The X-Files: Antibodies (7 page)

First, though, Hughart took the blood sample back to the small lab area in the adjoining room. The animal’s high body temperature puzzled him. He’d never seen a case like this before. Often animals went into shock if they survived the trauma of being struck by a motor vehicle, but they didn’t usually have such a high fever.

The back room was perfectly organized according to a system he had developed over decades, though a casual observer might just see it as cluttered. He flicked on the overhead lights in the small Formica-topped lab area and placed a smear of the blood on a glass slide. First step would be to check the dog’s white blood cell count to see if maybe he had some sort of infection, or parasites in the blood.

52

T H E X - F I L E S

The dog could have been very sick, even dying, before he’d been hit by the car. In fact, that could explain why the animal had been so sluggish, so unaware of the large automobile bearing down on him. A fever that high would have been intolerable. If the dog suffered from some major illness, Hughart needed to keep a record of it.

Out in the adjoining operating and recovery area, two of the other dogs began to bark and whimper. A cat yowled, and the cages rattled.

Hughart paid little attention. Dogs and cats made a typical chaotic noise, to which he’d grown deaf after so many years. In fact, he’d been surprised at how quiet the animals were when thrown together in a strange situation, penned up in a cage for overnight care. They were already smarting from spaying or neutering or whatever ailments had brought them into the vet’s office in the first place.

The only animal he was worried about was the dying black Labrador, and by now the Euthanol would be working.

Bothered by the distracting shadows, Hughart switched on a brighter fluorescent lamp tucked under the cabinets, then illuminated the slide under his microscope with a small lamp. Rubbing his eyes first, he gazed down at the smear of blood, fiddling with the focus knob.

The dog should even now be drifting off to perpetual dreams—but its blood was absolutely
alive
.

In addition to the usual red and white cells and platelets, Hughart saw tiny specks, little silvery com-ponents . . . like squarish glittering crystals that moved about on their own. If this was some sort of massive infection, it was not like any microorganism he had ever before laid eyes on. The odd shapes were as large as the cells and moved about with blurred speed.

“That’s incredible,” he said, and his voice sounded antibodies

53

loud in the claustrophobic lab area. He often talked to the animals around him, or to himself, and it had never bothered him before.

Now, though, he wished he wasn’t alone; he wished he had someone with him to share this amazing discovery.

What kind of disease or infection looked like this?

After a long career in veterinary medicine, he would have thought he’d seen just about everything. But he had never before witnessed anything remotely like this.

And he hoped it wasn’t contagious.

This revamped building had been Elliott Hughart’s home, his place of work, for decades, but now it seemed strange and sinister to him. If this dog had some sort of unknown disease, he would have to contact the Centers for Disease Control.

He knew what to do in the case of a rabies outbreak or other diseases that normally afflicted household pets—

but these tiny microscopic . . . slivers? They were utterly foreign to him.

In the back surgery room, the caged animals set up a louder racket, yowling and barking. The old man noticed it subconsciously, but the noise wasn’t enough to tear him from his fascination with what he saw under the microscope.

Hughart rubbed his eyes and focused the microscope again, blurring the image past its prime point and then back to sharp focus again. The glittering specks were still there, buzzing about, moving cells.

He swallowed hard; his throat was dry and cottony.

What to do now?

Then he realized that the barking and meowing inside the operating room cages had become an outright din, as if a fox had charged into a henhouse.

Hughart spun around, bumped into his metal stool, knocked it over, and hopped about on one foot 54

T H E X - F I L E S

as pain shot through his hip. When he finally rushed into the operating room, he looked at the cages first to see the captive animals pressed back against the bars of their cages, trying to get away from the center of the room.

He didn’t even look at the black Lab, because it should have been dead by now—but then he heard paws skittering across the slick surface of stainless steel.

The dog got to its feet, shook itself, and leaped down from the table, leaving a smear of blood on the clean surface. But the dog showed no more wounds, no damage. It trembled with energy, completely healed.

