Rosow led his exhausted team of Biocops back down the hill a short way, and directed them to search the same alleys once again. They’d followed up on every lead given to them by the fearful residents of the area, but not one had panned out; nothing of any use had been developed from the information they’d received. They’d even taken a couple of Marginals into custody briefly, then let them go again when it became clear that nothing would come of keeping them captive. Rosow got the distinct impression that one of those Marginals was toying with him, teasing him off in another direction. He’d had a notion to keep that man for further questioning, but he didn’t like the looks of him. He was skinny, all right, as one witness had described the man he’d seen pushing the cart. But this one was weak and rheumy and couldn’t possibly have pushed a loaded cart up a hill. Rosow noticed that the man was unsteady and had difficulty even walking. Probably drunk, Rosow thought to himself, and pickled with cirrhosis. Reluctantly, he let the man go.
Adding to his frustration was the fact that no Biocop was allowed to spend more than eight uninterrupted hours in a green suit. Bloody Coalition rules, he muttered in frustration as he watched the team members remove their heavy green uniforms. Bloody knights of old wore their bloody armor till the king said they could bloody well take it off!
So when the contract-mandated rest period finally came to an end, they took up the search where they’d left off, but by then every trail had gone completely cold. There were no wheel tracks, no footprints, no scraps of newspaper left uninvestigated. Every suspicious rock had been picked up and examined for signs that the Marginal with the cart might have passed by it. Perhaps they’re hiding in one of these houses, Rosow thought, scanning the neat rows of bungalows and cottages that lined both sides of the hill, but with further consideration, the idea seemed ludicrous. Sheltering Marginals was heavily frowned upon, and although it wasn’t exactly illegal, Rosow was certain that very few “normal” people would take the risk of doing so. But they tried a few homes anyway, frightening the residents; they found absolutely nothing.
He didn’t even know if the pair he sought knew they were being pursued. One was a being on the edge, perhaps over it, completely unsuited for the complications of modern life, a natural-born fugitive. One was probably deathly ill and, if so, was by now helpless, maybe even dead. Shame she has to die, beautiful young woman like that! he thought. He considered it unlikely that the Marginal pushing the cart would have the mental faculties to know the difference between a dead passenger and a very sick one, or an interest in knowing the difference. But Rosow had no choice; whether they were aware of his existence or not, he had to find them and examine them and then decide what to do with them. Many lives would depend on how well he fared in his pursuit.
So, near dawn, the exasperated lieutenant led his weary team up the hill again, back to the field where the tracks ended. He split them into two groups and sent one group around the perimeter to the west; the other he himself led east. As they started their search the sun was just breaking over the horizon. It had been a long night, and he hoped the day would go better.
They stood like a pair of nervous parents over the childlike old man sleeping in the chair between them.
Bruce lifted one of his eyelids and saw the pupil contract in reaction to the incoming light. “He’s out cold,” he said. “It’s like he just shut himself down. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t, either, but I think we’re going to have to finish this on our own.”
“Maybe we should wait until he wakes up. He said he just wanted a rest.”
“Who knows what he’ll be like when he comes to again. He’s been going in and out of lucidity all through this thing,” Janie said. She glanced over at Caroline and then back at Bruce, a look of fearful urgency on her face.
“We’ve got the book,” she said. “He’s been using it all along to do this stuff. Like a recipe. He said there’s only one more thing to use, and we can read what it says to do with it. That’s all he’s been doing. Reading it.” The tone of concern in her voice rose a notch. “It’s not like he has some magical power that we don’t have.”
“Janie, we don’t want to do anything rash.… What if we make a mistake with this stuff?” He looked over to the bedside table, and was suddenly very quiet.
“What?” Janie said.
He pointed. “There are two things left.”
One was a bottle of cloudy liquid, yellowish in color; it was stopped with an old, desiccated cork. The other was a small sack containing some kind of powder.
“There’s not much of either of them—what if we make a mistake?”
“If this senile old man didn’t make a mistake, do you think we will? He can barely read, for God’s sake.”
She picked up the book and looked at the page to which it was opened. There were two sets of writing on the yellowed sheaf, one faded and ancient, executed with spidery strokes and uneven pressure. Janie scanned through it, and began to feel terribly disheartened. “Oh, God, maybe you’re right—part of it’s in French, I think.…”
Then her eyes moved to the other writing, clearly the work of a more modern hand. There, the letters tiny but legible, was a passage in English. It wrapped around the old French, and here and there Janie recognized words that were common to both passages. “This has to be a translation,” she said. With hope building in her again, she read the small words and recognized that they were instructions for the things they had already done. Her excitement growing, she pointed to a specific part in the English passage. “Look, this is where we left off.”
Bruce read it over her shoulder. “The flesh and bones of those long dead,” he said aloud. “The hair of the dog …”
She put the book in Bruce’s hands and picked up the small sack of powder. Bits of it floated up as soon as she spread the drawstring and she sniffed the air above it, then turned her head away and sneezed violently. “It smells vile,” she said, grimacing and rubbing her nose. But then the grimace changed slowly to a smile of excitement. “But you know what? This is ‘the hair of the dog that bit you.’ Antibodies. This could actually work!”
