She went back to what Joe had said this morning, after his nightmare. What if all this sickness somehow goes back to someone trying to stop the Harmon project?
Bruce Friday slid the Outback to a halt beside the north side of a dilapidated one-story wooden house, completely cutting off her view of the soldiers. No smoke rose from the pipe chimney. The roof canted sideways. The walls seemed sucked in and the cunnychuck door, the outer entrance to the house, was secured by a clothesline strung between the knob hole and the shadows inside.
“Bruce, there’s no truck or snowmobile here. Maybe Alice left.”
“Her son dropped her off here. She’s inside, all right.”
There were no footprints in the snow, either, she thought walking toward the frigid-looking building, but then again, the sandlike snow was so granular that the slightest breeze shifted it and covered up footsteps in a minute. Still, no dog tracks. No caribou hides strung in the backyard. No hunting equipment. Nothing usable in view.
“Looks deserted, Bruce.”
“She’ll freeze in there. Hurry.”
She followed Bruce through the cunnychuck and into the living room. She stopped dead, her logical side needing a moment to catch up with her expectations of what she was supposed to see. The place was deserted. It smelled long deserted. It smelled like it had not been heated in months. Like even ghosts had left. There was no furniture. Karen called out, “Alice?” as if some voice might answer and dispel reality. Karen turned and saw fresh red paint dripping down a living room wall.
MURDERER MARINES!
YOU KILL OUR LOVED ONES! NOW WE KILL YOURS!
She was so taken aback that she froze, said, “Bruce? What?” and only vaguely registered the quick movement behind her as the floor creaked and an arm circled her neck with shocking force, and she was lifted off the ground.
Bruce looking sad and sick, from five feet away. Who is behind me? Karen fighting, trying to kick, claw, scream now, but the arm cut off her air. Karen thinking, Kick a shin or instep. Stomp on that black boot! Karen feeling something cold pinch the side of her throat, just a touch, and then the itchy cold sensation moved left to right and a hotness flooded her mouth and spread into her throat and the air was filled with reddish spray that fountained onto the scuffed white wall and beaded it and ran down the side like water.
She buckled.
Karen flopping like a fish. Karen clawing at her throat, unable to draw in air. Karen’s elbows hammering on the floor, her boots pistons, working on their own, as the pool around her grew slicker and soaked into cracks in the floor, the old ship timbers transformed into a home, and then losing purpose yet again. Wreckage. Ghosts.
“You,” she said. “Not…”
Only seconds had passed. Karen’s life was running out. Bruce bent over her, looking disgusted but also fascinated, as if studying her. And then another face was there, too. Two faces.
Karen Vleska, scientist, explorer, scheduled focus of an upcoming HBO documentary on the opening Arctic, which would now be canceled. Karen dying, but not on an Arctic trek, the way the documentary would have suggested she might.
Her final emotions came wordlessly, as she looked up at the two faces.
Terror.
Surprise.
THIRTEEN
I’d expected a conference but got an inquisition.
The Rangers drove me to the lab building on the tundra, within view of troops positioned a few hundred yards off, beyond concertina wire. We removed our boots beneath the NO DIRTY FOOTWEAR! WARNING! AVOID LAB CONTAMINATION! sign. In a foyer, rows of metal racks held pairs of combat boots. Mud dried on the floor.
Despite the somber mood there was something silly about Rangers, M4s on backs, walking around in stocking feet.
The building had no elevator. The guards followed me up concrete stairs, and past a glassed-in conference room where, grouped around a long conference table, standing and arguing, were about ten soldiers and civilians. A diorama of confusion: Merlin and the mayor at the far end of the table, standing, arms crossed, as if to say, We do not like what we’re hearing. A couple of Ranger officers poking something on the table, a map probably, and gesturing as if trying to convey orders. This is what we want you locals to do. The two CDC doctors watching, in an attitude of semi-helplessness. We haven’t found out anything yet that can help you. I saw a naval officer. A couple of state public health officials. And a man and woman sitting together, in uniform, glancing up sharply to meet my gaze as I passed, giving me a look of interest and recognition. Army investigators maybe. We’ve heard about you!
But Homza wasn’t there. The Rangers escorted me down the hall to the lab I shared with Eddie, where the general waited with a cute, gamine, Asian woman, in her mid thirties, in an Army sweater. Homza cradled a mug of steaming coffee. The woman sipped a Diet Pepsi from a can.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Ng, who’s running our special investigation unit,” Homza, said, his gray eyes probing. “She’ll report directly to me twice a day. I report to the White House every six hours.”
Both of them regarded me with a flat, appraising intensity bordering on suspicion. Their careers would be elevated or destroyed by what happened over the next few days. I was the bug under a microscope. They needed to know if I could hurt them or help.
Homza nodded at Ng. It meant, Go ahead.
Ng said, “I want straight answers, please. Did you have anything to do with the eruption of this outbreak?”
“What?” I was stunned.
“You were assigned to Alaska to seek out organisms that might be harmful. You’re dead center in this. Yes or no? Did this thing come from your work, your lab?”
“No, Colonel.” I felt myself growing warm.
“Did you, at any time this summer, find what you were sent here to look for, illness resulting from a U.S. government program?”
“No.” The warmth was turning to heat.
“Did you or Major Nakamura discover the existence of any prior testing program — directed by any branch of the armed forces — that may have caused this disease to erupt?”
Homza just watched and weighed. I said, “How can you ask that? We’re the ones who reported the rabies.”
“Which could mean you had prior knowledge,” came the high, musical voice of Amanda Ng. “It could mean you’re playing catch-up, minimizing damage.”
“You’re accusing us?” I asked, disgusted.
She shrugged. “Asking. I want to get to the bottom of this, as quickly as possible, and for this quarantine to end. I assume you do, too.”
“No,” I snapped. “I like it this way.”
She turned to the general. She had a mildly exotic look. Her face was heart shaped, her nose and mouth small. She was well proportioned, her honey-colored skin glowed, and her hair, almost blue-black, was cut in a shag that brushed the nape of slender neck. Her eyes were burnished light, and seemed to catch the fluorescent laboratory glow. The Army sweater she wore had built-in patches on the shoulders, and was thickly knit. A gold cross hung from her neck.