Darwin's Children (13 page)

“She won’t move more than a few inches away from him,” DeWitt said. “Their health probably depends on each other.”

“Explain,” Dicken said softly.

“When they’re brought here, the children form frithing teams. Two or three will get together and establish a default scenting range. The teams coalesce into larger groups. Support and protection, perhaps, but mostly I think it’s about defining a new language.” DeWitt shook her head, wrapped her masked mouth in the palm of one hand, and gripped her elbow. “I was learning so much . . .”

Dicken took the boy’s chin and gently turned it: head flopping on a scrawny neck. The boy opened his eyes and Dicken met the blank gaze and stroked his forehead, then ran his rubber-gloved finger over the boy’s cheek. The skin stayed pale.

“Capillary damage,” he murmured.

“The virus is attacking their endothelial tissues,” Kelson said. “They have red lesions between the fingers and toes, some of them vesicular. It’s goddamned tropical in its weirdness.”

The boy closed his eyes. The girl lifted her head. “I’m not his perf,” she said, her voice like a high sough of wind. “He lost his perf last night. I don’t think he wants to live.”

DeWitt knelt beside the girl. “You should go back to your cot. You’re sick, too.”

“I can’t,” the girl said, and again lay down her head.

Dicken stood and tried desperately to clear his mind.

The director tsked in pity. “Absolute confusion,” Trask said, voice muffled by the handkerchief. His phone rang in his pocket. He apologized, lowered the cloth, then half turned to answer it. After a few mumbled replies, he closed the phone. “Very good news. I’m expecting a truck filled with supplies from Dayton any minute, and I want to be there. Dr. Kelson, Ms. Middleton—I leave these people with you. Dr. Augustine, do you want to work from my office or would you prefer to stay here? I imagine you have many administrative duties . . .”

“I’ll stay here,” Augustine said.

“Your privilege,” Trask said. With some astonishment, they watched the director toss a nonchalant, almost dismissive wave and make his way around the rows of cots to the door.

Kelson rolled his milky eyes. “Good fucking riddance,” he murmured.

“The children are losing all social cohesion,” DeWitt said. “I’ve tried to tell Trask for months that we needed more trained observers, professional anthropologists. Losing bond friends—sometimes they call them perfs—do you realize what that
means
to them?”

“Diana’s their angel,” Kelson said. “She knows what they’re thinking. That may be as important as medicine in the next few hours.” He shook his head, jowls jiggling beneath his chin. “They are innocents. They do not deserve this. Nor do
we
deserve Trask. That state-appointed son of a bitch is in on this, I’m sure of it. He’s squeezing profits somewhere.” Having said his piece, Kelson looked up at the ceiling. “Pardon me. It’s the goddamned truth. I have to get back. The medical center is at your disposal, Dr. Dicken, such as it is.” He turned and walked down a row of cots, through the door on the opposite side of the infirmary.

“He’s a good man,” Middleton said. She used a key to open the back door to the main compound, opening on to the infirmary loading dock. She lifted an eyebrow at Dicken. “Used to be pretty cushy around here, room and board, easy work, best school in the world, the kids were so easy, we said. Then
they
up and ran, the bastards.”

Middleton led them down the loading ramp to a golf cart parked in the receiving area. DeWitt sat beside her. “Get on, gentlemen.”

“Any guesses?” Augustine asked Dicken in an undertone as they climbed onto the middle bench seat. The Secret Service agent, now almost invisible to Dicken, sat on the rear-facing backseat and murmured into a lapel mike.

Dicken shrugged. “Something common—coxsackie or enterovirus, some kind of herpes. They’ve had trouble with herpes before, prenatal. I need to see more.”

“I could have brought a NuTest, if there had been some warning,” Augustine said.

“Wouldn’t help us much,” Dicken said. Something new and unfamiliar had struck the children. If a new virus flooded the first rank of a person’s defenses—the innate immune system—and spread to others quickly enough, in close quarters, among confined populations, it could overwhelm any more refined immune response and bring down a huge number of victims in days. He doubted that contact immunity could have had any influence in this outbreak. Another of Mother Nature’s little screwups. Or not. He still had a lot to unlearn when it came to viruses and disease, a lot of assumptions to reexamine.

