“What went wrong?” she said as they went out the door together. “Rick is dead,” she said, relishing the clean night air. “They must think we killed him to cover up that your virus has gone rogue. If it’s using my tomato as a carrier, it could be all over the world in a matter of days, springboarded by your trial in Vietnam.”
Daniel stared at her, his thoughts almost visibly aligning as he put two and two together and got plague. “My God,” he whispered, turning to look behind him at the emergency room, bright with light as they stood in the dark. “Your tomato is condensing the toxins to lethal levels. But how? They don’t mesh.”
“Tell me about it,” Trisk said. “We need to find out for sure and see if we can stop it. But the last place we’re going to go is Global Genetics. Not only is there nothing left of it, but even if there were, they’d throw us in jail.”
Daniel swallowed hard, his steps holding the first hints of decisiveness as they stepped off the curb. “Where, then?”
Trisk looked at Quen. Her impulse to go to Cincinnati, where her father lived, rose and fell. There was no facility there. “Detroit?” she suggested, thoughts turning to the hidden elven labs scattered all over the U.S. Most were east of the Mississippi due to the fractured ley lines.
“Detroit doesn’t have a biolab,” Daniel said as they headed for the truck as one.
Arm looped in Daniel’s, Trisk looked up at the moon as she paced forward. “As a matter of fact, it does.”
18
The hum of her truck had become hypnotic, and the headlights illuminating the smooth, two-lane road heading east seemed to push back the dark just enough for them to pass through before it swallowed the world again. Trisk was driving because it was her truck. Daniel sat between her and Quen on the long bench seat. Both men looked lost in their own thoughts, but neither was showing any signs of unusual fatigue, rash, or nausea. U.S. 50 had been busy up to Reno, but now, as they entered Nevada’s deserts in earnest, the towns were smaller and the traffic almost nonexistent. It made her uneasy, and she couldn’t exactly say why.
The radio hissed as Peter and Gordon’s playful “Lady Godiva” ended, and Quen’s hand shot out first, his careful fingers shifting the dial to bring the station’s announcer in again. Sporadic news was being announced between British pop singles, and both men were listening with a morbid fascination. Sunset was only a few hours behind them, and Trisk’s and Quen’s elven metabolism made them both alert.
“Did he say they shut the border?” Daniel asked, and Quen nodded, his eyes never leaving the radio as it faded in and out. So far, Vietnam’s sudden isolation was being blamed on the recent military action, not the likely thousands of dead who were being piled in mass graves or simply left where they fell. Closing the border wasn’t going to help. The virus already had a foothold both in the U.S. and abroad, running rampant among oblivious populations.
Sick at heart, Trisk clicked the radio off as they came into a small town. Both men sat back in protest, but she couldn’t take any more. “We need to fill up before we hit the desert,” she said as she slowed, the engine sounding loud. Trisk scanned the dark storefronts and lighted stoops to see who was still open. It was dark, but not that late, the October night warm and clear.
“I could stretch my legs,” Quen said, and Daniel nodded, rubbing his stubbled cheeks.
“Maybe grab something to eat,” Daniel added with a yawn, and Trisk angled toward a gas station across the street from a diner.
“We should call the enclave,” she said, and Quen’s head jerked up in warning. “Sa’han Ulbrine has the clout to get the tomato fields burned,” she continued, flushing for having mentioned the elves’ secret cabal in front of Daniel. “If we bring it up, they’ll slap us in jail and ignore it.”
“Who’s Saahan Ulbrine?” Daniel asked, and she winced.
“One of my instructors,” she said, glad he’d focused on that instead of the more difficult-to-explain term, enclave.
Daniel looked ill as she pulled up to the pump and put the truck in park. “Trisk, it can’t be your tomato. You know both organisms inside and out. It’s just coincidence.”
“What else would make the plants fall apart like that?” she said as Quen got out and made a beeline for the restroom sign leading behind the building.
Daniel followed him with his eyes. “It’s my virus. Your tomatoes are perfect.”
No one was coming to pump the gas, and she was feeling the need to use the restroom. “They were yesterday,” she muttered, and Daniel’s lips parted at the implied sabotage.
Impatient, Trisk grabbed her purse and got out, slamming her door to hopefully get some attention from the small garage. Her legs ached, and she stretched. On the other side, Daniel slowly slipped from the cab, his expression empty as he thought her last words over. “Maybe they’re closed,” he said, turning at the loud bang of the restroom door as Quen returned.
Trisk shrugged as she tried to see past the ads on the windows and into the garage. “Someone is in there. I’ll go see.”