“You look tired,” Corey said.
“It’s been a long day,” Dena answered with a weary smile. “Going to be a long night, too. Dr. K doesn’t sleep, so he thinks the troops shouldn’t sleep.”
“You guys ought to have a union.”
“I’ll bring it up at our next meeting.”
They exchanged smiles that were clearly forced. The conversation sagged. Corey looked around for inspiration. Through the window he saw the dark trees at the forest line toss their branches and lean forward as though they wanted to advance on the buildings that had taken their space.
“Storm coming,” he said.
“Feels like it.” Dena took her hand away to rub the gooseflesh on her other arm. She conspicuously avoided the patch of bandage on her elbow.
A look of pain flashed across Corey’s face.
“Hey, I feel okay,” she said. “No worse than a bad cold. Anyway, at the worst I’ve got what — a week?”
“You’re the doctor,” he said in a husky voice.
“Yes. Well.” She glanced at the efficient wristwatch she wore and checked it with the big wall clock. “I’d better get back.”
“Sure.”
They stood up at the same time, leaving their cups sitting on the table with the cooling coffee untasted.
“I’ll check with you later,” Corey said.
“Good.”
Dena turned and took a couple of steps away from him, then stopped. She turned back. The uneasy smile she had kept in place through the coffee break was gone. Her eyes held a hint of desperation. She and Corey took a quick step toward each other, and she was in his arms, her face pressed against his chest.
“I’m scared, Corey,” she said, her voice small and muffled against his sweater.
He held her tightly, one hand patting her shoulder. “Hey, why wouldn’t you be? I’m scared, too.”
“I don’t want to die,” she said. “Not like this.”
Corey’s throat closed on him, and he could not speak for several seconds.
“It doesn’t have to happen,” he got out finally. “Like you said, if you had to get the damn things, you couldn’t be in a better place.”
Dena took one very deep breath, then stepped back away from him. Her smile was in place again, her eyes a little feverish but steady. “That sounds like a good-news, bad-news joke. Maybe later we can send it to Reader’s Digest.
“Right,” he said. “Later.”
She turned again and walked from the lounge through the swinging door into the laboratory. Her step was firm, and this time she did not turn back.
Corey looked down and saw that his fists were so tightly clenched the knuckles were white. He forced himself to relax and to give Dena time to reach her work station; then he followed her into the lab.
Dr. Kitzmiller was a touch less hostile when Corey approached him than he had been earlier in the day. For the forbidding biochemist, this was a huge concession to personal warmth. He even left the table where he was reading over notes made by the other members of the task force and took Corey back into his small, chilly office.
“Any news?” Corey asked, making an effort to keep it impersonal.
“I thought your briefing of the media was finished for today.”
“I’m asking for myself,” Corey said.
“We are making progress, of a sort.”
Corey leaned forward.
“There has been no breakthrough,” Kitzmiller continued quickly. “We are approaching the problem from two directions. We must find a means of protection for those not yet afflicted and a cure for those whose blood already carries the parasites but who are not yet too ill to be helped.”
“How ill is too ill?” Corey asked.
“Dr. Everett, the brain specialist, feels that once the parasites have been carried by the bloodstream into the brain tissue and have begun their damage there, it is too late.”
“And it takes about a week from the time they enter the body for them to get to the brain?”
“That is no longer a valid assumption. Our reports show that as the cases have spread, the length of time for the parasites to reach the brain has decreased.”
“How long?” Corey’s mouth had dried up.
“Three, perhaps four, days.”
“Jesus. But you say there is some progress toward finding a cure?”
“I said we were making progress of a sort. The preventive approach must take precedence to preserve the health of those who are not yet infested.”
“That’s not fair to the people who have the brain eaters in their blood. They could still be saved.”
“Life, Mr. Macklin, is not fair. Now you must excuse me.”
Corey sat alone for several minutes in the cold office, then pulled himself out of the chair and went in search of Lou Zachry. He badly needed somebody to talk to.
Zachry’s office was empty. Corey walked to the entrance and looked out into the parking area. Zachry’s car was gone. Lightning sparked down through the slate-colored sky, and thunder crashed like cymbals.
Corey sat down heavily on an ornamental concrete bench in front of the Biotron entrance. The wind made him shiver, but he paid it no attention. He stared unseeing out toward the gate, his mood darker than the skies. A first, fat drop of rain hit the bench beside him.
Anton Kuryakin sat in the pickup truck in a farmer’s roadway where he had pulled off after his second pass by the gate to Biotron. Raslov and the KGB men were still there, parked across the road, waiting for him. Kuryakin knew they would park there indefinitely, watching the road, waiting to take him. Time was on their side.
Kuryakin made a decision. There could be no more delay. He shifted the pickup into reverse and backed out onto the highway, taking a small pleasure in his growing skill in operating the American vehicles. He pointed the machine back toward Biotron and hit the gas.
When he came to the end of the chain link fence, he began to pick up speed. There could be no stopping for explanations to the guards at the gate. Raslov and the others would be there too quickly, and one way or another they would surely prevent him from entering.
When he could see the gate and guard shack ahead on his right, Kuryakin pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor. He swung the truck to the far side of the road to allow himself a better angle for approaching the gate. There was no need for him to worry about oncoming cars; traffic along that road had dwindled to nothing.
Rain began to smack the windshield in fat, heavy drops. Kuryakin had no time to search for the wiper control; he needed all his concentration for the driving.
From the corner of his eye he saw movement behind the smoked glass of the parked limousine as the pickup roared past the spot where it was parked. Up ahead, the door of the guard shack opened, and a uniformed man stood looking out as Kuryakin yanked the wheel and swerved into a tire-screaming turn off the road and toward the gate.
He hit the heavy steel mesh of the gate with a jarring crash that threw him forward against the steering wheel. The breath was blasted from his lungs as the gate sagged inward and the truck came to a stop.
Kuryakin’s chest heaved as he struggled to pull in air. I’ve failed, he thought as the men surged out of the guard shack. In the rearview mirror he could see the limousine across the road start to move toward him.
He kept his foot on the accelerator. The rear wheels spun; the heavy air was acrid with burning rubber. The face of one of the guards appeared at the window. He was shouting something Kuryakin could not hear.