Victor Methos - Plague

“Implying,” Robert said. “I implied that you did and you inferred that I have inside information about you.”

Conrad looked to Tyrone, bewildered. “Who the hell is this guy?”

Tyrone sat, looking from one man to the next. “I’ve clearly lost control of this meeting so I’d like to start again.”

“Tyrone,” Robert said, a slight smile on his lips, “you’ve done well in setting up this little party. But you’ve no more use to me. I suggest you keep quiet while I calm your friend down.”

“Hey,” Tyrone said, his brow furrowing in frustration. “I’ve done everything you asked and not asked a lot in return.”

“Oh, right,” Robert said, looking to Conrad. “You see, Ty here was going to get a percentage of the contracts. That’s why he’s pushing so hard for me to receive them. But we weren’t supposed to tell you that.”

Conrad looked to him, unable to hold back the disgust. “You son of a bitch! I trusted you.”

“C, it’s me, man. Calm down, all right. That’s not how it played out.”

“You’ve been to my house, you cocksucker! You ate my wife’s dinner.”

“C, I’m telling you, that’s not how it played out. Sit down and let me explain.”

Robert took a piece of chicken off Conrad’s plate and placed it gently in his mouth. “I’d love to stay and see how this plays out but I simply have to be going. I’m catching a flight in thirty minutes and the police will be looking for me.”

“Police?” Tyrone said. “For what?”

“Murder.”

The spit of the silenced Ruger.22 caliber could barely be heard over the din of the restaurant, even by the men at the table. When Conrad saw the blood pouring from a small wound on Tyrone’s chest, he knew what had happened. He thought it odd that it wasn’t like in the movies-a ping with a waft of smoke rising in the air. There was no sound, no drama. It had sucked Tyrone’s life away quietly and without fuss.

“Oh sh-”

Conrad felt his lungs tighten as if a fist had grabbed them and squeezed. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t suck in air. There was just this horrible nothingness as his mind raced and he stared wide-eyed into the face of the man who had just shot him.

He watched as Robert stood up, calmly put on his glasses, and looked to the dog under the table. He bent down to where Conrad couldn’t see and after a yelp from the dog followed by silence, Robert stood and walked out of the restaurant.

Conrad looked over to his waitress who was helping another table. He tried to gasp, but nothing came. Instead, he fell to the floor, pulling the tablecloth and all their dishes with them. As the floor rushed toward his face, he felt the sweet release of his soul lifting from his body and he wished he’d had time to tell his wife goodbye.

Samantha sat in the corridor of Queen’s Medical and watched journalists from every newspaper, magazine, blog, and website stream into the hospital and go straight to the media room that had been set up in another building just behind the ER. The hospital’s main floor had been cleared with the exception of the staff. They had been asked, politely, to remain on hospital premises for a short period of time to see if any of them had been infected. When they were asked, national guardsmen with rifles stood behind their supervisors. There wasn’t a lot of room for debate.

Samantha was one of the few people allowed to move freely. Technically, she would by right be under observation as well. But in an emergency situation when they faced a hot agent as deadly as black pox, it was all hands on deck.

She noticed the man from the prior meeting in the Depeche Mode T-shirt walking by with a Diet Coke in his hand and he smiled to her and came over.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Are you going to the press conference?”

“Yes.”

“So what lab are you with again?”

“I’m with the CDC.”

“Oh, man. So this is your press conference. Are you going to be sitting up there?”

“They like to fill the long tables during these things so if there’s space they’ll ask me.”

“That’s so cool.”

“Not really.”

He shrugged. “It is to me. I’m stuck in a nine-by-nine room twelve hours a day and when I do anything important my supervisor takes the credit.”

“The CDC can always use good field agents.”

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” He took a sip of his drink and she could tell he was thinking of what to say next. “If that guy you mentioned, the index patient, if he did pick it up in South America, that probably means someone’s going to have to go down there and snoop around, right?”

“It’ll take time to clear it with our two governments, but yes. We’ll send down a team to all the locations he visited.”

“And try and hunt down a virus. Man, I’m telling you, your job puts mine to shame.”

“It’s rewarding work. But it’s hard to have time for everything that you want. I travel so much I sometimes feel like a stranger in my home town.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing if your home town sucks.” He sat next to her on a chair, removing an old issue of Sports Illustrated that was open on the cushion. “So what does somebody need to do to be on that expedition to South America?”

“You wouldn’t want to go, trust me.”

“Why?”

“It’s government travel. That means charters and the cheapest lodging and food available. They’re rarely fun.”

“Well if I wanted to, what would I have to do?”

She stood up. “You’d have to work for the CDC. You ready?”

“Um hm.”

They walked down the corridor together, Duncan asking her about how she began with the CDC and why she remained there when she was clearly qualified to work anywhere in the world she wished. They left through the back entrance and came to the second building, which was crowded with military vehicles, police cruisers, and news vans.

“Man, must be a slow news day,” Duncan said.

“You don’t think this is deserving of attention?”

“You kidding me? Do you have, well, yeah you do, but do you think the general population has any idea how many deadly epidemics are just at their doorstep? Every day in Africa, somewhere, there’s an Ebola outbreak. It infects one or two people, spreads to a few dozen or one or two hundred and then disappears. Some people are in the same room with an Ebola infected patient and they contract the disease and others get blood coughed into their mouths and don’t get it. That’s what creeps me out about it. It seems like the viruses almost choose who they want to infect and who they don’t.”

“They can’t choose anything,” Sam said.

They worked their way through the cords from the cameras and sound mics that coiled on the ground like thin, black snakes. They showed identification to the MPs at the entrance and went inside.

Everyone seemed to be going in one direction down a hallway so they followed. This building was much different than the hospital proper. The floors were carpeted and clean and there were no fingerprint marks on the glass doors or the walls from children. Samantha guessed this was probably an administration building.

They finally came to a small auditorium and took seats in the back, Duncan sitting next her. Samantha took out her phone and began reviewing notes of the three patients that had been admitted during the night. Two women and a fifteen-year-old boy. They were all displaying fevers, rashes, vomiting, and diarrhea. The boy had developed what had become the telltale sign of the illness: a spreading, smooth black surface just underneath the skin.

“I guess you lost your seat,” Duncan said.