Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  George ran out of gas by the time he was satisfied with the table and had rolled it to the far side of the room. Dr. Collins had replaced the cassette in her tape recorder and was about ready to go. Collins was all right. Not too cheery, not too grim. Got her business done and got the hell out of there…just the way George liked it. Not like that damn Dr. Chiarchiaro. Always playing that loud rock music and singing while he worked. Or that Petersen woman with her jokes and disrespectful talk about the dead. No. Far as George was concerned, Dr. Collins was just right.

  “He’s in eleven,” she said as George pushed the cart across the room to the bank of refrigerated storage bins covering the north wall. He twisted the handle and eased the rollers outward until the entire body came into view beneath the harsh overhead lights.

  The victim lay on his back, hands neatly folded across his chest. Drained of blood, the cadaver seemed to have absorbed the unnatural purple hue of the overhead lights. This one was easy. What the doctors called a slam dunk. Somebody damn near cut the boy’s head clean off. Nothing but a little flap of neck muscle holding the head on at all.

  George moved his eyes downward. Guy was covered with tattoos. At least a dozen. Some of it…like the dragon on his chest…was really nice work. Some of the rest was blurry and indistinct. Strictly amateur stuff.

  This kind was easy. Like the car wrecks and the knife killings and the baseball bat beatings…you didn’t have to wonder what had come down. The worst mankind had to offer was right there in front of your face and what was left was no longer worth keeping.

  The ones that bothered George were the ones without a mark on them. Perfect in every way except for the purple hue around the lips. Looked like maybe they were just sleeping there on the cold hard metal. Like they were gonna get up later and go out for dinner. They were the ones reminded him how fragile and elusive the spark of life could be and how close to the line we all walk every day.

  George raised the table to the same level as the cadaver. He started to slide the body his way and then stopped. The head had stuck to the table and was not coming along for the ride. If he wasn’t careful, the guy’s noggin was gonna end up swinging around in the air, or, worse yet, gonna fall on the floor and roll around. Couldn’t let that happen neither. The man had a right to his dignity. Bad enough to be laying around stark naked, with your throat cut and your dick all shriveled up. No need for any of that head-rollin’ stuff. None at all.

  “Think maybe I’m gonna need a little help,” he said.

  Dr. Collins crossed the room to George’s side and stood for a moment looking down at the corpse. “Clean,” she said.

  “Excuse?”

  She poked a gloved finger into the wound. “A clean cut,” she said, lifting the victim’s chin to expose the gaping maw that was now his throat. “One clean stroke. No hesitations…no sawing…no nothing. Something real sharp used by someone real strong,” she said. “Somebody without the slightest hesitation about what he was doing.”

  She lifted the shoulders, slipped her arm under the upper torso and then used her other hand to push the head back into place.

  “You ready?”

  George said he was and, on the count of three, they slid the body, head and all, onto the table. As Dr. Collins wheeled the cadaver over to the autopsy station and used her foot to lock the wheels, George reached into the bin and came out with a green plastic bag. He untied the rough knot and looked inside. The victim’s stuff. Cops had already been through it for anything they might want. The rest they left for the coroner, in case something might shed some light on the victim’s last moments. Later on, they’d send whatever was left over to the evidence room to be cataloged.

  George shook the contents out onto the tray. The short leather jacket was still in pretty good shape. Other than a couple of bloodstains along the inside edge of the zipper, the garment seemed little the worse for wear. George was careful as he went through the pockets. Never knew when you were gonna come across a needle or something like that.

