The Death of Katherine Winslow
By F.A. Behrend
Rating – F13
The character of Frank Donovan was created by Shane Salerno and Don Wilson. The character of Nick Kokoris was created by John Wells, Lydia Woodward and Christopher Chulack. No infringement intended. All other characters belong to the author.
Feedback welcome through the message board or directly to fabram@kc.rr.com.
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At 6:15 PM on the evening of November 24th, Katherine Winslow left work and boarded a cross-town subway to visit her mother. The car pulled away from the platform, and at 6:18 PM the short and harried life of Katherine Winslow ended. A toxic gas, planted by an extremist group, filled the car, slowly strangling all the occupants. Seventy-eight people were dead. New York City ground to a halt, and although Katherine Winslow’s life was over, Katherine Winslow did not die.
“Jesus Christ, Gene, I think I’m gonna barf.”
“Hold it together, Roger. This isn’t training anymore. This is the real thing.” The two men in the blue biohazard suits picked their way through the bodies in the subway car. “All we have to do is take some samples.” Gene Havelin and Roger Bentley stood, up to their plastic-clad ankles, in the results of sudden and very messy death. The occupants of the subway car lay strewn in every conceivable position, their bodies and faces horribly contorted, frozen in agony. The floor of the car was covered in urine and feces, blood and vomit.
Gene moved through the car. He carried a portable devise that sampled the air. He concentrated on the readings coming from the machine. The heavy suit was hot and cumbersome and sweat collected on the inside of his face shield, partly obscuring his vision. Suddenly, off in the very corner of the car, he thought he saw movement. He jumped. “Jesus Christ!” he swore again, “I thought I saw something move!”
“It’s nothing,” Roger called out to him from the other end of the car. “Sometimes a body will go into spasm. I know it can scare the shit out of you. I once had a guy sit up on the autopsy table just as I was cutting him open. I nearly crapped my pants.”
Gene spun around; there it was again, unmistakable! First an arm moved, then a torso jerked upright, and then a scream tore through the air. “Roger! Call…someone! We’ve got a survivor!”
Frank Donovan charged down the hall at a dead run. He slowed just briefly at the security checkpoint and nearly collided with the other man waiting for clearance. The guard looked up at both men and gaped. “You guys related?” he asked.
“No, we’re not,” Nick Kokoris replied.
“What are you doing here?” Frank demanded as he returned his FBI badge to his pocket.
“I was at a conference when the shit hit the fan. I got a call that they needed a medic with security clearance. What gives?”
“Homeland Security buzzed me. There’s been an attack on a subway. I told them to get me a doctor. I didn’t know it would be you.”
“What kind of attack?”
“Looks like nerve gas.” Both men moved rapidly through the labyrinth of corridors and got into an elevator.
“Nerve gas.” Nick shook his head. “They don’t need a doctor. They need an undertaker.”
Frank pushed a button on the control panel and then stood back as the car began a slow decent. He tapped his foot impatiently as he watched the lighted numbers change, one after the other, taking them deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building. “We need a doctor because we’ve got a survivor.”
“Oh, my God,” Nick was astonished and he turned to stare at Frank.
“I don’t think God has anything to do with this,” Frank said. The two men stood in silence as the elevator descended.
She was cold and she was naked and she had no idea where she was. Men in blue plastic moon suits, she assumed they were men but she couldn’t really tell, kept poking at her and yelling. She couldn’t understand what they were saying. They stripped her clothes off and forced her under a spray of icy water. She kicked and slapped at them and screamed and backed into a corner. The room was gray cement all around with one long wall made of glass. The glass was dark and had the sheen of a mirrored surface. The room was empty except for the showerheads that just drenched her and the drain in the middle of the floor where the water ran away. The men in the suits left through a heavy steel door. She sat down on the cold floor and drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs to keep from shivering. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the images from the subway car. No luck. She began rocking slowly back and forth and moaning.
