Containment (28 page)

The night had been a long one, everyone on edge. Not much had happened, but Reddy figured that plenty of locks of hair had turned gray overnight along the barricade. A few skirmishes, some close calls. A dozen drunks had charged the fence along the we
stern border. They'd been carrying guns but nothing too serious—.22s, .30-06s, and, in one pathetic case, a pellet gun. The troops laughed at the wielder of the pellet gun, allowed the rubber bullet brigade to drive that little guy back into the shadows.

Now that the light of morning arrived
—damp and foggy though it was—the soldiers and their superiors breathed a little easier. Of course an attack could come at any time but night was the most likely time. Night-vision goggles had been issued but Reddy liked the searchlights better. High-tech equipment sometimes slowed you down.

Finally the shift was over. Reddy
's relief showed up and climbed the platform. Reddy trudged back to base camp with his buddies. Nobody said anything until they were in the tent and sitting around the heater, drinking coffee.

A corporal walked over and sat down.
"Two K," he said. "It's up to two thousand fatalities. They're dropping quick."

One of the men Reddy had known for several years put down his coffee cup. His name was Blake, one of the nicer men in the squad.
"You know," he said softly, "I'm almost glad."

The corporal looked at him.
"You're what?"

"
I said I'm almost glad. I hate to say it but you're thinking it as much as everyone else. You and you and you." Blake went around the tent, pointing at everybody. "In a few more days it won't matter and we can all go home. Might as well guard a mausoleum than a zone full of corpses."

Reddy half-expected someone deny it. But nobody did. The corporal
's gaze drifted to the red-hot coils of the heater.

"
What's gonna happen?" said someone. "What's gonna happen when...when the people in the zone are all dead? What are they gonna do, go in and make one gigantic bonfire?"

"
It ain't right." said someone else. "Why didn't the government do more to help those people? Why didn't they find a cure? Hell, they fixed polio, small pox, all the rest of them, so why not this thing? They can't be running out of money. They print up money all the time."

"
Look," said the corporal, "let's just let it go. Bad things happen. It's not up to us to call the shots. All we can do is our duty. And hope nobody rushes the fence."

Blake gave him a long look.
"If our duty includes killin' Americans, I'm not sure we're in the right outfit."

"
You'd do it," said the corporal. He looked at Blake. "You'd do it if you had to." He glanced around the room. "You'd all do it."

"
Yeah," said someone. "If they're shootin' at you, you'd shoot back."

"
Even if they weren't shooting," said the corporal.

Blake looked uncomfortable.

"You're too well trained," added the corporal. "Like the rest of us. You'd pull the trigger if the general told you to."

* * *

Three-quarters of a mile from the fence, Abe and Jimmy were looking at a map. Five boys and two girls, ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen, watched. One of them, Gary Winters, looked more intense than the rest, except perhaps his sister, Alicia.

"
Right there," Jimmy said, stabbing a finger at the map.

Abe studied it for a moment.

"Right there," repeated Jimmy, as if saying it often enough made it right.

Abe finally nodded. They
'd scouted all along the fence, narrowed down the target to a few places that held the most promise: relatively weakly guarded, hadn't been attacked yet, and had some buildings not too far away from the fence that would provide cover for the attackers. Jimmy decided the best spot was at the Montgomery County line.

Jimmy smiled at Abe.
"Let's do it then!" The smile faded when he looked at the kids. "Pay attention! This is serious business!"

Abe glanced at his partner. The kids
had
been paying attention. What was Jimmy thinking? Trying to get them scared? They didn't need it—they were already scared.

"
The most important job," said Abe, "is driving the car. Now Jimmy and me, we're gonna have to have our hands free. You know? Cause we're firing away, like the rest of you. So we got to get someone to drive." Abe laid a big hand on Gary's shoulder. "And I want you to be the driver. Okay?"

Gary nodded at once.

"He can't drive."

Gary turned. One of the other boys, long hair and pimples, snickered
. "He can't drive worth a damn. I've seen him try."

"
I can drive," Gary said fiercely.

The other boy looked at Jimmy and shook his head.

Jimmy said, "Wait a minute. We got to have a good driver. Somebody with a lot of guts, because the driver—"

"
Gary's my man," said Abe, giving Jimmy a sharp glance. Then he patted Gary's shoulder. "Right?"

The boy snickered again.
"His Mom won't let him drive."

Gary dropped his gaze. Everyone saw tears welling up in his eyes.

"Let's pick someone else," said Jimmy. He pointed to the boy that had snickered. "You. How about you? How well can you drive?"

Fear flashed over the boy
's face.

One of the girls said,
"He's a hot rod, he's got this old Plymouth he and his Dad fixed up."

"
That right?" asked Jimmy.

The boy looked different now. The fear edged away.
"My Dad's dead."

"
Okay," said Jimmy. "So you want revenge, right? Cause the government let him die, and they want to do the same to us. But we're not sick, none of us is sick, so we don't belong here. Those tests were just stupid—don't nobody tell
us
we're sick when we're feeling fine. They just want to keep us here so that sooner or later we catch the disease and die, you understand? That way they don't have to do nothing to treat this thing. But we're not gonna let 'em keep us here, right?"

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

Jimmy slapped his back. "You the man. We're gonna be following you, dude. Think you're up to that?"

Gaining confidence, the boy nodded more vigorously.

