Trout looked inside his mind and saw no counterarguments there. Instead he played one tired old card. “You’re not God, Doc. ”
Volker snorted. “Neither is any member of the jury that convicted him or the judge who ordered his execution. ”
“Guys,” interrupted Goat, “a little focus here. I don’t give a rat’s ass about how appropriate the punishment is or isn’t. What has my balls in a vise is the fact that this son of a bitch is still alive. Or … whatever. Living dead. ” He shook his head in frustration. “He’s out there. ”
“By now … others may have been infected,” said Volker, cutting a wary look at the pistol in Trout’s hand. “I explained this to my handler. Anyone infected by Gibbon will be entirely overwhelmed by the parasite. Gibbon, however, seems to be an unusual case. He was narcotized using the Haitian zombie coupe poudre before the parasites were introduced. When I spoke to him on the phone, he was lucid. That’s not in keeping with the profiles we worked up during Project Lucifer. The parasites invade the brain and essentially disconnect the higher functions in favor of their own needs and directives. Consciousness remains but intelligent control is gone. Except … that’s not what happened with Gibbon. For some reason he is still in control of his body. Mind and body are still connected even though he is infected. I would need to…” he paused and licked his lips, “to ‘study’ him to understand this variation on the ideal model. ”
Trout’s hand tightened around the pistol. He wanted to whip the barrel across this old maniac’s face. He wanted to brutalize him for this. “How do we stop it?” he asked hollowly. “What’s the cure?”
“Cure?” Volker repeated as if the word was unknown to him.
“How do we treat the infected? How do we save them?”
Volker was already shaking his head. “You can’t save them. There is no cure, no treatment, nothing. The parasites are hermaphroditic, so there’s no queen to find and kill. Each parasite is born pregnant. They begin laying eggs seconds after they hatch. They stay perpetually in the larval state, producing and laying eggs. The only way to stop that cycle is to destroy the host. That was the point. ” He paused, perhaps aware of how he sounded. In a calmer voice he said, “However … if no other human goes near the corpse, then within a few weeks the larva inside the host will have consumed it. Without food, no new larvae will be born. The old larvae die off within days. Three, four weeks and the corpse is inert. But if you want to stop the ambulatory hosts, then you can do that by destroying the motor cortex or the brain stem. And then incinerate the body. ”
Trout stared at him, needing all of this to be untrue, to be a lie told by a sick and delusional old man.
“I’m losing my cool here, Doc,” he said, gesturing with the gun. “I need you to tell me what you’re going to do about this. ”
Volker’s face wore an expression of profound confusion. “Do? Haven’t you been listening to me? There is nothing I can do. There’s nothing you can do, either. I doubt at this point that there’s anything that the government can do. We are not sitting here discussing a response protocol. You and your friend are here as witnesses to these events. You are the historians who will tell the truth of this story. But you are witnesses only from a distance. Go back to Stebbins and you become part of the infestation. Stay here, or at least away from town and you will be able to report what I’ve told you. ” He nodded toward the door as if that was a clear line to the town. “Don’t worry about Homer Gibbon. The parasites are consuming him even as we speak—”
“He could spread it across the whole goddamn country,” interrupted Goat.
“No. As I said, I told my handlers. There are people in the government who know the full potential of the Lucifer program. I’m sure all appropriate steps are being taken. ”
“What do you mean by ‘appropriate’?”
The old doctor’s eyes glittered with new tears. “Exactly what you would expect that word to mean. ”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
WOLVERTON REGIONAL HOSPITAL
Dr. Raja Sengupta stared through the reinforced plastic window of the hazmat suit. Inside the suit the figure of Officer Andy Diviny still writhed and thrashed against the four-point restraints and canvas strapping. There was no way he could break free, but even so Sengupta was not willing to go back inside that room.
Not now. Not after the test results had come back. There was a pulse, but it beat less than once per minute. There was respiration, but so shallow that it was impossible to detect without machines. So shallow that it had to be destroying brain cells. Sengupta had seen hypoxia at a hundred different degrees of intensity, but nothing like this. There was so little blood and oxygen going to the brain that it bordered on anoxia; cellular respiration was nonfunctioning at any detectable level. Without cellular energy, tissue all over the man’s body was becoming apoptotic, turning necrotic. He was rotting like a corpse even while he growled and fought to get up.
None of which was possible. Not even with the worst coma patients.
Even that wasn’t the worst thing. That wasn’t what frightened Dr. Sengupta on the deepest levels. The blood and saliva tests were nightmarish.
His fingers trembled so badly it took him four tries to punch in the number for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THE Q-ZONE, NORTHERN PERIMETER
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Lt. Colonel Macklin Dietrich bent over a plastic-coated map of Stebbins County. Three other officers and several aides were clustered around the table. A portable communications table had been set up against the far wall of the plastic shelter that had been erected to serve as field HQ for this operation.
He tapped the map with a forefinger. “This is the funeral home where Gibbon was taken. We’ve lost communication with the local and state police at the scene, so we can assume that it’s been compromised. However, a second wave of state troopers arrived a few minutes before we secured the perimeter. They’re on cleanup for this. ”
“Sir, what do the local police know?” asked a captain.
“Nothing,” said Dietrich, “and we’re going to keep it that way. ”
A major asked, “Can’t we use them as local assets?”