Immunity: Apocalypse Weird

by E. E. Giorgi

  So there you have it.

  The Lab.

  Or Labs, as everybody else seemed to call it.

  * TWO *

  The first reported case had been in Boston twelve months earlier. A mother had found her eight-year-old son in a pool of blood. Despite the mother’s initial fears, the blood wasn’t the boy’s. It was from his pet rabbit. The kid had slaughtered the animal with a knife and then proceeded to slash the couch, stab the curtains, and destroy everything that came across his path. As soon as the mother stepped into the room, the boy brandished the knife at her, too, slashing her stomach open.

  The doctors thought the boy had contracted rabies. Then they hypothesized it was meningitis. Yet, the boy came back negative to every possible virus, bacterium, or toxin.

  One week later, the headlines across the country were riddled with reports of murders and suicides. A woman in Portland, Oregon, shot her husband and her three kids, then jumped off the roof of her house. No previous history of mental problems or violence. A teacher of thirty years threatened her classroom with a knife and was about to gut one of her students if a security guard hadn’t stopped her in time. A tractor-trailer driver in California switched lanes while on the freeway and killed six people. It soon became a pandemic of unprecedented proportions, except what was spreading wasn’t a common illness. It was pure, homicidal madness. They called it AVP—acquired violent psychosis, and aside from the name, nobody could understand what was going on. These were regular folks, moms, dads, husbands, wives, kids—all going insane and killing one another for no apparent reason other than sudden, inexplicable schizophrenia.

  And then the breakthrough came, the one common thread across all cases of sudden insanity: they had all contracted the flu, a rare—until now, that is—influenza strain, one that had doctors worried for decades due to its highly zoonotic potential. For years, H7N7 had infected pigs, birds, cows and bats, and finally it had found its human form.

  Yet, people didn’t go crazy right away. The virus didn’t seem to be any different than all other flu strains: people came down with a fever, runny nose, and a bad headache for a few days. And then everything returned to normal. Until madness struck. Randomly, or so it seemed. No pattern, no previous history of unpredictable behavior, no psychosis, nothing. Ordinary people turned into the most violent of serial killers.

  The CDC deployed response teams all over the country. Hospitals opened up quarantine wards and H7N7 test kits were distributed everywhere. It was already too late. Because of the time lag between the actual flu and the onset of the AVP symptoms, so many had already contracted the virus without realizing it.

  And then, two weeks ago, the nuclear explosion off the California coast happened, cutting communications across the country and sending the population into an even deeper panic.

  Insanity on top of insanity, Anu thought, staring at the H7N7 particle rotating on her computer screen. The human race was succumbing to a tiny virus, and what do they all do? Terrorists take over. Nuclear weapons go off. The whole world collapses, instead of coming together to fight this.

  Anu blew up the image on her computer and squinted at the screen. On the surface, there was nothing unusual about this H7N7 strain. She could clearly see the clusters of 7 hemagglutinin interspersed with the 7 neuraminidase, a combination that made this particular strain of influenza virus so prone to jump from one species to another.

  Which is what makes it so virulent.

  But that was just the surface. There had to be something that made this virus special, so special that the symptoms didn’t stop with the usual runny nose or chest congestion. People went crazy. Completely crazy.

  The last CDC statistics before all communications had been cut reported three million active infections in the United States alone. They had lost count of the deaths, either directly attributable to the body shutting down from the infection, or to the side effects from the viral craziness: deadly car crushes, murders, mass shootings—all because of one tiny particle of influenza virus causing the brain to go berserk.

  Her phone chimed. She tapped on the screen and ignored it.

  If only we had more data.

  And more people working on this.

  But they had all left after the nuke explosion. Wimps.

  I’m not giving up. Even if I have to die fighting this, I’m not. Giving. Up.

  Her phone kept ringing, louder and more insistently, if that’s even possible.

  She picked it up and snarled, “What?”

  “Dr. Sharma, this is Sergeant First Class Martinez. We need you to report to the South Gate Entry Control Point right away. We’re detaining an individual who claims he's reporting to work for you. Bring with you any and all paperwork you have on him in order to issue the temporary permit.”

  Anu blinked several times before her mind finally clicked.

  It must be my computer guru guy. He’s finally here!

  The man was three days late, talk about taking his sweet time.

  “Yes, yes,” Anu blurted into the phone speaker. “Let him in, I’ll meet him at the badge office.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Dr. Sharma. We’ll have to detain him until you show up with the paperwork. He remains here until then.”

  Of course. Everything’s changed after the nuke explosion. “Fine. I’ll come right over, just give me a minute, ok?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Good day.”

  She exhaled, annoyed at the interruption.

  These military guys all over the place. They don’t get what it means to shut the whole world off for a good hour of thinking.

  She opened a drawer and fumbled through all the stacks of paperwork she’d had to fill out just so an ordinary guy who happened to know a whole lot about super computing could get a high level clearance to work with her on H7N7. It could all very well be in electronic format, but no, the Lab had to be so stubbornly stuck in the past when it came to bureaucracy. And of course, now that the government was supposedly under terroristic attack, the bureaucratic load had tripled and quadrupled. The computer guru guy was in for a fun close encounter with government management.

