Invasion (40 page)

“No, at least I don’t think so,” Harlan said. “I tied my weak monoclonal antibody to the enabling protein, and
I’ve been giving myself shots ever since. I’ve had the sniffles but no flu.”

“That’s fantastic,” Pitt said. “Let me tell Cassy.”

“Wait!” Sheila commanded. “How long after you were stung did you give yourself the antibody?”

“That’s my only concern,” Harlan said. “There was a three-hour interval. I was in Paswell at the time it happened. It took me three hours to get back here.”

“Cassy has already been four,” Sheila said. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Harlan said. “We can put her in one of the containment rooms and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, there’s no way she can get out of there. They’re like dungeons.”

Pitt didn’t need any more encouragement. Without another word he began telling Cassy they had an antibody to the protein and giving her directions to the deserted gas station.

“Why didn’t you tell us you’d been stung?” Sheila questioned. She didn’t know whether to be angry or encouraged by this new development.

“To be honest,” Harlan said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t trust me that I was okay. I was going to tell you sooner or later. Actually the fact that it has seemingly worked makes me feel a bit optimistic.”

“Well, I should say so!” Sheila said. “It’s the first positive piece of information so far.”

Pitt finished his communication with Cassy and came over to Sheila and Harlan.

“I hope you were as discreet as possible with the directions,” Harlan said. “We certainly don’t want a truckload
of infected people to be there at the station waiting for you when you arrive.”

“I tried to be,” Pitt said. “But at the same time I wanted to make sure Cassy found the place. It is so isolated.”

“Actually the risk is probably pretty small,” Harlan said. “My feeling is that the infected people aren’t using the Net. They don’t seem to need it since they appear to know what each other are thinking.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Pitt asked Harlan.

“I don’t think I’d better,” Harlan said. “There’s only a partial dose of my antibody left. I’ll have to get busy extracting more so that it’s available when your friend gets here. That means you’ll have to find your own way. Think you can do it?”

“Sounds like I don’t have much choice,” Pitt said.

Harlan handed Pitt the vial of what antibody he had along with a syringe. “I hope you know how to give an injection,” he said.

Pitt commented that he thought he could do it because he’d been clerking in the hospital for three years.

“You’d better give it IV,” Harlan said. “But be prepared for some mouth to mouth if she has an anaphylatic reaction.”

Pitt visibly gulped, but he nodded.

“And you might as well take this,” Harlan said, unbuckling his holstered Colt .45. “My advice is to use it if you have to. Remember, the infected people feel very strongly about you being infected if they sense you aren’t.”

“What about me?” Jonathan asked. “I’ll go with Pitt. He might have trouble finding his way back here, and four eyes will be better than two.”

“I think you’d better stay here,” Sheila said. “We can find plenty for you to do.” She rolled up her sleeves. “And we are going to be very busy.”

ONCE CASSY HAD BEEN LOCATED, BROUGHT TO THE INSTITUTE
, and subsequently infected, progress on the Gateway speeded up. Although the thousands of workers didn’t have to be individually told what to do, ultimately their instructions came from Beau. Consequently it was necessary for Beau to spend a good deal of time in the vicinity of the construction and for his mind to be clear of extraneous thoughts. With Cassy upstairs and soon to be one of the infected, Beau found it easy to fulfill his responsibilities.

Progress had even reached a point where it was possible to energize briefly a portion of the electrical grids. The test was a success although it did indicate that portions of the system needed further shielding. With those instructions communicated, Beau took a break.

He climbed the main stairs in a normal bipedal fashion, although he was conscious of the fact that it would probably be easier for him now to hop up, taking six or eight steps at a time. There had been considerable augmentation of his quadriceps.

Reaching the upper hall he sensed something was wrong. He hadn’t felt it downstairs because the level of unspoken communication about the Gateway was so intense. But now that he was alone, it was different. By this time he should have been getting stirrings of Cassy’s developing collective consciousness. Since there was none at all he feared she’d died.

Beau quickened his pace. His fear was that perhaps
Cassy had been harboring some disastrous gene that had yet to express itself. In that case the virus would have self-destructed.

With a sense of panic that he didn’t understand, Beau struggled to open the locked door. Bracing himself to see her lifeless body draped across the mattress, he was even more surprised to find the room empty.

Beau gazed at the open window. He walked over to it and looked down at the ground outside. He saw the walkway and the balustrade. Then his eyes went up the tree, and he looked at the branch. Suddenly he knew. She’d fled.

Letting out a shriek that echoed through the huge mansion, he rushed from the room and charged down the stairs. He was overcome with anger, and anger wasn’t healthy for the collective good. The collective consciousness had rarely experienced anger, and it didn’t know how to handle it.

Beau entered the ballroom and instantly all work came to a halt. All eyes turned to Beau, feeling the same anger but having no idea why. Beau’s nostrils flared as his eyes searched for Alexander. He spotted him at the command control console.

Boldly Beau strode over to his lieutenant and clamped down on his arm with his snakelike fingers. “She is gone! I want her found! Now!”

12:45
A.M.

PITT KICKED A FEW OF THE PEBBLES IN THE DRIVEWAY OF
the old gas station. He bent down and picked up others and threw them absently at the ancient pumps. The stones clanged against the rusting metal.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, which was now significantly more formidable in its heat and intensity than two hours earlier, Pitt scanned the two-lane road to its vanishing point on the horizon. He began to worry. He’d thought she would have been there already.

