Pestilence: A Medical Thriller (7 page)

17

Lance Page felt hot. He was lying in his living room
, watching television, and his eyelids were boiling. Sweat was pouring out of him, and he was shivering.

Someone knocked on his door. With great effort, he rose and
answered it.

His supervisor, Michelle,
was standing on the porch.

“
Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Sorry for popping in, but nobody’s phones are working. We think there’s a big outage or something.”

“It’s okay
. What did you need, Michelle?”

“
Hey, I know you just left, but you sure you can’t come in? It’s just that we can’t get a hold of Nancy, either, and we’re short two people. If you could come in, it would really help.”

He swallowed
, and his throat was tight. “Maybe half a shift.”

“Half a shift would be an enormous help.”

“Okay. Give me fifteen.”

Lance put on his scrubs and sneakers
, then headed out the door. He locked it behind him and then opened it again. He went to the fridge to get a soda and left again, heading toward Saint Anthony’s, which wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk from his house.

When he arrived, he went
directly to the bathroom and used wet paper towels to mop his head, belly, and underarms. Then he clocked in and went to the nurse’s station for assignments.

The day
was grinding slowly through, and Lance only lasted a few hours before he felt like it was time to go. He checked the board. A twelve-year-old boy named Max White had come to the ER with stomach pains, and his mother was worried that he’d gotten food poisoning from uncooked meat at a barbeque.

Lance went in and did his best to smile.

“How are ya guys?” he said.

“He’s started throwing up since we got here.”

Lance bent over to take the boy’s vitals, and a single drop of sweat rolled off his head and onto the boy. It struck his lips, and the boy wiped away the spatter with his arm without saying anything, but the mother said, “Excuse me, you dropped sweat on my son.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just really hot.” He moved away from him
. “I’ll be right back.” Lance went out to the shift leader and said, “I have to leave. I don’t feel good at all, Michelle.”

“No prob. I think the rush has
died down. Thanks for coming out. You gonna be able to make it tomorrow?”

“It’s my day off tomorrow.”

“Oh, right. Okay, have a good one then.”

“Thanks.”

After getting home, Lance slept for four hours. He hoped a nap would make him feel better, but when he woke up, the fever was worse. He tried calling his girlfriend to come and spend the night, but he was too weak to walk over to his phone. His throat still felt tight, and he was having trouble breathing. His lips and even his eyes were dry from dehydration, and he knew he had to drink something but was too faint to get anything.

With all the strength he could force out of himself, he swung his legs
over the edge of the bed and stood up. He got as far as the bathroom before he sat on the toilet to relieve himself, but something was wrong. He didn’t have the normal sensation of release. It felt more loose and messy. He stood and looked down. The toilet water was completely dark; red-black streaks crossed the bowl.

Max White stood in his backyard wi
th his two brothers and his two-year-old sister. He didn’t feel well and hadn’t for four days. He was hot and sweaty, and his mother kept giving him water, juice, and ice cream, but none of it made him feel better. He’d thrown up a couple of times, but that had stopped two days ago.

“Max, let’s play,” his brother Martin said. He flung a baseball at him
, but Max couldn’t lift his arm in time to catch it. It struck him on the side of the head, and he fell back and lay on the grass. He wanted to lie in bed. It had been his mother’s idea to come out to get some air and sunshine. He sat up.

“You all right?” Martin
asked.

Max s
tood. His throat was on fire, and he took the soda Martin was holding. He drank down a few gulps before handing it back to him. “I don’t feel good.”

“Oh my gosh!” Martin screamed. “Mom!”

Rebecca White came out of the house and saw Max collapsed on the grass. Martin was standing next to him. Her eldest son and young daughter were playing on the other side of the yard.

“Martin, what’s going on? What did you do to your brother?”

Martin was trembling. As she came upon Max, she screamed.

Blood was gushing out of his eyes and nose. He opened his mouth to talk
, and a torrent of blood spewed out over Martin and the lawn. Max tried to cry, but vomited instead. Rebecca scooped up her son and ran to the car to drive him to the hospital, Max spitting up onto her chest and neck as she ran.

