Henry: Part II
V.
“Henry, can you hear me?”
She was working alone, breaking one of the facility’s unbreakable rules, for George had vanished. At first, Judith suspected that he had been fired — the security cameras would have recorded their conversation, and his retelling of her predecessor’s fate was sufficient cause to warrant his dismissal. Judith found otherwise after a few days, when she passed the lab technician in a ground floor hallway; he acknowledged her presence with a brief nod, but they did not speak. Perhaps it was just as well – Henry was afraid of George, always watching the bearded man with a sullen glare, and if the lab technician became too threatening, he retreated to the far end of the enclosure, covering himself with the blanket that served as his only shelter. Still, if anything went wrong…
Never approach him alone.
“Can you hear me?” she repeated. “Can you understand me?”
The red eyes did a slow sweep of the room and fixed upon her face as she approached the glass. In the lead-up to her experiments, Desmond had given her access to portions of Henry’s classified file, and she tried to recall some detail, some facet of his former life, that might provide an opening. An accountant. Thirty-one years old, unmarried, recently broken up with a long-time girlfriend. Henry had been talking to a new girl, and three days before his disappearance, he had invited her to a Saturday night baseball game. That was the last anyone saw of him, Judith remembered. By the time he asked that girl out, he was already infected, and by Saturday night, he was lying comatose in his apartment. The rest of Henry’s file remained classified. How long was he in the wild before he was captured, and how did they catch him alive? How many people did he kill? And for God’s sake, how was he infected in the first place? The proximity line was marked on the floor by yellow tape, and Judith hesitated before stepping into the three-foot exclusion zone. The red eyes, not quite monstrous but certainly uncanny, stared as he drew near to the barrier, nearly pressing his nose against the glass. Judith pressed her fingers against the glass, and her eyes widened as Henry slowly repeated her motion.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She jumped, startled by the intrusion, and Henry retreated as George strode into the room. His hands clinched reflexively into fists as a hot flush spread upward from the cheeks to the shaven head, and when he reached the center of the room, he stopped, bouncing on his feet, his torso six inches from her own.
“George, you are not helping…”
“Not helping?” George spoke quickly, his voice rising in pitch as he accentuated each phrase with the jab of an index finger. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Do you want to get someone else killed? Or did you forget the rules? We have them for a reason, and if you don’t want to follow them, then pack up your shit and get the hell out of here.”
Judith returned the stare. She did not consider herself assertive by nature, but medicine was no charm school, and she had received enough verbal flack – from her professors, from hospital administrators, from the New York cops that followed her into the autopsy suite – to absorb the lesson. Stand your ground or they’ll walk over you. She answered his tirade with a single word.
“No.”
“No?” he replied, aghast. “No? You come in here alone, disregarding orders like you run the place, and –”
“Following orders,” she shot back. “My explicit instructions, which came directly from Desmond, are to work directly with Henry in a manner that requires his cooperation – he needs to understand me, and he needs to trust me.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“None of your damn business,” she said. “If you don’t like it, take it up with Desmond.”
“And he will back you to the hilt.” George shook his head in disgust. “After all, that Nobel Prize won’t award itself. Just remember that you can trust Paul Desmond only slightly more than you can trust Henry.”
The anger slowly bled away, and Judith gave a quick glance into the enclosure. Henry stood next to his blanket but remained uncovered, watching them both. A rat, George had called him. A chicken. His perfect stillness suggested something else, the quiet patience of a crocodile observing the water’s edge, and as a sick feeling settled into the pit of her stomach, the first true fear that she had felt since coming to Atlanta, she was nearly persuaded to tell George everything. The lab technician broke the spell with an embarrassed cough.
“Just don’t get yourself killed for Desmond’s sake.” George cast a fleeting look at the enclosure, then turned for the control room. “God, I hate him.”
VI.
She worked for six more days, always alone. Henry presented himself obediently for his regular blood draw, and on the third day, she placed the glass tubes into the airlock. The sick man turned the vials over in one hand, and when he returned them, Judith rewarded him with an extra ration of blood. “Don’t feed him so fucking much,” her mind complained in George’s voice. “If you value your life, you want him to stay weak.” She repeated the procedure over the next two nights, speaking to him in a soft voice as she uncapped and recapped the vials, and though her patient said nothing, he began gradually to mimic her actions, gently removing the rubber stopper as he watched her face. “That’s good, Henry. Now, put the cap back in place and pass it back to me.” Judith began to observe subtle changes in his expression, a faraway echo of recognition or insight, and when she presented his next reward, she watched him eat, his movements surprisingly dainty as he bit into the plastic.
The final part was the most important.
The next night, she spat into a tube, then slid a pair of empty vials into the enclosure. “I need you to fill the tube. I need to find what’s making you sick.” Henry picked up the vials, turned them over in his pale fingers, then returned them to the airlock. Did you really think it would be this easy? Judith rubbed her eyes – she was at the end of a twenty-hour workday, and she was exhausted. Try again tomorrow night. She picked up her clipboard and turned for the door.
“Judith.”
