A black outline of the world filled the blue screen. Crimson dots peppered the entire surface. In North America the majority coalesced along the west coast as he’d seen earlier, but the spread now reached east to the Atlantic and beyond, covering all the other continents like a spatter of blood.
Terry grew very still, the way a fox, sensing danger, might freeze in a thicket
“We’ve got ourselves a real runaway, pal,” the general said, and drew in a long breath as if sucking on a cigarette back in his smoking days. “Just like you predicted, and nobody has a clue what the fuck it is.”
Terry remained silent. He’d half-hoped that that prediction of his might have proved to be just his ER pessimism talking. See, silly, Carla would say, poking him in the ribs the way she always had when things didn’t turn out half as bad as he’d feared. And you were worried.
Two hours later
Waikiki Beach, Honolulu
He writhed inside a husk of carbonized flesh, barely able to breathe, his tongue split open like a burnt sausage. A singed life jacket had kept him afloat.
“I’ve got a live one,” Carla said, kneeling by his side at the water’s edge. The words crackled through the headsets of everybody on her recovery team, one of hundreds spread out along the beach patrolling for survivors and sweltering in radiation-proof biohazard suits.
Corpses continued to roll in on the waves. From afar they were dark smudges under white crests. As they drew closer to shore, sunlight illuminated the swells, and Carla saw their limbs move lazily in the currents, making them appear to be alive.
At least the wind had changed. From the hulk of wreckage that had once been the Reagan, smoke and steam still roiled upward, but into a brilliant afternoon sky where they caught the trades blowing off shore, leaving a smear all the way to the horizon, yet taking the radioactivity with them.
Two nurses came running in response to her call. Together they slid their arms under the man’s torso, and Carla steadied his head as they lifted him farther up on the sand.
He let out a cry that gurgled around his bloated tongue.
She’d no idea if he could see through the swollen black slits that had once been his eyelids. “Can you hear me?” she shouted, the hood of her suit muffling her voice. Gingerly she took his hand in hers, able to feel the crispness of his skin through her gloves. “Move your fingers just a little if you do.” The seared flesh would crack open if he flexed them too vigorously.
She felt them stir.
“Good. We’re going to give you morphine to ease the pain,” she said.
Carla let the other two nurses sort through the macerated tissues of the man’s arm to find an intact vein. Her own hand had begun to tremble again. The radiation suit covered up the shaking, but back in the hospital she’d seen a few of the nurses give her funny looks and was pretty sure they had spotted the quivering of her fingers. Thank God none of them said anything. If they sidelined her on account of it, that would really drive her nuts. She’d first volunteered to come on-site rather than sit around ER, waiting for casualties who never came and torturing herself with fears about Ryder. At least now she knew that he was okay--she could have kissed Shelly when she’d returned with Terry’s message. But Carla had elected to stay on beach duty, desiring to be near the few men they found alive. For the moment nothing seemed more important. During the twelve hours in which she’d no idea if Terry were alive, each time she reached for charred remains in the shore break, she prepared to see his ruined face. Her relief when it wasn’t was tempered with the hope that, should he be among the dead or dying, if she couldn’t hold him, someone else would.
“Got a line,” the nurse opposite her said, sliding the tip of a needle into a vessel that glistened dusky purple. It lay at the bottom of a deep fissure in his skin, the outer surface singed as badly as the adjacent flesh. Yet the lumen received the IV catheter without splitting open and, seconds later, bulged larger as a liter of saline poured through it.
Returning him to the sea, Carla thought. The near identical salt content of human serum, amniotic fluid, and ocean waters left little doubts in her mind as to the origins of life.
She injected ten milligrams of morphine through a side portal of the tubing, and he grew visibly calmer. Even his breathing became steadier.
“You okay here, Carla?” the nurse who’d needled the vein asked.
“Sure. I’ll stay with him. Just leave me your morphine.”
