Final Epidemic (20 page)

She grinned at the expression on his face. Before he could speak, she did.

“We have a lead in Montana, Beck,” she said. “Local militia there received a shipment of sarin, sent from Japan. That’s confirmed, and it’s one more finger pointing at your Aum. FBI field office says there’s evidence of another package that we suspect may contain something even worse.”

Beck frowned. “What am I supposed to do in Montana?”

“You’re an expert in biological terrorism, or used to be,” Andi said. “Work with the local Bureau agents. If there’s one band of crazies with this stuff, there may be others; we may be facing biological attacks in a multitude of locations around the country. Advise, observe, assist. Maybe it will help us anticipate what these bastards might do next.”

“If they’re playing with this virus,” Beck said, “what they’ll do next is die.”

“These militia people may be looney-toons politically, but they’re not usually suicidal,” Andi said. “If there’s any
chance they were provided a vaccine, or some immune factor—”

She shrugged, trying to put optimism into the gesture.

“Again, why me?”

Andi made her voice exasperated. “Because Billy Carson said so, how’s that? Maybe he thinks your finely honed mind—pardon me while I salute—might be of more use there than sitting in a D.C. bunker.”

“I’m not an investigator,” Beck insisted.

“Well, I am,” Andi shot back. “And I’m ordered to sit behind a desk at Health and Human Services while the world goes up in flames. Count your blessings and shut up. You take off when the Learjet’s been refueled.”

While Andi left to check the flight crew status, Beck turned to more mundane tasks. As he sat in the spartan passengers’ lounge, he pulled from his computer bag the satellite phone Billy Carson had ordered issued to him, what seemed like a long time before.

There were no messages on his apartment answering machine—not particularly unusual, though Katie usually called once or twice a week, just to talk.
Summertime,
Beck thought.
Or maybe a new boyfriend’s keeping her time filled.

He checked his watch; it was late, but with the new semester looming, the college office kept long hours. Beck direct-dialed the office he had been provided at the University of Chicago. Instead of the voice-mail recording he expected, a crisply efficient human answered.

“History department, Ms. Tercella. How may I help you?”

“This is Dr. Casey—
Beck
Casey? I’m a guest lecturer for the semester.”

As always, he felt the usual vague embarrassment; visiting faculty were academia’s transients, and dealing with the permanent staff at most universities was uncomfortable at best. Beck had become accustomed to always being the new kid on the block, the one that more established members of
any given academic community eyed quizzically, neither knowing his name nor appearing particularly inclined to learn it.

There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, during which time Beck envisioned the secretary scrolling through the computerized faculty list to confirm his existence.

“Yes. Dr. Casey. How may I help you?”

“I can’t seem to connect to my voice mail,” he said apologetically. “I don’t expect any messages, but—”

“That’s because you have not yet been activated, Dr. Casey. I see here that you have neglected to return the office registration forms you were provided.”

“I’ve been out of town,” he began, “but I promise—”

“One moment, Dr. Casey.”

He waited on hold, listening to Ravel’s
Bolero
build through its second orgasmic movement, until she returned to the line.

“Since your office voice mail has not been activated, we have had to take your messages here, Dr. Casey. By hand.” Her voice was accusatory, chiding.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. You have two messages, both of which were received yesterday afternoon. Both of them are from the same individual. A Ms. Stepanovich.”

Beck felt his stomach drop. One message from Deborah might be anything; two in the space of a single afternoon signaled potential cataclysm.

“Dr. Casey?” The voice was impatient. “I said, do you have something to write with?”

“Yes. Please go ahead.”

“Message one: ‘Please call me immediately.’ Time-stamped at 1:18
P
.
M
.” The voice was openly disapproving now. “Message two, 2:07
P
.
M
. ‘Tell him his daughter is missing, and he must call me immediately.’ Do you need the number, Dr. Casey?”

He clicked off without responding, and looked up to see Andi Wheelwright looking at him curiously.

“It’s my daughter,” Beck said, his mind churning. “Her mother says she’s missing.”

He stopped, frowning at the expression that suddenly appeared on Andi’s face.