Frank and Nick came to a large steel door with one more security lock. Both men reached for it at once. Nick stepped aside as Frank entered a code and the door opened. Frank went immediately to the glass wall. “I need to talk to her. I need to take her statement.” It was a command, issued to no one in particular.
“Wait a minute,” Nick interrupted, “has anyone assessed her condition?” He stepped to the wall next to Frank. “Look at her,” he said, “she’s going in to shock.”
“I need to question her. Now. Before we lose her. She may have information about who did this, about who planted the devise.”
Nick took Frank by the arm and spun him around. “She needs to be treated or she won’t be any good to anyone. If the gas didn’t kill her immediately it probably won’t kill her now.” He kept his voice reasonable but Donovan just stared at him, his hard dark eyes meeting Nick’s softer brown ones. “Look, she can’t tell you anything if she dies from hypothermia or becomes catatonic with fear.” Nick held his breath, waiting for Donovan’s decision.
Frank turned and studied the woman on the floor behind the glass. Her flesh was unnaturally white and her dark hair was plastered to her head. She slowly raised her face and he could see eyes wide with fear. Her lips were bluish and she was shaking uncontrollably. “OK. Do what you need to do to get her coherent.”
Nick turned to the others in the room. “Do we have a name?” Someone handed him a clipboard and he stepped to the control consol and flipped a switch. There was a static hiss in the air. “Miss Winslow? Katherine?” No answer. “Katherine? My name is Dr. Kokoris. I’d like to help you. How are you feeling?”
Katherine looked up at the window, her eyes frantically scanning the reflective surface. “Who are you? What happened to all those people?”
Nick could barely hear her. He flipped another switch and the lights came up in the control room, making it possible for Katherine to see him.
She lifted her face toward the window. “Please,” she whispered, “tell me what’s going on. And please, can I have some clothes?”
“It will take a few minutes,” he told her, “but we’re here to help you.”
The men in blue biohazard suits brought in blankets and moved her through a complex series of air locks. Finally she was alone again, dressed in hospital scrubs, sitting on the edge of a bed in a room surrounded by beeping monitors. Another blue suit walked in. “What’s with the Smurf get-up?” she asked.
Nick smiled behind the plastic facemask. Good. She was coherent, and a bit of sarcasm was peaking through the fear. “I’m Dr. Kokoris. How do you feel?”
“Scared. Better. Warmer.” She rubbed her hands over her arms. “What happened?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you remember?” Frank had given him strict instructions. He was to gather as much information as possible, and he was to tell her absolutely nothing. Nick bridled under such restrictions, but he understood them. This was an unprecedented situation, a national tragedy, and this woman was a survivor. She might have vital information, information that Donovan wanted, no matter what.
She nodded. “I got on the subway to go to my Mom’s…” she looked up suddenly. “Has anybody called my Mom? I was supposed to meet her for dinner! She’ll be frantic!”
Nick reached out and put a gloved hand on her arm. “We’ve taken care of it,” he said, “it’s OK. Just tell me what you remember.” His voice had a soothing calm about it.
“I got on the subway. It was crowded. We pulled away from the platform. It wasn’t very long before I smelled something.” She spoke hesitantly, “I thought the guy standing next to me…farted, but it was worse than that, more of a chemical odor. And then people just started to cough…and get sick…and they were bleeding from the mouth…and they were screaming…and the smell was terrible. They wet themselves…and everything. Then it got real quiet. I don’t remember much after that, until I saw a guy dressed like you…and then I was here.” She sat with her hands griped together tightly in her lap.
Nick nodded and let her catch her breath and then did his examination. She seemed to be a perfectly healthy twenty six-year old woman. He was glad that the facemask obscured her view. In truth, no one knew that she was alive, and her mother was probably making funeral arrangements right this very minute.
Nick finished his examination and put all the samples he collected into a tray. When he turned around she was standing next to the bed looking at the spot where he had taken blood. She rubbed her fingers over the small bandage. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “OK,” she demanded, “now you tell me what’s going on.” Some color had returned to her face. “What happened to all those people? This is certainly no regular hospital. Why do you have that suit on? Am I contagious or something?” A spark had returned to her eyes. The fear was still there, but something else, probably anger, was rapidly replacing it.
