Snakehead (39 page)

He slowly drew back the sheet to look at Margaret’s naked form in the bed and trail the back of his hand down from her neck and between her breasts. He sighed. ‘Such beauty,’ he said. ‘Such a shame to waste it.’

Margaret could only watch, and feel very distantly beneath the surface calm, a rising panic. Her breathing came a little faster. She made a small grunting noise. He said, ‘Margaret, Margaret. I told you not to fight it.’ He cupped one of her breasts in his hand and grazed the nipple with his thumb. He leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips, and then sat looking at her for a very long time before covering her with the sheet once more. ‘Such a waste,’ he said again.

He stood up and crossed to the dressing table. She could hear him opening something, laying things out on the polished surface. Hard things. Metal and glass. But she could not see. He said, ‘A name like Mendez. An accent I could never quite get rid of, no matter how hard I tried. You cannot know what a handicap they have been in this great country of ours. Always a Hispanic. Always a foreigner. Never an American. Even when I got a passport. Everything I have achieved was in spite of my background, Margaret, in spite of the prejudice I encountered with every job application I made, with each board I faced. And then, of course, finally, they got their revenge. Some piddling bureaucratic oversight — not even mine — and I am forced into early retirement. Forced to abandon my career at the peak of my powers.’ He turned around, and she could see the lights in his eyes, fuelled by anger and hatred. ‘And then what do they do? This government of yours, this great country with its precious ideals of liberty and equality. They start dumping poison on my people. Spraying disease and genetic disorder on innocent women and children, poor Colombian peasants scratching to make a living. And why? In a futile attempt to stop the trade in a designer drug that your own President has confessed to taking.’

Even through her confusion, Margaret was aware that Mendez’s ‘we’ had become a reference to himself and the Colombian people, and that his ‘you’ now applied to Margaret and the Americans, among whose number he apparently no longer counted himself.

Again, she heard him speaking and had to force herself to concentrate. ‘No longer could I just stand by doing nothing,’ he was saying. ‘It was time to do something. Time to teach America a lesson. Time to show its politicians that they could not just stomp around the world trampling over other people’s rights and sovereignty. Time to teach white Anglo-Saxon Americans that they could die just as easily as the rest of us.’

From somewhere Margaret found the strength to speak. The words bubbled out of her throat. ‘You…’ she said. And with another great effort. ‘…you engineered the virus.’

He smiled. ‘Of course. And don’t you just love the irony?
Spanish
flu. A Colombian revenge. Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. Americans don’t understand irony.’ Slowly, very slowly, the fog was lifting from Margaret’s brain. Mendez said, ‘When one of my students came to me with soft tissue, it was as if he had been sent by God. He was a volunteer with the expedition to recover the
Seadragon
from the Arctic. It was about eighteen months ago. You probably read about it. The submarine crew who died from the Spanish flu in 1918. Their vessel became trapped under the ice pack, eventually coming to rest on the polar continental shelf. The boat was never holed. A couple of divers looking for another wreck found it, and some scientists figured that the crew had probably been preserved inside by the cold, and that if they could raise the sub they might be able to recover soft tissue and culture live virus. They failed, of course. Sure, they got the soft tissue, but they couldn’t culture live virus. Wasn’t cold enough, even down there.’

He turned back to whatever he was doing on the dressing table. ‘My student managed to secrete a little of it away. He thought I might succeed where others had failed. I was flattered by his faith in me and sad to disappoint him. I told him it was a waste of time. It couldn’t be done. Which was true. What I did not tell him was that I could clone the virus from the viral RNA in the tissue he had given me. It was almost intact. As near to perfect as you could hope for. And then, of course, it was easy for me to engineer it to my own particular specifications.’

Margaret fought for breath to speak. ‘You’re…insane.’

He swung around. One eyebrow cocked. ‘No, Margaret. Just smarter than the rest of you.’

‘You won’t…just kill white…Anglo-Saxon Americans.’ The very effort of forcing herself to speak was clearing her mind. ‘You’ll kill Americans…of every race…every colour. And people…all over the world. Even…Colombians.’

