by Caleb Cleek
“The infected individuals crave protein, assumedly because prion production robs the body of amino acids. New amino acids are obtained by the digestion of protein. The infected have an insatiable appetite for meat and immediately resort to cannibalism. They will eat other sources of meat, too. For unknown reasons, they seem to prefer human flesh. According to the Chinese, the infected have never been observed to eat other infected.
“China has a large population of political dissidents and other undesirable people whom they used as test subjects. In the course of their testing, over twenty thousand people were exposed to the disease. Roughly five percent of the population was immune to the virus. The other ninety-five percent who were exposed to the virus became infected.
“In one test, a town was built in a remote location and surrounded by a fence with guard towers to ensure no one escaped. Five thousand people were brought into the town to live. At some point, they were exposed to the virus. In one neighborhood, everyone became infected except for a single family. It turned out that the immunity is genetic. If both parents have immunity, then their kids will also be immune. If only one parent was immune, the kids were not. In the end, immunity didn’t matter. The five percent who were not infected were killed by those who were. In that particular test, immunity was a moot point.
“With no outside source of food, the infected had all died off in about six weeks. If a source of food was available, test subjects were still alive after a year. It isn’t known how long it will take for the disease to prove fatal to the infected. No experiments have lasted longer than a year.
“Initially, damage to the brain occurs very rapidly thanks to the genetic manipulation of the disease. After the individual is “resurrected,” brain damage slows to a near halt. Further damage does occur, but very slowly from that point on.
“According to the information Dr. Chen has provided us, the Chinese leaders are counting on near complete elimination of the America population. After the infection has wiped out the population, they are going to send in their military to mop up the infected and anyone who is still alive. Once that’s done, they are going start moving their citizens to America and colonize the country. The entire infrastructure will be intact. They will come in and pick up where we left off.”
I stood in stunned silence. It took several seconds to collect my thoughts as I processed the information I had just heard. Slowly, the full impact of the revelation began to register.
“Are you being serious? This is a disease that was intentionally created for release in America?” I asked incredulously. “It doesn’t make sense that the Chinese would want to release a disease like this in our country. We obviously don’t agree on a lot of things, but without America, who would buy their stuff? Whether or not they like us, they need us. Their economy is tied to our continued prosperity,” I stated as the possible ramifications of the current situation ran though my head.
“Unfortunately, I am being completely serious. That brings us to an important question. Was the release of the disease intentional or accidental? Right now, you are the most likely candidate to start that investigation. The FBI and a dozen other agencies will be swarming all over town in a few hours. In the mean time, you are here and if you still have some conscious victims, you have limited time access to first hand witnesses as to how this started. The implications of what you may discover are enormous. We’re talking about a possible act of war.”
I paused. The initial investigation was up to me. By the time the feds arrived, there wouldn’t be any original exposures still alive. I had been pacing back and forth in a subconscious attempt to release the tension that was building from the story Doc Baker had been relaying to me. I suddenly stopped pacing as a new train of thought burst into the forefront of my mind.
“Before I get started with the interviews, fill me in on how the disease is passed from person to person.” I said, still reeling from what I had heard.
“Unfortunately, it is an airborne virus. It thrives in moist environments such as the inside of the nose and throat. If an infected person coughs or sneezes, the saliva and mucous that come out are full of viruses. The virus is very small and can remain airborne in the atomized discharge for a long time. If a person were to touch a surface contaminated with the virus and then rub his eye, scratch the inside of his nose or touch his mouth with his hand, he would become infected. Breathing the atomized saliva from a cough or sneeze would also result in infection. The good news is that it can’t live on a dry surface. Once the moisture in which the virus was dispersed evaporates, the virus becomes harmless within about two hours…”
As he continued to explain how the disease was transmitted, I stopped hearing what he was saying. The realization that we were all exposed attacked my mind and emotions relentlessly. We would share their fate.
“Be straight with me, Doc. How long do we have?” I interrupted.
“Well, the first symptoms are manifested four or five hours after the initial contact with the virus. The coma results about an hour later. Roughly thirty minutes later, the individual comes out of the coma and the damage is done. I’m sorry, but you don’t have long.”
I’m sure he was genuine in his condolence, but somehow it seemed trite. My life was six hours from ending and he was “sorry.” I understood. I had been in his shoes many times when I had been required to make death notifications. I genuinely felt badly for the person receiving news that destroyed her life. Then I went to lunch. You can’t fully empathize with people when it comes to their personal tragedies. I didn’t fault Doc Baker for his callous condolence. I understood that he couldn’t possibly feel the same emotions I was feeling right now.
“What are the chances of survival once infected?” I asked, still digesting the fatal diagnosis I had just received.
“According to Dr. Chen, there have been no cases of an infected person recovering,” he said. “The Chinese developed a vaccine and have begun administering it to their citizens, but it is a preventative. It keeps a person from being infected with the original virus. If you don’t catch the virus, your body won’t produce the prions. Once prion production has begun, there is no treatment. Some might be able to survive the virus alone, but the human immune system cannot combat the prion part of the disease.”
