Чак Хоган - The Blood Artists

She saw an information kiosk and hurried toward it in an arc, wide around Zero, keeping him in her sight as she worked to her right. She waited jumpily behind a man asking directions as she watched Zero slouch away.

“Yes?” Bright scarf, dull smile.

“Hi,” Melanie said, gasping. “You need to shut the airport down right now.”

The smile dulled further. “I’m sorry?”

“I know, I know. I need security people. Guns. I’m with the Bureau for Disease Control. There’s a man with a virus — who is a virus—”

“I’m sorry, but you...”

Zero disappeared around a corner, heading for the flight gates. Melanie was getting nowhere. With a slap of her hand on the counter, she took off after him again.

She dashed around rolling luggage. Flights were being called overhead. Zero plodded ahead of her, distracted travelers clearing out of his way. Plainville was germinating in these unknowing hosts as they walked off toward cities throughout the world.

At once she recognized the BDC logo ahead. It was emblazoned upon a booth just before the security checkpoints. U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH STATION it read, and she ran to it.

“Listen to me.” The man behind the counter wrinkled his brow as she refused his offer of an international traveler’s form. She was barely breathing now. “Do you know Maryk?”

“Dr. Maryk?” said the man suspiciously. “I know of him.”

“You must get him this message.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but this is not a message center.”

“The Plainville virus is here. It’s in the airport. Do you understand what that means? They need to shut this entire place down, right now.”

“The what virus?” It was disbelief.

“Get this message to Maryk. Tell him, ‘Zero is at the airport.’ Do you understand? ‘Zero is at the airport.’ ”

The man was nodding, but not at her, at someone behind her, summoning them with a widening of his eyes. She turned and saw a man in a blue uniform coming. It was airport security, but he was weaponless, and useless to her now. He would only detain her.

“Send it,” she commanded, and ran off toward me gates.

Zero was somewhere ahead, nearing the entrance to the concourse. She encountered the least resistance by run-, rung along the right side wall, fighting her way through a large tour group following a woman holding up a small British flag.

Melanie had a brainstorm. She searched the wall for fire alarm boxes — but there weren’t any.

“I need a lighter,” she said, startling the British tour group, and one man produced a matchbook with a picture of a pub on it. She snatched it from his hand and looked about for a trash barrel to set on fire.

But there weren’t any trash barrels. In a flash she realized this was all due to airport security. Trash barrels could be used to hide bombs.

She saw a female custodian gathering soda cups out of armchair holders, standing away from her cleaning cart. Melanie walked right up and grabbed the cart handle and wheeled it away. She scanned the ceilings for a water sprinkler, finding a low one near the Tourist Center. She piled cleaning rags and paper towels on top of the trash bag and lit the matchbook. She touched off the paper and the heated rags began to squirm, grudgingly producing smoke.

A scream from the security area turned her around. Melanie left the burning cart and took off running in the direction of the sound, pushing through people knocking each other over to back away.

An airline representative lay on the floor before a row of metal detectors. Her eyes were wide with horror and there were red marks on her neck in the form of a strangling hand, and her mouth and nose were glistening with something. It was saliva, not her own.

The fire alarm went off. It began honking over the flight calls, and announcements came immediately in English and Spanish and Chinese, stating that the airport must be evacuated immediately.

The screaming had excited the crowd; now the alarm set them in motion. People who had already passed through the metal detectors turned and pushed back, and the jostling overwhelmed the remaining security force, whose nervous shouts in turn triggered a mass exodus. It wasn’t exactly what Melanie had planned, but it was movement, and away from the airplanes. Now all she needed was to stop the flights still boarding.

She burrowed through the fleeing crowd, sliding around the outer edge of an X-ray machine into the panicking concourse. Twin escalators dipped beyond, one coming up and one going down, and between them ran a wide, steep stairway. Zero was stumbling down as the frenetic crowd thrashed all around him. The stairs were not quite full, as people were trying to double-time it up the down escalators. He was away from the handrail, and she saw her chance to shove him down to the bottom. The homicidal urge emboldened her and she fought to the top step, heaving for breath, suitcases and flailing limbs battering her arms and sides. She would not make it without another hit off her inhaler. She brought it out, but before she could even get the cap off, an older man in a Hawaiian print shirt shoved past her and smacked her elbow.

The inhaler popped out of her hand. It fell to the steps and skittered away between tramping feet, out of her view.

She had no breath left to curse the man. She drew in what oxygen she could and fought her way against the tide to the far railing, battling the crush, searching for her inhaler while praying that no one had stepped on it. Wheezing, feeling faint, she managed to pull herself through the onslaught of bodies down to the bottom steps where she was bumped and shoved as she stumbled around searching. She felt something sliding down her neck. She reached up to fix her wig when all at once it disappeared entirely from her head.

“Melanie.”

She twisted back, but her lungs prevented her from running. Zero was right there beside her, holding her platinum blond wig.

“No,” she said, a small noise, a gasp.

She saw him through bursting stars. He might have been smiling beneath his mask. His eyes were terrible and sharp as he grasped her arm.

She tried to scream, but couldn’t get anything behind it.

The skin on his face was gray and spoiling. His pale blue mask sucked deeply before filling with each exhale. His hot red eyes examined her face, an inch or two away, and suddenly he suffered a spasm of some sort, his head shivering madly and the force of his grip increasing. Then he came back out of it, hazy.

She was still looking for her inhaler and saw the floor moving beneath her as he began to pull her away. It was like breathing through a swizzle stick, and all she could do was concentrate on getting air and remaining conscious. She never saw her inhaler. When she looked up again, she was facing a row of silver doors leading to the airport’s shuttle.

“Maryk,” Zero said, his voice gooey with phlegm. He slurred his words. “Thinks he’s clever.”

She worked on filling her lungs while trying not to breathe his air. A dull roar behind the doors, red lights coming on above them.

“Mel-a-nie,” he breathed. His cotton mask filled with her name, savoring it. She tried to kick him in the balls but couldn’t turn around right. She didn’t even know if it would have the desired effect.

He held her over her shirtsleeve. His gloved fingers were like claws around her arms. Eyes, mouth, bare hands: She had to protect them.

The red lights turned green, and the doors all opened. They hadn’t shut down the shuttle train yet. The few passengers on board rushed to get off, stopping when they saw Zero. He made a threatening gesture with his free arm and they all cleared away, to the sides and quickly out the doors on either end.