Black Page 11

  “Exactly what is your source for this information?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how did you come across this information, Mr. Hunter? You’re making some very serious allegations—surely you have a credible source.”

  The words slipped out before he could stop them. “I had a dream.”

  Kara put both palms to her forehead and rolled her eyes.

  “I see. Very good, Tom. We’re wasting tax dollars here.”

  “I can prove it to you!” Tom said.

  “I’m sorry, but now I really am late for a meet—”

  “I also know who’s going to win the Kentucky Derby this afternoon,” he yelled into the receiver. “Joy Flyer.”

  “Good day, sir.”

  The phone went dead.

  Tom stared at Kara, who was pacing and shaking her head. He dropped the receiver into its cradle. “Idiots. No wonder the country’s falling apart at the seams.”

  A car door slammed in the parking lot outside.

  “Well,” Kara said.

  “Well what?”

  “Well, at least we’ve reported it. You have to admit, it sounds a bit loopy.”

  “Reporting it isn’t enough,” Tom said, walking for the living room windows. He pulled aside one of the drapes.

  “Why don’t we make up some signs and stand on the corner; maybe that will get their attention,” Kara said. “Armageddon cometh.”

  Tom dropped the drape and jumped back.

  “What?”

  “They’re here!” Three of them that he had seen. Working their way, door to door, on their floor.

  Tom sprang for his bedroom. “We have to get out of here. Grab your passport, money, whatever you have.”

  “I’m not dressed!”

  “Then hurry!” He glanced at the door. “We have a minute. Maybe.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He ran for his bedroom.

  “Thomas!”

  “Just go! Go, go!”

  He grabbed his traveling papers and stuffed them in a black satchel he always used when he traveled. Money—two hundred bucks was all he had here. Hopefully Kara had some cash.

  His toothbrush, a pair of khakis, three T-shirts, boxers, one pair of socks. What else? Think. That was it; no more time.

  Tom ran into the living room. “Kara!”

  “Just hang on. I could kill you!”

  Their yelling would wake the neighborhood. “Hurry!” he whispered hoarsely.

  She mumbled something.

  What else, what else? The bills? He grabbed the basket of bills, crammed them into his bag, and snatched up the machete from the coffee table.

  Kara ran out, hastily dressed in black capris and a yellow tank top. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, a white bag under her arm. She looked like a canary ready for a cruise to the Bahamas.

  “We’re coming back, right?” she asked.

  “Keep down and stay right behind me,” Tom said, running for the rear sliding-glass door. He pulled back the drape—back lot looked clear. They slipped out, and he closed the door behind them.

  “Okay, quick but not obvious. Stay behind me,” he repeated. They hurried down metal stairs and angled for Kara’s Celica. No sign of the men who were probably pounding on their front door at this very moment.

  “Keys?”

  She pulled them out and handed them to him. “How do you know it was them?” she asked.

  “I know. One of them had a bandage on his head. Same guy I met last night. I put my foot in his mouth.”

  They climbed in and he fired the car. “Get down.”

  Kara slouched in the front seat for two blocks before sitting up and straining back for sight of any pursuit.

  “Anything?” Tom asked.

  “Not that I can see.” She faced him. “Where are we going?”

  Good question.

  “Your passport is up-to-date, right?”

  “Please, Tom, be serious. We can’t just run off to Manila or Bangkok, or wherever!”

  “You have a better idea? This is real! Those are real men with real guns back there! The Raison Vaccine is a real vaccine, and Joy Flyer is a real horse!”

  She looked out her side window. “The Kentucky Derby hasn’t been raced yet,” she said quietly.

  “How long did I say we had before the Raison Strain became a threat?” he asked.

  “You weren’t even sure what year it happened.” She faced him. “If all these things really are real, then you need some better information. We can’t just traipse all over the globe because Joy Flyer really is a horse.”

  “What do you suggest, finding out exactly how to fix the problem in the Middle East in one fell swoop?”

  She looked at him. “Could you do that?”

  “’Course not.”

  “Why not?”

  Yes, why not?

  “What was it the black bats said to you?” Kara asked. “Something about them being your destiny? Maybe you should talk to them instead of these white furry creatures. We need specifics here.”

  “I can’t .They live in the black forest! It’s forbidden.”

  “Forbidden? Listen to you. It’s a dream, Tom! Granted, a dream with some pretty crazy ramifications, but just a dream.”

  “Then how do I know all this stuff? Why is my head wound gone?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that this” —she jabbed at the console—“isn’t a dream. So your dreams are special. You’re somehow learning things in there you shouldn’t know; I give you that. I’m even embracing that. I’m saying, learn more! But I’m not going to go running off to Bangkok to save the world without the slightest idea of what to do once we get there. You need more information.”

  They entered the interchange between I-25 and I-70, headed for Denver International Airport.

  “So at least you are admitting that this information’s important. And real.”

  She set her head back. “Yes. So it seems.”

