Mount Dragon (38 page)

“These are all the video files in the PurBlood research archives,” he went on in a low tone. “Most of them are the usual: animations of molecules and the like. But look at the second from the last on the list, the one called
pr
. Notice its extension: it's a digital dump from a video camera, not the video compression format used in computer animations. And look at its huge size: almost a gigabyte.”

“What is it?” de Vaca asked.

“It's a rough-cut video, unreleased, probably created for public-relations purposes.” With a few more keystrokes, he called up a multimedia software object to play back the video file. An image appeared in a window on the terminal screen, grainy but perfectly distinct.

“You'll have to watch closely,” he said. “There's no associated audio file.”

 

A caravan of Hummers is approaching across the desert. The camera zooms out briefly to show the Mount Dragon complex, the white buildings, the blue New Mexico sky
.

The camera returns to the caravan, now parked at the Mount Dragon motor pool. The passenger door of the lead vehicle opens, and a man emerges. He stands on the tarmac, waving, grinning, and shaking hands
.

 

“Scopes,” Carson murmured.

 

The entire Mount Dragon staff are on hand to greet him. There is much backslapping and grinning
.

 

“Looks like a camp meeting,” said de Vaca. “Who's that big-nosed guy standing next to Singer?”

“Burt,” Carson replied. “It's Franklin Burt.”

 

Now Burt is standing next to Scopes on the tarmac, talking to the crowd. Scopes puts his arm around him, and they raise hands in a victory gesture. The camera pans across the crowd
.

The scene shifts to the Mount Dragon gymnasium. It has been cleared of all equipment, and in the center are two rows of chairs, carefully arranged. They are occupied by what appears to be the entire Mount Dragon staff. The camera, positioned on the balcony running track, now focuses on a temporary stage built at one end of the gym. Scopes is giving a talk to the enthusiastic crowd
.

As Scopes continues, the camera pans the crowd again. Several of the faces seem to have grown somber, even uncertain
.

A nurse comes from offstage, dressed in white, wheeling a stretcher with an IV rack. The rack holds a single unit of blood
.

Scopes sits on the edge of the stretcher and the nurse rolls up his left sleeve. Franklin Burt now mounts the stage and begins to talk passionately, moving back and forth across the stage
.

The camera zooms in as the nurse swabs Scopes's arm and slides in the IV. Then she hooks up the pint of blood and turns a plastic stopcock, starting the flow. While Scopes receives the blood, Burt talks to him, obviously monitoring his vital signs
.

 

“Jesus Christ,” de Vaca said. “He's getting PurBlood, isn't he?”

 

The camera makes a few cuts and in a few minutes the pint of blood is empty. The nurse removes the IV, places a gauze patch on the arm, and folds the arm up to seal the vein
.

Scopes stands with a grin and holds up his other arm in a victory salute
.

The camera turns to the audience. Everyone is clapping; some enthusiastically, others with more reserve. One scientist stands up. Then another. Soon the group is giving Scopes a standing ovation. Another nurse comes onstage, wheeling two large IV racks, each holding two dozen or so pints of blood
.

Nye strides up to the stage. He shakes Scopes's hand and rolls up his left sleeve. The nurse inserts an IV into his arm and starts a unit of blood
.

Another scientist comes forward, then a maintenance worker. Then Singer himself begins to approach the stage, and the audience breaks into another round of applause. The camera focuses on Singer's plump face. It is white, and beads of sweat stand out on his brow. Yet he, too, sits down on a cot and rolls up his sleeve, and soon the blood is flowing into his veins
.

After that, the audience stands in unison. Within moments, a line has formed from the stage, snaking back toward the rows of chairs
.

 

“Look,” de Vaca whispered. “There's Brandon-Smith. There's Vanderwagon and Pavel what's-his-name. And there's—oh, my God.”

Abruptly, Carson halted the video, logged off the network, and cut the terminal's power.

“Let's take a walk,” he said.

 

“They were the beta testers,” said de Vaca, as they walked slowly around the inner perimeter fence. “They all got it, didn't they?”

