Spore (25 page)

“People are scared. The reality is that the world’s changing and sooner or later we’ll all get heart disease or diabetes or cancer. When we do,” he snapped his fingers, “that’ll be the end of that.”

Mindy nodded and reached out to touch his hand. She’d seen too many relatives die slowly and in great pain, weak and gasping for every desperate breath. “At least we won’t suffer. Won’t linger endlessly in agony anymore.”

Todd lowered his gaze and picked at his plate.

“What?” she asked. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

“Spores are different,” he said, pausing before looking into her eyes again. “We’ve had a problem with…”

“With what?” she asked, worried.

“One of the spores…” He muttered a curse and drained his glass of wine before refilling it. “He disappeared a few days ago, kidnapped, and we found him tortured.” He drained the second glass and pushed away his plate, his gaze pained. “He healed. You heal. That scratch on your face from this morning? It’s already gone.”

Mindy reached up to touch her cheek. She felt no welt, no pain. Even her beaten back had stopped hurting. “Oh boy.”

“There are a lot of sick freaks out there. This stuff in the water might make them more vicious, and a spore, someone like you who heals rapidly, could last longer and endure more. There’s a lot of play value in a victim who won’t easily die. With millions at stake, there’s no telling how far an ass like your ex might go, especially if he’s amped up by the fungus.”

“Don’t,” she said, pushing away from the table as she gathered up her dirty dishes.

He stood, following her to the sink. “I just need you to be careful. Extra careful.”

The dishes clattered as she stacked them on the counter. Trembling, she turned to face him. He towered over her, a massive wall of muscle and intimidation, but Mindy felt no threat, no scorn, only the calm assurance of safety and fortitude.

She thought he might kiss her—and she was pretty sure she’d let him. She blushed and managed to smile. “Thanks.”

He blinked, his mouth falling open for a moment. “Why are you thanking me?”

“For caring.” She started toward the table to gather up the rest of the supper mess, but paused to kiss his cheek.

When she returned, hands full of plates and wine glasses, he stood where she’d left him, watching her, an astounded smile teasing his lips.

Mindy skirted past him, feeling his gaze on her. “Let me just get these washed up. Do you have a something I can put the leftovers in?”

“Yeah,” he said, moving toward the cupboards in the corner. “Let me get you a—“ His phone rang, and he glowered and muttered a curse before excusing himself to answer it, leaving Mindy to smile as she located the bowl herself.

Laundry room window nailed shut. Check. Doors locked and barricaded. Check. Deputy still outside. Check. Sean sat at the drawing board with a glass of iced tea and tried not to worry.

Mare turned on her music—a well loved Madonna CD—and he relaxed as she belted out
Nothing to forget, all the pain was worth it
while clanging around the kitchen.

That’s my Mare. Nothing keeps you down for long.
He practiced a few brush strokes to loosen his hand before returning to the latest cell, three children tied in the dark while spore slime bubbled behind them.

He had the kids brushed in, and the main shadows on and around the spores when Mare, singing
Good little girls never show it
, moved from the kitchen to the bathroom. He heard the faint clink of the toilet lid hitting the tank over her singing
Do you know? Do you know?

Then Mare screamed.

Sean shot out of his studio and rushed to her, knocking aside a kitchen chair in his haste. She stood in the bathroom, pants wadded below her knees, screeching, her hands and thighs smeared with blood.

“Sean! Oh my God! Sean!” she wailed, reaching for him then drawing her hands back as if loath to touch him with her stained palms. “What’s happening? Am I dying? Oh, Sean!”

Clots and dribbles of blood twirled in the toilet and her underwear was a gruesome mess. He swallowed. They’d both heard, hell, everyone had heard, how people were dropping dead from unexpected diseases.
Not Mare. Please, anyone but Mare.

Despite the blood, he held her, shaking in his arms. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be fine. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

She nodded and whimpered as he cleaned her up, helped her put on fresh clothes. “I’ve been hurting for a couple of weeks now,” she said as he found her shoes. “Belly cramps. I just thought it was a stomach bug or too much greasy food, not something…” She tugged at her hair and rocked like a child trying to soothe herself. “Not anything bad. I should have gone in right away. Should have had someone check.”

