AHMM, October 2009
Page 14
"Did the Falcons have a game today?” Charlie stared. A fire engine wailed down the street, toward the epicenter of the disturbance.
"Your car is parked over that way, you know."
"Yeah."
It wasn't a riot, not the Hollywood version, even though clusters of armored police were clearing the avenue. A large mass of people milled forward and back. The street was blocked by a bonfire. Down the block a masked teenager stood atop an overturned car, cheering.
An eddy in the crowd put Charlie in the face of a shirtless man with a shaved head. Tattoos covered his arms and torso.
"Your fault!” screamed the man, over the first cracking of tear gas launchers. “You did it!” And he punched at Charlie, jostling him backward.
Sara pulled his arm. “Come on!"
They ran, shoving through the crowd, and stopped around the corner.
"My suit, dammit,” said Charlie. “He ruined my suit."
"He had the virus.” Sara looked back. “And so did two of his pals. They were splotchy."
Ahead of them several other boys were shouting at each other, pushing and threatening. One group seemed to be naturally black, but even as Charlie watched, he was wondering, is that how to say it? Original? Genuine? Language wasn't keeping up.
Once the virus's manipulations were complete, the distinction was genetically moot, but no one seemed to see it that way.
"You take everything from us,” someone yelled, shoving at a white teenager. “Now you want our damn color too!” Suddenly they were grappling, rolling on the ground, tearing at each other. As the melee became general, a half dozen steel-visored police arrived, swinging three-foot batons. Blood flew.
"How about we find your car later?” said Charlie.
They fled down a sidestreet, running until they reached Centennial Park. Sara's eyes were red from the gas.
"What were they fighting about?” she said.
"The color of their skin."
"I guess."
"You know, our hacker, he might have been thinking something like, if everybody looks the same, racism goes away.” Charlie spat dust. “Kumbaya, man."
* * * *
Ten hours later he woke on Sara's couch, stiff under a fleece blanket. A smell of burned coffee came from the kitchen nook.
"About time,” Sara said from the table, noticing him stirring.
"Don't you have to go to work?” he said.
"Forget that.” She pointed at her laptop screen. “I figured it out."
"What?"
"The signature. Frank practically told us—it's a simple substitution code."
"Huh?"
"He used codons but instead of amino acids, they represent a three-bit cipher. Four choices for each bit—C, A, G, T—so you get sixty-four characters. I just programmed a brute-force trial. Fortunately he used real words, so they matched against the dictionary."
"Okay, I'm impressed."
She shook her head. “He wasn't hiding anything. He wants people to know who he is."
"And?"
"World, meet Captain Blood."
"Captain Blood?"
"Cute, huh?"
"What a lunatic.” Charlie thought about it. “Congratulations."
Her face became serious. “Might be too late. Last night was just the start—things are getting out of hand."
She gestured to the TV, which was running a news channel on mute. An unruly crowd pushed at barriers somewhere, confronted by helmeted ranks of paramilitaries. A video window showed a newscaster, speaking grimly, while captions scrolled: “...confirmed dead ... police reserves ... National Guard..."
Charlie stared. “Is that downtown?"
"Chicago. But they keep switching around. So far New York is the worst. It's like a spark set everyone off last night."
She went to the kitchen and came back with some English muffins, run too long through the toaster.
"I called my manager,” she said. “They want to sit on it, see if they can find him lurking online somewhere, now that we have a name.” She glanced at the television. “Also, there's too much else going on at the moment."
They ate. Charlie hardly noticed the burned bits.
"Why blood?” he asked eventually.
"What?"
"Why did he choose to make the virus blood-borne? Infection would be trivial if it were built on a rhinovirus. HIV is hard to stop once you've been exposed, but it's relatively easy to prevent."
"That's a good reason, no? Someone scratch-building their own hot zone, they have to be worried about infecting themselves. The cold virus is too easy to catch."
"Okay. But then you've got another problem. How do you introduce the virus into the population? You can't just go out and stick a few hundred strangers with a needle."
Sara nodded. “The obvious answer is drug addicts. Pretend you're a needle-exchange volunteer, and just hand out syringes on the street corner. IV drug abusers are a perfect contagion mechanism."
