Night Zero (Book 1): Night Zero

by Horner, Rob

  “What am I looking for?” the doctor asked. His hand hovered over a mouse, index finger busily manipulating the wheel between the buttons. The images cycled farther. Small spots of white appeared on both sides of the center line, grew larger, then receded. Jesse didn’t know if those were supposed to be there or not.

  “Okay, coming up on image 67.”

  The coiling mass of the outer brain disappeared. Jesse assumed that meant they were now peering below the surface. The white areas remained, but their intensity faded, becoming gray. The gray began extending toward the top of the screen, which he thought was the front of the head. Maybe even the forehead. He’d know for sure if the eyeballs showed up soon. But the doctor stopped scrolling through the images, coming to a rest on a sudden explosion of gray lines, outgrowths of what was there before, that wound like a mess of snakes.

  “What the hell is that?” the doctor said. Then, “I’m aware you’re not a radiologist. Have you ever seen it before?”

  The doctor scrolled back a frame, then forward two, showing the lines go from almost nothing to a full grayscale takeover of the screen.

  “It just starts at 67, doesn’t it? Then it grows. Is it ischemia? Yes, I know ischemia of this nature is highly unusual in a patient this age. Have you identified a source?”

  The doctor turned from the screen, his dark eyebrows lowered in thought. He noticed Jesse standing at the counter and manufactured a smile that looked more artificial than Elvira’s boobs. He turned away and lowered his voice, but Jesse could still hear him. “Run a perfusion scan. Yes, I’m aware of the exposure, but do you think she stands a chance if we don’t identify this? And thanks for letting me know. Call the radiologist and have him do a STAT read on both.”

  The doctor put the phone back on its cradle and turned back to the computer with the CT images. Idly, like he was trying to kill time and hoping Jesse would go away, he began scrolling through the pictures again.

  For his part, Jesse was torn between confronting the doctor, trying to get some information, and just sneaking away. Ragan wasn’t his kid. He’d just been trying to do right by her, getting her out of the madhouse at the Mississippi airport.

  But Kimmy always wanted a daughter. They’d been trying right up until they found the cancer. Then it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Was that why he’d taken the girl in the first place?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  But it was the reason he decided to stay.

  Walking around the nurses’ station, Jesse drew in a breath to yell for the doctor’s attention.

  A low siren began wailing, and a woman’s voice shouted over the intercom system. “Code pink, Radiology. Code pink, Radiology. Code pink, Radiology.”

  The people standing around burst into motion like an anthill run over by a lawnmower.

  Not thinking, Jesse reached out and grabbed the arm of the pretty PA as she ran by. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  She must have been as confused as he was because she answered without thinking about who asked the question. “It’s a pediatric cardiac arrest.” Then she tore her arm free and followed the flood of nurses and the doctor as they ran out of the department.

  The words of the woman washed over her, plaintive and amazed and thankful all rolled into a blubbering mess of protestations of disbelief and love.

  She approached slowly, as if afraid to move too fast, scared of frightening her, or perhaps of discovering she was an illusion, a hallucination born out of frayed nerves and a decaying mind.

  The girl didn’t mind. It gave her time to sort through her new awareness.

  She had been someone. Then she got sick. Now she’d become. But the person she had been was still there, a series of memories that informed who she had become, at least to a degree.

  She remembered this woman, who inched forward and called her “Bitsy.”

  She knew Bitsy was her pet name, a funny form of Elizabeth. She even remembered that the nickname came from her own mispronunciation when she’d first learned to speak.

  This woman was her mother, usually called “Mommy.” There was another figure in her mind, a man-form called “Daddy.” He wasn’t become yet, but some new sense informed her that he would. They shared many things, including a special something that would make them more than many of the others yet to become.

  Mommy didn’t have that special something. When she became, it would be up to Bitsy to guide her.

  Maybe it would be best not to make her.

  That thought was discarded as soon as it completed. If Bitsy didn’t do it, someone else would. Mommy was ripe for sharing.

  It was strange, to consider all things in the context of memory. The Mommy-person who kept babbling and coming closer caused many things to appear in her mind, images of things they’d done together as well as memories of the feelings experienced while doing them. All emotion, all sensation, was a memory once lived. The only real things were experienced in the moment, and it was the memory of those experiences that built a relationship.

  All she had were memories now, with no ability to summon an emotional response to them.

  The woman was beside her bed now, one knee rising onto the surface as her body leaned in, arms coming around to enclose.

  Bitsy allowed the embrace, and felt the hot tears falling into her hair as the woman sobbed.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she said as she bit down on the woman’s arm.

  Surprisingly, she meant it.

  The woman flinched back, but Bitsy let go as soon as the skin was broken. Mommy had always said her front teeth were as sharp as vampire fangs. Perhaps she took it as just an accident, an emotional response as genuine as her own, because she didn’t chastise or curse.

  She just held on tighter.

  Bitsy let her.

