“Where is the hospital?” he yelled into the phone.
Stephens paused, and Ben could hear him sigh on the other end. “Listen, I’m only doing this because she told me to call you.” He gave Ben the address of the hospital, then added one more thought. “If the staff catches you in there, Ben, hell’s going to break loose. This is a completely unknown force we’re dealing with, and you’d better believe there are going to be suits from every branch there, trying to figure out what the deal is. It isn’t just the CDC anymore.”
Ben understood his meaning. If you aren’t careful, you might get thrown in jail. Or worse.
“I hear you. Stephens — thanks.”
“No problem. Good luck, Ben. Keep me posted.”
Ben hung up the phone and focused on gaining more speed.
An hour later, he pulled up to the parking lot in front of the hospital. It was small, and obviously old. The building was beautiful, no doubt built sometime in the early 1900’s, and it matched the stereotype of an old hospital. Green manicured lawns stretched for an acre in front of the building, surrounded by a tall iron fence with brick towers at the corners. Picnic tables were sprinkled here and there, each shaded by massive, centuries-old oak trees. The hospital itself featured a grand entrance and lobby, adjoined on each side by two five-story hospital wings.
He parked in a visitor parking spot and looked at the clock. It was getting late, but he knew there would still be a night staff. The problem was, he didn’t know what time the switch would happen; when most of the day staff would go home for the night. He took a few deep breaths to relax himself and surveyed the surrounding area.
He saw a few unmarked vehicles parked together in a clump behind his truck. Each had deeply tinted windows and seemed to be brand new. He assumed they were government, but he had no idea what department. He couldn’t tell if they were unoccupied.
He watched the pedestrian traffic in front of the old hospital. An elderly couple walked through the grounds, the woman holding onto and supporting her husband as he shakily moved down the sidewalk. Another couple, younger, sat beneath one of the oak trees, laughing.
A few people wearing scrubs walked into the building using a side entrance. He watched them swipe a card and enter, the door slamming shut behind them. That’s it. If he could gain access to one of their cards, he could get in without drawing too much attention to himself.
It would never work. What was he supposed to do, beat up some poor old doctor and steal their ID card? He almost laughed out loud. This is ridiculous. I’m trying to break in to a hospital.
He knew he couldn’t pull that off — he was a park ranger.
Instead, he opened the car door and walked purposefully toward the entrance. If the government suits were, in fact, watching him from their recon vehicles, he needed to look like a visitor. He walked up to the front entrance and opened one of the doors.
“Good evening, sir,” a young man at the front desk called out. “How may I help you?”
He panicked. What do I do? His thoughts became mush. “Uh, hi, yes. I’m here to see someone I, uh, know.”
The man’s smile faded a little. “Okay, sure. Visiting hours are actually over, but —”
“That’s okay, thanks anyway.” Ben was starting to sweat. He turned quickly and walked back toward the front door. You fool.
As he neared the exit, he stole a quick glance over his shoulder. The receptionist was on the phone, hunched over his workstation. A few other nurses and doctors walked across the expansive lobby, but none seemed to notice him. He saw a skinny door against the wall, wallpapered to look like the lobby’s striped two-tone wall, and he reached for the knob.
It twisted fully, and he pushed it open. He closed the door behind him and looked around. A small orange bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated the room enough to give him what he needed: it was a small janitorial closet, filled with mop buckets, brooms, and cleaning chemicals. He found an upside down five-gallon bucket against the wall. Sitting down on it, he recapped his plan.
There wasn’t much to recap: enter lobby, find a place to hide.
Wait.
Wait for what?
He had no idea. He knew he needed to see Julie, to make sure she was okay, but he was in over his head. He was a large, lumbering park ranger, not a spry little covert operative.
He waited for a few minutes, trying to gauge the activity outside his little closet. He couldn’t hear much. Footsteps here and there, telling him nothing other than the general location of the person on the other side of the door.
Another five minutes passed, and he heard footsteps again making their way past his closet.
No, they’re not moving past.
They were moving toward him.
Ben waited, praying the footsteps would recede into the distance.
The footsteps stopped. Someone was directly outside the door now.
Please go away.
The handle turned, and he reached for something — anything — to use as a weapon. There was nothing but a bucket of mops sitting within arm’s reach. He grabbed one and untwisted the handle from its base.
A second later, the door slid open. Light pierced the dim room.
Ben raised the mop handle, wincing.
A man’s frame was silhouetted in the doorway, but he didn’t step into the room.
“You must be Harvey Bennett. Ben, I believe?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Who are you?” Ben asked. “How do you know my name?”
The man took a step forward, and Ben raised the mop handle higher.
The man raised a hand. “Woah, there, son. I’m not going to hurt you.” He paused, taking another step into the closet. He looked at the mop handle. “Works better than you might think, too.”
Ben frowned but didn’t release his grip on the weapon.
The man was now fully in the room, and the light from the lobby was enough to give Ben some idea of who had entered.
A janitor.
Dressed in crisp blue overalls and a matching blue cap, the man was older than Ben, but about as tall and built similarly. Wisps of whitish hair fell from around the cap, and Ben could see he was smiling.
An ironed-on name badge stared back at Ben from the man’s chest pocket.
Roger.
“You— you’re a janitor?” Ben asked.
The man nodded. “We prefer ‘sanitation engineer,’ but yeah, janitor works too.”
“How do you know who I am?” he asked again.
“I saw you run in here after your harrowing encounter with Junior.”
Junior must be the kid from the front desk.
“That still doesn’t explain how you know who I am.”
“Right, sorry. There’s more to it than this, but Julie told me.”
The mention of Julie’s name sent a chill down Ben’s spine. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. In the quarantined ward, but they’ve got her on some sort of sedative that dulls pain and slows her blood flow. It’s not enough to, uh, stop the virus, but it’ll help.”
Ben was growing more and more confused by the second. Standing in front of him was a man — a janitor — who knew who he was, who Julie was, and apparently what sort of outbreak was going on in the hospital’s quarantine.
“She told me you’d be coming here and tried to explain a little bit about what you looked like. I was in there about an hour ago, when they brought her in. There’s a hazmat chamber set up just outside the entrance, but only staff and facilities, like me, can go in.”