Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

  “Captain! One of the passengers opened the outside door. We’ve depressurized and several passengers who weren’t in their seats were sucked out. The rest of the stewards and stewardesses have been attacked and are either dead or unconscious.”

  “Son of a bitch!” The captain hit his radio transmitter. “LAX, we have depressurized! Have no alternative but to land at your airport. Request landing instructions.”

  “You may not—repeat—may not land at LAX. Do you understand?”

  “Fuck you!” shouted the captain and turned off his radio.

  “We’re going anyway?” asked his copilot.

  “What the hell do you think? It’s that or into the drink.” He swiped his forehead. A dank, cold perspiration covered his hand.

  Copilot Savage was holding onto the controls so tightly his knuckles had turned white. “I’d just like to say, for the record, sir, that I didn’t mean those remarks about boredom.”

  Hayes spared him a glance and a grim smile. “Put the landing gear down, Martin. We’ll have to prepare our own glide path. She’ll be a little unstable and there will be some drag from the open door.”

  The runway was now visible. They were coming in low and too fast. Captain Hayes made the necessary corrections.

  “1500 feet to touchdown, sir. 1000 feet.” Savage looked up from his instruments. “Sir! Look at the runway!”

  Half a dozen fire engines had pulled onto the runway, blocking it completely.

  “What do we do, sir?”

  “We land this son of a bitch! If I was driving one of those fire trucks, I’d sure as hell get out of the way of a plane this size, wouldn’t you?”

  They careened in, heading straight for a ladder truck at the end of the runway. At the last instant, the driver of the truck gunned his engine and barely escaped the plane’s front tires. The other trucks also shot out of the way of the enormous aircraft.

  Then they were down, hitting hard and braking fast. The plane used the entire runway and didn’t stop until it was near the fence over a mile from the terminal building. As the engines wound down and Captain Hayes felt the adrenaline seeping out of his system, he glanced out the cockpit window at a sight he could only have imagined seeing in an asylum.

  The slides at all the plane exits had been inflated and hundreds of passengers were now romping along the tarmac. Some leaped and gyrated, others limped and even crawled. Several had torn off their clothes. A few lay beside the plane, unmoving. He could see some of the crazed passengers still carrying on their fights on the ground. Then he heard gunfire.

  “Oh my God! Look,” said Jennifer.

  Army trucks were speeding down the runway. They surrounded the plane and soldiers leaped out, firing into the crowds of passengers, mowing them down with great efficiency.

  “They’re killing my passengers!” cried Captain Hayes. “The sons of bitches are killing my passengers!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LIU XUEMIN SAT behind his big desk and thought about all that had happened since the Americans first arrived. That something was wrong he’d known from the first. He looked down at his hand. It was still red and burned from his contact with the object. Yet the pain didn’t concern him. It made him feel connected to his forebears at the monastery.

  Li-Wen had requested a meeting with him. Ever since the intense young man had arrived at the monastery at the age of twenty, he’d wanted to be in charge of the brotherhood. But of course, the wanting of such a thing made it impossible for him to have it. It was not their way.

  There was a sharp rap on the door, followed at once by Li-Wen entering before Xuemin could invite him.

  “Sit down,” the old monk said, half-heartedly. There really was no point to this. He knew what Li-Wen wanted.

  “I will stand.”

  “What is it you wish to say to me?”

  “You well know that!” Li-Wen snarled.

  Xuemin shook his head. “You are full of temper. You should meditate and reach a better state.”

  “We will all reach a state of death if you don’t stop the Americans. You know as well as I that they are involved with things they do not understand.”

  “Ah. Do you understand them, then?”

  “I know enough not to meddle. You should know. Have you forgotten? Go down to the lower levels and look again at our ancestors’ bones if you need reminding.”

  “The brothers have chosen me to lead, Li-Wen. They put their faith in my decisions half a century ago. So must you.”

  “Yes, I have, these many years. But you are old and I am young. I was willing to wait until my day came. But now, the Americans have found something—something our ancestors buried well, for good reason. You cannot allow it to be removed and experimented upon. You risk bringing great calamities down on us. If you destroy us, then I will never have my time as leader.”

  “You do not know what the object is, Li-Wen. Nor do I. Perhaps it is a good thing, something that will bring benefit to the brethren. If the woman scientist can decipher the meaning, we may finally know what it was our forefathers knew thousands of years ago.”

  “You are an old fool!” Li-Wen’s face turned red with his fury. “I will do what is necessary to protect the order.” He turned and left, leaving the door open behind him.

  Liu Xuemin pondered his visitor’s strange wrath. It was so . . . unworthy.

  Paula raised her head from the microscope and rubbed her eyes. They were tearing and bloodshot. This could be an early sign of the disease, but she immediately put the idea out of her head. No sense in going there. There were only three members of the CDC team left: Dr. Wokowski, one other staffer and herself. The others were all dead.

