She knew all the samples were coming from the gym. Obviously, the remains of the infected were being stored inside, and their scientists were preparing the samples to be sent over for analysis.
However, the tissue samples were degrading – they had come from dead subjects. But the news was stating no one had yet died from the virus. So far, hundreds of millions the world over were in a comatosed state, but not one mortality had yet been officially confirmed.
She didn’t want to think too hard about it. She closed the window and wandered back to the lab.
Ignorance is bliss.
A long stretch of work bench, that ran around the room, had nine scientists sat at different machines. The microscopy department was the busiest room on the campus. People sat at the containment boxes feeding the prepared slides onto an automated belt which fed the machines. Printers to one side churned out endless reams of paper. An assistant sat behind a computer compiling the masses of data into desktop folders, ready to be emailed.
Melanie left the room and walked next door.
The aptly named Computer Room was manned by seven assistants. Information was pouring in from around the world. They scanned it to see what needed deleting or passing on. One sat sending the data they had accumulated off to other laboratories all over the world. So far, there was a mailing list of four thousand six hundred and seventy-one recipients. The list was growing daily.
A dull boom echoed throughout the room, bouncing off the buildings; it originated from somewhere in the city.
A few technicians looked up from their monitors. After a few shrugs they returned to their work. Another person walked in carrying a tray of coffee. He distributed the caffeinated drinks.
Melanie left the room and wandered up the corridor.
There were people in the corridors. They carried files, or boxes of data, or they walked while reading reports.
Melanie looked into the boardroom, which had been turned into a brainstorming room, to see if between them they might stumble upon a theory that worked. Three doctors were stood pointing at graphs on a large whiteboard.
Something has got to give. There are thousands of us all over the planet working on this one problem – probably the largest single project ever undertaken by humanity in history. There has to be a breakthrough soon.
She walked past the canteen. At one end, a few people sat eating dinner. Their heads were lowered, and none were talking. They needed to eat in peace, to switch their brains off for a few minutes.
Today it was spaghetti bolognese. The food was the only thing the army had got right so far. There was plenty of it, and it was cooked well. There were also tables along one side full of packaged snacks and refreshments, so people could take the food and continue working in their departments.
At the back of the canteen was rows of cots, with personal belongings piled on or next to them. Nineteen people called this home.
Melanie was glad she had snagged the supply cupboard. The benefit of being in charge – supposedly.
She popped into the toilet.
As she was washing her hands, she could hear someone crying softly in one of the cubicles. She dried her hands and left the person in peace.
We all cope in our own way; she decided. If that person needed to cry in the toilet, then so be it.
Melanie closed the door to her cupboard. She was officially off for six hours. She would catch a quick nap and return to work. She was no good if she was exhausted – the last thing she needed was to add sleep deprivation to the list.
She lay on the cot and rolled onto one side. She flicked on her fan, which she had brought from home. The noise and vibration made the sounds in the corridor outside fade away.
14
New Years Eve 2012
The days were blending together. Even her hours became erratic, working and sleeping was now her life. She would look at the clock and realize it could be 4 AM or PM; it was all the same now. Windows just became dark or light splotches against the walls.
The specialized air filtration system, which moderated the air flow throughout the floor, similar to an air-conditioned system, but it also siphoned out microbial dust that may be floating around the laboratories, was having difficulty laboring against so many people being in such a confined space. Over the last day, the department was starting to smell like sweaty onions.
Scientists and lab assistants were getting cabin fever. She was ordering people to go for walks around the building, getting them to change their environment, even for ten minutes. They were not permitted to just wander the grounds. The army had sectioned an area off where they could walk around, like sheep.
Fights were becoming everyday occurrences. Tempers were frayed.
Gunfire from the army on the perimeter fence was becoming a daily occurrence. She hated to think about who they were firing at.
Yesterday the body of Nadene Gethard, a nineteen-year-old undergraduate student from South Africa, was found dead from an overdose in the toilet.
Melanie just hoped it wasn’t Nadene she had heard crying in the toilet a couple of days before.
She asked the soldiers guarding the building to pass messages to the General in command asking if she could talk with him. So far, her requests have gone unanswered.
It was 1:17 PM, and Melanie was sat in the canteen surrounded by nine other, silent, scientists and a couple of assistants while picking at a bowl of beef stew.
At the back of the room a couple of people snored as they slept during their breaks.
Melanie wondered how sanitary it was for her to be eating where nineteen people slept? She mentally shrugged and lifted the spoon to her mouth.
Then the gunfire started.
Normally, there were one or two pops, then it died away. Today it just kept going.
After a minute of continuous firing, some of the people started to gather around the windows, trying to see what was going on. The room didn’t have a good view of the barriers.
