Clearly, the CDC should have been more involved, given the growing scope of the virus, but the center was still enthralled by Ebola ravaging Africa and then being carried into the United States by returning health-care professionals and tourists. My blood cell disease was getting no attention, no real funds. I was made the head of the Nogales team a month after the initial event, but “team” was a stretch. It was still just me, filing reports back to Atlanta. No support staff.
I started calling it the Nogales organic blood illness on my field reports. NOBI for short. I had Sheriff Wilson send out an addendum to his APB on Liza Sole that the CDC would like to be informed about any leads or similar cases because of the possibility of illness related to the condition of the suspect.
But I still couldn’t get my superiors at the CDC to issue a warning on the disease. A warning would have required the FBI and other federal law enforcement to issue an immediate alert on the spreading disease, and on Liza. A warning would have sent information out to every law enforcement agency in the country. I’m not saying we could have stopped NOBI if that had been the case, but it would have made a huge difference in how far the disease spread before it became a national emergency.
It would have saved lives.
About a month after the initial Liza Sole event, Dr. Gomez took a leave of absence from the Nogales Department of Health to devote himself to my investigation. At his own expense, he followed me to different cities in the Southwest as we tracked the disease and the wake of bodies and those missing. He soon rode with me in the car I rented on the government’s tab and was a great help in tracking the people and the virus. And in keeping me company.
In the beginning, we followed Liza’s and the disease’s trail through Arizona. It felt like a spur-of-the-moment road trip for two college roommates piling all of our random belongings into a compact car. All we were missing was a cooler of cheap beer. Every small town seemed to blend into another, our files growing, our space for clothing shrinking. Ten miles to the next motel and I could hardly wait.
I was beat up and could only drop my bags to the floor as I stared at the motel’s rumpled bed. Dr. Gomez—Hector—had long since blown through his budget and was sleeping on the floor of my room. He dropped to the ground and puffed up his thin pillow against the torn wallpaper of the motel. I felt sorry that Nogales County would not pay for his research, and he had to front it all from his savings. His dedication to solving this unfolding crisis, like mine, only grew with adversity.
He looked pretty uncomfortable trying to make the hard floor into a bed. “Hey, Dr. Gomez,” I said. He looked up with tired eyes.
“What’s up, Dr. Scott?”
I cocked my head at the bed. “First of all, why don’t I call you Hector and you call me Lauren? Secondly, you look like crap on the floor. Why don’t you sleep on the bed? There’s room enough for both of us and I’m pretty sure I can trust you by now. And if not, I’ll beat the crap out of you. Pretty sure I could.”
He stared for a moment, as if he might not even want to get up from the floor. Maybe he was one of those ascetic individuals, abstaining from any indulgent behavior and preferring to deny himself any comfort.
Hector rose up without a word and flopped down onto the comforter. He flipped onto his side and gripped the pillow like a life preserver. In no time, he was asleep. I lay down on the other side of the bed in all my clothing, and was dreaming of leeches within minutes.
A month in, we had eight confirmed dead, devoid of blood, and ten people missing. The missing people were the most perplexing part of this investigation. I couldn’t come up with a plausible theory as to why some people who came in contact with Liza Sole went missing: if they had acquired this virus, wouldn’t they be dead after a short time? Did she kidnap them? Did they follow her willingly? Did she kill them and bury them somewhere remote?
But then Liza Sole finally made a mistake, became more than a myth, and every bulletin that we’d sent paid off.
At the time, we had seven dead bodies that were autopsied and found to be devoid of blood. It was almost as if all the blood had been drained and the rest incinerated within the body. Therefore, we could autopsy the body but we couldn’t find the most important aspect of the death: the blood, and how it compared to the sample we had from the previously dead Liza Sole.
We received a call from the El Paso police department about an eighth body, found near the border crossing with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A police officer was in his car on patrol near a back alley behind some abandoned warehouses when he saw a person crouched over another body lying on the ground. The officer shined his spotlight on them. The crouched figure jumped up and started to sprint away at great speed. The officer couldn’t believe a person could run so fast.
The officer approached the figure on the ground: it was a man with blood spurting from the neck, from his artery. The man on the ground didn’t last long enough for the ambulance, but at the morgue a technician remembered the notice from the Nogales police department. When Hector and I arrived, Hector convinced the coroner, an old medical school classmate of his, to let him sit in on the autopsy. He came to the conclusion, based on the postexposure condition of the body and the internal organs, that the body was probably exposed to the same virus as Liza Sole, but for some reason his body could not handle the physical changes.
Of course, we still hadn’t determined how Liza Sole carried this virus with no obvious ill effects. I had a disease with a mortality rate, albeit unofficial, of about 50 percent, if not more. A disease that presented with bodies disappearing and others coming back to life after being deceased. And a disease that also drained the blood from the truly deceased bodies.
Dr. Gomez and I had been so busy chasing bodies that I really hadn’t had the time to compile thorough statistics. Everything was haphazardly notated in my iPad and Moleskine notebooks, which I lugged to every city, but my notations were weeks behind the current cases. I’m not making excuses for the blame that has been thrust upon me; I’m simply stating facts.