Just when he was about to retreat back to the shade of the porch, his eye caught the glint of sunlight off a windshield. A vehicle was coming.

Unconsciously Pitt’s hand slipped down to envelop the butt of the Colt. There was always the worry that it wasn’t Cassy.

As the vehicle got closer, Pitt could make out that it
was a late-model recreational vehicle with large tires and a built-in luggage rack on the top. It was coming fast.

For a moment Pitt contemplated hiding inside the building the way Harlan had done, but he dismissed the idea. After all, Jesse’s van was sitting right there in plain sight.

The vehicle pulled into the station. Pitt wasn’t sure it was Cassy until she opened the door and called out to him. The windows were heavily tinted.

Pitt got to the vehicle in time to help Cassy down. She was coughing and her eyes were red-rimmed.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get too close,” Cassy said in a deeply nasal voice. “We don’t know for sure whether this can spread person to person like an infection.”

Ignoring her comment, Pitt enveloped her in an enthusiastic embrace. The only reason he let go of her was concern about her getting the antibody.

“I brought some of the medicine I mentioned on the Internet with me,” Pitt said. “Obviously we think it is best to get it into your system as soon as possible and that means intravenous.”

“Where should we do it?” Cassy asked.

“In the van,” he said.

They walked around the vehicle to its slider.

“How are you feeling?” Pitt asked.

“Terrible,” Cassy admitted. “I couldn’t get comfortable in that four-by-four; the ride is so stiff. All my muscles ache. I’ve also got a fever. A half hour ago I was shivering, if you can believe it in this heat.”

Pitt opened the van door. He had Cassy lie down on the van’s seat. He prepared the syringe, but then, after
putting on the tourniquet, he admitted his inexperience at venipuncture.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Cassy said, looking off in the opposite direction. “Just do it. I mean, you’re going to be a doctor.”

Pitt had seen medication administered IV thousands of times but never had tried it himself. The idea of puncturing another person’s skin was daunting, much less a person he loved. But the consequences of not doing it overwhelmed any timidity he had. Ultimately it went well, and Cassy told him as much.

“You’re just being a good sport,” Pitt said.

“No, really,” Cassy said. “I hardly felt it.” No sooner had she complimented him than she had an explosive bout of coughing that left her gasping.

Pitt was momentarily terrified she was having a reaction to the shot as Harlan had warned. Although Pitt had had CPR training, he’d never actually done that, either. Anxiously he held her wrist to feel her pulse. Thankfully it stayed strong and regular.

“Sorry,” Cassy managed when she could get her breath.

“Are you okay?” Pitt asked.

Cassy nodded.

“Thank God!” Pitt said. He swallowed to relieve a dry throat. “You stay here on the backseat. We’ve got about a twenty-minute drive.”

“Where are we going?” Cassy asked.

“To a place that’s like an answer to a prayer,” Pitt said. “It’s an underground lab built to deal with a biological or chemical warfare attack. It’s perfect for what we have to do. I mean, if we can’t do it there, then we can’t do it. It’s
that good. Plus it has a sick bay where we can take care of you.”

Pitt started to climb into the front seat when Cassy took hold of his arm. “What if this antibody doesn’t work?” she said. “I mean, you warned me it was weak and very preliminary. What will you do with me if I turn into one of them? I don’t want to jeopardize what you all are doing.”

“Don’t worry,” Pitt said. “There’s a doctor there named Harlan McCay who was stung and is still fine after getting the antibody. But if worst comes to worst, there are what he calls containment rooms. But everything is going to be fine.” Pitt gave her shoulder a pat.

“Save the clichés, Pitt,” Cassy said. “With everything that has happened, it can’t turn out fine.”

Pitt shrugged. He knew she was right.

Pitt got behind the wheel, started the van, and pulled out into the road. Cassy remained lying on the backseat. “I hope there’s some aspirin where we’re going,” she said. She was as sick as she’d ever felt in her life.

“I’m sure there is,” Pitt said. “If the sick bay is like the rest of the place, it’s got everything.”

They rode in silence for a few miles. Pitt was concentrating on the driving for fear of missing the turnoff. On his way out he’d built a small cairn of rocks to mark it, but now he was afraid it wouldn’t help. The rocks had been small and everything was the same color.

“I can’t help but worry that my coming here was a bad idea,” Cassy said after another coughing spell.

“Don’t talk that way!” Pitt said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s been more than six hours now,” Cassy said. “Maybe
even more. I wasn’t all that sure of the time when I was stung. So much has been happening.”

“What happened to Nancy and Jesse?” Pitt asked. It was a question he’d avoided, but he wanted to change the subject.

“Nancy was stung,” Cassy said. “They infected her in my presence. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t do it to me until later. Jesse was a different story. I believe the same thing happened to him as to Eugene. But I’m not sure. I didn’t see it. I just heard it, and there was a flash of light. Nancy said it was the same as before.”

“Harlan thinks those black discs can create miniature black holes,” Pitt said.

Cassy shuddered. The idea of disappearing down a black hole seemed like the epitome of destruction. Even one’s atoms would be gone from the universe.

“I saw Beau again,” Cassy said.