“Oh, cut the bullshit!” Ramon shouted, stepping around Marion. “You fucking, lying, sneaky coward! Why don’t you just admit it that you have no fucking idea what’s wrong with her? Marion called you here because he thought you could help, but it’s obvious you’re hiding the fact that you can’t. You don’t have a fucking clue and you’re trying to hide it by saying it’s something else!”
Drew’s face didn’t register any surprise. “I suspect Cassie’s got rabies.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“That’s your diagnosis?” Ramon exclaimed. “Of course it is. You can diagnose it because you can smell it!” Ramon shook his head. “All the time and money people spend with quantitative diagnostic tests when we could’ve just sent them to you and your magical mystery nose!”
“Wait, Ramon,” Lyssa said. She held up her hand.
“No! We’re wasting our time, Lyssa. He can’t help us. We need to leave, find help elsewhere.”
But Lyssa wasn’t listening. She turned and stumbled into the hallway. A moment later they heard the beep of the answering machine and the last message began to play.
This is the Woodbury Animal Clinic calling with results on the animal you provided us on Tuesday. This call is for Veronica Mueller.
“Ronnie?” Lyssa exclaimed. “But—”
Ms. Mueller, we were unable to reach you at the primary number you listed on our contact form. In cases such as this, our guidelines require us to follow up with your secondary contact number as provided on your submission paperwork. Again, this message is for Ms. Veronica Mueller.
Although our preliminary in-house analysis did not identify the presence of a human disease threat in the bat you brought to us, a repeat assay came back slightly positive. We sent it to the state lab for further testing and verification.
The others had gathered around Lyssa now.
We regret to inform you that the state lab confirmed the presence of rabies virus in the bat. We strongly advise that you or any other individual who may have handled this animal contact us immediately for treatment options. Rabies is a serious disease which, if left untreated before symptoms arise, is both untreatable and fatal. Please consider visiting your personal physician to receive prophylactic injections. Symptoms typically arise within days of infection, but in rare cases the disease can remain asymptomatic for up to several weeks or lie dormant for years.
Again, once the symptoms begin to show, the disease is one hundred percent fatal.
Our number here is—
Drew pressed the STOP button.
“I don’t understand,” Ramon said. He looked lost. “I don’t understand what this is about.”
“Lyssa,” Drew said, “I’m so sorry.”
But Lyssa just blinked at him. “The moment you said rabies, I remembered. But I was certain you were wrong because I’d already made sure Cassie wasn’t infected.”
Ramon stepped into her line of sight. “Lyssa, what are you talking about? You knew about this?”
She shook her head. “We hit a possum with the car a couple weeks ago. There was blood everywhere, but the poor thing wasn’t dead. I had to kill it. It was— It was horrible.” A strangled cry escaped her throat. “There was a second animal, a baby. Cassie found it. I was— I couldn’t do it. Cassie did.”
“Stop it,” Ramon told her. He gripped her shoulders and shook. “You’re not making any sense.”
“She did it because I couldn’t.”
“Did what, Lyssa? Cassie did what?” Ramon’s voice was rising in pitch. “What did Cassie do?”
“She killed it. There was blood everywhere, but most had washed off in the rain. I checked her after we got to the lab and didn’t see any new cuts. But to be sure, I stopped on the way home and picked the possums up. The in-house assay was negative, but I wanted it sent to the state lab anyway. I thought this message was a follow up to that.” She lowered her face into her hands. “I thought I’d done everything right. I try so hard to protect her and I fail. I tried.”
Ramon’s face was white as a sheet. The look in his eyes was insane. He looked as if he would either hit Lyssa or faint. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Ronnie. What bat?”
Lyssa went over and started removing Cassie’s clothes, stripping her down to her underpants. She started checking her skin, poring over it inch by inch. “Brad said Ronnie was sticking around because she was worried about Cassie. He said she mentioned something about a bat.”
“But she would’ve told us if Cassie had been bitten,” Ramon cried. “Wouldn’t she?”
Lyssa didn’t answer. She was holding Cassie’s leg up. She ran her thumb over the skin and whimpered.
There was a small scab just above her heel, a series of tiny holes spread out over an arc. Opposite it was a near-perfect mirror image.
“A bite?”
The edges of the wound were pink.
“That’s why she hasn’t been acting herself lately,” Lyssa whispered. “Why she’s been having mood swings. It’s why she hasn’t been drinking. And she was afraid of the water. That’s what happens. They get afraid of the water with rabies.”
Ramon turned to Drew. “There’s nothing you can do?” he pleaded.
“If it were the reanimation virus,” Drew answered, “then I might’ve been able to help. Maybe. But I can’t help with this. I’m so sorry,” he repeated.
“No,” Lyssa said, shaking her head. She was delirious now, in anguish. She slipped to the floor. She couldn’t understand how this could be, how a simple bat bite could somehow be worse than being bitten by one of those dead things walking around outside.
Ramon sat down. His own eyes had glazed over, too. His face was ashen with shock. “How could this happen? How could—” He gestured toward the front door, then the back, his jaw opening and closing wordlessly. “Why didn’t Ronnie say something when it happened?”
