Bioterror

by Tim Curran

  THE WAREHOUSE, 11:36 P.M.

  Harry told the Old Man that he really, honestly, and truly did not want to know what any of it was about and that was the gospel truth: he did not. Whatever curiosity had driven him when he was younger was sadly absent now. He no longer had any interest in risking his freedom for THE STORY. He’d had enough of that. For THE STORY had never failed to sink him in the shit and he didn’t want that anymore. What he wanted, was to get out of this place and have the Old Man call off the dogs of war so Shawna and he could relax.

  That didn’t seem to be asking so much.

  But the Old Man wasn’t having it. He wanted to talk, he wanted to tell. And the old Harry Niles would have been in heaven, but the newer and aged Harry Niles was terrified of the implications of knowing things that could cost him his life.

  So, when the Old Man said, “Do you want to see what Project BioGenesis is? The very nature of the parasitic infection that’s bringing this country to its knees?”

  Harry told him he’d rather not.

  The Old Man seemed to find that amusing; he nearly smiled. “What’s happened to your curiosity, Mr. Niles?”

  “I decided some years ago it was better to be free and ignorant than dead and informed.”

  The Old Man shook his head. “Your life is in no danger.”

  “So you say, yet you want to show me state secrets. And you can’t possibly let me walk away knowing these things. I have visions of torture chambers and dark prison cells dancing in my head.”

  The Old Man shook his head again. “You needn’t fear those either. You have my word that you will leave in complete safety. That you and your friend—Miss Geddes or is it Ms?—will be free to live your lives.”

  “But can I believe that?”

  “Actually, you can. As I said, the man who liberated your friend is our primary concern. Not you. Not Miss Geddes.”

  Harry didn’t believe any of it, of course, but he had little choice but to join the Old Man on his little impromptu tour of the Operations Center. He was shown the various containment areas, the labs, medical facilities, quarantine bunkers, even the incinerators where contaminated biological materials were burned. Harry didn’t have the heart to ask exactly what comprised biological materials. Then the Old Man took him through a pressurized door that said:

  EXTREME CAUTION

  BIOHAZARD

  BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4

  DO NOT ENTER

  WITHOUT SPACE SUIT

  “I’d rather not go in there if you don’t mind,” Harry said.

  “You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “But don’t we need one of those suits?”

  “No, we’re only going into an observation cubicle.”

  Harry followed him, his throat feeling like beach sand. He was well aware of the fact that the others in the biohazard area were all wearing biocontainment suits or “space suits” as they were generally referred to. The Old Man led him down a few intersecting corridors—away from the main action of that place, thank God—and brought him into a little cubicle, as he promised. There was a window of thick reinforced Plexiglas. Harry knew that he was supposed to look in there, but he didn’t want to. He did not want to see what horror awaited him beyond the glass.

  “C’mon, Mr. Niles,” the Old Man said. “Slake your curiosity.”

  Swallowing, at a complete loss for a witty comeback, Harry did.

  What he saw was appalling. It made his skin crawl and his belly swim. There were two bodies. Except, they were not dead. Two people, a man and a woman, lying on the floor, some lingering nerve function making their limbs tremble from time to time. They were both bloodless-looking, mouths hanging open and dripping foam, eyes wide and unblinking. And with them was something that looked like an extremely large albino snake at first glance. But it was no reptile and as he realized this, Harry felt a warm nausea gushing in his belly. A worm. A fucking giant worm. That’s what the thing was. It was easily twelve- or fifteen-feet in length, segmented, and starkly white like a ghost pipe growing from a rotted tree. Each segment was distended horribly, the flesh stretched and rubbery like the bulge in a tire that might burst at any moment. Each were set with a pair of gripping hooks that were either used for locomotion or to cling to prey. Its entire length was gleaming and greasy as if the worm were constantly secreting oils. It had a head, too. A great bulb-like protrusion that was near the size of a football. There were no eyes on it, just long brilliantly red spines and an X-shaped mouth that was hanging open, several pink squirming tubes hanging out like the entrails of an eviscerated man.

  “Jesus,” Harry said, sickened in ways he could not even express to himself. “This… this fucking worm is Project BioGenesis? These things are infecting the country?”

  The Old Man corrected him by saying that this particular specimen was exceedingly large and most would be much smaller, but, yes, this was the end result of Project BioGenesis. “There are mutations occurring daily now,” he explained. “The worms are parasitic in nature, but we’ve discovery that many are only using hosts until they’ve reached a larger size, then they become predatory.”

  Harry did not know what to say, what to think. The idea that these things were gestating in thousands, millions, of people was absolutely horrendous.

  “Project BioGenesis was speculative at best, right from the beginning,” the Old Man said. “It was used experimentally on a village in Iraq. The results were most unpleasant, as you can image. The village was sterilized by containment units. We thought it was over. A weapon so horrible that we could never ethically use it. Then… six years later, trouble started. Domestically. Veterans that had passed through that general area were somehow infected. Through a process we have yet to identify, the spawn infected them… then went dormant. Six years after, well, it activated. Your friend witnessed us trying to contain this thing. We were unsuccessful. And somehow, in the Middle East, certain terror cells harnessed the BioGenesis technology and they have spread it from one end of this country to another to bring us to our knees. That, Mr. Niles, is essentially where we are now.”

