Fatal

by Michael Palmer

  Rapidly, though, that notion gave way to thoughts of Kathy Wilson and Hal Sawyer, of Joe Keller and the dead miners, and of the other cases of the Belinda syndrome that Grimes and his crew had probably already dealt with. And suddenly all of her anger, all of her frustration and fear became focused on this young man, innocent of anything more malevolent than doing what his doctor and his mother recommended a decade ago.

  Colin Morrissey was not going to die—not if she could help it!

  Silently, Nikki cursed herself for not making preparations in advance for an emergency tracheotomy. She had been too wrapped up in their predicament and her pain to think clearly, and possibly she had also been influenced by the hopelessness of the untreatable disease that she believed was ravaging the man’s brain. She reminded herself that hindsight was always 20/20. What had happened had happened. What she needed to deal with now was this moment.

  “Ellen, I’m going to have to get some sort of airway into him. I’ll need your help.”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  Nikki tipped the young man’s head back, straightening his windpipe. Morrissey responded with a single, surprisingly effective breath, regaining the precious seconds that had been lost since his last one. In Nikki’s mind, the four-minute clock was reset.

  “Please keep his head in this position,” she said. “Do you by any chance have a pen or anything else that’s hollow?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Sara Jane, I’m going to do some things to help this man if I can. There may be some bleeding from his neck.”

  “Ah seen blood,” the girl said, looking about at the cave as if for the first time.

  There was no more time to explain. The skin above Colin Morrissey’s collarbones was retracting inward as his lungs struggled unsuccessfully to suck in air. Nikki grabbed the first-aid kit and searched through it frantically. The disposable scalpel she had used on Carabetta was there, along with a pair of bandage scissors that she could use as spreaders. Now she needed something round, hollow, and sturdy—something wide enough to allow enough air through, but not so big that it tore the trachea apart. A large-bore needle would buy her a little more time, and a long pen cap would be perfect. Acutely aware of the passing seconds, she dumped the entire kit onto the stone floor. A 2cc syringe, still in its sterile wrapper, had been buried beneath some bandages.

  Perfect!

  “We’re in business,” she said.

  Nikki discarded the plunger and used the bandage scissors to cut off the end of the barrel where the needle would have attached. The inch-and-a-half-long hollow tube was as good as she could have hoped for.

  Pain shot from her ankle as she shifted so that she was hunched over Morrissey’s swollen, discolored throat. Ellen clumsily tried to adjust the light while maintaining the neck extension Nikki required.

  “Sara Jane,” she said finally, “can you shine this lantern right here on this spot?”

  “Ah kin do thet.”

  “Good girl. We need you, Sara Jane. Be steady.”

  Nikki had no idea how much of the four minutes had elapsed, but there would be no stopping for any reason.

  “Not on my watch,” she whispered as she focused in. Not on my watch.

  She located the spot just above Morrissey’s larynx that she felt represented his cricothyroid membrane—the best place to make her incision. If she was wrong, she would make do. But she wasn’t going to hesitate, and she was damn well not going to screw up. A dozen or more had already died to make Grimes and his people rich. Hundreds, maybe thousands more were in danger if they succeeded in getting their vaccine onto the market.

  But not this man—at least, not now.

  Using the precious scalpel, keeping it parallel with the cartilaginous rings of the trachea, she made a stab wound through the skin and straight down through the windpipe. Instantly, a bloody froth bubbled out. Reflexively, Morrissey coughed, spattering Nikki’s shirt and chin. The drug he had been given was wearing off. His consciousness was returning. Deftly, mindless of the blood, Nikki inserted the scissors into the incision and spread them to open up the hole. Then she slid the plastic tube down into the trachea. There was a whistling, gurgling sound as the first rush of air entered the man’s lungs. Quickly, his breathing calmed.

  Minutes later, Colin Morrissey lifted one arm, and soon after that, his eyes fluttered open.