Nick answered as gently as he could. Donovan be damned, this woman had a right to know what happened to her. “You were exposed to a nerve gas attack. You appear to be the only survivor. I have this suit on because you may still have residue of the chemical on your body.”
“Not after that shower,” she snapped. She crossed her arms over her chest and faced him. There was a determined set to her chin. She had blue eyes that snapped with indignation.
“Even after that shower, we can’t be sure. This situation is unprecedented. No one has ever survived an exposure of Sarin gas.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
There was a sudden click as the speaker in the room came on. It was Donovan’s voice, “Doctor, I’d like to see you out here. Immediately.”
Katherine looked over Nick’s shoulder at the window. She could see Donovan, standing next to the controls, behind the glass. He had a cold look about him. She looked at Nick’s face, behind the plastic shield. The resemblance was remarkable, except for the eyes. This Doctor’s eyes were warm and compassionate. “Are you two…?”
“Related? No.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Doctor?”
Nick had just removed the biohazard suit. The two men were standing in the control room next to the isolation unit. “Taking care of a patient,” he replied.
“I told you not to give her any information.”
“She has a right to know what happened to her.”
“Not at the expense of national security!”
“Look, Frank, I know you’ve got a job to do. But so do I. We don’t know what the long-term physical effects of this exposure might be, not to mention the psychological trauma of what Katherine Winslow witnessed. If she’s ever going to get back to anywhere near normal, that process has to start now. The upside is, if we take care of her, we’ll get the information we need, and sooner rather than later. Then she can go home and get on with her life.”
Frank looked at Nick. “No,” he said quietly, “she can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Go home. Ever.”
She paced the length of the room and watched the two men on the other side of the glass. They were obviously having a heated discussion. Just as obviously, it was about her. She tried to clear her mind but all she could picture were the bodies in the subway car. She concentrated, forcing herself to think. Sole survivor. That’s what he said. Sole survivor. OK, she thought, they’ll figure out what happened and then I can go home.
A sudden realization hit her, like a fist to the stomach. Or maybe not. “They,” these government guys, might not be the only ones interested in survivors. What about the people who planned and carried out the attack? If they found her…if they knew about her…they would want her too. And they would probably want her dead. She began to shiver and her knees felt weak. She sat down on the edge of the bed and dug her fingers into the blankets and squeezed her eyes shut. No. The bitter taste of bile rose in her throat and she thought she would throw up. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. The realization came with stunning and sudden clarity. She could never go home again.
She was completely alone. She looked at the men on the other side of the glass. Their argument continued. She studied them. Her fingers fell to the bandage on her arm. The doctor, he would want to know why she survived. Perhaps she could use that. The other one, the hard one, with the eyes as cold as ice, he was the real key, but she would need some kind of leverage. She forced herself to concentrate, to remember everything she had seen, both on the subway car and just before she boarded. Pictures flooded through her mind, some sharp and clear, some hazy and out of focus. One by one she went through the images. After a few minutes she looked up and smiled. Perhaps there was a way out of this after all.
“Look, Donovan, I don’t appreciate your interference! I’ve got a patient to protect!”
“And I’ve got a country to protect! I think that take precedence.”
“We’ll get the information we need,” Nick’s tone was pleading, “but you can’t keep her in isolation, you can’t deny her information about what’s happened to her. You can’t deny her family’s right to know that she’s alive.”
“What if she’s in on it?” Frank snapped.
“What do you mean? You think she’s part of this whole thing? You’d have to be nuts to expose yourself to Sarin!” Nick was incredulous.
“The clock that detonated the release of the gas wasn’t set properly. She might have intended to get off the car before it discharged. We just don’t know enough yet. She could be involved in this up to her eyeballs, and if it takes some psychological pressure to get it out of her, that’s my job. I’ll thank you not to interfere.”
