Genesis Plague (16 page)

I
hit a wall of sound, and my first instinct was to cover my
ears and run back inside.

Hand-made signs danced
wildly over the mass of people, painted with slogans like “Affordable Health
Care Now!”, “Down w/Big Medicine!”, “No More Government Lies”, and “Cure for
Profit? NO!”

The two Military
Policemen stationed at the front door to our building were yelling uselessly at
the backs of the people in the crowd. One of them was bleeding from a cut on
his cheek.

“Where are the
others?!” I shouted over the din, meaning the extra security detail that had
been promised by the President.

“Thirty minutes away,
sir!” said the MP with the cut cheek.

His hands shook as he
held his M4 Carbine to his chest. He looked like a slightly different version
of Nash, the MP inside the building. A little bit older, but the same square
jaw and home-grown hero vibe.

The other MP adhered to
the same mold, but he seemed less shaken than his friend. He squinted at the
crowd, his jaw clenched, his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

“We need to get those
samples inside!” I shouted.

The MPs looked at me
and nodded, seemingly relieved to have a specific mission.

“Can you get me next to
that van?”

“Sir, it would be
better if we went alone!”

I shook my head and
leaned closer as the noise from the crowd escalated and the van’s horn blared.
“The courier won’t give the package to anyone besides the people working inside
the building!”

I showed him my ID
badge.

He nodded again, then shouted,
“Johnson, you take point!” to the MP with the cut cheek.

Johnson moved forward,
adjusting his rifle strap over his shoulder. I caught a quick glance at the second
MP’s name patch as he moved behind me: Caruso.

The first few feet were
easy going, since the crowd was pushing its way closer to the van. For a
moment, I could barely hear the people closest to the vehicle shouting for
everyone to back off, but their voices were quickly swallowed up by boisterous
chants of “We want the cure! We want the cure!”

Beyond the courier van,
safely outside the screaming crowd, two police officers stood by their
barricade of patrol cars, talking hurriedly to each other, gesturing with their
hands toward the crowd. One of them spoke into a radio clipped to his shirt,
listened to the response, then shrugged at his partner.

We were on our own.

I heard a sharp whistle
and ducked just as a glass bottle soared over my head. It shattered on the
ground nearby.

“Keep your head down,
sir!” Caruso shouted from behind.

He didn’t have to say
it twice. I huddled behind Johnson as he pushed his way through the crowd,
crouching and staying as close as I could. He muscled forward, jabbing people
in the kidney with the butt of his rifle when he couldn’t elbow them out of the
way.

A man holding a sign
fell to the ground and was immediately trampled. I stopped to reach down but
Caruso grabbed my shirt and hauled me up, pushing me forward.

“Don’t stop!”

The crowd was so dense
I couldn’t see more than a foot in any direction. I focused on Johnson’s padded
armor. When I looked back, I could only see Caruso’s grim face and his rifle,
and the flailing arms and torsos of countless people, caught in the grip of
madness.

Then the van was right
in front of me. It rocked on its chassis as the crowd surged against one side,
then the other. Johnson turned back and grabbed me, pulled me forward as Caruso
shoved people away from the door.

I pounded on the side
door and yelled for the courier. The door slid open, revealing a dark interior
lined with secured compartments. The courier stood there, eyes wide with
terror, holding the hard plastic sample case.

I showed him my badge
and shouted my name. He nodded and stuttered something I couldn’t hear as he
shoved the case into my hands and slammed the door in my face.

A deep, powerful voice
suddenly boomed above the noise of the crowd.

“Hey! The cure! This
guy has the cure!”

I looked up to see
everyone staring in my direction. Their crazed yet vacuous expressions made the
slow turn to realization as they looked down at the sample case in my hands.

“Let’s move!” Caruso
shouted, pushing me back toward the building.

The crowd screamed with
fresh energy as their focus shifted off the van and onto me. I was propelled
forward with Johnson and Caruso as the mob surged behind us, pushing us like
driftwood in a tidal wave. Half the time my feet weren’t even on the ground as
the MPs pulled me forward and the crowd pushed me from behind.

