Weapon of Choice (35 page)

Laura took a deep breath.

“Mom?” Natalie's voice was low and scratchy. “My throat does hurt. Especially when I talk. But—”

“Let me get you some Tylenol,” Laura said. “The nurse left a dose for you. Liquid so it won't hurt your throat.”

Natalie stared at Laura as she poured the red liquid into a dosing cup and brought it to her.

“Why is everyone wearing that?”

The isolation gear that looked like a space suit, worn by all hospital personnel.

“We have a terrible infection going on in the hospital. That's why you were so sick. But you got a special antibiotic and you're going to be okay.”

Laura marveled at the effectiveness of ticokellin and mentally thanked Stacy for making it available to Natalie and the others. But she still worried about Natalie getting the rare but fatal side effect, aplastic anemia. Worry later, she told herself; be here, in the moment, for Natalie.

“Is everybody going to be okay?” Natalie rasped.

“No, not everybody got the antibiotic in time, sweetie.”

Laura leaned in close to Natalie. Should she go ahead, or wait for Natalie to ask?

“Natalie, honey, about Trey—”

“Can I see him, Mom, can he come here or can I go to the ICU? Is he still in the ICU?”

The hurt, as Natalie tried to get the words out of her bruised throat, cut through Laura's resolve. What had Nicole said: tell Natalie the truth.

“Natalie, sweetie, I am so sorry, but Trey—he didn't make it.” Laura stroked Natalie's uncombed, soggy blonde hair. “He died, sweetie. I'm so, so sorry.”

Natalie's body began to shake, her chest heaved so deeply that Laura thought that she risked a convulsion. A croaky sob woke Tim.

“What's wrong?” he called, jolting to his feet, blanket dragging, and rushing to Laura's side.

Laura sat on the bed, taking Natalie in her arms, no longer caring if she ignored isolation protocol. In Laura's head, she heard the clunk as the dial pack of birth control pills hit the floor. How could she have been so insensitive?

“No, not dead.” Natalie moaned through the sobs. “We are going to spend our lives together. Me and Trey. Please, Mom. Will you go check? Maybe there's been a mistake. Maybe he's just in a coma. Please make him wake up. I want to see him. Now.” Still tethered to the bed by an intravenous line, Natalie struggled to pull herself up.

The bedside cardiac monitor started to beep and a nurse hurried into the room to check her patient's vital signs.

Natalie pulled with one arm to get up. “I have to go to him,” she rasped.

“Sedation,” the nurse said, and Laura stepped back so the nurse could inject the IV tubing.

Tim held Laura close as they watched Natalie drift off into sleep. Seventeen years old and her daughter feels, deeply feels, that her life is over. I know, Laura thought.
When I was nineteen, if anything had happened to Steve
—

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The next tray would be the last and Charles had to wait a few seconds for Lonnie to finish the chocolate drizzle before he could start to inject the next pastry. Only one more tray of profiteroles. Charles began to breathe more easily. His assignment had gone without a hitch. Lonnie had either dismissed his kitchen helpers or they were busy somewhere else. No one had paid him the least attention. He wasn't in the slightest worried about the process, this was so much like his everyday job, handling lethal organisms. Using a syringe designed with the latest in isolation technology, he methodically injected one plated profiterole after another. No problem.

He was curious as to whether the victims had started eating dessert, and as the door to the dining room swung open, he peered out. More white faces than he'd expected. What was wrong with those people? Was it political, because Atlanta had a black mayor?

Charles had thought that he'd feel a modicum of guilt for infecting so many unsuspecting people, with a flesh-eating death, but strangely, he didn't. He felt a surge of power and pride.

The swinging door had stayed open, and Charles continued to peer out, refocusing his attention on Lonnie, who warned, “When you're done, you take your shit and get out.”

