The Zulu Virus Chronicles Boxset (Books 1-3) Read online

  “Perfect. I’ll pick up something, or I could meet you right in Broad Ripple.”

  “Either way. I’ll call you when I’m an hour out,” he said.

  “Drive safe,” she said, and then blew him a kiss, which he pretended to catch and return.

  She disappeared into the hallway, appearing a few seconds later.

  “I was thinking about inviting some people over for drinks tonight. We can sit out on the patio all night and annoy whoever was yelling up a storm last night,” she said.

  Jack vaguely remembered what she was talking about, but he did recall thinking that it sounded like a vicious argument, at least an eight on a scale of one to ten. The kind of tone and language you could expect from a wife that just caught her husband cheating—and the woman was still there! As animated as it had sounded, when Emma had woken him up, it couldn’t compete with a good night’s sleep after a long day of travel.

  “I drifted in and out. What was it all about?”

  “I don’t know, but it sounded serious,” she said. “I thought about getting up to lock the doors.”

  “It wasn’t Chris and Courtney next door, was it?”

  “No. Sounded like a few houses down—but it was loud. It died down after several minutes, or I fell asleep. Not sure, honestly. I was pretty zonked, too,” she said. “Anyone you want me to make sure to include for tonight?”

  “I trust your judgment,” he said before stepping into the garage.

  Jack stopped his Jeep halfway down the driveway to put the top down. The forecast called for clear skies and temperatures in the mid-eighties—perfect Jeep weather. Wide rays of sunlight poked between the trees across the street, warming his face and convincing him he’d made the right decision. He’d folded the Jeep’s retractable soft top into the rear cargo compartment, when his neighbor’s front screen door snapped shut.

  He looked over his shoulder and waved at Sam, who carried two bulging plastic grocery bags by their stretched thin handles. Jack took a few seconds to make sure the top was secure before heading over to meet his neighbor.

  “No need to haul everything over, Sam!” said Jack, catching him before he’d struggled too far. “We appreciate you taking care of the mail last second like that. I totally spaced putting it on hold. Here. Let me grab that.”

  “It’s no problem,” said Sam, struggling to the contrary.

  Sam strained to disentangle his hands from the handles, which left deep white lines across his palms. When the transfer was complete, the thin plastic started to dig into his own hands.

  “You guys get a lot of mail,” said Sam, breathing heavily.

  “It’s all of Emma’s magazines and catalogues,” said Jack.

  Sam started to smile, but winced in pain instead, nearly taking a knee in the grass.

  Jack dropped the bags of junk mail and steadied Sam.

  “You all right?”

  Sam squinted, the effects of whatever had just hit him still lingering. “Been getting these nasty headaches,” he whispered. “Never had a headache outside of a hangover before. Even those weren’t even close to this.”

  “Migraines?” said Jack. “Emma gets those every once in a while. I think it’s allergy related.”

  “I don’t have allergies. Or at least I never did before.” Sam flinched again, softly grunting. “Comes in waves. I thought I could run this out to you before they hit again.”

  “Here,” said Jack, taking Sam’s arm. “Let’s get you back inside. Amy’s home, right?”

  “Yeah. She’s gonna take us over to urgent care when they open,” said Sam. “She’s got the same thing, but not as bad.”

  “Both of you with migraines?” said Jack.

  “Weird, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think it could be food poisoning?”

  “My stomach’s been fine,” said Sam, in between deep breaths.

  “Let me check something,” said Jack, feeling Sam’s forehead with the back of his hand.

  Jack never had much success doing the forehead-temperature thing, but the second he touched Sam’s head, he could tell the guy was burning up.

  “I think you have a solid temperature, Sam,” said Jack. “Urgent care doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Is Amy okay to drive you over? Maybe Emma can give you guys a lift.”

  “And get her sick, too?” said Sam. “We’ll be fine. I can call a cab if it gets that bad.”

  “I’ll have her check on you guys, either way. I’m headed up to my folks to grab Rudy. I should be back by midafternoon.”

