The Eden Plague

by David VanDyke

  I stared at him, running it over in my head. “Okay, fair enough, but you don’t talk about it. You don’t need to lie, just don’t mention to the others that you are not infected.”

  He nodded.

  I turned to the rest. “Everyone’s seen the effects. Be prepared for the appetite. We have no shortage of food. Just eat what you feel like. And keep an eye on each other, in case of anything strange. But now that that’s done, we have to give it to everyone else in the bunker.”

  “What, against their will?”

  I stared at Vinny, who had spoken. “We’re talking about doing it to the whole world. If we can’t do it to our own people, our own families, how can we justify doing it to everyone else in the world?”

  There came another exchange of shocked glances. It was all becoming real to them, and fast. I had had days and days to think it over and settle it in my mind, but they were getting steamrolled in real time. I had to do it this way, though, or the consensus might collapse.

  “So what I propose doing, and you will need to ratify, is this. We start putting it in the drinks at our meals, and keep doing it until everyone is in. Nobody gets to opt out.”

  I could tell some were very uncomfortable with this idea. The values of individual liberty and self-determination ran deep in this country and culture. I stamped on my own misgivings and forced the issue. “So that’s my first formal motion. I move the Bunker Council approve infecting everyone here, without their express permission.”

  There was a pause. Then, “Seconded,” from Spooky. He shot a look at Vinh.

  “All right, motion is on the floor. All in favor say ‘aye.’”

  Ayes rang out, some tentative, but clear.

  “Opposed?” I waited for Vinny to object, but he didn’t. Perhaps he would stand up to me, but not to his uncle. There were no ‘nays.’

  “All right, that’s settled. Now, here’s my first bureaucratic act as Chairman – watch this presentation.”

  Turning on the computer screen, I laid it out for them then, in graphics and charts and pictures, how I proposed to plague the world. Coming to the conclusion, I looked around again, my hands clenched behind my back.

  “So now you’ve seen my plan, in outline. Everyone will get a chance to weigh in on the methods, on the how. But for the basic goals, I need to hear all inputs now, and I need everyone behind me one hundred percent on this.”

  We talked and wrangled well into the evening, breaking for a meal and coming back, until we had worked through all the misgivings and everyone raised his or her hand and said, “Aye” again.

  After that it was just details.

  -21-

  The Council and I spent the next week keeping peace and soothing hurt feelings as the Eden Plague took hold. The virtue effect was fortunate, and I had counted on it. Better-balanced brains and kinder minds made it easier to accept the insult of their own destinies being hijacked for the greater good. Still, once everyone was confident they wouldn’t turn into zombies or pod people, our little community settled down remarkably well.

  I looked in one afternoon on the scientists, who had turned their efforts away from research and toward simply breeding as much virus as they could, making doses. They had enlisted the whole community, and there was a group of people in a big room next to the lab chattering away like a knitting circle. Except in this case instead of needles and yarn, they had hundreds of containers and were filling them with virus solution. Plastic water and soda bottles dominated. A few filled syringes: large and heavy, with enormous needles, as if we were to inject horses. Part of the plan.

  Elise came over when she spotted me. “It’s a good thing the virus is hardy. Not like HIV, for example, which dies after a few hours in the air. This stuff is more like influenza. I sure wish we had time make it airborne.” She looked accusingly at me.

  “Sorry. We all agreed we couldn’t risk taking the time.”

  “I know. We’re doing the best with what we have. At least it looks like simply ingesting it in non-alcoholic drinks is highly effective. Although you use less with an injection.” She ran her hands through her hair.

  “Yes, all but two people acquired it the first time around in the drinks, and those two got it the next time.”

  “With a higher dose. We’re going to have to accept the fact that it’s not one hundred percent.”

  “Anything over fifty and I’ll be happy.” I kissed her, a little longer and harder than was usual, and moved on.

  I checked up on Larry, Spooky and Vinny’s work on the Bunker. They and some of the other men were laboring away with the heavy equipment, digging a new tunnel, covering everything with rock dust. This was also part of the plan.

  Then I tracked down Cassie. I found her working with her kids and a few of the Nguyen and Nightingale kids that had come in, an impromptu school. The room smelled like old-fashioned paste and new magic markers.

  “Hey, Cassie.”

  “You know you’re the only one who calls me that.”

  “I like to be different. What do other people call you?”

  “Cassandra, or Cass.”

  “You wouldn’t look good in a mumu.”

  “I’m not going to admit to being old enough to get that reference. Call me whatever you want.” She raised her voice. “Class, take a ten-minute recess.”

  The kids bolted out the door.

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “I need your tradecraft. I want to go get my dad.”

  She cocked her head. “Okay…you know they’ll be watching him. He’s your only living relative.”

