Final Epidemic

by Earl Merkel

  “First, VIX is so contagious that it could easily spreadoutside the U.S.,” Carson said. “Frankly, I believe this is desirable. But even if we made the attempt to minimize this, the possibility is there. Technically, Mr. President, it would be illegal. In effect, we’d be using a biological weapon in violation of numerous treaties and international law.”

  “The flu is highly contagious too,” the President said. “If it’s between H1N1 and VIX, I think most governments would make the obvious choice.”

  “The choice isn’t quite that simple, sir. VIX was designed as an incapacitating agent against military targets,” Krewell said. “Mainly young, healthy people whose immune system could deal with the overload. Even so, in tactical situations where we would employ VIX, our projections indicate a fatality rate of about two percent.”

  The President looked at Carson with hard eyes. “You’re saying that if we use this, we intentionally kill two percent of the American people?”

  “More,” Carson said, and his voice was unflinching. “Widespread use will carry VIX infection far beyond its originally intended targets. To the elderly and the very young, persons with compromised immune systems. Other population groups probably have risk factors we can’t even envision yet. When you factor in these groups, the projected percentage increases.”

  “How much?”

  “Statistically, between four and seven percent,” Krewell said. “As a realistic working percentage, we’re using five percent.”

  The President sat very still, and Krewell could almost see him working the math in his mind, over and over. Krewell had done the same himself, done the horrific sums, the cold-blooded division, the ruthless subtraction.

  The result always came out the same. The population of the United States, rounded off, came to about two hundred eighty million persons; world population was six billion souls. Five percent of those totals came to—

  “Three hundred million people,” the President said. “If I order this, the chances are that I will kill three hundred million people—fourteen million of them Americans.”

  “If you do not,” Carson said, “you doom the rest.”

  Krewell spoke up. “There is something more to consider,” he said. “The symptoms of both diseases are virtually identical. For H1N1-Florida, we’ve seen some wide swings in the incubation period between infection and the onset of symptoms—for some people, it’s days. Others seem to succumb in eight hours or less. There’s a possibility the flu has already spread and is simply incubating in many people who have not yet shown symptoms.”

  “And?” The President seemed not to understand.

  “Well, sir,” Krewell said. “If we release VIX on a widespread basis, we’re certain to see flulike cases spring up all over—certainly in the U.S. and very likely elsewhere if it does spread to other countries. Millions upon millions of people will become ill within a short time span. We’ll incapacitate whoever is still working in emergency services and the health system—doctors and nurses will be as sick as anybody else. Same with law enforcement, the military. VIX will literally shut everything down, very quickly. But—” His voice trailed off.

  “But what?”

  “Well, Mr. President,” Krewell said, “as I said, the symptoms and antibody signatures of both are identical. We won’t know which virus is activating the disease, the VIX or the killer flu.”

  The President clearly did not understand the implications. After a moment, his national security advisor spoke up.

  “What Dr. Krewell means, sir, is that we won’t know with certainty if the plan is working,” Carson said. “Not until it’s too late to do anything else. Except die.”

  Chapter 31

  Outside Helena, Montana

  July 23

  His leg, where one of the shotgun pellets had torn out a chunk of flesh, stung under the dressing he had improvised. He had easily stopped what little bleeding there had been. But now, after two hours spent parked casually in the vast parking area of a modern-looking rest stop, the wound had stiffened somewhat.

  It hurts,he thought,but worse—it is embarrassing. Forced to run like a rabbit, by a woman whose brains were all but pouring out of her ears! Ah, Ilya—it is well your old comrades are not here to see this, and to laugh at your ineptitude.

  He had been caught up in the dance of interrogation, too preoccupied in planning the rhythms and the choreography of pain to pay attention to the noises she must have made as she approached the tableau. Only the sound of the shotgun’s pump mechanism—hearthatonce, and survive it, and you never forget again, he told himself wryly—only that sound had penetrated the exclusive relationship he had begun to establish with the man. He counted himself lucky to have escaped through the low underbrush with only this scratch as a souvenir.

  The car was back on the interstate now, cruising at a speed only slightly above the posted speed limit. It was an untroubled drive on a fine road—particularly, he thought, one built through these most impressive mountains. Ilya considered himself a fair person, and ungrudgingly admired the quality of the highways he had found in this country. With the possible exception of the Autobahn, which he had driven a few months earlier while on another assignment, he had never seen finer roads.

  Ilya regretted the lack of time with the man. He had resisted strongly, though the Russian had anticipated this from a fellow professional. But the breaking point certainly would have come; both of them knew it, he was certain. It was this shared knowledge, this . . .intimacy that had accounted for his inattention to his surroundings.

  Unfortunate.He nodded silently.On so many levels.

  Still, he now knew—almost for certain—that the CIA was working hand-in-glove with the federal police. This, he knew, was unusual for Americans. With only a few exceptions, they typically performed as wolverines locked in the same cage. Cooperation was rare, mutual animosity usually fierce.

  So this Trippett and his play-soldier militia must have great significance to them too,he thought.Even more interesting, if they are looking for this man, it is because they themselves do not have him. He is still a viable threat, and my assignment is still unresolved.

