The Deep Zone: A Novel

by James M. Tabor

  She dropped off, came back. “Know wha’?” She was starting to mumble, heard herself, but the best she could do.

  “What?”

  “I like the way you smell.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad you do. It’d be a hell of a thing if you didn’t.”

  “Do you like the way I smell?” She giggled, the sleep pulling her.

  “That and a whole lot more.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you all of them, every single one, and that will take a long time. But you need to sleep now.”

  He leaned down and kissed her softly on the unbruised cheek, then on her forehead, careful, tender, then on the lips, his touch soft as light. He straightened up, still holding her hand, and the last thing she remembered before dropping off was him standing there, towering over her, looking down from what appeared to be a great height, the air around him seeming to glow, and her feeling not only safe, but saved.

  SPENDING SO LONG IN THE CAVE HAD DISRUPTED HALLIE’S biorhythms, which would take days to restabilize. She slept for twelve hours after Bowman left and awoke in the middle of the night. The floor was dark. Somewhere down the hall a patient was snoring softly, but that was the only sound.

  She tossed and turned and tried to go back to sleep, but her body was still in midday mode. At three A.M. she was still awake, trying to make her mind stop revisiting the things that had happened, when a nurse padded in silently with a stethoscope, digital thermometer, and sphygmomanometer.

  “Hey. I’m awake. You don’t need to tiptoe. But if you could leave the light off, I’d appreciate it. Still hurts my eyes.”

  “Of course. The night-light is plenty. I’m really sorry to disturb you, Dr. Leland.” The nurse was a short, plump woman in her thirties wearing white pants and a floral-patterned hospital top. Her name tag said, “Placida Dominguez, RN.”

  “I can get you something to help you sleep if you like.” She had a slight Latin accent and a velvet-soft voice. Hallie wanted no more befuddling pain meds.

  “Thanks. I’ll count sheep or something.”

  “Warm milk? That really does work. Tryptophan, you know.”

  “No, but I appreciate your concern.”

  Hallie sat up and had to be quiet for ten seconds while the nurse took her temperature with the digital thermometer, read it, and said, “Ninety-eight point four.” She took Hallie’s blood pressure, listened to her lungs.

  “It’s quiet here tonight,” Hallie said.

  “Here, yes. Not so much in other wards, though.”

  “No?”

  “No. They have activated the Biosecurity Isolation Area. Down in Sublevel Two. We have not been told what is there.” She paused, frowned. “People are thinking maybe smallpox. It’s all soldiers from Afghanistan. You know, germ warfare maybe.”

  It’s ACE, Hallie thought. They don’t know yet. “Have they confirmed smallpox?”

  The nurse shrugged. “No. It’s just what people are saying. Nobody knows, really.”

  Hallie nodded, but did not add anything.

  “Your vitals are looking very good, Dr. Leland,” the nurse said. “I think they will discharge you tomorrow.”

  “That will be nice. To sleep in my own bed. Yum.”

  “Good night, Doctor. Please use your call button for anything at all. Even if you should only want to talk. I am just at the nurses’ station.”

  Hallie eased down, then turned onto one side because her bruised back hurt. They had raised the safety bars on her bed, and now she lay there staring through them. She was not thinking about her expedition into the cave. She was thinking, instead, of the footage of the soldier Don Barnard had shown her in his office, back before this all started. The things she’d seen were like the afterimages caused by staring into a bright light, but these would not fade. She closed her eyes, tried to think about other things, to squeeze the horror out of her mind. Then she stopped doing that. Turning away struck her as cowardice. Turning away from the people themselves struck her as worse. Especially from one person. What would she tell Mary, knowing that her sister was right here in the same hospital, and that she could have seen her, and did not? She dropped the safety bars and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Because it was so late, the halls were deserted. It was not hard for Hallie to find a supply closet and exchange her hospital johnny for green doctor’s scrubs. She pulled white Tyvek covers over the running shoes Don Barnard had brought and put a hair cover on, just for good measure.

