She ignored this because the truth was right before her eyes. The sun was shining and the buildings sparkled as though from a fresh rain, but the billboards advertised in silence, to silence, and the traffic lights changed for no one, the city working like a clock with precision gears but no hands. There is nothing so emblematic of death as a deserted city.
He said, "It was me." She listened then. He told her about the virus and how he had infected the city in order to baffle Zero. He told it as her father used to tell her parables: slowly and patiently, without comment. The only pride evident was in his detailing of the plan's execution. Sherman had burned Atlanta; Maryk infected it. The entire city and county slept under his spell.
He stopped the car in the middle of one of the wide Peachtree streets, dead center on the double yellow line. She did not move at first.
"The sun has burned off whatever was left," he said. "It's clear."
She got out and stood in the center of the four-lane road, The silence of the concrete and steel city was absolute. Maryk started across a boardwalk mall of stone tiles toward a fountain, and Melanie followed.
Water plumed out of the center of the fountain, joined in its fall by jets flaring from the outer ring of masonry like a serenade of trumpets. She saw coins scattered over the submerged, rusted green tiles and thought of the small fists that had released them, and the big wishes that had gone unfulfilled. Maryk sat on the stone rim of the fountain, and she took her place nearby, two exhausted beings alone under the Atlanta sun, looking at the dead city all around them.
Church bells rang somewhere, but other than that, only the running water alleviated the awful silence.
She noticed that Maryk was carrying a first aid kit in place of his black bag. It was set on the stones between his feet. "Zero is breaking apart," he said. "He's holed up somewhere, waiting, but he can't wait long. He's dying, and I've taken Atlanta from him."
It was over, or nearly over, and yet Maryk did not appear pleased.
There was no sense of victory about him as he sat looking at his shadow on the stones. The kit was open between his black shoes. She could see his eyes, and they were lower and brighter than usual. He was thinking hard about something, deliberating. She wondered what it meant that she knew him so well. She looked around the park, and everything in her field of vision, a hand rail, a scuff mark on a stone step, a bench, shimmered with echoes of humanity.
She looked back at him, and he was reaching down into the kit. He paused when he saw her, his hand remaining inside the bag almost as though she had caught him at something. Then his hand came out holding a syringe. She saw that the barrel was half filled with a clear fluid, and then she cheated a look at his face, and for one crazy instant thought he was going to turn on her and attack her. He had that look in his eyes, the same glare of murderous intent she had seen inside the airport tunnel. He straightened with the syringe in his hand, and stared at her, breathing deeply.
He appeared oddly full of adrenaline. None of this made sense to her.
"Why did you bring me here?" she said. Something was telling her to stand and run away. "What's wrong with you?"
He was looking at the syringe now. He held it like a pen, staring at it as though in deep deliberation. "I want to go back," she said, standing.
He did not rise after her. Her jumpiness turned to frustration, fed by his silence. Stephen Pearse was dying in a hospital cell a few miles away. "Why are you just sitting there?" she said.
He turned the syringe over in his big right hand. His silver eyes rose only as high as her knee. "Why won't you visit Stephen?" she said.
She was angry now. Emotions were coming at her randomly, like asteroids, fragments of long-ago eruptions. "He used to be your best friend."
Her voice faltered and she stopped and breathed through it, and realized she was crying again, though she hadn't thought that possible.
She used her fingers to whisk away the tears. "It is Stephen, isn't it?" she said. That explained the syringe. "His fate. It's different when you know the person who is sick and suffering, know them well, and have some stake in their well-being, A part of you, invested, that withers when they wither. That will die when they die."
The syringe turned more slowly, and she sensed something building in him, perhaps something like rage. The fountain itself seemed alive with it, as though it were going to explode. He looked up at her then, the fountain pluming behind him, and she expected to see a different face, but it was his own. He did not look murderous anymore. The syringe remained in his hand, but Maryk looked strangely vulnerable.
Something was giving way inside her as well. The frustration she felt, the loneliness, the waiting, stinging her eyes. Her voice was steady and collapsing at the same time. "He told me I needed to save you," she said.
"What does that mean? Save you from what?" Whatever Maryk had been thinking, it seemed to pass. He set the syringe back inside the kit and closed it and stood. He was a moment balancing himself, looking away, and she recognized at once that low-eyed expression, the slant coming into his face like a ripple across a tableau of water, and the faint slackness in his jaw. The drowsy look that twisted his face in a strange way that made him appear sad.
He was cascading, and trying to hide this from her. She looked up at him wordlessly for an answer. "The lab," he explained. "I was looking at Zero's virus."
She didn't believe him, but could not understand why he would lie.
She could not understand anything about him anymore.
He turned himself toward the car. "I'll visit him," he said, and she knew what that meant. He was going back to the BDC to put to death the only friend he ever had.
Good-bye
I knew then why people fear the ill. Because when health is boiled off the body, like meat off a bone, something elemental is revealed beneath: our pained selves, bombarded from without and within, expiring with every breath. Frightened creatures-small, afraid, and alone.
I was a mere consciousness by then, a brain, a mind, an impaired intelligence existing apart from the bodyalone, like a single, struggling cell.
