Stasis (Book 1.1): Beta

by E. W. Osborne

  His eyes narrowed a touch. “What have they told you, exactly?”

  Panic tightened her throat, making her mouth go dry. She was in deep now. “There was a murder and… I know my dad didn’t do this.” It came out as a whisper. Kristine wasn’t normally such a good actor, but her nerves were doing their part in the performance.

  The nasty cop snorted and looked away, the lump of his tongue moving around in his cheek.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you see him,” the other said firmly.

  Sensing she wasn’t going to get anyway with them and pushing any harder would only hurt her chances, she quickly backed off. “Thanks anyway.”

  While she was always hungry for more, Kristine left for home feeling like she was on to something interesting. She was so fired up, she didn’t think twice about paying for a car home.

  After feeding the car her address, she pulled up her contact list. She sent a quick, flirty text to the EMT, just so he wouldn’t forget about her. Then she made a call. Her foot twitched with each ring until he finally picked up.

  “Angel? It’s me. I need to talk to your friend.”

  San Francisco, CA

  May 15th

  “Shit,” Penelope hissed as she read the message. As if moving on their own accord, her feet were already carrying her down the hall and toward the emergency psych department. After her clandestine meetings with Cameron, she’d agreed to let him give out her number to some of the nurses he trusted in the emergency ward. If any patient came in exhibiting the same symptoms as the others, they were to let one of them know ahead of the normal transfer.

  Penelope was both thrilled and horrified the outbreak continued. She could almost hear Cameron’s voice in her head. Fucking botulism.

  She made it down the stairs and into the psych ward before the patient had been transfered over from the emergency room. It gave her enough time to call Cameron.

  “I’m already on my way,” he answered.

  “I can take care of it, if you want,” she replied. “You’ve been working non-stop since this began. Stay home,” she added, hoping he would take her up on it.

  “So have you. Goddamnit!” He shouted loud enough Penelope pulled the cuff from her ear. “I miss being able to drive my own car! Speed up you piece of junk.”

  Penelope pressed her lips together to keep from snickering. “We have speed limits for a reason plus, you have one of the nicest cars I’ve ever seen.”

  “For all the good it’s doing me now.” She heard him throw something and curse under his breath. When he spoke again, he sounded like a man barely in control of his temper. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, assuming no other fucker wants to get on this road!” he raged at the traffic. “I’m gonna call a buddy of mine who works at NYU. See what he makes of all this.”

  She heard a commotion at the end of the ward and figured her patient was arriving. “Do I know him?”

  “No, he wasn’t there when we did our residency. Dr. Sanjay Lal. Anyway, I’m going to run some of this past him and see what he says.”

  “You aren’t afraid of him talking to someone? If it gets back you’re going against Hung, you know he’ll be pissed.”

  “As far as anyone is knows, I’m a concerned doctor calling a specialist for a second opinion. I’ll let you know what he says when I get in.”

  Penelope ducked from behind the curtain to see her patient. A young woman, diminutive, calm, but flanked by four aggressive police officers. The on-call doctor, a woman she recognized but didn’t know, gave her a double take as she stepped up to the bed.

  “What do we know?” she asked the doctor.

  After a beat, the professionalism kicked in. No time for needless questions during an emergency. “Patient has no visible injuries. She was…”

  Penelope drifted off, staring into the woman’s soulless eyes. She let the medical jargon wash over her, comparing it to the data she now knew inside and out.

  “Patient was found at home with her infant who died at the scene.” Penelope’s breath hitched as her eyes rose to meet the doctor’s.

  “How?” she choked out.

  The doctor fumbled with the paperwork and one of the police escorts spoke up. “Drowned. Bath time.”

  Penelope scanned the strong officer. The wet patch on his dark uniform and brittle look in his eye put him at the scene, possibly the one who discovered the child. She made a mental note to refer him to the trauma unit after she finished.

  “You were here the first time, right?” The woman’s voice pulled Penelope away from her thoughts.

  “Yes, I was…” she replied, searching the doctor’s chest for her ID.

  The doctor pulled away the lapel of her coat and flicked the laminate. “Lores. Listen, if you don’t mind, there are another two coming in and…”

  “You got it,” she reassured her, already sensing her pull away. “I’ll get the assessments going.”

  “Good. Glad to have an extra pair of hands to clear the ward, especially since they’ll just get sent upstairs anyway.”

  Penelope nodded unable to look at the young woman placidly staring off into space. This one hit too close to home. It was too easy for her to visualize the murder. Anna loved bath time. The thought of holding her beneath the water, her slippery body wriggling under her…

  “Doctor?” At some point, a nurse had stepped into her line of sight. When Penelope looked up, relief flooded the poor guy’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Penelope exhaled. The sight of her staring off into space beside a catatonic patient was so darkly funny, she almost chuckled. “Just lost in thought.”

  The color returned to his cheeks as he nodded. “Had me going for a sec,” he said. Over his shoulder, Penelope saw Cameron come in. He looked terrible. Hurriedly, she signed off the CT Scan and excused herself.

  Cameron spotted her from across the room and tilted his head to the hall. “Anything new here?”