  She leaned in over the microscope and stared again at the bit of brain tissue she’d sectioned and dyed for study. There were small holes in the tissue, making it resemble a sponge. All the samples had the same appearance. She wished, at some point in her career, she’d had a chance to examine Mad Cow Disease to give her some sense of comparison. The rate of decay in the bodies increased exponentially after death. This was so far beyond the realm of anything she’d ever encountered before it was difficult to accept. But by studying innumerable samples from all parts of the bodies of the deceased victims, she’d made one crucial discovery. The disease was the most advanced in brain tissue, which suggested this was where the—whatever it was—first took up residence in the body. There was no other way to explain it.

  She sat back and carefully wrote her comments and observations in her notebook. Soon, it would be time to share her notes with Dr. Wokowski and to begin preparations for the next step.

  She’d worked out a connection between the brain samples and what appeared to be some sort of unusual genetic debris. The existence of the debris had subsequently been confirmed by her phone conversation with the White House. Whatever it was had apparently been around for a long time and only now was breaking out and causing havoc.

  While the effects of the disease appeared to be systemic, the most heavily infected tissue was invariably located in the brain. The greater the elapsed time from diagnosis, the more brain tissue was infected and the greater the amount of the unusual debris that could be found. It was the same with every sample. Whatever was killing these people emanated from the altered DNA. She no longer had any doubt. The epidemic was not the result of avian flu or of the Chinese government’s poor controls. It was the result of an anomalous genetic structure the like of which had never before been documented.

  She turned off the microscope and slipped the notebook into her pocket, though she kept her hand on it still. Her head swirled with what to do next. Perhaps they could centrifuge tissue samples of the disease, develop a concentrated dose of weakened—what?—she wanted to call it a serum, but knew it wasn’t that. Still, perhaps this weakened dose, once injected, could become a sort of vaccine. It was the first, and perhaps only, ray of light shed on fighting the disease. For now, any hope resided only in her head and in the tiny notebook. As
she headed through the doors of the lab into the hall, she heard a commotion. There’d been an unending series of disruptions to their work in the last few days, the result of looters breaking into the hospital. She thought it rather bizarre, actually, that in the midst of an epidemic, with the entire country virtually shut down and people dropping like flies everywhere, looters would still try to take advantage of the breakdown in society. She considered them the lowest of the low.

  More incredible still was that they would attempt to break into a place that was widely recognized as one of the epicenters of the disease itself. If it were her, she wouldn’t have come anywhere near this hospital. But, of course, most of the Chinese still left in the capital were the poorest and most ill-educated. They had no real understanding of what was happening to their country, and were at most only vaguely aware that this particular hospital had any connection to the disease.

  What they did know was that everything appeared to have broken down. There was no more army or police or emergency services of any kind. There were no more of the widely despised bureaucrats. There was no food in the markets, no medicine, and no fuel. Survival now depended upon what one could steal, plain and simple.

  “Paula!”

  She turned to see Dr. Wokowski running down the hall toward her. She gripped the little notebook tighter in her hand.

  “Looters!” he shouted breathlessly. “They’ve broken into the main building. Hundreds of them this time—destroying anything they can’t figure out a use for. They’re completely out of control. Come on.” He grabbed her hand. “We’re going to try to make a stand on the third floor in the secure quarantine area.”

  She struggled after him as he pulled her quickly down the hall and into a stairwell. “But there’s nothing secure about the quarantine area,” she said. “It was only secure because there were soldiers to guard the entrances. There aren’t even any locks on the doors.”

  “I know. Dr. Zhongfa says our one hope may be for him to confront the looters when they reach that part of the hospital and tell them they’re in the quarantine area, that they risk infection if they enter. It may stop them.”

  They hurried up the stairs, Dr. Wokowski faltering as they began the third tier. Paula went from being pulled along to supporting the older man. Bursting into the quarantine area, they found Dr. Zhongfa, his two remaining nurses and their own last staffer. Once it had become clear the early quarantine measures had failed, this room had been turned into another laboratory to be used by Dr. Zhongfa and his team. There were no longer any patients in this wing. Everyone worked at building a barricade of tables and refrigerators shoved against the lab doors.

  The noise of the looters escalated as they made their way through the hospital. Paula could hear them smashing their way into locked rooms and breaking the hasps off secure specimen refrigerators. Perhaps they expected to find food, but would be rewarded for their efforts only with vials of blood, plasma, and testing supplies.

  “They’re mad,” said Wokowski. “Out of their minds with fear and disease. I don’t think anything will stop them.”

  Dr. Zhongfa nodded. “I think you are right, my friend, but all we can do is wait and see.”

  They sat together staring at the opaque glass of the laboratory doors as the noise came ever-closer. Then there were gray forms in the hallway, running past their door. Cries of glee and discovery emanated from the interlopers as they broke into room after room. Finally, several forms gathered outside the laboratory and began to try to push the doors open. The barricade held, however, and they went away.

  Paula had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief when suddenly they were back. This time they had a file cabinet and were using it as a battering ram, smashing again and again into the doorway. Slowly, the barricade gave way. In a moment they would swarm into the room.

  Dr. Zhongfa stood up and yelled at the invaders.

  “Don’t come in here!” he cried. “This whole area has been contaminated with the disease. You’ll die if you come in. You should get away from the hospital entirely. Everything here is infected.”

