Page 66 of Smoky Lake

Damn his luck, he’d fallen for someone who was probably counting on him not falling in love.

He’d just have to keep it to himself. And hope he didn’t blurt it out while he was insane in the membrane from fever.

31

If someone had told Ani she’d be treating a six-foot-two bodyguard behind a pizza pub in the middle of Denali National Park two weeks ago, she would have laughed her ass off.

Then she would have panicked.

She was a general practice pediatrician who worked at a clinic located on a lovely tree-lined block in downtown Barlow, Indiana. Her patients were little ones with ear infections and stomach aches and chicken pox. Very occasionally, a child would turn out to have something more serious, in which case she referred them to someone more specialized than her.

This situation was completely different. She didn’t even have her medical bag with her. No thermometer, no antibiotics, no stethoscope.

But Gil needed her, so she had to call on inner resources she hoped existed deep inside her.

She explained the situation—avoiding specifics—to Dave Donohue, the owner of the pizza pub, a burly, kind-hearted man in his fifties. He allowed her to use the restaurant’s first-aid kit and offered to pick up anything else she needed during his next supply run. She made friends with the kitchen staff, who let her make chicken soup and kitchari when they weren’t busy. It warmed her heart to see Gil devour the rice and lentil dish that her grandmother had always made for her when she was sick.

After three days, she started to hope she had a grip on this virus. Gil slept a lot, his body using all its energy to battle the intruder. His fever came and went. He followed her orders without protest—drink this water. Sip this green tea. Tell me your headache pain level.

But then things took a turn.

He started talking out loud using nonsense words—it sounded like gibberish to her. “Road to the underground. Last summer to fly like an ant. Fire ant. Fire ants.” Staring hard at her, repeating it over and over, as if it was urgent that she understand.

Stroke?

She asked him to smile, saw no one-sidedness, just that same heartstopping smile that hit her in the solar plexus every time. His face wasn’t numb. When he followed her instructions to lift his arms to the sides, they came up with equal strength.

He was in peak physical condition and showing no other symptoms of stroke, so she felt comfortable ruling that out. She didn’t want to call nine-one-one because that would mean exposing other people to the virus, and themselves to their potential pursuers. But if she had to, she would.

In the next moment, he asked for more water in a perfectly understandable manner, with no confusion whatsoever.

Maybe he was just rambling from the fever, his head still in whatever dream he’d been experiencing. As she relaxed, she remembered the bizarre way Victor had been talking in the airport, and the strange notes he’d written. Was the same thing happening to Gil? Were hallucinations a symptom of the omegavirus after all?

With any virus, the only way to understand the symptoms was to watch its effects on people. Until you had a large sample of patients, it was hard to know how it behaved.

She needed more information. She needed to go online. This virus was unfamiliar, but it was part of a family of viruses. Knowing more about the class of viruses as a whole might give her some clarity about this one.

The next time Gil settled into a deep sleep, she chased down Donohue, the busy owner, and asked if she could use his computer.

Settled into his office, surrounded by filing cabinets and stacks of empty pizza boxes, she looked online for whatever information she could find on the omegavirus family. There wasn’t much, since it was such a rare virus.

Relieving, but unhelpful.

Time to try a different approach. She did a search for “zombie virus,” which, after much searching, led her to a scientific forum for medical researchers who were working with zombie viruses. After much thought, she created an anonymous account using an email address she hadn’t used since high school.

Her time was up at that point, so she headed back to the room, where Gil was tossing and muttering to himself. Donohue had added a pulse oximeter to his last supply delivery, so she was able to confirm that Gil’s oxygen level was still good, although his pulse was a little fast.

During her next session on Donohue’s computer, she went straight back to that forum.

At first she lurked and scanned threads related to sub-Arctic viruses. They were just like other viruses, members of familiar families like the poxviruses, herpesviruses and so forth. Since they were viruses, their vaccines had to be specifically targeted to the particular microbe. There was no such thing as a broad spectrum antiviral.

So until this new omegavirus could be studied—which presumably the CDC and others were already doing—there would be no medical treatment for it. Only the symptoms could be treated, which she was doing.

A mention of green tea in one of the threads caught her eye. She’d been giving Gil green tea based on a memory from medical school, although she didn’t prescribe it for her young patients. The catechins in green tea could be effective in slowing the replication of a virus in the bloodstream. This thread went further—basil extracts had also been shown to have similar effects. The restaurant used basil on their pizzas—maybe she could buy enough to make a pesto to pour down Gil’s throat. Botanicals could be great, but getting enough of their bioactive constituents into your system could be challenging.

She sighed. Green tea and basil didn’t exactly make her feel well-armed. If only she knew what plants Victor was looking into. Did Nyx know? Would he tell them if he did?

She kept scanning the thread about catechins.

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