No Living Soul

by Julie Moffett

  “We can do that?” I asked.

  Elvis nodded. “We can sure try. You in?”

  I glanced at Slash and he nodded. For the first time since we’d started this conversation, we were in my area of expertise.

  I smiled. “You had me at mad math skills.”

  Chapter Five

  Slash seemed to understand what Elvis had meant by modeling, but I was still unclear how it worked. I hated being the dumb one in the room.

  “Um, while I’m happy to help, guys, how exactly do you mathematically model an endospore?” I asked.

  Gwen grabbed her notebook from Slash and began scribbling. “We aren’t actually going to model the endospore itself. We’re going to use a mathematically-based model to understand the spatial-temporal transmission of the plague if it went live. That way we can have a better idea of what we’re dealing with. But my math isn’t as strong as yours and there’re a lot of complex calculations that need to be made. It would take Elvis and me a long time to do it alone. But with you two—and the power of the computers—we should be able to knock it off in several hours.”

  “I’m in,” Slash said. “But I thought these kinds of models were used only for existing pandemics.”

  “Not only,” Gwen replied. “I was an intern at the CDC in Atlanta for my junior and senior year at MIT. They use modeling as an epidemic forecasting tool, as well. I’m familiar with the software. We should be able to determine the plague’s effect on animal and human populations with a fair degree of certainty if these exact endospores are activated.”

  “While that’s cool, how are we going to get the software?” I asked.

  “I’ve already got it,” Elvis said. He didn’t offer to tell how he’d gotten it, so I didn’t ask. Slash didn’t either.

  “So, how are we able to model the plague’s potential damage if we aren’t sure how the disease will spread?” I asked.

  “We do different models for each possibility,” Gwen explained, showing me her sketch in the notebook. “The point is to identify spread ratios, possible epidemic cycles, and outbreaks. We should be able to figure, within a reasonable level of uncertainty, which populations will be at the highest risk and estimate mortality rates from that. Depending on what we come up with, it should help estimate the complexity and danger of the disease vectors. At the very least, we should have a scientific baseline for the level of public health danger we are talking about. We’ll model both a best-case and worst-case scenario.”

  Science. Facts. Numbers.

  This, I could get behind. It was exactly what we needed in this situation. My opinion of Gwen went a notch higher.

  Slash crossed his arms behind his neck as he leaned back on the couch. “Okay, a few questions first. Elvis, do you have any idea where your father is now? What city was postmarked on the package? Did he provide a return address?”

  “The package was postmarked from Cairo, but the address was bogus. According to Google Maps, the street doesn’t exist. I followed up with a search of various online city maps of Cairo—old and new—and got nothing. I also ran the address against the code he used in the letter and came up empty again.”

  “Do you know what was he doing in Egypt?”

  “A bit. I called Oxford University and they said he’s been on sabbatical in Egypt for the past year. They lost touch with him about a month ago—right about the time he sent Xavier and me the package. According to the university, he was going to Cairo to do research for the Egyptology class he was teaching. His apartment in Oxford is being sublet, his phone number has been disconnected, and he doesn’t have a cell phone, at least not one I could find. I truly don’t know how to reach him. But after this encounter with the gun-wielding guy, I’m worried.”

  “Where’s the letter from your dad?” I asked. “Is it in a safe place?”

  “It is.” He dipped his head toward Gwen. “I scanned it, so I have an electronic copy in a safe place, but I gave the original to her.”

  He trusted her that much? What was the deal with these two?

  “Either way, I’ve got to warn my father,” Elvis continued. “He could be in danger or already in trouble. He’s got to know the seriousness of what we’ve found before someone else does. If this find is legitimate and we determine the endospores are real plague carriers, he’ll be right about one thing—this is an extremely important, not to mention hazardous, find.”

  “How are you going to do that if you can’t find him?” I asked.

  “Well, I know he’s in Egypt. His passport hasn’t been used since he entered Cairo two months ago.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew that. I didn’t want to know that he’d hacked into the State Department. Regardless I was impressed. That couldn’t have been easy.

  “So, other than the modeling, do you have a plan?” I worried about the strain around his eyes and the paleness of his skin. He didn’t look well. This thing with his father was taking a toll. I really wished he’d talked to me earlier.

  “I’m going to Egypt to find him, of course.”

  “What? You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? Memorial Day Weekend is coming up and I’ve got nearly two weeks before the wedding.”

  “One week and five days,” I clarified. “That’s so not a good idea, Elvis. Guy with gun as my supporting evidence.”

  “I’m in full agreement with her statement,” Slash said.

  “Look, guys, I don’t have a choice. I’m going.” He crossed his arms against his chest and narrowed his eyes.

  “Xavier and Basia will completely freak out,” I warned.

  “Can’t be helped.”

  Gwen shook her head. “Lexi and Slash are right. You shouldn’t do this alone, Elvis. I’ll go with you.”

  Before I could express my utter astonishment, Elvis held up a hand. “Whoa. Time-out, everyone. Despite the embarrassing consensus I can’t handle this on my own, I can.”

