The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Poole again began to cry, heaving sobs that convulsed her whole body. She struggled to her feet and staggered out of the room.

  For a moment Cho and Jeremiah looked at each other. Jeremiah said, “Can I see him?”

  Cho said, “I’m afraid we’ve already rendered the body, processed it to recover its moisture for the settlement.”

  “You freeze-dried him?”

  “Did you ever read an old book by a guy named Frank Herbert about a desert planet? The people in that book recovered the water of their dead. We realized early on that we could do the same thing here to augment our water supplies. It’s part of the standard release everyone signs before coming to the Moon. You signed one too.”

  He must have seen something in Jeremiah’s face, for he added: “It’s a respectful process and we reserve a sample of various tissues—heart, brain, bone marrow—for future generations to study, should they so choose. We’ll place his remains in the graveyard. You probably saw it when you were outside.”

  Jeremiah recalled the colorful capsules.

  Cho shifted his gaze to the wall over Jeremiah’s bed. “By the way, I made a few calls, talked to your friend, Elias Leach. President Hope. General Horowitz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And the decision was made to let you take your son home with you—once you’re healed up, that is.” Cho looked Jeremiah in the eye. “Of course, the two of you will have to be quarantined for a long time.”

  Jeremiah felt a sudden relief. At the same time, the restraint in Cho’s voice indicated the Admiral was hiding something. Jeremiah wished he could see behind Cho’s mask. It was difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking. He said, “Why?”

  “I thought you’d be happy to hear the news.”

  “It’s too easy.”

  Cho shrugged. “There’s no pleasing you, Mr. Jones. You’re not happy when we say we’re keeping him. Now you’re upset that we’re releasing him into your custody. What is it exactly that you want?”

  Jeremiah shook his head, wincing at the movement. “I just don’t understand. Why all this effort to stop me and suddenly change your minds?”

  “You’ve got the virus. We want you gone.” Cho turned to leave, then stopped and spun around. “Two more things. One, the Verlorens wanted to thank you. I told them they’d have to wait until we lift the quarantine, if we ever do.”

  “The Verlorens?”

  “The little girl you saved. Kyler Verloren and her parents.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s sending you a vid-message. And the second thing is that Walt Devereaux will be stopping by to examine your blood, ask you a few questions. Maybe he can figure out exactly how the virus is transmitted. That would go a long way to lifting the quarantine. We know it can be passed by the usual means—bodily fluids, a touch on broken skin, even a few cases of sneezing. But there have been a few instances where the virus seems to have been passed by simple airborne transmission, lodging in the upper lining of the lungs. If Devereaux finds that to be true, or if he can’t find an answer, the quarantine must remain in place.”

  “What about my son?”

  “Do you really want us to bring him to you when you’re potentially contagious and in such a weakened state? Not to mention that he’d probably just attack you anyway.”

  “I guess not,” Jeremiah said. “Thanks for your efforts on my behalf.”

  After Cho left, Jeremiah thought back to the night he and Jack—both of them drunk, Jack shattered by grief—had stopped at Franklin Park to sober up, lying back on the grass, looking up at the Moon and talking, never realizing they would soon be traveling there. As Jack fought to recover his composure, Jeremiah realized that Marschenko, his one-time enemy, had become his best friend.

  Catherine, Julianna and now Jack Marschenko: why did everyone he loved die?

  No, not everyone: Joshua was still alive. Even if Joshie was dying he wasn’t dead yet. Together they’d figure out a way to beat whatever was killing him.

  * * *

  During the night, Jeremiah retreated to his dungeon, holding back the agony by focusing on the flickering torchlight bouncing off the stone walls. The imitation sunrise—reds, pinks and yellows—brought him out of his hypnotic state. Kitchen sounds carried into his room: pans and plates and the chatting of the mess staff as they prepared the day’s breakfast. The smell of baking bread made Jeremiah’s stomach growl. Nurse Manuella, a dark, petite woman with wide brown eyes and a sunny disposition, appeared with several new anesthetics for him, but they helped little. After a breakfast of protein-enriched oatmeal, toast and fruit, he played the vid-message from Kyler.

