Chuck Hogan

by The Blood Artists (epub)

  Maryk straightened. "It's not an injection," he said. Freeley said, "What do you mean?" He walked around the end of the table to the other side. He was remembering his meeting with the girl. She had thought they were injecting her with something when in reality they had been pulling her blood. "I mean they were purposefully bled," he said.

  He pointed to the deep incisions on Blossom's upturned wrists. "We assumed these murders were made to resemble suicides. Each, in fact, was an exsanguination." Maryk pointed to the needle stick magnified on Blossom's neck. "This is a blood pull. Lancet and Blossom were sampled before their deaths. The bleeding was meant to cover up the crime of the stolen blood: two homicides to mask two petty thefts."

  "But who would want their blood? And why? No one knew about the project."

  "Someone knew."

  "We were watching them all the time."

  "Not all the time. Nor were we watching for other people watching them. We were more worried about being seen ourselves."

  "The only problem with that is: Their blood was good. It was beneficial, life-saving."

  Maryk nodded. "Exactly. And to go to these lengths, to steal these lives from us, implies desperation -- not in the act, but the impetus.

  "The motivation. Who would so desperately want a look at their blood? And why?"

  "Someone close, you're thinking. Someone in Special Path."

  "No. I can account for all of my people's whereabouts at any given time. It's someone outside the project. Maybe it ties in to Orangeburg somehow, I don't know."

  Freeley said, "What about the girl?"

  "We keep her close, see who comes looking for her." He was thinking back to the lecture hall again. "I think we may have underestimated her. She may not be as malleable as her psych profile led us to believe."

  He went back around the table near Preeley and set his tablet on top of her cutting board. He opened the screen and brought up the image of the unfinished painting they had recovered from Melanie Weir's apartment. "What do you see?" Maryk said.

  Freeley looked at it disparagingly over the top hem of her mask.

  "One of her crazed paintings."

  Maryk was patient. "Look again." She crossed her arms within her surgical gown and stood in judgment. "I see a big mess," she said. "I see garish colors: stormy red, smoky black. A dead, sick yellow."

  Maryk pointed. "What is this?"

  "That's a man. He's sick. He's kneeling."

  "He's praying. And that?"

  "A crevasse, or a gorge. But the colors and the shadows are all wrong-the light doesn't match. It's either a mistake or an optical illusion. Then that black valley below. A mangy wolf lapping at a lake of blood."

  "And that?"

  "That's the reflection of a man," she said. "His face is hidden. Except for his white hair." She stood quietly a moment. She was beginning to see.

  "It's you," she said. "And here?"

  "You're squeezing a royal purple fist. Dripping blood into the lake of blood."

  "And here?"

  "Thin people, naked. Walking with crutches and splints on a dirt road that becomes an oak tree. Those clouds in the sky are like milky eyes."

  She nodded grudgingly. "It's almost like she knew we were running her."

  "She never knew," Maryk said. "She felt, because she has that extra sensibility. Maybe she remembered a little."

  Freeley picked up a trephine from among the scalpel, forceps, scissors, butcher's knife, and Stryker saw set out on her cutting board. "She was your favorite," Freeley said. "Wasn't she. The artist."

  "She was the most interesting case."

  Freeley steadied Blossom's bared scalp with a gloved hand. The circular blade of the trephine started with a whine. "She's just a guinea pig," Freeley said.

  Her derision surprised him. Maryk collapsed his tablet and returned it to his bag as she began to cut. Freeley was a good doctor and a good investigator but she was not an artist. It limited her.

  The nurse looked up startled from the counter as Maryk entered the B4 lab.

  Stephen was sitting up with a cushion of pillows propped behind his back. His nylon restraints hung loose to the cement floor. "He asked to sit up," she said quickly through her hood. "Peter?" The illows rustled. Stephen could not see him yet.

  Maryk went around the raised head of the gurney. Stephen's thin hands were folded on the sheet in his lap. The nurse had dressed him in a hospital gown. "Peter," he said. He seemed relieved. He had apparently undergone a change of personality since earlier that morning.

