by Gibb, Lew
“So, theoretically, an animal with this disease—a dog, for instance—would attack and bite people until it died of old age?” Her hand left behind a warm tingling feeling on Sergio’s skin when she let go
“I would say it’s theoretically possible. But this is all hypothetical,” Dr. Patel said, waving her hands in a wiping-away motion. “This is a laboratory creation. Oh, one other thing. The mutation of the ACAD gene is causing the over-production of aminotransferase. We’re just beginning to understand how this enzyme relates to obesity, but over-production could possibly drive the organism to consume food without ceasing.”
“So the satiation response would be completely shut down?” Sergio asked.
“Not shut down.” Dr. Patel shook her head. “Overridden. In this case, the excessive quantities of the enzyme being produced send such a strong hunger message, it completely overrides the stretch receptors in the stomach that trigger a feeling of fullness and signal the body to stop eating.”
Sergio stared down at the black lab table for a few seconds, then looked up. “Excuse me. I need to make a call.” He hurried to his office. He needed to ask Maria Vargas to perform rabies tests on the four patients and to have the nurse who had been bitten brought back in for vaccination.
When he returned to the lab after making his call, Sergio approached Dr. Patel at the microscope. He crossed his arms and took a deep breath before speaking. “The samples we’ve been working on aren’t laboratory creations.” Dr. Patel’s eyebrows rose, and she turned to face Sergio. “They were taken from the survivors of the jungle expedition that was rescued yesterday.”
Dr. Patel rocked back on her chair, and her eyes grew wide. “I saw the report on the news.”
“Yes. I’m sorry to deceive you, but I wanted you to complete your analysis without any preconceptions.”
“This is incredible.” Dr. Patel stood and began to pace again. “I know we were just talking about what it might look like in a real animal, but I don’t see how it’s possible, especially in humans. I’m frankly surprised they’re even alive.” She stopped and turned to face Sergio, eyes still wide. “And have these patients attacked anyone?”
“Yes. One of them bit a nurse in the isolation ward when they were brought in. The wound had to be stitched in the ER, and she was sent home yesterday afternoon.”
“She needs to receive the rabies protocol as well.”
“That’s who I was calling, just now. I talked to her supervisor and asked that she be brought in for the shots and for an examination. They’re also going to start the rabies protocol on the four patients.”
“Certainly.” Doctor Patel nodded, then looked thoughtful. “What is the status of the military personnel who were bitten during the rescue?”
Sergio’s face flushed, and he felt his heart rate speed up. “I wasn’t aware of any military personnel in the hospital.”
“They are not here. I saw it on the news just before you called yesterday. They said several soldiers were injured in the rescue and were being treated at the military hospital.”
Sergio felt sick. Why hadn’t the hospital CEO told him about the army patients?
“I would also like to test the subjects’ appetites. With the accelerated cellular reproduction, they should be ravenous. Would it be possible for me to see these patients for myself?”
“Why don’t you go up now? I’ll call the charge nurse, Maria Vargas, and tell her you’re coming. Then I’ll see if I can get in touch with the army about the injured soldiers.”
Chapter Six
Officer Paulo Moreno popped another ball of fried cheese-dough into his mouth and groaned with pleasure. His mid-shift snack—a double helping of pão de queijo from his favorite food truck—brought back fond memories of his father. He wiped the crumbs from his mustache and pushed the thought of how his father had left when he was ten to the back of his mind.
Moonlight filtered through the palm trees and added to the glow from the illuminated central government building, the Palacio do Planalto. His large belly was pressed against the cheap plastic table, reminding him how dangerously close he was to failing his annual physical. He knew he shouldn’t eat so much, but the heavenly golfball-sized balls of fried cheese were irresistible.
The portable radio squawked to life, and the voice of his dispatcher dragged him from his pleasant daydream. She directed him to collect a missing nurse from her home and bring her to Brasília Hospital for some tests. He couldn’t bring himself to discard the last two pão de queijo, so he wrapped them in a paper napkin and put them in his front pocket before heading across the plaza to his patrol car.
In less than ten minutes, he pulled into the empty slot labeled with the nurse’s apartment number. Paulo lumbered out of the car, noting the trail of dark red droplets leading from where he had parked to the large puddle of congealing blood on the sidewalk before the nurse’s apartment. He drew his Glock 17 and approached the apartment with his gun leading the way. The window beside the front door was broken. Glass fragments sparkled on the cement, and the curtains flapped in the breeze. A woman’s scream echoed through the courtyard. It sounded like it was coming from the building’s right side. Running toward the noise with his gun extended and his belly swinging from side to side, Paulo thought again about his need to lose weight.
After he rounded the corner, Paulo stopped and stared. The area between the condominium complex’s buildings was illuminated by small lights lining the sidewalk. Their light fell on the macabre scene of a young woman lying supine on the ground while another young woman perched on her chest. The woman on the ground was screaming and punching at the one straddling her torso; the one on top had the trapped woman’s forearm pressed against her face while her head jerked from side to side.
