“Let me help you,” she said again. “I am a physician. I can tell you what’s happening to me. I know it’s too late for me, but I can still help you find a cure. Please let me help you.”
The man still refused to look, but his subsequent movements were hesitant, as if he were fighting his own inner irresistible compulsion.
“It’s a fungal infection of some kind, isn’t it?” She kept talking, hoping that her display of cooperation might somehow reach through the barriers that separated them. “That fits most of the symptoms, but it’s unbelievably aggressive. It seems to be spread by skin-to-skin contact, but airborne transmission is also possible. I don’t think it’s contagious in the early stages. The first symptom… ”
She faltered here, knowing that she was diagnosing her own terminal condition.
“The first symptom is an urge to start walking. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m fighting it right now. It’s like my brain is telling me that I really want to do it. I think the infection is interfering with dopamine receptors. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
The young man placed a thermometer in her mouth, silencing her, and once again she did not resist. After a few seconds, the device beeped, signaling that it had finished measuring her body temperature.
“I have a fever, don’t I?”
No response.
“It feels mild right now, maybe 37 degrees… About 100 degrees Fahrenheit,” she amended. If he was American, he probably wouldn’t know Celsius temperatures. “Are my eyes bloodshot? I think capillary leakage is an early symptom, too. In a few hours, I’ll develop petechiae. It spreads through contact with infected blood, and maybe other bodily fluids. Aerosolized blood from coughing. After a while, I won’t be lucid anymore.”
The young man put away the diagnostic machine and turned to leave.
“Please,” she said again. “Let me help.”
The man disconnected his air supply and reached for the door, but before he hit the button to open it, he turned and faced her. His lips moved but she heard no sounds at first. Then he took a breath, and spoke again more forcefully. “Doug. My name is Doug. I’m so sorry, Maria.”
Then, he turned away quickly, opened the door and left without looking back.
Doug Simpson lingered under the disinfectant shower, as if the harsh chemicals might somehow burn away the guilt he felt. The suit kept the solution from making contact with his skin, just as it kept the microbes in the patient rooms at bay, but it offered scant protection from the pain of watching another person die.
The shower was part of the multi-layered Bio-Safety protocol designed to keep infectious agents from escaping the lab and spreading to the outside world, yet despite such precautions, on more than one occasion, deadly pathogens had made it out of even the most capable BSL IV facilities. Because this was a privately operated lab, operating without oversight from any government, additional layers of protection had been put in place, including a fail-safe that would sanitize the entire facility in the event of a containment breach — something as simple as attempting to leave the airlock before the disinfectant shower finished its cycle.
After five minutes, the flow of chemicals switched to pure distilled water, which sluiced away all traces of the caustic disinfectants. The pressure of the shower pushed his clammy skin against the inside of the suit, chilling him.
What am I even doing here? he thought. I’m not going to be able to help Maria or any of them.
Several more patients had died, and those few from the village who had been exposed but were asymptomatic — like Maria — were now exhibiting the first signs of infection. Bloodshot eyes, fever, and that weird compulsion to move.
Maria had been partially right about that. Somehow, the disease hijacked the central nervous system, making infected victims start walking. It was probably some evolutionary adaptation to spread the pathogen. He knew of a similar example in nature—Ophiocordyceps unilateralis—the so-called “zombie fungus” which caused infected ants to immediately climb up the nearest tree and bite down on a leaf with a death-grip until actual death occurred, whereupon the fungus would reach maturity inside the ant’s carcass and scatter spores on the forest floor below.
The thought of what would soon happen to Maria made him want to throw up. She was in the control group, which meant that, even if, through some miracle, they found the right combination of therapies to cure the afflicted patients, Maria would not be spared. When — if — such a cure was found, she would be too far gone to save.
The patients belonged in a real hospital, USAMRIID in Reston, Virginia, or maybe a CDC facility, not here, in a privately operated facility owned by a biotech outfit. What Alex had him doing was insane. It was profoundly unethical.
Worse, it was probably criminal.
He knew his boss’s reputation for putting profits ahead of everything else, even basic humanity. Alex was impetuous, hot-tempered, vindictive, like his legendary father in many ways, and utterly without compassion. He had rushed into the hot zone and brought the infected patients here to this mobile BSL IV facility, not so that he could save their lives, but so that, when a treatment was finally discovered, he and he alone would control it. If the contagion ever got out into the open, the governments of the world would be forced to pay whatever exorbitant price he set for that cure.
Alex called it capitalism in action, and Simpson had tried to convince himself that he was right, but no amount of money would take away the shame he now felt.
He marched back to his office, wondering who to call first. The CDC? Or the FBI?
Who even has jurisdiction out here?
The light in the airlock went from red to ordinary white, signaling that it was safe to exit, but as he opened the door, a chill shot through him. Alex was there, sitting behind a disused desk across from the suit storage area, with his feet propped up on the desktop.
“Doug. Took your sweet time.”
Simpson gaped for a moment, then finally nodded. “I was just… with the patients. Er… subjects.”
“I figured as much. I took the liberty of reviewing the data you’ve collected so far. I have to say, I’m not altogether happy with the results. This should have been a cakewalk.”
Simpson sucked in a breath. “Mister… Alex… I think we’re going about this the wrong way.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed into cold reptilian slits. “Is that what you think?”
“I just mean… we… there are other agencies, with resources we don’t have. We should turn this over to someone else. I know what you’re going to say. That there’s no profit in doing things that way, but… ” Simpson shook his head miserably. “Some things are more important than money.”
Alex brought his feet off the desk, planting them on the ground with the suddenness of a gunshot. He pointed a finger at Simpson. “Exactly. I can see you’re a man after my own heart, Doug. Maybe it’s time I let you in on a little project I’ve been working on. I call it ‘Shadow and Light.’ And it’s going to change the world.”
CHAPTER 17
Maddock shone his light into the dark recess. The stone blocks framing the opening had been partially forced out of place by plant roots, but in an ironic twist the vegetation seemed to be the only thing preventing the structure from crumbling completely into ruin. Beyond the opening, he could see irregular stone steps descending into inky darkness.
“I thought the steps on pyramids were supposed to go up,” Bones observed.
“It’s the City of Shadow,” Bell said, as if that ought to explain everything. “The Underworld lies below.”