McKean 02 The Neah Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  The awful sight fell behind us when I rounded a bend. “I can’t believe it!” I cried. “I can’t believe it!”

  “Calm down, Fin,” McKean said with inexplicable cool. “Concentrate on your driving or you’ll put us in the ditch.”

  I took a deep breath and focused on steering. After a moment I said, “Thanks, Peyton.”

  “For what?”

  “For shouting at me back there. I’d still be there in those flames if you hadn’t thought fast.”

  “We would still be there,” he corrected, turning to look back at the fire glowing through intervening dark tree tops.

  “Do you think we should go back?” I asked. “There might be something we can do to help.”

  “Answer: no,” McKean said emphatically. “We’re no help to a dead man. And clearly the disease has left the reservation. I’ll be needed at my labs now more than ever.”

  I drove quickly through the empty, rainwashed streets of Clallam Bay and out the far end of town. Fumes of gasoline on the Mustang nauseated me, but eventually dispersed. I adjusted my speed to a rate consistent with the winding road and the continuing rainstorm. After a brief stop to close my gas cap, I drove swiftly past Port Angeles and Sequim. Not until I crossed the Hood Canal floating bridge did I feel we were a safe distance from Neah Bay.

  “The most disturbing thing,” McKean mused somberly, “was the way the man seemed quite capable of operating the pump despite his delirium. It was as if his higher thought centers were gone but his reflexive, learned responses, like squeezing a gas pump handle, were still operative. A maniac like that is much more dangerous than one who is fully disoriented. I dread to think what could happen if that sort of madness spreads to a city.”

  “The most creepy thing,” I said, “was that raven. Did you hear it calling just before the man came out of the woods? I almost believe it was leading him in our direction.”

  “According to Gordon Steel,” McKean said thoughtfully, “Raven and his cousin Crow will spread the disease. I suppose the bird might have brought the disease to Clallam Bay and infected the man, but I’m unwilling to accept your demon-bird theory.”

  “Just the same, that raven really gave me the creeps.”

  “Everything else that happened wasn’t bad enough for you, Fin? You need to throw in a little hocus pocus to go with it?”

  “All I know is this situation just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “Agreed.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  The superferry Hyak was loading when we got to the Winslow terminal. The foul weather from Neah Bay arrived with us, and a gale-force wind blew from the northwest as we crossed, frothing the black surface of Puget Sound with giant waves. These rollers made the going tough even for the huge ship, the hull of which was pushed so hard by the wind that she had to plow forward at an angle to maintain her course. As she wallowed and shuddered into each new wave, sea spray blew horizontally across the car deck on the fierce wind.

  I watched this spectacle from inside my Mustang while McKean dashed off to the snack bar for a double tall mocha, intending to dose himself with sugared caffeine and stay up late with his work. When he returned, he sipped his drink in silence for some time. I laid my head back on the headrest and tried to relax. McKean had a dollar bill in the change for his coffee, which he examined closely. “Look at this, Fin,” he said, pointing at the Great Seal on the back. “The American Eagle holds a ribbon in its beak inscribed with the words ‘E Pluribus Unum.’

  “The national motto,” I said without much interest.

  “Meaning, ‘One Out Of Many.’” he said. “It refers to one nation fashioned out of many separate nations, including Indian nations incorporated - willingly or not - into America as a whole.”

  “And your point?”

  “Gordon Steel has a legitimate concern about diet and alcohol. If we are truly a nation made up of many nations, then what should we do about dietary inequality? How do we adjust for the fact that some people have different nutritional needs? The most obvious example is alcohol, where the majority of Americans consume it beneficially and moderate consumption contributes to longevity. But for Makahs, other Native Americans, and most Asians, alcohol is poison.”

  “You can’t just outlaw drinking,” I said. “They tried prohibition and it didn’t work.”

  “Agreed. But Steel’s point still holds. If Makahs are full citizens of our nation, how do we compensate for their deleterious reaction to alcohol?”

  “It’s not our problem, is it? Can’t Makahs take responsibility for their own relationship with alcohol?”

