by John Locke
“Say it.”
“I promise.”
“Caruso,” Sam says, “guard the door. Creed will probably burst in here any second. I’ll tell you guys, and no one else.”
I don’t know if the nurse is still there or not. But Sam speaks.
“Spanish Flu, 1918,” he says.
“What about it?” Brightside says.
“Don’t you see? She’s got the gene!”
“What gene?”
“Call your superiors. Tell them what I just said.”
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to tell them.”
“Hurry! Before Creed gets here! He’ll kill us all! Call your superiors! Tell them Rachel Case’s blood contains the gene that can cure the Spanish Flu!”
“Of 1918?” Brightside says. “Sam. Do you know what year this is?”
“Call them, you moron! Call them now! You promised.”
I hear Brightside sigh. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll call them.”
23.
My phone rings.
Brightside says, “Sir, Rachel Case is—”
“I heard,” I say. “I’m on my way.”
I walk a hundred yards to the Sensory Resources hospital room where Sam has been staying since the snake bite. When I walk through the door, Sam says, “Fuck you all.”
“What’s all this about the Spanish Flu?” I say.
Sam looks defeated. “Fuck you,” he says, though he says it with very little emotion. I can see he’s starting to shut down, mentally.
“Come on, Sam. Rachel’s in trouble. Talk to me.”
“You bastard! They cut off my leg!”
“You’re making such a fuss about it. A word to the wise, Sam. No one likes a whiner.”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t complain?” Sam says. He grabs the sheet, throws it off of him. He wants me to see that his leg ends at the knee.
“Sam, your leg is fine.”
“What?”
“That’s not your leg.”
Sam looks down at the heavily-bandaged stump.
“Not my leg? Are you insane?”
He stares at Brightside. His head is moving very slightly, from side to side. He’s thinking of something. Or replaying something in his mind. Finally he says, “You gave me a clue.”
Brightside stands there quietly.
“Your father,” Sam says.
“What about him?”
“First time we met. You said they named the hospital after him.”
“So?”
Sam laughs a derisive laugh. “You dumb fuck. You don’t even know.”
“Know what?” Brightside says.
“The script Creed gave you. You didn’t even get it. That’s why I didn’t pick up on it.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The script called for you to say your father’s name was Robin Brightside.”
“So?”
“So you’re Robin’s son. And he’s Caruso. Robinson Caruso.” Sam shakes his head. “And I got snake bit on Friday, no less. I’m a moron.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I say. “You were bitten by a water moccasin, after all.”
“Twice.”
“No, just once. On the ass.”
Sam gestures to his stump.
I nod to Caruso. He holds the hand mirror away from the bed, so Sam can see how his leg is hanging down under it.
“They never cut your leg off,” I say.
I rip the bandages off the end of his knee, where he thought his leg ended.
“There’s a hole in your bed. I had them numb the bottom half of your leg. It’s propped on a foot stool beneath your bed. Your leg is fine. You just can’t feel it. Now help me find Rachel.”
Sam is so relieved he doesn’t know what to do. But what he says is, “How do I know that’s my leg? Maybe it’s my leg, but it’s not attached. You could’ve done anything to me.”
“We could’ve avoided all this if you’d cooperated with me in the first place.”
“You went to this much trouble?” Sam said.
“Rachel means the world to me.”
“Who was the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The one who looked like Rachel. The one who came in my room.”
“You must have dreamt that part.”
“Get Dr. Drake. He’ll tell me the truth.”
“There is no Drake. He had to leave. He’s performing On the Waterfront tonight at the little theater.”
Caruso yells, “Stella! Stella!”
Sam says, “Where am I?”
“I can’t disclose that.”
“Give me a hint.”
“When we put you under, it will require a plane flight to get you back to Louisville.”
“How long a flight?”
“Don’t even think I would tell you that.”
“No problem. I’ll just look up every town in America that has a little theater and narrow it down by the shows they’re putting on.”
“Sounds like a great project.”
Sam looks at me. “You lied about the little theater.”
“It was a figure of speech. I just meant he was an actor.”
“Is he here or not?”
“Not.”
Sam says, “Fine. I give up. Go save Rachel, if you can. You’ll probably die trying, and I’m fine with that.”
“On the other hand, if I fail, you’ll never see her again.”
“She doesn’t want to see me anyway.”
“True. But if I bring her back, you’ll still have hope.”
Sam shrugs. Then says, “If you can prove that’s my leg under the bed, and if it’s attached to my knee, and if it works, and if you promise to let me go…I’ll tell you what I know.”
24.
We’re in Sam’s hospital room. I’m standing bedside, Lou’s sitting on the hard-back chair, taking notes. Sam’s sitting on a hospital bed that has no hole in it. His leg is propped up, and he’s beginning to get some feeling below the knee, which causes his upper thigh to twitch.
