Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

school, which didn’t help her win any friends. She was, as far as Howie could tell, almost entirely alone.
    “Hey.”
    He looked over to see Sandy on the balcony next door. “Hey.”
    “I don’t see you out here that much , drinking. Something happen?”
    “That obvious, huh?”
    She went inside and a moment later was out on the beach in front of his balcony. She climbed the steps and sat on the edge of the hot tub, a glass of wine in her hand. “Anything you want to talk about?”
    “My daughter hates me. Same old.”
    “She doesn’t hate you.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I’ve talked to her. It’s a defense mechanism. She thinks you don’t care about her, and her defense is to convince herself she doesn’t need you.”
    “I think she does n’t need me.”
    “Please. You’re Daddy. Fathers are larger than life to their daughters.”
    He exhaled and took a sip of his beer. “What did you do tonight?”
    “Just watched movies by myself. I was hoping you were home and we could watch one together.”
    “Now , what the hell is a girl like you doing home alone on a Friday night?”
    She shrugged and placed her wine glass down. “Sitting in the hot tub with you.”
    Sandy slipped off the clothing she was wearing and stepped into the hot tub, then slid over to Howie. They kissed as some teenagers lit a bonfire farther down the beach.

8
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    General Kirk Lancaster walked down the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon and stopped a moment to look out the windows. At five in the morning, he’d already been up for an hour. He couldn’t sleep, and he’d thought about taking an Ambien but had heard they can cause psychotic episodes, so instead, he tried warm milk and chamber music. It didn’t work.
    He walked down to a large office , where he sat behind the desk and immediately spun the chair around to look out the windows at the hedges and the lawn. He didn’t feel like staring at walls.
    But the grass gave him an uneasy feeling , too. He had been at that desk on September 11 th . He remembered running out of the building and seeing charred remains all over the lawn. He’d thought the entire country was under attack, and his first thought had been that Bin Laden was responsible. He had warned the CIA and the FBI for as long as he could remember, but no one took the threats as seriously as they should have. After all, so many people hated the United States that it was difficult to tell who would actually act.
    “Sir.”
    Lancaster turned around and saw his assistant, Major Martin Boyle, salute.
    “At ease . We’re not on a battlefield, Marty.”
    “Yes , sir,” he said as he sat down across from him.
    “What is it?”
    “Sir?”
    “I assume you have something to say about this morning , so let’s just hear it.”
    He swallowed. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
    “I couldn’t either.”
    “We’ve closed off the major highways leaving the state , and all the flights out were cancelled about a week ago. Per your orders, we didn’t cancel the flights going in.”
    “Good.”
    He hesitated. “I don’t want to do this, Kirk. This is wrong. There’re less than a hundred infected, and we know where they are. We could just quarantine them and—”
    “Have you seen someone infected with Agent X, Marty?”
    “No, sir. Just photos.”
    “I visited a military hospital up there, Loma Linda. They had a patient behind this huge transparent barrier. Like a bubble. And I went and pinned a Purple Heart to the bubble with tape. As I was looking in, he began to vomit. It wasn’t food, though, it was blood… and organs. The vomit wouldn’t stop, and it exploded out of him so violently, it looked like a grenade had gone off in there. And I saw his brains start coming out of his ears. The virus liquefies the organs, all of them, including the brain and skin. And all it would have taken for me to contract it is a single virus. Just one. If that barrier hadn’t been there, he would have