  “Of course they can, and do. It’s a simple matter of abstinence.”

  “That’s the answer, then.”

  “For alcohol, yes. But Gordon Steel’s bitterness is two-fold. His experience of alcohol has been extremely negative, and now he sees the U.S. introducing a new negative factor into Makah life, namely the courtroom prohibition of whaling. From his perspective, our culture benefits from alcohol but refuses to let Makahs benefit from vitamin W. That’s doubly cruel, and a form of genocide, according to Steel.”

  “But what proof is there that Makahs really need whale oil?”

  “None at present, but what if the idea is ultimately proven true? My scientific curiosity is aroused. Consider the genetic information regarding alcohol. Up until a decade ago, the notion that alcohol metabolism was different between whites, blacks, Asians, and Makahs was little more than a hypothesis. Now we have detailed scientific data on the precise genes that affect alcohol metabolism in different groups. Native Americans and East Asian peoples share a small group of DNA mutations that lower the levels of alcohol-metabolizing enzymes in their livers relative to whites, blacks, and some others.”

  “So, the inequality in alcohol metabolism is actually spelled out in different people’s DNA.”

  “Precisely right. Now, concerning Gordon’s claim that Makahs need vitamin W, scientists have yet to find any information at the DNA code level, but that’s not to say there isn’t any. It’s simply an unknown, just as the alcohol codes were unknown a few years ago. Steel could be right. If so, then his perception of a great wrong being perpetrated by the protesters - up to and including genocide - would also be correct.”

  “How will we ever know the answer?”

  “Time and experimentation will uncover the facts. Steel’s concept will either be vindicated or disproven. Until then, Steel has his point of view and the protesters have theirs. But it all sits poorly with me. What ever happened to E Pluribus Unum? I assume our motto implies that we respect our differences even as we join in the union of all of us. How are the protesters honoring the Makahs’ differences?”

  “They’re not.”

  “And now the shoe is on the other foot. The protesters and all of us non-Makahs need something that only Gordon Steel has.”

  “The cure for Lost Souls disease.”

  “Exactly. A cure that comes from his heritage as a Makah. If the protesters don’t want to honor the Makah in him, why should he honor anything about the protesters? Why should he care about their susceptibility to the disease? It’s a tit-for-tat situation in the worst negative sense. ‘You keep me from the whale meat I need, and I’ll keep you from the cure you need.’ ‘

  I shuddered. “If this epidemic spreads, then Gordon Steel will be to blame. He’ll have to live with that.”

  “‘Turnabout is fair play,’ he might say. The protesters started the confrontation, not the Makahs.”

  “Can’t you intervene, Peyton? Can’t you find the Makah whale-eater gene and convince the protesters to back off?”

  “I have carried out prodigious feats in the lab, Fin, but I can’t work miracles. Finding one altered code letter in the entire human genome is a doable project. But it’s a needle in a haystack with three billion straws in it. Such a search could take my team years to complete. We won’t have the luxury of that much time if this epidemic spreads.”

  A particular
ly huge roller hit the Hyak’s bow. The heaving of her decks made me queasy. “This has been one long day,” I sighed. “I’ll be glad to get home and go to bed.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” said McKean. “I need you to drive me to see Kay Erwin. I called her while I was at the coffee stand. She wants me at the hospital as soon as we can get there.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t you ever let up, Peyton?”

  “Leon Curtis is gravely ill. He’s been raving like Pete Whitehall. She’s got him under heavy sedation.”

  The Hyak arrived at the terminal about 9:30 pm and by 9:45 we were at the isolation ward with Kay Erwin, observing Leon Curtis through the window wall. He was unconscious and pale. His eyes were surrounded by purplish-red sunken flesh. They were partly open, unfocussed and moving here and there as if watching some unimaginable horror. His forehead was covered in sweat. His wrists and ankles were fastened to the bed rails with white cloth ties. An intravenous line ran into his left arm from a saline bag on a pole.