He held her face in his hands and kissed her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.” Shoes on, he helped her up and held her close as they staggered to the front door, Madonna wailing about nothing equaling nothing. Sean struggled not to wail himself. Wailing would not help anyone. And, no matter the cost, no matter the task, he had to help Mare.

She clenched at him, her hands like talons against his arm. “My mom, my grandma, they died from cervical cancer.”

“I know, babe, I know,” he soothed as he helped her down the steps.

“I thought that, maybe, since all that stuff was removed when I was a kid I’d be okay. I wouldn’t—“

They reached the car and he opened the door for her, eased her in. “It’s not cancer,” he assured her. “Shh. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

“It has to be!” she sobbed, her face in her hands as he hurried around and slid behind the wheel.

“Maybe we were too rambunctious last night,” he suggested, backing out then speeding down the road. “Maybe it’s just a burst blood vessel or something.”

“People are dying! I see it every day at work. Just fine, then bam! They’re dead. And now it’s my turn. Oh, God, oh Sean. I’m only twenty-nine. It’s too soon. I can’t leave you!”

He grasped her hand and squeezed it. “Shh. You’re not going to die. This is fixable. It has to be.”

Traffic was uncooperative, too many hay mowers and weekend dawdlers on the road on this rare sunny day, but he managed to keep her coherent if not completely calm as he rushed her to the hospital in Boone.

A hospital worker stood at the emergency room door with a clipboard. “Accident, illness, or unknown?”

“Unknown,” Sean said. “She just started bleeding.”

The clerk asked their names and symptoms and Sean gave her the details. Once past the sentry, they entered to find the emergency room awash with people gasping for breath, looking pale, haggard, and terrified. He located a chair for Mare before he stood in line at the registration desk.

He often looked over his shoulder, terrified she too, would start fading. All around, people moaned in pain and fear.

The digital check-in requested insurance information, medical history, all the standard crap, so he knelt before Mare and hurried, asking her when he didn’t know the answers.

They were almost done, checking off family history issues, when the middle-aged man beside Mare hitched a pained breath and fell forward, landing with a loose smack on the floor beside Sean.

Mare screamed and covered her mouth as she lurched toward the woman hacking and coughing on the other side. The old woman across the aisle from them whimpered and daubed at her oozing face with a grimy hankie, but the others sighed and looked away. Sean reached over to roll the man onto his back, but dead, unseeing eyes stared at him. No one seemed to care.

Mare silently rocked herself, her eyes closed.

“Look at me,” Sean said and Mare did, her whole body quivering. “I am going to take this to the receptionist and be right back, all right?”

“Hurry. Don’t leave me here to die alone.”

He hurried. When he returned, he stepped over the dead guy to sit beside her, to hold and cradle her. No one came for the dead guy for almost half an hour and he was thrown onto a cart and pushed away like a load of dirty laundry. Sean saw four others fall dead to the floor while waiting to see a doctor, and he lost count of those who simply slumped unconscious against their neighbor. Three hours later, they called Mare’s name. Other than crushing fear, she seemed unchanged, no worse, but no better. He tried to feel encouraged, but found it impossible in the sea of death and dying.

Blood smeared her chair when she stood, but he ushered her away from it, hoping she wouldn’t see. Dark blood stained the crotch of her capris. No one seemed to notice them stagger past.

Haggard nurses helped her onto an examination table and asked many of the same questions he’d already answered on her digital check in. They requested he leave while they helped her undress. She protested, demanding he stay, but the nurses were insistent.

He remained in the hall outside her exam room, pacing and terrified, until they let him back in. Mare lay on the table in a hospital gown, her knees up under a thin blanket, a soaking pad beneath her, and she reached for him, both hands grasping until she clenched his shirt, his skin. Her pale, sweat-tacky face gleamed blotchy in the bright fluorescents, and, despite the heavy stink of antiseptic, he smelled death lingering in the air.

“She asked me if I was afraid of you,” she muttered, glaring at the nurse who readied a tray of instruments and swabs. “If you’d ever hurt me.”

He stroked her hair, one arm cradling her against his belly as if drawing her into him could erase their fear. “It’s okay. It’s just their job.”

“I’m lying here bleeding and they ask insulting questions like that. I know it’s their job, but, dammit!”