“Every single one,” said Carson. “From the custodians to Singer himself. Everybody except us. We're the only new arrivals since February 27th, the date of that file.”

“How exactly did you figure this out?” de Vaca was hugging herself tightly as she walked, seemingly chilled despite the late-afternoon heat.

“When I went to see Singer this morning, I saw him lining up the objects on his coffee table. There was something very obsessive about his movements that struck me as unusual, out of character. I remembered how Vanderwagon had acted just before he put his eye out, and Brandon-Smith's obsessive habits in the last days. And then I noticed Singer's bloodshot eyes, with the yellow cast in the whites. It was just what Vanderwagon's eyes looked like. And Nye. Think about it. Don't a lot of the people here seem to have bloodshot eyes these days? I assumed it was the stress.” He shrugged. “So I spent the day in the library, looking through the research files.”

“And found that tape,” de Vaca said.

“Yes. It must have been Scopes's brainchild, having the rest of the Mount Dragon team be the beta test subjects for PurBlood. It's a common enough thing in certain pharmaceutical companies, you know, to draw the volunteer pool from the company itself. They must have filmed it, thinking it would make good press later on.”

“Only some of the volunteers didn't look too pleased about it,” de Vaca said wryly.

Carson nodded. “Scopes is a brilliant speaker. Between him, Burt, and peer pressure, sure, it's not hard to see why everyone fell in line.”

“But what the hell is happening to them
now
?” De Vaca struggled to keep the sound of panic out of her voice.

“Obviously, the PurBlood is breaking down in their bodies, having a toxic effect. Perhaps impurities got into the phospholipid capsule, DNA mutations occurred. We don't have the time to find out exactly. As the capsule decays, it's all released.”

“How can you be sure it's PurBlood?” De Vaca frowned.

“What else could it be? They all received transfusions. And they're all beginning to show the same symptoms.”

De Vaca was murmuring to herself. “Dopamine. What was it Teece told you about dopamine?”

“He said that Burt and Vanderwagon were suffering from overdrives of dopamine and serotonin. Brandon-Smith, too, to a lesser degree.” Carson turned to her. “He told me that too much of those neurotransmitters in the brain can cause paranoia, delusions, psychotic behavior. You took two years of med school. Is he right?”

De Vaca stopped.

“Keep walking. Is he right?”

“Yes,” she replied at last. “The production of bodily chemicals is very carefully balanced. If mutated DNA in PurBlood is instructing the body to pump out large amounts of…” She paused, thinking, then began again. “Mental distress and disorientation would develop, perhaps combined with obsessive-compulsive behavior. If the overdrives were sufficiently great, the result would be extreme paranoia and fulminant psychosis.”

“And the leaky blood vessels Teece described must be another symptom,” Carson added.

“Naked hemoglobin, permeating through the capillary walls, would just make a bad situation worse. Poison the whole body. Bloodshot eyes would be the least of the problems.”

They walked for several minutes in silence. “Burt was the alpha test subject,” Carson said at last. “It makes sense he would be the first one affected. Then, last week, he was followed by Vanderwagon. Have you noticed any other odd behaviors?”

De Vaca thought. Then she nodded. “Yesterday at breakfast, that technician from the sequencing lab yelled at me for sitting in her chair. I got up and moved, but she wouldn't let up. She's normally such a mousy thing. I thought the pressure was getting to her.”

“Obviously, people are affected at different rates. But it's only a matter of time until—”

He stopped. It wasn't necessary to finish the sentence.
Until the entire staff of this laboratory—this remote laboratory, in the middle of the desert, guardians of a virus that could destroy the human race—goes insane
.

Suddenly, another thought struck him. He turned to de Vaca. “Susana, do you know when PurBlood is scheduled for general distribution?”

She shook her head.

“I read several memos about it in the library this morning. GeneDyne marketing has organized a massive media event. There's going to be a big rollout, with all sorts of fanfare. They've chosen four wards across the country. One hundred hemophiliacs and children undergoing operations will be the first to receive PurBlood.”

