Pestilence: A Medical Thriller (12 page)

31

Kyle Levitt had joined the National Guard when he was eighteen years old.
The recruiter at his school had been a cool guy named Dave. He drove a Viper and would show up to the school with his sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular arms, and Kyle saw the way the girls stared at him.

Kyle had planned on becoming a veterinarian
, but one meeting with Dave had changed his mind.

“Vets don’t get no pussy,” Dave had told him.

Instead of discussing it with his parents, Kyle had prayed about it and decided that the Lord wanted him to join the National Guard. He had even had a dream telling him something like that. He thought, as Dave had promised, he would be fighting for God and country against Bin Laden. But when he was shipped off to Iraq for his first tour in 2006, he didn’t see Bin Laden. He saw peasants fighting not only the terrorists, but the coalition soldiers, as well.

He’d had several close calls in Iraq. One stuck more than the others
; an IED had gone off about four feet from the vehicle he was riding in. The Humvee in front of them was blown to hell, and so much shrapnel flew off that some of it burst through their windshield and hit him in the face. Luckily, he hadn’t taken any permanent damage other than a scar on his cheek.

As Kyle walked the perimeter of the huge fence, what the guardsmen
had named the Cage, he felt as though he were back in Iraq, on patrol, ensuring the enemy combatants weren’t attempting to escape from custody.

But he wasn’t in Iraq. He was twenty-five miles from where he had grown up in Santa Monica. And the people inside the cage weren’t enemy combatants
; they were Americans.

Some of the other soldiers fell into their roles perfectly and treated the Americans no different
ly from the Iraqis they had dealt with. As far as they were concerned, they followed orders, and nothing else mattered. But for Kyle, it was more complicated. He felt for these people, and his entire family was in this city. Would they be rounded up, too? Would he be expected to guard his own family with a rifle pointed at their heads?

Fuck that,
he thought. He would go AWOL first and take his family with him.

But something more concerning was
beginning to happen. He’d been coughing for about a day, and the night before, he’d had a fever and diarrhea. He was still hot and couldn’t stop sweating. He had dumped ice water over his head, but that didn’t feel like it did anything. A few minutes later, he would be burning up again.

His stomach convulsed
, and he felt his bowels let loose. He ran to a row of nearby bushes and vomited. The vomit was clear and black, but something like dark oatmeal came up with it. The fluid spattered over the bushes and didn’t seem to stop until it decided it was done.

The vomiting alleviated the pain in his guts for a few minutes
, and then the tight, aching pain returned and he had to vomit again.

He walked to the front entrance
, where his buddy Mark was stationed.

“You all right, man?” Mark asked.

“No. I gotta go.”

“Where?”

“Barracks, man. I’m not feelin’ hot. Flu or somethin’.”

Mark glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “That
ain’t no damn flu, you fucking idiot. Tell me you didn’t take off your mask when you was dealin’ with these folks.”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so
… I can’t remember.”

Mark
peered at a group of other soldiers near a tower. “Get outta here, now. I’ll cover for you. Just take a jeep and go, and don’t come back until you feel better. And you ain’t goin’ near the barracks, you hear me? You go straight to the med tent.”

“Thanks.”

He found a jeep with the keys in the ignition. He wasn’t supposed to commandeer a vehicle without permission, but Mark, who was his superior, had just given him what sounded like permission. Even though Mark probably didn’t rank high enough to give permission like that, it didn’t matter. Kyle could barely stand.

He drove off the camp and
took the side streets rather than the 405 or the PCH. The streets were empty, and it felt eerie, like the zombie apocalypse he was always afraid of as a child.

He drove for at least half an hour and kept feeling worse. In that short span of time, he
’d had to stop three times to vomit, and he had grown certain, considering that he hadn’t eaten or drank anything for four hours, that he was vomiting pure blood.

