Authors: Louise Voss
‘OK – you three, come with me.’ He pointed at the men. ‘Ladies, you wait here.’
To get to the lab, they had to pass through an airlock. Kate and the other women stood back while the men entered the airlock and closed the door behind them, leaving them in silence.
Kate realised her mouth was hanging open. ‘Did he just call us “ladies”?’ she broadcasted to Junko and Annie simultaneously.
Junko pulled a face. ‘I think he is a brilliant man. But he is also – what is the English? – a sexist asshole.’
‘You got that right, sister,’ said Annie.
The next ten minutes crawled by, Kate and the other two remaining mostly silent while they waited to be let into the lab. It was sweltering in the suit and a bead of sweat rolled into Kate’s eye. She breathed deeply and thought about Paul, wondered what he was doing. Probably waking up in some nice comfortable hotel room, enjoying a full breakfast on government expenses. She hoped he was all right and not still fighting with Harley.
Finally, Kolosine re-emerged and gestured impatiently to them.
‘Never meet your heroes,’ Kate muttered to herself, but she felt another surge of adrenaline as they passed through the airlock and entered the dazzling white space of the lab. She looked around. It was the kind of lab every scientist dreamed of working in: spacious, state-of-the-art equipment, everything shining with the gleam of newness. The air pressure in the lab was kept low so that no stray virus particles could be sucked out of the room. And lining the walls were biological safety cabinets in which, Kate knew, the virus samples would be kept locked away. CCTV
cameras recorded their every move from each corner of
the
lab. Kate knew that cameras would be set up all around
the
exterior of the building too. All category four labs
had
these, as well as alarms, to detect intruders. And, according to McCarthy, this place had extra security because of the bombing. It was more secure than any bank vault.
A Trexler isolator – a kind of plastic tent used to quarantine patients, larger than the VATI – had been set up in a small room behind another metal door, a window giving a good view of the patient beneath the plastic sheeting. This room had its own exit that led outside through another airlock. Kate approached the glass and peered in, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other scientists, only Junko holding back.
The patient lying on his back inside the isolator was in his mid-to-late twenties, dark hair, broad-shouldered and probably handsome, though his good looks were masked by a grey pallor and a layer of sweat. In the silence of the lab, Kate could sense that, like her, everyone was holding their breath. Then the patient turned his head and looked at them with pink eyes. His lips moved but his words were inaudible. Kate didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she thought he’d said, ‘Please. Please help.’
She moved away from the glass, catching her own reflection
as she turned. But in her reflection she was a child, a child
watching her own parents writhe and burn with fever, a nurse
wringing water from a cloth on to her mother’s fore
head
. Ka
te could still feel the urge to comfort her mother, the need to hold her and make her better, even though she had been forbidden from going near either of them.
‘Kate?’ Junko’s voice came over the speaker in her helmet. ‘Are you OK? You bumped into me. I think you are shaking.’
Kate unthinkingly tried to touch her own face then shook her head. ‘Damn suit. I’m … I’m fine, Junko. I just … it took me back to my childhood.’
The Japanese woman looked at her with surprise.
‘Both my parents were killed by Watoto. I was told to stay away from them, but I ran up to my mother’s bed as she was dying and hugged her.’
‘Oh my God. What happened?’
‘I caught it. I was taken to a hospital in Nairobi where they kept me in an isolator very similar to that one. It took me back, that’s all.’
Before she could say anything else, Kolosine gestured for attention. ‘OK, people, listen. This is LAPD Officer Marshall Buckley. First started showing signs of Watoto-X2, which is now the official name of this new strain, or Indian flu as the fucking media insist on calling it, three days ago. That means he would have contracted it a day or two before that. It has a very short incubation period, as with the original strain. This man has volunteered to help us in this urgent situation. To donate his body to science.’
‘He’s not dead, Kolosine,’ Annie protested.
‘Not yet. Anyone else want to say anything smart? Anyone else want to get the fuck out of my lab?’ His eyes bulged. ‘Thought not. I need a volunteer, somebody to go in there and talk to him and get a blood sample.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Kate heard herself say.
