Chuck Hogan

by The Blood Artists (epub)

  There were dead spots on his kidneys, lungs, and intestines where his circulation had failed. His appendix was bloated and threatened to rupture and flood the abdominal cavity with bacteria-rich pus. Maryk removed it.

  Maryk went after Stephen's internal bleeding aggressively until the machine choked on the sludge. He repaired abscesses and wrapped damaged arteries and plugged leaking veins with surgical gel before closing. Plum-colored bruising flushed the stitching.

  He examined scans of Stephen's brain. There were visible lesions in the thinking center of the right prefrontal cortex, the cognitive behavior and motor planning region of the prefrontal lobe, and the emotional behavior center of the anterior cingulate. But the virus had not yet blitzed the brain stem. Maryk introduced minimal cytokines locally to the brain to excite the immune cells in a bid to preserve Stephen's mind. He required more powerful ammunition but had not yet received his from Engineering.

  Maryk's breathing began to deepen and his head and arms grew heavy.

  The amplitude of Stephen's infection was reflected in the intensity of Maryk's cascade. Maryk knew that he had to get away in order to remain on his feet and see this thing through.

  Maryk directed the nurse to draw off as much of Stephen's poisoned blood as she could before transfusing four MARYK blood units. She repeated his orders back to him before Maryk underwent a thorough UV exposure and departed B4.

  It was dawn and the aboveground halls of Building Seven were empty. He felt better outside the pressure tank of B4. He found an unlocked office and fell into a chair. He dug a sterile syringe out of his black bag. He drew a measure of clear liquid amphetamine out of a small glass ampule and dosed himself with it. He could not afford the energy drain of a cascade just yet.

  The jazz started in his head and he stood and rebuckled his bag.

  The speed would keep him going a few hours more.

  Engineering occupied the bottom three floors of Building Four.

  There was a bright light shining beneath Geist's office door and Maryk entered and found the BDC's chief genetic engineer balancing number two pencils eraserdown on his desk. The overhead halogens paled Geist's already sallow complexion. Each individual bulb was reflected upon his waxy pate. He had lost every strand of his straw blond hair following a substantial radiation exposure some months before. He previously had suffered degenerative kidney and spleen damage and still occasionally set off sensors in the labs.

  Geist looked up at Maryk through round wire-rimmed glasses with the ghosts of his blond eyebrows slightly raised. "Dr. Maryk," he said.

  "You know about Pearse."

  Geist was inordinately sedate. "From Bobby Chiles. An absolute shame.

  You know how much I admired Stephen."

  "Is that the jizz?"

  Between the standing pencils and a photograph of an oily black Doberman sporting a blue show ribbon stood a wire rack containing a single glass tube of clear fluid. Dr. Amory Geist was a pioneer in the field of viral therapy. The retroviral antigen was a genetic smart bomb designed to excite Maryk's killer T cells now roaming Stephen's veins.

  The tube was capped and safety-taped. "I'm going to need a patient consent," Geist said. He pulled the tube rack closer to his,forest of pencils. "I need a signed consent before I kill somebody. I'd like to know what you're up to."

  Maryk said, "Straight viral therapy." -V.T. isn't cleared for late-stage catastrophic and you know it. If it's Plainville, then Stephen Pearse is dead already."

  "He's laid out on a table over in Seven. His cells are dying off by the millions every hour. How long do you want to chat?"

  "I am not one of your errand boys in Special Pathogens." Maryk smiled thinly. "I see," he said. "And I'm not afraid of you either. I think you know that. My little laboratory mishap relieved me of two things: hope for an average life expectancy; and fear. I don't believe I fear anything anymore. And still, there are rules that I follow. In our game, the rules are all we have.

  Stephen stood for that."

  "Get to the point, Geist."

  "I can't stop you from doing this. Bobby Chiles said to give you the juice, no questions asked. But you called me-that's the catch. You called me in here in the middle of the night to do your bartending for you."

  "I could have done it myself."

  "Possibly. I don't doubt it. You're very capable, even given your disdain for laboratory science. A few days, a week, maybe longer.