And then. We finally caught a break there in El Paso.
We caught up with Liza Sole.
Dr. Gomez and I decided to go eat some real Texas Mexican food. Yelp brought us to a place called El Capitan. Supposedly it “didn’t get any better!” Of course, it took all my persuasive powers to get Hector out of his room given his monk-like devotion to figuring out Liza Sole’s path.
“It’s good Mexican food,” I said, pushing the door to our motel room open.
“I have work to do,” he replied.
I glanced around at the hurricane of files around him. Hector had a pretty thick beard now and he looked to have lost about ten pounds since we started this journey. He sat in his boxers and a dingy T-shirt.
“You seriously want to eat Dairy Queen or McDonald’s again? Or maybe there are some new items on the menu at the vending machine.” I did the best thing I knew to scare a man: I crossed my arms and channeled my mother. “Seriously: get your fucking clothes on and let’s get some Mexican food!”
He stared at me for a moment.
Then he walked over to the bed and grabbed his pants.
Soon enough, we were sitting in a corner booth sipping margaritas and working on chips and salsa. The restaurant was pretty old and worn, with red lights above the tables casting an eerie glow over the booth. The seats’ vinyl covers were old and ripped from end to end. We sat in silence, left to our own thoughts while we nursed our drinks and ate greasy chips. My phone buzzed and I answered it before the second vibration. I didn’t get a word out before—
“Where have you been?” It was Jennifer. I should have checked the caller ID. I could tell she was looking for an argument.
“I’m on the road, Jenny,” I replied. My irritation vanished when I heard her raspy voice. It had been far too long…
“Are you still chasing that bug?”
“Virus,” I corrected. “So what’s up?” Although I already knew the answer.
�
�Well…I’m gonna be a little short this month and I was wondering…”
“What was it this month? Music festival?”
Silence on the other end. “Stuff. You know.”
“Okay. I’ll send you five hundred.”
I heard a sigh on the other end. “Thanks. And call Dad. He always complains he never knows where you are.”
“I will,” I replied. When she hung up, I regretted not calling her more often. I had so much to ask her but never had the time.
Hector looked at me but didn’t ask. And I didn’t answer. “I wonder when they’ll call us with another body,” he said.
I thought for a moment while I savored an especially salty chip. “If the pattern proceeds to schedule…probably in two days. That seems to be the routine.” I laughed to myself. My dad would be appalled at all the sitting around and thinking. He would demand that I get my hands dirty and grab something real!
“I agree.”
“Where do you think it’ll be?”
Hector shook his head. “Who knows? Could be anywhere.”
My mind raced. “Not anywhere. Somewhere. Has to be somewhere. I mean, all of this is proceeding like a pattern. Let’s see if we can figure it out.”
Hector ignored his enchilada plate as he tapped his fork on the table. “She doesn’t go very far from the last city. Probably hitchhiking or by some other means—God help us if she has a car.”
“Exactly. I think we can safely say she’s not in El Paso anymore,” I declared as I took a big bite of my flauta. The grease dribbled off my chin. Heaven.
“We need a map,” he said.
Instinctively we each took out our cell phone and hit Google Maps. “She’s not going to Mexico or she would have gone there from Nogales,” I said. “I think she’s going to stay in the Southwest.”
“She’s going to stick to towns off major highways. She doesn’t have a choice. Carlsbad, Las Cruces, Van Horn. Has to be one of those. But which one?”
I thought for a moment as I sipped on my second margarita. I tried to remember the inventory of Liza Sole’s apartment. Papers, receipts, notebooks…The search of her computer history. I slammed my hand on the table. “She’s an artist! Or someone interested in art.”
Dr. Gomez gave me a sideways look. “So what?”
I leaned over the table toward Hector. “Listen. She’s going to a city or area where she feels familiar or interested in…the type of people she wants to meet. She had a list of things she wanted to do that I found on the refrigerator! One of them was to check out the art scene in Marfa, Texas.”
“Hmm. Seems tenuous. Very.” He stared at the map on his phone as he pointed his finger at the various cities spread out from El Paso. He shook his head before biting off almost half of his enchilada. “But damn. It would be easy for her to get there with minimal effort, and it’s off a highway but not a major highway, so it lessens the opportunity to be seen.”
Hector looked up and we held our stare for a moment.
We reached the Marfa Motor Inn as the sun came up. It was cheap enough for Dr. Gomez to have his own room, and we decided to grab some much-needed sleep until noon and then get to work. Of course, noon rolled into three in the afternoon. Angry and muttering to myself, I knocked on his door. He answered with sleep covering his face.
“Seriously. We need to get moving.”
Hector nodded. “I know. Sorry. I needed it, though. And I’ll bet you did too.”
From there we stopped by the local sheriff’s office—Sheriff Langston Lamar—to present our credentials and discuss the current situation. He looked to be in his forties and was built like a linebacker. There had not been any suspicious activity or injuries in the past couple of months other than a few bar fights. He told us he did not have the manpower to assign any deputies to the investigation, but if anything came up he would certainly take it seriously. He gave us his cell phone number.
