While the big man was lost in his thoughts, still tucked under his covers, Marcus came strolling through his door. “Hey fella, you getting your news fix?” he said, while staring at the screen himself.
Jeep was startled to suddenly have company, and grumbled, “No, really, come right in.”
“Don’t worry man, we all binged on it as soon as we realized it was on again. Story is, the president turned on the news for everybody.”
Jeep looked up at the man who was still staring at his vid screen, “See, I told you there was a reason I voted for her.”
“That was your reason, huh? Because someday she might grant you TV privileges again while you’re living in a giant bunker, sunk under tons of granite, while the world balances on the brink of an all-out nuclear Armageddon?” Marcus spoke with all the aplomb befitting the circumstance.
“Yeah, I’m a forward thinker like that.”
“I bet. Hell, I voted for her because I knew it would drive all the old white dudes crazy.”
Jeep laughed, mostly because it did drive all the old white men crazy. Letting out a groan he turned and flopped his legs off the bed. “You just come in here to watch me get dressed or what?”
“Yeah, because bearded southern men with beer bellies are really my style.” Marcus laughed. Jeep knew that Marcus actually preferred the really skinny, nerdy type guys. “Nope, I woke your ass up because Laurel needs some of your blood, and she keeps telling me to come get you. Shunka is back to full capacity it seems, and it alerted her as soon as your eyes opened.”
“Well, nothing like being monitored at all times to make a guy feel loved.”
“I wasn’t monitoring you. I learned early on not to pay attention to you when you are alone in your sleeping quarters.”
“Oh damn, man! Now the AI’s making fun of you too! This day gets better and better.”
“Yeah, this is a great day all right.” Jeep grumbled as he climbed out of bed. He was wearing only his boxer shorts with pink flamingos sporting ridiculous sunglasses as he strolled into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Marcus laughed as he watched the pale man stumble into the other room. “You know, the computer can provide you with boxers for grown men.”
“If southern boys like me aren’t your type, what are you doing paying attention to my drawers for?” Jeep said as he closed the door to the bathroom and got ready for another day while Marcus chuckled.
+++
“So Doc, how much blood are you gonna take exactly?” Jeep said while eyeballing the large bucket sitting next to the cushy chair he was sitting in. Every move he made created a crinkly sound as the paper gown he’d had to put on rustled. “And why the hell did I have to put on this paper dress?”
Laurel smiled as she prepped all the little vials that could be swapped into the needle and tubing inserted in his arm and be quickly filled with blood. “Don’t worry big boy, we don’t need the bucket totally full.” Jeep didn’t laugh. She sighed and said, “The bucket is there because sometimes when people see their own blood filling these vials, they vomit.”
Jeep looked at the bucket then gently pushed it farther away with his foot. All of sudden he thought he could smell the previous contents. “That’s not a problem with me.”
“Oh, Marcus said you got violently ill around blood. That’s also the reason I had you put the gown on, didn’t want you to ruin your clothes,” she said very matter of fact. “He said you didn’t like to bring it up because it was embarrassing.”
Jeep looked up and saw Marcus waving at him through the glass walls of the large lab. “Dick,” he said while waving back at Marcus with a single finger. “He was messing with you, Doc. Well, he was messing with me. Either way, are we ready?”
“Yes, just need to get one more vial ready. We need a total of six vials, but it comes to less than half a pint total.”
“Why are you doing this again?” As he was asking, she clicked the vial into place onto the tubing and flipped the dial; the vial rapidly filled with dark maroon blood. The sight didn’t bother Jeep at all.
“When you started working here, they were still doing full blood workups on the new hires. We only have about twenty people that are still here from when they were doing that. I can compare your DNA from before and after and possibly find out what the virus is doing.” In the space of her answer, she had filled another three vials. “Actually, I am very close to figuring it out already thanks to the others. I have a hunch.”
Jeep waited for her to continue talking, but instead she quickly took the remaining samples and then removed the needle with its attached tubing. “So, you’re not gonna tell me about this hunch?”
She looked up and smiled at him. “You never talk about a hunch in medicine. It would jinx the whole damn thing!” After putting all the vials into their small Lexan holder and pasting the label sticker on them, she scanned the small barcode and heard a beep. Looking back up at him she smiled and said, “Okay, we’re all done here.”
“Great,” Jeep said as he slid out of the chair because of the paper outfit. “You know, we have possibly the most advanced AI system in the world, and a lab that would make the CDC in Atlanta drool, but we still haven’t improved these paper things, huh?”
“Hey, if they work, they work,” she said. “Any other ill effects? On a scale of one to ten, with ten feeling completely normal, how close to normal do you feel?”
“I’d say I’m a ten. It lasted just as long as you said it would.”
“That’s good. And what is your ancestry?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your ancestors, where did they live a couple hundred years ago?”
“I thought that’s what you said. Why the hell does that matter?” Jeep said as he realized it didn’t really matter, he just wanted out of the awkward, crinkly outfit. “Mostly Italian and some French, probably a little English in there somewhere. You know, a regular old mutt.”
