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:
There was a remote keypad built into the arm of my chair, linked to the Tank computer. I instructed it to replace the deep-sea panorama with a prerecorded program from the BDC archives, my documentary, The Disease Dilemma.
There I was. Facing myself from the wall, sitting on the couch back in my office, legs crossed casually, arm extended over the seat back. I looked relaxed and supremely healthy, my face full again, my skin tight and clear. My old voice filled the Tank, dosing me with nostalgia more powerful than morphine. The sunlight was strong behind me, glowing around my hair — midday in the world of the living, just a few weeks earlier. The vista of downtown Atlanta lay beyond. Image after image swept over me until the sentimentality of the experience began to wear. I had different eyes now, and different thoughts. When the person playing the role of “Stephen Pearse,” doctor to the world, claimed that he oversaw each serious outbreak investigation personally, I stifled a laugh. The hubris of this strange man tickled me. He was begging Zero to wait for him inside bay twenty-six at Orangeburg.
I stopped the show and sank back into the cushion of the headrest, closing my eyes on the brightness of the Tank. I triggered the medication switch with a rusted thumb and it worked on my emotions, set adrift into a bright and gauzy silence. I left myself for a while, and in the role of Stephen Pearse, I visited my current self in the chair. Be brave, I told that sickly form.
I surfaced to the toning of the Tank computer. I prodded the necessary keys on my armpad to receive the incoming message. It had been posted from “Stephen Pearse” in Zurich, Switzerland. The message read:
>Won’t you join me for a chat?
Maryk watched in disbelief as the conversation scrolled down his tablet. Stephen and Zero were conversing across a virtual table in a cyber-café halfway around the world.
Audio and visual were both disabled. Each dialogue leader was listed as S. Pearse. Stephen answered
>I am here.
>So you are still alive, Doctor.
>Medical science Is gaining on you.
>Me: 1. Medical science: approx.-500. Your colleague Maryk sensed my presence, it seems. Intriguing.
>You are ill. You have contacted me for Information about my treatment.
>Has he given up yet? Now that I have humiliated him? Zurich is quite pleasant this time of year.
>Do not underestimate Peter Maryk. And you are not in Zurich.
>Soon I will be, Doctor. Soon I will be in all places.
A window opened at the top right corner of Maryk’s tablet. It was Suzy Lumen. “Hailing’s still off,” she said. “He’s plugged in somewhere.”
“You can’t trace?”
>How does it feel to be sick yourself?
“Impossible to track him back through the Internet. He’s routed the signal through five or six sites all across the world, maybe more. The only crumbs left behind would be stored in his own drive cache.”
“All right,” Maryk said. She signed off and he found his place in the scrolling conversation. Zero was speaking.
>This body is wearing out. Breaking down.
>You are changing too fast. Out of control.
>I am only improving. I will spare the sinless fauna and flora. Only man will perish, and the earth will once again turn peacefully.
>Your human cells can take only so much.
>Yours too, Doctor. Maybe you think there is still hope for you. Maybe you think salvation is still possible. A vaccine. A cure.
>I am too far gone to be remedied.
>True, Doctor. So true.
>If you are so confident In your abilities, then what are you waiting for?
>The right girl to come along. A small-town girl, someone with a similar background, similar interests. I’m carrying a torch, you might say. One that must be extinguished. Man will be exterminated absolutely. It even one or two of you beasts are left behind, In a few hundred years you’ll be crawling all over the place again. The girl is a detail, nothing more. Maryk, too. My triumph will be a complete one.
>You will learn nothing of my treatment unless you surrender yourself to our care.
>How does It feel, Doctor?
Stephen did not respond.
>It won’t be long now. Embrace it, dear Doctor. It will be less excruciating that way.
>I only wish to outlive you, Ridgeway.
>Be brave, Doctor. Be brave.
The connection ended. Maryk saved the transcript and paged through it again. Zero had contacted Stephen because he was hurting. Zero was getting desperate. Desperation could lead to a critical mistake.
His tablet toned again. This time the window opened on Dr. Smethy. “Another Banix prescription was just filed under Stephen’s name.”
She posted him the electronic receipt. The prescription had been forwarded to a pharmacy just south of downtown Atlanta. Zero was walking into a trap and Maryk would be waiting for him.
The Airport
The country music playing in the aisles made her want to do something drastic. It was one of those electric fiddles, an instrument that clearly should never have been electrified, sawing into her brain like a voice instructing her to burn down the store. The sun was gone outside and soft halogen ceiling lights suffused the wide aisles of the Buy-Rite! Super Drug store with a ghastly, morguelike glow. Only two teenage customers remained inside, goofing off quietly in aisle three. Melanie sat at the front register in her red paper-like Buy-Rite! blazer, after spending the day scanning bar codes and working on her southern accent. The return to the dull routine of customer service was at first comfortable and even kind of fun, and she had amused herself between sales by reading every magazine and tabloid on the racks and most of the greeting cards, until she realized that it was not nostalgia, but in fact all that awaited her back in Boston was the same broken life of half jobs and always just getting by.
She drifted back down the long, warehouse-sized aisle to the pharmacy in the rear. Maryk wore a white Buy-Rite! pharmacist’s coat with the name plate “Dennis” over where most people’s hearts are. The coat was too small for him, the wrist hems coming down only as far as the taped cuffs of his gloves, which made him look even more huge up on the raised counter overlooking the store.
He had needed someone else who could stand in the store without wearing a suit. The common sense assumption was that Zero himself would not come inside, based on the fact that there had been no infections at either of the two previous pharmacies he had patronized. She was there solely in order that everything would appear normal inside. In the event that Zero did enter, she was to usher out any customers so that BioCon could seal off the store and Maryk could do away with him.
She stepped up behind the counter over a carpeted wooden step that sounded hollow. There was a carousel of sunglasses, and she looked into one of the small mirrors, picking-at the lifeless strands of her platinum blond wig. “This isn’t fooling anyone,” she said. The wig looked like one of those awful hairpieces they give free to cancer kids.
She could see the entire store from the raised counter, the two kids having split up, the girl in the makeup aisle and the boy at the snacks. She could see straight down the double-wide center aisle to the glass doors in front.