Julie opened her door and prepared to step out of the truck when her phone rang. She answered it.
“Stephens? You want to explain to me what the hell happened back —”
“Julie, listen. I’m sorry about that. That was Livingston’s decision, not mine. I’m back at the office, and I just found out that he put a redirect on my outgoing emails…”
The mention of David Livingston’s name caused Julie to choke up. She remembered Randy’s words as he delivered the news. A suicide, the gun lying next to his head on his desk at home. She still couldn’t believe it.
“Where are you?”
“We — I’m at Yellowstone. We’re trying to —” She felt a hand on her arm and looked up. Ben was staring at her, shaking his head.
“What?” she mouthed the words.
“Trying to what, Julie? What are you up to? You need to get away from there, before this gets out of hand.”
She looked back at Ben, meeting his eyes. Again, slowly, he shook his head.
“Sorry — Benjamin, I can’t. We’re close. I can’t give you an update right now, but I —”
“Julie! You can’t afford to keep gallivanting around. If Livingston finds out…”
The words tumbled from her mouth before she could control them. “Stephens, where have you been? What are you doing?”
There was a pause.
“I’m — I’m… working on this, too, Julie. What do you mean?”
She waited a moment, then continued. “Okay, I know. I’m sorry. Just… don’t worry about Livingston. Listen, we need to go. Okay? I’ll check in tonight, after we leave.”
“Okay…” the voice was shaky, uncertain. “Okay, you’re right. Keep at it, Julie. Let me know what you need.”
She thanked him and hung up, then looked at the other two passengers in the truck.
“He doesn’t know already?” Malcolm asked.
“I… I guess not.”
Ben frowned. He thought for a few seconds, then put the truck in park and opened his door, still shaking his head. He looked up sharply and caught Julie’s attention.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Look,” Ben said. He held out his left arm and pulled his sleeve up. The rash had disappeared from his exposed hand, and his arm looked almost completely normal, replaced by his natural skin tone. His right arm looked similar. Julie checked out her own rash and found the same to be true.
“It’s gone,” she said.
“Almost. Come on, we need to get in there. Whatever’s left of the virus in our systems is the only hope we have left to figure out what this is.”
“But why’s it going away? I feel fine, too.”
Malcolm had exited the truck and was helping Ben examine the open skin on his hands and arms. “It appears as though it’s naturally run its course and is now dying on its own.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Julie asked.
“No,” he replied. “I never had an actual rash outbreak, at least not as I remember. I could have been sedated, or comatose. But most likely I was injected with a small amount of the stuff to test its effects and find a cure. That was enough to inoculate me.”
They nodded, then slammed the doors to the truck and turned to enter the laboratory building.
Chapter Forty-Three
“The lab was built in the ‘80s for onsite research,” Ben explained. “It’s not actually used much, since it’s not really a specific type of lab.”
“What do you mean?” Malcolm asked.
“It’s got tools that would be useful for a high school science classroom, but it’s not specific enough to be considered a chemistry lab or a biology one. It’s also not quite big enough to be helpful for our geologists, geographers, or animal scientists.”
Malcolm muttered something under his breath and continued exploring the small room.
“Why build it, then?” Julie asked. She’d already found a collection of microscopes and was preparing one, searching the drawers for glass slides.
“They thought it would be nice to have a sort of ‘front line’ lab, so they don’t have to wait around for outside help to come, or travel hundreds of miles to a university.”
Julie had finished setting up the standard issue compound light microscope on a table in the corner of the room.
“Everything okay?” Ben asked.
“No,” she answered. “This is a compound scope, and there’s no way there’s enough power to magnify anything smaller than a bug. I wish there was a transmission-electron in here. Even an LVEM or something would be fine.”
Ben simply stared back at her.
“Sorry — this will have to work. It’s not going to get us all the way there, but it might be enough to measure chemical reactions and test for an antidote. Come here.”
Ben stepped forward, and she reached for his arm. He pulled back, reacting involuntarily.
“Chill. I’m not going to bite.” She reached again, and this time Ben let her lift his right arm and roll up his sleeve. “Dr. Fischer, would you mind helping me?”
Malcolm jogged over to the corner of the room as Julie whipped out a strand of latex she’d found amongst the assortment of scientific equipment. She handed Ben’s arm to Malcolm, who held it precariously in front of him. As he held it, she tied the latex band around Ben’s upper arm, causing the veins to bulge as the blood became restricted.
She then picked up a small syringe and poked it into one of the veins. The chamber began to fill with a deep crimson color.
“Geez,” Ben said. “You didn’t test it for rabies or anything.”
“Rabies is the least of your worries,” Julie answered, focusing on holding the syringe straight. “Besides, I doubt that would be the problem with these needles. God knows how long they’ve been here.” As a sort of flourish, she blew on the latex band and the syringe that was plunged into the vein. A thin veil of dust sprung from their surfaces, causing all three to blink and look away.
“Ah, right. Seems perfectly safe.”
She shushed him, then withdrew the syringe slowly from his arm.
“How much do you need? Seems like overkill,” Malcolm said.
“I don’t know how many units are left inside the bloodstream or if we’ll be able to see it at all. Plus, the virus is wearing off, as we saw earlier. I may not have time to extract more later, since the units might be working their way out.”
She placed the cap on the syringe chamber and loaded another. This one, she stuck into her own arm, not bothering to check for a vein or tie off her upper arm.
“Units?” Ben asked.
“Like chickenpox,” she answered.
Malcolm and Ben still didn’t understand.
“I’m developing a hypothesis about it, but it’s pretty simple. Imagine a kid has chickenpox — the varicella zoster virus — and has a birthday party. Some kid comes to the birthday party and gives the birthday boy one unit of the virus. That unit multiplies — as viruses do — to a certain point, until the virus has physically manifested itself in the host’s body.”
“Little red bumps all over his skin.”
“Yes, exactly. But that’s it. It doesn’t ever really get worse than the bumps, though as you might remember, those bumps are bad enough. The virus has reached its ‘critical mass’ in the kid’s system. The units have reached their maximum exposure ratio, and they won’t — can’t — proliferate any more. But he’s still very contagious, too. Since the virus is at critical mass, every kid who comes over will probably get it, right?”