Pulses, page 45
“Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah, Mike, I do. I'm going to get everything we've got out here, and then I'm going to wait for an opportunity.”
***
Dan awoke when the shaft of sunlight dropped slowly down to touch her eyelid. She sat up with a start. “Luke?”
A note on the breakfast table said he had gone back to the hospital to check on Bev's little boy. There was a P.S. None of the agents had returned. If they should come during the day, go with them. He would find her later.
***
Luke stepped out of the elevator into the antiseptic beige and white of the hospital's third floor. The nurse at the control desk paused briefly to check the pass clipped to his shirt pocket. He crossed carefully over to the central desk. “Where can I find three thirty-two?”
The nurse pointed her pencil down the hall to the right without looking up from her schedule sheet. Luke made his way up the corridor, glancing briefly at the faces on the gurneys.
Room 332 was near the end of the corridor. They had told him those who had recovered were down at the end. The door was open.
Inside, white curtain dividers broke the room into six separate stalls. He found Bev asleep in the last stall on the left. The swelling and redness that had marked her face when he had brought her in a few days ago were almost gone. Only a pattern of faded green and yellow bruising remained, the last vestiges of the ordeal. He leaned over to check the extent of bruising that remained. As the shadow of his head crossed her closed eyes, she came instantly awake, her eyes wide and afraid.
“Hi. It's me,” he said.
The fear drained away as her eyes focused on him.
“Hi, Luke.” Her voice croaked, husky with fatigue. She reached for his hand. “Hi,” she said again, relief evident in her smile. Lines of strain etched themselves across her face as she studied him. Her eyes had the dull sheen of grief and despair. She began to shake with great sobs, all the while trying to maintain her smile for him.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held her against his chest. Outside, the slow afternoon sun slid down the grimy windowpanes on the far side of her bed.
Almost an hour passed before she could talk coherently. A doctor had offered her another sedative but she had refused. She had to begin facing life again sometime, she said. That afternoon was as good as any to start.
“They told me Luke was killed while I was ...” She searched for the right word.
“Who was Luke?”
“My oldest child.” She looked down at her hands. “I guess I never mentioned his name to you did I?”
Luke wondered if she knew how he had been killed or if she knew she had done it. “No, I guess you didn't. The little one is safe, though. I saw him this morning.”
The clatter of a serving cart announced the evening meal. Luke helped her to balance the tray while she ate. The nurse explained that they didn't have enough side tables for everyone. They were still being inundated with new arrivals - Weres who had somehow escaped detection during the three day long mopping up that had been going on.
The meal and Luke's company seemed to cheer Bev somewhat. After dinner she managed another smile and retrieved her dessert from the tray as Luke lifted it off the bed.
“A giant Tootsie Roll. I haven't seen one of those since I was a kid. I didn't even know they made them anymore.” She turned it over in her hands. “Would you like half?”
Luke shook his head. “No. I've got to go in a few minutes.”
Bev shifted her weight with a grimace. “I've been so sore since I came to. I feel like every muscle in my body has been sprained.” She began to unwrap the bar. “One of the nurses told me it was worldwide. That thing you guys got to come down here started it.” She looked up quickly. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like that. I'm not trying to blame you for this.”
“It's all right. You aren't the only one who's mentioned it.” He squeezed her hand. “Here. I'll take a piece of that candy bar after all.” He tore off a piece of the end and tasted it.
Bev bit into her Tootsie Roll and made a face as she tried to chew a piece off. Her puzzlement changed to dismay as she pulled the candy from her mouth. Three of her teeth were embedded in the end of it.
***
Luke arrived a few minutes after Bourne. As he came into the kitchen, Dan let out a sigh of relief.
“Any luck today?”
“No, I'm afraid not, Luke. I've checked every hospital and vet clinic in town. They're still bringing a few stragglers in every hour or so, though.”
“People are still coming down with it?” Dan asked.
“No. These are Weres ... people who holed up in houses and under bridges. Most of them are pretty bloody. It's suspected these last cases have killed a lot of people during the past few days.”
Dan began moving around the kitchen searching for pots and dishes. Bourne took his coat off and joined her.
“An excellent idea, Dan. I have some filets in the freezer. We may as well eat them while we can. There was a lot of talk today about power outages in the not too distant future. They can't seem to get the coal trains rolling again.” He rummaged around in the back of the freezer for a moment. “Yes, here they are. A good steak dinner, then we can settle down in the library to sort through what has happened here. We may well have pieces of knowledge that mean something, if only we knew how to look at them.”
***
The soft, yellow glow of light in the library almost dispelled the dark knots of horror and uncertainty of the past four days. The dinner had been good and Luke felt a little guilty about that. The rest of the world barely held on just outside those dark windows, shocked and reeling from the events of the week. He leaned back in the old leather chair and took a sip of brandy from the crystal snifter and watched Dan scratch the cat's ears as it lay curled in her lap.
“The more I think about some of the things Alex said, the more I become convinced he was trying to tell us something,” Bourne said almost to himself. “And those dreams. He actually said you were supposed to learn something from them. Something that would help you later. Help you deal with this crisis.”
