“What will you do about that?” It was Lisa’s turn. “Will you help?”
“Not if it means going back to Martin or the CDC; they may be best equipped to deal with this, but I doubt that I could control myself. I probably would make things worse. What about the medical examiner you mentioned, Greg?”
“Phillip Rucker — smart guy but very strange. I think he’s probably the next best choice after Martin.”
“You two should think about staying inside until this has been resolved. The virus is transmitted through human contact, and neither of you are immune.” Amanda got up and rinsed her cup. “I’m going to take a long hot bath before I do anything.”
An hour later, Amanda walked back into the kitchen wrapped in a thick warm robe and her hair wrapped in a towel. She could tell without reading anyone’s mind that something had happened. “What’s going on?”
“Reisch attacked a platoon of soldiers in Manitou Springs. He killed sixteen of them.” Pain was written all over Greg’s face. “Phil Rucker is in the hospital, and the federal government has imposed a curfew on travel, and quarantined the state.”
“Maybe I should have just taken a shower,” Amanda said.
“Can you find him?” Greg asked.
Amanda opened her mind and felt for the German, but like yesterday, all she could sense was a presence. “He’s close, that’s all I can say.” Greg’s face registered his disappointment. “You have to remember, he can do pretty much whatever I can, and it is fairly simple to fade into the background noise of a hundred thousand people. I can tell you that he’s injured and mad as hell.”
“They think that he may have been shot,” Greg added. “Can he be killed?”
Amanda reviewed her own situation. She had been shot at very close range years ago and it barely registered with her. She was an order of magnitude stronger now, and she had every reason to believe that Reisch was also very nearly bulletproof. “Probably not like that.”
“So how do we stop him?” Greg stared at his daughter-in-law.
“You don’t. I do.” Amanda could feel the fear in Greg and Lisa’s minds. ”Why is Dr. Rucker in the hospital?” She had decided to put herself in his hands in hopes of identifying her immunity and then duplicating it. She accepted that in all probability Martin would be involved at some point, but at least it would be on her terms. Now, without Rucker, it would be more difficult.
“He had a seizure or something,” Greg said.
An image of Phillip Rucker suddenly invaded Amanda’s consciousness. “For some reason, I think we should go see him.” She was filled with a compulsion to talk with the pathologist. Greg stared at her, questioning her strange statement. “I’m not sure why,” she answered his look. “But I think it’s important.”
* * *
Reisch was breathing hard, but at least the bleeding had stopped. That was twice in less than a day that he had been shot, and the drive back to the outskirts of Colorado Springs had been the most painful moments in memory. He sat on the commode awkwardly and peeled off his blood-soaked shirt. A line of bullet wounds stitched across his abdomen and into his chest — seven shots, not counting the one in his arm from the baby-cop yesterday. This was definitely pushing the envelope, but most of the wounds, both inside and out, had started to seal themselves off. The blood loss, however, was a different issue. He had lost far more than the lethal limit, and although he could will himself to heal, he could not create the needed blood out of thin air.
He slowly changed into the surgical scrubs that he had stolen from the laundry, and gingerly left the staff bathroom. A white lab coat completed the disguise, and now he could conserve his energy and allow the tired and disinterested staff to glance up at him. He found the blood bank and was pleased that the door was unlocked. Less than five minutes later, he had four units of type AB negative blood tucked in the pockets of his gown and scrubs. Now, he just needed a nurse.
He scanned the immediate area and located the on-call physician just up the hall, but to his surprise, he also found the sedated mind of Phillip Rucker. Intrigued almost to the point of distraction, he tried to search the mind of his favorite hobby, but could only see the images of a dying woman. He needed to know more, but it would have to wait.
Two hours later, he had almost a gallon of new blood and fluid running through his veins. All his wounds had healed, and he was starting to feel normal again; a tingling sensation, almost like low-voltage electricity dancing across his skin, but otherwise, he was a hundred percent. A close call, but the tragedy had been averted and lessons had been learned, and now he was off to see the surprising Dr. Rucker.
* * *
Amanda could feel his presence. He still remained shrouded, but an invisible cloud of malevolence that she could only assume was Reisch grew thicker the more they drove west. She carefully retracted her own mind and switched to a listening mode. “He’s close,” she told Greg as they parked at St. Luke’s. “He could be here, but I can’t be certain.”
“Can you handle this?” Lisa asked. “You were so exhausted last night.”
“I’m fine,” Amanda said quietly as Greg called Patton for assistance. “He is definitely here.” Her expression changed rapidly to confusion and then anger. “Don’t park here, Greg. Drive around to the main entrance.”
It took them only a minute to skirt the ER and the loading dock, and it became clear what the problem was. Father John Oliver was climbing out of an old Dodge Neon. “Damn,” Greg said at the sight of the priest. He honked his horn and Oliver looked over at them.
Amanda was burning with anger, and was out of Greg’s car before it stopped. ”Get back in that car and get as far from here as possible,” she demanded. She would have done more, but Reisch was far too close.
“He’s here, Amanda,” he said with excitement.
“I told you to stay put. You have no conception of what you’re doing and you’re going to get yourself and others killed.”
Oliver opened his mouth to argue, but before he could utter a syllable Amanda wound up and hit him with a closed fist across the jaw. His head snapped back and all three of them could hear the bone break. Oliver fell to the floor unconscious. ”Lisa, drive him home. Better yet, drive him as far away from here as you can get.” Amanda’s eyes were filled with rage, and Lisa backed away from her beloved daughter-in-law.
Greg reacted first. “No, he has to get medical attention.”
Amanda turned her gaze upon Greg, and he too took a step back. “He will be fine; he’s like me now.”
“Why?” Lisa asked through tears as she and Greg lifted the priest back into his car.
“Reisch was in his mind, he almost saw me.”
* * *
Reisch began laughing as he walked down the hall. So the priest had evolved; isn’t that interesting, he thought. So, the mutated virus could also induce the change. This could change the dynamics a little. It wasn’t important now; Phillip Rucker was important now.
The last thing the soldier who shot him saw was the face of Dr. Rucker, and there was every probability that like the priest, Phil had also changed. The new civilization was going to be bigger than his wildest expectations.
Reisch walked straight through the intensive care unit and into the isolation room without challenge. Phil was sound asleep, and Reisch sat down at the foot of the bed and searched Rucker’s mind. He saw Phil giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his, neighbor and Klaus suddenly understood. He had killed Van Der at the height of a breakout, when he was most infectious. He had touched the man’s face, cradled his neck, and finally closed the dead man’s eyes, spreading not just the Colorado Springs virus with his breath, but also the original deadly Hybrid virus with his touch. It was a hardy virus and could easily survive the near-zero temperatures of a cooling body until someone came along and tried to revive the body. Phil was doubly infected and was going to die very soon.