[2001] Public Enemy Zero

by Andrew Mayne

  “My name is Mitchell Roberts.”

  “Hello, Mr. Roberts. We’ve been waiting for your call. I’ll put you right through.”

  Finally some courtesy, thought Mitchell.

  “Mr. Roberts, I’m so glad you called.” The booming voice had a calming effect on Mitchell. “It looks like you’ve had a bad couple of days.”

  “Not as bad as the people who got hurt, sir.”

  “That’s true. I just want you to know that I’m on your side. Everyone is on your side. Especially after the way the Keystone cops handled it today.” He paused. “Yes, I’m talking to you buffoons listening in. I’d remind you that I’ve got attorney-client privilege if that would make a difference. Either way, they can hear what I’m going to tell you anyways. I don’t want you to step a foot off that pier until they give you full immunity for everything that’s happened.”

  “That sounds great. Can you get them to agree to that?”

  “My office has already been talking to the attorney general. We pointed out that if they wanted to charge you for acting in self-defense then they would be obligated to charge half the agents on the bridge for attempted murder,” he said.

  “Yeah, but they couldn’t help it. There’s some kind of rage virus thing,” said Mitchell.

  “That’s exactly the point. Either they acknowledge that there’s something real that’s out of your control and agree to not charge you for trying to save your own skin or they say its hogwash and have to try two dozen FBI agents for attempted murder.”

  Smith went over a few more legal points with Mitchell and then got off the phone to speak to the head of the CDC, the governor’s office and the U.S. attorney. He laid out his legal arguments and made the case that for everyone involved it was best to have Mitchell as a willing patient. He pointed out that he could get an injunction against them using any blood or tissue samples without his consent. And without those, they put their investigation into jeopardy.

  After they agreed in theory, he called Mitchell back to tell him that the immunity offer was only relating to the events of the past three days. He explained that they wanted to keep legal options available in the event Mitchell was found to be part of some larger plot.

  “Is three days going to be enough?” asked Smith.

  Mitchell stopped to do the math. “My first encounter was a girl four days ago. She just ran and screamed at me. I just ran away.”

  “I’ll include that,” said Smith. “Is there anything else?”

  Mitchell realized that Smith, ever the lawyer, was giving him the opportunity to ask for help if he was actually tied into some kind of terrorist plot. “No, that’s fine. If they can give me this and make sure I’m going to be safe, they’ll have my full cooperation.”

  Smith called back to say that paperwork was being drafted on the immunity. “The next issue is your care. I’ve asked that you be admitted to a private hospital of your choice, but they’re insisting you be taken to the CDC. I don’t think we can get them to budge much on that.”

  Mitchell thought about that. “Wait, what if they can’t cure me? Then what happens?”

  “I’m going to have a trustee appointed to make sure that they provide the best care possible for you. They won’t be allowed to just lock you away in some dark room.”

  Mitchell hadn’t contemplated the idea that he had something that might not go away. What if people tried to kill him for the rest of his life? The only safe place would be locked away like a virulent disease.

  He still didn’t have any answers about who was trying to shoot him. Terrorists trying to cover their tracks? A renegade part of the government?

  After another hour, Smith called him, “You’ll be allowed unrestricted use of communications. I’ve got three Nobel laureates who have agreed to act as trustees. Amnesty International and the Red Cross have offered to oversee your treatment.”

  Mitchell’s appreciation for the well-connected lawyer grew every time he called.

  Behind him the sun was beginning to lower in the horizon. He’d finished the last of his steak an hour ago. The final step was for a courier in a spacesuit to bring him the papers to sign.

  A voice came over his radio. “For us to allow the courier to come out to you, we need you to disable your explosive device attached to the gas tank.”

  Mitchell still had Smith on the phone. He told him to proceed. Mitchell climbed down to the boat to pull the flare gun out of the gas tank. A sudden wave of paranoia overcame him. He pulled out the phone to call Rookman.

  “Rookman, I’ve been in the middle of negotiating and haven’t listened to anything on the news in the last few hours. What have they said?” Mitchell was afraid that it was too good to be true and the pardons and Smith’s smooth tactics were all an act and that he was just talking to an impersonator.

  “They’ve been saying that Smith was making a deal for you,” said Rookman.

  “Should I go along with it?”

  “Listen, kid, I don’t think they’re going to try anything more today. But I wouldn’t put it past them to try to find a new way to screw you later on. When, not if, they do, scream. Make a big noise.”

  “Thank you,” said Mitchell.

  Mitchell unplugged the empty flare gun from the gas tank and threw it onto the floor of the cockpit. He climbed back up the stairs and sat down.

  The voice on the radio spoke. “Please sign the documents as soon as you can so we can get you proper care.”

  A few minutes later, a man in a blue hazmat suit walked down the pier. He set down a sheaf of papers and a pen on the table. Mitchell looked through the documents. There were two copies of the pardon, two more saying that the government was responsible for any liability claims made against Mitchell and another document underneath them with an X next to where he was supposed to sign. He read the first few paragraphs and then picked up the cell phone. He gave the courier a look and the man stepped out of range.

  “Mr. Smith, why is there a document here about an agreement to limited liability?”

