Altered Genes: Genesis (12 page)

Nothing.

The girl’s mother uttered a soul-destroying cry and ran to the bed. Her face was contorted with grief. She pushed Mei away and dropped to her knees. She lay her head on the girl’s body and sobbed with great gasping breaths that caused her chest to heave up and down.

Mei watched with a deep emptiness. It was only a few minutes earlier she had told Dullet she would continue to look after the patients.

But what good am I, if I can’t help them?

She turned off the droning heart monitor. The room went quiet aside from the mother’s sobbing.

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Sanchez. Should I call a chaplain?”

The woman lifted her head and glared at her with an anger so fierce it frightened her.

“There is nothing a priest can do,“ she spat. “God has taken my daughter.”

She watched the woman stand and walk to the garbage pail where she took the string of rosary beads and snapped the thread. The beads tumbled into the pail, one after another.

The boy, who had been forgotten during the turmoil, coughed and climbed to his feet. He lost his balance and stumbled into the door. Mei rushed to support him. He had seen everything but didn't appear to understand any of it.

“I’ll call for a chaplain anyway,” she said to the mother as she struggled to support the boy who weighed as much as she did. “I’m going to take your son to an examining room.”

She half-walked, half-dragged him down the hallway until she could no longer carry him.
I’m not going to be able to make it.
She leaned him against the wall and looked for an empty wheelchair. There was one in the room next to them. She eased the boy into it and continued down the hallway.

The examining rooms they passed were all full. Even without tests, she was certain he had the same bacterial infection as the others. She left him in the hallway beside the nurses station and ran to the hospital pharmacy.

“I need ten days of Vancomycin for an eleven-year-old male.”

“Can't do it, we're out,” the pharmacist replied sympathetically from behind the counter. “No Metronidazole either—won't be any until tomorrow morning.”

“What the hell can I prescribe then?” Her frustration boiled over and she glared at him.

“Don’t shoot the messenger. The whole damn city is running low. Fidaxomicin…that’s about it—but I can only give you five days worth.” He shrugged his shoulders.

She’d take it. It was better than nothing.

“What about FMT approval, any word yet?” she asked as he filled the prescription.

“FDA waived the paperwork requirements and New York-Presbyterian Hospital is running some trials,” he said as he scooped a handful of pills into a small container. “But the results haven’t been great—marginally better than antibiotics.”

Her shoulders sagged.
What then?

She took the pills and ran back to the nurses’s station where she gave the boy his first dose. She hid the remainder in the back of a drawer. She didn’t trust that the scarce drug would remain if she left it in the open.

She remembered the girl and picked up the desk phone to call for the chaplain. It rang unanswered.
I’ll call again when I’m back.

She returned the boy to his sister’s room, his mother was on her knees by the side of the bed huddled over her dead daughter’s body. She quietly pushed the boy’s wheelchair to the end of the bed and left without speaking. There was nothing more she could do here.

D
amn suit
…
The itch had started as a tickle in the space between his shoulder blades. At first it was just annoying, but soon became relentless, a distraction he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried. The thick blue suit was constrictive and the itch just beyond the reach of his gloves. Finally, he walked to the corner of the lab's workbench, turned and squatted. As he moved up and down, he could feel the rounded corner of the bench rubbing against the suit.

“Tony, what are you doing?"

Embarrassed, he stood quickly with a sheepish grin on his face. "I had an itch I couldn’t reach.”

Dr. Mayer gave him a chastising look and shook her head. He imagined the
tsk-tsk
sound
that could have but didn't come out of her mouth.

“Watch you don't rip that suit, that would be much worse than an itch.” She lifted her air hose and walked around to his side of the workbench.

“What are you working on?”

He turned the monitor so she could see the screen. “I’ve been comparing the antibiotic resistance regions in the bacteria’s genetic material to other samples that are on file. I wasn’t able to make much progress at the university—not enough computing power—but here?” he waved his hands around. “With all the equipment and computers, it’s like a geneticist’s wet dream.”

She frowned at his analogy and he continued excitedly. “The strain has exactly the same fluoroquinolone resistance mutation in it’s DNA gyrase genes as the RT027 strain I studied two years ago, but it also has resistance genes from a host of other bacteria—resistance to Metronidazole from a strain that was grown in a Canadian university lab, Fidaxomicin resistance that looks like it was acquired from the Rifamycin family of antibiotics and most surprisingly of all, genes from Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci.”

He turned away from the monitor and spoke with a measure of awe. “Other than being deadly, it’s a spectacular piece of genetic engineering. With all these resistance genes, there’s no possible way that treating patients with antibiotics will have any affect at all.”

