Altered Genes: Genesis (14 page)

“Tony Simmons.” He held out his hand. “Dr. Tony Simmons—sorry about getting snippy back there.” He motioned towards the door to the auditorium.

Her eyes softened. “Do you have a family member—someone you know in one of the hospitals?”

He nodded. “Yes, a friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“What can I do for you,” she asked after an uncomfortable pause.

“Dr. Mayer suggested I talk to you. I understand there was a proposal to merge the antibiotics and vaccine development teams but it was rejected. Can you tell me why?”

She stiffened. “I’m not sure its any of your business, Professor, but the president felt it best we continue to pursue both avenues.”

“The president?” his brows furrowed. “He was involved in the decision?”

“Yes, of course. As you can imagine, he’s very interested in anything that will help stop the pandemic.”

“But I think it’s been proven that antibiotics aren’t effective,” he argued. “I’ve seen it first-hand in the bacteria’s genes. Is he aware of the bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics?”

“The president has been briefed on everything.” Her haughty voice was back and he suddenly remembered where he knew her from. She had been the president’s mouthpiece when he announced he wouldn’t sign the “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act” into law.

There was absolutely no way he would approve anything that involved admitting that antibiotics were ineffective—even if in this case, it had nothing to do with their abuse.
Arguing with her would be futile and he wasn’t about to get face-time with the President.

“Anything else?” she asked and started to turn away.

“Just one more thing.”

“Yes?” She looked annoyed.

“It would be incredibly helpful to both the vaccine and antibiotic programs if we were able to locate an individual with natural immunity”.

Strictly speaking that wasn’t true. Such a person wouldn’t be of any use to the antibiotic program, but she didn’t need to know that.

She tilted her head slightly and blinked. “I was under the impression that no one was immune.”

He smiled and put on the charm. “Mathematically, the odds are small but they aren’t zero. It’s likely that somewhere in the United States is an individual with immunity.”

“There are three hundred and twenty million people in the United States, Professor. How to you propose to find this person.”

“Initially, my thought was that testing centers be established but that approach relies on people voluntarily traveling to a location where there would be crowds.”

“And?” She waited for him to finish explaining.

“You said it yourself during the briefing. People are on the move. They’re trying to escape crowds—so lets take advantage of that.”

“How so?”

“Set up testing locations along the interstates—or perhaps just off of them. For the most part, you have a captive audience to select from. If they’re on the road, then presumably they’re well enough to travel. A quick blood test for the presence of antibodies would be a sufficient initial screen. If that was positive, set the individual aside for more thorough testing.”

She loosened-up slightly. “It’s a very interesting suggestion, thank you. I’ll definitely bring it to the attention of the committee.”

“Great. Thank you.”

“And I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Your friend in the hospital.”

He nodded silently and watched her walk away.

T
he two girls
stood in a crowd at the edge of the baggage carousel watching the stainless steel conveyor belt loop in a circle.

“That’s the third time I’ve seen that one,” Saanvi said as she pointed to a red roller board with a blue ribbon wrapped around the handle. It disappeared and she turned to her friend.

“I still don’t see your bag. What color is it again?”

“It’s brown with a gold pattern on it,” Dishita replied in a disappointed voice.

Saanvi gave her a worried look. The person beside her was a shadow of the vibrant girl she had met just a few days earlier.
She’s worried about her brother.

She put her arm around her friend’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “I’m sure he’s fine but do you want to call your grandmother and check?”

Dishita shook her head. “My phone is dead, no battery.”

“We can use mine,” Saanvi said helpfully and pulled it out of her purse.

“It’s too late, it’s after ten. I’ll call tonight. It’ll be morning for them.”

"I still can't believe your grandmother paid for my ticket,” Saanvi said wide-eyed as she looked around the airport, “or that I’m actually in the United States.”

Dishita’s eyes brightened slightly. “I’m so happy you’re here with me. Besides, it wasn’t too expensive. Nanni knew you couldn’t go home, at least not until the UK borders are re-opened, and my brother thought we would be safer here.”

