Scott Sigler - Contagious

“Okay, Mommy.”

Mommy closed the door. Chelsea set the Barbie on the right-hand pile, then grabbed another doll from the pile on the left.

Margaret refused to cry.

She had a job to do. But looking at the flat-panel monitor, looking at that poor girl’s face…

“Let me go !” the girl screamed. She pulled weakly against her restraints, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Even if she got out of the restraints, she couldn’t escape the tiny containment chamber’s clear, reinforced walls.

Cameras mounted outside her chamber provided an excellent view. white epoxy walls blazed under the ceiling’s embedded neon lights. Leather cuffs held Betty Jewell’s wrists and ankles tight to the autopsy trolley. A disposable roll of thin foam on top of the cart gave it a little bit of padding, but it was still a steel cart and wasn’t designed with comfort in mind. She wore a blue hospital gown spotted with purple where her oozing sores leaked blood.

“We injected her with the WDE-4-11 formula,” Dan said. “That slowed the apoptosis reaction, but she’s still breaking down, particularly around her facial lesions.”

“We have to operate immediately,” Amos said. “We have to get rid of that compromised tissue, see if we can stop the chain reaction entirely.”

Margaret turned to Dan. “Has she given any indication of when she started showing symptoms? What has she said so far?”

“She just won’t talk to us,” he said. “She believes we’re here to kill her. She keeps asking for her father, but I think she knows her father is dead. She’s asking for her mother, too.”

“Did you contact the mother?” Margaret asked.

Dan shook his head. “We haven’t tried.”

Amos turned on him. “What the hell do you mean, you haven’t tried ? The girl just lost her father. She needs her family.”

“I have orders to keep any infected victims in isolation,” Dan said. “No contact of any kind until I’ve relinquished custody, which I’m doing now to you, Doctor Montoya.”

“Well, fine,” Margaret said. “We’ve got custody now. Clarence, please call the girl’s mother.”

“No,” Clarence said.

Margaret stared at him, dumbfounded. Dan she could understand, he was military, but Clarence? “We are calling this girl’s family, and right now.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, Doc,” Clarence said.

“But she doesn’t have triangles,” Margaret said. “She’s got something, sure, but nothing is going to hatch out of her. She’s not a threat.”

Clarence shook his head. “You know we can’t say that for sure, Margaret. How many times have you told me that the disease might shift, might become contagious? You said it’s mutated, right?”

Margaret didn’t know what to say—he was using her own words against her.

Amos jabbed a finger at the monitor. “That is an American citizen in that cage. Yes, cage. She’s got rights, goddamit.”

Clarence again shook his head. “Not right now she doesn’t. We contact the mother and the next thing you know, the press is all over it.”

“The press ?” Amos shouted. “You’re worried about the press ? Listen up, you goose-stepping assho—”

“Amos, stop,” Margaret said. “He’s right. She could be contagious.”

Amos looked at her like she was crazy. “Well, sure she could be contagious,” he said. “That’s why we have her in a fucking BSL-4 containment cell. It doesn’t change the fact that she’s a scared teenage girl. She needs her family. We can bring in the mother, keep her under surveillance or whatever.”

“He’s right about the media, too,” Margaret said.

“Margaret, what the hell is wrong with you?” Amos said. “You’re a doctor. Remember the phrase primum non nocere ?”

Margaret swallowed. The phrase was Latin for first, do no harm. It wasn’t actually part of the Hippocratic Oath, but the words were still drilled into every med student’s head.

“Yes, I remember,” she said. “I also remember another Latin phrase, the one we found painted in Kiet Nguyen’s bedroom. The house with all the dead kids. E pluribus unum. You remember that?”

Amos said nothing. He looked away.

“What’s that mean, Amos? Say it.”

“It means ‘out of one, many,’” he said quietly.

“So we follow the orders,” Margaret said. “We don’t call the girl’s family. Get suited up. We’re going to go in there and talk to her.”

Fully suited, Margaretand Amos walked into the autopsy room. An airtight door led into the collapsible walkway that connected Trailer B. Margaret watched the light above that door turn from red to green. Amos pulled up on the latch and swung the door outward to reveal a four-foot-long corridor and a matching door on the other side. They had to close their door to open the other, both because it was an airlock and because there wasn’t enough room in the corridor to open both.

When it came time to move the MargoMobile, built-in nozzles would douse the walkway’s interior with the chlorine/bleach. Gitsh and Marcus would then fold the walkway into its bracket inside Trailer B, shut the seamless outer door, and the MargoMobile would make like Willie Nelson—on the road again.

She stepped into the walkway. Amos shut the door behind her. Above the door to Trailer B, the light turned from red to green. Amos opened that door, and they stepped through. Only four feet away sat Betty’s containment cell.

The girl lifted her head to see them, and Margaret’s heart nearly broke in two.

Three giant black sores soiled the left side of her face. One centered on her cheekbone, one on her jaw where it met the neck, and one up on her temple. The last one undercut dark hair that must have been beautiful once. Now, wet strands clung to her face, her forehead and the table around her.

The decomposing black spots on her face were by far the worst, but they weren’t the only trouble areas. At least two dozen dime-size circles spotted her body. Her hands looked terrible; half the skin there was wrinkled, black and oozing, her fingers like a modern-art sculpture made from wet raisins. Several IV needles ran into veins on her feet—two of the few unblemished areas left on her body.

The girl shook with sobs. Even though she’d been strapped down for something like sixteen hours, she had no shortage of tears.

Margaret and Amos walked up to the clear glass cell. A flat-panel touch-screen controller mounted on the door served as a wireless interface for all systems in the containment cell. It could even be used to trigger a last-ditch emergency sterilization. All someone had to do was type in #-5-4-5-5, and every inch of both trailers would fill with the deadly chlorine/bleach combination.

Margaret hit a button to turn on the intercom system—they would be able to hear Betty on their earpieces, and their voices would be pumped into speakers inside the cell.

“Hello, Betty,” Margaret said.

Betty stopped whimpering for a second, just long enough to draw in a huge, ragged lungful of air.

“Let me go!”

“We can’t,” Margaret said. “You’re very ill.”

“ No fucking shit I’m ill, you fucking assholes ! Did you do this to me? Please, get my dad. Get my mom. Please !”

“Your father is dead,” Amos said.

Margaret quickly pressed a button on the touch screen to turn off the intercom.

“Amos, what are you doing?”

“Telling her the truth.”

Margaret wanted to smack him right in the mouth. “Amos, we need to get this girl to talk, not put her further into hysterics.”