The Miracle Strain (38 page)

Prison Morgue

In the tiled basement morgue the younger of the two orderlies kept rubbing his sweaty palms down the front of his overalls as he waited for the elevator to arrive bearing the corpse of the latest executed prisoner. Lenny Blaggs had been working down here for almost a month now, but the stiffs still gave him the creeps. Working with dead bodies was okay, even in the middle of the night. He'd done that before when he worked at the hospital. But dead murderers and rapists were something else. This was unreal, like something out of a Stephen King novel.

A rumbling of gears started abruptly above him. The elevator was coming down with its cargo.

His boss, Calvin Jetson, wheezed noisily on one of his cigarettes. "Here it comes, man. The death express."

"You keep smokin' those you're going to catch it yerself," said Lenny, waving the smoke away, although he secretly preferred the smell of Marlboro tobacco to formaldehyde and death--even if there were some who thought they were the same thing.

"I don't mind dying," said Calvin, his gray, sun-starved face wrinkling into a grin. "Death and me are old buddies."

There was a clank and then the lights on the elevator lit up and the door opened.

Calvin gave him a wink. "Tonight we are truly honored, my young protege. Because tonight we are dealing with one seriously famous bad-ass--none other than the Preacher."

"Yeah, great," said Lenny, helping roll the gurney from the elevator into the front section of the morgue, by the door. If killers gave him the creeps then the queen of the killers gave him the king of the creeps.

"You know what the Preacher did to her victims after she killed them?" said Calvin, his cigarette sticking to his lower lip as if by magic. "She got a pen with a special extra-long nib and stuck it into--"

"I don't want to know. Just leave it alone. Okay!"

Calvin laughed. "Sure thing, Lenny my boy. No need to get so uptight. Hey, could you go next door and get the stuff, and we'll clean the body up here in the light--so you don't get too scared."

"I'm not scared," Lenny protested as he walked to the back of the morgue to get the wipes and chemicals, and the bin to put the soiled diapers in.

"Sure you're not, Lenny my boy," he heard Calvin say soothingly behind him. "Sure you're not."

Lenny pulled up a small trolley and wheeled it over to the supply cupboard. As he busied himself getting the wipes--which he noticed were running low--he thought he felt a subtle breeze, a change in the room temperature, like when a door is opened. Putting it down to his imagination, he collected the chemicals and other stuff on the trolley and wheeled it back to the archway that led to the front section of the morgue. As he approached he listened for one of Calvin's "little jokes," but for once he was silent.

"We'll need to order some more wipes," Lenny said as he went through the archway. "I'll get some--"

The sight of Calvin cut him short. His boss just stood there, directly in front of him, staring, his face even whiter than usual. His mouth was moving but no sound came out. A dead cigarette stub dangled from his lower lip, and his eyes bulged. This acting was pretty good, even for the great prankster Calvin Jetson. The man was freakin' terrified.

"Calvin? What the hell's going on, Calvin?"

Calvin's face suddenly changed and he gave Lenny a sly look. "It was you, right?" Calvin appeared to regain some of his composure, but when he spoke his voice was still so panicky it set Lenny's teeth on edge. "That was a good one. Shit, how'd you do it? I just turned around for a second, man. Two at the very most."

"So? What freakin' happened?"

With trembling fingers Calvin lit a new Marlboro and took a deep drag. "Stop foolin', man. You got me, okay? But how? I just turned for a second. Just one lousy second."

"I don't know what you're freakin' talking about," said Lenny, his nuts starting to shrivel with fear.

Then Calvin stepped to one side and Lenny understood what all the fuss was about.

Maria Benariac's body was gone.

The freakin' Preacher had disappeared.

Chapter Thirty.

Beacon Hill

Boston

The morning after the execution, Maria Benariac couldn't have been further from Tom Carter's mind as he woke from a deep, restful sleep. The kind he hadn't enjoyed since before Stockholm. Eyes closed, he reached across the bed and was about to pull his hand back---Will you never learn? Olivia's gone--when he felt her shoulder. He half-opened his left eye and smiled at the small figure curled up in a baggy red T-shirt next to him. Holly.

His joy at the memory of how she had crawled into his bed last night was some compensation for the everyday ache of Olivia's absence. Holly was here and she was well.

For a while he lay there in the half light afforded by the sunshine streaming in between the curtains, and stared at her. Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted as her chest rose and fell with every regular breath she took. Her hair still had to grow back, but it was already returning faster than he'd thought possible, and even the neat scar on her head was fading at a rate that left Karl Lambert bemused.