  Like any sane, compassionate individual, Harry was offended.

  Offended that this entire mess was created by his own government. Maybe the terrorists had seeded it countrywide in some misguided, reckless attempt at revenge, but at the core of the thing was this: it was created as a weapon. It was created to do what it was in fact doing. American tax dollars had funded this monstrosity and millions of innocents were now paying the ultimate price. We’re right and sorry about the loss of your husband, ma’am, nothin’ worse than having a worm burrowing in you. Sorry about your kids, too. You have to know we never meant this to be used on real Americans, just them God-dang A-rabs. Not real people. You have our deepest sympathies. But what could he say? Really, what could he say? He wanted to grab the Old Man by the throat and throttle him, but what good would that do?

  “So you see the situation we’re in here, Mr. Niles. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  The worm, which had been happily coiling up the bodies on the floor, had abandoned them now. Maybe it didn’t have eyes but it seemed to know there were people beyond the glass and it wanted them. It was climbing the glass like a caterpillar up the side of a jelly jar.

  Harry had to turn away. “So what now?” he said.

  “That’s what we’re all wondering. We’re hoping to eradicate the menace, but only time can tell.”

  Harry had been waiting for this. “And until then?”

  “Who can say?”

  But that was hardly enough. Too many maybes and unknowns for his liking. If they were going to do something to him, he wanted to know about it. And if they were going to do something to Shawna, he had to know about it.

  “And what about me?” Harry asked him when they were back in the room—essentially, a holding cell or interrogation room.

  “You?”

  “You’ve spilled state secrets to me, shown me a worm, told me about BioGenesis, and let
me tramp all over this classified installation,” Harry said. “Surely you’re not going to just let me walk away.”

  “Oh, but we will,” the Old Man assured him. “Of course, by that time, you won’t remember a thing anyway…”

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND:

  MARRIOTT HOTEL, CTHULICON 11:49 P.M.

  It was happening, by God, it was really happening. And no Hollywood CGI could match it. The feel of it. The smell. The sights. It was insane. Some shadowy strobe-show of cavorting bodies all tangled together, looped and knotted into a wiry and weird perpetual motion machine of faces and limbs and mouths …and worms. Where they had come from and what they were, Chaz did not know. He kept his eye to the Internet and he’d read plenty of those crazy tales making the rounds like the clap… but that was fantasy and conspiracy, minds going to sauce because the country was going toes up along with the rest of the goddamn world.

  But worms… fucking worms…

  “What are we going to do?” Bree whispered to him.

  But Chaz just ignored him. They were stuffed under a table watching the show in the glow of the fog lights or whatever they were up on the wall. The worms were threading amongst the crowd, coming out of everywhere, sliding out of mouths and stringing those people up. They were white and bloated with ring-like segments, sliding around like maggots gushing from a dead poodle’s asshole. And that sweet-sick stench. It was nauseating and thick, made Chaz want to paint the floor with his stomach contents.

  Bree was shaking next to him. “How we gonna get out of here?” he asked.

  But as Chaz saw a worm dangling down from the table, inches from his face, he said, “We ain’t.”

  CAMP PEARY, WILLIAMSBURG, VA:

  THE FARM, 11:59 P.M.

  The time to move was fast approaching and DCI Pershing was impressed with the results thus far. In a matter of hours, two targets had been removed and by morning the seat of power in the country would have dramatically shifted. But now was not the time to relax. The vigil must be increased, if anything. Admiral Paulus and General Mason were not as yet having second thoughts, but Paulus was definitely weakening and Pershing knew he had to keep the pressure on him. Mason had the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his pocket and tomorrow at this time, they’d have no problem—in fact, no choice—in accepting their new leader.

  But that might prove to be a minor fly in the appointment.

  For although it was never truly hashed out amongst the gang of conspirators as to who would be in charge, DCI Pershing automatically assumed it would be him for he was the guy who hatched this particular egg of treason. Paulus wouldn’t want it… but General Mason. Hmm. This was a military overthrow for the most part and Mason might see himself as the man on the top. He had something of a history of a taking credit for the hard work of others.

  Pershing made a note to himself to broach that very topic as subtly and diplomatically as possible. If Mason hinted at his own ascension to the throne of power, Pershing would merely agree with him. But when the time came, Mason would go too. Pershing was not about to share this glory with anyone.

  AUGUST 28

  CHICAGO: WICKER PARK,

  12:03 A.M

  Though she knew she would never sleep, Shawna laid there in the narrow bed, the wheels of her mind looms endlessly spinning out the whole cloth of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. She was afraid for Harry. She was afraid for herself. She was afraid for the whole damn country. Every time her paranoia level began to spike, making her heart pound and her breath barely come, she forced herself to relax, to unknot herself inch by inch until she could breathe again.

  Her entire world was up in the air and she did not like it.

  She did not know what to think.

  What to feel.

  It was not that many days ago when she was happy in her little mundane existence…okay, that was a lie and she knew it. She had never been exactly happy or even content but she’d accepted her lot as much as one could.

