‘It wasn’t easy,’ said Anna. ‘It was so unlike most of the viruses we have to deal with today. It was like trying to cure the Black Death. But once I’d realized how archaic it was, I was able to devise an antiviral for it comparatively quickly.’
‘OK – so that’s why Matchitehew and Megedagik went to Grandier to help them. Grandier’s possessed by Gressil, and Gressil is the demon of infection. Gressil was able to give them a virus which could shrug off any antiviral drug, ancient or modern. Maybe Gressil is the virus, from what you’ve told me.’
‘I still don’t see how this helps us. We’ve made a start on isolating the bedbug virus, but its structure and the way it replicates is absolutely baffling. I’ve never come across anything like it.’
‘Maybe you can’t find a state-of-the-art drug to beat it,’ I said. ‘But how about a state-of-the-art virus?’
‘You’re talking about the Meramac School virus?’ said Epiphany. ‘Are you seriously suggesting we use it as a cure?’
‘It makes some kind of sense,’ said Anna. ‘The Meramac School virus makes its sufferers seriously ill, but the bedbug virus is one hundred percent fatal. We’ve seen already that the Meramac School virus attacks and destroys every other virus it comes into contact with, including type-A flu and avian flu, and even previous mutations of itself. If we can get it to destroy the bedbug virus, all we need to do is carry on trying to find an antiviral that will persuade it to destroy itself – to commit suicide, so to speak – and I think we’re getting very close to it.’
‘So – we use a virus to kill a virus,’ said Epiphany. ‘Dog eat dog. Or at least, new dog eats old dog.’
‘It’s very risky,’ said Anna. ‘There’s no doubt that if we inject BV-1 sufferers with the Meramac School virus, a high proportion of them will die anyway, and we will have killed them.’
Rick sniffed and said, ‘Me, personally – if I was faced with the choice of having some chance of living, or no damn chance at all, then I know which I’d choose.’
As we sat there talking and drinking coffee, we heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. Epiphany looked toward the windows and said, ‘Sounds like a storm’s brewing, doesn’t it?’
Rick’s cell rang, and he answered it. ‘Dazey? Hi, sweetheart. How is she? OK. Yes. OK. I won’t be more than a half-hour, I promise you.’ He dropped his cell back in his pocket and said, ‘Mazey’s gotten much worse, and Dazey wants me home again.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there’s much more that I can do here.’
‘Well, I have to thank you for coming, Harry,’ said Anna. ‘I really thought I was going mad until I met you at the hospital. You’ve been wonderful.’ At that moment, her own cell buzzed. She picked it up from the table and said, ‘Professor Grey.’ She listened for a moment and then she said, ‘What?’ She looked at me, and her expression was shocked. ‘Don’t let him in,’ she said. ‘Tell security to get rid of him. Yes. You don’t have to give him any excuses.’
She put the phone down, and I said, ‘Who was that?’
‘It’s Brian Grandier. He’s in reception, asking to see me.’
‘Grandier? You’re kidding me! How did he know you were here?’
‘I have no idea. But you heard what I said.’
‘I think we should see him,’ I said. ‘At least, I should. Come on, Anna, he’s the key to this whole epidemic. We can’t just turn him away.’
‘I’m frightened,’ said Anna. ‘Why do you think he’s come here?’
I stood up. ‘Rick and me, we’ll go and find out. You just wait here.’
I went to the door, and Rick got up to follow me. As I reached the door, however, I saw Brian Grandier’s face in the circular window. He was right outside, staring in at me. His gray hair was brushed back, and his gray beard was neatly trimmed, and his eyes were as hard and gray as two stones.
I opened the door, and he took a step inside, so that I couldn’t close it again without pushing him back into the corridor.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Mr Erskine and Professor Grey, both together. Ill met by daylight, as Shakespeare didn’t say.’
‘Brian Grandier,’ I said. ‘Or should I say Urbain Grandier? Because it is you, isn’t it? Burned alive, and then reborn?’
The muscles in Grandier’s face knotted with suppressed anger. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Burned alive? Reborn? Are you mad?’
