Робин Кук - Pandemic

Leaning toward the Korean man and speaking sotto voce, David said: “Did you do what I suggested?”

“Yes,” Kang-Dae said. He was a man of few words.

“Once or several times?” David asked. As Wei’s trusted aide, Kang-Dae had unparalleled access to the entire complex. He still lived at Wei’s nearby private estate. He was more like an appendage than an aide.

“Three times, like you suggested,” Kang-Dae said. “I put it in the drinking water. Will it work?”

“There’s no way to know for sure,” David said. “This whole project is breaking new ground for all of us. But it was definitely toxic to human kidney cells in tissue culture, so if I had to guess, I’d say it is going to work very well — maybe too well!”

SEVEN MONTHS LATER...

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 9:10 A.M.

“Wait! Hold on!” Carol called out. She’d just entered the subway station at 45th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to see that the R train was already there. To her shock, it had arrived early, something New Yorkers did not expect the subway to do. Holding on tightly to her new miniature Gucci backpack, Carol started to run. It wasn’t easy, for reasons that had less to do with her attire, which was one of her favorite dresses and relatively high heels, than with her physical stamina. Any running was a feat that, until recently, she hadn’t been able to accomplish for more than a year. As she ran, she frantically waved her free hand in the hopes of catching the conductor’s attention to keep the doors ajar.

As out of shape as she was, the effort was Herculean for Carol, and as she leaped onto the train she was seriously out of breath. She could also feel her heart pounding in her chest, which gave her a touch of concern, but she trusted it would soon subside, and it quickly did. Over the last month she’d been religious in her trips to the gym and was now up to twenty minutes every other day on the treadmill, which she considered fantastic progress. If someone had predicted four months ago that she’d be doing that much exercise at this point in her life, she would have considered them certifiably crazy. Yet, needless to say, she was thrilled. In many ways, being able to run again was like being reborn.

No sooner had Carol gotten on the subway than the doors slid closed, and the train lurched forward in the direction of Manhattan. To keep her balance, Carol grabbed one of the upright poles that ran from floor to ceiling and glanced around for an appropriate seat. Since it was only the sixth stop from the train’s origin at 95th Street in Bay Ridge, and since it was now 9:11 and hence mostly after the morning rush hour, there were plenty of openings. But as an experienced subway rider, she knew that certain seats were better than others. Being hassled on the subway was not an infrequent event, and a bit of attention to detail was worth the effort. She quickly spied an auspicious spot only ten feet away.

As soon as the train reached its desired speed, Carol made her way to the seat she had her eye on. There were no immediate neighbors. The closest people, each an empty seat away, were an elderly, well-dressed African American man and an attractive white woman who Carol guessed was close to her own age of twenty-eight. The slender woman impressed Carol with her style and the quality of her casual but elegant clothes. She had a haircut not too dissimilar from Carol’s, with a dark-brown-base undercut that was mostly covered by a bleached-blond combover. It made Carol wonder if they went to the same hairdresser. As Carol sat down she exchanged a quick glance and smile with the woman. It was a part of New York that Carol loved. You never knew who you might see. Life here was so much more interesting than it was in the boonies of New Jersey where she’d grown up. There people became set in their ways as teenagers and never tried anything new and exciting.

Making herself comfortable, as she had a long subway ride ahead of her, Carol pulled her iPhone out of her backpack to go over the disturbing texts she’d been exchanging of late with Helen, the woman she had expected to marry if and when Carol’s serious health problems had been put behind them. The sad irony was that the health problems were almost resolved, whereas the relationship had been challenged and had taken a turn for the worse, so much so that Carol had recently moved from their shared apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn, to her own studio in Sunset Park. It had all happened rather suddenly. Almost three months ago, while Carol had been in the hospital for her life-saving operation, Helen had invited a dear old high school boyfriend, John Carver, to stay with her, as he happened to be in New York and was in need of an apartment. She’d been looking for emotional support, someone to comfort her while she battled the fear that Carol might die, but then the unexpected had happened.

Between the trying emotional circumstances and their close proximity, Helen and John’s old romantic relationship reawakened. When it had become clear that Carol was going to live, Helen had hoped she would be understanding and would embrace John as a permanent third party in their relationship.

Although Carol was initially dismayed and shocked, her desperate need for love and acceptance after the stress of her hospitalization and near death inspired her to give the unconventional arrangement a good try over several months. But it wasn’t for her. At age thirteen she’d come to accept her sexual preference and adjusted, and she had just become more certain as the years had gone by.

Rereading all the texts and reexperiencing the emotion they represented didn’t help Carol’s mind-set. It also made her look at the tattoo she had got together with Helen six months ago. It was hard for her to ignore, since it was on the under surface of her right forearm. The image was of a puzzle piece next to a matching image of the puzzle piece’s supposed origin. Both were drawn in perspective to make them look all the more real, and the base of the origin was done in a rainbow of colors. Helen’s name was on the puzzle piece, as Carol’s was on Helen’s tattoo. Carol had always loved the tattoo and had been proud of it until now, but her current goal on this trip was to return to the tattoo parlor in Midtown Manhattan where they had gotten the ink and have something done to erase the painful reminder of all that had gone wrong between them. Carol didn’t know what the options might be but assumed the tattoo artist would have some ideas. Besides, the trip gave her something to do, as she still had not gone back to her career in advertising. That wasn’t going to happen for another month. It had been a deal she’d made with her doctor.

As Carol’s train made its way north through Brooklyn, people boarded at each of the many stations, with far fewer people getting off. By the time they were approaching the tunnel to Manhattan, the train was almost as packed as if it were rush hour. It was then that Carol got the first disturbing symptom — a shudder-inducing chill, as if a blast of arctic air had wafted through the subway car. It came on so suddenly that Carol instinctively looked around to see if other people had experienced it, but it was immediately apparent that it had come from within her own body. Her first instinct was to feel her pulse. With relief, she determined it was entirely normal. For a moment she held her breath, wondering if the unpleasant sensation would return. It didn’t, at least not at first. Instead she felt a sense of weakness come over her, as if she might have trouble standing up if she tried.

Still holding her mobile phone, Carol checked to see if she had a strong signal. She did, and she contemplated calling her doctor out in New Jersey. But she hesitated, wondering exactly what she would say. Sudden weakness hardly seemed like an appropriate symptom to tell a doctor. It was much too vague. She was certain he would tell her to call back if it didn’t go away or if the chill returned. She decided to wait as she raised her internal antennae to seek out any abnormal sensations. She looked around at the faces she could see. No one was paying her any heed, as everyone was pressed together cheek to jowl.