Genesis Plague (15 page)

“I
don’t think she likes you,” Johann said.

“What the hell are you
doing turning down more resources?” I asked. “We’re not getting any sleep, in
case you haven’t noticed. We could use an extra body or two around here.”

Johann laughed. “Sleep!
You can sleep when we get the vaccine.” He grinned and bounced on the balls of
his feet. The abrasive edge he seemed to cultivate when we were working in the
lab had melted away to be replaced by a kind of boyish exuberance. It made me
nervous.

“What’s wrong with
you?” I asked.

“Why should something
be wrong?” he said, still smiling. “We are almost done, Paul! Don’t you see?”

“I see you’ve been
putting the cart in front of the horse since we got here.”

“Oh, cheer up,” he said
lightly.

“And you deliberately
left out information during the call, like the fact that the virus is visible without
an electron microscope.”

“Why would the President
care about such a detail?”

“Because we’ve never
encountered anything like it!” I said. I could feel my face turning red. “And
you left out the presence of the second capsid. Two heads on a single virus
shouldn’t exist.”

“Vestigial,” said
Johann, shaking his head. “Or redundant development. A useless mutation.”

“It’s a bacteriophage
with potentially two separate sets of DNA. So far we’ve only seen one side of
this virus. We need to figure out what’s hiding in the other capsid.”

“Leave the real virology
to the experts, Paul. If I need a generalized theory on anything else, I’ll ask
you.”

The table didn’t
crumble beneath my white-knuckled grip. I forced myself to take a breath and
calm down.

Through clenched teeth,
I said, “And another thing. You never gave me the data I requested on the final
vaccine sequencing process.”

“Why would you need
that information?”

“You can figure out
why, right? I thought you were the expert.”

Johann exhaled sharply
through his nostrils. “If you needed to have the details, you’d have the
details.” He closed the laptop and unplugged the wires, then carried it from
the room.

I rubbed my dry eyes
and rested my elbows on the table, daydreaming about punching Johann’s teeth to
the back of his throat. The anger passed and my body slowly relaxed.

Perhaps I fell asleep
for a short time, because when my eyes popped open at the sound of breaking
glass, I felt a little better.

I yawned and cracked my
back as I walked into the hallway, trying to determine where the sound came
from. Then I heard a chimpanzee screeching, and I hurried across the hall and
pushed open a door.

Dr. Conny Tate knelt on
the floor of a long, narrow room, carefully picking up big shards of glass and
setting them in a small trash can. Above her on a metal table, three large,
transparent, cube-shaped acrylic containers sat side-by-side. Inside each of
them was a live chimpanzee. Thick metal latches on the sides of each container
sealed the doors.

The chimp in the middle
was sleeping, but the other two paced in circles in their little prisons, hooting
and screeching when they weren’t beating their chests or flashing their exposed
teeth in my direction.

I knelt next to Conny
and started picking up shards of glass. She jumped slightly when she saw me.

“Oh! Hi, Paul. Didn’t
notice you come in.” The physiologist tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her
ear and pushed her black-rimmed glasses higher on her nose as she smiled. She
wore a white tee shirt with black lettering that read “Ask Me About My PhD”. I
did, once, and she only giggled.

“Hard to hear anything
with these guys making such a racket,” I said.

She sighed. “It’s
getting worse. The isolation is really taking its toll. How did the conference
go?”

I shrugged. “Johann’s
still an asshole.”

She giggled.

“What happened?” I asked,
holding up a thick piece of sharp glass.

“Number Three figured
out he could shake the table if he jumps hard enough,” said Conny. “I set a
beaker too close to the edge, and next thing I know…” She nodded toward the
broken glass.

“Number Three, huh?”

I stood up, brushing my
hands on my coat. Each of the transparent container cubes had a small number
stenciled in the upper corner.

The chimp named Number
Three stopped pacing his container and put his face close to the acrylic, like
he wanted to tell me a secret. I leaned in until I was almost touching the
container, and he started pounding on it with his fists and screaming as if
someone just lit him on fire.

