by Scott Britz
“That moron won’t let me pass.”
“Then don’t pass him.”
“Fuck if I won’t.”
The road ahead was clear. Unbelievably, the pickup was doing thirty-five again. Hasta la vista, muchacho! Niedermann was almost on the guy’s tailgate when he gave the accelerator a serious kick and swung out to pass him. Who would’ve believed it? Once again the truck took off, matching the BMW’s surge as though he had been waiting for it. In four seconds they were both doing about seventy. Still Niedermann couldn’t pass. What’s more, the son of a bitch started crowding the center line, forcing Niedermann so far out that he felt the crunch of his tires edging onto the far shoulder. There was no fighting back—the pickup had more than twice the mass of a BMW. So when another set of headlights appeared, Niedermann hit the brakes and swerved back into exhaust-sucking second place.
“That guy’s a fucking psycho!” Niedermann screamed, above the blaring stereo.
“Then why are you playing his game?” shouted Cricket.
“It’s dangerous to be behind him. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”
No mistake. Everything this guy did was deliberate. He seemed to anticipate Niedermann’s moves—lying in wait for him, toying with him. Did he have some vendetta against BMWs? Or was it just testosterone gone wild?
The bastard had some power under that monstrous hood, that was for sure. But he was up against a car that could go from zero to sixty in under four and a half seconds, and he had to be taught a lesson. In this world there was fast enough, and then there was fucking white lightning. Know which you are.
Thirty-five mph again. This time, don’t tip your hand. Wait till he’s sure you won’t go. Then give him a taste of rubber. Niedermann hung back a couple of car lengths from the pickup, as if he weren’t interested in the bait. He even waited until the headlights of a slow-moving camper peered around the bend a few hundred yards ahead. Then he downshifted and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The 3.2-liter engine of the Z4 roared as he shot forward, his body flattening against the bucket seat.
But the Dodge was onto him. He floored it, too. Car and truck zoomed forward as if they had but a single power train. No good. Abort. Niedermann let go of the pedal and tried to swing back into his own lane. This time the pickup slowed, blocking him. Niedermann hit the gas. The Dodge, too. Now the brake. Again, the Dodge. The camper would be on top of him in seconds. A fifty-foot cliff to his left. Five thousand pounds of steel to his right. No way forward or back.
He’s a maniac. He’s going to get me killed. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Niedermann recognized something in the dark outline of the driver of the truck. Before the name even popped into his mind, he knew who it was and why.
Two or three seconds left.
Cricket screamed.
“Brace yourself!” Niedermann shouted, and in the same instant he slammed his foot against the floorboard. The little BMW seemed to leap forward by half a car length. It’s enough. Niedermann jerked the steering wheel hard right. Bang! Metal ground on metal as he rammed the front corner of the Dodge. The Dodge bounded off—right into a wall of granite. The friction against the rock acted exactly like a slamming of the brakes, and the Dodge dropped back instantly. Niedermann swerved hard right, missing the camper by inches.
The Dodge wasn’t so lucky. The drag against the rock wall put him into a spin, swinging his rear end into the northbound lane just in time for a broadside from the camper. With a crash of glass and metal, the camper plowed straight on through, sending the Dodge into a counterspin with its right-side wheels tilted up in the air. Like a two-and-a-half-ton twirling penny, it swept across the roadway, then dropped off the cliff edge toward the rocks below.
Niedermann slammed to a dead stop, threw open the car door, and jumped onto the road. The camper was sitting crooked across both lanes, its taillights and headlights still on. The door jiggled as its driver started to get out. The roadway sparkled with debris. A cloud of smoke or steam was rolling up from below the cliff. The air was full of strange smells, of burning rubber and oil and brake metal.
The passenger door of the BMW opened a foot or so until it knocked against the granite escarpment. Niedermann heard Cricket vomiting into the little wedge between the car and the rock.
He got back into the car. His hands shook until he wrapped them around the steering wheel. His heart was pounding as never before.
“My God! Look what you’ve done.” Cricket wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Shut the door.”