  “That’s to make sure the government is responsible for any liability claims against you,” replied Smith.

  “Yeah, but there’s two here. One is different than the other.”

  “What? Read it to me,” said Smith. Smith listened and then blurted out, “Those assholes. They want you to give up your right to sue them.”

  “To sue them?”

  “Of course. We’re going to file papers on your behalf tomorrow,” replied Smith.

  “This isn’t about money.”

  “It’s about leverage, Mitchell.”

  “What do I do?” asked Mitchell.

  “Tear it up.”

  Mad Mitch tore the document up and then signed the others. The courier looked down at the torn-up document and gave Mitchell a wink. He turned and walked back down the pier.

  Ten minutes later, the voice came on the radio. “We’re bringing a container down to the pier for you to get into. It’s airtight with its own oxygen supply. From there, we’re going to bring you to a temporary staging area to look at your wounds. Then we’re going to transport you via plane to the CDC in Atlanta. Are you ready?”

  Mitchell called Smith to get a reassurance that it was safe to proceed. Smith told him to cooperate and that he would meet him at the staging area -- behind glass, of course.

  Mitchell told the voice on the radio that he was ready. At the far end of the pier, he saw four men in yellow hazmat suits push a larger stretcher out onto the pier. When it got closer, Mitchell got a good look at it.

  It was small plastic bed that looked like a sled with a plastic covering over the top. To Mitchell it looked like a glass coffin.

  The men lifted the clear top off the stretcher. One of them spoke. “Mr. Mitchell, if you would please have a seat here, we can make sure you’re securely fastened inside.

  Mitchell eyed the container warily. In his mind, he’d been hoping for something a little bigger, like an airtight limousine. Already mildl
y claustrophobic, the added paranoia wasn’t helping him any.

  The lead medical technician spoke to him. “After we take you to the staging area, we can give you a sedative for the trip.”

  Mitchell just shrugged and got on the stretcher. Nobody protested when he put the phone in his pocket. Another technician fastened an air mask over his mouth. After he put his legs up, they covered him with a blanket. The lid came down and he could hear the sound of it sealing. The lead medic gave Mitchell a thumbs-up. Mitchell nodded weakly.

  He’d gone from a man on the run to letting them put him into a box smaller than the coffin he felt bound for. The medics began pushing the clear coffin down the pier and toward a large van designed for transporting hazardous materials. Mitchell tried to calm himself by accepting the fact that everything was out of his hands now. No more running. No more seeing people get hurt.

  In the back of his mind were a hundred different paranoid thoughts. He should have asked for Secret Service protection. He should have demanded a 24-hour live Internet feed showing the world his treatment. Damn, he could have been streaming the whole thing. Overhead he could see news helicopters still flying around. What happened when he was put inside the van or locked away for treatment? Why didn’t he just aim the boat for the ocean and keep going? He’d have to have felt safer than he did at that point.

  They finally reached the van. The medics slid the casket into the sealed-off back area head first. The wheels were locked into grooves on the floor. The first medic, the one who gave him the thumbs-up, stepped inside. Another medic began to step into the back but was waved off by him. That was odd, thought Mitchell. You’d think they’d have that kind of thing sorted out. The doors were shut. Mitchell looked around the interior of the van and then at the one man inside of it with him. He was trapped.

  52

  Restricted by the glass casing, Mitchell tried to turn his head to look at the man in the hazmat suit sitting just past his shoulders. It was hard enough to make out a face through the glass shield of the helmet without Mitchell’s own scared face reflecting back at him from inside the plastic dome that trapped him.

  Mitchell could feel the van begin to move. He thought about shouting for help but knew no one would hear his muffled voice through the respirator and the van’s thick walls. The man in the hazmat suit slid across the metal bench so Mitchell could more clearly see him. The man looked out the small window at the rear of the van and then back toward him. He placed a gloved hand on Mitchell’s casket.

  “Mitchell,” said the man’s voice from behind the ventilator in his mask. “I guess the only way to explain things is to just come right out and tell you.” The man paused. “When they get you to the facility, they’re going to find out that there’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Nothing wrong with me? Was this guy crazy, thought Mitchell.

  The man continued. “And then it’s going to be even worse for you. People will begin asking questions. Questions that others don’t want answered. And that’s why they want to kill you.”

  Mitchell’s eyes bulged behind his own oxygen mask. Was this man an assassin? He ran his fingers along the edge of the container, trying to find some way to crack the seal and get out.

  The man looked down at Mitchell struggling. He reached into a pouch and pulled something out and set it on top of the plastic casket. Mitchell’s eyes tried to focus on the object just inches above his head. It was a screwdriver.

  “You’d need something like this to get yourself out. But I don’t suppose you have one on you. No matter.” The man leaned back and looked at a watch strapped to the outside of his suit. “We have a little time.”

  Mitchell looked down at his feet. He braced his hands against the side of the container and began to kick. Maybe it wouldn’t set him free. At best it would attract the driver’s attention.

  The man in the suit put another hand on the casket and shook his head as he looked down at Mitchell. “Mitchell, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”

  Mitchell stopped kicking and looked up at the man. “Who are you?”

