The Orion Plague (13 page)

***

Rick was just finishing replacing a hard
drive on an ancient laptop when the Marines showed up. He figured
they were Marines because the woman that jumped out wore one of
those sharp octagonal caps, and she seemed to be in charge, all
business. And she kept her finger flat alongside the trigger guard
of the short nasty-looking gun snugged into her shoulder, ready to
shoot anyone who got in her way. So he was surprised when she
barged through the door and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at
him.

“May I help you?” he asked politely.

“Rick! Thank God!” She moved toward him,
dropping the gun onto its retractable sling.

“You know me?” he asked in puzzlement. The
woman looked somewhat familiar but he couldn’t dredge up her name.
“I think I know you from somewhere…” he said, then almost fell off
his stool as she embraced him.

“Umm…miss…”

“Jill. I’m Jill.” She held him at arm’s
length, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s true?” she asked,
swallowing. “You can’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

She reached for her neck, pulling out a chain
with a ring on it, to hold it up in front of her. “Remember this.
You gave it to me.”

He reached out to touch it in wonder. “I…I
can’t recall. I’m sorry. But I can’t remember a lot of things. I
can’t even remember where I’m from or what I’ve been doing for a
while. But I can fix computers!” He disengaged himself to show her
the finished laptop. “I’m damn good at that.”

“Oh yes you are, Rick, you’re damn good at
that. But it’s time to go now.”

“Go? I kind of like it here. Walter feeds me
good and his cat’s friendly. Her name is Misty. What’s wrong with
me staying here?”

Jill turned all the way around in
frustration, hands working helplessly. “You have to trust me, Rick.
You have a job, you have friends who love you, you have
family
. Your mother, your sister...you can't stay here. You
need to come with me. You'll start to remember soon.” She reached
out for him gently.

“I don't want to go. I
don't
." Rick
crossed his arms, for all the world like a stubborn child.

“Oh, God, what do I do?” Jill whispered to
herself. Then she straightened, to hold her hands up at shoulder
level. “Rick, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“This.” And she slugged him, a sharp straight
right that ended on the hinge of his jaw and put his lights out
instantly. Catching him as he fell, she repeated, “I’m so sorry,
Rick. But I’m not going to lose you again. You’ll thank me
later.”

Three ugly days later Jill watched Donovan
and Doc Horton load a groggy Rick into the Beast. She nodded at
Lockerbie behind the wheel, and then climbed into the shotgun seat.
Donovan went around to the other side and got into the back seat
with Rick.

She was sure the medic-in-training hadn’t
expected to be back with his old boss so quickly but this was a
medical mission, so it seemed natural to ask Horton to let him
accompany them when she’d seen him at Grusky’s funeral.

Butler was still in the hospital getting his
ribcage reset. Rapid healing had its drawbacks; broken bones
settling into new, unnatural positions was one of them. She
couldn’t see Donovan manning the Vixen, so once they got on the
road she climbed up to the manual turret and strapped herself in to
the harness.

They had offered her an ambulance but she had
declined. It wasn’t Rick’s body that was injured, mostly, it was
his mind, and she felt a lot more comfortable with the Beast as
their courier to the big medical center in Richmond. With the Eden
Plague killing a lot of business for doctors specializing in the
body, psychiatry was an exploding field. There was some trauma even
the virus couldn’t fix. And then there were the Demon Plague Two
infectees, the “Twosies,” who had lost their language skills and,
once cured of their illness, sometimes needed help with their
mental health.

Rick would be a unique case, Jill thought,
but she had hope. With the gathering of specialists in the bustling
Virginia capital – the northernmost city on the East Coast not to
be nuked – someone should be able to figure out what to do. She
sure couldn’t.

Oh, he wasn’t in any distress. But she was.
He didn’t remember anything about her. Talking to him was like
talking to a slightly ditzy acquaintance, not the brilliant and
sensitive man she had fallen in love with. And when he talked about
his “girlfriend” Shari – where the hell had he come up with that?
It was all she could do not to punch something.