Back at the hotel, we brainstormed various options in Marfa that night. Hector searched his phone. “Okay, so there’s an art show, a live country band, and a couple of dinner events in the center of town,” he said.
“I think we should start at the art gallery. And then move on to the others if we have the time. She could be at any of them.”
We changed our clothes, although neither of us had anything even resembling art opening–wear. Jeans and sweatshirts it would have to be. I put the hazmat suit in the trunk just in case. We walked in the cool night air to the end of the long main street block to the Hi-Times Gallery, a converted gas station from another era, now captive to hipster art patrons. The sun had already fallen away and the gallery was full—I bet the town population doubled at this gallery. The crowd flaunted their beards, flannel, and black garb—cowboy chic—and mingled with drinks in their hands, all but ignoring the art on the walls.
Hector and I kept to ourselves near the door. Every so often we checked a picture of Liza Sole on our phones, as a reminder. The lead was solid—I could feel it. This had to be the place and town. But after an hour and three glasses of wine I began to lose hope. I looked over at Hector. Was he having the same doubts? I saw him glance over at the people and the art, almost ignoring the front door. I knew his doubts were starting to surface. Had we made a huge mistake? What the hell was I still doing on this wild-goose chase…
Then a woman walked in by herself.
She wore a pair of faded and torn Levi’s 501 jeans that hugged her hips and legs—and a black turtleneck. It was as if she didn’t care that no one wore turtlenecks like that in Texas. An old beat-up tan Stetson cowboy hat was perched on her skull like she had grabbed it off her lover’s head as he lay in bed. Scuffed old black punk rock boots completed the image. She looked like a young Patti Smith busking in front of the Chelsea Hotel in seventy-three, screaming mad at society for not conforming to her vision. The hat tilted down about to her nose so it covered her face. My eyes were automatically drawn to her and I saw others in the gallery staring in the same manner.
She had a presence. A tingling in the back of my neck made me shudder. A sweet smell drifted into my nose and only made my thoughts scramble and bounce around in my head. It was like a car accident where you see your life as if in a flip-book of pictures scrolling too fast for you to even catch a memory. It only made me sad.
There was a magnetism I couldn’t put into words.
Temptation in human form.
She took measured strides over to the first wall aisle of paintings. The woman made no eye contact with any person, but her gaze—shaded as it was—cut across every occupant as if each were prey. I looked over at Hector and he was transfixed. I mean, he looked like he wanted to devour her. “Take a picture—it’ll last longer,” I told him with an elbow to his ribs.
He about jumped out of his skin. “Damn! Sorry. I mean, she’s a pretty girl. Although I can’t really see her face.”
I don’t know if it was the hat or the face or the fact that the hat covered her face—or simply a vibe. But it clicked. My picture of Liza Sole and this girl were not an exact match—this girl in the gallery was a bit thinner—but I felt my heart beating faster and faster.
I leaned in to Hector. “I think that might be her.”
He looked over at me. “Her?” He raised his arm to point. I yanked it down.
“Look at your picture. The nose on down.”
Hector clicked on his phone and studied it before leaning over to me. “Fuck!”
I was still distracted but I concentrated. “I’m going to stay here. You go outside and call the sheriff.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s her. I’m certain.”
“No, I mean are you sure you want to stay here instead of waiting outside?” Hector asked.
I gave him a hard look. He walked outside to call the sheriff.
With the studied focus of a professor, the woman was considering the painting of a white bird in an oak tree with its roots spreading out everywhere under the ground. I was so engrossed
trying to see what she found so interesting about the painting…that I didn’t notice she had turned away.
She was staring at me.
I caught my breath, even from across the room. All I wanted to do was look into her eyes. It was as if she knew the reason I was there and that I was looking for her.
She moved like a cat. She was lurching toward me before I even realized it. I stepped back but she had already sprinted toward the back of the gallery, to a back room.
The gallery was almost empty save for a few stragglers trying to convince the bartender to open back up. I screamed for Hector as I chased Liza Sole toward the back door. I reached for the handle to the back room, and the door blew open and knocked me to the floor. Liza leapt over me as Sheriff Lamar sprinted inside and drew his Taser. He yelled at her to stop and she did for a moment, baring her teeth like an animal, then she lunged toward the front door of the gallery.
She made it to the front door just as the sheriff yelled a second time for her to stop. Surprisingly, she did, bared her teeth again, and then surged through the doorway.
The Taser wires made contact with her back just as Hector tackled her waist. In a single swiping movement, she swept loose the Taser darts and Hector both, but as she made it outside she was tackled again, now by the sheriff and three deputies.
She scratched and swung, but quickly they were able to cuff her wrists. The sheriff screamed for leg-irons but Liza kicked her heel into his face. All of a sudden, Liza jumped up and spread her legs. The handcuffs snapped off like wet paper. She took off in a sprint into the street, where a large pickup truck immediately hit her head-on.
She bounced off as the truck screeched to a halt, rubber smoke hovering in the air.
A People's History of the Vampire Uprising_A Novel Page 3