“Sweet Jesus … you’re right …” He looked at the page before him and started reading again. His eyes darted back and forth from line to line, sparkling eagerly. “Let’s get to it, then! It says here that we have to mix the liquid and the powder together. Then we’re supposed to take some of this stuff ourselves. Says it will ‘protect us from the ravages of the scourge.…’ ”
“I’ll get some mixing stuff from the kitchen.” She ran off while Bruce continued reading and returned a few seconds later with a spoon and a small bowl.
“Okay,” she said, almost breathlessly, “how do I mix it? Does it give proportions?”
“Yeah, hold on, I’m coming to that part.…” He began to read aloud. “Join together four knuckles of powder to a cupped hand of liquid—”
“Four knuckles? A cupped hand?”
“Janie, I’m not making this up. It says right here”—he held the book in her direction—“if you want to read it yourself.…”
“Never mind. I believe you. I’ll believe anything right about now.”
With unsteady hands she poured a small amount of powder into the bowl and then held her hand next to it, one finger bent slightly, and decided that the amount she’d poured would suffice. When she tried to remove the stopper from the bottle, it began to crumble, and she had to dig it out in two pieces with her fingernail. She filled the hollow of one hand with the yellowish liquid, which had the smell of swamp water, and then poured the handful into the bowl with the powder. She stirred it with the spoon, and the resulting mixture was a loose slurry not unlike corn-bread batter.
“How much are we supposed to take?”
He scanned the book again. “It doesn’t say.”
“We’ll have to guess, then. Okay, we’ll each take a spoonful.” She scooped some of the slurry into the spoon and held it out for Bruce. “Open wide,” she said.
He cast a wary glance at the gritty mess on the spoon, then gave Janie a look of uncertainty.
“Open,” she said, and when he did, she shoved the entire bowl of the spoon into his mouth.
“Ugh,” he grimaced. He swallowed hard and then wiped his mouth with one hand. “This stuff tastes like liquid skunk!” He put his other hand on his stomach and said, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to keep it down.”
Holding her nose, Janie took her own dose; it tasted every bit as bad as Bruce had claimed, and left a gritty aftertaste.
“That was awful,” she said. “How the hell is Caroline going to keep it down?”
“I think the bigger problem is going to be getting this stuff into her. I don’t know if she’s still capable of swallowing. And even if we had a syringe, there’s no way we can dissolve this stuff into any kind of solution. It’s just way too granular. She’s going to have to swallow it.”
Bruce stirred the mixture again and tried to place a spoonful in Caroline’s mouth. He rubbed her lower lip with the tip of the spoon in the hopes that she would open it, but she didn’t. After a few frustrating attempts he looked up at Janie and said, “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“Here, let me try.” She took the bowl and spoon from his hands and sat down in the chair in his stead.
“Come on, Caroline …” she said. “Open up wide for me.” But the stimulus, so effective in getting babies to eat, failed to elicit the desired response in an adult. Caroline remained closed lipped.
“Maybe Sarin’s got a funnel,” Bruce said. “I’ll go look.”
He came back from the main room empty handed. “I couldn’t find one. We’re going to have to wake him.”
Janie nodded. She knew they couldn’t wait any longer.
He gently placed his hand on Sarin’s shoulder and was about to shake him, but as soon as his fingers made contact with the old man’s body, Bruce knew that the spark had left it. The old man was still warm, but the energy, the life force, the being, was no longer there. Only the body remained. He took his hand away slowly.
“Janie,” he said softly, “he’s gone.”
She got up from Caroline’s bedside and came to where Bruce stood. Placing her fingers on the old man’s wrist she searched unsuccessfully for a pulse. “Now we’re really on our own,” she said.
They stood over the old man in a momentary wake. “He deserves more than this,” Janie said, “but right now …”
“I know,” Bruce said. “We need to get on with it, here. I still need a funnel.”
Another quick search of the kitchen failed to produce one, or anything that might be substituted for it. Then Janie offered another possibility. “We can make a funnel out of paper. I used to do that to decorate cakes when I was a little girl. We can close up the funnel and squeeze it like a pastry tube.”
But the slurry was too loose and leaked from the paper funnel almost immediately.
Suddenly Bruce said, “Damn! Why didn’t I think of this before!”
“What?”
“There’s a drip tube for condensation on the air conditioning in the car. We can intubate her and let this stuff drip into her stomach.”
He was up like a flash and out the door before Janie could say anything.
He ran down the path past the oaks and on toward his car. As he neared the vehicle, something in the distance caught his attention. He stopped running and looked off across the field.
Battling the wind between the trees, he ran back inside and called out to Janie, who was sponging Caroline’s forehead. She looked up and saw him gesturing for her to follow him. She stopped what she was doing and they went outside together.
“Oh, no!” she said when she saw the Biocops in the distance. “How did they find us? How do they even know?”
“I don’t have a clue,” he answered, “but I think we’d better take Caroline and get out of here.”
“Where are we going to go?”
“We’ll have to go to my apartment. I just hope there’s no one there waiting for us.”
“What about Ted?”
“We’ll leave him here with Sarin and the dog. Janie, we have to burn this place. It’s going to be infectious anyway.”
She looked at him gravely, wondering if it would all ever end. “All right,” she said, “let’s do it.”