Pestilence: A Medical Thriller (17 page)

48

“Wait.”

Samantha
’s heart beat against her ribs like a sledgehammer. She was still young enough that the actual concrete fear of death hadn’t settled over her yet. She’d always been trying to prevent it in others or comforting those who had already lost people. She’d never had time to contemplate her own death. That one day, her life would be extinguished as easily as turning off a light had never entered her mind, until Robert Greyjoy was standing over her a month ago, telling her she was going to die. She had that same feeling again. Fate would flip a switch, and everything she was wouldn’t exist anymore.

She had seen so much death in her life that
it didn’t seem tangible. She’d seen entire villages wiped off the face of the earth by a single virus that could barely be seen under the most powerful of microscopes. Samantha had watched hemorrhaging children suffer for weeks in hospital beds with open sores before dying, and it had never dawned on her that it could happen to her. She thought she was immune from it somehow because she was the one taking care of them.

She thought back to
a young child in Nigeria who had lost both his parents to Ebola. He had watched them die and had still asked where they were days afterward. His mind had erased that memory because of the acute pain it caused. She wondered if any memories like that were floating around in her mind—things she repressed because she could not face the possibility that life could be nothing more than cruel, random chance.

And, with a gun pointed
at her heart, she wondered if she had led the life that she truly wanted.

“Do you need a moment to prepare?” the man
asked.

“Would you give it to me if I did?”

“Yes. I’m not a monster.”

“
Could’ve fooled me.”

He grinned and lowered the gun.
“People always ask me why I’ve chosen them. Why they’re going to die. But you didn’t ask. It’s such a funny thing to see people expect good things in their life, that everything will turn out all right. We’re parasites drifting through black space on top of a rock, and people are shocked when bad things happen to them. I think it would be more appropriate if people were shocked when good things happened to them.”

“
I wouldn’t want to live that way—without hope.”

“Hope
was what was left in Pandora’s box. Maybe people’s lives aren’t meant to have hope.” He was silent a moment and then glanced back to Jane. “She’s quite lovely, even like this. They gave her a sedative after I came in here and she saw the gun. I told them I was her husband. She called out for you.”

Emotion tugged at her
, and she swallowed, hoping to keep it down. “Leave her alone.”

“I only t
ake a life when I’m paid or when it amuses me. Taking the life of an unconscious convalescent wouldn’t amuse me, and no one’s paying me to do it.”

“How much are they paying you to take my life?”

“They’re not giving me money. In fact, when my employers get here, there won’t be a use for money anymore.”

“Who are y
our employers?”

“Unfortunately
, you won’t get to meet them, but they’re coming. They’ll be here soon, actually, once my work and the work of others like me across the world is finished.”

“What is your work? Murdering doctors?”

“No. Eliminating resistance.”

49

Howie woke in the dark, feeling only the intense heat. He couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing. His eyelids fluttered, and they seemed sticky, as if they had been glued shut. Reaching up over his head, he touched smooth steel. When he forced himself up, pain shot into his shoulder with such intensity, he thought he might pass out. When his fingers found the space between his neck and shoulder, he felt the roughness of bandages.

He was in a box
—a metal one that was about five feet by four feet. He thought of monkeys he’d seen on television that were crated and shipped off from Africa to the zoos or labs where they were destined to spend the rest of their lives. He felt like one of those monkeys now.

H
e guessed the slits in the box were for air, and he pressed his face against them to look out. He was inside what appeared to be a storage facility. At least a dozen other boxes were stacked around him, along with crates overflowing with supplies. A sliver of dim, golden light was coming through from the space underneath a door.

Howie
sat back, trying to control the vertigo that was making his stomach feel like Jell-O. He was so hot that his eyes felt as though they were frying, and when he closed his lids, it was worse, like putting a blanket over them.