Saanvi looked Dishita in the eyes. “He’s going to be okay. He’ll get better.”

Dishita gave her a sad look. “I hope so.”

Saanvi put the phone away. “Is that your bag!” she pointed to a piece of brown luggage on the carousel.

Dishita jerked her head towards it and scowled. “That’s not a Louis Vuitton.” She folded her arms across her chest and frowned.

Saanvi spotted an airline employee standing by a pillar with a clipboard in his hand. “Stay here, I’ll go see if he can help us.”

She brought him back and Dishita angrily explained that her luggage hadn’t arrived. "That bag has all my clothing," she told him after he had collected the details from her.

“It will turn up,” he said in a soothing voice, “and when we find it, we’ll deliver it to you—“ He looked at the claim form in his hand. “—at Madeira School.”

"When?"

"As soon as we've located it, Ms. Brar.”

She dismissed him with a wave. "They're useless, but at least I've got extra clothes at school.”

“We should go then,” Saanvi said to her. “It looks like they’re closing up.” The airport wasn’t busy at all. Nothing like Heathrow with it’s chaos.

“Airports don’t close,” Dishita replied.

As they walked out of the arrivals area, the baggage carousels ground to a halt, one by one, and as they did, the arrival boards above them went dark. To Saanvi, it felt like a dark shadow had arrived. She shivered.

It was ten minutes past noon on March 28th.

M
ei grabbed
two MRE packs from the cardboard box that sat in the middle of the hospital’s loading bay. She paid no attention to their labels. It didn’t matter to her what they were. It was just food to fill the stomach and fuel the body.

As she left, she passed two orderlies and a nurse she didn’t recognize. Bellevue was a large hospital but the thousands of employees who had filled it before the outbreak had dwindled to a few hundred. Each day she recognized fewer and fewer of them.

She nodded to the nurse, a hollow-eyed woman dressed in a dirty but once-colorful set of scrubs.
Maternity ward.
She wondered about the babies and their mothers but pushed the thought from her mind. With the MREs in her hand, she headed back to the second floor.

Aside from the occasional moan, the ICU was still. Even during normal times it was a place of whispered conversations cut short by sobs—or sometimes laughter. Today, it was nearly empty, a ghost of its prior self.

She spotted the woman she had come to see sitting on the carpet of the visitor’s lounge with her back against the wall. Both of the woman’s children were dead but she couldn’t leave the hospital. No one could, the army had quarantined it a few days earlier. Bellevue had become a place of death.

She sat down beside the woman and held out an MRE package.

“Mrs Sanchez, you have to eat.”

She opened the package for her and placed the foil packs of food on the floor between the two of them. “Look—peaches, cake, crackers…rice and chicken.”

“Do you want it warmed up?” Most of the time she didn’t bother to use the chemical heaters that came with the package. Today she did. She wasn’t in a hurry to do what had to be done next.

She opened the chicken, scooped out a fork-full and brought it to the woman’s mouth. After two or three mouthfuls, the woman took the fork and worked through the meal on her own.

“Drink some water, Lucia. Do you mind if I call you, Lucia?” She held a plastic bottle to the woman’s parched lips and trickled some water into her mouth. As with the food, the woman began to drink on her own after a few sips.

While Lucia finished her meal, Mei started on her own. It was tasteless. All her senses were dulled from exhaustion. If it weren’t for the woman beside her, she would go the entire day without food.

She ate slowly, dragging it out as long as she could. When there was nothing left to eat, she took a swig of water and spoke. “I have to go now. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

She didn’t wait for an answer and climbed to her feet, first on one knee and then the other. As she stood, the vials in the pocket of her scrubs clanged together. They wouldn’t break, but they reminded her of what came next. Until this morning, she wasn’t sure if she could go through with it.

She went to the floor above. Jason Grant, the intern, lay in a bed pushed up against the window. It overlooked the East River. He had told Mei he didn’t want a painted hospital wall to be the last thing he saw before he died.