‘You were reborn in exactly the same way that Misquamacus was reborn,’ I persisted, trying to stay calm. ‘You infected Father Zapata, didn’t you, so that he couldn’t tell me who you were – or rather what you are? But he didn’t die before he told me all about you.’
‘What are you doing here, Mr Grandier?’ Anna demanded. ‘What do you want? I’m calling security!’
‘Security? I wouldn’t bother to do that, if I were you,’ said Urbain Grandier. ‘As for what I want … it’s very simple indeed. I want you to stop your research on this virus, Professor Grey. And you, Mr Erskine, I thought you were going to advise your compatriots that if they didn’t quit this land as soon as possible, they would die. And now they are dying, which makes you personally responsible for every one of their deaths.’
There was another rumble of thunder, so much closer this time that the windows rattled.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I said. ‘You’re history, Grandier! This country has changed beyond any recognition in four hundred years, and you can’t expect it to change back again. It doesn’t matter any more who murdered who and who stole what. You can’t turn back time. Haven’t you seen the cities and the highways and the planes and the tunnels and the bridges? And as for you – those bishops who persecuted you and tortured you and burned you at the stake, they’ve been dead and buried for centuries, along with all of their beliefs and all of their superstitions.’
‘There is still revenge,’ said Urbain Grandier. ‘I want my revenge, and my Indian friends want their revenge. Your ancestors didn’t just steal land, they destroyed whole nations, whole cultures, whole languages – wiped them out for ever, as if they had never been. And in Europe they did the same, all in the name of Christ. Revenge is the very least that is owing to us. You have been warned not to stand in our way, both of you. This is your very last chance.’
‘You can’t touch us, either of us. You know that.’
Right in front of me, Urbain Grandier’s face began to alter. His eyes became wolfish and bloodshot; his nose became longer and sharper. His skin darkened until it was almost maroon, and his lips turned black. He opened his mouth, and his teeth were sharp and amber and crowded together like a shark’s.
With a chilly sense of dread, I realized what was happening. He was showing us the demon that had possessed him ever since Father Surin had exorcized his mother, Sister Marysia. This was Gressil, the demon, or the virus. He was real. He looked just like one of the demons that you see in medieval paintings and engravings, and the reason for this was that in the Middle Ages demons were openly walking abroad, and the artists had seen them and knew what they looked like.
‘Of course, we cannot harm you,’ said Grandier-Gressil, in a voice that sounded as if he had grit between his teeth. ‘We have codes of honor, just like you do. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t punish your friends, and all those around you. We will rip them open and strangle them with their own intestines. We will blind them and make them mad. By the time we have finished, you will be pleading for mercy on their behalf.’
Another detonation of thunder sounded as if the storm was right on top of us now. The whole building shuddered, as if it had been shaken by an earthquake, and three glass retorts fell out of their stands and shattered on the floor.
We heard a man shouting and a woman scream. Then there was a splintering, crashing noise and a strong wind came whistling down the corridor, carrying with it a blizzard of paper. It sounded and felt as if the main entrance to the laboratory had been blown in. A fire alarm started
to ring, and we could hear more shouting.
Rain started to patter against the window, and I glanced quickly behind me. It was almost as dark as night outside, although I could see the trees on the opposite side of the parking lot thrashing their branches like drowning bathers.
I saw something else, too. Figures. There were scores of dark, hunched figures making their way toward the laboratory. All of them were dressed in black, with black veils over their heads, and as they came nearer I could see that they were swaying as if they were walking in a religious procession. Nuns.
Epiphany stepped forward and confronted Grandier-Gressil. ‘You’re nothing but a monster,’ she said, although her voice was shaking. ‘You just dare to touch us. We’re getting out of here now, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’
‘Oh, but I can, and I will,’ grated Grandier-Gressil. ‘Whatever you try and do, you bitch, I can lick you.’ With that he drew back his lips and waggled his tongue in a lewd simulation of cunnilingus.
