Мэтт Рихтел - Dead on Arrival

“Individual lab areas,” Denny said. He stopped midway down the hall. He kept his voice low. “I wanted you to see some of the current work. It’s less focused on the imaging right now and more so on recall and behaviors. What kinds of conditions lead to more social behavior, sharing, liking, endorsing, and remembering. Basically, you’ll see people using their gadgets through a two-way mirror.”

“The study subjects?”

“Local folks. There’s actually a pretty good pool from wives and girlfriends of military personnel, along with folks we draw from surrounding communities. Low income in Nevada, sadly, leaves us with people who will do experiments for what is pretty low pay, at least by our standards.”

Jackie heard a voice behind her and the female Alex appeared with a tablet.

“Door number five, boss,” she said to Denny. “Good time. We’re just finishing up.”

Alex led them inside the fifth doorway on the left. Behind a two-way mirror a woman sat in a comfortable office chair in the middle of a room, staring at her own tablet. Jackie watched to the point of gawking and now she, at last, understood why this project was a secret one.

The woman behind the two-way mirror looked so engrossed as to be catatonic.

For a long time, Jackie and Denny stared. Suddenly, the woman bolted upright.

When the man in the orange suit shot forward, Lyle caromed backward. Two, three steps, slipped. He didn’t try to break his fall. He slammed onto the ground on his ass. Of course he didn’t feel it. Every ounce of him focused on the body, the baggage handler who had been comatose, or dead, just moments before. Now the body sat upright at the waist. A wonder, Lyle thought, fear giving way to curiosity. He put all his attention on the man’s face, trying to discern the eyes. Were they open?

No. He inched closer. Still closed.

Lyle moved closer again, mostly just by his neck craning. He scraped for his phone. He found it and fiddled for the flashlight. He had to look down to make the phone work. Shit, he thought, I’ve got to input my code. I’ve got to look down at my phone. He wouldn’t take his eyes off this man, this creature, Don, held up at the waist like a marionette.

Then, suddenly, as quickly as Don had jerked upright, he fell back again.

In the cockpit:

“Jerry! What the hell is going on?”

A muffled sound from below.

Lyle wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He spit. Had he gotten the man’s spittle on him? Saliva? Something from this… host?

That’s the word that struck Lyle. Host.

Was that what he was looking at?

The body had become inert again. Now Lyle wondered if he’d imagined it. He immediately dismissed the idea; for all of Lyle’s flaws and quirks, he was not a sufferer of PTSD and so it didn’t make sense to him that he’d had some sort of flashback or emotional break, a false memory, any of that.

Then, from the corner of his eye, Lyle caught movement. He half turned; he didn’t want to look away from Don. He could see a dark shape. Jerry.

Lyle put up his hand. Stop.

“Are you okay?”

“Go back inside,” Lyle said to Jerry.

“What’s happening? Is he alive?”

Lyle didn’t answer. Cautiously, he touched the man’s neck. If there was a pulse, he couldn’t feel it. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“Dr. Martin, is he alive?”

Lyle nodded. It was as much for himself as Jerry. Yes, he suspected, Don was alive.

And a host.

Jerry felt the gun in his pocket. It felt like a caged animal. He twitched. Who was Dr. Martin to put his hand up in Jerry’s face? Who was he to suddenly be playing number two to Captain Hall?

There was something else bugging him. He let himself ask the question: What was an infectious disease specialist doing on a flight that hit the ground in the middle of some kind of outbreak?

Wasn’t that a whole lot of coincidence?

Jerry’s father had worked two jobs while his mother drank herself into a near coma. The only reason she didn’t get to that point is because she fell down the stairs in a drunken mess and wound up in a wheelchair. Then Jerry got two jobs to help his dad. Jerry could see drunks a mile away. He also hated men who didn’t step up and do what was necessary. Dr. Martin looked like both, a drunk and a man who didn’t step up.

He felt the gun and turned back to the plane.

Then he looked back again and saw something that allowed him to give Dr. Martin a little bit of respect. Dr. Martin was crouched over the man, peeling back his eyelids, looking into his eyes with the light of his phone.

Pupil fixed in the middle position. Lyle aimed the light into the man’s right eye. No movement, no light reflex. That argued for brain death. But brain death didn’t lead to spontaneous movement, either. Without thinking much about it, Lyle reached to the man’s cheek and pinched his skin between thumb and forefinger.

Nothing.

Harder.

The face muscles tightened. Just a touch. Enough. Lyle focused on the right maxillary and pinched again, even harder. A clench.

Not dead.

Not brain-dead.

Lyle tightened his own jaw in thought. Tight muscles. He moved suddenly. He ran his hand over the man’s arm, the right triceps and biceps and the muscles around the rotator cuff. Taut, tensed. No, not dead. Not rigor.

Absently, Lyle gave another thumbs-up to the plane, his way of saying: Leave me alone . He brushed sweat from his forehead onto his forearm. He stared at the man’s mouth and considered the next, unavoidable move. Full lips, rosy with cold and pulled at the corners. Beneath the nose, that droplet of mucus had doubled into two drops, one settled into a small pool on the groove of the philtrum. Lyle held the phone with his left hand, creating a spotlight on the mouth. With his right, he reached for the lips, pausing only a millisecond before parting them with forefinger and thumb. He dove in.

He felt inside the cheeks, not for anything in particular, anything out of the ordinary. He picked up the warmth and the tightness inside the jaw. He kept a keen awareness of the teeth, ready to instantly withdraw should the man reflexively open wide enough to bite down hard.

“Sorry, Don,” he said. “This next part is harder on me than you.”

He opened the mouth sufficient enough to get his forefinger toward the back of the throat and lingered at the tonsillar arch. Ideally, he’d watch the pharynx to see if it elevated in a gag response, and to what extent. He’d just have to surmise. He rubbed the arch. Don, the baggage handler, spasmed. Cough. Spasm. Lyle pushed himself not to withdraw. He didn’t want to cause a stir with Eleanor and the others in the cockpit, if they could even see him. Don calmed down again.

Lyle leaned down again and swirled his finger near the back of the throat, careful to avoid another gag. Likely only so many times he could do that and not get vomited on. As he swirled, he found what he was looking for. Mucus. Lots of it. Pooling near the edges of the throat. He tried to stir it away from the throat’s entrance to keep Don from drowning. Lyle sat on his haunches.

Mucus meant the production of white blood cells. It meant the body was mounting an immune response. To what? No light reflex, tight muscles, no pupil reflex. Odd. What did it add up to?

Lyle didn’t want to take his own eyes off the man. He felt he needed to. He shone his phone light on his right hand. He put his right thumb into the thumbs-up sign. Showing Eleanor in the cockpit. Showing Jerry.

Nothing, Lyle thought, could be further from the truth.