Warp Speed

by Travis S. Taylor

  Jim was right. Although she had been well at times, 'Becca had never been as sick as much as she had the last two years.

  "Jim, did the doctors say anything about opportunistic infections?" Tabitha asked.

  "That's exactly what we thought it was," a voice from behind me said. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  "Dr. Reese, this is Professor Clemons and Colonel Ames," Jim introduced us to 'Becca's physician.

  "The astronauts?" Reese asked. Tabitha and I just nodded.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you both." He shook our hands. "As I was saying, we thought it was just multiple opportunistic bacteria coupled with allergic reactions but not any longer." He looked at his pad. "We sent several blood samples to Atlanta. The CDC has isolated some new mutated flulike virus. It is the first time it has ever been reported. CDC is trying to develop a cure but it would help if we knew where she caught it. Its host might have antibodies."

  "What exactly does flulike mean?" I asked.

  "Well, it's a flu virus with something else attached to it. Here's a print out of the electron microscope image Atlanta emailed me." He held his pad where we could see it and began explaining what we were looking at.

  "You see this filament shape here--that's a typical looking influenza filament. But there's something funny about these glycoprotein spikes that extrude from the filament. On this picture here," he flipped the page, "zooming in on the spike you can see that there's a shape instead of a single spike like would be expected. Instead of a spike it's more the shape of a . . . I dunno a . . ."

  "A dumbbell," I said. I suddenly felt as if the weight of the world rested on my shoulders, again.

  Tabitha, and Jim said in unison, "Holy shit!" Then neither of us said a word for a long moment. Dr. Reese paused to see why we were so amazed.

  "I wish I would have never invented those damn things!" I bit my lower lip in anger.

  "Anson, if they're really Casimir effect devices can't we just give them a good jolt?" Jim said hopefully.

  Tabitha looked grim. "Jim, we can't risk it. What if one of them . . ." She couldn't bring herself to say what Jim was now thinking, what we all three were thinking.

  "Exploded!" Jim finished it for her.

  "Okay everybody, just calm down." I turned to the confused Dr. Reese, "Doc, can she be moved safely?"

  "What? Are you serious? Invented what things?" He thought we were all nuts. "She is in ICU. You can't seriously think she could be moved?"

  "Listen to me, Doctor, and listen very carefully. If the things in this picture you just showed me are what we believe they are, then 'Becca is contaminated with Top Secret nanoscopic explosives. Don't ask where they came from. One, and I mean one," I emphasized by holding up one finger, "of these tiny devices could blow her arm off." I told him.

  "Whew!" Reese whistled, "There are most likely millions of them in her body!

  "I was afraid of that," Tabitha said. "More than enough to destroy the whole city."

  I was beginning to realize the awesome power of the dumbbells and how they might could be used as a weapon of terror. There would be no way to detect a dumbbell or millions of them. And they could be hidden inside the terrorist's own body until, kablooie!

  "Why haven't they gone chaotic?" Jim mentioned.

  "Good question, Jim, but first things first." I tried to think of a plan of action. "Doctor, she has to be moved to a safer location and we may be able to cure her with your help. Tabitha . . ." I turned to see if she could get us some help but she was already on her cell phone ordering a helicopter, security containment, and general support.

  "No I don't care what your orders are! They just changed damnit!" she was ordering into her cell phone.

  "Tabitha, we need to track who has seen these pictures." I reminded her. She just nodded. Tabitha knows how to do her job so I decided not to micromanage. I switched gears to something I could do to help. "Jim, are you parked here?"

  "Yes. Why?" he replied.

  "Let's get over to the lab and gather some diagnostic equipment, my laptop, and whatever else we can think of that might help. Doctor, please keep her healthy as long as possible." We left Tabitha to take care of business at the hospital. Jim waved his cell phone at her as we were leaving as if to say, "Call us if you need us. You have the number." Tabitha gave us the thumbs up and waved us out.

  Down the elevator and out to the parking garage we went. We had to climb about fifteen steps to the level where Jim's car was. I realized on about the fourth step that one of my lungs was healing from a bullet wound. My chest was on fire, but I pushed on to the car.