18

Howie
woke with a banging in his head and was sitting up before he even knew where he was. He always thought that people who’d been knocked out woke up slowly, like they did in the movies. He’d thought his vision would be blurry at first and then he would hear things and slowly come to. But that was not what happened.

He was lost in a sea of darkness and barely aware of himself
, and then, out of nowhere, he was back. He jumped up so violently that he tweaked his neck. He was leaning against a chain-link fence, but the area he was in was much smaller than what he remembered. Around him were four other men and only three cots.

“You al
l right?” one of them said, a man in a tank top, whose arms were covered with tattoos.

“
That’s the second time that’s happened today.” Howie groaned, twisting his neck. “Where am I?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We still in LA
, though, but we ain’t near no beach.”

Howie
looked around. He was surrounded by trees, and a single guardsman sat at a table, with his feet up.

“What is this place?”

“Told you, man, we don’t know nothin’. They ain’t sayin’ shit.”

Howie
rose to his feet. He was dizzy and touched his face, feeling the stickiness of dried blood. “My daughter,” he said. “I left my daughter at that place by herself.”

“Take it up with him,” he said, pointing with his chin to the guardsman. “But he
ain’t in a talkin’ mood. That one there tried to talk to him, and the soldier damn near shot him. If I were you, I’d keep quiet right now. Everyone’s on edge.”

Howie
shook his head. “This is America,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice. “This is fucking America. They can’t do this.”

“Hey
, man, you preachin’ to the choir. I lived off the grid in Montana lotta years. Then I come here for work and ain’t here but six months, and now I’m in a cage. But shit, how’d people like you not see this comin’? All them phone records and e-mails the government was collectin’. Our passwords, bank info, what movies and books we liked. What did you think they was gonna use all that for? This is about control, man. That’s the only thing government can do. Control. Ain’t got no other purpose. It’s blind to everything else.”

Howie
leaned back against the fence, putting his hands to his head. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but it didn’t help. “There’s gotta be a way out of here. I have to get back to my daughter.”

He shrugged. “Wish I could help
, man. But the only door’s got a lock on it, and that muthafucker right there’s got the key. How you think we get it?”

Howie
glanced at the guardsman and then back to the man with the tattoos. The chain-link fence was a military brand and the holes were much larger than standard. “Just do what I say, and follow my lead.” He shouted to the guardsman, “Hey, hey, please come here. Hey!”

The guardsman
appeared annoyed. He was playing on a cell phone, which he put down, and stood up. Howie saw the outline of the rifle slung over his shoulder. The guardsman came to within a couple of feet of the fence.

“What do you want?” he
asked.

“I need my heart medication. I have heart disease
, and if I don’t get my glycerin, I’ll have a heart attack.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Wait, don’t leave. Please. Look, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write down my address and the medications I need. Maybe you could give it to someone to get for me.” The guardsman didn’t move. “I will die in here. How do you think your superiors will feel when my family files a lawsuit against you and the army for refusing to give me my medication? And there’s money at my house. In a drawer in the kitchen. Cash. It’s yours if you get my medication.”

The guard watched him a moment and then walked close
r. He took out his phone and opened his text messages. “I’ll send a text to someone that can maybe go pick it up. Where do you—”

Howie
reached through the fence, tearing up his hand and wrist as it scraped through, and grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him to the fence. The man behind him, without even a hint from Howie, jumped up, took the guardsman’s fingers, and pulled his arm through up to the elbow, gluing him in place. The guardsman went for the pistol in his waistband, and Howie grabbed his wrist.

The barrel was pointed toward
Howie’s stomach. He pushed with everything he had until the man with the tattoos bent down and bit into the guardsman’s hand bad enough to draw blood. The guardsman screamed, and Howie ripped the pistol away from him and stuck it into his ribs.

“Where’s the keys
?” the man with the tattoos yelled.

“In my pocket.
On my shirt. In the fucking shirt.”

The man reached through the fence
, into the guard’s shirt, and pulled out the keys. He whistled and tossed them to another man by the door. The other man reached through the gate to the lock and inserted several keys before finding the right one. Then the lock clicked open.

“Kill him,” the man with the tattoos said.

