by Ben Mezrich
Which meant it was all the more important for Mulder and Scully to keep barreling ahead. They had split up to reach the two med students as quickly as possible. Even so, Mulder prayed they would be quick enough. If Scully’s theory was right, there was a dangerous, diseased man still raging through the streets of New York. And if Mulder was right—a disease didn’t begin to explain the phenomenon they were chasing: something that could transform a quiet, gentle professor into a vicious killer, with inhuman strength.
It took Mulder a few minutes to reach the anatomy lab on the third floor of the vast stone building. He was out of breath as he exited the marble stairwell, and he paused for a moment by the double doors that led into the lab, leaning against the wall. He could see the cavernous room through a small circular window in the center of one of the doors. The room was close to fifty yards deep, rectangular, and contained two parallel rows of waist-high steel tables. Mulder could vaguely make out the bulky shapes on the tables; the bodies were wrapped in opaque plastic bags, and there were bright red plastic organ trays on carts attached to the stainless steel blood and fluid gutters that ran the length of each table. Mulder swallowed back a gust of nausea as he pressed his palm against one of the double doors. It was more physiological than mental; he had seen many dead bodies in his career, and he was not squeamish by nature. But the clinical nature of the anatomy lab triggered something primitive inside of him. Here, the human body was nothing more than meat. There was no room for philosophies of life, soul, or even God. Here, humanity was defined by bright red plastic organ trays and stainless steel fluid gutters.
He pushed the door inward and stepped inside the long laboratory. The strong scent of formaldehyde filled his nostrils, and he fought the urge to gag. His gaze roamed over the cadaver tables, jumping from bag to bag. Then he caught sight of his quarry, standing alone near the back of the room, bent over an open body bag. From that distance, Michael Lifton appeared to be tall, gangly, with short reddish hair and youthful features. He was wearing crimson sweatpants and a gray athletic T-shirt beneath a white lab coat. There was a thick book open on the cart at the head of the dissecting table, and Lifton seemed completely entranced by the open body in front of him. He didn’t look up until Mulder was a few feet away, and when he did his eyes seemed glazed, far away. His eyelids drooped unnaturally low, and there was a slight tremble in his upper lip. Was he ill? Or simply tired? Lifton coughed, as the color returned to his cheeks. “Excuse me, I didn’t hear you come in. Can I help you?”
Mulder shifted his gaze from Lifton’s face to his bloodied gloves and the scalpel balanced between his thumb and forefinger. “Hope I’m not interrupting. I’m Agent Fox Mulder from the FBI. I tried your dorm room, but there was no one home. Your next-door neighbor told me I could find you here.”
Lifton didn’t move for a full second. Then he carefully set the scalpel down next to the open book. Mulder read the large-print heading that stretched across the two open pages: PARTIAL BOWEL RESECTION. His gaze slid to the open lower abdomen on the dissecting table. It looked like a bag overflowing with black snakes. Mulder quickly moved his eyes back to the young man’s face.
“The FBI?” Lifton asked, his eyes wide. “Am I in some sort of trouble?”
Lifton coughed again, and the sound was coarse, vaguely pneumatic. Mulder saw beads of sweat running down the sides of the kid’s face. It looked like he was running a fever. “Are you feeling all right, Mr. Lifton?”
“Call me Mike. I’ve got a bit of a cold. And I’ve been working in here most of the night; the formaldehyde screws with my allergies. What is this about?”
Lifton’s hands were trembling, and Mulder could not tell if it was nervousness, or another sign of fever. He thought about Scully’s microbe theory. Any minute, she would be arriving at Josh Kemper’s apartment; would he be suffering from the same flulike symptoms as the kid in front of Mulder? Were the symptoms just the beginning of something worse? “I need to speak to you about a skin harvest you and Josh Kemper performed last Friday night.”
Lifton took a tiny step back from the dissecting table, his hands falling to his sides. “Did we do something wrong?”
Mulder could tell from Lifton’s tone that he was not as surprised by the idea as Mulder would have suspected. “Well, we think you and Josh might have harvested skin from the wrong body.”