He reached across and gently stroked her forehead. Only two days ago she had undergone a CAT scan, which could find no trace of her tumor. Her genome now appeared normal, all defects miraculously corrected.

He jumped out of bed and pulled back the curtains of the large windows overlooking the garden. The June sunshine streamed through the mullioned glass, covering his pajamas with squares of light. The warmth felt good through the cotton, soothing away the chill of the last few nightmare months.

He took a deep breath from the open top window and reached his arms above his head, like a cat stretching in front of a fire. Below him, the garden looked beautiful: the emerald of the lawn, the red of the roses, the yellow of the marigolds, the colors more brilliant than he could ever recall.

"Dad, what time is it?"

He swiveled around to see Holly sitting up in bed yawning, rubbing her eyes. "Almost eight. Don't forget, Jazz is coming for breakfast at nine."

"Larry too?"

"Nope. He's still busy in L. A. making his movie. When are Jennifer and Megan coming?"

Holly crawled out of the covers till she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and began scratching the scar on her head. "They said they'd be here about ten-thirty."

"Anything planned?"

"No, just hanging out."

Tom laughed and shook his head. Here was a kid who should be dead, the last five days already a bonus. But today, on one of the most fantastic mornings in creation, with her two best friends about to visit, all she wanted to do was "hang out." Talk about living life to the fullest.

"What happened, Dad?" Holly asked, her voice suddenly serious.

He walked over and sat on the bed next to her. "What do you mean?"

"During the operation."

He paused. This was the first time she had mentioned the operation in the five days since it had happened. He had purposely not probed before, waiting for her to talk about it in her own time. "We made you better," he said simply.

"Mom told me you made me better."

"Mom? When?"

Holly leaned her head against his shoulder, making herself comfortable. "In my dream. When I was sleeping in the operation. It was weird. I seemed to wake up while I was still asleep. I was on a platform and you were putting me on a train. And as the train pulled away you and all these people were waving good-bye to me. There was Alex, Jazz, Jack, Jennifer, Megan--everybody."

"Where was the train going, Holly?"

"To see Mom. You said that you would be coming along later."

"Really? So what happened?"

"Well, I was kind of sad to be saying good-bye to you, but happy to be seeing Mom. Then suddenly Mom was there on the train next to me. She explained that she was there to make sure I got to where I was going. It was fantastic seeing her again; she was exactly like she used to be--the way she smiled and laughed--everything. She asked how you were, and whether you were worried about us both. I said you were okay and would come along soon; then just as the train slowed down she began to smile and cry at the same time.

"She said I wasn't getting off with her. That you'd made me better and were taking me back. I didn't feel too sad, because I knew I would see her again, and I wanted to come back and see you. The next thing I knew I was waking up looking at Jazz, feeling real thirsty."

"Some dream," said Tom.

Holly shifted her head and looked up at him. "So how did you make me better?" she asked quietly, her intelligent eyes looking into his.

He sighed. This wasn't going to be easy to explain. He still wasn't exactly sure how it had happened himself.

He said, "I made you better with a special medicine."

"What kind of medicine?"

"A medicine so special that it doesn't work on the person who's sick. I had to take it instead, so I could make you better."

"You had to take medicine to make me better?"

Tom nodded. He remembered his revelation during the operation, the connection he'd made at the point of crisis: why mice injected with the serum had been cured when kept in cages of two or three, whereas injected individual mice had not. The flash of insight had inspired him to inject himself with the Nazareth genes when he realized that the mice had made each other well; that the Nazareth genes didn't work on the host--but through the host.

"You see, Holly, the medicine only works by giving a person the power to help someone else. You can't use it to make yourself well--only others."

Holly thought about this for a while, then gave a matter-offact nod. "I get it," she said, standing up next to the bed, apparently unfazed by what he'd just told her.

"You do?"

She shrugged diffidently as if she were discussing a movie. "Yeah, I guess it's kind of like a cool software program that doesn't affect the computer it's installed on--but can do awesome things on other ones it's connected to."

Tom gave a nod and said, "Yeah, it's sort of like that."

"Sounds simple," said Holly as she walked out of his bedroom toward her bathroom. Then just as she was going out the door she casually asked, "So why didn't you use this medicine before?"

Tom groaned and threw his pillow at her. "Because, smartass, it wasn't that easy."

