"If you think it'll be of service," said Pradeep uneasily. "But I fail to see how any of these chemicals has anything to do with the pathogen."
Roderick told him what they knew of the pathogen—its capacity to replicate even without any genetic materials—and he summarized his theory of protobiont and its origins in the brain cell cultures of Vision Cell Bioceuticals.
While he was listening, Pradeep's eyes widened. When Roderick finished, the chemist's lip was quivering. "But if that's true...."
"If it's true," said Roderick, "then we have our work cut out for us."
"If it's true...." Pradeep couldn't seem to finish the sentence.
"It's nobody's fault," said Kraig.
Pradeep shook his head. "No. We have to accept responsibility...if it's true." He looked at Roderick. "You're convinced."
Roderick gave no reply. He simply stared at the chemist with a steady gaze.
"But are you sure you want to try and remake this...thing?" asked Pradeep. "Wouldn't it be better to analyze the samples of it that you've already got?"
"We're working on that," said Roderick, "but that takes a considerable amount of time—something that's in short supply. If you use your notes to reconstruct your last few chemical batches we can test those."
"Work from the top-down instead of from the bottom-up," explained Kraig.
"It's another avenue with which to arrive at an answer," said Roderick. "Possibly faster. Instead of breaking down its components and analyzing them, we'll try to synthesize the beast again and, if we succeed, we'll know what it's made of. And we'll discover something of its nature."
Pradeep nodded. "Hair of the dog that bit you."
Kraig gave him a puzzled glance. "What?"
"It's not important," said Roderick. "Just an old saying." He smiled at Pradeep. "If you have your notes together, shall we get started?"
"I will not rest until the problem is solved," vowed Pradeep.
* * *
As soon as Pradeep and Roderick got busy in the lab Kraig picked up the telephone.
A moment later a voice answered.
"Cecily?" said Kraig.
"Yes."
Kraig paused. "How are you doing?"
"I've been better."
An agonizing moment for Kraig passed. The ticker incremented. The moment it did Kraig called out, "Cecily!"
"I'm still here."
Head bowed, shoulders slumped, Kraig muttered something unintelligible.
"So I guess you heard," said Cecily.
"Heard what?"
"My mouse died."
For a moment Kraig was confused, but then he realized she was talking about the mouse used to bioassay her CSF for the presence of the pathogen. "Everybody's mouse died." Kraig's lips compressed. "Cecily, I'm sorry."
"For what? It's not your fault. This is our job. You don't accept the risks, you don't need to be in the business."
How, Kraig wondered, could she be so calm? Her voice didn't even waver. Would he be that stoic? Or would he be more like Lisa?
Cecily asked, "Has Lisa called you?"
"You knew about that? She told you?"
"No," said Cecily, "but I guessed she might."
The woman's uncanny, thought Kraig.
"Don't take it so hard," she went on. "Lisa's young."
"Yeah, but—" She probably won't be getting any older.
A moment of silence passed. Both of them were probably thinking the same thing, Kraig realized. Finally he asked, "Have you seen her? Or talked to her?"
"Not lately."
"Do they let you move around in isolation?"
"I'm not in isolation, Kraig."
Kraig's compressed lips suddenly parted. "What?"
"It's not like it would do me any good. There's no treatment yet."
"But you can't just be wandering around! You might infect.... Cecily, where are you?"
"Where I belong," she answered.
Medburg, Pennsylvania / 3:45 p.m.
Gordon found her meditating on the floor of a dirty basketball court in a gymnasium on Glaser Avenue.
He sat down beside her and said nothing. Cecily Sunday sat cross-legged, thin forearms resting on thighs, mouth and eyes closed. Over the murmuring of several other people in the gym Gordon heard her deep breaths. He watched her slender abdomen steadily swell and collapse. A few minutes passed. Then she said, "Hello, Gordon."
"Amazing."
"Amazing?"
Gordon shook his head. Her eyes hadn't opened—she couldn't have seen him unless she had peeked through barely cracked eyelids.
