The Liger Plague (Book 1) (12 page)

Chapter 9

Tag spent a fitful night, waking periodically to check on Monica and Taylor. The intruders upstairs made lots of noise, stomping around, laughing and generally having a good time. He figured that they must have discovered his liquor cabinet and twelve pack of Geary’s sitting in the fridge. They’d turned the stereo up to full volume, and every so often he heard the sound of a gunshot going off. As much as he wanted to try to remove the twine wrapped around his wrists, he was too weak to attempt it. The effect of the vaccination was still wreaking havoc on his body. He glanced over at his wife and daughter both asleep on the couch, their faces reflected in the splashes of light given off by the fifty-inch flat screen.

His head pounded, and his body ached. It was the worst he’d ever felt. The blisters on his body screamed for relief, and he knew he had to get some medicated cream on them soon so that infection wouldn’t set in. Despite the fact that he now had variola minor—a minor case of smallpox—it didn’t mean he was out of the woods yet. With proper medical care, this infectious disease was easily treatable, but without treatment the chance of infection posed a much greater health risk.

He tried to keep his mind occupied by watching an infomercial for a vegetable chopping product. He was never so happy to watch an infomercial than he was at the moment. It kept him alert and awake. Soon fatigue overcame him, and he fell back asleep. When he woke up sometime later, he sensed daylight breaking. Thin slivers of light slipped through the blinds and illuminated the finished basement, causing a painful sensation in his eyes. He heard nothing coming from upstairs and deduced from the time of day that they must have passed out from their excessive partying.

Something seemed different. He glanced over at the sofa and realized that his wife and daughter were not there. Panic filled him. He looked back and saw that Versa was also gone. Wriggling unsuccessfully against the armchair, he tried to free his bound ankle from the leg of the couch. His fever had broken, and he was no longer drenched in sweat. The tantalizing itch had passed, and he no longer felt the need to scrub his body from head to toe with a wire brush, although he knew this sensation was fleeting and that the torture would most likely return. More importantly, he didn’t feel deathly ill like he had last night, but hungover and fatigued. The pounding in his head had lessened to a murmur and given way to clarity and reason, and he knew if he could just free himself from these restraints, he could save his wife and daughter. A sense of vengeance filled him as he considered the worst-case scenario. He lifted his hands and tried to position the twine against the wooden arm. Standing as best he could, his ankle tied to the leg of the chair, he vigorously rubbed the twine against the carved wood, hoping he could create some heat from the friction and burn off the splintery strands. He tried to listen for any sounds upstairs but heard nothing.

An hour passed, and he fell back, exhausted, to catch his breath. He could feel the twine loosening ever so slightly. Or was he imagining this? It didn’t matter. He’d keep doing whatever he could to pry himself loose until he was eventually free. The
Today Show
came on, and he read with rapt interest as the news anchor spoke of the curious situation unfolding on Cooke’s Island. A commentator speculated that a rare Hantavirus had struck the island, but there was no official comment either way.

He stood up, gathering his strength again, and slid the twine back and forth against the arm. Sweat poured from his forehead, this time a result of his strenuous efforts. If he could free himself, he could get inside his supply cabinet, get one of his pistols and some ammo, and rescue his family, assuming it wasn’t too late. No, he couldn’t let himself think that way. His family was fine.

Two hours passed, and he still remained tied to the chair. He collapsed again, needing a few minutes rest before he started anew. The muscles in his arms and stomach throbbed so badly that he feared he might have strained them. After a few deep breaths he started up again.

A soap opera came on, and he watched two actresses argue, one slapping the other in the face. He moved his wrists and felt the last two strands of twine snap apart. With newfound energy, he untied the twine from his ankle and lifted his foot out of the loop. A sense of purpose came over him as he ripped the tape off his mouth, trying not to cry out in pain. Blood and skin bits had collected along the sticky side of the strip. He sprinted to the door to his supply room, remembering that Slade had taken his set of keys, and thanked his lucky stars he’d had the foresight to hide another key behind one of the bookshelves. Retrieving it, he opened the door and took out his Saiga 12 semi-automatic rifle and a .357 Magnum loaded with 125 grain hollow-point bullets. One-shot stopping power. He checked the cylinder and confirmed that every chamber was filled. The Saiga was a monster of a weapon. Its speed and firepower would clear out a large crowd, and it gave him the ability to use different magazines. In close-quarters combat, the Saiga would do the job rather nicely.

