by L. A. Larkin
‘Keep straight ahead of me or I’ll kill you right now,’ Ben shouted above the screaming mayhem.
‘How did you … ?’
‘Location finder I planted on your back,’ he shouted in her ear. ‘I wasn’t going to lose you a second time.’
Trapped by hundreds of bodies, she moved with them towards the main entrance, the police outside trying to direct the terrified people away from the building. Traffic had been stopped to allow the thousands evacuating a space to stand. Above the din, Serena heard the honk of fire engine sirens. Ben swore as people banged into him.
‘Stay close when we get outside,’ he said, breathing down her neck.
Firemen were staring at diagrams of the building’s structure, directing others with tanks on their backs. A woman screamed as she tripped over, a cop lifting her to safety. As Serena and Ben stepped outside, it was as if they had walked into a fridge; the temperature was freezing.
Times Square was gridlocked. Drivers stood outside their vehicles, staring around both in confusion and grim fascination. A tourist filmed the commotion on a tiny camera. An ABC News presenter was interviewing an evacuee. People stood between every stationary car, van, truck or cab, staring up at the Gene-Asis building, waiting for something to happen. Others ran away, remembering September 11.
Serena saw Gloria, standing unsteadily on a car bonnet. She was staring back towards the Gene-Asis building, peering into the evacuating crowds. Someone was trying to get her down, and she was arguing with him. Then Gloria spotted Serena and Ben, and pointed straight at them, shouting at her companion.
The cop joined her on the car bonnet. He eyeballed Serena, and then moved a hand to his lapel, speaking into his two-way radio. If he were calling for back-up, he had no chance: the crowd was too packed.
The cop took out his gun and jumped down, disappearing. Was he coming to find them? What had Gloria said? Was the cop going to shoot her?
‘Police!’ he shouted, pointing the gun at them. He was only a few metres away and, as he spoke, a space opened in the throng. Even in such a mad panic, people avoided a loaded gun. Ben grabbed her arm, pressing his gun deeper into her back. She froze. One way or another, she was going to be shot dead.
‘Put down your gun!’ the cop called out.
He was moving closer and Serena could see that the gun was pointed at Ben’s head. Not at her. It took her a while to put two and two together: Gloria had sent the cop to rescue her from Ben. She had looked at the memory key’s content.
‘Officer, I’m Gene-Asis Security. This woman is a terrorist.’
‘Help me,’ called Serena, her eyes pleading. Ben yanked her arm back and she yelped.
‘Shut it,’ he said in her ear.
‘That may be, sir, but she ain’t got the gun. You have. So, put your gun down on the ground, nice and slow, and show me your ID.’
‘Listen, you dumbass cop. I’m not letting go of a fucking terrorist.’
‘I’m gonna tell you one more time to put the gun down, or I’ll shoot,’ he said. He plainly didn’t like being called a dumbass cop, especially by some foreigner.
‘You dumb fucker,’ growled Ben, throwing the gun on the icy pavement. He still held Serena firmly.
‘Both of you, face the wall and place your hands above your heads.’
Ben groaned with frustration but released her arm. Serena raised her hands, hardly able to believe she’d been saved from certain death. She quickly turned to face the wall. Ben slowly raised his arms. He winced in pain. The cop threw his weight behind him, crushing his face into the wall.
‘Who’s the dumb fucker now?’ the cop said, patting down Ben’s clothing. He roughly pulled his arms down to handcuff them. Ben yelled with pain.
‘You’re not handcuffing me,’ he shouted and a struggle broke out, the slighter cop struggling to hold the bigger man.
Serena saw her chance and took it. She shot off into the crowd. The cop could do nothing to stop her: he had his hands full with Ben. As she ran, she found the location-finding device, a small button attached to her collar, and threw it into the gutter.
She needed to hide. She ran out into Seventh Avenue, zigzagging round vehicles, heading in the direction of their hotel. But she couldn’t go back there: she might lead them to John. So she followed Seventh Avenue, towards One Times Square. Her breath came thick and fast in the freezing air.
