The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series)

by Tracy Serpa

  Kai was unable to speak. His mind reeled; the new information—this strange list and all the implications—overwhelmed what was left of his nerves. Finally, Paul pushed his hand aside and flipped through the rest of the pages, each covered with either names or addresses. At the bottom of the last page, in bold, were the words COMPLETE SANITIZE.

  Without thinking, Kai’s hand moved to the radio at his waist. He turned up the volume and held down the call button.

  “Mike, find us a way off the island. We’re leaving the station now, but we’ll have the radio. Touch base every fifteen. Over.”

  “Okay, Kai. Where are you guys going?”

  “To the hospital. We have to get Brandon.”

  From the corner, Jones asked weakly, “How long do you think that will take?”

  Kai was trying to come up with a rough estimate, but before he could answer, he heard a choking sound coming from behind him. When he turned to look, he found Jones convulsing violently on the floor.

  ~

  The first gasp of air flooded her lungs, and she felt nothing but the sizzling pain: no relief from the oxygen or from the feeling of her chest expanding; nothing but the aching stretch of the skin over her ribs and a strange kind of crackling in her lungs. She coughed, violently, sucking in ragged puffs of cool, sterile air, her eyes watering as she clutched at the sheets.

  “Karen?”

  Thad’s voice was close to her ear, thin and tense, as if he had too been holding his breath for some time. She opened her eyes wide and immediately squinted against the glare of the overhead fluorescents. Her whole body hurt, but the pain seemed to be radiating out from her chest. As her eyes focused, she realized she lay on the gurney, still half-naked; gingerly, she reached for her shirt to cover herself back up.

  Thad, immediately embarrassed, looked away, sneaking a concerned glance at her face.

  “Yes, Thad, I’m okay,” she croaked. Every inch of her mouth and throat felt parched, almost cracked. “Can you bring me some water?”

  He was gone from the room and back almost instantly with a small cup of tepid water from a fountain, which she sipped carefully. She was unsure of how her body would be reacting at this point, and the last thing she wanted was a bout of vomiting, even if it was only water.

  “Don’t ever make me do that again,” Thad finally spoke up after watching her drink for a few seconds. Karen smiled thinly, and assured him that she hoped the situation would never present itself again.

  “But we’ve got fifty percent of an answer. I survived. Now we have to check my blood,” she continued, her voice still grating in her throat.

  He helped her down the deserted hallway; the pain in her leg was more severe now, and she was having trouble putting any weight on the ankle at all. In truth, any kind of movement caused her body to ache, but she wanted to be in the lab with Thad as he ran the tests. They were nearly there when the eerie silence of the hallways finally overwhelmed her.

  “I haven’t seen anyone up here in hours,” she murmured, glancing into empty rooms as they passed. “It would be nice to know a little bit more about what’s going on outside.”

  As they neared the last corner before the elevators, they heard low voices ahead of them. Without knowing why, Karen stopped and motioned for Thad to keep quiet.

  “Everyone except psych has been moved to the first floor, ER, or triage outside,” said one of the voices. It was male, young and tentative, with an edge of concern. The voice that answered was older, more confident, and female.

  “Good. The Marines and corpsmen are assisting in triage, correct?”

  “Right. Mostly the navy guys are helping the docs. The Marines are providing security, checking people in . . . they’ve got a perimeter set up around the parking lot already, assessing people as they arrive. We’ve already had two attacks in the streets nearby.”

  “I heard that. Matana told me there’s some kind of group of deranged people out there.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. If this is biochemical, whoever got it made some very crazy shit. Pardon me.”

  There was a brief pause, and then the female voice spoke again.

  “Any details on the attacks?”

  “The Marine I spoke with was one of the guys who went out to help. They’ve been instructed not to shoot, so they’re using tear gas and some kind of spray. The stuff really did a number on him, but he said the crazies in the pack didn’t even react. Like they didn’t feel a thing. He and a couple of his guys managed to grab the family and get back to the parking lot. But several of them, including him, were wounded.”

  “Have you heard anything from Washington? Or the CDC?”

  “Nothing. Radio silence. We haven’t had a response since the Marines got here.”

  “Go check with whoever is in charge down there. Find out if they’re getting orders from the mainland.”

  The elevator bell let out a soft ding, and Karen heard the soft metallic slide of the doors opening.

  “Also, I talked to one navy guy who said part of that pack out there was testing the fences.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the female voice.

  “He said they show up every little while and try to get in. The guys guarding have tried all the riot gear stuff, but nothing seems to drive them off. And we don’t want them firing any shots. We’d have panic . . .”

  Their voices were abruptly cut off when the elevators closed. Thad angled his head awkwardly to look down at her.

  “What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

  She had recognized the female voice as belonging to the hospital’s director, Manaia Freshwater; the male must have been an assistant of hers, or a liaison from the military. Whatever the case, their discussion had made one thing very clear: things were deteriorating at the hospital, and quickly. She was glad they had not seen her up here and in her condition. They would have had a series of questions for her that she could not yet answer. Karen hobbled forward again with Thad supporting her, and they waited for the next elevator silently.

