Genesis Plague (18 page)

“W
here was this taken?” I asked, leaning closer to the picture
on the screen.

Cassidy didn’t look as
if her hands were tied. None of the other people in the group were forcing her
up the stairs. As much as it hurt to admit, she appeared to be with them
voluntarily.

“The PharmaCor facility
in Rapid City, South Dakota,” Maria said. “It’s their main processing plant.
Xander has been doing a lot of field research for the company.”

“But this looks like
they just got off the plane from Hawaii,” I said. “Right after we came back
almost a week ago.”

“I’m sorry, Paul,” said
Maria. “It’s the only information I have.”

“She must have been
hiding in the back of Xander’s SUV. I kept expecting to see her struggling, but
I didn’t think she would go with him willingly.”

“People do crazy things
in stressful situations, Paul. There’s no way to predict behavior when a person
is running for their life.”

It was hard to describe
what I was feeling. I thought it would have been worse if I knew she had been
taken against her will, or maybe if I had never found any sign of her at all. I
felt like someone had scooped out my insides and stuffed ice into the cavity.

Maria was talking, but
I couldn’t hear anything. My eyes defocused as I leaned back in my chair,
thinking of Cassidy.

I wasn’t sure how long
I sat there in Conny’s lab, staring into nothingness. What snapped me out of it
was a sharp slap on the back. Flint nearly knocked me out of my chair with the
blow. His eyes were open wide and he was breathing hard.

“I said we have a
problem, Paul.”

I looked at the laptop
on the desk. The screen was blank. Maria must have disconnected when I zoned
out.

“Did you hear me?!”
said Flint.

“Of course I heard
you!” I said irritably. All those other people with their petty little
problems. Why couldn’t they solve them on their own? What about
my
problems?

I stood up and moved
past him, toward the door.

“Where are you going?”
he asked.

“South Dakota.”

Flint sputtered
half-words as I walked briskly down the hall. The MP guarding the lab entrance,
Nash, saw me coming and prepared to open the door.

Flint grabbed my
shoulder and spun me around. I used the momentum to swing at him, but he must
have figured I would do exactly that, because he easily ducked my swing and
slammed my back against the wall, pinning my arms at my sides.

“Paul, I’m telling you
we have
a major problem
.”

I looked toward the
door, which Nash held open. Flint pulled me off the wall and slammed me into it
again.

“Paul, goddammit,
look
at me!” he shouted.

I looked. What I
thought was pure confusion was mostly fear. Flint’s hands shook as they pressed
me to the wall. His breath came in sharp, ragged gasps.

“Please, Paul.”

My shoulders relaxed,
and I nodded. Nash closed the door and resumed his guard position, seemingly
not bothered at the minor inconvenience.

I followed Flint back
down the hallway and into the small conference room. Black and white printouts
of the Pacific Ocean were scattered across the table, along with pages filled
with dense text.

Flint picked up a sheet
of paper and shoved it into my hands. He turned away and paced next to the
table, looking up at the ceiling and muttering to himself.

The image on the paper
showed the west coast of the United States from a satellite perspective.
Farther offshore were the Hawaiian Islands. Between them was a long streak of
dark pixels – an amorphous blob representing a storm front – with several
clusters branching off from the main body.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Valentina, that
bitch,” Flint said hotly.

“The hurricane that hit
us in Hawaii?”

He nodded, his wild
eyes searching the papers on the table. He selected one and handed it to me.
This one showed the same view of the Pacific Ocean, but the pixelated streak
had changed into a wide half-moon arc as it approached the northwest coast of
the States.

“Since 1900,” Flint
said, “only two hurricanes have made landfall on the west coast. It’s rare for
a storm to travel eastward. Pacific cyclones almost always move west, away from
the mainland. But not Valentina. She passed over the Hawaiian Islands, heading
east, right toward California.”

“But she never made
it.”

“No, she didn’t,” said
Flint.

He handed me another
sheet, showing the pixelated streak pushing northeast across the Pacific.

“She began to break up
a few hundred miles offshore. I was watching the news downstairs, and the
weather report came on. You know about the Pacific trade winds?”

I shook my head, no.

“It was all that
bastard on the news could talk about. Damn fear-mongers. Look.” He pointed to
Hawaii on the paper. “Around the island chain is something called the South
Pacific Convergence Zone. It’s a monsoon trough. You know about those?”

“Not really.”