Weakness overtook him then
, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and die. Jessica was gone—probably taken back to a camp—and he could only pray that she was in a women’s camp. His girlfriend was gone; so were his house, his cars, and his family. The only family he really had was his ex-wife’s family. Her mother had been surprisingly gentle and loving with him, and Howie had grown close to her. But she passed from a heart attack at forty-nine years old. The cardiologist had told Howie that it was just one of those things they had no control over. Humans had no control over the most important things in life, really. He had felt so helpless then, so impotent. But that was nothing compared to how he felt in that box. Fate hadn’t spun his life out of control; other men had—men from his own government, no less. They were meant to protect him.

He leaned back against the
side of the box and thought he would close his eyes. No more running. No more fighting. He didn’t have it in him.

He felt a
warm sensation on his face. Sticky blood was coming out of his nose. He wiped at it softly but then stopped. What did it matter anyway?

He began to drift
off to sleep, but laughter woke him, and he realized it was his own. He was about to die in a box. Despite all his wealth, the hundred or so employees who relied on him, the interviews with the media, and all the people who sought his advice as though he actually had something to teach… he was going to die alone in a box, like a sick dog.

He wondered where his father was now
—a man in his sixties dating twenty-year-olds. Howie had an uncle somewhere, too, whom he hadn’t seen in over a decade. The last time he’d seen him, his uncle was leaving on a world cruise and had asked Howie to come with him. He’d asked him not to be confined to one city, ever. Howie wanted to go so badly that he hadn’t been able to sleep the night before his uncle was going to leave for his first stop: Florence. But he couldn’t go. One face kept appearing to him every time he made up his mind to go and abandon everything. Jessica. But she was gone, and he was alone.

When
Howie woke up the temperature was hotter than he remembered it being before. Sweat rolled off him as though he were in a sauna, and his clothes were drenched. His collar was also damp with blood. He started to peel his shirt off and then stopped. Death would probably come quicker if he allowed himself to dehydrate. He had no intention of dragging this out.

And then he heard something
coming from another room, possibly next door, where the light was coming from, that made his heartbeat hammer in his ears—a piercing scream. He would have recognized that voice no matter where he was.

Jessica
.

50

Duncan Adams waited for a long time outside the hospital. He spent most of that time walking around. He went across the street to a convenience store to get a drink. The cashier, who was reading a magazine, looked up.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Duncan said.

“Just so you know
, the credit card machine is down.”

“I’ve got cash, thanks.”

He went to the fridge, picked out a chocolate milk, and went to the cash register. He laid the cash on the counter. As the cashier counted out Duncan’s change, he picked up the phone, put it to his ear, and then placed it back down.

“Can I ask you something?” the cashier
asked. “Is your phone working?”

“No. No one’s is.”

He shook his head. “So weird.”

Duncan went back to the hospital entrance and sat at the curb
, drinking his milk. He checked his watch, and almost an hour had passed. He threw the empty bottle in a trash bin and went inside.

The hospital wasn’t extremely busy
, and two staff were talking about how bizarre it was that they hadn’t seen any stabbings or shootings that night. But they had treated a lot of people with the flu. He told them that anyone with flu-like symptoms should be quarantined, and they stared at him as if he were a crazy person off the streets. He decided he had to find Sam. Maybe she could help convince them.

As he walked around a corner
, he stepped around something on the floor, slowly realizing it was blood. Cautiously, he followed the small trail around a desk.

A nurse with a hole in her head was l
ying on top of a police officer. He bent down to check their pulses but then didn’t. Their eyes already had the grayness of death. They had been gone for a while.

He stood up
to go notify the staff, thinking they needed the police or more guardsmen at the hospital. Suddenly, another thought hit him, and he nearly lost his breath.
Sam
.

He ran to the elevator and
took it to the quarantine floor. He dashed into Jane’s room. The door hit someone and knocked them forward as Duncan saw the man standing next to the bed, with a pistol in his hand.

Without a thought, he ran at him.

The man fired the pistol, and the bullet grazed his shoulder as Duncan leapt on the man, who twisted him around and flung him into the wall. Duncan ran at him again, and at the last moment, he ducked and grabbed the man’s legs, taking him down.

“Run
, Sam!”

Samantha was screaming something
, but he couldn’t hear it because the man had slapped both his ears. The intense pain and the ringing told him that his eardrums had been ruptured. But he still had both hands on the man’s firing arm. Samantha picked up a chair, ran over, and struck the stranger with it.

