Fertile Ground by Charles Wilson

Author:Charles Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250126931
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 25

“You’ll try to find a cure now, won’t you, Delaney?” Alex smiled from behind the bars.

The wide corridor between the cells was empty except for a solitary moth flying lonely circles around a dim, grid-covered overhead light at its center.

“Won’t you, Delaney?”

His words echoed down the empty cellblocks.

* * *

Darrell stared at the wound.

“I flushed it with alcohol,” Delaney said. “Left it exposed to air.”

Darrell took Jordan’s forearm into his hands. Alex’s teeth marks were as clear against the skin as if they had been made in paraffin, twisted where he had tried to tear. Delaney looked at the marks. Had he flushed any virus from the wound, or into it? he thought. On the hurried drive from the jail to the research center, Jordan had held the wound down toward the floorboard, hoping to let it drain. They couldn’t think of anything else to do. Their minds had raced so they almost couldn’t think at all. They had been reduced to not much more than novices, reduced to stunned victims no different from any others. What else had there been to do? He visualized the viruses, their tiny size making them the same as children’s marbles rolling into the giant Grand Canyon of the wound. How did you flush marbles out of the Grand Canyon? And now were the marbles, like tiny flakes of dust in a vast water main, rushing through her system, looking for living cells to cannibalize and take over? He closed his eyes at the thought.

The office telephone rang.

Delaney looked at Darrell examining the wound, then turned and walked toward the office as the telephone rang a second time.

It wasn’t the regular laboratory telephone, but Feltenstein’s fax machine. The older agent normally manning it was in the restroom near the rear of the lab. Delaney saw the paper start to roll out and turned to go back to Jordan, when he saw Alex’s name—and then hers.

Regarding: Dr. Alex Brister. Dr. Jordan Jeffries. Orders confirmed concerning transportation team. In route. Will arrive at 1330 hours tomorrow as previously indicated. Your end will be responsible for secure transfer to national guard air transport.

Continued—

Text of national security advisor memo follows:

CDC concludes no possible cure. Advise immediate incarceration in secure government bacteriological facility to prevent any further incident. Final disposition will be determined later.

Continued—

Text of Presidential response.

Proceed.

Continued—

Respond that instructions are understood.

End.

Delaney’s gaze went back up the fax.

Final disposition will be determined later.

He felt a wave of nervousness sweep over him. In a secure government facility. Where all that might happen will go unseen and unknown. Until final disposition.

He looked into the laboratory and then reached for the fax. Its return address was printed across the top of the page. He grabbed a memo pad off the desk, jotted Feltenstein’s name and “Instructions received” on the top sheet, slipped it into the machine, and punched in the proper numbers.

He waited until the message was sent, stuffed the fax and the memo sheet into his pocket and leaned back against the wall, trying to think.

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