“Good to hear. I will find out when I look into your DNA anyway, just curious. The only deaths have been people who were initially from the Basque region.”
“That’s Spain, right? Wait, deaths?”
“It’s north-central Spain and south-western France, yes.” Laurel was scribbling some things down in a notepad while talking. “That’s the culture with the most Neanderthal ancestry. The virus seems to be better at attacking that bloodline.”
“Neanderthals? What the hell are you talking about Doc?” Jeep had totally forgotten about the uncomfortable gown and was now wearing a thoroughly confused look.
“Sorry, Jeep, I still have a great deal to do today, and like I said, I don’t want to jinx anything.” She waved her hand at Marcus, and he came strolling in.
“So, I’m just going to have to wonder what the hell you were talking about then.” Jeep said, growing a little frustrated.
“I suppose so, sorry.” Laurel said as she set down her notepad. “Also, if you could refrain from spreading theories, that would be great. A bunch of wild rumors won’t help me do my job at all.”
Jeep looked at her vacantly while nodding. He didn’t even notice Marcus walk up behind him until he put his hand on the shoulder of the paper gown. “How’d he do, Laurel?” Then his voice got much softer as he leaned in closer to the doctor, “He didn’t have one of his reactions, did he?”
“You have a weird sense of humor, man,” said Jeep as he pushed away from the other man and headed into the other room to change back into his regular clothes. Marcus continued to laugh while Laurel walked away. She had already seemed to forget the other two were even in the lab as she hurriedly went over to begin the analysis of Jeep’s post virus samples.
As Jeep was putting his clothes on, he could still hear Marcus laughing.
18
Laurel wasn’t nervous about her meeting; in her career she had led many important meetings. This one was perhaps the most important, but she was confident in her findings. She was running late though, and she felt terrible about that. It
wasn’t uncommon for her to lose herself in the lab work, and that is exactly what had happened this time.
Thankfully, Shunka reminded her as the time approached. She had just enough minutes to gather all of her things, but not to change. As she speedily walked down the hallway, she thought that it was fitting to show up in a slightly worn lab coat. “Why not?” she thought. “The military personnel will all be in their uniforms.”
As she got to the mid-sized conference room, she glanced at her watch. She was only five minutes late; that wasn’t even late by her standards. Hell, she was on time! As the door snapped open, she saw that she was wrong in her assessment.
The general was pacing about in the front of the room as he said “Ahhh, doctor, so good of you to join us.” Laurel could easily sense that the general was irritated with her tardiness.
Laurel looked around and saw the president and her staff as well as a vid screen full of projections of nearly a dozen very serious looking men. “I apologize for my tardiness; I was finalizing some models of possible disease effects in the future.”
“Well, we are all very intrigued. Everyone has been briefed on you and your credentials. The floor is yours.” The general had regained his respectful tone and nodded curtly to the virologist. Then he took a seat opposite the president and her team.
Laurel, not one for dawdling, jumped right in. With the press of a button she held in her pocket, the largest screen in the room jumped to map of the world. She could see that the image had also been piped into the other conference rooms around the country as the men on the vid screens looked up and stared at their own walls.
“What you have before you is the current estimated spread of the virus.” Laurel paused for effect since the vast majority of the map was bright red. The only areas that didn’t seem to be solid red were all huddled around the equator in small pockets. “As you can see, we strongly suspect it has nearly covered the globe,” she clicked the button again. This time the image showed a much more patchy arrangement of red blobs all seemingly random on the land masses, but only about 50% covered. “These are the known cases of the virus that have presented in their hosts. That is to say, this is the distribution of the people that have gotten sick and reported it.”
The president seemed perplexed and said. “The other image showed many more people sick.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” replied Laurel. The virus will incubate for up to 2 weeks in some people before showing any symptoms. Most people are infected and simply don’t know. That goes for everyone at this facility as well.” Laurel glanced quickly around the room and said, “By the sweat coming off some of you, I can tell you are currently showing symptoms.”
The president nodded in agreement and then said, “What can you tell us about the deaths? Initially, all I heard was that this was no big deal, but now I get reports of fatalities. What changed?”
Laurel was enjoying the president’s questions. She seemed to not be hampered with the ‘questions make me look stupid’ dilemma that was apparently gripping all the other individuals in the meeting.
“This is where things get very interesting, I…”
One of the men that were virtually sitting in on the meeting stood up, and with a beet red face said “Interesting? People are dying out there, doctor, and you call this interesting!”
“Sit down, Jim,” said President Tomas, shooting him an ice cold glance that Laurel had no doubt found its mark all those thousands of miles away to where the man was sitting. Laurel actually felt bad for him. Judging by his long earlobes and slightly larger brow ridge, she could tell he had plenty of Basque blood flowing in his veins. He most certainly had lost some loved ones to this virus.
