When they passed away, it was within weeks of one another, his mother only a week after Halloween and his father just before mid-terms of his senior year of college. As an only child, he was left to plan the funeral arrangements on his own. Compartmentalization was the only thing that made it possible for Gale to manage all of these duties while not missing more than the couple of days of school that was absolutely unavoidable. He’d displayed a knack for being able to emotionally disconnect from everything in his life a long time before, bordering on repression at times; but he always seemed to function well enough that no one ever worried too much about his state of mind.
Mariah, Hewitt, and Tristan all managed to attend both funerals, the other three friends were unable to get leave or afford travel arrangements for their friend’s sake. In the cases of Abraham, Miles, and Kateb, cards were sent and phone calls were made. Gale appreciated the support and the attempts to provide comfort even though he felt like he was coping with the situation well. He knew it would have been a challenge for everyone to make it.
Hewitt and Tristan made a habit of checking in on him regularly through the rest of winter and the following spring, opting to occasionally work on their homework and studies at Gale’s house, around the same kitchen table where they’d often done the same during their youth. Silent and separate from one another, they did their best to be there for their friend without needing to say a word a lot of the time.
The house was on the market and readied for sale a week after Gale’s graduation.
Between life insurance and the sale of the house, he was able to move on for further education, set in his objective to never stop learning.
As it turned out, he didn’t need the money as much as he’d imagined. He was awarded a partial scholarship to the biology graduate program at MIT and a research assistant position to supplement the remaining costs.
The work kept him busy and his course load led him to a Ph.D. program in the brain and cognitive sciences where he excelled.
With the extra course studies he’d added to his required curriculum, paying out-of-pocket for additional classes just to improve his versatility, Gale was only 29 years old when he began working full-time with the Centers for Disease Control.
During graduate school, he had already started working on projects funded through the CDC and the World Health Organization, but his association was made official upon graduation.
He moved down to Atlanta, GA that summer and, in the fall, began taking additional classes in molecular and cell biology to increase his overall value in the position he held.
It was no surprise to any of his friends that Gale was well-respected and successful within his field and no one who knew him was shocked that he was making a name for himself within the circles of the CDC and WHO.
Over the years in college, he had managed to pick up a thing or two from his more socially-oriented and adroit friends and he played politics well within those organizations.
Tristan’s suicide hit him hard.
After returning from the funeral his work became more focused and driven, impressing everyone above him as he threw himself more completely into his work to escape from the nearly overwhelming sense of loss he felt at losing someone closer to him than his parents had been.
More compartmentalization, more suppression, and repression.
Healthy or not, Gale did what he always did when he needed to cope, he immersed himself further in work and study, displaying no outward signs of the strain he was under. He was coping in the only way he knew how and it worked for him better than it probably would for most.
His friends, were they around at that time, might have recognized some tell-tale signs of Gale shutting down, some minuscule cracks showing in the veneer of the professional detachment he wore like a second skin, but they rarely heard from him during the intervening years until they all received the special invitations.
34
The group looks around in stunned silence as they pass through the second pressurized door, all except Gale, who walks through the entrance space to flip the rest of the interior lights beyond the airlock from emergency lighting to the overhead fluorescents. With that transition banks of computer monitors and other equipment begin to power on as well, the buzzing and humming of hard drives and electricity completing circuits fill the air.
Even Gale needs a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the new lighting.
From the room they stand in Hewitt feels like they are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There’s something about the way the noises reverberate within the space that makes him feel like they are in only a small component of a much larger facility. As he squints against the glaring lights, he takes in what he can with his other senses.
There is a definite thrumming vibration all around, carried from unseen machinery through the walls and floor and directly to his nerves, it feels like.
It smells like a hospital, but not quite. There is that same sterile, antiseptic quality in the odors, but not quite the smell of life and death that is typical of those places.
This is no hospital, he reminds himself. There is none of the pretense of being warm and welcoming that one normally finds in a hospital, as often as those buildings fail in that regard.
Gale breaks the overall silence by leafing through papers in a steel drawer before pulling out a map that he spreads out on top of the stainless steel table that seems more appropriate for a veterinary clinic than the office-like environment they’re in presently.
“I told you I had a map of town up here,” he says proudly as he gestures to Miles.
Miles scoffs before shaking his head. “Asshole, I think we have bigger questions here than to be concerned about whether or not you actually had a map up here.”
Mariah chuckles momentarily before catching herself.
“Miles is right,” Hewitt pipes up. “What is this place?”
“This is where I worked until very recently,” Gale replies. “You don’t think I commuted to Atlanta from Idaho for work all the time, do you?”
“This is fucking crazy though,” Hewitt says, gesturing all around at the virtually cavernous room they’re standing in. “How could something like this be built without everyone knowing about it?”
