Pestilence: A Medical Thriller (4 page)

8

General Kirk Lancaster walked down the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon and stopped a moment
to look out the windows. At five in the morning, he’d already been up for an hour. He couldn’t sleep, and he’d thought about taking an Ambien but had heard they can cause psychotic episodes, so instead, he tried warm milk and chamber music. It didn’t work.

He walked down to a large office
, where he sat behind the desk and immediately spun the chair around to look out the windows at the hedges and the lawn. He didn’t feel like staring at walls.

But the grass gave him an uneasy feeling
, too. He had been at that desk on September
11
th
. He remembered running out of the building and seeing charred remains all over the lawn. He’d thought the entire country was under attack, and his first thought had been that Bin Laden was responsible. He had warned the CIA and the FBI for as long as he could remember, but no one took the threats as seriously as they should have. After all, so many people hated the United States that it was difficult to tell who would actually act.

“Sir.”

Lancaster turned around and saw his assistant, Major Martin Boyle, salute.

“At ease
. We’re not on a battlefield, Marty.”

“Yes
, sir,” he said as he sat down across from him.

“What is it?”

“Sir?”

“I assume you have something to say about this morning
, so let’s just hear it.”

He swallowed. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“I couldn’t either.”

“We’ve closed off the major highways leaving the state
, and all the flights out were cancelled about a week ago. Per your orders, we didn’t cancel the flights going in.”

“Good.”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to do this, Kirk. This is wrong. There’re less than a hundred infected, and we know where they are. We could just quarantine them and—”

“Have you seen someone infected with Agent X, Marty?”

“No, sir. Just photos.”

“I visited a military hospital up there, Loma Linda. They had a patient behind this huge transparent barrier.
Like a bubble. And I went and pinned a Purple Heart to the bubble with tape. As I was looking in, he began to vomit. It wasn’t food, though, it was blood… and organs. The vomit wouldn’t stop, and it exploded out of him so violently, it looked like a grenade had gone off in there. And I saw his brains start coming out of his ears. The virus liquefies the organs, all of them, including the brain and skin. And all it would have taken for me to contract it is a single virus. Just one. If that barrier hadn’t been there, he would have infected a dozen people, who would each infect a dozen more.”

“But what we’re doing to our own citizens, it’s never been done before.”

“You kiddin’ me? Lincoln had Confederates arrested and held for years without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Korematsu v. United States
was the case that decided that Japanese internment was justified. And guess what? It’s still good law. It hasn’t been overturned. In times of crisis, people always give up their freedoms, and they’re happy to do it.”

“This is different. This isn’t targeting a group. This is indiscriminate. And we can’t maintain order, General. We’re talking about forty million people. We can’t even scratch the surface.”

“Use local law enforcement to help you. But, Marty, we’re not letting this thing out. Not at any cost. We’re talking about the end of our nation if this thing spreads. No more America. And if the U.S. falls, you bet your ass the rest of the world is going down with us. We have to do this.”

“And you’ve cleared
it with the Joint Chiefs and the president? The Justice Department?”

“
Who do you think came up with the idea, Marty?”

They sat in silence a moment before Marty said, “
Once we do this, there’s no going back.”

“I know.” Lancaster paused. “Do it, Marty. Send the order now.”

He rose. “Yes, sir.” He took the emblems over his heart off his uniform and placed them on the desk. “It will be the last thing I do as Major under you, sir. I’m here voluntarily, and I quit.”

Lancaster watched him walk out
, and he leaned back in the chair. Marty was young and idealistic—two traits he himself might have had at some point. But if he ever did, they were so long gone that he didn’t even remember them anymore. He cared only about pragmatic decisions and didn’t understand those who took any other view.

He turned back to the window and stared at the lawn.

9

Samantha sat in her off
ice around ten at night, scanning the news sites for any information about California, but she found nothing. She checked Facebook and Twitter and found only one relevant post under the hashtag #UFOSRREAL. A person was saying that she had seen a lot of activity at the military base near her house. They seemed to be preparing for war.

Sam stood and rolled
her neck, then raised her arms over her head to stretch her shoulders. She walked to the window looking out over the parking lot and didn’t see anyone out. Pacing her office, she bit her thumbnail.

Screw it,
she thought.
I’m not doing any good here.

After g
rabbing her jacket, she went out and got into her car. A bar where most of the people at the CDC hung out wasn’t too far from there, and as she drove, she tried not to think about why her sister wasn’t answering her cell phone.