"You have a distinctive gait," explained Cecily.
"You heard me? My footsteps?" Gordon glanced around. There were about twenty other people in the building, and though no one was playing basketball there were several voluble conversations drifting through the enclosed gym.
"No, I didn't hear them, but I felt them."
Suddenly Gordon understood. His footsteps had been transmitted into Cecily's body as she sat on the floor. "Okay, maybe you're not amazing. Simply perceptive. Very, very perceptive."
Still with eyes closed, Cecily smiled.
It was the same smile that Gordon had found so disconcerting when he'd first met her back at the Vision Cell laboratories. But perhaps it wasn't the same. Now, as he stared at it, he noticed that Cecily's smile wasn't so disconcerting. In fact it was sort of comforting.
Cecily asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"I'm here because this is where I should be." Cecily's eyes opened. "I'm infected. And now you are quite likely to be infected too, if you weren't before. So, why did you come into the containment zone, Gordon? You're not a stupid man. Surely you knew what you were doing, surely you had some reason for what you did."
Gordon couldn't meet her gaze. He shrugged.
"That's not a good answer," said Cecily.
Gordon looked up. "I was searching for someone."
"Who?"
After a short pause Gordon said, "I found her."
Cecily watched him for a moment. "You're pretty perceptive too, if you knew I'd be here."
"I knew you'd be infected, after I realized how infectious this thing is. This thing that my company turned loose. I know it started at Vision Cell. I don't know how, but I know it got started there."
"And you're here to atone for the mistake." Cecily frowned. "Quit punching yourself, Gordon. According to the people at Micro, nobody's at fault."
"Everybody is at fault," said Gordon savagely.
Cecily stared. "You mean by not being prepared? How can you prepare for something like this?"
"By considering all the possibilities."
Cecily frowned. "There are an infinite number of them, as my esteemed colleague Sherlock would point out. You can't be prepared for them all."
"But you have to know you're taking risks."
"It seems to me that everybody did know that we were taking risks. The risks were deemed acceptable, considering the potential reward of that kind of research."
"That's the whole problem, Cecily. We were arrogant. Everybody was. We deemed the risks acceptable, all right, but that's because we assumed that we knew everything that might happen. We thought we were in control, we thought...we assumed we knew what was going on. Behold, Homo sapiens: wise being, conqueror of nature."
Gordon paused to glance around, as if to take in the whole containment zone. "And this is the result of that arrogance. We didn't know what we were doing and now we're paying for it."
"What would you prefer? That people do nothing unless they fully understand what they're doing? Seems like we couldn't do anything but sit still if we had to live under that kind of restriction. Don't get me wrong, Gordon—I think you make a good point, but I don't believe there's anything reasonable we can do to prevent this kind of accident."
Gordon stared at her for a moment. She stared back, her expression neutral.
"Twenty thousand
causalities," said Gordon. His mouth went dry. "Including...."
"Including you and me?"
Gordon nodded.
"We're not dead yet," said Cecily.
"This Sherlock fellow, he's going to save us. Is that it?"
"I don't know. What do you want me to say? I just don't know. All I'm telling you is that we're not dead yet, so let's not act like it." Cecily looked at him. "But you know what? You were a fool to come here and do this contrition stunt. How did you sneak into the zone?"
"I wrapped myself in plastic peanuts and jumped from a tree."
Cecily laughed.
"No, really."
"And what were the soldiers doing while you climbed the tree and jumped over the fence?"
"You'd be surprised how easy it is to sneak up on people when their full attention is focused on what's in front of them rather than what's behind them."
"Good point. But I would have thought the tree limbs would be trimmed so they don't extend over the fence."
"They were. I had to run along a branch and leap forward. Just barely cleared the fence."
Cecily smiled her weird smile. "I think you're a fool. A clever one, but a fool nonetheless—a clever fool. How's that for an oxymoron? So now you're in the zone, and you're here to stay, my friend, because you won't be doing any more fence-jumping unless you want to eat a bullet. You've gone from spectator to spectacle. Does it make you feel any better?"