As opposed to the rush of ER where each intervention was directed toward saving a life, here she’d quickly shed any illusion that they could do more than help the living die as peacefully as possible. In ER, when dealing with terminal cases, the residents called it Ryder’s Rules. “Never commit active euthanasia,” he would say. “Simply withhold futile treatment and give whatever keeps a patient comfortable. Death will come on its own.”
The women passed her a couple of vials and resumed their patrol.
Carla’s gaze crept back toward all the brown smudges still floating toward them. For a mile in either direction, hundreds of troops toiled in the surf to load the DOAs onto pallets, and drivers used all-terrain vehicles to haul them across the sand, tires churning up deep tracks from the weight. Where tourist buses once clogged the entrance ways to some of the finest hotels in the world, fleets of refrigerator trucks, their motors running, stood crowded together, serving as temporary morgues. The hotels themselves had been evacuated, then commandeered to house the survivors. So far, no more than a handful of the injured lived long enough to see a room in the Royal Hawaiian.
The dying seaman made a two-syllable sound as if he were trying to talk, snapping her back to the vigil she’d sat for so many today.
“Do you need more morphine?”
He gave her fingers a slight squeeze.
She injected another dose, but much more slowly than the first, watching his respirations. They remained steady, for the moment, rising and falling, causing his dog tags to glitter. Unlike the men whose tags were missing, he’d be identified quickly enough, and his family informed of his fate right away.
Before Shelly had told her that Ryder had survived, she hadn’t been sure of being notified at all if he’d died. It wouldn’t happen unless he’d listed her as the person to contact. “If he hasn’t, I’ll kill him,” she said under her breath. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, and nobody else loved the bugger as much as she did. So she damn well better be registered as his one and only. Otherwise, no news wasn’t good news, like today, and she wanted no repeat of that uncertainty. But he never believed much in paperwork, and wouldn’t ever acknowledge his mortality, especially in writing. So who knew if he’d named anyone, let alone her?
“Kill who?” Shelly’s voice said in her ear.
Carla had forgotten about the radio hook-up. “Terry Ryder. I’m not even sure he’s named me to be notified if anything does happen to him. If he hasn’t, as happy as I am that he’s still alive, the man’s dead meat.”
Shelly chuckled. “Hey, gal, that’s morbid talk.”
A few of the other nurses who were hooked into the channel laughed as well, but uneasily, as if unsure whether it was appropriate.
“Now how are you all doing physically?” Shelly asked, her voice turning uncharacteristically funereal. “Staff health wants an update on symptoms of possible radiation poisoning.”
Something in Carla rebelled. The last thing she needed was to be suffocated with earnest sincerity and labeled an invalid. “Great! Just waiting to see which part falls off first.”
“Exactly like middle age,” one of the other nurses added
“Might as well start a pool,” said a third. “What goes first--hair, guts, or butts--any takers?”
This time the laughter had teeth. Even Shelly joined in, and everyone responded with more wisecracks, the relief of the moment audible in their voices.
Black humor helped most people in ER cope with death. It provided a macabre, almost illicit release from gloom and fear. Ca
rla knew no other way to confront her own demise.
“You think this is funny?” a man interrupted as he lugged an orange tackle box filled with intubation equipment over to where Carla sat.
Even through the visor of his suit, Carla recognized the flushed, boyish features of the military physician who’d briefed them as to their duties at the start of the detail. He had behaved like an officious jerk then, and she braced for more of the same.
“No, Sir. I don’t think it’s funny.”
Squatting beside her, he glanced at her patient’s cracked lips, seared inner mouth, and bulging tongue. “This guy needs an airway before the swelling totally chokes him” He plopped his case down in the sand. “It’s a wonder he can still breathe at all.” His voice carried that you-nurses-have-screwed-the-pooch-and-I’m-here-to-save-the-day tone that some fresh MDs adopt.
The patient’s hand stiffened, then squeezed her fingers, over and over. His flesh split open, falling away from the bone with the movement.
