by Platt, Sean
“Are you getting this?” Rick asked Thom.
Sanjay waved his hand again. “All right. Brass tacks. Here’s what matters. You, Mr. Shelton, have an extremely resistant brain. I could show you. It’s really quite fascinating in your scans.”
Rick turned and looked meaningfully at Thom: I told you they did scans.
“You mean I’m strong,” Rick said. “Mentally.”
“I think he means ‘stubborn,’” Carly said.
Sanjay pointed at her. “Precisely. I would like very much to be more scientific about this, but our working theory is far simpler than that. We believe your development path is unique because you have rigidly self-proscribed ‘acceptable’ ways that BioFuse is permitted, by your own rules, to build new connections. In a more malleable person, the new connections would be more straightforward because they themselves — and by that, I mean their brains and their bodies — are more straightforward.”
“And?” Rick said.
“Again, it’s complicated, but I think the unique function of your brain, combined with BioFuse, might actually be making you immune to certain … things.”
“What makes you think that?”
Sanjay stumbled, a bit flustered. He seemed not to expect Rick’s suite of questions, and Thom got the definite feeling he was having to improvise on a carefully written script.
“Certain boring medical metrics.”
Thom looked at Carly for help. She was medical herself; she’d understand what the doctor wanted to say. But Carly’s eyes were hard, pre-staring at him before he had a chance to stare at her. Very subtly, she shook her head: No. Don’t say what you’re about to say.
Thom returned to observing without a word.
“You think I’m immune,” Rick said.
“Exactly.”
“To a disease that just cropped up.”
“Again I could bore you, but there are ways in which we anticipated … well, not this exactly, but a predilection for an anomaly in your case.”
“And you think I’m immune despite the fact that I haven’t been bitten. I haven’t had a chance to be immune.” He looked to Thom, Carly, and Brendan. “Why aren’t you talking about them being immune? Or anyone else who hasn’t been bitten?”
Thom shifted uncomfortably. Either Rick had forgotten Carly’s bite or was deliberately obscuring it. She looked more waxen than ever. When would someone notice, and what would they do when they did?
“Give us some credit, Mr. Shelton. We have a lot of your medical history at our disposal, and of course I’m not exactly handing over all of our internal research. Suffice to say, you’ve been of interest to Hemisphere for a while.”
“And that’s why you’ve been doing extra tests on me.”
“Correct.”
Rick shook his head. He was mulling, trying to fit the pieces together. “This doesn’t make any sense. You’ve been wondering about me for a while now, and now you think I might be immune … but it’s all in the context of a disease that didn’t exist this morning.”
“It hadn’t manifested this morning,” Sanjay corrected.
“So, what, you knew it was coming or something?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“What, then?”
Rick’s no-bullshit voice was downright intimidating. In the silence after his question, they could all clearly hear the ticking of a wall clock.
“Think of it like this,” Sanjay said, deepening Thom’s sense that the man was improvising. “You’re moving into a new house and you find a key. You don’t know what that key’s for, so you set it aside. Later, you find a chest in the attic with a padlock you can’t open. Wouldn’t it be logical to try the key you found months ago?”
Carly was still looking at Thom, her expression still begging his silence. Nothing Sanjay said made much sense. Thom had been assuming it was because it was over his head, but now he was starting to think it was because Sanjay wasn’t actually saying much of anything at all.
The doctor must have sensed he was losing his audience, so he stood and brushed his hands together. “Anyway. Shall we draw that blood?”
“Why did you take Rosie?” Rick asked. “She’s not in your trial.”
“Why did you take any of them?” Carly added.
Sanjay sighed and sat back down. “All right. I suppose with all these questions, I wouldn’t feel like cooperating either.” Another sigh. “What I am about to tell you is highly confidential, proprietary information, but we don’t exactly have time to draft NDAs, so assuming there’s another day for any of us, I’d appreciate if you could keep it to yourself.”
“Seriously?” Rick asked.
“Not because it’s illegal or immoral,” Sanjay scrambled to add. “More because it would blow our methodology and, frankly, cost this company a lot of money and an equal number of valid test results. See, when you do a study of any sort, it’s important that experimenters don’t accidentally influence the outcome. We must administer whatever we’re testing, BioFuse in this case, and then get out of the way. But because of the way BioFuse works and the varied nature of its results, a lot of what we do is to observe our subjects ‘in the wild’ as it were. We don’t want to simply test you using our people and ask questions. It tells us much more when we can see how you act when you’re not being observed. Or when you think you’re not being observed.”
“You spy on us?”
“That’s putting it a little dramatically, but yes, in a limited way. Never in private, of course, but when you’re out in public — say, at a mall — we want to see how you react. We want to see if BioFuse helps you navigate life in real-world situations.”
“But Rosie …”
Something hit the floor. All heads whipped around to see Carly, her eyes on the ground, embarrassed. She’d knocked her water over, and now it was everywhere.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s no problem.” Sanjay went to the others, presumably to ask one to fetch a mop.
