Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Read online

  Blood tests had confirmed the presence of smallpox, but in a form the hematologist didn’t recognize. The CDC had taken all her infected blood and the test results.

  “There must be something we can do,” Deluge had said to Cheney as he was preparing to leave.

  “This pathogen is a hundred percent fatal.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Nothing’s a hundred percent fatal.”

  Cheney glanced at him and then handed him a sheet of paper. “Write down anyone that has interacted with her since she’s been in the hospital. Then speak with her family and see if you can find out who she’s interacted with in the five days before she was admitted here. If any of them are showing symptoms, they have to be admitted with a full barrier set up. If you have any concerns, here’s the number to our local office. They’ll send someone out to help you.”

  With that, Cheney left, leaving Deluge to wonder exactly what the hell he had on his hands.

  Nancy Claiborne had worked at Saint Anthony’s Hospital for thirteen years and loved every minute of it—even the horrible patients who yelled, threw up on her, and fought. They had once even wrestled a gang member to the ground because he was on PCP and had knocked the doctor out cold.

  But her first shift in the quarantine unit was unnerving. Many of the nurses had refused to even go in, but she wasn’t scared. She had dealt with the worst outbreak of flu she’d ever seen and had lived to tell the tale without a scratch.

  She was in the locker room, changing into her scrubs. She put on her Crocs and then went out onto the floor. Walking to the elevator, she didn’t really speak to anybody, which was unusual for her. But she wanted her concentration, and the best way to maintain it was to ignore others.

  She stepped off on the top floor, and Dr. Deluge was standing in front of one of the patient’s doors. As she came up next to him, she looked into Candice’s room.

  “How is she?”

  “Stable, I suppose,” he said. “Has she moved or talked?”

  “Not since about three days ago.”

  “Any vomiting or bowel movements?”

  “One bowel movement yesterday, but it was mostly blood.” She shook her head. “Poor girl. She’s my Mathew’s age.”

  Deluge rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. “I’m going home. I’ve worked a twenty-hour shift. Keep me apprised of any major updates.”

  “Sure.”

  As Deluge left, Nancy walked back to the nurse’s station on the quarantined floor and relieved the lone nurse sitting there, surfing the internet. She stretched and then opened solitaire and began playing.

  Around midnight, Nancy heard something on the monitor. She paused the video she was watching on YouTube and listened. It sounded like coughing. She rose and walked over to Candice’s room to make sure she was all right. Glancing in, she nearly screamed.

  Candice was covered in a thick black blood. The fluid was spurting out of her eyes, ears, and mouth. Nancy wouldn’t say she was vomiting because the heaving reflex was absent. Her blood was just coming out of her body as if being pulled by gravity.

  Nancy called the ER. “I need a crash cart and a doctor up here in quarantine right now!”

  Unthinking, seeing only a young girl in pain, she ran in.

  She pushed past the transparent barrier and turned Candice to her side. A metal bowl near her mouth caught most of the blood, but it was still coming out of her ears. Nancy grabbed a bedsheet and pressed it to her ear canals to try to slow the bleeding.

  For a single moment, Candice stopped vomiting and sobbed. “Please help me,” she cried.

  Before Nancy could say anything, Candice convulsed violently and jerked onto her back on the bed. She vomited an explosive stream of blood that hit Nancy in the face. It was warm and smelled like foul steak.

  Nancy panicked, turning Candice to her side again, allowing her to vomit into the bowl. But so much blood was coming that it filled the bowl and spilled onto the floor.

  The door opened, and a crash team was there.

  “No,” someone shouted down the hall. One of the trauma doctors, Roger, ran over to the room and looked in. “Don’t go in,” he said. “Gear up first.”

  “There’s no time,” Nancy said.

  She realized suddenly that the crash team was staring at her. She wondered why, until something wet dripped off her face and onto her hands. She touched her face and came away with the blackness that covered Candice. Until then, she hadn’t registered that the blood on her face was hemorrhagic blood.

  “Roger…”

  “Get into the shower, now.”

  She walked to the bathroom in the corner of the room and washed her face and hands. She started slowly and used a little soap, and then rubbed her hands together furiously. She was using so much soap that the suds covered the sink. She scrubbed violently at her face, and after a short time the skin was raw and pink, and she was crying.

  She screamed and ran out of the room. The crash team were in the supply closet where they kept the biohazard gear, and Roger yelled out to her, but she didn’t hear. She was sprinting down the hall. She had to get out of there. The hospital walls were closing in around her, her heart was racing, and she couldn’t breathe. Her chest was tight, and she worried she was having a heart attack.

  The elevator took too long to arrive, so she sprinted down the stairs instead. Hysterical, she burst out onto the first floor and ran for the exit.

  The sliding doors opened and another nurse, Lance Page, walked in. She tried to run past him, but ended up running into him, nearly knocking him off his feet, and their faces bumped.

  “Nancy,” he said as she stood and ran out the door. “Nancy, what’s wrong?”