"Yes."
Cecily gazed at him with a skeptical look on her face. "Really?"
He returned her stare. "Yeah, really. I'm where I belong. And it's been a long time since I could honestly say that."
* * *
An hour later Gordon and Cecily left the relative calm of the gymnasium. It had been designated as a "public center" and was guarded by two troops in hazard suits, both soldiers bearing M4s and giving the impression they were alert but not scared.
"Where are you staying?" asked Gordon, as he followed Cecily down the sidewalk.
Cecily jerked her thumb at the gym.
"Really?" asked Gordon. "That's home?"
"Yes," said Cecily. "Showers in the back, no waiting for the toilet, continental breakfast. Can't beat it."
She stopped. It was late afternoon in Medburg but there was no rush hour traffic in the zone. A drizzling rain came down, just enough to wet an uncovered face. The street was practically deserted—and filthy.
"It's getting dangerous," said Cecily. "And it'll only get worse. We should probably go back inside. But I hate being cooped up all the time. Makes me feel...." Her voice trailed off.
"Is that why you came into the zone? To escape isolation, confined to a room?"
"I already told you why I'm here." Cecily started walking again. An SUV sped by, and she watched it suspiciously.
"Something wrong?" asked Gordon, staring at her.
Cecily turned and smiled. "Was that a joke?"
"No," said Gordon, frowning. "But I suppose it—"
Gordon's mouth stayed open but he quit talking. Cecily followed his gaze. Her mouth set. "I don't know about you," she said, "but I'm not going to let this place slide all the way into barbarity." She walked forward.
Following a pace behind, Gordon went with Cecily toward the body that they'd seen on the sidewalk a short distance away.
It was an old woman. As Gordon stared at her, he thought she looked a little like his grandmother—a likeable, kindly woman who lived in Atlanta and sent him cleverly punned Christmas cards every December.
Gordon noticed Cecily looking around. He said, "Where do we take her?"
"Nowhere." Cecily walked over to an abandoned store front. It was a barber shop, jutting out from a row house. The windows were boarded up and sheets of blue plastic had been wrapped across the boards. She began stripping the plastic off.
"What do you mean, 'nowhere'? Isn't there a burial place or something?"
"They come around and pick them up in trucks." Cecily tore off a piece of the plastic and handed it to Gordon. Then she started on another.
"Then why...." Gordon paused. Suddenly he got it. "Civilized people cover their dead."
"You have to keep up your standards," said Cecily. "If you don't, there's no telling how far down you'll go. There's no limit to how low you can fall." She finished ripping the plastic. "If," she added darkly, "history is any judge."
They took the plastic and made a blue cocoon around the body. After they dragged the body onto the curb, Cecily brushed off her hands. "Ready for delivery."
Gordon studied her face. "I can't figure you out."
"Don't try." Cecily straightened up. "I have to ask one question, though, while we're on the subject. I think I understand why you broke into the zone—sort of like a symbolic virgin, throwing yourself into the volcano—but what I want to know is, were you really looking for me?"
Gordon nodded.
"Mind telling me why?"
Gordon shrugged. "What else is a volcanic virgin supposed to do? I don't know anybody else in the zone."
Cecily stared at him for so long that Gordon became uncomfortable. "What?" he asked.
She shook a bony finger at him. "You know what I think? I think you're a closet dysphoric."
"A what?"
A wild scream diverted their attention.
A pickup truck careened down the road. Jammed in the back were five young people, four men and a woman. Most were holding up beer bottles. One of the men tilted back his head and gave another ear-splitting yell.
"Look out," warned Cecily. With her hand on Gordon's shoulder she drove him backward, toward the flimsy shelter offered by the awning of the barber shop.
The truck was only going about ten miles per hour. The people in the back had plenty of time to notice Cecily and Gordon. And they did.