“Back up! We need to check on him. He could be hurt.”
The engine was still running. Niedermann put the car into first gear and started to roll forward. “I hope he’s toast.”
“Stop! I’m a doctor. I’m legally required to help.”
“Shut the fucking door, please.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
Niedermann reached over and pulled the door shut himself, brushing against Cricket’s breasts. “Do you know who that was? That was a guy named Dominick Loscalzo. The motherfucker just tried to kill us. Well, to kill me, anyway. You’d have been collateral damage. I wouldn’t go back there if I were you. He might still be alive.”
“That’s insane. Is the whole world going to hell?”
Niedermann grinned sardonically. “Are you sure you wanna go back to Acadia Springs?”
Cricket turned toward the window. It looked as if she were going to puke again. “Yes. As fast as you can.”
Niedermann flicked off the stereo. He didn’t need Led Zeppelin. Music was in his own ears—wild, free, roof-blowingly loud. Tipping back against his headrest, he pursed his lips and let loose a whoop of victory. “Somebody up there must like me. That’s twice today I’ve cheated death.”
Twelve
GIFFORD GLIDED ALONG THE DARKENED HIGHWAY, the whoosh of his Lincoln Navigator barely audible above the rustling of the pines. He drove slowly, scanning the shadows beyond the range of his headlamps, ready to turn back at the first glimpse of a hidden police car.
For hours, driving constantly to evade tracking of his cell signal, he had made call after call—to Henri Barthelme at UNESCO, to the governor of Maine, to half the section heads of the National Institutes of Health, preparing a counterattack against Cricket and her handful of allies. She was in police custody, he learned, but that didn’t reassure him. The cops had put an APB out on him as well. How ironic—he, the greatest benefactor in the history of mankind—being hunted as a threat to public safety.
His mind was racing. Over and over he made an inventory of every scrap of the Methuselah Vector that might still be left at Acadia Springs. Could he find enough to keep the Lottery going? His own research stocks weren’t pure enough for medicinal use. In the production lab, batches forty-nine and fifty were running in the incubators, but it would take forty-eight hours to complete their growth cycle, and five more days for purification. Meanwhile, the world was waiting. The Lottery was supposed to begin in less than fifteen hours.
He couldn’t believe it had come to this. The greatest discovery in medical history was about to be obliterated. Millions would die because of the treachery of one madwoman.
But then, a little after dark, there came a text from, of all people, Dominick Loscalzo: All is not lost. I know a secret stash. Meet me at mile marker 15 on hwy 3.
Loscalzo was Niedermann’s man, and Gifford didn’t trust him. But he had to take the chance. The Methuselah Vector was more important than anything else—even his own fate.
Gifford drove to the spot and parked. Before long, a shadow emerged from the trees and yanked open the car door. Loscalzo was covered in dust. His shirt was ripped and a large, red bump was on his forehead.
“What happened to you?”
“Just a conk in the noggin. I’ll be okay. Now drive. Go, go!”
Gifford pulled bac
k onto the highway. Ahead, he saw a flickering blue and red glow coming from around a sharp bend in the road. The oncoming northbound lane had been closed off, and a cop was waving traffic forward a few cars at a time. They passed through a light show of red and blue strobes, set against the magenta glare of burning flares. A brown-and-white camper with a bashed-in grille straddled two-thirds of the roadway. Surrounding it were police cars, a fire engine, an ambulance, and a couple of tow trucks. One of the trucks had backed close to the edge of a precipice. Some men were shining spotlights down the mountainside.
“Pickup went over the edge here,” said Loscalzo.
“You saw it?”
“I was in it.” Loscalzo laughed.
Gifford found Loscalzo’s gaiety unsettling. “Your text, uh—”
“You remember me talkin’ about my mama? How she’s got—”
“Multiple sclerosis.”
“Yeah. MS.” Loscalzo smiled. “You’re sharp, Doc. You listen. Anyway, you said a shot of that Methuselah Vector could help her, right? I was wonderin’ if we could establish a little quid pro quo—just between us. One shot for her, for services rendered.”