“Supposedly.” Luke said.
“So Alex knew we'd arrive at this state of affairs. Why didn't he just tell us this was coming?”
No one spoke for several minutes. Luke began to remember fragments of conversation. Hints and clues scattered everywhere. What was it Alex had said? He could monitor everything but thought. Thought was simply too complex, too ephemeral, too subjective to get a fix on.
“He didn't tell us because he was monitored. That's why the dream series. He could communicate with us at thought level, without being monitored - and subsequently destroyed, as happened when he finally tried to put it all down in writing.”
“Makes sense, Luke, up to a point.” Bourne closed his eyes for a moment and leaned back. “Then why didn't he tell you what you needed to know in the first three dreams? Was he going to put it all in the last dream? Why? It doesn't make sense.”
“He said we, including Alex, needed the first three to fine tune the process,” Dan offered.
“As I recall it, he told us why. He said we would need the experiences of the first dreams to get ready to believe or comprehend whatever it was he was going to tell us.”
“Then why wasn't he destroyed as soon as he communicated that intent to you?”
“I don't know. Maybe he was still too valuable to the ship at that point. Maybe he was the one who ran everything.”
“Everything but the system that destroyed him? Maybe,” Bourne said. “Maybe. It could have been something like that. But it still leaves one big question. Who's running things now?”
Dan leaned forward. “Maybe no one. Alex's final message said he had disconnected a lot of things.”
“And why has this Were plague only affected a fifth of the population, and why has that fifth been temporarily transformed into rabid animals?” Luke threw in.
“I might be of some help there, at least,” Bourne said. “I've got a theory. The McBride theory.”
“The people that were cut in two? Out where we found Kitty.”
“Yes.”
Luke edged around in his seat, his brandy forgotten. “How so?”
“Remember when Plummer thought the bodies had been used as specimens? Well that got me to thinking. Other than those two, we know of no other living specimens that were ever taken into the ship. If the ship were going to design a disease vector, make a viral transport mechanism for instance, it needed living tissue. Tissue that had not been exposed to preservatives or oxidized by exposure to air. If it used the McBrides as its models, the virus may have been too specific. It may have been able to operate only on specific DNA sequences. Sequences that the McBrides had and were only shared by a fifth of the rest of the population.” Bourne stopped and twisted toward the dark front windows.
“What is it?” Dan sat up straighter. “I heard it too.” The cat also sat up, its eyes wide and dark.
Bourne rose and went into the foyer. Luke heard him open the front door. A clicking sound filled the air. The cat shot off Dan's lap and stood in the middle of the room facing the door, its tail twice normal thickness.
“Well, where have you been, Mister Pug?” Pug followed Bourne into the library his nails clicking on the floor. The cat made a desperate leap for the library table. The dog’s jaws snapped shut just behind it. Pug tried to jump up on the table but a rake from the cat's claws threw him off balance. He hit the floor on his rear and slid to a halt several feet away. Bourne had him by the collar.
“What's gotten in to you lately? What'd you do to your mouth?”
“It's bloody,” Dan said. “Maybe the cat got him.”
“No. His lip is torn. Been out fighting I guess. Come on, boy, let's get you fixed up and bedded down.” He turned to Luke and Dan as he carried Pug off, “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the dogs were also affected by the recent events.”
Chapter 48
In the intervening week Bourne searched for his housekeeper and his lab assistant in the area hospitals and veterinary clinics on a rotating basis. Between visits to these various medical facilities he traveled to the morgues. No sign of either woman ever turned up. He blinked away fatigue as he headed down the access road from the west side emergency morgue set up in the state's National Guard armory. As he passed a large sewer treatment plant on the left, several large rats darted out into the road. They stopped for a split second as they realized the car bore down on them. Bourne heard one pop as he hit it. When he checked his rear view mirror the other rat was scurrying up an embankment. Away from the large culvert opening a hundred feet off the road.
***
Inside Culvert Thirteen the ceiling fauna had undergone a remarkable transformation. Where small polyps had thrashed about the previous week, liana-like tendrils hung down in loose spirals. A saclike organ the size of a large cantaloupe attached to each. These sacs could, on cursory observation, have been mistaken for the head of an octopus.
The organs hung suspended from the overhead by tiny fibrous stems. In the darkness one of the sacs twisted and undulated with peristaltic movements until its stem snapped. It fell to the floor with a firm, ripe plop. The attached sinewy tendril uncoiled, its tip rising several feet into the damp air. The tip ended in a nozzle shaped head which flared slightly several inches down the shaft. Beneath the flare, concentric rows of horny spines lay pressed flat against the pinks and blues of the fleshy surface of the tendril. Near the tip it tapered to the thickness of a man's thumb.
