No Living Soul

by Julie Moffett

  Whatever this was.

  “Anyway, when I received the package, it contained a letter and plastic vial,” he continued. “The letter was in code written in my father’s hand. I knew better than to open the vial before reading the letter—that’s just the way my dad is. Regardless, it took me nine days to break his code and I was using pretty sophisticated software.”

  “Wait. You didn’t ask me to help break a code?” Wow. I wasn’t sure what to think about that except it hurt. A lot.

  “I just thought I could handle it myself.” His cheeks flushed as he swallowed hard and looked away. Unusual emotions crossed his face. Pain, embarrassment, discomfort. This situation was getting more uncomfortable with every revelation.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself this wasn’t about me or my feelings. “How many years has it been since you spoke to or heard from your father?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “So, after thirteen years he sends you a letter written in code completely out of the blue and a strange vial of something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure.” Elvis plucked at a thread on the knee of his jeans. “He’s kind of nomadic. Last I’d heard, he was a tenured professor at Oxford.”

  “As in England?”

  “That’s the place.”

  I digested the information for a moment. “What does he teach?”

  “Egyptology and advanced mathematics. That’s his bread and butter, at least. It’s not his passion, though. That would be biblical archeology.”

  “Whoa. Biblical archeology?” I totally hadn’t seen that coming. “Is that an Oxford-approved academic subject?”

  “Actually, it is.” Elvis leaned back in his chair. “The recovery and subsequent study of biblical artifacts can often shed light on the historical and cultural times of the Bible. It’s a pretty popular subject.”

  I couldn’t think of what to say to that. “Well, that’s...unusual.”

  “Yeah, that’s my father to a tee.”

  “So, is your father well-known for his work in biblical archeology?” Slash asked.

  “I suppose,” Elvis answered. “In certain academic circles, for sure. It’s a small group to begin with, but it’s pretty active. He’s made some interesting finds over the years and has published extensively on them. He was the archeologist who discovered some ancient inscriptions in a cave in Jordan a while back. You might have heard of it. Anyway, he thought the discovery was going to be his big break but, instead, the academic world just yawned.”

  “You never told me any of this.” I studied Elvis for a moment. “Why?”

  He let out a long breath. “The truth is, Lexi, until I received the package, I didn’t even know if he were still alive.”

  “But he knew your address,” Slash said. “He kept track of you.”

  “Is that supposed to be significant?” Elvis’s voice was bitter. “You know better than most that these days it isn’t hard to track someone down if you want to.”

  Slash dipped his head in acknowledgement but didn’t say anything.

  Holy cow. I’d never seen Elvis like this. I don’t normally notice things like body language and expression, but I knew Elvis well. His normally pale skin had taken on a gray tinge and the pulse on his neck visibly throbbed indicating high stress. Even worse, he was sweating and fidgeting in a way that indicated this was an extremely uncomfortable topic for him. It was awful to see him like this and not know what to do to fix it.

  Elvis rubbed his right temple. “Look, I’ll be honest. I’m not surprised he contacted me. If my father wants something, he’ll find a way to get it. Even if he has to use the sons he hasn’t seen in thirteen years.”

  Ouch.

  The room was silent while we collected our thoughts.

  “So, what does Xavier think of all of this?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t know.” A shadow crossed Elvis’s face. “He refused to look at the letter and wouldn’t help me with the code. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. Not that I blame him.”

  Ouch again.

  Pretty harsh. Still, it was a bit strange, their father just popping up with a bizarre request after all these years.

  “Okay, so you get a letter and a vial of some unknown substance from your father,” I mused. “Why did he code the letter?”

  “Not completely sure.” Elvis settled in his chair. “My best guess is he didn’t want the information regarding the possible nature of whatever was in the vial to fall into the wrong hands. Case in point, psycho guy just threatening to shoot us.”

  “What psycho threatening to shoot you?” Gwen’s eyes widened in surprise.

  I smiled sweetly. “Oh, didn’t he tell you we’re irresistibly attractive to homicidal maniacs and worldwide hardened criminals?” I was only half kidding. This past year had given us way more than our fair share of danger.

  Gwen’s gaze darted between us. At this point, she probably thought I was a nutcase.

  Elvis gave me a bemused look. I couldn’t decide if he was exasperated or exhausted with the conversation. Honestly I was feeling a little of both.

  “She’s teasing you, Gwen. Sort of. I’ll explain it to you later.” Elvis gave me a look that told me to take it easy on her. I wanted to comply, but I was still feeling hurt that I didn’t know any of this, but Gwen did.

  I wondered why Slash was keeping quiet. I looked over at him. His fingers drummed the top of his thighs as if he were typing on an air keyboard. His brows drew together, an indication he was deep in thought. “Any idea who your father might have been trying to outwit by using code?” he asked.

  “Heck, no.” Elvis shrugged. “Psycho guy didn’t shed any light on that either. He was just going to shoot Lexi’s kneecaps if I didn’t turn the letter and vial over.”

  Thinking about it made me cover my knees with both hands. “What was in that package that made it so important?”