  “Poor fellow,” said Kay. “He got feverish and threw the sheets off his bed and tore off his clothes. He said they made him feel like he was on fire. When we tried to get him back in bed, he went berserk. He bit one of our people, Nurse Hawkins. You remember him, Fin?”

  “The black fellow, built like a linebacker?”

  “Yeah. Leon bit him on the arm while Hawkins was trying to restrain him. Didn’t break through the isolation suit, though, so Hawkins is okay. We had to inject Leon with a sedative and lash him to the bed. It took three big men to do it.”

  I watched Curtis while she spoke. Seeming to hear our conversation coming through the speakers on the other side of the glass wall, he tugged at his restraints and uttered a stream of mumbles punctuated by weak snarls. His eyes opened wide but he didn’t look at us. Instead, he stared vacuously at the ceiling. His head twitched hard to the side.

  McKean looked at his friend and murmured regretfully, “I wish there were something I could do for you, Leon.”

  “What I would like to understand,” said Erwin, “is why Leon is down but we still don’t have any sick Makahs. The tally of cases, including your gas station man, is up to twelve white people and one black.”

  “The mystery deepens,” McKean replied absently.

  “Another thing,” said Erwin. “The CDC still is not responding the way I want them to. I’d like to see orders to seal off the reservation, but the bureaucracy hasn’t moved very fast. They’ve got people setting up a forward base halfway between Seattle and Neah Bay, at the Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles. But they’re waiting for more documented cases before they’ll take drastic action.”

  “The man at the gas station!” I said.

  “He’s not really documented yet, is he?” Kay responded. “And if the body is burnt badly enough, he may never be.”

  Curtis let out a long moan.

  “Poor Leon,” Erwin murmured. “We’ve been making a case study of him. We’ve started the Milwaukee Rabies Protocol, giving him ketamine to induce a coma that protects his brain from the inflammation, and the antiviral drug amantadine to inhibit viral growth. We’re trying to keep him as comfortable as possible while observing the disease’s progression and symptoms.”

  McKean leaned near the glass to look into Curtis’s unseeing face. He shook his head slowly and said, “It turns out, my friend, that you are our first guinea pig, like it or not.” He leaned nearer the window until his long straight nose almost touched the glass. “Are those fingernail scratches on his cheeks?”

  “Yes,” Erwin confirmed. “Before we restrained him, he scratched himself all over.”

  Curtis uttered a pathetic wail, “Hoooo! Hoooo!”

  “That was a lot louder before,” Erwin said. “The ketamine has turned the volume down.”

  “We heard it at Clallam Bay,” said McKean. He stared at Curtis’s tormented, unseeing face for a long moment. Then he turned his back to the window wall. He looked quite pale himself.

  “Do you feel all right?” I asked him.

  “I’m much better working with diseases than patients,” he said. “I can handle any virus in the lab, but I can’t stand to see a fellow human suffer.”

  “I had come to think of you as the ultimate in professional detachment,” I replied. Noting that he had gone from pale to ashen, I let the subject drop.

  After a moment Erwin said, “I’ve divided the disease progression into four stages.”

  “Oh?” Peyton McKean’s expression cleared as if switching to intellectual matters was all he needed. “What you’ve come up with?”

  “Phase one,” Erwin explained, “begins with itchiness around the eyes, which in turn causes swelling and redness.”

  “And eventual purplishness,” McKean added, “as we saw with the bulldozer man and the madman at Clallam Bay. I suspect it’s an early effect of brain swelling, compounded by constant rubbing.”

  Erwin nodded. “Then phase two starts with mild signs of mental derangement, the inability to concentrate and occasional lapses into a trance-like state.”

  “Like Pete Whitehall when we first saw him,” I said. “And Leon Curtis in Peyton’s office two days ago.”

  “And then comes phase three,” Erwin continued. “Discomfort with clothing, a tremendous urge to scratch the skin, and more mental derangement interspersed with moments of wild erratic behavior. Leon would be much more scratched up if we hadn’t tied him down and sedated him.”

  “Regarding the erratic behavior,” McKean said, “add this observation. Victims seem to retain their ability to operate machines, even though they don’t seem to know just what to do with them.”

