Chuck Hogan

by The Blood Artists (epub)

  She drifted back down the long, warehouse-sized aisle to the pharmacy in the rear. Maryk wore a white BuyRite! pharmacist's coat with the name plate "Dennis" over where most people's hearts are. The coat was too small for him, the wrist hems coming down only as far as the taped cuffs of his gloves, which made him look even more huge up on the raised counter overlooking the store.

  He had needed someone else who could stand in the store without wearing a suit. The common sense assumption was that Zero himself would not come inside, based on the fact that there had been no infections at either of the two previous pharmacies he had patronized. She was there solely in order that everything would appear normal inside. In the event that Zero did enter, she was to usher out any customers so that BioCon could seal off the store and Maryk could do away with him.

  She stepped up behind the counter over a carpeted wooden step that sounded hollow. There was a carousel of sunglasses, and she looked into one of the small mirrors, picking-at the lifeless strands of her platinum blond wig. "This isn't fooling anyone," she said. The wig looked like one of those awful hairpieces they give free to cancer kids.

  She could see the entire store from the raised counter, the two kids having split up, the girl in the makeup aisle and the boy at the snacks. She could see straight down the double-wide center aisle to the glass doors in front.

  "Shouldn't you have a gun or something?" she said. "What about calling in the police? The army, even."

  Maryk slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket. She thought his shoulder seams would burst. "That would only mean putting more people at risk. They aren't equipped for this."

  What he didn't say was that he had a jones for viruses, and that Zero was the ultimate virus and Maryk wanted him all to himself.

  "Well, I'd blow a hole in him," Melanie said. "But that's just me."

  "Thank you for your input."

  She picked up a TB pamphlet and opened it before putting it back.

  "I was wondering what's going to happen to me after all this."

  His eyes remained on the front doors. "What do you mean?"

  "Just that, part of me is worried that when this ends, I'll be sort of expendable. I know I've learned a lot here. I've seen a lot."

  She kept her tone as casual as possible. "Too much, maybe?"

  His expression did not change. "What are you saying?"

  "Just that I'd hate to see something happen to me. Do you think I need to take any precautions?"

  He looked at her then with a gray-eyed glare that made her wish she had remained back at the register. It was anger, clearly, and yet something else. She thought she had been speaking his language, but he looked now as though she had somehow disappointed him.

  The door chime sounded. They turned and another teenage kid entered, stopping just inside the doors that slid shut behind him. He looked around at the signs over the aisles, then saw the pharmacy in back and started toward it. Maryk lifted his hands out of his pockets.

  Melanie moved one step away.

  The kid wore an army-style olive-drab jacket with a thin silver chain looped off the shoulder. He was slight and scuzzy with day-old chin growth and brown hair unevenly trimmed, as though by a friend.

  The bandage on his neck was just him trying to look cool. He came around a bin of New Year's Eve hats and horns to the counter, nodding at "Dennis" and drumming two dirty fingers. "Here to pick up a prescription ," he said with a nasty twang. "Name?"

  "Smith."

  He said it confidently enough. Maryk nodded, and Melanie moved another step away. "I'll get it," she said suddenly, going around the corner behind Maryk, out of sight into the back. Dr. Freeley and another Special Pathogens agent sat there on folding chairs, inside contact suits. Dr. Freeley handed Melanie a white paper bag with the prescription form taped over the folded top. It read "Banix," but was in truth ten capsules of cyanide, just in case. Melanie heard Maryk out in front.

  "Is this prescription for you?"

  "For my daddy."

  "Is he here?"

  "He sent me on in alone. He's sick."

  "He's at home?"

  " Yep."

  "Because there's a restriction on this medicine. Is there a phone number I can reach him at?"

  "Now. He's out in the car right now.

  He's sick, and he's waiting out in the car. Sent me in."

  "He's in the car."

  "Right. Said to say it's all set."

  "Payment is, through his doctor. But this is a medical issue. Is he right outside?"

