Чак Хоган - The Blood Artists

She was waiting for him. He could not look up.

“What are you going to do now?” she said again. He unplugged the box and collapsed the tablet to stop the word from flashing.

He sat alone in the car in a parking lot of the Georgia World Congress Center staring at the dash and the speedometer needle pointing to zero.

The conference attendees who had responded unsuccessfully to the Milkmaid serum treatment remained inside and he had left Melanie with them under the pretense that she could see to their care. She would be safe there alone. And the suited and the already sick would be safe from her.

He pulled his eyes from the dash and turned the key and the starter ground. The engine was already running. He pulled out and headed fast for the highway.

Isolate her, Freeley had said.

It was not that simple. Melanie had told him twice that she would destroy herself rather than face Plainville again.

Containment, Freeley had said. This point was inarguable. Cutting off the virus was the only way to keep it from spreading. It had been his creed before it had been Freeley’s.

But he had failed the girl. He had promised to protect her.

What if I got sick again?

Simple. I would treat you.

And if I refused? Resisted?

She would not comply. She was a carrier now and would run or destroy herself if she knew.

Would you kill me?

If Zero succeeded, then none of this would matter. She would be infected like the rest. He needed to stop Zero before he needed to deal with Melanie.

Nothing impeded Zero now. His virus infected humans only. It had shifted so much that Melanie was no longer immune. He had corrupted her blood and now was utterly without cure. Atlanta was about to become the epicenter of a conflagration that would consume the human race.

But then Maryk remembered Zero’s pain in the airport tunnel. Zero’s virus was mutating wildly and tearing his genetic makeup apart.

Zero was sick.

At the BDC Maryk went immediately to the B4 sub-subbasement of Building Seven. He stopped before entering and did something he had never done before. Maryk PCR-tested his own blood. He mixed the blood sample and ran it into his tablet.

The bar expanded steadily to 100 percent. Of course he was still healthy. But his personal victory over the virus seemed hollow now.

He entered the first room and rebooted all the computers and the B4 unit came alive. He carried his bag through to the lab and brought out the sealed biohazard sac containing the syringe from the airport shuttle. The bevel of the needle was still crusted with Zero’s blood. He scraped the blood onto a sterile paper bindle and prepped it for processing.

His thoughts drifted back to Melanie. His failure was so absolute and the loss so needless that he had trouble getting his mind around it. There was only one remedial course of action. Four years ago he had saved her life. Now he would have to destroy her.

The work continued without him. The computer processed Zero’s blood sample and compared it to Stephen’s work on the older Zero virus from the Florida phone booth exposure. He examined the computer models side by side. The structural discrepancies of the viral genome were obvious and dramatic.

Zero was desperate and compelled to infect. But he was also perishing. His human host was weakening and in need of repair. He was running out of time.

The plan revealed itself to Maryk all at once. It was as though his distress over Melanie’s fate had subordinated the Zero dilemma in his mind and therefore freed him to think intuitively. But the design as presented was so propitious that he discounted it at first. Atlanta was rising to live out what could be its last healthy day. Nothing less than the survival of the species was at stake.

Moments later he was convinced of the genius of his scheme. It was as radical a treatment as he could envision and his only chance at stopping Zero.

He would need a geneticist’s help. He scheduled a meeting with Geist before rushing back out of B4.

The conference sick were laid out on blankets and mats under shining chandeliers. Some called to Maryk by name but he did not stop for anyone until he found Melanie kneeling on the floor with a shivering man. She was holding his gloved hand gently.

Wheat brown skin sagged off the man’s neck and shoulders. A white bedsheet clung to the ribs of his sunken frame. Tortoiseshell eyeglasses too large for his face exaggerated the ghosting of his eyes and laid bare the fear in his caving face. Every breath seemed a mystery to him.

“No,” Maryk heard Melanie say. “I’m not a doctor.”

The man said, “Then you must be sick too.”

“I used to be.”

The patient’s eyes widened while the rest of his being remained sagged.

“I know how you feel,” Melanie said. “It’s so shameful to be so sick. The disease came up out of nowhere and took you all at once, and all you can think is, why?”

The man’s wristwatch clattered on the heel of his trembling hand. He breathed deeply through bared teeth. His eyes were profound with blood.

“Why?” she said again. “I remember lying in the hospital, before it got really bad, and trying to figure out what terrible thing I had done. Or what thing I had failed to do — some kind act of charity that would have spared me. What terrible thing did I do to deserve to die this way? And now that I’ve survived, all I can think is: What terrible thing did I do to deserve to live?”

She was quiet a moment. She was just coming to this realization herself.

“But we can’t think that way, either of us. You’re scared. You’re just scared. I know, because I was more scared than you are. You have questions that you can’t answer. And even if there’s nothing these doctors can do for you, maybe they can make you more comfortable. Maybe they can answer some of your questions. You have to let them try.” The man’s eyes were ancient with infection as he watched her over the rims of his eyeglasses. It was as though an exchange of some sort had taken place. “Just let them try.”

Illness hung in the room like moisture. The room was humid with disease and Maryk felt it starting to cling. People were dying at his feet. Melanie was administering to the sick while Maryk could not bring himself to move. He remembered her holding his hand as he was coming out of the cascade at the airport. He remembered seeing her face over him as he awoke.

Melanie saw him standing behind her. “We have to go,” Maryk told her.

She looked up at him. “Is it Stephen?” she said.

“He’s weak now. I’ll take you to him.”

The sky was brightening into dawn as he drove the tree-lined roads back to the BDC. He felt suspended between the urgency and audacity of his plan and the nausea of failure. He pulled around to Building Nine as daylight broke around them. The city was waking to what could be its final day.

The building was uninhabited as he had ordered and there was no BioCon guard outside the Tank. Melanie was exhausted and did not notice any of this.

Maryk went to the tablet that controlled the Tank doors. “I won’t be asking any more of you,” he said. “You can stay with him as long as you like.”

She nodded and waited tiredly at the first door. “What are you going to do?”

Maryk just shook his head. “I’ll come back for you,” he said.

He issued the remote admittance command from the nurse’s table and opened the doors that allowed her into the Tank. She moved through the UV shower that killed the viruses on the surface of her body but could not touch the ones changing her inside. He looked through the window and saw her approaching Stephen’s wheelchair. He closed both doors and sealed her inside the Tank.