But now Rick came up, took hold of Epiphany and moved her aside. He levered his revolver out of his belt and pointed it directly at Grandier-Gressil’s face, only six inches from the tip of his nose. ‘I think that’s where you’re wrong, shitface, and if you try to stop us, I swear to God that I’m going to do you an injury – like, blow your fucking head off.’
Grandier-Gressil stared at the muzzle of Rick’s revolver, as if it amused him. I could swear that he was actually smiling. Three or four seconds passed, and then he suddenly made a grab for Rick’s wrist.
Rick was too quick for him: he fired and hit Grandier-Gressil point-blank in the face. I was expecting him to drop dead on the spot, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. His head snapped back a little, as if he had been slapped, but he stayed where he was. Not only that, the pellets from the shotshell should have blasted all the flesh from his cheekbones and blinded him, at the very least, but instead they left nothing but tiny black lumps all over his forehead and the bridge of his nose.
Rick didn’t have the chance to fire a second time. Grandier-Gressil seized his wrist, wrenched the revolver out of his grasp and slung it across the laboratory, so hard that it smashed one of the windows. Then he grabbed hold of Rick’s jacket and forced him face-first into one of the laboratory cabinets, cracking the windows and breaking most of the beakers and retorts inside it. Rick toppled sideways on to the floor, his face and his hands smothered in blood.
I tried to snatch Grandier-Gressil’s sleeve, but he swung his arm and hit me in the ribs. It was like being hit by a scaffolding pole. Winded and bruised, I stumbled back against the wall, and before I could regain my balance, Grandier-Gressil had caught hold of Epiphany and wrapped his arm around her neck. She flailed her fists against him, trying to break free, but he yanked his elbow up even higher, almost choking her.
Outside in the corridor I could hear more screaming, and then a man shouted, ‘No! No! Help me! No!’ This was followed by a succession of squeaking, tearing sounds, like doors being twisted off their hinges.
‘Now we are going outside,’ said Grandier-Gressil. ‘Now you can face the people you have wronged and tell them how sorry you are and that you beg their forgiveness.’
He tightened his stranglehold around Epiphany’s throat even more. She was desperately tugging at his sleeve, but he was much too strong for her. Her eyes were bulging, and she was whining for breath.
I looked across at Anna, and all Anna could do was shake her head. We didn’t have a choice. I had no doubt at all that if we didn’t do what Grandier-Gressil wanted us to do, he would break Epiphany’s neck right in front of us.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Outside in the corridor, the scene was chaos, with bodies heaped everywhere. The wind was still blustering through the building, and sheets of paper were still whirling around. The doors to every one of the laboratories had been smashed open and the lab technicians dragged out into the corridor and killed. They were lying on top of each other in their bloodstained lab coats, and we could have been walking through a slaughterhouse. There was blood on the floor and blood up the walls and even blood spatters on the ceiling.
Every one of the technicians had been ripped open from crotch to breastbone, and their intestines dragged out of them, wound around their necks and used to strangle them. Whoever had killed them had made no distinction: there were women lying there, as well as men. The sight of all those glistening beige ropes made me gag, and the stench of feces and bile and half-digested food was overwhelming.
Grandier-Gressil forced Epiphany along the corridor toward the main entrance, and Anna and I reluctantly followed him. We had to high-step over the bodies, as if we were performing horses. I had left Rick sitting on the floor of the laboratory, half-concussed. His chin was badly cut and his left eye was closing up, but I didn’t think that he was too badly injured.
The reception area was strewn with shattered glass and broken furniture and potted palms that had been knocked over and smashed. The stuffing had been torn out of a brown leather couch, so that it looked like a disemboweled cow.
The storm was even more furious now. The sky was black, and lightning was crackling all around us. Every now and then there was a deafening bellow of thunder and the rain would lash across the parking lot even harder, flooding the gutters and filling the drains. The wind was so strong that we had to keep our heads down and lean against it.