  Dr. Freeley was waving at Melanie to get back out to the counter.

  Melanie gave the bag a shake so that the crinkle would precede her, then turned the corner.

  The kid's fingers were hanging on the counter now, no longer drumming.

  His posture was defensive and he watched the bag as Melanie handed it to Maryk. "Just down the street a-ways," said the kid, pointing, then scratching his neck near the bandage. "Uh-he's real sick, an' in a real hurry."

  Maryk deliberated, but then handed him the bag. "All right," he said. "This time."

  The kid took the bag, gracious in victory. "No problem at all."

  He hustled back down the aisle past a pyramid of bottled soda.

  The dong-ding of the electric eye chimed, and he was gone.

  Maryk was already stripping off his jacket. Dr. Freeley emerged and the other agent was speaking into his tablet: "He's moving. Hold positions and watch him all the way to the car."

  "Some hustler," Maryk was saying. "Working for a quick fifty. Zero must have killed the first two to stop his disease from spreading." He pulled his black bag out from under the counter. "Stay with her," he told Dr. Freeley, who was about to protest, but Maryk was already gone, rushing ahead of the other agent to the exit in back.

  Maryk sprinted with his bag at his side. At the end of the back alley he slowed and held up his hand to quiet the other agent's approaching boot steps. He leaned forward and peered left around the corner. He watched the open end of the connecting alley where it emptied into the brighter street.

  The kid appeared with the prescription bag in his hand and shuffled past.

  Maryk jogged to that corner. The kid was turning right off the main sidewalk ahead of him and Maryk looked high across the street as he moved into the clear. He saw the yellow sleeves of his spotters' contact suits moving along the rooftops and he strode past the unmarked vans parked along the street.

  The kid disappeared around the corner and Maryk was after him.

  Melanie hung by the checkout counter in front. Dr. Freeley stood at the entrance, trying to see down the street outside, then moved too close to the electric eye and set off the chime, and the doors slid open. Dr. Freeley ventured a step out into the night, now a yellow form bright against the black street, looking down the sidewalk. She glanced back into the empty store, and looked at Melanie, who looked quickly away. When Melanie looked back, Dr. Freeley was moving along the front windows outside, and the doors were sliding shut.

  Melanie was relieved to be alone. She stepped out from behind the register, and a tension so constant she had forgotten it was there left her small lungs. She breathed free.

  Her happiness brought her to the snack aisle, where the two kids were together now. They stifled their giggling when she rounded the corner, and Melanie remembered she had her cashier's jacket on. She saw that the kids were stoned. The boy was trying to choose between two different bags of cookies, while the girl made fluttering movements with her hands, air-drying her fingernails, each of which she had polished a different color.

  Melanie moved to the candy. She was hungry again and craved something sweet. The dong-ding door chime sounded, and she quickly grabbed a Hershey's bar.

  She stepped back from the kids and peeled off the foil, watching over the top of the aisle for Dr. Freeley's approaching yellow hood.

  She snapped off a corner piece and the gratification as the milk chocolate sank into her tongue was immediate. She b
it fast into another sweet chunk as she listened for Dr. Freeley's footsteps, the shuffling kind, produced by the suits.

  She got up on her toes and peered over the aisle. She did not see a yellow hood, and Dr. Freeley was tall. Another greedy bite, and then Melanie replaced the candy bar half eaten on the shelf and returned to the front, guiltily wiping her mouth with her fingers.

  She saw no one at the entrance. She crossed the end of the first aisle and looked to the rear and it was empty, and that made Melanie slow.

  She heard noises then, like the sound of things dropping to-the floor somewhere in back. She crossed to the second aisle and saw nothing, and then to the third, from which she could see all the way to the pharmacy.

  Zero was behind the counter. He was hunched slightly, his back to her, rifling through the shelves and bins of prescriptions.

