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:
“Shouldn’t you have a gun or something?” she said. “What about calling in the police? The army, even.”
Maryk slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket. She thought his shoulder seams would burst. “That would only mean putting more people at risk. They aren’t equipped for this.”
What he didn’t say was that he had a jones for viruses, and that Zero was the ultimate virus and Maryk wanted him all to himself.
“Well, I’d blow a hole in him,” Melanie said. “But that’s just me.”
“Thank you for your input.”
She picked up a TB pamphlet and opened it before putting it back. “I was wondering what’s going to happen to me after all this.”
His eyes remained on the front doors. “What do you mean?”
“Just that, part of me is worried that when this ends, I’ll be sort of expendable. I know I’ve learned a lot here. I’ve seen a lot.” She kept her tone as casual as possible. “Too much, maybe?”
His expression did not change. “What are you saying?”
“Just that I’d hate to see something happen to me. Do you think I need to take any precautions?”
He looked at her then with a gray-eyed glare that made her wish she had remained back at the register. It was anger, clearly, and yet something else. She thought she had been speaking his language, but he looked now as though she had somehow disappointed him.
The door chime sounded. They turned and another teenage kid entered, stopping just inside the doors that slid shut behind him. He looked around at the signs over the aisles, then saw the pharmacy in back and started toward it. Maryk lifted his hands out of his pockets. Melanie moved one step away.
The kid wore an army-style olive-drab jacket with a thin silver chain looped off the shoulder. He was slight and scuzzy with day-old chin growth and brown hair unevenly trimmed, as though by a friend. The bandage on his neck was just him trying to look cool. He came around a bin of New Year’s Eve hats and horns to the counter, nodding at “Dennis” and drumming two dirty fingers.
“Here to pick up a prescription,” he said with a nasty twang.
“Name?”
“Smith.”
He said it confidently enough. Maryk nodded, and Melanie moved another step away. “I’ll get it,” she said suddenly, going around the corner behind Maryk, out of sight into the back. Dr. Freeley and another Special Pathogens agent sat there on folding chairs, inside contact suits. Dr. Freeley handed Melanie a white paper bag with the prescription form taped over the folded top. It read “Banix,” but was in truth ten capsules of cyanide, just in case. Melanie heard Maryk out in front.
“Is this prescription for you?”
“For my daddy.”
“Is he here?”
“He sent me on in alone. He’s sick.”
“He’s at home?”
“Yep.”
“Because there’s a restriction on this medicine. Is there a phone number I can reach him at?”
“Naw. He’s out in the car right now. He’s sick, and he’s waiting out in the car. Sent me in.”
“He’s in the car.”
“Right. Said to say it’s all set.”
“Payment is, through his doctor. But this is a medical issue. Is he right outside?”
Dr. Freeley was waving at Melanie to get back out to the counter. Melanie gave the bag a shake so that the crinkle would precede her, then turned the corner.
The kid’s fingers were hanging on the counter now, no longer drumming. His posture was defensive and he watched the bag as Melanie handed it to Maryk.
“Just down the street a-ways,” said the kid, pointing, then scratching his neck near the bandage. “Uh — he’s real sick, an’ in a real hurry.”
Maryk deliberated, but then handed him the bag. “All right,” he said. “This time.”
The kid took the bag, gracious in victory. “No problem at all.”
He hustled back down the aisle past a pyramid of bottled soda. The dong-ding of the electric eye chimed, and he was gone.
Maryk was already stripping off his jacket. Dr. Freeley emerged and the other agent was speaking into his tablet: “He’s moving. Hold positions and watch him all the way to the car.”
“Some hustler,” Maryk was saying. “Working for a quick fifty. Zero must have killed the first two to stop his disease from spreading.” He pulled his black bag out from under the counter. “Stay with her,” he told Dr. Freeley, who was about to protest, but Maryk was already gone, rushing ahead of the other agent to the exit in back.
Maryk sprinted with his bag at his side. At the end of the back alley he slowed and held up his hand to quiet the other agent’s approaching boot steps. He leaned forward and peered left around the corner. He watched the open end of the connecting alley where it emptied into the brighter street.
The kid appeared with the prescription bag in his hand and shuffled past.
Maryk jogged to that corner. The kid was turning right off the main sidewalk ahead of him and Maryk looked high across the street as he moved into the clear. He saw the yellow sleeves of his spotters’ contact suits moving along the rooftops and he strode past the unmarked vans parked along the street.
The kid disappeared around the corner and Maryk was after him.
Melanie hung by the checkout counter in front. Dr. Freeley stood at the entrance, trying to see down the street outside, then moved too close to the electric eye and set off the chime, and the doors slid open. Dr. Freeley ventured a step out into the night, now a yellow form bright against the black street, looking down the sidewalk. She glanced back into the empty store, and looked at Melanie, who looked quickly away. When Melanie looked back, Dr. Freeley was moving along the front windows outside, and the doors were sliding shut.
Melanie was relieved to be alone. She stepped out from behind the register, and a tension so constant she had forgotten it was there left her small lungs. She breathed free.
Her happiness brought her to the snack aisle, where the two kids were together now. They stifled their giggling when she rounded the corner, and Melanie remembered she had her cashier’s jacket on. She saw that the kids were stoned. The boy was trying to choose between two different bags of cookies, while the girl made fluttering movements with her hands, air-drying her fingernails, each of which she had polished a different color.
Melanie moved to the candy. She was hungry again and craved something sweet. The dong-ding door chime sounded, and she quickly grabbed a Hershey’s bar.
She stepped back from the kids and peeled off the foil, watching over the top of the aisle for Dr. Freeley’s approaching yellow hood. She snapped off a corner piece and the gratification as the milk chocolate sank into her tongue was immediate. She bit fast into another sweet chunk as she listened for Dr. Freeley’s footsteps, the shuffling kind, produced by the suits.
She got up on her toes and peered over the aisle. She did not see a yellow hood, and Dr. Freeley was tall. Another greedy bite, and then Melanie replaced the candy bar half eaten on the shelf and returned to the front, guiltily wiping her mouth with her fingers.
She saw no one at the entrance. She crossed the end of the first aisle and looked to the rear and it was empty, and that made Melanie slow. She heard noises then, like the sound of things dropping to-the floor somewhere in back. She crossed to the second aisle and saw nothing, and then to the third, from which she could see all the way to the pharmacy.
Zero was behind the counter. He was hunched slightly, his back to her, rifling through the shelves and bins of prescriptions.