Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

The disease that afflicted Subject 13 was definitely some kind of brain fever, they were sure of that. But that was almost the only thing they knew. When the cops had killed the previous twelve they’d ruined the best chance the CDC had to study this thing as it progressed. Subject 13 could be a very important catch.

Bringing her in alive also meant they could get some epidemiological data, too. They couldn’t question her—like all of the subjects, she was completely incapable of speech—but they could study her clothing for any trace of environmental toxins, look at her teeth to get an idea of her diet. The clue to identifying the pathogen could come from anywhere.

They definitely needed some kind of clue. 13, and the twelve bodies in the morgue, were just the tip of the iceberg, they were sure. There was no way to know how many other people had been infected with the pathogen, how many people they’d missed. Early cases might have been dismissed as PCP overdoses or just psychotic breaks. Subjects might have wandered out into traffic and gotten themselves killed before they were diagnosed.

If they were going to figure this thing out—isolate the pathogen and come up with a vaccine or at least some kind of treatment—they needed information, and that meant finding a live subject. Whitman had been given that duty because he was a senior field agent.

“What’s her name?” Philips asked.

Whitman blinked in surprise. “Sorry?”

“Her name,” the Director repeated. “She must have one.”

Whitman thought for a second but nothing came to him. “They told me but… I forgot. It’s in my report.” He rubbed his temples with his fingertips as if that would jog his memory. “It’s been a long day, Director, and if—”

Philips reached over and grabbed Whitman’s right hand.

Both of them looked at the two red dots on Whitman’s index finger, tiny bruises that were clearly the imprints of teeth.

Philips raised an eyebrow.

He didn’t need to ask aloud. Whitman knew what the question was. “She bit through my glove. Yeah. But she didn’t break the skin.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

Whitman looked away. “Absolutely.”

Philips wondered if his agent was telling the truth. He had a strong enough incentive to lie. If he had been infected, if there was any chance, well—Whitman would very quickly find himself in a negative pressure room of his own. But Philips knew he needed Whitman, still. He nodded and turned back to the monitors, back to watching 13 rock back and forth.

Atlanta, GA

This was a bad one.

Whitman had been through some bad ones before. After washing out of med school with a biology degree, he’d joined the CDC just in time to get in on the circus that was SARS. He’d see outbreaks of cholera and TB in cities up and down the eastern seaboard, and of course the e. coli flare-ups that hit every time a restaurant tried to save some money by buying second-grade meat. As a field agent, he didn’t even have the luxury of looking at it all through a microscope or the plastic viewport of a containment suit. He’d been down in the streets with the panicking victims, often wearing no more than a surgical mask and a pair of latex gloves, covered in blood and much worse day after day. The bad ones left him with nightmares and a need to wash his hands every time he passed a sink.

This one… it was worse, maybe. Nobody had coughed in his face on this case, nor had he had to watch anybody die. But he knew those bloodshot eyes were going to haunt him.

There was nothing there. Nobody home.

The nice thing about the bad ones, of course, was that they didn’t last. Killer pathogens had a way of burning themselves out, wiping out their host populations before they could pass on their genes, or simply mutating out of the killer phase. In the worst cases it just meant somebody had to isolate the pathogen and find a counteragent in a hurry. And he wouldn’t be the one pulling all-nighters for a week to make that happen.

The very best thing about the bad ones was that he got to go home. He wasn’t the one who had to make the decisions about who to quarantine, or who got the actual vaccine and who got the very convincing placebo.

That night, he managed to sleep for nearly seven hours in a row with no one bothering him. When the phone rang, he answered it. Because he knew if he didn’t they would start texting him. And if he ignored the texts they would send someone to knock on his door. He had signed the contract and he knew it said he was always on call.

“I’m on vacation,” he told the phone. “Call me in three days.”

It was Philips. Not a good sign, if the Director was making the call himself. “All vacation time is rescinded, as of now.”

“You’re taking away my days off for—”

Philips’ voice got very, very serious. “Vacation time is rescinded for all CDC personnel until further notice.”

Whitman got out of bed, the cell phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder as he grabbed his pants. The CDC employed 15,000 people. If they were all being called in, that meant one thing.

Epidemic.

“Where am I going?” Whitman asked.

“Flagstaff.”

“Arizona? Seriously?”

All thirteen known cases of the mystery brain disorder had come from the northeast corridor, from Vermont down to Washington, DC. What the hell was it doing out west?

Whitman buttoned his shirt one-handed. “Did 13 tell us something?” he asked.

“Nothing we wanted to hear.”

Flagstaff, AZ

Whitman had a welcoming party waiting for him when his plane landed: the local sheriff, a guy in a short-sleeve, button-down shirt from Public Health, and a couple of ranchers in cowboy hats and permanent tans. Whitman might have sent the ranchers away until the sheriff explained the situation.

Subject 14 was alive, and he wasn’t going anywhere. It looked like he might have been some kid, some teenager just out for a long drive in the desert. Now he was stuck in a barbed wire fence. He kept trying to drag himself free, pulling at his clothes and his leg where it was tangled in the wire. The fence marked the divide between two pastures—hence the ranchers, who argued the whole time about who was liable if the kid died on the fence.

“I figure if he just calmed down a second, thought it through, he could get himself free,” the sheriff said. They had parked about two hundred yards from where 14 was stuck. He hadn’t shown any sign of noticing them yet. Whitman was happy to keep his distance. “He’s not firing on all cylinders, is he?” He handed a pair of binoculars to Whitman.

Bloodshot eyes. A lot of open wounds on that leg. This was going to be dicey.

Whitman frowned. “What’s that stuff by his feet? Looks like a torn-up paper bag. Was he carrying that when you found him?”

“We had orders not to approach, but it took you twelve hours to get out here after we called it in,” the guy from Public Health said. “I had a sandwich in my car—it was going to be my lunch. I got as close as I dared and then I tossed it to him.”

“Did he eat it?” Whitman asked.

“The sandwich and part of the wrapper it came in. I was worried he might choke.”

Through the binoculars Whitman watched as 14 pulled and pulled at the wire. A piece of his pantleg tore free, curling down over his knee cap.

No , Whitman thought. That wasn’t his pant leg. It was the skin of his thigh.

Limited pain response , he thought, adding to the catalog of symptoms for this new disease. Maybe some kind of neuropathy?

The immediate problem was that 14 was now one third of the way free of the fence. A couple more tugs and he would be out and running right toward them, looking for someone to bite or scratch.