James Tabor: The Deep Zone

Hallie walked down the hall, turned left, moving without thinking, kept going to the end of the corridor, turned left again. She stopped in front of Lenora Stilwell’s room. The door was closed. There was a sign on the door, red with yellow lettering: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

I’m authorized if anyone is .

She pushed through the door, walked to the foot of Stilwell’s bed, stared.

“Oh my God!”

She fled into the hall, where she stood screaming at the top of her lungs for doctors, nurses, anybody, to get down there now .

THE DOCTOR WAS PANTING FROM HIS SPRINT-WADDLE DOWN the hall in a Chemturion. He stood beside the bed, peering at Stilwell. His heavy breathing had fogged up the faceplate, so he kept tilting his head this way and that, trying to get a decent view. Several nurses in their inflated suits hung back, trying to see around him.

Lenora Stilwell smiled, waved. Weak, but a wave. “Hey there. Think I could get some orange juice?” Her voice was still raspy, but stronger.

Hallie stood and gaped. Stilwell’s color had returned. The lesion on her forehead had shrunk. “Unbelievable. The colistin is working.”

The doctor looked up from Stilwell’s chart. “She hasn’t received colistin since she got here. Wouldn’t take it. Directed it to be used elsewhere.”

More people, staff in biosuits and patients in johnnies, were crowding around outside the door now, peering in, trying to get a glimpse. Word had spread quickly through the ward that something was happening. Now pretty much everybody who could walk was coming toward Stilwell’s room.

“Look at you!” Hallie laughed, sobbed, laughed. She turned to the doctor. “If it wasn’t colistin, what happened?”

“Damned if I know.” He put the clipboard on its hook. “It’s… it’s… hell, I don’t know what it is.”

Hallie was thinking the simplest thought: A miracle, that’s what .

Stilwell let out a laugh of pure joy. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“It’s you .” Stilwell pointed a bandaged hand.

“What?”

“It’s you. Something about you , Hallie. You gave it to me, and now I’m getting better.”

“The CPR.” Hallie remembered the feel of Stilwell’s mouth, the taste of blood, saliva and breaths mixing in their throats. Stilwell’s chest rising. Over and over.

“Had to be. No other way to explain it.”

“What CPR?” The doctor was looking at them.

“I arrested last night. No pulse, no respiration. Hallie was here. Did CPR. Something must have passed from her to me.”

“How…?” Hallie was still trying to understand. She looked down at her bandaged hand and remembered what had happened in the moonmilk chamber.

Was it possible? Could the substance somehow have synthesized, maybe even transfected, in her own immune system? Morphed biochemically?

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But I tell you one thing, gal. You better come over here and let me give you a hug.”

And that’s what Hallie did.

Then she turned to the doctor, who was still staring, open-mouthed.

“My name is Dr. Hallie Leland. I’m a microbiologist with BARDA at the CDC. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. I need for you to call Dr. Donald Barnard, the director there.” She repeated Barnard’s cell number from memory. “Use any secure line you need to. Use WRAMC’s national security hotline if you need to. But get hold of Dr. Barnard now . Understand?”

The authority in Hallie’s voice took command of the still-stunned doctor. “Yes, sure, I can do that. But… what should I tell him?”

“Tell him he needs my blood. A lot of it.”

“NOW I KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE A VAMPIRE’S GIRLFRIEND.” Hallie was sitting up in bed, pale but showing no sign of ACE infection.

“It’s a good thing the human body can replace a pint a day.” Barnard had visited often. They had taken four pints of blood, one a day, with a day or two of rest in between each drawing, since the discovery of Lenora Stilwell’s recovery.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Light-headed once in a while. Sleeping more than usual. Otherwise, piece of cake. Are they getting it done?”

“Every government lab with the capability, and those of every major pharmaceutical company, are producing. Close to a hundred thousand doses already deployed. And since it’s government property, which means everybody’s property, every company has access to the drug’s genome.”

“So nobody gets filthy rich from this.”

“Right. How’s your mom? You finally talk to her?”

“She’s relieved. So are Mary and my brothers. They all knew something weird was up, not having heard from me. They just didn’t know what.”

“Are they coming to see you?”

“They were. I told them to stay put until I get out of here.”

“Did you think more about what we discussed?”

“About the lab? Yes. I would like to come back, and I appreciate the offer, Don. Have you found out anything more about all that happened down in Mexico?”

“We identified the two operatives that took you captive initially.”

“You did? Who were they?”

“Their names were Brant Lee Kathan and James David Stikes. Kathan was former Army Special Forces. Dishonorably discharged for torturing prisoners in Iraq. Stikes had been a SEAL. Honorably discharged. Both worked for the security firm Global Force Multiplier.”

“GFM? My God. The same contractor that provides security for VIPs in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“None other.”

“We suspect that they were to kill everyone on the team, including Al Cahner, and retrieve the moonmilk. They knew nothing of its real value.”

“So Cahner would have been double-crossed. And GFM was behind all of this?”

“No.” Barnard frowned, sighed. “We’re not sure yet who was the prime mover. But we do know someone else was involved.”

“Well?”

“Nathan Rathor.”

She gaped. “Rathor? The HHS secretary?”

“None other.”

“Why would Rathor be part of something like this? And what did he do?”

“I’ll take the second question first. We believe he was connected with David Lathrop’s death.”

She could only shake her head. “How about the why?”

“Before he was named HHS secretary, Rathor was the president and CEO of BioChem.”

“Right up there with Johnson & Johnson and Merck.”

“Yes. Biggest of the Big Pharmas. We’re fairly certain that he was part of a larger effort to get the moonmilk directly to BioChem. With your whole team dead and missing, we could only have assumed that the mission failed. BioChem, meanwhile, would have been creating new antibiotics, effective against ACE and maybe other MDRBs as well. Their profits would have been obscene. Rathor’s stock would have increased a hundredfold in value, if not more.”

“Is he going to jail?”

“Sadly, probably not. The evidence is strong but circumstantial. More importantly, a criminal trial of a member of the president’s own cabinet—and in particular one he personally recruited—would be disastrous for him.”

“So what will happen to Rathor?”

“I understand that he was instructed to present a letter of resignation to the president. He did that late yesterday, in fact. His departure will be attributed to health reasons or the need for more personal time or some such. You know how it works here, Hallie.”

“Indeed I do. How’s it playing?”

“The media are chewing on it now, but it’ll be forgotten by next week. They will know the reason given for his departure is bullshit. But they’ll probably figure the real reason was his failure to react quickly to the ACE problem. And many insiders will figure he just pissed off the wrong people, something Rathor was very good at.”