Tammy and Ringo (15 page)

He put the map and unit away and leaned back on the bed. It was fairly comfortable and he was grateful for it. As he started to drift off to sleep he thought of something. Rising, he closed and locked the door once more, replacing the chair beneath the knob. He placed the Remington beside him on the bed, the pistol beneath his pillow.

Tired to the point of exhaustion, Ringo fell into a fitful sleep hoping that he woke up still in his right mind.

*****

Baxter reviewed the video that Ringo had taken, fascinated that the young man had thought to provoke the infected in order to record their reactions. The video from the bridge area was especially interesting as she noted the same behaviors that Ringo had. He really had done remarkable job gathering information.

The specimens were also collected and labeled properly; something that two of their volunteers had not been successful with, resulting in the loss of their hard-earned collections. All of Ringo's were excellent and were sent immediately to the lower labs in the secure area where others were waiting for them to begin testing.

The head was secured in a cryo chamber and she had to wonder where the 'Goblin' Colonel had gotten it. It wasn't as if these things were standard issue. Still she was glad he had it, since it practically guaranteed that the head would still be workable in their research. Once she was in an isolation lab with the temps set to just above freezing, she broke the seal on the canister and removed the head for examination. It would have been much better to have a live specimen to work with, of course, but Williams was not willing to risk his men to retrieve one for her. This would have to do. She set the head on the table before her, preparing to take samples of the brain tissue.

“Well Mister Doe, let's see what kind of brain you had,” she murmured. She estimated that the John Doe had likely been in his late thirties to early forties, but an exact age was impossible to tell. She hadn't thought to ask for any identification that the body might have had and regretted it. If she had been able to pull the man's medical records, it might have assisted her in her research.

But then, none of this was supposed to have happened. She sighed in regret at the loss of life and of years of research in the African lab. One little mistake by an over-eager research assistant had brought almost a decade of work crashing down and now threatened to end the world as it was known. Baxter knew from experience how deadly this disease was since she was one of the team that had weaponized it. She had no qualms about that, knowing that the virus had been intended as a last resort against the spreading threat of radical terror groups that were slowly taking control of the Middle East and Northern Africa.

It had never occurred to her that all the careful planning and safety precautions would be completely undone by stupidity on the part of a staff member and the outright incompetence on the part of security forces charged with preventing what had happened.

There had always been plans for a vaccine, of course. You didn't manufacture a weapon like this without one, for a number of reasons, self-preservation chief among them. But the virus had still been in the developmental stage at the time of contamination. And all of the work they had done had been lost when the lab was contaminated. There had been back-ups of course, but those servers had been in Africa and they were lost now, probably for all time.

Legal issues had prevented them from bringing any of that material into the States, though she had argued unsuccessfully that USAMRIID should have had received copies of everything as a back stop to her program. But the Army was not aware of this program so her argument had been shot down.

And now she was starting from scratch trying to find a vaccine for the Pandora's Box she had opened. To make matters worse, all of her team had been killed in the original contamination and she alone remained of the science unit that had developed the virus.

That was part of the reason that Williams and his men were here, she knew. Despite the White House's immediate treatment of her, the people who really wielded the power had secured her release in mere minutes. She was the only one alive that had first-hand knowledge of the virus and how it had been created. She was literally the most important person in the world at the moment.

The world's most important person had allowed her mind to wander over all these things as she worked, and that turned out to be a mistake. John Doe had a metal crown on his very front tooth. Years of neglect and days of harsh treatment since his infection had left that crown with a sharp edge to it.

As Baxter prepared to take a sample from Doe's head, her left hand glove caught on the razor-sharp metal, slicing her glove and her finger. As soon as she felt it Baxter froze, eyes wide in horror.

With her heartbeat slamming in her ears, she slowly lowered her gaze to her hand, hoping she would not see blood.

But she did. Her finger was bleeding. From a cut caused by a crown in the mouth of a dead infected.

She carefully placed her tools back on the table and moved to decontamination. She stripped the gloves off inside the chem shower that cleaned her suit, daring to hope that the combination of liquid nitrogen the head had been frozen in and the chemical bath would prevent her sickness. She grabbed a bandage from the first aid kit and quickly wrapped it around her finger, grasping the bandage in her hand and placing the hand in her lab coat pocket and out of sight.