  Across the room, Dr. Collins had adjusted her minimic and begun her monologue. “Subject is a white male. Thirty to thirty-five. Brown hair, blue eyes. Approximately a hundred and ninety pounds. Severe frontal laceration to the…”

  From the inside pocket of the jacket George extracted a fresh pack of cigarettes, an old-fashioned silver Zippo lighter and a plastic credit card type thing. Had an arrow on it. Looked like it might be one of those electronic keys to something. The rest of the pockets were empty. The shirt was a wadded-up mess. Barely tell it had once been brown. George used the tips of his gloved fingers to pry the blood-soaked folds apart, smoothing and separating the stiff fabric until he had the shirt laid out on the table before him. He patted it down for evidence, but found nothing. By the time he’d finished, the rusty-iron smell of blood wafted its way to his nostrils causing him to turn his head to the side for a couple of quick breaths before continuing.

  Dr. Collins used a metal caliper to measure the depth and width of the wound and then set the tool aside as she circled the body, lifting it here and there, poking this and prodding that. “Contusions on the upper arms and neck suggest the victim was in a struggle at some time immediately prior to the fatal wound. The amount of residual bleeding suggests less than an hour passed between the struggle and the moment of death. Victim was, in all probability…”

  The black parachute pants were stiff with dried blood, making it difficult for George to go through the maze of pockets and compartments, zippered and snapped and Velcroed and buttoned, that made up the design. He could feel something inside the rough material but couldn’t figure out which of the many pockets it was in. He narrowed his search to the right leg and began a systematic search, top to bottom, until, finally, he pulled aside a small silver zipper and extracted a glass vial from a little compartment along the outside of the thigh. A black rubber stopper filled the top of the vial. He held the glass tube up to the light. Inside, a fine white powder filled the vial nearly three quarters full. George shook it and was amazed at how completely it filled the void…whatever the stuff was floated around inside like one of those Christmas paperweights. He stood openmouthed, waiting for the material to settle back into place, but it didn’t. It was like the stuff had some kind of motor that kept it aloft. Weird.

  He shifted his gaze to Dr. Collins who was about to make the central incision in the cadaver, the T-shaped cut they used to take the organs out, so they could check for damage and then weigh them one by one. The doctors didn’t like being bothered when they were doing that, so George returned his eyes to the vial, where the powder was still roiling around inside like a blizzard of artificial snow.

  “Whatcha got there?” Collins wanted to know.

  “Maybe some new kinda club drug or something,” he said.

  “Save it for the boys in blue,” she said, as she folded back the abdomen walls to expose the dark shimmering mass of internal organs. “Probably got something to do with how he got this way.”

  Wasn’t like he thought about it. Somehow or other…no tellin’ why…just seemed to be the thing to do…George pushed at the stopper with his thumb. Turned the vial and worked it from the other side. Then again. Nothing. Damn thing was jammed in there tight as hell. He thumbed it again, and again failed to budge the rubber.

  Being careful not to squeeze the glass vial too tightly, he grasped the stopper with his thumb and forefinger and gave a twist. The plug squeaked as it turned. He applied upward pressure and finally the plug began to move. A third of the way out, it bound and wouldn’t move again. Frustrated, he jerked hard. The stopper came out in a hurry, eluded his twitching fingers and fell to the floor.

  George watched the stopper bounce twice and finally come to a jerky rest on the tile. Just then, his vision wavered. He blinked his eyes, trying to maintain his focus. His head had suddenly begun to throb, as if an animal were trying to claw its way out from inside his skull. Seemed like the air around him was filled with tiny white particles. See
med like he weighed a thousand pounds and that his legs just couldn’t carry the load.

  Wasn’t till he heard the clink of the vial on the floor that he realized he’d gone down. “George,” he heard Dr. Collins call.

  His chest felt like it was full of water. He listened to the shuffle of her feet and felt his bowels empty themselves down his pant legs and onto the floor. He opened his mouth to apologize but could manage only a wet gargle. And then she was kneeling at his side. Blue eyes wide behind the rimless lenses. And he watched as a red flower bloomed on her white surgical mask. Watched as it grew from a tiny dot in the middle of the mask to a spreading tulip of crimson that rolled down over her chin in the last moment before she collapsed on the floor beside him. He sought for a phrase. An epithet perhaps. But nothing came to mind. Only the roaring in his head and the sound of waves lapping on a distant shore.