  “Then we have to respond to it. You’re right, I need more information. But I can’t very well fall asleep at the wheel, can I? And you can’t keep drugging me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Macklroy seemed to think the CDC was the right place to go with this information.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Okay. So let’s go to Atlanta. How much money do you have?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Just fly to Atlanta? I can’t just leave my job without some notice.”

  “Then call them. But the phone obviously isn’t the best way to get the attention of the CDC. They probably get a hundred kooks a day calling in crazy stories. So we go to the CDC headquarters in person.”

  “Not Bangkok?”

  “No. Atlanta. You know we can’t go back to the apartment—who knows how long they’ll stake the place out?”

  She considered the matter. Closed her eyes.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “Atlanta.”

  12

  Try as he may at Kara’s urging, Tom couldn’t sleep on the flight to Atlanta. Not a wink.

  Slowly but surely, Kara was laying aside her disbelief that something very significant was actually happening to Tom, although she still wasn’t buying the notion that he’d actually stumbled onto the end of the world, so to speak. As she put it, just because he was admittedly experiencing some kind of precognition when he slept, didn’t mean everything his highly active imagination latched onto was real. Who ever heard of fuzzy white bats anyway?

  Tom desperately wanted to convince her that it could easily be the other way around. That there was no real evidence the Boeing 757 they were flying in wasn’t actually part of some crazy dream. Who was to say which reality was more compelling?

  “Think about what Dad used to say when we were kids,” he said. “The whole Christian worldview is based on alternate realities. We fight not against flesh and blood but against principalities or whatever. Remember that? In fact, most of the world believes tha
t most of what actually happens, happens without our being able to see it. That’s a religious mainstay.”

  “So? I don’t believe that. And neither do you.”

  “Well, maybe we should believe that. Not necessarily the Christianity part, but the whole principle. Why not?”

  “Because I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “If there is a God and he made us with five senses, why wouldn’t he show himself to us through those senses? A dream makes no sense.”

  “Maybe he does show himself to us, but we don’t see. Maybe it’s not our senses that are the problem, but our minds.”

  She twisted in her seat and looked at him. “Is this the same Thomas who used to tell Dad how crazy his silly faith was?”

  “I’m not saying anything’s changed. I’m just saying that it’s something to consider. Like The Matrix. Remember that movie? Everyone thinks it’s one way, when actually it’s another way.”

  “Only the real world is a colored forest with fuzzy white bats, and all this is just a dream. I don’t think so.”

  “The fuzzy white bats healed my head and told me who will win the Kentucky Derby. And if I’m imagining one reality, it would be more likely that I’m imagining this one. In the other reality, both realities make sense—this one as a history and that one as the present. In this reality, the other reality makes no sense unless this reality isn’t really a reality. Or unless it really is the future.”

  “Enough. You’re giving me a headache. Go to sleep and find out how we solve the Middle East crisis.”

  “We don’t .The Raison Strain hits us before then. Which is now.”

  “Unless the Raison Strain is stopped,” she said. “Is it possible to change the future? Or better yet, change history?”

  He didn’t bother to respond.

  They landed in Atlanta an hour later and spent thirty minutes on a run of errands. Kara owed the hospital in Denver an explanation and had some banking to do; Tom checked on the availability of flights to several overseas destinations, just in case. It was half past three before they met up in ground transportation.

  “So,” Tom said, holding the door open that led to the taxi line. “How much do we have?”

  “We? About $5,000, and it’s in my account. I don’t recall you depositing any money in my account.”

  He’d found a 10:00 p.m. flight to Bangkok through Los Angeles and Singapore, but the short-notice tickets would cost $2,000 apiece. Not good. He frowned.

  “You expected more?” she asked.

  “I thought you’d saved up over twenty thousand,” he said.

  “That was three months ago. I’ve made some purchases since. Five will hold us. As long as we don’t go running off to Manila or Bangkok.” She shut her door.

  The yellow cab pulled up to the Centers for Disease Control headquarters on Clifton Road at 4:15, forty-five minutes before the government building presumably closed. Kara paid the driver and faced the front doors with Tom.

  “Okay, exactly what is our primary goal here?” she asked.

  “To wake the dead,” Tom said.

  “Let’s be a little more precise.”

  “Someone in there has to take us seriously. We don’t leave until someone with the power to do something agrees to look into the Raison Strain.”

  Kara glanced at her watch. “Okay.”

  They entered the building and approached a counter cordoned off with protective Plexiglas and identified by a black sign as “Reception.” Tom explained their objective to a red-headed woman named Kathy and, when informed that they would have to see a caseworker, asked to see one immediately. He was handed a stack of forms containing a host of questions that seemed to have nothing to do with infectious diseases: birth date, Social Security number, grade school achievements, shoe size. They retreated to a row of cushioned waiting chairs, filled the forms out quickly, and returned them to Kathy.

  “How long will we have to wait?” Tom asked.

  Her phone buzzed and she answered it without offering a response to Tom. One of her coworkers was evidently having mice problems in her house. Tom tapped his fingers on the counter and waited patiently.

  Kathy set her phone down, but it rang again.

  Tom held up his finger. “Simple question: How long?”

  “As soon as someone’s available.”