  Stephen's withered face exaggerated expression. He would be Happy or Sad or Content or Angry without degree. Here it seemed he was Embarrassed.

  His jaw worked clumsily. "Better now," he said. "To be sitting up. More balanced, in my thinking. About before --"

  "Forget it."

  "She told me everything you did." Stephen turned his eyes to the tablet open on the counter next to him. The data screen was toplined Pearse, Stephen D. "My charts," he said.

  "More T cells even than you now."

  A glance at the chart confirmed this. Maryk could not explain Stephen's rapid recovery and for that reason it troubled him. Stephen tried to relax as Maryk felt the underside of his jaw and worked his gloved hands along the neck in firm circular strokes. Maryk probed the lymph area around the muscle and felt nodules as hard as acorns.

  He was close to Stephen's face. "If you feel a cough coming," Maryk said, "let me know."

  Stephen's eyes were on the ceiling. "You gave me your blood, too."

  "Stop thanking me and raise your arms."

  Stephen raised his arms as high as he could and Maryk massaged his armpits. He felt marbles inside. "Pain?"

  "Not bad."

  Stephen was a poor liar. Maryk guided his arms back down to his lap and explored his chest through the thin gown. "How do you feel overall?"

  "Tired. Better."

  "Better than you should be."

  "Only you would sound discouraged by that."

  The nurse appeared with her air hose trailing her along the ceiling track. "Anything else before I go, Doctor?"

  Maryk and Stephen both turned to her and at the same time said: "No."

  Maryk paused in his examination. Stephen looked at him. The nurse waited awkwardly. "Thank you," Stephen said quietly.

  Maryk said nothing. He resumed his examination as soon as the nurse went out.

  He worked over the ribs where the gown clung to Stephen's moist skin.

  "When are you going to tell me what happened?"

  "Orangeburg," Stephen said. "I was pulling blood --"

  "We have an entire serology department for that."

  Maryk could feel the change in Stephen's breathing and knew he should keep quiet. He would let Stephen talk it through. "The second patient I saw. He flinched somehow as I withdrew the needle, nudged my arm. I stuck my palm. I went out and cleaned up, flushed out the wound. But when I returned, the bed was empty. The patient was gone."

  "Dead."

  "No. I don't know. Just gone. I couldn't find him anywhere, and no one knew anything about him. At first I thought I had imagined the whole thing. That was what I wanted to believe-" He sucked in breath as Maryk probed his abdomen. "Pain here?" Maryk said. "-Some."

  Maryk reached under the gown. "Hold on," he said.

  Stephen's right testicle was swollen and soft like a tomato too long on the stem. Maryk saw sweat appear on Stephen's brow and upper lip.

  "More than 'Some,' " Maryk said. He straightened and worked hand over hand along each hip and Stephen relaxed in degrees.

  "Listen," Stephen said. He was still regaining his breath. "I don't think this was an accident."

  Maryk stopped and looked at him. "Those catatonics had been in a dead sleep for twenty years."

  "This patient was different. He was further along the syndrome than the others. He called me over by name. There was no way he could know that. And the way he was looking at me ... afterward, I couldn't get over th
e feeling that he had bumped me on purpose."

  It was classic physician denial. Maryk said, "Give me one good reason."

  Stephen gave up. "I don't have a reason. Just a feeling." He was quiet a while as Maryk continued his examination. He was studying Maryk. "No other cases?" he said. "I mean, in Amagansett?"

  Maryk said, "None."

  "And Sixteen?" His voice was different.

  "The BDC? Contained." Stephen was watching him and Maryk felt he was waiting for a more specific answer. "None?"

  "There was one case."

  Maryk felt tension in Stephen's legs but kept moving. "Someone from in Public Affairs named Peri Fields."

  Stephen's breathing shortened. Maryk concentrated on finishing his examination and worked attentively down each kneecap, lower leg, ankle, and foot. He moved to the counter and changed gloves and pulled on a surgeon's mask and goggles. When he returned, Stephen had collected himself His red eyes were wet and he was swallowing.