Lifton closed his eyes, his cheeks pale. “I knew it. I thought something was wrong. But Josh insisted. He said Eckleman probably blew the tags. He said the body was close enough to the chart. Blond hair, blue eyes, no outward trauma.”
“So what made you suspect it was the wrong body?”
Lifton sighed, using his forearm to wipe the sweat off of his forehead. “First, there was the tattoo. A dragon, on his right arm. And then there was the strange rash.”
Mulder’s instincts perked up. He remembered what Bernstein had told him about the rash on Stanton’s neck. “What sort of rash?”
Lifton turned his head to the side. He pointed to a clear area of skin, right below his hairline. “Here, on the nape of his neck. A circular eruption, thousands of tiny red dots. Josh told me it was nothing—and it probably was. But if the guy had been in the ICU, it would have been in the chart. A straight shot from the ER, maybe it would have been missed. But not in the ICU.”
Mulder nodded. The John Doe had gone straight from the ER to the morgue. Derrick Kaplan had spent time in the ICU before he died. Mike Lifton was a smart kid—but he had allowed himself to be bullied into performing the harvest, even though he had suspected it was the wrong body.
“After you finished the harvest,” Mulder continued, “what did you do with the body?”
Lifton looked at him. “What do you mean? We returned it to the morgue, of course.”
“To the same locker?”
“Yes. Fifty something. Fifty-two, or fifty-four. I’ve usually got a good head for numbers, but I’ve been practicing in here nearly every night this week. Lack of sleep, you know. Screws with everything.”
Mulder nodded. He hoped it was just lack of sleep that was affecting Mike Lifton. But he had to cover the bases—to prove or disprove Scully’s theory. “We need to get you checked up by a doctor right away. There might be a chance that you caught something from the John Doe.”
Lifton’s face turned even paler. “What do you mean? Did he die from some sort of infectious disease?”
“We’re not sure. That’s why we need you to get checked out.”
Lifton’s entire body seemed to sag as he thought about what Mulder was saying. Then Mulder noticed another tremor move through Lifton’s upper lip, followed by a heavy cough. “I think we should get you to an ER right away. Just to be sure.”
He didn’t know whether or not it was evidence of Scully’s theory—but suddenly, he didn’t like the way Mike Lifton looked. It seemed as though Lifton’s condition was deteriorating as he watched. As the student hastily repacked the open cadaver with trembling hands, Mulder hoped that Scully had gotten to the other med student in time.
“Mr. Kemper! Mr. Josh Kemper!” Scully’s voice reverberated off the heavy apartment door. “This is Agent Dana Scully of the FBI! The building superintendent is here with me, and if you don’t answer the door, I’m coming inside!”
Scully could feel her heart pounding as she waited for a response. She glanced at the short, stocky man in the untucked gray T-shirt standing next to her, and nodded. Mitch Butler began fumbling through his oversize ring of apartment keys. Scully cursed to herself as she watched the super’s stubby fingers struggling to find the correct one. This was taking too long.
Scully had called for an ambulance when she had first arrived at the Columbia-owned apartment building and found Kemper unresponsive to her attempts to get inside his room, but she knew it would be another few minutes before the paramedics would arrive. She had already lost valuable time rousing the grubby superintendent out of his apartment on the first floor; the trip upstairs to the fourth floor had been in
sufferably long.
“Here it is,” Butler finally exclaimed, holding up a copper-colored key. “Apartment four-twelve.”
Scully took the key from him and went to work on the lock. The door came open, and she rushed inside. “Mr. Kemper? Josh?”
The living room was small and almost devoid of furniture. There was a gray couch in one corner, facing a small television sitting on top of a cardboard box. A picture of two dogs wearing tuxedos took up most of the far wall, and dirty laundry invaded every inch of bare floor. Scully was reminded of her own med-school days—when even an hour for laundry would have been a gift from heaven. She had been a kid, like Josh Kemper—just trying to survive.
“How many rooms?” she shouted back toward the super, who was still standing in the entrance, breathing hard from the four flights of stairs.