I jumped back and bumped
into Conny. She grabbed my arms and stopped me from falling over.

“Guy’s got a temper,” I
said.

“Can you blame him?
We’ve been sticking needles into him for days.”

“Is he the one who got
the infected blood?”

“That’s Number Two,”
she said, nodding toward the sleeping chimp. “And Number One got the straight
dose. The original sample your team brought back from Mauna Loa.”

I took a step toward
Number One’s container to get a closer look at the chimp. He turned away and
showed me his back. Beneath the thick hair were patches of shiny wetness.

“Lesions,” Conny said
with a sigh. “Just like—” She stopped herself with a quick glance in my
direction. “Just like the others. It doesn’t seem to be related to the
colonization of the bacterium in the stomach.”

“
Something
has to
be causing the lesions,” I said. “It could be the body fighting the infection
without knowing the best way to do it. A shotgun approach.”

“I didn’t fly all the
way from Atlanta unless I thought we would figure it out,” said Conny. “We’ll
get there. Just need one more day.”

“What about this one?”
I asked, looking at the sleeping Number Two.

“We already know it’s transmitted
through fluid,” Conny said. “Number One is showing more advanced symptoms since
he was injected with the original sample. But Number Two is only about twelve
hours behind since I gave him Grayson’s infected blood.”

Moving down the line, I
looked in on Number Three. He paced in a continuous circle, ignoring me. Unlike
the other containers, a large white tube was attached to the top of this one.
It ran up the wall to the ceiling, where it took a ninety degree turn and
disappeared into the wall.

“Still no signs of
infection?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“So far, no. But I’m
watching him closely. Number Three is our straight man. Any signs that this
thing has gone airborne, we’ll see it in him first.”

Conny and I watched
chimp Number Three in silence. I could only guess what Conny was thinking, but
I bet it wasn’t optimistic.

“Do you have time to
run my blood?” I asked. She raised an eyebrow. “Had a little bit of a close
call with Dan,” I added.

“Oh?” she said, pulling
on a latex glove and picking up a packaged syringe. She ripped open the plastic
packaging and uncapped the empty syringe as I pumped my fist so she could find
a vein. The needle went into the crook of my arm, next to the other three holes
from the times I had already been tested. “You think he got you?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said, trying
to comfort myself. “Just procedure.”

Conny sighed as my
blood filled the syringe barrel. “I need to get back in there and get a new
sample. Dan is deteriorating faster than I thought.”

She pulled out the
needle and pressed an alcohol-soaked cotton ball to my arm as blood beaded up.

“Just be careful if you
do go back in,” I said as I walked toward the door. “He’s manic at best, and he
could get a lot worse. I’ll go in with you if you want.”

She smiled.

“I’ll be back in a
little while to use the scope,” I added. “I want another look at the original
slides.”

“Sure thing. The
samples aren’t going anywhere.” Conny grabbed a broom from the corner as I left.
“I guess none of us are,” she said quietly.

F
lint was asleep on a cushioned chair in the break room when I
went down for a cup of coffee. His feet were propped up on the back of the
chair in front of him, and the television was set to a news station. He snored
while a reporter rattled on about rising tax rates.

I stood in front of the
groaning coffeemaker like a risen corpse, waiting for my brain-juice that would
keep me going a little while longer. I almost drifted off where I stood, lulled
into a deep trance by Flint’s rhythmic snoring, when I snapped awake at a roar
of shouting outside.

I walked to the window
and parted the blinds. On the street six stories below, the crowd of people had
tripled. Our building sat on the corner of an intersection, and below, police
had cordoned off all the roads starting one block away, barricading the passage
with their own cars.

The crowd of people
outside the building covered the entire intersection and was beginning to spill
down the streets, toward the barricades. I watched with a sense of detached
fascination as the group of protestors swelled and moved as one, waving their
signs. It was almost like observing a sea fan as it swayed in an ocean current.