She stood silently in the doorway and thought about his words to her.
“A few of us are thinking about leaving…what about you?”

That had been days earlier, an eternity. But he didn’t leave, he stayed and helped. She had asked him to.

“Is that you, Mei?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Did you bring it?”

“Yes.”

“Thank…you” His words were barely audible.

She forced herself to enter the room and finish what she had promised him she would do.

The first vial contained Sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that would put him into a deep coma. She would give it to him first. She filled a syringe with a massive dose, capped it and stuck it in her shirt pocket.

The second vial sat in the palm of her hand, her fingers wrapped so tightly around it she could feel her nails digging into her skin. It was a powerful muscle relaxant that would stop his lungs from functioning. He would suffocate and die.

As his chest moved up and down, a short breath every few seconds, she hesitated and then removed the first syringe from her pocket. She uncapped it and pressed the needle against the muscle in his upper arm.

He smiled at her, as if to give her his final approval—or maybe forgiveness. Then he stopped breathing.

She felt the weight of her promise disappear. She wouldn’t have to keep it, but she still cried. For him and for everyone else she couldn’t save.

T
he lab was brimming
with activity when he passed through the airlock a little before 8:00 a.m.

It’s a big change from a few days ago,
Simmons thought as he ran his eyes up and down the row of tables and watched the researchers in their protective suits working on all manner of equipment.

He had met some of them before and those he hadn’t, he knew by reputation. It was a veritable who’s who of the most brilliant scientists in the United States and a testament to how serious the pandemic was being taken.

Without wasting any time, he moved to a free station, connected his air supply and jiggled the mouse to activate the computer monitor. Dr. Mayer was already signed in. He searched the lab for her but everyone looked the same in the bulky blue suits.

“Have you seen Dr. Mayer this morning?” he asked the researcher next to him.

The woman, a Nobel nominee from John Hopkins University was intently studying something on the computer in front of her. She answered without taking her eyes off it.

“She was here a couple of minutes ago…must have gone for a bathroom break.”

He leaned back and looked down the aisle. The other computer stations were occupied.
I’ll work here until she comes back.
With a few clicks of the mouse and a tap on the keyboard, he found the latest test results for the vaccine program and brought them up on the display.

They weren’t good.

The trial vaccine was supposed to be composed of artificially produced proteins identical in structure to the antigens associated with the three toxins. To accomplish this, they had to extract the DNA fragments responsible for the production of the toxins and genetically modify them. Once that was done, the modified DNA was inserted into yeast cells that were coaxed into over-producing the three antigens—but without the accompanying toxins.

Simple on paper,
he thought,
but nearly impossible to do in any reasonable length of time.

His task was to locate and extract the gene responsible for the binary toxin. He had managed to do that but hadn’t been able to modify it to produce only the antigens.

But that wasn’t the only problem.

The yeast-based vaccine production system they were using wasn’t working. The antigen proteins it created weren’t properly structured and secondary processing was required.
Even if they could develop a vaccine, they’d never be able to produce enough of it for more than a tiny fraction of the population.

He stared at the screen and rocked back and forth.
Maybe a Baculovirus-based production system could be used.
Most people thought the only way to produce a vaccine was to inject the virus into a chicken egg and let it replicate, but some of the newer recombinant vaccines were produced using yeast-based production systems. Even more novel was the concept of using modified insect viruses to produce the antigen proteins. A system like that would allow them to quickly produce large quantities of the vaccine once they had rendered the toxin genes inert.

He sighed in frustration.
Even if they were able to address the production challenges, he still had to sort out his issues with the binary toxin.

“Damn it.”

He didn’t realize he had spoken out loud. The scientist next to him gave him a sympathetic look. She had the same challenge, only with the A and B toxins. “You’ll figure it out,” she said and turned her attention back to her data.

She was right. Getting frustrated wouldn’t help anyone.

He started the lab’s genome browser application. It was state of the art software and enabled the researchers to study virtually every aspect of the bacteria’s genetic structure in a graphical interface.

