Chuck Hogan

by The Blood Artists (epub)

  They cleared the lights of the station and the car windows darkened into mirrors. In the window of the door at her end she could see the reflection of Zero standing behind her. He was wavering, feet planted evenly, moving with the motion of the train.

  People sitting near him began to stir. At first they were merely uncomfortable in the presence of an obviously ill man. Then they noticed the smell. Politeness crumbled as first one young woman rose from her seat and moved toward Melanie's end, then a professional couple, then an elderly man making a face.

  They were all going to die. The distasteful smell was carrying microbes into their lungs to poison their blood. And Melanie was their only antidote, standing right there with them-and there was nothing she could do. These thoughts dizzied her, and squeezed her lungs. Her nerves were jumping. She went to her inhaler again, but using it was like trying to inflate a lead bag.

  Some sixth sense of trouble had kicked in, beyond his stink and odd appearance, and the people thrown together on the subway car stared in silence at the quiet marauder facing them. Melanie watched his reflection in the flickering light as he glowered back at his victims, red-eyed and knowing, his head low and bobbing and the mask covering his face dark at the edges, seemingly wet with his own saliva. He was not holding the pole now. He was standing free, his gloved hands trembling at the ends of his hanging arms. She wondered fleetingly why he still bothered to wear the mask and gloves.

  The car began to slow and the riders edged around the doors on Melanie's end, anxious to exit and in doing so spread the disease to the airport and the rest of the world. How long did Melanie have before they were actively infectious? A few hours, perhaps.

  The train stopped and the doors opened, and the carriers quickly scattered away.

  Melanie was the last to leave, even after Zero. He lurched across the platform ahead of her, people granting him wide berth, and then he was through the revolving doors, inside the airport and into the bloodstream of civilization.

  Melanie followed behind. She hoped to see suited BDC agents and airport security people waiting to pounce, but there were only travelers, hundreds of them, rushing this way and that. Parents toting luggage and children, couples with pet kennels and garment bags, business travelers, all moving with quiet, airport determination. She was the only one there who knew what was happening.

  The main lobby of Hartsfield airport was a high, ornate, circular glass-roofed atrium surrounded by concessions and decorated with tall trees and an elaborate display of ivy. She shadowed Zero through it, past the baggage carousels, past car rental stalls and a vacant shoe shine stand, waiting for some burst of inspiration. But he just kept pulling himself ahead. He moved beyond the concessions, and she stayed with him, tracking him past the ticket counters, moving deeper and deeper into the airport. He had to be stopped. She kept praying to see Maryk come rushing up behind her.

  She saw an information kiosk and hurried toward it in an arc, wide around Zero, keeping him in her sight as she worked to her right. She waited jumpily behind a man asking directions as she watched Zero slouch away.

  "Yes?" Bright scarf, dull smile.

  "Hi," Melanie said, gasping. "You need to shut the airport down right now."

  The smile dulled further. "I'm sorry?"

  "I know, I know. I need security people. Guns. I'm with the Bureau for Disease Control. There's a man with a virus -- who is a virus --"

  "I'm sorry, but you..."

  Zero disappeared around a corner, heading for the flight gates.

  Melanie was getting nowhere. With a slap of her hand on the counter, she took off after him again.

  She dashed around rolling luggage. Flights were being called overhead.

  Zero plodded ahead of her, distracted travelers clearing out of his way. Plainville was germinating in these unknowing hosts as they walked off toward cities throughout the world.

  At once she recognized the BDC logo ahead. It was emblazoned upon a booth just before the security checkpoints. U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH STATION it read, and she ran to it. "Listen to me." The man behind the counter wrinkled his brow as she refused his offer of an international traveler's form. She was barely breathing now. "Do you know Maryk?"

  "Dr. Maryk?" said the man suspiciously. "I know of him."

  "You must get him this message."

  "I'm sorry, miss, but this is not a message center."

  "The Plainville virus is here. It's in the airport. Do you understand what that means? They need to shut this entire place down, right now."