  17

  Lance Page felt hot. He was lying in his living room, watching television, and his eyelids were boiling. Sweat was pouring out of him, and he was shivering.

  Someone knocked on his door. With great effort, he rose and answered it.

  His supervisor, Michelle, was standing on the porch.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Sorry for popping in, but nobody’s phones are working. We think there’s a big outage or something.”

  “It’s okay. What did you need, Michelle?”

  “Hey, I know you just left, but you sure you can’t come in? It’s just that we can’t get a hold of Nancy, either, and we’re short two people. If you could come in, it would really help.”

  He swallowed, and his throat was tight. “Maybe half a shift.”

  “Half a shift would be an enormous help.”

  “Okay. Give me fifteen.”

  Lance put on his scrubs and sneakers, then headed out the door. He locked it behind him and then opened it again. He went to the fridge to get a soda and left again, heading toward Saint Anthony’s, which wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk from his house.

  When he arrived, he went directly to the bathroom and used wet paper towels to mop his head, belly, and underarms. Then he clocked in and went to the nurse’s station for assignments.

  The day was grinding slowly through, and Lance only lasted a few hours before he felt like it was time to go. He checked the board. A twelve-year-old boy named Max White had come to the ER with stomach pains, and his mother was worried that he’d gotten food poisoning from uncooked meat at a barbeque.

  Lance went in and did his best to smile.

  “How are ya guys?” he said.

  “He’s started throwing up since we got here.”

  Lance bent over to take the boy’s vitals, and a single drop of sweat rolled off his head and onto the boy. It struck his lips, and the boy wiped away the spatter with his arm without saying anything, but the mother said, “Excuse me, you dropped sweat on my son.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just really hot.” He moved away from him. “I’ll be right back.” Lance went out to the shift leader and said, “I have to leave. I don’t feel good at all, Michelle.”

  “No prob. I think the ru
sh has died down. Thanks for coming out. You gonna be able to make it tomorrow?”

  “It’s my day off tomorrow.”

  “Oh, right. Okay, have a good one then.”

  “Thanks.”

  After getting home, Lance slept for four hours. He hoped a nap would make him feel better, but when he woke up, the fever was worse. He tried calling his girlfriend to come and spend the night, but he was too weak to walk over to his phone. His throat still felt tight, and he was having trouble breathing. His lips and even his eyes were dry from dehydration, and he knew he had to drink something but was too faint to get anything.

  With all the strength he could force out of himself, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. He got as far as the bathroom before he sat on the toilet to relieve himself, but something was wrong. He didn’t have the normal sensation of release. It felt more loose and messy. He stood and looked down. The toilet water was completely dark; red-black streaks crossed the bowl.

  Max White stood in his backyard with his two brothers and his two-year-old sister. He didn’t feel well and hadn’t for four days. He was hot and sweaty, and his mother kept giving him water, juice, and ice cream, but none of it made him feel better. He’d thrown up a couple of times, but that had stopped two days ago.

  “Max, let’s play,” his brother Martin said. He flung a baseball at him, but Max couldn’t lift his arm in time to catch it. It struck him on the side of the head, and he fell back and lay on the grass. He wanted to lie in bed. It had been his mother’s idea to come out to get some air and sunshine. He sat up.

  “You all right?” Martin asked.

  Max stood. His throat was on fire, and he took the soda Martin was holding. He drank down a few gulps before handing it back to him. “I don’t feel good.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Martin screamed. “Mom!”

  Rebecca White came out of the house and saw Max collapsed on the grass. Martin was standing next to him. Her eldest son and young daughter were playing on the other side of the yard.

  “Martin, what’s going on? What did you do to your brother?”

  Martin was trembling. As she came upon Max, she screamed.

  Blood was gushing out of his eyes and nose. He opened his mouth to talk, and a torrent of blood spewed out over Martin and the lawn. Max tried to cry, but vomited instead. Rebecca scooped up her son and ran to the car to drive him to the hospital, Max spitting up onto her chest and neck as she ran.

  18

  Howie woke with a banging in his head and was sitting up before he even knew where he was. He always thought that people who’d been knocked out woke up slowly, like they did in the movies. He’d thought his vision would be blurry at first and then he would hear things and slowly come to. But that was not what happened.

  He was lost in a sea of darkness and barely aware of himself, and then, out of nowhere, he was back. He jumped up so violently that he tweaked his neck. He was leaning against a chain-link fence, but the area he was in was much smaller than what he remembered. Around him were four other men and only three cots.

  “You all right?” one of them said, a man in a tank top, whose arms were covered with tattoos.

  “That’s the second time that’s happened today.” Howie groaned, twisting his neck. “Where am I?”

  He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We still in LA, though, but we ain’t near no beach.”

  Howie looked around. He was surrounded by trees, and a single guardsman sat at a table, with his feet up.

  “What is this place?”

  “Told you, man, we don’t know nothin’. They ain’t sayin’ shit.”