“We should talk about her,” Andi said. “About Katie, I mean.”

He called Deborah’s numbers, both home and office, while Andi stood at his shoulder, voicing quiet objections.

“No answer,” Beck said, only partly to the woman beside him. “What’s the flying time to get down there?”

“There is no commercial air traffic in or out of Florida,” Andi reminded him, grateful that Beck was once more addressing comments to her directly. “And don’t start thinking you could get into Fort Walton, anyway. Not without official sanction. I’m sorry, Beck. Montgomery is as close as they’ll let anybody get.”

He nodded. On the map he had examined, Montgomery, Alabama, was perhaps one hundred fifty miles north of the Gulf Coast; there was no direct interstate route to Fort Walton Beach, which in the current circumstances was probably fortunate for the Alabama capital. He had traced down the various primary routes and two-lane blacktops that spiderwebbed southward from Montgomery.

Andi read his mind.

“Use your head, Beck. They’re not at the motel anymore, and there’s been no activity on the credit cards we know the girls have. They may not even
be
in Florida anymore.”

“If you think I’m going to play spy in Montana when my only child is—”

“We’ve put out an urgent request to all our CDC teams in the Quarantine Region. They have Katie’s photo and the names of all three girls. You want to locate her, that’s the only way to do it.”

“Do you know where Deborah is?” He did not turn to look at her.

“We’ve confirmed she is still in the Arlington area, Beck. We’ve monitored several phone calls she’s made today. There’s no reason to believe she even knows Katie has been in Florida. And as long as Deborah stays in Virginia, she’ll be as safe as anyone else.”

“Thank you. I appreciate all your . . .
efforts.
”

“Damn it, Beck! I’m sorry we—I—kept you in the dark about your daughter. But you know as well as anybody what it’s like in there right now. If I had told you, you’d have done just what you’re thinking about doing now. And that won’t do Katie, or anybody else, any good.”

“Don’t,” Beck said with heat. “Don’t pretend you care about my daughter, or anything else that wasn’t in your case orders.”

“I made a decision, Beck.”

“What does that mean, Andi?”

She kept her eyes locked on the terminal window; outside, the CDC aircraft waited.

“You’re a valuable asset. During this emergency, we need your skills, the things you know how to do. Don’t be so eager to go wandering around in a contagion zone.”

“My daughter is more important than—”

“Than working to stop this plague?” Andi’s voice was hard. “Use your head, if you still can. Even if you find Katie in that madhouse down there, what happens next?
There’s no cure for this disease, damn it!
What does that mean, Beck? Think!”

In her peripheral vision, she could see the impact her words had on her companion. But her next words were still anything but sympathetic.

“I want us to save Katie, and all the other Katies out there. I just think you might prefer not to die foolishly trying.”

“I’ve done enough for my country, for too many years,” Beck said, his voice tight. “Now it’s time to think about—”

“Unless this virus is stopped damn soon, it will keep spreading,” Andi interrupted. “Your daughter—and millions of other daughters; the whole country, Beck, maybe the whole damn
world
—in all likelihood will be dead. Within ten days, maybe less.”

Beck stared at Andi for a long moment. Then, with a violence that startled her, Beck Casey spun away; his fist hammered against the wall, leaving a pockmark deep in the plasterboard. As she watched, Andi saw him slump as if all strength had drained from his limbs. He leaned his forehead against the wall, his eyes shut tight.

She resisted the impulse to speak, waiting.

“What do you expect me to do?” Beck said through gritted teeth.

“Go to Montana,” Andi said, her words level and without emotion. “Get us whatever information there is, Beck. It’s all you can do right now.”

Fort Walton Beach, Florida
July 22

The football stadium was a scene that would have rivaled the best of Dante, or perhaps the worst; certainly, it was as close to the lowest circle of hell as Carol had ever imagined.

Across the expanse of summer-burned grass, huge tents had been erected; their sidewalls were rolled high for ventilation, leaving the rows of cots open to view. All were occupied, save for those only recently vacated by one of the increasing number who no longer required it. These cots then quickly refilled, the process not unlike some perverse assembly line.