  * * *

  Anu gave the guy a good look over, blinked, and then seized him up again.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  David Ashberg, PhD, computer scientist, his ref card read. Tall, ash-blonde, the start of a beer belly sprouting above his waistband, sun freckles, sand all over his face and hair, torn jeans, and, Oh-my-god that shirt, what the hell was he thinking showing up in a pin-up girl Tee?

  And that stink—what the hell is it, horse manure?

  “Hey, Doc,” he said as soon as she stepped inside the security booth by the South Gate. He stretched out his hand, freckled and cracked and dirty. “I’m Dave.”

  Claire, the big nurse in charge of all new visits, whisked him away before they would—had to—shake hands.

  Thank goodness for Claire’s prompt reflexes.

  She shoved him on a chair, wrapped a cuff around his arm and stuck a thermometer in his ear.

  “What the—what’s all this?”

  Anu handed the folder with all the paperwork to one of the security guards who marched off to match everything with David’s passport, official offer letter, and certificates. Surely the guy didn’t forget any of his paperwork, did he?

  She leaned against one of the desks and watched Claire carry on her initial assessment.

  “Preventive measures, Dr. Ashberg,” Anu explained, coldly. “There’s a pandemic going on out there, in case you haven’t heard.”

  “It’s Dave.” He winced as Claire pumped air into the sphygmomanometer cuff. “Of course I heard. Isn’t that why you called me out here? To work on the zombie flu?”

  Anu swallowed and bit her lower lip. Hard. She refrained from uttering another word for the time being, but this was not a good start. Not at all.

  I can’t believe this is all I could get to work on a multi million dollar project. A guy in a pi
n-up girl shirt who believes in zombies.

  The security guard came back with the temporary visitor permit. Thank goodness all the papers were in order. Claire also declared the guy healthy and fit, so now it was up to Anu to escort him to the badge office and introduce him to the project.

  Or maybe take him to his room, first. The guy could use a shower for sure.

  They walked up the street to the first building in the complex, Anu confidently striding her short legs, and the big guy wheezing behind her.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she said. “The low oxygen, I mean. Takes a few days.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Had a real rough time getting here. Had to leave my car with an Indian guy down the hill. Ran out of gas. And water,” he added, licking his cracked lips.

  She gave him a sideways glance. Maybe she’d been too hard on him. And then her eyes fell on the awful shirt again and immediately looked away.

  No I haven’t.

  But then she plucked a paper cup out of the dispenser at the badge office and offered him water while they waited for the new employee request to be processed. He drained it, then got up and refilled it four times. She thought of pointing to the bathroom in case he wanted to wash up his face for the badge picture. Then she shrugged the thought off, given that guys never bother with stuff like that anyway.

  Melinda, at the badge desk, bulged her eyes at the two of them. Anu shrugged, and Melinda went ahead and took the picture anyway.

  Don’t complain, girl, Anu thought. I’m the one who’s stuck working with him.

  He picked up the badge fresh out of the printer and stared at it like a kid with a new toy. “Sweet,” he said, oblivious to the ghastly look captured by the camera. “So, uh. When do you want to start? Cuz I could use a little shower first. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  She shook her head. “Oh. Course not. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”

  He picked up his duffel bag, slid on his backpack on and grinned. “Great. And you can tell me all about the zombie flu on the way.”

  She stiffened and this time she did not let it slide. “It’s a mutated form of the H7N7 flu virus,” she snarled. “That’s what we call it around here. Zombies belong in science fiction and B movies.”

  She spun on her heels and shouldered through the double doors.

  “Whoa,” he called, catching up with her outside. “I’m sorry. That’s”—he wheezed, his breath short again. “That’s what everyone in California calls it—the zombie bug. I mean, seriously, you had to see the stuff going on over there.”

  “I don’t believe any of it,” she cut him short.

  “And that’s fine. I mean, you’re free to believe or not believe in whatever you want. But I tell you, the stuff going on out there—you gotta see it to believe it.”

  He smiled amiably, but somehow that didn’t make him any more likable.

  One block down the road, they stopped in front of the next building, a concrete structure at least ten stories high with no visible windows and a red metal door guarded by a call box and a badge reader. She taught him how to slide his badge to unlock it and then handed more paperwork to the guard sitting at the reception desk.

  He’s from California, she thought. I bet the Lab looks like post-war military camp to him.

  It was, in a way. Especially now that the security had tripled and half of the staff members had fled, making military members most of the in house population. The New Mexico Army National Guard had taken over the Feynman building and turned it into their own campus headquarters. Three Infantry Units patrolled the premises and the land around it.

  “This is the Oppenheimer building,” Anu said, as they took the elevator up to the sixth floor. She leaned into a corner as far away from him as possible, trying not to be too obvious about it. She didn’t try too hard.

  “Looks like a dorm,” David mumbled.