“I don’t care who you think she is or what she might have done, she is still a human being and she needs treatment. We do anything less and we sink to the level of the people who released that gas in the first place.”
“I have no problem infringing on the liberties of one person if doing so will save the lives of thousands!” Frank’s voice rose.
“Where do you draw the line!?” Nick shouted, “Today you play fast and lose with one individual’s rights; tomorrow maybe it’s ten, or a hundred! Just where do you stop!?”
“I stop when I get the answers I need to protect the lives of the citizens I serve!”
“At what cost?” Nick said, forcing himself to take a more reasonable tone. “What are we fighting for, Frank? Freedom? Justice? Choice?”
She pushed herself off the edge of the bed, paused for a moment to make sure the shaking in her legs had stopped, and then stepped purposefully towards the window. “Hey!” she called out. They did not seem to notice her. “Hey,” she called again and pounded her hand against the glass.
There was a momentary hiss as the speaker clicked on. The doctor leaned over the microphone and spoke urgently, “what’s wrong? Are you feeling OK?”
She looked at Nick and spoke with determination, “I feel fine. I’ll talk to you later. Right now I want to talk to him!” She pointed at Frank.
Donovan spoke into the microphone, “I already have your statement.” Let her twist, he thought, let her beg to talk to me.
“You don’t have everything. There’s a great deal more I can tell you. But the information will cost you.”
“Cost? You’re really in no position to bargain. I could charge you with treason right now for even suggesting any kind of quid pro quo.”
She stepped close to the glass and spoke quietly, “you won’t charge me with anything because we both know that nothing that goes on in here will ever become public.” She paused. “I know who set off the gas.”
“We already know who he is,” Frank laughed, “he was easy to spot on the security cameras. It’s just a matter of time before we get him. We don’t need you.”
She took a deep breath. I hope this works, she prayed. “I know where you can find him.” She saw a flicker of interest in the cold dark eyes. There was a momentary hiss of static. Dead air. She held her breath.
“Are you telling me you’re involved in this?”
“No. Of course I wasn’t involved. You’ve probably got a bale of background information on me already, so I’m not telling you anything new here. I go to school nights. I’m a psychology major. And I’ve learned how to observe people. I visit my mother regularly, and I see many of the same people on the subway. One man in particular caught my attention.” Her voice quavered slightly and she cleared her throat before she continued. “He was always carrying a backpack. I thought he was a student on his way home. One day he left the pack behind and he seemed very upset when I chased him down and gave it back to him. If you want more, we’ll need to make a deal first.” Katherine Winslow and Frank Donovan studied each other through the glass.
“What day is it?” she asked. She took a deep breath of the cold clear air and let it out slowly. It was the first time she had seen daylight in over a month.
“New Year’s Day,” Nick replied.
She smiled, “a good day for a new start.”
Donovan strode over to where they stood on the tarmac of the small industrial airstrip. “You’re all set. When you get on the plane, tell the pilot where you want to go. You’ve got cash in the bag and a clean birth certificate. Remember what I told you.”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “I know. Stay off the radar. Keep a low profile. Work for cash. Don’t get too friendly with anyone. Don’t contact any family,” her voice broke, “for any reason, ever. Keep moving for a while.”
“For at least a year. Two would be better. Any questions?”
“No.” She turned to board the jet but turned back to look at Donovan. “What made you change your mind?” she asked.
“You helped us. It was a simple exchange.” Uncharacteristically, he scuffed his feet somewhat nervously at the ground.
“I would have told you everything anyway. You could have kept me locked up like some kind of gerbil in a cage until I cooperated. Why did you decide on this?” She nodded at the plane.
Donovan hesitated a minute before he answered. “Because Nick reminded me of what we’re really here for. To try and make a world where people get choices. You didn’t have any choice about what happened to you. The minute you got on that subway car, your life changed. He reminded me that we needed to give you back your choices.”
Katherine Winslow looked long and hard at both men. She stepped towards the pair of them and stood on tiptoe to give each one a brief kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said, and then she walked to the plane and Katherine Winslow disappeared forever.
The End