The Ninth Day (31 page)

Oz sat on a nearby stool while Emma fished around in the cabinets. She found some gloves and spare slides, along with a small tool to use to scrape at the sores and several different agents to use to treat the resulting tissue. She scraped some more cells from Oz’s hand, noting that they were chewing down into the meat of his palm.

“Still numb?” she said.

Oz nodded.

Once she prepared the slide, she grabbed a staining solution and began to run through the steps to complete the process.

“What’s that?” Oz asked.

“Something that will help me identify any acid-fast bacteria.”

“What are you looking for?”

Emma shrugged. “Tuberculosis.”

“But it doesn’t create sores.”

“Not usually, no.”

Emma finished up and popped one slide into a nearby oven. She turned to the next slide, which she intended to view bare, under a microscope.

“Damn these nosebleeds!” Oz said.

Emma looked up and watched Oz wipe at his nose once again with his filthy, bloodstained tee shirt. She stared at him. He stopped dabbing at his nose and glanced up, catching her look. “What?” he said.

Emma returned to the cabinet and brought out another stain. She took the second slide, added the solution, and waited five minutes. She slid the slide under a nearby microscope and peered through the lens. Millions of red-colored bacteria swam around against a blue background. Emma stared at the stain, stunned. That she, Vanderlock, Oz, Serena, and all the others who had touched the shipment could have what she now suspected, at the virulent level that it appeared to be, was devastating.

“Let’s go,” Emma said.

Oz stood. “You’re done? What about the slide in the oven?”

Emma reached up and turned it off. “I don’t care about it now. We need to see their stash of medicines. Look around, tell me what you find.”

Oz stood up, a puzzled look in his eyes. “What kind of medications?”

“Antibiotics. Anything that will kill bacteria.”

The room, though, contained only laboratory equipment.

“What do you think I have?”

Emma shook her head. If she told him she was afraid he’d shut down, refuse to fight any further. What she suspected was horrifying, but she kept hope that the disease could be reversed. “Not now. Let’s get out of here first. I’ll tell you then.”

She heard, far in the distance, the sound of a honking horn.

“That’s Lock,” Oz said. “Let’s go.”

Emma was already moving across the room, heading to the hall. “I’m not leaving without finding their stash of medication. We’re in an orphan-drug lab. I may need what they have.” Especially now that I know what afflicts us all, she thought. “We’re going to have to check every door in that wing.”

“We don’t have the time,” Oz said. “Let it go. I’ve accepted that I’m dying. Let’s just get the hell out of here and stop that shipment.”

“You forget that Lock and I have it too,” Emma said.

“You have a lot of days left. We’ll stop the shipment and you can still get to a hospital.”

Oz made a move to grab her, then stopped. “Sorry.”

“I don’t care if you touch me. Just go. Get to the meeting place and hook up with Lock. Give me fifteen minutes, then leave without me.”

Oz stood still.

“Go!” Emma said.

He turned and ran down the hall. Emma kept up her search, opening the numbered doors on the way. Nothing. She turned into the main hall, jogging to each successive door and opening it. On the sixth she hit pay dirt. She stepped inside a large room, twice the size of the earlier offices, and flicked on the lights. Refrigerators lined two sides of the square-shaped area, and glass-fronted cabinets lined the others. She ran to the refrigerators first.

Dozens of medications in bottles of all shapes and sizes filled every inch of the appliance. While labels arranged by alphabet made finding the medication possible, Emma wasn’t sure if the bottles were organized by the name of a disease, the bacteria it fought, or by some other system with which she was unfamiliar. She’d have to take as much as she could and sort it out later.

She backed away from the refrigerator and looked around for something to hold all the bottles. She saw nothing that would be of use. She briefly considered using the trash can, but discarded the idea. It would be hard to carry while she ran to the meeting place.

A shrieking filled the room as the alarm system triggered.

A far corner held a desk and she sprinted to it. Emma yanked on the lowest, and largest, drawer. It opened to reveal a set of hanging file folders, organized and labeled. She opened the corresponding drawer on the other side of the chair and found a pair of black low-heeled pumps, neatly arranged in the bottom. They rested on top of a piece of canvas. Emma pulled the canvas out from under the pumps and saw that it was a tote bearing the initials BAP. From the hall Emma heard the sound of raised voices and doors being slammed. The sounds drew closer as the searchers checked each room. Emma ran to the door, and turned the lock on the handle before returning to the refrigerator. She held the open tote in front of the first shelf, and used her arm to sweep the medications inside. The noise from the slamming doors came closer. She moved to the second shelf and swept her hand once again. Bottles and plastic containers fell into the tote, making a clinking noise as the ones in glass containers hit the others. Some missed the opening and landed on the tile floor, the glass containers among them breaking with a shattering sound that set Emma’s teeth on edge. The rest rolled away.

The door handle rattled. Emma stopped, her heart pounding as she watched the knob. It jiggled again. Emma turned back to the third shelf and started picking up the bottles and placing them inside the tote as quietly as she could.

“Open it, now!” Mono’s voice came through the panel.

Emma quit filling the tote and closed the refrigerator door. She needed a place to hide, but the room was devoid of any nooks and crannies. The only possible hiding place was the area under the desk where the desk chair rested.

She heard a woman’s voice, speaking in an Eastern European language, pleading with Mono. Emma could tell from the inflection that the woman was scared out of her mind and begging.

“I said, open it!” Emma heard a punching noise accompanied by a woman’s cry. She placed the tote over her shoulder and headed to the desk.