  “Yeah, that’s the way things are around here.”

  He had to slide his badge to unlock the door to his small, studio apartment. That too was very much dorm-like, but this time he didn’t make any comment on the looks of the place. He tossed his bag and backpack on the sofa bed, stretched and said, “Great. I’ll take a quick shower and then we can talk.”

  She stood by the door and wrote down her office number on a piece of paper. “It’ll have to be quick. Three minutes is all you get.”

  His eyes widened. “Three minutes to discuss the whole project?”

  Anu gave him a hard stare. “No. Three minutes to shower,” she said, matter-of-factly, and handed him the piece of paper with her number. “We’re in severe drought. Hasn’t rained a single drop in forty months.”

  He took the note from her hand, his jaw still hung in disbelief. “Hasn’t rained much in California, either. But we can still shower as long as we need to.”

  “Right. Which is why we don’t have any water left out here. You guys used it all up already.” Her eyes fell once again on his shirt. “And please do change that Tee. It’s offensive.”

  He dropped his chin and pulled the hem. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

  Anu inhaled. Clueless. The guy is clueless.

  “Call me when you’re ready to discuss the project,” she said, closed the door, and walked away.

  * THREE *

  David stared at his screen and blew air out of his mouth. “Compilation error. Uninitialized object on line 239,” read the last line on his terminal window. The cursor at the end of line blinked.

  David looked over his shoulder. No noise came through the open office door. No talking down the hallway, no steps, no clacking of keyboards.

  What the hell.

  He opened up iTunes and played Fistful of Metal, one of his old favorites. The loud guitar and crazy drumming recharged his energy level.

  Two days at the Lab, and his new job was already turning out to be more challenging than he’d anticipated. No, it wasn’t the task itself. It was the place, dammit. Military and scientists, what a perfect combination. The former were everywhere, armed to the teeth and looking threatening. The latter didn’t look threatening at all but were a bunch of unsociable, unsmiling, sad people who could only talk about work.

  And that woman he had to work under… his new boss.

  Sheesh.

  Chastised on his first day over a stupid shirt? Get a life.

  What was offensive about my shirt? he’d asked her once again, after he’d showered—record shower indeed, not even the time to completely rinse off all the soap—shaved and changed.

  You’re wearing a half-naked woman on your chest! You’re basically objectifying women, turning them into sexual objects.

  He couldn’t believe his years. It’s a cartoon, for heaven’s sake. A cartoon.

  Yeah, that wasn’t a great start.

  He sighed, fixed the typo on line 239, then ran the compiler again. Through the computer speakers, Neil Turbin screamed from the top of his lungs about conquering, devouring and slaughtering. It made David think of home, of whatever was left of it.

  He opened up the browser and checked the latest updates on his newsfeed. His cell phone wasn’t even allowed inside this particular building of the Lab, but at least the Internet was still working here at the Lab. Alex had texted him a couple of times—he could now read the messages in his email inbox. Max and everybody else were doing fine. They’d all fled the Bay Area and parked themselves at some cousin’s house who lived near the border with Nevada. Latest text was from three days ago. David wished he had more recent news, but he’d be hard pressed if Alex had any reception at all out there where they were camped right now.

  No news is good news, he consoled himself.

  The updates from anywhere in the world were sketchy. A Google search reassured him that no more nukes had been detonated in or near California, but whenever he tried to click on any of the links in the newsfeed, the browser got stuck loading forever. A few of the headlines seemed to hint at threats of a third world war flaring up,
but again those links turned out to be inaccessible. Yet, here at the Lab people seemed to be completely oblivious to anything happening outside the barbed wire perimeter. They all carried on with their research as if it were the most important thing in the whole entire world, whether or not said world was about to end.

  Maybe it is the most important thing.

  I mean, the zombie flu and everything.

  Maybe it’d been some infected madman that had detonated the nuke outside the Bay. Was a vaccine going to be enough to suddenly stop the raving madness?

  I need a break.

  He swiveled away from his desk, grabbed his wallet, and sauntered down the hallway. The vending machine was pretty empty. Just a packet of peanuts that looked as old as the jeep he’d left by Nawat’s place. He checked his watch. Almost noon. Nah, it’s lunchtime anyway.

  Back in Oakland, his buddy Sasha would come sweep the offices screaming out of his lungs, “Ding, ding, ding, lunchtime.” They’d all stroll to the cafeteria in T-shirts—and they could wear whatever the fuck they wanted on those T-shirts—and flip-flops, tanned faces and a blue endless sky smiling above them.

  Man, he missed home. And most of all, he missed not knowing what was going on back home.

  He missed his dog Max, his friends, the nights drinking beer at the bar and getting drunk just for the heck of it, laughing off the last break-up, the occasional speeding ticket, the stupid election results. Laughing off life.

  David poked his head in one of the few open offices that hadn’t been vacated and held up his badge showing his name. “Hey, I’m Dave.”

  The guy looked up from his computer screen and nodded.

  “Wanna go grab a bite?”

  “Already had lunch.”