  “I’m part of this, Mitchell, but I never wanted to be a part of this.” He tapped the casket. “I’m a doctor. I’m part of a group that spends its time worrying about worst-case scenarios and trying to prevent them.”

  “Like this?” asked Mitchell.

  The man shook his head. “Much, much worse, Mitchell. This was a side effect. A mistake that happens when people act without thinking. When they do things out of fear. We’re at war Mitchell.”

  Mitchell tried to look into the man’s eyes to read if he was being sincere or just trying to calm him down so he didn’t alert the driver. “At war with who?”

  “The future, Mitchell. It has many faces, many threats. We take tiny pieces of information, and from those tiny pieces, we try to extract a bigger picture. Sometimes that picture is more horrible than you can imagine. When that happens, you have to act. You’re here because certain people decided to act in a certain way. I told them they were too motivated by fear. But it didn’t matter. What they saw was too terrifying to act any other way.”

  Mitchell was silent as he tried to make sense of what the man was saying.

  “A few months ago, we found something. A virus, basically a modified version of a pneumonia-causing virus, the kind of virus everybody has in their body but that their immune system keeps in check. But this virus had something special in it, a set of instructions that would flip a switch in your body that’s been dormant for a hundred million years.

  “Ever wonder how animals can tell family members apart? It’s in the pheromones. Chemical fingerprints. Everybody has them. They’re what make us want to fuck. They’re what make women jealous when they smell another female on their mate. They’re what make men want to kill each other in bars filled with available women.

  “This virus had been engineered to make people want to kill each other when they smelled other human pheromones. Any kind. It turned on the fight-or-flight response in our brains and turned us into reptiles trying to rip the throat out of any other animal with that same chemical fingerprint.

  “The virus is highly contagious and we knew it could spread quickly if it got loose. In a few weeks every man and woman on this planet would be trying to murder each other with their hands and teeth.”

  “Who would make something like that?” asked Mitchell.

  “The Russians, the Chinese, us, maybe the Indians. It could be something an ally made and it got loose. The problem was that we knew it was out there. Somebody had it. And we had to do something about it. That’s when some clever people came up with an idea for how to inoculate us against it. We’d heard that Chinese party officials were getting vaccinated for some mysterious reason and we had to act.

  “The problem is that the virus works even in its weakened form. So we needed to create something that acted just like it and prevent it from infecting in the first place and, if it did, override the chemical triggers it sent to the brain. That’s when we had the idea, my idea, to change the pheromone trigger from a general one to a specific one. Instead of targeting any human, only one unique pheromone could set it off.”

  The man gestured toward Mitchell. “And that, my friend, is where you came in. It was a simple mistake. A mislabeled vial here, a truncated database, I don’t know the specifics, but I can draw you a picture.

  “You donated blood three years ago on your college campus. A sample of it ended up in a lab looking for pheromone triggers in blood. Yours wasn’t special, no offense, it was just a control sample. From your blood we sequenced the part of your DNA that coded for one of your unique pheromones. Some we all share, others are one-in-a-sextillion combinations that will never occur in a billion years of human history. Instead of creating a random one to plug into our counter-virus, we fucked up. We used yours.

  “A few weeks ago, we got the go-ahead to covertly inoculate the population. We began spreading the virus in subways, restaurants, everywh
ere. Its symptoms were so mild we were able to run under the cover of a convenient flu outbreak. I suspect the only person who got noticeably sick was you. Your body didn’t know what to make of it. That’s why you were sick at home. That might be why you’ve lasted this long.

  “And so there’s the problem. If other people get a look at you, they’re going to realize that you’re perfectly healthy. We’re the ones who have been infected. We’ve covered our tracks so far by modifying gene libraries of pneumonia viruses and made sure that epidemiology reports are filtered through friendly hands. But it’s a small group of people trying to maintain a large conspiracy. That can’t last for very long if you’re alive.

  “That’s why they’re going to come for you. They don’t see themselves as murderers. So they won’t come at you with guns and knives. They’re doctors. They’ll kill you via committee. A group of people will prescribe a treatment for a condition that doesn’t exist and just to be cautious they’ll treat you for other conditions as well until you’re dead. They’ll cure you to death so that people who know better can keep the real secret hidden. Once you’re dead, your body will be sealed up and buried away in some basement where they keep vials of smallpox and polio. A tentative explanation will be given, some kind of hormonal trigger you give off, and that will become the accepted wisdom because there will be no more Mitchell Roberts around to test and poke. The end.”

  The man began to unlatch the buckles holding the top of the casket in place. “Of course, then the people who did this will get overconfident and the next time they might get even more sloppy. Or even worse, someone might decide we need to be proactive and create a virus that only gets the ‘bad’ guys and go ahead and release it. Or maybe the ‘bad’ people. It’s not like a nuclear missile where you need a thousand people to build, maintain and launch these things. All it takes is one asshole with a test tube.”

  Mitchell watched as the man finished unlatching the casket. He picked up the screwdriver and lifted the container open like a clam shell. Mitchell eyed the screwdriver. The man turned it over and handed it to Mitchell handle first.