He clicked on the menu item to open a file. A pop-up window displaying a list of folders appeared. Since he was using Dr. Mayer’s account, the software defaulted to her home directory. The files were organized in a structure that wasn’t immediately obvious to him. He scanned the list of names looking for something familiar.
The bacteria’s genome data should be in here somewhere.

The directory labeled ‘CDIFF FINVER’ looked promising and he clicked on it. A long list of files appeared. They were named after the gene regions responsible for antibiotic resistance in different types of bacteria. There were dozens of them.

Intrigued, he clicked on one. The genomic data it contained described the genetic encoding for Metronidazole resistance. It looked similar, but not quite identical, to what he had found himself when he first looked at the bacteria. The timestamp on the file preceded his own work by a couple of weeks.
That’s odd…must be an error.

“There she is.”

He looked to his side. The woman from John Hopkins was staring at him.

“Pardon?”

“Dr. Mayer—there she is.” She pointed at the figure emerging from the airlock.

He logged out of the computer, freeing it up for Dr. Mayer and stood as she arrived beside him.

“Please take your seat back. I’ll find another.”

“Thank you, Tony.” She looked at the monitor as she sat down. “Hmmm, I thought I had already logged in.

“You did. Sorry about that. I logged you out. I’m going to go find another station.”

The researcher from John Hopkins stood. “I’m finished for now. Take my seat, you won’t find another one free until lunch.”

She left and he took her spot. As he worked, he caught a glimpse of Dr. Mayer looking at him.

“Do you need something?”

She shook her head slowly and looked back at her monitor.

“No.”

T
he dryness
in his eyes was annoying. He would have rubbed them but the clear polycarbonate visor that covered his face made it impossible. Instead, he settled for blinking a few times but that just made the soreness worse.

The digital clock on the wall showed 8:45 p.m. Dr. Mayer had left an hour earlier. He’d been in the lab for thirteen straight hours with one mid-afternoon bathroom break.
It was time for some food and sleep.

He had caught her staring at him off and on throughout the day. At first, it was bothersome but after a while, he was able to ignore her and focus his energy on the binary toxin. He had a new idea on how to modify the gene to retain production of the antigens while eliminating the toxins. Pursuing it would have to wait for the morning. He wanted to bounce his thoughts off the scientist from John Hopkins first but she had just left and was in decontamination.

When she was finished, he would decontaminate and go see Dr. Mayer in her office. He still needed to talk to her about his idea to use a Baculovirus expression system to generate the vaccine.

He looked up, the light above the airlock was green.

He shut down his equipment, went through decontamination and put on his street clothes. Dr. Mayer’s office was across the grounds of the base, a quick fifteen-minute walk. The evening was cool, in the mid-fifties he guessed. Without a jacket, he found himself hurrying to stay warm.

As he jogged down the sidewalk into the dimly lit area between two streetlights, he saw a figure step out of the building and look around.
It was Raine. He hadn’t talked to him since their initial meeting and didn’t want to start now.
He froze as the CIA man turned towards him, stared for a moment and then spoke.

“Professor Simmons, Good evening.”

Shit.

“Going somewhere?”

“To Dr. Mayer’s office,” Simmons answered. He moved out of the shadows, closer to Raine. “I have a few things to discuss with her.”

Raine looked at him suspiciously. “Like what?”

“Nothing too interesting—just some ideas on vaccine production.”

“Hmmm..anything else?”

“No, just that.”
What is it with this guy and his constant questions?

Raine stared at him for a second, his shifty eyes darting about. He blinked once and turned. “Have a good night then.” In a matter of seconds, he had disappeared into the darkness.

Simmons shook his head.
Guess that’s why they call them spooks.
He headed inside.

Building A, the administration building, was laid out like an Escher drawing. He quickly found himself lost in the labyrinth of corridors. He was on the fifth floor, but the room numbers started with four and didn’t follow any type of scheme he could understand.

“Looking for something, Professor?”

Startled, he turned on his heels to find Colonel Young standing beside a partially closed door.