“Just this one, the kitchen, and the bedroom. Through that door.”
Scully headed for the open doorway on the other side of the living room. She passed through a small hallway and found herself in a tiny kitchen: porcelain-tiled floor, chipped plaster hanging from the walls, a light fixture that looked like it was older than the electricity that powered it. There was an open container of orange juice on a small wooden table in front of the refrigerator. Otherwise, no signs of life. Scully rushed across the kitchen and through another open doorway.
She nearly tripped on a pile of bedding, catching her balance against a large wooden dresser. There was a bare mattress in the middle of the room, covered with medical texts and science magazines. But still no sign of Kemper.
“The bathroom,” she shouted back over her shoulder. “Where is the bathroom?”
“Off the bedroom.”
Scully cursed, her eyes wildly searching the cramped space—then she saw the closed door, directly on the other side of the dresser, partially obscured by a sea of hanging colored beads. She shoved the beads aside and yanked the door open.
There he was. Shirtless, lying facedown on the floor, one arm crooked around the base of the toilet, the other twisted strangely behind his back. Scully dropped to her knees and put her hand against the side of his neck. No pulse. His skin felt warm to the touch, but it had a waxy appearance and had turned a blue-gray color. No doubt about it—Josh Kemper was dead. She gently unhooked his right arm from around the base of the toilet, noting the lack of rigor mortis in his joints. She used her weight to roll him over.
His eyes and mouth were open, an anguished expression frozen on his boyish face. His face and bare chest were slightly purple where the blood had pooled beneath his skin. Scully reached forward and pushed an errant lock of blond hair out of the way, then pressed her index finger against Kemper’s cheek. The pressure caused a slight blanching of the area beneath her fingertip. When she moved her hand away, the discoloration returned. Early nonfixed lividity. That meant he had been dead less than four hours—perhaps three, but no less than two. From the anguished look on his face and the awkward positioning of his body, Scully guessed he had convulsed or stroked out. But there were no obvious wounds to his head or face, so it wasn’t the fall that had killed him. It had been something else—something inside his body.
Scully had a sudden thought and tilted Kemper’s head to the side. But the back of his neck looked clear. No red dots, no circular rash. Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t the same disease that had sent Stanton into a violent fit.
She sighed, rising to her feet. She turned to the sink and turned the water faucet as hot as it would go. Then she grabbed a bar of soap and began working on her hands. She knew she had taken a risk by coming into the room at all—but she doubted it was anything airborne or even contagious to the touch. Airborne viruses deadly enough to kill a man Kemper’s age were extremely rare—and if the John Doe had been an airborne carrier, there would have been many more victims by now. That meant it was probably something blood-borne. Those at risk included the interns who worked on him, the two med students, perhaps the paramedics who had brought him in, and Bernstein’s surgical team at Jamaica Hospital.
“Ms. Scully?” The super’s hack crept at her from somewhere in the bedroom. “Is everything all right in there?”
“Mr. Butler,” Scully responded, “I need you to go downstairs and wait for the ambulance. I’ll join you in a moment.”
Scully listened as Butler’s plodding footsteps trickled away. Then she finished washing her hands and pulled her cellular phone out of her breast pocket. Her shoulders sagged as she dialed Mulder’s number. He answered on the second ring.
“Mulder, where are you?”
His voice sounded tinny through the phone’s earpiece. “The ER at Columbia Medical School.”
Scully glanced at the body on the bathroom floor. She could hear sirens in the distance, but she wasn’t sure if it was through the phone or through the thin apartment walls. “I take it you found Mike Lifton?”
“Scully, he’s not doing so well. When I brought him in, he was complaining of flulike symptoms. Now the doctors tell me he’s fallen into some sort of coma.”
Scully nodded to herself. The symptoms fit with her earlier hypothesis. A viral threat, something that could cause cerebral swelling. The sort of disease that could also cause a psychotic fit and deadly convulsions. “We’re going to have to notify the CDC immediately. They’re going to want to track down anyone who’s had serious contact with the John Doe. And they’ll need to act fast—obviously, the infected subjects’ conditions deteriorate rapidly.”