  “I’m Dr. Leland,” she said as she approached the desk by the elevator. She had expected that access to the elevators and stairways would be restricted. The young corporal looked at her, then looked again, transfixed by her damaged face. “Car accident,” she said. “The stupid Beltway. You know how it is. I need to get down to the iso unit to see a patient.”

  He examined a clipboard on the desk, running his index finger down a printout with a list of names, the finger stopping beneath each one. His lips moved while he read the names silently. Finally he looked up.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, ma’am …”

  “Doctor.”

  He blushed. “Yes, ma’am, I mean, Doctor, but I don’t got your name here.” He held up the clipboard.

  She grabbed it, laid it on the table, picked up one of his pens, and wrote her name between two others. Eyes flashing, she pushed the clipboard toward him.

  “Now you do. Open that elevator, soldier.”

  After passing into the iso unit’s air lock system, Hallie performed all the BSL-4 procedures, donned a Chemturion suit, and finally walked through an inner air lock into the unit itself, as quiet and dim as the area she had left. Ultraviolet germicidal lights on the ceiling and walls glowed an eerie, radioactive-looking blue, and even with the Chemturion’s filtration system running the air smelled of a chlorine-based aerosol disinfectant.

  The nurses’ station was deserted—no surprise with a ward full of critical cases. She turned right and started down the long hall. Most of the rooms had their doors open, privacy curtains drawn around the beds inside. When she was halfway to the corridor’s end, she passed a room where the curtain was not drawn and she could see the person lying in bed. She was sleeping or, more likely, knocked out on meds, on her back. Some of the flesh on the right side of her head had been eaten away, exposing white patches of skull. There was a plum-sized hole in her left cheek, through which Hallie could see jawbone and teeth. There was no eye on this side, just a suppurating empty socket.

  Hallie’s stomach churned. It was one thing to look at pictures of this horror, another to actually see—and smell—it. She started down the white corridor again. At its end, she turned left and kept walking. She passed five rooms and then stopped at the door to one. The rectangular metal frame on the wall beside the door held a paper name label: STILWELL, L. MAJ. FLNG.

  It was a private room, just the one bed, a perk of rank. Night-lights at the baseboards and wall switches illuminated the room softly. Hallie could see a woman with short brown hair lying in the bed. She had met Lenora only once, at Mary’s parents’ home in Louisiana. Now an oxygen-supplying cannula was inserted into Stilwell’s nostrils. A sheet was pulled up to her chin. Her arms rested on top of the sheet. Both hands were bandaged. And then, as Hallie watched, one came up and waved her in. She walked to the bedside.

  “Hey.” Stilwell’s voice was a raw whisper, roughened by pain and throat inflammation. “What’s up, Doc?”

  My kind of gal. “Lenora?” she said very softly. Then, remembering the suit, she repeated her question more loudly.

  “Yes. You’re early.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Stilwell chuckled. “Not much sleeping going on here, Doc.”

  “I’m not a doctor. Not a medical doctor. I’m a microbiologist.”

  “I see.” Stilwell did not sound happy to hear that. “Do you really need another biopsy? They’ve already taken about a pound of flesh for tests.”
/>   “No, it’s not that. I …” Now that she was here, she found it difficult to explain to this woman why.

  “Take your time, Doctor,” Stilwell rasped. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “Neither am I. What’s your name, Doctor?”

  “Um, it’s Leland. Hallie Leland. I know your sister, Mary.”

  Stilwell did not sit up—could not—but the surprise was clear in her voice. “Hallie Leland. I remember meeting you at our home. What on earth brings you here?”

  “I …” What had brought her here? Should she tell Stilwell about the whole Cueva de Luz effort? No. Too complicated. “I learned you were in here yesterday.” Leave it at that.

  “So if you’re here, you must know about ACE?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “That surprises me. They’ve been working hard to keep this contained.”

  “I work in a government facility that’s been researching countermeasures. For ACE, I mean.”

  “What facility?”

  “BARDA. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Most people haven’t.” She hesitated. “What you did. Over there. Incredible.”