Addressing me like a high school professor lectures his students, Sam says, “What’s the greatest threat to the world?”
I answer, “Nuclear weapons?”
“No.”
“Terrorism?”
“No.”
“Religious fanatics?”
“No.”
“Politicians? Saturated fat? Oprah Winfrey?”
“Pandemic Flu,” Sam says.
“Do tell,” I say.
“In 1918, in the space of three months, more than 40 million people died from the Spanish Flu. But it was a misnomer.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“Because it started in Kansas.”
“People die every year from the flu.”
“Not this type. It never happened before, never happened since. It was, quite simply, the worst plague in the history of the world.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Then you’re a moron,” Sam says.
I shrug. “At least I’ve got eyebrows.”
Sam sighs. “Some of your stunts are so juvenile, I’m surprised you didn’t put a tack in my chair.”
“What made the flu of 1918 so bad?” I say.
Sam frowns. “Do you even know how the flu gets started each year?”
“In cold weather, people start coughing on each other and spread their colds. As more people get sick, the cold virus mutates into the flu, right?”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. Are you that stupid?”
“Pretend I am,” I say, “and answer the question. Or I’ll hit you with a spitball.”
Sam shakes his head in disgust. He’s convinced I’m completely beneath him intellectually. Since everyone else in the world shares that position, I could care less. I just want to find Rachel. He says, “The short answer why it was so bad: this is the only virus in history that killed the youngest and strongest people. It was also the most contagious. From start to finish, it lasted
twenty-seven months. During that time one out of every three people in the world caught it, and 100 million of them died. As for how it started,” Sam says, “I’ll have to give you a simplified explanation. I’ll be sure to use small words so you can keep up.”
“You’re very considerate. I’ve always said that about you.”
Ignoring me, Sam continues: “Most animals that get the flu, get it from birds.”
“Birds.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’ve heard of bird flu,” I say.
“Humans rarely catch flu directly from birds,” Sam says. “The birds infect pigs, and pigs infect people.”
“I’ve heard of swine flu, also.”
“You and every third grader. Look, do you want this explanation or not?”
“Me want!”
He says, “Every year, wild ducks migrate south for the winter.”
“So?”
“One out of every three have the flu. Their droppings land in fields, streams, and lakes. They pass the flu on to pigs, and the farmers catch it. This happens all over the world around the same time each year. It also happens in Asia, where millions of chickens pass the flu on to pigs, who pass it on to humans. When people are infected with the flu virus, it spreads as they come into contact with other people.”
“If this happens every year, why was 1918 worse?”
“Pigs have both avian and human flu receptors, so they can catch the flu from birds and people. Scientists believe that in the spring of 1918, a pig caught a human strain of flu from a person, then caught an avian strain from a wild duck. Every known flu virus is made up of eight gene segments. But the 1918 strain was a mix of eight from the human, eight from the bird, and eight from the pig, creating a lethal hybrid the world had never seen. As it spread, it continued to mutate, becoming more and more lethal. It was wartime, and infected soldiers from Kansas were deployed to bases and battlefields all over the world. As the Kansas flu strain mixed with the flu strains from other countries, the virus continued to mutate exponentially. By the time it hit Spain it was so deadly they called it the Spanish Flu. And it’s been called that, ever since.”
I hold up my hand. “You mean to tell me that because a single pig in Kansas ate some duck shit one morning, 100 million people died?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. In general.”
“And what’s all this got to do with Rachel?”
“Every year the World Health Organization hosts a meeting among the top scientists in the world, and public health officials, to determine if the Spanish Flu could return that year.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I’m not surprised. But you’re not alone. Even newspapers and text books in the years that followed the pandemic barely mention the Flu of 1918.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Nor do I know why kids aren’t taught about it in history. Maybe they don’t want to cause a panic. But what I do know is the world is smaller now than it was in 1918. And every year it’s more likely the Spanish Flu will return. And when it does, it’s going to wipe out a third of the Earth’s population.”
“You still haven’t told me what Rachel’s blood test has to do with this.”
“Pull up a chair,” Sam says, “because here’s where it gets interesting.”
“I hope to hell it does,” I say, “because if I wrote all this in a book, my readers would be snoring by now.”
25.
“There is no cure for the Spanish Flu,” Sam says. “And scientists can’t make a vaccine for it, because the live virus has only been seen twice. The first was in 1995, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, when a researcher found a preserved tissue sample from a Spanish Flu victim who died 77 years earlier. Unfortunately, that sample was taken from a soldier who died before the flu mutated into the deadliest form.”
“I thought you said this was getting interesting,” I say.
“By the end of 1918 the flu had spread throughout the world,” Sam says, “including Alaska. In 1997 a scientist found the body of a young woman he and some Eskimo helpers dug out of the permafrost. The flu-causing agent was still in her lungs. They’ve tried to isolate and identify the genetic code for that strain ever since.”