"But I thought—"
"I know. The demographics don't match up. There isn't a trail back to Patient Zero yet—for one thing, the epidemic seems to have started simultaneously in several cities, but so far the earliest known cases are not addicts."
"The only commonality is age, right?"
"In their twenties, most of them. Men and women alike, all different backgrounds.” She frowned. “It's frustrating. Even the age correlation could simply reflect greater promiscuity in that cohort."
After breakfast Charlie put his suit back on, not happily. It was dirty, reeking of smoke and oil. He examined a long rip in the sleeve of the jacket.
"That skinhead must have had a knife or something."
"Skinhead? I don't know. Lots of boys shave their heads now."
"You don't get tattoos like that in the chess club—” He stopped abruptly.
A long moment passed.
"Charlie?"
"The Patient Zero set. You must have health records for the earliest known cases."
"Sure."
"I need to see them. With photos."
Sara hesitated. “Confidentiality rules..."
He shrugged impatiently. “At your office, then. I don't need names or anything."
"What are you thinking?"
"Contagion mechanisms.” He pulled on the jacket, now heedless of its damage and dirt. “Let's go."
* * * *
On the way they saw a convoy of sand-colored military Humvees trundling along, several with .50-caliber rifles mounted above the rollbars. Sirens wailed in the distance. Charlie thought he could see a pall of smoke hazing the skyscrapers downtown, but the sky had clouded over and it was hard to tell.
He was afraid.
"It's like the apocalypse.” Sara, hard edges showing, wasn't going to admit to anything. “The Last Days have arrived."
The CDC's campus was locked down, dozens of extra police and federal security stationed at the entrances. Inside, Sara immediately set about calling files from the agency's internal network.
"Sort for everyone who manifested before, say, ten months ago,” said Charlie. He sat on a plastic chair pulled up beside her desk.
"Two hundred and eighty-seven records."
"Pictures?"
"Hold on ... all right. There's the first."
The woman had short platinum hair, an array of piercings in one ear, and a large birthmark-like patch of darker skin spreading upward from her neck.
"Next?” Charlie took the mouse and started paging through. A young man who'd progressed further, his face already reshaped. Another man with a recent beard, probably grown to cover up the blotching. A boy with a large hoop earring. A mug shot, showing tattoos peeking up from the collar.
And so on.
"See it?” Charlie tapped the screen.
"What?"
"I know how the hacker infected them."
* * * *
"What's remarkable is how little oversight there is,” said Charlie. He was reading through a Wiki article on t
he laptop while Sara drove. “Most states require licensing, but that's about it."
"No hygiene regulations?"
"Sure, but are they actually inspecting the parlors for autoclaves and sterile tool storage? I doubt it."
"Even so, HIV...” Sara shook her head. “It must have been lyophilized. I know some researchers tried freeze-drying to stabilize the virus for gene therapy. That's the only way it could have survived in the needles."
"So my parents were right after all: Piercings really are dangerous."
Even more remarkable was the fact that most piercing apparatus used in the United States, from disposable needles on through heavy-duty staple guns, was supplied by a single company.
A company located in Atlanta.
"There's the exit,” said Charlie. “Southside Industrial Parkway."
The sky was heavy with clouds. They were close to the airport and jets descended overhead, turbines glowing orange against the gray overcast.
The company's chief operating officer met them in the front office. He was trim, about fifty, and wore a company windbreaker. “Everyone's distracted today,” he said. “I'm about to send the second shift home."
"I'll keep it quick. We're curious about standard protective measures."
"The state Industrial Safety Agency inspects us annually. Not to mention the insurance companies, the accreditation board, and OSHA."
"No problems?"
"Our products—they're sharps.” The man shrugged. “Just like syringes and surgical tools. Of course, we don't do any kind of drug delivery, so the FDA isn't involved. And from a regulatory perspective, the piercing equipment doesn't count as interventional, either."
"Are the needles sterile when they leave here?"
"The disposable ones, sure. There's a separate inspection line before they get boxed."
"Maybe we could take a look at that."
But there wasn't much to see, only loud machines and a few incurious employees. The COO walked them back through the floor and into a conference room. Sara asked for the restroom.
As she left the COO glanced at a calendar on the wall. “You know, we had a couple visits from you all last year too."
Charlie looked at him so sharply he raised a surprised eyebrow.
