by Pike, JJ
Jo waited.
Fran didn’t fill the space. They were all tired. She hadn’t heard the implied prompt. “Sorry, Fran, I don’t know your family name. Identify yourself for the record, please.” Jo turned her laptop so the camera was facing Fran full on.
“Loomaye. Francesca Loomaye.” Fran had been invaluable. She was the closest thing Baxter had to a personal blankie—she kept the professor calm and on track—and she seemed to have a bead on Michael Rayton as well. Jo was going to take Fran to a quiet corner just as soon as this briefing was over. They hadn’t had much of a chance to talk and she was sure Baxter’s assistant would have all the dirt on everyone at K&P.
“To my left is General Hoyt, who you guys know.” No need to investigate him. The general had been vetted six ways from Sunday. She could rely on him to know 1) how to comport himself and 2) to keep his mouth shut if her colleagues shared any sensitive information.
The general nodded at Acron and Larson. “Good to see you, Acron. I might have known you’d be tangled up in this mess.”
Jo smiled. Alex Acron was known to the military, too. That was a good portent and while she wasn’t usually into signs from above, she was willing to take whatever came her way. It had been a rough couple of days and luck hadn’t been on their side. Getting their collective asses together—FBI, CIA, the military elite, and the remaining scientists from K&P—made her feel like they might beat this sucker after all.
“Good to see you, General. I take it you have your staff with you?”
“Not quite,” said Hoyt. “We’ve had to make some adjustments. We lost Roff, Guttiere, and Hanson to this disease.”
“Sorry to hear that, General Hoyt.”
The general listed his new aides, complete with name, rank and number. He had a prodigious memory.
The briefing was off to a good, if somewhat slow, start. The steady pacing was deliberate. She was allowing the people in the back office to continue to compile dossiers on everyone connected with K&P and the production of MELT. With the servers down and the field offices being reassigned left and right, they were all behind schedule. Doing things the old-fashioned way—pen and paper, eye to eye—was laborious and time consuming.
That was the one thing they didn’t have: time.
MELT had broken free of Manhattan; spread all the way down Long Island; infecting Brooklyn, Queens, and all those high-end towns that dotted the eastern tip and southern shore. It had reached Staten Island and Liberty Island. No one cared about North Brother Island, there weren’t any people there anymore only birds. What other islands might it have spread over? Of course there’d be plenty of infected inmates at Rikers Island. That was going to be a mob scene. That thought triggered the seed of an idea. Jo scribbled down a note to herself. There was a barge off Rikers, which housed overflow inmates. If they’d gone into lockdown there might be uninfected survivors right there. She doodled around the word “barge” just as she had done in high school, eyes and starbursts and arrows pointing at that word. She’d get back to it later. Criminals as the ultimate survivors. There was a thought.
The introductions on the other end of her video call went on and on.
Jo took a deep breath and tried not to let the panic take root. MELT had touched down in New Jersey. That was their fault. They’d brought the damn stuff with them in the rats and fish that were sealed in their little plastic pouches. It was also in upstate New York and possibly eastern Connecticut. That last outbreak was still under investigation. They didn’t have enough people on the ground to investigate fully. Reports from the scene were sketchy at best, but the collapsing buildings suggested MELT was at work. It was like a hundred mini terrorist attacks had been launched in the space of a few days. The agency wasn’t equipped to be in that many places all at once.
Their vehicle bounced and swerved. They couldn’t see out, but Jo had a vivid imagination. She’d been in combat zones. She knew what it looked like when the general populace began to freak out. They were their own worst enemies. If they stayed calm and followed orders this would all go a lot smoother. But, no. They had to take to the streets, loot stores, trash businesses, burn cars. What did that achieve? And how did it always happen so fast? It was as if there were agitators and criminals who were always there, waiting to spring into action, as soon as they saw the smallest opportunity. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps all the normal, law-abiding citizens had fled to the country and all that was left to make their lives miserable were the dregs of society.
“Morgan?” Alex Acron invited her back into the conversation. “I have the general’s staff logged in. Anyone else in the vehicle with you?”
“We have two drivers,” she said. “I don’t know their names, but I’m sure the general can supply those if he hasn’t already.”
General Hoyt tapped out a text and shot it over to Alex. “They’ll have been positively vetted, but I know you boys like to research everyone. Especially the ‘company man.’” Hoyt used air quotes. He was referring to the short training film the FBI had made about an under-appreciated and under-paid company employee who was recruited by a Chinese firm. It was never going to win an Oscar, but it had been shown thousands of times to hundreds of executives, making them paranoid about everyone in middle management and below. Hoyt was signaling that he understood each and every one of them—his drivers included—were fair game. The FBI would leave no stone unturned. They’d find their man.