Yet – they were there, waiting for us. There were more nuns than I could count, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. They were standing in a semicircle, their rain-sodden habits flapping with a sound like muted applause. Right in the middle of this semicircle stood Matchitehew and Megedagik. Although it was so dark, they were lit up intermittently by flashes of lightning, so that I could see at last what they really looked like – the sons of Misquamacus, the greatest wonder-worker who had ever lived, and lived again, and then again.
They were both nearly seven feet tall, and they both wore elaborate headdresses with buffalo horns on them and patterned blankets over their shoulders, although one of them was in black and the other red. They both wore necklaces, too, of teeth and beads and bones, and both of them had rattles hanging from their waistbands, with eagle feathers and beads and tufts of hair attached to them.
As before, they had beetles crawling all over them, hard-shelled and shiny. Some of the beetles dropped to the ground, but they immediately crawled back on to the brothers’ bare feet and up their legs.
Their faces were extraordinary. I didn’t know which one was Matchitehew and which was Megedagik, but they both had deep-set eyes, sharply-sculptured cheekbones and hooked noses. Their cheeks were painted with white stripes.
Grandier-Gressil forced Epiphany down the steps and across the parking lot to stand right in front of them. Then he twisted around and pointed with his free hand toward me and Anna. ‘They have come to ask for your mercy!’ he shouted at the wonder-workers. ‘They have come to tell you that they will do everything they can to help you claim back your land!’
The wonder-worker with the red blanket said, ‘Is this true?’
I tried to hold Anna back by catching at her hand, but she shook herself free from me and stepped forward until she was standing right beside Grandier-Gressil and Epiphany.
There was another rumble of thunder, but it seemed to be further away now, and quite suddenly the wind began to subside and the rain ease off. I saw a last flicker of lightning off to the west, and then the storm appeared to be passing, although the sky remained dark. It was so quiet now that I could hear Anna speaking quite clearly.
‘I can’t do what you ask,’ she said. ‘You have your beliefs, but I have mine. I swore when I started my career to save as many lives as I could, and that is what I have to do. I am sad for all of your people who were killed and had their land taken away from them, but killing more innocent people will never bring them back – either your people or your land.’
‘You do not belong here,’ said the wonder-worker in the red
blanket. I assumed he was Matchitehew, because his brother, Megedagik, had hardly spoken before. ‘All we are doing is reclaiming the country that is rightfully ours. You must go, and if you will not go, then we will make you go.’
‘Do you know how many thousands of people have already died because of this sickness you’ve been spreading?’ said Anna. ‘Do you know many millions are going to die, if I don’t find a way to stop you? Far more people than we ever killed!’
She was clenching her fists in righteous anger, and I have to admit that I was deeply impressed by how brave she was, standing alone in front of these two looming figures, with their headdresses and their rattles, and all of these silent, creepy nuns.
‘An eye for an eye!’ said a sharp, female voice.
Out of the crowd of nuns standing behind Matchitehew and Megedagik, a taller nun appeared with her face uncovered. Her face was long and oval, and it was so pale that it could have been carved out of ivory. Her eyes, however, were coal-black, with charcoal circles around them, as if she hadn’t slept for centuries.
‘So your people have multiplied, since you settled here?’ she said. ‘They have fornicated, like you, you slut! There are millions of you now, are there? Well, there would have been millions of these people, if they had been given the chance to live in their own land and prosper. It is just as much of a sin to have denied a people what they might have been, as to have denied them what they once were.’
‘It was you who threatened me before, wasn’t it?’ Anna challenged her. ‘It was you who assaulted me. I didn’t give in to you then, and I won’t give in to you now, no matter what you do.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ said the nun, coming even closer to Anna and staring into her face, unblinking. ‘I am Jeanne des Anges, Mother Superior of the Ursuline Convent of Loudun. Do you know who brought me back to life and brought me here? Gressil, the Lord of Infection, in the shape of Father Grandier, aided by the power of Matchitehew and Megedagik, the wonder-workers. We five together are justice. We are revenge. We are a spiritual league to bring hypocrites and thieves and murderers to account, no matter how long ago they committed their sins!’
Plague of the Manitou Page 31