Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Page 9

  The soldier was down, twitching, and then he went limp. Howie dropped the rolling pin and kicked away the pistol that was in his hand. He bent down over the man and checked for a pulse. He still had one. Howie tried to wake him up but couldn’t. The keys to the jeep were in his pocket, and Howie took them and held them tightly in his palm. He stood up, completely clueless as to what to do, when he heard another sound coming from outside—a jeep pulling to a stop.

  He grabbed the pistol and ran around the house like a burglar trapped by a family coming home. He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time as he heard the voices of men entering the house. A brief silence was followed by shouting and the sound of boots stomping across linoleum.

  Howie ran into a bedroom and to the window that looked down on a pool surrounded by a tall wooden fence. He ran back through the hallway and found another bedroom. This one looked out over the front lawn. He ran back to the window over the pool. As he opened it, he heard the men calling for additional troops and requesting a medic.

  He crawled out on the sill and peered down. The drop was at least ten feet. He hung by his fingers to give him as much length as possible and then dropped. He hit the pool deck hard, sending a shock through his ankles. They stung, but he got up and ran toward the jeep as quickly as he could. The men were all inside the house, tearing it apart, looking for him. He jumped into the driver’s seat and had to try three keys before he found the one that started the jeep.

  Leaving as quietly as possible, he saw that one of the choppers had broken away from the rest and was headed his way.

  25

  Samantha was behind Dr. Olsen as he showed them an electron microscope prototype that he proudly told them had cost the military twenty-seven million dollars. It could enhance an image half the width of a hydrogen atom, making it the most powerful microscope in the world.

  Samantha glanced inside. The image had a faint green tint. Bouncing around next to each other were what looked like bright-purple beanbag chairs. They contorted and then straightened again as they rubbed and bumped each other.

  There were three ways to make a vaccine. The first was to weaken the pathogen. The virus, which would be too weak to reproduce, was then injected into the recipient’s body. An immune response would still be generated, creating the antibodies that fought that virus for, typically, the rest of the recipient’s life.

  The second method was to destroy the virus and then insert the husk into the patient. Since the immune system had seen and could recognize the shell, the body would produce antibodies. The benefit was little risk of infection to the recipient.

  And the third way was to remove one part of the virus and use that particular piece to elicit an immune response. This way worked well because the body only recognized a full, healthy virus, not just one part, and developed all the antibodies it would have during a full infection.

  Sam thought that injecting a live or even weakened poxvirus into a recipient was too dangerous. If Olsen was smart, he would be using destroyed husks.

  Sam had seen Agent X under an electron microscope, and she knew she was looking at an active virus, but it wasn’t behaving normally. The virus was slow and seemed out of sync. Perhaps she was anthropomorphizing it, but she thought the virus was acting differently than it had the last time she’d seen it.

  She deduced that Dr. Olsen must have chosen the first method of vaccine creation and had weakened the virus so that it could not reproduce.

  “Have you done a phase three trial?” she asked, stepping away from the microscope.

  “No,” Olsen replied. “In fact, we haven’t been able to do any substantial phase one studies. We’ve just never seen an organism like this. We maintain samples from the Oahu outbreak, but the ones found in the patients here are already different. In the span of a month, it’s mutated.”

  Duncan had a look into the microscope. “I don’t think this will work.”

  “Why not?” Olsen asked, seeming puzzled that he hadn’t received a more positive reaction.

  “The virus is too strong. It’ll be able to replicate.”

  “We’ve monitored it after weakening, and it hasn’t been able to. I think the chances are slim to none.” He looked to Sam for confirmation. “What do you think?”

  “I think Duncan’s right. We don’t fully understand what we’re dealing with. Until more extensive studies can be performed, I wouldn’t give anyone the vaccine.”

  He thought a moment and then said, “Dr. Bower, do you know why we dream?”

  “No.”

  “An honest answer. I like that. There are over eleven hundred published theories as to why we dream, and that’s all they are. Theories. Science cannot even answer the simple question of why we dream, something Cro-Magnon man quite possibly asked himself, and we’ve been unable to answer since. So if, with all our knowledge, we cannot even say why we dream, how are we supposed to know for certain what an organism one billionth our size will do? We just have to take our chances.”

  Sam nodded toward the microscope. “Viruses aren’t like other organisms, Clyde. They’re as old as life itself and have lived through every cataclysm that has wiped out most other species. They adapt, they hide when threatened, and some people believe they can even feel pain. And this one we have is the deadliest I’ve ever seen. How can you even think about injecting it into people? Weakened or not?”

  “Because that’s all I have.” He checked his watch. “The first batch of volunteers should be here shortly to accept the vaccine. I could really use a good pair of extra hands to administer it.”

  “I’ll help.” She paused. “There is one other thing. My sister was here, and I’ve lost contact with her.”