“People in town were well aware of the construction taking place up here, just not what was involved or the ultimate purpose of it. As far as any of the locals knew, the Bureau of Land Management was here to seal the mine for safety reasons. The land was already owned by the US government. I simply had a proposal on the table that they considered viable.”
Gale continues, telling his friends about how the CDC had been searching for a new location to establish another BSL-4 facility in a geologically stable location and the existing mine in this region provided an excellent scaffold from which it could be assembled.
The National Science Foundation, he explained, had already provided proof of concept for just this sort of thing by converting a former gold mine in South Dakota into a series of different labs at various levels underground. It was a major cost-saving measure for the CDC to simply take advantage of the existing structure of the mine.
“No one,” he assures them, “outside of Washington DC and the CDC even knows that this place exists, except for you now.”
Gale goes on, explaining that the place is powered by a geothermal plant over the rise of a nearby mountain that is largely automated and designed to run with minimal human involvement. The same plant supplies power to the emergency systems down in the town and in some other neighboring areas, a concession made to the locals when the construction was going on up the hill in the former mine. All they knew was that the BLM was offering some new enhancements to the power grid due to the amount of energy they were drawing during the construction process.
“The reality was,” he continues, “that we needed to justify the presence of so much Department of Energy staff as well as representatives of the NSF being present for something as seemingly straigh
tforward as filling an empty mine with concrete.”
It comes as a surprise to all of them that Gale has been splitting his time between Idaho, Atlanta, and D.C. For more than seven years he was placed in charge of this facility and he oversaw aspects of the construction and development.
Until just then, none of his friends had grasped just how much pull Gale had within the CDC and they are all taken aback that he could be involved with something this massive and clandestine.
“You played this one close to the chest, didn’t you?” Miles asks, patting his friend on the back as he makes his way from the table where the map is spread out to a computer monitor displaying a flickering image with a slightly green tint to it.
Hewitt is feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach and he can’t quite place the reason why. Something is wrong, he thinks to himself, or maybe he’s finally dealing with the side-effects of everything he’s experienced since Kateb had been killed. Of course, something is wrong, he tells himself, everything has been wrong for a little while now. He chuckles to himself, amused by the absurdity of only suddenly realizing that nothing is right about the last 24 hours or longer.
“Holy shit!” Miles says, pointing at the monitor that had captured his attention. “Are these fucking security cameras, Gale?”
“Of course they are,” his friend replies. “We have cameras all through the lab, hidden in the mine shaft through the door back there, and all around near the entrance to the mine itself. You have no idea what sort of security is required for this sort of facility to get off the ground.”
Miles chuckles absently and returns his attention to the monitor, watching as the image transitions from the feed of one camera to another.
Gale, sidetracked by Miles’ interruption, begins telling them about the security precautions that went into place when this lab was being constructed. In the back of his mind, Hewitt begins to wonder why, if there’s so much stringent security required, there are no other staff members around. He worries that he might already know the answer and that the staff usually in place here is down there in town, running wild with the locals and murdering people.
He’s remained calm and even-tempered throughout most of what’s transpired, but Hewitt’s coping mechanisms are frequently unhealthy and he’s starting to find perverse amusement in the scale of just how bad everything has gone.
“Zombies, check. Mobs of angry villagers, check. No cell phone service, check. No rescue en route from emergency services or the National Guard, check.” Hewitt mumbles to himself as he wanders in circles around the large open space of the lab beyond the second set of doors leading in from the mine itself.
Everyone is coming to terms with the changing situation in their own ways now that they’ve got a chance to decompress and catch their breath. Hewitt isn’t even taking in the surroundings at this point, muttering and talking to himself while he works through the trauma and circumstances that led them to where they are. Gale stops talking mid-sentence as Hewitt’s rambling interrupts his discussion of the security protocols.
Mariah watches him, concerned about his state of mind but knowing that this is just the way he does things.
“Of course, it’s got to be raining. It’s always raining when the world comes to an end. This is just altogether too fucking typical,” Hewitt continues as he paces back and forth, desperately trying to analyze what has happened, striving to discern some sort of solution that is eluding him but that he feels is looming right there at the edge of his perception.
Miles glances up from a computer monitor where he’s been compulsively watching the changing perspectives of the cameras outside that they’d seen no evidence of when they’d made their way into the mine even though they could see the path they’d taken not more than half an hour before. Even knowing that some of the town is on a backup power supply and that the lab itself is independently powered he is still surprised that this place is entirely untouched by the power outage throughout the town itself, “Are you trying to make a joke right now, Hewitt? We watched Kateb getting torn into pieces by what we all seem to swear was a god damn zombie no more than 12 hours ago, and that’s not even the only one I’ve seen since then, and you consider this an opportunity to try and be cute or funny?”