“Evening, Colonel. I was looking for Dr. Mayer’s office…but damned if I can find it in this maze.”

“One floor up and a corridor over…on the east side—room 523.” Seeing the confused look on his face, Young added, “Rooms on the first floor start with zero, second floor with one and so on. Dr. Mayer’s office is on the sixth floor. Oh—odd numbers are on the east side of the building and even on the west.”

Simmons shook his head in disbelief and Young grinned.

“Welcome to the US Army. But you won’t find her there, she left twenty minutes ago to get some sleep. I just finished a meeting with her and John Raine.”

Raine and Mayer with the colonel?

Young closed the door to his office and locked it without volunteering anything further. “Follow me and I’ll show you the way out.” He began to walk without waiting for an answer. He pointed at the stairs in front of them. “Mind if we take them? I’ve been sitting all day—could use the exercise.”

Simmons gave the colonel a once over.
Not an ounce of fat on him.
“Sure, no problem.”

They reached the main floor in short order and he followed Young into the lobby.
Five floors and I’m winded.
Thank God it was down and not up.

The colonel stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Would you like to join me for breakfast? You can bring me up to speed on your research.”

“That…would…be great,” he said between huffs.

“Let’s meet at 0700 hours in the enlisted mess hall. The chow there is better than the officer’s mess.”

“See you then.”

“Good night, Professor,” Young said and disappeared into the night.

A growl from Simmons’s stomach reminded him he still hadn’t eaten.
The colonel was right, the food in the mess hall wasn’t bad, but a burger would hit the spot
. There were a couple of restaurants in the strip mall just outside the base. He looked around, took his bearings and headed towards the main gate.

The road to the gate was busy and the rumble of trucks filled the air. Enthralled, he watched as a seemingly endless stream of large olive-colored 5-ton trucks passed by. He guessed most of them carried cargo of some type. The canvas canopy on one of them flapped open. He caught a quick glimpse of soldiers sitting solemnly on the seats that lined the back of the truck. The man nearest to the tailgate reached out and grabbed the flapping piece of canvas. He latched it closed as the truck drove away.

A few minutes later, Simmons approached the gate. A sentry with his M16 hanging loosely from a strap around his shoulder stepped forward.

“Can I help you, Sir?

He eyed the soldier and the gun warily. “I’m just going out for a bite to eat.”

“Can I have your name please, Sir, and some ID.”

“Simmons…Dr. Tony Simmons.” He reached for his wallet.

“Is there a Dr. Simmons on the list?” the soldier yelled to someone in the guardhouse.

The answer came back quickly. “No.”

Unsure what that meant, Simmons offered his driver’s license to the soldier who glanced at it but didn’t take it.

“You can put that away, sir. I don’t need it. You aren’t on the list.”

“I’m sorry, what list?” He moved towards the guardhouse to clear up the misunderstanding. “There must be some kind of mistake, can I see the—”

“
Step away! Sir…now!”

The friendly tone from earlier was gone. The soldier raised his weapon and pointed it at him.

Simmons slowly raised his hands and stepped back from the guardhouse. “I d-don’t understand,” he mumbled, his face ashen.

The adrenaline-fed tension in the soldier’s eyes drained slightly. He lowered his weapon. “You’re not on the entry-exit list, Sir,” he explained.

“There must be a mistake. I’m working with Colonel Young and Dr. Mayer. Please call either of them to clear this up.”

“I don’t know about any mistakes, Sir. The colonel left a few minutes ago. Until you’re on the list, you can’t enter or exit the base. I suggest you return to your quarters and sort it out with the colonel in the morning.”

“Is there a problem?” a hard voice asked from inside the guardhouse.

Simmons knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with the soldiers.
It’s just an over-sight…they’re following orders
. He swallowed his indignation. “I understand, I’ll clear it up with the colonel in the morning.”

The soldier gave him a sympathetic look. “Thank you, Sir.”

Simmons nodded goodnight and turned to leave, more annoyed than angry.