“Yes,” Charles said, waiting for Lonnie to paint the last profiterole on that tray with warm chocolate sauce. “I'm taking all evidence and burning it.” Until now he hadn't given much thought to how he would destroy the staph, but he hadn't been worried. Since there were no spores involved, he could simply boil the vials and
syringes to kill the organisms. There would be staph organisms left on the plates, no doubt, but without the proper culture media, they'd die out fast. Strain AZ3510 was designed to strike fast in human flesh, but die quickly in ambient environments.

“That leaves me to stick around here and destroy any leftover profiteroles,” Lonnie said.

Charles noted that a waiter had returned through the open door with an empty tray. He wondered when Banks would show up to disclose the next step, Charles's final destination. Time was getting short.

Charles knew that Banks was out there among the diners, posing as a busboy, watching the victims eat their dessert. But when he looked more closely, he saw that the diners were silent. Through the open door Charles craned his neck for a view of the podium.

A rotund, balding man of medium stature stood, his arm extended to the sky. “And joining me to lead the prayer is Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who, himself, would rejoice in an evening like this.”

Charles watched as the statuesque black woman, a familiar figure in the South, and if Charles was honest with himself, all over the world, walked to the stage. Dr. Martin Luther King, now that was a name that his father despised.

“Didn't we plan—” Lonnie repeated, retrieving Charles's attention, “to put any uneaten ones in the disposal with all the other garbage.”

“Yes,” Charles said. And they had, but he wasn't sure that the sanitation system was adequate to prevent any of the toxic staph from infiltrating the water system. Too many unknowns and Charles was not a sanitation expert. He thought that the bacteria would die off in a hostile environment, but he wasn't sure. He had a moment of panic. His parents, he'd need to tell them to use bottled water for the next few days. But then, they always used bottled water.

“I'm trying to locate Will out there. He should be back in here by now,” Charles said.

“Not before you finish this last tray,” Lonnie said, pausing as
another waiter came through the open door with a tray containing two profiteroles. Lonnie deftly intercepted the tray just as the waiter reached for one of the pastries.

“Give me that,” Lonnie said. “Don't eat that shit.” Lonnie had on rubber gloves, and Charles made a mental note to put them in his satchel when they finished the last tray.

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At Emma's request she had been seated, not among the dignitaries, but with her grandchildren. Her eldest, Karen, sat at her right, and her youngest whom she considered her namesake, Emeril, a chubby four-year-old, sat on her left. The other kids ranged around the rectangular head table of sixteen.

Emma had been strict with her own children, but she never tried to discipline the grandkids, even if she found fault, as she occasionally she did, with their parents' child-rearing practices. Case in point; Emeril, reaching in front of her to grab a dessert.

“Emeril,” she said, “didn't you hear the preacher? Everyone has to say a prayer first.”

The child's arm remained extended, hand almost reaching the plate with the pastry. Emma looked to the nearby table where the boy's mother sat, eyes focused on the podium where Coretta King now stood. An only child, Emeril had been known to throw quite a fit when he was crossed; Emma wanted to avoid anything like that at this exact moment.

“I want one now,” Emeril insisted.

Coretta King joined her pastor in prayer. Emma sighed. Now was not the time to correct a spoiled child.

Stacy had woofed down her shrimp cocktail—she'd eaten not a bite since a breakfast bar early that morning. But by the time the lobster and filet mignon were served, she was deep in conversation. Her plate sat untouched as she listened to John Conyers, Michigan's
longtime U.S. Congressional Representative from Detroit and his heroic and celebrated assistant, Rosa Parks. Stacy found herself spellbound by Conyers's account of the Detroit riots of 1967, in which he'd prominently played a conciliator role. Stacy had lost two brothers to those riots. Those five nights when Detroit burned amidst looting and sniping would always stay with her. She could never forget. And what happened afterward. She could never forget that, either.

When the profiteroles were served on the fine china plates, Stacy promptly salivated. She felt the childish impulse to just pop a quick spoonful into her mouth. But, of course, she refrained. She'd sit politely though another moment of solemn prayer. They had prayed before each course. Stacy was Catholic, but the Goodes were Baptists. The Catholics prayed once, and that was it. Now she folded her hands on the cloth napkin and waited for Emma Goode's pastor and Dr. King's widow to finish what unquestionably was a record-setting lengthy prayer.