  She stepped back. At first she was too stunned to scream or move or do anything. She turned to the doors leading outside, and thought instantly of the telltale chime. Then she remembered the kids. She turned and ducked back to the snack aisle. "Get out of here now," she told them.

  But she spoke so quietly and chokingly, they did not hear. The boy turned to her, eyes misty and narrow. "Do you have any pretzel chips?"

  "We're closed. Take what you have and leave right now."

  They looked at the snacks in their hands and at each other. "Sure thing," they said as though discovering the phrase for the first time.

  "There are people outside in yellow suits. Find them and send them here immediately."

  "Sure. Whatever."

  They cruised past her to the exit. She thought to slip out with them.

  Were they infected now? Her mind raced. Zero had been careful.

  He had watched to see if the prescription kid was followed. He had seen Dr. Freeley leave, so he knew that there had been a trap. If he knew Melanie was there, he would be killing her now instead of looking for the drugs he needed.

  Too late. The chime sounded as the doors parted and the kids ambled out. The rummaging in back stopped.

  Melanie ducked quickly to the open lane in the middle of the aisle.

  She counted to ten, then straightened just enough to see over the shelves and up to the pharmacy.

  Zero watched the doors slide shut. He was scanning the store from there, his neck crooked at a curious angle. She could just see his face around the surgical mask, his red eyes. He was gaunt and twitchy.

  He was in pain. He was searching for Banix, and Melanie knew that there was none in the store.

  She crouched and listened, trying to hear over the sound of her own labored breathing. She counted to ten again, and at thirty-seven inched to full height.

  Zero was gone. The pharmacy area was empty. She thought at first he was somewhere in the aisles, coming for her, but then saw the light shining through the door behind the counter. He had gone out the rear exit.

  She waited in relief and turned and started at once for the entrance.

  She wanted to get to Maryk, but realized she didn't know exactly where he was. And once she did find him, it would be too late-Zero would be gone again. She stopped and feit the tightness return to her lungs.

  This had to end now. She could not let Zero get away.

  She shrugged off her paper jacket and hurried back toward the pharmacy.

  She would find out where he was headed, she decided, then double back and sic Maryk on him. She crept up over the hollow step.

  His stink lingered behind the counter, and every part of her body was jumping. She listened for footsteps in back. Then she moved to the open door and looked inside.

  The stockroom was bright and empty. She slipped past the manager's office to the delivery bay, and found the door half open to the security lights outside. She pulled back before grasping the knob, and clasped her hands. She was not wearing gloves. She had to protect her glands and her blood.

  She peered around the door edge and saw him in the alley, small and thin, half running, half limping away. His gloves, loose white nylon jacket, toque, dirty tan pants, and hiking shoes turned from the light around the corner of the alley, disappearing into a side street.

  She shrugged off her wool cardigan, taking a preemptory hit off her inhaler before shoving it into her jeans pocket, then started out after him. She crossed the alley gingerly, careful not to scuff her sneaker soles against the tar.

  The only lights on the side streets came from the high windows.

  There were no other people around. She saw him well ahead of her, turning right, crossing a one-way without looking back. This is crazy, she thought to herself. She was chasing a lethal virus through the streets of Atlanta. She rushed silently to the same corner and watched him move over a broken sidewalk farther away, toward a brighter corner, slowing there to a loping jog, then a hobbled walk. He stopped at a side street opening, and she watched him from a half block away.

  His bony shoulders fell under his jacket as he stared down the unseen street. He appeared greatly troubled by what he saw there, and hesitant as to which way to turn now. With a sudden grunt that kicked off the dark, silent buildings, he turned and looked resolutely across to the bright, wide street opposite, and set off limping that way.

  She crept along to the corner where he had stood. She looked down the two narrow blocks and saw a number of yellow suits moving about, lit by car headlights. Maryk's men had converged on Zero's car. In doing so, they had cut off his only means of escape.