Hands clawed at my
shoulders, ripping my shirt. Someone grabbed my ankle and I kicked hard, felt a
bone crack. The hand released me and I ran hard.

The building loomed
above. Johnson made it to the door first. He slammed into it and bounced off,
jangling a set of keys in his hands. He found a key card in the mass of dancing
metal and swiped it next to the door, which slid open quickly. Caruso shoved me
inside as the crowd surged to get into the building. The MPs held their rifles
by the barrel and stock, pushing back against the mob with all of their
strength.

Caruso pulled back his
gun and cracked the nearest man in the jaw. He dropped to the ground,
unconscious, and the other members of the crowd looked from the fallen man to
Caruso, their mouths open in shock, as if this was something they never thought
could happen.

“Inside, now!” Caruso shouted.

He and Johnson stumbled
through the door as it closed. Through the tinted glass, I could see a solid
mass of arms, legs, torsos, and heads pushing against the outside of the
building, bowing the glass inward.

“Will that hold?” I asked,
panting heavily. My throat burned from the near-suffocation I endured at the
hands of Dan Grayson. My body ached from the dozen fresh bruises I’m sure would
show up later.

I inspected the sample
case. There was a long scratch on one side, cutting through the biohazard
symbol, but the lid was still securely sealed.

“We’ll be here if they
get in,” Caruso said, looking at Johnson.

Johnson nodded and
wiped saliva from his cut cheek.

“One of the bastards
spit on me,” he said, disgusted.

“They’ll do a lot more
than that if the glass breaks,” Caruso said. “I’m gonna call HQ and make sure
the reinforcements are still on the way. Maybe tell ‘em to double the order.”

I thanked them both as
I stepped into the plastic tunnel to begin the decontamination process.

J
ohann looked at me in confusion when I set the sample case on
his desk.

“And what do you expect
me to do with this?” he asked.

Printouts showing
various angles of the
Loasis
virus were strewn across his desk,
annotated with chicken-scratch handwriting. Large question marks punctuated the
notes.

“Compare these samples
to the ones taken from Grayson and Levino,” I said. Johann opened his mouth to
speak but I quickly added, “You’re the expert, remember? I’m just a generic
microbiologist.”

I left the room while
he sputtered in protest, but then I heard the clinking of glass as he removed
the samples from their case.

Across the hall, Conny
had anesthetized chimp Number One and laid it out on an examination table. The
chimp infected with the original sample of the
Loasis
virus breathed
slowly, its eyelids twitching. Conny leaned over her patient, wearing thick
glasses with magnifying lenses and shining a light into the chimp’s left ear
canal.

“Find anything in
there?” I asked as I stood next to the table.

“Nothing I didn’t
expect to find.” She clicked off the light and stood up straight, cracking her
back and looking at me.

The magnifying glasses
made her eyes bulge like a cartoon character. I put a hand to my mouth to try
and stop from laughing.

“Oh, these,” she said,
smiling as she pulled off her glasses.

But I couldn’t stop.
Something about it hit me deep and I buckled over, my face heating up as I
laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Conny started up, too, and soon we were
both bellowing laughter over the sleeping chimp.

The wave finally
subsided, and I wiped tears from my eyes and took a deep breath.

Conny sighed. “That
felt good.”

“It really did, Cassy.”

She looked at me,
confused. “What was that?”

I was still shaking off
the effects of the laughter, chuckling softly.

“What do you mean?”

“You called me Cassy.”

“I don’t think so,” I
said hesitantly.

“You said, ‘It really
did,
Cassy
.’”

I shook my head. “I—I’m
sorry, Conny. If I did, I didn’t mean to. I guess my brain is fried, that’s
all. It’s getting too easy to make a mistake.”

She smiled. “I’m just
giving you a hard time.”

“That’s a relief. I was
worried something around here might actually turn out to be easy. Speaking of
which, the samples from St. Christopher’s are here. Johann is comparing them
with blood from Grayson and Levino.”

“That’s good,” Conny
said. “And I think I found something else.”