“Hey! You!” Paulo’s voice boomed. “Freeze!” He shuffled forward, gun leveled at the attacker’s head, until he was two meters away. The attacking woman’s head snapped around. Drops of blood flew from her nose and chin. Paulo noticed one of them land on the toe of his duty shoe. He swallowed hard when the intense dark eyes locked onto him. “Step away,” Paulo ordered in a much higher voice than normal. What he could see of the victim’s arm looked like shiny ground hamburger.
The attacker was off the other woman and had covered half the distance between them before Paulo realized what was happening. He jerked the trigger three times. In spite of the close range, two of his bullets missed. The third struck the woman in the right shoulder just before she crashed into him.
By the time the pair hit the ground, her arms were wrapped around his neck. The expanding chasm of her mouth, smeared with blood and bright pink lipstick, moved toward his face until her perfect teeth clamped down on his nose. Paulo screamed so hard it felt like he might rip a hole in his throat while he slammed his gun into her head. Over and over. The sound was like punching a watermelon, but the teeth remained clamped hard, sending pulses of pain burning across his entire face.
When Paulo realized his mistake, he stopped and jammed the gun’s barrel against her temple. The woman didn’t react at all. The electric current of pain still sizzled through his mind. After a slight hesitation, he pulled the trigger. The woman collapsed onto Paulo like an electric toy with the power switched off, and her jaw relaxed. A cooling mist settled on his face. Blood from the entry wound draped in his right eye. He gagged and shoved the inert body with all his strength. It slid off the mound of his belly and flopped to the ground, arms splayed. Her mouth, ringed by a dark red goatee, gaped at the sky. Paulo rolled to his knees. Even though he knew she was dead, he checked for a pulse, not wanting his report to lack that crucial detail. After confirming that her heart was no longer beating, he holstered his pistol and lumbered to his feet.
The victim sat on the sidewalk, cradling her injured arm with her free hand, shoulders shaking with sobs he could hear only faintly over the ringing in his ears. The wounds on her forearm and wrist glistened in the glow from a nearby light.
“What h
appened?” Paulo said, walking over and kneeling beside the woman. “Did she say anything?”
Her head tilted up, and when her eyes met Paulo’s, she sucked in a quick breath before speaking in a whisper. “Oh my god.” She stared at Paulo’s face and moved her hand close to her mouth. “Your nose.”
Paulo crossed his eyes and tried to focus. What he could see made him want to close his eyes and look away. The majority of his nose dangled to one side like something from a haunted house. With a tentative hand, he gripped his nose and maneuvered it back into place. He felt blood from the wound drip onto his chin and looked down. An expanding half-moon of wetness covered his uniform shirt to the third button.
The victim stared at him with her mouth hanging open and her eyes vacant until Paulo spoke again. “What happened?”
She seemed to focus her attention on him. “She never even said anything.” Tears streamed down her face. “She just jumped me and started biting.” Her sobbing increased, and she leaned into him. Paulo comforted her as well as he could with a one-armed hug while holding his nose to his face. The pain had become an insistent throbbing that increased with each minuscule movement of the fingers holding his ruined nose. The woman didn’t seem to notice the blood from his face dripping into her hair.
Although he was pretty sure the approaching sirens were a result of the gunshot, Paulo radioed his dispatcher to report the attack. Looking at the injured woman, Paulo was struck by the contrast between her scarf’s bright yellow-and-green floral design and her blood-splattered white linen skirt.
He hoped they would give him a lot of painkillers at the hospital.
Chapter Seven
Sergio slammed the phone’s receiver into its base with a loud crack, and the eight-by-ten photo of his wife fell forward with a clatter just as Dr. Patel appeared at the office door.
“That was not the sound of success,” she said.
Sergio rocked back in his chair and blew out a long breath between his tightened lips before waving his new friend in. “Please, come in, Indrani,” he said in a tired voice.
While the cellular biologist settled herself in one of the desk chairs, Sergio scrubbed his face with both hands, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desktop, supporting the weight of his head in his palms.
The pair had been working closely together throughout the previous night and now most of the day. They had started to form a bond based on mutual respect and a love of puns. He hadn’t had a close relationship with another person—much less a woman—since his marriage to the social-climbing champion of Brazil, and it felt good to have someone with whom to talk things through. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any sexual tension between them. He just felt a companionable intellectual sympathy for the brilliant scientist.
Sergio sat up straight and spoke. “The short sightedness of bureaucrats never ceases to amaze me. These last few hours have been some of the most frustrating of my entire life.”
“Were you successful in getting the police to look for the nurse?”
“Sort of.” Sergio dropped his hands to the desk and shook his head. “The police dispatcher refused to see this as anything more than a simple case of rabies. But I finally convinced him to send a car to her apartment.”
Dr. Patel rubbed her hands on the legs of her pants and looked at the floor. “And what about the hospital administration?”
“The administrator I spoke with is only a manager, with no medical background. She knows only that four patients are sequestered and doesn’t see a problem with one—” he made air quotes with his fingers “—‘possibly infected’ nurse.”
