“Roughly one thousand doses of a vaccine that must be reformulated and administered within the next 48 hours. You see, Nathan, you are going to live, along with 999 other people of your choosing. I want you to reproduce this vaccine as rapidly as you can and distribute it worldwide. It is quite effective and should ultimately halt the spread of the infection.”
“But not until after billions have died,” Martin said bitterly.
“Approximately four point two billion; the computer estimates are accurate only if you begin work tomorrow.”
Chapter 27
Patton watched the pretty brunette from his office television. Great, now they want to pin the governor’s assassination on us. As if on cue, his phone began to ring. He stared at it for a moment, wondering if he had the energy to deal with it. It had to be the mayor. The chief was out sick, and they were the only two who would call him directly.
“Good evening, Your Honor,” he said, but he didn’t mean it.
“Rodney, I know you’ve had a tough day, but I’m afraid I’m about to make it a little tougher. I just took a call from the Lieutenant-Governor. He’s had a tough day as well, but he graciously made room in his busy schedule to rip me a new one. He’s got some asshole telling him that the governor’s murder is somehow connected to what’s been happening here.”
Publicly, the mayor was a jovial, well-spoken man. Privately, he was something very different.
“I just saw something about that on the television,” said Patton, massaging his forehead with one hand, wondering how he could have ended up so far from home, so far from where things made sense. “I hate to say it, Billy, but it’s possible.” A pregnant pause followed. “I haven’t got a clue as to what’s happening here. There’s no rational explanation, and if this Bilsky character was up here like they say, hell, I’m starting to believe that anything is possible.”
“Anything may be possible, except this. I’m releasing a statement tonight that, in effect, says that there is no connection between Peter Bilsky and Colorado Springs, and I expect you to back that up. Ken Small died about an hour ago, and you just became interim chief of police.” The mayor spoke so rapidly that Patton wasn’t exactly sure that he had heard him correctly.
“Ken’s dead? What happened?”
“It’s not clear. He was at home with the flu and then he started having convulsions. He died at St. Mary’s. Sorry you had to hear about it this way, but life goes on, and we have a crisis to deal with.”
Patton put the shock of a colleague’s sudden death aside for a moment and focused on the mayor’s other bombshell. “You skipped over three more senior officers, Billy,” he said, and he understood why. Each of them would be in the running to fill Ken Small’s post permanently, and the mayor wouldn’t want any of them to be tainted by this crisis.
“My prerogative,” the mayor said simply. “Now, you have exactly thirty-six hours to come up with something I can take to the press that explains the violence. Don’t let me down, Rodney.” The line went dead.
Patton started to massage his head with two hands when a soft knock at the door disturbed him. “Who is it?” he demanded out of frustration.
“I’m sorry, sir.” It was one of the front desk officers. Patton tried to remember the man’s name but couldn’t, and the young man was so intimidated that he only poked his head around the door, hiding his nametag. “Ah, the old. . ah, detective is here and wants a word with you.”
How about scram, he thought. “Who is the ‘old. . ah detective’ you are referring to, Officer?” he said instead.
“Greg Flynn,” he said.
“Him, I will see.” Patton had met Flynn on several occasions and found that he liked and respected the retired detective. He would have been eaten alive in a real city, but he seemed to have a solid understanding of Colorado Springs and had become somewhat of a local legend before retiring and handing his responsibilities over to Patton.
“Knock, knock,” Flynn said a moment later, walking in and looking around his old office. “Nothing’s changed.”
Patton smiled, rounded his desk, and pumped Greg’s hand. “How are you, Greg?” He wished that he had thought of talking to Flynn a month ago. His pride had taken such a beating of late that he would have gladly accepted advice from a police cadet.
Greg took a seat, and Patton leaned on the edge of the desk.
“I know what’s going on here,” Greg said without preamble.
“Thank God someone does,” said Patton. A wave of relief, or possibly exhaustion, passed over him.
“Seven years ago, my daughter-in-law, Amanda, was infected by a virus,” Greg began. He gave Patton the abbreviated and sanitized version of the story, but it still took several minutes. Throughout it, Greg watched Patton closely. He didn’t really know the large black man, and the reports from his old squad weren’t exactly flattering.
After Greg finished, Rodney walked slowly, thoughtfully, back to his chair.
“Is this an indication you don’t believe me?” Greg motioned to the distance Patton had just put between them.
Patton answered, “The Colorado Health Department is sure that there is no infectious cause for this. Two weeks ago, I asked them to look again. They checked the air, the water, even the food, and they still didn’t find anything. “
“They’re wrong,” Greg said definitively. “They’ve been looking in the wrong places. This virus is passed by human contact. Someone is deliberately infecting the population.”
Patton’s expression remained neutral.
“Phil Rucker,” Greg pressed on, “the coroner, told me that about a month ago an unknown virus was found in a previously healthy man’s brain. He thinks that this virus could be damaging people’s brains and altering their behavior.”
Patton winced at Phil’s name and slowly lowered himself into his chair. Ten minutes ago, he had been confessing that he didn’t have a clue as to what was happening here, and now all the answers had fallen into his lap.
“Does the name Klaus Reisch mean anything to you?” he asked.
After a moment Greg said: “No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before.”
It was now Patton’s turn to tell his story, and Greg listened with an expression questioning the relevance. “Yaeger told me that Reisch had tried to kill him, but he couldn’t because someone named Amanda had hurt him. He said that Reisch reached into his head and squeezed his brain. Now, ordinarily, I’m not really a believer in this X-Files shit, but I got a witness who saw the whole thing, and this guy says Reisch never touched my officer, he just stared at Yaeger, and then he went down. Phillip Rucker said almost the exact same thing about Mr. Van Der.”
Greg was visibly shaken, despite his best efforts to hide it.
“Now, Greg, you’re a good guy, everyone knows that, but everyone also knows about your daughter-in-law. Is it possible she is involved with this Reisch character, and they’re out there spreading this virus? This guy used to live in Russia, and they were into some really weird shit in the seventies and eighties. She could have met this guy in Honduras—”
“No!” Greg didn’t mean to shout, but it did stop Patton. “I’m sorry,” he said after the echo died away. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’ve never heard about this Reisch before, and if Amanda ever had contact with him, she would have told me.”
“I’m sure you know how that sounds, Greg, and how this all appears. The government held her against her will, you said that yourself, and then a few months later she kills a couple of guys, one of whom happens to be an FBI agent. Now years later, in her hometown, some strange virus that she survived resurfaces.”