  An hour passed, and other become started to wander into the emergency department. Bitsy sensed them long before they appeared and kept them from intruding simply by thinking they should stay away.

  As the time came for Mommy to begin feeling the first calls to become, Bitsy pushed with her mind, accelerating the process.

  The shaking subsided and the arms fell away from her as Mommy stopped breathing and her heart quit beating. Its job was done. The woman slid sideways off the bed and to the floor.

  Any moment now.

  Mommy rose to her feet and stood waiting for Bitsy to climb out of bed. Bitsy raised her left hand and commanded Mommy to take it. It felt right to be seen as mother and daughter, holding hands as they walked out of the hospital.

  Daddy was out there. They needed to reach him.

  Together, they started walking east.

  There isn’t a more frightening prospect for a critical care provider than having to attempt a cardiac resuscitation outside of the proper location. Emergency department doctors won’t send crashing patients to Radiology because they know Murphy is watching, and anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. A patient with ascending cholangitis will wait in the controlled environment of the ED until they are admitted to ICU, and woe to the intensivist who allows that same patient out of his sight.

  Murphy never takes a day off.

  Jesse knew none of this. He had no idea of the success rate of cardiac resuscitations in an ED versus anywhere else. He could sense that something was very wrong from the moment he reached the Radiology department, an unwelcome but unnoticed tagalong in the wake of the rush of scrub-clad people racing ahead of him.

  The CT room was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Ragan lay on a narrow table barely as wide as her shoulders, her head toward what looked like a large, off-white donut. There were already two people working on her, one of them at the side of the table, hands interlaced over the girl’s chest, pushing down, again and again. The other held a small plastic mask attached to a clear balloon with another hose snaking off to a nozzle on one of the walls. Every few seconds, this second person squeezed the balloon, a smooth compress and release action.

  Jesse didn’t know how
to react to the proceedings. Part of him wanted to rush in, start grabbing people, demanding answers. That’s what a father would do, wasn’t it? But she wasn’t his daughter. And anything he did might come off as an act. Even if they believed it, wouldn’t it just be pulling their attention away from the girl they wanted to save?

  Did other parents realize that when they made hysterical scenes while a medical team worked on their loved one?

  The doctor leaned over to say something to the physician’s assistant, the same woman who’d sewn up Jesse’s hand and inadvertently led him here. Then the doctor began giving orders to the half-dozen other people in the room, creating order out of chaos, and the P.A. hurried to the side, aiming for a door Jesse hadn’t noticed at first. Thinking the third time might indeed be the charm, Jesse followed her through the door and into a small room that smelled of electronics and looked like the control center for a small nuclear power plant. A young man stood at the wide bank of monitors, switches, buttons, and dials.

  “Dr. Worthington wants a CD of the girl’s CT,” the pretty woman said.

  “Already done,” the man replied. “I burned it as soon as I got off the phone with him. Figured this was one for the record books.”

  Confused, Jesse stepped back out of the door before either noticed his presence.

  The code was now in full swing. Ragan’s hospital gown had been removed and she lay on the narrow table, naked except for a pair of demure, flowery panties. Large, sticky pads covered most of the surface of her torso, though he couldn’t see much beyond that through the gaggle of people crowding around on both sides. He’d never been one for medical dramas, so the rapid-fire commands and responses had only minimal meaning for him.

  “Monitor shows sinus, but there’s nothing at the femoral.”

  “P.E.A. then. Rotate and go two more minutes.”

  “Time plus four.”

  “Get another mig of epi ready.”

  “Prepping one milligram of epinephrine.”

  “Dennis, pick it up, you’re pushing too slow.”

  It happened so fast that Jesse wasn’t sure what he’d seen. One man was still pushing on her chest. A woman had two vials in her hand, one she’d just popped out of a box and another that came out of a plastic-wrapped pouch. The doctor stood nearby watching everything while one of the initial men still squeezed the air balloon and someone else had their eyes glued to the cardiac monitor.

  That was one moment.

  In the next, Ragan slid sideways off the table like she’d been greased. One instant she was there, her thin breastbone being pushed down by the strong arms of the nurse, Dennis, and as he came up, she slid away.

  “What the—”

  And then she was back up, tearing into the people around her. One woman screamed as sharp teeth bit into her wrist, sending blood spraying while a man scrambled over the table, intent upon getting his hands on the girl. Ragan released the arm and swung around, angel face twisted with fury, mouth painted with the nurse’s blood, naked torso trailing wires and spattered with red. She swung her arms, scoring hits on the man’s face, and he fell back against the table, unable to face the aggressive girl.

  Jesse had seen it before. He ached to run in to help, but he knew what happened next. These kind men and women only wanted to save a life. More would be hurt as they tried to subdue her. And then they’d go crazy.

  So why hadn’t he?