“Well,” I said, already hardening myself to the fact that I would be dead in four or five hours. “I guess I have a lot to do in the mean time. And Doc, thanks for shooting straight with me.”
“I know that’s what you would do if the roles were reversed. I am truly sorry, Connor.” And I knew he meant it.
Chapter 7
I looked across the street at the Knick Knack Shack and saw that Matt’s patrol car was not there yet. I dialed Matt’s number on my cell phone, the same instrument Doc Baker had just used to deliver a wheelbarrow full of bad news. I didn’t want what I was about to tell Matt to go out over the radio. There isn’t a lot of excitement in our town so scanners are popular. If something happens, people want to know about it right away. I didn’t wanted to start a panic.
Matt answered on the third ring. “Are you okay?” he asked with genuine concern in his voice.
We had worked together for four years. He came to the department a year after I did and we immediately hit it off. His wife and my wife were inseparable. Our sons were two months apart and were best friends. We had been through a lot together and I knew how he was feeling after hearing my radio call of shots fired.
Two years ago, I had been on the other end of the radio when Matt put out an emergency shots fired call on a traffic stop gone bad. He was pinned down and had been hit. I remember the helpless feeling of not being close enough to do anything. At my car’s top speed of one hundred-thirty miles per hour, I knew it would take close to ten minutes to reach him. Good or bad, I knew the outcome would be decided long before I got there. Those were probably the worst ten minutes of my life. I knew exactly what was going through Matt’s mind. I knew the most important thing I could d
o for Matt was to assure him I was okay.
“I’m fine, but the situation here is bad.” I quickly filled him in on what had transpired, leaving out what Doc Baker had said about my exposure. That information would only hinder him at this point.
There was a pause while Matt digested what I had said. “I’m passing Black Rock now. I will be there in fifteen minutes,” he answered. Black Rock was a twenty foot tall mound of lava rock twenty-nine miles out of town. The road was straight and lightly traveled. Traversing twenty-nine miles in fifteen minutes wasn’t a big deal. The area we patrolled was huge, over six thousand square miles. We regularly responded to emergency calls at over one hundred twenty miles per hour. It was the only way to get anywhere in time to be of any use.
Now it was my turn to pause as I considered the best deployment for Matt. “I think the best place for you is outside the Knick Knack Shack. Set up there and make sure no one goes in, or more importantly, no one leaves. Stay outside and don’t get exposed. When you come into town, stop by the station and get me another couple boxes of .40 bullets out of the armory. I’m going to need them.”
“Copy that. I’ll be there soon.” And then we were disconnected as Matt ended the call.
Steve hadn’t been what I would consider a friend, but he was someone I had contact with on a regular basis and he was a good person. He had died a senseless death. I wasn’t going to let it happen to anyone else if I could prevent it. My goal was to contain this Chinese act of aggression for however long I had left.
I was back to the decision I had been avoiding before: what to do about the tourists. After talking with Doc Baker, the answer was obvious. They needed to be put down before one of them escaped and spread the disease. Like leaves in the wind, there would be no stopping it at that point. I was still having trouble with the idea of shooting people even though they appeared dead. Before I talked with Doc Baker and found out they were hibernating, there was no problem. Now that I knew more about their condition, I was facing a moral dilemma.
Before I dealt with that issue, I needed to get some answers if I could. I turned toward the four who were still conscious. Three looked bad, and one looked normal. I had heard the others call her Kimiko. She and Yuto must have been the five percent who were immune. Like the rest of them, she appeared to be in her sixties. Salt and pepper hair hung limply to her shoulders with bangs just above her eyebrows. Twenty-five years ago she would have been attractive. Now, she was elegant and poised. She was dressed very well. My eyes moved back and forth, making sure nobody was going to surprise me from behind or from the sides as I approached her.
“Ma’am, would you walk over there with me?” I gestured to the far side of the diner where I had been eating. She seemed reluctant, I placed my hand around her elbow and exerted a slight upward pull and she stood. At five-six, she was tall for a Japanese woman. She followed me across the remnants of what had been a neat and tidy dining room. I sat down first, my back to the wall. She sat across from me. Normally I would have pulled her chair out for her. Today, chivalry seemed a little out of place.
“I need you to answer a few questions, if you don’t mind. I’m helping the doctor figure out where this sickness came from.”
“I will answer your questions,” she said in nearly perfect English, starring down at the table.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel fine,” she replied, continuing to stare at the table. She may have felt fine physically, but emotionally she was a wreck and understandably so. Her body was trembling slightly and her hands were fidgety.
“How long have you been with the rest of the people in the group?”
“We all met at Haneda airport in Tokyo yesterday evening. Yuto Yakamoro was our classmate in school. He is the founder of Yakamoro Electronics.” I was familiar with the company. They made the TV in my living room. “He put together and paid for a trip for our classmates and their spouses. It was to be a reunion for us. The reunion began yesterday when we boarded a plane he chartered.” She move her hands from the table and rested them in her lap.