Driving into Burbank, a part of the city that wasn’t quarantined yet, he found a hotel on one of the streets leading to downtown. He parked in front and didn’t move for a long time, closing his eyes and
tilting his face up to the sky. He turned the jeep back on and pulled away. His mind was hazy, and he wasn’t sure where he was going or what he was doing.

The streets weren’t empty
there, and he had a hard time keeping up with traffic. His vision was getting blurry, and the constant vomiting had burst the blood vessels in his eyes. He could see the red strands running along the whites of his eyes in the rearview mirror. He felt it as a sharp pain in his head and eyes.

At a stoplight, he stumbled out of the jeep and over to the car nex
t to him. The driver was a portly man with glasses, and his wife was in the passenger seat with the window down.

“Excuse me,” Kyle said,
slurring his speech. “Where is the hospit—”

Vomit
spurted out of his mouth and over the woman. It hit her in the face and dripped down onto her white blouse and her neck, making her look like a murder victim. Kyle’s head spun, and he tumbled backward.

He hear
d her screaming and the frantic voice of the husband trying to calm her down.

32

Katherine sat up in the hospital bed and pressed the call button for the nurse. The nurse took almost five minutes to get back.

“What do you need, dear?”

“Did you call the police?”

The nurse took a few steps
around the room, checking the equipment. “None of the phones are working. We’re having some sort of blackout or something, dear. I don’t even know how they found out about you, because none of our phones have been working for a while.”

“So
you don’t have any police here?”

“
’Fraid not. But relax. You can stay here until we figure something out.”

The nurse checked her IV
, which was empty, and then removed the bag and replaced it with a new saline solution before pressing a few buttons on a machine and leaving the room. Katherine leaned her head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. She wondered where her dad was and imagined the panic that must have gripped him when she hadn’t shown up at the airport or answered her phone.

Suddenly
, she became aware that someone had walked into her room though she hadn’t heard anything. Ian was standing at the doorway. He grinned and sat down in the chair next to the bed.

Unable to say anything, she
sobbed.

“You didn’t miss me?” he
asked.

“Please just kill me,” she cried,
covering her face with her hands.

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Why are you doing this? Who are these people? What have they done that they have to die?”

Ian put his foot on the bed and pushed himself back, balancing on two legs of the chair. “It’s not what they’ve done. It’s what they’re likely to do. They are trying to stop something that my
employers don’t want stopped. They’ll become leaders in a movement to stop it. An army of sheep led by a lion is more powerful than an army of lions led by a sheep.”

She wiped at the tears, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

“The world’s changing, Katherine. A new one is on the way. And certain people aren’t welcoming of the new.”

“Please leave me alone, please.”

“I promise that I won’t harm you.”

“I’m at the hospital. You’ve already harmed me.”

He was silent.

“They told me one of the boys is in critical condition. Why did you do that? Why would you hurt people if you don’t have to?”

Ian grew visibly uncomfortable and then licked his lips. Katherine noticed that a small strand of drool was coming off his lower lip, and he suctioned it up with his tongue.

“Who knows why we do what we do?
Are you well enough to walk on your own, or should I get a wheelchair?”

“Why me? Why did you choose me?”

He rose. “Let’s go.”

A red Audi of the same model
as her car was out front. Ian held open the door for her, and she got inside. He went to the driver’s side, got in, and pulled away from the hospital.

He wiped his mouth again, making sure no more drool
was leaking out of him—a side effect of the medication he had been taking, as was occasionally slurred speech. He would have to watch himself more closely.

“It’s your car now,” he said.
“One year newer.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want something that
you killed to get.”

“Who said anything about killed? I bought this for you. Look at the licensing on the back
window. It was purchased today. Cost me forty grand. Plus an extra five to get the dealer to come in at this hour.”

She glanced back and saw the yellow tag with
the date. “Why would you buy me a car?”

“Because I ruined your last one. It’s only fair.”

She shook her head, staring out the window at the passing homes and trees that swayed in the darkness like shadows. “I don’t understand this. I don’t know why I’m here.”