  22

  Pitch black. Corso hurried now. Running quietly on the balls of his feet for just a few strides before losing patience and stretching his long legs into a full sprint, his headlong soles slapping the street as he covered the distance to the corner only to find her gone again…He…

  …sat up with a start and looked around. The sound of halyards clanking against masts told him where he was and that the overnight wind had risen. Saltheart rocked gently in the slip. He pulled aside the curtain and peered out into a steel gray morning and then flopped back into the bed. He closed his eyes, tried to sleep for a moment and then gave it up, sliding his legs over the edge of the berth and down onto the floor.

  He looked around for his clothes only to discover he was wearing them, then levered himself off the bed…groaning at the effort as he shuffled around the corner into the head. The ache in his feet reminded him that he’d walked home. Better part of four or five miles he’d estimated. He ran his hands over his stubbly face and shuddered. Remembering how cold he’d been at the end and wishing he hadn’t been forced to leave his jacket behind.

  He used the teak handrails to help himself up the three steps into the galley, where he put together a pot of coffee before stepping out on deck. The air was thick and wet. A glance at the brass clock on the galley wall said it was seven-forty…full-bore rush hour. Overhead, the swoosh of cars on the freeway bridge seemed somehow slower and more ponderous than usual.

  Across the lake, the rusting carcass of the ferry Kalakala sank slowly into the sand, its peeling art deco dome a sad reminder of better times with higher hopes and brighter dreams. A Coast Guard patrol boat cruised slowly along the far bank, its black machine gun mount ominous on the foredeck.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and saw what he knew he would—the bodies strewn about the bus tunnel…the pools of blood and effluent…the final odd angles of the limbs…the horrified looks on their faces…the—he blinked a couple of times, swallowed hard and looked up into the slate sky.

  He could feel the change. The uncertainty in the air and how Seattle was now a completely different place than it was this time yesterday morning. He watched the early morning boat traffic on Lake Union for a while and then stepped back inside the galley.

  The coffee gave a last, rapid-fire series of gurgles and then went silent. He poured himself a cup and doctored it to his liking. Cream and sugar. New York regular. He held the cup in both hands and sipped at it tentatively as he made his way aft into the salon. Setting the coffee behind the pin rail, he reached up and unfastened the latch holding the thirty-six-inch flat screen TV pressed tight against the ceiling. He eased the screen down and looked around for the remote. He felt like a gawker at a freeway wreck, at once horrified by the twisted steel mayhem and at the same time, inexplicably drawn to leer at the carnage like a peeper at a bathroom window.

  The screen lit up, and there it was. The nightmare. Right there in front of his face. CNN. Talking head and a stock picture of Yesler Street. He pushed the volume button. An electronic voice-over filled the air. “Homeland Security confirms an unspecified number of casualties from an unspecified biological agent.” Another ten seconds of noninformation and the picture cut to Harry Dobson, Seattle’s chief of police, standing behind a forest of microphones looking old and haggard. “We aren’t releasing any further information pending the notification of kin. We are…” He stopped talking and strained to hear a question shouted from the throng of reporters.

  His face darkened. “The investigation is no longer in the hands of the Seattle Police Department.” He waved off a shouted question. “It’s business as usual,” he said, then caught himself and went into his canned spiel. “Excepting, of course, the tragic plight of the victims and their families.” Another question was flung his way. “Several federal agencies,” he said. “The FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security people, the Centers for Disease Control…” He spread his hands in resignation. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said finally. He listened again. “No,” he said emphatically. “To my knowledge, the threats delivered to the media were not attributed to any particular group…Arab or otherwise. Let me say…” he began, before his words were swept away by a torrent of shouted questions.

  Corso changed the channel. MSNBC running a canned compilation of terrorist activities. September eleventh. Pictures of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a bevy of other Arab terrorists. He pushed the channel button again.

