“To check on Brian.” She lifted her drink, downed it, swiped up her keys, and stormed out.
Kit tossed up his hands after she flew by him. “And she drinks and drives.”
Cass was on Brian’s porch at the front door when she heard the call of her name.
“Cass, wait!” Art called out.
She turned around. Kit, Art, and Bill were walking toward her.
“Don’t go in there,” Art said. “Not alone.”
“Cass,” Kit scolded. “You flew here, downed a double shot, you know at your body weight…”
“Shut up, Kit, it’s not even in my blood stream yet,” she snapped. “Something is wrong. I called. I knocked. I tried the back door. He’s not responding. Drapes are drawn, I can’t see in.”
“He’s obviously home.” Kit pointed to the car in the driveway.
“No shit.” Cass tried the front door. “Locked. Can you break it down or something?”
“Hold on.” Kit ran back to the police car, popped the trunk, and reached in. He returned to the door with a Halligan bar.
Cass stepped out of his way.
Kit wedged the bar in the door and with a grunt pulled to pry the lock. The door opened.
As soon as the sunlight entered the dark home, Cass saw Brian on the floor.
“Oh my God.” She ran to him. “Brian.”
“Don’t touch him.” Art shouted. “Don’t touch him. Please. Wait.”
“Is he contagious?” Kit asked.
“Not him so much as what might be on him.” Art pulled out a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket. “Don’t touch anything in this house. Not yet.”
“I’ll put the light on,” Kit said.
“Not yet. Don’t draw the drapes.” Art crouched down and gently felt for his neck. He shook his head. “He’s gone.”
“What?” Cass asked in shock. “What happened to him? Look at him.”
Even though it was dark, Cass could see what looked like fresh wounds on his arms and around his mouth.
Art carefully removed the rubber glove, placed on another and from his front check pocket pulled out what looked like a pen light. It was, but it was a black light. He aimed it at Brian’s mouth and chin. The light exposed bright spots, some round, some looking like clouded smear marks. He ran the light down to his hand and it was the same there. “Subcutaneous route of infection,” Art said. “He touched it. It was on his hands, his arms, he touched his face, probably a secondary inhalation exposure as well. This”—he pointed—“is what we were running from.” He slowly stood up. “There’s no running anymore.”
In the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Brian’s and Patty’s bodies, Kit was lost. He rattled questions to Art in an angry manner. “Do we have a biological hazard here?”
“In a sense.”
“In a sense? So this is all highly contagious.”
“Only if you touch it and only for another twenty-four hours. That should kill it.”
“Jesus.” Kit paced. “So I don’t call county. Just leave the bodies here in the middle of the living room to rot.”
“There’s no one to call.”
The call Kit wanted to make at that moment was bullshit. To him there was no way, no how, no one was around and gone that fast. It wasn’t possible.
Since they couldn’t do anything about Brian and Patty, Kit cranked up the AC as high and cold as it could go and requested everyone go back at the police station.
Cass was the last one to enter. “Okay, I stopped by Doctor Holloway’s home,” she said as she walked in. “He’ll be here momentarily.”
“Did you stop anywhere else?” Kit asked. “Tell anyone else.”
“You mean did I go to Ada’s?”
Kit nodded.
“No.”
“Okay, because you took a while.”
“Oh, I stopped at Brass Balls for another shot.”
“Cass.”
“What?” She pulled out a chair and joined them around Kit’s desk. “It’s the end of the world.” She glanced over at Art and Bill. “‘As we know it.’ Other than the doc, are we waiting for anyone else? The chief because I think this situation warrants me being allowed to break the restraining order.”
“You have a restraining order against the chief of police?” Art asked.
“Oh, no, he has one against me. Long story.”
“Yes,” Kit said. “We won’t get into it. The chief… I was unable to get ahold of him.”
“Where was he?” Art asked.
“West. He was helping his brother all day.”
Bill nodded. “So he’s dead.”
“We don’t know that,” Kit snapped. “I tried Seaver. Maybe their communications are down. I need to go there…”
“Not yet,” Art said. “Tomorrow. Not before.”
Kit tossed out his hands. “I wish to God you’d tell me what you know.”
“I will. When the doctor gets here, so I won’t have to explain it more than once.”
The old-fashioned ding-a-ling bell rang and a younger man walked in. He wasn’t much older than thirty. Deliberately shaved bald head, and thin.
“Hey, Doc,” Kit said.
“He…” Bill pointed. “Is the town doctor? Looks so young. I pictured some older guy.”
Cass shook her head. “We don’t have an old town doctor. We have a county PCP that comes in. Sets up shop. They do like a three-year tour of duty. No one stays. They send us residents fresh from the hospital. We know when we get a new pastor a new doctor isn’t far behind.”
The young doctor shook Bill’s and Art’s hands. “You can call me Craig or Doc. Whichever you prefer. What’s going on?”
“Pull up a chair,” Kit instructed. “We have a situation on our hands.”
“Since you called me, I am assuming it is of a medical nature,” Craig said.
“Wide scale,” Art told him. “Global.”
“Is it here?” Craig asked. “In Griffin?”
“In a way,” Art explained. “There are a lot of variables involved. They wouldn’t have been exposed to it here. But if they were out of town yesterday. Were you out of town yesterday?”
“Yes,” Craig said. “I was northeast yesterday morning doing rounds at the hospital. I was back here before noon.”
“Then you’re fine,” Art said. “Anyone west of here after ten a.m. and anyone east of here after three p.m. are in danger.”
“What about north and south?” Cass asked.
Bill answered. “Noon.”
“But the thing is,” Art said, “if they were affected, they would have symptoms now. Has anyone called you with symptoms like a bad rash, trouble breathing, severe burning when breathing, stuff like that?”
“Got two calls yesterday about rashes.”
“Was Brian one of them?” Cass asked.
“Yeah, and the other was Mrs. Sanders.”
“This is important,” Art said. “Did you see them? Examine them?”
Craig shook his head. “No. I didn’t. I just told them to use a topical or Benadryl if the itching was too much. They could get both at the grocery. So I take it this is highly contagious and lives on a surface?”
“It does,” Art said. “But not for long. You can’t… shed it like a normal virus. It doesn’t carry in droplets. It does carry in blood. It transfers from hand to surface—the longer it is on the skin, the more it loses strength. Outside of Griffin right now, it will run out of hosts and die off by tomorrow. We just need to find anyone and everyone that’s left. Stop people from leaving. Check any place they may have stopped or been.”
“Disinfect?” Kit asked.
“No. Disinfectant won’t kill this. Time does, that’s the only thing. Close the establishment if we see it with a black light. Twenty-four hours.”
“Fuck,” Cass blurted out. “Brian was at Brass Balls and Beer.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know it’s clean,” Bill said. “My son checked it last night. The bartender was very nice about him doing that. We told him it was an experiment.”