“It’s okay, babe. Everything’s okay.” He leaned over to kiss her and tell her he loved her.
They can accuse me of anything they want, as long as you’ll be all right.

The nurse continued to lay out instruments without any sign she cared about Mare’s rant. Another nurse bustled in with a clipboard and more questions about Mare’s accident—she’d been impaled falling through a tree when she was eight—and the subsequent hysterectomy, about her family’s history of cervical cancer, and about their sex life, complete with blunt questions about force, coercion, and violence which only served to further aggravate Mare.

Mare was still giving the nurse her opinion of those questions when a middle-aged woman entered, yawning. She introduced herself as Dr. Ledders, then skimmed the nurses’ notes before looking into Mare’s eyes and taking one of her hands. “Okay, Rosemary, we’re going to figure out what we have going on, all right? Gonna start with a quick pelvic and have a look see. Just hang with me a little longer.”

Mare nodded and clenched Sean’s hand tighter. He took a breath and tried not to let his terror show.

Instruments in and poking around, Mare buried her face into Sean’s belly as Dr. Ledders glanced up, frowning. “How complete was your hysterectomy?”

“They saved my left ovary and vagina,” she said, voice muffled against his shirt. “Nothing else. Was just too damaged.”

“Well, you have a cervix now. Going to take some samples.” Ledders inserted a skinny probe-looking thing and it came out bloody. She handed it to a waiting nurse, then inserted yet another instrument, then a long swab. A few more probes, then she removed the last of the bloody instruments and reached into Mare with a gloved hand.

“Oh God.” Mare scrunched her eyes closed and shook her head. “It can’t be there. My mom and grandmother died from cervical cancer.”

“I feel a mass,” Ledders said, palpating Mare’s belly. “Beside your left ovary.”

No no no no no.
Sean thought his knees would buckle, but he managed to remain standing even as Mare began to quietly weep.

Ledders poked and palpated then removed her hand and gloves. She stood and came to the side of the exam table and, once again, took Mare’s hand. “We’re going to get you prepped for an ultrasound. Get a good look at what’s happening in there. All right?”

“Is it cancer?” Mare asked, her voice small and quavering.

“I don’t know. We need to take a look, okay? If it is cancer, with luck, you came in quick enough we can give you another hysterectomy and clear it up. We’ve had a few patients we’ve managed to save. But we have to take it all out before it has a chance to metastasize. But ultrasound first. Then surgery right after, if needed. Okay?”

Mare nodded. “Okay. Can Sean stay with me?”

Ledders squeezed her hand. “Until you’re being prepped for surgery. Just let me talk to him for a moment, all right?”

Mare nodded and Sean kissed her before following Ledders out the door on the far side of the exam room. Medical personnel rushed past, their faces drawn with fatigue.

Ledders regarded Sean with a cool stare. “I know who you are,” she said. “We all do. You’re that friendly guy on TV who keeps telling us this is a miracle. Does it look like a miracle now?”

An orderly pushed a gurney with two bodies piled upon it. One an old woman, the other a man in his twenties.

“No,” Sean said, his belly twisting in shame and fear. “This isn’t. I only meant—“

“Yeah, the people who’ve come back. They’re the miracle. But their fungus is a plague. Thousands have died. Millions will before it’s over. Your girlfriend will quite possibly become one of them.” Ledders paused to watch him. “Still excited about this blessing?”

He swallowed the bitter taste of bile. “Mare’s going to die?”

“I told her the truth, it all depends on what we find. With her history and the strange things we’ve seen lately, it could be anything. But if it
is
cervical or uterine cancer that’s reached the bleeding point, the chances of her not already metastasizing are essentially nil. If it’s that advanced, there’s nothing we can do for her. But right now, we just don’t know.”

Sean felt his knees weaken and he stumbled backwards to lean against the wall. He let out a shuddering sob.
Oh, Mare. Oh, babe.

Ledders took a step toward him, trapping him, forcing him to hear. “Not everything hits the news. This fungus you’ve been lauding has infiltrated rivers and ground water throughout the entire Mississippi river basin. Iowa is lost. Missouri. Most of Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee… There are frantic reports coming in from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Kentucky. They expect to start seeing mass deaths in Mississippi and Louisiana by the middle of next week. We’ve been carting bodies away in trucks for three days now. They die so quickly, we can’t keep up.”