  Here I have it for you in under four hours. Now I want an audience. I want answers."

  "You're the top geneticist in the country-" "Flattery," Geist remarked.

  "You are desperate, aren't you?"

  "I thought you might like the challenge of helping him."

  Geist sat back. "When you say things like that, I feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. And I don't have any hair.

  Everyone knows how cold-blooded you are, especially Stephen. I would have expected you to be the first to suggest a quality of life action, to relieve his suffering. Instead you want to prolong it. Why?"

  "You wouldn't want to live, Geist? You wouldn't want me to keep you going, even just a few more hours?"

  "I told you before: I have no fear. But even I am a little afraid of Plainville."

  They regarded each other across the desk under the unnaturally bright office. The pause was long but neither one of them grew uncomfortable.

  Maryk said, "You're wondering why I'm still here."

  "I'm thinking you're enjoying it. Someone finally standing up to you. Because I know I'm not changing your mind. If you're expecting the 'You Can't Play God' speech, you won't get it here. I play God every day in that glass bell across the hall. I could twist DNA helixes into origami if the mood struck me. But I don't. Because I am a benevolent god. May I offer a theory? I think some doctors love humanity while harboring enormous contempt for actual people. And I think you're one of those -- though I may be mistaken about the 'loving humanity' part.

  "Why a retrovirus? Why the brain?"

  "I took some pictures. I did a lumbar and a cerebrospinal pull; both were clear. The bug hasn't fully colonized his brain yet."

  "So you'd like a chance at that yourself. Circle the genetic wagons, as it were. You realize this retrovirus will run rampant-invading at high efficiency, shooting its genes into the cells' chromosomes."

  "Exactly. Only here, you've snipped out the virus gene and recoded it with genetic matter from a beneficial source, fighting bad virus with good virus. I can infect one hundred million cells with good, clean cargo in under two hours."

  Geist said, "Transduce."

  "Transduce, infect-whatever.- "Not 'whatever." Viruses infect people; I don't. It is not an infection because it produces no new viruses. A payload has been transduced."

  He sat forward again. "What is this 'beneficial source'? " Maryk held Geist's gaze without answering. Geist smiled. "This retroviral antigen will soak him with DNA. It will change him. Not physically, but this is another human being's genetic material. Soup to his brain's saltine. It's dangerous, and it won't hold."

  "It will over a limited period of time."

  "Which is to say, you expect he'll die before it has the chance. So Stephen Pearse's survival is not your ultimate goal."

  "He's too far gone for that."

  Geist looked at Maryk as one might observe the artistry of a spider consuming a fly. "The beneficial genetic source is you."

  "If it were my DNA, you wouldn't do it."

  Geist smiled broadly. "I'll do a lot of things, but plucking the hot stuff out of a live virus and exchanging it for your twisted helix is not one of them. Mengele, in his happiest hour, would still have respected nature enough not to infect an unsuspecting brain with Maryk virus."

  "Transduce," said Maryk. "Whatever."

  "Are we through lying to each other yet?"

  Geist pointed at the shiny tube. "How do you know this isn't a saline placebo? By the time you figure out it's not working, Pearse would be out of his mis
ery-and there is nothing you can do to me."

  "Because I have a theory too. My theory is that you're that other kind of doctor, the bleeding heart kind, and that so long as there is a million-to-one chance Pearse might pull through this thing, you'll take that chance, because Stephen Pearse is the patron saint of your cause. Because you gods in the laboratory are content to leave the practical decisions of death and life to the foot soldiers such as myself. You work in a greenhouse, Geist. I live in the jungle. Fiat experimentum in corpore vill.- " 'Let experiment be made on a worthless body." toe Touching. And here I thought you and Stephen used to be friends."

  "All I can do is give him a little more time."

  "Pardon the non-Ivy League pronunciation: Corruptio optimi pessima. 'The corruption of the best is the worst of all.' And one more I know; and then I want you out of my office and out of my sight. The next time you want some chicken soup, open up the can yourself. Similia similibus curantur. 'Like is cured by like.'"