  “She doesn’t have to check on us,” said Sam.

  “If you guys haven’t seen a doctor by then, I’ll drive you myself,” said Jack. “Even if I have to wear gloves and a mask.”

  Sam laughed a little, the lingering pain of the cluster headache still evident on his strained face.

  “The thought of you driving us around wearing a silly mask and latex gloves is all I need to make sure we get to urgent care—on our own,” said Sam, patting Jack’s shoulder. “Drive safe.”

  “Will do,” he said, starting to turn away, but remembering something. “Hey, Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you hear a big commotion on the block last night? Like some arguing?”

  “No. But an ambulance and a few police cars showed up around three in the morning. I couldn’t tell exactly where, but it looked like three houses down from yours on that side,” said Sam, pointing behind Jack.

  They didn’t know the couple that lived there very well. Gary and…he couldn’t think of the wife’s name. They were in their mid-forties from what he guessed, with no kids. Probably a good thing given last night’s fiasco, especially if an ambulance was involved.

  “I hope everyone is all right,” said Jack. “Emma said she heard a vicious argument coming from that direction. I slept through most of it. Neither one of us caught the ambulance and police.”

  “Jeez, that doesn’t sound good. Hate to think they had an argument that got violent,” said Sam.

  “Me too,” said Jack, looking in that direction.

  If one of them hospitalized the other, there was a good chance that both of them would be gone. One in a hospital bed. The other in a jail cell. He wondered if anyone had thought about the dogs. They had two miniature poodles that barked nonstop, but they’d been silent this morning. Jack made a mental note to check on that situation later. He had enough on his plate for now.

  Chapter 10

  David Olson needed to find his ex-wife quickly. At the very least, he needed to get in touch with her over the phone. So far, his numerous calls to the three different numbers he had for her in his contacts list had gone unanswered, which was unlike Meghan. They’d had their difficulties in the past, mostly “job” related, but she’d never failed to return a call within a few hours when he had Josh, even if it meant dealing with one of David’s dumb questions. Now he was starting to get worried. It had been eighteen hours since he’d left his first string of messages.

  Worried about his ex, and his job. Sergeant Jackson’s tone had shifted from “we could sure use your help” to “get your ass into the station ASAP” between last night and this morning. More officers had called in sick, and the department continued to get hit with an increasing number of legitimate 911 emergencies. If he could just get in touch with Meghan, he could explain the situation and work out a plan.

  Ideally, she would take him back early, and he’d do an extended shift lasting until tomorrow morning. If she was out of town, he could head in this morning and stay on duty until ten o’clock tonight, scooting home to make sure Josh wasn’t left alone overnight. Either way, he wanted to let her know what was going on. She got a little crazy when he went off script with their son, and he didn’t need her throwing that back at him in the form of a visitation modification petition. He didn’t think she’d do something like that, but why take the chance?

  Checking his watch, he made a quick calculation. He could drive to her house in Fishers and back wit
hin an hour while Josh slept in. His son rarely rolled out of bed before ten during summer break, leaving him enough time to scope out her place and make it back in time to cook up some omelets. That was the plan. David wrote his son a note explaining the situation and slid it under his door, hoping it didn’t get lost in the mess when Joshua stumbled to the bathroom first thing after waking up.

  Why was he sweating this? The kid was seventeen years old, fully capable of fending for himself for a few hours, and he had a phone, which could apparently solve any problem in existence nowadays. Joshua could probably YouTube how to make an omelet and surprise his old man when he got back. Fat chance. He’d be lucky if the kid poured his own glass of orange juice. Meghan kind of treated him like a baby at her place, a habit he only managed to slightly rewire once a year by taking him into the forest, where mama didn’t cut up the food on your plate or make a second meal because you don’t like meatloaf. Who was he kidding? He was about to make the kid a three-cheese omelet with two kinds of hash browns.