  "The what virus?" It was disbelief.

  "Get this message to Maryk. Tell him, 'Zero is at the airport.' Do you understand? 'Zero is at the airport.'"

  " The man was nodding, but not at her, at someone behind her, summoning them with a widening of his eyes. She turned and saw a man in a blue uniform coming. It was airport security, but he was weaponless, and useless to her now. He would only detain her.

  "Send it," she commanded, and ran off toward me gates.

  Zero was somewhere ahead, nearing the entrance to the concourse.

  She encountered the least resistance by run-, rung along the right side wall, fighting her way through a large tour group following a woman holding up a small British flag.

  Melanie had a brainstorm. She searched the wall for fire alarm boxes-but there weren't any. "I need a lighter," she said, startling the British tour group, and one man produced a matchbook with a picture of a pub on it. She snatched it from his hand and looked about for a trash barrel to set on fire.

  But there weren't any trash barrels. In a flash she realized this was all due to airport security. Trash barrels could be used to hide bombs.

  She saw a female custodian gathering soda cups out of armchair holders, standing away from her cleaning cart. Melanie walked right up and grabbed the cart handle and wheeled it away. She scanned the ceilings for a water sprinkler, finding a low one near the Tourist Center. She piled cleaning rags and paper towels on top of the trash bag and lit the matchbook. She touched off the paper and the heated rags began to squirm, grudgingly producing smoke.

  A scream from the security area turned her around. Melanie left the burning cart and took off running in the direction of the sound, pushing through people knocking each other over to back away.

  An airline representative lay on the floor before a row of metal detectors. Her eyes were wide with horror and there were red marks on her neck in the form of a strangling hand, and her mouth and nose were glistening with something. It was saliva, not her own.

  The fire alarm went off. It began honking over the flight calls, and announcements came immediately in English and Spanish and Chinese, stating that the airport must be evacuated immediately.

  The screaming had excited the crowd; now the alarm set them in motion.

  People who had already passed through the metal detectors turned and pushed back, and the jostling overwhelmed the remaining security force, whose nervous shouts in turn triggered a mass exodus.

  It wasn't exactly what Melanie had planned, but it was movement, and away from the airplanes. Now all she needed was to stop the flights still boarding.

  She burrowed through the fleeing crowd, sliding around the outer edge of an X-ray machine into the panicking concourse. Twin escalators dipped beyond, one coming up and one going down, and between them ran a wide, steep stairway. Zero was stumbling down as the frenetic crowd thrashed all around him. The stairs were not quite full, as people were trying to double-time it up the down escalators. He was away from the handrail, and she saw her chance to shove him down to the bottom.

  The homicidal urge emboldened her and she fought to the top step, heaving for breath, suitcases and flailing limbs battering her arms and sides. She would not make it without another hit off her inhaler. She brought it out, but before she could even get the cap off, an older man in a Hawaiian print shirt shoved past her and smacked her elbow.

  The inhaler popped out of her hand. It fell to the steps and skittered away bet
ween tramping feet, out of her view.

  She had no breath left to curse the man. She drew in what oxygen she could and fought her way against the tide to the far railing, battling the crush, searching for her inhaler while praying that no one had stepped on it. Wheezing, feeling faint, she managed to pull herself through the onslaught of bodies down to the bottom steps where she was bumped and shoved as she stumbled around searching. She felt something sliding down her neck. She reached up to fix her wig when all at once it disappeared entirely from her head.

  "Melanie."

  She twisted back, but her lungs prevented her from running. Zero was right there beside her, holding her platinum blond wig. "No," she said, a small noise, a gasp.

  She saw him through bursting stars. He might have been smiling beneath his mask. His eyes were terrible and sharp as he grasped her arm.

  She tried to scream, but couldn't get anything behind it.

