The X-Files: Antibodies (24 page)
“Do you think I’m a threat, Dana? Are other people going to die because of me?”
“No.” Scully said. “I’ve touched you, and I’m fine.
I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”
The boy said nothing—it was hard to tell whether her words had the reassuring effect she intended.
“These ‘nanocritters’, Jody. What did your dad say to you about them?”
“He told me they were biological policemen that went through my body looking for the bad cells and fixing them one at a time,” Jody said. “The nanocritters can also protect me when I get hurt.”
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“Like from a gunshot,” she said.
Scully realized that if the nanomachines were able to repair well-entrenched leukemia, a gunshot would have been simple patchwork. They could easily stop the bleeding, plug up holes, seal the skin.
Altering acute leukemia, though, was a monu-mentally more difficult task. The biological policemen would have to comb through billions of cells in Jody’s body, a massive restructuring. It was the difference between a Band-Aid and a vaccine.
“You’re not going to take me to a hospital, are you?” Jody asked. “I’m not supposed to be out in public. I’m not supposed to let my name get around anywhere.”
Scully thought about what he had said. She wished she could talk this over with Mulder. If Kennessy’s nanotechnology actually worked—as was apparent from the evidence of her own eyes—Jody and his dog were all that remained of the DyMar research. Everything else had been systematically destroyed, and these two in her backseat were living carriers of the functional nanocritters . . . and somebody wanted to destroy them.
It could be a grave mistake for her to take the boy to a hospital and entrust him into the care of other unsuspecting people. Scully had no doubt that before long Jody and Vader would fall into the hands of those men who had caused the destruction of DyMar.
As she drove on, Scully knew she couldn’t let this boy be captured and whisked away, his identity erased. Jody Kennessy would not be swept under the rug. She felt too close to him.
“No, Jody,” Scully said, “you don’t have to worry.
I’ll keep you safe.”
Oregon Back Roads
Friday, 6:24 P.M.
As the pickup truck droned on and the X darkness deepened, at least Mulder didn’t have to look at Jeremy Dorman, didn’t have to see the sickening squirming and unexplained motion of his body.
After a long period of uneasiness, restlessness, and barely suppressed pain, Dorman seemed to be dropping into unconsciousness. Mulder could see that the former researcher, the man who had faced—and been seemingly killed by—the other conspirators, was in anguish.
He clearly didn’t have long to live. His body could no longer function with such severe ravages.
If Dorman didn’t get his help soon, there would be no point.
But Mulder didn’t know how much to believe the man’s story. How much had he himself been responsible for the DyMar disaster?
Dorman lifted his heavy-lidded eyes, and when he noticed the antenna of Mulder’s cellular phone poking from the pocket of his suit jacket, he sat up at once.
“Your phone, Agent Mulder. You have a cell phone!”
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Mulder blinked. “What about my phone?”
“Use it. Pull it out and dial your partner. We can find them that way.”
So far Mulder had avoided bringing this monstrously distorted man anywhere close to Scully or the innocent boy in her possession—but now he didn’t see any way he could talk himself out of it.
“Take out your phone, Agent Mulder,” Dorman growled, the threat clear in his voice. “Now.”
Mulder gripped the steering wheel with his left hand, compensating from side to side to maintain a steady course on the uneven road. He yanked out the phone and extended the antenna with his teeth. With some relief, he saw that the light still blinked NO SERVICE.
“I can’t,” Mulder said and turned the phone so that Dorman could see. “You know how far out we are. There aren’t any substations nearby or booster antennas.” He drew a deep breath. “Believe me, Mr.
Dorman, I’ve wanted to call her many times.”
The big man slumped against the passenger-side door until the armrest creaked. Dorman used his fingertip to rub at an imaginary mark on the pickup window; his finger left a tracing of sticky, translucent slime on the glass.
Mulder kept his eyes on the road. The headlights stabbed into the mist.
When Dorman looked at Mulder, in the shadows his eyes seemed very bright. “Jody will help me. I know he will.” Dark trees flickered past them in the twilight. “He and I were pals. I was his foster uncle.