  His brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. If she’s in one of our camps, she’ll have to stay there for the time being. There’re plenty of guards and food, and she won’t be mistreated. But I can’t get her out right now.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “I suppose if you want to put it that way, then I won’t.”

  “Why is this even necessary? Just have quarantine zones for the infected. You don’t need to put everybody in prison.”

  “That’s the order from on high, so that’s what I’m going to do. Sorry, Sam. You know I want to help you. But she has to stay where she is.”

  “Can you at least tell me where she is so I can check on her and see if she needs anything?”

  He thought a moment. “Okay, I’ll find out. Just give me her name and birthday.”

  26

  In the middle of the night, Samantha stretched and decided she needed some caffeine if she was going to stay up, giving doses of the vaccine. Since the vaccine hadn’t gone through the proper clinical studies, she was uncomfortable injecting it into human subjects. But she’d thought about it on the drive out of the medical center to downtown and couldn’t think of another option. If the vaccine worked, it would prevent an enormous amount of suffering. But if it didn’t, if Duncan was right and the virus was strong enough to replicate in a weakened state, everyone vaccinated would be infected.

  She sat in the passenger seat this time, and Duncan was in the backseat. She glanced over at him, and his head was leaned against the seat. He was sleeping, even though the jeep bounced around as if they were on an unpaved African road rather than a highway in Los Angeles.

  Duncan was a decent man, and she knew he cared for her deeply. They had some points of contention, particularly religion. She saw it as an unnecessary extravagance. Why put in all that time and effort worshiping ghosts that likely didn’t exist? Atheism was as illogical to her because it was a belief system built around a negative of something that was non-verifiable. She had gone to a meeting at a local atheist organization, but she’d found it just as formulaic as the religious services she’d been to.

  Duncan, with both a medical degree and a PhD in microbiology, was quite likely the most brilliant man she had ever known. She was puzzled that this brilliant man could believe in th
ings without evidence and apply the scientific method all day at work, then abandon it when it came to his own fundamental beliefs.

  Her father had been the same. He’d been a devout Catholic his entire life and read History of the Saints and the New Testament to her as bedtime stories when she was three years old. She particularly enjoyed History of the Saints, the stories of men and women of conviction who were ready to die in the most gruesome ways for their faith. She could think of few things—in fact nothing—that inspired as much passion as faith. The whole thing was an enigma to her. Religious thinking seemed to be declining in the Western world, with only five percent of Europeans attending church and the number of regular attendees declining in the United States. Societies had been religious for so long—for the entire existence of mankind, in fact—that she couldn’t decide how the complete abandonment of religion would impact society. She could think of only two possibilities: enlightenment or anarchy.

  “It’s right up here, Dr. Bower,” the driver said.

  The jeep came to a stop, and she stepped out as the rough halt roused Duncan. A metal trailer, much like the one Dr. Olsen had occupied with his equipment and surgical room, was set up for them. As they stepped inside, the driver got out boxes of pre-wrapped syringes filled with the vaccine. He placed them down near some chairs and glanced at both of them. “Good luck.”

  When they were alone, Duncan sat down. He seemed tired and uncertain of what they should be doing.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “So if it doesn’t, we’re injecting these people with replicating poxvirus.”

  “I know,” she said softly.

  He exhaled. “What a mess. I can’t believe it’s come to this. We have to potentially kill several hundred people to see if we can save several billion.” He leaned back in the chair. “I read an account once from a historian that was alive during the Plague of Justinian in Constantinople. He said the levies holding back flooding waters broke because the people that maintained them had grown sick. And when they broke, the city was flooded. Sitting by his window, he watched the bodies float down his street. He said the city was choked with corpses to the point that people felt like they couldn’t breathe…”

  “And it faded away, Duncan. At some point, this will fade away, too.”

  “In the meantime, before the plague faded away, it changed the course of history and killed five thousand people a day. And this pathogen is more contagious. I’m no big-government nut, by any means, but I’m not sure I’m against all this.” He waved his hand around the trailer. “We’re not talking a few thousand or even a hundred thousand deaths, Sam. We’re talking about the end of civilization.”

  “And so because of that risk, we throw out our values, our beliefs? We toss them to try and have a little more safety? It’s not worth it. I’d rather die out than live in Stalinist Russia. That type of life isn’t life at all.”

  He rubbed his temples. “Maybe any life is better than no life.”

  Before she could respond, a middle-aged blond woman in a purple shirt appeared at the door.

  “I was brought here for the vaccine,” she said. “I was told to get it here.”

  Sam glanced at Duncan, then told the woman, “Come in and roll up your sleeve, please.”

  27

  Ian waited around the corner after ramming the Audi into the car full of boys. No police or ambulances arrived since no one’s cell phone worked. He took out his own, connected to a private server, and connected directly with the hospital. After giving them the address, he walked away with a limp because his knee had butted into the dash.

  The building he had come for wasn’t more than a mile away. He watched the cars pass him as he limped down the sidewalk, until he came across a pharmacy. Inside, the pharmacist and a tech were behind the counter, trying to get their Internet connections to work.