“Never mind. This
Convergence Zone does a lot of things, but what we’re interested in right now
are the wind surges it cranks out, seemingly at random, without any set
pattern. As Valentina crossed the threshold of the Zone, heading toward
California, one of these wind surges picked her up and split her apart. But she
didn’t die.”

He handed me another
sheet, showing a weaker version of the pixelated streak, but much closer to the
northwest coast of the States.

“What was left of her
rode the trade winds all the way to the coast, from the Canadian border down to
Santa Cruz.”

“Santa Cruz,” I said
slowly. “That’s south of San Francisco.”

“It sure as hell is.”

“How long did this
take?” I asked, frowning at the map. “For Valentina to reach the coast.”

“Just shy of seventy
hours,” Flint said.

My brain waded through
slush to make the connection. “But the virus can survive up to seventy-two
hours without a host.”

“That’s right, Paul.”

“It isn’t an airborne
pathogen.”

“Right again. But guess
what happens when a supercharged volcanic eruption spews debris into the lower
atmosphere?”

My mouth tried to move
so I could speak, but I just stood there, dumbfounded.

“The virus followed us
from Hawaii,” Flint said. “It made landfall
four days
ago, sprinkling
down on the western seaboard in the volcanic ash of Mauna Loa.”

We stood in silence,
and from somewhere in the lab, I heard a soft, continuous beep. I left the room
slowly, in a trance, still gripping the map of the Pacific Ocean. I walked into
Conny’s lab, past the chimps, to the laser printer next to the electron
microscope.

A small screen read
Analysis
Ready - OK to Print
. I pressed the OK button and paper spooled out of the
printer.

“What is that?” asked
Flint as he walked into the room.

“Blood chemistry analyzer,”
I said, reading the data. “We ran a test on the flu samples from St.
Christopher’s to see if the infection was related to the
Loasis
virus.”

“And?” he asked,
holding his breath.

“It’s a perfect match.
You were right. The virus is already here.”

“We’re calling Atlanta
right now,” he said, marching toward the security phone next to the door.

At that moment, Johann
burst into the room, clutching a ream of paper and triumphantly shouting, “It’s
finished! The vaccine works! Chimp One is cured!”

“Out of the way, you
damned fool!” Flint said, pushing Johann aside and picking up the phone.

Johann realized he
wouldn’t get any congratulations from Flint and turned to me, holding out the
wrinkled paper.

“Did you hear, Paul? We
did it! The results from Chimp Two should be printing out any second. We can
test the vaccine on Levino.”

I looked at him blandly,
then over to Flint. He punched numbers on the phone and waited.

“What’s the matter with
you two?!” Johann shouted. “This is the reason we’re here in the first place! I
at least expected you, Paul, to appreciate the magnitude of this discovery, but
you don’t even seem—”

He stopped abruptly
when Flint pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned at the receiver.

“Who are you calling?”
asked Johann.

I stepped toward Flint,
seeing the concern on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“What the hell is going
on around here?” asked Johann, growing visibly agitated.

“Line went dead,” said
Flint, hanging up the phone. “Let’s try a video conference—”

The overhead lights cut
out, plunging the room into darkness. The chimps jumped up and down in their
containers, screeching and pounding on the acrylic walls.

“I’m going to check on
Conny and Roger,” I said as I hurried from the room.

Flint and Johann followed,
shouting at each other as they jogged to keep up.

Conny was sitting in
the far corner of her room, as far from Dan’s lifeless body as she could get.
She had her legs pulled up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. Her
dark hair hung in strands over her face. Even in the darkness, I could see her
eyes glinting up at me.

Levino sat on the edge
of his bed, eyes closed, swaying to some distant tune. His breath came in soft,
rattling wheezes.

There was a low
electric hum from somewhere in the building, and an emergency light in the
ceiling flickered on, casting a sickly green glow across the room.

“Auxiliary generator,” Flint
said. “Someone must have cut the main power. We’ve got twenty minutes on the
elevators and an hour on the decontamination system. After that we’re locked
in.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Johann
said. “Who would do such a thing?”

In the silence that
followed his question, gunshots popped like firecrackers outside the building.

T
here were no windows on the top floor. Johann, Flint, and I ran
out of the observation room, stumbling over each other to get down the hallway.

Nash opened the door
for us and we ran past.

“You coming?” I shouted
back as we approached the elevator.

“I’m supposed to guard
the lab!”