He shook his head and smiled, as if saddened by her wretched stupidity. ‘You don’t really think I would create a virus without also producing the vaccine?’ he said. ‘After all, that’s what made me able to sell the idea to the Colombians who’ve been bringing in the Chinese. Once the flu is out there, they can sell the vaccine to the highest bidder. Lot of money to be made. And, of course, the people of Colombia might just get preferential treatment. Naturally, I have already vaccinated myself.’

Margaret coughed the phlegm out of her throat. Her tongue was so dry it was sticking to the roof of her mouth. ‘Can’t work,’ she gasped. ‘You know it. No one…could produce enough vaccine…in time. Once the flu is…rampant…it will be…too late.’

He shrugged and turned away again, and when he turned back a few moments later, he had a syringe in his hand, needle pointed at the ceiling. He squeezed it gently until a spurt of clear liquid shot into the air, flashing in the moonlight, then he approached Margaret around the bed. Panic was feeding strength to her lungs and heart, and her breathing became rapid and erratic. She found movement in her arms and legs, but not enough to resist. She heard her own voice scratching in her throat with each breath, whimpering like a dog.

‘Just relax, Margaret,’ Mendez told her softly. ‘I want you to know how it feels. To live with death hanging over you. To wonder when and where it will come from.’

She felt the cold dab of disinfectant on her arm, and the sharp bite of the needle. There was nothing she could do to stop him squeezing the syringe, forcing the virus through the needle and into her bloodstream. And with a start she realised that her baby, too, would be infected. An icy despair broke over her, like a wave in a frozen sea.

‘Unless, of course,’ she heard Mendez saying, ‘you’re smart enough to figure out what it is I programmed to trigger the virus.’

He withdrew the needle, dabbed her arm again and stood up. He returned to the dressing table and started clearing away his things. She lay, under sentence of death, and saw poor Steve’s haunted face in that moment when his resistance finally ended. And in her mind’s eye she saw also the faceless faces of all those who would die just like him, just like her. Hundreds of millions of them. A tear forced its way out of the corner of her eye and ran down on to the pillow.

His shadow fell across her again, and she saw him silhouetted against the window. ‘Goodbye, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Time for me to go home.’

* * *

When she awoke, she was not certain how long she had slept. Minutes. Hours. Moonlight still streamed in through the window, but the angle of it had changed, and half the room was now in deep shadow. She turned her head and found that it moved quite easily. The digital display on the bedside clock told her it was just after four. With consciousness came recollection, and an involuntary moan slipped past her lips. A deep, heartfelt moan of distress. She grieved more for her unborn child than for herself, a revelation to her that she could consider another life more important than her own. And she knew that it was only nature, what had been programmed into her. It was just that she had always thought that her conscious mind would always make decisions over her evolutionary one.

She figured that Mendez must be long gone, and she was lying attempting to summon the strength to try to get out of the bed when she heard a crash from somewhere downstairs, and a man’s voice cursing. Then Clara started barking, and the voice shouted again and she stopped. Margaret lay still and listened for a long time hearing nothing. And then a car door slammed outside. Maybe he was still packing his stuff into the Bronco. Maybe his decision to run had not been taken until tonight, triggered by Margaret. Why had he not just killed her? And as soon as the question formed in her head she knew the answer. Because he loved her. Because he knew he could never have her. Because he wanted her to suffer as he had suffered with her rejection. She closed her eyes and was aware that she was breathing almost normally. But her mind was still fuzzy, not fully in control of her body. She turned her head and lifted her arm and saw the needlepoint where the virus had entered her. It gave her fresh impetus, and with an enormous effort she forced herself up into a sitting position, the cotton top sheet falling away to the floor.

It took another great effort to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but when she tried to put her weight on them, they offered no resistance and folded under her. She collapsed into the thick piled carpet like a house of cards. Part of her wanted simply to close her eyes, but another, larger, part of her fought the impulse. Her muscles were like jelly. She had to put steel into them with her mind, and it took several minutes for her to drag herself, on her knees, to the door. She fell into the landing and found herself staring straight down the stairs to the entrance hall. She lay, listening, for a long time, but heard nothing. Even if she made it down there, she had no idea what she could do. She had no strength. But she could speak, she was sure. If she could get to a phone…She let herself go and half slid, half tumbled, to the foot of the stairs, carpet burning her legs and arms and chest.

