The Blood Artists
- Автор: Хоган Чак
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-688-15622-0
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Blood Artists». Краткое содержание книги:
He replaced the portrait of the old, forgotten Melanie with a more recent photograph of the woman known as Blossom. She appeared much changed, thinner, harder-looking, handing out leaflets on a street corner. Her hair was cut short and she wore a T-shirt with a small insignia over the breast. Melanie could make out the words on the front of her shirt, “Live Long.”
“As I said, Plainville has a varied and pronounced effect upon the brain. Blossom, after her recovery, was not the same person she had been before her illness. She became preoccupied with the future, joining a fringe religious order. She was not employable, and we doubted she could even survive on her own. She was therefore awarded a sweepstakes prize through the maiclass="underline" a weekly stipend and free rent in an Atlanta apartment complex. She took this to be a religious sign and relocated immediately.”
He then put up what appeared to be a kind of surveillance photograph of Lancet, now older, cleaner, shaved, and better dressed. He was conversing with a customer from behind a store counter.
“Lancet also emerged from his illness a changed person. But he became fixated on the past, manifested in a preoccupation with the popular culture of his youth. A poor credit rating from his previous life prevented him from opening a nostalgia retail store in the Boston area, but at a franchise fair there he was offered an attractive deal on some prime retail space in the Underground Mall in downtown Atlanta and accepted without question. For whatever reason, Lancet became a merchant of his past.”
Maryk cleared the wall screen.
“But Milkmaid’s change was the most intriguing. She was found to have developed certain remarkable, inexplicable artistic talents, though she had never so much as touched a paintbrush before the disease. She was unschooled and did not attend museums or galleries of any kind. She never bothered to sign her canvases, or even complete many of them. She seemed to have no interest in the business of art, and sold the paintings only as was necessary to pay her rent.”
Melanie went cold. “You,” she said. “You were my so-called patron.”
“Through one of my investigators. But you resisted all entreaties to come to Atlanta. We even tried appealing to your veterinary bent: a letter of invitation from the Emory School of Medicine; the cat hospital in Decatur; an entry-level position with the local ASPCA — all rebuffed or ignored.”
She saw it all now. None of those strange job offers had ever made any sense to her.
“We purchased your paintings to keep you going,” he said, “though on several occasions we wound up funneling money directly into your bank account, and paid bills you forgot to pay. Evidently you never bothered to balance your statements. We watched out for you, took care of you. We even pushed you out of the way of oncoming trolleys. For over four years we have been with you: not every minute, and not every place, but comprehensively enough to ensure that you remained healthy and always within our reach.”
Her stare burned into the vacuum of space between them. “Endometriosis,” she said.
“Just an excuse to get at more of your blood, as well as to sample some other fluids for research. Only rarely did we require a blood pull that could not wait for a regular doctor’s appointment. This was the exception, not the rule. My people would slip into your apartment during the night, but rarely did they need to put you out for more than seven or eight hours at a time.”
“Oh my God.”
“As I said, early on there was hope for a vaccine. The stakes were very high. I tried to give you a life while we did this critical work. But then the outbreaks started.”
She was reeling. “Outbreaks?”
“We had to cover them up, for obvious reasons. Blamed something else each time. There have been five subsequent breaks since Plainville. The first occurred thirteen months later, at an ‘Engaged Encounter’ weekend for prenuptial Catholics in a Franciscan retreat north of Tallahassee, Florida. All fifty-three participants died, including the cafeteria and ministerial staffs. Fortunately for us, the location was isolated, and therefore easily contained. We blamed a rare salmonella. At subsequent outbreaks, we began experimenting with serum derived from your blood, as well as the blood of the others. Only yours has proved consistently successful. There is a time factor involved, as I said. Success requires immediate intervention. The most recent reemergence occurred less than two weeks ago, in South Carolina.”
As she was sorting through all of this, he put up on screen the image of a naked man lying facedown across a bed. There was blood on the floor by the man’s hands. Melanie quickly looked away.
“Lancet,” said Maryk. “Three days ago. It looked like a suicide at first.”
He changed the image to that of a corpse stuffed facedown into the backseat of a car.
“Blossom,” he said. “Very few people know about Plainville, know that it did not die in that small town in southeastern Massachusetts. And no one, save a core group of people working directly under me, knew about the survivors. You are a closely held secret, which is why we are meeting here and not inside the BDC. Are you certain you don’t remember anyone else following you recently? Perhaps something in the alley last night?”
She was staring at the screen. The back of the corpse’s T-shirt was wrinkled and dark, but Melanie could just make out the words “And Prosper.” Then Maryk clicked off the image, and her gaze settled sullenly upon the carpeted floor.
“We had planned to cut you all loose as soon as we derived a vaccine,” he said. “But the Plainville bug is too complex, and constantly changing. It burns bright and fast and then wriggles away somehow, only to pop up in a slightly different form again behind us. There will be no vaccine. The only existing treatment is the antibody remedy of your blood serum.”
She was wondering when the screaming would begin, if it would be soon or much later. Probably very soon. She looked up at Maryk standing before her, the white-haired man of her fever dreams. “You ruined my life,” she said.
He approached her then, enormous and imposing, until only the tray table of untouched food separated them. “On the contrary,” he said, “I believe I saved your life.”
“No.” She nodded at the high school portrait that had long since vanished from the wall screen. “You changed me. You made me into something else.”
The door clicked above her, and Maryk glanced up at the person entering. Then he came around the tray table, to her side. He knew enough to choose her good, left ear. She turned away from him as Pasco descended to the bottom step.
Maryk said, “This had to be done. I could not just cure you and let you walk away. Plainville is catastrophic to every human being on this planet — except you. You alone are immune to it now.”
“If this is all so good,” she said too loudly, “then why does somebody want to kill me?”
She sensed him straightening, pulling back. “That is something I don’t know yet,” he said. “Stephen Pearse: He was not infected in a lab accident. He was infected while treating a room full of patients — in Orangeburg, South Carolina — who inexplicably awoke from chronic, clinical catatonia infected with a newly mutated strain of the Plainville virus. Stephen Pearse has Plainville, and yet he is still alive today — because of the antibodies your immune system generates, which I have nurtured and seeded him with. We were only too late to cure him. But your blood is sustaining Stephen Pearse. You are the only thing keeping him alive.”