Moving hurriedly, but trying to appear calm, Baxter kept her hand in her pocket as she walked briskly down the hallway to her suite. Once inside, she locked the door and leaned her forehead against the cold steel, trying to stop shaking.

She was violating protocol by leaving the lab and she knew it. Had there been a full staff on duty she would never have been allowed to leave the lab. The current crisis had robbed them of most of their staff, however, and working alone had become the norm rather than the exception. No one knew she had been exposed.

She managed to make it to her desk on shaky legs and sat down, her entire body trembling in fear. It had seemed so clinical just a short time ago to speak of casually infecting someone so that she could study the virus and try to find a treatment. She had never imagined that it would be her that was infected.

Of course, she might not be infected her mind reasoned. She had been handling a dead specimen, one that had been completely frozen for several hours. There was every reason to believe that she was safe. And she was due for a rest period.

Justifying her behavior with the knowledge that she was the only hope of finding a vaccine, let alone an actual treatment, Baxter decided she would not report her possible exposure. She was sure that if the virus began to manifest itself she would have ample time to isolate herself and prevent any damage.

In the meantime, she was very tired and a short rest would be good for her. She stood carefully and made her way to her bed, removing her lab coat and loosening her clothes. She would just lie down and rest for a short time. If she were infected, she would know it soon enough.

If needed, she would take immediate measures at that point, she promised herself. She would isolate herself and make sure that she didn't contaminate the lab. There was absolutely no point in exposing herself to the tender mercies of the infection protocol that she herself had written. One that required immediate isolation and containment of anyone who might have contacted contaminated blood or body fluids.

She was a special case, she assured herself. Not at all like the masses that were even now suffering from the hell she had allowed to be unleashed on the populace. She was different.

Having justified her behavior to herself, she allowed her eyes to close and sleep to claim her. Her last thought was that she would awaken later, all would be well, and this little mishap would simply be an unwritten footnote in the travesty that was the unnamed virus that was turning the world on its side.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tammy was awake early the next morning, something she was getting more accustomed to. The first two days she had been here she had been on the verge of exhaustion. That, coupled with hard work and intense worry, had made her sleep later than normal while conversely not actually letting her get much rest.

Today seemed to be different. Not that she didn't have plenty to worry over with the world going to hell on a skateboard, her father missing, her home 'off the grid', at least for now, and with no way to know if her friends were still alive and safe. On top of that was the fact that she was essentially homeless except for Hiram and Helen who had literally taken her in as an act of kindness and that her friend was out there somewhere in all this craziness waiting to see if he turned up infected.

So all in all, there was plenty for her to be worried over, yet not a single thing she could do about any of it. That realization had been rammed home by the news that Ringo might be infected. She was powerless to help him, but there were things she could do and should do. There were chores to be done here at what she had started calling Birdsong House, preparations to make in case this situation spiraled out of control even worse than it already was. She meant to survive, if it was possible. She owed her father that and her mother. She owed it to Ringo, too. He had helped her get this far, after all. She would like to believe that she would have made it anyway, but there was no way to know.

So she owed it to him to live, to survive in this crazy world even if he couldn't. Even if her father and everyone she had known before was gone now. To just lie down and quit was a foreign thought to her to start with. She certainly wasn't going to quit now.

With that in mind she walked into the kitchen to start breakfast. She intended to start taking over most of the household chores from Helen, at least as far as the older woman would allow. Not to take over the house, but simply to be useful. To be productive. She might not be able to accomplish anything else, but she could at least take some of the burden off of her hosts.

It would also give her something to do besides wait for a call from her father or from Ringo, calls that might never come.

*****

Hiram was sitting on his riverside bench looking at the water flow by him. His satellite phone was next to him and he would look down at it every now and then, wanting it to ring but dreading to hear it at the same time.

He shook his head again at the memory of how he had handled all of this. Mishandled might be a better word. He should never have mentioned any of this to Ringo. He had known the boy would be willing to try and do the mission. Why hadn't he just ignored it?

Maybe Helen was right. Maybe he just couldn't let go of the life he'd once led. He had thought he could when they had bought this place and settled here. He had retired after thirty years in the Army and its various incarnations of service. He had left without looking back, or at least he'd thought he had.