  She turned toward the busier street, seeing his skinny, shadowed back against its bright lights as he shuffled off the sidewalk. A large structure of concrete stairs faced him across the street, rising, and there were people crawling all over the steps, and great, elevated train rails running from the building. The bright sign in front read MARTA, and even without understanding the acronym, she knew that it was a mass transit station.

  She looked back down the two long blocks to the BioCon agents.

  Her yell would not be heard. And if she ran to them now, she would not be able to tell them where Zero had gone.

  She turned and hurried after him to the bright, busy street, and across it toward the bustling station. Every commuter there was a potential host. Zero's only form of safe transportation was gone now, and he was desperate, and in pain. He had been forced to flee, and doing so, to infect.

  He remained hunched over, head down, moving to the far curb as cars dropped off and picked up passengers around him. No one seemed to notice him at first. He stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at the MARTA station above him as a sleek subway car slid away on an elevated rail like a centipede.

  She slowed and waited for cars to pass before reaching the sidewalk, wheezing as she hit the curb. She looked around frantically.

  She had lost him.

  She pushed ahead through the evening commuters, onto the stairs.

  She hurried up a few more steps, then stopped and looked back, and Zero was right behind her. He was gripping the handrail and climbing the stairs one step at a time. Somehow she had passed him, and she froze now as he moved up to her step, moving right next to her. She could see right into his bleary red eyes, and the pain fluttering his lids.

  He moved right past her, pulling himself step by step up the high stairs. She exhaled and looked around her as though she were invisible, then brought her hands up to her face. She felt the odd strands of fiber there. Her wig. Zero hadn't recognized her without her cranberry hair.

  The commuters were now becoming aware of this gaunt, sick-looking figure rising through them, and ceding him ample room. He used the handrail to haul himself over the top step-this sick, hobbling thing-onto the mezzanine, into the Atlanta subway system.

  Melanie pushed through to the top. She didn't see him there, only the turnstiles ahead. She looked back from the landing high above the street, and could see a Mack truck blocking a road two blocks away, part of Maryk's plan to cut off Zero's perceived escape. She scanned the street below, but there were no yellow suits from
the BDC following her.

  She clambered over a turnstile, jumping the fare. She stumbled as she landed but righted herself and pressed along a rising, spiraling brick wall, a walkway leading to twin open-air platforms.

  Zero was there. He was standing at the yellow safety line at the edge of the platform, sagging slightly like a drunk. Others were cleared away from him, though not far enough. This was it. They were all being infected. She was witnessing the spark of what would be a catastrophic urban outbreak.

  She searched the platform desperately. A sign on the wall told her she was on an outbound track, and she found a wall map and searched madly for a "You Are Here" arrow as the platform began to rumble. A train was coming. She wanted to scream, and finally found her station on the map as the subway cars approached. She was at the second-to-last outbound stop. She traced the line to its next and final destination: Hartsfield International Airport.

  The lead subway car glided in behind her, and she looked frantically for a policeman or subway official, anyone wearing a shirt of authority or carrying a two-way radio, even a custodian. The train doors opened and commuters were bunched up on the platform, waiting for passengers to disembark. All were hosts and carriers, every jostle an exchange. She watched as Zero entered the side doors of one of the central cars.

  There would be no stopping him once he got inside the airport.

  Twenty infected people, boarding twenty different flights, and the human race was dead. Viruses love airports, Maryk had said.

  She could go to the token booth and tell them to stop the train, but no one would pay any attention to her. Maryk could make them, but she could not get to him in time. By then Zero would be colonizing the airport and spreading city to city.

  Why? Why? Why? she was thinking as she hurried toward the car Zero had entered, slipping aboard just as the doors closed behind her.

  She immediately turned and faced the opposite end so that she did not have to look at him, and only then realized that it hadn't been necessary to board the same car he had boarded. But the doors were closed and the train started with a jolt, rising, gaining speed along an incline. She looked out the side window and could see the BDC roadblock on the streets below, small and shrinking away.