It’s not his fault. They screwed his brain
up in there, some kind of mind control.
When she or Doc Horton
or Donovan could get Rick to talk about it, he said he didn’t
remember any Shadow Men or Burn Rooms, but his eyes still went
blank at their mention.

The physical exam had shown he’d had surgery
on his chest and head, but they needed the imaging center in
Richmond to tell them more. Whatever was in there required a good
look and a good surgical team before they started messing around
with it, and that meant Virginia Commonwealth University Medical
Center in Richmond.

I-95 South had been cleared now so they
hummed along nicely, averaging at least forty-five. She’d heard it
had taken six to twelve hours to make the fifty-mile trip from
Fredericksburg the first time. The main things that slowed them
down were the checkpoints. The piece of paper next to her heart got
them through, but there were always lines of waiting vehicles as
martial law remained in force.

Once Rick woke up from the mild sedative
they’d given him – he didn’t want to leave Fredericksburg, still
trying to find Shari – he looked around like a child, and it nearly
drove her mad to see.
What did they do to you, heart of my
heart? God, I know I’ve gotten off the path, forgive me for that.
Punish me if you must, but Rick didn’t deserve what happened.
Please, Lord, reach down and heal him.

They pulled into the bustling medical center
parking lot and Jill sent Lockerbie off in the Beast to find them a
place to stay that would take the military scrip she had. Real cash
was in short supply. If they had to they could find a military
barracks but they were all in the mood for good beds and lots of
hot water.

Getting out, Jill was all ready to walk in to
the enormous building when she heard Donovan say, “Okay, Rick,
okay, just come…along…Top? Top!” Her head snapped around to see the
medic holding on to a struggling Rick, who seemed to want to go in
a specific direction, very badly.

“Hang on to him,” she said, jumping over and
grabbing his other arm.

Rick had an eager look on his face and said,
“I remember that. I remember that!” He tried to point, and she let
his arm go but grabbed his collar. Once he could, he aimed his
finger and arm across the parking lot, pointing at a group of
geodesic domes, “golf balls,” and tall towers with microwave dishes
and lasers pointed toward the mountains. The US was throwing
satellites back up as fast as it could but the line-of-sight
network was still more reliable.

“Let him walk,” she ordered, and Donovan
released Rick. “If something is helping him remember, we have to
let it play out. And…I want to see what he does.” Rick immediately
started striding toward the installation, and they had to hurry to
keep up. “Looks like a secure comms center. Maybe intel, maybe
C2.”

“Reckon so,” Donovan replied, “but Top, we
can’t let him in there. Who knows what they done to his brain, he
could cause all sorta mischief.”

“I don’t care,” Jill said, “it’s worth the
risk. We’ll watch him close.”
Whatever it takes, I’m not going
to pass up this chance before the shrinks get their claws into
him.
That scared her almost as much as seeing him this way.
Maybe, if I’m lucky, we’ll have a breakthrough right
now.

Donovan called, “Woah, Mister Rick, you jes
watch out there.” They had run up against a tall, new cyclone fence
with rolls of concertina wire atop it, and Rick made as if to climb
it.

“Get him off,” Jill said, and the two of them
pulled him gently down.

“But I want to go in!” he complained.

“What is it you remember?” Jill asked.

“I don’t know. I think I was here before, or
someplace like it. I think if I can see more of it I can remember
more.” His voice had an odd lilt to it, almost singsong, but Jill
didn’t care. Anything that helped him recover what happened or
connected him with reality was a good thing.

“Come on, let’s find the way in.” She turned
to the right and they walked along the perimeter, passing warning
signs and garnering a look from a pair of hard-faced guards. It
wasn’t until halfway around, after perhaps two hundred meters, that
they found the entrance. There was an armored booth and
turnstiles.

It took her half an hour to work her way from
the sergeant to the chief to the lieutenant to the captain to the
major to the colonel in charge of the facility – she still didn’t
know what it was, since it was unmarked – before the pass she
carried got them inside. Because of all the rigamarole she surmised
it had to be an intelligence setup, probably some kind of COMINT –
communications intel – though who they were listening to was
anyone’s guess.

