Showers of bullets spun through the wet air.
Theo flung the door open just as the boys reached it and slammed it shut right behind them.
Margo continued to fire into the night for a few extra moments before she turned and looked at her children.
There stood Alik and Evan, dripping wet with their T-shirts stuck to their strong torsos, smiling from ear to ear as they helped Creed off the gurney.
“Now that was one heck of a plan! Thanks for the cover fire, mom! You’re awesome!” Alik said sweeping his mother up into his arms even as she held the still smoking handgun.
“My boys!” she yelled and hugged them to her, ignoring how wet they were. “Is everyone okay? Anyone hit?”
“I’m good,” Alik said patting himself all over making sure adrenaline hadn’t disguised the pain of a bullet wound.
“Me, too,” Evan said inspecting his clothing for blood.
“Creed?” Theo asked.
“Well, I took at least one, but I shut off the pain, so I don’t know if there’s more,” he said nonchalantly. “Don’t worry about me; make sure Meg’s okay first.”
“What? Never mind, explain it to me later. Now, let’s get you and Meg to the lab.” Margo took on her motherly tone and everyone hurried across the house to the lab.
Outside, lying in the mud, Farrow cursed furiously as she struggled to locate her satellite phone in one of her many pockets. She had to tell Williams what just happened. She had to tell him that the whole plan—the metas on a plane headed to Germany with the serum to trade for the female’s life—was dead.
The metas were back home on the island and Creed obviously chose his allegiance to them over Williams. As she listened to the ringing, she decided to just leave out the part about the coyote finding the dart. He didn’t need to know that. He did need to send reinforcements though, considering she had just been shot in the stomach by one of Dr. Winter’s random bullets. Farrow tried to ignore the metallic, coppery taste of blood from her mouth, but couldn’t. She spat angrily and heard the doctor’s voice mail pick up.
Of all the times not to answer his phone, Farrow thought miserably.
55 The Plasmodium Parasite
“We need a current blood sample,” Paulie was saying as they were finishing settling Meg back into the lab.
“Right, I’ll collect that myself,” Margo said. Her hands worked as efficiently as possible gathering the supplies she needed.
“We’ll need to make another thin blood smear so we can estimate the parasite density and hopefully determine what species it is so we can treat her,” Paulie was saying much of this so everyone in the room was included in the process whether they had a medical background or not.
“There are treatments for malaria already, aren’t there?” Creed asked the room.
“Yes, for the four to seven known species of Plasmodium that have been successfully treated but the trick is to know which species infected the patient. With Meg, things get even more complicated because we believe she was infected by a laboratory-grown super-parasite—compliments of Williams. It has behaved differently from anything I can find in documented medical cases, so we’re trying to determine the appropriate antimalarial treatment—the sooner, the better,” Paulie explained patiently.
“With her clinical status, clearly we’re working with a severe manifestation of the disease. Impaired consciousness, anemia, jaundice, seizure…these are all clear indicators of the severity of the disease,” Evan concluded.
“What are you thinking, Evan?” Theo asked anxiously without looking up. His hands were busy working on removing a second bullet from Creed—this one located in his side. The first struck his shoulder and was trickier to remove, clean and stitch up than this one.
“I’m thinking we start her on a drug combination that is recommended for treatment of severe malaria and see if that can’t knock this out of her system. We’ll keep taking samples of her blood, and watch for confirmation of parasitologic response to the cocktail treatment. It may not kill off the parasite completely, but nothing about what I see in this smear contraindicates that course of treatment, either.” Evan’s voice was steady and calm. He had his face pressed into the viewer of the high-powered microscope where he was studying his sister’s blood.
“Paulie and I were thinking the same thing, but we wanted to wait to double-check a fresh smear and discuss it with you to see if you agreed,” Margo said with obvious respect for her son’s medical opinion.
“Take a look,” Evan motioned to his mother as he stepped away from the microscope.