  Roughly a half hour later, after driving across what appeared to be a normally busy town, he pulled into Meghan’s neighborhood, a tightly packed development of custom, ranch-style homes. She’d always wanted a home with the master suite on the main level so she could grow old in the home, or something like that. David always figured that would happen anyway when they moved to Florida after they retired. Most of the houses down there were one story, from what he could tell.

  David drove slowly through the winding streets of the subdivision, finally spotting her house next to the community pool and playground complex. He pulled up to the curb in front of her house and idled his pickup truck forward, spotting the back end of a boxy silver SUV at the back of the driveway that wrapped around the side of the house. The boyfriend was here, with his ugly-ass, outrageously expensive Mercedes G63, or whatever the number was this year.

  One hundred and fifty grand for the most aesthetically unattractive, gas-guzzling vehicle on the road. And he didn’t buy any of “boyfriend’s” nonsense about the thing being unstoppable in any climate or terrain. The guy lived in central fucking Indiana. The closest his SUV got to rough terrain was a muddy stretch of flat ground at one of his construction sites.

  He stopped at the edge of the driveway and weighed his options. He really didn’t want to see mister real estate developer. It wasn’t that he was an openly bad guy, but he had a bad habit of hanging around and chiming in when they discussed Joshua. David often heard him in the background during phone calls, telling her what to say, which—as a three-time divorcé—was apparently one of his areas of expertise. Giving people domestic advice that he couldn’t seem to take himself. He didn’t like the guy, and if he could avoid seeing his plucked eyebrows and Botox grin, all the better.

  With the truck in park, he dialed her cell number again and waited. Voicemail. Damn it. He gave her home phone a try, getting the same result. Fuck it. He was trying to do the right thing here, and if that meant saying hi to a permanently frozen face, so be it. He got out of the pickup and walked up the driveway, doing the math in his head. His ex would have had one hell of a time getting out of the garage without hitting the silver lunchbox on wheels. No way the boyfriend sat in the passenger seat and sweated her close-quarters maneuvering. Actually, why would they take her car in the first place? The housing market boom had bought her a new Lexus, but it was a base model—nothing like the marvel of German engineering standing before him right now.

  A quick glance through one of the garage windows confirmed that her car hadn’t left the house. Now he really faced a dilemma. If he knocked on the door, he faced the distinct possibility of encountering the two of them in their post-sex romp robes, or whatever outfit they threw on to meet his insistent knocking. David strongly considered turning around, but Sergeant Jackson wasn’t going to take no for an answer for very long. The sooner he squared this away, the better for all of them.

  Bracing for whatever burlesque show might appear in his ex-wife’s foyer, he rang the doorbell and listened. A long minute later, not hearing any movement inside the house, he rapped on the door with his knuckles, trying hard not to sound like he was pounding. Pounding could be interpreted as aggressive. David put his ear to the door, still not detecting any kind of activity on the other side. Maybe they were sleeping. Nine twenty was a little late for adults to sleep in, by his book, but he had to consider the possibility.

  He rang the doorbell several times and backed off the stoop, looking for any movement in the windows. It was definitely a stalkerish move, but he was past the point of no return here. He’d give it a few more knocks and a few more minutes before calling the Fishers Police Department. He’d ask them to take a closer look around the house, maybe kick the door in if they agreed that it was unusual enough for both cars to be here, with nobody answering. A thought hit him as he knocked on the door for the second time. Shit. They could be out riding bikes or walking. Hell, for all he knew, moneybags might have sprung a little romantic getaway on his ex, treating her to a limousine ride to the airport. Dozens of possible scenarios poured through the delayed floodgate of his mind, making him feel more like an over-reactive stalker by the second.

  David stood there for a few more seconds with his hands on his hips before deciding to give up. He’d have to work something out with Sergeant Jackson. It wasn’t like Jackson hadn’t dealt with this problem himself over the past years. He’d divorced a few years ago, with three kids in high school. He had to know firsthand how difficult it was to balance fixed custody arrangements with often less than flexible shift work. Then again, Jackson hadn’t worked rotating shifts in several years, and his wife had taken full custody of the kids, leaving his life about as uncomplicated as it gets.