"The same questions,” he said. “I forget his name, but he was particularly interested in the inspection process. Came back and spent some time on the line. Didn't you talk to him first?"
"Ah, no.” Charlie hesitated. “He didn't leave a business card, did he?"
"I don't think so. But he was kind of familiar, like I'd seen him before."
"Well, we are practically in the neighborhood."
"On TV, I think."
Charlie was still staring at him when Sara returned, briskly. “All set. Thanks for your time."
And that was that. Five minutes later they were headed back into the city. Heat lightning crackled once on the horizon.
"What's up?” Sara asked
"We're making progress."
"Really?"
"I think that's a roadblock ahead.” Charlie squinted. “How convenient—I was just thinking we need to talk to the police."
* * * *
Months later, Charlie saw a Web documentary asserting that the decision went all the way to the president. The rationale was obvious enough in the end: Any coverup was sure to fail, so better to go in guns blazing and sort everyone out later, but it still took an executive order to make happen.
At the time, he didn't know anything, since he was sitting in a windowless detention cell somewhere in Virginia, working his way through 1001 Sudokus. When they finally let him out, one week and twenty interrogations later, he had to sign a non-disclosure acknowledging it was straight to Guantanamo Bay if he ever told anyone anything. They didn't even take him back to Atlanta, and the travel voucher was two hundred bucks short for the first flight out of Reagan. Not that he was complaining.
The country was still unsettled. Airport security was an hours-long madhouse of seething irritation. Television screens kept going back to the same footage: a phalanx of FBI and military special forces emerging from the CDC's main building, their suspects ducking the cameras. Charlie bought three newspapers and five magazines, read every word, and then didn't bother with the news again.
He went straight to Sara's apartment, let himself in with the key from the windowbox she'd shown him, and waited for another day until she showed up.
"They let you out first, huh?” she said.
"You probably had more to tell them."
"They actually weren't all that interested.” She didn't release the hug.
"It's all right,” said Charlie, awkwardly patting her back. “It's all right now."
Later they went out to eat—takeaway Chinese in a strip mall off Peachtree Road. They sat by the window and watched cars drive by.
"And I used to think investment banking was cutthroat,” said Charlie. “Funny thing is, your bioterrorism guys weren't even in it for the money. They set off a global plague for no better reason than a bigger budget and a little prestige."
"Not all of them,” Sara said. “Really just Bruce, and a couple of GS-11's he recruited out of the lab."
"It was a hell of a plan."
They ate quietly for a while. Charlie kept looking up at her eyes—dark smudges under them, weary.
"You knew, didn't you?” he said.
"What do you mean?"
"That's why you brought me in. You needed an outsider to drop the dime, to make it convincing."
She put down her chopsticks and slowly wiped her hands on the paper napkin, but said nothing.
"And they're your managers, after all. It was safer to have me along."
"I don't—"
"It doesn't matter. I don't mind.” He drank the cooling tea. “It came together too easily. I thought I was figuring everything out, but when I was being quizzed eighteen hours a day by the men in black, I realized you'd been nudging me forward the whole way."
Sara was quiet. “Not the piercing needles,” she said finally. “You got that all by yourself. I really didn't have anything but my suspicions."
"He thought he was going to be a hero.” Charlie sighed. “Instead, he probably set public health back about a hundred years. No one's going to listen to the CDC—or the government generally—ever again."
"We'll keep doing what we can."
Outside dusk had fallen. The counterman took another order on the phone, repeating the items several times in energetically broken English.
"You're not going to make a fortune, either,” Sara said. “Sorry about that."
"Not this time.” Charlie shrugged. “Who knows what the next one will be?"
Copyright © 2009 Mike Wiecek
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Department: SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
The young waitress was casting a worried look over his shoulder. In the mirror behind her he saw the sheriff pointing a gun at him.
—Robert Lopresti
From “The Hard Case” (April 2008), AHMM
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 54, No. 10, October 2009. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. Annual subscription $55.90 in the U.S.A. and possessions, $65.90 elsewhere, payable in advance in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Subscription orders and correspondence regarding subscriptions should be sent to 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Or, to subscribe, call 1-800-220-7443. Editorial Offices: 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. Executive Offices: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. © 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. POSTMASTER: Send changes to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to: Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. GST #R123054108.