by Steve Alten
“What else can we do?”
The Kabuki mask remained placid. “Pray.”
VA Medical Center
East Side, Manhattan
4:18 P.M.
Leigh Nelson jogged down East 23rd Street, the VA campus in sight. She slowed as she reached First Avenue, shocked by the changes that had occurred over the last ninety minutes.
The ambulance parking lot had been converted into a triage zone. Hundreds of people formed a line that snaked from First Avenue all the way up to East 25th Street. Faces were concealed behind carbon-filter masks and scarves. Mothers rocked screaming infants in blankets. Husbands and wives. Friends and families and single workers. The silent killer’s work made easy.
Medical personnel, dressed in gowns, masks, gloves, and yellow plastic ponchos performed quick examinations before segregating patients into tented waiting areas by the main entrance (suspected plague) and the staff parking lot (confirmed plague).
She spotted Dr. Clark as he hustled out of the emergency-room entrance, followed by two interns carrying blankets. “Children under twelve only. Make sure the cops know.”
“Dr. Clark!”
He saw her. Signaled her to wait. Grabbing a clean poncho from a stack, he met her halfway across First Avenue and slipped the waterproof sheeting over her head.
“Sir, all these people—”
“If they weren’t infected when they arrived, they’re infected now. We’re just stalling for time, shuffling them from one waiting area to another. Where’s the vaccine?”
“In my backpack.”
“We moved the redheaded woman to the fourth floor to prevent her from seeing her newborn. Administer the vaccine and report back to me with the results.”
They looked up as a Black Chevy Suburban, its siren wailing, pulled onto the sidewalk on 23rd Street.
“Secretary DeBorn? What’s he doing back here?”
“I’ll deal with him. You get that vaccine started.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Patrick Shepherd entered the hospital library, surprised to find the media center deserted. He moved past shelves of donated books. Located the row of computer stations and situated himself at one of the terminals.
He typed in Dr. Nelson’s e-mail address and password, accessed the Internet, and sorted through her old e-mail. He stopped at the subject line: lost person inquiry and clicked open the e-mail.
Dr. Nelson:
Thank you for your inquiry regarding the whereabouts of BEATRICE SHEPHERD, age 30–38, ONE CHILD (female) age 14–16. TOP 5 Search States Requested: NY. NJ. CT. MA. PA. The following positive matches were found:
Manhattan, New York: Ms. Beatrice Shepherd
Vineland, New Jersey: Mrs. Beatrice Shepherd
See also: Mrs. B. Shepherd (NY — 4)
Mrs. B. Shepherd (NJ — 1)
Mrs. B. Shepherd (MA — 6)
Mrs. B. Shepherd (PA — 14)
To provide you with the highest-quality results, we suggest our LEVEL 2 Detective Service. Fee: $149.95
He fumbled with the mouse. Clicked on the address link and printed the page. Hurried to another booth, this one containing an i-pay phone. He sat at the built-in desk and swiped the machine with a prepaid phone card:
credit remaining: 17 minutes
He began to dial the Battery Park phone number, then crumpled beneath a wave of anxiety so unnerving it stole his breath. “What am I doing? What do I say? Hey, baby, it’s Shep. So, I’m back. Wanna get together? Ugh!”
He slammed the phone back on its receiver in disgust.
Think it through, asshole. Remember what the shrink said… cause and effect. Try beginning with an apology. “Hey, uh, it’s Shep. I’m sorry for leaving you and the baby and enlisting… ugh! This is all wrong, I need to write it out. Better yet—”
He left the booth and hustled to the information desk, searching through drawers until he found what he was looking for — a palm-size recording device used by amputees for dictating letters. Returning to the booth, he cleared his mind, then pressed record.