  "Are you okay, Doc? You look pretty bad."

  "Fine," is all I could gasp out. After a few minutes sitting in the passenger side as we made it to the lab I began to feel better.

  "Anson, how is it that you have stitches in your chest and back and Tabitha's face is all cut up? That is, I mean, if you two were in your spacesuits, how bad was the crash?" Jim was figuring things out even though he had been told by security not to even speculate.

  "Let's not talk about it right now, Jim." I gave him the nod that now wasn't the time or place.

  "Okay," Jim said. "Then what is your take on 'Becca's flu."

  "The answer is obvious, I think. The only problem with that obvious answer is that it's too damn unbelievable."

  "You mean that you think the dumbbells have been in her since the accident and somehow a flu virus mutated with them?"

  "That's the only way I can see it. It's just amazing." It was amazing. How versatile viruses must be if they can mutate to capture physical objects. Or at that scale, is everything physical or biological the same? In other words, on the nanoscale is there no way to distinguish live from mechanical? If you think about a bacteriophage for example, some of them look just like a nanoscale Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). And what do they do? They land on a cell and inject the occupants of the LEM cabin into it. The occupants go and rewrite the code of that cell to reproduce more bacteriophages and the cycle continues. The cell is just redesigned to manufacture a different product. That's pretty damn amazing. Is it biological or mechanical? It's my view that everything in the universe is due to electromagnetic interactions. Just some interactions appear to have been animated.

  "I don't know, Jim. Let's just hope we can figure out a way to get those things out of her and neutralized."

  As we came to the guard shack of our laboratory parking lot, one of Tabitha's security requirements, we both noticed that there was no guard anywhere to be seen. "Jim, stop the car!"

  "There should be a guard here." Jim did his best to rubberneck over the windowsill of the two-man shack.

  "I don't like this." I began to feel edgy and thoughts of Johnny Cache flooded my mind. I opened Jim's glove box. "Jim, the Orbiter didn't just explode due to some accident," I began as I chambered a round in Jim's Glock. I grabbed his other clip and placed it in my pocket.

  For you folks that don't live in the South, I guess I should mention that most everybody has at least one pistol in his or her glove compartment. Those who don't, well they are carrying theirs on them somewhere. That's why our crime rate is so much lower than the big "no-gun" cities. There, only the criminals are armed. If you recall history, the "shoot out at the O.K. Corral" was over a no-gun ordinance in the city of Tombstone. In the South we try to keep the playing field as even or better as we can. Therefore, criminals know that if they want to start something in the South that they will be shot back at. Deterrence is a very good crime prevention technique. Hell, it kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War.

  "Jim, you're right. The stitches are to fill up the bullet holes left by terrorists. Tabitha is limping on a shot up leg. Johnny Cache shot her. Long story. Do you have any other weapons in the car? I asked.

  Jim smiled and popped the trunk. His karate gear and his tournament bag were in there. He rummaged through the gear and dug out two kamas, two escrima sticks, and one set of nunchukas.

  "Which do you prefer?" h
e grinned.

  "This will do fine," I brandished the Glock 19 with the pre-Clinton-Reno era clip. "Sixteen shots ought to do. Besides, I ain't in any shape to be fighting. I'll have to keep you covered. Sorry."

  The front door to the office had been opened effortlessly. Obviously, the guard's keys came in handy for somebody. We cautiously scoured the entire facility and found no signs of foul play, except that my laptop was missing from the safe, the lab was nearly destroyed, the contents of the offices were strewn about everywhere, and my whiteboard in my office was gone.

  "They even ripped the whiteboard right out of the damn wall." Jim exclaimed. We grabbed what equipment we thought would still function and loaded the car.

  "I guess they got what they came for," I told Jim and shrugged my shoulders.

  "What do we do now?" he asked.

  "Call Tabitha and ask her."

  Jim tried twice and got Tabitha's voicemail message. "That's odd," he said.

  "Well, let's head back to the hospital and keep trying to reach her on the way."