  No matter. He would look, and he would find Trippett. And then he would ask him the questions his employer wished answered. Ilya had no doubt the man would gratefully provide the information that was required, at some point in their conversation.

  In his experience, almost everybody did.

  Chapter 32

  State Hwy. 241

  Mielcarz, North Carolina

  July 23

  For Deborah Stepanovich, her eyes burning and her hands shaking in near exhaustion, the four hundred-plus miles she had traveled in the past seven hours had been a trip through hell.

  It had not lacked for demons—many of them, she understood, of her own imagining, though that made them no less frightening. Neither had it lacked for sulfurous flames, a particularly vivid, dark orange corona against the black summer sky over several of the cities she had skirted.

  Since leaving Virginia, Deborah had scanned the radio frequencies. Most were static filled, or—to her mind, worse—dead air. The few radio stations that were still broadcasting told tales of martial law, of riots breaking out even in smaller cities. There was little about the flu that she considered “news”; but the broadcasters still on the air made up for that shortage with an excess of rumors and wild conjecture.

  Deborah had consulted her road atlas frequently, avoiding the main roads and skirting any city of significant size. She had skimmed the eastern edge of the Alleghenies, and their imposing bulk seen through her passenger window felt comforting and serene.

  She had felt herself in personal danger only once, when halfway across North Carolina a two-vehicle covey had suddenly appeared in her rearview mirror. The first, a rust-dappled pickup truck, had spun from a side road seconds after she had sped past. Behind the pickup, a Firebird had fishtailed onto the pavement in turn, their wheels spitting gravel and dust.

 
; Her stomach had dropped as the vehicles mushroomed in her mirrors, and for the first time Deborah wished she possessed a gun, even a knife. She pressed harder on the accelerator, but when she looked up again the pickup was so close she could read the letters on its grille:F RD , it read, the missing letter like a gap-toothed leer.

  And then the truck swerved to the side and roared past with a broken-muffler flatulence that she felt even through her closed windows. Before her mind could register this fact, the other car shot past; from the Firebird, a girl who could not have been older than twelve waved excitedly from the passenger seat.

  Deborah Stepanovich blew out the breath she had not realized she was holding, and willed herself to stop trembling. There was a moment of elation that flooded through her; then she felt the old anger rise—not surprisingly, at Beck.

  Her temper flared.Damn him!

  For an instant, she thought about what could have happened, what she had expected was about to occur; vivid images, some of them pornographic in their violence, flashed across her mental cinema.

  He should have been here to help. But he never was, not when I needed—

  She stopped short.

  “Is this what it felt like, Beck?” she said aloud. “Is this what is was like out there in your world? Every day, every minute?”

  She had seldom thought about that side of it.

  But Katie is in danger and I—

  Again she stopped herself.

  I’ve spent my adult life without his help.

  “And I did pretty fucking well on my own,” Deborah said, again aloud, and was surprised at how much she savored the profanity. Despite herself, she smiled. “All on my . . .fucking own.”

  She drove on, not knowing there was a smile on her face.

  Deborah saw only a few other cars before dusk fell, and none of them took any notice of her.

  Outside Gaffney, South Carolina, Deborah filled her fuel tank at a BP station. There, she found that an executive order prohibiting fuel sales simply translated into a per-gallon black market price that roughly approximated that of single-malt Scotch.

  The terms were non-negotiable: cash in hand. Deborah did not flinch as she handed the attendant two hundred-dollar bills, which he folded into his pocket with a nervous grin. But she supervised, tight-lipped and intent, as he filled the tank. She spoke sharply at the end, and glared until he topped off the last few ounces. She even pretended not to hear what he muttered as he replaced the hose in the pump.

  Then she drove off, her stomach fluttering and her heart pounding madly.

  Deborah swung far to the east of Atlanta, figuring to avoid whatever structures might be in place there, whether by law enforcement or those who defy it.

  But even the most reasoned plans go awry in the face of reality; none of the alternate routes she traced on her map took her toward her destination. She pressed on for a while on roads that ran, more or less, due south; twice she found herself lost, even with her map open on the passenger seat beside her.

  Finally, just before the nighttime darkness grew complete, Deborah looked up through her windshield and mentally sighed. Above her idling Mercedes, the sign at the crossroads intersection pointed west. A blue-and-white shield gleamed in her high beams.

  Interstate 85 it is, I guess,she told herself.Here goes nothing.

  Ninety minutes later, she was one of the handful of vehicles speeding along the concrete ribbon of the interstate. To the north, a faint flickering glow marked where the skyline of Atlanta should have been; apparently, electrical power had failed, at least in the central business district. Her detour had added a hundred miles, and brought her only a dozen or so miles south of the metropolis.

  But Deborah was past Atlanta now, and closer to where she knew, in her heart, Katie waited for her arrival. She sped up, slightly, at the thought.

  She glanced at the sign as it flashed past.

  MONTGOMERY,ALABAMA , it read, 192MILES .