“I’m afraid the best we can do now is make her comfortable,” Marion said.
“Maybe not.” Drew nodded to the others. “Give us a moment?”
Silently, the two men and the boy filed out of the room.
“There may be something we can try. I don’t know if it’ll work. I don’t want to get your hopes up, as it’s an extremely long shot.”
Lyssa turned toward him. It took such effort, as if her neck were as stiff as a tree trunk and her head a boulder.
“There have been a couple reports of people surviving rabies. It’s very rare and requires some rather . . . extreme measures. Even after almost a century since it was first attempted, it’s still highly controversial.”
“The Milwaukee Protocol,” Lyssa whispered. She shook her head. The chances were practically nil.
Drew nodded. “It’s believed that if the person can survive the infection long enough — and that’s a big if — then the body develops its own antibodies and eventually clears the virus. It requires putting Cassie into a coma for several weeks.”
He stepped back and looked around them and sighed. “But we’re talking about long-term monitoring, constant medical intervention, palliative care, a feeding tube, cardiovascular and respiratory monitoring. Intravenous antibiotics and antivirals. None of that can be done here.”
“There’s a hospital about five miles from here,” Ramon uttered.
“The hospitals are empty. Emergency staff have all been evacuated.”
“Then we’ll take her somewhere else. We’ll get her off the island.”
“The moment you try to get her into a hospital on the mainland, you’ll disappear. The Ames people won’t allow you to survive. Not now. Not knowing what you know.”
“Then we do it ourselves. Lyssa is a medical doctor. We break into the hospital and get what we need and bring it here. We’ve got solar power. We can survive for months if we have to.”
Drew sighed again. “I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
“Just tell me what we need,” Lyssa said. “This is my fault. I’m the o
ne who wanted Cassie to have a nanny. I trusted her.” She turned to Ramon. “You were right. I trust everyone else except you. I’ll go and get what we need.”
“No,” Drew said. “Ramon will go. Take Marion with you. Lyssa, you stay here with Cassie. She needs her mother.”
“It’ll be risky,” Marion said. “The infected are all over the place out there now. And it’s only going to get worse.”
“It’s not them you have to worry so much about,” Drew told them. “It’s the living you have to watch out for.”
“The uninfected?” Ramon asked. “Why?”
“There are other illnesses,” Drew said, “opportunistic diseases which infect the weak-minded. Out there, in all this chaos, they are the ones who pose the greatest threat to you, more than the dead.”
CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT
“You want to tell me who you really are? And why you disappeared? And why everyone’s been so interested in finding you?”
Drew waited a moment before responding with his own questions. “That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”
Lyssa removed the washcloth from Cassie’s forehead, dipped it into the bowl of ice water, then replaced it. She didn’t know if it would help. She figured it couldn’t hurt. “Let’s start with those first and go from there.”
Drew kicked off his shoes and leaned back in his chair. In the two weeks since he’d gone missing, he’d grown a thick beard, the kinky dark hair looking out of place beneath the thinning gray up top. He rubbed his fingers through it and sighed. The other man, the tall one who’d shown up with him, now leaned against the doorway. The boy imitated his casual stance.
“Where to start,” Drew muttered repeatedly to himself.
“How about the beginning?”
He waved his hand, as if whatever the beginning was didn’t really matter. Or maybe it did matter, but it was just too big to explain in the time they had.
“I’m part of a small group of people who’ve been aware of the truth about the government’s reanimation program for a couple years now.”
“The Omegaman Program?”
“Yes. The government — well, this group of very powerful private citizens — are behind it all. It’s all run for profit and power. They own the government. Several governments, in fact. Hell, they own everything.”
“Then it was inevitable that this would happen.”
“I tried to prevent it a couple years ago. I failed. But I gained some valuable information about the disease and how we might be able to defeat it. It’s what I’ve been working on ever since.”
He gave her a sad look. “I’m sorry I lied to you all this time. I needed an out-of-the-way place to do some research without fear of being discovered.”
“You used us. I’ll never forgive you for that. But I can’t say I blame you.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “The government has been carefully studying public perception and acceptance of reanimation. There was, for obvious reasons, a level of repugnance. But, over the years, as a result of a campaign of information leaks, we’ve become desensitized to the whole idea. They planned it so that when the truth finally did come out, getting us to accept it would be a relatively minor challenge. We’re already too dependent on the Omegas to easily dismiss them. Most people wouldn’t care anyway to find out they’re dead, given that the Omegas are culled from Death Row prisoners and Lifers anyway.”
“Turning something bad into something good.”
“Quite right. It’s not the first time the public’s had the wool pulled over its eyes by an industry. The tobacco cartels conducted a systematic, decades-long campaign of deceit and denial regarding the harm cigarettes caused.”
“Yeah, well, cigarettes are illegal.”
“Now they are. But do you think they would be if somebody was able to demonstrate a tangible benefit to society? Look at how they decriminalized marijuana fifteen years ago.”