  “Hello, Mr. Jeremiah,” she said from the screen, her blond hair pulled back behind her head, her brown eyes glistening with moisture, her upper lip and nose quivering with sorrow that broke his heart. “I’m sorry I got you hurt out at the crater. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen. I just wanted to be your friend because you looked sad. Mother says if I would be more careful these things wouldn’t happen and Daddy says I need to act more like a lady, which I will. Please don’t be mad at me. I don’t know what happened. The ground just . . .” A tear trickled down her cheek. She closed her eyes as her shoulders bobbed up and down. After a few seconds she wiped her eyes and managed to speak again in a halting, squeaky voice: “I’m sorry . . . please . . . get well . . . soon.”

  The screen shifted to blue. Jeremiah shook with anger at the unnecessary pain she was enduring. He sent an immediate reply, telling her it wasn’t her fault and that he wished to see her once his quarantine was lifted. Then he began to work his legs, alternately lifting and flexing each one, straining himself to the point of nausea before moving to the next one. He’d show her he was fine no matter how much it hurt.

  As he worked his legs, an older man entered the room, mask firmly in place over the lower half of his face. Jeremiah recognized him immediately as Walt Devereaux. Tall and lean, the scientist had graying hair and crows’ feet around his brown eyes that deepened as he smiled behind his mask. Jeremiah felt better just seeing him.

  “It’s good to see you too, Jeremiah,” Devereaux said. He placed a small statue of Emerging Man on the table above Jeremiah’s bed. “Quark asked me to give you this. It’s a copy of the one you brought up for the Escala. He thought you might take some comfort from it.”

  Jeremiah smiled. “Thank him for me.”

  “I’d ask you how you’ve been but I already know the answer. Terrific, right?”

  Jeremiah laughed for a second, stopping when a piercing jolt struck his broken ribs. “Don’t. Laughing hurts.”

  “Humor’s good for you. You should laugh a dozen times a day. How have you been?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Of course you are. Your friend, Jack Marschenko, is dead. Why shouldn’t you be fine?”

  “They told you about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Devereaux nodded. “Okay. Do you feel any tingling in your fingers or toes?” Jeremiah shook his head. “How about flashers or floaters in front of your eyes?”

  Jeremiah nodded. “Small dark spots that move wherever I shift my gaze.”

  “Good.” Devereaux glanced up at the monitors. “And I see you still have a great deal of pain, particularly when you try to move.”

  “Is that good too?”

  Devereaux laughed. “The pain lets you know you’re alive. And it tells me your body is healing itself. For some reason, the standard pain medications don’t work on you.” Devereaux winked. “That’s interesting, though perhaps you’re less enthused about that aspect than I am.”

  Jeremiah smiled. “A safe assumption.”

  “Well, let’s take a look at your blood.” Devereaux took a quick sample, stepped over to the powerscope and bent over the eyepiece.

  J
eremiah said, “Why are you still here on the Moon?”

  Devereaux stayed bent over the powerscope. He began to hum faintly, an unrecognizable melody. After perhaps a minute he said, “Politics is an almost unstoppable force. And it’s long been the fashion to promise whatever is expedient or popular, even where there’s no intention to fulfill the promise or at least no intent to do so expeditiously.”

  “You mean they don’t intend to let you go to Mars?”

  “They’ll let us go sometime. Earth doesn’t want us back and the Moon is too uncomfortably close. Eventually they’ll have to release us. As for you,” Devereaux straightened, turned to look at Jeremiah, “you’re definitely a carrier of the virus, though it’s extremely well hidden within your white cells. In fact, though I’ve not seen a blood sample from before you were infected, judging from my brief study of your genetic makeup, I believe you’ve experienced an episode of epigenesis.”