Hughart stood in total shock, unable to believe that the dog had not only regained consciousness—

despite its grievous injuries and the euthanasia drug—

but had jumped down from the table. This was as incredible as the swarming contamination in the blood sample.

He caught his breath, then eased forward. “Here, boy, let me take a look.”

Quivering, the dog barked at him, then backed away.

TEN

DyMar Laboratory Ruins

Tuesday, 4:50 P.M.

Not long before sunset, a patch of bright X blue sky made a rare appearance in the hills over Portland. Mulder squinted up, wishing he had brought along sunglasses as he maneuvered the rental car up the steep drive to the site of the DyMar Laboratory.

Much of the facility’s structure remained intact, though entirely gutted by the fire. The walls were blackened, the wood support structure burned to char-coal, the office furniture slumped and twisted. Some overhead beams had toppled, while others balanced precariously against the concrete load-bearing walls and metal girders. Glass shards lay scattered among ashes and broken stone.

As they crested the hill and reached the sagging chain-link fence around the site, Mulder shifted the car into park and looked through the windshield. “A real fixer-upper,” he said. “I’ll have to talk to my real estate agent.”

Scully got out of the car and looked over at him.

“Too late to make an offer, Mulder—this place is 56

T H E X - F I L E S

scheduled to be demolished in a few days to make way for a new business park.” She scanned the thick stands of dark pines and the sweeping view of Portland spread out below, with its sinuous river and necklace of bridges.

Mulder realized the construction crew was moving awfully fast, disturbingly so. He and Scully might not even be able to finish a decent investigation in the amount of time alloted to them.

He opened the chain-link gate; sections of the fence sagged and left wide gaps. Signs declaring DANGER and WARNING adorned the fence, marking the hazards of the half-collapsed building; he doubted those signs would discourage any but the meekest of vandals.

“Apparently Vernon Ruckman’s death has proved a greater deterrent than any signs or guards,” Scully said. She held on to the chain link for a moment, then followed Mulder into the burned area. “I contacted local law enforcement, trying to get a status on their arson investigation. But so far, all they would tell me is that it’s ‘pending—no progress.’ ”

Mulder raised his eyebrows. “A protest group large enough to turn into a destructive mob, and they can’t find any members?”

The FBI crime lab was analyzing the note claiming responsibility. By late that evening they expected to have results on whoever was behind Liberation Now.

From what Mulder had seen, the letter seemed to be a very amateurish job.

He stared at the blackened walls of the DyMar facility for a moment, then the two agents entered the shell of the building, stepping gingerly. The smell of soot, burned plastics, and other volatile chemicals bit into Mulder’s nostrils.

As he stood inside the ruins, looking across the hilltop vista toward the forests and the city below, Mulder imagined that night two weeks earlier, when a mob of antibodies

57

angry and uncontrolled protesters had marched up the gravel drive. He drew a deep breath of the ash-clogged air.

“Conjures up images of peasants carrying torches, doesn’t it, Scully?” He looked up at the unstable ceiling, the splintered pillars, the collapsed walls. He gingerly took another step into what must have been a main lobby area. “A mob of angry people charging up the hill to burn down the evil laboratory, destroy the mad scientist.”

Beside him, Scully appeared deeply disturbed. “But what were they so worried about?” she said. “What did they know? This was cancer research. Of all the different kinds of science, surely
cancer research
is something even the most vehement protesters will abide.”

“I don’t think it was the cancer part that concerned them,” Mulder said.

“What then?” Scully asked, frowning. “The animal testing? I don’t know what sort of experiments Dr.

Kennessy was doing, but I’ve researched animal rights groups before—and while they sometimes break in and release a few dogs and rats from their cages, I’m unaware of any other situation that has exhibited this extreme level of violence.”

“I think it was the type of research itself,” Mulder said. “Something about it must have been very scary.

Otherwise, why would all of his records be sealed away?”

“You already have an idea, Mulder. I can tell.”