  Maryk asked him to open his mouth. Stephen held it open shakily.

  Through strings of bloody phlegm Maryk saw brown sores beneath Stephen's tongue and along the insides of his gums. He moved to the eyes and thumbed up both lids. Each eyeball was suffused with blood.

  "Sight?" he asked. "Floaters," said Stephen. He was trying to look at Maryk. "Normal otherwise."

  "Any hearing loss? Ringing in your ears?"

  "A steady tone."

  Maryk removed his mask and goggles and set them down on the counter.

  He changed gloves again as he spoke. "By all evidence, Stephen, you should not even be awake right now, never mind coherent.

  You should not be speaking. You should not be able to sit up in bed.

  You are getting too strong, too fast."

  "It's known as 'healing.'"

  " "It's not. The virus is well entrenched in the lymphatic system.

  I've done all the blood work, I've looked at all the scans. Plainville has already colonized some of your organs. All I've done is stall the feeding frenzy, primarily in the brain. I don't know how long that will hold." . Stephen blinked and played at being strong. "All right," he said. "When do you go back after it?"

  "I don't. Any more viral therapy and your immune system will collapse. You'd self-destruct, a road you are well along anyway. You're doing better than I ever could have expected right now, but the revival of your strength can only be explained as a mirage. The virus is everywhere inside of you. The diagnosis remains the same."

  More primary emotions played upon the diminished palette of Stephen's face. Fear. Then Dismay. His head and neck quivered until his bloodied eyes returned to search Maryk's. "You said yourself," he said, "there were survivors."

  Maryk nodded. "One lives. A girl, 'Milkmaid." She beat the infection at Plainville."

  "Over four years ago?"

  "She's fully recovered, and not only that, she's immune. Her antibodies resist each Plainville mutation. That's why I tracked her all this time. But the Plainville survivors were the exception; that treatment has not worked since. That's why she is so vital to this effort. I've since saved others with her blood sera, but you understand the time factor involved. If you had turned yourself in to BioCon at Orangeburg, I could have helped you. But you bid it, you ran off to New York. By then it was too late."

  Stephen looked away and Maryk was quiet and let him stare. But Stephen's eventual response was not what Maryk expected. "I want to work again, Peter," he said. He looked back at Maryk with eyes that were strong. "It's been a few years-I know. But the equipment is already here for me." Stephen motioned toward the animal room. "This virus is my virus now. No one else could work with it safely, not even you. Maybe I can find some chink in its armor." It was as though the long-dormant scientist part of Stephen had taken over. Maryk nodded to encourage Stephen's pride. "Good," he said. "But I need to meet her. The survivor."

  Maryk realized that he meant the girl. "No," he said. "That would not be a good idea."

  "I need to speak with her, Peter. That will give me some strength."

  "She's just a girl," Maryk said. "She has no special powers. No secret knowledge. Only her blood."

  Stephen's grimace began to relax. His strength was fading.

  "Bring her to me," he said. "And then I will help you."

  Stephen's eyelids slipped over his eyes. His breathing slowed and Maryk waited by the gurney. Stephen's eyes opened once more before sleep finally consumed him. "Peri," he whispered. Then he succumbed.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  Maryk sat looking at the blinds turned down over the window and the glowing lines disappearing between the thin white slats. He heard car doors thumping and engines starting up in the parking lot below and realized that it must be four-thirty.

  Cascade time was lazy and formless like a summer day. He had been dozing in his office for most of the afternoon. His frequent administerings to Stephen meant sacrificing countless hours to the voice of his cascades.

  The BDC at night reminded him of his internships and residencies and the various city hospitals he had patrolled as though they were his.

  But Stephen was wrong: Maryk had no designs on running the BDC He had already made Special Pathogens over in his own image. An artist must know his place in the world. He would nap again soon to drain off the remains of this Pearse-induced cascade. Then he could work long into the night.

  His office door opened and Melanie Weir entered alone behind the chair he had arranged for her. "Your inhaler," Maryk said and waved at it on his desk. It was stickered with a fresh prescription label.