“That is unfortunate.” Dr. Patel removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Perhaps once the army gets involved, we will have more luck in convincing them.”
Sergio barked a short laugh. “They were much worse. It took over an hour of pleading and threatening before they would even admit that any service members had suffered injuries in the jungle. I finally secured a promise that the physician in charge of the injured soldiers would call me as soon as he was able.”
Dr. Patel shook her head in disbelief. “I am afraid to ask, but what was the response to your request for an infectious diseases specialist?”
“That is possibly the most frustrating, since it was the hospital director herself who asked me to look into this. She now seems more concerned with protecting the hospital’s image than with the public’s welfare. She was concerned that the hospital could be viewed as negligent for sending the nurse home following the attack and has decided that the information should be kept quiet until we determine exactly what the survivors were suffering from. She made it absolutely clear that nothing is to be shared outside the hospital and especially not with the media. She was especially put-out that I had shared information with you and wanted me to caution you not to spread any premature rumors.” Sergio shook his head and righted the picture of his wife without looking at it. “Do you have any good news about your trip to the isolation ward?”
“It is almost exactly as I hypothesized. The patients are single-minded in their desire to bite whomever comes near and don’t appear to understand when someone is talking to them. I did discover that they turn their heads immediately and focus intently on the source of the slightest noise.”
“That’s something new, I guess,” Sergio said softly.
“I also performed a little impromptu experiment to see what the patients might be induced to eat. I was told that none of them had eaten anything since they were brought in. I offered part of a hamburger and also a small piece of chicken. They wanted nothing to do with it. They simply continued snapping their jaws and stretching toward me and the nurse who was assisting me.”
Sergio bowed his head and shook it. “I hope we aren’t too far behind the curve on this.”
Chapter Eight
When Jerry and Mike walked into the Sapp Brothers Diner for breakfast, Bob and Alicia were already in their usual booth. Amy, their usual waitress, hustled over and took their orders before they even got to the table—a garden omelet for Jerry and a stack of pancakes for Mike. After several years of regular breakfasts at the only decent restaurant in their service area, they all had the menu memorized.
Amy followed them to their table, refilled Bob and Alicia’s coffees, then flipped over two coffee cups and filled them for Jerry and Mike without asking if they wanted any. She probably could have dispensed their food with taking their orders, too, since they always got the same thing.
Jerry took the seat across from Bob, who pointed at the TV mounted over the soft drink machine. “I hate to say I told you so, but this is looking more and more like the beginning of the end.”
“Bob,” Alicia said, punching him in the shoulder. “Let the poor guys at least sit down before you start in on your end-of-the-world craziness.”
“That’s okay, Alicia,” Jerry said. “We were already talking about it. We heard a radio report on the way in.”
“Yeah,” Mike added sliding into the booth next to Jerry. “Did you know the capital of Brazil is Brasília?”
Alicia’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward. “Really? That’s very interesting. I thought it was Rio.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Mike said with a big smile. “I never even heard of Brasília. But I Googled it on the way over. It’s actually an interesting story.”
Alicia put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on one fist. “Tell me more.”
Mike smiled. Jerry suspected he had a thing for Bob’s partner, although he hadn’t said anything yet. “Rio was actually the capitol until nineteen-sixty, but they decided they needed to be away from the humidity and crowding, so they built Brasília from scratch and moved the capitol there.”
“Oh,” Alicia said, nodding her head and smiling, “just like Washington, D.C.”
“Exactly. Did you know they had to drain a swamp for that?”
“You two are quite the comedians.” Bob, said. “But if you were really
paying attention to what’s been happening.” He was shaking his head and pointing at the TV with a piece of bacon. “You would know things are going just the way I said they would.”
“What do you mean?” Jerry said, looking at the TV and taking a sip of coffee. The same clip of the patients at the Brazilian hospital was running over a crawler showing stock prices at the bottom of the screen.
Amy arrived and slid plates in front of Jerry and Mike. Maybe she did take their orders just for formality’s sake. She must have put their orders in when they’d pulled up.
“They got victims at two different locations, and they’re treating it like just an isolated incidence of something, like road rage without the car. Just like they always do in the movies when people say stupid things like, ‘Oh my. Why is that guy that died two days ago still walking around? Maybe I should walk over unarmed and discuss this with him.’ Next thing you know, things have gone to hell in a handbasket because no one wanted to accept what was happening.”
“Seriously, Bob,” Alicia said as she scooped a bite of her biscuits and gravy into her mouth. “There’s, like, less than ten people doing weird things in Brazil right now.”
“That’s the ones we know about.”
“Oh, so there’s this big conspiracy already to conceal this?” Alicia said around a mouthful of biscuit.
Bob frowned and crossed his arms. “It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. It’s just simple human nature. Ninety percent of the people aren’t even paying attention because it’s not happening to a celebrity, or in their front yards. The rest are either just too busy to listen or they’re denying what’s right in front of them because it doesn’t fit their notion of how the world works. We deny what we don’t understand. Just like you’re doing right now.”