  “It’s already 4:35. When will someone be available?”

  “We’ll do our best to get you in today,” she said and picked up the phone. Same party. Another critical question on tactics to hold back swarms of attacking mice. Something about wearing rubber gloves when removing the varmints from traps.

  Tom sighed audibly and walked back to the waiting chairs. “Kathy was raised in an idiot factory,” he said.

  “Patience, Thomas. Maybe I should do the talking.” Kara glanced at her watch again.

  “I have a bad feeling we’re wasting our time here,” he said. “Even if we do report this, how long will it take for the bureaucracy to work? It takes months, sometimes years, to get FDA approval for a drug. How long does it take to reverse that? Probably months and years. I’m telling you, we have to go to Bangkok. They’re making the announcement in two days. All we have to do is explain the problem to them—to this Monique de Raison. They’ll check out our concerns, find the problem, and deal with it.”

  Kara looked at her watch and stood. “I doubt it would be that simple. I have to check something. Be right back.”

  Tom let his steam gather for another ten minutes before approaching Kathy for another round. This time she stopped him before he could ask the obvious question.

  “Excuse me, sir, are you hard of hearing, or just stubborn? I thought I said I’d call you when a caseworker was available.”

  He stopped, shocked by her rudeness. No one else was within ear-shot—a fact obviously not lost on Kathy, or she wouldn’t dare offer this verbal abuse.

  “Excuse me?” he stammered.

  “You heard me,” she snapped. “I’ll call you if we have a caseworker available before we close.”

  Tom stepped up to the counter and glared through the Plexiglas. “This can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “You should’ve thought about that earlier.”

  “Listen, lady, we flew all the way from Denver to see you! What if something dead serious was wrong with me? How do you know I don’t have a disease that could wipe out the world?”

  She sat back, clearly smug in a certainty that she had won with this last absurdity of his. “This isn’t a clinic. I don’t think you have—”

  “You don’t know that! What if I had polio?” Wrong disease. “What if I had Ebola or something?”

  “It says Raison something.” She lazily pulled out his form. “Not Ebola. Sit down, Mr. Hunter.”

  Heat flared up his neck. “And what is the Raison Strain?” he demanded. “Do you even know? As a matter of fact, the Raison Strain makes the Ebola virus look like a common cold. Did you know that? The virus may just have broken out in—”

  “Sit down!” Kathy rose to her feet, fists clenched by her hips. She pointed dramatically to the waiting chairs. “Sit down immediately.”

  Tom could never be sure if it was his martial arts instincts or his generous intelligence that took over in the next moment—either way, at least his courage couldn’t be faulted.

  He locked stares with the woman behind the Plexiglas for a full five seconds. The sight of her quivering jowls was the last straw. He suddenly grabbed his own neck with both hands and began to choke himself.

  “Ahhhh! I think I might have been infected,” he gasped. He stumbled forward and smashed his head into the Plexiglas. “Help!” he screamed. “Help, I’m infected with the Raison Strain!”

  The woman stood rigid and shaking with fury, still pointing at the chairs. “Sit down!”

  Tom smashed his cheek against the glass, tightened his choke hold, and stuck out his tongue. “I’m dying! Help, help!”

  “Thomas!” Kara ran toward him from the hall
.

  He started to sag and rolled his eyes.

  A half-dozen workers ran into the cubicles behind the receptionist.

  “Stop it!” Kathy shrieked. “Stop it!”

  “Thomas, what are you doing?” Kara demanded frantically.

  He winked at her discreetly and then banged his head against the glass, this time hard enough to give himself a headache.

  “Excuse me!” A man dressed in a gray suit had materialized behind the receptionist. “What seems to be the problem here?”

  “He . . . he wants to see a caseworker,” she said.

  Tom lowered his hands and stood up. “Are you in charge here?”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Forgive me for the antics, but I’m a bit desperate and a junior-high fit was the only thing that came to mind,” Tom said. “It’s absolutely critical that we speak to someone from the infectious diseases department immediately.”

  The man glanced at Kathy’s red face. “We have procedures for a reason, Mr. . . .”

  “Hunter. Thomas Hunter. Trust me, you’ll be very interested in what I have to say.”

  The man hesitated and then stepped through a door in the Plexiglas. “Why don’t you come into my office?” He extended his hand. “My name is Aaron Olsen. Please excuse our delay. It gets a bit hectic around here at times.”

  Tom shook the man’s hand and followed him, escorting Kara.

  “Next time you’re going to lose your hearing, warn me, will you?” Kara whispered.

  “Sorry.”

  Kara couldn’t hide a grin.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Aaron Olsen stared at Tom from behind a large cherry-wood desk, elbows propped on the surface, face stoic and impossible to read in the wake of Tom’s detailed explanation of the fuzzy white bats.

  Tom sat back and let out a long breath. A gold placard on Aaron’s desk said he was the assistant director, and he explained that his department was indeed infectious diseases. And, although he’d started by explaining that the World Health Organization’s rapid response unit was the right party to contact, he had agreed to listen to their story and had done so without emotion.