The Liger Plague (Book 1) (15 page)

The man conferred with some of the others.

“The relatives of the dead would like to take away the bodies.”

“Leave them. Their blood may be infected with an even deadlier virus. We’ll give them a proper burial when things return to normal,” Tag said. “And one other thing. Tell your people that under no circumstances should they use their cellphones.”

“But we need to talk to our families back home,” the guy argued.

“Trust me, don’t do it. It could be the difference between life and death.”

The man walked back to the crowd. Parents picked up their children and shuffled sadly back down the road, many of them crying and wailing in agony. Tag’s heart went out to them. He wished he could help, but taking them in would put his family in jeopardy. Once the last person disappeared from sight, he dashed into the second bedroom and found his wife propped up against the window, barely conscious and gripping the rifle. She had no idea how to use the weapon, refusing to have anything to do with guns.

“Are you okay, hon?”

Tears fell from her eyes. “She shot them. Our Taylor killed those men, Tag.”

He embraced her. “She had no other choice.”

“This situation has turned our daughter into a killer.” She sobbed, falling into his arms.

“If she didn’t, they might have broken inside and killed the two of you. These windows are strong, but they’re not unbreakable.”

She wept into his chest, and he could feel the heat from her forehead burning against his damp shirt. The situation had reached critical mass, and he realized that Lenny had been correct. The liger had landed on Cooke’s Island and had just begun to wreak its destruction. Now they were stuck on the island for the foreseeable future with little medicine and no authority to speak of. He wondered what the future held now that the first component of the hybrid virus had struck. Would the fatality rate be high? More troubling, he wondered what the second component of the disease would bring. The prospects of the unknown terrified him, especially the possibility of an encephalitis/rabies-like outbreak. Smallpox was bad enough, but to envision an island of disfigured, mentally deranged people sent a chill down his spine. He tried not to think about such a nightmarish scenario.

But how could he not?

He went downstairs and armed the alarm system he’d installed a few years ago. The island had been such a quiet, peaceful respite from the real world that most islanders never even locked their doors when they left for the beach. He remembered how his wife had laughed at him for having installed such an elaborate security alarm, jokingly calling him a paranoid right-wing whack-job. There were only two cops on the island at any one time, so in the event of a break-in, the alarm would pitch loudly, giving him enough time to at least grab his gun.

Once the alarm system was set, he went back upstairs and carried his daughter down to the main floor. Then he went up and brought his wife down as well. He wanted them nearby in case they needed his assistance. He pulled out the sleeper couch, which they used whenever guests arrived, and placed his wife and daughter on either side. He hooked the IVs back up to their platform and inserted the needles into their arms. Once he was finished, he collected the weapons and placed them in a spot where he could easily retrieve them. Exhausted from all that had happened this morning, he pulled a cold can of soda out of the refrigerator and collapsed onto the Ottoman, closing his eyes. He’d need to take brief naps whenever possible, but something told him that naps would be few and far between.

Chapter 11

No sooner had he closed his eyes than the cell phone in his pocket rang, startling him awake. He opened his eyes and stared down at his pocket, feeling the vibration quivering against his thigh. He removed the phone from his pocket and put it on speakerphone.

“Hello, Dr. Winters. The first thing I need you to do is put this conversation on speakerphone.”

“I’m already on it.”

“Good. Then let me introduce myself. I’m Special Agent Susan Bishop of the FBI’s Hazardous Material Response Unit. I’m the supervising agent in charge of this investigation. How are you?”

“Just peachy, Bishop. What the hell has taken you so long to contact me?”

“We’ve been advised that there’s been a potential radio frequency component to this viral event, which is why I requested you put this call on speakerphone. Sorry for the delay in reaching you, but with the grid out on the island, I had no choice but to postpone this call. How are you holding up, Dr. Winters?”

“Not bad, except that my wife and daughter have come down with smallpox.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. As bad as things seem on that island, I suppose that there is a silver lining to all this.”