  She was staring off into space trying to imagine the scene outside when the elevator arrived, the doors sliding open in front of her face. Suddenly, she realized she didn’t have to imagine what was going on in the parking lot. Instead of stepping into the elevator, she pivoted on her good foot and started to move weakly toward the nearest room. Briefly, she paused in the hallway, cocking her head to the side and closing her eyes as she envisioned where she was in the building and its orientation. Thad had moved up beside her again without questioning, and waited for her to move again. Satisfied that her instincts were correct, she hobbled into the nearest room and toward the window.

  “Get the lights, Thad?” she asked, shuffling the last few feet to the window. He flicked the switch, and the scene outside appeared behind the glass.

  A row of Humvees were parked at the far edge of the parking lot, nearest to the entrance normally reserved for ambulances. A chain-link fence had been erected in front of them, extending around the rest of the lot and presumably behind the building. She could see a few Marines either sitting or standing on and around each vehicle, their weapons in hand. Lights had also been set up, illuminating both the hospital grounds and a small area outside of the fence. Vehicles belonging to patients and hospital staff were all parked in one area of the lot, wedged in one behind the other. Briefly, she thought what a nightmare it was going to be trying to get that all worked out when everyone had to leave. The rest of the lot was covered in camouflage tents, well lit both inside and out.

  Every few seconds, someone in uniform either entered or exited one of the tents, looking around at the crowds of people who waited in somewhat orderly lines. Younger people were sitting along the curbs or against trees, while many of the older adults had been given folding chairs or wheelchairs in which to wait. The uniformed official would wait at the entrance while an individual or couple approached, and he would lead them inside. For the most part, things looked to be functioning re
latively well.

  She pressed her cheek against the glass, trying to get a look at the dark field and neighborhood that lay to the east of the hospital. The Marines’ lights did little to illuminate far beyond the fence, but she thought she could see forms moving in the darkness. A few seconds later, she was sure she saw several human figures moving, crouched and stealthy, down a small side street. Something in their gait or the way they held their bodies made her shudder, and she wondered if that was the deranged group that she had heard Manaia talk about.

  When she was satisfied that the scene downstairs was not the pandemonium she had imagined, she limped away from the window and back to the elevator with Thad. Minutes later, they were in his lab, where she sank gingerly into a rolling chair. Thad drew her blood in the efficient, practiced way he had earlier in the day, but she found herself gripping the side of the chair as the needle slid into her vein. The pain was significant—manageable, but not the usual pinch that she warned patients about when inserting IVs or taking samples.

  “Geez, Thad,” she muttered.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Just be a little gentler next time,” she groaned, pressing a cotton ball to the bleeding vein.

  Thad frowned at her briefly before he turned away in his chair to begin preparing the sample. At first she felt irritated at his reaction; he had hurt her, and she felt entitled to complain. But as she waited for him to get the samples up on the screen, she began to wonder about her own reaction. Thinking back to the hour before she had Thad defibrillate her, she realized that the pain in her calf and ankle, though difficult to ignore, had not been debilitating. Now, it was nearly impossible to even set the foot on the floor with any kind of weight on it. Her chest still throbbed where the paddles had sent the electricity into her body, and although she had certainly expected some burns and discomfort, she thought what she was feeling was much more significant than she had ever expected. And now there was the experience with the needle.

  “Thad?” she said, not waiting for him to answer. “That guy in the hallway, he said the people attacking in the streets didn’t respond to tear gas or pepper spray, right?”

  “Mm-hm,” he answered shortly without taking his attention from what he was doing.

  She turned the new information over in her mind, poking and prodding it until she felt relatively sure she had a sound theory.

  “Thad, whatever this is, it’s getting into the nervous system,” she finally said, her voice hushed. He set a slide on the microscope and glanced at her, his eyes questioning.

  “It has to be,” she continued. “When the guy downstairs bit me, the pain was . . . significant. But when we went to resuscitate the girl and then when we tried it on me, I don’t remember really even thinking about it.”

  “Well, you were under stress,” he pointed out.

  “No, it was more than that. I can barely even put any weight on the leg now—it’s hard to even think straight, the pain is so intense. It’s like I’ve been on some kind of drug, and the effect has worn off. Just now, when you pulled the blood, the needle was excruciating. And I know you didn’t do anything differently than you normally do.”

  Thad nodded his head, agreeing with her. She thought he looked quietly vindicated, which she tried to ignore.

  “So the people outside in the street have this stuff in their systems, and it makes them immune to pain. Or at least able to tolerate a great deal of it,” she mused. It was a leap, she understood, but it was another piece to the puzzle that might make a difference for them.

  Thad’s monitor came on at that moment, and she rolled herself forward with her good foot. Her blood, magnified, was displayed on the screen; the red cells floated, almost static, fairly well rounded and indented in the center, as they should be. Thad shifted the microscope, searching the sample for her white cells. Karen felt her stomach tightening as she watched, until finally he found one of the round, fuzzy cells, vibrating in between clumps of the red.

