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:
They set down on top of the roof of the main building. Two people stood at the roof door, one of whom Melanie recognized immediately as Maryk. The pilot gave her a thumbs-up signal and she unbuckled her seat belt, taking the white medical suitcase from between her legs and pushing open the door.
She ducked out away from the whipping rotors as she’d seen done so many times on TV. She had to stop and balance herself as the helicopter tipped up and blasted her with wind, wasting no time in taking off again. Her hospital shirt rippled and climbed halfway up her back, and for a moment she thought she might blow off the rooftop like a scrap of paper. Then it was gone, running lights rising into the sky over the bayous of southern Louisiana. She straightened and turned.
Maryk, glowing from a spotlight set behind him, reeked of bleach. He probably used it as after-shave, she thought. He said nothing, and she set the medical kit containing packets of her blood down at his feet, rather than hand it to him.
“Weir, Melanie,” he said. “On-site.”
The man holding a plastic-sheathed tablet next to him replied, “Weir, Melanie, on-site, twenty-forty-eight.”
She had to strain to hear them. Both ears were filled with noise in the seashell-like absence of helicopter roar.
They descended three flights of echoing metal-edged concrete stairs to a long, gray hall. Every door was open and several inches thick. But except for that and the cameras watching from every corner, the inside of Lewes looked more like a junior college than her idea of a federal penitentiary.
A third suited man ushered her into a side room and began to dress her as Maryk watched. She was issued a plastic surgical gown to wear over her hospital scrubs, a procedure mask with a wraparound splash visor, a cotton cap, a white cowl covering her head except her eyes and nose, and rubber-soled, elasticized booties that fit over her sneakers. She felt as though she were eight years old again and being bundled up for an afternoon of sledding.
Maryk said from the doorway, “What do you think you can do here?”
She had bartered her blood for Maryk’s acquiescence, but now that she was there and being suited up, she was regretting her decision. The man worked over her with great deference, like a tailor for NASA. She played confidence to Maryk. “I’d like to help,” she said.
“Lewes Penitentiary is an administrative maximum level six. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“The Bureau of Prisons uses a one-to-five scale to rank penitentiaries by security level. The men inside here are the worst of the worst.”
“If you’re trying to scare me,” she said, “you should know I’ve had this aversion to prisons all my life.”
“What I’m trying to do is to dispel any Florence Nightingale fantasies Stephen Pearse may have instilled in you.”
The tailor stuck a yellow and red BDC patch to her chest and pointed her to the latex glove dispensers, where she took a petite size five. Maryk went to her and seized her gloved hands, taping them hard around her wrists and checking the seal. She realized then that they were dressed exactly alike.
They left the room and started down the long, gray hall, people in yellow suits brushing busily past them. She had to hustle to keep pace. Her outfit was bulky and everything was moving fast.
“At this point, these men no longer pose any threat to you, or to society,” he said, “except through their infection. Plainville is the warden in this place now.” They passed a high, circular guard station dead center in the hall. “Riots ensued once the disease cycle began. Many of the guards fled when they realized they were cooking in here the same as the inmates, and the prisoners went at each other like animals. Plainville was already well entrenched. A closed environment, with substandard living conditions, poor hygiene: an optimal ecology for an airborne bug like Plainville. But there is nothing more conducive to microbial transmission than a riot, and the disease quickly wore them down. The fight’s gone out of most of them now, and we’re losing nine to ten an hour. This is B unit, all advanced cases.” He stopped at a closed steel door sealed into the wall at the end of the hallway. “Inside, guards lie side by side with inmates.”
She heard noises through the door that were groans.
Maryk faced her. “You will be safe inside so long as you remain with me at all times. Touch no one and nothing, and keep yourself covered. You know that blood contact from a needle stick will overwhelm your resources and infect, antibodies or no antibodies. Same as for me. So if you are considering another self-destructive stunt like the one you pulled in B4, know that I will stop you, and you will be removed. Stay away from needles, and stay away from blood.”
He released the door. It opened and there was just enough room for two people to stand inside and face another steel door. The first door closed and her shoulder was pressed against his left biceps. She felt him breathing, and she realized she was afraid of him again.
“The riots killed any hope for negative airflow containment,” he said. “We are working in a Plainville atmosphere here. These ultraviolet light closets are only checkpoints between areas of higher viral intensity and lower viral intensity. When we come back out, these doors will lock down automatically and initiate a two minute UV light shower. You’ll stand for that until the second door opens.” He rattled all this off as though giving her directions to the bathroom. “Scared?”
She nodded, staring straight ahead, not looking at him.
Maryk flexed his black rubber hands. “Good,” he said. He hit a switch and the second door released.
The unit beyond was high and long and painfully bright. They stepped onto the middle of three tiers, facing the hollow center of the unit, cells lining the railed parapets in long rows on either side. It was windowless, but high-intensity lamps made the cell block appear artificially as bright as day.
The cell doors were all open and the cells themselves were empty. Cots lay along the guard walk between the open doors and the low railing along the hollow, and there was a body on every cot. The stagnant smell of the sealed unit hit her immediately, human sickness and spoil and trapped smoke. The sides of the concrete parapets had been licked black by riot fire. There was a footpath cleared through the trash strewn over the floors: toilet paper, burned blankets, feces.
She followed Maryk along the path of debris, starting down the length of the left parapet, finding the red painted rail with her gloved hand and gripping it as she went. He studied computer charts hooked to the cots and stopped now and then to pull back a sheet and examine the progression of some remarkable sore, moving intently from patient to patient, oblivious to the moans and feverish talk, appraising the prisoners’ treatments and modifying them or okaying them before moving on, and all the while keeping an eye on Melanie.
“This one is a spitter,” he warned.
This particular inmate had obviously once been very large. His loose skin now sagged over his wasting frame, obscuring tattoos burned fiercely into his chest and arms. The high-intensity light above sought out every blemish and sore.
There was a strange tranquility about these criminals, a red-eyed curiosity as they lay there dissolving. She could not tell which of the sick were the guards. The disease wore away all distinction.