  TWO MORE HOURS passed as Ellen and Sara Jane tended to their four patients. Fred Carabetta remained comatose, although he seemed to respond a bit when cold river water was sponged over his face and lips. Sid, the guard, lay nearby, alternately sobbing and cursing. He was clearly paraplegic, and now was woefully aware of that fact. The woman who had attacked Nikki remained trussed up with tape. She slept much of the time and rattled on incoherently when she was awake. Seemingly mindless of their predicament, Sara Jane crawled from the woman to Morrissey and back, comforting them, sponging their foreheads, holding their hands, and even singing to them.

  “They’re lak me,” she said in one of the rare instances when she spoke to Ellen and Nikki. “They’re jes lak me.”

  Nikki had insisted that Morrissey’s hands be taped securely to his belt to prevent him from pulling the tube from his makeshift tracheotomy. Now, exhausted and more apprehensive each minute, she lay on the dusty floor, propped against a large boulder, her injured, throbbing leg elevated on a pile of stones. There was nothing more she could do now than wait. Horrible visions kept impinging on her mind—visions of Matt, his body wedged forever between two rocks, his limbs wafting lifelessly in the black water. In addition, the sickly sweet air seemed to be getting thicker and harder to breathe. Was it vanishing already?

  Not with a bang, but a whimper . . . Not with a bang . . .

  As she lay there, Nikki marveled at Ellen, who remained in almost constant motion, tending to the others, speaking cheerfully and hopefully with them and with Sara Jane. Periodically she would return to where Nikki lay to assure her that her patients were okay, and that Matt was going to make it, and so were they. On this trip, however, she had no such message. For the first time, tension etched her face.

  “I’m going to try the river,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I won’t go downstream, but I have to try something. It’s been almost three hours and I think we might be running low on air. Do you think you can manage without me?”

  What difference does it make? Nikki stopped herself from saying.

  “I’ll do what I can do,” she said instead. “You don’t think he made it out, do you?”

  Ellen sat beside her and took her hands.

  “I don’t know what I think right now, except that we can’t just sit back and let them win. For one thing, we both have new men in our lives. I want to see how that turns out for me. And for another, in just a few hours that vaccine is going to be the standard of care. Pediatricians all over the country have been primed by the public-relations people from the pharmaceutical houses and the dear President and his wife. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of thousand doses of the stuff get administered by sunset today.”

  “You’re right,” Nikki said, pushing herself up. “We’ve got to keep trying. You said you’re a good swimmer?”

  “A fish.”

  “Let me hop you over. Sara Jane and I’ll do fine here.”

  “I know you will.”

  Both women were breathing harder from the trip across the cavern than they might have expected. No comment was necessary. The supply of oxygen was definitely dwindling.

  Nikki watched as Ellen made her way around the pile of wood and rubble that had once been the second bridge and lowered herself into the water. This was one hell of a woman, she was thinking—courageous, intelligent, resilient, and kind, precisely the sort of person she would like to be in her sixties. The notion of even reaching sixty brought a rueful smile. Several hours had passed since Matt headed off. It was doubtful that he had made it out of the mountain, and now what little rema
ined of their hope for survival rested with a wisp of a woman who was nearly twice his age. Ellen would not only have to find a way out of the mountain swimming upstream, but she would have to avoid Grimes and his gunmen, find people who could and would help, and make it back to the cavern before it became an airless tomb. The chances of her pulling all that off were slim indeed.

  But slim wasn’t none.

  Lantern in hand, Nikki settled down on the bank and waited. Her wait was not a lengthy one. Not five minutes after Ellen had paddled into the pitch-black tunnel, she came floating slowly back, feet first, facedown in the water. Nikki scrambled onto her hands and knees and reached for Ellen’s blouse. The fabric slipped from her hand. Ignoring the stunning pain from her ankle, she pushed off the rocky bank in a clumsy dive and wrapped her arms around the older woman’s waist just before they reached the second bridge. Holding tightly, Nikki grabbed a fistful of Ellen’s hair and pulled her face clear of the water. Then she braced herself against the bridge and managed to set her one good foot on the bottom. The river lapped by just beneath her chin.

