Water poured from the bottom of the fissure.
Father Joe came over the rise at that moment. He exchanged a silent gaze with her, then raised his hand over the scene. “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls…”
Megan jumped at the sound of a thunderclap overhead. She looked up and a raindrop struck her in the eye. Then a cluster of black clouds opened up.
Puddles of water formed quickly and churned like boiling red broth.
She turned to the priest. He stood frozen in prayer.
Thunder boomed again and sheets of rain poured over her. She stumbled along the edge of the muddy lake and took cover under an overhang of jagged rock.
A minute later the rain stopped as quickly as it had started. She stepped out into the open and started around the edge of the lake, looking for survivors.
Above her, patches of dark limestone spotted the forested peaks, staring down on the wet clay like hunters’ eyes taking in the fresh meat of their kill.
She passed the body of a pregnant woman who looked about her age. Megan stooped and felt the woman’s abdomen. It was quiet.
By the time she reached the other side of the valley, the scale of the wounded earthen formation had grown to freakish proportions. Three peaks rose to either side and behind the massive stony pouch. A jagged V-shaped fissure ran up to the top of what looked as if it had been a gigantic earthen reservoir — a geologic oddity that collected runoff from rivers hidden beneath a carpet of green on the towering peaks above her. She was standing a hundred or so feet below the lower edge of the breach.
It appeared as though the bulbous front wall of the reservoir had ruptured, releasing a small ocean of water that carried with it the mountain’s earthen slopes. The mud had probably consumed the shallow valley in a matter of seconds.
She waded through ankle-deep mud along the shoreline and maneuvered around a tree trunk snapped in half by the torrent.
When she stepped back onto firm ground, what she saw stopped her in mid-stride.
A fresh boot print.
She looked closer. A second and third print led into a coppice of trees on her left. She glanced behind her. Father Joe was making his way around the valley with a downward gaze.
A thought tapped her on the shoulder, and then screamed at her.
Get out of here. Now!
It happened before she could scream. Her feet left the ground, her body arched by the torque of the force. A hand came up over her mouth.
“Watch out. She bites,” were the last words she heard before the world went dark.
33
“I’m telling ya, Elmer, there’re too many peculiar goings-on here.”
Ben Wilson had just recounted the unlikely events of that morning — discovering the Killer T-cells in Jane Doe’s lungs, and moments later learning that his senior lab tech had inexplicably mislabeled the girl’s autopsy tissues for incineration.
“Margie doesn’t make those kinda mistakes,” Ben added.
The two men were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at a ten-foot-tall Plexiglas mosquito pen in the center of Elmer’s malaria lab. The only other person in the lab couldn’t hear them talking; he was inside the see-through enclosure, wearing a rubberized suit and netted hood to shield him from the mosquitoes swarming around him.
Elmer ran a hand through his tousled white mane. “Maybe you should have a talk with someone in Security.”
“If I talk with anyone, it’s going to be the police,” Ben said. “Luke is right. Every time we get a lead going on that Guatemalan boy or Jane Doe, some hobgoblin pulls the rug out from under us. Something’s up.”
Elmer turned to him. “Have you talked to Luke this morning?”
“I called several times, but he didn’t answer.”
“All this stuff going on…” The older man’s eyes drifted out of focus. “I’m worried about my son, Ben.”
Both men turned back to the enclosure when the hooded man tapped on the Plexiglas.
When the man saw that he had their attention, he started removing the covers from a row of petri dishes. Throngs of mosquitoes immediately blanketed the bottom of each dish, covering the thin red layers of blood agar.
“The one person I’d most like to talk to,” Ben said absently, “is lying in the morgue.”
“Oh?”
“I’m thinking of Kate Tartaglia.”
“You really think Zenavax had something to do with those children’s deaths?”
“I have no idea, but twenty-five years in this business tells me that whatever killed them is not a natural biological process. Somebody’s messing with Mother Nature. Jane Doe was attacked by a stampede of Killer T-cells, the likes of which I’ve never seen, and I’m willing to bet I’d’ve found the same thing going on in that Guatemalan boy if the autopsy hadn’t been stopped.” Ben held up a pair of fingers. “Two deaths, both with findings that sound strangely similar to your episode with those mice.”
Elmer held up a hand, as if pushing back an uncomfortable thought. “But the other day, you told me that the girl’s pancreas and bile ducts were damaged.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I can’t think of any reason that a vaccine would damage those organs,” Elmer said. “There’s got to be another explanation.”
“I’m just following the trail these children left,” Ben said. “Death always leaves a trail, and you and I are gonna find out where this one leads.”
“Sounds like I’m being recruited for something.”
Ben nodded. “The alphavirus vector you developed for your flu vaccine — how similar was it to Zenavax’s?”
“Almost identical. That’s how the lawsuit came about.”
“Would Zenavax use the same alphavirus for their malaria vaccine?”
“Without a doubt. It’s the perfect vector for a malaria vaccine. They’d have made a few changes, but most of what’s unique about their strain would remain the same.”
The man in the mosquito pen picked up a handheld light that was shaped like a gun and aimed it at the petri dishes. Mosquitoes passing under the blue swath of light sparkled like glitter.
“So,” Ben said, “with what you know about their alphavirus strain, could you identify it, isolate it from other strains? That is, could you tell me whether someone was exposed to it?”
Elmer’s head moved up and down while watching the man in the pen. “Months after the vaccine is given, you can still find small amounts of the alphavirus circulating in the patient’s blood. Give me a sample of whole blood from those children. It may take a few days, but if they received a Zenavax vaccine during the last several months of their lives, we’ll know.”
Ben was shaking his head even as Elmer spoke. “There’s no whole blood. The girl died hours before they found her. Her blood had already coagulated. And the boy’s blood went out the door with the rest of his remains when the autopsy was cancelled.”
Elmer began walking in a tight circle, pulling on his earlobe.
Ben knew to leave the man alone when he was thinking.
Halfway around his third lap, Elmer stopped and asked, “The boy that died in our E.R. — did you send any of his blood for viral cultures?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“When we do viral cultures, we always split the blood specimen and send a portion to the state lab. Regulations. The state makes us send them part of each specimen so they can do their own tests on random samples to check our results.”
Ben was generally familiar with controls of that type — the State Health Department exerted its influence over every department at their hospital — but he didn’t know the specific regulations that applied to Elmer’s lab. It was one of the myriad quality control practices that regulators thrust upon hospitals, and in this instance he wanted to kiss the bureaucrat who had devised that procedure.