"Great." Jimmy gave everyone a thumbs-up sign. "Remember, this is for your parents, and your brothers and sisters."

But mostly, thought Abe, for us. He opened the door.
"Go home, get some sleep. And I don't want to catch anybody messing around out there. All of you fired the guns today, got in a little practice, got used to carrying a weapon. I like what I saw, you're now experienced soldiers, I'd say. Good and ready. But no more, okay? You play with those guns, you touch the car before we're ready to roll, then you answer to me, you hear?"

When their young troops had gone, Jimmy and Abe clasped hands.

* * *

As Alicia and Gary were walking home, Alicia said,
"How come you let that other kid drive?"

Gary didn
't answer.

"
I know you're not chicken," said Alicia. "The driver—that's going to be the hero. Man, you let that little dork be the hero. You can drive—it's easy, there won't be any traffic. I'll show you how. You'll catch on fast."

They walked on in silence. Alicia talked some more, but Gary didn
't listen. Instead he thought about the previous night.

He
'd already gotten a taste of combat. It had been a brief one, to be sure, but a real taste—Gary had killed a man.

He hadn
't intended to. It'd been an accident. When he'd seen a gang surrounding and threatening that cool lady he'd met earlier, he had to do something. His first thought was to cry out, but then he'd decided his best bet was to fire a few warning shots. Show them he meant business. A few bullets into the grass and they would go running.

The plan didn
't go as expected. Shooters on television hold guns with their little fingers and fire off round after round, and Gary forgot the real world doesn't work that way. What had he been thinking? His gun had one hell of a kick—he knew because he'd already fired some practice rounds, and yet he didn't think about it. The gun got away from him; instead of staying aimed at the ground it had worked its way upward. Before Gary could tell his finger to release the trigger, bullets stitched their way along that man's spine like some sort of crazy sewing machine gone out of control. The man fell over and Gary knew that he'd never get up again.

So this was what killing a person felt like.

Gary didn't like the feeling. It reminded him of the time when he was very young and he spilled a can of soda on his one and only picture card of his favorite Mutant Monster, the Firefly. It ruined the card—the stain wouldn't come out, not even when his mother washed it with that special solution that was supposed to repair the damage. It'd been something that, once done, could never, ever, be undone.

Bethesda, Maryland / 11:20 a.m.

"It was a dirty trick," said Kraig. Standing in Roderick's office, the assistant director of the Micro-Investigation Unit appeared far better rested than he'd looked in days. "It's not like I was psychotic or anything."

"
Of course not," said Roderick. "You simply needed a good night's rest, and that's what you got."

"
The ticker's past three thousand," Kraig said in a quiet voice. "God only knows how accurate it is."

"
But we have our beastie." Roderick waved a hand at his computer monitor. A 3D representation of a molecule rotated serenely on the screen.

"
Hard to believe," said Pradeep, standing in the doorway.

Roderick looked up.
"I didn't hear you come in. Have you met Kraig Drennan in person?"

Kraig wasn
't interested in introductions. "Hard to believe what?"

"
Hard to believe that this innocent-looking little molecule can be responsible for such devastation...and tragedy."

They all stared at it. In the stick-model form, it resembled a dumbbell with a zigzagging branch growing out of the bar near the middle.

"It's not so hard to believe," said Roderick. "It's a combination, of course, since that's how it was made. Mixed together, the individual molecules chemically combined and produced this hybrid."

"
Which molecules?" asked Kraig.

"
One piece of protobiont is the business end of a neurotransmitter—one of the more common ones, gamma-aminobutyric acid—GABA—derived from an amino acid, glutamic acid. The whole molecule of GABA isn't there, just the important part."

"
The part that binds to the receptor?" asked Kraig.

Roderick shook his head.
"No, not that part."

"
But that's how a neurotransmitter works. It acts as a signaling molecule, it's released by one neuron and latches on to another. You said 'business end.'"

"
Yes, but not that business. Neurotransmitters are also taken up by the neuron that released them. This reuptake mechanism saves the cell from losing all the neurotransmitters it releases."

Kraig thought a moment.
"That's how it got into the brain. Isn't it?"

"
Not just that," said Pradeep. "Another part of the molecule helped. It's the active end of a molecule that attaches little membranous vesicles to a motor transport molecule called dynein."

"
Oh, God." Kraig put a hand to his forehead.

Roderick said,
"I perceive that you understand now how our little fiend got all the way into the cellular nucleus. Dynein proteins carry vesicles from the periphery toward the cell center. Along with the real cargo of molecules needed for transport, protobiont hitched a ride. The dynein molecules could have no idea they were transporting contraband—when the key fit the lock, that was good enough for them."

"
Apparently protobiont gets into the brain via nerves," said Pradeep. "It either infiltrates the skin or, more likely, needs a small abrasion or cut."

"
So that's why masks alone won't stop the contagion," said Kraig. "Even the best protective systems fail, unless they cover the whole body. And now we know why the immune system isn't activated. There's no chance—protobiont sneaks in, gets picked up by nerves and ferried to the brain. And since the brain has a relatively muted immune system, the invaders don't get detected there either."

"
It's probably too small for the immune system to find," said Roderick.

"
Christ," said Kraig, still stunned. "But how in the hell does the thing replicate?"

"
Oh, that's the really beautiful part," said Roderick. "The third part of the trio is a piece of the enzyme that synthesizes GABA, glutamic acid decarboxylase."