She parked right out front and went in
. The bar was packed with people shooting pool and throwing darts, and she saw a few of her colleagues at a table, nursing some beers. They waved to her, and she waved back but didn’t feel like going over.

She chose a
stool at the end of the bar, then ordered an orange soda with ice and sipped it quietly. She tried to resist, but eventually she gave in and texted her sister for the fiftieth time.

Where the hell are you?

No reply.

She tried her husband
, and again, no reply.

Thinking of
her sister’s husband, Robert, brought back memories of when Sam was nearly married, to another medical student named Isaac Hinckley. He was a warm, intelligent boy, and they dated for so long, they’d grown comfortable together in that way that couples find the comfort better than anything else in the relationship. When he asked her to marry him, she said no. And to this day, she wasn’t sure why. No was the first thing that had popped into her head, and she’d blurted it out. Even if she wanted to change her mind then, she couldn’t. His heart was already broken, and he would have always known that her first answer was no.

Maybe
she had turned him down because of her career or the fact that she was only twenty-two and wasn’t ready to settle down. Or maybe her father loomed so large that anyone else seemed to fall short. He was a successful businessman, a rugged former boxer who dominated any room. Samantha idolized him, and she knew that his traits were what she was looking for in a husband, whether consciously or not. So far, in the halls of medical school and laboratories, she hadn’t found them.

A man sat one stool away from her and ordered a beer. He turned to her and smiled
. “Hi, I’m Brad.”

“Sam. Nice to meet you.”

“You, too. Haven’t seen you here before.”

“I’m not really a drinker.”

“Who you texting?”

“Excuse me?”

“I saw you texting. Just wondering who.”

“No offense, but I kind of came here to be alone.”

“You picked a helluva place to be by yourself,” he said.

He was right. Why would she come to a bar
, of all places, to be alone? She finished her soda, then brushed past him on her way outside. A hiking trail wasn’t far from here, and reaching the summit of a hill overlooking the city took only about fifteen minutes. After driving there, she was pleased to see there were no other people around.

The
dirt on the path was smooth, and her hike was quick. She took out her mace and held it in her hand until she reached the summit, where she placed it in her pocket and sat down.

The
lights of Atlanta twinkled, and a plane flying by overhead blinked rapidly from the cadre of illuminations along its body. Streetlamps looked like glimmering buttons in the dark, and farther up, past the mountains of steel and glass, were flashing radio towers. She wondered how much longer standard radio would exist with digital available.

The skyline was a mass of building
s pointing skyward, each lighted differently and with diverse company logos stamped over them. She noticed one for a bank, and she remembered that she needed to pay her credit card bill. She had called them earlier, but they’d said their system was down…

H
er heart skipped a beat.

She pulled out her cell phone and looked up restaurants in Los Angeles. She called the first result in Google
. She got a busy signal. She tried the second result and got the same. She looked up bars in San Francisco—all busy. A clothing store at a mall in Sacramento also had a busy signal, as did television stations, utility companies, and twenty-four-hour pharmacies. She looked up random people in the online phone directories, and their numbers went straight to voice mail. Calling another five, she got the same results each time.

Jane
wasn’t avoiding her.

10

When Ian’s plane landed at LAX, he got off with the twenty-five other passengers. He guessed it would be one of the last flights into California.

His feet hit the terminal carpet at
nearly seven o’clock in the evening West Coast time, and he checked his watch, then set it back an hour. As he walked through the terminal, past security, a man in a gray suit was walking toward him. The man placed a suitcase down about ten feet in front of him, and Ian picked it up and walked out of the airport.

He stood outside in the warm Los Angeles air
, glancing over the palm trees, and was glad he wasn’t in Chicago anymore. After growing up in Rio de Janeiro, he felt as though he were being strangled by the compacted cityscape of modern cities, and LA was no different. But at least in the oasis surrounding the airport, trees, open space, and a sweeping twilight sky existed. 

He walked to the curb
, where he saw a car with two men inside. He glanced inside, but walked past them. He walked past a minivan, then came to an Audi with a single female sitting in the driver’s seat. The young blonde was trying to send a text. Looking in through the passenger-side window, he saw that the doors were unlocked. He opened the door and got into the passenger seat.

The girl looked at him, her face wrinkled in confusion, and then her eyes went wide as she saw the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson.

“If you scream or try and get out of the car,” he said, “I’m going to shoot you in the face and then drive myself. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”

She nodded.