“Stop,” she told him, and hastily pressed his fingers between her palms so he could no longer bend them.
The tumorous swell of his lids parted, opening the slit between them a fraction wider. Deep within she saw the glint of his eyes. They flicked up, down and sideways, then a terrible moan came from the black orifice that had once been his mouth.
“Give him more morphine,” the physician ordered, busily selecting a tube and verifying that the light on his laryngoscope worked properly. He avoided looking at the man whose voice he would completely silence by slipping an airway between the vocal cords.
Carla met her patient’s pleading, imprisoned gaze. It began to dart from her toward the man preparing the tube, and back to her, again and again. His groans swelled louder, his breathing grew more tortured, and a gurgle rattled deep in his throat.
“He’s telling us, ‘No!’” she said.
“Give him morphine!” the physician repeated, snapping the laryngoscope blade open. “I’m ready to proceed.”
“He’s refusing the tube, Doctor!”
Even through his visor, she could see the doctor’s look of dismay. “Are you nuts?” he said. “This guy’s a heart-lung preparation who’s out of his head with pain. At least we can let him breathe. Now put him under with morphine.”
Carla bristled. The hand between her palms tried to clench itself into a fist. Again she held it straight. “This patient, Doctor, can see, and hear, and understand what’s going on. He’s saying, ‘No!’”
“Medicate him and let me do my job, or I’ll place you on report.”
The flicking of those eyes picked up tempo, pleading and begging as the sound from the savaged throat became even more impossible to disobey.
“And I’ll report you for medical assault,” Carla fired back. “The man is refusing treatment.”
By now, Shelly, having heard the exchange on her radio, had strode over to join them. She shot Carla a what-are-you-up-to-gal glare, yet leaned over to look their patient in the eye. “Sir, can you nod your head?”
The blistered sphere of carbon ridges and red fissures gave a nod.
“And are you refusing a tube in your airway?”
The slight movement repeated itself.
“Without it, you won’t be able to breathe. Is that understood?”
There was a second of hesitation this time, followed by that same tiny movement. The sound in his throat became, “Nooo tuuubes.”
Shelly looked up at Carla and the boy-doctor. “Everyone satisfied?”
He scowled, threw his equipment back in the case, and tromped away. “Don’t even know why the fuck I’m here,” Carla heard him say over her headset.
“I don’t either,” she whispered, knowing he’d also hear her words.
He spun in his tracks and stood poised to come back.
“Drop it, Doc,” Shelly snapped. She had an aura of command about her that could stop a Mac truck. It may have been partly to do with her size, but the convincer lay in her hard, black stare. “Back off!” it said, even through a visor.
The man sized her up, turned heel, and retreated.
Carla remained kneeling at her patient’s side, never releasing his hand. “Thanks, Shelly. I’ll be okay with him now.”
“You got enough morphine?”
Carla nodded, and gently raised his head so he lay on her lap.
Shelly frowned. “You’ve sat vigil more than anyone. It takes a toll.”
“It helps me believe that someone would have done the same for Terry.”
Shelly nodded and walked off.
The man in her lap stirred.
The destruction of his face made it impossible to tell his age.
But the muscular bulk of his body and thick remnant of his neck suggested someone in peak physical shape and probably young. Every now and then he shivered, and a powerful trembling passed through his muscles, most likely the result of shock and so much of his serum leaking out through open breaks in his skin.
She increased the flow of saline through his IV.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, trying to sound tender despite having to yell.
He stirred and gave what she thought was a nod.
“I’m going to tell her how brave you are.”
His hand moved in hers.
“I wish I knew your first name.” His tags only gave the initial M.
He made a moaning sound, as if trying to tell her.
She couldn’t make it out, though it sounded like “Moose.”
