But it was a person who spoke.
Not a monster.
Joe snapped, “Everyone—two teams. Go.”
It was impossible. It was a task assigned in hell. It was the hardest thing Benny had ever done. But as Joe went through the room and quieted those whose life spark had burned out, the rest of them worked in pairs—Lilah holding patients for McReady, Benny holding for Nix.
It took forever.
Forever . . . And with every second Benny thought about Chong.
But they got two capsules into the mouths of every remaining person in the room.
Soldiers.
Scientists.
Support sta
ff.
Flight crew.
One hundred and sixty-two people.
It took forever.
But they did it. Lilah kept saying to herself, It works. We can save my town boy. Over and over.
By the time they were finished, Benny could hardly stand. Nix was weeping openly. So were many of the patients.
Archangel was a miracle drug, they all knew that; but Benny had read too many science fiction novels where miraculous cures are instantaneous. He willed the infected to all suddenly snap out of it, for their eyes to clear, and for the thing that dwelled inside them to flee. Not all of them did. For some it was fast, for others amazingly slow. Reality is often harsher than fiction. Slower, and far less satisfying.
For most of the infected the Archangel pills triggered shrieks and convulsions, and it filled their eyes with screaming madness.
“You’re killing them!” Benny yelled.
“Shut up,” said McReady. “It’s the parasites—they are programmed to defend themselves.”
A few of the patients sagged back into panting semiconsciousness. Some turned aside and wept into their pillows, as if ashamed of the dark thoughts that had set up court in their heads. Some stared fixedly at the ceiling as if frozen in time.
Some died.
Benny began to untie one of the treated patients, but McReady stopped him, warning that a relapse, though unlikely, was possible. Observation for several hours would be needed.
They gathered around the bed of one of the worst cases. A soldier who screamed and thrashed and finally collapsed back, his eyes and mouth open, his chest suddenly silent. McReady snatched up a medical chart that hung on a hook at the end of his bed. “This soldier was bitten on patrol. Looks like he was already pretty far gone when they gave him the metabolic stabilizer.”
“Is he dead?” asked Lilah in a frightened voice.
“Yes.”
“We killed him,” breathed Nix.
McReady looked sad. “He had almost transitioned to a reanimate. All the parasitic eggs in his system must have hatched. The strain . . . it was simply too much for him, and his heart gave out.”
She examined the other fatalities.
“This one had a preexisting heart condition,” she said, reading another chart. “And this one looks like she had a stroke.”