  Jeremiah grunted with pain as he forced himself to a sitting position. “Epigenesis?”

  “Your genetic makeup has changed due to environmental factors. Your Escala nature is quite dynamic. In fact, it adapts itself all the time, adjusting to the conditions around it. The same holds true for the Mars-bound Escala. The condition is not static. However, there are differences between you. The Escala were designed for a specific purpose—to survive on Mars. You, on the other hand, have been altered as an Earth-bound creature. The changes they’re undergoing are much slower, more targeted to the Martian environment. Even though they’ll die if they don’t get to Mars, the relatively sedate pace of their evolution means it will take some time.”

  Devereaux moved to the chair next to the bed and took a seat.

  “For you the changes occur more quickly. As a result, they’re more dangerous. Because of the speed at which your body adapts, any one mutation could be harmful. And right now your body is fragile. It’s holding the virus at bay. But the virus might recur, especially if you’re weakened by some other illness or injury. It could also reassert itself should your immune system mutate further. Unfortunately, with this kind of forced evolution, there are no guarantees.”

  “Why did you create us?”

  Devereaux shook his head. “I suppose it could be said that I created you, since my research made your evolution possible, though I only intended to create the Escala. When I look at those kids, those monsters Poole and Cho created, I wonder if I did the right thing. Those cadets frighten me. Too late now—Pandora’s box is open. And I still believe that forced evolution is the only hope for humanity’s long-term survivability. We can’t rely on luck to see us through the aggression that’s been hard-wired into us. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket. Unless we change our essential nature, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes—killing ourselves and our planet.”

  Jeremiah said. “A rosy outlook.”

  Devereaux’s eyes wrinkled again. “It’s not all doom and gloom. I’d love to be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. But I don’t think I am.”

  “And what’s going on between Poole and Cho?” Jeremiah asked. “Pretty tense.”

  Devereaux shrugged. “That’s a relationship I haven’t figured out yet. Possibly a soured romance. Certainly different priorities. I only know that whatever they’re doing, the end result will be bad. Those kids they’ve trained—they’re trouble. But I’d rather talk about you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Devereaux stared patiently at Jeremiah. He sat still, his eyes never leaving Jeremiah’s. Through the wall behind the bed, Jeremiah heard dishes stacking in the kitchen. He began to feel the weight of Devereaux’s gaze. He glanced at the statue of Emerging Man and said, “You want to talk about Jack Marschenko.”

  Devereaux raised an eyebrow. “What was he like?”

  Jeremiah spent a few moments collecting his thoughts. “He was a man of enormous integrity,” Jeremiah said. “But more than that, he was a hell of a lot of fun. Since we knew each other’s secrets, we didn’t have to watch what we said. He liked this fruity drink called a rainbow flower. Had a hell of a kick. He drank half a dozen one night and took me to this karaoke place. A little hole in the wall. And he sang old Sinatra songs for an hour. Wouldn’t let anybody else come up on stage. I finally had to wrestle him off.

  “He had a girlfriend back on Earth, a woman named Lily from his old neighborhood. Not long after we met he asked her to marry him. She turned him down. I don’t know if he ever got over that. Anyway, after I yanked him off-stage that night—this must have been about two months after she’d refused his proposal—he decided that we had to go look Lily up. We went to the club where she worked. The manager told us that Lily had killed herself the week before. I thought he might try to tear the place down. But he just went completely quiet. I put him in my car and drove to Franklin Park, where he sat on the grass and cried like a baby—his whole world destroyed, like mine had been. We stayed there and talked for hours. But you can’t put a QuikHeal bandage on a broken heart.”

  Devereaux said, “I forgot that your wife killed herself too.”

  Jeremiah nodded. “That bonded us in a tragic way.”

  Devereaux reached for a box of tissues and Jeremiah realized the great man was crying. Yet he himself couldn’t. Not now. He waited for Devereaux to wipe his eyes and said, “So what are you going to do next?”

  “I’ll study the virus further. There’s something familiar about it.”

