Infected

16.
VEINS

Margaret walked, trying to stretch her muscles, but there wasn’t much room in the claustrophobic BSL-4 tent. She wandered over to Amos, who was transfixed by a slide set under a high-powered microscope.

“What have you got on that thorn?”

“Still doing a few tests. I’ve found another structure that you should take a look at. And make it quick, it’s decomposing as we speak.” He stood, letting her peer into the microscope. The highly magnified image looked to be a deflated capillary, a normal vein. But it wasn’t all normal. Part of it looked damaged; from that area ran a grayish-black tubule. The tubule ended with a decomposing area showing the ubiquitous rot so common in all the victims. Amos was right, she could see the tissue dissolving right before her eyes. She focused her attention away from the rapid-rot spot and back onto the tubule.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“I love your subtle use of scientific terminology, Margaret. That appears to be a siphon of some sort.”

“A siphon? You mean this was tapping into Brewbaker’s bloodstream, like a mosquito?”

“No, not like a mosquito, not at all. A mosquito merely inserts its proboscis into the skin and draws out blood. What you’re looking at is another level entirely. That siphon draws blood from the circulatory system, but it’s permanently attached; there’s no visible means for opening or closing the siphon. That means there are probably matching siphons that return blood to the circulatory system-otherwise the growth would fill up with blood and burst.”

“So if it returns the blood to the circulatory system, it’s not feeding directly on the blood?”

“No, not directly, but it’s definitely capitalizing on the host’s bodily functions. The growth obviously draws oxygen and possibly nutrients from the bloodstream. That must be how it grows. It may also feed directly on the host, but I doubt that; that would entail a digestive process and a method for eliminating waste. Granted, the growths we’ve seen have been completely decomposed, so we can’t confirm or deny the existence of a digestive tract, but from what we’ve got here I doubt there is one. Why would something evolve a complicated digestive system when there’s no apparent need-the blood would supply the growth with all sustenance.”

“So it’s not just a mass of cancerous tissue, it’s a full-blown parasite.”

“Well, we don’t know that it’s really living in the usual sense,” Amos said. “If it’s a growth, it’s just that, a growth, whereas a parasite is a separate organism. Remember, the lab results didn’t show any tissue other than Brewbaker’s-that and the huge amounts of cellulase. But it does appear to be using the host’s bodily functions to stay alive, so at least for now I’d have to agree with you and define it as a parasite.”

Margaret noticed a touch of astonishment in his voice. He was really beginning to admire the strange parasite. She stood.

Amos bent back to the microscope. “This is a revolutionary development, Margaret, don’t you see that? Think of the lowly tapeworm. It doesn’t have a digestive system. It doesn’t need one, because it lives in the host’s intestine. The host digests food, so the tapeworm doesn’t have to-it merely absorbs the nutrients surrounding it. Where do those nutrients go if the tapeworm doesn’t get them? They go into the bloodstream. Blood carries those nutrients, along with oxygen, to the body’s various tissues and then takes out waste materials and gases.”

“And by tapping into the bloodstream, the triangle parasites get food and oxygen. They don’t need to eat or breathe.”

“That’s how it appears. Quite astonishing, isn’t it?”

“You’re the parasitologist,” Margaret said. “If this keeps up, you’ll be in charge and I’ll be the lackey.”

Amos laughed. Margaret hated him at that moment-over thirty-six hours into their marathon session, with little more than twenty-minute catnaps to pace them, and he still didn’t seem tired.

“Are you kidding me?” Amos said. “I’m a total chickenshit, and you know it. First sign of danger-physical or emotional-I run for the hills. My wife actually has my balls in a jar back at the house. She’s taller than me, she puts the jar up on a shelf where I can’t reach it.”

Margaret laughed. Amos was famously open about who ran his household.

“I’m fine where I’m at,” Amos said. “I rather like being the lackey if being in charge means having to deal with Dew Phillips and Murray Longworth. But if I do wind up calling the shots, just remember I like my coffee black.”

They sat in silence for a moment, tired brains processing the strange information that seemed to provide no answers.

“This can’t stay a secret forever,” Amos said. “Off the top of my head, I can name three experts who should be here right now. Murray’s secrecy policy is asinine.”

“But he’s got a point, you have to admit,” Margaret said. “We can’t have this story out, not yet. We’ll have anyone with a rash, bug bite or even dry skin flooding the hospitals. It’s going to make it very difficult to find someone who’s actually infected, especially as we have no idea what the early stages of this infection look like. If the story got out now, we’d have to look at millions of people. Hopefully we can at least come up with some kind of screening process or test for infection before this story breaks.”

“I understand the precarious nature of the situation,” Amos said. “I just think that Murray is taking this too far. It’s one thing to keep a lid on something-it’s quite another to be completely understaffed. What the hell happens if a hundred Martin Brewbakers suddenly pop up, and no one is prepared for it, let alone warned it could happen? You think a bomb is a terror weapon? It’s nothing compared to hundreds of Americans going psycho on each other. What happens if we keep this a secret until it’s too late to do anything about it?”

He walked back to his station, leaving Margaret to stare at the half body. The constant decomposition had partially relaxed Brewbaker’s talon hand-where it had once stood straight up, it now hung at forty-five degrees, halfway to the tabletop. His blackening, liquefying body didn’t have much time left.

Margaret wondered about Amos’s comment; if there was some rogue lab with the technology to genetically engineer a parasite that could alter human behavior, wasn’t it already too late?