  Miserable, she thought then. That’s what you were—miserable.

  And it was true, she supposed. She’d gone about playing the good little assistant gardening editor, telling herself it would lead to bigger and better things. But the bottom line was that she knew it wouldn’t and her career path was hardly the prime motivator in her life. That was her romantic life—using her looks to trap one rich man after another. And when she drew them in, she gave them exactly what their wives didn’t: compassion and understanding… and a hot romp with a pretty young thing.

  Sooner or later, she always thought, one of them will dump their wives for me and I’ll have the lifestyle I want.

  That was her mantra.

  But it hadn’t happened.

  One disastrous fling after another. She had become a professional, high-dollar slut: immoral, predatory, merciless in her conquests. Eager to hang another head on the wall, she stalked her prey like a big game hunter. She was good at it. Her campaigns were successful… but in the end, she always lost her trophy kill.

  That wasn’t exactly much of a life, Shawna admitted to herself. But, then again, it beat the hell out of her current situation.

  Although she was free to leave anytime she chose, she still felt like a prisoner. Stein seemed all right and he had saved her ass from the goons that were trying to take her away, but that didn’t mean she liked him. He had done her a good turn, but were his reasons altruistic or was this another game? Plot and counter-plot? She just didn’t know. He would not talk about himself or reveal his background other than to tell her that he was a member of Blackpool and he was a paid assassin. Did that make him an evil man? Again, she didn’t know. A week ago, certainly, but now? Unknown. Things had changed. They were different. Her frame of reference was askew. Her world was crooked. She did not know what to trust or who to trust.

  That’s why she kept the door locked, hoping Stein did not have a key.

  The last thing she needed was for him to develop some twisted hero complex and decide that she needed to be more grateful. She was grateful, but not that grateful.

  Because really, where was she now? Alive? Yes. Safe? Comparatively. But she was very far from being happily adjusted to any of this or content with the situation. Stein had been very accommodating to her. Absolutely non-threatening. Still, she did not trust him or men like him. Subterfuge had always been her specialty, but this guy survived in a world she could not comprehend, a shadow world of assassinations and black budget operations. How could you trust someone like that? And she was his prisoner. Not literally, but figuratively at least.

  She had nowhere to go.

  No one she could trust.

  She wasn’t like Harry who knew seamy characters in the underworld that could hide you out places. She was not a survivor. She was used to being catered to, treated with kid’s gloves. Her ass was sore from being kissed by men desperate to have her by their sides. But Stein was no more like that than Harry was. He did not give a shit what sort of deluded princess fantasy she had been living these past years. That kind of thing was window dressing for a guy like him. Because most people looked at the world and saw what they were supposed to see: little pink houses and white picket fences, blue skies and opportunity and parks for their children to play in; but Stein saw beyond all that, he saw the dirty machinery that kept that world running and the blood that oiled the cogs and gears, the greed and power plays and ruthless profiteering that fueled it all.

  A pessimist? How could he not be? But Shawna figured if she asked him, he’d say he was not a pessimist, but a realist.

  She wondered what Harry would do. How would he handle this situation? And thinking that and knowing she missed him terribly and was worried sick about him, she became more depressed than ever. For she knew where he was, but she could not get to him.

  If it was you in that awful place, he’d get to you. Somehow.

  And knowing this and feeling completely helpless, sleep had never been so far away.

  DETROIT, HOLY CROSS HOSPITAL:

>   DETOX WARD, 12:19 A.M.

  "It’s okay,” Bertie said to Johnny, holding his hand as he shook with panic. “It’s all going to be just fine.”

  Johnny nodded, knowing she was lying but more than happy to lose himself in the lie, to become part of it. The desire to perpetuate self-defeating bullshit had never been so strong. He smiled. He breathed. And, yes, he believed.

  From the upper, abandoned floor of the hospital, he watched Army Humvees and APCs patrol the streets. It was insane. It looked like something from Northern Ireland or Chechnya. The sort of thing you saw on the news.

  Bertie squeezed his hand tighter. “The world’s still there, it’s just changed now. We’ll have to change with it.”

  It was good to have her there with him like this when his head started getting funny. He hadn’t had a good taste in days now and his mind was acting up. It always did after a time when they dried him out. It started with a funny sort of humming between his ears and before he knew it, it was like a desert wind blowing low and lonely between his ears that blotted out everything else. Then he’d start hearing the voices from the past, all of them trying to out-shout one another for his attention—voices from his childhood, from the war, from last week or fifteen years ago.

  “I’m okay,” he heard his voice say. “I’m okay.”

  But he wasn’t okay and he knew it, because he did not trust what he was seeing or what he thought was going on. The soldiers everywhere, the choppers in the sky with their scanning searchlights, police vans blaring out from their loudspeakers that curfew was in effect. Oh Christ, martial law. He knew what that meant. It was like being in Hue City again.

  Oh Jesus, that humming. It opened his mind like a door and all the voices started talking to him again, telling him things and questioning where he was and what it was he thought he was doing.

  “I’m Johnny Kopok,” he said. “That’s who I am, and the place is now goddammit.”