“When is this scheduled to happen?” de Vaca asked.

“August third.”

De Vaca's hands flew to her mouth. “But that's this Friday!”

Carson nodded. “We have to warn the authorities. Get them to stop the PurBlood rollout, and get help for the people here.”

“And how the hell are we supposed to do that? The only long-distance phone lines out of here are the dedicated network leased lines to Boston. Even if we could get to those, who'd believe us?”

Carson thought. “Maybe Scopes is already suffering the effects.”

De Vaca snorted. “Even if he was, nobody would connect that with anything happening here.”

He turned to her. “Maybe we're worrying unnecessarily. If there's a developing paranoia among all the Mount Dragon residents, wouldn't it turn them against each other, canceling the threat?”

She shook her head. “In this atmosphere? Not likely. Especially with someone as charismatic as Scopes running things. It's a textbook setting for folie à deux.”

“What?”

“Shared insanity. Everyone acting out the same twisted fantasy. Or, as we called it in med school, a double-nut fruitcake.”

Carson grimaced. “Great. That leaves us only one option. Get the hell out of here.”

“How?”

“I don't know.”

De Vaca smirked, started to speak. Then she stopped and nudged his elbow. “Look over there.”

Carson looked. Ahead of them lay the motor pool: half a dozen white Hummers in a gleaming row, standing like sentries and casting long shadows across the graveled lot.

They walked closer to the vehicles with feigned nonchalance. “First,” Carson whispered, “we'd have to find the keys. Then, we'd have to drive out of the compound without anyone noticing.”

Suddenly, de Vaca knelt beside him in the dust.

“What are you doing?”

“Tying my shoe.”

“You're wearing slip-ons!”

De Vaca stood up. “I know that, idiot.” She dusted one knee, shook her hair back from her head and looked at him. “There isn't a car made that I can't hot-wire.”

Carson looked at her.

“I used to steal them.”

“I believe it.”

“Just for fun,” she added defensively.

“Uh-huh. But these were once military vehicles, and this was once a top-secret facility. It won't be like breaking into a Honda Civic.”

De Vaca frowned, kicking the dust at her feet with the heel of one shoe.

Carson spoke again. “On my first day here, Singer implied that the security is better than it looks. Even if we did bash through the perimeter fence, they'd be after us in a second and would just run us into the earth.”

There was a long silence.

“There are two other possibilities,” de Vaca said. “We could take the horses. Or we could walk.”

Carson looked out over the vast, endless desert. “Only a fool would attempt something like that,” he said quietly.

They both stood silently, looking out into the desert. Carson realized that, for the moment, he felt no fear: just an oppressive weight on his shoulders, as if he were supporting a terrific burden. He did not know if that meant he was brave or simply exhausted.

“Teece was no fan of the product,” he said at last. “He told me as much in the sauna. I'll bet his hasty departure had something to do with PurBlood. He probably had enough doubts about X-FLU to want to stall the release of our other products, at least until he was satisfied there was no flaw in our procedures. Or until he'd learned more about Burt.”

As he was speaking, he noticed de Vaca suddenly become rigid. “Someone's coming,” she whispered.

There was the sound of footsteps; then the figure of Harper came down the covered walkway leading from the residency. Carson noticed a bulge under the scientist's shirt where a large bandage was attached.

Harper stopped. “Heading to dinner?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Carson after a brief hesitation.

“Come on, then.”

The dining hall was crowded, and only a few tables remained vacant. Carson looked around him as they took their seats. Since Vanderwagon's departure, Carson had taken to dining alone, well past the peak hour for dinner. Now he felt uneasy, seeing such a large number of Mount Dragon workers together at once.
Could all these people really
…He pushed the thought from his mind.

A waiter approached their table. As they gave their drink orders, Carson watched the waiter continually smooth an imaginary mustache: first the left side, then the right side, then the left, then the right. The skin of the man's upper lip was red and raw from being continuously pawed at.