The upright portion of the tendril rose slowly until the tip swayed some six feet above the sac. The remaining two feet of tendril encircled the organism to provide a base of support for the upright portion as the tip swung around, as though trying to gain some sense of direction or bearing. Then slowly, the whole tendril lowered itself to the floor and began to elongate in a direction leading deeper into the culvert. At full elongation it reached out nearly fifteen feet. Then the tip swept blindly about the sewer until it found a small crack. It probed along the crack, stopping at a small crevice. The tip twisted itself into the crevice and hung on. Its distant end anchored, the tendril grew taut, then, with a shiver, began to contract, drawing the sac along the floor behind it with a muffled scraping sound. Once contracted to a length of three feet, its tip disengaged from its hold and shot out along the floor again to search for another crack or cranny into which it could gain a hold. Several feet away other sacs broke loose and hit the floor with damp thuds.
At the end of an hour the sac had pulled itself nearly a mile and had found a feeder-tube dumping into the main sewer line. The appendage tip carefully rose off the floor and explored the circumference of the tube. Finding everything to its satisfaction it entered the tube and continued its efforts on its journey toward a destination it only dimly perceived. It would know when it had found the right environment, however. The kind of place where it could rest and wait and grow an eye stalk.
***
When Luke stepped out of the elevator the same nurse that had been on duty when he had first come to the hospital waved him over to the desk.
“Would you wait here a minute, please.”
Luke leaned on the desk top while she put out a page for Doctor Philson.
“He should be along in a few minutes. You can wait over there if you like.” She nodded toward an area with orange plastic chairs lined against the wall.
Luke was standing in front of the window of the makeshift waiting area when the doctor arrived.
“How is Miss White?” he asked, as he motioned Luke over to one of the chairs. Philson looked weary and rumpled. Only his glasses remained bright. The lenses sparkled with near surgical cleanliness in the overhead lights.
“She's fine.”
“And her injury?”
“Completely healed. No scarring. Except for a few nightmares.”
Philson shook his head. Luke suspected he knew about nightmares.
“Good.” Convinced of Dan's health, Philson put his hand on Luke's arm. “What's your relation to Bev Townsend?”
Luke hesitated. “Friends. I was the one who brought her in.”
The doctor nodded. “I remember. The child, too. You know the child died don't you?”
“No.” Luke's stomach wrenched. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more.
“We don't know why. It was a couple of days ago. Just stopped breathing.”
“Nothing associated with Bev then?”
Philson caught the meaning. “No. She had nothing to do with it.”
“Does she know?”
“We've told her. Not much response. No response in fact. You know the Weres are still undergoing change, don't you?”
“No. What kind of changes?”
“Outwardly, so far, a change in the lower jaw. The mandible has defused along the chin. The two sides of the jaw work independently. The teeth are gone. There's some bone dissolution in the cranium. Frontal and parietal lobes are just about gone. The brain's protected only by the scalp now. Other less noticeable changes in the hands and a buildup of the spinal column. Thicker. Some of the vertebrae are starting to fuse.”
Philson noticed his expression and stopped.
“Sorry. I guess if you haven't worked with them, it sounds a little gruesome.” He stood up. “Anyway, I wanted you to know before you went in to see her. She's not the same. I didn't want you to be caught off guard.”
Luke looked away and tried to regain his composure. “Thanks for the heads up, Doctor. Do you know yet what the long term effect is going to be?”
“Not a clue. The biochemistry is changing too. Did you ever confirm what changes may have occurred to you and Miss White and the Doctor? I know Bourne is a good physiologist. My guess is that he's run some tests on you.”
Luke started to mention the changed chromosome count but thought better of it. He shook his head. “We all feel normal. As far as I can tell, nothing's changed.”
“Well, I hope for your sake everything is okay. The Weres are headed somewhere else on the evolutionary ladder at the moment I think. I'm not sure if it's for better or worse.” He shook hands and excused himself.
Luke started down the hall toward Bev's room but his steps grew more hesitant the further he went. Would it do her any good to see the shock he knew still lingered on his face? And he wasn't sure he could avoid an expression of horror when those two independent jaws started working up and down. Out of step with each other. He remembered the teeth stuck in the candy bar. At the time, he had thought they had come loose as a result of the blows he had delivered to her head. It was small relief that the reason was something genetic.
The door to her room stood open. Shadows moved across the wall. Someone said, “I'll come back to see you later, dear.” The voice choked back fear and loathing. Luke stepped aside as a middle aged man pushed past him in a near panic. The man's eyes flashed at Luke in that moment of passing. There was a recognition, Luke thought. It registered momentarily in the man's eyes. It reflected the horror the man felt for Luke. Because of what waited in there for him. The man fled down the hallway, breaking into a run as he neared the elevator. Inside the room another shadow moved. And a throaty cough followed. Then a hiss.
Luke turned and walked away before he had time to think of obligations. He was driving out the hospital parking lot before his mind clicked back on. He let out a long breath as he headed home, disappointed in himself.
Chapter 49
The Reverend Ellwood Pealle rose early the next morning as he did every morning. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he scratched at a particularly stubborn case of dandruff over his left ear then rose unsteadily and kicked his feet into a pair of purple slippers. He clomped into the bathroom and leaned over the sink to get a good look at his patch of dandruff.