Dicken needed to map the river of this illness before he would venture an answer, chart it back from whatever tributary they were at now to its source. He wanted to know the virus when it was asleep, what he called glacial virus—learn where it hid as frozen snow in the high valleys of the human and animal population, before it melted and became the torrent they were now seeing.

If he found anything closer to that ideal source, that beginning, things might fall into place. He might understand.

Or not.

What they all needed to know as a practical matter was whether this flood would jump its banks and find another run. Taking specimens from the staff would begin to answer that question. But he already had a gut feeling that this disease, attacking a new and juicy population, would not readily cross over to old-style humans.

Proving
that
would, in any sane world, stop the political nightmare building outside.

They passed a crate of body bags the end of the loading dock.

“No trouble getting
those
,” Middleton said. “They’re going to be filled in a couple of hours.”

34

PENNSYLVANIA

M
itch washed his face for the fourth or fifth time in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. He stared at the brass light fixtures, the antique gold faucets, the tile floor. He had never been much for luxuries, but it would have been nice to provide more than just a run-down shack in the Virginia countryside. They had been plagued by ants and by roaches. The big yard had been nice, though. He had liked to sit there with Stella and drag a string for the ever-willing Shamus.

The doctor arrived. He was in his early thirties, hair spiked and frosted. He looked very young. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and carried a black bag and a NuTest diagnostic unit the size of a data phone. He was as worn-out as they were, but he immediately inspected Stella. He took blood and sputum from the girl, who hardly noticed the prick of the little needle. The spit was harder to obtain; Stella’s mouth was as dry as a bone. He smeared these fluids on the business end of the NuTest arrays—little sheets of grooved plastic—then inserted them. A few minutes later, he read the results.

“It’s a virus,” he said. “A picornavirus. No surprise there. Some sort of enterovirus. A variety of Coxsackie, probably. But . . .” He looked at them with a quizzical, worried expression. “There are some polymorphisms that aren’t in the NuTest library. I can’t make a final determination here.”

“Were the baths the right thing to do?” Mitch asked.

“Absolutely,” the doctor said. “She’s four degrees elevated. Coming down, maybe, but it could spike again. Keep her cool, but don’t wear her down. She’s skin and bones now.”

“She’s naturally slender,” Kaye said.

“Good. She’ll grow up to be a model,” the doctor said.

“Not if I can help it,” Kaye said.

The doctor stared at Kaye. “Don’t I know you?”

“No,” she said. “You don’t.”

“Right,” the doctor said, coming to his senses. He gave Stella the first injection, a broad-spectrum antiviral with multiplex immunoglobulin and B vitamins. “Used these when measles hit a bunch of old kids in Lancaster,” he said, then grimaced and shook his head. “ ‘Old kids.’ Listen to me. We’re talking in tangles. This isn’t measles, but the shot can’t hurt. It’s only good in a series, however. I’ll report her arrays anonymously to Atlanta. Part of the field program. Completely anonymous.”

Mitch listened without reaction. He was almost beyond caring about anonymity. He looked up as the doctor glanced at the NuTest display and said, “Whoops. Shit.” The display was blinking rapidly, reflecting on the doctor’s face.

“What?”

“Nothing,” the doctor said, but Mitch thought he looked guilty, as if he had screwed up. “Can I have some of that coffee?” the doctor asked. “Cold is fine. I’ve got two more patients tonight.”

He felt Stella under her jaw and behind the ears, then turned her over and inspected her buttocks. A rash was forming on both cheeks. “She’s spiking again.” He turned her over and helped carry her to the bathtub. George had emptied the kitchen ice machine and driven off to get more from the local grocery. They sponged her down with cold tap water. Stella was convulsing by the time George returned.

Mitch lifted Stella out of the tub by her underarms, soaking his clothes. George emptied four bags of ice into the water. Then they lowered her in again.

“It’s too
cold
,” Stella shrieked thinly.

Mitch’s daughter seemed to weigh almost nothing. She was ephemeral. The illness was stealing her away so quickly he could not react.

The doctor left to get another injection ready.

Kaye held up her daughter’s hand. It was pale and blue. She saw small sores between the girl’s fingers. With a gasp, she dropped the hand and leaned to lift Stella’s foot. She showed the sole to Mitch. Small lesions spotted the flesh between Stella’s toes. “They’re on her hands, too,” Kaye said.