  “Pete Whitehall’s mad driving,” I said.

  “Exactly,” McKean concurred. “And the gas station maniac’s apparent understanding of the use of a gas nozzle - much to his regret.” McKean’s color returned as the clinical discussion proceeded. On the other hand, I felt myself blanching at the memory of the awful look in the madman’s eyes.

  McKean finally regained his detached academic expression. “It seems that our peculiarly human ability to use machines and tools is coopted by the disease in the same way that rabies coopts an animal’s biting instincts. Where a dog’s primary weapons are its teeth, it makes sense that humans may resort to their own most efficient weapons, namely tools and machines.”

  “In addition to biting,” I pointed out.

  “To summarize stage four, then,” said Erwin, “raging, biting, and attacking with machines. I haven’t seen a fullblown case of that stage yet but I’ll take your word for it. Leon was probably headed in that direction before we sedated him.”

  “I wonder what Leon would be like if you weren’t treating him?” I asked. “As mad as Pete Whitehall? It was awful to watch Pete lashing out at his rescuers.”

  McKean turned to look at Curtis again. “Leon is lucky to be here where he can be helped. It’s encouraging that his fever and mania can be controlled by drugs.”

  “That’s something,” Erwin agreed. “But if this contagion gets out of hand, there won’t be enough medical facilities and personnel to handle all the cases. I wish we knew how fast this disease spreads, and how it is transmitted.”

  “Biting,” said McKean. “There’s an effective means of spreading this disease rapidly, if you want one.”

  “No, I don’t want one,” I said. “This situation’s bad enough without screaming zombies biting people.”

  “One victim biting the next,” Erwin murmured. “Truly a human version of rabies. In crowded urban areas transmission could be incredibly rapid. Much faster than we’ve seen so far. But Leon wasn’t bitten - was he?”

  “No,” McKean replied. “And that’s got me thinking there might be multiple ways the disease can be passed. It wouldn’t be the first disease with different means of propagation. Leon’s case seems to have come on slowly. I perceive he may have gotten a low-level exposure, perhaps from the ravens or their droppings after they had eaten some of the c
orpse.”

  “Transmission by birds!” Erwin exclaimed. “That’s really scary. Like avian flu, it could spread on the wing!”

  “Just like Gordon Steel claimed it would,” I added.

  “This all fits with what we’ve seen,” McKean observed. “A low level exposure via the lungs or skin leads to a slow-acting disease, as we see in Leon. However, a bite victim might be expected to go down much faster, given a much heavier initial virus dose delivered directly into the bloodstream. So there might be a range of incubation times - bitten people having the shortest period before appearance of symptoms, while those exposed via air have longer latent times and a more slowly developing disease. And some people may be more resistant than others.”

  “This conversation is making me nervous,” I said. “Where do you and I fit in, Peyton?”

  McKean thought for a long moment. “I wish I had an answer for you, Fin. Perhaps we avoided exposure. Or, with a mild enough exposure, perhaps our bodies will hold off the virus.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then the clock is ticking.”

  We fell silent for a moment, pondering the implications. McKean then asked Erwin, “Tell me more about the fever. How intense is it?”

  “Very,” Erwin replied. “Leon hit one-hundred-and-three before we started him on heavy doses of ibuprofen to control it. We’re continuing ibuprofen, otherwise the fever might have been fatal by itself.”

  McKean stared soberly at Curtis through the glass. He murmured, “Then, my friend, you would have reached phase five.”

  “Phase five?” Erwin puzzled. “What’s that?”

  “Death.”

  After a moment, Erwin was struck by a sudden thought. “Wait a minute, Peyton. I just realized you told me your gas-station madman was in Clallam Bay. That’s off the reservation. So it’s already too late to quarantine just Neah Bay.” She turned and hurried toward her office. “I’m calling CDC right now. This quarantine has got to get a higher priority or it will be too late.”

  She sat at her desk and picked up her phone. She progressed through a series of calls while McKean and I stood disconsolately watching Leon Curtis moan and hoot his way toward whatever fate awaited him.