Чак Хоган - The Blood Artists

>I am too far gone to be remedied.

>True, Doctor. So true.

>If you are so confident In your abilities, then what are you waiting for?

>The right girl to come along. A small-town girl, someone with a similar background, similar interests. I’m carrying a torch, you might say. One that must be extinguished. Man will be exterminated absolutely. It even one or two of you beasts are left behind, In a few hundred years you’ll be crawling all over the place again. The girl is a detail, nothing more. Maryk, too. My triumph will be a complete one.

>You will learn nothing of my treatment unless you surrender yourself to our care.

>How does It feel, Doctor?

Stephen did not respond.

>It won’t be long now. Embrace it, dear Doctor. It will be less excruciating that way.

>I only wish to outlive you, Ridgeway.

>Be brave, Doctor. Be brave.

The connection ended. Maryk saved the transcript and paged through it again. Zero had contacted Stephen because he was hurting. Zero was getting desperate. Desperation could lead to a critical mistake.

His tablet toned again. This time the window opened on Dr. Smethy. “Another Banix prescription was just filed under Stephen’s name.”

She posted him the electronic receipt. The prescription had been forwarded to a pharmacy just south of downtown Atlanta. Zero was walking into a trap and Maryk would be waiting for him.

The country music playing in the aisles made her want to do something drastic. It was one of those electric fiddles, an instrument that clearly should never have been electrified, sawing into her brain like a voice instructing her to burn down the store. The sun was gone outside and soft halogen ceiling lights suffused the wide aisles of the Buy-Rite! Super Drug store with a ghastly, morguelike glow. Only two teenage customers remained inside, goofing off quietly in aisle three. Melanie sat at the front register in her red paper-like Buy-Rite! blazer, after spending the day scanning bar codes and working on her southern accent. The return to the dull routine of customer service was at first comfortable and even kind of fun, and she had amused herself between sales by reading every magazine and tabloid on the racks and most of the greeting cards, until she realized that it was not nostalgia, but in fact all that awaited her back in Boston was the same broken life of half jobs and always just getting by.

She drifted back down the long, warehouse-sized aisle to the pharmacy in the rear. Maryk wore a white Buy-Rite! pharmacist’s coat with the name plate “Dennis” over where most people’s hearts are. The coat was too small for him, the wrist hems coming down only as far as the taped cuffs of his gloves, which made him look even more huge up on the raised counter overlooking the store.

He had needed someone else who could stand in the store without wearing a suit. The common sense assumption was that Zero himself would not come inside, based on the fact that there had been no infections at either of the two previous pharmacies he had patronized. She was there solely in order that everything would appear normal inside. In the event that Zero did enter, she was to usher out any customers so that BioCon could seal off the store and Maryk could do away with him.

She stepped up behind the counter over a carpeted wooden step that sounded hollow. There was a carousel of sunglasses, and she looked into one of the small mirrors, picking-at the lifeless strands of her platinum blond wig. “This isn’t fooling anyone,” she said. The wig looked like one of those awful hairpieces they give free to cancer kids.

She could see the entire store from the raised counter, the two kids having split up, the girl in the makeup aisle and the boy at the snacks. She could see straight down the double-wide center aisle to the glass doors in front.

“Shouldn’t you have a gun or something?” she said. “What about calling in the police? The army, even.”

Maryk slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket. She thought his shoulder seams would burst. “That would only mean putting more people at risk. They aren’t equipped for this.”

What he didn’t say was that he had a jones for viruses, and that Zero was the ultimate virus and Maryk wanted him all to himself.

“Well, I’d blow a hole in him,” Melanie said. “But that’s just me.”

“Thank you for your input.”

She picked up a TB pamphlet and opened it before putting it back. “I was wondering what’s going to happen to me after all this.”

His eyes remained on the front doors. “What do you mean?”

“Just that, part of me is worried that when this ends, I’ll be sort of expendable. I know I’ve learned a lot here. I’ve seen a lot.” She kept her tone as casual as possible. “Too much, maybe?”

His expression did not change. “What are you saying?”

“Just that I’d hate to see something happen to me. Do you think I need to take any precautions?”

He looked at her then with a gray-eyed glare that made her wish she had remained back at the register. It was anger, clearly, and yet something else. She thought she had been speaking his language, but he looked now as though she had somehow disappointed him.

The door chime sounded. They turned and another teenage kid entered, stopping just inside the doors that slid shut behind him. He looked around at the signs over the aisles, then saw the pharmacy in back and started toward it. Maryk lifted his hands out of his pockets. Melanie moved one step away.

The kid wore an army-style olive-drab jacket with a thin silver chain looped off the shoulder. He was slight and scuzzy with day-old chin growth and brown hair unevenly trimmed, as though by a friend. The bandage on his neck was just him trying to look cool. He came around a bin of New Year’s Eve hats and horns to the counter, nodding at “Dennis” and drumming two dirty fingers.

“Here to pick up a prescription,” he said with a nasty twang.

“Name?”

“Smith.”

He said it confidently enough. Maryk nodded, and Melanie moved another step away. “I’ll get it,” she said suddenly, going around the corner behind Maryk, out of sight into the back. Dr. Freeley and another Special Pathogens agent sat there on folding chairs, inside contact suits. Dr. Freeley handed Melanie a white paper bag with the prescription form taped over the folded top. It read “Banix,” but was in truth ten capsules of cyanide, just in case. Melanie heard Maryk out in front.

“Is this prescription for you?”

“For my daddy.”

“Is he here?”

“He sent me on in alone. He’s sick.”

“He’s at home?”

“Yep.”

“Because there’s a restriction on this medicine. Is there a phone number I can reach him at?”

“Naw. He’s out in the car right now. He’s sick, and he’s waiting out in the car. Sent me in.”

“He’s in the car.”

“Right. Said to say it’s all set.”

“Payment is, through his doctor. But this is a medical issue. Is he right outside?”

Dr. Freeley was waving at Melanie to get back out to the counter. Melanie gave the bag a shake so that the crinkle would precede her, then turned the corner.

The kid’s fingers were hanging on the counter now, no longer drumming. His posture was defensive and he watched the bag as Melanie handed it to Maryk.

“Just down the street a-ways,” said the kid, pointing, then scratching his neck near the bandage. “Uh — he’s real sick, an’ in a real hurry.”

Maryk deliberated, but then handed him the bag. “All right,” he said. “This time.”

The kid took the bag, gracious in victory. “No problem at all.”

He hustled back down the aisle past a pyramid of bottled soda. The dong-ding of the electric eye chimed, and he was gone.