  Chapter 33

  Fort Walton Beach, Florida

  July 23

  If he pulled back the black-out drape slightly, Ray Porter could look out over the football field a scant fifty yards away. Occasionally he saw movement, dim figures moving ghostlike amid the canvas village. Most then disappeared into the darkness of the field, bearing what he assumed were stretchers.

  Briefly, Porter wondered whether what they carried was alive or dead. He could not tell. The lights that the engineers had strung between the tents hung like a pale yellow necklace carelessly tossed, its weak glow waxing and waning with the fitful surges of the generators.

  Here, in the elementary school gymnasium they had converted into a testing facility, illumination was anything but scarce.

  No,Porter thought, and behind the acrylic faceshield of the physician’s breathing apparatus his lips twisted wryly.

  That’s not quite accurate.

  It was light that was plentiful—an otherworldly blue-white light that filled every corner of the gymnasium with a cold glare. As for illumination—well,he thought,we’ll see how much of that we have here soon. Very soon. Porter let the curtain drop, snapping the dark UV shield back over his helmet’s faceplate before he turned back to the room.

  “Dr. Porter? We’re ready to start.”

  The voice was pitched low, but even so the physician could hear the near-exhaustion in the tone. It was not, Porter knew, a good sign. The whole team had been working nonstop, first on outbreak evaluation and then—after CDC had been advised that Fort Detrick was sending a very special package for Porter’s people to live-test—on preparing a jury-rigged containment system. They were all tired.

  And tired people make mistakes.

  Which we damn well can’t afford,Porter reminded himself wordlessly.Certainly not with this damnable stuff.

  Porter had been briefed on the virulence of VIX and on the potential it carried for both good and ill. Of course he knew “Major Barbara” Jones—biological research and epidemiology are part of the same elite circle; everybody called her that, albeit behind her back—and during the conference call they had patched between Washington, USAMRIID, CDC-Atlanta and here, the Army researcher had been unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

  “The lab work is sound, Ray,” Jones had insisted. “VIX willdefinitely stimulate the immune system in any subject, even one already infected with your H1N1-Florida virus. You should see hyperproduction of antibodies within an hour of VIX exposure—and because the base virus was the parent organism for both VIX and your killer flu, the antibodies should be effective on both.”

  Ray Porter had grunted, a noncommittal response he hoped sounded professional. But when he spoke, he had carefully avoided the word “cure.”

  “As a theory, I concur,” Porter said. “As a treatment therapy, Barb—well, I have concerns. VIX may work or it may not. But if it escapes and makes it into the general population . . .” He paused, leaving the words unsaid. “A live-subject test in the kind of field conditions we face here is very, very risky.”

  “Riskier than what? Than flying an infected subject out of the contagion zone to test up here?”

  “That’s simply not going to happen, Doctors.”

  It was a new voice, one that Ray Porter had known belonged to the only person with the power to make this decision final. The voice spoke firmly, in the manner of one accustomed to commanding others.

  “Dr. Porter, you will devise a suitable containment there, in Fort Walton Beach—one that will prevent VIX from posing an immediate threat outside. No, please don’t interrupt, Doctor. You will receive a sufficient supply of VIX to test its effectiveness on persons already infected with the killer flu; you will use as many subjects as needed to obtain results that will be representative of the U.S. population as a whole.”

  The voice had softened, and for a moment Ray Porter felt a twinge of profound sympathy for its owner.

  “People will die as a direct result of your tests, Dr. Porter. For that, I accept complete responsibili
ty.” Then the tone hardened again. “You have your orders. Make the arrangements, and proceed.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Porter had said, but the connection had already been broken.

  Now, only a few hours afterward, Ray Porter turned from the shrouded window to survey the school gymnasium his team had labored to turn into a microcosm of Level 4 containment. The ultraviolet lights had been commandeered from tanning salons they had found in the Yellow Pages, rewired and configured in a ring around the gym’s center court.

  The lights surrounded a bubble of clear vinyl that in its original incarnation had been designed as a low-cost greenhouse; it had come from a garden supply store a few blocks south, as had the hand-pump sprayers now being used on its exterior surfaces. Empty gallon jugs of household bleach littered the far reaches of the parqueted floor. Other elements—ductwork, blowers, and more—had also been incorporated, Rube Goldberg–like.

  It was an ingenious design, readily duplicated in field conditions anywhere. Or so the team hoped.

  Inside the bubble, a half-dozen camp beds held the forms—some thrashing, some moving only feebly—of what were now the most important people on earth. Like worker bees attending a comatose queen, members of Porter’s team moved among them, testing and measuring.

  And waiting.

  “Dr. Porter.”

  Ray tore his attention from the tableau and turned to the spacesuited figure who now stood at his elbow.

  “There’s a woman outside—a Dr. Mayer—who insists on talking with you immediately. She says it’s urgent.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Ray Porter’s voice was frankly skeptical, even a little suspicious.

  Carol took a deep breath, wishing she felt less like a traitor.

  “I mean gone,” she repeated. “Missing. Nowhere to be found. Out of here.”

  Porter snorted, the sound odd from behind the Plexiglas faceshield. “Not likely, Dr. Mayer. Not from here.”