Pandemic Page 36

“So you touched her?”

The diver rolled his eyes. “No, Agent Otto, we sat back and told her she had nice t.i.tties. She was still alive. We were trying to save her.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

Cantrell stared back. “You’ve got my report right in front of you. Read it for yourself.”

The man didn’t want to repeat the words. Why not?

“But do you remember? Can you tell me?”

Cantrell sighed.

“Yeah. She said, I took out the reactor. Then she said, They bit me. I killed them. I shot two of those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

Clarence read from the statement. Cantrell had it word for word.

“Okay, so what happened then?”

“The ’Hawk dropped the collection cage,” Cantrell said. “Clark and I put Walker inside, then got in with her. We were just about to return to the Brashear when the pilot spotted a second body. Clark and I went back into the drink. Petrovsky was eviscerated, among other significant damage. We loaded him into the cage.”

A cage normally meant for two divers and a container had four people in it, two of them infected. Clarence wondered if there was something to that.

“Did you continue to search for bodies?”

Cantrell shook his head. “Command wanted the Seahawk to return and look for survivors from the Forrest Sherman. No part of the helicopter had touched us or the bodies, if that’s what you’re wondering. The ’Hawk dropped our cage into the water, Brashear’s crane took us up, we got in the airlock just like normal. This time, however, there were two man-size, airtight containers waiting for us. We loaded the bodies into the containers. Feely was talking to us at that point. We went through the bleach bath, then carried the body containers to the morgue trailer.”

Clarence called up Feely’s report. Cantrell’s recall matched the report exactly, as if he were reading directly from it. All except for one thing.

“It says here that when you entered with the bodies and went through the decon bath, you smelled bleach.”

Cantrell paused. “Of course I smelled it,” he said. “They bathe us in it. The suits smell like it when we’re done.”

“I’m not talking about when you’re done. You’re quoted in the report as saying, I smelled bleach during decon step. Maybe a seal leaked.”

Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. Was that a look of … anger?

“That is not accurate,” he said. “Maybe I typed it wrong.”

“So you didn’t smell bleach when you and Clark were submerged in the decon tank?”

Cantrell shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

Clarence reached out into air, called up Clark’s report on his HUD.

“Clark also reported smelling bleach,” Clarence said. “He was worried the suit would fill up with it.”

Cantrell clapped his hands together once, spread them out. “There you go, Agent Otto. Clark told me that right after we finished. I was exhausted. I must have put his words down as mine.”

Clarence studied the man. That explanation sounded perfectly logical. A battle, a high-risk recovery of infected bodies … that kind of stress could lead to significant fatigue, the blurring of memories. But Cantrell seemed to have a near-photographic memory of the event, all except for that one detail.

Had the vector somehow got inside Clark’s suit through a broken seal or a tiny tear that also allowed in a small amount of bleach? If Cantrell was now lying about smelling bleach, he was doing so because he knew evidence of a tear would lengthen his time in the cell. Or could he actually be infected and trying to protect himself? So far, though, Cantrell had tested negative.

Clarence felt he was missing something … but what?

“Let’s go over the entire day again,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you? Like you said, it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

PHOTO BOMBING

Margaret had thought diving back into this world would be h.e.l.l. She’d thought working on the bodies of infection victims would further stir up the ever-present memories of Amos Braun, of Perry Dawsey, of Dew Phillips, of Detroit and everything else that had turned her life to s.h.i.t.

But she didn’t think about any of those things.

In fact, almost as soon as she began the examination, those thoughts faded away. She didn’t think about anything but the work. And, most important, she didn’t think about Clarence.

In that way, at least, donning a BSL-4 suit and standing next to a body that had the potential to wipe out the human race was kind of … well, it was kind of nice.

She slowly ran her gloved hand over Candice Walker’s body. A meticulous search. She had Tim’s report up on the right side of her visor. She was getting the hang of the eye-track navigation; as she found torn pustules and other marks on Candice’s body, she checked to see if Tim had logged them. Maybe he’d missed something. Or, maybe something had grown after he’d completed his initial exam.

Margaret heard a rattle: the heavy, compact Stryker bone saw moving against a prep tray. Tim was cleaning Petrovsky’s powdered bone and that thick rot from the blade, preparing to use the device on the skull of Candice Walker. Petrovsky’s rot was accelerating now. Most of his skin looked black and wet, and it was already sloughing off at his left shoulder to show the sagging, decomposing muscles beneath.

Tim stopped, looked up. “Uh, Doctor Montoya? What are you looking for?”

“Triangles,” she said, turning her attention back to Walker. “I’m looking for any skin growths that would show triangle infection.”