Mulder went silent on the other end of the line. Scully wondered if he was still resisting the idea that a microbe was behind the case. Or had the med student’s illness finally convinced him that a disease linked all of the elements of the case together? Then again, she doubted he would give in to reason that easily.
Finally, Mulder’s voice drifted back into Scully’s ear. “So Josh Kemper’s pretty sick, too?”
Scully took a deep breath. “He’s dead, Mulder. Whatever the John Doe was carrying—it progresses quickly.”
“And you think it’s the same disease that made Stanton kill Teri Nestor?”
“Yes. Like I said before, it’s some sort of microbe that causes a swelling of the brain. And Mulder, whatever Stanton was capable of in that recovery room or out in Brooklyn this morning—I don’t think he’ll be putting up much of a struggle in a few more hours. This is a fast-acting disease.”
Scully heard voices out in the apartment. The paramedics had arrived. “I’m heading back to the hospital with Kemper’s corpse. I’ll find out what this microbe is, Mulder. And after I do—we’re both going to get some sleep.”
For once, there was no argument from the other end of the line.
Less than ten minutes later, the EMS team had secured Josh Kemper’s body in the back of the ambulance. As the double doors clicked shut and the heavy vehicle pulled away from the curb, a solitary figure stepped out from the narrow garbage alley that ran next to the apartment complex. His glossy, sable hair was hidden beneath a baseball cap, and his lithe body swam beneath a long, tan overcoat. His hands were buried in his deep pockets, with just a hint of white latex showing at the wrists.
He watched the ambulance roll quietly down the deserted street. He could just make out the red-haired FBI agent sitting in the front passenger seat. Her pale cheek was pressed up against the side window, a look of sheer exhaustion in her blue eyes.
The young, caramel-skinned man thought about the discovery Agent Scully was about to make. Certainly, it would chase the fatigue out of her pretty features. The young man smiled, carefully removing his right hand from his pocket. He twirled a tiny plastic object between his gloved fingers. The object was thin and cylindrical, the shape of a miniature ballpoint pen. The young man touched a plastic button on the edge of the object, and there was an almost imperceptible click.
A shiver of excitement ran through the young man’s skin as he carefully examined the three-inch-long needle that had appeared out of one end of the object. The needle was thinne
r than a single hair, its point significantly smaller than a single human pore. At certain angles it seemed invisible—too small, even, to displace particles of the early-morning air.
So much more subtle than a gun or a razor blade—and at the same time, so much more effective. The young man closed his eyes, reliving the moment just five hours ago—the tiny flick of his wrist, the unnoticed brush of a stranger in a crowded late-night subway car. Then the second moment ten minutes later, in passing on the stairwell of the Columbia Medical School anatomy lab. A thrill pulsed through his body, and he sighed, wishing he could have watched the results himself.
But despite his love for his work—he had to adhere to at least a semblance of professionalism. His gloved finger again found the plastic button, and the tiny needle retracted. He carefully slid the pen-shaped object back into his pocket and strolled toward a blue Chevrolet parked a few feet down the curb.
The two FBI agents would be returning to New York Hospital. If he hurried, he could arrive just a few minutes behind Josh Kemper’s ambulance. He had to stay close to the two agents—on the off chance that they were smarter than expected. If they started to get too close again—the young man smiled, fondling the pen-shaped object inside his pocket. Professionalism, he reminded himself. Still, he could feel the warm, almost sexual anticipation rising through his body.
In his heart, he hoped agents Scully and Mulder were absolutely brilliant.
7
Four hours later, a triangle of harsh orange light ripped Mulder out of a deep sleep. He sat straight up on the borrowed hospital cot in the cozy third-floor intern room, blinking rapidly. Scully came into focus, her red hair highlighted by the high fluorescent beams from the hospital hallway. She was wearing a white lab coat and gloves, and there was a plastic contact sheet in her right hand. The look on her face was somewhere between disbelief and dismay.