When the doctor wasn’t looking, Carly moved close to Rick and whispered something.
Then she said, “You said there was somewhere to lie down? Where Rosie and the others are resting?”
“Oh! Yes, of course. The test will take a half hour or so anyway, and I believe we’re quite safe here in the meantime.” Sanjay motioned for one of the others to show Carly the way.
“No problem,” said Rick, rolling up a sleeve. “Where do I go?”
Thom was confused. His father’s questions were done, just like that?
Carly took Thom’s hand and said, “Maybe you should come with me.”
Sixteen
Kind of a Stretch
Carly thanked the woman who led them to the brightly lit back room, which turned out to be a short hallway leading to several more rooms. All but one, on cursory inspection, were empty. They found Rosie in the last one, on a cot flanked by many others, fast asleep.
“She’s sleeping?” Thom asked.
Carly moved with purpose. She’d shut the door to the hallway after coming through and was now closing the door to their room, pulling a blind over the small window. She locked the door, thought, then unlocked it. “She’s not sleeping. She’s drugged.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Sanjay has a note about it on the lock screen of his phone.”
“How do you know what he …” But she already had a device in her hand that didn’t match any of his family’s iPhones. “You stole his phone?”
“His lab coat was draped over the chair where I was sitting, and this was in the pocket.”
“Carly, what’s—?”
“Shh. Just listen.” She shook her head. “He’s lying. I don’t know what parts exactly he’s lying about, so I’m assuming all of it.”
“How do you—?”
“I don’t think he’s a doctor. I mean, maybe like a PhD doctor, but not an MD. The stuff he was saying out there? None of it makes sense.”
“What did yo
u say to Rick out there?”
“I told him to let them draw his blood, but not to ask any more questions.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Sanjay keeps talking, pretty soon he’s going to trip over himself. And I’d rather he didn’t. Right now, he probably assumes we believe him, but if Rick asks him something he can’t answer, he’ll know the jig is up.”
She was handling the phone deftly, by the edges. She set it on a rolling tray, then rummaged in her purse. She’d probably have lost the thing by now, but it converted to a little backpack. All her stuff was still inside.
She pulled out a compact and a fat foundation brush, then swept it across the phone’s surface.
“What are you doing?” Thom asked.
“The powder shows where the screen’s been touched most often. See?”
He looked. After dusting, she’d woken the thing to reveal the code entry. The darkest smudges lined up with the 4, 6, 8, and 2 buttons.
“How do you know how to do that?”
“I thought you were cheating. Saw this little trick in Cosmo in an article on how to catch an unfaithful spouse.”
“You thought I was …” Thom couldn’t believe it. He wished he had time or energy right now to feel betrayed.
“I know you’re not. We can talk about it later.” She was already tapping out all the combinations of those four digits, muttering thanks that Sanjay had stuck with a four-digit code rather than the more popular six. Knowing the digits, she needed only to find the order. Thom remembered this from high school math, concluding there were only twenty-four possible combos. Carly found it about halfway through.
In the interim, Thom was inspecting the room. Even less made sense now. Brendan said the Hemisphere people had rounded up a whole lot of people — five vans worth, he assumed. Sanjay had confirmed as much in the front room, but unless the building had hidden passageways, Rosie appeared to be the only one back here. The implications opened even more boxes. If they’d only taken Rosie, it seemed to suggest they’d only ever been looking for Rick. It was pretty much all Thom felt comfortable concluding.
“Okay,” Carly said. “Most of what I was hoping to find is on a cloud server, and it looks like his local copies are encrypted. I found a bunch of promising email attachments, but they’re all encrypted, too. But look at this. Sanjay must have sent this when he saw us outside or something. They’ve got an evacuation planned. The National Guard is coming to get them in less than an hour.”
Thom looked through the windows. Evening was coming. “Good. What else?”
Carly looked frustrated. “There’s probably a lot in here, but the only thing that’s not encrypted are things like email and this messaging app they’re using. I’d have to read everything he’s got, and there’s no time.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything we can do. I’m telling you that what he said out there was bullshit, but I’m not sure it changes anything. The way he was tap-dancing, I get the feeling they’ve got a secret worth protecting. If we become a problem, they might not want us to leave. Or they might force us to leave — kick us out into the crowd, which is obviously getting larger by the bite.”
Thom knew; he was still looking through the windows at the growing pile of gnashing humans outside the fence.
“Either way we’re not getting out of the city without a ride,” Carly finished. “I vote we cooperate like hell.”
He went to Rosie and gently shook her. She began to stir, but it would take a while for her to fully wake.
Thom looked back at Carly. “Sanjay said they were watching their test subjects. Just observing them ‘in the wild.’”
“Yeah. Wearing black suits with skinny black ties so they stand out? Armed with special weapons? Five vans worth, and yet they sort through everyone and only take Rosie?”
“What, you think they wanted to lure Rick here, using her?”
“I think they wanted Rick, but he never came out.”
