This Dark Earth Read Online Free

onto his desk. He had jumped and leaned away from her. I’m a scientist, Jerry. Not a goddamned kindergartener. You can fuck right off . She regretted the last bit, for truth, but very little else about her stint there.
    She sighed, at her past failures or for the looming mysteryof whatever this disease was, she couldn’t say. “We can’t know its origin. The fact we’re right next to a chemical stockpile just clouds the issue. It could be from anywhere and already moving into pandemic stage. No way to tell. But what does it matter? It’s happening. And we have to find out what it is and how to treat it.”
    “Lucy. Luce. Hold on a second. Listen to what you’ve just said. There’s a biological agent loose. We’ve got to go. This place is going to get very ugly, very soon.”
    “Leave? We have to treat these people. We have to solve this—”
    “Shoot ’em full of sedatives. Then we run. The children with Lesch-Nyhan need restraints all their life. Most of these folks are adults. It’s quiet now, but it’s about to be a psychopath’s wet dream out there.” He moved to the door. She was actually startled when he put his ear to the glass to listen. “And I need to get home to Rachel. To my girls.”
    From the corner of her eye, Lucy noticed a motion on the table. She turned and gaped. The infant moved sluggishly.
    “Robby. The baby.”
    The mother pushed herself into a standing position, using the wall as a brace.
    “Deb!” She lunged forward and huddled over the infant, tears falling on blue skin.
    “Mrs. . . .” Lucy realized she didn’t know the woman’s name. “Please let me examine your baby.”
    The baby waved her arms, opening and closing her mouth. In death, or what had seemed to be death, her eyes had glazed over, but they focused on the woman now.
    “My baby isn’t dead. But so cold—”
    “Ma’am, please.”
    Robby whispered, “You witnessed the tachycardia. Her heart gave out. I watched it happen. This child was dead.”
    The infant squirmed and the mother gave her her hand in comfort. The baby grabbed the proffered finger and stuffed it into her mouth.
    The mother said, “She’s teething. It’s really been hurting her lately. Rubbing her gums helps.”
    “What’s your name, honey?” Lucy asked, remembering Cathy with the mother this morning.
    For a moment she looked as if she didn’t know herself. “Martha.”
    “Martha, make room. Please. I need to examine Deb.”
    Lucy turned, began to snatch for Robbins’s stethoscope, then stopped herself and pointed at the device hanging from his neck. He blinked, then gave it to her. Lucy pressed it to the infant’s chest and listened for a heartbeat. Nothing. She pulled back the blankets covering the infant’s legs, grabbed the thermometer, and took the child’s temperature anally. The baby didn’t flinch.
    Eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit. And dropping. Like a cooling corpse.
    Yet the infant moved.
    Martha winced and pulled her hand from the child’s mouth. Blood crowned the tip of her finger and beaded down the side in a long rivulet. It made a soft pat-pat sound as it dripped to paper on the table. The baby half screamed, half moaned.
    Lucy turned to Robbins. “What is going on here, Robby? This goes way beyond biological warfare.”
    He shook his head. “I have no fucking clue.”
    “This child is dead.”
    Martha frowned at Lucy but remained silent. She glanced at the blood-smeared mouth of her child.
    A thump sounded as something heavy hit the door. The frosted-glass window cracked.
    Robby said, “It’s time to get out of here, Luce.”
    “Hold on a moment. I want to take some blood and another crystal sample. See here? She’s got it in her ears as well as her diaper, which means—”
    Something slammed into the door again, and the window went white with small fractures. Another blow and it would be gone.
    Lucy removed a Vacutainer for drawing blood from its wrapper and moved to the examination room’s cabinets to