the big things. Later, of course, he would begin to stir, to focus on research again. But now he felt a deep slowness in his veins, a reluctance to engage with life that almost frightened him. The feeling wasn't new. Sometimes he felt like a retrovirus himself, neither alive nor dead, but rather half a helix-half a chain-eternally searching for a tie that would bind. He suspected that most human beings were like that: dormant, drifting, like living corpses until they infiltrated the barriers of another person. By insinuating themselves into that other life, they began to function, to act, to feel, and ultimately to reproduce. But after a time (varying in every case, but always inevitable) they began to kill the host body. Look at the desperate men and women who went to Andrew Rusk for help. Most had already attached themselves to a new host and were now consumed by a frantic impulse to flee the dying husk of the old one, the husk that they themselves had sucked dry. And they would not scruple to kill if necessary.
Eldon listened to the whisper of the creek and let his mind drift downstream. Sometimes he had trouble evacuating his bowels. Before his adoptive father came to believe that Eldon had been ordained by God to handle serpents, he had flown into rages and beaten the boy without mercy. All the anger that would have crashed onto the thick heads of his biological children was diverted onto Eldon by his wife, a living monument to passive aggression. But Eldon had understood none of that then; he understood only pain. Even now, he had more than a dozen burn scars on his body, souvenirs of his father's Kafkaesque efforts to 'prove' that he was not one of the elect, that he had been touched by the Evil One. (Being burned by the flame constituted damning proof of sin.) The red-hot iron had scourged Eldon in places he had not touched himself back then-the very iron they used in church to fulfill Luke 10:19:
The sound of a cell phone was alien in these woods, and many creatures stopped to listen. Eldon let it ring three more times before he answered.
'Yes?'
'Dr. Traver?'
Eldon blinked three times, slowly. 'Yes.'
'It's Neville Byrd.'
'Yes?'
'I think I may have him, sir. Or it, rather.'
'Go on.'
'The thing you were waiting for, you know? The
'Go on.'
'Andy Rusk just logged on to this Dutch Web site. It seems to me he's going through an authentication protocol of some kind. You know, verifying his identity.'
'And?'
'Well…I mean, if he does that tomorrow, I'd say we've found the trigger, you know? Like, if he didn't log in the next day, all hell would break loose. Or whatever it is you're expecting.'
Eldon found it hard to adjust to the sudden intrusion of modernity. 'Very good. Call me when…you're certain.'
Neville Byrd sat breathing into the phone-he was almost panting, really, and obviously puzzled by his employer's apparent detachment. 'I'll do that, Doctor. Is there anything else?'
'No.'
'Okay, then.'
The connection went dead.
Eldon hit END, then wiped himself with some broad leaves and walked slowly back to his motorcycle. He saw a shiver in the pine straw as he walked, a shiver that filled him with anticipation. Instead of halting, as most people would have, he threw out his right foot.
A thick black snake reared up before him, exposing the milky lining of its mouth and two long fangs. A cottonmouth moccasin. The tip of its tail vibrated like a rattlesnake's, but there was no sound. This viper had no rattle like its cousin. Still, it stood its ground more fiercely than a rattler would have done.
The cottonmouth seemed perplexed by his lack of fear. As Dr. Tarver moved forward, he opened his mouth and flicked his tongue in and out, an old habit from his snake-hunting days. The cottonmouth was not brilliantly hued like the coral, but corals were rare, and the one he'd found in the park was probably dead by now. Agent Morse would almost certainly survive, even if she'd been bitten. But she would never be the same. She would have tasted the enmity that God had promised in Genesis, and she would know that her present hunt was like no other.
The cottonmouth advanced in a quick rush, showing that he meant business. Eldon laughed and sidestepped the snake, whose body was nearly as thick as his forearm. Its diamond-shaped head was big as an average man's fist. A snake like that could generate a lot of fear. In some contexts, it could be a very persuasive tool.
'I believe you are,' he said. 'A sign of rebirth.'
As he shouldered his duffel bag and climbed aboard the Honda, his laughter echoed strangely through the trees.
CHAPTER 30
Chris was sitting at his kitchen table dictating charts when the cell phone Alex had given him began to ring. Ben was in the den playing
Ben didn't even look in his direction.
'Alex?' he said, walking across the driveway. 'How's it going up there?'
'Not so good.'
'You sound shaky.'
'Not my best day.'
'I'm sorry. Take another Ativan.'
'I'd like to, but they're giving me a drug test in the morning. And it's not voluntary.'
'Ativan's no big deal. You've got a prescription.'
'Not in writing.'
'I'll fax one up there tomorrow.'
'That won't help. They don't want me talking to you, Chris. They don't want me talking to anybody associated with any of the cases. Actually, ‘noncases' would be more accurate.'
'They still don't believe you?'
'For a second, I thought I saw something in an old friend's eye, but I was wrong.'
Chris switched on the flashlight and scanned his front yard. Two pairs of yellow-green eyes glowed to life on a hilltop sixty meters away. The deer reassured him, for the skittish animals would instantly vanish if someone were prowling the area. 'Well, your big worry was that they would fire you. Have they done that?'
'Not yet. They offered me a deal.'
'What deal?'
'If I give up everything, stop trying to find out what happened to Grace, they probably won't fire me.'
Chris didn't know what to say.
'They want me to go to a goddamn psychiatric hospital. They think I'm having some kind of breakdown.'