  Stilwell let out an exasperated sigh. “No big deal. It’s war. Those boys get shot and die every day. I’m going to leave them when things finally get dangerous in my house? Not likely.” She winced, groaned, obviously in sudden pain.

  “Should I call someone?” Hallie could see a small area of infection on the left side of Stilwell’s neck, and one the size of a half dollar on her forehead. They looked like third-degree burns, red and raw and oozing.

  “No. It passed. Nerve endings flare up when they die, but just for a few seconds.” She got her breath back. “Of course, there are billions of nerve endings, so I have plenty to look forward to.”

  “Lenora, maybe I should go. I don’t want to make this worse.” Hallie was damning herself, feeling selfish now, for having interrupted this good woman’s rest.

  Stilwell waved a bandaged hand. “Lenny. My friends call me. Stay. Good to talk.”

  “All right. I feel stupid in the suit, though.”

  “You’d feel stupider if you came down with this stuff. So don’t even think about taking that off. But you can come closer.”

  Hallie stepped to the side of the bed.

  “How is Mary? She won’t answer my emails or phone calls,” Stilwell said.

  “I know. She’s …” Was this the time to tell her big sister about the drinking? No. “She’s doing okay. I’ve spent some time with her recently, down in Florida.”

  “She really okay?”

  Then again, was this a time to lie? “Not really.”

  “The Army treated her like dirt.”

  “I know.”

  Stilwell did not speak for a while. Then: “Husband know you’re down here?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Sorry. Shouldn’t assume. Can’t see your hand, though. Is news about this stuff getting out?”

  “Not yet. They fear there will be a panic.”

  “My family doesn’t know anything, either.” Real pain of a different kind came into Stilwell’s voice.

  Hallie couldn’t believe that. “They haven’t been notified?”

  Stilwell shrugged, winced. “Two things you learn about the military. Follow orders. And often they suck.”

  “Do you want me to call them? I’ll do it right now.”

  “Not just yet, thanks. They couldn’t visit now, anyway. I think it will be easier to wait until I’m a little better.”

  The ACE mortality rate thus far was 90 percent. So there was at least a chance. But Stilwell did not look like she was on the road to recovery.

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “Tampa. Husband’s name is Doug. We met in college. Tall. Looks like Jimmy Stewart. Great dancer. Son Danny. Fifteen. Plays football. Boyfriend?”

  Hallie realized it was a question.

  “Not just now. Well, maybe.” She smiled at her own confusion. “Time will tell. Danny plays football, you said?”

  “Varsity already. Wrestling team, too.”

  “College plans?”

  “No. Wants to enlist. Day he turns eighteen.”

  “Jesus.” Hallie regretted that the moment she said it.

  “Exactly.” Stilwell started to say more but coughed violently. At one point she raised a bandaged hand and pointed at the vomit pan on her bedside table. Hallie held it, clumsily with the thick gloves. When the bout finally subsided, Stilwell spit out a volume of red-and-black mucus dotted with solid yellow bits of tissue.

  “Should I call someone now?” Hallie put the pan aside.

  “Nothing they can do.” Stilwell was gasping, struggling for air. “Pulmonary edema. Body trying to flush itself. Feels like drowning.”

  They waited until Stilwell’s breathing settled. She said, “Danny. Terrifies me. But how to discourage? Wants to do his part.”

  “A military academy,” Hallie said. “In four years, the war might be over. Or at least winding down.”

  Stilwell shook her head. “No. Afghans don’t know anything but war. They need it. Go on forever.” She paused, coughed. “It’s like their baseball.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Stilwell’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow and rapid. Then her eyes opened wide. Her back arched, her mouth stretched, as though readying to scream, but no sound came out. Her body convulsed twice, violently, and she collapsed onto the bed. She did not move. Her chest did not rise and fall. There was no pulse visible in her neck.