  Maryk took the tube and returned to the subterranean B4. In a sense he admired the small-focus simplicity of Geist's mind. It reminded him of the half-sad smile of his blind mother when she rumblingly realized some small task.

  He injected Stephen with the retroviral antigen. If nothing else his DNA strategy flooded Stephen's brairf with healthy cells that needed killing and this bought Maryk time. Maryk needed time.

  He boosted Stephen with another fix of MILKMAID serum and charted an aggressive protocol of the same. He ordered monitoring for hyperkalemia due to the massive transfusions and prescribed strict electrolyte and fluid maintenance. He ordered tube feeding into the small bowel and 10 mg perenteral morphine and trycyclics for the pain.

  "He's going to get worse before he gets better," Maryk told the nurse, "if he gets better. How long can you stay?"

  "As long as you need me, Doctor."

  The speed was already failing him. Stephen was radioactive with Plainville. "Call if there are any sudden changes," he said.

  He dozed in UV. He was a long time changing back into his clothes.

  Morning light beat through the windows upstairs as he staggered into an empty break room and dropped onto a bruise-red vinyl sofa. The room ebbed against him as though the entire building had been set to sea.

  He heard his tablet smack the floor and his breathing became thick and lugubrious. The weight of the cascade fell. He sank heavily away.

  The tone did not awaken him. A woman's voice did. He came to hours later in a room full of people eating 1-unch. "Hello?" she was saying. A young woman wearing a lab coat. Small nose and large glasses and curled brown hair looming over him. The room smelled of peanut butter and apples. "Excuse me?" She knew who he was. He could tell by the way she kept her distance. "Your tablet. You're being paged."

  He sat up. The others in the room continued to eat and pretended not to notice him. Maryk tasted the roily paste of sleep. His black socks were only half-pulled onto his feet and he realized he had left his shoes behind in the changing room of B4.

  The woman backed away. "It's been going off for a while," she said.

  He righted his overturned tablet on the floor and opened it and the tone ceased. Stage sighs within the room. The header split in his muddled vision and he concentrated until it became clear. The post was from Reilly and Boone. It was uncharacteristically capitalized.

  LANCET IS DOWN.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  Lancet's traffic was squeezed into two lanes on the five-lane Peachtree. Police lights flashed against the orange terracotta wall announcing The Groves. Maryk displayed his credentials for a cop wearing lime green gloves and was admitted through the barricade.

  Police vehicles outnumbered BDC vans and trucks in the parking lot outside the easternmost condominium building. The structure was fat and frosted with pink stucco and rimmed with Spanish terraces.

  Evacuated residents sat on a side lawn under trees manicured to look like poodle tails.

  Maryk was met by one of his Special Pathogens men wearing a full contact suit at the concierge's desk in the lobby of Groves East. His name was Reilly and he introduced a waiting Atlanta police lieutenant named Cole. The cops behind Lieutenant Cole all wore gloves and police respirators and stood around anxiously. Law enforcement organizations in general hated dealing with disease.

  Reilly huffed inside his suit and led Maryk around rather theatrically.

  Maryk declined a suit with a sideward glance at Reilly but did pull on a simple respirator for appearance's sake. Lieutenant Cole thumbed the elevator log button but Maryk walked to the stairwell. Reilly and Lieutenant Cole reluctantly followed. Uniformed police officers in gloves and masks were posted at each landing. "How bad would you say it all is, the spread?" asked Lieutenant Cole. "We can go wider with the evacuation if it's warranted."

  "I won't know what it is until I get in there," said Maryk. "Helluva job you people do. Tracking this thing, and keeping my boys out of it. Be nice if we knew where crime was going to emerge as it emerged."

  "It's like narcotics," offered Reilly. "From the source to the distributor to dealers to the street. Contact tracing. Chain of infection."

  White viricidal foam lathered the walls beginning with the eleventh-floor landing. Reilly and Lieutenant Cole slowed there.

  Reilly said, "We do appreciate your cooperation, Lieutenant."

