Chuck Hogan

by The Blood Artists (epub)

  "It is ended. Stephen Pearse ended it. Zero is dead, and Plainville is extinct."

  "But not on Gala. It still lives here."

  I tried to sound spontaneous. "I think we are sufficiently contained here. I think she understands the situation and will abide by it."

  Freeley stared. "It's been only two days. What happens when she gets restless? A meeting, a conversation, a touch-she can never so much as breathe near another human being without spreading the disease."

  "Except me."

  Freeley looked at me, and I recognized that it was the same expression she used to reserve for Stephen Pearse. "What's that?" she said, now looking at my hands. "Luggage," I said.

  She grew more and more anxious. "A means to an end," she said.

  "Useful to us at one time. But a liability now. A carrier. A threat to the species." Anxiety turned to anger. "What if it re-ignites inside her? She could become another Zero."

  "I've run the tests. I know it will not sicken her. The virus is too weak to take her, but neither does she have the resources to expel it.

  It's a biological draw. She is the reservoir now. In any event, I will be monitoring her myself."

  "It's against the law," Freeley said. "It's against your law. We cannot walk away with this left open. Not after all we've worked for.

  She is the last carrier. You cannot declare Plainville conquered so long as she is alive."

  "I can, and I have," I said impatiently. "The helicopter is waiting to take you back. They've set up temporary headquarters in Chamblee, and you are to report there within the hour. Bobby Chiles needs to speak with you, to tie up some loose ends. He's being sworn in as the BDC director tomorrow. I assured him of your full cooperation." She was stunned. "But we need to get our stories straight."

  "I told them everything," I said, "with the exception of the girl. You will do the same. The code name project never existed."

  "You're leaving the bureau," she said. "A sabbatical. A long one.

  I'll be living and doing my research here on the island."

  I was devoting myself now to developing Melanie's cure. My research was in the most preliminary stages, and the formulas were still quite elaborate. But I had saved her once before, and I saw no reason why I could not save her again.

  Freeley looked betrayed. Vain confidence returned to her voice.

  "She's a freak," she said.

  Freeley could have said the same for me. I waited until she was inside the helicopter and on her way before turning and starting up the dirt path with my bags in hand, crossing the quarantine boundary toward the outpost. The first bird I saw was a great blue heron, prehistoric in size, squatting on the grassy side of the road and watching me, piercingly, through one small eye over its pterodactylian beak. I stopped, facing the bird and it waited fearlessly, as though wanting to tell me something. Then at once it fanned open its great, heavy-fingered wings and lifted off, stirring the dust of the road. I watched it go, then continued along the rising path to the sanctuary under the shade of the trees and the fugitive cries from above. I was remembering a veil of dark clouds lit up from below, and synapses pulsing over the one-celled earth.

  Author's Note: The geographic and bureaucratic structures of the Bureau for Disease Control are derived from the present incarnation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outside Atlanta, Georgia.

  Essential to my research and the story itself were Laurie Garrett's compelling and comprehensive The Coming Plague (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), in particular the extraordinary true story of Lily "Penny" Pinneo, and Peter Radetsky's engrossing The Invisible Invaders: Viruses and the Scientists Who Pursue Them (Back Bay, 1991), a fountain of practical virological information, as well as my source for the code names and the story of Joseph Meister.

  Essential to the publication of this novel were Amanda Urban, and Henry Ferris and his assistant, Ann Treistman. Like Stephen Pearse, I too contracted a mysterious and debilitating disease during the writing of this book, known as the "sophomore curse." These people provided the cure.

  Although every medical term, symptom, and procedure detailed herein is based upon or derived from some real world fact, the author is neither a medical scientist nor a physician, despite the best efforts of his parents. Liberties have been taken.