Emma rolled the wheeled desk chair to the window and hauled it up by the arms, grimacing as she tried to lift it higher. She staggered backward with the chair’s weight, but managed to keep her feet while she swung the metal legs with their steel rollers against the glass with all her might. The hit made a booming sound and the window bounced with the impact, but the double-paned glass held. A bullet cracked through the door and embedded itself into the wall three feet from where Emma stood, creating a dent.

“
Puta
!” Mono screamed through the door. Emma swung the chair again, her arms aching in pain as she tried to both hold the chair high enough and swing it fast enough to crack the glass.

Another boom. This time a long fissure appeared in the pane.

Two more bullets splintered the door. Shards of plywood flew into the room. The shots landed one foot away from Emma, shoulder high. White, chalky pieces of drywall flew into the air. Several bits hit Emma in the cheek.

She swung the chair again. This time the glass broke, shattering into a million cracks. The chair wheels punched out a circular hole in the window about the size of a large dinner plate. Far too small for Emma to climb through. She dropped the chair onto its feet directly in front of the pane, grabbed the bag, moved back, and took a running start.

Mono kicked open the door.

Emma leaped, placing one foot on the chair seat and turning her body so that her shoulder lined up with the pane. The rest of the glass broke open with the force of the hit and she felt herself free falling downward. She landed on the grass below with enough force to knock the wind out of her. Bits of glass showered down.

She rolled up and started running at a forty-five-degree angle to the window. Bullets thudded into the grass around her. She made it to the parking lot and plunged into the surrounding trees. The bag banged against her side with each pump of her arms. She felt a cold liquid soak through her pants at the hip, but she was too engrossed in getting away to stop and check the source. She ran at a breakneck speed down the road in the direction of the store. The high light poles that lit the store’s parking lot appeared before her. She kept sprinting in a straight line, scanning the area. She saw the Caliber idling in the back, hiding in shadow. When she reached it she pulled open the door, tossed the tote inside, and followed it in. Vanderlock said nothing, but tore off, driving in the opposite direction of the lab. Oz lay in the backseat, once again with his back against the door, his eyes closed.

Emma snapped on her seat belt and reached up to lower the visor. She slid open the cover to the embedded mirror, which lit up in order to allow her to see her reflection.

A line of blood ran out of her nose.

Chapter 38

V
anderlock drove for half an hour without speaking. Emma stared out the window, trying her best to keep calm and keep thinking. The sight of the blood draining from her nose had panicked her. She was having a hard time keeping her mind from flying off in a million different directions.

”Oz, you awake back there?” Vanderlock said.

Oz shifted. “Yeah. Why?”

“ ’Cause I want you to hear this.” Vanderlock nodded at Emma. “Oz told me that you know what we have?”

“It’s anthrax after all, isn’t it?” Oz said.

“I never thought it was anthrax because that’s not communicable between people. This disease appears to be communicated by touch as well as inhalation.”

“What do you think it is, then?”

Emma paused. Oz sat up, still holding his tee shirt to his deformed nose, but now looking at her, a question in his eyes. Vanderlock flicked a serious glance her way, then returned his gaze to the road.

“I think it’s a derivative of leprosy.”

The car jerked when Vanderlock did. “Are you kidding me?” he yelled.

Oz groaned from the backseat.

“Damn it, you’d better be right about this. Because if you’re not, I’m going to kill you just for scaring the shit out of me.” Vanderlock sounded as panicked as Emma felt.

“Is leprosy curable?” Oz said.

Emma inhaled. “Yes. And honestly if
all
you had was leprosy I’d be relieved, because leprosy is completely curable. Take a course of antibiotics and it’s over. At least the traditional type of leprosy is. But traditional leprosy takes years to develop and this is a hell of a lot faster growing than that.”

“Could you be wrong then?” A thread of hope ran through Oz’s voice.

Emma shook her head. “This last look confirmed it. The bacteria appeared strange, as if mutated, but it was still closer to leprosy than anything else. Right now I’m thinking that something La Valle did with his fields, coupled with the herbicide being dumped on them, created this new form of disease.”

They drove in silence for a minute. Emma stared out the window, mulling over every fact she’d ever learned about leprosy. “Now we just need to find some antibiotics to cure it. Powerful ones.”

“We’re driving to a hospital. Right now. Before Mono comes back,” Vanderlock said.

“I agree,” Emma said. She felt a pang as she thought of Raoul’s hostages, but their situation was now so dire that she didn’t think there was any way to salvage it and convince La Valle to let them all alone. Not anymore.

“Absolutely not,” Oz replied. “No hospital.”

Vanderlock looked at him in the rearview. “Why not? We know what it is. We go in there, tell them what we have, get treatment.”

“And get killed by La Valle’s men when they find us,” Oz said. “Or, worse, give this to everyone we touch.” He looked at Emma. “You know how this is spread?”

Emma shook her head. “No one really knows how leprosy is spread and this disease is behaving so differently that I don’t think we can assume anything. I saw a few cases when I volunteered in India. Contact seems to be required”—Oz appeared ready to interrupt and she held up her hand—“
but
that doesn’t mean we can’t warn the hospital personnel in advance that we might be carrying a contagious disease. They can prepare for our arrival.”

“And La Valle’s men?”

“I’ll call Banner. He’ll send someone to protect us,” Emma said.

Oz shook his head again. “I don’t know who that is, but I don’t want some hospital security guard getting killed by Mono.”

“Banner owns Darkview, a contract security company out of Washington. He hires the best. Special forces, ex-military, sharpshooters. You don’t need to worry,” Vanderlock said. “He and I don’t always see things the same way, but the guy is more than a match for La Valle. I’ll get on a major highway. You can still decide if this is what you want.”

Oz seemed to mull the thought over.