Fantasizing, he told himself. Wishful thinking. Not Lou Zachry’s style. He had just slipped away from the afternoon media briefing being handled by Corey Macklin. It had been a string of tired clichés that Corey hadn’t even tried to disguise as real news. The reporters were grumbling, and with justification. They had kept their bargain not to harass Dr. Kitzmiller and the task force. In return, they were supposed to be kept informed at the twice-daily briefings.
Zachry knew Corey had excuses for his spiritless delivery that day. Anybody with eyes could see what was happening between him and Dena Falkner. If Dena was now infested with the brain eaters, it was not so strange that Corey’s enthusiasm for his job would flag.
But damn it, almost everybody had lost somebody. You had to do your job even when you were hurting. That had been Lou Zachry’s code as long as he could remember, and he expected the people around him to live up to it.
Then there were the damn Russians sitting across the road in their air-conditioned limo, eyeballing the gate. Couldn’t those people read English? Didn’t they watch television? If they knew what was happening, how could it matter a damn if one of their people defected or got married or turned queer or whatever they were afraid he was doing?
And there was Kitzmiller. He was no help with his rigid old-time anti-Russian stance when a couple of words from him might send Raslov and his goons on their way. Sure, he had his reasons, but they dated back to another war in another time. Everybody had reasons.
Underneath these major worries, like a fragment of half-remembered music that won’t go away, was the phone call from the woman. She had gotten his number from the newspaper and was calling to warn that Eddie Gault was a victim of the brain eaters and was on his way to Biotron for some crazy purpose. She had refused to give her name, but some vaguely familiar note in the young voice troubled him.
Zachry was well aware of the potential danger if Eddie Gault talked. It was possible, of course, that the brain eaters would make the whole question academic, but Zachry could not wait for Armageddon. Eddie Gault had to die.
He was, in fact, a dead man the moment the brain eaters had entered his bloodstream. Zachry had talked to the task-force doctors enough to know what the little parasites could do to the human brain. He figured he’d been doing the man a favor by sending Quick and Vollney to help Eddie Gault out of this world.
The thought made Zachry wonder where the hell Quick and Vollney were. How long did it take to shoot a man?
Zachry reached for the telephone. He snatched his hand back reflexively as the thing rang just as he was about to touch it. Then he picked it up and cleared his throat.
“Zachry.”
“Lieutenant Purdue at the gate, sir. Agent Vollney is out here.”
“Vollney? What about Quick?”
“He’s alone, sir, and he’s … hurt.”
“For Christ’ sake, send him in.”
Zachry slammed down the receiver and ran out the door, heading for the front entrance to the plant. As he burst out the door, he saw Agent Donald Vollney making his way across the asphalt of the parking area. His left arm hung limp at his side. He clutched the shoulder with his right hand.
Zachry met him at the edge of the walkway before the building and helped him up the low curb.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Vollney said in a strained voice.
“What happened?”
“He went crazy. Killed Seth.”
“Eddie Gault killed a trained agent?”
“Yes, sir. He was like nothing human.”
Vollney’s legs sagged, and his eyes started to roll up. Zachry grasped him around the waist and supported him into the building and into his office. Inside, the agent recovered and refused a chair.
“Tell me about it,” Zachry said.
Vollney made an effort to get control of himself and in a voice purged of emotion related the events of the afternoon to Zachry. “Everything was going according to schedule. We intercepted the subject at the gate, transferred him to our car, and transported him to the location selected in advance for termination.”
“What condition was Gault in when you took him?” Zachry asked.
“He was obviously suffering some distress, but he was coherent and ambulatory.”
“All right, go on.”
“When we reached the designated location, we exited the car, and I instructed the subject to walk toward a growth of trees. He started to comply, then turned back. He began to … howl.”
“Howl?” Zachry repeated.
“Yes, sir. More like an animal than a man.”
Here Agent Vollney’s emotions welled up, and he dropped the awkward locutions of report language. “His face … the guy’s face … I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like he’d walked into a hornet’s nest. There were bumps all over the skin, and right while we were watching, they broke open.” Vollney had to pause and swallow something that had come up in his throat. “They made little popping sounds and squirted gunk out of them. Jesus, it was ugly.”
Zachry gave the agent a minute to collect himself, then said, “What happened to Seth Quick?”
Vollney retreated back into the formalized, emotion-free jargon. “The subject became violent and charged Agent Quick and me. We both discharged our weapons. I observed several bullets strike the subject, but they seemed to have no effect. The subject seized Agent Quick by the throat and he — he killed him. When I tried to render assistance, the subject grasped my arm, knocking my weapon to the ground. I sustained an injury to my shoulder. I managed to reach the vehicle and returned here.”
“Gault escaped,” Zachry said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Yes, sir. We — we just messed it up.”
“Nothing to do about it now,” Zachry said. “Go on back to the lab and get somebody to look at that arm.”
“Yes, sir.” Vollney lingered for a moment as though there were more he wanted to say but changed his mind and went out.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Zachry said to the empty office. Now he had a vengeful brain-eater victim thrashing through the woods out there. Fortunately, there was little chance he would get past the gate guards even if he did make it this far.
Where would he go? To the woman, of course! Circuits closed in the brain of Lou Zachry with an almost audible click. The woman, Roanne Tesla, had to be the anonymous caller. In the old days he would have punched up her name on the computer for a full report of the investigation they had done on her when Eddie had first come under suspicion. Now he had to pull out bits from his memory. Roanne Tesla: No Nukes; Greenpeace; Save the Whales. Your basic eco freak with leanings toward free-this and stop-that trendy radical causes.
Zachry thumped himself on the forehead. She was the one! Whether out of madness or twisted idealism or plain old villainy, this woman was behind the brain eaters. He was suddenly as thoroughly sure of her guilt as he was of his own name.
Zachry fairly leaped for the file cabinet and snatched out the folder labeled Edward Gault. He flapped it open on his desk, memorized the location of the house where Eddie lived with his girlfriend, and sprinted through the door.
As he dashed out of the building, a wisp of cool breeze ruffled his crew cut. Lightning forked to earth on the horizon, followed by the grumble of thunder. Lou Zachry shivered and ran toward his car.
Chapter 30
All the lights blazed in the Biotron laboratory complex. The small employees’ lounge adjacent to the labs was bright with an ersatz high-tech cheeriness. It made the gray-black sky outside look even darker.
Corey Macklin sat at a formica table in the lounge with Dena Falkner. On the table before them were two Styrofoam coffee cups, which they toyed with while their attention was elsewhere. A cigarette smoldered, forgotten, in an ashtray at Dena’s side. Their free hands rested on the table, touching.