Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

“What’s going on with you and Mike Marr?” he asked.

She looked at him quickly. “That son of a bitch? He’d been coming on to me since day one. I guess he thought no woman could resist big black boots and a ten-gallon hat.”

“You seemed to be resisting pretty well at the Bomb Picnic.”

A rueful expression crossed de Vaca’s face. “Yes, and he’s not a man who likes to be crossed. He comes across all smiles and aw-shucks, but that’s not how he really is, at all. You saw how he planted the butt of his shotgun in my gut, back there in the Fever Tank. There’s something about him that scares the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth.” She pulled her hair back brusquely with one finger. “Come on, let’s get to it.”

Carson exhaled deeply. “Okay. Take a look at my ideas, see if you can think of any other reasons for the failure.” He pushed the PowerBook over, and she took the next stool at the lab table, reading the information on the screen.

“I have another idea,” she said after a moment.

“What’s that?”

She typed:

Possibility 5: Viral product contaminated with other strains of X-FLU or plasmid fragments.

Answer: Repurify and test results.

“What makes you think it was contaminated?” Carson asked.

“It’s a possibility.”

“But those samples were run with GEF. They’re all cleaner than a Vatican joke.”

“I just said it’s a possibility ,” de Vaca repeated. “You can’t always believe a machine. These X-FLU strains are very similar.”

“OK, OK,” Carson sighed. “But first, I want to double-check Burt’s notes on the mapping of the X-FLU plasmid. I know it all by heart, but I want to go through it once more, just to be certain.”

“Let me help you,” said de Vaca. “Maybe between us, we can find something.”

They began to read in silence.

Roger Czerny lay on his bed in the quarantine room, looking at Brandon-Smith sitting, against the far wall. Pouting, as usual. He loathed the sight of her more deeply, more thoroughly, than he ever had any other person in his life. He loathed the fat dough-boy biohazard suit she wore, loathed the whining sarcastic voice, loathed the very sound of her breathing and whimpering through the intercom. Because of her, he might die. He was furious that he had to share the quarantine room with her. With all the money GeneDyne had, why hadn’t they built two quarantine rooms? Why stick him in with this fat, ugly woman who bitched and moaned all day long? He was forced to watch her every bodily function, her eating, her sleeping, her emptying her shit bag, everything. It was intolerable. And everything was so complicated, just taking a piss or trying to eat dinner while maintaining the sterile environment. When he got out of here, he thought, unless they did something really nice for him—a hundred-grand bonus at least—he was going to sue their asses. They should have given him a rip-proof suit. It should have been part of the procedure. It didn’t matter that they’d given them both fresh bluesuits. They had locked him in with his own would-be murderer. They were liable as hell, and they were going to pay.

On top of everything else, they wouldn’t tell him the results of the frequent blood tests. The only way he’d know anything was when the ninety-six hour waiting period was up. If they let him out, he was clean. If not ...

Shit, he thought, it was going to take two hundred to make up for this. Two-fifty. He’d get himself a good lawyer.

It was ten o’clock. The lighting was dim, so he knew it had to be evening, not morning. That was the only way he could tell in this prison. He thought, once again, of his one visit to a hospital, ten years earlier. Emergency appendectomy. This was like a hospital, only worse. Much worse. Here he was, a hundred feet below the ground, sealed in a small room, no way out, with a roommate that—He opened and closed his mouth several times, hyperventilating, trying to ease the panic that came bubbling toward the surface.

Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. He shifted on his bed and pointed a remote at the television that hung from the ceiling. “Three Stooges” reruns. Anything to get his mind out of there.

A soft beep sounded and a blue light began blinking high on the wall. There was a hiss of compressed air escaping; then the doctor, Grady, squeezed through the hatchway, the bulky red emergency suit hindering his movements. “That time again,” he said cheerfully into the intercom. He took Brandon-Smith’s blood first, inserting the needle through a special rubber-sealed grommet in the upper arm of her suit.

“I don’t feel good,” Brandon-Smith whined. It was what she said every time the doctor came. “I think I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

The doctor checked her temperature, using the thermometer inserted in her suit.

“Ninety-eight point six!” he piped. “It’s the stress of the situation. Try to relax.”

“But I have a headache ,” she said again, for the twentieth time.

“It’s not time yet for another shot of Tylenol,” the doctor said. “Another two hours.”

“But I have a headache now .”

“Perhaps a half dose,” said the doctor, fumbling in his suitcase with gloved hands and administering the injection.

“Just tell me, please, please , if I have it,” she pleaded.

“Twenty-four more hours,” the doctor said. “Just one more day. You’re doing fine, Rosalind, you’re doing beautifully. As I told you, I’m not being given any more information than you are.”

“You’re a liar,” Brandon-Smith snapped. “I want to talk to Brent.”

“ Relax . Nobody’s a liar. That’s just the stress speaking.”

The doctor came over to Czerny, who presented the side of his suit in resigned anticipation of having his blood drawn.

“Anything I can do for you, Roger?” the doctor asked.

“No,” said Czerny. Even if he pushed past the doctor, he knew there were two of his fellow guards stationed directly outside the quarantine area.

The doctor drew the blood and left. The blue light stopped blinking as the hatchway was sealed. Czerny went back to the Three Stooges, while Brandon-Smith lay down, falling at last into a fitful sleep. At eleven, Czerny turned off the lights.

He awoke suddenly at two. Even though it was pitch black, he felt, with a shiver of horror, a presence hovering above his bed.

“Who is it?” he cried, sitting up. He fumbled for the light, then dropped his arm again when he realized the form at the end of his bed was Brandon-Smith.

“What do you want?” he said.

She did not answer. Her large frame was trembling slightly.

“Leave me alone!”

“My right arm,” said Brandon-Smith.

“What about it?”

“It’s gone,” she said. “I woke up and it was gone.”

In the dark, Czerny pawed at his sleeve, found the global emergency button and punched it savagely.

Brandon-Smith took a small step forward, bumping his bedframe.

“Get away from me!” Czerny shouted. He felt the bed vibrate.

“Now my left arm’s going,” she whispered, her voice strangely slurred. Her whole body began to shake. “This is strange. There’s something crawling inside my head, like tapeworms.” She fell silent. The trembling continued.

Czerny backed up against the wall. “Help me!” he cried into his intercom. “Somebody get the hell in here!”

Two recessed bulbs in the ceiling snapped on, soaking the chamber in a dim crimson light.

Suddenly Brandon-Smith screamed. “ Where are you? I can’t see you! Please don’t leave me !”