  "Cooperation, nothing. Damn pleasure. You know I have a son in sixth grade in Conyers who says he wants to be a doctor like Dr. Pearse at the BDC. I tell him he's crazy. That's one hell of a public relations department you got going there."

  Maryk was a half flight above. "We can handle nextof-kin notification," he said. "Disease can be a difficult subject, and we've had some experience."

  Lieutenant Cole pointed up from the perceived safety of the lower landing. "Shouldn't you be in one of them suits?"

  Reilly answered for him. "Dr. Maryk's not so good in confined spaces."

  "Lord," said Lieutenant Cole genuinely. He tipped his hat to Maryk.

  "Luck to you."

  The eleventh-floor hallway was foamed wall-to-ceiling. Two suits guarding a door three doors down opened it for Maryk and Reilly. They entered a kitchen area with a larger room beyond. The door closed behind them and they were sufficiently alone.

  Maryk stripped off his respirator. Reilly broke open the seal across his chest and with a gasp of relief pushed the hood piece back over his head. The suit collapsed to the carpet and he stepped out of it.

  "Seven years of med school," Reilly said. The tension of the situation had short-circuited his usual midwestern agreeableness.

  "Seven years of med school-for this? We've been going out of our minds here."

  "I was detained."

  "I thought they'd bust in at any moment."

  Maryk moved into the living area. "You should have more faith in their fear. Now what happened?"

  Reilly walked inside ahead of him. "Everything's been preserved, everything recorded on disk. The apartment and the hallway, everything."

  Rattan shades drawn over the windows glowed brown. The main room was arranged around a media center with a monitor and console set into sturdy wire shelving. There was a black leather couch and a floor lamp in one corner and twin black canvas director's chairs in the other. A large bookcase was built into the near wall. It was full of pop culture memorabilia from the turn of the centurybooks, posters, glossies, action figures, magnets, mugs, lunch boxes, pins, cels, phone cards, video cassettes. Lancet owned and operated a nostalgia boutique for tourists in the Underground Mail of downtown Atlanta. "You've never been up here," Reilly said.

  Maryk shook his head. "Where is he?"

  "The bedroom. We took a liver temp which set death at about midnight, right after he got in from work. Boone's in there now. Haven't touched him otherwise."

  Reilly was calming down now and the eagerness was returning to his moon-shaped face. "We breezed by his shop at the Underground Mail around eleven and everything was fine. Fol
lowed him back home here like any other night and watched him go in. All routine. He put on the lamp and the light in the bedroom window as always."

  "That's it?"

  "There's nothing missing as far as we can see. He draws his salary every other Thursday and of that takes just twenty in paper, so there's never any hard currency lying around.

  Everything that isn't tied up in his store he spends on more of the same collectible junk, and obviously, all of that is still here."

  "How did you find him?"

  "He didn't open the store this morning. We tried a phone call to wake him up. We tried a lot of things before we came in.

  He was always punctual. Made our part easy. None of it makes any sense."

  "Where's the bedroom?"

  Reilly led him through the connecting hallway. The bed was queen-sized and neatly made. A rattan shade drawn down over the room's only window lifted and fell against the sill as the bedroom sighed.

  The breeze stirred the coppery smell of blood.

  Lancet was a trim thirty-three-year-old white male with sandy brown hair. He lay facedown across the peach comforter with his head and shoulders falling off the side and the knuckles and backs of his hands curled on the thin white mat covering the floor. He was nude except for athletic socks. Discarded clothes lay in a pile against one wall.

  Both wrists had been slit lengthwise. Dry brown blood soaked the white mat and also a wood-handled steak knife lying between Lancet's curled hands.

  Maryk stepped back. The shock of the suicide momentarily eclipsed his anger at seeing four years of work thrown away. The instrument choice seemed particularly crude. "A steak knife," he said.

  Reilly nodded. "I know." The weight of the body upon the mattress had shrugged down the comforter so that the sweat-stained tops of the pillows showed. Maryk went to the heap of clothing across the room and sorted through the pile with his right foot. A vintage pair of black Levi's jeans lay below a white pair of briefs. Both were turned inside out. "No sign of a struggle, forced entry?" Maryk said.