  The terrorist effort or war effort, whatever it was, had reached into my everyday life more deeply now. While we were away Johnny's people must have ransacked the lab. It would have been a big operation. The safe had to weigh a ton. It must have taken a forklift to move it. And it happened fast. Something else was bugging me on a more subconscious level, but I couldn't wrap my mind around it just yet. Then I thought to look at the alarm system.

  "Jim, check the silent alarm," I pointed to the hidden panel on the wall where the system's keypad was hidden.

  Jim slipped back a wall plate and punched in a code on the keypad. The display read today's date about thirty minutes ago.

  "We just missed 'em Anson!"

  "What?"

  "They triggered the alarm just thirty minutes ago!" Jim exclaimed.

  Then my subconscious grabbed hold on whatever it was that was bugging me before. "That means it's still going on! What if they had come in when Sara or Al were here? Crap! They might go to their homes, Jim."

  "We gotta help them, Doc!" Jim looked frantic.

  "Jim, get Sara and Al on the phone and tell them to get out of their houses now. They can meet us at a public place or someplace safe," I told him. I couldn't think of where to send them.

  "Tim's place?" Jim asked.

  "Perfect."

  Jim got Sara at her apartment. He told her to leave this second. Don't change clothes, don't put on makeup, just go. I hope she listened. We were only five miles from Al's house so we headed that way while Jim called. There was no answer on the phone. I also tried Tabitha at the hospital again, but had no luck reaching her either.

  We reached Al's house; there were two vehicles in his driveway that we hadn't seen before. There was a truck and a van. Jim pulled up in the neighbor's driveway and we crawled over the fence into Al's backyard. I barely had the strength to get over the four-foot chain link.

  Jim and I hugged the back wall of Al's house and eased around the chimney to the back door. The back door flung wide open and Al came flying out the door headfirst and he skidded across the patio into a large ceramic plant pot. The little apple tree in the pot had one small apple clinging from its droopy limb. The impact of Al's head into the pot shook the apple free and it fell on his back. Al was out cold I was pretty sure.

  Behind Al stepped a very large individual. I didn't have time to make out any details of his face before Jim had sunk the blade of a Kama into his throat and ripped out the guy's trachea. I rushed in behind Jim as he flew through the door never missing a beat from the Kama strike. There were Kamas swinging and then escrimas. Two more were dead before the gunfire ever started.

  The first gunfire Jim was prepared for and he dropped and took out the assailant's kneecap with a low side kick. He pulled the man's wrist downward while kneeing his elbow upward until the man's arm was in two pieces. I managed to bust off a few rounds into the guy covering Jim's present attacker. Jim proceeded to break the guy's neck as I continued the cover fire.

  The van parked out front squealed out of the driveway and laid down some suppressing fire from an automatic weapon. Jim and I dove behind the upstairs stairwell for cover. We waited for a few seconds listening for movement.

  "Jim, are we clear?"

  "Not sure. You ready to cover me."

  I changed the clip since the slide on the Glock was open, depressed the lever with my thumb and it closed, chambering a new round. "Ready now. On three and you stay low. One, two, three!"

  I rolled out into the open and fired two rounds. Jim came out behind me and zipped across the room behind the couch and took cover again. I rolled across the floor behind him. "Ow shit that hurts!" I held my chest.

  "You all right, Doc!"

  "Yeah. Just pulled some stitches I think."

  "I think we're clear. Let's get Al and get the hell out of here."

  Al was coming to by the time we got out the back door. He was concussed and a bit goofy-headed. If you have ever been concussed, you know that "goofy-headed" is a good way to describe it. We dragged him to Jim's car and hit the road fast.

  I grabbed Jim's phone and tried Tabitha again.

  "Jim, is that you!" Tabitha answered.

  "Tab, it's Anson. Listen it is still going on. Jim and I were just in a firefight. You better get some back up and get out of sight fast," I told her.

  "Anson, I know! Dr. Reese caught one in the neck before I realized what was going on. Don't worry. We have the situation contained and I think everyone will survive. Are you okay?"

