Somewhere in the cul-de-sac, the grayness of morning is violated by the hydraulics of a garbage truck. A dog responds from a screened-in patio. A school bus negotiates the loop with an emissions-belching growl, transporting campers to the local YMCA.
In the house with no kids at the end of the block, the woman with the candy-apple red hair snores softly against a down pillow. Her subconscious refuses to be disturbed by the awakening neighborhood. Her bladder tingles, still she lingers in sleep.
Mary Klipot clings to the dream the way a non-swimmer clings to a capsized boat in tempest seas.
In her dream, the emptiness is gone. In her dream, her father is not a nameless John, and her drug-addicted mother feels the remorse of abandonment. In her dream, there is a home and a warm bed. Chocolate chip cookies and good night kisses that do not taste of tobacco. The air is lilac-sweet and the walls a cheery white. There are private bathrooms and showers and teachers who are not nuns. There is no soundproof room on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, no leather straps and holy water splashes, and certainly no Father Santaromita.
In her dream, Mary is not special.
Special Mary. The orphan with the high I.Q. Smart, yet dangerous. Satan is the tiny voice in your head that says torch the cat, it’ll be fun. Jump off the ledge, you can survive. God is missing in these moments. The brakes on a runaway truck. The doctor with the cold stethoscope gives it a name — temporal lobe epilepsy, and offers a prescription.
Father Santaromita knows better. The weekly exorcisms last until her eighth birthday.
She takes the medication. The bridled I.Q. pays dividends. Parochial-school honors. A college scholarship. Degrees in microbiology from Emory and Johns Hopkins. The future looks golden.
Of course, there are “other” challenges. Parties and coeds. Beer and drugs. The introverted redhead with the steely hazel eyes might be trailer-trash cute, but she doesn’t put out. Special Mary is branded Virgin Mary. Abstinence labels her an outcast. Come on, Mary. Only the good die young. Mary dies a hundred deaths. She works two jobs so she can afford her own apartment.
Isolation is easier.
Straight A’s open doors, lab work offers salvation. Mary has talent. The Defense Department sets up an interview. Fort Detrick needs her. Good pay and government benefits. The research is challenging. After a few years, she’ll be assigned to a Level-4 containment lab where she can work with some of the most dangerous biological substances on the planet.
The little voice agrees. Mary takes the job. The career shall define a life less lived.
In time, the dreams change.
The discovery had been unearthed in Montpellier. The archaeological team in charge of the dig required the services of a microbiologist experienced in working with exotic agents.
Montpellier is located six miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It is a town steeped in history and tradition, haunted by a nightmare shared by the entire Eurasian continent.
The archaeological dig was a mass grave — a communal pit that dated back to 1348. Six-and-a-half centuries had stripped away organs and flesh, leaving behind an entanglement of bones. Three thousand men, women, and children. The bodies had been discarded in haste by their tortured loved ones whose grief was rendered secondary to their own terrifying fear.
Plague: the Black Death.
The Great Mortality.
Three hundred people a day had perished in London. Six hundred a day in Venice. It had ravaged Montpellier, killing off 90 percent of the townspeople. In only a few short years, the Black Death had reduced the continent’s population from 80 million people to 30 million — all in an era where transportation was limited to horse and foot.
How had it killed so effectively? How had it spread so fast?
In charge of the excavation was Didier Raoult, a professor of medicine at the Mediterranean University in Marseilles. Raoult discovered that pulp tissue found inside the remains of plague victims’ teeth, preserved in many of the unearthed skulls, could yield DNA evidence that would, for the first time, unlock the mystery.
Mary set to work. The culprit was Yersinia pestis—bubonic plague. A pestilence delivered from Hell. Extreme pain. High fever, chills, and welts. Followed by swelling of the bulbous — black golf-ball-sized protrusions that appeared on the victims’ necks and groins. In due course, the infected internal organs failed, often bleeding out.
A thirteenth-century nursery rhyme provided vivid clues as to how quickly the Black Death had spread: Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, at-shoo, at-shoo, we all fall down. One sneeze, and plague infected a household, eventually the entire village, wiping out its unsuspecting prey within days.
Impressed with her work, Didier Raoult presented Mary with a parting gift — a copy of a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written during the Great Plague by the Pope’s personal surgeon, Guy de Chauliac. Translated from its original French, the diary detailed the Great Mortality’s near eradication of the human species during the years 1346 through 1348.
Mary returned to Fort Detrick with de Chauliac’s journal and samples of the 666-year-old killer. The Department of Defense was intrigued. The DoD claimed they wanted protection for American soldiers in case of a biological attack. Thirty-one-year-old Mary Louise Klipot was promoted and placed in charge of the new project, dubbed Scythe.
Within a year, the CIA took over funding and Scythe disappeared off the books.
Mary awakens before the alarm sounds. Her belly gurgles. Her blood pressure drops. She barely makes it to the toilet in time.
Mary has been sick for a week. Andrew assured her it was just the flu. Andrew Bradosky was her lab tech. Thirty-nine. Boyishly charming and easy on the eyes. She had selected him from a pool of workers not because he was qualified but because she could read him. Even his attempts to foster a social relationship outside the lab were calculated toward promotion. The trip to Cancún last April was a welcome diversion, granted only after he acknowledged her rules of celibacy. Mary was saving herself for marriage. Andrew had no interest in marriage, but he did make good eye candy.
Mary dresses quickly. Cotton scrubs simplified her wardrobe choices. Loose-fitting clothing made for better choices in a BSL-4 suite and the environmental suit she wore for hours at a time.
Toast and jam were all her upset stomach could tolerate. This morning she would see the department physician. Not that she wanted to go. But she was sick, and standard operating procedure when working with exotic agents required routine checkups. Driving to work, she assured herself that it was probably just the flu. Andrew could be right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
She hated waiting. Why were patients always relegated to antiseptic exam rooms with paper-lined cushioned tables and old issues of Golf Digest? And these exam gowns… had she ever worn one that actually fit? Did she have to be reminded that she needed to lose weight? She vowed to hit the gym after work, then quickly dismissed the notion. She had far too much work to do, and Andrew as usual was behind on his duties. She considered bringing in a new technician, but worried about the innuendo.
The door opened and Roy Katzin entered, the physician’s expression too upbeat to conceal bad news. “So. We’ve run the gamut of tests using the most sophisticated machines taxpayer money can buy, and we think we’ve nailed down the source of your symptoms.”