Most of them were sitting down, except the man who'd yelled. He was about twenty years old, tall with an athletic build, and obviously intoxicated.
One of the other men shouted something, pointing to Cecily.
Gordon felt fear—for the first time in a long time, he felt scared. Not the sort of fear he'd occasionally felt before—it was nothing like the vague sense of unease when he used to think about how the company might fail, or when he worried about what would happen to his son, or when he fretted over his career, the rising national debt, politicians who must have been lobotomized before taking office. This was a primitive, raw kind of emotion, coming from deep inside.
Someone threw a bottle. The liquid spilled out as the glass spun crazily through the air. If the intent had been to hit either Cecily or Gordon it was a bad shot—with a splattering of glass the bottle landed far away, hitting the front of one of the nearby row homes.
The pickup truck slowly weaved down the road. Its driver, apparently no more sober than the passengers in the back, sideswiped a parked car; the squeal of metal grinding against metal caused Gordon to throw his hands up to his ears.
"End of worlders," said Cecily, watching them go. The truck disappeared down the street. Peace and quiet returned.
Gordon let his hands drop. "Are there many crazy people like that around here?"
"You call that crazy? They're just having one last party before they die. Irresponsible, maybe, but not exactly crazy. Those aren't the ones we have to worry too much about." She looked around. "Let's go back home. I think we've done our bit to keep the zone civilized. It'll be dark soon."
"Wait." Gordon caught a glimpse of a body down the street. "We're not finished yet," he said grimly, and started down the sidewalk.
Cecily followed him. They reached the body sprawled out on the pavement, face up. Cecily stopped. "Gordon...."
Gordon stared. It was a man about his age, unshaven, unkempt. "What a way to die," said Gordon, in a disgusted tone.
"Gordon—"
"You want to get some more of that blue plastic?" asked Gordon, as he grabbed hold of the arms.
"What the hell?" said the man.
With a look of horror Go
rdon dropped the arms.
"I tried to warn you," whispered Cecily. "That one's still breathing. For now."
"What the...hell?" The man opened his eyes—which didn't seem capable of focusing, but finally one eye, then the other, lit on Gordon. Spittle drooled down the mouth. "What you trying to do, boy? You a faggot or something?"
Gordon held up his hands. "Sorry."
The man tried to get up. "C'mere. I'm gonna kick...." He passed out before he could finish. The filthy head slid back onto the pavement and landed with a definite thud.
Gordon felt a hand on his arm.
"We've done our duty for the day," said Cecily. "Let's go."
"They're all like this?" Gordon couldn't believe it. "Drunk? Drunk to the point of unconsciousness?"
"Call it self-medication." Cecily pulled Gordon away. "Not everyone is like this. I'm not, you're not. The people back at the gym aren't. Come on, let's call it a day. There's a curfew. The troops will pick this fellow up and give him a comfortable cot where he can sleep it off."
They got only a block before Cecily said, "Crap."
Gordon looked up sharply. "What?"
Then he saw them. Five tough-looking young men had strolled out of an alley right in front of them.
Medburg, Pennsylvania / 5:00 p.m.
Gary was the one who had to call for the mortuary's carriers. His mother's strength was just about gone, and she couldn't stop crying.
The hazard-suited men and women showed up and Loretta Winters made a scene when they started taking her youngest daughter away.
"She's dead, Mom," Gary had said. He wiped a tear from his own cheek. "They need to take the body, so maybe we won't get sick."
His mother would not be consoled. Finally one of the medical people sedated her before they left with Yvonne's body. She was now resting in her bedroom; still sobbing, Gary knew, but quietly, softly.
Gary realized that he was now in charge of the household. His first act was to call his father—but he couldn't get through. Neither the land line nor his cell phone worked.
I'm on my own, he thought. No one to turn to for advice. No one except Alicia, and Gary was unsure how much help his sister would be.
Gary walked into the living room. Curled up on the couch, Alicia was embracing her youngest brother and gently stroking his hair. They were quiet; both had eerily vacant expressions.
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