Had she the strength or the leisure, Carol Mayer would have been appalled. As it was, she merely filed it deep in her subconscious, displaying only the absent demeanor of those preoccupied with more pressing matters.

They were dying at a steady pace, almost like the workings of a clock. Carol wondered when she would become numbed to it all. She hoped it would be soon.

Carol wiped the perspiration from her forehead. The heat rose steadily throughout the day, but aside from the thundershower that rumbled through almost every afternoon during the summer months, the weather, at least, was cooperating. It
was a small mercy, and one that was noticed only vaguely by the majority of those whom the virus had felled.

She was tired—
no, exhausted,
she corrected herself.

Aside from herself, there were only a relative handful of health-care personnel attending almost four hundred desperately ill patients. This, despite the presence inside the stadium of a dozen exposure-suited physicians from Ray Porter’s CDC contingent. They moved about purposefully, but their activities were focused not on treatment; rather, they concentrated solely on the larger picture of analyzing the viral outbreak with an eye to containment strategies. Once Carol had even buttonholed Porter and demanded he order his team to help; Porter had listened, curtly refused and moved on.

What help Carol did have came from a surprising source: the two teenage girls who had carried their friend into the Rossini-Evans Clinic.

She looked around for the two volunteers and spotted them working in the semishade of the large canvas tent fly that shielded a block of filled cots.

Right now, Carol noted, the one called Katie was gamely holding the shoulders of a thickset black man. He was convulsing, vomiting violently into a stainless steel pannier being held by her friend, Jay-something.

The three teenage girls had been the last patients to come to the clinic; the one who had presented with acute symptoms had been, Carol knew immediately, beyond hope. But the other two had refused to leave her with the CDC team, fought off the suggestion they go anywhere but with their friend. Finally, all three had been ordered transported to the Fort Walton Beach High School football stadium.

Almost as an afterthought, Ray Porter had ordered Carol along.

It was just as well: throughout the morning, electrical power had become fitful and petulant. Then it had died completely, and did not return. As a medical facility, the clinic had been summarily shuttered.

It was a short trip to the stadium, scarcely half a mile. But to those who traveled it, the journey took them into a different, terrifying universe. There, several hundred of the most critically ill victims had been sent.

The sick girl—
Carly Holmes was her name,
Carol remembered suddenly,
just a seventeen-year-old girl who had the bad fortune to vacation in a plague zone
—was in agonal convulsions when she was carried to the van. When the spacesuited soldiers lifted the stretcher into fittings that locked it to slots in the floor, Carly’s limbs began to flail; to the uninitiated, it appeared as if she were fending off an assault by unseen demons.

It took a determined effort on Carol’s part—the soldiers had pulled back, though whether in shock from the violence of the young girl’s seizure or in simple resignation, the physician could not tell—to secure the nylon restraints around Carly’s arms and legs. It did little good; Carly’s entire body was now convulsing madly, thrashing inside the straps. Her eyes were open wide, and her teeth gnashed and clacked as her jaw muscles went into spasm.

“What’s happening?” J. L. had screamed. “What’s happening to Carly?”

Before Carol could answer, Carly’s body arched bowlike inside the embrace of her restraints. A sudden geyser of phlegm and bloody fluids burst from her mouth in an impossible volume. Carol fought, only partly successfully, to keep Carly’s face turned during the paroxysm. The other teenagers looked on in something akin to horror.

Then J. L. began screaming in hysterics, adding to the chaos.

“Can you quiet her?” Carol snapped at Katie. Another thick stream of vomit gushed from the thrashing girl whose head she held steady, clamped beneath her arms and body weight.

Katie Casey reached out to J. L., who turned and clung tightly to the younger girl. She buried her face against Katie’s
shoulder, muffling the short screams that her fear and revulsion still wrenched from deep inside.

“What are you doing to my friend?” Katie asked, her voice unsteady.

“I’m trying to prevent her from aspirating the discharge,” Carol said, most of her weight now pressing Carly’s head against the stretcher’s edge. She shifted Carly’s position, trying to clear the airway. Then she raised her voice. “Driver! Get this thing rolling, damn it! I can’t do anything for this girl without assistance!”