Spiral (36 page)

53

MAGGIE TRIED TO GET HIM TO HIS FEET. “JAKE—PLEASE.”

Jake could barely speak. “Go. Maggie. You have to …”

She looked up at the airplanes almost directly overhead now. How long did she have? Twenty seconds?

She frantically opened the vials and dumped their glowing contents off the bridge. Crying now, she longed to tell a barely conscious Jake about what she had found on the yellow sheet of paper, Liam’s last message: “… the fluorescent fungus is a dispersal vector for the cure …” Liam had designed the cure to spread the same way the Uzumaki did. The geese would carry it.

The glowing strands drifted down into the water, blinking bits of red, yellow, and green. Within seconds it was all gone, swept over the falls. The last vial she put in her pocket, saving it for Dylan.

Grabbing Jake’s arm, she dragged him to the edge of the bridge. Was he breathing? Oh, God, she couldn’t tell. She lay down on top of him. His skin was so cold against hers, their faces inches apart. Rocking them back and forth, the next thing she knew she was underwater, still holding on to Jake. The brutally cold water dragged them toward the falls. Maggie held him as tightly as she could, harder than she had ever held anything in her life.

In seconds, they were at the falls’ crest, then over its edge, locked together when the sky exploded, a shock wave like a giant hammer striking them down.

They were airborne, falling, a deafening hurricane roar coming from overhead. The sky above was red, swirling fire, a twisting maelstrom of flame. Then a violent slap like hitting a wall. They struck the bottom of the falls and were immediately sucked under the surface. Stunned and confused, Maggie was twisted and tossed by the churning water, unsure which direction was up.

She fought her way to the surface, spitting and coughing.

She couldn’t see Jake. The white froth of the waterfall was churning around her, its roar drowning her voice, the orange flames overhead raging like the end of the world.

54

THE FIRST SOLDIERS AIRLIFTED IN FROM FORT DRUM FOUND
her wandering about in the shallows, shivering, her arm broken. She gave them the vial with the cure, explaining what Liam had done. She said again and again, “Where is Jake? Please, you have to find Jake.”

They found him in the reeds near the river’s edge, as if he’d dragged himself partly out of the water. His bullet wounds were washed clean, skin white, nearly drained of blood. They checked for a pulse. A tiny thing, then even that faltered. They went to work, pumping his chest.

“Oh, God, no,” Maggie whispered. “Please. Please.”

HIS HEART HAD STOPPED WHEN THE MEDICS LOADED HIM
into the helicopter, Maggie piling in after them. Jake had lost more than forty percent of his blood, no vital signs, but they kept working on him to get a pulse. A decision was made to divert to Fort Detrick, where they had the containment facilities to handle them.

A medic tended to her wounds. She had a broken arm and a fractured bone in her wrist from pulling her hand from the cuff. After they had put her arm in a sling and secured it to her chest, Maggie stayed beside Jake the rest of the way. “Hold on, Jake,” she begged. “Please hold on.”

WHEN THEY LANDED AT DETRICK, MAGGIE WAS TAKEN TO THE
slammer. Two hours in, they let her talk to Dylan through the glass of his quarantine unit. The doctors administered the antidote she’d given them. She forced herself not to break down at the sight of her drugged and barely conscious son. In a moment of lucidity, he asked about Jake. “Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know, Dylan. Let’s you and I pray with every bit of hope that we have.”

No one was sure of the final outcome for Jake Sterling, not the first day, not the next. On the third day, he’d opened his eyes. On the next, he’d asked for water. Not long after that, beside his hospital bed, Maggie held his hand while he slept. She sobbed like a baby for reasons she only half understood.

ONE YEAR AFTER

THE SMALLEST THING

THE UZUMAKI WAS A DISTANT MEMORY. ALMOST FOUR HUNDRED
people around the Hazelton prison and Camp David came down with early symptoms. Hundreds of other clusters of cases appeared up and down the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways, but none of these expanded into a full-blown epidemic, thanks to Liam Connor’s last gift to the world, the fungus Maggie had released alongside the Uzumaki. The cure had spread like a branching river from the release spot, Liam Connor’s fungal creation quickly taking root in fields up and down North America. Later, spores had carried the cure overseas, with the fungus turning up everywhere from Africa to Australia, France to the Falklands.

Liam’s cure came from the protective bacterium that lived in the guts of people who were antibiotic-free. It flipped a genetic switch that turned
Fusarium spirale
from its deadly form back to the relatively harmless, single-celled version that Liam had first discovered in Brazil five decades ago. Liam had taken the genes and inserted them in a fluorescent fungus that could spread just like the Uzumaki. People merely had to ingest a small amount. Maggie named the cure
Fusarium spero
, borrowing from the Latin phrase
Dum spiro, spero
. While I breathe, I hope.

An FBI investigation into Kitano revealed that he had been spying on Liam for years. After he learned about Liam’s labs at the Seneca Army Depot, he had hired Orchid. It had been her job to deliver the cure to the Chinese and Japanese governments. Hitoshi Kitano, the last Tokkō, would finally destroy America.

But Kitano hadn’t counted on Jake Sterling. Or Liam Connor.

Liam’s cure was not perfect. It worked reliably only when adminstered immediately after the infection. Of the three hundred and seventy-two known cases of the Uzumaki that occurred before the cure was widely available, twenty-nine had died, including Lawrence Dunne. The deputy national security adviser had lasted three weeks, completely mad the entire time, screaming and cursing and begging to die.