The prenatal human is pristine in nature. The womb is safe, a clean place for a developing organism, and biologically we are all perfect at the instant of birth. But with that first independent breath comes the microbiota, swarming and colonizing the amniotic-mucked newborn who from that flawless primary instant is engaged in a lifelong struggle against his own death. Every touch, every kiss, every cuddle; every word whispered to an unformed face; every new room into which an infant is carried. Every step is an assault of all the natural world upon this new life form struggling moment to moment for survival.
I was not rotting of Plainville. I was rotting of life, of the effluvia of existence, being dragged into eternity by the cumulative disease of a lifetime of exchanges from submicroscopic to tangible, from the most profane to the most pleasing. Existence was my ultimate undoing, not this virus. Not Zero.
Peter and Melanie appeared at the viewing window. Melanie cupped her hands to the glass, looking for my wasted body in the corner, while Peter disappeared behind her. It was dark inside the Tank now, and the most she could have seen of me would have been a vague gray shape in a chair backed into the far corner.
I awaited Peter's words. Typed from the tablet at the nurse's table, they appeared in stark, white letters scrolling across the black field of the wall screen. "Stephen. What are you doing?"
I typed: I am waiting now, Peter. I must wait alone.
"Why have you barricaded the door?"
I feel close to him, Peter. So close now.
"Stephen. Move the hyperbaric chamber. Let me in."
Do you remember the sick girl, Peter? The one we went to Africa for in the first place? Jacqueline?"
"Yes."
I could not do it then.
"I know that."
You had to do it for me.
"I remember, Stephen. You are the one who cannot do it now." His next sentence was slo
w in coming. "What happened to the lights, Stephen?
I broke them with the top of my IV stand I want to suffer in private now.
There was no one outside to stop me. The Tank is unguarded, and I notice also that the BDC net is silent. I fear the worst.
Peter then typed in what he had done. The words scrolled slowly before my hungry red eyes. I typed back: Wonderful.
"That is not the response I would have expected from you."
How does it feel to infect an entire city, Peter? Does it feel good?
"No, Stephen. It feels dirty."
I notice Melanie was unaffected.
"No. She has been affected very greatly. But not by me."
The words glowed before my eyes. Zero.
"He got to her inhaler. No symptoms yet. But she cascaded me."
Then you have not told her?
"No."
How strange that, even in my incapacitated state, I was still the only one Peter Maryk could talk to. And at once, I understood.
You cannot kill her, can you, Peter?
"The virus must be contained."
You infected an entire U.S. city and the BDC itself so that she could walk about unrestrained, and not know that she is sick.
"The city was shut down to stop Zero."
I am happy for you, Peter. The thought of her suffering plagues you.
"Stephen. Let me in."
It is too late. I am committed now. Go away from here, Peter. Take her with you. While you still can.
"What can you hope to do?"
We built this place, Peter. You and I.
"Yes, we did."
Then it is ours to bring down. He made further attempts at communication, which I ignored. The end was near and it was inevitable. Zero was coming. I had to prepare.
The Message
They made their way back through the empty maze of the BDC to Maryk's office. Maryk went straight to his desk. He was consumed with the dilemmas of Stephen, Melanie, and Zero.
Melanie saw the cartons stacked in the corner and recognized her belongings there. Maryk had ordered her room packed up by BioCon before the city was put to sleep. Her handbag lay on top of one of the boxes and she picked it up and tried it on her shoulder.
He watched her. He remembered her standing before him at the fountain in the city without eyes. He remembered his failure to carry out her sentence.
She was feeling the slick top flap of the handbag. She made a face.
She had noticed that the handbag smelled faintly of bleach.
Maryk's tablet sounded. He opened it at his desk. Freeley was standing suited on deserted Interstate 285 with the skyline behind her.
"You took out the entire city," she marveled.
Maryk used his earphone. He was concerned about what Melanie might overhear. "Nothing on Zero?" he said.
"We're up on the roofs watching every road out. We'll see him if he tries to leave the city."
"Good," Maryk said. "What about the girl?"
Maryk looked at her across the room. Melanie was poking through an open carton of painting supplies and could not hear Freeley. "Yes?" he said. "Do you need me to finish her?"
Maryk looked back at his tablet screen. He could see the sunny interstate reflected on Freeley's faceplate. "I'll handle it," he said.
He had an incoming page and clicked over to it. It was the third-party eavesdrop from the Tank line tap. Zero had posted Stephen again for an on-line chat. Maryk pulled the earphone from his ear and read along.
Both dialogue leaders were again listed as S. Pearse.
"What has he done, Doctor?"
"He has taken Atlanta from you. His people surround the city. He has left you nothing."
"The girl."
"She is strong. Stronger than you know. He has feelings for her now. We are all who are left here. I am sealed inside a cell."
"We are both his prisoners now."
"Yes. You are breaking down."
"I feel as though I am bursting, yet my mission is almost complete. Innocent plants and sinless animals will be spared. Only the criminal man. The planet will rejoice as I rid its crust of his plague."
"But you are devolving. You will no longer be able to reproduce In human cells. You are going extinct. You must act."