  She did not move. She was staring at the blinds and pretending to ignore him. The girl's posture and the low angle of her resentful eyes spoke for her. "Take it," he said.

  She came forward without looking at him and took it from his desktop.

  Then she turned to leave. "Sit down," he said.

  She slowed at the door. Pasco had brought her there and was waiting beyond to bring her back inside if necessary. She must have sensed this. She came back and sat in the arranged chair.

  The girl's short hair was the deep red color of vine berries. She wore a short black skirt and thick black stockings and a long white T-shirt with the corporate affiliation bleached out. She sat deeply in the chair but was alert and assessing him at every turn. "Dr. Pasco walked you through a tour of the BDC," Maryk said. He licked his lips.

  "This is my office."

  She sat with her arms and legs crossed. She did not respond.

  "Let me guess," he said. "You feel as though you've been treated poorly."

  "I feel as though I've been raped," she said. "Repeatedly and routinely, for over four years. Violated. Taken advantage of.

  How long do you think you can hold me here?"

  "Plainville took advantage of you," Maryk said. "I gave you life."

  She stared in apparent amazement. "You know what? We have nothing more to discuss. I have been drugged and jabbed with needles. I've been used like a voodoo doll against some crazed disease. I've had experiments performed on me, been followed around, spied upon. I've been humiliated. All by you-whoever you really are. You're warped, all right? And that-that comes as a total relief to me. Because now I know I'm fine. You're the sick one."

  He nodded after a moment. "Good," he said. "What's good? Don't you smile at me." He had indeed underestimated her. "I can see now how you survived your time in the hospital," he said.

  She did not know how to respond to that. Her expression grew a little less guarded. "Why didn't you wear one of those suits?" she said.

  The question surprised him. "It's all coming back to you."

  "No. I only remember the others sealed inside a suit in order to survive being in the same room as me. All except you."

  Maryk nodded. He stood then and felt confident on his feet and moved to the front of his desk. "Natural immunity," he told her. "A fluke of nature, not unlike yourself. My immune system is exceptionally strong. It detects invading for
eign agents immediately and executes the infected host cell itself, thereby expelling both the virus and the infection at once. I require no protection against airborne exposure to Plainville. You and I are the only two people in the world who could withstand it."

  Her eyes seemed to relax and she spoke with the power and authority of revelation. "You're drunk."

  Maryk half smiled and held on to the edge of the desk. "I was coming to that. Natural killer cells, unlike other immune system cells, don't wait to be told what to do. They search and destroy on their own. Everybody's system produces some; mine happens to make billions. But the kill-off from any significant exposure taxes my system to exhaustion-a cellular massacre and leukocyte surge triggering an energy drain, which I call a 'cascade.' Makes me drowsy sometimes, slows me down. Depends on the pathogen and the extent of the exposure. You undergo a typical antibody reaction; you feel nothing, unaware of the services being rendered by your immune system. This," he pointed at himself, "what you see here, is the machine working at maximum efficiency, ridding my body of Plainville. This is human superiority over a virus."

  She looked at him with something like disgust. Maryk nodded in the general direction of Building Seven. "Stephen Pearse is isolated nearby. I left him some time ago. Pearse is my patient, as are you."

  "Were," she said.

  He ignored that. "Stephen and I used to be research partners. We went to school together, joined the bureau together."

  "So he's in on this too."

  "Oh no." Maryk showed a frowning grin. "Not Stephen. Stephen turned his back on creative science some time ago. He thought he could do more good by being more good himself, and abandoned his medical gifts for something like faith. He wanted to heal by example, rather than by practice; to cure purely through the power of his presence. The high priest of world medicine. Now, of course, quite the opposite is true."

  She was still staring. "This makes you happy?" He realized he was rambling and checked himself Perhaps he was more fatigued than he had realized. He cleared his throat. "Pasco tells me you refused to give your blood."

  She hardened. "Since when do you need my permission?" She thrust out her left arm and pushed back the sleeve. "Here. Take it."