I could tell he was
fighting an internal battle about whether or not to abandon his post. Johann
swiped his ID card and the elevator door opened. The three of us hurried inside
and I caught a glimpse of Nash as the doors closed. Resignedly, he took up his
post in front of the lab door, but not before kicking the wall in frustration.

We spilled out of the
elevator on the sixth floor. The television was still on in the break room,
blaring an infomercial for hair care products. My frozen burrito had thawed and
was slowly melting to become part of the countertop next to the microwave.

We ran to the large
glass window that looked down the front of the building as another gunshot
echoed through the streets.

A black assault truck
was parked in the middle of the barricaded intersection. A muscular man in full
combat armor stood atop the roof of the metal-plated truck, yelling into a
megaphone and waving a semi-automatic rifle in the air. He wore a black
tactical mask that covered his head and tightly hugged his face. The people in
the crowd around the vehicle shouted encouragement as they listened.

“What’s he saying?”
whispered Johann.

We pressed closer to
the window. The police officers had abandoned their cars and were nowhere to be
seen. There were at least three hundred people down there, packed into the
blocked intersection.

“It’s the military
reinforcements!” said Flint. “We’re finally catching a break!”

But I wasn’t so sure.
For one thing, the armored truck was unmarked, and I saw no insignia on the
man’s vest. His voice was muffled as he turned away from us to address the
crowd. He fired another round into the air and the mob cheered, shaking their
protest signs and pounding on the sides of the assault truck.

As the man spoke, the
doors on the truck opened and more armed men emerged, each more
powerfully-built than the next, each wearing full body armor and protective
face masks.

“I don’t think they’re
here to help,” I said.

The man on the roof of
the truck turned to the building and pointed his rifle up at our window. The
crowd screamed for blood as one of the other men lifted a bulky two-handed gun
with a large magazine and pulled the trigger. There was a soft
thonk
and
a puff of smoke.

“Gas grenade!” Flint
shouted.

He grabbed me and
Johann by our collars and pulled us to the ground as the projectile crashed
through the window. Shards of glass rained down from above, stabbing my lab
coat like knives.

The metal canister
bounced on the floor and hit the far wall. It spun like a firework as it
belched dense gas into the room, burning my eyes and throat. My mouth watered
instantly and I spit and cough, but it only got worse.

“Back to the elevator!”
Johann said, pulling me with him.

Through the gas, I saw
Flint doubled over, choking. I grabbed his shoulder. His eyes were shut tight.
He stumbled after me, following blindly.

Johann swiped his card
and the elevator door opened. As we fell in, I heard more gunshots below. The
mob was chanting, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then there was more
gunfire, but it came from inside the building.

The front door had been
breached.

“What do they want?!” Johann
shouted as we ascended.

I coughed, waving away
the small amount of gas that made it into the elevator.

“The vaccine.”

“Well it wouldn’t do
them any good!” said Johann. “It has to be distilled and diluted, and even
then, there must be more tests, and then mass production. It worked on one of
the chimps, but that’s all!”

“I don’t think they
care about any of that, Johann,” I said as the elevator door opened.

Nash was right there,
rifle held tightly in his hands.

“What is it?!” he asked,
looking from person to person. “Are they inside? How many are there? What
happened to Johnson and Caruso?”

“We don’t know,” I said
as we made our way down the hall. “Nash, listen to me.” I coughed hard and spat
on the floor. “We have to hide the vaccine. Whoever’s in the building is coming
for it, and if they take it, we can’t synthesize enough to cure everyone.”

“What do you mean,
‘everyone’?” asked Johann, looking stricken.

“Guess you missed that
part,” Flint said as we pushed through the door to the lab. “The virus is out
in the open, all over the west coast.”

“But how is this
possible?!” shouted Johann.

“That’s not important
right now!” I yelled.

More gunfire from inside
the building, closer now, almost to the top floor.

“Think, Johann! Where
can we hide the vaccine?”

He pulled at the hair
on the sides of his head as he wracked his brain for an answer.

“I know!” he shouted.
“Leave it to me.”

He ran off quickly,
ducking into his lab.

“What about us?” asked
Flint.

“We should barricade
the door,” Nash said.

“With what?”

“Whatever you can
find,” I said. “I’ll wheel out the electron microscope. Flint, get all the
tables and chairs in the conference room. Nash, cover us until we’re done. We
only need to hold out until the reinforcements—”

But I stopped when the
elevator dinged at the end of the hall, and the door opened.