Sealed In (7 page)

“Uh, huh.” Stew nodded. “You aren’t a
n Ice Age Eskimo. Or a Bog Person.”

“I cert
ainly hope not,” Emma said. “I have no plans to die in an extinction level event.”

“You’re a nut,” Stew said.

Andy laughed.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Emma asked. “No sleep over tonight, pal.”

“Emma,” Stew scolded. “This behavior with Cody …”

“Will save her life one day,” Emma cut him off. “So there.”

“Maybe you should have let Val watch …”

Emma’s loud gasp silenced Stew. “Bite your tongue.” She gave a quick look to Andy. “Did you hear that? He wants the spy to watch my granddaughter. Uh
… no, Daddy. I don’t even like when she visits him. He speaks Russian to her. Lord knows what vile things he is saying.”

“Um, Em?” Stew said, “The Cold War ended. Val is a doctor, not a Russian spy, and you need to stop this.”

“I hate him.” Emma folded her arms. “I hate him, Andy, and he hates me.”

“He does not,” Stew defended.

“Daddy, he was the one who had me committed.”

Stew growled, “Because you wouldn’t come out of the goddamn hole!”

“I thought the world was gonna end!” Emma yelled. “And he used it as his excuse to get me away because he knew I found his picture on the ’net.” She faced Andy. “I found his picture on the internet. He’s a missing spy. I’ll show you.”

Stew tossed his hands in the air. “Let it go, for crying out loud. You are both grandparents to that child.”

“I don’t trust him.”

With another growl, Stew turned. “I’m leaving.”

“Why are you here?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know now. I forgot. You frustrate me. I’ll be back.” Stew walked out the back door.

Emma chuckled. “And he calls me crazy.”

Andy laid a hand on
her cheek. “You … you’re fine.”

“Thank you.” She tiptoed up and darted a kiss to Andy.

“I … want … t… to see …”

“The spy picture of Val?”

Andy nodded.

“Absolutely. But first …” She placed Cody back at the table, pulled the cookie decorations to her
, and then grabbed her phone, resetting it. “We do the drill again. Right this time.”

<><><><>

Val kissed Heather on the cheek as he put on his coat. “I will be making rounds at the hospital, so I will not get to see you two off.”

“Thank you,” Heather said
, “for letting Roman get time off.”

“Have fun.” He stepped to Roman and kissed him on the forehead. “Drive safely and call when you arrive.”

“We will, Father. Thanks.”

Val grabbed his briefcase and walked from the clinic, waving one more time.

Heather spun to Roman. “All right, what’s left to do?”

“I did all the work, we can leave as soon as Vivian gets here.”

“Sweet.”

“Hey …” Roman leaned to her. “We got about fifteen minutes. No patients. Wanna do something we’re not supposed to?”

“Fool around?” Heather asked.

“No.” Roman grabbed her hand. “The basement.”

“Seriously?” Heather asked. “You mean the stuff that your father is obsessed with?”

“Yeah, aren’t you curious as to what it is?” Roman asked.

“You bet.” Heather looked at her phone. “Ok, let’s look, but we don’t have much time. We don’t want Vivian to bust us down there and tell your dad.”

“Cool, let’s go.”

Roman led the way to the basement, leaving the door open. He turned on the light. Sitting center were several boxes and two old trunks.

“Why do you sup
pose he is obsessive about this?” Heather asked.

“I’m betting there are pictures in here. He doesn't talk about living in Russia at all.”

“Was he a doctor there?” Heather asked.

“Yeah. He was a lot older than my mother.” Roman began going through the boxes. The flaps weren’t sealed. “Books.”

Heather checked another box. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“How freaking old are these boxes?” She lifted a tape from one. “These aren’t even VHS; they’re the ones before it.”

“Oh wow. Beta?” Roman laughed and took the tape. “This is so great.”

“Let’s try the trunks.” Heather walked to the first trunk. They both knelt on the floor.

“It can’t be all that secretive,” Roman said as he turned the key. “He left the key in the lock.” As he opened the trunk lid, the key fell out. He didn’t think much of it, he’d get it later.

Inside the trunk were books, some clothes, and a few pictures.

Heather’s hands rummaged at the same time as Roman’s. “What’s in here that he’s so protective over?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a diary or an old girlfriend.”

“Oh, maybe he had a wife in Russia.”

“You think.”

“Bet this is her stuff.” Heather reached deeper into the trunk; as she pulled items out to view she paused. “The side is loose.”

Roman looked. “It’s not loose. It’s a compartment.”

“No way,” Heather said with excitement. “A secret compartment?”

Roman nodded.

“He’s got something in here. Maybe my mom is right.”

Roman paused. “Stop. She is not. It’s just …” The side flap folded over as if it were supposed to. Silver cases were revealed, no bigger than four inches. They lined against the case.

“Drugs?” Heather asked.

“No way.”

“Should we open one?”

Roman hesitated. “Bet it’s money or gold.”

“Oh, he’s probably worth a fortune. And you just aren’t supposed to know. Go on.”

Roman pulled out one of the cases. He opened it, and inside were six silver tubes that looked exactly like cigarettes. Same size and shape; in fact, they were made that way, down to the part that resembled a filter.

“What are they? Just metal cigarettes. Oh my God, Roman, your dad invented the first E cigarette.”

“Weird.” Roman lifted one. He touched the mimicked filter end and it turned. “Oh wow.”

“Drugs.” Heather nodded. “Or secret scrolls.”