“Why not wait longer? The place wasn’t overrun yet.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not leave a note or something? How could they assume he’d know where to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why five vans?”
“Maybe they knew it would spread fast. Thought they’d need five vans to hold them all.”
“But they didn’t take the …” Go on, say it. “The zombies. They took Rosie instead.”
“I don’t know, Thom. I just know that what he told us out there was the biggest load of hand-waving bullshit I’ve ever heard. He was either making it up on the fly or he has no idea what he’s doing. And did you see the other guy? The one in scrubs?”
“Yeah. I got the feeling he’s the one calling the shots.”
“The only thing I believe for sure is that they want Rick. Sanjay asked about new mental capabilities, and we both know your father thinks he has some.”
“You don’t seriously think he’s got some kind of …” Jesus. This, he found harder to say than zombies. “Some kind of ESP connection to Rosie or something?”
“No idea.” She was still scrolling through the phone. “I’m starting to get the feeling they think ‘latent brain abilities’ aren’t consciously controlled. They’re primal. Sub-conscious. Remember the time I just knew Brendan was in trouble, and you got so mad at me?”
Thom remembered just fine. They’d been planning a rare lunch over Brendan’s summer vacation — just the two of them. He was almost thirteen and their neighborhood was a safe one, so they’d felt comfortable leaving him alone. But then Brendan decided to make afternoon toaster waffles and dropped a pad of butter, and he’d slipped on it, knocking himself out on the kitchen floor. They’d been about to sit when Carly insisted they go home; she was positive something was wrong.
Examples of maternal instinct were everywhere in the animal kingdom once you started to look for them.
Rick and Rosie had supposedly only met recently. But who knew? Rick kept his sensitive side under tight wraps, showing it only when forced. They might have been together for months. Even a year or more.
“I don’t know, Carly. It’s kind of a stretch.”
“But does it matter? Here we are, right where they wanted us. Where they wanted Rick. Clearly he’s special, just maybe not in the way they’re pretending he is. My priority here is to get out first, not be played for fools a distant second.” She shook her head, frustrated, and slipped Sanjay’s phone back into her pocket. “But it looks like I may have to accept the second in order to accomplish the first.”
Carly tried to stand, wincing on her bad ankle. Thom knelt before her, and glancing up for permission, raised her pants.
Her entire lower leg looked dead now. It was black, run through with even darker veins. He touched it and found he could feel her pulse. Low and slow, not like a trained athlete but like a body about to give up.
“I don’t understand why this is moving so slowly.” They had dubious opportunity to see more turnings, and almost all of the bitten turned bad before the Sheltons moved out of sight.
“Maybe it has something to do with Rick,” Carly said.
“How? You’re not related to Rick.”
“No, but he likes me. Not in the way he likes Rosie, but …”
Thom understood. It’d been clear for a long time that Rick liked his daughter-in-law far better than his son. The idea that Rick was somehow tied to Rosie and Carly (and Brendan; he loved Brendan) was a long shot to be sure, but he was equally sure that if “psychic protection” applied here, he’d likely have none of it.
If Thom had been the one to get bitten instead of Carly, they might all be dead now.
Stupid idea. Stupid, baseless speculation.
“Maybe you should try and get some sleep,” he said, seeing Carly flag.
But a terrible set of noises came before she could so much as lower her head.
Seventeen
Most
ly an Accident
Rick still didn’t like needles, as much as he’d trained himself to endure in life.
He didn’t avoid them the way some needlephobes did, and he never availed himself of the considerations given to those who hated them. Watching TV, holding a loved one’s hand, or anything like that. But he did always tune out the voice of whoever was drawing the blood when the time came, focusing all his energy on a lot of nothing at all. He didn’t look at the needle or give a beat of his thought. The kiss of the tip was hard pressure, and not a thing more than that.
It was easier to stare at the corner and accept his impalement.
That’s what Rick was doing when Sanjay slid the needle into the pit of his arm. He felt the pressure, but then came a red-hot flare of pain.
He flinched. The still-unnamed woman in scrubs held his arm down at Sanjay’s order, but Rick was already tensing and pulling away.
“Hold him!” Sanjay shouted, trying now to extract the needle.
Something had gone wrong. Blood was spritzing from the needle site, spraying the doctor’s coat and face like a tiny little hose. When the needle finally came out, Rick’s arm gushed in a river.
Sanjay aided his assistant’s efforts to apply pressure, but it still took thirty seconds or more to stuff wadding over the draw site and wrap it clumsily with medical tape.
Rick’s eyes went to the table, where Sanjay had set the syringe. There was blood inside it, but the needle had been bent almost thirty degrees at the tip. No wonder he was bleeding.
“You used a syringe?”
“Yes, yes,” said Sanjay, trying to clean up.
“They usually use those vial things.”
“Yes, well, I prefer a syringe.”
But Rick’s radar — maybe because he’d gained spooky intuition as a side effect of treatment, or maybe just because Carly’s words had put him on alert — was already on high.