She directed me over to
her workbench, where she held up an MRI scan of the chimpanzee’s skull.

“Everything looks
normal,” she said, pointing to the top of the brain with her pinky, “until you
get down here.”

She pointed to a bulge
behind the prefrontal cortex.

“Help me out,” I said.

“The hypothalamus is
swollen to roughly twice its normal size. I’m registering a massive increase in
oxytocin in this chimp’s blood.”

“Oxytocin,” I repeated.

“It’s called the
bonding hormone,” said Conny. “To put it simply, this chemical is responsible
for the connections we feel to others. Mothers and their children, lovers, best
friends, et cetera. The area of the brain responsible for those feelings is the
hypothalamus.”

“Why would a virus
evolve to affect that particular gland?”

“I can only think of
one reason, but it’s almost too silly to say out loud.”

“Don’t hold back now.”

She sighed. “Here goes.
On its most basic level, oxytocin makes you crave companionship. Let’s say I’m
infected with the virus. My oxytocin levels are going up. The first thing I’m
going to want to do is be around the people I love, like my family. It’s how
the virus spreads, Paul. If we are contaminated, the first people we would
infect are the ones we love most in this world.”

I
expected the observation room to be empty, but Johann was
standing there, arms crossed, watching Grayson and Levino with a frown on his
face.

He didn’t acknowledge
me when I entered, which was just fine. I stood next to him, and then I frowned,
too.

Roger Levino sat with
his back to the divider wall, staring up at the ceiling lights, unblinking.
Directly on the other side of the divider, Dan Grayson pawed at the wall, as if
he were trying to push through to Levino.

“How long have they
been like this?” I asked.

“Since before I got
here,” said Johann.

“Are those samples
being processed?”

“Yes, Paul, the samples
are being processed.”

Levino stood abruptly,
still staring up at the ceiling. He walked toward us slowly. On the other side
of the divider, Grayson matched his pace, staying directly parallel.

“They can’t see each
other,” Johann said.

Yet Grayson was definitely
following Levino, who bumped into the transparent wall and walked away from the
divider. This seemed to agitate Grayson, who flattened himself against the
divider as if he were being compressed into it by a magnetic connection to
Levino.

I stepped forward and
flipped the comm switch for both rooms. Dan was gurgling loudly from deep in
his throat. His body thumped against the wall as he tried to get closer to
Levino.

Then Dan leaned his
head back from the divider and smashed his forehead into the solid wall.

“Hey!” I shouted,
stepping up to the acrylic.

Dan pulled his head
back. Blood trickled from a gash just below his hairline. He slammed his head
into the divider wall again. In the adjacent room, Levino looked up, searching
for the noise.

“He can hear it,” said
Johann.

“We have to do
something,” I said as Dan pulled back for another hit.

“Like what?” asked
Johann.

“Sedate him! Anything!”

“You’re not thinking
clearly, Paul.”

Grayson smashed his
forehead into the wall, cracking the plaster.

“We need to learn
everything we can about how this virus affects our species,” Johann said.

“You cold bastard,” I
said, walking toward the exit.

Johann ran over and
blocked my path.

“Do you want to be the
one responsible for missing the solution to this problem?” he asked. “These men
are already dead. There is nothing we can do.”

I grabbed Johann’s coat
and shoved him aside, then I heard a door open. I turned to see Conny, in a
full-body biosafety suit, enter Grayson’s room from the decontamination chamber
in the back. She must have already been inside the chamber when Dan started
hitting the wall.

The door closed behind
her and she adjusted her floppy polyethylene head-cover.

“Conny!” I shouted,
running over to the comm unit. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Relax, Paul,” she said
easily. “I’m going to sedate him and get a blood sample. I want to check my
oxytocin theory.”

Dan stood at the
divider, palms flat on either side of the bloody crack his head had formed. He
leaned back and cracked his skull into the plaster once again, forming a small
crater in the wall that bulged out on the opposite side of the divider.

In the other room,
Levino hesitantly approached the growing bump in the wall.

“That’s quite a dent,”
said Johann. “I thought the wall would have been stronger.”