  “Well, he said he’d found something big.”

  “Big as in...?”

  “Historically big. A historically rare artifact sure to put his name up among the archeology greats like Howard Carter, who found King Tut’s tomb, and Heinrich Schliemann, who unearthed ancient Troy.”

  “So, what was the artifact?” Slash asked, his eyes lighting with interest.

  “That’s the problem. He didn’t say. Not exactly anyway.” Elvis clasped his hands in his lap. “He basically asked me and Xavier to analyze the material he’d found with the artifact. It was then he mentioned the tube contained actual biological material.”

  “What?” I said, flabbergasted. “He sent biological material through international mail? He lied to the post office? They always ask if the package contains anything perishable, fragile or potentially hazardous. Is he crazy?”

  “Potentially, yes. Thank goodness I used common sense and didn’t open the vial before decoding the letter. But I could have. What kind of father does something like that?”

  Not a one of us in the room had an answer to that.

  “So, what was in the vial?” Slash asked.

  “Spores. I decided to run them by Gwen and see what she thought.”

  I glanced over at the plants. “I assume they have something to do with this.”

  “They do,” Gwen confirmed. “Although not in the way you might think.”

  “I don’t know what I think.” I leaned forward, meeting Elvis’s eyes. “Why would your father send you spores?”

  “I think he didn’t know for sure what they were.” Elvis pushed his fingers though his hair. “He apparently thought, or hoped, Xavier and I would be able to figure it out.”

  “That’s one hell of a request,” Slash said quietly.

  “
I’m not surprised. It’s typical of him.”

  “So, did you figure it out? What the spores are?” I asked.

  Elvis exchanged a long glance with Gwen. “Yes. Luckily, Gwen took proper precautions before handling them. But this isn’t like anything we expected. That vial didn’t contain just any spores. They were ancient bacterial spores whose DNA is not on record anywhere. We believe my father unearthed them when he found this artifact. Now here comes the interesting part. Gwen’s analysis suggests the spores might be the root of an ancient Egyptian plague.”

  Chapter Four

  “Plague?” I looked at Elvis in astonishment. “As in, Black Plague?”

  Gwen shook her head. I thought she looked a little disappointed. Like maybe she thought I should have known the answer. Ugh. I might be a geek, but that didn’t mean I was an expert in everything. Great. Now she’d go back to the fan club and tell everyone I was a fake geek girl or something. On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing so they’d shut down the whole stupid club, whatever it was.

  “Actually, the Black Plague came much later and is a different type of bacteria,” Gwen explained. “In regards to the plague, scientists believe the very first widespread ones arose in populous hotbeds like ancient Egypt more than four thousand years ago. That makes sense because plagues evolve more quickly and spread faster where there are large concentrations of people. Ancient Egyptian cities were the largest in the world at that time.”

  Slash frowned at Elvis. His brow was drawn and his expression shuttered. I suspected he was both worried and intrigued at Gwen’s revelation.

  “So, you think your father discovered a sample of an ancient plague hidden in an artifact, woke up one morning and decided to send it to you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what he was thinking.” Elvis rubbed his forehead. “Look, Gwen and I just figured this out over the past few weeks. We haven’t told anyone anything yet. Certainly not the Center for Disease Control. Unfortunately, we couldn’t send them any of the spores to confirm. We only received a very small sample from my dad and we used them up by testing them. What we can confirm is we received bacterial spores of an unknown origin.”

  “While that is shocking, we don’t have to panic, right?” I said. “Even if Elvis’s father discovered spores for an ancient plague, so what? We live in the modern world. Plagues are derived from bacteria. Today we have antibiotics for that. End of problem.”

  “I’m afraid antibiotics won’t work on this plague.” Gwen’s blue eyes darkened as she rested her elbows on her thighs. She looked at us one by one as if impressing upon us how important this was and imploring us to catch on quickly. “It’s endospore-based. That means that it has a protective sheath that shields the bacteria from the usual body defenses, as well as harsh environments and sterilization techniques that would kill ordinary bacteria.”

  Okay. That changed things significantly.

  She continued, “I’m not sure how familiar you all are with endospores, but an endospore isn’t even technically a spore, but a case of bacteria cannibalizing itself into some kind of protective hibernation. They can survive in the harshest of conditions and live for millions of years. While these spores are not live like a virus, if ingested or inhaled, they could activate and cause lethal consequences. We both think that if Elvis’s father uncovered more spores, they could be reactivated in the right environment and possibly retain their full toxicity. Unfortunately, given the gravity of this find, we have to assume that there are more of them in his father’s possession.”

  “Tell me more about the endospores,” Slash said, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, watching Gwen intently.

  “Well, endospores are fairly rare among bacterium. Most bacteria just can’t change itself into an endospore. It’s particular to a certain strain in the Firmicutes phylum. The interesting thing about endospores is they can live in both water and soil and are resistant to temperature extremes, hot and cold. They can survive most types of known chemicals and ultraviolet radiation. In addition, they’re resistant to all antibiotics and anti-viral treatments, at least the ones we have today. It’s nearly impossible to destroy or control them.”