  Channel Five. Local news. Old guy with flyaway hair standing at a dais like he was accustomed to it. Caption identified him as Dr. Hans Belder. “I have seen the pictures…” he was saying. He used a knarled hand to sweep over the collection of two dozen serious-looking souls who stood behind him on the dais. “Many of my colleagues have also seen the pictures. There can be no doubt. What we have here is a genetically altered form of hemorrhagic fever.”

  As he spoke, the camera panned again, sliding over the somber group from end to end. At the far right of the screen, a familiar face peeked out from the forest of shoulders. Corso had to bring his other hand to bear on the coffee or he would surely have dropped it onto his shoes. It was her. The woman from the bus tunnel. He was sure of it. The short blonde hair. That competent…almost arrogant…look in her eyes. A shiver ran down his spine like a frozen ball bearing.

  “Go back,” he shouted at the screen, which instead segued to a shot of Mayor Gary Dean holding a pile of note cards. Corso growled, grabbed the remote and began furiously pushing the channel button. He kept at it until he was satisfied that nobody else was running the Belder interview and then, with a shouted curse, switched back to the mayor.

  “The situation is completely contained,” he said. “We are assured that there is absolutely no danger of further contamination.” He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Other than the fact that Providence Hospital will take over the role of Regional Trauma Center for the next several days…and that the bus tunnel will remain closed…” He waved a blasé hand. “Other than that…we want to encourage Seattleites to go about their business.” He looked narrowly into the camera. “It’s important that we don’t allow these people to affect our daily lives. That we show these people that we will not be intimidated by a bunch of—”

  Corso changed the channel. More talking heads. More stock terrorist footage. Then the President, with the word LIVE displayed in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

  He and the mayor must have shared the same speechwriter. Same call for calm. Same antiterrorist rhetoric. The usual steely-eyed Baptist assurances that the perpetrators would be brought to heel and punished in a way only Americans had the stomach for.

  Corso pushed POWER and threw the remote onto the settee, where it bounced twice before coming to rest. He started for the galley to refresh his coffee, when a movement in his peripheral vision stopped him cold.

  You don’t see a lot of suits on a dock. Living on a boat not only means you have virtually no closet space, but that whatever you do own, whether from Sears or Armani, is destined, in very short order, to smell like diesel fuel. So the sight of old man Gentry letting a
trio of suits through the security gate at the far end of the dock was reason to be concerned.

  Corso set the coffee on the counter, turned on his heel and walked quickly toward the stern. He had no doubt. They’d traced the jacket already and were coming for him.

  He moved through the boat at a lope, threw open the sliding doors and stepped out onto the stern. In one smooth motion, he untied the dinghy line, stepped up over the transom rail and climbed down onto the swim step before stepping into the inflatable and pushing off.

  Through the pea-soup air, he could hear old man Gentry bawling something about “infringing his rights.” He reached behind himself and pulled out the choke on the thirty-horse Evinrude. A push of the START button and the engine was purring. He goosed it a couple of times and then pushed the choke back in. Above the purr of the engine, he could hear the hard sound of heels on the ancient wooden dock. They were running now. Old man Gentry was still yelling at them. “Assholes” something.

  He jacked the wheel hard to starboard and gave the little boat way more gas than was polite inside the marina. The propeller sucked itself down into the water. The bow began to rise. He slammed the throttle forward and bent low over the wheel. Looking back under his arm, he caught sight of the trio as they skidded to a stop at the rear of his boat. Corso winced as the one on the right reached toward his belt. Crazy bastard was going to shoot. Right here in the middle of the marina. He bent lower, waiting for the whistle of gunfire as he slalomed the boat sideways around the corner, past the big Tolly moored at the end, and went ripping out into the lake.

  A smile spread halfway across his lips before the deep rumble of another engine wiped it from his face. He snapped his head around. The Coast Guard patrol boat bounced on the chop. The machine gun was manned.