Hero (Gone 9)

Swollen boils, pustules, weeping open sores, blood-red ulcerations covered every square inch of the four men. There were blood blisters, lacerations, and tumors as big as tangerines.

And all of it, every inch of the four men, seethed. It was like watching time-lapse video of a pizza in a hot oven, the cheese bubbling and browning, the bits of meat or vegetables drying and withering.

The stink was overpowering, and Dekka saw Francis struggling to stop herself from vomiting.

Then the eyes in one head moved and focused, and Francis screamed.

Williams said, “Ms. Talent, Ms. Specter, these are ICE agents Franklin, Wallberg, and Pedroncelli. And ATF agent Hernandez.”

“Help us,” one of the ICE agents moaned, and with renewed shock Dekka realized that somehow they could still speak. Dekka recoiled in horror, not conscious of moving but obeying a DNA-deep imperative to get away, to put distance between herself and . . . and something that should never exist. Francis hugged Dekka’s arm tightly and buried her face against Dekka’s chest.

“Best we can tell,” Williams said, his voice flat from suppressed emotion, “they are showing signs of, well, just about every awful disease you can think of. The coroner took a look and gathered some samples, but his first guess is smallpox, black plague, and leprosy. Other things, too. Like a goddamn display of every awful disease you can have, and all accelerated.”

“But they’re still alive,” Dekka said.

“Yeah,” Williams said. “They’re locked in place, can’t move, and that’s a good thing.” He shook his head at the irony of using the word “good.”

“Why good?”

“You want men carrying a dozen infectious diseases running around loose?”

“Ah,” Dekka said.

“They should be dead. Coroner took temperatures, and the weird thing was, no fever,” Williams said. “That means their immune system isn’t working. Isn’t there at all. They should be dead.”

That the men were not dead was testified to by a continuous moan of pain, occasional sharp yelps, and desperate pleas all saying the same thing.

Please. Please. Kill me. Let me die.

People were coming down the ramp to the gravel beach, people in white hazmat suits, five of them, their faces invisible behind plastic shields, looking like lost astronauts.

“What are they doing?” Francis asked.

“They’re going to shoot them full of more antibiotics, I’d guess,” Williams said.

“Can we talk to them?” Dekka asked.

“We’re not to get any closer. This is it. The risk of disease . . . the city does not need the black plague; we have plenty to deal with.”

Dekka watched as the hazmat team advanced, knelt by the tortured men, unlimbered medical kits, and stabbed needles into flesh that would barely register a needle’s pinprick.

“How soon before we see results?” Dekka asked. Williams could only shrug.

And then: the answer.

The seething, the sense that their very flesh was crawling with bacteria, viruses, amoebas, and parasites, grew worse, much worse, and with shocking speed, until they looked more like marshmallows dropped into a fire, their skin erupted in boils six inches across, with obscenely swollen buboes growing as big as cantaloupes before bursting and draining green pus.

And the screams. The screams. The pitiful cries for death.

Kill me! Please, God, kill me!

The hazmat crew withdrew quickly to a safe distance. The antibiotics had not just failed; they seemed to act like accelerants, like spraying lighter fluid on hot charcoal.

“Why don’t they die?” Francis cried, nearly hysterical.

Dekka put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she knew it was useless. She couldn’t comfort herself, let alone Francis. She was powerless. Powerless, standing there, watching something from a nightmare, listening to the agony of men being tortured like heretics in a medieval dungeon.

“Have you ever seen anything . . . ?” Williams asked, not wanting to seem helpless, not wanting to cede authority to Dekka, but unable to keep the pity and the horror out of his voice.