The stranger coughed. “Turning prisoners into soldiers. There’s possibly no greater national benefit imaginable than that.” He tilted his head at the boy. “I thought I told you to keep an eye out front, in case anyone comes.”
The boy complained, but did as he was told.
Lyssa stared at the man for a couple seconds. She had a vague sense that she’d met him somewhere before. There was definitely something familiar about him. “And who are you?” she asked. “Scientist? Politician?”
“Former scientist,” Drew explained for him. “He’s our—” He paused and leaned over to regard the man more carefully now. “I guess you could call him our own public relations officer.”
“Ha! Public relations,” the man said, shaking his head and chuckling wryly. “That’s a new one.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Jeremy,” he told her. “Jeremy Burt, but these days I go by—”
“Jay Bird. You’re the man on the radio. That’s why I keep thinking I knew you. Most people think you’re a crackpot.”
“It’s a calculated strategy. I’m playing the government’s game, hiding the truth inside innuendo. Except in my case, the truth is wrapped inside hyperbole.”
“Nobody takes you seriously.”
He pulled his hand back when she didn’t take it. “On the contrary. Many people do believe, privately. If too many people openly supported me, I’d have been shut down much sooner by the very groups I’m exposing. As it was, they discounted me.”
“Sounds like they’re trying to shut you down permanently.”
“Times have changed,” Drew offered. “And after today, I don’t think you’ll be able to find too many people who will think Jeremy is crazy.”
Lyssa shook her head, partly in dismay. “For months — years, even — you’ve been telling us the government was creating dead people. Nobody believed you. I didn’t anyway.”
“On a subconscious level, I’ll bet you did. How else would you explain their success in combat?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s because they can’t be killed, not like regular people.”
Drew leaned forward, shaking his head. “They can be killed, just like you or I can be. It’s just not as easy to do it when you’re faced with a creature that can take dozens of bullets, lose an arm and a foot and half their torso, and will still keep coming after you.”
“And they know no emotion,” Jeremy added. “No fear. No remorse. No hesitation. They’re like machines.”
“They are machines,” Lyssa muttered. “All these months, we’ve been living, working, playing right next to them, the dead.”
“All a part of their strategy to inure us to having them around. ‘See?’ they’ll argue. ‘They’re not dangerous at all. They’re just machines, just like microwave ovens and power drills.’ ”
“As long as we can control them, Jeremy.”
Lyssa stood up and walked over to the sliding door and looked out into the darkness of the back yard. “Marion told us he thought the outbreak was intentional, just mistimed. What did he mean by that? How would that help us accept the undead more?”
“I actually disagree with him on that account,” Drew said. “I think the outbreak was supposed to happen after the truth came out, after we’d already welcomed them into our society and our lives, after we’d seen how much of a convenience they could be. By then we’d be fully dependent and have to accept the risks. Automobiles are dangerous. Guns and chainsaws are dangerous. But they all help us do things, as long as we use them properly. The government would argue the outbreak occurred because someone didn’t ensure the proper controls were applied, and that would open up other doors for them.”
“What sort of controls? What doors?”
“The Ames Research Consortium, ARC, have been pushing Congress with the idea that every living person should be implanted and connected to the Stream. They’ll use the outbreak to reason that if we’d all been implanted already, very few people would’ve had to die. As soon as the first victim was identified, all they’d have to do is throw a swi
tch, and immediately anyone who was infected would be stopped cold in their tracks. Without the ability to attack, the disease wouldn’t spread.”
“It’ll never happen now,” Lyssa argued. “People won’t stand for it. And what’s to stop them from flipping the switch anyway, controlling our minds while we’re still alive?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you can imagine how the people who created these implants would profit,” Jeremy added. “You wait and see. After the dust from this outbreak settles — if we’re still around to see it — the government will pass regulations which mandates neural implantation as a protective measure. The alternative would be to ban reanimation technology. Well, I can’t imagine that’s going to happen. There’s too much money and power at stake.”
“So, how can you fight this?”
“By creating a vaccine or cure, something that will destroy reanimation technology once and for all. That’s what we’ve been trying to do, Lyssa, me and a select group of scientists scattered about the country. We even have people inside the research consortium. The Ames group renting space in the lab has two of our own people in it. Sudha was in on it as well. As soon as this new chemical arrived from Ames, we started having it characterized. There were high hopes it might be a cure, since it binds viral proteins specifically.”
“It’s not?”
“Sadly, no. We still don’t know what it’s for.”
“What happened to Sudha?”
Drew’s face clouded.
“Marion mentioned she wasn’t infected.”
“She wasn’t.”
“And her children?”
“Murdered. Beaten terribly by someone bent on evil. But it wasn’t the virus. The police are claiming it was Sudha who did it, but she and the other boy, Ricky, are in hiding. I sent them away as soon as I got wind they’d contacted you. Unfortunately, we still don’t know who killed them.” Anger flashed in his eyes.
“And what about the couple who went missing a few weeks ago? Marion said they were the first. How is that tied to us?”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 72