“I do apologize, sir. Being stuck in a lab all the time insulates me. I am sorry for your losses.” A murmur swept through the room as the virtual man sat back down. “The deaths have a genetic component to them. They seem to only occur in people that have ancestral ties to the Basque region of Europe.” Switching the screen to another slide, everyone could see another image of the globe with a massive red blob over large swaths of Spain and France.
Laurel heard another murmur pass through the people as they saw the screen. “As you likely suspect, this represents current deaths. You will notice that in our own country, the vast majority of the deaths are in California, then Idaho and Nevada. These are the regions of highest Basque concentrations in America.”
“I have family from Idaho and the sickness didn’t kill me,” said Beth.
“You most likely do not have enough of the Basque genes to be fatal. The percentage it takes is still unknown to us, but we’re working on it. If you look at the map, you will see we have thousands of deaths in Europe, and that number will easily go into the hundreds of thousands. Here in the U.S., we expect around 50,000 fatalities.”
General Bahn looked up from the image displayed on the screen with the numbers of expected fatalities at the bottom and said. “Not to be callous, but that’s not horrific. We lose almost that many people to the common flu every year.”
“That is true, General. Around 40,000 people die from influenza in this country every year, although we have vaccines for that. In the rest of world, the deaths number several hundred thousand.” Looking back at the man who had the outburst earlier, she continued, “The deaths are still terrible, make no mistake.”
Clicking the button once more, the screen showed the well-known double helix that made up all the genetic material on the planet. “There is a much more frightening component of this virus than initial fatalities.” Laurel had now captivated everyone’s attention. “As a DNA virus, not unlike chicken pox or the herpes simplex viruses, this virus will continue to alter our DNA and show itself again later.”
The president spoke up again, “Have you discovered what it’s doing to our DNA, doctor?” She was obviously beginning to grow impatient with the presentation and Laurel decided to try to speed things up.
“I am fairly confident it will lead to sterility in the human race.”
Laurel paused to let that sink in. As people’s eyes snapped back into focus on her, she continued. “The sections of DNA it seems to be attacking are mostly responsible for reproduction. It’s attacking the strands of DNA responsible for the Y chromosome. My collaborators at the CDC and I both believe this to be incidental, bad luck essentially. It may leave females totally undamaged, assuming they survive the initial fever. The vast majority of males will end up sterile.”
All the men in the meeting shifted uncomfortably in their seats. One of them spoke up, “How do we stop it?”
“I’m working on a gene therapy that might work. It can even be administered after infection and it will stop the damage. I want to point out that it doesn’t immediately leave you sterile after the initial fever. I expect the process to take years.”
A collective exhalation was readily heard around the room, but Laurel continued “Make no mistake here, if this isn’t stopped, it could end the human race. I am not trying to inflate the risk, there is no need. The natural immunity shown by a very small percentage of males comes along with Y chromosome anomalies leading to infertility anyway. We’re stuck here people, without enough fertile males, Homo sapiens’ reign on this planet ends very quickly.”
Beth Tomas spoke up again, “You have all the resources of the most powerful government on the planet doctor. Stop this thing.”
“I will do my best. We are near to finding a treatment now, but it will need extensive testing, of course.”
“I can fast track that testing,” said the president. “We can deal with side effects if we have to, that’s better than extinction. Tell me where this came from.”
“Ma’am, it appears to come from our past. We are certain that it came out of the melting glacial ice.” Many around the room, having heard this rumor, nodded slowly in agreement. “Looking at where it first surfaced, we have dated it back to around 25,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand.” Laurel had decided before eve
r starting this meeting that she would keep her Neanderthal theory quiet for the moment. Once she saw the man with obvious Basque lineage, she was very happy with her decision. She knew it might not go over well to tell the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he was part Neanderthal, even if most of the public just assumed it after hearing the man speak.
As the president began to ask another question, alarms went off both inside the bunker as well as inside the locations of all the other members of that particular meeting. The president simply looked at Laurel and said, “Leave us doctor; go do your job, and please, for the sake of humanity, do it quickly.”
Laurel quickly gathered her files, pushed a button to shoot the digital file displayed on the screen back to her own office, and left the room. Upon walking out the door, she couldn’t help but notice the intense feeling that spread across the room just as the alarms ended and the vid screen was quickly filled with a totally different image.
19
The general had his elbows placed on the table forming a pyramid shape, his fingers were laced together at the top. He was squeezing his hands together so tightly that his knuckles had gone nearly white. On the screen above him was the image of Chicago, Illinois. It was the area where Chicago used to be anyway. Now, through the smoke, they could only make out the broken hunks of several buildings.
The entire room was still silent. They seemed to be watching the president, wondering what to do. The general was never one for silence in a situation such as this, he wanted to strike back. “Do we know who did this?” he asked the room.
One of the president’s younger aides was at a separate video screen, apparently receiving information as it unfolded. “We don’t know anything other than that it was nuclear and it was plural,” the younger man said.
Finding Their Path (Down The Path Book 3) Page 11
