No Immunity

sound till the door creaked behind her.
    “Kiernan? What’re—”
    “Tchernak?” She looked from him to the body on the bed and back at him. Her throat tightened, but the knot inside evaporated. In two steps she was wrapping her arms around him, squeezing hard. He squeezed back. She could barely breathe. She pushed her head away from his chest, but he was still holding her like a football he was afraid of fumbling. “Jesus, Tchernak, you scared me. I was so worried about you. If you’d been dead... I can’t even think... You are alive!”
    Tchernak was saying something, but his words didn’t penetrate. He was shaking. She pressed tighter against him. But he didn’t grow still, and the initial relief she felt gave way to the smell of death. Now she did push free and turned to the beds. Both were caked with blood. On the nearer one, the body lay facedown. “If that’s not you there, Tchernak, who—”
    “Grady Hummacher.” Tchernak left his hand on her shoulder. It was a big, meaty hand; his thumb rested on her clavicle. “Grady Hummacher, the guy—”
    “I know, the one Reston Adcock hired you to find.”
    “Adcock’s flying up here. But how’d you know I—” She turned to face him. “Adcock left a message for— Oh my God, the blood! Did you touch anything?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Blood, did you get it on your hands, even a speck?”
    “No.”
    “Liar! Idiot! Look at your hands. They’re covered in blood. Wash them. Wash every part of you. Oh, God, Tchernak get in there. Get the water running.”
    “Why? Is he infected?”
    “He could be. A woman has already died, almost certainly of hemorrhagic fever. I’ve got Clorox in my pack. She ran for her truck and grabbed the small pack she’d brought in case of just this kind of emergency. She had figured it would take place in Jeff Tremaine’s morgue with the dead body, not here in a motel room with Brad Tchernak. Clorox was the staple coroners used to clean their autopsy rooms. It was the best she could do.
    Tchernak was scrubbing his hands in the sink. She turned off the water, jammed the stopper in the drain, and poured in the Clorox. ‘Ts the blood just on your hands?”
    “Yeah, I turned the body over—”
    “Did you touch anything else?”
    “No. Well, only the door as I was running out to barf. And—oh, no, Kiernan—you. Look at your shoulder; there’s blood all over it.”
    For the first time she eyed herself. Her right shoulder was stained from Tchernak’s hand. “Let me see your shirt, Tchernak, where my face was when you hugged me.” The shirt looked clear. She eyed his back where her hands had clutched him. “No sign of blood. But it takes so little, one drop in a cut…“ She looked down at her hands in horror. They were still scraped from climbing in the morgue window. She stuck them wrist-deep in the Clorox. At least with the Clorox the bathroom smelled better than the death scene.
    “Hey, this stings like crazy, Kiernan. You sure it’s going to protect us? You sure Grady had a fever?”
    “No and no.”
    Tchernak shook his head. “I touched him. His body was still hot. And his eyes, they were covered in blood. Whatever this fever is, he had it, didn’t he?”
    “I don’t know. Hey, keep your hands in here!” She could hear the panic in her voice. “He could have what the dead woman had. Or it could be something different.”
    “But common sense says it’s the same, right?”
    “Tchernak, whatever it is, we’re doing all we can. Okay, take your hands out. Wash them good. Shake them dry. don’t touch anything .” She had never told Tchernak about ‘hose days in Africa, every time she swallowed watching for signs her throat was closing, checking her face every few minutes for hints of edema, waiting for fever and bleeding and death. At least then she knew it was Lassa fever that might kill her and that treatment was on the way. This was many times worse. All she knew was she and Tchernak could end up lying on beds with their eyes covered in blood.
    “We’re probably okay,” she said with more certainty than she felt. “Viruses don’t survive well in the air. If Grady had a virus. Whatever, we need to find out what he had and where he contracted it and if it’s the same thing the woman in Gattozzi had.”
    Tchernak gave his hands a last shake. “Think like detectives, huh?”
    “Right. Did anyone see you come in? Anyone follow you?”
    “No.”
    “You’re sure?”
    Tchernak jolted up