“It just seems impossible,“ he added after a pause.

"What does?”

“That it’s North Korean.”

“How does a country barely able to feed its people and not exactly known as a hotbed of genetics, come up with something as deadly as this?”

”Perhaps they have capabilities we don’t know about.”

Surprised, he stared at her and thought,
You don’t believe that
.

She turned away from his gaze, motioned to a chair and changed the subject. “Sit down. I’ll fill you in on how the research teams have been organized.”

He rolled the chair out from under the lab table and carefully backed into it. The process was cumbersome with the suit, not only did he have to ensure the air hose didn’t jam up against the back of the chair, but he had to line his butt up with the seat so he didn’t miss and land on his ass.

Mission accomplished,
he thought as his bum hit the seat. He balanced precariously on the chair like an oversized balloon and leaned forward to force a small amount of air out of the suit. It made it easier to move. Mayer did the same with a practiced ease. She had taught him that trick years before.

“Okay, I’m all ears,” he said when he had finished the maneuver.

“There are three separate teams—one in the UK at Porton Down, one in Winnipeg, Canada and of course, the team here at Fort Detrick. The Canadians are focused on spore neutralization, the Brits on antibiotics and we’re working on developing a vaccine.”

“What about other countries—the Russians, Chinese?”

“We’re sharing our research with some countries but…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged, the motion mostly hidden by the bulky suit she wore.

He didn’t need her to finish. He could put two and two together.
Somethings never change.

“If you’re wondering why you’re here, I asked for you specifically,” she said to his surprise. “I need a geneticist on my team—one I can trust, a friend.”

She blinked and smiled at him.

He shifted in his chair and looked away. Her smile made him uncomfortable.
She never smiles…and I’m not a friend—a student for sure, a colleague, perhaps.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ll do my best, of course.”

The words sounded lame. He needed to change the subject.

“How did you come to be here?” The last I heard you had just left—“ he caught himself before he finished the sentence.
They hadn’t talked about her dismissal.

She gave no sign of being embarrassed. “After I left Stanford, I did some research work for the government. Colonel Young requested me.”

“You worked for him before this?”

“No.”

“What about the CIA guy?”

Her head snapped forward. “What about him?”

The sharp tone in her voice caught him off-guard. “I was just curious what you knew about him?” he said neutrally.

“Nothing. Let’s get started.”

She swiveled in her chair and typed a few commands on the keyboard. A report appeared on the screen. He slid his chair closer to look at the monitor while she spoke.

“We’ve started work on a recombinant vaccine that targets all three of the bacteria’s toxins. Thankfully, the pharmaceutical companies were already working on experimental vaccines for the common strain of C. diff so we didn’t have to start from scratch. But we’ve hit a dead-end with the binary toxin.”

Wow, that’s incredibly ambitious,
he thought as he scanned the information on the computer screen.
It must be bad if they’re willing to bet everything on a moon-shot like this.

They would have to locate the genetic fragments that produced the toxins, extract them and then alter them to eliminate the toxicity. Once that was done, they’d recombine them into some type of replicating cell and mass produce the vaccine. Theoretically, it could be done but the timeline was long—not days, or months, but years—in some cases, decades.

He looked at her. “You’d like me to get started on the binary toxin genes?”

“Yes, you’ll find the reports on previous efforts in the lab’s computer system. I’m sorry to run, but I have to go back to my office and finish my report.”

Using the edge of the table to support herself, she climbed awkwardly to her feet. “Are you okay if I leave you?” She motioned to the banks of equipment that surrounded them. “You should be familiar with most of this.”

He nodded. “More than familiar.”

She walked to the door in front of the airlock and looked back at him. “The videoconference system is in a small room at the end of the lab. It has a directory with the other locations. If you need me, my number’s programmed into it.”

“Okay, thanks.”

He watched her leave. First she would pass into the airlock where a chemical decontamination shower would activate and spray and scrub the suit. When that was finished, the airlock would open and she would pass into another vestibule where she would disrobe, clean the suit one final time and remove the nitrile gloves and booties she was wearing. After one final airlock, she would disrobe, drop the coveralls and other disposable clothing into a garbage chute where they would be incinerated at a high temperature. One last shower and then she would be done.

He knew researchers who wore adult diapers just to avoid having to leave the containment lab, but he wasn’t one of them. He had made sure to use the restroom before he came into the lab and purposefully hadn’t had anything to drink since dinner the night before.
Better to be a little dehydrated then to be going through all of that,
he thought.

The light above the airlock door turned from red to green. She was gone and he was alone in the lab. The other researchers wouldn’t be arriving until this afternoon.

