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:
“Oren Ridgeway?” said Melanie.
They both turned to her. Stephen said, “You knew him?”
She retreated somewhat. “The family,” she said. “He worked summers in my dad’s office. He was a few years older than I was.”
“Fascinating,” said Stephen. He returned to Maryk. “Assume Ridgeway came into direct contact with the African girl. It couldn’t have gone any farther than that in Africa, or else we’d have seen it, seen victims.”
Maryk interrupted. “We backtracked after Plainville. We posted the RECI to see if any of their people had gotten sick. The answer was no.”
“Of course. But something tripped the virus into lying latent, some mutation inside the girl. Ridgeway showed no symptoms, and brought it back here unknowingly. Then a year or so later — on a trip to his parents in his hometown, I assume — it erupted. The virus emerged there in three places simultaneously. In the schools: he may have stopped in for a visit with his old teachers. In the pediatrician’s office.” He looked at Melanie. “A ‘hello’ to your father, perhaps. And the town halclass="underline" His mother worked for the town clerk.”
Maryk had been trying to break in. “Plainville does not lie latent,” he said. “No one who contracts it survives two weeks, never mind—”
“That was the PeaMar4. The viral inhibitors from your blood reacted with the virus from the girl; By the time it spread to Ridgeway, a sort of symbiosis had been reached. The virus was softened up, but not killed, and attained something like equilibrium with his body. The impossible was then suddenly possible.”
Maryk said, “How do you know all this?”
“I know it, Peter. I know it. The goal of every active virus is to change the host cell — to transform the host into a copy of the virus. Not to kill, but to coexist; to preserve a viable host so that the virus may survive and endure. And this has always been biologically impossible. Until now.” Stephen looked at him fire-eyed. “You’ve got to open your mind to this, Peter. Under normal conditions, either the immune system battles the virus into submission, or the virus continues unabated and consumes the host. But not here. Here communion has been achieved. Rather than plundering and killing Ridgeway’s immune cells, the mutated virus instead began transforming them, successfully, exponentially, into virus cells — exactly as it is supposed to, only this time, it worked. Plainville is the first successful virus. It is not lying dormant in him; it is active, it is thriving. It is one with him. It has transformed this Oren Ridgeway into a human Plainville vector.”
Maryk resisted this at the same time it started to make sense. “First of all,” he said, “how did you find this place?” He needed to understand it all logically.
“A few months before Plainville, Ridgeway won a MacArthur Foundation grant of $345,000 for his work documenting and preserving expiring species of flora here in the Okefenokee Refuge. He gave away every dime to radical environmental groups for the first two years, then dropped out of sight. An article in a back issue of Audubon led me here. Most of these supplies — the boat, the instruments — are pilfered from his original camp, now abandoned, less than a kilometer away. Something drew me from there to this place. It was almost like I could smell the plants, Peter. Right through my suit. I feel close to him.”
Maryk ignored this. “Then, those plants, inside?”
“He was learning. He was planning his infection, but patiently, over four years’ time. He was methodical. A virus must infect — that is all it knows and all it wants to do. But now the virus has taken human form: It has a brain, it has reasoning capacities and an understanding of the way humans work to fight disease. It has the best of both existences, virus and man. The outbreaks were tests. He was taking human samples, the same way we take viral samples, in order to measure his infective progress. Not indiscriminately, because he knew we would trace that. “I think that Plainville was most likely a mistake. It was his first time, he may not have known what was happening to him yet. But we covered up the subsequent outbreaks, which led finally to Orangeburg. He tried to take me out and the entire BDC with me.”
Maryk kept pace. “So then this same man followed you to Amagansett.”
“Virus, Peter. This virus.” Stephen nodded. “Imagine his shock at opening up my tablet and discovering that there were three Plainville survivors generating sera.”
“And then he set about hunting them down,” Maryk said. It was all unfolding in his mind. “The lightweight shoe print in Lancet’s bathroom. The plants missing from Blossom’s car. The open windows at each location to air out the smell. He was sampling their blood before killing them.”
“In order to test it against his own disease. He had to know just how potent their antibodies were, to see how much of a threat they posed to him. Of course this man-virus would kill them. They were his cure, and therefore had to be eliminated.”
Melanie had stood silently listening through this. Now her voice came like a gasp. “The broken-down motorist.”
Stephen nodded. “That was our Patient Zero. He was driving back from Boston. He had just failed to eliminate the third survivor.”
Maryk remembered the shadow in the cul-de-sac outside the Penny University. He remembered the shoe marks on the rusted rungs and the feeling he had of being watched inside the sewer. Patient Zero had been there that night. Only the sewer sanitation mechanisms killed his virus in the water and prevented its spread.
Stephen was still looking at Melanie. “Your death would guarantee his success,” he said.
He seemed unaware of the impropriety of his statement. He seemed only intrigued. Melanie stepped away from him. “Oh my God.”
Maryk said, “Then where is this ‘Zero’ right now?”
“I don’t know. He is extraordinarily contagious, so any form of mass transportation would lead to a prematurely infectious event. He is saving himself for the end. Therefore, he travels cautiously. He must have his own car.”
Maryk searched the swamp in frustration. He looked at the laboratory and at the twisted Plainville trees. He was trying to get his mind around the reality that there was a man out there driving the streets who was no longer a man but a virus.
He knelt down and unbuckled his bag and pulled out his tablet. “I’m calling in BioCon. We’ll preserve some of these plants for examination, then torch the rest and return to the bureau.”
“Wait,” Stephen said. He used his cane to stand. “His work is still here. Written logs, data disks. I need to remain to analyze them.”
“Stay here? You shouldn’t even be out of B4. The bacteria alone will eat you alive.”
“He was expecting to return. We’ve got his research, Peter. Listen to me. Something is troubling him. He would not have panicked over the LNPs otherwise. He would have touched off a chain of transmission and consumed the entire human race by now if there weren’t something keeping him back, something he is waiting for. The secret may be right inside here.” He moved near Maryk. “I feel close to him, Peter. I can’t explain it, but I think I can make sense of his notes, his work here. We’ll not have a chance like this again.”