“Bea… it’s Shep. Remember me?” He stopped, erased, then started again. “Bea, it’s Patrick. I’m back, honey. I’m in New York, at the VA hospital. Maybe it’s fate we’re both in Manhattan. Babe, I was wounded. I can’t be whole again without you. You’re my soul mate, Bea, I need to see you and our little girl… only I guess she’s not so little anymore.” He swallowed hard, the words catching in his throat. “I made a bad mistake. I was angry. I didn’t think things through. Babe, I’m so lost without you. If there’s any way you could find it in your heart to forgive me—”
He paused as the library door opened…
* * *
Mary Klipot lay on her back in the self-contained isolator, her wrists and ankles shackled to the bed rails. A plastic hood enveloped the bed, preventing the escape of contaminated air. The hood also sealed in the combined stench of her breath, her sweat, and the vomit staining her hospital gown. Despite the morphine drip, the pain and nausea she felt remained overpowering, pushing her delirium toward the brink of madness. She had become a mindless wretch, her thoughts consumed by the fever. Every breath was panted. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, her open mouth locked in a gnarled grimace. Her lips, white and curled back, exposed bloodstained yellow teeth.
The cool liquid washed through her bloodstream like a cleansing tide, soothing the rhythm of her breathing. Within minutes, it had drawn away the fever, bathing her irritated internal organs with blessed relief.
Mary’s eyes rolled back into place, and she looked up.
Leigh Nelson hovered outside the isolation bed, holding the empty vial. “The vaccine — is it working?”
Mary attempted to speak, but her throat was still too parched, her coughs lubricated in bloody spittle.
Leigh adjusted Mary’s mattress so she was sitting up at a forty-degree angle. Using one of the isolation tent’s plastic sleeves, she passed through a bottle of water, positioning the straw in her patient’s mouth.
Mary drank. “Bless you, sister.”
“Who are you? What is Scythe?”
“Release my restraints, and I will tell you everything.”
Positioning her free hand in an open sleeve, Leigh reached inside the tent and unbuckled the leather strap pinning Mary’s right arm to the bed rail.
Mary flexed her arm, then freed her other wrist.
“Now tell me, what is Scythe?”
“A biological weapon… a genetically harvested pandemic. Part of a black ops biological program. The disease feeds on negative emotions, especially anger.”
“Anger? How?”
“As the infected individual becomes more reactive, adrenaline and noradrenaline are released, affecting the heart rate, blood pressure, and the pancreas. The greater the anger, the faster the disease spreads throughout the body. The vaccine… did you bring both boxes?”
“No. I only found the one.”
“Take me to the car, I’ll show you where the second is hidden.”
“First tell me who released Scythe in Manhattan?”
“God. He sent me as his vessel.”
“God told you to unleash a man-made plague?”
“After He impregnated me with His child. Where is he? Bring me my baby!”
She’s insane. Clark told you to keep her restrained. You need to put her under again and—
“The End of Days is upon us. Scythe is the deliverer, it will save us from the heretics. I have delivered the Messiah. Where is my son? Bring me the Christ Child!”
“Your child is being cared for in a specially designed incubator. Oh, by the way, the Christ Child… it’s a girl.”
“What? No… that can’t be. You’re lying!”
“I’m lying? Listen to me, you pathological murdering bitch. Your plague has killed thousands of innocent people, maybe tens of thousands, maybe millions before we can harvest your antidote.”
“Wait… today’s not the twent
y-fifth.”
“Are you even hearing me?”
Mary’s expression darkened her voice crackled. “The child was supposed to be born on the twenty-fifth. You took him out too early!”
Leigh backed away, moving toward the nurses’ station phone on the wall—
— when the room was suddenly overtaken by a deep thrumming sound, the disturbance growing louder until it reverberated the windowpane. Mary heard it, too, her eyes growing wide and intense, her pulse rate leaping on the heart monitor. “Satan. He has sent his minions to kill me. How did they find me so quickly?”
Leigh walked to the window, raised the shade. “Now what?”
Three black helicopters hovered overhead, releasing dozens of Special Ops commandoes, who rappelled several hundred feet to the street below. They were all heavily armed, dressed from their hooded heads to their boots in black uniforms, their faces masked behind air rebreathers.