He reached up the arm to the pistol. The
stranger was clearly too strong, and Duncan couldn’t wrestle the pistol away. Instead, he stuck his finger over the trigger and fired. Four shots went off, four quiet spits that went into the ceiling. And the gun clicked empty.

The man
punched him in the face and then savagely elbowed him multiple times. Duncan’s grip loosened as Sam ran over with something else.

“Run, now!”
he shouting at her as the man was getting to his feet. He wrapped both hands around Duncan’s jaw, and the last thing he heard was Samantha’s scream—and the crunch of his own spine.

Samantha
screamed and ran out of the room, fear overtaking her. She was sobbing as she ran down the hall to the elevator and pushed the button. The stranger came out of the room and sprinted toward her. She kept pushing the button, refusing to acknowledge him, but she knew she wouldn’t make it onto the elevator.

She back
ed up against the glass as he ran at her. He wasn’t slowing down, and right before impact, she wrapped her arms around him and pushed back with her legs. His momentum went forward and hers went back, sending them crashing through the thin window.

A sensation of flying hit her
, and she twisted to the side before they both slammed into the lawn from thirty feet up.

51

Howie
shouted for his daughter but didn’t get a response. She apparently couldn’t hear anything else over her own screaming and crying.

He tried shaking the box
, but nothing happened. The door on the outside was locked with a padlock that he could hear clink every time he pushed on the door. He pressed on the backside of the box. Leaning into it, he thrust back with his leg, and the metal gave a little. The box wasn’t against the wall as he had originally thought.

Howie
kicked again and again, and the metal caved a little each time. He kicked at least five more times before the corners of the box bent and gave way. After a final kick, the side was bent enough that he could push it off. It crashed to the floor, and he crawled out, his head spinning and the blood draining out of his nose.

He climbed
off the counter the box was sitting on, then ran to the door where the screaming was coming from and opened it.

A
guardsman, the only one in the room, was trying to tear Jessica’s clothing off. Red handprints marked her face, and she was fighting as hard as she could. The guardsman heard the door open and turned as Howie sprinted at him.

The blow knocked the wind out of both of them
, and Howie landed on top of him. Howie had his hands around the guard’s throat, and some of his blood dripped into the other man’s opened mouth and eyes. The guard screamed, trying to wipe away the blood.

Howie
got a good grip on the man’s throat, and his eyes bulged when Howie’s grip tightened. He wasn’t trying to get the blood off himself anymore, but, making hoarse, guttural sounds, he was scrambling to pull Howie’s fingers away. Howie didn’t let go, his arms straining like serpents wrapped around their next meal, until the man’s body went limp beneath him.

H
e stood and turned to his daughter, who was crying and holding torn clothing to her body. Holding his head away, he put his arms around her, and she cried for a long time. He wasn’t sure how long because he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

“We need to go,” he said.

He took the guard’s rifle, which was propped against the wall, and put the strap around himself as they opened another door that led to a dark hallway. He walked slowly to make as little noise as possible but couldn’t hear anyone else. As they rounded a corner, he heard laughter coming from another room.

He
motioned for Jessica to wait in the hall and then glanced in. Four guardsmen playing poker were drinking and laughing, their rifles stacked neatly on a table across the room. He lifted the strap of the rifle off himself and walked calmly into the room, pointing the barrel at the first guardsman’s head.

“I want the keys to any jeeps outside.”

They sat silently, glancing at each other, until a blond one with a cigar in his mouth took the cigar out and said, “Fuck you. You want—”

The round tore into the side of his head and burst his brains over the table
, staining the playing cards red. The body fell to the side into one of the others. The remaining guards didn’t move.

“I don’t have time. The keys
, now, or I’ll kill all of you and find them myself.”

After the men were locked away in boxes in the room he had woken up in,
Howie and Jessica exited through a side door. The building was just a warehouse. Out front were two jeeps and a Humvee. He unlocked the passenger door to the Humvee and helped Jessica inside. He got into the driver’s seat, started it, and pulled away.