The Gemini Virus (26 page)

The equipment was still there—the microscopes, syringes, scissors, jars of paraffin and hard resin, a variety of irradiators, a vacuum infiltrator, and a cryostat. In the center of one room, under a light with a huge chrome hood, was a slightly tilted necropsy table. The leather straps were rotted and hanging loose. There were still bloodstains on the surface, the sides, and the floor. A glass-enclosed chamber had rows of animal cages. Some held skeletons lying on their sides, the flesh rotted away or chewed off by maggots that were also long gone.

“There were also three more computers, as well as a cabinet with dozens of notebooks. What became clear is that they had no idea what they were doing. They were just experimenting, completely at random. Different viruses, different drugs, different effects. And then … then we found some notes that led us to the back of the property.”

“This is the part you didn’t want to tell me about on the phone?” Hejazi asked.

Garoussi nodded. “Yes. We found the spot in a clearing. It had become a large depression because the loosened soil had settled back down. We began digging, and it didn’t take long to find the first carcass—a medium-sized dog. Then two more. Finally, we discovered the first human victim—a female, mid-thirties at the oldest, very badly decayed. But … the horror was still visible on her face. No sooner had we removed her corpse than another was found underneath.”

Baraheri shook his head slowly; Hejazi cursed under his breath.

“In total, there were seventy-two corpses,” Garoussi said. “Forty-one were animals, the other thirty-one human, including eleven children and fourteen women.”

“Savages, absolute savages,” Baraheri said. “Men without souls.”

“The children were all kidnap victims, the women prostitutes. The males … they came from a variety of places. We are contacting the families now. It is a most unpleasant business.”

“I would imagine.” Baraheri took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “So, it appears Shalizeh really is behind this. I can’t believe he actually managed to engineer a vir—”

“No, Mr. President,” Garoussi said, then surprised them by smiling.

“What?”

“According to the records we found, he never succeeded in creating a virus that could be used as a weapon.”

Baraheri’s eyes widened. “Are you certain of this?”

“Yes, most definitely. All the notes and computer files indicate that none of the experiments produced a virus of appreciable virulency. Also, there was nothing to make us believe he ever obtained samples of the smallpox virus from the Russians. No evidence whatsoever.”

Baraheri turned to Hejazi, who appeared to be just as bewildered.

“Then what’s this thing that’s spreading through America?”

“Impossible to say at this point,” Garoussi replied. “But there is nothing to indicate that it came from Shalizeh.”

“So we were wrong in assuming he had anything to do with it.”

“No, that’s not quite true either, sir,” Garoussi said. “He
was
involved, but in a very different way.”

“I don’t understand.”

Garoussi told him.

Baraheri was on the phone within minutes.

*   *   *

In Washington, President Obama was walking down the second-floor hallway of the Executive Mansion carrying a pair of white towels. He was heading for the bathroom, where his younger daughter was about to be told it was time to get out of the tub and get ready for bed. He was still in his suit pants and white shirt, but his tie and jacket had been removed. Just as he reached the door, his BlackBerry trilled and vibrated at the same time.

“Let’s go, ladies,” he said, setting the towels on the basin and then removing the device from his pocket. It was a text message from his chief of staff. He read it twice to make sure he wasn’t imagining it.

Calling back immediately, he said, “Is this for real?”

It was.

SEVENTEEN

The Jensen family was given a private room at Catskills Regional shortly after they arrived. A heavyset nurse with her hair twirled up like soft ice cream came down to the receiving area and led them away. An elevator ride and two hallways later, she showed them in. There were two large mechanical beds, which she rolled together, and a HEPA filter already humming away. Her name was Melanie, and she sat with them in her protective gear and patiently filled out their paperwork, sparing them the tedium of doing it in the lobby downstairs.