Over the years since his retirement he had consulted on certain issues a time or two but had balked at ever returning to the field. He wasn't exactly an old man but he knew that field work was properly a young man's province. He had been there and done that as the saying went, and his time had passed.

Yet here he sat, ten years down the road, watching his nation, hell, the whole world, fall apart right in front of him. A nation he had given far too many years of his life protecting from one threat or another. Years where he had missed birthdays, anniversaries, years that had cost Helen the chance to adopt a child because he was never around. He stood suddenly, his self-loathing reaching the point that he had to move and burn off some adrenaline. He wandered down the path he had laid for his visitors, hands stuffed in his pockets, head down. In his despair and self-condemnation he left the satellite phone on the bench behind him.

So engrossed was he in retrospection that he didn't notice the lone figure moving out of the trees.

*****

Helen descended the stairs of her home to the sound and smell of breakfast being prepared in her kitchen. She smiled softly to herself as she realized that Tammy was cooking this morning. Rather than jog her elbow, Helen turned to the left instead of the right and walked into the library where she went about dusting and straightening.

The presence of Tammy Gleason was a comfort to Helen. Not because she needed help, because she didn't. As she had told the younger woman, Helen and Hiram were in no stretch of the imagination old. They were older, yes, as both were in their fifties, but they were both fit and able. But their home had always lacked children and while Tammy was not in any way a child, she was young enough to be Helen's daughter had she had one.

She had taken to the younger woman at once, something she wasn't wont to do, if she was honest. Over the years she had become accustomed to people coming and going but rarely getting to know them very well. She and Hiram had few close friends and none of them were really nearby. They both had made acquaintances in the area since settling here ten years before, but neither of them were the kind of people who made real friends easily. They had moved about too many times and too often to allow them to make those kinds of friendships except in the rarest of cases. She sighed sadly at the thought of those few friends, people she would likely never see again, if this situation was a bad as Hiram believed it to be.

There was the chance, of course. At least one couple had made plans to come to Birdsong should an event like the current situation occur. That was assuming they could make it here, of course, and that they themselves were not infected. There was no way to know at this point.

Hiram had tried in vain to reach Charles and Amanda Reilly since this madness had started. Every contingency the two men had made to keep in contact had failed thus far. Perhaps the two of them would simply show up one day, but Helen admitted, if only to herself, that she doubted it. Charles was certainly capable of taking care of them and Amanda was in no way helpless, but it was a long way from their place in Huntsville, Alabama. It was perhaps a three to four hour drive in normal times. But her current houseguest was here because she could not find a way across the river to get home. Charles and Amanda would certainly face similar challenges on their trek to Birdsong.

“Helen?” She heard Tammy call and shook away the feelings that had begun to settle on her. Ever the hostess, Helen was smiling when she turned to face the younger woman.

“Breakfast is ready,” Tammy smiled and Helen nodded.

“Thank you, dear,” she smiled again. “I'll call Hiram.” She started for the door but before she could get there both women heard a gunshot.

*****

Ringo stormed into Birdsong house covered in blood and gore, eyes wild with rage. Moving through the vaguely familiar home he searched for a target. He found one.

“Ringo?” Tammy looked stunned at the sight of him. “Ringo, what's wrong?”

Rather than answer, Ringo fairly growled as he lunged toward her. The woman evaded him at the last second which only served to enrage him further. Screaming, the woman ran for the stairs, Ringo hot on her trail. She had made perhaps three steps before he grabbed her ankle, pulling her down.

Tammy flipped onto her back and used her free leg to kick Ringo in the face. He recoiled but did not let go, so she kicked him again, then a third time. Finally she managed to hit him hard enough that he stumbled back slightly, nose broken and bleeding. Tammy was on her feet in an instant, taking the steps two at a time. Despite the pain of his injury Ringo was only steps behind.

He followed her down the hallway that looked strangely familiar to him and slammed into the door that she just managed to close in his face. Screaming in rage, he pounded on the door, then began kicking it. He kicked again and again until the wood began to splinter and he could see into the room.

The gun in her hand didn't register in his rage and fever-damaged mind as she backed away from the door, pleading.

“Ringo, please! You know me! You aren't like this! Stop!”

Ignoring her, he concentrated only on getting into the room. There was enough of the door damaged now that he could crawl through the hole and he did, ignoring the skin on his arm tearing as a shard of the broken door dug a deep channel through his skin. Blood dripping from this new wound, he was a terrifying sight as he straightened to his full height.