We played games, we talked about things. Jody’s dad was always busy, and his uncle—that jerk—told them all to go to hell when he had his fight with David and ran off to stick his head in the sand. But Jody knows I would never hurt him. He has to know that, no matter what else has happened.”
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He gestured to the phone lying between them on the seat. “Try it, Agent Mulder. Call your partner.
Please.”
The sincerity and desperation in Dorman’s voice sent tingles down Mulder’s spine. Reluctantly, without any faith that it would work, he picked up the phone and punched in Scully’s speed-dial number.
This time, to his surprise, the phone rang.
Tactical Team Temporary Command Post Oregon District
Friday, 6:36 P.M.
As the two vehicles toiled down the muddy X rutted drive, Lentz couldn’t believe they had missed the obvious connection all this time.
Earlier, they had quietly checked out the survivalist enclave where David Kennessy’s brother Darin had gone to ground, thinking himself invisible and protected. But Patrice had not gone there.
There was no sign of the dog or the twelve-year-old boy.
She had come instead to this land and this cabin, which had belonged to Kennessy’s brother, purchased long ago and seemingly ignored. Focused on the red herring of the survivalist enclave, Lentz had not spotted this hiding place on any of their computer searches of where Patrice might have gone.
This cabin would have been a perfect place for Patrice to shelter her son and the dog.
But now it appeared that someone had found them first.
The team again sprang out of their vehicles, this time fully armed, their automatic rifles and grenade launchers pointed toward the small, silent building.
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They waited. No one moved—nobody inside, nobody on the team. They were like a set of plastic army men forever frozen in attack positions.
“Move closer,” Lentz said without raising his voice.
In the still-misty air, his words carried clearly. The team members shuffled about, exchanging positions, moving closer, tightening a noose around the cabin. Others sprinted around the back to secure the site.
Lentz flicked his glance around, confident that every member of the group had noticed the twin sets of fresh tire tracks on the driveway. Agent Mulder had already been here, as had his partner Scully.
One of the men shouted, gesturing toward a thick patch of tall grass and weeds near the front porch.
Lentz and the others hurried over to find a woman’s body sprawled on the ground, blotched from the ravages of rampant nanotech infestation. She had been tainted. The disease had gotten her, too.
The viral infestation was spreading, and with each victim the prospect for containment grew worse and worse. The team members had just barely thwarted an outbreak in the Mercy Hospital morgue, where the nanomachines had continued their work on the first victim, crudely reanimating some of the cadaver’s bodily systems.
It was Lentz’s job to ensure that such a close call never happened again.
“They’ve gone,” Lentz said, “but we’ve got more tidying up to do here.”
He directed the teams in the cleanup van to put on fresh protective gear and prepare for another steriliza-tion routine.
Lentz stood back and drew a deep breath, inhal-ing the resiny scent of the nearby forest, the damp perfume of the clean fresh meadow. He turned to one of the men. “Burn the cabin to the ground,” he said.
“Make sure nothing remains.”
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He turned to see the crew already swaddling Patrice Kennessy’s body with the plastic and the foam.
Another man took out pumping equipment and began to spray jellied gasoline around the exterior cabin walls, then made a special effort to douse the meadow where Patrice had lain.
Lentz didn’t bother to stay and watch the fire. He went back to the car, where the radio systems connected to other satellite uplinks and receiving dishes, to cellular phone tapping or jamming devices and security descramblers.
Other members of the extended tactical squadron had been keeping tabs on Agent Mulder, and now Lentz required whatever information they could give him.
Mulder could be the one to lead them right where they needed to be.
Oregon Back Roads
Friday, 6:47 P.M.
Scully’s cellular phone rang in the quiet X darkness of the car’s front seat, like an electronic chipmunk chittering. She snatched it up, knowing who it must be, relieved to be back in touch with her partner at last.
In the rear of the car Jody remained quiet, curious.
The dog whimpered, but fell silent. She yanked out the antenna while driving with one hand.
“Scully, it’s me.” Mulder’s voice was surrounded by a nimbus of static, but still understandable.