This didn’t spare them from a number of ghastly sights, however. Two sheet-covered corpses were wheeled by when they came up, one downstairs and one in the hallway. The sheets were splotched with pus, so heavily in some places that you could vaguely see what was underneath. Relatives in protective gear were coming and going, most of them bawling like babies. In one room, they caught a glimpse of a screaming woman holding a small child in her arms just before the door drifted shut. They would later learn that the woman’s two-year-old son had died the day before, but she refused to let the body go.

Dennis doubted Andi and Chelsea had taken much note of any of this; they were in their own little world now. But he noticed all of it. He saw and absorbed every detail, and he thought,
We’re part of it now. We’re in the middle of it
. He hated himself with a seething intensity, hated that he had been unable to protect them from it. It was his job, as a father and husband, to protect his family from harm. Maybe that sounded corny or old-fashioned, but he believed in it. And he’d failed—when it mattered most, he failed. As he watched Andi and Chelsea go down the hallway in front of him, their arms wrapped tight around each other, he felt nothing but guilt and self-loathing.
After they’re gone,
he thought,
I hope it lingers a long time in me. I hope I really suffer
.

They had not left the room since Mel, as they had come to know her, got them settled. The top half of the beds were raised to a forty-five-degree angle, and she brought them cold drinks and snacks. She told them several other couples and their children were in the same situation, and the hospital administrators had agreed to let them stay in their rooms until the inevitable occurred. Dennis and Andi did not even entertain the idea of seeking out any of these families, to commiserate or offer comfort. There was no comfort to be found here, and they had enough to deal with in their own suffering; the last thing they wanted to do was share someone else’s.

Dennis called Elaine and gave her the news. She sobbed into the phone and said she was coming up immediately. That was yesterday evening, shortly after they’d arrived. He stayed on the phone with her for a long time, talking about a variety of things. He told her he loved her, which she already knew, and that he would not have wanted anyone else for a sister. It struck him at that moment how natural it seemed to be undertaking final, wrapping-up kinds of things. Calling people to say good-bye (without really saying it), filling out papers to make sure everything would be in order after they were all gone, even
thinking
final thoughts. It was as if he’d stepped into a previously unseen current of reality. Everything around him was colored by a different meaning now, a different value. The money they had in the bank, for which they had worked so very hard, was as important to him as the pile of used tissues that clogged the little plastic wastebasket. Their home, their two nice cars … irrelevant. Andi said it should be split up evenly between their respective families, and Dennis agreed. Everybody would get something, and everyone would get what they wanted. Because it was material, it was immaterial. Their world was this tiny room now, with the pale green walls and polished tile floor and softly humming fluorescent lights.
This is where it ends,
he thought.
When Mel brought us through that door, she brought us through a gateway—from this world into whichever one is next
.

Not long after they arrived, he put Nickelodeon on the TV for Billy. The little boy sat there, attention fully trained on the set, scratching his arms and legs absentmindedly as pediatric sedatives and painkillers coursed through his five-year-old body. It wasn’t long before they were all watching. No one said anything about what was on; they simply went with it. When the kids slept, Dennis and Andi switched to PBS for
Sesame Street
and
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
—programs they had watched as children. This also seemed like a natural thing to do, as if they were coming full circle in their lives. Back to the beginning …

They talked as they hadn’t talked in years, like in the early days of their relationship. Dennis told her again that she was the love of his life, something he had thought often but, to his regret, felt he had not expressed enough. He said she had made his life worthwhile, gave it real meaning and substance. Andi listened to every word and cried frequently, holding him close and offering her own, similar sentiments. He was the only man she’d ever truly loved, the one who made her realize what love really was. In this one respect, she said, she would die satisfied. Dennis then apologized profusely for anything he ever did to hurt or upset her, and he begged for her forgiveness. She gave it without hesitation.

As the last of the sunlight faded on the second day, and with both kids fast asleep, Andi whispered to Dennis, “When will it start?” The
it,
as Dennis already knew, was the onset of Stage Three—blurred vision, slurred speech, and general confusion. It would last about six to eight hours, followed by dementia and episodic violence, plus the systemic bleeding from the meltdown of internal organs. You were stripped of everything that mattered—your personality, your identity, and your dignity.

