Jenna felt no misgivings about striding forward on her own, knowing the Marines had her back. Still, she gave her armored vest a surreptitious tug. Nikko kept to her knee, as if sensing her tension.
As she reached the door, she shook back her hood, ignoring the rain, and plastered on a feigned look of confusion. She knocked firmly, then stepped back.
“Hello,” she called out. “I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to the Ahwahnee’s lobby?”
A faint sound reached her.
So somebody was inside.
She leaned closer, bringing her ear near the door. “Hello!” she tried again, louder this time.
As she listened, she realized the noise was the muffled ringing of a phone. From the tone, it had to be a cell phone.
She took in a breath to call again when somebody responded, hoarse, barely audible.
“… help me…”
Reacting instinctively to the plaintive cry, Jenna pulled out her Smith & Wesson and used the butt of her pistol to smash the side light next to the doorknob. As the window shattered, she yanked the cuff of her jacket lower over her hand, brushed the worst of the glass out of the way, then reached through and tugged on the door latch inside, disengaging the lock.
She heard boots pounding up behind her.
A glance back revealed Drake running her way. “Wait!”
Now unlocked, the door swung open on its own.
Jenna kept sheltered to the side and raised her pistol in both hands. Drake reached her, taking a position on the other side.
A single bedside lamp glowed inside the shadowy room. It revealed a figure in the bed, half covered by a comforter. From the blond hair, it had to be Amy Serpry — but the woman’s face was swollen and blotched, her skin blistering, darkening the edges of her lips. Vomit stained the top of the quilt, while the sheets were tangled as if she had fought within them.
Earlier, Jenna had heard about Josh having a seizure.
She suspected Amy had suffered similarly.
No wonder she hadn’t escaped too far. She must’ve gotten sick and went to ground where she could.
Jenna felt little sympathy for the saboteur, knowing how many had died because of the woman’s actions.
Amy’s head tilted on the pillow, falling in the direction of the door. Her eyes were an opaque white, likely blind. Her mouth opened, as if to again plead for help.
Instead, blood poured forth, swamping the pillow and soaking the mattress. The body sagged in the bed, going slack and still.
Jenna took a step to go to her aid, but Drake blocked her at the threshold with his arm.
“Look at the rug,” he warned.
At first Jenna could make no sense of the small shapes dotting the floor. Then her mind snapped to what she was seeing.
Mice… dead mice.
She had heard stories of the tiny trespassers who often shared these cottages with the hotel guests. A friend of hers from college had stayed in one of these cabins last year. Afterward, all she could talk about was how mice bounded across her bed at night, rooted through her luggage, even deposited a few droppings in her shoes.
To deal with the vermin problem, the hotel maintained an ongoing war, especially after cases of mouse-borne hantavirus broke out in the valley.
But the war inside this cottage was already over.
Or almost over.
A lone mouse hopped feebly across the carpet, its body shaking.
Jenna reacted too slowly, too focused on the horrors inside.
Nikko burst past her, the motion igniting his hunter’s instinct.
“Nikko, no!”
The husky stopped at her command, but he already had the mouse in his teeth. He turned back, his tail dropping, knowing he had done something wrong.
“Nikko…”
The dog dropped the mouse and came sheepishly toward her, his head bowed, his tail tucked.
Drake pushed Jenna back with one arm — then reached and closed the door. What lurked inside that room was something far worse than any hantavirus.
On the opposite side of the door, Nikko whined, pleading to be let out.
Lisa waited inside the air lock for the pressure to stabilize before she could open the inner door that led into the lab complex. Through the walls, she heard the light tin-tinning of raindrops on the metal roof of the cavernous hangar.
It reminded her that time was running short.
According to the local meteorologists, the massive storm front continued to push into the region. As of yet, the dead acres surrounding ground zero remained dry, but it was only a matter of time before those dark skies opened up over the area. A logistical group had been tasked to figure out how far this disease might spread, employing computerized modeling programs to calculate runoff patterns based on topography and local geology.
Their initial reports were harrowing.
Painter was currently teleconferencing with various state and federal officials, trying to stay one step ahead of this disaster. Unfortunately, a new arrival in the middle of the night had proven to be a headache. The technical director from the DTC — the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command — had flown in from Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, which handled the nation’s defense against nuclear, chemical, and biological threats. In the few short hours since the man had arrived, he’d already become a pain in Painter’s ass.
The light above the inner door turned green, and the magnetic lock released with an audible pop of pressure. Lisa stepped through, all too glad to leave the political hassles to Painter. She had a greater challenge that needed her full attention.
She glanced over a shoulder toward the patient containment unit on the hangar’s far side. Josh was resting again, on a diazepam drip. The cause of his brief seizure remained unknown, but she feared it was a possible sign of infection spreading to his central nervous system.
She pictured the thorn sticking out of his leg.
I hope I’m wrong.
But until she knew for sure, she intended to keep working.
“Dr. Cummings, you’re back. Fantastic.”
The voice came through her radio earpiece. She turned and spotted Dr. Edmund Dent, the CDC virologist, on the far side of a window, standing in his lab. He lifted an arm in greeting — then waved for her to come inside.
“Thanks to your work, I think we’ve made some significant progress in isolating the infectious particle,” he radioed to her. “Once we knew to look for something so small, we’ve started to make good headway. But I’d love to get your input on what we’ve found so far.”
“Of course,” she said.
Excited for even a measure of progress, Lisa hurried through the smaller air lock to reach his lab. His section of the BSL4 suite was all shiny with steel hardware: high-speed centrifuges, a mass spectrometer, a Leica ultramicrotome and cryochamber, along with a pair of electron microscopes.
She discovered another suited figure seated at one of the computer stations, bowed over a monitor. She failed to recognize him until he turned. She kept the surprise out of her face as best she could.
It was Dr. Raymond Lindahl, the technical director from the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command. Through his face shield, the man looked to be in his early fifties, with dyed black hair and a matching goatee. Since his arrival, he had been sticking his long nose into all of Painter’s work, making snap judgments, ordering changes when it was in his prerogative to do so — which, frustratingly for Painter, was all too often.
Now it seemed Painter’s pain was about to become her own.
Of course, it was not inappropriate for the man to be here. Lisa had heard about Lindahl’s background as both a geneticist and a bioengineer. He was brilliant in his own right and had the arrogance to go along with it.