Serena heard a scream, so loud it was like someone had screamed into a microphone at an empty football stadium. It reverberated throughout Times Square. It was a woman screaming in unmistakable agony. Serena stopped in her tracks, as did the people around her. As far as she could see, people turned their heads, searching for the source of the distressing sound.
Serena was standing still on Seventh Avenue, outside the MTV studios, and, at first, she thought the sound was emanating from there. But it was everywhere: all around Times Square. The people next to her raised their mobile phones, staring at them in disbelief. The woman’s screams were being transmitted through each and every mobile or smartphone: in fact, every wireless communication device.
A cab driver stared at his car radio, frowning: her screams were coming from his and every car radio. Drivers standing in the street opened their doors to hear better. But it was not just transmitting via car radios and mobile phones. The woman’s screams were being transmitted through store radios too. People all over Times Square looked up and around.
‘Look. Up there.’
Serena had seen it. At exactly the same moment, every one of the sixty-eight illuminated billboards from one end of Times Square to the other went blank. Completely blank. The brightly lit advertisements were gone, as was the live news coverage. The stock market ticker-tape had stopped rushing around One Times Square and the NASDAQ building walls were their natural grey colour, no longer projecting colourful messages to passers-by.
‘Must be a power failure,’ said a man in a thick coat.
‘Can’t be. Power’s on everywhere else,’ said the man with him.
Then, in unison, every billboard shot into life, displaying exactly the same image.
Chapter 72
On every billboard from One Times Square to Two Times Square, which spans five blocks, appears one image: an African woman wailing in agony, her feverish face filling every screen.
The camera zooms out to reveal the semi-darkness of her impoverished hut. She is laying on a ragged blanket on a mud floor, a man holding her bony hand. The camera pans down her body to her legs, which have swollen like tree trunks. The skin has cracked, forming gaping wounds that weep a yellow pus. A hand swats uselessly at flies hovering above the ruptures.
Next to Serena, a woman raises her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’ A man behind her mutters, ‘What the hell is this? What’s going on?’
The voiceover, which Serena knows is Tracey’s, says simply ‘Zimbabwe, Gweru District. A new deadly virus. No cure.’
Next, everyone sees the interior of a run-down hospital, with patchy whitewashed walls and a concrete floor. An emaciated man lies on a bed, shivering with a fever, his dark skin has a yellow hue. His breathing is raspy and his eyes bulge with fear. Tracey’s voice says, ‘The new hepatitis S virus. No cure.’
The camera pans out, showing men, women and children with that same yellow hue. Some are in beds. Most are on the hospital floor. One woman clutches her abdomen in pain. ‘Hepatitis S broke out here before it was first diagnosed in the USA. But the outbreak was kept quiet.’
On each and every screen, there is a close-up of a woman’s black hands unwrapping a bundle of cloth to reveal a newborn, stiff with rigor mortis. The camera zooms in to show the baby’s tiny heart resting on her chest, already fly-blown. Tracey says, ‘Born with her heart outside her chest cavity.’
Close to Serena, a woman with two little girls, wrapped in matching woolly hats and scarves, tells them: ‘Don’t look. This is disgusting. Stop looking, Jamima.’
Then an image of a two-year-old boy, whom his moth
er hides under a blanket. A voice off-camera speaks in her native dialect, coaxing her to lift the cloth, which she does, exposing her dead baby, its sex indistinguishable. The infant resembles a doll; the area between the legs smooth and flat, having no genitals or anus. ‘Died of severe deformities,’ says Tracey.
Apart from the occasional murmur and distant noise of a siren, Times Square is hushed. People are staring, shocked and horrified by the images they are seeing. Some shake their heads. Some cover their eyes. Some are crying. Serena hears a woman vomiting. Even the television presenters remain silent; their cameramen are recording everything.
Tracey now focuses the camera upon herself. The sky is bright behind her and her short platinum-blonde hair is combed flat, not spiky as usual, and her pixie-like face looks drawn and tired. She wears a loose white shirt and linen trousers. Behind her are some mud huts with thatch roofs and, to her left, a whitewashed building.
‘Who’s that?’ a woman whispers behind Serena.
Tracey speaks.