“Colonel Murdo,” Jill said when the
pinch-faced woman finally let them in, “I know this goes against
all your security procedures and instincts but we’re still in a
combat zone, still under martial law, and this pass gives me access
to any US government facility.
Any
. If you have to, feel
free to put a call in to Pueblo, but that signature is real. We
need to come in and look around.”

“Actually, Master Sergeant, I recognize your
name, and I believe you,” the Colonel said with a grimace. “We
break lots of rules around here to get the job done, what’s a few
more? I know, it’s not really rulebreaking if the President gives
you that kind of blanket access, but it feels like it.” She smiled,
suddenly, turning her face from forbidding to delighted. “Kinda
fun, huh? Let’s go.”

Colonel Murdo gave them the grand tour,
though Jill was savvy enough to realize that by taking control of a
situation she couldn’t avoid, the woman was just making the best of
a bad situation, and might steer them toward some things and away
from others.
Probably thinks we’re here for some kind of
inspection,
Jill thought, and didn’t disabuse the colonel of
the notion. Frankly, even Jill didn’t quite know what they were
doing, so she cued off of Rick.

He walked around looking at the antennas and
structures, then headed for a boxy prefab with a river of cabling
running into it, most gathered into large conduits. Reaching for
the door, he was frustrated when it seemed to be locked. He tugged
on the handle, looking distressed.

“What is it, Rick?” Jill asked.

“It’s in there. I know it is.”

“What’s in there?”

“The key to me. If I can see in there I’ll
remember.”

Jill stared at him for a long moment, then
shrugged. “Okay…Colonel?”

“This is our secure server building for the
high-security networks,” she said worriedly. “Is this really
necessary?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Jill said with more
confidence than she felt. “Open it up, please.”
No matter what
it takes.

The colonel stepped in front of the keypad
and lock, waving a chipped badge in front of it and punching in a
code that she hid from the rest with her body. The magnetic lock
sounded a clunk, and the door opened a crack with a hiss of
pressurized air.

Inside, the large room was filled with
humming servers, blinking lights and a rat’s nest of cabling. Rick
took a deep breath, then turned right and headed down a narrow
alley between tall racks that held the computer machinery. Jill
could feel the blast of the air conditioning vents competing with
the fans drawing heated air from over the hot circuitry and
chips.

“What’s he doing?” Colonel Murdo asked. She
pointed at Rick, who had stopped in front of one machine and was
swaying back and forth as if drunk, and scratching one wrist with
the other hand.

“Rick?” Jill asked, walking toward him.

He turned toward her, digging at his wrist
until blood came. “Jill,” he whispered hoarsely. “Jill!”

“You recognize me!” she said with delight,
but Rick did not seem delighted. Rather, horror filled his
face.

“Jill…shoot me.”

“What?” She stopped, half-reaching for him,
not understanding. “No, Rick, you’re confused.”

“Jill, I remember. I remember, Jill…
it
burns…IT BURNS
,” he half-screamed, pulling a wire out of his
wrist where the self-inflicted wound was. “I can’t hold it for
long, Jill, shoot me or we all die!” He spasmed with pain, his
fingers clawing at the rack.

Pushing aside thought and fear, Jill suddenly
knew that Rick’s mind was back and she had to trust him. With a
smooth and practiced motion she brought up her PW10 and fired one
round into Rick’s left shoulder, the arm with the now-revealed wire
trailing from it.

He jerked as the high-voltage Needleshock
capacitor dumped its electric load into his flesh, knocking him to
his knees. “Again! Shoot me shoot me shoot me –” He repeated those
two words over and over until with a prayer and a convulsive
squeeze she unloaded most of the magazine into him, one quick shot
at a time.

Each tiny needle the gun fired poked a hole
and sent a convulsive shock through his body, but didn’t do enough
damage for even ten or fifteen rounds to kill him. It was, after
all, designed to be non-lethal. She was careful to stay away from
his heart and head but she felt his pain every time she fired,
until the Colonel and Donovan, not understanding, grabbed her from
behind.