Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

Whitman made a call to bring in a helicopter that could take 14 away from all this. Then he waded across the pasture, looking out for cow pats, and pulled his Taser from his jacket. 14 went down, slumping across the fence.

“You have any wire cutters?” Whitman asked the sheriff. “I’m going to have to cut him free.”

One of the ranchers took off his cowboy hat and slapped it against his leg. “Who’s gonna pay to fix the damage to my fence?”

The helicopter lifted away from the field and carried subject 14 off, and the ranchers dispersed. The sheriff waited in his truck while Whitman made some calls. As he was finishing up, the weedy guy from Public Health came trotting up, a serious look in his eye.

“This, uh… well, anything I should know about this?” he asked.

Whitman switched off his phone and looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Just. You know. Should I tell the local doctors to be on the lookout for anything? Any precautions they should take?”

Whitman frowned.

He could tell the man what they’d discovered from studying subject 13. He could say that it was fluid-borne. They’d traced 13’s history enough to know she once shared needles with subject 8. They’d also found a link between subject 5 and subject 2: 5 had donated blood once, and 2 had received some of it in a transfusion following an appendectomy.

But—why didn’t the Public Health guy know that already? It was the first break in the case, and it should have gone out to every doctor in the country, every police department, every public health official. So far the CDC had kept the media from finding out about the mystery illness—no need to cause a panic—but the caregivers should already have been notified.

If this guy didn’t know what was going on, that meant Director Philips didn’t want him to know. For reasons Whitman couldn’t imagine.

Still.

“Nope,” Whitman said. “Nothing to worry about. If something comes up, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

Atlanta, GA

Back in the observation suite again. A new living subject. Philips sipped at his coffee. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days.

“What’s going on?” Whitman demanded. “Damn it, I have a right to know, at least. You’ve got me out in the field, putting myself at risk. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have your two live subjects—”

“Six,” Philips interrupted.

“What?”

The director sat back in his chair. Whitman was right, he decided. He should know what was going on. “Did you think you were the only field agent I had working on this? We’ve got six live subjects in the negative pressure rooms.”

He watched Whitman’s jaw fall open. “How many? How many reported cases?”

Philips took a long, deep breath before answering. “Eighty-nine. Confirmed.”

“How long has this been going on?” Whitman asked.

“The first case we’re sure about showed up seven years ago. For a long time then there was nothing. We thought it was just some fluke. But then more of them came to light,” Philips said.

Whitman shook his head. He walked across the room to where a monitor showed the feed from Subject 13’s room. She was still sitting there, rocking back and forth. She’d moved to a different corner of the room but that was the only change.

“What’s going on?” Whitman asked.

“Tell me something, first,” Philips said. “Tell me why you didn’t finish medical school.”

Whitman grimaced. “I wasn’t empathetic enough, they said. My bedside manner was lousy.”

“When you didn’t know 13’s name, I thought as much,” Philips told him. “Most doctors—we aren’t equipped for this. We take an oath, you see. ‘First, do no harm.’ Even when it could save other lives.”

“What are you getting at?” Whitman demanded.

Philips nodded at the screen. At subject 13.

“The President called me this morning.”

“The President of the United States?” Whitman asked. “He’s been briefed about this case?”

“He’s being updated every twelve hours.”

Philips closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“He called… to give me the authorization to find this thing no matter what it takes. You see, we can’t detect anything in her system. No virus. No bacterium, no fungal infection, no parasites. This thing’s invisible.”

“For now,” Whitman pointed out. “We couldn’t find HIV for a long time, either, but we did.”

Philips shook his head. “It isn’t like that. And anyway, we don’t have time to find out. This thing is spreading, and it’s moving fast. We have eighty-nine confirmed cases today. We could have a thousand tomorrow. The President gave me authorization to euthanize her and do an autopsy.”

Whitman was stunned. “But she’s a… a living person. A human being. She may be brain dead, but she still has basic rights.”

“Not, apparently, in the face of an epidemic. I was supposed to do it this morning, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to kill her, even in the name of public good. Though maybe it’s not just squeamishness. I have a suspicion I know what it actually is. But oh, Lord, do I want to be wrong this time.”

He looked up at Whitman with pleading eyes. The question went unasked but they both knew it. Philips desperately wanted Whitman to say he would do it. Go down to the negative pressure room and kill Subject 13 so they could cut her open.

But Philips knew it couldn’t be that easy.

First thing in the morning, they came for subject 13.

She was in a straitjacket and her facial mask, but they didn’t take any chances. A technician in a bite-proof containment suit stood outside the room and shot her with a massive dose of sedative. Once she was unconscious they strapped her to a gurney and wheeled her into an operating room where three doctors waited. One of them was Philips.

Each of the doctors had a hypodermic needle. Two of them were filled with harmless saline solution. The other had the same chemical cocktail used for lethal injections in prisons. None of the doctors knew which of them had the bad needle.

That was intentional.

One by one they made their injections.

Chicago, IL

Whitman wasn’t asleep when the next call came in. Somehow he’d known it was coming. Another mission.

“This one’s a little different,” Philips told him.

He was on a plane an hour later. Fully briefed by the time he set down.

The church had been Catholic once, but it had been sold to some other denomination. Whitman didn’t bother finding out which one. Outside, a dozen policemen stood around looking bored—nobody had told them what was going on. Inside the church was all frothy stonework and stained glass and lanterns hanging from chains. Holy men in severe suits stood around wringing their hands and clutching bibles, unwilling to meet Whitman’s gaze.

A middle-aged woman called his name and told him to come with her. She led him down a flight of stairs into a basement with tan-painted walls that glared in the overhead fluorescents.

“How long has this been going on?” Whitman asked.

The woman wouldn’t make eye contact, either. The church had fought with the CDC, even threatened legal action. A federal judge had slapped that down—the church had no choice but to turn over its parishioners now. “About thirty-nine months,” the woman said. She was in charge of the church’s community outreach. Running homeless shelters and literacy programs. And their hospice.

“The doctors said there was nothing they could do,” she explained. “We kept them fed, gave them clothing, and kept them clean. Was that so wrong?”