“There’s only three more names on the list
. After that, I’ll let you go. I promise.”

“Who are the three people?”

“No one you’d know. The next one is a man that works for the National Security Administration. He’s thinking about leaking information about the imprisonments.”

“What imprisonments?”

“Oh, that’s right,” he said with a grin. “You don’t know. They’re rounding everyone up. Anyone displaying symptoms of a certain disease is taken to various hospitals for personal quarantine. Everyone else not displaying symptoms are taken to cages set up in fields and on beaches, in the middle of streets…”

Her stomach dropped. “What about my dad?”

“What about him?”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. If he had arrived in LA before they shut flights down, he’d be in a cage. But I’m guessing he never made it out here.”

For a long time, s
he was quiet, staring out the window. In college, the school had had an earthquake scare once, and everyone had panicked and run out of the building. Going outside was the last thing you were supposed to do, and everyone had known better, but they’d done it anyway.

Under stress, people’s reason
ing broke. Their calm broke. They did what their reptilian brains told them to do. She had known this her entire life. But something was different about the man sitting next to her. He wasn’t like that. Even when he was murdering people, he was completely calm, without a trace of emotion.

H
is eyes were forward, concentrating on the road. She was embarrassed of the thought, but it crossed her mind that he was extraordinarily good looking. She wondered why someone with his talent, intelligence, and looks would choose to do what he did. Murderers were supposed to be the monsters that hid under our beds, not someone who could be in a J. Crew catalogue.

“What’s
really going on?” she asked softly.

He glanced
at her and then back out at the road. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

33

Howie stopped about a dozen feet from the entrance to the cage. He swallowed hard, not so much from nervousness but because of an itch he’d been having in his throat. He was still sweating although he didn’t feel like he should be, and a general malaise was coming over him. He ignored it, attributing it to fatigue, and went forward.

The guard at the entrance looked up.
Howie didn’t recognize him.

“Hey, how are
ya?” Howie said.

“Good.”

“Here for two people. They’re being transferred up to the Hills.”

The man pulled out his iPad and opened a document. “What two people?”

“Jessica Burke and Harold Burke.”

He flipped through the document for a moment. “Okay, where they going again?”

“Facility up in the Hills. I don’t know why. Lieutenant just said to come get ’em and take ’em up.”

“
Lieutenant Edmonds?”

“Yeah.”

The man thought for a moment. “I’m gonna call and verify really quick.”

Howie
swallowed and felt the sweat slowly trickle off his head and down his neck. “Listen, I was supposed to take these two up there at the beginning of the night and screwed up. You call the lieutenant, and he’s gonna chew my ass, brother.”

The man thought for a few seconds and said, “Fine. Just get
’em outta here quick.”

The guard let
Howie into the cage. He walked toward the back. On a cot with her legs crossed, her head tilted to the side, was Jessica, fast asleep. In the cot next to hers was Mike. His cot was pulled closer and to the front of Jessica’s. Howie knelt beside her and glanced at the guard at the entrance. He wasn’t paying attention.

“Jessica,” he whispered.

Her eyes opened, and he put a finger to his lips, indicating for her to be quiet. She sat up and put her arms around his neck. He didn’t know how to respond at first, and then he hugged her back—something he hadn’t done since she was a child.

H
e said, “Let’s go.”

Mik
e had woken. “How’d you get back here?”

“I’ll tell you later. Come on, I got you outta here
, too.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry about how. If anyone asks, your name is Harold Burke. Let’s go before they change their mind.”

They walked in front as
Howie stayed behind them. He nodded to the guard at the entrance, who was eyeing him. The guard watched them a good five or six seconds before returning to what he was doing.

As soon as they got around the corner and out of sight of the guard,
Howie said, “Run, now.”

The metal of the jeep groaned as all three jumped in.
Howie turned the ignition and spun a U-turn, then headed down the block before turning onto Belvedere, toward the city.