  Inch by painful inch, drawing on a reserve of strength that surprised her, Nikki pushed Ellen upward until she was sprawled out prone on the bridge, her legs dangling down into the water. Then, crying out in pain, she hauled herself onto the bank and crawled over to where Ellen lay. A single downward thrust on both sides of her back cleared much of the water from Ellen’s lungs. A second thrust, and she began breathing on her own, sputtering and coughing reflexively. In less than a minute, she began to come around. For some time she lay that way, her chest heaving.

  “Rocks,” she said finally. “Tunnel was blocked by rocks.” Another minute passed before she spoke again. “I . . . tried to move them. . . . Foot got caught. . . . Couldn’t get free. . . . Water got down my—”

  “Easy,” Nikki said, cradling her head in her lap. “Easy. You gave it a great try. Just relax and catch your breath. I’m just grateful you made it back here.”

  It was many minutes before Ellen could push herself up, still violently coughing out river water.

  “God, but that was awful,” she said. “The rocks collapsed on me. I couldn’t get my leg out.”

  Nikki hauled herself up using the bridge railing. The two women, soaked and shivering, held each other tightly. Then Ellen pulled away.

  “Where are you going?” Nikki asked.

  “Up on that pile of rock,” Ellen replied, gesturing toward what remained of the entrance Nikki and the others had used. “Send Sara Jane up to help me move some of that stuff.”

  Nikki started to protest, then merely shrugged and nodded.

  Dead waiting around helplessly was no different than dead trying.

  CHAPTER 34

  MATT’S FIRST AWARENESS WAS THE SMELL OF motor oil. His second was that he was alive and cold. He was in a large shed of some sort, lying in his sodden clothes on a bed of filthy rags. The walls were creosoted wood. The bare bulb dangling overhead was unlit, but thin, gray light filtered in through a foot-square, screen-covered window near the peak of the ceiling. Piled not far from him were covered plastic buckets of what looked like chemicals, and large, unmarked paper sacks of what might have been seeds or fertilizer. There were gardening tools in one corner of the coarse wood floor, several gas-powered weed whackers hanging on the wall, and a good-sized, partially dissected motor underneath them.

  It wasn’t until he tried to move that he realized his left wrist was handcuffed to a U-shaped pipe that seemed to have been built through the wall of the shed for precisely that purpose. He peered about again, trying to get a sense of who his captors might be. A pulsating pain encircled his head like a bandanna that had been knotted too tightly. His stomach, reacting to the odors and his dizziness, was sending acrid jets of bile into his throat. His watch was gone, as was the pistol he had shoved into his pocket. The backs of his hands were scraped raw and coated with clotted blood. There was no traffic noise from outside, but twice over fifteen minutes or so, he heard a motorcycle rumble away—two different ones, he guessed, both Harleys. Bit by painful bit, memories of his devastating trip down the underground river crystallized.

  “Help!” he cried out. “Hey, someone help me!”

  He waited for a reply, then yelled again. Tentatively, the door across from him opened, and a slightly built woman in her twenties peeked in and put her finger to her lips. She had badly spiked purple hair, dense black eye shadow, and piercings through her nose, brows, and lower lip. Her black leather pants were frayed and dusty, as were her black T and leather vest.

  “Quiet!” she whispered urgently. “They’ll tend to you when they’re ready.”

  “But I need to get—”

  The woman had already pulled away and closed the door behind her. Matt waited a few minutes and then began hollering again. This time, when the woman reappeared, she had a child on her hip—a boy, two years old, filthy and frail, with a sallow complexion, thick greenish mucus draining from both nostrils, and a deep, nasty cough. She tossed Matt a tattered brown army blanket.

  “Look, I told you to shut up,” she said, still in a pressured whisper. “They ain’t much likelihood they ain’t gonna kill you. But yellin’ like that an’ disturbin’ the children will take care a what little chance you got.”

