Pandemic
Chapter 39 : And then there was Murray’s order to collect some crawlers and seal them up for s.h.i.+

And then there was Murray’s order to collect some crawlers and seal them up for s.h.i.+pment to Black Manitou. Tim had done that the day of the battle, grabbing a few samples from Petrovsky and sending them on. He knew he should have fought that order, but all he wanted to do was satisfy Murray’s request so he could get back to the wounded. Murray had sworn Tim to secrecy on that — Tim couldn’t tell anyone, and in truth, he was ashamed of caving in and didn’t want to tell anyone.

“I worked two days straight to save as many as I could. The only time I stopped was when Yasaka had two men drag me — literally drag me — down here to do some basic sample gathering on Walker and Petrovsky. And when I came down, I made sure not to touch the bodies, at all, just on the off chance I might bring contagion up with me when I returned to the wounded. I only used needles to gather samples, and I gathered those samples as quickly as I could. Know why? I had more important things to do than play with corpses. So no, Margaret, I didn’t pay that much attention to the motherf.u.c.king crawlers.”

Margaret sighed. She looked sad.

“I apologize,” she said. “I should know better. We have so little time to get this work done. I’m sure I’m missing things, and there are tests we should be running that just have to wait because we don’t have the resources. Everything is hurried, rushed, and you had it even worse with all the wounded. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He could see she meant it. The sincerity of her response made his anger fade away as quickly as it had erupted.

Tim shrugged, feeling the bulk of his suit on his shoulders when he did.

“You’re really sorry?”

She nodded.

“Sorry enough for apology s.e.x?”

“Not that sorry, no.”

“Oh well, worth a try.”

Margaret shook her head, a sad dismissal of his feeble attempt. She focused on the images in her HUD.

“These new crawlers from Walker … where exactly were they inside her body?”

“The pustules,” Tim said. “That was the fastest and easiest place to get a sample, so I started there. I collected crawlers from other areas as well, but all of those were dead. And, come to think of it, all of the dead ones look the same as those I collected from Petrovsky.”

Margaret frowned. She reached out, turning the image of the living crawler, looking at it from multiple angles. “Sanchez had pustules, but what was in them didn’t look like these. So we know that Walker definitely had the old kind of crawlers, the ones we saw back in Detroit, the same that are in Petrovsky, but she also had this new kind.”

Tim studied the images on his own HUD. The new crawlers reminded him of a microorganism he’d seen way back in his undergrad days.

“They kind of look like hydras,” he said.

Margaret nodded. “Yeah, a little bit. As good a name as any for the variant.” She stared. The tip of her tongue traced her upper lip. “So the hydras and the crawlers were in Walker at the same time, but only the crawlers were melted.”

Tim watched the real-time image of the hydra, watched it reach and move, searching for something to grab onto. Walker’s crawlers had melted; Petrovsky’s, Sanchez’s and Jewell’s had not. Her hydras were the only known variable.

“Maybe the hydras killed the crawlers,” he said. “Something they secreted, perhaps.”

Margaret thought about that for a moment. “Possibly. But … why? Crawlers and hydras are on the same side, so to speak.”

“Maybe it’s a new design,” Tim said. “The first round of infections — with Perry Dawsey and the other early victims — they only had the triangular growths. But later on, when Detroit got crazy, you saw the crawler-based infections, and even that woman you said blew up like a puffball.”

The look on Margaret’s face made it clear she didn’t want to remember that moment.

“The disease seemed to adapt,” she said. “We stopped the triangles. In the following outbreak the disease expressed itself in at least two new ways.”

Tim closed his eyes, let his brain work through the details, hoping he could find that spark of inspiration. “We’ve had no new activity since the Orbital was shot down. Now we find a piece of the Orbital, and blammo, we’ve a third new form. So it’s reasonable to hypothesize that all the designs originated with the Orbital. You stopped the first attempt, the Dawsey-era infections, so it retooled and tried again with the things you saw in Detroit. You stopped that, so maybe it was already making additional changes when it was shot down. Maybe the hydras are that new design.”

Margaret bit at her lower lip. “Maybe. But that doesn’t explain why hydras would kill crawlers. Why would the Orbital make something that kills something else the Orbital made?”

Tim didn’t have an answer for that. He felt like he was on the right path, although he couldn’t see where that path ended.

“Well, the hydras aren’t an accident,” he said. “The infection reprogrammed Walker’s body to make them.”

Margaret’s eyes stared off, seemed to lose focus. Her lips moved slightly, like she was talking quietly to herself.

“An accident,” she said. She closed her eyes, kept mumbling to herself like a student trying to work out a complex math problem. Tim wasn’t even sure if she knew he was there anymore.

“Tim, what if was an accident. Or rather, a mutation. Maybe there was something different about Walker’s body, about the way her cellular factories reacted to the infection’s reprogramming.” Margaret blinked rapidly, raised her eyebrows — her eyes again focused on him. “Can you get Walker’s medical records?”