  "Jim and I are fine. Al is banged up pretty badly but he'll be okay. I think we need to hide everybody's families. Jim and I will pick up Sara and meet you. Where?"

  "Listen Anson, we're already on the move. We'll track Jim's phone and pick you up. You keep moving and stay safe. See you soon." Tabitha disconnected.

  We grabbed Sara in record time and before we knew it a helicopter was shadowing us. Then my phone rang.

  "Hello?"

  "Anson, pull over in the next parking lot," Tabitha told me.

  I turned to Jim. "It's Tabitha, Jim. Pull over there!" I pointed to a parking lot by a strip mall where a military helicopter was setting down--Tabitha was waving to us from the open doorway. We loaded into the chopper and were gone. Safe again, I thought.

  "Dr. Clemons, you're bleeding." Sara pointed at my back.

  "Yeah, I figured I was. It's just a few loose stitches. Nothing to worry about, I think," I reassured her.

  Jim spoke to Tabitha through a headset. "Where's Rebecca?"

  "Don't worry. She's been moved in a different chopper. We'll rendezvous with her in a few minutes."

  The helicopter pilot landed us at the airstrip on the Redstone Arsenal where we loaded into a C-141 Starlifter evac plane. The closest they are based is in Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi but they fly patterns in Huntsville, often. This one must have been close by when Tabitha put in the call. Come to think of it, I never did figure out how she got us a helicopter so fast either--I didn't care. I just wanted to get out of sight fast. As we boarded, Tabitha explained to me that our families were being hidden and that her daughter would meet us at the rendezvous point. Neither of us were sure how far the--whoever they are--would go to get what they wanted. Whatever that was. Were they looking for something or did they just want us out of the picture? And, who were they? I still voted for Chinese.

  CHAPTER 15

  We landed a few hours later. Where, I have no idea. When we debarked the plane we were inside a very large hangar. There were other aircraft and vehicles inside the hangar, so it was a big place--wherever it was. I tried to be useful, but I was beginning to feel very tired and sore.

  Jim had never left 'Becca's side throughout the flight. She seemed to have had no changes, good or bad. We all had hopes that there was something, anything that we could do for her. I hoped that the crazy quacks had just not been smart enough to figure out what was wrong with her and it was still a stra
ightforward medical issue. I hoped so, anyway.

  As we debarked I followed the group in a daze. We entered an elevator, a large elevator, and descended for what seemed like a full minute or two. The elevator doors opened into a large bright room. The wall directly to the right had a large red "Floor 31" painted on it. I did later find out where we were, but the location was classified even higher up than I realized existed. I was beginning to learn that there were many more levels of "Top Secret" than just the ones I had experience with.

  "Anson, are you okay?" Sara asked as she approached the group.

  "I'm . . . just a little tired." I would live for now I told myself. I was trying to focus on my breathing, but since I'd had the damage to one of my lungs, breathing was more labor intensive. Just sitting still seemed like work. It reminded me of a comic book character I used to read a lot of. This guy had some sort of "techno-organic virus" that there was no cure for, but fortunately he had superpowers. He used his superpowers constantly to hold the virus at bay, yet he was still one of the most powerful superheroes in his universe. His friends would always mention that he was so powerful while fighting the virus that they couldn't imagine his strength if he were cured.

  Well, I don't have superpowers. I wish I did. And I'm definitely not one of the most powerful people in my universe. I was tired and in pain.

  "You just look a little pale is all." Sara laid her hand on my shoulder.

  "I agree with you, Sara. He could use some sun. And maybe a haircut. At the very least run a comb through that unruly mop," Anne Marie added as she approached.

  "Annie! How are you? It's good to see you." Seeing my future stepdaughter bolstered my morale a bit. It felt as though I were given a jolt of caffeine and epinephrine all at once.

  "From the looks of it," she said, "a helluva lot better than you."

  "Have you seen Tabitha?" I asked.

  "Just for a sec. She's really busy right now. You know, saving the world and everything." Anne Marie laughed and patted me on the back as she gave me a hug. "It's good to see you, Anson." She looked into my eyes and smiled. "Did you force her to pick a date yet?"