  Penelope snorted and crossed her arms. “Homicidal catatonia induced by badly canned peaches. You know, typical day.” When he didn’t even crack a smile, she ducked her head low to catch his eye. “What is it?”

  “My buddy? The one out in New York? Same shit is happening out there.”

  “Seriously?” she gasped.

  “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk, but he said the CDC has been there since their first outbreak. And that was three weeks ago.”

  Penelope was staggered. So many questions were flying through her head, she could only blurt out the shortest. “How many do they have?”

  “Sixteen came in today, so I think he said they’re at twenty-nine? Thirty? I managed to grab him on his first break in hours.” Cameron paced the hall, hands threaded behind his head. “What are they hiding? What…” he trailed off as an orderly walked by. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  For several heartbeats, she allowed this new information to sink in. Not that she ever truly believed it, but this all but completely ruled out an outbreak of botulism. Even with globalization and overnight delivery, food production meant products were delivered regionally. It’d be all but impossible for the same plant to distribute to New York and San Francisco on the same day. That thought tickled at something she couldn’t put her finger on.

  “They had sixteen before this?” she asked.

  “Something like that.” Cameron nodded once and continued his tight circuit between each wall, obviously consumed with more important thoughts.

  “Seems odd,” she muttered, thinking he wouldn’t hear.

  “Why?”

  “Manhattan has quadruple the amount of people,” she started before he cut her off.

  “More than that.”

  Penelope huffed. “Okay, could you please stop wearing a path into the floor for one hot second?” Cameron halted at her outburst, but she couldn’t continue. She wasn’t willing to venture her theory quite yet, scared of what it might mean if she were correct. Instead, she covered with another question. “What else did
he say?”

  “Nothing, really. Like I said, we didn’t get much of a chance to talk. We’re onto something,” he warned, his fist clenching.

  Penelope battled with herself. One part of her was convinced Cameron was right. The idea of a psychiatric epidemic spreading across the country, a governmental cover-up, was tantalizing. The other part of her wondered if she wasn’t getting sucked into his delusions. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d let him sway her normally even temperament.

  Just as she forced herself to admit that her longtime friend might be coming apart, the outside doors burst open. The hallway exploded with a chorus of shouts and screams. The pair of doctors spun on their feet, moving on instinct.

  A gray-haired woman was strapped to a bed, shouting and lunging for the nurses wheeling her into the department. They pushed the bed at arm’s length, not wanting to get any closer than absolutely necessary. Penelope felt both relief and disappointment when she realized this was a normal psych emergency. The look she shared with Cameron as they followed the bed in told her he felt the same.

  “What do we have?”

  The EMT rattled off what he knew, wiping dirty sweat from his face as he talked. “Patient attacked a nurse who was feeding her breakfast. She’s a resident at the Sunny Vale retirement home.”

  “She was being fed?” Penelope wondered as she watched the old woman’s teeth gnash and chomp at any person who got too close.

  A soft spoken woman with a thinning hairline stepped out of the crowd. “Mrs. McKenzie had a stroke a couple years ago. She’s been with us ever since.” Her wide eyes kept returning to the old woman out of disbelief.

  “You were the one she attacked?” Cameron asked, rounding on the poor girl so fast she flinched.

  “No, no. That was Jackie. She didn’t really get hurt neither.” The doctors surrounded her, towering over her like two angry parents. “It was lucky we had the guards across the hall. Mr. Epson has been getting a little… handsy with the nurses,” she said with a blush.

  “She didn’t kill anyone?” Penelope clarified.

  The girl gasped. “God, no! Why would she… no! Jackie got a couple scratches is all. We couldn’t get Mrs. McKenzie to calm down, so we had to call 911.”

  Penelope and Cameron communicated wordlessly over the terrified nurse. This was different but also the same. Luck or fate or an odd twist of the universe had possibly handed them a patient before they fell into a catatonic stupor. Cameron peeled away from the conversation, ordering every test and scan he could think of.

  “Give her a mild sedative, then,” Penelope heard him say through his teeth.

  She guided the terrified nurse away from the fray and crouched to her level. “Mrs. McKenzie, she had a stroke.” The woman nodded, eyes glued to the old woman as she lunged for one of the nurses who’d come too close. Her sinewy arms strained against the restraints. “What state did it leave her in?” The nurse blinked back, almost as though she hadn’t heard her. Penelope clarified, “We’ll get her chart soon enough, but it’s important we know the effects of…”

  “She never spoke. She couldn’t walk. She could use her right arm but only for little things like pressing buttons, nothing that required grip strength. So this…”

  Penelope gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder and nodded, hoping the poor girl didn’t feel the tremble in her touch.

  ***

  Hours later, she and Cameron spread out in her office. Every file, every scrap of note and paperwork, all scattered around them on the floor and desk. Penelope leaned back against the wall and took a long sip of coffee.

  “There’s a pattern here, but I’ll be damned if I can see it.”

  Cameron gestured to the white board. “There is no commonality between any of them. Not even political affiliation or travel.”