I was about to go back
to my coffee cup when a black van screeched to a halt at one of the barricades.
A courier jumped out of the passenger door and approached a nearby policeman.
The courier held a hard plastic cooler, the kind you would take on a picnic.
Except this one had a large yellow biohazard sticker sealing the lid. The courier
pointed to the cooler, then up at my building. The cop turned and looked, then
shrugged.

He got into his patrol
car and backed up enough for the courier van to get through, then parked his
car back into place, closing the barricade.

The crowd of people
outside the building turned toward the new arrival, their shouts swelling to a
roar. They charged the van and surrounded it. The driver blared his horn to no
effect. The crowd forced him to a crawl as they threw themselves onto the hood
and pounded on the windshield.

Through the swarming
mass of bodies, there was a brief moment where I could read the words printed
on the side of the van: St. Christopher’s Hospital of Seattle.

The courier was
bringing us blood samples from the hospitalized flu patients.

I ran to Flint and kicked
the back of his chair. His eyes popped open.

“Flint, wake up! The
samples are here.”

“Hmm?” he said
groggily, closing his eyes again.

“The courier can’t make
it to the building!” I said, already moving toward the elevator. “Come on, man,
we need those samples!”

What we
needed
was to find out as soon as possible if the flu outbreak and the
Loasis
virus were connected so we could begin containment procedures. Why they hadn’t
already quarantined the whole damn county was beyond me, but there must be a
reason, right? After all, every one of the original samples we brought back
from Hawaii was accounted for. There was no way the bug could have gotten out.

Flint was already
asleep again, snoring softly.

I shook my head in frustration
as I swiped my key card to open the elevator door. It felt like a long ride
down to the ground floor, and when the door opened, I knew it was still going
to be another two minutes before I could get out of the building.

Directly outside the
elevator on the bottom floor was a square room lined with thick transparent
plastic, almost like vinyl sheeting. It reminded me of an industrial-sized
version of the case my bed sheets came in. There was a small chute sticking up
from the corner of the square room. I stripped off my clothes and dropped them
into the chute, which led down to the decontamination room in the basement. My
badge went into a small auto-disinfecting box for pickup when I got back.

Standing there naked, I
was suddenly aware of the cold metal chain around my neck, and of the engagement
ring hanging from it. I never had the chance to ask Cassidy the big question.
So now the ring hung around my neck by a cheap metal chain, and every once in a
while it would bounce against my skin and remind me of the woman I would
probably never see again.

I took off the chain
and dropped it into the disinfecting box next to my badge. I looked down at my
body. A dark bruise covered my chest from when I had smacked against the jagged
cliff’s edge above the lava river in Hawaii. My hands shook.

After a moment, a green
light flicked on overhead, and I unzipped the plastic door and stepped into the
next chamber, zipping the door behind me. A fine white mist drifted down from a
nozzle overhead, coating my body in slippery disinfectant. When another green
light popped on above, I stepped through one last door, into the tunnel.

The long corridor was
lined with plastic, like the first room. Every few feet, hissing vents in the
ceiling pushed cold, thick fog across my naked body, making me shiver. The fog
had a strong chemical smell, almost like toilet-bowl cleaner.

I walked slowly, not
because I wanted to, but because I was following procedure. Harsh ultraviolet
light beamed out from the walls, painting my body in a purple glow and warming
my skin after the cold fog.

The last stop before
the front door of the building was another sealed plastic room where
superheated air blasted my body from all directions. It scorched my skin until
the point right before I screamed, then the fans cut out and the wind died. I
felt like a poodle in a car wash.

There was a selection
of standard nurse’s scrubs hanging from a rack next to the front door. I
quickly pulled on a pair of blue pants and a shirt, then stuffed my feet into
the pair of sneakers I had been wearing when I arrived at the facility. A
duplicate ID badge hung from a hook next to the door. I snatched it up and clipped
it to the waistband of my pants.

The seconds felt like
minutes as I waited for that green light over the front door. It finally
blinked on, and the door hissed open.