As Melanie looked down a group of soldiers ran out of the gym, heading to the main entrance. They were all carrying automatic weapons. More gunfire erupted, joining in with the first.
“Jim and I are going to check out what’s happening. You coming?” Doctor Peter Frank announced. Peter looked like he had lost weight. His third child was due four days ago, and it was eating him up not knowing what was happening to his family.
What the hell. Why not? It’s about time I got some answers. They supposedly put me in charge. About time I asserted that authority.
“Let’s go!”
Most stayed by the windows. Five of them headed for the lift.
When the lift reached the foyer, and the doors slid open, there were two soldiers stood directly outside the lift with their automatic SA80 rifles raised.
“Return to your work,” the youngest announced looking down the rifles sights. He was so young his face was still covered in acne. She would be surprised if he was older than eighteen.
“Please come with us, Doctor Lazaro,” the older of the two stated.
Peter went to stand in front of her.
“It’s okay Peter.” She gripped his arm and walked around him. “It will be fine.” She smiled as she looked into his sad eyes. “Maybe I will finally get some answers.”
“If you hurt one hair on her head, so help me God,” Peter mumbled through clenched teeth.
God has abandoned this world, Melanie randomly thought.
As Melanie stepped out, the youngest soldier stepped forward, reached around and hit the button to return them to their floor.
She watched the lift close.
In the distance, the gunfire continued, with shouting and screaming mixed in. A loud concussion explosion sounded like it was just on the other side of the tall building.
“Please follow us Doctor Lazaro. Someone wishes to speak with you.”
The oldest led the way, with the youngest at the back.
15
Melanie was led around the side of the
building and into the section her mother used to work in – the Botany Department.
Even though she only worked next door, it had been years since she had stepped inside the building dedicated to fauna.
The inside looked like a garden centre with plants and flowers in rows against the walls, and hanging from the high ceiling, and planted in a large circular display in the middle of the foyer. The air was warm and swampy, thick with the aroma of wet earth and vegetation, and due to the sustained artificial environment, a lot of the plants were in bloom.
Sadly, the smells and greenery reminded her of home. She hoped her parents were coping well.
She was led through the main lobby to a connecting door, then in past the laboratories and into the offices.
There were soldiers everywhere. One walked past with just his boxer shorts on and a towel around his neck. His hair was wet.
It must be where they sleep.
She wondered what her mother would say if she knew a soldier was using her old office as a bedroom?
On the right, through large windows, was the botany departments pride and joy, the arboretum. The huge arboretum is the third largest collection of cultivated tropical trees in Europe. Over two hundred were inside the large dome. The misting system was obviously switched off, because military cots were scattered between all the trees.
Now that is something mother would have a few things to say about.
The two soldiers stopped and stood to either side of a standard looking office door.
Melanie presumed they had reached their destination. She didn’t bother knocking; she simply walked straight in.
A man was sat behind a large mahogany desk. He was just a regular looking man – nothing about him stood out. He was an average height, with bland brown hair in a basic centre parted style, with plain features and dull grey eyes. He wore black trousers and a polo neck shirt with the red and black emblem, similar to the two doctors who first set the facility up. You would walk past him in the street and not give him a second glance – he would fade into the shadows and from your memory.
“General Hay?”
He looked up from the paperwork that he was scribbling a signature on.
Didn’t he hear the door open? Unless he’s just rude?
“I’m afraid I’m not General Hay. He is indisposed at the moment. You will have to deal with me instead.” He stood up and walked over to a shelf that was covered in exotic plants. The rest of the room was full of academic books.
“I love this building, with all the greenery and the smells.” He snapped the stem off a rare orchid and started twisting it around in his fingers.
“And how about that arboretum, huh? I find it amazing that mankind can build and create fake environments to grow hundreds of full-sized trees; and all inside!” He shook his head. “Truly astonishing!”
He returned to his seat.
He then changed the subject. “Your scientists are not making any progress,” he simply stated.
Melanie was still standing. The man had offered no seat or handshake. She decided to remain on her feet. He was getting on her nerves, and she had only just met him. There are some people you meet and you just instinctively dislike them instantly. He was one of those kind of people.
“What’s your point? There are tens of thousands of scientists working all around the world, what makes you think we are any better than any of them?” She gripped the back of the chair she was stood behind. Her knuckles turned white.
“But none of them have the great Doctor Melanie Ann Lazaro.” He lifted the stem to his face and sniffed the delicate blue flower.
“Who are you?”
He exhaled noisily and just stared at her. He then came to a conclusion.
“You can call me Mr. Shepherd.” He smiled.
“What no mysterious last name derived from an ancient language?”
“Sadly no. Mine is much more fitting for my position within the society.”
“What society? The Illuminati? The Freemasons? The Priory of Sion?” Sarcasm was heavy in her voice.
“Let us not drift off topic.”