Dennis glanced briefly at the clock on the wall. It was of the basic variety seen in hospitals, classrooms, and police stations all over the world.

“It should be any time,” he said, his voice so dry that the first words came up like embers through a chimney.

“I guess we … we should have Mel start using the sedatives now.”

They looked at each other for a long time, the torment clear on their faces. They knew the sedatives would be, for all practical purposes, the end of the road. As the infection progressed, the drugs would be the only mercy they would receive. By administering them, the kids would be spared most of the suffering. But they would also be close to a vegetative state, drifting through a mindless haze until death finally came for them.

“I suppose,” Dennis said, his voice faltering. He leaned over and stroked Chelsea’s hair, then kissed her gently on the top of the head. “I guess it’s the right … the best thing to do.” Then, his lower lip trembling, he said in a sharp whisper. “Mother of God, she’s only
seven.…
” He buried his face in a pillow and broke down, his body trembling as the grief took over. Andi put her arm around him and kissed him on the back of the neck.

Mel came into the room thirty minutes later with the syringe. The fluid was clear and loose, almost like water. The Jensens didn’t know what it was, didn’t really care. Andi held Chelsea against her; Dennis continued to stroke her hair with one hand while balling the other into a fist and pressing it against his mouth.

Talking softly to the child even though she was asleep, Mel pulled up the sleeve of her cotton shirt to search for a vein, as she had done with over two dozen other children in the last week alone.

Then she stopped. “What the—?”

Dennis and Andi turned their heads at precisely the same moment, as if they’d rehearsed the move.

“What?” Andi said—then she saw it, too. “Oh my God…”

The pustules had shrunk. The rash had faded.

Dennis gently lifted the sleeve of her other arm. “No way…”

Same thing.

Then, with the excruciating daintiness that any decent father reserves for his daughter, he lifted her gown to just above her knees.

“It’s disappearing!” Andi said, the tiniest of smiles appearing on her face for the first time in weeks. “Mel! It’s disa—”

But Mel had already fled the room to find the nearest doctor.

EIGHTEEN

Beck was in the middle of nowhere, on a sandy trail that slithered through the green wilderness of the Catskills. The rented convertible had not been built for off-road travel, and he prayed it wouldn’t shake apart. He was also praying that
he
would hold together—pain waves were radiating through his back from the bumping and jostling. He had pulled off Route 88 nearly an hour ago. According to the handwritten notes lying on the passenger seat, he should reach his destination any minute now.

Neither Bob Easton nor any of his three friends survived after their last trip here. That was significant. All three had more of the same hunks of raggedly cut meat in their homes. One had apparently cooked and eaten some the same night he brought it back. The other two put it in their freezers. Sure enough, the mystery virus was present in all of them. The final piece to the puzzle came to Beck when he interviewed a fifth man, a friend of theirs from the local VFW, who was supposed to go on the trip but couldn’t make it due to, of all things, an illness. He was a widower, and he’d left town when the outbreak began to stay with a son in Vermont. Over the phone, he told Beck where the others had been. It was their favorite spot, especially at the start of the season. Beck jotted down the rough directions and hoped he could divine the location. Neither MapQuest nor his GPS would do much good out here.

The trail finally smoothed out and cut through a colorful, flower-filled glade, then led into a hallway of fir and pine trees. A few hundred yards farther on, it terminated abruptly in a sandy, circular clearing: a natural cul-de-sac. He parked and got out, gloves, mask, and goggles in place. He also carried a kit with a variety of instruments and containers, plus a digital camera in a black leather case. Both were small enough to clip onto his belt.

Others had been here recently, as evidenced by the tire tracks printed in the sand. There were footprints, too. Or, more specifically, what appeared to be boot prints. They led down the narrow trail Beck had been told to follow. It seemed that this “favorite spot” wasn’t exclusive to Bob Easton and company after all.