  This brought the men to a stop. They could hear them arguing among themselves in the hallway, then, blessedly, they went away.

  “It worked,” said Wokowski. “Thank God.”

  Paula felt her anxiety level slowly returning to normal. Their lives were no longer so important, but the notes in her pocket were vital—perhaps to the entire world. She rested one hand on Wokowski’s shoulder, weak with relief. She reached into her pocket, withdrew the little booklet, and started to explain to the others what she had.

  “They’re back!” shouted one of the nurses, standing up and backing away from the doors.

  As they watched in horror, the figures in the hallway began emptying cans on the floor outside the doors, and the pungent smell of gasoline filled the room. In an instant, before anyone could even think to reason with them, a match was struck and the building erupted in flames.

  Paula felt Dr. Wokowski push her toward the back of the room, toward the windows. But the windows in the quarantine section were designed not to open and to be airtight as well. They were utterly trapped.

  The flames burst along the tables, finding chemicals and flammable testing supplies of a hundred varieties. The accelerant sped the flames into an inferno, forcing them all back to the farthest corner in a hopeless bid to escape.

  Just before the holocaust consumed them, Paula grasped the notebook one more time. Perhaps it held the solution to the epidemic. She wanted to scream her frustration, but the fire had removed the oxygen from the air. The last thing she felt was her lungs bursting into flame.

  General Zhou sat at the head of a large conference table in his headquarters building in Hohhot. Surrounding him were his aides, including Xiaolang and even LiLing, whom he’d found himself relying upon more and more since she’d moved in with him. She had a strategic mind and saw things clearly, a valuable trait in the new China. It was small wonder she’d been chosen to lead the women at her homestead.

  As far as Zeli was concerned, LiLing’s entry into his life had been a gift of the best sort, one totally unexpected. Aside from the fact he’d been having the best sex of his life, she had also, in a very short time, become an invaluable part of his command.

  They were listening to an aide named Yaozu, who had just returned from the Russian border, where he’d gone to sound out their neighbor’s sentiments in the event there was a coup of the Chinese government. That was before things turned truly ugly in the country.

  “When I arrived,” said Yaozu, “the Russians were friendly and even conciliatory. I had the impression the people I negotiated with were in close touch with Godunov. They were ill at ease about a coup, but clearly not enamored of Premier Zhao either. I believed I was making real progress. Then . . .”

  “Yes?” The general leaned forward.

  “Then, everything changed. I can only assume they’d begun to hear more about the epidemic. Everything closed down. No one would meet with me or even talk to me. After two days, I was ordered back into my helicopter and told to go home. No further explanation. Nothing.”

  Zeli sat back. So it was clear. The entire world now knew what was going on in China.

  “There’s something else,” said Yaozu.

  It could only be bad, Zeli thought. He nodded.

  “While I was there, we learned that Premier Zhao had arrived at Manzhoulli and asked for asylum.”

  There was a rush of comment around the table. It had been generally believed that the premier was dead, probably of the sickness.

  “How was he received?” asked Zeli.

  “In the worst way. In fact, he and his party were sent home at gunpoint. I think it illustrates in the clearest terms how the Russians feel about this epidemic. To oust the head of state of a neighboring country at gunpoint is hardly what you might call a diplomatic overture.”

  “Do we know where the premier is staying?” asked LiLing.

  “Yes. He
has a summer home near Qiqihar, a compound really. He’s staying there with his family and a number of body guards and police.”

  LiLing looked at Zeli. They were both thinking the same thing. “The premier will never be more vulnerable,” she said. “How far is it to Qiqihar?”

  “Seven hundred miles,” replied an aide. “But the roads are filled with the sick. To avoid them, we’d have to travel cross-country, along the edge of the Gobi Desert. It would be hard going for heavy equipment.”

  The general placed his hands together. “I have in mind a smaller force. The premier must have few resources, I doubt a hundred men. We should organize a quick strike force. Traveling lightly, we could be there in two days.”

  Xiaolang raised an eyebrow, a look the general knew well.

  “What is it, my old friend?”

  “A strange question, perhaps, sir, but what would be the point? China is in complete turmoil. There’s no certainty at all she’ll even survive as a viable nation.”

  “I refuse to believe that, Xiaolang. Epidemics come and go, as they always have. When this one is over, China will need a strong leader, more so if the Russians or Koreans or others decide that they can take advantage of our weakness. We’ll be in a stronger position if we consolidate our power before that happens. LiLing is right. This is our moment.”

  LiLing leaned forward, her eyes shining. “We now know for a certainty the Russians won’t back the premier. We must take him prisoner and end the regime.”

  Heads nodded around the table. Epidemic and millions of diseased citizens aside, this was an opportunity not to be missed.

  “There’s another factor,” said Xiaolang. “Hohhot is plainly in the path of the diseased hordes now pouring out of Beijing. Our forces have managed to hold them off and redirect them to the south thus far. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult. I think we may want to consider abandoning Hohhot and send our entire force to Qiqihar. It was clever of the premier to move north out of the path of the main migration. We should do so, too. If we can take over his compound, it could become our own headquarters.”