“Hi.”
Melanie was looking down at him. Her face was gauzy. He tried to raise his head but she put out a small hand to keep him down. “Zero,” Maryk croaked.
“They all thought you were dead.”
He got over onto one side. “Zero.”
Melanie left him and went to the door. She called someone from there as he dropped his legs over the table edge and sat up. The pain was loud and expanding in his head.
Freeley came into the room and looked him over. “Zero’s gone,” she said.
Maryk gripped the table. His head was still too heavy for his neck. “How?”
“He went out through the airfields and must have come back around. There’s a yellow cab missing. We’ve got the police out all over the state pulling over taxis.”
Maryk squeezed the sides of his head but could not feel any pressure against his skull.
“What happened in there?” Freeley said.
Maryk was trying to remember. A feeling of helplessness lingered. “How long have I been out?”
Freeley looked at Melanie who was standing against the wall. Melanie said, “About four hours.”
Freeley turned back. “The airport is in full quarantine, and we have Milkmaid serum going around. Primary exposures are already starting to show symptoms. But no planes got off. We blitzed the MARTA station as well, and it looks like we got everyone there too.”
Maryk said, “Inside the terminal atrium — there were trees.”
“Silk,” Freeley said. “But there was ivy, real ivy. All still healthy. The plants show no sign of the disease.”
So Zero’s virus had succeeded. Stephen had been right. Zero was infective only to humans now.
“Then it’s starting,” Maryk said.
Freeley looked at a clock on the wall. “Three hours until dawn. This massive quarantine is draining off a lot of manpower.” She stepped up to Maryk. “What happened in there?”
Maryk could say nothing. He hung his head and blood rushed to his temples.
Freeley went out again. Melanie came forward. “They carried you out on a stretcher,” she told him. “They thought you were dead. They thought maybe he had done something to you.”
He looked at his hands and saw that he was wearing fresh gloves. The skin on his face felt washed. “They cleaned you up,” she said.
She was in front of him now and he could see her hand moving nervously at her side. He saw her spinning her inhaler around and around. Something stabbed at him.
“Your inhaler,” he said.
She looked at it. “You must have found it on the concourse. They pulled it out of your bag. I could barely breathe.”
At once Maryk dropped to his feet. He saw his bag on the floor and fought his dizziness as he picked it up and straightened and unbuckled it on the table. He lifted out his tablet and a sterile syringe.
“Give me your arm,” he said. He took the inhaler from her hand.
“Hey, I need that.”
He brought out a testing dish. He grabbed her wrist and shoved her shirtsleeve back over her elbow. He was clumsy but moving faster and faster.
“Okay,” she complained. “All right.”
Maryk tied the tourniquet. Immediately he inserted the needle.
“I’m fine, you know— Ow!”
He drew out as much as he needed and began to prep the mixture.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “I’m fine. I was careful.” There was pride in her voice. “I kept him away from my glands.”
Maryk stared at the solution as it mixed. His arms and legs felt light.
“You were mumbling my name,” she said. “In your sleep, over and over. Your medical people, when they put a stethoscope to your chest and felt nothing, they thought you had gone into cardiac arrest. I had to direct them to the other side.”
Maryk held the table and implored the mixture with his stare. He connected the Plainville PCR test kit to his tablet and opened his tablet screen away from Melanie.
“You’re wasting time,” she said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. He’s still out there.”
Maryk punched in the command and got it wrong and entered it again. He was gripping the table.
She was standing near him and just waiting. “What are you going to do now?”
The gauge opened on screen and numbers appeared and the red bar began its crawl from zero. It grew strong to 18 percent before slowing. The bar stopped altogether at 24 percent. The screen was still a moment and then the red bar disappeared and a message began to flash.
INFECTED INFECTED INFECTED
She was waiting for him. He could not look up.
“What are you going to do now?” she said again. He unplugged the box and collapsed the tablet to stop the word from flashing.
Cascade
Dawn
He sat alone in the car in a parking lot of the Georgia World Congress Center staring at the dash and the speedometer needle pointing to zero.
The conference attendees who had responded unsuccessfully to the Milkmaid serum treatment remained inside and he had left Melanie with them under the pretense that she could see to their care. She would be safe there alone. And the suited and the already sick would be safe from her.
He pulled his eyes from the dash and turned the key and the starter ground. The engine was already running. He pulled out and headed fast for the highway.
Isolate her, Freeley had said.
It was not that simple. Melanie had told him twice that she would destroy herself rather than face Plainville again.
Containment, Freeley had said. This point was inarguable. Cutting off the virus was the only way to keep it from spreading. It had been his creed before it had been Freeley’s.
But he had failed the girl. He had promised to protect her.
What if I got sick again?
Simple. I would treat you.
And if I refused? Resisted?
She would not comply. She was a carrier now and would run or destroy herself if she knew.
Would you kill me?
If Zero succeeded, then none of this would matter. She would be infected like the rest. He needed to stop Zero before he needed to deal with Melanie.
Nothing impeded Zero now. His virus infected humans only. It had shifted so much that Melanie was no longer immune. He had corrupted her blood and now was utterly without cure. Atlanta was about to become the epicenter of a conflagration that would consume the human race.
But then Maryk remembered Zero’s pain in the airport tunnel. Zero’s virus was mutating wildly and tearing his genetic makeup apart.
Zero was sick.
At the BDC Maryk went immediately to the B4 sub-subbasement of Building Seven. He stopped before entering and did something he had never done before. Maryk PCR-tested his own blood. He mixed the blood sample and ran it into his tablet.
The bar expanded steadily to 100 percent. Of course he was still healthy. But his personal victory over the virus seemed hollow now.
He entered the first room and rebooted all the computers and the B4 unit came alive. He carried his bag through to the lab and brought out the sealed biohazard sac containing the syringe from the airport shuttle. The bevel of the needle was still crusted with Zero’s blood. He scraped the blood onto a sterile paper bindle and prepped it for processing.
His thoughts drifted back to Melanie. His failure was so absolute and the loss so needless that he had trouble getting his mind around it. There was only one remedial course of action. Four years ago he had saved her life. Now he would have to destroy her.