d loosened in the floor of his closet one day when no one else was home. Those boards were how he got out at night to watch the high school kids.

  His plan today was to sneak inside, change into his other pants, then go back to the woods and arrive home the regular way. Should his mother say anything about his pants being different than those he’d left in that morning, he’d convince her she was mistaken. If he could manage that, the burned ones would have just disappeared.

  He pushed the loose boards up and out of the way and hiked himself inside. Suddenly, the closet door flew open, and there was his mother, his only other shirt on a hanger in her hand.

  They looked at each other for a moment in disbelief, then she pulled him out of the closet and inspected the floor. Turning, she skewered him with a fierce stare. “Where are your pants?”

  Though he was already an accomplished sneak, he was a fledgling liar and had no answer.

  She hung up the shirt in her hand, then grabbed him by the arm. “I think your father needs to hear what you’ve got to say about all this.”

  His father was on the sofa watching the tiny fluttering TV the church had given them. Unable to work or even walk very much because his lungs had been hurt at the asbestos siding plant, that was how he spent most of his time.

  “Ben, your son has something to tell you.”

  His father struggled to a sitting position and went off on a coughing jag, covering his mouth with the handkerchief he always carried.

  When he could speak, he said, “I’m listening.”

  Genuine tears welling up in his eyes, his son said, “I burned up my new pants.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they came from the church rag bag. They weren’t new, they were used, like everything that comes into this house. They belonged to Jimmy Demarco, but his mother got that bleach stain on them, and so she gave them away. But Jimmy recognized them today, and he told everybody where I get my clothes and he said . . .” Now he was sobbing.

  “He told everybody that when I was born you put me in a shoebox and threw me away like garbage, and he started calling me TR, saying it with my last name so it came out, ‘TRash.’ Then everybody was doing it. Why are we trash? Why can’t I have clothes that nobody else has had first? Why do we have to live in this ugly house? Why does our car have to be so rusty? I hate my life.”

  His father reached out for him. Fearing that his father would start coughing again, Eric reluctantly moved closer.

  His father put his hand on his son’s shoulder “Eric, I know what you’re going through. But there’s no shame in being poor. It’s what’s inside a man that counts.”

  No shame? Eric thought. It was nothing but shame. And that’s when he lost what little respect he still had for his father.

  SUDDENLY, ASH WAS yanked back to the present by light once again coming from Fairborn�
�s study window.

  Was that old fart still up?

  Lights began blooming all through the garden. Two feet away, one came on at the base of a spruce, illuminating its branches and him, too. He heard the sound of the sliding door to the study rasping along its track. Panicking, he rolled onto one knee and lurched for the spotlight giving him away. Ignoring the heat, he unscrewed the bulb. Once again hidden by darkness, he pulled his automatic from his jacket pocket and focused on the corner of the house. He didn’t want to kill the old man, but if he had to, he would. And his wife.

  FINDING SLEEP AN elusive commodity, Sam Fairborn stepped outside wearing a robe over his pajamas, his pipe in his hand. He stood for a while on the porch smoking and surveying the garden, enjoying the damp smells of the night.

  Then he began to think of his hostas in that shady spot under the cherry tree, and how if he was to preserve that beautiful unspoiled spring foliage, he needed to be vigilant, which meant he’d have to come out at night and pick the cutworms off them.

  Did he want to do that tonight? No.

  But this very minute, those little wrecking machines were probably crawling up the stems to begin feeding. And once the damage was done, there was nothing you could do about it. The plant would look lousy until the next spring.

  He took a few more puffs on his pipe, all the while imagining cutworm jaws chewing and slicing. Finally, unable to take it any longer, he returned to the study, where he put his pipe in an ashtray and picked up a flashlight, then went back outside to do battle.

  Before engaging the enemy, he stopped by the storage shed and put on a pair of disposable rubber gloves from a jar he kept there.

  CROUCHED AMONG THE foundation plantings on the side of the house, Ash could see Fairborn pissing around in the garden. What was he doing? Looked like he was picking something off the plants. Then he’d put whatever it was on the brick walkway and jab at it with a stick. But it was the flashlight that worried Ash. If Fairborn got it into his head to replace the bulb Ash had unscrewed, the old man was going to die.

  IT TOOK FAIRBORN a little less than ten minutes to rescue his hostas, and when he was finished, his lower back was aching from all the bending. Still, it was a reasonable price for putting an end to the cutworm threat. Playing his flashlight once more over the verdant green leaves, in a final salute, he thought about how dramatically his world had shrunk. Where entire countries had once looked to him for help, his influence now was limited to a quarter acre of land around his house. Or at least it had been until Chris Collins came to him.

  How did that Kazak virus get into those folks who died at Monteagle? As he began to stroll back toward the house, along the perimeter walkway, he idly played his flashlight into the foliage around him, looking for more nocturnal pests.

  TURN THE FLASHLIGHT off and go inside, old man, Ash silently urged. But Fairborn kept coming, his flashlight swinging from side to side. Ash began to think ahead. He’d kill the old man and immediately go inside and find his wife, which shouldn’t be hard because she’d likely come running to meet him. When he’d searched the house earlier for the tape, he hadn’t seen a cell phone. So with the phone line cut, there was probably no danger she’d be able to call for help . . .

  Unless she carried one in her bag. Damn. This wasn’t good.

  Fairborn was now about ten feet from the corner of the house, and he was still working the flowers and bushes with his light.

  Then he was eight feet away . . .

  Now six . . .

