Germ

What had Karl said—that Kendrick had wanted Rebecca and Jessica and Joe out of the picture? It was true that Kendrick believed Litt's family was a distraction, that his life as head biologist of a covert lab was incongruous with tending to a wife and rearing children. When he'd first conceived of staffing a secret lab with the German children, for whom there were no official records of their existence, he thought he could keep them unofficial and nonexistent. Soon he realized all life left footprints—there was simply no way to keep thirty-five children off the books indefinitely. They needed caregivers and tutors, food and sunshine. He'd wanted a secret staff of scientists, but not scientists who functioned in reality.

After many of Kendrick's staff became the children's foster parents and he and Elizabeth adopted Karl, they had seemed like a normal family.

He smiled at the memory of Elizabeth's giddiness over having the boy in their house, falling into the rhythms of maternal servitude, incessantly checking on him in bed those first weeks. For his part, Karl had been moody but had slowly warmed to Elizabeth's charms. How could he not?

All of the children were taught at a very private school consisting of only them and a handful of academics on the government payroll. As Joseph Litt had promised, the children's scientific acuity proved well beyond their years. When Karl was twelve, Kendrick moved all the children and their families to Elk Mountain, Wyoming. At the time, it was a small town of seventy people. The Department of Defense owned much of the surrounding land, originally intended for missile silos and never developed. Kendrick had one of the nearby hills hollowed out and turned into a laboratory. A fence went up, enclosing dorms, a playground, a cafeteria, and other assorted necessities. The whole thing was billed as a weather-monitoring station and education center, governed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Harvard University.

Of course, he and Elizabeth could not relocate. They tried to visit at least once a month, but still her heart ached; twelve was too young for a child to move out. She once told Kendrick that she coped by pretending they'd divorced and he had gotten custody. He suspected that in her heart she had indeed divorced herself from him for sending Karl away.

However, the wisdom of giving the children their own lab soon became apparent. At fourteen, Karl developed an aerosol strain of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium—botulism. He even provided the plans for a delivery system using a V-2 rocket. As the children developed, it was clear they needed advanced education and social experience. In groups of three and four, they attended top-ranked universities.

It was there that Karl met Rebecca. Kendrick discouraged the relationship, but his efforts went wherever it is that common sense hides in the face of young love. He knew Karl enough to understand that blocking his romantic pursuits would result in Karl's determination to never again provide what Kendrick wanted from the lab. A dozen years later, the union produced a baby boy, named Joseph, after

Karl's father. Baby Jessica came when Joe was six. Kendrick learned to loosen his grip, and the family seemed content in their small compound outside Elk Mountain.

Until the accident.

Kendrick pushed himself up from the pillow, rolled, and collapsed on his back. The room was so dark, nothing was visible. His eyes ached. He closed them.

Karl and his team had developed a virulent, airborne strain of rabies—a Level 4 biohazard—a dozen years before the CDC developed the four-level biosafety designations, and well before the techniques and equipment currently in use to safely handle and contain them. An aerosol canister fell over and its valve broke off, releasing the virus and triggering an emergency evacuation. Security immediately air-lifted lab scientists and staff to a site sixty miles away. There had been no evac plans for civilians, who were in or around the surface buildings. When Karl learned this, he frantically pleaded and threatened the security officers to return for them. He called Kendrick, who stressed the importance of following established procedures.

"There is the general public to think about," he told Karl.

"I don't care about them! Rebecca! The kids! Kendrick, you can circumvent procedures. Do it!"

"Put Major McCafferty on the line."

Kendrick had been told the hot zone was limited to a relatively small teardrop-shaped area around the facility, the shape a result of prevailing winds. There was an 88 percent chance family members in the dorms were already exposed; a 15 percent chance that Elk Mountain townsfolk were exposed. Kendrick could not risk pulling the infected people out of the quarantined area. He told Major McCafferty to act as though Kendrick had ordered him to retrieve the families at all cost. His true orders had been to stay clear of the compound.