He looked at the digital clock on the wall and thought of Edward Gore.

Maybe the Porton Down lab is in the directory.
It was late afternoon over there.
Can’t say that I’ve ever seen a man come back from the dead, Gore would be the first.

E
dward Gore slouched
sideways with one hand on his hip and the other on the table. He looked at Simmons through heavy eyes and spoke softly.

“Can you hear me?” The Brit looked like he was about to fall over from the sheer effort of talking.

Simmons fiddled with the remote control and raised the volume. “Don’t worry about it, Edward, you're fine.”

Gore nodded and threw himself into the chair. “Good to talk with you again, Tony, and to finally meet face-to-face.”

“You, as well. After our last call, I wasn’t sure if we would talk again.”

“Yes, sorry about that. The bastards didn’t leave me much choice. Stomped in and told me they needed me for queen and country—all that nonsense. Kept it hush-hush until we arrived at Porton Down.”

“I had a similar experience, although a little more civilized.” He recounted his own trip to Fort Detrick and the subsequent inquisition by Raine.

“Sounds dreadful, but I can at least say I understand why they took you. Me, not so much.”

Simmons raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“Don’t be so modest, Tony. No one on the planet comes close to having your knowledge of bacterial genetics.”

“Thanks, you’re too kind, but I think you’re selling yourself short. After all, it was you they approached in the first place.”

“Right.” Gore frowned. “I still don’t understand why they didn’t bring in Albertson. He’s not at your level, but he’s a damn sight more knowledgeable than I am.”

“Owen Albertson?”

“Yes, do you know him?”

“No, but I called him when I couldn’t reach you. Is he there with you?”

Gore shook his head. “No, they said he wasn’t reliable. Not trustworthy enough for something as important as this. What a load of bollocks—the man’s a Deacon in the Church of England for god’s sake. Paranoid bunch of bastards, they are.” His voice became somber. “Doesn’t matter now anyway, I heard he’s dead.”

Simmons let the silence hang between them for a second and then spoke. “You look exhausted, Edward. How’s it going over there?”

“I’m knackered,” the Brit admitted. “Not well I’m afraid, Tony. Nothing we’ve tested is effective against the strain—even Teixobactin’s efficacy is limited. Have you seen the report?"

Simmons shook his head.

Teixobactin was from a new class of antibiotics, the first truly innovative one discovered in many years. Grown from bacteria found in soil, it offered tremendous promise and was viewed as resistance-proof.

Gore continued to explain. “The Teixobactin can’t bind with the peptidoglycan precursor molecule because the bacteria’s outer wall is linked differently than run-of-the-mill C. diff.”

Simmons whistled out loud. “So it isn’t a resistance gene but a different cell wall structure?”

“Yes, very different. There’s an outer membrane on top of the peptidoglycan layer. The analogy is crap but it’s almost like each bacteria is covered in its own shrink-wrap layer for extra protection.”

He was impressed. “Whoever did this piece of genetic engineering knew their stuff.”

“It’s bloody brilliant…” Gore agreed.

Brilliant was an understatement. It was a masterpiece, almost God-like.

Gore pounded the table in frustration. “We have tested every antibiotic known to mankind on this bacteria and nothing has made a smidgen of difference. It just keeps soldiering on, producing its toxins.”

Simmons stood and walked to the whiteboard behind him. “I think we’re chasing our tail, wasting precious time. Antibiotics aren’t the answer. Have there been any positive field reports at all, even one?”

“No—but we can’t give up hope.”

“Edward, I’ve looked at the strain’s genetics and you’ve just confirmed it. It’s got resistance to just about everything built into it and then some. It’s not a matter of giving up hope. It’s futile to keep wasting valuable time and resources looking for a cure that doesn’t exist.”

“Surely, you’re not suggesting giving up?”

“No, of course not.” He gripped the whiteboard marker awkwardly in the thick rubber glove he wore and began to write on the board.

“PREVENTION”

“We need to get in front of it. The only way to do that is with a vaccine.”

The camera followed him as he stepped to the side.

Gore opened his mouth to speak and Simmons held up his hand. “Before you say anything—I know we’ll have the same issue with a vaccine as we do with antibiotics—the development cycle is long, but at least with a vaccine we get right to the heart of the issue, stop it dead, so to speak.”

He turned back to the whiteboard and wrote “VACCINE” beneath “PREVENTION”.

“A lot of people are going to die without treatment, Tony—more than two million a week in the United States according to your CDC’s model. A vaccine isn’t going to help them.”

“I know…I know,” he said dejectedly.
The thought was almost unfathomable…millions, maybe even billions would die. The numbers were so large, it was a struggle to even get his head around them.