He charged across the room and suddenly felt a hammer hit his chest. . . . .

Ringo sat straight up in the bed still yelling. He yelled for several seconds until he realized that it had been a dream. He was bathed in sweat, hair matted to his head, the sheet beneath him and the pillow he had been using soaking wet.

“A nightmare,” he breathed to himself, shaking his head slowly. He got to his feet shakily, evaluating himself. Was he infected? Did he have a fever? Was that what had caused his nightmare? Nightmare. He had woken up screaming. Had anyone heard? Galvanized by that thought, Ringo grabbed the pistol from beneath the sweat-soaked pillow and eased the curtain back, peering outside.

The rain had stopped, he noted, but he saw no one in view and no movement. He crossed to the door and removed the chair, unbolting the lock. He moved through the house from window to window, repeating his inspection. Nothing was visible around the house anywhere that he could see. Sighing in relief, Ringo allowed himself to relax, returning to the bedroom and securing the door once more. Stripping off his sweat-soaked clothes he entered the bathroom and checked the clothing he'd hung there the night before. Mostly dry. He took them down and crawled into the shower, turning the water on and allowing it to cascade over him.

The nightmare had seemed so real that he hadn't realized it wasn't even when he'd woke up. It had taken several seconds for it to register.

“I was tired,” he told himself aloud, the sound of his own voice comforting in the silence. “That's all. I was tired and I'm probably half sick from being out in the rain. Just because that nightmare made me sweat is no sign I've actually got a fever. And even if I do, it doesn't mean I'm infected. I might be running a fever from being cold and wet for so long yesterday.”

Once more he allowed the shower to warm him, standing beneath the water long after he had washed, waiting until the hot water began to taper off before shutting the shower off and stepping out. He toweled himself off and dressed in the nearly dry clothes from the day before. He used hand soap to wash the clothes he had slept in in the tub, wringing them out by hand and then hanging them in the shower to drip dry.

That done, he moved into the bedroom and stripped the damp sheets from the bed, tossing them into a corner. He looked through the drawers of the small chest in the bedroom and found another set of sheets. He quickly re-dressed the bed then took the damp sheets into the kitchen where he spread them across the chairs to dry. It was then that he noticed a small closet at the back of the kitchen. He hadn't seen it the day before, or at least if he had, he'd ignored it.

He opened the door to find a small washer and dryer. He stared for a minute before laughing out loud at the find.

“Always the hard way,” he shook his head. He had just spent twenty minutes scrubbing his clothes by hand when there was a modern washing machine sitting right here. He went to get his clothes. Ten minutes later he was sitting in the kitchen naked as both of his remaining suits of clothes ran through the wash cycle. He was taking a chance he supposed, but it wasn't like he could just leave. He had to wait out the incubation period and see if he was infected or not.

He had found a thermometer in the bathroom and had it under his tongue as he sat at the table. When it beeped he removed it, looking at the readout with a combination of dread and hope.

99.9°

“Well, that's not too bad,” he told himself, not sure if he should be worried or relieved. It was too soon to tell for sure.

Hunger began to make its presence known so he took an MRE from his pack and let it start heating. He really didn't feel like eating but his body needed food. As he waited for the heat tab to work, he thought again about the nightmare.

It had to be psychological. His worse fear had been to go back to Tammy and the others carrying the infection with him. Hiram and Helen had been too good to him in the short time he'd known them for him to risk them that way. He just couldn't take the chance. And he would never put Tammy at risk either.

He snorted to himself slightly at that admission. What was Tammy Gleason to him? He had elected on a whim to accept her offer because she had helped him out. He acknowledged he hadn't needed it, but she had still done it. That meant something to him, perhaps more so because it wasn't something that happened to him. It just didn't. People didn't help him. Didn't care whether he lived or died, usually. Yet she had. That made her special as far as he was concerned. People that were willing to help someone they didn't know were rare.

So he had decided on a whim that he would make sure she got somewhere safe. When he had found out she was heading for her home that became his focus. To makes sure she got home. All he owned was in his duffle bag or his backpack so there was nothing keeping him in Memphis. He was free to go where he pleased at that point and helping her gave him something to focus on.