The voice was a croaking rasp, so unlike human speech that she wondered whether sleep deprivation had sent her imagination into overdrive, and a chill ran up her spine as she turned. Henry’s face was pressed against the security barrier, his mouth open to reveal the long teeth, and the red lips worked spasmodically as he attempted to form words. A low moan emanated from his throat, and she shied away in sudden fright. Taking a deep breath, she touched the barrier, and her fingers rested mere inches from his face.
“Talk to me, Henry. I’m here to help you, and if there’s anything you can tell me…” Judith trailed off, lost for words, and the yawning mouth worked again, dismissing her with a cryptic benediction.
“I’m sorry.”
He retreated to the far corner of his cell, and though she remained for another hour, Henry would not speak or look in her direction.
VII.
“Wake up.” Judith opened her eyes as George nudged her elbow. “You going to sleep all day, like our friend on the fifth floor.”
She sat up. She slept poorly last night, her rest disrupted by vivid nightmares of Henry’s prison, and the dream lingered half-remembered at the fringes of her consciousness. The lights had gone out as the security barriers crashed into place, sealing her inside the containment room, and a shadow had watched from the far side of the enclosure as the glass of Henry’s pen fractured, then shattered –
“Henry spoke to me last night,” she said.
“That wasn’t in your report.”
“That’s all you have to say?” She shoved him aside and went to the sink to brush her teeth. “Henry has been nonverbal this whole time, and now that we’ve had a sudden breakthrough, you’re critiquing my reports – and who the hell are you to read my reports in the first place?”
“You know the rules.” George moved behind her, watching her face in the mirror, and a shiver of discomfort flashed along the length of her spine. “Any change in his condition goes into your nightly report, and something this big needs to be reported to Desmond immediately. If the CDC finds out that you withheld critical information, not only will they kick you out of the building, but you can say goodbye to your security clearance and your future employment prospects – there’s not a medical licensing board in the country that will stand by you. One slip, and you’re sunk.”
“Then let’s go see him together.” Judith paused and spat into the sink. “I’ll own up to the mistake, and he can fire me if he wants.”
“Of course – he and you are partners now, working on together whatever little skunk works project he’s dreamed up. Just remember that Desmond’s first and only loyalty is to Desmond. And another thing.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, and when she flinched, George withdrew the arm and looked away in sudden embarrassment. “Do you remember what he told you on your first day? Henry has an effect on people. Fall under his spell, and someone is going to get hurt. I think it would do you some good to take a couple of days off – get outside the fence, get some rest, and maybe you should think about whether you want to come back. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“Safe?” Judith scoffed, shaking her head. “This is the biggest goddamn outbreak of infectious disease since the Black Death, and you don’t think it’s safe? I’m a fucking doctor, and what – you think I’m falling under Henry’s spell?”
George, already leaving, paused in the doorway.
“Who said I was talking about you?”
She sat on the bed for another ten minutes, gathering herself, then headed for the elevator. George was right, of course, and while Desmond might allow some leeway for the sake of their shared project, he had a martinet’s reputation, and the oversight could still place her career in jeopardy. Desmond’s first and only loyalty is to Desmond, she remembered, but the director’s nasty reputation bothered her less than George’s hints of darker doings. If he asks, tell him that you heard nothing. The enclosure was wired for sound, but she doubted that the microphones could pick up the quiet rasp of Henry’s voice. Tell him that you were tired, and that you got spooked from being alone with Henry for too long. Stick to your story, and don’t tell him that you heard a voice. The elevator opened onto the fifth floor, and she walked quickly down the hallway. Henry lay asleep in the far corner of the enclosure, his body covered by the heavy blanket, and Judith’s hands trembled as she fumbled with the airlock door –
– and found two vials of liquid in the sample container.
Moving with deliberate care, she donned a Tyvek suit and heavy gloves and removed the samples from the airlock. She studied the vials before placing each into the dumb waiter, then Judith pressed a button to whisk her precious cargo to the biosafety lab below. The suit and gloves went into a biohazard bag, and she retreated to an adjoining office to compose her report. Two vials of cloudy liquid, viscous and covered in a layer of foam. Sample is presumably saliva, will confirm via security footage. Request electron microscopy and chemical analysis. Definitive confirmation would require a full laboratory work-up, but in her heart, Judith already knew the truth.
Whatever pathogen was making Henry ill, she would find it in those samples.
VIII.
The fourth floor was deserted, and the silence was broken only by the sound of a single pair of footsteps and the swish-swish of the mop as the janitor moved through the hallway. He had been there from the beginning, had watched the building grow from a foundation of gravel and concrete, and if the government tests, both physical and psychological, had been rigorous, the janitor did not mind, for the added hardship had disrupted the monotony of prison life. The interviews had been strangest part, especially the last one. He had sat across the table from a gray-haired man in a lab coat, and the janitor suspected that the coat was ornamental, a stage prop worn by an actor. He had been unshackled, but the interviewer displayed no fear – indeed, he revealed no emotion of any sort – and the janitor, who had met his share of frightening men, had found himself rattled by the eerie calm of his counterpart. “Tell me everything,” he said, and the janitor did – the reason for his prison sentence (five years for burglary), crimes for which he had not been caught (at nineteen, he had killed a man in a barfight), history of alcohol or narcotics use (mostly booze and weed, with experimental use of both cocaine and heroin). When the questions were over, Paul Desmond had studied him for a long time, saying nothing as he peered at the janitor through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
“Your intelligence is well above average What would you say if I gave you a clean start?”