“Mr. Loscalzo, there is no more Methuselah Vector. Dr. Rensselaer-Wright made sure of that.”
“Not totally.”
“What do you mean?”
Loscalzo chuckled. “That fuckin’ sack of shit Niedermann’s been playin’ ya, Doc. He’s been skimmin’ off the stuff you’ve been makin’ in your lab.”
“Jack? Why would he do such a thing?”
“To sell, Doc. This stuff goes for a million bucks a pop. That I got from his own lips. He has rich boys lined up for it. Movie stars. Big-ass politicians.”
Gifford was dumbfounded. “How much has he taken?”
“I dunno. But I have a pretty good idea where he keeps it. I laid down a few bills to get people talkin’. Shadowed our friend on his nightly errands.”
“And . . . ?”
“Here’s where we need to talk, Doc. Our quid pro quo, if you will.”
“Mr. Loscalzo . . . er, Dom . . . It is absolutely imperative that the Methuselah Vector Lottery proceed on schedule tomorrow morning. If, in fact, you can deliver what you promise, you will be one of the great heroes of humanity. Every newspaper—”
“Forget the papers. My ma—”
“Of course. That’s no problem. I would be honored to give her the Methuselah Vector—with my own hands. She’ll be the very first in line.”
“Okay, then. Now, if you want to know where this stuff is, you have to think like that slimy son of a bitch Niedermann. You’d have to keep it cold, right?”
“Yes. In a cold room or a freezer.”
“I know there’s nothin’ like that in Niedermann’s office. But he would want to keep it somewhere he could get to, but no one else would look. If he was skimming it from the production lab in the Rensselaer Building, he wouldn’t want to carry it far. So I think it’s still in that building. Maybe in the basement. Is there a cold room there?”
“No. Just some utility rooms and a storeroom for supplies—for my lab and for the production lab.”
“People go there much?”
“No. Almost no one.”
“Is it under lock and key? Does Niedermann have access?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a freezer?”
“No. Just an old dry-ice machine no one uses anymore.”
“What’s dry ice?”
“It’s frozen carbon dioxide. It maintains a temperature of minus seventy-eight and a half degrees centigrade. That’s as cold as an ultra-low-temperature freezer.”
“Bingo, Doc!”
Gifford floored the accelerator. With all the cops looking for him, Acadia Springs was the most dangerous place in the world for him at that moment, but he had to take a chance. If Loscalzo was telling the truth—if there really was a second set of Vector stocks—the Lottery would be back on track. That was the only thing that counted.
He turned onto a rugged dirt lane, scarcely visible amid the overhanging trees. No one but park rangers ever used it, but it would get him to the back of the campus, near the Rensselaer Building, without going through the main gate.
He looked at his wristwatch: 9:00 p.m. I have time, I have time. He could scarcely contain his joy.
Still fifteen hours to go. . . .
Thirteen
WITH NIEDERMANN AT HER SIDE, CRICKET hit the intercom button for Bay 2. “How is she?” She almost dreaded the answer.
The taller of two helmeted and blue-safety-suited figures turned away from the plastic tent in the middle of the room and looked toward the window.
“Cricket!” exclaimed Hank. “How did you . . . the jail—”
“Never mind me. How is Emmy?”
Hank seemed already to be in mourning. “I . . . I . . . we . . . we’ve done everything we could think of. She’s going . . . fast.”
At least she’s alive. Thank God, she’s still alive. “Where’s Wig? Is he here yet?”
“No. Why?”
Cricket heard the front door being buzzed open. “Wait! It’s him!” She ran toward it.
Waggoner and Freiberg came through the entryway, Waggoner carrying two large IV bags filled with clear fluid.
“Is that it?” asked Cricket.
“It’s all I could extract,” said Waggoner in his usual monotone. “The affinity purification columns were still set up from this morning, so I only had to spin down the blood, pull off the serum, and load it for purification. There wasn’t time to concentrate it, so it’s in a couple liters of buffered saline. The yield wasn’t as much as I had hoped for, but, mind you, we’re talking about blood of a dog that was dead and buried. Four point two liters of blood yielded just over fifteen and a half grams of purified antibody.”