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Charles stared out across the tables. Even in subdued lighting, he could make out the shade of everybody's skin. Skin coloring had been important to his parents and thus to him. He'd learned that lesson after school in the fifth grade, the first and only time he'd invited home a kid with darkish-colored skin. He'd known not to associate with Negroes, of course, but this kid's skin was just a bit darker than the other kids'. A really great tan, Charles thought. But his mother had been quick to usher the kid out of the house and out of the neighborhood. She'd sat down with Charles and explained about skin color.

Absorbed by the mix of races, appalled by how this had come about, Charles jerked to attention as Lonnie interrupted, “Get the fuck over here and finish the last tray. What the fuck you lookin' at out there?”

One last glance from table to table as the preacher and Coretta King led the diners in prayer. So many different tones of skin color. Many quite dark and lots lily-white, too. Then his eyes fell on two white people. A man and a woman. Sitting among whites-only at a round table.

His hand opened, the syringe clacked onto the final tray of to-be-injected profiteroles, and he bolted through the door into the dining room.

The table compelling his interest was on the far side of the banquet room, so he had to run past several tables to get there. Most of the diners had their eyes reverently cast down so he didn't attract
that much attention, but as he passed one table, he found himself staring into the eyes of Stacy Jones. He almost didn't recognize her in the scooped neck black dress, her hair up, pinned with a cluster of jewels. Fake, obviously.

“What the heck are you—” Stacy said.

Charles barely hesitated, then propelled himself toward the back table. Still, the diners focused on the podium.

Charles reached one of two all-white tables toward the back. Twelve people, exquisitely dressed, expensive jewelry. No fakes here. They looked out of place, their eyes wandering as Mrs. King recited what must be the last verse before her final amen.

The animated woman reached for her knife and cut into the dessert, smiled to her dinner partner, and with a fork scooped a generous helping of the cream from inside the profiterole.

“Mother, don't!” Charles yelled, diving toward the table, jerking the tablecloth off, sending everything on the table crashing to the floor, including the tainted profiteroles.

The fork had reached his mother's mouth, when his father stood. “Charles, my word, boy, what are you doing here? Why are you wearing—those clothes?”

“Put it down, Mother!” Charles shouted again, louder. “Don't eat that profiterole!”

Rosabelle Scarlett looked dazed as her hand continued toward her mouth.

“Dad, stop her, they're poisoned,” Charles warned.

Charles, now at his mother's side, tried to slap aside the forkful of pastry, but tripped on a small, heavy handbag on the floor in front of him, and instead shoved the profiterole against her open mouth.

His father stood, grabbed Charles's arm, and yanked him back. “What's gotten into you, son?”

“Mother!” Charles's cry of anguish could be heard above the resuming chatter.

In an agonizing instant, Charles realized what he had done. Eyes wild, he looked around at all the black faces. All their fault. I have to stay calm. Let them eat their dessert. But his mother—

Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw a busboy approach,
stepping quickly. Will Banks in the promised disguise, his auburn hair in a ponytail. His coal-black eyes blazing with menace.

“Charles, look what you've done to my dress, it's ruined,” Mother said, wiping away the creamy white filling with her napkin. “Have you gone mad? And what in Hades are you doing here?”

Will now stood next to him. “They need you in the kitchen,” he told Charles, as if he'd been sent to fetch an errant kitchen worker.

“Charles, what is this all about?” his father asked, scrutinizing his checkered pants. “And you,” he said to Banks, “get some soda water for my wife's dress.”

“To the kitchen,” busboy Banks reiterated, with a shove to Charles's shoulder.

Charles had no choice: leave Mother, obey Will Banks, return to the kitchen. His father would expect him to complete his assignment from The Order.

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