  Jesse didn’t know, but maybe someone else would have the answer. As an alarm began to sound and the intercom to blare, “Code Black, Radiology,” he ducked back into the control room, almost knocking over the young woman as she rushed out to aid her friends.

  The young man was on the phone, probably calling Security. Jesse lunged for the plastic CD case he’d seen on the counter. The silver disc was visible inside, with words carefully printed on its surface in black Sharpie: Ragan Franks, CT Head, followed by the date. “You’re not her dad, are you?” the man asked, putting down the phone. He held his hands up, showing he meant no harm. “It’s been all over Facebook, you know? People getting sick, acting crazy, attacking other people. They get sick too, but in a different way. It started in Atlanta, but there were planes… You came in a plane, right?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You’re a pilot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take it, okay? Get it to the CDC. Maybe it’ll help.”

  “Thanks,” Jesse said.

  “Go out that door,” the man added, pointing to a door in the wall opposite where he’d entered the room. “It leads out to the main part of the hospital, instead of back to the ED.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Now go, before Security gets here.”

  Jesse went.

  Chapter 27

  Thirty minutes came and went without Matthis returning.

  Dr. Lowman gathered his notes, including the printed transcripts of the “planned” conversations which took place in the office when Johnson was the CMO. He took the map overlays provided by Mr. Fields, though he predicted the politicos with the President would have the same information if not better. Hell, they could probably watch the situation unfold in real time.

  The Lincoln Town Car with its assigned driver waited for him in the parking garage, one of the perks of the position that Greg relished. How he’d ever accomplished enough to earn this position was amazing when taken in light of how much more productive he was now that he could continue working during the twice-daily commute between DC and Springfield, Virginia.

  “Looks like a detour, sir,” the driver said within seconds of leaving the garage.

  Greg had never seen a detour conducted by men in digital camouflage surrounding a fully armored Humvee. Had the President called out the National Guard? He had a moment to think that perhaps they should approach the blockade and see if they’d be let through onto New York Avenue NW; Greg was expected at the White House, and that was the most direct route. But the car was already moving, following the flow of traffic on North Capitol Street.

  “We can get there on K, sir.”

  But they couldn’t turn on K, either. Another military truck sat in the center of the road, with foldable A-frames painted in yellowjacket on either side preventing vehicles from going around. No one manned this blockade, which made trying to argue for passage impossible.

  “Maybe we should try to go back where the soldiers were,” Greg said.

  “We’re being funneled onto I-395 now, sir. But I can try to get off and swing back around.”

  “Can we get there on the Interstate?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s only a couple of miles to 695, which will bring us around the long way but only adds ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Let’s see what it looks like a little farther south then,” Greg decided.

  The traffic was slow-and-go. The car moved five or ten feet then slowed, never stopping completely. At this rate, Greg mused, it would take them ten minutes just to get to the Interstate. He tried to lose himself in the academic problem they faced, finding that useful thought helped pass the time far better than wasted fretting over their pace. That was the driver’s responsibility.

  Several key pieces were missing from the data collected by Mr. Fields and provided by Dr. Matthis, questions that needed to be answered in order to move forward with any plan to counteract the spread of the virus. Supposedly, the cocktail was engineered to spare people with a certain blood type. Had that been tested and proven? Or was it just a hypothesis? If some people were immune completely, would there be others more susceptible because of a different aspect of their DNA.

  Most importantly, if the carrier was a virus, was it completely stable, or could it adapt to changing antibodies and mutate into a different form?

  The slamming of the car’s brakes jolted Greg forward in the backseat. The driver let out a surprised “Woah!” even as the sounds of plastic and metal meeting at high speeds reached them.

  “What the—” Dr. Lowman began, but then cut himse
lf off. Righting himself in the seat, he could see what the hell happened, though seeing didn’t immediately translate into believing.

  They were on the merge lane heading onto I-395, stopped about halfway up. Only ten cars separated them from the acceleration lane, but those ten were packed nose to butt, a sea of red lights and sun-spangled fiberglass that a daring man could walk along from trunk to roof to hood without having to set foot on the ground. A few of the cars must have bumped bumpers, if the driver doors flying open meant anything, angry motorists not ready to just take down information but needing to vent some frustration first. They might be climbing out just to get a better look at what caused the sudden stop, which was also understandable.

  All three lanes on the southbound side were gridlocked, a crazy mishmash of cars rear-ended and side-swiped beginning perhaps fifty feet along the road and extending back as far as the eye could see. Distant sounds of crumpling fenders, blaring horns, and shattering glass continued to filter up the road as the pile up mounted. No one turned off their engines that he could tell, and the humid air filled with the exhaust of a hundred cars and diesel trucks.

  “We’re not moving anytime soon,” the driver commented over his shoulder as both men stepped out of the car.

  The road behind them was blocked as well, with the train of cars now extending along Capitol almost back to the CDC office.

  “What started it?” Greg wondered aloud.

  “In this town, who knows?” the driver answered. “Could have been a squirrel or a cat—”