Gale shakes his head, dispelling whatever inner musings he was entertaining until that moment. “Could you please just calm down, both of you? We have more important things to worry about, I do believe.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! You saw the same damn things that I did, the same damn things all of us saw” Miles growls without looking away from the screen displaying the drowning world outside.
Hewitt can’t shake the feeling, and it’s been getting distressing the whole time Gale has been talking, that things are still heading downhill and that everything will get worse before it gets better, assuming it ever does get better.
The clean, sterile laboratory environment feels unreal after spending so much time in the rain and the filth of the town itself. It doesn’t make sense, something like this located in the veritable middle of nowhere.
Miles is certain, without any niggling doubts, that there is a clear correlation between the events of the last couple of days and what he’s seeing here in this facility. The others all share those thoughts, he’s sure, at various places along the same mental steps he’s making. Miles is a few steps ahead of his friends though, shock and combat trauma being things he’s been acquainted with for his whole adult life because he does not doubt that Gale knows more about this than he’s letting on. He continues watching the screen, occasionally glancing back at his friend while he rambles on about how great this facility happens to be.
Hewitt is putting two and two together as well, not far behind Miles, in his own disorganized fashion, finding it altogether too coincidental that their biologist friend would just happen to be living somewhere so isolated, working in some secret lab sitting nestled in the corpse of a decommissioned mine. He’s no scientist himself, but he knows enough to recognize a lot of the equipment he’s seen so far.
Pieces of a terrifying puzzle are falling into place in Hewitt’s mind, well below the surface, but reverberations from these elements are locking into place, filtering up to his surface awareness, and he doesn’t like the picture those pieces are assembling.
Gale knows what they’re thinking, or he assumes that they’re reaching conclusions not far off from what they’re thinking. He sees the changes coming over his friends as the facts start to fall into place; the tension building in Miles’ shoulders, the furrowed brow of Hewitt’s face, and the unfocused way Mariah is staring in his direction now that she’s not following Hewitt’s every move. The only ones not arriving at the same reasonable suspicion are Abraham and Ben, but that’s only because they’re too focused on one another. It’s only a matter of time before they’re all on the same page. In the cool, circulating air of the lab, Gale begins to perspire.
He distracts himself by continuing to discuss the build and the layout of the place, telling them all about the things collected within and the data they have stored securely in this location.
“Gale,” Hewitt whispers, with an edge to his voice that makes everyone turn his way, “did what’s happening out there come from up here?”
“Of course it did,” Gale replies without any attempt at guile, distracted from what he was in the middle of saying. “I created it in this very lab.”
35
“Regardless of how you might feel about me right now, you really must appreciate the accomplishment this represents,” Gale insists, his voice full of indignation. “I had to develop whole new methodologies in an effort to create something entirely novel, what you’ve witnessed out there.”
“Well, let me be the first to say we’re really fucking proud of you, doc,” Mariah says. She glares at the scientist with venom and disdain.
No one says anything further for a couple of minutes. Gale slumps in his seat like a scolded chil
d, his eyes still displaying the same frustration and defiance, but he remains silent.
Finally, Hewitt speaks up. “What the fuck is it, Gale?”
“It’s something new. It’s something I designed myself through years of examination and careful splicing.”
“That doesn’t answer the question, asshole,” Miles interjects tersely.
Impatiently Gale rolls his eyes and Miles backhands him across the left side of his face for the effort. The sound of the impact jars Hewitt where he’s standing and he can’t help but wince.
Gale speaks up, his eyes watering, “Hewitt, you’re probably the only one who’s going to understand, but I’ll try to keep it simple.” Whether his physical reaction is the result of the slap itself or the sting of one of his oldest friends hitting him, it’s difficult to tell.
Everyone takes a seat at the table where the map is still spread out, eyes turned toward Gale expectantly.
“I started with illnesses that produce neurological effects like aggression and confusion or paranoia. I began working at the problem from substrates of rabies and syphilis. That was the most difficult and time-consuming element of the process, sifting through the RNA to isolate as best I could the desired characteristics of each virus to produce the results that I was looking for. In contrast with that, the actual recombination was the very essence of simplicity.
“That isn’t to say that it was simple, by any means; there was a lot of trial and error involved while I snipped and reassembled a few dozen cocktails from multiple sources. What was particularly challenging was working with animals, since I couldn’t accurately gauge how it might translate into human behavior.”
Gale’s voice becomes more calm and clinical as he continues, explaining how he narrowed his research down to three potential candidates for the plague and couldn’t get any further than that at first.
Miles slams his hand down on the table, the report of the impact stirring Gale from the almost nostalgic nature that his confession was taking. “And at no point, while you were playing mad scientist did you stop to consider just how batshit crazy what you were doing was?”
Innocence Ends Page 13