  And the sample was not pulsing. This alone sent a wave of relief washing over her; their experiment had worked, at least on her. When she pointed this out to Thad, saying that they might have at least the beginnings of a cure, he reminded her carefully that their survival rate at this point was only 50 percent. She shrugged.

  “That’s better odds than lung cancer,” she retorted.

  Thad ignored her and began laying out a plan to draw samples of her blood every two hours, checking her white blood cell count, and to pull tissue samples, when the overhead speaker crackled to life for the first time in hours.

  “Dr. Lau to Ward Four. Dr. Lau to Ward Four. Code Green.”

  She caught Thad’s eye. The call was summoning her to the psych ward, and quickly. The code was not an emergency, but high priority. She wondered if someone had finally noticed her missing and they were simply trying to locate her, or if something else was going on.

  “You have a wheelchair near here I can use?” she asked.

  Fifteen minutes later, she rolled to a stop at the nurse’s station outside the psych ward and pushed herself up out of the chair. On the other side of the desk, an older woman in scrubs waited impatiently, her long yellow nails tapping on the keyboard in front of her.

  “Dr. Lau responding,” Karen stated simply.

  “Oh, Dr. Lau, great,” the woman responded, a wan smile spreading across her face. She stood and leaned over the other side of the L-shaped desk, looking down the opposite hallway. She gestured at someone that Karen could not see, then plopped back into her chair. Seconds later, two men appeared from around the corner.

  They both wore vaguely utilitarian pants, sporting several large pockets and loops, as well as long-sleeved black shirts buttoned up to their chins and down to their wrists. The man in front was large, blond, and strikingly handsome. Behind him, another man followed, this one slightly smaller, sinewy, and strong. His hair was a nondescript brown, his features somehow both unremarkable and dangerously sharp.

  The man in front extended a large hand.

  “Hello, Dr. Lau. I’m Agent Marks, and this is my colleague, Agent Strimmel. We appreciate your quick response, especially with so much going on.”

  She nodded and shook his hand, careful to keep her face neutral.

  “Of course. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re here to pick up a patient of yours, which I’m told is impossible without your sign-off, as he’s currently in this ward,” Marks explained, gesturing toward the secured door that led into the psychiatric unit.

  “Are you family?” Karen asked, working to keep the alarm bells sounding in her brain from translating into her voice.

  “No, ma’am, we’re with the CDC. And we’ve been authorized to remove this patient from the hospital by his father. We have a signed release form, as well as paperwork from the agency,” Marks answered her, his voice even, his smile reassuring.

  The hair on her neck rose slightly as he spoke, identifying himself as an agent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Karen was certain that she had heard the young man tell the hospital director that they had been without contact with the CDC since the arrival of the Marines, which had been nearly eight hours earlier. Marks and Strimmel both produced badges, which she glanced at casually.

  “Can I see the release form?” she asked. “It’s a fairly unusual request, you understand.”

  “Of course,” Marks answered good-naturedly, pulling an envelope from his pocket. She removed the release form and read it carefully; she was stalling, and they would know it soon, but there was no way she could comply with their request. Karen wondered why she was so concerned about that fact; aside from it simply being against the hospital’s policy, she herself was an authority figure, and someone whom most people didn’t think to challenge. Something about these men intimidated her, though, and so she steeled herself to refuse them. And then she saw the patient’s name.

  “You want Brandon Kavida?” she asked.

  Marks made a show of
looking over her shoulder at the paperwork as if to confirm the name.

  “Yeah, that sounds right. Uh, yes, Kavida,” he said as he searched the page. Karen felt sure the gesture was entirely for show.

  “And this is coming from the CDC?” she pressed.

  “Right,” Marks responded, offering nothing more.

  She chewed her lip for a moment.

  “This is a difficult request, you see,” she said finally. “Brandon has been the victim of a serious attack, and he’s in extremely unstable condition. Where are you planning to take him? And how are you planning to transport him?”

  “Well, ma’am, we’re taking him to a secure location at the Marine Corps base. We’ve got a helicopter on the roof. The trip should be no more than twenty minutes, thirty at the most. I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Marks answered, his voice still flat and calm.

  Karen watched his face and felt the hair on her neck stand up again. She was sure that this man was not with the CDC and that his story was a blatant lie.

  “Well, I’ll have to clear it with the director—”

  “We’ve already spoken with him,” Marks declared, smiling. “He said it was in your hands.”

  That was the confirmation Karen needed. The previous director of the hospital, Adam Koaluna, had transferred to another hospital on the Big Island a month earlier, and Manaia Freshwater had transitioned in as his replacement. But the new director had not yet been formally introduced to the press, nor had any changes been made to the hospital’s website.

  Tread carefully, Karen, she told herself.

  “I’ll need to check him before I can authorize the release. If he’s in any condition to be transported, I’ll be happy to sign off. But I can’t do it without at least a brief evaluation,” she explained, trying to make it sound as though she was both apologetic and embarrassed by the need for procedure.