“What do I have to do to earn it?”
“Work hard, stay clean, and do everything you’re told. Above all, keep your mouth shut.”
“I can do that.”
“You’d better. Do well, and I can have your record expunged. If not, there are worse places to land than this one.”
Most of the work was routine, but he functioned as the doctor’s assistant and dogsbody, and on occasion, Paul Desmond assigned him specific tasks to be carried out away from the other staff. He had worked all afternoon, mopping the hall around the doctor’s office and passing briefly through the doorway in response to his summons, then working his way upward, supplies in hand, until he reached the biosafety lab. The entrance to the lab was barred by a heavy door, and laboratory staff were granted access via a retinal scan. A keypad rested below the scanner, and if anyone questioned its purpose, for none of them knew the access code, the keypad soon faded into the background, unused and ignored. The janitor knew better, for he was adept at bypassing the security systems, and he punched a numeric code into the panel on the wall. The security cameras powered down as the door slid open, and any footage of his approach would be erased, replaced by five minutes of stock video showing nothing more than an empty hallway. He proceeded to the sample cabinet, and when his task was completed, the janitor returned to his cleaning cart. The rest of the evening was pure drudgery.
IX.
There was little work for the next two days, and Judith passed the hours in a state of enforced idleness. She e-mailed her report to Paul Desmond and skipped the morning meeting. Desmond likewise did not attend, and though his departures were typically heralded with the fanfare of visiting royalty – the Doctor is in Washington, in London, in Beijing – his official itinerary remained blank, his comings and goings utterly secret. She passed George in the hallway. His face was drawn, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. On the third day, she called the biosafety lab.
“This is Doctor Judith Liu. Do you have the results for my samples?”
“Authorization number,” a voice responded from the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry – what?”
“Authorization number,” the voice said tonelessly. “If you submitted a sample to the lab, you must provide the nine-digit authorization number to receive your results.”
“I’ve never heard of this,” she replied. “My samples were sent two nights ago with the chain of custody form, and –”
“Doctor Desmond changed the protocol in the interest of building security,” the voice interrupted. “If you need more information, please speak with your supervisor.”
“Can you at least tell me if it’s been analyzed? If you found anything?”
“Without an authorization number, I can’t even tell you if such a sample exists.”
The line went dead.
X.
An unmarked access door led to the roof, and George leaned against an air intake as he removed the cigarette pack from his shirt pocket. Smoking was forbidden throughout the complex, and he felt a perverse pleasure at breaking their rules. Multi-agency action, they called it, whole-of-government approach, and Paul Desmond’s crew of Ivy League pricks could bitch to their hearts’ content, but they couldn’t fire him. George Stone was untouchable, though at best, his continued employment was a mixed blessing.
He had lied easily enough to Doctor Liu – deception was part of the job – but he had mixed enough of the truth, hoping to frighten her away. “Young guy about your age, newly-minted doctor from UCLA. He was about a half-second away from having his arm bitten off.” Instead, Judith Liu had proven herself to be made of sterner stuff, and George wondered whether he should have given her the truth. I was a half-second too late. He had seared Henry with the ultraviolet, and the EMTs had saved the hapless doctor’s life, but it was rumored that Desmond was hard at work on another half-dozen facilities – in Fort Detrick, in the Montana Badlands, in God only knew where else – so George had finished the job, retrieving his duty pistol and personally overseeing the doctor’s final journey to the incinerator. Those facts were a closely guarded secret, and he had broken a half-dozen federal laws in revealing even a partial truth. And for what?
The phone in his pocket buzzed, and he answered, providing a careful update and pausing occasionally to answer questions. In a darkened room some three hundred miles to the south, his minders at Eglin Air Force Base conferred among themselves, and George waited in silence until the answer came back. Hold your position and wait.
XI.
The janitor had worked for nearly twelve hours, and he checked his watch before storing his cleaning supplies in the stockroom. It had been an odd day, for his shift typically ended at five in the afternoon, and his after-hours work was assigned personally by Desmond. Today’s schedule had kept him on duty for an extra four hours, but he saw no point in complaining. Do what you’re told and keep your mouth shut. He pushed the elevator button and watched as the elevator ascended from the first floor, counting off the numbers in his head. Perhaps the extra work was a bizarre loyalty test of sorts (the old doc was polite enough to him, but he had a reputation for terrorizing the other staff) or a simple clerical error. Either way, there was no reason to rock the boat.
He jumped as the elevator door opened, surprised to find that he was not alone, then smiled at the familiar face.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. If we keep working these hours, we’ll end up like the man in the cage –”
The words died in his throat as he was seized by a pale hand, and the janitor stared into the red eyes, a final, agonized cry emanating from his throat before the voice was torn from his body.