Howie glared at him. “I’m not going to kill him.”

“Let me do it then.”

“No, he’s an American soldier.”

The man laughed. “In case you
ain’t noticed, we at war now, man. Gimme the gun.”

Howie
twisted the gun so that he could pull the grip in first and then angled it to pull it through.

“Give it to me.”

Howie felt the weight of the gun in his hands. He had never owned or even shot a gun before.

“No, we’re not killing him. He’s just doing his job.”

“Ain’t that the truth. And his job is lockin’ us in cages, man. Gimme the fuckin’ gun.”

“No.”

The man smiled. Before Howie could even blink, the other man struck him in the face with an elbow, making him see sparkling lights, before kicking Howie in the chest, throwing him back into the fence. The man grabbed him and proceeded to bash his fist into his face several times before flinging him to the ground and kicking him so hard in the face that Howie thought he’d shattered his cheekbones. He tasted blood that dribbled out of his mouth and onto his neck.

The man pointed the pistol at the guard
, who tried to scream but was cut off by the round that entered his mouth and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed backward, and the man turned and placed the muzzle of the gun against Howie’s temple.

“Please,”
Howie slurred through the blood, “Please. I have a daughter.”

The man smiled, tucking the gun away into his waistband. “She
ain’t your daughter no more, man. She government property now.”

The men fled the cage, leaving
Howie bleeding and in pain on the soft ground, the corpse of the guardsman next to him like a bad dream.

19

Ian glanced at her as she drove. She had calmed down a little, and he didn’t get the impression she was constantly searching for an escape, although that should have been her only thought. She had seen his face. She couldn’t expect to survive. Then again, for some reason, he kind of liked her.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“My name?”

“Yeah. You asked me my name. What’s your name?”

“Ian.”

“
If I looked at your driver license, is that the name I’d see?” she said.

He grinned. “No. It’s not. But it might as well be.”

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“You drive me around
, and you drive me around some more. Then I let you go.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He looked out the window at the commercial area they were in. Some of the office buildings bordered on being qualified as skyscrapers. “You see that building there? The tall one with the blue lighting?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop there.”

As the car pulled to a stop in front, he got out first and then waited for her by the hood of the car. She paused a moment in front of the open door.
This is it,
he thought. She was going to make a run for it. He slipped his hand into his suit coat. Her eyes went wide, then she shut the door and came to him.

He took her arm and led her into the building.
The glass building was fifteen stories and had a nice atrium with a security guard. Gardenias and petunias in fanciful vases sat on glass and wood tables. He smiled at the security guard and squeezed Katherine’s arm, prompting her to smile and say hello.
Smart girl,
he thought.

He
pushed the button on the elevator, and the security guard rose from his table and started over.

“Oh,” she said, “
My uncle’s working late. We’re trying to convince him to come eat with us.”

“Who’s your uncle?” the guard said.

“Robert with Gem Mortgage. They’re on the seventh floor.”

The guard
studied them. He rolled his eyes and returned to his desk, to whatever website he’d been looking at. When the elevator opened, they stepped in and didn’t speak until it closed again.

“How did you know that man worked here?” Ian said.

“I looked at the directory when we walked past it.”

“Hm
m,” he said, impressed. “You saved that security guard’s life.”

“Rather than take five seconds and spare his l
ife, you just wanted to kill him? Why would you do that? Don’t you care if he has a family? What if he has kids?”

“They
might be better off growing up without a father.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“No.” He checked the magazine in his firearm before holstering it again. “My father was a raging alcoholic that lived to a ripe old age. Until I was sixteen years old, he would beat me and my mother a few times a week so badly we’d have to go to the emergency room. We couldn’t keep going to the same one because the cops would get involved, so eventually, we were driving two and a half hours to go to a hospital or clinic that hadn’t seen us before.” He glanced at her. “So like I said, they might be better off.”

She stared at him, holding his gaze. “You’re lying.”

He chuckled. “My parents live in Iowa and couldn’t be a nicer couple.”

“Do they know what…”

“What I do for a living? They think I’m some mid-level bureaucrat.”