  It took Hallie a second to react. She searched for the nurse-call button. Because Stilwell could not use it with her bandaged hands, they had secured it on a hook near the top of her bed, on the other side, and Hallie could not see it. She looked at Stilwell, lying there, not breathing, in arrest. She yelled for help, then screamed for it, but the biosuit hood trapped her voice. Hallie grabbed Stilwell’s wrist to check for a pulse, but the heavy gloves kept her from feeling anything.

  She could run to the nurses’ station, alert someone. But she could not really run in the damned suit. Without oxygen, Stilwell’s brain was dying right now. That would take too long. Hallie’s mind made a flash calculation, like the one when she had been standing with Kathan by the cenote. Odds and probabilities. This woman has ACE. If I help her, I might get ACE. If I don’t help her, she will die. If I do get ACE, we may be able to kill it.

  She ripped the zipper open, threw the hood back over her head, screamed “HELP!” twice as loudly as she could. She pulled back the sheet and did fifteen fast chest compressions, expecting an explosion of pain in her sutured hand, but felt none. Adrenaline, she thought.

  Then she tilted Stilwell’s head back, made sure her airway was clear, and blew three breaths into the unconscious woman. Fifteen more compressions, three more breaths. Hallie tasted the blood in Stilwell’s mouth, sour fluid coming from her nose, ignored them, kept compressing and ventilating.

  A nurse appeared at the door, saw what was happening, rushed back toward the floor’s main station. The biosuits made running nightmare-slow. Hallie kept working, compressions and breaths, compressions and breaths. She lost track of how much time elapsed before the biosuited code blue team came race-waddling into the room. Someone in a suit pushed her out of the way. More suits kept squeezing in, and soon she was pressed back out into the hall.

  No point in putting this back on now. Hallie walked away from Stilwell’s room without resecuring the hood. Presently she came to the nurses’ station. With most of the shift team down in Stilwell’s room, there were only two nurses there, both in biosuits. One was in the dispensary, back turned to Hallie, inventorying the drug stocks. The other was looking down at a stack of paperwork. She heard Hallie approach but did not look up at first. When she did, and saw the tall woman with the white-blond hair and stitched-up, blood-smeared face stand
ing in front of her wearing a biosuit but no hood, she dropped her pen.

  “Hey,” Hallie said. “I need a room.”

  FOR THIS VISIT, DON BARNARD WAS CLOAKED IN A FULL biosuit. She tried to think of a joke about it, but could not.

  “I’m told you saved her life.” The hood and faceplate made him sound like he was talking to her from inside a closet.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Hallie was in a bed herself now in the iso ward. “She deserves to live.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine.” He appeared skeptical. “Really, Don. Look …” She pointed at her lunch tray, where only crumbs remained from the cheeseburger, French fries, and chocolate sundae she had devoured. “Appetite good, no fever, no pains, pulse, BP, respiration, all good.”

  He just nodded.

  “I know. Incubation period, three to five days. This is just day one.”

  He nodded again. Looked at the floor, at the wall, at the ceiling. Through the faceplate, she could see that something was wrong.

  “Don, talk to me. Did Lenora die?”

  “She’s hanging on. It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  He looked directly at her. She could see only his eyes through the faceplate, but they frightened her.

  “What, Don?”

  “It isn’t working, Hallie.” Strange voice, dead-sounding, flat.

  “What isn’t working?”

  “The moonmilk. It isn’t working.”

  Her body felt as if it had just taken a hard electric shock. Can’t be. He has to be wrong.

  “No way, Don. We gave them my research results. And Lew’s work. With the new moonmilk, they can’t miss. We were this close. They have to …” Her voice trailed off as she watched his face.

  “No. Not that. We have seven laboratories working on this. They all got the same response. Either this material is different or the samples were contaminated.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “The protein-sequencing conformations—the ones you developed, as a matter of fact—aren’t aligning properly. There’s nothing wrong with the work you did. It’s the new material. It’s as if the keys you’ve always used in a lock suddenly don’t fit. As I said, every lab has encountered the same problem at the same point in their enzyme transfections. It may be that the moonmilk can mutate just as quickly as ACE.”