The Deep Zone

“I know.”

Stilwell did not speak for a while. Then: “Husband know you’re down here?”

“I’m not married.”

“Sorry. Shouldn’t assume. Can’t see your hand, though. Is news about this stuff getting out?”

“Not yet. They fear there will be a panic.”

“My family doesn’t know anything, either.” Real pain of a different kind came into Stilwell’s voice.

Hallie couldn’t believe that. “They haven’t been notified?”

Stilwell shrugged, winced. “Two things you learn about the military. Follow orders. And often they suck.”

“Do you want me to call them? I’ll do it right now.”

“Not just yet, thanks. They couldn’t visit now, anyway. I think it will be easier to wait until I’m a little better.”

The ACE mortality rate thus far was 90 percent. So there was at least a chance. But Stilwell did not look like she was on the road to recovery.

“Tell me about your family.”

“Tampa. Husband’s name is Doug. We met in college. Tall. Looks like Jimmy Stewart. Great dancer. Son Danny. Fifteen. Plays football. Boyfriend?”

Hallie realized it was a question.

“Not just now. Well, maybe.” She smiled at her own confusion. “Time will tell. Danny plays football, you said?”

“Varsity already. Wrestling team, too.”

“College plans?”

“No. Wants to enlist. Day he turns eighteen.”

“Jesus.” Hallie regretted that the moment she said it.

“Exactly.” Stilwell started to say more but coughed violently. At one point she raised a bandaged hand and pointed at the vomit pan on her bedside table. Hallie held it, clumsily with the thick gloves. When the bout finally subsided, Stilwell spit out a volume of red-and-black mucus dotted with solid yellow bits of tissue.

“Should I call someone now?” Hallie put the pan aside.

“Nothing they can do.” Stilwell was gasping, struggling for air. “Pulmonary edema. Body trying to flush itself. Feels like drowning.”

They waited until Stilwell’s breathing settled. She said, “Danny. Terrifies me. But how to discourage? Wants to do his part.”

“A military academy,” Hallie said. “In four years, the war might be over. Or at least winding down.”

Stilwell shook her head. “No. Afghans don’t know anything but war. They need it. Go on forever.” She paused, coughed. “It’s like their baseball.”

They sat in silence for a while. Stilwell’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow and rapid. Then her eyes opened wide. Her back arched, her mouth stretched, as though readying to scream, but no sound came out. Her body convulsed twice, violently, and she collapsed onto the bed. She did not move. Her chest did not rise and fall. There was no pulse visible in her neck.

It took Hallie a second to react. She searched for the nurse-call button. Because Stilwell could not use it with her bandaged hands, they had secured it on a hook near the top of her bed, on the other side, and Hallie could not see it. She looked at Stilwell, lying there, not breathing, in arrest. She yelled for help, then screamed for it, but the biosuit hood trapped her voice. Hallie grabbed Stilwell’s wrist to check for a pulse, but the heavy gloves kept her from feeling anything.

She could run to the nurses’ station, alert someone. But she could not really run in the damned suit. Without oxygen, Stilwell’s brain was dying right now. That would take too long. Hallie’s mind made a flash calculation, like the one when she had been standing with Kathan by the cenote. Odds and probabilities. This woman has ACE. If I help her, I might get ACE. If I don’t help her, she will die. If I do get ACE, we may be able to kill it.

She ripped the zipper open, threw the hood back over her head, screamed “HELP!” twice as loudly as she could. She pulled back the sheet and did fifteen fast chest compressions, expecting an explosion of pain in her sutured hand, but felt none. Adrenaline, she thought.

Then she tilted Stilwell’s head back, made sure her airway was clear, and blew three breaths into the unconscious woman. Fifteen more compressions, three more breaths. Hallie tasted the blood in Stilwell’s mouth, sour fluid coming from her nose, ignored them, kept compressing and ventilating.

A nurse appeared at the door, saw what was happening, rushed back toward the floor’s main station. The biosuits made running nightmare-slow. Hallie kept working, compressions and breaths, compressions and breaths. She lost track of how much time elapsed before the biosuited code blue team came race-waddling into the room. Someone in a suit pushed her out of the way. More suits kept squeezing in, and soon she was pressed back out into the hall.

No point in putting this back on now. Hallie walked away from Stilwell’s room without resecuring the hood. Presently she came to the nurses’ station. With most of the shift team down in Stilwell’s room, there were only two nurses there, both in biosuits. One was in the dispensary, back turned to Hallie, inventorying the drug stocks. The other was looking down at a stack of paperwork. She heard Hallie approach but did not look up at first. When she did, and saw the tall woman with the white-blond hair and stitched-up, blood- smeared face standing in front of her wearing a biosuit but no hood, she dropped her pen.

“Hey,” Hallie said. “I need a room.”

FIFTY

FOR THIS VISIT, DON BARNARD WAS CLOAKED IN A FULL biosuit. She tried to think of a joke about it, but could not.

“I’m told you saved her life.” The hood and faceplate made him sound like he was talking to her from inside a closet.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Hallie was in a bed herself now in the iso ward. “She deserves to live.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine.” He appeared skeptical. “Really, Don. Look…” She pointed at her lunch tray, where only crumbs remained from the cheeseburger, French fries, and chocolate sundae she had devoured. “Appetite good, no fever, no pains, pulse, BP, respiration, all good.”

He just nodded.

“I know. Incubation period, three to five days. This is just day one.”

He nodded again. Looked at the floor, at the wall, at the ceiling. Through the faceplate, she could see that something was wrong.

“Don, talk to me. Did Lenora die?”

“She’s hanging on. It’s not that.”

“What then?”

He looked directly at her. She could see only his eyes through the faceplate, but they frightened her.

“What, Don?”

“It isn’t working, Hallie.” Strange voice, dead-sounding, flat.

“What isn’t working?”

“The moonmilk. It isn’t working.”

Her body felt as if it had just taken a hard electric shock. Can’t be. He has to be wrong.

“No way, Don. We gave them my research results. And Lew’s work. With the new moonmilk, they can’t miss. We were this close. They have to…” Her voice trailed off as she watched his face.

“No. Not that. We have seven laboratories working on this. They all got the same response. Either this material is different or the samples were contaminated.”