  “Like what?”

  Devereaux shook his head. “I can’t quite place it. Perhaps I once conjured up something like this in my head. Perhaps someone I worked with in the distant past created a similar virus.”

  “It’s been around for years.”

  “Yes, I know. But this strain is different—more obviously manufactured. The older versions looked more natural, as if they could have evolved on their own. I’m going to conduct a series of tests, see if I can narrow down its preferences and mutability. In the meantime I want you to focus on feeling better. Eat. Laugh. Smile. Keep a positive outlook. That’s important.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Yes, it is. It doesn’t make it any less true, however. Tell me something, Jeremiah. Do you like yourself?”

  “I have far too many flaws for that. And I’ve done far too many terrible things. So, no, I don’t particularly care for myself. Why do you ask?”

  Devereaux shook his head. “Because it’s important that you do. Your profile indicates that you demand far more of yourself than anyone around you. It’s probably the reason you’re so good at what you do. You’re never satisfied. But if you want to get well, you’ll have to do a better job of forgiving yourself.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes closed despite his best efforts to keep them open.

  “I’ll leave you to get some sleep,” Devereaux said. “But remember this. I spoke with Julianna about you last year. She loved you and trusted you more than any man she’d ever met. And don’t forget the Escala and me. We’ve seen to the heart of you. And you’re the best man we know. So no matter what you think of yourself, there are people who admire and respect you—people who wish you well.”

  Sermon delivered, Devereaux gave a short bow and exited the room. Perhaps, Jeremiah thought, I’m not as bad as I think I am. Perhaps there’s hope for me after all. On the other hand, you don’t know the terrible things I’ve done.

  Chapter Eleven

  Curtik paced in his cell, watched by two Elite Ops troopers outside. They wore full armor, shields activated, which told him they were afraid. Good. Still, what did I do wrong?

  The cell—a portable model with plas-glass walls on all four sides—sat in the center of the greenhouse for some reason, so vegetables and fruits surrounded him. Yellow lights gave the room—actually, a cave—a weird glow. If he wasn’t locked up, he might think the place was kind of cool. But no way was he going to sit here and rot like that freak, Damon. A
nd no way was he going to let that bitch Zora lead the attacks on Earth. The cell’s dampening field prevented him from using his implant to contact anyone on the outside. But his tong would come for him.

  Addam and Benn should be planning his escape by now. They’d rally the rest of the boys, maybe most of the girls too—except for Zora’s tong. Once he got out, he’d figure a way to eliminate her. Always flaunting her brains, like they mattered. So annoying, so worried about cause and effect, long-term consequences, carefully plotted retreats. You don’t retreat in battle. Ever.

  He’d have to do something about Poole and Cho when he got out too. They obviously didn’t intend to let him run free. So he’d have to neutralize them, maybe take them out. As that idea occurred to him, an incredible pain knifed through his head—a paralyzing, vision-blackening agony that nauseated him and left him incapable of rational thought. He dry-heaved a couple times. Son of a bitch!

  What the hell was that?

  Programming, he realized as the pain diminished. They’d programmed loyalty into him. And since he’d never thought of attacking them before, he’d never experienced the agony that came with disloyalty. He wondered whether he’d even be able to move if he decided to kill them. Even that thought left his stomach unsettled. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t recall ever having a rebellious thought about Cho and Poole. He must have had some early on. They all must have. But if negative thoughts directed at Cho and Poole brought on discomfort, they would naturally have veered away from such ideas quickly, without ever wondering why. Now that he knew the reason, he might be able to find a way around the negative programming.

  He thought he heard something faintly, not so much through his ears as directly into his brain. Two words: We’re coming. Benn and Addam.

  Outside the cell the two Elite Ops troopers turned their dark visors his way. One of them said, “You’re a scary little bastard, Curtik.”

  “Is that you, Talbert?” Curtik said. “I can’t tell you guys apart when you’re wearing your helmets. Who’s that with you?”