He grunted at the cool tone of her response. “A silver lining? Please tell me what that could possibly be.”

“This virus has not yet spread to the mainland.” She paused. “I know that’s no consolation to you, Doctor, except for the fact that you have two other children on the mainland to worry about.”

“This island’s in chaos, Bishop. It’s a complete mess. There’s no authority taking control of the situation. There are two Portland P.D. officers stationed on the island, but I haven’t been able to contact them on a regular basis, and even if we could, they don’t have the expertise to handle a crisis of this magnitude and scale.”

“Are there any signs of the infection spreading?”

“It’s already spread far and wide. I’ve witnessed the telltale signs of smallpox over people’s bodies: red spots, fatigue, nausea and high fever. These people need medical assistance and are desperate for someone to come over and take control of this situation. If they don’t get help soon, we’re going to have a major tragedy on our hands. It’ll make Katrina seem like Mardi Gras.”

“The Bureau understands the seriousness of the situation there, Doctor. The webcams situated around the island have been relaying real-time video footage of the events back to us. So we have a good idea what we’re dealing with.”

“How can the webcams be working when all the power is out on the island?”

“The webcams are not attached to the grid. They are a part of a scientific experiment and are powered by solar panels. However, that’s irrelevant to the issue at hand. My team has been unable to take action for fear of reprisal by the culprits responsible for this event. We were hoping you could better inform us of the situation on the ground.”

“Inform you of what? People are sick and panicking.”

“How is that you have not come down with the disease like all the others?”

“Whoever released this virus left a vaccine in my Jeep with instructions to take the vaccine if I wanted to save my family. The vaccine caused me to come down with a minor case of the pox, which I’m still recovering from.”

“Why would the perpetrator give you a vaccine?”

“How the hell would I know? Why don’t you go ask Lenny, the terrorist responsible for all this?”

“You
know
who’s responsible?”

“Just by name. He called me several times and told me to call him Lenny,” Tag said, angered by the direction this conversation was taking. “What the hell are you implying?”

“We’ve cross-checked your cell phone records, Doctor. There’s been no incoming calls except from Special Agent Whelton, who I assume returned your call.”

“I assumed that Blake was in charge of this investigation. As far as incoming calls go, you better check your records again, Bishop. This Lenny character has already called me several times.”

“Let’s get something straight, Dr. Winters. I’m the supervising agent in charge of this investigation, not Whelton. Unless this person is using sophisticated rerouting software, my records indicate that there have been no other incoming calls.”

“It’s obvious that they’re not leaving any trail.”

“We sent a forensic investigator to your office to examine the hard drive of your computer. What we found was rather unsettling.”

He felt his stomach turn.

“We discovered a hidden drive on your machine with some encrypted files, one of which has an unusual icon attached to it.”

“Let me guess, the icon was a liger.”

“Not just a liger, Doctor, but it had a strange-looking coat resembling shingles or armored plates.” Bishop muffled the receiver and spoke to someone away from the phone, then returned to Tag and said, “There are at least a dozen other files in the encrypted folder detailing how to engineer a smallpox virus with other organisms.”

“Hold on! Are you implying that
I’m
responsible for planting this bug?”

“I didn’t say that, Dr. Winters, but all the evidence gathered so far indicates a strong likelihood that you may have had some tangential involvement.”

“Tangential involvement? That’s the craziest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard! Why in the world would I jeopardize the lives of my own wife and daughter, not to mention the lives of my neighbors living on this island?”

“I don’t know the answers to those questions yet. Why don’t you tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell. Can’t you see that someone is setting me up? They broke into my computer, planted all this phony evidence, and then made it look like I planted this virus on the island. I have absolutely no motive to do such a terrible thing.”

“I see that you took out a five-million-dollar life insurance policy on your wife last year.”

“Yes, but we took policies out on each other in order to protect our three children in the event that something happened to us. My job isn’t exactly the safest occupation in the world, if you haven’t already noticed.”

