Free Plague by Victor Methos Page A

looked to him, unable to hold back the disgust. “You son of a bitch! I trust ed you.”
    “C, it’s me, man. Calm down, all right. That’s not how it played out.”
    “You’ve been to my house , you cocksucker! You ate my wife’s dinner.”
    “C, I’m telling you, that’s not how it played out. Sit down and let me explain.”
    Robert took a piece of chicken off Conrad’s plate and placed it gently in his mouth. “I’d love to stay and see how this plays out but I simply have to be going. I’m catching a flight in thirty minutes and the police will be looking for me.”
    “Police?” Tyrone said . “For what?”
    “Murder.”
    The spit of the silenced Ruger .22 caliber could barely be heard over the din of the restaurant, even by the men at the table. When Conrad saw the blood pouring from a small wound on Tyrone’s chest, he knew what had happened. He thought it odd that it wasn’t like in the movies — a ping with a waft of smoke rising in the air. There was no sound, no drama. It had sucked Tyrone’s life away quietly and without fuss.
    “Oh sh —”
    Conrad felt his lung s tighten as if a fist had grabbed them and squeezed. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t suck in air. There was just this horrible nothingness as his mind raced and he stared wide-eyed into the face of the man who had just shot him.
    He watched as Robert stood up, calmly put on his glasses, and looked to the dog under the table. He bent down to where Conrad couldn’t see and after a yelp from the dog followed by silence, Robert stood and walked out of the restaurant.
    Conrad looked over to his waitress who was helping another table. H e tried to gasp, but nothing came. Instead, he fell to the floor, pulling the tablecloth and all their dishes with them. As the floor rushed toward his face, he felt the sweet release of his soul lifting from his body and he wished he’d had time to tell his wife goodbye.

 
    CHAPTER 13
     
     
    Samantha sat in the corridor of Queen’s Medical and watched journalists from every newspaper, magazine, blog , and website stream into the hospital and go straight to the media room that had been set up in another building just behind the ER. The hospital’s main floor had been cleared with the exception of the staff. They had been asked, politely, to remain on hospital premises for a short period of time to see if any of them had been infected. When they were asked, national guardsmen with rifles stood behind their supervisors. There wasn’t a lot of room for debate.
    Samantha was on e of the few people allowed to move freely. Technically, she would by right be under observation as well. But in an emergency situation when they faced a hot agent as deadly as black pox, it was all hands on deck.
    She noticed the man from the prior meeting in the Depeche Mode T -shirt walking by with a Diet C oke in his hand and he smiled to her and came over.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Hey.”
    “Are you going to the press conference?”
    “Yes.”
    “So what lab are you with again?”
    “I’m with the CDC.”
    “Oh, man. So this is your press conference. Are you going to be sitting up there?”
    “They like to fill the long tables during these things so if there’s space they’ll ask me.”
    “That’s so cool.”
    “Not really.”
    He shrugged. “It is to me. I’m stuck in a nine- by - nine room twelve hours a day and when I do anything important my supervisor takes the credit.”
    “ The CDC can always use good field agents.”
    “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” He took a sip of his drink and she could tell he was thinking of what to say next. “If that guy you mentioned, the index patient , if he did pick it up in South America, that probably means someone’s going to have to go down there and snoop around, right?”
    “It’ll take time to clear it with our two governments, but yes. We’ll send down a team to all the locations he visited.”
    “And try and hunt down a virus. Man, I’m