  Penelope countered his pessimism with a heavy dose of realism. “They’re human. They all have stomachs and toes and eyes. Something made them sick and we have to figure out why them and not us.”

  “Not yet,” he grumbled.

  “Cam, come on,” she sighed. “When the test results come back for Mrs. McKenzie, we’ll know more.”

  She did her best to ignore his incessant pacing. Flipping through all the information she had about the old woman, she tried to drown out his footfalls and mumbling.

  “Keep going,” he said to her, rolling his wrist for her to continue.

  She frowned and wondered if she’d been thinking aloud. “With what?”

  “All those things they have in common. What else?”

  “Christ, Cam, I don’t know. They all have skin and hair and teeth. I was only pointing out that they aren’t as different as you might think.”

  His nostrils flared as he exhaled loudly. Penelope asked herself for the dozenth time why she found herself spending yet another night with him at work and not at home with her family. She swiftly about-turned on that thought for fear of what she might discover.

  “Have you gotten anything from New York?” she asked, referring to his friend.

  Cameron shook his head. “I’ve sent him three messages. It’s late out there.”

  “It’s late here.”

  Penelope rested her head against the cold wall and watched Cameron pace. One, two, three, turn. One, two, turn. One, turn. One, two, turn.

  “That’s an odd pattern,” she commented.

  He looked down and continued without breaking his stride. “It helps me concentrate. It gives me something to think about without directly thinking, you know?”

  A thought from earlier in the night bubbled to the surface of her mind. “How many did you say they had out there?”

  “I don’t know, a lot.”

  She squinted at the board, eyes darting around. “And he said they had sixteen come in today alone?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Could be more since we last spoke.”

  “We had sixteen come in today.”

  His pacing slowed but didn’t stop. That’s how she knew she’d touched on something interesting. Rather than filter her thoughts, she allowed them to come out uninhibited.

  Penelope continued. “We had fourteen total at the start of the day and they had close to the same. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  “Manhattan is bigger than here,” he muttered.

  She climbed to her feet, sensing they were getting close to something important. Rifling through the paperwork on her desk, looking for an intake history, she asked, “How many did we have before that?”

  “Eight,” he replied without hesitation, coming to a halt. He attacked the white board with a blue marker, smearing his notes clean with one hand while he scrawled with the other.

  16

  8

  4

  2

  1

  He took a wide step back and stared at his nearly illegible writing. “It’s exponential.”

  Penelope scrambled through her notes. “But our numbers don’t match that. We had four the first day. The bus driver and the…”

  “Highschooler.”

  “But that means we’re missing a few, if you’re saying there’s a pattern here,” she breathed as she straightened.

  Cameron shrugged, still intent on the board. “They could’ve come in as a normal psych emergency, folded into the rest. Without the others to compare them to, it’d be easy to ignore. Rare, sure, but easily overlooked.”

  With a hand to her mouth, Penelope shook her head, disbelief fighting against logic. “If this is true…”

  “Yeah,” he replied, following her thoughts down a terrifying road.

  Penelope had to say it aloud. She couldn’t believe it otherwise. “If that’s the pattern, we’re expecting thirty-two next week, sixty-four the following…”

  “And for every person who’s wheeled in with this condition, there’s another person out there dead.”

  “Jesus,” she whispered, ashamed she hadn’t put that together quick enough. “And it’s happening in New York.”

  Camer
on tugged at the roots of his salt-and-pepper hair, leaving it wild. “Who knows where else?”

  While the silently grappled with the sheer volume this revelation predicted, Penelope’s thoughts drifted back to the raving old stroke victim. “Maybe we’ll get lucky with Mrs. McKenzie’s results. The answer could lie with her, someone who is still in the throes of mania.”

  Cameron laced his fingers together and rested his hands on his head. “Let’s pray that’s true,” he replied without a touch of sarcasm.

  Kansas City, MO

  May 16th

  Randall Belloquet stood in front of his ceramic bathroom sink waiting for the tepid water to turn icy. His hands were on either side of the sink, his weight completely on his arms, as if bracing himself for impact. Cupping both hands under the frigid water, he splashed his face and neck, enjoying the shock to his skin, still warm with sleep.

  He loomed in the small bathroom, his size apparent in the lack of space. Tall with a lean muscular frame, Randall could be naturally intimidating if he needed to be. Parts of his life had taught him a natural intimidation was handy tool to have. Most of the time he kept his head down and nose to himself. The part of his life he spent behind bars taught him that.

  His mind was clear. An answer had been provided and all other questions were pointless now. The dreamscape he had the night before was a message and he took that very seriously. Remembering the scene as if it were a movie, he saw himself standing on a huge platform with dozens of disciples watching and listening to him. He’d felt vindicated and empowered. Today came with purpose.

  Randall was a long term tenant of the CW Motor Lodge just off of 70 in Kansas City, Missouri. The road that had led him to set up home in a run down motel was a bumpy one, but Randall had always prided himself on rolling with the punches. Having spent more than a few nights of his life on the streets, CW Motor Lodge wasn’t too bad a place to stay. The couple who owned it were accommodating simply because he paid his rent on time and mostly left him alone.