Red Tide by G. M. Ford Page A

close-up?” she asked.
    Gardener spoke into the telephone. A moment later the camera began to move, jumping one electronic magnification step at a time…closer and closer…As the successive images appeared, a buzz of whispered anxiety filled the air.
    At the point when the victim’s head filled the entire screen, his malady seemed little more than a general irritation of the skin, which, as the camera moved closer, appeared puckered and shiny in places like a burn. Two jumps later, however, everyone in the room stiffened, as it became evident that the redness was, in fact, caused by thousands of puss-filled lesions, many of which had burst, leaving a waxy red film coating the surrounding tissue. Another magnification…and then another until the stubble on the victim’s chin looked like shrubbery and they could make out that the blemishes were shaped like bones…thin at the center, widening out into knobby ends. The woman’s involuntary groan brought silence to the room. “Stop,” she said.
    “Dr. Stafford…” Sykes began.
    She held up a hand and leaned closer to the screen. “Can’t be,” she muttered.
    When she looked back over her shoulder, her face was the color of oatmeal and her lower lip was beginning to tremble. “You said the officers saw other victims at the bottom of this escalator?”
    “According to the report,” Dobson said carefully.
    “Can you get me a look?” she asked.
    Gardener relayed the request. After a ten-second interval, the robot began to move, wheeling around to the top of the escalator and moving forward until the victim’s head must have been directly between the machine’s rubber treads.
    The view down the frozen metal stairway revealed little more than a single dark smudge on the floor at the base of the stairs.
    The robot’s operator anticipated her next request. A bright halogen light suddenly snapped on; the camera zoomed, and the smudges on the floor became a woman and a little girl. Matching blue jackets and matching red faces. Only this time their heads were surrounded by a wide halo of coagulated blood, spread out black and sticky-looking in the harsh artificial light. The doctor turned her gaze back toward the room.
    “Call Atlanta,” she said. “Get the Centers for Disease Control.”
    The mayor opened his mouth in protest. She cut him off.
    “Hurry,” she said. “Get them here now.”

8
    M eg Dougherty spoke directly into the driver’s ear.
    “Don’t lose him,” she whispered.
    “Traffic like this…” Stevie said, “there ain’t much I can do.”
    As he spoke, the gray van suddenly turned downhill and disappeared from view. Stevie gave it a little gas, pushing the cab up Broadway toward the brightly lit drugstore on the corner.
    “Come on,” Dougherty chanted.
    They’d spent the past forty minutes winding around the top of Capitol Hill in an endless series of loops and whorls seemingly headed nowhere. He’d stopped four times. Twice in the street, where he just sat in the van and looked around. Once at the Summit Tavern, where he’d gone inside and had a couple of beers, and finally up on Twelfth and Pine, where he’d spent a full five minutes parked in front of the first apartment they’d rented together. For the first time in nearly six years, she’d wondered what he was thinking.
    Stevie swung the cab out into the turn lane, floored it past an ancient Chinese man driving at the speed of lava, and then again to pass an empty police car, light bar ablaze, parked in the middle of the street. They were roaring toward the intersection when suddenly the light cycled to red. Instantly the street was filled with pedestrians. Stevie jerked the cab to a halt, the front bumper halfway across the crosswalk. He banged the heel of his hand on the steering wheel in disgust, caught her eyes in the mirror and shrugged a silent apology.
    “Shit,” Dougherty hissed. She threw herself backward in the seat, bouncing off the cushions. “He’s gone,” she