Red Tide by G. M. Ford Page A

the cop strode off, the EMT turned his attention back to Taylor. “Let’s get you more comfortable,” he said. “See if we can’t get that heart rate down.”
    Taylor started to protest, but the more he talked, the more the sense of relief in his voice became palpable. They took hold of his elbows and raised him to his feet. His knees shook slightly as he stood in the center of the floor. Taylor pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his parachute pants. “I’ve got to call…” he began.
    The nearest EMT slipped the phone from his fingers and dropped it back into his pocket. “We’re gonna walk you down to the aid car,” he said. “You can call whoever you need to call from there.”
    “There’s no need…” Taylor protested. “Just a little air is all…”
    Corso felt the van rock a couple of times as they took him out the door, then listened as Taylor’s protests became fainter and farther away until, at last, it was silent inside, and he popped the lock and stuck his head out of the closet.
    Empty. He stepped out of the closet and hurried over to the door. Ten yards downhill, Taylor’s legs had turned to foam rubber. If the same cop hadn’t showed up and lent a hand, Taylor might have fallen on his face. As it was, it took all three of them to keep him upright and moving forward. “Tough day for virgins,” Corso whispered to himself.
    Half a block up, the battle was over. The citizens had been herded back against the boarded-up bodega where they milled sullenly. Other than an infrequently shouted curse, they seemed to have vented their wrath and had now lapsed into some sort of postriotal repose.
    At the top of Yesler Street, the fire engines had been pulled back far enough to allow a convoy of aid cars to pass between their front bumpers. Corso counted eight ambulances with others still cresting the top of the hill, before he turned and looked the other way, where Taylor was still being assisted down the street and the reinforcements had returned to their guard posts.
    Corso stepped outside and quickly covered the narrow space between the van and the fire department SUV, still sitting with its doors flung open, half on, half off the sidewalk. He started to step around the front, heading for the door to the Underground, when he jerked himself to a stop and quickly squatted.
    A motorcycle cop sat leaning back against the door, while an EMT tended to a nasty gash above his right eye. Corso held his breath. The pain had squeezed the cop’s eyes shut. The medic was facing away from him, daubing away intently. Moving silently, Corso duckwalked back the way he’d come. Back to the van, where he peeked around the front to find that same police captain who’d been begging for help, now talking with Bobby and Ensley and the other haz-mat boys. For the first time, it crossed his mind that he had nowhere to go. That maybe the jig was up.
    Corso was lamenting his paucity of options when a flash of orange in his peripheral vision brought his attention back to the floor of the van where Taylor’s hazmat suit lay in a crumpled heap. He ran his eyes up to the shelf above the closet. The black rubber breathing apparatus stared at him with oblong plastic eyes.
    A smile spread slowly across Corso’s thin lips.

13
    D r. Hans Belder buried his nose in the TV monitor again. At his request, Ben Gardener had rewound the tape to the first victim’s cheek. Highest level of magnification. Belder used his fingernail to trace the outline of the lesion…first one and then another and another, as if by repetition alone he could convince himself that what he was seeing was real. He sat back in the chair and surveyed the room.
    “I’m sure…” he began. “I’m sure you all remember the simulation your government ran with the pox virus.”
    He looked up at Colonel Hines, who anticipated the question. “Operation Dark Winter,” Hines said. “Back in two thousand and one.”
    “Some sort of doomsday game,” the mayor