‘So, who are these people and why are they suffering such terrible health problems? They all live in the Gweru district of the Midlands province of Zimbabwe, and each and every one of them participated in scientific food trials conducted by a well-known biotech company between 2006 and 2011.
‘My name is Tracey Pollack and I’m Science Correspondent for The Post in London. This is a true story about 1400 men, women and children who were used as human guinea pigs. Seven hundred were a control group and did not eat any GM food. The other 700 people were used to test the effects of a new range of genetically engineered plant crops, all of which contain the Koch Bottlebrush Virus, or KBv for short. The company carrying out those trials is Gene-Asis Biotech, the world’s largest producer of genetically engineered plants and animals.’
A wave of recognition rumbles up and down Times Square. Some turn to look at the looming black building that is Gene-Asis’ head office.
‘Did these Zimbabweans participate knowingly in this experiment? No, they did not. They were told they were receiving food and agricultural aid. Have they received any financial or medical support from the company that caused them such terrible suffering? No, they have not. Were the results of these food trials ever made public? No, they most certainly were not. In fact, Gene-Asis has done everything in its power to prevent its publication.’
‘She’s gotta be kidding, right?’ Serena hears a cab driver say. A tourist replies, ‘How could they!’
‘Is this a movie trailer?’ a waitress asks, chewing gum.
Tracey continues. ‘Let’s take a look at the lives of these people before they were experimented upon. Here is some footage taken by a missionary doctor, and his wife, in 2005, in Mutenda village.’
Tracey is gone and in her place is a slightly shaky image of some Zimbabwean women laughing at the camera as they grind grains, using a long, heavy wooden pestle and mortar. Children run around, playing, and when they realise they’re being filmed, they stand shyly staring, huddled together.
A woman picks carrots in her field and proudly holds them up to the camera.
A white doctor with a blond moustache is listening through a stethoscope to the chest of a local boy, who is transfixed by the camera. The boy grins timidly.
‘Michael Caldwell, a highly respected American doctor and missionary, worked in the Mutenda Community Clinic. He instigated health checks for each of the 1400 people who later took part in Gene-Asis’ experiment. These records are still on file. They are as follows …’
Back on every billboard screen is the image of the woman whose mysterious virus has caused her legs to swell up and weep pus. Tracey’s voice says simply, ‘Prior to 2006: healthy.’
Then, in a run-down hospital, again the man dying of hepatitis S. She cuts to footage of the same man playing soccer on a dustbowl pitch in Mutenda, with the voice-over, ‘Prior to 2006, this man suffered only from low blood pressure.’
She cuts to a close-up of a woman’s hands unwrapping a bundle of cloth to reveal the dead newborn whose heart lies outside her chest. Then she moves to some footage of this same woman, with three other children giggling from behind her legs. Tracey’s voice says, ‘Her three other children, born prior to the food trials, were all healthy.’
Finally, there is the image of the mother uncovering her dead baby with no genitals or anus. ‘Dr Caldwell noted in 2005 only two instances of child deformity in the Gweru district. Today, there are thirty-one. This is a staggering twenty-two per cent of births. Unfortunately for the people, the Caldwells were moved to Ethiopia by their mission in 2006. So, the key question is—what caused these viruses and birth defects, and are they linked? The answer rests in the palm of my hand.’
The camera pans to Tracey’s pale hands, which are cupped and through which seeds trickle.
‘These are Gene-Asis’ wheat seeds. For five years, all their bread was made from this wheat.’
The camera moves to another pair of black-skinned hands, cupping some more seeds.
‘These are corn. For five years, they ate only this genetically engineered corn.’
The camera is now pointing at some fields and, as Tracey moves through them, she speaks: ‘In fact, every last grain, fruit and vegetable these people ate were grown from Gene-Asis’ genetically engineered seeds containing the Koch Bottlebrush Virus. The very same seeds that produce the grains, fruits and vegetables you and I eat every day.’
A murmur, much louder than before, reverberates through Times Square. Feet shuffle uncomfortably. Eyes open wide. More people speak, betraying their concern.
‘What? Did she say we eat this stuff?’ a FedEx man asks.