What Mary Klipot saw was something entirely different — the Scythe vaccine had moved from her bloodstream into her brain, affecting her central nervous system while disrupting the release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that modulated mood swings and sensory perception. The sight of the Special Ops commandoes had unleashed terrifying thoughts — flashbacks from Mary's earliest grand mal seizures. The images distorted her senses and sent her tattered mind on a hallucinogenic trip that filtered present-day events into nightmarish visions of Hell.
Black-winged demons flap past the fourth-floor window. Crimson eyes stare through her. Voices whisper sulfurous thoughts into her brain: “There is no escape, Mary Louise. Our claws shall tear the flesh from your bones. Your existence shall be blotted from the book of the living, your soul cast into the rivers of Hell, basking in Satan’s light for all eternity.”
“Santisima Muerte, Most Holy Death, I ask you with all my heart, chase these demons away!” Mary turns to her left—
— the female Grim Reaper materializing before her eyes. Purple satin robe. Candy-apple red wig.
“Santa Muerte!”
The Goddess of Death animates, her scythe cutting the air with a short chop, her skull protruding from its hood as its jaws bellow a silent command at the demons circling outside the window.
Hell’s minions disappear.
Leigh’s attention was drawn below to the commandoes, who were ordering everyone to the ground. A mother holding her sick child was too slow to react and was struck in the head by the butt end of a 5.56mm assault rifle. The attack sent Dr. Clark rushing across the ambulance parking lot. The commandoes in black opened fire.
Leigh screamed as she saw Dr. Clark’s bullet-pummeled body dance, then spiral backward into a heap—
— the room abruptly spinning into blackness.
Mary Klipot straddled the unconscious physician. She dropped the aluminum bedpan, the sudden exertion causing her to stagger. “Santa Muerte… is it true? Is the child female?”
The hooded figure nods.
“The child… whose is it? Is it… God’s?”
The female Grim Reaper’s bony left hand motions to its cloth-covered loins.
“Oh, no… no!” Mary stumbled over the doctor and took her white lab coat. Then, wrenching open the window, she climbed out onto the fire escape, fleeing the scene.
* * *
Shep hid beneath the i-phone station’s built-in desk, his paranoia on overdrive, his left eye tracking Bertrand DeBorn through a slit in the corner of the booth. The secretary of defense crossed the library. He entered the i-phone station next to Shep’s and dialed a number.
“It’s me. I’m back at the hospital… Yes, I made an appearance, now I need an extraction. Make it for three, my security team’s coming, too.”
Shep held up the recording device and taped Bertrand DeBorn’s conversation.
“I don’t give a damn what strings you have to pull. Scythe’s already reached stage-six saturation levels, I’m in danger of being infected… No, I can’t get to Kogelo, the roads are jammed, we were lucky to make it back to the hospital… No, you listen! I’m sitting in the middle of plague central, now you either find a way to extract me within the hour, or I’ll leak everything I know about Amerithrax and Battelle on the six o’clock news… You’re damn right I’ll name names, beginning with your two FBI pals shredding files in West Jefferson.”
The muscular contraction in Shep’s left shoulder became a tremor. Try as he might, he could not maintain his balance on the slippery prosthetic elbow. Shifting his weight, he fell back, banging his head against one of the legs of the desk.
“Who’s there?” DeBorn disconnected the call and peered over the shoulder-high cubby.
Patrick stood, revealing himself. “Amerithrax?” He stared at DeBorn, his mind piecing together the plot. “You crazy bastard. You’re trying to initiate another war.”
DeBorn backed out of his booth, reaching for his cell phone. “Every war serves a purpose, Sergeant. In this case, it preserves the American way of life while reducing the threat of communism. We’re on the cusp of instituting real change in the world… you could have been a part of that. Instead, you’ve just become collateral damage.”
DeBorn pressed an intercom button on his cell phone. “I need you.”
Sheridan Ernstmeyer entered the library from the outer corridor.