Kolosine’s attention snapped to her. ‘Ah. Kate Maddox. The great Watoto expert. I guess this is a familiar scene to you, huh?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She was aware that the other scientists and lab technicians were staring at her. ‘But I had Watoto as a child. I’m more likely to be immune than anyone else.’
‘Not necessarily – and you’re the only one who hasn’t had their own blood sampled yet, so some might say you’re the last person that ought to go in. But go ahead if you want, Miss Gung-Ho. The suit will protect you.’
A minute later, after Kolosine let her through the door, Kate sat down on a chair beside Officer Buckley. Shrouded by the isolator, he turned his head slowly, like a turtle, to look into her eyes. It reminded her so much of seeing her father with Watoto. His hair was stuck to his scalp with sweat and he breathed rasping, shallow breaths through his mouth. A microphone and speaker had been fed into the isolator so the scientists could communicate with the sufferer inside. It made it difficult to interact with the patient and that frustrated Kate, but even though the suit protected her from the virus they couldn’t risk particles being released into the lab and beyond.
‘Hi,’ she said softly, making sure to keep eye contact with him through the plastic. ‘My name’s Kate.’
‘I’m Marshall,’ he said. His voice was weak and muffled further by the plastic isolator.
‘How bad are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Like I’m on fire,’ he said. ‘My whole body hurts. My skin … it’s like somebody scrubbed me with freaking sandpaper or something, then poured gasoline on me and lit it.’
He coughed, spasms that sent deadly sprays of spittle into the air inside the isolator.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘And my head … It’s like I got the worst hangover
I ever … had.’ He tried to smile but it flickered and died on his lips.
‘How long have you felt like this?’ Kate asked.
‘I only felt this bad since yesterday. Two days ago I thought it was just a cold, you know. I went into work, took some cold medicine, sucked a freaking lozenge, like that helped any. Went to bed that night thinking I probably got flu, going to have to take a day off. Then I woke up feeling like this, called the station to tell them. Next thing I know there are guys in bio suits like you’re wearing asking me if I wanted to help out, would I sign some papers.’
He coughed again. ‘You a doctor?’
Kate replied, ‘Not that kind of doctor. I’m a scientist, a virologist. We’re trying to find a cure for what you’ve got.’
‘And what have I got?’
‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’
‘Nobody’s told me squat.’
Kate felt a prickle of anger beneath her skin. ‘It’s called Watoto,’ she said. ‘Or to be precise, Watoto-X2. It comes from Africa.’
‘Africa? What in hell is it doing in LA?’
‘That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out. But Watoto … I’ve had it.’
His eyes widened. ‘And you got better.’
‘Yes.’ She felt tears sting her eyes. Despite many years of research, Kate had seldom had an opportunity to become acquainted with the patients from whom her live tissue samples came. But what was wrong with giving him a little hope?
He was quiet for a minute, closing his eyes, and Kate thought he might have drifted off. She was about to start the process of taking the blood sample when Buckley’s eyes opened again.
‘I want to see my kids,’ he said.
Kate swallowed. She wanted to tell him he would see them soon, that everything would be fine. But she couldn’t go that far. Instead, she simply nodded. She wished she could reach inside and squeeze his hand.
‘Tell me about your children,’ she said.
He told her. He had two daughters, aged five and three. Millie and Harper. Millie was at elementary school and loved Barbie and argued about everything. She had a real strong personality, like her mom. Harper, the three-year-old, was into
Sesame Street
and looked like her dad, everyone said, and she shared his calm character too. On his second day of feeling sick, the girls had made him a get well soon card, with a smiling family of stick men and a shining sun.
Last time he saw them, when he said goodbye, they and their mother were all complaining of feeling a cold coming on.
Kate couldn’t stop thinking about Jack, and how she would feel if it was him lying there close to death – as no doubt many parents in Los Angeles were doing right at that moment, with their own precious children. Or worse, the children who were having to watch, helpless, as their parents writhed and gasped in agony, the way she had watched in that Tanzanian village … All her working life had been dedicated to eradicating Watoto so that nobody else would ever have to go through that anguish – and yet here they were, in the grip of a potentially unstoppable pandemic of this new, supercharged Watoto.