“Mulder, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,”
she said quickly, before he could say anything. “Listen, this is important. I’ve got Jody Kennessy with me. He’s healed from his leukemia, and he’s got amazing regenerative abilities—but he’s in danger. We’re both in danger.” Her breath caught in her throat. “Mulder, he doesn’t have the plague—he has the
cure
.”
“I know, Scully. It’s Kennessy’s nanotechnology.
The actual plague carrier is Jeremy Dorman—and he’s sitting right here next to me . . . a little too close, but I don’t have much choice at the moment.”
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Dorman was alive! She couldn’t believe it. She had looked at the blood-soaked body, his hand still twitching. No human being could have survived an injury such as that.
“Mulder, I saw the dog attack him, tear his throat out—”
But then, Scully realized, she never would have believed young Jody could live after the gunshot wound he had received.
“Dorman’s got the nanomachines in him as well,”
Mulder said, “but his are malfunctioning. Rather spec-tacularly, I’d say.”
Jody leaned forward, concerned. “What is it, Dana? Is Jeremy after us?”
“He’s got my partner,” Scully muttered quietly to the boy.
Mulder’s voice continued at the same time. “Those nanocritters are amazing things with remarkable healing abilities, as we’ve both seen. No wonder somebody wants to keep them under wraps.”
“Mulder, we saw what happened at the DyMar Lab. We know people came in and confiscated all evidence of the dead security guard in the hospital morgue. I’m not going to let Jody Kennessy or the dog be captured, taken in, and somehow erased.”
“I don’t think that’s what Mr. Dorman wants, either,” Mulder said. “He wants to meet.” She heard a mumbled discussion on the phone, Dorman saying something in a threatening tone. She remembered his gruff, dismissive voice from her confrontation with him in the forest, just before he had accidentally shot Jody. “In fact, he insists on it.”
She pulled into a clearing at the side of the road.
The trees were thinning, becoming scrubbier, and she looked down a shallow grade to a small city ahead.
She hadn’t noticed the town’s name as she drove along, but from the direction she had been heading, antibodies
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Scully knew she must be nearing the suburbs around Portland.
“Mulder, are you all right?” she said.
“Dorman needs something from Jody. Some of his blood.”
Scully interrupted. “I stopped him before . . . or at least I tried. I won’t let Jody get hurt.”
Mulder’s voice fell silent for a few seconds on the phone, then she heard a scuffle. “Mulder! Are you all right?” she called out, wondering what was happening and how far away she was from helping him.
He didn’t answer her.
As Mulder tried to think of something to say, Dorman finally gave up in frustration and reached over to snatch the telephone from Mulder’s hand.
“Hey!” he said, then flinched away to keep from touching the slime-slick man.
Dorman cradled the cellular phone and pushed it against his fluctuating face. The skin on his cheeks glistened and squirmed. The mucus on his hands left sticky patches on the black plastic.
“Agent Scully, tell Jody I’m sorry I shot him,”
Dorman said into the phone. “But I knew he would heal, just like the dog. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
He reached up to flick on the dome light in the pickup’s cab so that Mulder could see the intent look on his face and the revolver still held in his hand.
“You need to tell the boy something for me, please. I need to explain to him.”
Mulder knew his own conversation with Scully was now over. He couldn’t touch the telephone again, or else the nanocritters would infiltrate his body too and leave him a splotched, convulsing wreck like Dorman’s other victims.
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Dorman swallowed, and from the anguished look on his face and the yellow shadows cast from the dim dome light, Mulder thought perhaps the distorted man really was sorry for all that had happened. “Tell him his mother is dead—and it’s because of me. But it was an accident. She was trying to protect him. She didn’t know that just touching me would be deadly.”
His lips pressed together. “The nanocritters in my body are going wrong, very wrong. They didn’t heal her, like Jody’s do—they destroyed his mother’s systems, and she died. There was nothing I could do.” He spoke faster and faster. “I warned her to stay away from me, but she”— he drew a deep breath—“she moved too fast.