Mitch shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”

George pushed back from the tub and stood, his face showing alarm. The doctor returned with another syringe. As he was injecting Stella he looked at the girl’s fingers and nodded. He pulled back Stella’s lips and looked into her mouth. Stella moaned.

“Could be herpangina, vesicular stomatitis—” He took a deep breath. “I can’t make the call here with just a NuTest. Treatment with a targeted antiviral would work best, and that requires a positive ID. That should be done in a reference lab, and she should be hospitalized. I just don’t have that kind of equipment.”

“No one will admit her,” George said. “Blanket ban.”

“Disgraceful,” the doctor said, his voice flat from exhaustion. He looked up at George. “It could be communicable. You’ll want to sterilize this bathroom and bleach the sheets.”

George nodded.

“There’s someone who might be able to help,” Mitch said to Kaye, taking her aside.

“Christopher?” Kaye asked.

“Call him. Ask him what’s happening. You know his phone number.”

“His home,” Kaye said. “It’s an old number. I’m not sure where he works now.”

The doctor had dialed up a sentinel CDC report page on his Web phone. “There’s no warning posted,” he said. “But I’ve never seen pediatric warnings for virus children.”

“New children,” George corrected.

“Is it a reportable disease?” Kaye asked.

“It’s not even listed,” the doctor said, but there was something in his face that disturbed Kaye.
The NuTest. It’s got a GPS and a broadband hookup to the Department of Health. And from there, to NIH or the CDC. I’m sure of it.

But there was nothing they could do. She shrugged it off.

“Call,” Mitch told Kaye.

“I don’t know who he’s working for now,” Kaye said.

“We have a secure satellite phone,” George said. “No one will back trace. Not that it matters, for us. Our son is already in a camp.”

“There is
nothing
secure,” Mitch said.

George seemed about to debate this slur on his masculine grasp of crypto-technology.

Kaye held up her hand. “I’ll call,” she said. It would be the first time she had spoken with Christopher Dicken in over nine years.

But all she got was the answering machine in his apartment.
“This is Christopher. I’m on the road. My house is occupied by cops and wrestlers. Better yet, remember that I collect strange plagues and store them next to my valuables. Please leave your message.”

“Christopher, this is Kaye. Our daughter is sick. Coxsackie something. Call if you have any clues or advice.”

And she left the number.

35

OHIO

T
he infirmary stood adjacent to the southwest corner of the equipment barn: two blocks connected by a short corridor with barred windows. The bright security lights drew angular trapezoids of shadow over the concrete courtyard between the buildings, obscuring a lone boy. Tall and chunky, about ten years old, he leaned or slumped against the door to the research wing, arms folded.

“Who’s that?” Middleton called out.

“Toby Smith, ma’am,” the boy said, standing straight. He wobbled and stared at them with tired, blank eyes.

“You sick, Toby?”

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

“Where’s the doctor?” Middleton pulled the cart up ten feet from the boy. Dicken saw the boy’s pallid cheeks, almost free of freckles.

The boy turned and pointed into the research wing. “Doctor Kelson is in the gym. My sister’s dead,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Toby,” Dicken said, swinging out of the seat of the golf cart. “I’m very sorry to hear it. My sister died some time ago.”

Dicken approached him. The boy’s eyes were rheumy and crusted.

“What did your sister die of?” Toby asked, squinting at Dicken.

“A disease she caught from a mosquito bite. It was called West Nile Virus. May I see your fingers, Toby?”

“No.” The boy hid his hands behind his back. “I don’t want you to shoot me.”

“You ignore that crap, Toby,” Middleton said. “I won’t let them shoot anybody.”

“May I see, Toby?” Dicken persisted. He removed his goggles. Something in his tone, some sympathy, or perhaps the way he smelled—if Toby could still smell him—made the boy look up at Dicken with narrowed eyes and present his hands. Dicken gently reversed the boy’s hand and inspected the palm and the skin between the fingers. No lesions. Toby screwed up his face and wriggled his fingers.

“You’re a strong young man, Toby,” Dicken said.

“I’ve been in the infirmary, helping, and now I’m on break,” Toby said. “I should go back.”