She kept her eyes forward
, on the doors, as the numbers on the dial above them slowly increased. She didn’t say anything until the elevator had stopped and the doors opened. When they stepped off, she said, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“Only if you don’t do as I say.”

“No, you’re going to kill me anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t have a soul.”

He stopped and looked at her. Taking up her arm again, he marched her forward.

The law firm’s name was emblazoned across double doors with frosted glass. The secretary had already gone home for the night, but a few people still remained, grinding away the nighttime hours. He opened the door and pulled Katherine through with him.

They walked past two people talking
near the front desk. Ian tried checking the names on the doors but found there weren’t any, which was symptomatic of somewhere with high turnover. One man was sitting at his desk, drafting a document.

“Excuse me,” Ian said. “Where’s Mandy Hatcher’s office?”

“Um, three doors to the left, down the hall.”

“Thanks.”

“Who are you guys again?”

Ian ignored him and walked
to the office. He opened the door and pulled out his pistol. The office was empty. He went back to the lawyer he’d spoken to before.

“She’s not in. Do you know where she is
, by chance? I’m her brother-in-law.”

“Oh, you’re Tommy. Nice to finally meet you.”

“You too. Mandy talks about me, huh?”

“She told us about Ice Cybernetics and how you started it with
Kickstarter money and all that. Very cool. Hey, I need some advice on something. If Kickstarter offers me money and then I change my mind, and I—”

“No offense, but
do you have any idea where Mandy is? Sorry, it’s just I want to grab something to eat with her and catch up before I have to leave in the morning. She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Oh. Well, whenever we have to work late
, her and some of the girls go down to Ah Shucks. It’s a bar and grill next door.”

“Right, I saw it coming in. Thanks for your help.”

“Hold on,” he said, standing and minimizing the browsers on his desktop. “I’ll come with. I could use a drink.”

“Sure,” Ian said.

“No,” Katherine blurted out. “No, I don’t really… I don’t know. I just want to have a quiet dinner with Mandy.”

“Um, okay.”

“Okay,” she said.

Ian walked her out and back to the elevator. “If you ever speak up again with
out my permission—”

“I saved you the hassle of having to kill someone in a public place. So you’re welcome.”

Ian glanced at her and then stared forward again, until they were off the elevators. They went outside, where he spotted the bar’s white canopy over a green-striped door.

Ian stepped out front as
two women were walking out. He recognized one of them and quickly spun Katherine around and put his arms over her waist, pretending to be whispering to her. He slowly took out his phone and checked Mandy’s photo. The picture was perhaps a few months old, but that was the same woman.

As the women
were walking down the sidewalk, two men ran up from behind. One of them smashed what looked like a small bat into the head of the other woman and then into Mandy’s jaw. They picked up Mandy and dragged her to a van parked at the curb.

Ian
laughed.

“
Wow, today is not her day.”

Katherine
wasn’t even smiling.

“
Looks like someone else had the same idea,” he said.

Ian
casually strode up to the two men. One had opened the back doors to the van, and the other was holding Mandy, who was unconscious. On the inside of the van were shackles and chains.

Ian grabbed the man’s wrist and jerked it away from his body before spinning it toward him and then snapping it in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go.
The man screamed, and Ian thrust the tips of his fingers into the man’s eye, popping it out of the socket. He bashed his fist into the man’s sternum which knocked him back.

The other one swung at him with the bat. Ian grabbed it with both hands on the downward motion and slammed it back into his face. He kicked down into the man’s shin and then his knee before twisting behind him and smashing his face through the van door’s window. He opened the door
all the way, almost gingerly placed the man’s head inside the van, and then slammed the door, again and again and again, until blood had spattered inside the van and his brains were laying there like jelly.

“Hm
m,” Ian said. He pulled out the pistol and fired into the exposed brain. “Never done that before.”

Mandy was groaning on the warm cement. Ian pointed his pistol.

“No!” Katherine shouted. “Please don’t!”

“As you wish.” He t
ucked away the pistol, and relief washed over her face. In one violent motion, he knelt and spun Mandy’s head almost all the way around and then twisted it backward, separating the spine from the body at C2, the spine’s weakest point. Katherine was screaming as he ran to her, grabbed her, and pulled her back to the car.