“Is that enough?” Cricket’s voice was sharp with impatience.
Waggoner shrugged. “Getting the dose right is guesswork. This is nonselected polyclonal stuff—the whole gamut of antibodies that were circulating in Hannibal’s system. That includes antibodies to distemper, rabies, parvovirus, maybe even pollen and cat dander. Probably seventy-five percent of it targets the acute Nemesis infection itself. Estimating the total number of viruses in Emmy’s blood as a few trillion, and the antibodies’ affinity constants as lying in the range of zero point five nanomolar—then my best guess is that you need between ten and twenty grams of dog antibodies to achieve a clinical result. Bottom line: we have enough antiserum for one patient.”
“No,” said Cricket. “Divide what you have in two. Administer half to Emmy and half to Mr. Niedermann.”
Waggoner gave Niedermann a curious look. “Niedermann? What for? He’s not even sick.”
“I’ve made a deal with the devil, and I have to pay.”
“I’m not the devil,” protested Niedermann. “I’m the best ally you have at this moment.”
Cricket turned her back on him—coldly, pointedly. “Erich, bring me a crash cart and an IV pole.”
As Cricket dragged a chair to the viewing corridor outside Bay 2, Freiberg hastily rolled up a chest-high, red metal cart that had been stored next to the security office. From the top drawer of the cart, Cricket pulled out a pair of gloves and an IV kit. Ordering Niedermann to sit down and roll up his left sleeve, Cricket snapped on the gloves and roughly swabbed his inner elbow with iodine. Then she tied a rubber tourniquet around his arm and poked a needle into the first vein that showed itself. Niedermann winced. A moment later, Cricket had attached the needle through a plastic tube to an IV bag, yanked off the tourniquet, and watched the first drops of antiserum begin to fall.
“Satisfied, Mr. Niedermann?”
It was a declaration, not a question. Taking Waggoner’s second IV bag, she stormed through the portal of the containment suite and hastily donned a biosaf
ety suit. She could barely endure the succession of air locks to her daughter’s bedside.
As she charged into the lab bay, Hank and Jean greeted her with amazement.
“Jean, what do you have running from that IV pump?” asked Cricket.
“Saline, with Lasix for her kidneys.”
“Disconnect it and start this instead. It’s the antiserum from Hannibal. Use a large-bore catheter. Eighteen-gauge. Set the flow rate as high as you can go.”
“That’d be one hundred cc per minute.”
“Good. Then the infusion will be complete in ten minutes.”
“Are you sure it’s not too late?” Hank’s voice sounded forlorn.
“I don’t know, Hank. Maybe it is. Maybe nothing can save her. But we have to hope.”
“I have hope,” said Jean.
After a few seconds the precious fluid started its journey into Emmy’s veins. Cricket was breathless, watching the monitors in dread silence. Minutes went by with no change.
Through his visor, Hank’s face looked haggard and pale.
“Why don’t you take a break, Hank?” said Cricket. “Jean and I can manage here.”
“Okay, I’ll be in the office.” His voice had the wobbly tone of a guitar string stretched almost to the breaking point. He took one last look at Emmy, then tottered through the air lock.
Almost immediately, Cricket heard Niedermann over the intercom. “Dr. Rensselaer-Wright, I would like you to witness this.”
Half a dozen security guards stood around Niedermann’s chair.
“These are all employees of Eden Pharmaceuticals,” explained Niedermann with a sweep of his hand. “They answer directly to me.” Turning to the men, he raised his voice. “Gentlemen, as of this moment Acadia Springs is under emergency quarantine. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about a mysterious virus. Those rumors are, unfortunately, true. I’m setting up a new chain of command. You, Mike, will be the acting security chief. You will answer not to me, but to Dr. Rensselaer-Wright, who, by her authority as an officer for the Centers for Disease Control, is assuming direct control of the institute. Her word is law.”