  Ian went to an empty aisle and pulled down his pin-striped trousers. His injured knee wasn’t bleeding at all, which signified an internal injury. It felt a bit as if he’d torn his ACL or MCL. But he didn’t have time for that. He grabbed two ACE bandages and wrapped them tightly around the knee.

  He left the store and headed farther down the street, to the building he was searching for. He didn’t have to double-check the list. He had memorized every name and address.

  The building was almost a skyscraper, with maybe fifteen or sixteen stories. On the tenth floor was a man named Gabriel Vega, a Mexican national who worked for the United Nations and was only in Los Angeles for a brief meeting with officials from the consulate.

  Ian hobbled inside. Flowers decorated the dark-wood-paneled lobby, and the elevators were chrome. An older security guard sitting next to them looked up.

  “Can I help y—”

  Two slugs entered his left eye, the second following the first almost perfectly, breaking through the back of his skull with a dull thump as he toppled over his chair. The elevator dinged, and Ian stepped on and glanced up at the mirrored ceiling as it began to rise.

  How many elevators like this have I been in? he wondered. How many people above him were living their lives in total obliviousness while death quietly drifted up to them? That their decisions had led to a visit from him was an odd thought to consider. From the moment they were born, they were making choices, and their choices brought him to them. The truly interesting question was whether someone was riding an elevator up for him.

  The doors opened on the tenth floor, where he got out. Elegant lights were spaced in the hallway, and the carpet was a pure white, without a trace of dirt. And a unique thing for this city, it had no smell—no exhaust, no perfume, no warm garbage, or sweat. The place was odorless and lifeless.

  He found the apartment he wanted and knocked. Footsteps came from inside, then the door opened. An elderly Hispanic man, perhaps as old as eighty or eighty-five, answered the door.

  “I’m looking for Gabriel,” Ian said.

  “Who are you?” the man replied in heavily accented English.

  “A friend. My name’s Ian.”

  He was silent a moment. “You’re a friend of my grandson’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gabriel, venir aqui.”

  “Que?” A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven came to the door.

  Ian eyed him up and down. “Are you Gabriel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You work at the consulate? On cross-border epidemiological issues?”

  He gave his grandfather a quizzical glance and said, “Yes.”

  Ian lifted the pistol and fired into the boy’s chest. It threw him back against the wall, leaving a smear of blood all the way down as he slid to the floor. The grandfather’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t have time for much more of a reaction. Ian slammed his elbow into the old man’s throat, crushing the windpipe, and then swept his feet out from under him. The old man fell so hard, Ian heard his delicate bones crack as they broke. He stepped over him, leaving the grandfather gasping for breath on his back like an injured turtle, and shut the door behind him.

  Ian fired one more round into the boy’s heart to be sure he was dead and went farther in to the apartment. One bedroom was a master decorated with furniture that was at least thirty years too old. The other was decorated with baseball caps and sports memorabilia. Ian walked into this one and glanced around.

  Photos were up on the nightstand of the boy and his grandfather at baseball games and on a fishing trip. He saw all of Gabriel’s life then. His parents had abandoned him at a young age, and a kindly grandfather who had thought he’d already put in his time raising his children had taken him in and raised him as his own.

  Ian did not like remorse or guilt. They were wasted emotions the herd felt because they had been trained from childhood to have a response to stimuli that shouldn’t have meant anything. Emotions were nothing more than a response of the weak, those who were ruled over rather than doing the ruling. Successful people w
ere frequently on television, discussing love, charity, and compassion, but those were not the things that had made them successful. They shared a secret that they would never reveal. The formula for success was simple enough for anyone that wanted to learn it: do not feel guilt.

  Still, in his own way, Ian was saddened that the grandfather had to die and that he had seen his grandson die before him. If he had it to do again, Ian would kill the grandfather first.

  Ian checked the rest of the apartment, and no one was there. He made his way down the elevator, and when he stepped off, a crowd had gathered around the security guard’s body. They were all trying cell phones, sending texts to nowhere, and placing calls that would never connect. They seemed so impotent that Ian almost laughed. He brushed past them, getting a good look at their faces. Absolutely fascinating, they were much like a different species he couldn’t possibly empathize with. They fussed over this man whom they had never met. They probably saw him every day and ignored him, but once he was dead, they cared for him. What a waste of energy.

  Three names were left on his list. He thought about commandeering a car, but something about Katherine was… entertaining. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he enjoyed her company.

  He hailed a cab to take him to the hospital.

  28

  Samantha held the syringe above the pale dermis of the woman’s bicep. Wearing thin latex gloves and a surgical mask, Samantha glanced once at Duncan, then plunged the needle into the doughy flesh. She injected the weakened pathogen. Agent X, the deadliest aspect of nature she had ever encountered, was flowing in this woman’s veins. And they would have to hope that it didn’t kill her.