  He cut across the lawn, headed for his pickup truck, when the front door to the house directly across the street creaked open. A woman with disheveled hair, wearing flannel pajamas and pink slippers, stepped onto the porch and put a hand on her hip. She looked two cups of coffee short of firing on all cylinders.

  “You’re the ex, right?” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Meghan since yesterday. Any idea where she might be?”

  The woman rubbed her head, taking a long time to answer.

  “There was an ambulance and a couple cop cars here around ten last night.”

  “Cop cars? What happened?”

  “They dragged your ex away screaming,” she said.

  “Wait. Who dragged my wife—ex-wife—away? The paramedics?”

  “No. They put the boyfriend in the ambulance. She went away in the back of one of the squad cars.”

  None of this made any sense, unless Mr. Botox stepped out of line and Meghan’s Krav Maga training kicked in—and didn’t stop. Why hadn’t she called him? He could smooth things out as best as possible with the officers he knew in the Fishers PD. Even if they had to charge her, he could make her life a little more comfortable and a lot less uncertain. Then again, she was probably worried about the custody situation. Everything came down to that after a divorce. It was a constant state of paranoia.

  “He was bloody from top to bottom when they put him in the ambulance,” she added.

  “What? Like a bloody nose?” he said.

  “No. They worked on him inside the house for a few minutes while they dealt with her. Carted him out on a stretcher with IV bags and everything. Looked like he’d been stabbed.”

  That couldn’t be right.

  “Are you—” he started.

  The woman suddenly raised both of her hands to her head and squeezed the sides of her skull, grunting and groaning. A few seconds later, she dropped her arms by her sides, face still scrunched in a painful grimace.

  “All right?” said David.

  “Headaches,” she mumbled. “Really bad. Called off work because of it.”

  “Well, you take care,” he said, his mind about as far from this woman’s problems as the moon.

  As soon as he
slammed the truck door shut, he dialed an unpublished number at the Fishers PD, which rang in the administrative area. He didn’t expect a police officer to answer, especially if they were having as much trouble as Westfield’s department, but he hoped to get someone. Anyone. After several unanswered rings, he tossed the phone on the passenger seat and started the truck. Omelets would have to wait. He needed to figure out what had happened to Joshua’s mom.

  Chapter 11

  Dr. Chang swiveled his stool to face the rightmost monitor in the trio of high-resolution screens comprising his personal workstation deep inside the lab. To say that he was alarmed would have been the scientific understatement of the decade. Chang was terrified by what he saw. Remaining motionless for several minutes, he carefully reviewed the DNA analysis displayed on the monitor twice to make certain he hadn’t made a mistake. He really wanted all of this to be a mistake. The implications were unthinkable.

  Based on the polymerase chain reaction results, both the spinal tap and blood samples contained a human-engineered virus strain. Weaponized was a more accurate term. There was no other conclusion. On the surface, he was looking at what he had expected to find based on the symptoms described. Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV1). HSV1 was the leading cause of herpes simplex encephalitis, a rare neurological disorder that caused severe inflammation of the brain. However, when run against his exhaustive database of previously sequenced HSV1 samples associated with HSE cases, he immediately noticed some slight variations to the DNA coding.

  The virus strain in his samples would undoubtedly cause encephalitis upon contaminating the central nervous system, but the persistent difference in DNA structure suggested a sophisticated genetic engineering effort. Chang was certain that he was looking at a designer bioweapon. There was simply no other explanation.

  HSV1 is estimated to be present in close to two-thirds of the global population under the age of fifty, but the vast majority remain asymptomatic their entire lives, and it’s not found in the bloodstream or cerebral spinal fluid. If it were, two-thirds of the population would suffer from HSE upon initial infection with HSV1. Herpes simplex encephalitis was extremely rare, striking roughly one person in every five hundred thousand. The number of suspected cases at Methodist Hospital alone right now was statistically impossible unless every case that was projected to occur in the United States this year struck at once.