The Proteus Cure (48 page)

Public excoriation in all the media … saying her mind was as twisted as her body … comparisons to Mengele … effigy burnings … hurled rocks, perhaps hurled bombs … her name dragged through the scientific mud …

When all she’d wanted to do was help.

No one would understand—no one would be
allowed
to understand.

It would all come down, and she could do nothing to stop it.

She looked up and spied Bill’s gun lying on the desktop. She glanced over to where the Sheila, Paul and Coogan were hugging each other and crying. All together while she was alone …

“Your dream …”

She gasped. Bill’s voice, barely audible. She leaned closer, her ear nearly touching his lips.

“What?”

“It’s coming true …”

•

Sheila glanced over and saw Abra leaning over Bill. His lips were moving. Still plotting? But no … the growing look of horror on Abra’s face said otherwise.

She straightened. “No! Oh, no!”

Bill’s slack mouth and open glazed eyes confirmed the inescapable truth—he was dead. But that didn’t seem to be the reason for her horrified reaction. What had he told her?

Abra grabbed Bill’s pistol, pressed the muzzle against her carotid artery, and pulled the trigger.

“I still can’t believe I killed someone,” Sheila said as she pushed a floweret back and forth through the juice leftover from her broccoli and garlic sauce.

She couldn’t believe Abra had killed herself either. Like losing her mother all over again. The grief would hit her, and hard. But for now she was safe from emotion, in that special place in her mind that allowed her to wade through her trauma and still function.

Numb, exhausted, she sat at her kitchen table with Paul. Coog had migrated to the TV in the front room to watch the news stories about the three of them. Thank God he didn’t remember what had been said about him yesterday. The afternoon was all a blur for him.

“You’re going to have to tell him soon,” she said.

He nodded. “Very soon. I’ll give things a few days to settle down, then ease him into it. I just hope it doesn’t hit the airwaves first.”

The TV seemed to be carrying only one story. The rain had stopped and the river was starting to recede so now they concentrated on what was being called the “Tethys Tragedy.” The nature of Proteus hadn’t broken yet, but it was only a matter of time.

The way she felt, cooking had been out of the question, as had eating in public. So they’d ordered Chinese takeout.

Paul reached over and gripped her hand.

“I’m so sorry you had to do that, but you had no choice.”

“I just wish I felt bad about killing him.”

That single finger twitch on the trigger had saved four lives. Still, it had been her finger, and she wasn’t about killing, she was about life. And she couldn’t help feeling good that she had stopped Bill from going any further.

She sighed and closed her eyes. It was over. After a day and a half of hell, it was finally over. Or so she hoped.

The cops had arrived sometime in the afternoon. She’d bet Bradfield’s finest had never seen anything like the scene in Bill’s blood-bathed office: two dead, one wounded, and three wet, bedraggled survivors.

It had taken the rest of the day to remove the bodies, cart Shen Li to the hospital, and sort things out with officialdom. By night she and Coog had been allowed to go home, but Paul—to Sheila and Coogan’s horror—had been led off in handcuffs and jailed. Sheila had searched frantically for a lawyer, but trying to find one willing to take a murder case during a flood had proved impossible.

And then this afternoon, miracle of miracles, Paul had been released. Shen Li had made a deathbed confession, taking blame for Tanesha and Hal, and describing how he’d stolen the bat from Paul’s garage and returned it after he’d killed Kaplan.

Deathbed confessions apparently carry a lot of weight, and Paul was freed.

All Bradfield was in shock—both from the flood and the deaths—and Tethys Medical Center was in chaos. The Feds had shut the place down and the patients were being moved to other hospitals. Nobody knew who was in charge.

But at least it was over.

Or was it?

Alone in her bed last night, Sheila had cried for Abra. How could such a good person go so wrong? Her bloody death had been a horror—Sheila had pulled Coog against her so he wouldn’t see the red spray from the poor woman’s neck.

And now she was gone, leaving another hole in Sheila’s life.

But mourning for Abra wasn’t the only thing that had kept Sheila awake. Something Bill said had bothered her. Bothered her still.

She turned to Paul. “Do you remember what Bill said before he died?”

Paul shrugged and smiled. “I don’t think I was paying attention. I was just a wee bit distracted by that gun he was pointing at us. What I can’t figure out is Shen Li. He was a cold-blooded murderer, but he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—kill Coog. Why did he give you the gun? Why confess?”

“Maybe because you saved his life. He sensed he was dying and decided to do the right thing. But Bill said something to Abra … something like ‘Humanity needs help and it’s getting that help in spite of itself.’ What did he mean by that?”

“Megalomaniacal raving.”

“Let’s hope so. What bothers me is that he sounded so smug about it.”

Paul squeezed her hand. “He was crazy, Sheila.”

“But he said, ‘Mama and I took matters into our own hands years ago, and we’ve been doing just that.’ What’s that mean? That VG-seven-twenty-three is being used somewhere else?”

“There’s a scary thought.”

Sheila nodded. “The thing is, neither he nor Abra ever mentioned his mother before. I didn’t even know she was alive.”

“Let’s just hope she’s not as crazy as he was.”

“Amen. And then there’s what Bill said to Abra before she killed herself. Whatever it was, it seemed to horrify her.”

“You’re sure the horror wasn’t simply seeing the life go out of her beloved ‘Billy?’”

“Could be, but I sensed it was something else.”

