Hartsfield International Airport.
The lead subway car glided in behind her, and she looked frantically for a policeman or subway official, anyone wearing a shirt of authority or carrying a two-way radio, even a custodian. The train doors opened and commuters were bunched up on the platform, waiting for passengers to disembark. All were hosts and carriers, every jostle an exchange. She watched as Zero entered the side doors of one of the central cars.
There would be no stopping him once he got inside the airport. Twenty infected people, boarding twenty different flights, and the human race was dead. Viruses love airports, Maryk had said.
She could go to the token booth and tell them to stop the train, but no one would pay any attention to her. Maryk could make them, but she could not get to him in time. By then Zero would be colonizing the airport and spreading city to city.
Why? Why? Why? she was thinking as she hurried toward the car Zero had entered, slipping aboard just as the doors closed behind her. She immediately turned and faced the opposite end so that she did not have to look at him, and only then realized that it hadn’t been necessary to board the same car he had boarded. But the doors were closed and the train started with a jolt, rising, gaining speed along an incline. She looked out the side window and could see the BDC roadblock on the streets below, small and shrinking away.
They cleared the lights of the station and the car windows darkened into mirrors. In the window of the door at her end she could see the reflection of Zero standing behind her. He was wavering, feet planted evenly, moving with the motion of the train.
People sitting near him began to stir. At first they were merely uncomfortable in the presence of an obviously ill man. Then they noticed the smell. Politeness crumbled as first one young woman rose from her seat and moved toward Melanie’s end, then a professional couple, then an elderly man making a face.
They were all going to die. The distasteful smell was carrying microbes into their lungs to poison their blood. And Melanie was their only antidote, standing right there with them — and there was nothing she could do. These thoughts dizzied her, and squeezed her lungs. Her nerves were jumping. She went to her inhaler again, but using it was like trying to inflate a lead bag.
Some sixth sense of trouble had kicked in, beyond his stink and odd appearance, and the people thrown together on the subway car stared in silence at the quiet marauder facing them. Melanie watched his reflection in the flickering light as he glowered back at his victims, red-eyed and knowing, his head low and bobbing and the mask covering his face dark at the edges, seemingly wet with his own saliva. He was not holding the pole now. He was standing free, his gloved hands trembling at the ends of his hanging arms. She wondered fleetingly why he still bothered to wear the mask and gloves.
The car began to slow and the riders edged around the doors on Melanie’s end, anxious to exit and in doing so spread the disease to the airport and the rest of the world. How long did Melanie have before they were actively infectious? A few hours, perhaps.
The train stopped and the doors opened, and the carriers quickly scattered away.
Melanie was the last to leave, even after Zero. He lurched across the platform ahead of her, people granting him wide berth, and then he was through the revolving doors, inside the airport and into the bloodstream of civilization.
Melanie followed behind. She hoped to see suited BDC agents and airport security people waiting to pounce, but there were only travelers, hundreds of them, rushing this way and that. Parents toting luggage and children, couples with pet kennels and garment bags, business travelers, all moving with quiet, airport determination. She was the only one there who knew what was happening.
The main lobby of Hartsfield airport was a high, ornate, circular glass-roofed atrium surrounded by concessions and decorated with tall trees and an elaborate display of ivy. She shadowed Zero through it, past the baggage carousels, past car rental stalls and a vacant shoe shine stand, waiting for some burst of inspiration. But he just kept pulling himself ahead. He moved beyond the concessions, and she stayed with him, tracking him past the ticket counters, moving deeper and deeper into the airport. He had to be stopped. She kept praying to see Maryk come rushing up behind her.
She saw an information kiosk and hurried toward it in an arc, wide around Zero, keeping him in her sight as she worked to her right. She waited jumpily behind a man asking directions as she watched Zero slouch away.
“Yes?” Bright scarf, dull smile.
“Hi,” Melanie said, gasping. “You need to shut the airport down right now.”
The smile dulled further. “I’m sorry?”
“I know, I know. I need security people. Guns. I’m with the Bureau for Disease Control. There’s a man with a virus — who is a virus—”
“I’m sorry, but you...”
Zero disappeared around a corner, heading for the flight gates. Melanie was getting nowhere. With a slap of her hand on the counter, she took off after him again.
She dashed around rolling luggage. Flights were being called overhead. Zero plodded ahead of her, distracted travelers clearing out of his way. Plainville was germinating in these unknowing hosts as they walked off toward cities throughout the world.
At once she recognized the BDC logo ahead. It was emblazoned upon a booth just before the security checkpoints. U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH STATION it read, and she ran to it.
“Listen to me.” The man behind the counter wrinkled his brow as she refused his offer of an international traveler’s form. She was barely breathing now. “Do you know Maryk?”
“Dr. Maryk?” said the man suspiciously. “I know of him.”
“You must get him this message.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but this is not a message center.”
“The Plainville virus is here. It’s in the airport. Do you understand what that means? They need to shut this entire place down, right now.”
“The what virus?” It was disbelief.
“Get this message to Maryk. Tell him, ‘Zero is at the airport.’ Do you understand? ‘Zero is at the airport.’ ”
The man was nodding, but not at her, at someone behind her, summoning them with a widening of his eyes. She turned and saw a man in a blue uniform coming. It was airport security, but he was weaponless, and useless to her now. He would only detain her.
“Send it,” she commanded, and ran off toward me gates.
Zero was somewhere ahead, nearing the entrance to the concourse. She encountered the least resistance by run-, rung along the right side wall, fighting her way through a large tour group following a woman holding up a small British flag.
Melanie had a brainstorm. She searched the wall for fire alarm boxes — but there weren’t any.
“I need a lighter,” she said, startling the British tour group, and one man produced a matchbook with a picture of a pub on it. She snatched it from his hand and looked about for a trash barrel to set on fire.
But there weren’t any trash barrels. In a flash she realized this was all due to airport security. Trash barrels could be used to hide bombs.
She saw a female custodian gathering soda cups out of armchair holders, standing away from her cleaning cart. Melanie walked right up and grabbed the cart handle and wheeled it away. She scanned the ceilings for a water sprinkler, finding a low one near the Tourist Center. She piled cleaning rags and paper towels on top of the trash bag and lit the matchbook. She touched off the paper and the heated rags began to squirm, grudgingly producing smoke.