The UN hearings on the Uzumaki in the months after the crisis had held the world in thrall. Maggie’s testimony, along with Jake’s, was said to have drawn a worldwide audience of more than three billion. Pressure was building, and negotiations were under way for new limits on biological-weapons programs, with all the major powers participating.

THEY’D BURIED LIAM CONNOR AT A LITTLE GRAVEYARD IN
Ellis Hollow, laid him to rest beside his beloved Edith in a quiet ceremony with no press. Life slowly returned to normal but with a few changes. Jake still taught at Cornell, still built microbots, but he had started a side project creating custom prosthetic limbs for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He would visit the soldiers, listen to their stories, fit them with their new limbs. It was therapeutic for him. Jake came back from the sessions at the Syracuse VA shaken but somehow more alive. Maybe one day Dylan would join him. He was calmer by the day, the panic attacks almost gone.

Maggie had started her own project, using the almost eighty million dollars that Liam had left her. On the site of the old Seneca Army Depot, she’d started construction on a living herbarium, a gigantic garden of decay, going after the entire fungal kingdom. Fungi were among the most remarkable, versatile, and powerful forms of life, yet they were also among the most mysterious. Ninety-five percent of all fungal species remained to be identified, their genetic makeup and their morphological variations still to be classified. She was going to change that. By the time they put her in the ground, the Kingdom of Fungi would no longer be a mystery.

There had been other changes, too.

JUST BEFORE DUSK, THE LITTLE EXPEDITION SET OUT TO SEE
the colors.

Dylan and Turtle led the way, Maggie behind them. Jake was happy to bring up the rear. The best spot for viewing came at the end of a long walk through Treman State Park that had been one of Liam and Edith’s favorites, a stretch of the Finger Lakes Trail that ran above Lucifer Falls.

They stopped at a spot on a small bluff. Turtle sniffed the earth. Around them was a stand of tall trees, leaves shimmering in daylight’s last rays.
“Poplulus tremula,”
Dylan said, the budding taxonomist. “Pop-pop always liked them.”

Jake reached his hand to Maggie’s, their fingers intertwining. They’d married the month before, in a big outdoor celebration in the backyard of Rivendell. For a time, she’d resisted his proposals—but she never really had a chance after realizing that what had kept them apart for way too long was fear. Fear exposed is the weakest of emotions; love is so much stronger.

Jake had often wondered about himself. After the war, his marriage had fallen apart, and he’d never really been able to put himself back together. No one seemed to be able to touch him. Now he knew why. He was waiting for these two people. Maggie and Dylan had brought him back to the land of the living.

Together they looked out over the cornfield, waiting for the peak of the colors. At dusk, the sight was unbelievably beautiful. As the last sunlight faded, they began: a million little fungi, all flashing in reds, yellows, and greens, like multicolored stars. The cure had spread around the world, Liam Connor’s fungal creation. As if the old man had taken one last, great breath and exhaled it all over the world.

Jake mussed Dylan’s hair. “I wish Liam was alive to see this.”

“He is alive,” Dylan replied.

An old Irish saying came to Jake, one of Liam’s favorites: “The smallest of things outlives the human being.”

There were tears in Maggie’s eyes. “Come on,” she said to her son. “Count it down.”

Dylan nodded. “Ready? Three, two, one …”

Together they all took a big breath, drawing in the memory of Liam Connor. They held on as long as they could, then exhaled Liam back into the world, ready for another go.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My editors, Susan Kamil and Dana Isaacson, were brilliant—I cannot thank them enough for their patience, wisdom, and skill. Jane Gelfman made everything possible; she has been a steadfast advocate and all-around miracle worker. Also thanks to the rest of the team at Random House and Gelfman Schneider, especially Noah Eaker and Cathy Gleason, as well as Katie McGowan at Curtis Brown.

Kathie Hodge, professor of mycology at Cornell and curator of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, provided inspiration and endlessly fascinating facts about fungi. Paul Griswold gave an enlightening tour of the now-shuttered Seneca Army Depot, and Cornell Chief of Police Curtis Ostrander answered my questions about what would happen if a world-famous faculty member jumped off a campus bridge. Nina Shishkoff, Ph.D., of the USDA at Fort Detrick provided many helpful insights and facts. Captain Larry Olsen, U.S. Navy, assisted with matters nautical. Ed Stacker was a wonderful early editor.

My parents, Joe and Mary Lu McEuen, and parents-in-law, Robert and Judy Wiser, have been great readers and cheerleaders, as have been the rest of the McEuen/Arnevik/Wiser clan. My grandparents Buddy and Mary Jane Lorince, both sadly now deceased, were inspirations. Thanks to Cornell University for the freedom to pursue this quixotic quest, and to all my graduate students, post-docs, and colleagues who read early drafts. Many others have read, commented, encouraged, and criticized over the years, including Jessica Shurberg, Jayne Miller, Barb Parish, Debbie Lev, Rob Costello, Elan Prystowsky, Lesley Yorke, Josh Waterfall, Kim Harrington, and the wonderful crowd at Backspace. Thanks to all.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Susan Wiser—devoted psychologist, enthusiastic editor, and dog rescuer extraordinaire (visit
www.cayugadogrescue.org
). Occasionally critical, always supportive, forever mine.