Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Read Online Free Page A

classified?”
    He stepped into her office and sat down across from her. “I know in medical school they trained us to question everything. To find every detail, even what someone’s grandmother did for part-time work back in Uzbekistan when someone comes in with flu-like symptoms. But sometimes, as employees of the government, we have to stop questioning and just do what we’re told.”
    “That sounds like you don’t agree with what’s about to happen.”
    “Doesn’t matter what I think. I’m a cog in a wheel.” He rose and started out of her office, turning back to her at the door. “I can tell you one thing, though. There’s a Chinese curse that says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ And this is definitely an interesting time.”

6
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Howie Burke finished shooting hoops at the park by his house, then lay on his back in the grass after chugging half a Gatorade. At forty-three, he thought he should feel younger than he did. He sat up and watched a few minutes of the other game going on, a five-on-five, and then made his way over to his jeep and headed back home.
    The 405 was packed, and he occasionally thought it was quicker to drive to Las Vegas than to get around within LA. And it seemed even more crowded than a few years ago, as though a large migration into Los Angeles had happened. He wondered why anybody in their right mind would move there.
    As a kid, he remembered clean parks and plenty of role models. An old man who’d lived in his apartment complex had been in the 101st Airborne, the division that had guarded the first black students to integrate into white schools. He remembered the man telling him stories of what people put those poor kids through. They hung black dolls with their genitals cut out from trees and threw bottles at their heads. The teachers wouldn’t teach and forced them to sit in the back, away from the other students.
    Howie also remembered a woman who had slept with Jack Kennedy, or so she’d claimed. She went into detail about it, and for a twelve-year-old, that moment was pretty gross but fascinating. In that little apartment complex, which was really his entire universe, he found all the villains and heroes he needed, and the outside world didn’t seem to matter much. He had his friends, his family, and his neighbors. And every lesson of life he needed was learned there.
    But the city had changed. The sense of community was done. He felt as if he could have lived in any apartment complex in Los Angeles, and no one would even have said two words to him if he didn’t initiate the conversation. People were growing more distant from each other, and he wasn’t sure why.
    The drive to his house in Malibu took almost two and a half hours. His home was right on the beach. He parked in the driveway, unlocked the door, and turned off the alarm. The maids hadn’t come yet that week, and a couple of beer bottles stood on the coffee table, and a few dishes sat in the sink, but other than that, no one seemed to live there.
    The apartments he’d lived in growing up were always cluttered and messy, but he’d preferred a more sanitary environment ever since going out on his own at seventeen. His father, a raging alcoholic, hadn’t noticed he was gone for months, and when he did finally raise himself out of his drunken haze enough to track Howie down, the only thing he did was ask for money. Howie gave him every cent he had on him and hadn’t seen him since.
    As h e showered, he thought about where his dad might be. His mother had run off when he was a teenager. His father always told him she went to live on a ranch with her sister, but he’d later learned that was a lie. She was a secretary and had struck up a romance with someone at work. They fell in love, and she abandoned her son and husband for the beaches of Florida. When Howie’s mother left, his father turned to the bottle. It began with beers at every meal and then turned to hard liquor and