Locked and loaded, he took off his shoes and tiptoed up the stairs. At the top, he found that the door was locked from the outside by the hook at the top. Tag and Monica had put the hook up there to keep Salty, their Golden Lab, in the basement so that he wouldn’t chew up the furniture whenever they left him alone in the house. The hook brought back memories of Salty, who they put down last year when he got sick with bladder cancer.

Tag took out his credit card and slipped it up the crack until the latch popped. He slipped the Magnum into his waistband, waited a few seconds, and then burst into the living room, gripping the Saiga. What he saw shocked him. Monica and Taylor were sitting together on the leather couch, bound at the wrists with their mouths still taped. They gazed up at him with fear in their eyes. On the floor lay the bloody corpses of the six gang members, pools of blood puddled around their heads. He snatched a steak knife out of the drawer and cut his wife and daughter loose. Beer and booze bottles lay everywhere. Furniture had been upended, and the gang had put holes in the wallboard. Scrawled on the wall in what he assumed was blood were the words,
The Liger Has Landed!
The sight of the word liger sent a chill through his spine.

He started to remove the tape from his wife’s mouth when he noticed a series of small red spots on her skin. Once he’d removed the tape from her mouth, he went over to his daughter and saw that she had the same spots as well. The smallpox was beginning to set in.

“Did they hurt either of you?” he asked, tossing the balled tape behind him.

“No, thank God,” Monica said, falling back against the sofa. Sweat had dampened her hair and dripped down the fine bones of her pretty face. “They brought us upstairs when you fell asleep. I don’t know what they did with the lady who came by. You have to go find her, Tag.”

“Jesus! What the hell happened up here? Did they start to fight?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Monica said, vomiting on the floor. “I can barely stand I’m so dizzy.”

“Same here,” Taylor said. “My whole body feels like it got hit by a truck, Dad.”

He knew instantly that they’d contracted the smallpox virus and only hoped it was a case of the minor strain.

“Who shot them?”

“They were pretty drunk by the time they brought us up here. The one named Gus tied us to the sofa. I have no doubt he would have… tried something, Tag, if not for that mysterious person who saved us.”

“Mysterious person?” Tag said in confusion. “What mysterious person?”

“I don’t know who it was because I could barely see. The person was wearing a mask and costume. They got our attention through the window when the others weren’t looking. Then he—or she—walked in through the front door and shot each one of these gang members while they were drinking. By that point they were so drunk they could barely move.”

“I don’t understand. What kind of a mask?”

“You’re not going to believe this, Dad…”

“Try me,” he said, turning toward his daughter.

“They were wearing a liger mask.”

“A what?”

“She’s right, Tag. It was a liger mask. We couldn’t see who the person was because they were wearing a robe of some kind with stripes across it.”

Tag stood and ran to the window. The purveyor of this infectious disease had been on the island the entire time and had been watching them. How else to account for the fact that this person, the one who had put his family in jeopardy, had been the one to save them as well? The thought of this caller watching his family frightened him and made him paranoid. It was like
Big Brother
in reverse.

He returned to Monica and Taylor still sitting on the couch. He knelt in front of them and examined the red dots on their faces and arms, trying to determine the extent of the pox. With no pharmacy on the island, they’d have to make do with whatever he had on hand. He ran downstairs to the supply room in the basement and retrieved his medical kit from the top shelf. All the supplies inside the room had been organized and stacked neatly, and every item had been tagged. He had enough dry food stored away to last the next three years if need be, and enough weapons to fight a small war.