  He was back-lit by a couple of spotlights, and he was a big target, so even if Ash hadn’t been a skilled shot, there was no chance he’d miss.

  Four feet . . .

  Fairborn swung his light from his left, bringing it across his body. There was no doubt now, the beam was going to rake Ash’s hiding place. Ash pointed the muzzle of his automatic at Fairborn’s heart, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  Chapter 26

  JUST BEFORE ASH’S gun fired, Fairborn switched off his flashlight and disappeared around the corner.

  Ash rolled back into a sitting position, the tension of the last few minutes leaving him in a rush. In just a few minutes, his mind took him back to the events that occurred after he’d told his parents how everybody was now calling him TR.

  THE NEXT DAY they did it again, led as before by Jimmy Demarco, the asshole who’d thought it up. But this time Ash didn’t cry, because he had plans for Demarco.

  After school, with a piece of broken glass in his pocket, Ash headed directly for the woods. There, he took a path that led to the field behind the home of the widow Massy, who made ends meet by doing other folks’ laundry, so she always had a lot of sheets and stuff hanging outside, all of which would make good cover for what he needed to do.

  Sure enough, when he got there, her yard was rippling with white panels fluttering in the breeze like the sails of great ships carrying spices and slaves. Dropping into a crouch, Ash made his way through the weeds to the edge of the widow’s grass and began yanking clothespins off a sheet in the middle of the yard, well hidden by all the unmolested laundry.

  He worked quickly, throwing the pins to the ground and letting the damp sheets lie where they fell. In under a minute, the rope clothesline he coveted was bare. Careful to keep from slicing himself, he began sawing at the rope with the broken glass he’d brought.

  Hurry . . . Hurry . . .

  The first strand popped free.

  One by one, others joined the first.

  Then that end was done.

  Making sure he didn’t leave any footprints on the sheets he’d let fall, he raced to the other end of the line and sawed it free as well. And ran away into the woods.

  He hid the rope under some leaves near the place where he’d burned his pants, then set off through the woods along a route that couldn’t even be called a path, but which he could follow with ease.

  This course led him to the Ledbetter place, a family that never threw anything away, so that his advance on their shed was hidden by stacks of old tires, piles of lumber, and every kitchen appliance the family had ever owned. That his family was considered lower than even the Ledbetters was a hard apple to swallow.

  Reaching the shed, he worked a loose board free and slipped inside. Amid the gloom and spider webs, he began pulling out drawers and looking in rusty cans for what he needed.

  Outside, the handlebar shadow of the rusting motorcycle behind the shed crept steadily across the ground. Just before it started up the back of the shed, he came out with a handful of #16 spikes, an old hatchet, and an oily rag. On his way back to the woods, he picked up a gray board with about a hundred slugs stuck to the underside in a slime fest. But it was just the right length.

  God bless the Ledbetters.

  SUDDENLY, ASH HEARD the sound of a car pulling into Fairborn’s driveway.

  Who the hell was that?

  He remained where he was, trying not to let his mind run wild with unfounded speculation on how much this might screw things up. Fairborn was in bed. He couldn’t be expecting someone. Every nerve sizzling, Ash listened hard to the engine out front, which didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Then, it revved up, slowed again, and . . .

  Yes, the car was leaving . . . probably just someone using the driveway to turn around.

  With this latest threat extinguished, Ash’s thoughts soon returned to the Jimmy Demarco saga.

  ASH HID THE spikes and the board he’d taken from the Ledbetters under the leaves with the rope. Hatchet in hand, he went in search of the final item. He found it eighty yards from where he’d hidden everything—a tree about ten inches in diameter that had been snapped off in a windstorm, so he only had to cut it at one end.

  But even that wasn’t easy, for the hatchet was rusty and the blade badly nicked. He was so hindered by his poor equipment that wh
en it was time to go home, the tree was only cut halfway through.

  That night, before falling asleep, he went over his plans for tomorrow again and again, until he believed he had thought of everything.

  The next afternoon, he went immediately from school to his hidden cache of supplies and picked up the hatchet. Soon, he was whacking away at the fallen tree, wood chips flying into his hair and sticking to the sweat on his brow. This was the bad part, making so much noise. Because if anybody saw him doing this, they might remember it later. So he’d chop awhile, then stop and listen and look around. Finally, one last blow ended the job.

  He had lopped off a section about three feet long, and when he tried to pick it up, he found it almost too heavy to carry. But it had to be heavy to work properly, so he just made the best of it, staggering under its weight a few yards at a time, then putting it down to rest.

  It took nearly an hour to move the log to the big catalpa tree beside the path Jimmy Demarco took to school each morning. Then he had to go back and get the rest of his stuff.

  When he returned, he didn’t have much time left. Even in rural Alabama, kids knew about fingerprints, so he wiped his from all the spikes with the oily rag he’d taken. Holding each spike with the rag, he used the blunt end of the hatchet to drive a dozen of them through the board in two rows several inches apart. With the last two spikes, he nailed the board to the log so the sharp end of the other spikes faced outward.

  He notched the log a few inches from each end, then cut some pieces off the rope he’d stolen and fashioned a sling for the log. In about twenty minutes he had the log properly suspended from a big limb in the old catalpa. Now it was time to test it.

  Positioning himself high in the tree so he could lean back against a limb big enough to support his weight, he began pulling the fetching rope on the log hand over hand until the log swung up almost to where he stood.

  His location among the leaves did not allow him an unrestricted view of the path, but he could see well enough to know when someone on a bicycle was coming, and judge their progress. He imagined now that he saw Jimmy Demarco come into view.