“David Kennessy and his brother had made some waves in the research community, trying unorthodox new approaches and treatments that had been abandoned by everyone else. According to Kennessy’s resume, he was an expert in abnormal biochemistry, and his brother Darin had worked for years in Silicon Valley. Tell me, Scully, what sort of relationship could there be between electronics and cancer research?”

58

T H E X - F I L E S

Scully didn’t offer any of her thoughts as she poked around, looking for where the guard had been found. She saw the yellow-taped section and stood gazing at the rough outline of the body impressed into the loose ash, while Mulder ranged around the perimeter. He moved a fallen sheet of twisted metal out of the way and stumbled upon a fire safe, its door blackened but ajar. He called for Scully.

“Does it contain anything?” she asked.

Mulder raised his eyebrows and rummaged around in the sooty debris. “It’s open, but empty. And the inside is dirty but not burned.” He waited for that to sink in, then looked up at his partner. From her expression, it was clear she thought the same thing he did. The safe had been opened after the fire, not before. “Someone else was here that night, someone looking for the contents of this safe.”

“That’s why the guard came up here into the ruins. He saw someone.”

Scully frowned. “That could explain why he was here. But it still doesn’t tell us what killed him. He wasn’t shot or strangled. We don’t even know that he met up with the intruder.”

“But it’s possible, even likely,” Mulder said.

Scully looked at him curiously. “So this other person took all the records we need?”

He shrugged. “Come on, Scully. Most of the other information on Kennessy’s cancer research was locked away and classified. We can’t get our hands on it.

There may well have been some evidence here, too—

but now that’s gone as well, and a security guard is dead.”

“Mulder, he was dead from a kind of disease.”

“He was dead from some kind of toxic pathogen.

We don’t know where it came from.”

“So whoever was here that night killed the guard, and stole the records from the safe?”

antibodies

59

Mulder cocked his head to one side. “Unless someone else got to it first.”

Scully remained tight-lipped as they eased around a burned wall, ducked under a fallen girder, and crunched slowly into the interior.

What remained of the lab areas sprawled like a dangerous maze, black and unstable. Part of the floor had collapsed, tumbling down into the basement clean rooms, holding areas, and storage vaults. The remaining section of floor creaked underfoot, demonstrably weakened after the fire.

Mulder picked up a shard of glass. The intense heat had bent and smoothed its sharp edges. “Even after his brother abandoned the research, I think Kennessy was very close to some sort of magnificent breakthrough, and he was willing to bend a few rules because of his son’s condition. Someone found out about his work and tried to stop him from taking rash action. I suspect that this supposedly spontaneous protest movement, from a group nobody’s ever heard of, was a violent effort to silence him and erase all the progress he had made.”

Scully brushed her reddish hair back away from her face, leaving a little soot mark on her cheek. She sounded very tired. “Mulder, you see conspiracies everywhere.”

He reached forward to brush the smudge from her face. “Yeah, Scully, but sometimes I’m right. And in this case it cost the lives of two people—maybe more.”

ELEVEN

Under Burnside Bridge

Portland, Oregon

Tuesday, 11:21 P.M.

He tried to hide and he tried to sleep—but X nothing came to him but a succession of vicious nightmares.

Jeremy Dorman did not know whether the dreams were caused by the swarms of microscopic invaders tinkering with his head, with his thought processes . . . or whether the nightmares came as a result of his guilty conscience.

Wet and clammy, clad in tattered clothes that didn’t fit him right, he huddled under the shelter of Burnside Bridge, on the damp and trash-strewn shore of the Willamette River. The muddy green-blue water curled along in its stately course.

Years ago, downtown Portland had cleaned up River Park, making it an attractive, well-lit, and scenic area for the yuppies to jog, the tourists to sit on cold concrete benches and look out across the water. Young couples could listen to street musicians while they sipped on their gourmet coffee concoctions.

But not at this dark hour. Now most people sat in their warm homes, not thinking about the cold and antibodies