The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

Author:Richard Preston [Preston, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345498137
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-08-15T05:00:00+00:00

'We just wanted to see you and to say hello,' Austen said.

'Huh uh am.' Here I am.

'How are you feeling today?' Hopkins said. 'Uh guh tuh uh.' Pretty good today.

His body went into a writhing motion, the back arching and twisting, the legs twisting. Suddenly his arm lashed out, aiming for Austen's face. She jerked her head back, just in time, and his clawlike mangled hand whipped past.

Bobby Wiggner moaned. 'Sorry. Sorry,' he said. 'It's okay.'

'Guh tuh hell.'

'Please, Bobby,' his mother admonished him.

He lashed out at his mother, trying to strike her, and cursed violently at her. She did not react.

'Sorry, sorry, sorry,' he said to her.

'He needs his restraints,' his mother said.

Quickly, with deft movements, the mother and Dr Heyert tightened the Rubatex straps around the young man, fastening his wrists to the chair, and they placed and tightened a wide Rubatex band across his forehead. That helped restrain the back-and-forth writhing of his head.

'Tha is wetter,' Bobby Wiggner said. 'Huck you, I sorry.'

'This is a vertically divided mind,' Dr Heyert said. 'The brain stem has been deranged and wants to attack the things it loves. The higher cortex - the conscious, thinking part of the mind - hates this but can't control it. In these battles between the higher brain and the brain stem, the brain stem wins, because it is primitive and more powerful.'

'Nuh wuh ook! Nuh!'

'Are you sure, Bobby?' Mrs Wiggner tried to keep reading.

'I wanh sohsing tuh drink. Wlease.' 'Do you want milk?'

'Nuh. Nuh.' No. No. That probably meant yes.

The young man's mother held a plastic cup up to his mouth. It had a feeding spout. She got some milk down

his throat. Suddenly he vomited it up. His mother wiped him with a towel, dabbing it around the scarred remains of his lower face.

Bobby turned his head and looked at Austen, his eyes bright. He was completely tied down. 'Uhr yuh uh Stuh Tuk hwuhnh?'

'I'm sorry. Could you say that again?' she said.

'My son is asking if you are a Star Trek fan,' the mother remarked. 'He always asks people that.'

'Hopkins is,' Austen said.

Hopkins went over and sat down on a chair next to Bobby Wiggner. 'I like that show,' Hopkins said. 'Wee, too,' Bobby Wiggner said.

Hopkins listened. He found that he could understand the words.

Wiggner said (his words are translated now): 'My favorite episode is "City on the Edge of Forever." 'Right! Mine, too!' Hopkins said. 'When Captain Kirk ends up in Chicago.'

'He was sad when the woman died,' Bobby Wiggner said.

'Yes. He couldn't save her.'

'Or history would be changed,' Wiggner said. 'Captain Kirk loved that woman. He should have saved her, and to hell with history,' Hopkins said. They were deep in conversation, Hopkins hunched over, seeming to forget the fact that he was supposed to be conducting an interview for the F.B.I.

Austen stood back, watching Hopkins. He was leaning forward. She could see the muscles of his back and shoulders through his jacket. She thought: He's very gentle.

Abruptly she realized that she had stopped seeing Hopkins in a purely professional way.

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