“So?”
“I think they found it.”
“So why can’t they create a vaccine?”
“If I’m right, they lack a live strand of genetic code that contains a natural receptor to the exact form of the virus that wiped out all those millions of people. They’ve got the wild duck and pig strains isolated. But the chances of finding the perfect human genetic match are…impossible to one.”
“But somehow Rachel has it?”
“That’s my guess,” Sam says.
“I always said Rachel was one in a million.”
“This would make her one in six billion.”
“And they’ve what, checked every blood sample in the world every day until they finally found the receptor gene in hers?”
“For the last five years. In developed countries, anyway.”
“But how?”
“Computer analysis.”
“Wouldn’t every doctor or blood lab tech be able to recognize it?”
“Not if they don’t know what to look for. It would show up as an anomaly. No one is going to read the results and say, ‘Aha!’”
“Except the scientists who know what to look for.”
“That’s right. Most people would look at Rachel’s blood test results and think the sample had been contaminated.”
“So why kill her doctor? Why try to kill Nadine? Why kidnap Rachel?”
“You mean, why not just ask her to donate enough blood to start creating a vaccine?”
“Exactly.”
“Think of the implications for bioterrorism. What would happen if word got out that Rachel was the missing link to the deadliest virus the world has ever known?”
“I suppose all sorts of good and evil people would be clamoring to kidnap her and harvest her receptor gene.”
“Yes, but the bad guys could also inoculate themselves against the flu, and unleash it on the rest of the world.”
“Holy shit!”
“I told you it was interesting.”
“So you think our government kidnapped her and is holding her somewhere to harvest her blood?”
“At the very least.”
“What’s that mean?”
“If you were the government, what would you do?” Sam says.
“Raise taxes?”
“Funny. They can’t take a chance on her dying. So they’ll take as much blood as they can, freeze it, and harvest her eggs, create children who will continue supplying them with genetic code.”
“They want Rachel’s children?”
“That would be my guess.”
“How much blood do they need?”
“To inoculate the world? Every year? I have no idea, but it’s probably more than any twenty people could provide. How much blood is required to yield a single proper genetic strand? I don’t know. But it’s a lot, because they’ll have to combine the proper strand from a duck, a pig, and a human. And even though they’ve isolated the proper components, the flu is an RNA virus.”
“You mean DNA?”
“No. DNA has double strands of genetic code, RNA has just one.”
“So?”
“RNA is highly unstable, and breaks down in hours, not days.”
“If they get the right combination, how do they make the vaccine?”
“They have to create the actual Spanish Flu virus in the lab. Then culture it in eggs.”
“Rachel’s eggs?”
“No, chicken eggs, you dolt.”
He sighs at my stupidity, then continues. “They inject a minute portion of the live virus into a chicken egg. After a few days, that creates maybe a teaspoon of vaccine. It will take millions of gallons to create enough vaccine to inoculate the world, and they have to do it one e
gg at a time.”
“That would take forever.”
“Not one egg then a second one,” Sam says. “They start with a few hundred, then a few thousand, then tens of thousands at a time. It involves time and people. And millions of chicken eggs. And money, and resources. And that’s just for one flu season. And only if the Spanish Flu turns up that year. In other words, they won’t start producing the vaccine until they know they need it.”
“They’d go to all that trouble for something they won’t even use?”
“No. They’d go to all that trouble if the Spanish Flu comes back. And they’ll keep Rachel locked up until that happens. And if it doesn’t happen in her lifetime, they’ll have her offspring on hand in case that strain of flu breaks out in their lifetimes.”
“You’re telling me that someone plans to create children and lock them up as lifetime blood donors for a flu vaccine that only occurs when a human infects a pig who gets infected by a duck who re-infects the human?”
“By George, I think you’ve got it!” Sam says.
“Yeah, that sounds like a government project,” I say. “But no one is going to lock up Rachel’s kids. Not on my watch.”
Sam laughs. “Like there’s a lot you can do about it. If I’m right, Rachel has just become the most important person in the world. They’ll have her locked up so tight the President himself won’t be able to find her. I bet there aren’t five people in the world who know where she is.”
Lou and I exchange a look.
Sam says, “How could you possibly locate her?”
“By locating those who need her.”
He frowns. “If you do find her, how could you possibly hope to rescue her?”
“I’ll find a way. Trust me on that.”
Sam says, “You’re insane.”
“In my line of work, being insane is a plus.”
Sam shakes his head. “Even if you find her, and rescue her, where could you possibly go? How could you keep the world from finding you?”
“I haven’t worked that part out yet. But tell me this: how much would a vaccine like that be worth?”
“Shut up.”
“That much, huh?”
“There is no sum too high to demand.”
“A zillion dollars?” I say.
“There’s no such number.”
“All the riches of the world?”