As she lay in the hall, breathing hard, she heard the cough of a motor starting, and then the roar of it as Mendez gunned the engine. Suddenly she no longer wanted just to make a phone call. She wanted to stop him. Any way she could. Margaret had never suspected just how powerful a fuel adrenalin could be. A rush of it came with her anger and despair and powered her struggle to her feet, pulling herself up on the coat stand. She almost fell again as it tipped away from the wall and crashed to the floor. The door jamb saved her. She clung to it desperately, steadying herself before staggering off through the dining room, clutching at anything that offered support, and making it, finally to the kitchen. The lights had all been switched off, but the moonlight still poured in through the back window. She used the central island to support her progress around the kitchen and into the gun room. The gun cabinet, which had earlier bruised her leg, was there to keep her on her feet. Outside, probably no more than twenty feet away through the open garage, she could hear the Bronco’s engine idling. Why had he not gone? And suddenly she was afraid he would come back and find her there, naked and helpless. How on earth could she have thought there was any way she could stop him? She heard him calling to Clara, the dog barking distantly at first, and then closer. A car door slammed. After several seconds, another.

It was in that moment Margaret realised what it was she was leaning against. She felt for the light switch, and blinked in the painful brightness of it crashing through the darkness in her brain. Six shotguns were neatly stacked along the rack. She snatched one down and broke it open on top of the chest, and with thick, fumbling fingers, pulled open the top drawer. The first box of cartridges she pulled out split open and spilled its contents across the floor. As she dropped to her knees, cartridges rolling across the floorboards away from her scrabbling fingers, she heard the whine of the Bronco reversing into the turning circle opposite the entrance to the garage. She let out a tiny cry, and her fingers closed around a cartridge. And then another. Using the gun to prop herself up, she dropped them one after the other into the two barrels and snapped it shut. She was on her knees then, swaying behind the door. She reached up and pulled the handle down, using it to lever herself to her feet and draw it open at the same time. It almost tipped her backwards to send her crashing to the floor again. But she caught the architrave and held her balance. She stood reeling there for an eternity, hearing the Bronco slipping into forward gear, its headlights swinging into the garage as it made its turn. She staggered out and was immediately blinded by them, caught in their full glare, stark naked and barely able to stand. Beyond the blaze of them she saw, palely reflected, the astonishment on Mendez’s face as he jammed on the brakes. She swung the gun to her shoulder and pulled the first trigger, firing straight into the light. The force of it propelled her backwards, and the involuntary reflex of her finger emptied the second barrel. She heard the scream of the Bronco’s engine and the blaring of the horn as she fell.

Chapter Fifteen

I

The first thing she was aware of were the voices. There seemed to be so many of them. She felt as though she were floating in an auditorium filled with people. She wanted to open her eyes. But the lids were so heavy she could not move them, as if someone had decided she was already dead and had placed pennies upon them to keep them shut. When eventually they snapped open, she was taken almost by surprise. The room was filled with sunshine, the shadows of people moving around in it. Where was she? Lying on something soft, staring at the ceiling. A fan was turning lazily overhead. She smelled something familiar. Something disturbing. What was it? She became aware of her breathing becoming more rapid. It was cigar smoke. Stale cigar smoke. Mendez! They were Mendez’s cigars. She tried to sit up and pain closed around her head like a steel band. She heard a familiar voice. A man’s voice. ‘She’s awake. Doc, she’s awake.’

A face floated into her vision. A familiar face. But it wasn’t attached to the voice. It was a woman. A doctor. Someone on her staff. A medical examiner. ‘Elizabeth,’ she heard herself say.

Elizabeth’s warm hand gently brushed her forehead. ‘Just lie still, Dr. Campbell. You’re gonna be just fine.’