  Howie rose to his feet. He was dizzy and touched his face, feeling the stickiness of dried blood. “My daughter,” he said. “I left my daughter at that place by herself.”

  “Take it up with him,” he said, pointing with his chin to the guardsman. “But he ain’t in a talkin’ mood. That one there tried to talk to him, and the soldier damn near shot him. If I were you, I’d keep quiet right now. Everyone’s on edge.”

  Howie shook his head. “This is America,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice. “This is fucking America. They can’t do this.”

  “Hey, man, you preachin’ to the choir. I lived off the grid in Montana lotta years. Then I come here for work and ain’t here but six months, and now I’m in a cage. But shit, how’d people like you not see this comin’? All them phone records and e-mails the government was collectin’. Our passwords, bank info, what movies and books we liked. What did you think they was gonna use all that for? This is about control, man. That’s the only thing government can do. Control. Ain’t got no other purpose. It’s blind to everything else.”

  Howie leaned back against the fence, putting his hands to his head. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but it didn’t help. “There’s gotta be a way out of here. I have to get back to my daughter.”

  He shrugged. “Wish I could help, man. But the only door’s got a lock on it, and that muthafucker right there’s got the key. How you think we get it?”

  Howie glanced at the guardsman and then back to the man with the tattoos. The chain-link fence was a military brand and the holes were much larger than standard. “Just do what I say, and follow my lead.” He shouted to the guardsman, “Hey, hey, please come here. Hey!”

  The guardsman appeared annoyed. He was playing on a cell phone, which he put down, and stood up. Howie saw the outline of the rifle slung over his shoulder. The guardsman came to within a couple of feet of the fence.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I need my heart medication. I have heart disease, and if I don’t get my glycerin, I’ll have a heart attack.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Wait, don’t leave. Please. Look, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write down my address and the medications I need. Maybe you could give it to someone to get for me.” The guardsman didn’t move. “I will die in here. How do you think your superiors will feel when my family files a lawsuit against you and the army for refusing to give me my medication? And there’s money at my house. In a drawer in the kitchen. Cash. It’s yours if you get my medication.”

  The guard watched him a moment and then walked closer. He took out his phone and opened his text messages. “I’ll send a text to someone that can maybe go pick it up. Where do you—”

  Howie reached through the fence, tearing up his hand and wrist as it scraped through, and grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him to the fence. The man behind him, without even a hint from Howie, jumped up, took the guardsman’s fingers, and pulled his arm through up to the elbow, gluing him in place. The guardsman went for the pistol in his waistband, and Howie grabbed his wrist.

  The barrel was pointed toward Howie’s stomach. He pushed with everything he had until the man with the tattoos bent down and bit into the guardsman’s hand bad enough to draw blood. The guardsman screamed, and Howie ripped the pistol away from him and stuck it into his ribs.

  “Where’s the keys?” the man with the tattoos yelled.

  “In my pocket. On my shirt. In the fucking shirt.”

  The man reached through the fence, into the guard’s shirt, and pulled out the keys. He whistled and tossed them to another man by the door. The other man reached through the gate to the lock and inserted several keys before finding the right one. Then the lock clicked open.

  “Kill him,” the man with the tattoos said.

  Howie glared at him. “I’m not going to kill him.”

  “Let me do it then.”

  “No, he’s an American soldier.”

  The man laughed. “In case you ain’t noticed, we at war now, man. Gimme the gun.”

  Howie twisted the gun so that he could pull the grip in first and then angled it to pull it through.

  “Give it to me.”

  Howie felt the weight of the gun in his hands. He had never owned or even shot a gun before.

  “No, we’re not killing him.
He’s just doing his job.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. And his job is lockin’ us in cages, man. Gimme the fuckin’ gun.”

  “No.”

  The man smiled. Before Howie could even blink, the other man struck him in the face with an elbow, making him see sparkling lights, before kicking Howie in the chest, throwing him back into the fence. The man grabbed him and proceeded to bash his fist into his face several times before flinging him to the ground and kicking him so hard in the face that Howie thought he’d shattered his cheekbones. He tasted blood that dribbled out of his mouth and onto his neck.

  The man pointed the pistol at the guard, who tried to scream but was cut off by the round that entered his mouth and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed backward, and the man turned and placed the muzzle of the gun against Howie’s temple.

  “Please,” Howie slurred through the blood, “Please. I have a daughter.”

  The man smiled, tucking the gun away into his waistband. “She ain’t your daughter no more, man. She government property now.”

  The men fled the cage, leaving Howie bleeding and in pain on the soft ground, the corpse of the guardsman next to him like a bad dream.

  19

  Ian glanced at her as she drove. She had calmed down a little, and he didn’t get the impression she was constantly searching for an escape, although that should have been her only thought. She had seen his face. She couldn’t expect to survive. Then again, for some reason, he kind of liked her.

  “What’s your name?” she said.