The “Company Man” hypothesis, as outlined in that film, wasn’t what they were facing in this instance. The K&P team were highly compensated and, as far as she could tell, dedicated to their jobs. These two, for example—Baxter and Loomaye; actually, no, best not use last names when talking to them, they were civilians. Civilians got bent out of shape if you used their family name rather than their Christian names—Christine and Fran had stuck around even when their lives were at risk. That wasn’t normal for civilian workers.
At least, not unless they had their own agenda.
Which brought her to Michael Rayton, who was sitting all the way at the other end of the transport. He’d run after them as they exited the plant, screaming about new information. He was the main reason they’d put this conference call together.
Rayton worked for the CIA. It still irked her that he hadn’t broken cover and told her sooner. Then again, she hadn’t broken cover and told him who she was either, so they were even on that score. He’d remained undercover for days when the two of them were searching for Alice Everlee. It was only when he was choking to death that he’d blurted out a phrase that tipped her off to his identity.
He was CIA and she was FBI and that was the end of that debacle. No more hiding and pretending they weren’t who they said they were.
Jo had been given orders to work closely with Rayton and his colleagues. They’d come back to New Jersey to investigate K&P’s labs together.
That’s when the internecine war had begun. Colleague against colleague, all of them pointing fingers at each other.
Christine Baxter was convinced Rayton was the saboteur who’d altered MELT at the structural level and made it into the monster that had been released in their Manhattan offices.
Michael, meanwhile, brayed about his innocence and suggested she look at anyone BUT him.
It was a mess.
It didn’t help that Michael’s name had been on a “persons of interest” memo that the State Department had circulated. She grimaced. She hated when the Bureau was caught with its pants down. They weren’t a bunch of bumbling Keystone Cops, no matter how popular movies liked to portray them, but this kind of misstep didn’t make them look like MENSA members.
Michael Rayton had been working undercover in K&P for years, but he’d still made it onto the “persons of interest” list and—somehow, she wasn’t sure how—hadn’t been immediately cleared. With any luck the next few hours would clear him or confirm he was the best damn agent she’d ever gone up against. If he was their liar, well she needed to call it a day and hang
up her badge for good.
“Greetings Mr. Acron. Mr. Larson.” Michael had settled himself into smooth operator mode almost as soon as he’d been hauled onto the transport.
Fran had taken longer to catch her breath and not look like a deer in headlights, but then this intel was news to her too. They’d all been caught unawares. No one likes that.
“If you’d like to tell my colleagues what you told us?” Jo turned the laptop towards Michael. She’d heard his story twice, so she was ready to listen for inconsistencies. It was going to be a challenge. He was trained and had been under deep cover for years. He was used to lying. It was part of his trade. Her job was to uncover any little hiccup or glitch, blink or swallow, verbal tick, tense change, or factual slip he made. It was going to be the small stuff that gave him away, but she was good at reading micro-expressions.
All eyes were trained on Michael Rayton as he recounted his story.
CHAPTER TWO
“Does he have a pulse?” Betsy elbowed her way past Petra to Paul, who was splayed in the dirt path between her front door and the backhoe.
Petra was screaming and crying; the words coming out of her completely unintelligible.
Betsy was grateful that Sean had the foresight to pin Petra’s arms to her side. That way she might possibly be prevented from doing any harm to her brother. Between hysterical outbursts it became clear Petra wanted to “scoop him up,” “hold him,” “make it all better.” But that wasn’t what you did with a gunshot victim. Paul needed calm and quiet and Betsy needed to be able to inspect his wounds and get him to surgery. All this screaming—while entirely logical in its own way—wouldn’t help one bit.
Sean rocked Petra as she wailed. “You couldn’t know he was coming. There’s no way you could have known. He looked like hell. All that blood. All the dirt. He looked like something that had crawled out of a grave. You couldn’t have known it was him. Really, bae. You couldn’t. You’re fine. You’re fine. He’s going to be fine.”
Betsy wasn’t so sure. Her fingers were at his neck, but she was having trouble locating a pulse.
A young woman hung over her newest patient. She was bug-eyed and slack mouthed. Also, she was new to the compound. A stranger. They weren’t allowing new people. That wasn’t the agreement. They were on alert—now that Aggie had discovered their stores had been ransacked—to the fact that they were no longer among those who could count themselves as “the most prepared” and/or “the most likely to survive the oncoming storm.” Betsy tried to brush aside thoughts of all the privation they were about to face, though those thoughts had been jostling for ascendancy over the past few hours. It was going to be rougher than any of these young people could possibly imagine. Rougher, perhaps, than she’d hoped to face again in her lifetime. But, with a young man down, that was the wrong place to focus her energies. Those thoughts were for later. She had one task: stabilize this excellent young man and save his life.
“Who are you?” Betsy still had two fingers on Paul’s bloodied neck.
“Hedwig. I told him it was a good idea to come home. It’s my fault he looked like that. My fault he’s covered in all that blood and muck. My fault he’s dead.”
“He’s not dead. Run inside the house and find Nigel. Tell him we need a cut down tray.”