“I guess the designers
didn’t expect patients to bash their heads through it,” I said.

In Dan’s room, Conny
unzipped a waist pouch and withdrew a syringe filled with clear liquid. She
uncapped the needle and slowly approached Dan, who had yet to notice her
presence.

“I feel it, too, Paul,”
Levino said weakly. He walked to the acrylic wall and stood in the corner where
it met the divider.

Dan bashed his head
into the wall and a spurt of blood blossomed out like a firework, splashing
against the cracked plaster.

“I feel it…crawling up
into my brain,” said Levino, scratching at his temples. “It wants me to peel
off my skin, but I’m fighting it. I’m fighting it, for now. Please tell my wife
I love her, Paul. Bring her to the lab, or let me out so I can hold her again.
Find my son and bring him, too. I miss them, Paul. It isn’t right for a man to
be without his family.”

He cried as he slipped
down to the ground and curled into a fetal position.

I got a good look at Dan’s
eyes when he pulled back for another hit on the wall. They were completely red,
like solid pool balls, except for the beady black pupils in the centers.

“Definitely a massive
aneurism of some kind,” Johann said, breathing quickly.

Dan smashed his head
into the wall as Conny walked up behind him. She stuck him in the shoulder with
the needle, but before she could depress the plunger, Dan whipped around and
knocked her hand away. He grabbed the syringe and broke the needle off in his
flesh, then threw the syringe at Conny. It hit her in the chest as she stumbled
for the door.

Grayson moved quickly.
He ran Conny down and jumped on top of her, sending her sprawling to the floor.
She screamed as Dan flipped her onto her back and pinned her hands against the
floor.

“I’m going in there,” I
said, running for the exit.

Johann’s grip was
surprisingly strong as he grabbed me by the neck and pulled me back.

“Not without a suit,
you’re not. Besides,” he said sadly, “it’s too late.”

Dan bit the soft
plastic faceplate of Conny’s head-cover like a rabid animal, violently shaking
his head. Conny screeched as he ripped a ragged hole in the transparent cover
with his teeth. Drops of bright red blood spattered her mouth and open eyes.
She screamed and pushed him off with her knees. Dan flopped on the floor like a
fish out of water, gibbering and spitting pink foam. His eyes rolled up into
his head, showing solid red.

Conny stumbled to her
feet, gagging and spitting. She pulled off her torn head-cover and shoved her
finger down her throat, forcing herself to be sick.

“My God…” whispered
Johann.

I pushed him away and
ran to the acrylic.

“Conny, can you hear
me?”

She coughed and spat Dan’s
blood onto the floor. Dark strands of wet hair clung to her face. She ran to
the back of the room and pounded on the door, then she realized she needed her
key card. It wasn’t clipped to her suit. She searched for it frantically, then
pounded on the door again.

“I have to lock her
card out of the system,” said Johann, running quickly from the room.

“Let me out of here,
Paul!” she screamed.

“We can’t do that,
Conny,” I said. “Not until we run some tests.”

“Get me away from him!”

Conny screamed
hysterically, her words a jumble of primal sounds that sent a shiver up my
spine. She pounds weakly against the closed door as she sinks down to the
floor, her body wracked by deep sobs.

Dan lay twitching on
the floor. Then he blinked, and his pupils slowly rolled down until he stared
right at me. He jumped to his feet and ran full-speed at the divider wall.

“Dan, stop!” I shouted,
but he was beyond hearing.

He took a flying leap
for the wall, head-first. The top of his skull plowed into the dented plaster
like a battering ram. Blood splattered out in all directions, as if someone
threw a piece of ripe fruit against the wall.

Dan’s fingers twitched.
His head was embedded in the hole in the wall. With a sudden spasm, he fell to
the floor and went limp. His skull was caved in over his frontal lobe. Blood
dripped slowly from the corner of his open mouth.

“I can feel it, too,”
Levino said from the adjacent room. He stood at the cracked hole in the divider
wall and tentatively touched some of Dan’s blood. “I can feel it, Paul,
crawling through my brain.”