“You don’t work in the biocontainment facilities anymore. Am I safe to assume that your job is more administrative than hands-on now?”

“That’s mostly true, but I still help out in the labs every now and then to keep my skills set current in case I ever decide to get back into research someday.” He realized that his hands were shaking. “I don’t appreciate this line of questioning, Bishop.”

“I’m sorry for having to ask such hard questions, Dr. Winters, but it’s my job,” she said. “Back to the life insurance policy. Is it true that you’ve mortgaged both your main house and your vacation home in order to finance your children’s college educations? Also, your wife seems to have run up thousands of dollars on her Visa card in order to supplement her career as an artist. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re expected to step down from your position at USAMRIID by year’s end. My notes also indicate that you’ve not yet landed another position but are currently looking for something in the private sector. Something, I assume, that pays significantly more than what you’re currently earning.”

“Since when is earning more money a crime? Look, Bishop, I make a good salary and am able to provide for my family. Taking out a home equity loan to finance one’s children’s education is not unusual in this day and age.”

“No it’s not, but considering the circumstances you now find yourself in, it does seem rather suspicious.”

“Then come over here and arrest me.”

“You know as well as I do that we can’t possibly come over and question you with that infection spreading. We’ve received word that this organism has been placed in strategic locations throughout the country and that any attempt by law enforcement to make their way onto Cooke’s Island will trigger its release. From the images we’re seeing relayed over the webcams, it appears that this threat is all too real.” She sighed. “Dr. Winters, I need you to tell us what the second component to this virus is.”

“I wish I could tell you what it is, but I’m telling you that I had nothing to do with this.”

“We’ve determined from the encrypted files in your computer that this particular smallpox virus is an engineered organism combining the 1972 Kosovo strain with an unusual strain from Pakistan circa the early nineteen eighties, and is designed to progress rapidly.”

“Then you know more than I do. And as far as this conversation is concerned, Bishop, I’m done speaking for now. Talk to me when you find the real culprit. I have to go and care for my sick wife and daughter.”

Tag disconnected the call and paced the room. Who could have set him up? He thought about all the people he had worked with back at the office. His computer could have been hacked online by almost anyone in today’s virtual world, even one as well protected as the computer system configured at the Institute. Whoever dropped this viral bomb on the island had to be from an organized group possessing a highly specific skill set, such as being able to hack into computer systems as well as to execute the complicated lab procedures necessary to successfully combine two foreign hosts into a lethal biological weapon.

There was a knock at the door.
Here we go again
, he thought. He snatched up the rifle and ran upstairs. Looking out the window, he saw yet another group of people standing at his doorstep. They held sticks, bats and knives. He aimed the rifle down at the leader, a man with spiky, short black hair. The sound of the generator hummed loudly, and it occurred to him that the noise of the generator had been responsible for all this unwanted attention. He made a mental note to shut it down as soon as this group moved on, and to use it only in the case of an emergency.

“Go away!” he shouted down to the group.

“Did you shoot these people?”

“I warned them to get off my property, but they didn’t listen. Now I’m warning you.”

“We don’t mean you any harm, mister. There’s nine of us, and we’re all sick as dogs, especially the kids. Got these red dots sprouting up on our skin. You got to let us in so we can rest for a little while. It’s crazy out there, man. People are losing their heads and acting like savages.”

“Sorry, but I can’t do that. If I let you in, I have to let everyone else in, and I don’t have enough supplies for even your small group,” he said.

“What the hell are we going to do? We’re sick and running out of options. People are shooting and attacking each other on the street. How am I going to protect my little ones?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told the others. Go down to the beach, and find a safe cove somewhere where no one can find you. They’re all over this island. You’re going to get a lot sicker than you are right now. You’ll run a fever and then come down with a severe rash followed by aches and pains. It may seem hopeless, but if you keep bathing in the ocean, the salt water will keep your skin clean and help fight off the infection. It will also keep your fever down. Stay there for as long as you can, and I promise that someone will be down to help as soon as possible.”