Roman took off the filter and tapped it on his hand. “Nothing. Just this.” He pulled out a wire. The size of a Q-tip. Straight on one end, the other was a small glass coil. “Son of a bitch, you’re right. He invented the first electronic cigarette. Wow.”

“Kind of a letdown.” Heather said.

“Yeah, but …” Roman stopped when he heard the footsteps above them.

“Roman?” The woman’s voice called out. “Are you here?”

Roman cleared his throat. “Be right up.”

“Shit. Vivian.” Heather cringed. “You think she’ll tell your dad?”

“No, but let’s get back up there.”

Hurriedly, as a team, they returned things to the way they were, or so they thought. In their haste, they neglected to notice two things.

One, Roman never replaced the key.

The other … when he hurriedly replaced the coil back into the metal tube, he never noticed that he broke the tip of the glass spiral.

For the first time in his career, Edward had to pause to throw up, and then he downed a drink. His examination of Vivian Morris went about as far as it could go before he got sick. It wasn’t just the sight and smell of her, it was the thought of what had occurred.

“I need an investigative team,” Edward told Dr. Lange, head of the Centers for Disease Control
, in his first telephone conversation to headquarters. “Body removal and another team of virologists. We have to trace this thing. We need to find out exactly what it is.”

“You’ve only been there three hours, Ed. What in the hell …”

“Over eight hundred bodies. One just thawed enough for me to examine … my God, Bill.” Edward grabbed his flask. “This woman … these people … this … thing. I’m scared to death.”

At first, his soft laugh carried over the line, then Dr. Bill Lange breathed outward. “You’re very serious.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Bill.” Edward paused to take a sip. “I don’t even know if
I’ll
end up with it, for as much precaution as I’ve taken. This thing is like nothing I have ever seen. Nothing. And it’s fast, my God, is it fast. Last phone call out of this town was placed a few days ago; that’s when I guess the town died.”

“When did it hit there? Any guesses?”

“No more than a week.”

“Jesus.”

“Tell me about it,” Edward said. “I just did my first examination, and I got sick. Sick, Bill. Underneath what was left of her skin … and I say what was left because the victim either scratched her skin away or it tore from within. And what was beneath it … it was like tar, looked like tar and smelled like bile. Everything inside was destroyed. Internal organs barely recognizable. They were mush. If there was any blood left in the victim’s body, it was too thick to run through the veins and just seeped through any bodily orifice it could find.”

“Where … where did it start?” Dr. Lange asked. “Any idea?”

“I’d be guessing,” Edward replied. “But I’d say it was inhaled. Maybe it started as a respiratory ailment, who knows, but it hit the digestive system and ate through it like acid.”

“Septicemia?”

Edward laughed. “We need a new word for it. Trust me. Septicemia is a walk in a park compared to this. And you know what the worst part is?”

“There’s worse?” Dr. Lange asked.

“Oh, yeah. The brain. Barely touched. That tells me the victim knew every single thing that was happening to them. This woman felt every single ounce of pain and sickness, and my guess is she went through an agony that was inhumane.”

“I’m disbursing as many units as I can to you. They’ll be there by the end of the day,” Dr. Lange said. “Have you tried the neighboring communities?”

“I am keeping the State Police at bay and out of those towns just in case. I’m scared. There’s a town thirty miles north of here, one forty miles east. The last phone call went to Lincoln. Those are small towns. But Billings … it’s only ninety miles away.”

“This hit fast; do you think it broke boundaries?” Dr. Lange asked.

“It should have under normal circumstances,” Edward said. “But these aren’t normal. You have everyday folks, dead cowboys in pickup trucks with shotguns on every single road leading in and out of town. This makes me wonder if there is a BSL-4 lab around here. Maybe a resident here brought in the germ, knew it was released, and they shut down and sealed in the town. Set up an aid station, prepared for it. Kept it down until everyone died.”

“Someone knew it was this bad?”

“Without a doubt. My only hope is they shut down this town fast enough.” At that instant, Edward’s eye lifted to the opening of the lab door. “My team just returned. Let me call you back.”

Dr. Lange told him he was assembling more teams, and the conversation ended.

Using the intercom, Edward told Harold to double disinfect, then waited for him to walk into the office portion.

He knew by the look on Harold’s face that he had more information.

“We found a whole bunch of bodies,” Harold said. “Maybe a eighty or more.”

“There’s eight hundred plus people in this town, of …”

“No.” Harold stopped him. “Let me finish. We found a bunch of bodies. Apparently infected … but they didn’t die of our sickness. They were shot.”

Edward was barreled over by the news. “It can’t be.”

“Single shot to the head. Men, women, children.”

“Someone finished off the town.”

Harold shook his head. “Nope. Someone killed the people who weren’t going to die from the illness.”

Edward ran his hand down his face with a hard sigh. “What the hell? Why?”

With his question came a thump on his desk. Harold tossed a sealed bag; in it was what looked like a journal.”

“What is it?” Edward asked.

“Your answers,” Harold replied. “Someone documented everything. I only skimmed through, but I’m pretty certain,” he pointed to the journal, “that right there solves the mystery of what happened to this town.”

Vivian Morris was done for the day. She thanked Bonnie for the pie she brought with her at her appointment and apologized for the wait. But Bonnie was the last patient of the day. Vivian cleaned up the waiting area, pulled the charts for the next day, and powered down the computer.

As she did a sneeze reverberated through her entire body. “Oh man,” she said out loud. “I hope I didn’t catch what Mr. Stevens had.
Jeez.” After rubbing a tissue under her nose, she told herself it was just some dust, and grabbed her coat.