  The skin on his face was gray and spoiling. His pale blue mask sucked deeply before filling with each exhale. His hot red eyes examined her face, an inch or two away, and suddenly he suffered a spasm of some sort, his head shivering madly and the force of his grip increasing.

  Then he came back out of it, hazy.

  She was still looking for her inhaler and saw the floor moving beneath her as he began to pull her away. It was like breathing through a swizzle stick, and all she could do was concentrate on getting air and remaining conscious. She never saw her inhaler. When she looked up again, she was facing a row of silver doors leading to the airport's shuttle. "Maryk," Zero said, his voice gooey with phlegm. He slurred his words. "Thinks he's clever."

  She worked on filling her lungs while trying not to breathe his air. A dull roar behind the doors, red lights coming on above them.

  "Melanie-a-me," he breathed. His cotton mask filled with her name, savoring it. She tried to kick him in the balls but couldn't turn around right. She didn't even know if it would have the desired effect.

  He held her over her shirtsleeve. His gloved fingers were like claws around her arms. Eyes, mouth, bare hands: She had to protect them.

  The red lights turned green, and the doors all opened. They hadn't shut down the shuttle train yet. The few passengers on board rushed to get off, stopping when they saw Zero. He made a threatening gesture with his free arm and they all cleared away, to the sides and quickly out the doors on either end. "Help me," Melanie croaked, sinking beside him. "Help."

  No one did. They all fell over one another getting away.

  He threw her sprawling inside. She hit the far wall, her shoulder and her hip, and the force of it knocked out what little air she had won.

  "Welcome to Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport..." The voice on the train was female, stern. She tried to keep from sagging to her knees. She could not breathe at all. "The jungle," he said, entering, watching her, eyes glowing. "What did they do to me in the jungle?"

  "Caution. Doors will not reopen." The doors closed. She staggered and almost went down as the train started forward. "... A one-and-three-quarter-mile-long underground mall connects the terminal and concourses." She reached for a handrail and pulled herself straight, her chest small and empty. She could get nothing into it.

  She was suffocating.

  Zero left his tablet on a seat and started toward her. She moved away blindly down the car, not breathing, like a diver in trouble, scrabbling toward the surface, until all at once something broke inside her chest, like a stuck valve coming free, and she groaned and tasted a gulp of air. "He'll kill me," she choked. She saw stars again as he moved before her. "To get to you. Maryk. He doesn't care." He fondled a pole as she struggled back toward the middle doors.

  "Concourse B. Gates B1 through B36 Delta. Delta Crown Room."

  The train was slowing. She was nearing the doors. The train stopped again and the doors slid open and she turned to them, but awkwardly, as he moved in front of her, cutting off her escape route.

  She shrank away, gasping. Behind him she saw the last of the travelers hurrying away through the concourse. "Caution. Doors will not reopen."

  The doors closed again and the train jumped forward. "The girl in the jungle," he said, insistently.

  She retreated, using all her breath to stall him, telling him what Maryk had told her. "Outbreak. Stephen Pearse tried to save her. But the girl was already sick. The serum was from Maryk's blood." He was pacing her, step by step, pole by pole, back through the shuttle car.

  "How did you survive my virus in Plainville?"

  "His blood. Maryk's. He put me back together again."

  She moved past more poles, the shuttle rocking, the lights flashing, the overhead voice droning on and on.

  Zero's eyes flamed. "Then his blood runs through us both."

  She felt something solid behind her. It was the door to the next car.

  She had run out of space. "Marries us," he said.

  She reached frantically back for the door handle but it did not turn at all. She looked back again and his eyes were lascivious over the breathing mask. She sank down as far as she could.

  He reached with one hand behind his own head. She did not understand the gesture at first. Then she saw that he was untying his mask.

  Melanie was making herself smaller and smaller against the door.

  The mask came down off his face, and she saw his mouth. His lips were gone. The skin there was blackened and decayed. He had gnawed off his own lips and his teeth were rotted and his mouth inside was crimson red, like excited flesh, his tongue small and bright and swishing, the top coating having sloughed away. She could see clear to his tonsils, the soft parts of his mouth scarlet and writhing.