  “Of course, you can,” Gwen said. “But you’ll need me or at least my expertise. Questions or situations may arise that would require my microbiology or biochemistry knowledge. I’m willing to help remotely, but I’m sure I’d be more useful in a hands-on capacity. I don’t mind going, Elvis, so if you’ll let me, I’d like to accompany you. This is really important.”

  Elvis stood. “I don’t want to put you in a dangerous situation, Gwen.”

  Uh-oh. Red-haired girl alert. Gwen’s eyes fired and color rose in her cheeks. She stood from her chair and faced him down. “I’m already neck-deep in this situation, Elvis Alvin Zimmerman. So, don’t think you have to protect me.”

  Alvin? Elvis’s middle name was Alvin? Wait. How did she know that? How come I didn’t know that?

  Even though she was several inches shorter than Elvis, Gwen stood on her tiptoes and glared at him, hands on her hips. I wondered if it were true about redheads and tempers. Honestly, the way she was all fired up kind of intimidated me, even though I had a good eight inches on her.

  “You need me. Don’t say you don’t,” she said. “It would take way too long to explain this to someone else who might not agree to keep it quiet like I will. I understand the dangers and I want to come anyway. Besides, if those endospores are genuine, we’re all in a lot of trouble anyway.”

  Elvis looked like he might argue, but then he sighed. “Fine. You can come if you want to. I’m not going to stop you. But let’s not waste energy arguing about this. We need to get the modeling underway. You may change your mind after you see the results.”

  “I won’t,” she said firmly.

  Slash walked over to Elvis’s broken window and examined it. “I need to patch this up first. You’ll need to get a window guy in here to replace the pane tomorrow.”

  “First thing in the morning,” Elvis promised. “I’ll fetch the tools from the basement.” />
  “Don’t worry,” Slash said. “I can find them. You guys get the computers set up with the specialized software.” He disappeared to the kitchen, where the entrance to the basement was located.

  “Well, we’d better clean up the broken glass before we skewer ourselves.” Gwen stretched. “You got a broom and dustpan anywhere, Elvis?”

  Elvis went into the kitchen and came out with both. He looked a bit better, I thought. Planning, strategy and execution always made me feel better, too.

  After handing it off to Gwen, he came over to me. “So, Lexi, I guess it’s up to us to gather any materials we’ll need and get the computers ready for some complex mathematical calculations.”

  “Guess so.”

  We started rearranging the laptops as Gwen began sweeping the glass. Slash returned shortly with a toolbox, a circular saw and a large piece of plywood.

  I crawled under a table, threaded up a cable through a small space next the wall. “Here you go.” Elvis got a hold of it and connected it to one of the laptops.

  As I backed out, he held his hand on the underside of the table so I didn’t bump my head. “Thanks, bud,” I said as I straightened and stood.

  “No, thank you. Seriously, what would I do without you...without my friends? And I can’t believe I just said that. I’ve got friends. That’s plural, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Oh, believe me, I noticed.”

  Near the window, Slash was freehand cutting the plywood with the saw, scattering sawdust everywhere. Gwen, who had swept up the last of the glass and was carrying the dustpan toward the kitchen turned as she heard the screech. As the sawdust wafted through the air and down to the floor, she did an about-face and began to redo her cleanup. Slash, however, seemed immune to the mess he was creating or Gwen’s diligent efforts to clean it up.

  He must be really deep in thought, I marveled. And who knew he could look so incredibly sexy with a saw?

  I leaned my elbow on Elvis’s shoulder. “You’ve got pretty cool friends, dude.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “I sure do.”

  Chapter Six

  Gwen quickly taught us that modeling a potential epidemic was complex, but straightforward. Once I understood the parameters in which I had to work and the goal of the numbers I was crunching, I was in my element. I loved numbers and numbers loved me, which meant in spite of the dire scenarios we were modeling, I was enjoying myself.

  We used a Monte Carlo approach so we could better model the probabilities. Elvis, Slash and I each worked on probabilistic calculations for different scenarios, while Gwen created and managed the different models on the computer. The software did the hard work; we just had to populate it with the environments and scenarios we wanted to evaluate. She walked back and forth between the laptops, entering data as we handed it to her.

  It was after five o’clock in the morning when we finished the last of the calculations. I stood stretching my arms over my head. Elvis groaned and massaged his lower back as he walked around trying to get the feeling back in his rear and legs. Slash stood, too, rolling his neck and shoulders. We all looked like we’d been through the wringer, which made me incredibly cheerful.

  God, I loved math.

  I walked over to the first laptop and peered at the data scrolling across the screen. It didn’t mean a thing to me.

  “Don’t touch that,” Gwen warned.

  “No worries,” I said, lifting my hands in the air. “As fun as that was, I do not want to redo it.”

  “How much longer until they are done?” Elvis asked as he joined me at the laptop.

  “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.” Gwen was jotting something on a piece of paper. “Just go away and don’t distract me.”