“We believe you were exposed to this disease within the last six hours. Can you think of an incident in that timeframe where all of you could have been exposed to the virus? You could have come in contact with it by something you touched or you could have inhaled it. Was there someone the group had contact with who had the symptoms your classmates have?”
Still looking down at the table, she moved her hands back to the table top and folded them in front of her. “It was just us on the plane,” she said. “Yuto chartered a large jet for our group. We never saw the pilots. When we boarded the plane, the cockpit door was closed. The only other people on the plane were the three flight attendants. They were all involved in the distribution of the food we ate. None of them acted sick, though. Certainly not like everyone here.”
“What time did your plane land?”
“The plane landed at 7:00 this morning. We got off the plane and went straight through customs. The bus was waiting for us as soon as we cleared customs.” She refused to look me in the eyes as she spoke.
“If you landed at 7:00, you had to be exposed on the plane, probably sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 this morning. Did they serve breakfast during that time?” I asked hopefully.
“No, most of us were sleeping. We didn’t have breakfast until we were in the airport. Yuto had been telling us about a place that served cinnamon rolls that he liked very much. Most of us ate there; a few ate at other places. We all ate in the airport. It was probably about 8:00 when we ate.” Suddenly her hands stopped fidgeting. Her head lifted up and she looked into my face with wide eyes. In a soft voice, she nearly whispered, “I know when it was.”
After pausing for a moment, she continued. “As I said, most everyone was sleeping. I had my head down with my eyes closed, trying to sleep. I heard the flight attendants passing by and looked up. Two of them were carrying silver cylinder’s about this big,” she said, holding her hands a foot apart. “A mist was coming out of the cylinders. One of them saw me watching her walk by and she stopped. She explained that the last flight had taken refugees from Africa to Japan. Most of the refugees had lice. They fumigated the plane as soon as the refugees got off, but unless they sprayed it twelve hours later to make sure all the bugs were dead, we may get held up in customs. She said the spray was harmless. They weren’t wearing masks, so I believed her.”
The time frame fit. It seemed that spraying an aerosol would be the best way to assure everyone was thoroughly exposed. This had to be the infection and it was intentional. “I have one last question,” I said. “Were the flight attendants Japanese?”
“No,” she said with a puzzled look on her face. “They were a crew from China. Why do you ask?”
Chapter 8
I took my phone out again. I needed to make three calls. I looked through my call log and found Doc Baker’s number and touched the green box at the bottom of the screen to dial the number.
“What did you find?” he asked without a greeting.
“It was an intentional act.” I quickly described what Kimiko had related to me. “That isn’t why I called, though. You said that five percent of those exposed would be immune to the disease. Kimiko is not showing any signs. I think it would be best to get her away from the diner. Is there a problem with that?”
After what Kimiko had already been through, it didn’t seem right to keep her locked up to watch her classmates succumb to the illness. I didn’t want her here if I had to put them down, either.
“I don’t see that as a problem. I will contact Dr. Clark to make sure. I would like to have her quarantined for a few hours to make sure that any hitchhiking viruses she may be carrying have time to become inactive. I will get back to you in a few minutes.”
The second call I needed to make was to Special Agent Shannon O’Niel in the Los Angeles FBI field office. I had worked a case with him three years ago and we had developed a good relationship. We kept in touch and he c
onstantly told me to call if I needed anything. After the fourth ring, “Some of us have work to do, what do you want?” and then he started laughing. He was third generation American, but he normally spoke with a slight Irish accent. He had never even been to Ireland. He said the ladies liked it. When he told me that, I started laughing and told him that with all the curly red hair he had, he had better try to make it a little more pronounced because he obviously needed all the help he could get with the ladies. The truth was, his accent had nothing to do with the “ladies”. He was the guy from high school who was always making jokes and never grew out of being the class clown. He was actually married and completely devoted to his wife.
“Shannon, I need some help. Have you heard what is going on up here?” I asked quickly.
“Yeah, I heard. A doctor from there talked with a Dr. Clark at the CDC. As soon as they got off the phone, we got a call from the CDC. Within a couple minutes of that phone call, a team of Homeland Security contractors that works out of our office was out the door and on their way. We were briefed two weeks ago on the chance that this might be released, but it didn’t seem very probable that they would release it once we knew about it. Before we knew, it was likely the country would be wiped out before we figured out what was happening, Once we knew it was a Chinese weapon, releasing it would be like dropping a nuke on New York City. It would demand retaliation. What is the damage up there?”
I gave him the ninety second abbreviated version of what had happened. There was no response for at least ten seconds. “Are you still there?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” he said with his blustery bravado and Irish accent gone. “I didn’t realize you had been exposed. How long has it been?”
I looked down at my watch, “A little over an hour and 10 minutes, I guess.”
“Do any of you have any symptoms?” I could tell from the way he asked that it was an uncomfortable subject for him to broach. It was like asking a friend just diagnosed with terminal cancer when he was supposed die.
