Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

These could have been any number of Chen’s past lab reports. What made them so special? The answer to this and Griff’s other questions was on the final page. As he read them, he felt his blood turn to ice.

The test animals were identified not only by code, but by first initial and last name.

Griff grabbed a legal pad and wrote down the identifying code of each test subject, then the name. Beside each name, he wrote Sylvia’s recorded result.

DWM—1, S. Coughlin

(M)

Deceased

DBF—2, G. Anderson

(F)

Deceased

DBM—3, T. Geffman

(M)

Deceased

DWM—4, L. Warshalski

(M)

Deceased

DWM—5, M. Scheffer

(M)

Deceased

DWM—6, J. R. Davis

(M)

Robotlike, he handed the page to Forbush, who scanned the names with the same disbelieving expression as Griff.

“This is terrible,” he said, with his characteristic lack of excessive emotion.

“If it’s true, Melvin, then it’s worse than that.”

“The certain path—the certain path to a cure, I guess. That’s what the title on each page must mean.”

Griff could only stare down at the report.

“I know Sylvia was desperate to keep the program going,” he said, “but I never would have dreamed she was this desperate.”

“No more monkeys,” Forbush said, with a shrug.

“No more monkeys,” Griff echoed. “She took the leap and somehow began experimenting on people.”

“And they all died.”

“Assuming she just neglected to mark that in next to J. R. Davis’s name, they all died.”

“Leaving us with one huge unanswered question.”

“Where could these subjects have come from?”

“And I guess one other huge unanswered question,” Forbush added. “Where did she do the work?”

Ellis checked that Gladstone’s BlackBerry was powered on and set to capture video. She was keyed up and tense in all the best sense of the words. Jim Allaire had kept her in the dark long enough. It was time she documented what was really going on, and just how much they all had to fear from this virus.

Beside her, O’Neil looked as if his legs were about to betray him. His complexion mirrored the white of the marble floor.

Inches away, the clamor and the scraping sound on the other side of the door continued.

The Secret Service agent uncoiled the length of chain securing the Senate Chamber doors. The steel links slid through his hands and clattered into a heap at his feet. Ellis cupped her ear and listened against the door.

“Nothing,” she said. “I have no idea what that sound could have been, but it’s gone now.”

“I think you’re crazy to go in there.”

“ We, dearest. We are going in there. And we’re going to be quick about it, too. In and out with a little video in between. That will be all I need. Judging from Dr. Townsend’s containment suit over there, these people are infected with something pretty horrible.”

“Whatever it is, we’ve been exposed, too.”

“But I’m betting that whatever it is, these poor souls got a mega dose. It’s time to see just how much your boss has been holding out on us all. Don’t you want to know? I mean, it is your life, too.”

“I … don’t know.”

“O’Neil, I promise you. If we stay only a minute, just enough time to let me gather the video I need, we’ll both be fine—especially if we hold our breath. Now, let’s go.”

O’Neil sighed, and pulled the door open.

The first thing Ellis noticed as she stepped forward into the main aisle of the Senate Chamber was the smell. It was a foul stench of blood, bodily waste, and vomit, unlike anything she had experienced before. Her throat immediately tightened as her gag reflex kicked in. She wondered if the standing fans installed throughout the room were somehow keeping the powerful odor from escaping through the door cracks. The room lights were on full, and what Ellis saw as she fumbled for her camera made her cry out in fright.

The golden damask above the marbled wainscot was stained with blood and fecal matter. White marble busts of past Senate presidents, normally set in bowl niches in the gallery level, were either smashed, missing, or lying on the floor. But even more disturbing was that the one hundred mahogany senators’ desks had been ripped from their footings and thrown aside, replaced by a number of cots—at least twenty or twenty-five of them, mostly occupied, and many by people she knew, now barely recognizable to her.

Some of those in the chamber wore the comfortable clothing that had been delivered to the Capitol. But there were a few others—the most debilitated—who were still wearing what remained of their tuxedoes and designer gowns. They were lying listlessly, or vomiting congealing blood into blue plastic buckets wired to the bedframes. Some were writhing in pain. Others were propped on one elbow, moaning piteously.

For half a minute, Ellis stood transfixed, the purpose of her mission forgotten.

She heard a terrible shriek and turned in that direction. The senior senator from Missouri, a genteel, dignified man in his seventies, was pressing his hands on either side of his head, groaning for the pain to stop. Blood, from a nosebleed or perhaps his stomach, stained the sheet beneath him. He screamed again, and slapped at his expansive abdomen, as though trying to put out a fire burning inside. Then, suddenly, he turned his head and vomited into the bucket—black blood, thick as oil.

Ellis managed to raise her camera and pan the scene. This was not the flu. Nor was it any other virus she could imagine.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, her voice barely able to form the words.

O’Neil was rooted. Many of these dignitaries were also people he knew well. Finally, he managed a few baby steps back toward the door. Ellis stayed close to him. Then they turned to run, but Admiral Archibald Jakes had materialized in the center of the aisle and was blocking their only way out. He was a grotesquerie. His stained dress whites were ripped in many places. The rows of service ribbons over his left breast had gaps resembling a hockey player’s teeth. The sclerae of his eyes were bloodred. His cheeks were sunken and his lower jaw was in constant motion—a gnawing skull.

The admiral lifted his hands to prevent O’Neil and her from passing, and Ellis gasped.

His palms were a swirl of crimson, concentric circles, giving the appearance of having had the design branded on. On the surface of the swirls were hundreds of tiny, raised blisters, many of them broken and oozing.

“Home … please take me home…,” Jakes moaned.

His voice was a coarse whisper, and his breath was foul.

“Admiral, what’s going on in here?” O’Neil managed to ask. “What’s happening to you? Who’s helping you all?”

“Dying … we’re all dying.” Each word the admiral spoke emerged like a hiss of steam. “Why did you do this to me?”

“No, it wasn’t us,” O’Neil said. “It was Genesis. It’s some sort of virus.”

“You lie! You lie!”

Ellis sensed movement behind her and turned to see that others in the room were now gathering behind her like zombies, blocking their only retreat from Jakes. Some of them had been friends and colleagues of hers for many years. All of them were ill—terribly, terribly ill. It was also impossible not to see the bright red patterns on their palms.

“Admiral Jakes, please,” O’Neil pleaded, “let us by. We’ll get you help. I promise.”