  We wandered into the kitchen, where Slash drank a glass of water and Elvis and I ate a couple pieces of cold pizza.

  After we returned to the living room, I knew something was wrong. Gwen’s already pale face had gone ashen.

  “Hey, Gwen, you okay?” Elvis put a hand on her arm.

  “Not really. I think everyone needs to sit down.”

  Once we were seated, Gwen took a deep breath and looked down at her notebook. “Okay, although we don’t know as much as we would like about the endospores we’re evaluating, if they operate in the same manner as the ones we know today and—factoring in the potential effects of the pathogenic capabilities of a few of the key DNA segments—we are talking about a pandemic. The critical determinant is how it’s transmitted and whether or not an effective defense can be found.”

  “A pandemic?” Elvis said.

  “Yes. All of the calculations and simulations we just did indicate this plague could be one of the most deadly in modern times. If an effective defense can’t be found, it could be like the Black Plague all over again with the only defense being a quarantine. You can imagine what that would do to international travel, trade and commerce.”

  We all looked at each other grimly.

  “In a worst-case scenario we could have an economic meltdown,” she continued. “Even the threat of the disease without a means to stop it would cause things to grind to a halt as panic of potential infections spread. Look what happened in the US with the Ebola virus scare. We only had a few people infected and yet public fear was palpable.”

  No kidding. This was serious stuff.

  “Can you give us some parameters, Gwen?” Parameters helped me make sense of things.

  “Sure, but you won’t like them.” Gwen consulted her notes. “If these endospores are replicated and widely distributed somehow and meet the upper end of the possible transmission vectors, they would cause a global outbreak. Every country, race, age and gender would be at risk. Worse, if this plague is really unstoppable, then because of the endospores’ nature and ability to survive for long periods of time, areas that are lost to the disease may never be recovered.”

  Slash murmured something in Italian under his breath. I felt sick and scared. What in the world had Elvis’s father uncovered?

  “Talk to me in actual numbers,” Slash said.

  Slash was a lot like me. Numbers always put things in perspective for us.

  Gwen took a moment to compose herself and then looked down at her notebook again. “Given the absence of any known vaccine, effective prevention measures, or therapeutic intervention, the calculations indicate that if we assumed a deliberate worldwide release in a biological warfare or terrorist scenario over seven hundred million people would be infected within the first twelve months worldwide. Two hundred million would be terminal as a result of a coexisting illness such as cancer, infections or diabetes. One hundred and eighteen million people would require hospitalization. Sixty-two million people would die outright. And that’s a best-case scenario and the first year only. Depending upon the transmission vectors, medical and health care personnel would be disproportionately affected resulting in significantly reduced care in future years. You can only imagine what a worst-case scenario looks like.”

  “But the endospores would have to germinate.” I was grasping at straws, but there had to be hope somewhere here. “Maybe after thousands of years they would have been damaged or won’t work.”

  “Scientists have found endospores hundreds of millions of years old and were able to bring them to life,” Gwen said. “I think it prudent to assume these spores could also be activated.”

  We all looked at each other, the gravity of the situation sinking in. Finally, Slash stood, a determined look on his face.

  “Then it’s up to us to make sure they aren’t.”

  Chapter Seven

  It was dawn by the time Slash and I drove to my apartment. We were silent, both thinking of the discovery. We were almost home before Slash finally spoke.

  “Do you want to go to Egypt with Elvis?”

&nbs
p; “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “Si. He’s your friend and he’s my friend now, too.” He glanced over, his brown eyes assessing me thoughtfully. “Your strong bond with your friends is one of the reasons I love you so much.”

  It sounded cliché, but I never got tired of hearing him say he loved me. I wondered if I ever would.

  “I’m really worried about him, Slash. Not only in terms of his physical safety, but his emotional safety, as well. Besides, given what we know in regards to the plague, the situation is even more dire than I thought.”

  “Agreed. So, why didn’t you offer to go with him, if that’s what you wanted? You held back. That’s out of character for you. A month ago, you would have announced you were going to Egypt with him without another thought. Am I wrong?”

  I leaned back against the seat and considered his words. “No, you’re not wrong. It’s just there’s a lot of pressure on you right now with your new job, moving and the house.” I reached over and took his hand, linking my fingers with his. “I didn’t want to add to it.”

  He blinked. “You didn’t volunteer to go...because of me?”

  “That’s part of the relationship dynamic, right? Thinking of your significant other as well as yourself. I had to weigh a lot of factors in this one. As much as I’m worried about Elvis, you came out on top this time.”

  After a moment, he squeezed my hand. “Thank you.”

  He pulled into a parking space in front of my apartment and removed the key from the ignition. I glanced over my shoulder and saw our FBI tail pull into a slot several rows over and turn off their lights.

  He leaned over, kissed my cheek. “Let’s go to Egypt with Elvis.”

  “What?” I couldn’t have been more surprised than if he had said Windows 10 was a perfect operating system. “We’re moving in two days. Plus, the wedding... How?”