"You are with me now, Doctor. We are the Messenger. We are the Message."
"And Maryk?"
"It is Maryk for whom the Message is. The Message must get through."
"Yes. The Message must get through."
"To that end, we may rely on our great heritage, Doctor. A sort of homecoming, do you agree?"
"Yes. Our heritage. I understand."
"You do, Doctor. You do. The Message must get through."
It ended abruptly. Maryk read back through the transcript. There was another page incoming on his tablet but he remained a moment longer with the current text. His gray eyes lingered over cryptic words like heritage and homecoming. It was as though they had been communicating in code. Maryk's tablet toned a second time and he finally answered it.
It was a page routed through Cyberviruses Section. Zero had dialed into the Genetech using Stephen's tablet code. The Hailing trace was successful and Maryk brought up a grid map of greater Atlanta. He waited anxiously as the coordinates cross-haired over the source. They settled there and pulsed faintly.
The location was listed as Clifton Road. Maryk stood suddenly.
"Zero's here," he said.
Melanie turned with her handbag still on her shoulder. Maryk had people all over the city but no one else there at the BDC. The bureau was a maze of catwalks and corridors. Maryk sat back down at his tablet. A security search run through the Genetech computer detected unauthorized movement in Building Two.
Building Two was the Library and Reports building where the Genetech 11 mainframe was located. "What is it?" Melanie said.
Maryk collapsed his tablet. He reached for the first aid kit containing the syringe he had prepared for Melanie and rushed to the door. "What about me?" she said. "Stay here," he said behind him.
He was going to end this once and for all.
The Black Bag Puzzling
My own Genetech security search returned a total of four sources of movement inside the BDC. The one leaving Building Fifteen would have been Peter. The one still inside Peter's office was certainly Melanie.
The third, unknown source, was all the way across the complex, in Engineering, Building Four.
The fourth source, already inside Building Two, I knew.
I dialed back into the Genetech, this time logging on as director, and bypassing the message that I was already on-line. I instructed the mainframe to unsecure its chamber doors within Building Two. "Chamber open, Dr. Pearse.
I instructed the Genetech to divulge its core processor, the heart of the heart of the BDC. "Genetech core divulged, Dr. Pearse. Please select MaIntenance or Inspection.
I selected Inspection, and then activated the Genetech's overhead camera.
He was there already. There he was. It was time. I rolled to the rear counter, and Peter's bag. I reached for it, slowly, unfeelingly, pulling the bag awkwardly onto my lap. In doing so, I knocked my medication switch off my chair to the floor, but it was no matter. I needed it no more.
The bag was already unbuckled, the leather finish flesh-smooth like Peter's own skin, the result of innumerable disinfections. There were loaded hypodermic syringes clipped to the top of the bag, plungers drawn halfway back and stopped with cardboard chokers. I plucked out each one and dropped them to the floor.
I was not interested in the poison. My hand pawed through rolls of tape and gauze and packets of sterile gloves to the foam-cushioned glass ampules at the bottom.
Liquid amphetamine. Enough for multiple injections. With the stiff hands of a puppet, I unwrapped a fresh syringe. I punctured the foil cap of the small glass bottle and drew the contents in under the plunger as quickly as I was able.
I did not feet the injection. The needle
pushed through the pus-stained fabric of my scrub shirt and entered the twitching mass of my left biceps. Plainville does not go for the muscles. It goes for the organs, it goes for the blood. It goes for the bones.
The second injection, into my right arm, took longer. Then one each into the muscles of my thighs, with enough left for just one more, and I jabbed the sag of my right breast, through the brittle cage, directly into my heart. A sensation of warm water washed over my body, and my muscles trembled with life.
The light coming in through the Tank window had begun to flicker.
My vital signs display on the rear console 'was flipping and sputtering like an old analog television set on the blink. I rotated my chair toward the wall screen, and saw that the image of the Genetech computer had begun to warp. The room was empty. Zero was already gone.
It was happening. I pushed the bag off my lap, spilling it to the floor, amazed at the movement in my arms. I rolled to the hyperbaric chamber blocking the door and released the wheel lock on the control panel. The bed glided away.
The outside lights flared again with even more intensity. The equipment inside the Tank switched on and off by itself I heard the lock catch give on the first Tank door. It swung open and blue light fell over my feet. The ultraviolet light source was surging, humming and intensifying to a beautiful, blinding cobalt blue, setting off the radiation sensors in the doors. Then it dimmed and died away.
The second door stood open. I was free. The top floor of Building Nine lay beyond.
Infection
Maryk arrived at Building Two with the syringe ready in his hand. He could smell Zero as he raced past the dedicated user stations and into the room that housed the minivan-sized Genetech mainframe and its core processor. But he was too late. Zero was already gone.
The room glowed dull green. The chamber doors were open like petals of a titanium flower in bloom. For some reason Zero had accessed the Genetech core. Maryk looked inside and saw a well of green gaap no larger than a drinking glass. He remembered that the Genetech was a living machine. "The perfect marriage of biology and technology." Its processor was not electronic chipware but actual human DNA.
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