Minutes later her own arms began to shake in a sickening rolling motion that she’d come to loath. Over and over her hands twisted outward, as if she were in the invisible grip of someone trying to snap her wrists. Unlike the fine tremors, these attacks had gotten stronger since morning, and despite her best effort to prevent the movements from disturbing her patient, there was no controlling them. A prickle of cold sweat seeped to the surface of her skin. If the rumors out of Pearl about what SHAKES had done to the crew of the Reagan were true--crippling gyrations, a hopeless slide into homicidal rages--she’d prefer a dose of Ryder’s Rules.
That same evening, 5:01 P.M. EST
Times Square, Manhattan
The falling snow had thickened to a white squall.
On high the flakes picked up colors from the dizzying columns of flashing lights and cast the famous intersection in a neon haze. At ground level they softened the noise of traffic and slowed the pace of the crowds. Yuri just wished the icy melt would stop running down the back of his neck.
He always retreated here to hide in plain sight, usually from irate girlfriends, or their husbands. The people changed by the hour, from bankers to bums, sane to crazy, their numbers waxing and waning, no race, color, or nationality in the world unrepresented, every social situation imaginable on full parade. It was as if a series of instant cities with different inhabitants kept springing up around him, and in each he could remain a stranger, yet never have to stray more than a few blocks.
Especially this time of evening. The disturbing stories out of Honolulu hadn’t deterred the after-work crowd and theatergoers from flocking to bars and restaurants. The snatches of conversation at Broadway and 46th Street as he waited for the light to change were downright festive.
“Christmas all over again.”
“I love the city like this, it looks so clean.”
“Yeah, as pure as the driven slush.”
Everybody in hearing range laughed.
The good mood was from relief, Yuri thought. There wouldn’t be a New Yorker who, on seeing the TV images from Waikiki, didn’t think, At least this time it’s not us.
He crossed on the green, and turned west, rushing toward Eighth Avenue. A glance at his watch told him he had another ten minutes to kill before meeting Boris--if the Russian showed at all.
He should. Without the new identity papers he’d promised, Yuri would have to use the same persona that he’d traveled as on previous missions. That cover had been metic
ulously maintained, just in case it had to be resurrected, but too many people in the old network knew about it, and Boris was a stickler when it came to matters of security. He’d nearly strangled Yuri for warning Anna about the FBI.
“You idiot!” he had said, then skidded the SUV to a stop, leapt out of the driver’s seat, slid open the side door, and smashed the phone in two. Grabbing Yuri by the neck, he added, “They scan our calls, and you’ve as much as told them I’ve got an FBI source . . .”
Yuri had started to see white points of light floating in front of his eyes. But he could still hear fine. A creaking in his neck, the kind of sound a thick rope makes when it’s stretched to the breaking point, competed with Boris’s tirade.
If Boris didn’t finish me then, it means he needs me now, Yuri reassured himself, and tramped faster through the fresh snow.
Striding under the marquee where Lion King was playing for what seemed its hundredth season, he felt a pang of nostalgia.
It had been a snowy night like this when he’d taken Kyra to see it a half dozen years ago, on her seventh birthday.
She had smiled up at him, black hair glittering with a tiara of tiny snow crystals. “It’s beautiful out, Daddy, a perfect birthday night.”
Anna in miniature, he’d thought, marveling how much she resembled her mother. Except for the eyes--they were his. Dark and brimming with a youthful version of his own cocky nature, they made him think he was looking in a mirror.
Two weeks ago she’d turned thirteen. His jaw tightened. Who knew how old she’d be when he saw her next? The grim reflection that returned his stare as he passed a darkened store window no longer looked boyish.
At Eighth Avenue he checked behind him. There were fewer people here, and he felt more exposed.
Nobody stood out.
But they wouldn’t, would they, if they were any good, whether they be assassins or G-men.
Then he saw an Asian woman amongst a group waiting for an uptown bus.
Maybe assassins would stand out,
He turned north, walked up a few doors, and glanced over his shoulder.
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