  "Concourse C. Gates C1 through C36. Air South. Midwest Express...".

  He was all throat, and she watched it undulate as he slurred: "You should have died in Plainville."

  He was reaching down. His dirty glove was reaching around for the nape of her neck. She was low and practically lying on the floor.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  He gripped the back of her head, the tongue and throat of his mouth yawning toward her, finally claiming his good night kiss.

  The train stopped. The doors began to open and a form, a blur, only partially realized over Zero's shoulder, hurtled through the doors nearest her. She saw Maryk's face and its expression of pure homicidal rage as his fist came down driving from behind his head, burying a syringe needle deep into the base of Zero's slender neck.

  Zero keened and fell back and away from the force of Maryk's blow, and Maryk crashed into her on the floor of the train, his bag skidding across to the wall.

  Maryk rolled off her. Zero was sitting up, twisting his head to look at the syringe jutting out of the top of his shoulder as though inspecting his collar for lint. With his opposite hand he wrapped his thin fingers around the barrel, and in one motion jerked it out.

  Doing so kicked loose pellets of his blood which lolled through the air of the train. They fell like bullets at the floor near Melanie's feet.

  The syringe in Zero's hand was still loaded, the plunger fully extended. Maryk hadn't yet forced it. The poison had not been delivered.

  Zero looked at her, his open mouth howling. He jumped to his feet and held the syringe out like a sword as he lunged at her.

  Maryk was on his side by then, crouching. His left shoe came up strong and flat against Zero's thin chest, and Maryk extended his knee and Zero sailed flailing four or five seats back through the car. The syringe jerked out of Zero's hand and landed dancing in the center of the aisle. He fell sprawling behind it.

  Zero cried out, or giggled, then flipped over and grabbed his tablet off the nearby seat. The doors were still open and he fled crawling out of the car. Melanie saw him slide between the corner of the platform and the end of the train. He was escaping into the tunnel itself.

  Maryk stood and lifted her to her feet. "Did he get you?" he said.

  "I'm all right."

  "Did he get you?" Hi
s eyes were murderously bright. "No!" He stood staring and panting wide-eyed as though he didn't believe her.

  "Caution. Doors will not reopen..."

  Maryk looked to the rear of the car. "I'm going after him," he said.

  He grabbed the bloody syringe and his bag and rushed out, clearing the doors just as they slid shut. The train started ahead again automatically and Melanie stood and stumbled against its motion, moving to the rear window of the car. Maryk's shadow emerged into the dark light of the tunnel, bag in hand, and as his silhouette faded away, she sagged to the floor, safe finally, fighting for a mouthful of air.

  Maryk sprinted after Zero's shadow lurching between the rails as the tunnel began collapsing around him. Loose stones shifted beneath his feet. He stumbled and felt the sensation of a tremendous weight shifting inside his head. His claustrophobia only amplified the debilitating force of the cascade.

  He tried to follow the echoing footfalls but lost track of Zero ahead.

  What he thought was the end of the tunnel turned out to be a yellow safety lamp on the wall and this disappointment drained the last of his energy. He wandered off the twisting rails into a wall recess.

  He slid to the grimy ground there with his legs out flat in front of him.

  Zero is close and ready to infect. Get up. Maryk could not. He was spent. The full force of the cascade was pressing on him.

  He pulled his tablet from his bag. He opened the screen and hoped the signal would carry through the tunnel. He posted Zero's location to Freeley just as the tablet slid off his lap to the floor. His breath was coming in gusts and his chin rode the pitching of his chest.

  The ground lifted and drifted like a loosely moored dock. He had speed in his bag but it was too far for him to reach now. He could not move at all.

  Zero will escape onto the airfield and the runways beyond.

  Maryk saw a shadow standing out on the dark tracks. The shadow was small and crooked and it moved a step closer and caught some of the sulfurous light from the wall.