  The woman moved to go, but this time hesitated when he spoke.

  “Wait, please, I’m a doctor,” he said quickly. “My name’s Matt Rutledge. Dr. Matt Rutledge from Belinda. I don’t know how I got here or even where I am, but I’ve got to get away and get some help. My friends are trapped in a mine cave-in and they’re going to die.”

  “You ain’t no doctor,” she said. “They said you had a gun. Doctors don’t carry guns.”

  “I can explain that. Look, your boy there has a bad sinus infection and probably a throat infection, too. I’ll bet he isn’t eating or sleeping well. He should be checked over by a doctor, and soon. He needs antibiotics.”

  “We don’t go to no doctors.”

  “I can take care of him. I can get you the medicine he needs. What’s your name?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “Becky,” she said finally. “This here’s Samuel. An’ don’t go callin’ him Sam neither. His daddy gets mighty angry at that.”

  “Well, I’m a really good doctor, Becky, and I can get Samuel better. Just let me go and get some help for my friends. Then I’ll be back to take care of him.”

  Indecision flickered across Becky’s face but then just as swiftly vanished.

  “I did that an’ they’d never find all the pieces of me,” she said. “You jes lay still an’ keep quiet. If yer not a doctor, Bass’ll kill you quicker’n you kin snap yer fingers. An’ if you are, he’ll most likely do you anyway. Now shut up!”

  “But—”

  This time the door slammed shut.

  “Becky, please,” Matt called out.

  There was no response. He looked up at the small window, trying to get a sense of the time of day. How long had he been gone? His damp clothes and the freshly clotted blood suggested it hadn’t been all that long, but he couldn’t be certain. The handcuffs were police-department grade and put on way too tight to slip out of. He set his feet against the wall, grasped the copper pipe with both hands, and tried to pull it loose. The futile effort sent a fusillade exploding through his head. Frustrated, he sank back onto the oily rags and kicked the walls until his strength was gone. There had to be a way out. Waiting for Bass or whoever was supposed to kill him did not seem like his best chance.

  “Becky,” he shouted. “Samuel is sick. Really sick. You know he is. He’s not going to get better without medicine. That stuff draining out of his nose is serious. I can help him. He could get very ill. Please listen to me. People are going to die if I don’t get some help. Don’t leave me here like this.”

  “Bass, no!” he heard Becky cry.

  An instant later the shed door burst open. The man stood there, filling the space. He was six-five, with
shoulders that nearly spanned the doorjamb; heavily tattooed, tree-trunk arms; and a massive gut. His thick, shoulder-length auburn hair and full beard hadn’t seen a scissors in months, if not years, and his vest, perhaps once the covering for an entire cow, was studded with chrome spikes. His narrow, feral eyes held not a bit of warmth.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said, taking a step into the shed. “And who do you work for?”

  Behind him, Matt could see at least one other biker, as well as Becky, Samuel still riding on her hip. He pushed himself to his feet.

  “I’m a doctor,” Matt said, certain that he had better state his case quickly. “My friends and I were trapped in a mine explosion. I swam out in the river to get help.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, please, it’s true. I’m from Belinda. I need to get to the Slocumb brothers’ farm off 82. Do you know them? They can vouch for me.”

  “I don’t know them. I don’t know nothin’ except that you were where you shouldn’t have been with a gun in your pocket. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You DEA?”

  “No, I’m a doctor from Belinda.”

  “I’m gonna find out, and I promise it ain’t gonna be pleasant for you. Tell me who you work for and I’ll see to it you don’t suffer too much. Fuck with me, and I promise you’ll be beggin’ to die.”

  “What I told you is the truth,” Matt pleaded stridently. “I swear it is.”

  Bass stepped forward, grabbed Matt’s shirt in his massive fist, and lifted him onto his toes. Matt could smell the odor of marijuana wafting from his clothes.

  “You have half an hour,” Bass growled.