Outside, the two policemen watching over the house sat slumped in their squad car. It had been another long, boring night and both were looking at their watches. Their relief should be along in half an hour. On and off they had both been staking out the house for the last six months, ever since Mrs. Carter's funeral in December. In all that time nothing had happened, and although neither ever said it, both thought their presence was more to reassure Dr. Carter than to really keep him safe.

Bill, the taller cop, was rubbing his eyes as he tried to convince his partner.

"Lou, it's no contest, Ali was the best. Easy."

Lou shrugged and took another bite of his pastrami on rye. "Best talker, sure. But boxer, no way. Tyson at his peak would have creamed him."

A laugh. "Tyson? Tyson wouldn't have even got close. Ali would have danced all around him."

The two cops from the Boston Police Department paid little heed to the broad figure in the Boston Red Sox baseball cap, now walking up the drive to the Carter home. It wasn't unusual for Ted to tend the garden so early on a Saturday.

"We're not talking dancing here," scoffed Lou. "We're talking boxing. For a faggy pirouette Ali might be the man. But in a fight Tyson would have killed him."

Both cops were so involved in their discussion that if either man noticed that Ted walked a little taller and straighter than usual, they didn't mention it.

Jasmine Washington put down her coffee cup in the conservatory and frowned at Tom across the breakfast debris.

She asked, "So the genes release chemicals that can be passed on by touch? But the chemicals don't work on the host?"

Tom shrugged. "It seems that way."

Jasmine shook her head and watched Holly excuse herself from the table. As Holly passed her the little girl raised her right hand in a high five and Jasmine slapped it.

"Way to go, Holly."

"You're sure she's completely okay?" Jasmine asked Tom again, watching the young girl leave.

"She's fine. According to all the tests she's never been better."

"And all because of the Nazareth genes," she said. Just because you touched her, she thought.

Tom reached across the table to pour them both more coffee. As he did so Jasmine caught herself staring at his hand---one ofthe hands that had brought Holly back to life. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. If she had found it difficult to accept that the killer, Maria, had been born with Christ's healing genes, then she found it equally confusing that Tom Carter now possessed them. What was evident, though, was that these genes didn't define or determine who the Messiah was, or even whether the possessor was good. The Nazareth genes were simply a rare God-given talent that stretched the Christian tenet of free will to the ultimate. Just because you were blessed with the power to do amazing good, you didn't have to use it. Like Maria Benariac, you could still choose to kill, rather than save. Jasmine had to smile at the irony of Tom Carter, an atheist, unlocking their benign power, using his science to cheat the lottery of nature and possess the genes himself.

"So what do you think the mysterious third gene does?" she asked, sipping her coffee.

"I'm not sure." Tom paused, collecting his thoughts. "But guessing from DAN's early findings, naz 3 is a control gene that activates and modifies the other two Nazareth genes. And from the data I think the gene interacts with a host of other genes too. It seems to perform as many as three key functions." Tom put down the coffee flask and began to count on his fingers. "The first is a trigger function--probably linking up with genes that control emotion and thought, so the host can decide when the Nazareth genes should or shouldn't kick in. The second function is that of a control---activating and customizing the naz 1 and naz 2 genes, which repair and regulate DNA respectively, so they give the most benefit to the recipient's damaged cells. The third function is as a vehicle---delivering the optimized genetic instruction from the host to the recipient and then spreading that benefit throughout their body. My guess is that it's a pheromone-type agent that's secreted through the skin--transmitting the healing program through touch."

"But you don't know exactly how they work yet?"

"Nope. And we probably won't understand precisely how the genes function for years. But I do know the host has got to want it to happen and believe it can happen at either a conscious or emotional level."

Jasmine smiled and drank her coffee. "Sounds a lot like good ol' fashioned faith to me. A real gift from God."

Tom shrugged at that. "Perhaps you're right. And as gifts go it's got to be the ultimate one. It's the only one I know that has to be given away to be enjoyed."

Jasmine raised her cup in a "cheers" gesture. "Well, it is more blessed to give than receive."

Tom laughed. "I couldn't have put it better myself."

Holly walked back into the room, holding a copy of the BostonGlobe. "Paper's come," she said, dropping it on the table between them, before walking over to the garden door.

"Aren't your friends here yet?" asked Tom, idly picking up the newspaper. He glanced at the front page, his eyes skimming the news.

"About half an hour," said Holly, opening the door. "I'm going to wait in the garden." She looked outside and shrugged her small shoulders. "I didn't know Ted was here this weekend. I thought he was going to Martha's Vineyard with Marcy."