‘That could happen to us?’
‘In an incredible act of corporate greed and a crime against humanity, in 2012 Gene-Asis released for sale these very same seeds to farmers around the world. They are called Supercrop 13, and over three billion people have been consuming them.’
‘No way!’ someone yells.
‘This can’t be true. It just wouldn’t happen.’
‘Oh my God. I’m going to die,’ a woman gibbers.
Tracey goes on: ‘This begs the question—why has the developed world not yet seen such alarming birth defects? The answer is, we have, but in lesser numbers, because not everyone consumes GM. Hep S? It has killed many thousands worldwide. Because the developed world’s diet contains less than fifty per cent GM, there have been fewer outbreaks but this virus is contagious and spreading fast. It is well known that Gene-Asis’ stated goal is to make our diet one hundred per cent GM by 2025. If that happens, we could suffer the same fate as the Gweru people.’
‘Jesus!’ mutters a woman nearby.
‘How do we know that Gene-Asis Biotech conducted these trials? I have here a letter from a Mr Waite, an employee of Gene-Asis Biotech, to the regional Bureau of Agriculture in Gweru city, Zimbabwe, confirming the distribution locations of the so-called agricultural aid.’
The camera pans in so that the logo on the letterhead is clearly visible: an indigo-blue image of the earth, as if seen from space, sprouting from the top of which is a tiny green seedling. Behind this, shines an orange sunrise. It is indisputably the Gene-Asis logo.
Next appearing on screen is a truck, from the back of which large sacks are being unloaded.
‘This is footage taken by an aid worker in July 2008, showing sacks of Gene-Asis seeds being delivered to Mutenda.’
Clearly visible is the Gene-Asis logo on each sack, which stays frozen on screen.
‘And I have an audio recording of Dr Fergus McPherson, who was the professor of genetics conducting these food trials in Zimbabwe. He is speaking to his colleague Dr Philip Munroe, the epidemiologist in charge, expressing his grave concern about the research results. At the time, both men were employed by Gene-Asis. Neither Dr McPherson nor Dr Munroe knew they were being recorded. Dr McPherson speaks first:
‘This is terrible, Phil. Terrible. Horizontal gene transfer has happened in all eighty-three of
the deceased. KBv has to be the trigger. It’s switching on centuries-old viruses. We have no immunity to them. And the birth defects are alarming. Somehow, KBv is screwing with the foetus’ DNA.’
‘Fergus, you’re getting carried away. All we have to do is block the transfer of the foreign genes into human cells. We can find an answer.’
‘No, no. This can’t be released.’
‘Fergus. Keep your voice down. You’re being alarmist.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Phil! You’ve seen the evidence. We have to make Gene-Asis listen. They’ve got to keep these seeds off the market.’
‘Fergus, you don’t realise what you’re saying. It’s like asking Microsoft to stop selling software. They simply won’t do it. Microsoft patch their vulnerabilities. That’s all we need to do—come up with a patch to prevent horizontal gene transfer.’
‘That could take years. And, in the meantime, people suffer. There simply cannot be a Supercrop 13.’
‘Good luck, mate, ’cause you’ll never win.’
‘I’ll need your support, Phil.’
‘Fergus, I’ll verify everything in your report, but if they tell you not to publish it and you try to, then, I’m sorry, I can’t afford to lose my job. I’ve a wife and kids, and expensive school fees.’
‘Damn the job. It’s immoral. We’re not feeding the world—we’re poisoning it.’
‘Shush. Did you hear that?’
The audio recording stops there and Tracey speaks.
‘Dr McPherson tried to persuade Gene-Asis to stop production of GM foods with KBv. He was fired. You are about to see a recording of Dr McPherson at the Mutenda clinic, taken by one of his team. Gene-Asis believed this footage destroyed. The young woman’s name is Shoorai.’
The camera is filming inside the run-down hospital. Dr McPherson, in a lab coat, hovers at the side of a young woman. The bed is metal and the mattress bare. She is in labour. A wrinkled walnut of a woman is holding up a blanket to give her some privacy. Shoorai pants a few words at the old woman, who responds with a nod.