Paul sighed. “Well, we’ll never know, will we.”

That’s for sure, she thought as she reached for a fortune cookie.

She cracked it open and pulled out the narrow slip. Along the bottom ran a string of six lucky numbers, but the fortune gave her a chill.

Nothing is as sure as change

Her insides twisted as she handed it to Paul. He took it with a grin, but the smile faded as he read it. He looked up at her.

“It’s just a coincidence, Sheila. I mean, you can’t really believe a fortune cookie’s got anything to do with reality.”

No, she didn’t.

But still …

Anna Gilchrist squirmed in her first-class seat.

Lufthansa did everything possible to provide a comfortable flight but, considering her advanced age and where she was bound, how could one be comfortable?

No parent should have to face the tragedy of outliving a child, but burying two of them—both Abra and Billy, gone at once—was almost too much to bear.

Their legacy, however—hers and the children’s—would live on.

Changing the world …

But not one life at a time as dear, romantic Abra had believed—
millions
at a time.

Her company, Schelling Pharma, had joined the vaccine business—flu and pediatric types such as DPT, MMR, and so on. Last year Schelling had shipped one-hundred-million doses of Viron-P, its flu vaccine. Fifty million of those to America. This year the USA sale had reached seventy million. And why not? Since profit was not her motive, she was selling it for a little above cost.

Viron-P was as good against influenza as any of its competitors, but each dose also contained a helping of
Die Perfekte
stem cells. Only a few were needed to begin the job. She and Billy, working together, had neutralized its gender effect years ago. Already it was at work in last year's vaccine recipients. And seeing as children as young as six months were in the recommended vaccine population, it would already be having an impact.

A hundred million doses last year, a hundred-fifty million this year—many donated to Third World countries—and even more next. And on and on. Not as good as adding it to the water supply—Abra had been right about the unfeasibility of that—but a close second.

Billy had told her about Tanesha Green. More Tanesha Greens would be appearing. And so it was inevitable that, in a few years, the world would realize that something was amiss. But it would take them many more years to pinpoint the Schelling vaccines as the cause, and by then she would be gone and nearly a billion doses would have been dispensed. And the good will have been done.

No, not done—
begun
.

Stopping the vaccines would not stop their Protean benefits, because those benefits wouldn’t be limited to the recipients. With vertical transmission to their children, and even horizontal transmission through blood banks, Proteus would keep spreading.

Anna smiled. Yes, a New World was in the making—a smarter, healthier, more peaceful world. Her legacy—hers and Abra’s and Billy’s. She only wished she were younger, so that she could witness it, glory in being a part of it.

TRACY L. CARBONE
is a Massachusetts native who sets most of her work in the fictional town of Bradfield. She was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for her editing work on Epitaphs: A Journal of the New England Horror Writers. The PROTEUS CURE is her fourth published book, with previous titles including a Young Adult science fiction, a suspense thriller, and a collection of horror and literary dark stories. Her short stories have been published in several magazines and anthologies in the U.S. and Canada. Her medical thriller HOPE HOUSE will be released by Shadowridge Press the summer of 2013.
www.tracylcarbone.com

F. PAUL WILSON
is the award-winning, NY Times bestselling author of nearly fifty books and many short stories spanning horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything between. More than nine million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into twenty-four foreign languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media. His latest thrillers, NIGHTWORLD and COLD CITY, feature his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. Paul resides at the REAL Jersey Shore
http://www.repairmanjack.com

The Soul Collector

Restitution

The Collection and Other Dark Tales

Hope House
(forthcoming summer 2013)

Repairman Jack

The Tomb

Legacies

Conspiracies

All the Rage

Hosts

The Haunted Air

Gateways

Crisscross

Infernal

Harbingers

Bloodline

By the Sword

Ground Zero

Fatal Error

The Dark at the End

Nightworld

The Teen Trilogy

Jack: Secret Histories

Jack: Secret Circles

Jack: Secret Vengeance

The Early Years Trilogy

Cold City

Dark City

Fear City

The Adversary Cycle

The Keep

The Tomb

The Touch

Reborn

Reprisal

Nightworld

The LaNague Federation Series

Healer

Wheels Within Wheels

An Enemy of the State

Dydeetown World

The Tery

Other Novels

Black Wind

Sibs

The Select

Virgin

Implant

Deep As the Marrow

Mirage
(with Matthew J. Costello)

Nightkill
(with Steven Spruill)

Masque
(with Matthew J. Costello)

The Christmas Thingy

Sims

The Fifth Harmonic

Midnight Mass

Short Fiction

Soft & Others

The Barrens & Others

Aftershock & Others

The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium

Quick Fixes – Tales of Repairman Jack

Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong

Editor

Freak Show

Diagnosis: Terminal

THE PROTEUS CURE

First published May 2013

by Shadowridge Press

Copyright © 2013 by F. Paul Wilson and Tracy L. Carbone

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and imagined events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

www.shadowridgepress.com

In medical ethics, the line between right and wrong is often blurred. Who is to decide what is for the good of humanity?

Changing the world. One person at a time…

That is the mission statement of Tethys Hospital, run by Dr. Bill Gilchrist and his deformed sister, Abra. VG723, their revolutionary stem-cell-based therapy, appears to be capable of doing just that for the cancer patients who come to Tethys. VG723 is often their last hope. But if they match the protocol, they’re virtually guaranteed a cure.