Except there was no point thinking like that. Anything could be stopped. It was almost certainly too late to save Officer Buckley, but there were many millions of parents and children out there who were, unwittingly, relying on her and Kolosine and the rest of them. Now, more than ever, it was time to face and beat her nemesis.
Kate stood up. Built into the side of the isolator were two glove units to allow samples to be taken without physical contact with the patient. She slipped her hands into the slots, so she could now touch him with her gloves, and picked up a syringe and tube. ‘Officer Buckley, you’re not afraid of needles, are you?’
He shook his head, wincing at the effort. ‘That’s one thing I ain’t afraid of.’ He rolled his head to one side and looked into Kate’s eyes. ‘I just want to see my daughters again,’ he said. ‘You will be able to help me, won’t you? My little girls …’ He fell silent.
Kate couldn’t respond, did not know what to say. How could she tell him that it was highly unlikely he would ever see his children again? That within a couple of days, his daughters would be as sick as he was now? There was nothing she could say that wasn’t a lie.
When she looked up from preparing the syringe, she saw that the big, tough LA police officer was crying.
‘We’re going to the pool today, right, Daddy?’
Jack hovered outside Vernon and Shirley’s bedroom, dressed only in his stripy trunks and un-inflated orange armbands, wearing swimming goggles. There was no answer from the other side of the closed door, only the swell of what sounded to Jack like some really boring music.
‘Right, Daddy?’ Jack raised the pitch of his voice a little higher to make sure he was heard over the violins. ‘’Cos you promised we could today. You said you’d teach me to do diving. You said so, on the way back yesterday.’
He pressed his ear against the door, and heard Shirley crying quietly. She’d been in bed with a really bad tummy-ache ever since they’d got home from the airport.
‘Daddy, you’re definitely in there, aren’t you?’ he persisted, hopping from foot to foot on the wooden landing floor. The door opened suddenly, and Jack looked up into his father’s face. Through the plastic lenses of his goggles, Vernon appeared slightly blurry and distorted. There was no mistaking the barely concealed irritation and stress on his face, though.
‘Jack,’ he began, leaning an arm against the doorframe as though the effort of even speaking was too much. With a sinking feeling, Jack knew what was coming. He ripped off his goggles and flung them down the landing, where they spun along the wooden boards and skidded into a vase full of pampas grass taller than Jack himself.
‘You’re gonna tell me we can’t go, aren’t you! It’s NOT FAIR!’
Vernon picked up his small son and hugged him, but Jack squirmed and kicked out in fury and disappointment.
‘I’m real sorry, Jackie, but Auntie Shirley is really sick. I can’t leave her. She’s in too much pain.’
Jack paused for a moment. ‘Are you sure she doesn’t
have the Indian flu?’ he asked quietly. ‘Are we all gonna get it?’
Vernon shook his head. ‘It’s definitely not flu. It’s her diverticulitis. It’s flared up again.’
Jack neither knew nor cared what divert-whatever was, as long as it wasn’t the deadly flu. ‘But you promised you’d take me swimming today.’
Vernon moved Jack’s chin so that he was forced to look at him. ‘Now, Jackie, I didn’t actually promise – I said I’d take you if I could. And I can’t, not today. You’re going to have to be real grown-up and try and understand.’
‘You
did
promise! And, I’m not a grown-up, I’m EIGHT,’ yelled Jack, and wriggled so hard that Vernon had to put him down.
‘Well, if you’re going to be this naughty, I couldn’t take you anyway,’ Vernon said, looking disapprovingly at him over his half-moon reading glasses.
‘Oh, so what? I’m going over to Bradley’s. I bet his mom will take us because she’s nice, not like you.’
Vernon snorted. ‘I doubt that Gina Morton’s been straight long enough to take her kids swimming since they were
born.’
Jack put his hands on his hips and glared at his father. ‘Gina Morton ALWAYS stands up straight, so THERE.’ And with this devastating parting shot, he marched straight down the stairs, out the back door and through the gap in the hedge into Bradley’s backyard.
‘Going swimming, honey?’ Gina said when Jack appeared in her kitchen, bright red with anger, still barefoot and in armbands.