Locking the door, he sprinted upstairs. Taylor had fallen back on the sofa by the time he’d returned, her head resting on her mother’s lap. Monica ran her hand through her daughter’s sweaty hair, trying to ease Taylor’s discomfort. Tag opened the kit and pulled out two compact IVs, a bottle of liquid antibiotics and one of liquid codeine. He unfolded the collapsible metal frame and inserted it into the stand. Then he set up the drip bag and filled it with a saline solution containing amoxicillin. He repeated the same procedure with his daughter. The metal frames were light enough that they could carry them upstairs to their bedrooms if need be, but for now he made sure the IV stands remained stable while they rested. He spooned out doses of liquid codeine and administered them orally. It would help alleviate the intense aches and back pains that would inevitably rack their bodies.

He stood and studied them. The doctor in him had now taken over and refused to admit that the worst had occurred. If the vaccine provided to him had been a protective measure, it meant that Monica and Taylor had contracted the less severe form of smallpox, in which case there was nothing he could do but wait and do what he could to ease their suffering. The virus would need to run its course naturally, and in the end it would either kill them or they would come out the other side. The IV solution and codeine would only treat the symptoms.

Versa! He’d momentarily forgotten about the intolerable island woman. He went from room to room until he found her in the guest bedroom upstairs, one hand tied to the top bed frame and both her feet tied to the end board. Duct tape covered her mouth. Once he set her free, Versa shot up off the bed, cursing like a Teamster.

“Where are those lousy bastards?!”

“Someone came in last night and killed them.”

“Not your family too?”

“No, Monica and Taylor are fine. The others, though, are all dead.”

A big smile spread over Versa’s face. “Serves those scum right.”

“There’s no time to gloat. We need to clean up the bodies and scrub the place clean.”

“Killing them was too nice. I would have clipped battery cables to their balls and fried them for hours on end.”

Once back on the main floor, Tag located his cell phone, put it on speakerphone, and dialed the private number of Special Agent Blake Whelton of the FBI’s Hazardous Materials Rapid Deployment Team. Whelton was not only one of his best friends but also the most experienced and knowledgeable agent in the field. He had no doubt that Whelton would be put in charge of this complicated case. Whelton possessed considerable clout in the bureau, and his years of experience had given him special insights into the ways and methods of bioterrorists. In fact, he probably had his team of FBI agents set up along the Portland waterfront right now. The phone rang, and a taped message asked callers to leave a detailed message.

“Blake, this is your old buddy Tag. Call this number immediately when you get the chance. It’s urgent, as you no doubt already know.”

He stuffed his phone back into his pocket, wondering why no one had called and filled him in on the situation unfolding. Unless they knew about the RF threat and were trying to protect him. No sense worrying about that now, because he had too much else to do at the moment. The corpses sprawled on the floor needed to be carried out and disposed of in a timely fashion. Where would he put them? He went over to the bay window to see if there were other people out on the street, but didn’t see a soul. He passed through the door leading into the garage and pushed his wheelbarrow out the door and into the backyard. Then he went back inside the garage and got his blue tarp and set it up inside the trunk of his wife’s Beamer. He rolled the corpses up in plastic bags, wrapped duct tape around them, and then dragged each corpse out back. He stacked the bodies two at a time in the wheelbarrow. Each of them had a bullet hole in their head, indicating to him that their executioner had been a professional marksman. Before leaving, he grabbed a lasso of rope and pushed it up his arm until it rested on his shoulder.

He placed Gus, Slade, and the corpse of one of the women inside the trunk, fitting them snugly. He felt no remorse for their deaths, yet the sight of those two thugs had filled him with apprehension. The crisis on the island had brought out the worst in these men, and now they’d paid the ultimate price. Would there be other gang members out looking for them? Would the police think that he’d been the one who shot and killed them? By ditching the bodies, he wasn’t about to let anyone find out.

Versa filled a bucket with soap and water and cleaned off the blood and bits of brain matter scattered along the floor. The sight of the bloody massacre had no effect on him. Having conducted countless autopsies on humans and animals, he’d long ago gotten used to seeing blood.