  “Okay, that’s definitely scary,” I said. “If we’re talking about a plague made up of endospores, this isn’t good.”

  “My point exactly.”

  Slash pointed at Gwen’s lap. “What’s in that notebook?”

  “It’s annotations from my testing, and excerpts from the unique DNA sequences we found. Though I haven’t experimented with it yet, it also contains my professional assessment of the ideal environment for rapid reproduction of the bacteria.” She held it up. “You can basically consider it a recipe to create a plague if you had the spores. And if you didn’t, the DNA sequencing would potentially allow a competent scientist to recreate the bacteria from similar modern day analogs.”

  “May I see it?”

  “Sure.” Gwen handed over her notebook.

  Slash studied the material and I leaned over to look at it with him. I understood how she’d laid out the sequencing, but microbiology was not my strong suit. While I understood the pieces, I wasn’t clear how they all fit together.

  “What are the chances these endospores might be susceptible to protein disruption?” Slash finally asked.

  “You know, I had that same thought,” Gwen said. “But we won’t be able to tell until we get our hands on more spores. The key is we need something to disrupt the protective sheath around the bacteria to allow normal defenses and antibiotics to work effectively. Now granted, I’m not an expert in prions or endospores. I don’t even have a PhD in microbiology...yet. But I am sure we’re talking about undiscovered, uncataloged, ancient endospores that may have caused a plague in ancient Egypt. That’s pretty significant no matter how you look at it.”

  “Agreed,” Slash said.

  “If that’s the case, we should turn over the information to the Center for Disease Control immediately so scientists can be prepared,” I suggested.

  “And exactly how are we supposed to prove to the CDC our research is genuine and not a hoax?” Elvis said. “We don’t have any of the spores left. Besides, the CDC is swamped with real diseases, not hypothetical ones. Sure, we could send them Gwen’s analysis, but if they can’t verify our research and assumptions, who will believe it? Even if they did believe us, they’ll still want to know where we got the spores. Am I supposed to tell them it came from an unnamed ancient Egyptian artifact sent to me by a man I haven’t seen in thirteen years and whose whereabouts we don’t know at the present? That will surely convince them.”

  “Point taken,” I said.

  Elvis blew out a breath. “Look, I’m having a hard time with this. There are too many questions and not enough answers. Not to mention, my father is not the most reliable of sources.”

  “There’s also the guy with the gun to consider,” I said. “Given the possibility these endospores do have the ability of unleashing an ancient plague, how does this equal to him threatening to blow my kneecaps off? How and why does he figure into this?”

  “What guy with a gun?” Gwen paled, making the freckles on her cheeks and nose seem darker. “Why were Lexi’s kneecaps going to get blown off? Elvis, what aren’t you telling me?”

  Realizing she wasn’t going to go any further until she knew what was going on, Elvis gave her a brief, sterilized version of the events. While speaking, he often patted her arm to soothe her. He was being awfully protective and attentive.

  When Elvis was finished, Gwen leaned back in her chair. “Wow. This has gone from interesting to downright terrifying. What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to figure this out. That’s why I brought in Lexi and Slash.”

  I was glad he was finally bringing me up-to-date, but I wasn’t sure how to approach this. Microbiology was out of my ele
ment. Still, despite her fangirling, Gwen seemed capable and smart. Plus, microbiology was her thing.

  I looked over at the greenhouse. Guess it was as good a place to start as any. “Okay, guys, so what’s with the plants?”

  “I was looking for plants whose material might affect the spores’ sheathings,” Gwen said. “Based on my research, I identified these plants as having the greatest potential to disrupt the bacteria. I was growing them here, hoping I could get my hands on more spore samples to test. Obviously, we never got that far.”

  “That was good thinking,” Slash said.

  “Technically, this is getting out of my realm of expertise. Epidemiology isn’t my specialty. But based upon the research I’ve done since we started this, I believe it’s possible that, back in ancient times, the endospores may have spread quickly through the population via plants. That may also be why the plagues were fairly contained at the time.”

  That was a pretty weighty statement. “You can’t reproduce the plague without additional spores, right?”

  “Right.” Gwen shifted in her seat. “Besides I wouldn’t have even attempted to analyze them if we’d known what Elvis’s father had sent. Certainly I would have used far more sophisticated safety equipment than I utilized, including people with real expertise in this field and a special containment lab. I absolutely wouldn’t have tried to make or reproduce them without a P-4 lab.”

  “P-4 lab?” I said.

  “It’s a biosecurity lab at the CDC. P stands for pathogen and the 3 or 4 depends on the pathogen level. A P-4 would be used to handle an unknown pathogen. But we can assess the potential risks another, safer way that doesn’t involve the endospores.”

  Slash shifted on the couch, his eyes thoughtful. His brow drew together like it always did when he was working something out. “Such as?”

  “Modeling.” Elvis tapped one of Gwen’s books on the table. “Which is why I needed you and Lexi to help me. We need to put our mad math skills together and see if we can come up with a probable scenario for what might happen if this so-called plague is unleashed on the world today.”