“Who are you, and I don’t mean your name, tell me more about this society you represent?”
“I represent everyone’s interests.” He said no more.
“Whatever! This is going nowhere. Why bring me here if you’re just going to play silly buggers?”
“This is a very serious situation that we are all in,” he announced.
“No shit Sherlock! I hope you haven’t been sat in here for two weeks working that out? I could have told you that ages ago.”
He actually smiled.
“What I mean to say is, yes, the outbreak is disastrous, but I don’t think you understand just how catastrophic it is going to get?”
“There are hundreds of millions of people incapacitated – comatosed, all over the world. You think that’s not bad enough?”
“You misunderstand me. I’m telling you, what’s happening at the moment is just the tip of the iceberg. Things are going to become worse, much worse.”
He dropped the stem onto the desk. The blue flower looked out of place on the mahogany surface.
“Stop looking at this as a virus. Yes, it follows similar parameters, but as you have already found out, you can’t continue treating it like a bog-standard non-bacterial pathogen.” He leaned forward in the chair and rested his elbows on the table and placed his hands together as if praying.
“Since 1898, over five thousand viruses have been discovered since the Russian botanist, Dmitri Ivanovsky described the first in his famous article – which incidentally was discovered by someone else and attributed to Ivanovsky.”
He paused to give Melanie a chance to ask who originally discovered the first virus.
She didn’t.
He continued.
“There is believed to be millions of different types. Viruses are found in every ecosystem on this planet and are the most abundant type of biological entity known to man. As you are well aware the study of viruses is virology, a sub-specialty of microbiology – your doctorate of choice.” He knitted his fingers together.
“Virus particles consist of two or three parts: the genetic material, long molecules, and a protein coat. Some even consider viruses as a form of life, because they carry genetic material and can reproduce and evolve. As you are also aware, there are many different ways a virus can spread; from plant to plant and animal to animal, even cross contamination between flora and fauna.”
It was Melanie’s turn to sigh. She knew all this. Even a first-year student knew these facts.
“Please be patient, I and building up to my point.” He sat back in the chair.
“The range of host cells a virus can infect is called its host range. This can be narrow or it can be capable of infecting many species, as you are well aware. The host immune response normally destroys the infecting virus, or in cases where the host cannot fight the virus, a vaccine can be produced to artificially boost the immunity. But as the world is aware, there are viruses such as AIDS and viral hepatitis that can chronically infect the host. Antibiotics and antiviral drugs have no effect.”
He’s got to be building up to something?
“As you are well aware–”
It was annoying Melanie how he kept repeating that word.
“–viruses attach themselves to the hosts genetic material. That is how evolution created them.” He leaned forward again. “What if, say, there is a new virus, one so old it hasn’t mutated along with the others over the millions of years of this planet’s evolution. One which has laid dormant since before the dawn of man. A strain which doesn’t just hitch a ride, it actually genetically changes the host to its desired plan?”
Melanie just stared.
Her synapses fired up.
“Shit!” Melanie mumbled. “If that were true, or even possible, that would mean we have all been looking in the completely wrong place. If the virus is a new strain, one so old it pre
dates everything we know, we would have no way of genetically tracking its development and pinpointing it within the host’s DNA!”
She lowered her head while thinking.
“We have pinpointed it on the human DNA strand, but we can’t isolate it.” Her head snapped up.
“Fuck-a-duck!” Her eyes stretched wide.
“It’s not hitching a ride; like a normal virus, it’s actually genetically changing the host! That’s why we can’t map it, because we’re not looking for all of it. Some of it has mutated, mixing with the human DNA, creating a new strain!”
“Bingo!” Mr. Shepherd said.
“But nothing like that exists!” She creased her forehead. “It would have been discovered by now, surely?”
He gave a chuckle.
“We know more about the surface of the moon, or Mars than we do about our own jungles or ocean floors. There’s lots we don’t know about our world. Trust me on this.”
She wanted to ask why she wasn’t told about this sooner. Why they have been allowed to wander in the dark for weeks? Instead, she turned and headed back to the lab.
The youngest soldier followed in her wake.
She moved as if in a daze. Everything was starting to make sense. Before she did anything else, she had to recalibrate the machines to look for something different, that is, after she worked out what to tell the machines to look for.
Mr. Shepherd stood as the remaining soldier walked in.
“Prepare my transport,” he announced. “I am heading back to The Ark.”
16
New Years Day 2013
Day 16
Melanie didn’t hear the fireworks go off in the night, or the gunfire out on the parameter barricade; she was too engrossed in her work.
She had been sleeping as little as possible. Every minute counted now they knew what they were looking for. But even so, it was tough going.
The machines were recalibrated to the new parameters they needed to look for. It took eighteen hours before they got their first look at the complete virus.
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 45