“Good. Now put it in drive and get on the freeway.”

“Just take the car
.”

“I need a driver, not a car. If you do everything I say and you do it well,
by tomorrow morning, I will be on a plane, and you can go back to your life.” With his free hand, he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. He counted out several hundred dollar bills and threw them on the center console. “And you’ll make some money for your troubles.”

She
looked behind her. “Why do you need a driver?”

“I’ll tell you
when we move.”

She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Once they were out of the airport and winding their way to the 105, Ian lowered the weapon but left it on his lap, where she could see it.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“
You don’t need to know that.” Ian opened the suitcase and glanced inside. He closed and locked it again, then put it in the backseat. He opened the note app on his phone. Of the seven names he’d had two days ago, three were grayed out. That left four people, all with Los Angeles addresses. The name at the top of the list was Wendy Alvarez.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Suzan.”

“
If I look at your driver license, is that the name I’m going to see?”

She hesitated. “No. It’s Katherine.”

“Katherine, I need your help for tonight. If something should happen to you, it interferes with my schedule, and I certainly don’t want to interfere with my schedule. I have a flight scheduled for noon tomorrow, a flight where I’m the only passenger, and I intend to make that flight. So my inclination is to make sure you’re safe. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to need you to say it.”

“I understand.”

“Good. So the only way you are going to get hurt tonight is if you change that inclination, which I’m hoping you won’t. Take the third exit down from here.”

Katherine
took forty minutes to drive to Inglewood. Ian saw men on street corners throwing up gang signs at him, and groups of teenagers roamed the night as though they were in some post-apocalyptic capital.

“I was here once about ten years ago,” he said. “It’s gotten worse.”

“What has?”

“The city. Maybe people.” He looked to her and could tell she grew uncomfortable. “
Who were you waiting for at the airport?”

“My dad. He’s
coming to visit me.”

“He’ll be fine
. By the way, I can see that you’re trying to hide your phone on the other side of your lap. Pick it up.”

She glanced
at him.

“It’s all right
. Pick it up.”

She did.

“Call 9-1-1.”

“No,” she said.

“It’s not a trick. Call 9-1-1. Tell them the make and model of your car, and give them a description of me. I’m serious. Do it.”

“You’ll hurt me.”

“I give you my word. I will not hurt you. Call.”

She looked down at the phone and held her thumb over the keypad
for a moment before she dialed the number. It played an error message.

“Try your dad’s cell,” he said.

She called her father’s cell and got a busy signal.

“It’s not working,” she said.

“No, it’s not. So you can put the phone away. You don’t need to hide it from me. Turn right up here.”

She stopped at the intersection and glanced
at a group of men on the corner and then at Ian.

“I wouldn’t,” Ian said. “They’ll rob you, rape you
, and leave you on the side of the street. I’m not going to do any of those things.”

She swallowed and then turned into a residential neighborhood.
The houses were worn down, and the dilapidated chain-link fences with missing sections did a poor job of protecting yellowed lawns. Some lawns were strewn with broken-down cars and parts and some, without any effort to hide it, simply had garbage thrown around. A few of the homes were kept up, though, and dogs were chained near the front doors.

“Stop here.”

She pulled over to the curb and parked. They were in front of a white house with yellow trim that was lit up brightly by two small flood lamps.

“Get out and come with me.”

They stepped out of the car. Ian glanced toward her and then back at the house. She looked down both sides of the street.

“It’s difficult to tell, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

“How far you would get. I’m guessing to that corner right there before the slug exploded your skull.”

“I’m not going to run.”

“Good girl. Come on.”

They walked up the driveway, to the front door. Ian knocked and heard voices inside. The door opened, revealing an elderly man.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m looking for Wendy.”

“And who are you?”

“LAPD, sir. Is she here?”

“
Lemme see a badge.”

“Sure thing.” Ian reached into his suit coat and came out with the pistol. He fired into the man’s eye
, and he collapsed without a peep. Katherine screamed, but Ian covered her mouth and dragged her into the house, then shut the door behind them. He heard footsteps in the kitchen, along with a woman’s voice. “Robert, who’s here at this—”

A woman came around the corner and stopped when she saw the gun in Ian’s hand. He lifted it and fired three rounds into her chest. She flew against the
refrigerator, leaving smears of blood on it as she slid down to the linoleum. He walked up to her while Katherine screamed behind him and fired another two into the top of her head.

“Let’s go
.” He grabbed Katherine’s arm and pulled her out of the house.