“Agent Ernstmeyer, I just caught Sergeant Shepherd on the phone making a bomb threat to the United Nations. Under section 411, subsection B of the Patriot Act, I order you to arrest Sergeant Shepherd using extreme prejudice.”
The former CIA assassin grinned. Removing the Glock.22 from her shoulder holster, she methodically screwed an AAC 40 Evolution suppressor to the end of her gun barrel.
Shep dived over the back of the i-phone booth, his steel arm shattering the glass partition as he scrambled on his hand and knees to reach the nearest row of bookcases.
Her silencer in place, Sheridan methodically moved through the stacks, stalking her quarry, her pulse barely over seventy.
Patrick Shepherd ran down one of the twelve parallel rows of eight-foot-high bookcases until he reached the back wall. Hiding behind the end of one stack, he ducked low and peered around the corner.
The female assassin had removed her shoes and was quietly moving from right to left along the opposite end of the bookcases, visually checking each row before moving on.
DeBorn’s voice bellowed from the librarian’s desk. “Come on out, Sergeant. We’re not going to shoot you. You’re a veteran… a hero. I’m sure whatever threat you made can be chalked up to post-traumatic stress.”
The woman was three rows away. Two rows. The gun in her left hand aimed down each row before she showed herself.
She’s a lefty.
The shard of memory replayed in his consciousness like an inescapable jingle.
Clear the negativity. Visualize success. Retake the mound only when you’ve regained control of your emotions.
Shep’s breathing slowed, his mind clearing.
It’s not about power, Shep, it’s about cunning. With lefties, you have to use your change-up to keep them off-balance.
The female assassin was one row away.
Use your change-up. Set her up.
Shep removed his left shoe and positioned it on its side so the sole protruded slightly along the bottom edge of the bookcase to his left. Then he crawled to the end stack on his right. Peering between books, he waited for the woman to appear.
Sheridan Ernstmeyer peeked around the far end cap, looking down another empty aisle. She knew her target was pinned down, hiding behind one of the end caps. She searched the next row. There! Seeing the sliver of shoe, she slid along the tile floor in her stocking feet, moving silently down the aisle, her gun sight trained on the exposed left sole—
— unaware that Shep was quietly crawling up the previous aisle. Reaching the midway point, he pressed his right shoulder against one of the long case’s vertical supports, driving his powerful legs.
The twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-
high bookcase wobbled, threatening to topple over.
Books rained down on Sheridan Ernstmeyer’s head. She instinctively leapt, sliding to the end of the row, where her eyes caught sight of the empty shoe. She looked up—
— as Shep’s steel appendage slammed against the back of her skull. “Change-up. Strike three.” He grabbed the woman’s gun, retrieved his left shoe, then hurried up the next aisle to confront Bertrand DeBorn. He aimed the Glock at the secretary of defense’s forehead.
The gray-blue upturned eyes showed no fear. “Think it through, Sergeant. Kill me, and you’ll never find your family. That’s right, I know where they are. Think you can reach them before my people? Maybe you can. Or maybe I’ve already sequestered them away.”
“I taped you… your entire conversation. I’m going to play it on the six o’clock news.”
DeBorn’s expression changed. “You have nothing.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“A trade then — the tape for your family. Colonel Argenti spoke with your wife earlier today. After all these years, she still wants to see you. Don’t blow it by doing something stupid.”
Shep’s right arm trembled. “He spoke with Bea?”
DeBorn’s voice softened. “Put the gun down, Sergeant, and I’ll take you to her.”
His thoughts were fragmented, his mind unable to focus, unable to reason. He lowered the weapon—
— as the sound of gunfire exploded outside the library, shattering the outer glass doors.
Confused, Patrick pushed past DeBorn and ran, heading for the small alcove on the other side of the lobby. Hurrying past the librarian’s office, he kicked open the fire door at the end of the corridor—
— finding himself in a concrete stairwell.
* * *
Leigh Nelson opened her eyes, dazed and a bit queasy. She sat up, the lump on the back of her head throbbing from where Mary Klipot had struck her with the bedpan. She looked around.
The redhead was gone.