“Nigel? Like, where?”
Betsy pointed towards the house. “Just go. Get him out here.” She ripped the top of Paul’s coveralls from his neck to his belly to reveal a torn-up mess of flesh and viscera where his stomach used to be.
Hedwig gasped.
Petra, predictably, screamed.
Hedwig turned and ran towards the house. Good thing at least one of the young women wasn’t lost to mania.
“Not a cut down tray,” Betsy shouted after Hedwig. “Not out here. We need gauze. Lots of gauze. We need to stop the bleeding.” Hedwig was gone so Betsy was left muttering under her breath “Bring the Israeli gauze, please. That’s what saved me. We need the maximum amount of absorption. Now.”
“He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.” Petra had slipped through Sean’s grip and was on her knees at Paul’s feet. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t…” Her face was screwed in on itself, her eyes red and raw.
Sean sank down beside Petra, one arm around her shoulders, the other pulling her hands away from Paul’s twitching feet. “He’s moving. He’s not dead. Let Betsy do her job.”
“What have we got?” Nigel was at Betsy’s side, snapping his latex gloves on and handing Betsy a pair.
“He’s lucky. They didn’t hit an artery. Not enough blood. And he was far enough from the gun that we’re not looking at a through and through.”
Nigel met her gaze. They both knew what that meant. The bullet could have ricocheted around inside him and done more damage than a simple through and through. With luck he wouldn’t say it out loud. If Petra knew what the next few hours held she’d lose her mind.
Nigel nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Betsy smiled. They were going to get along swimmingly. He’d handled himself like a pro around Midge and her brain injury and was doing the same in the field. “We should pack the wound, sterilize the kitchen table, and move him in there for surgery.”
“We need someone to prep the kitchen while we work on his wounds.”
She nodded.
Nigel wasn’t just competent, he was a star. She liked a man who could think ahead.
“Fred!” Nigel yelled at the top of his voice. He had considerable reach and Fred came running. Nigel’s hands didn’t stop moving as he instructed the pediatrician on what to do in order to prepare Betsy’s kitchen for surgery. Fred asked no questions, raised no objections, and went right back to the house.
So far, so good. Nigel knew how to do his job which freed her up to think 10 steps ahead. First up: get him inside, sterilize the wound, find the bleeders, find the slug, make sure there was no organ damage, pump him full of antibiotics and pain meds, then pray like tomorrow was promised for none of them. It wasn’t, of course. She knew that better than anyone, but in the case of a wound like this, Paul’s odds of making it through the next few days had been altered dramatically.
“Are we thinking spleen? Liver? Stomach?” Nigel whispered.
Her prayers had been answered: he’d brought Israeli gauze with him.
As they talked, he packed the wound, sealed it, and wiped down the surrounding areas so they could see what lay ahead.
They ran through all the scenarios they could imagine, but it boiled down to the same conclusion. “It’s impossible to know until we go in.” She wished for the millionth time that week that she were 20 years younger, her joints and muscles willing and able to do what her heart and mind knew needed to be done. Instead, at the ripe old age of 73, she needed to rely on the hands of younger men and women. But her mind was sharp. She’d take her solace there.
“Hedwig? That’s right, isn’t it? You’re Hedwig?” Betsy beckoned the young woman over.
Hedwig nodded.
“You’re going to help Nurse Nigel carry Paul inside the house.”
“I’ll help,” Petra was back on her feet, at Paul’s side, wiping the tears from her face. She meant well, but she was jittery and unstable and, in Betsy’s experience, given to fits of violent feeling that undid her. Betsy understood Petra’s drive to be of assistance, but there were those instances when stepping back was the better part of valor. This was one such time. How to convince an hysterical young woman that she would be doing all of them a favor—not least of all Paul—if she faded into the background for a few hours?
“Stay with me,” said Sean. “Seriously. Let them do their jobs.”
Betsy nodded at Nigel, hoping he’d understand the division of labor she was suggesting: you care for the patient and I’ll get this agitated neurotic out of our hair. He was a sensible young man. He could get things done while she attended to the family. With a little, light personnel management Petra wouldn’t even know she’d been “managed.”
Nigel got it in an instant. He gave Hedwig detailed instructions—how to lift, where to apply pressure, how fast they were going to move, the importance of not stressing Paul’s body too much—under his breath. Together they lifted Paul and carried his slack and sagging body towards the house.
Petra shrugged Sean off. “He’s my brother. I’m the one who knows him best. I know what’s going on inside him. I can read him.” She turned the full force of her impotence and fury towards Betsy. “I can help. Let me help. Let me make it better.” She sobbed. It was almost more than Betsy could bear. The young woman had not only been complaining that she’d lost her psychic connection to her twin, she’d also been the one to pull the trigger (which only proved that the aforementioned connection had been severed), so she was going to be a mess for a good while yet.
Betsy placed her hand on Petra’s shoulder, gentle but firm enough to send the right message.