  I sighed. “I know. Vinny did as much recon as he could via the web; it looks like they haven’t picked him up or anything.”

  “He’s bait.”

  “Yup.”

  “Probably got everything wired and tapped.”

  “Yup.”

  “And you want me to figure out how to bring him in.”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay…well, I’m a bit out of practice but I think I can do it.” She smiled, a white shiny thing in her cherry-cheeked face. “By the way, I hate you.”

  My eyes widened. “What? Why?”

  “That damn Eden virus. Larry’s uncle Leroy is starting to look good to me.”

  I laughed. “Well, he is a good-looking man for sixty.”

  “He’s a good looking man for forty-five, which is about how old he looks now. And he’s been looking at me too. Do you think it’s too soon…” She put a finger in her mouth to bite the nail, a most un-Cassie-like thing.

  I reached out to hug her. “Only you can decide that. Nobody here will hold it against you. This thing is making a whole new world, a whole new human biology.” I patted her, then let go to hold her at arms’ length. “What would Zeke have wanted?”

  “Oh, I know. He was always so damn cheerful and understanding. Not my idea of a Green Beret when we met.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t his idea of an Agency spymaster. So you have my blessing, whatever you do. Just remember, nine months later…” I let go of her, miming a big belly.

  “Oh, God, that’s right. Well…I have pills, that may delay things.”

  “Or the Plague may just laugh and run roughshod over your pills.”

  “Okay, you’ve freaked me out enough. What about your father?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the spy. Do some spy stuff. Tell me what to do.” I pointed at little faces peeking in the door. “Your ten minutes is up. Come see me when you got something, hopefully in a day or two.”

  I waved on my way out to the children, who chorused, “Bye Mister DJ!” Kids can adapt to anything.

  ***

  Spooky and I sat in the old beat-up pickup truck we had bought for cash that morning, no questions asked. We had put up reflective sun shades in the windshield and door windows, and we watched through the gaps around the edges. Parked in the lot of a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, our vehicle blended right in. As the sun went down the old men and women started
arriving. Some younger ones too, from the latest wars, but the VFW was a slowly-dying institution, held together by camaraderie and cheap drinks under club rules. The marquee out front said “Bingo Tonight,” and I know my dad never missed it.

  “There he is,” I said as I watched my father get out of his Chrysler. He looked pretty good for sixty-plus, still slim and spry, so different from my more muscular physique.

  “And there they are,” answered Spooky, as a dark late model heavy sedan drove slowly past his parking spot, then backed into another.

  “No imagination. I can smell the Big Brother on them from here.”

  “You think they Feds or still contractors?”

  “With that car? Contractors would have had more imagination. You know what that means, right?

  “It mean Mister Jenkins spread the word. Not just INS, Inc. any more.”

  “Right you are, though I doubt he’s spilled his guts completely. So. You got them?”

  “Easy as pie, Chairman DJ. You think there is more than two?”

  “Yeah, but these are the closest ones. Hopefully we will be gone before the farther ones notice. Do your stuff now. I’ll go in the back and get Dad.”

  Spooky slipped out of the truck to work his way around the parking lot, low to the ground. In the fading light he might as well have been invisible. I pulled my trucker’s cap low over my eyes and headed for the back door to the hall.

  Inside, the sounds of music, the beeps of game machines, and the murmur of conversation surrounded me. I smelled cigarettes and beer and wine and harder stuff, as the barmaids poured drinks for the members from their own marked bottles. That was how you avoided controls and taxation – you brought in your own bottle then paid the organization to mix and serve your drinks. Club rules.

  I stood at the inside end of the short hallway opening into the main room. It was Friday night, and the bingo was just setting up. There were a few card games going on the side, and a short line of eager players in front of the registration table. My dad stood in it.

  I swallowed a lump. It was good to see him.

  I intercepted him as soon as he had gotten his bingo cards, steering him toward the hallway leading back out the rear door. “Hey, what?” he said, jerking away before I lifted my hat to show him my face. I put a finger to his lips before he could cry out.

  I whispered in his ear. “Great to see you, Dad, but we got a situation. You’re being watched, because they want to find me. You got to didi-mao with me now. Give me your cell phone.”

  He stared at me a moment, wheels turning in his head. Then he reached into a pocket and handed it to me. I pulled him into the men’s room, dropping the phone into the tank of one of the old toilets. I mimed him getting undressed, opening up the paper bag I carried with me and taking out a set of cheap sweats and a pair of sneakers. He changed silently, his eyes questioning. I shrugged, held my fingers up to my lips, then my ear. He nodded.

  I picked up his wallet, ran a bug-finder over it with negative results, then put it in my pocket. Everything else of Dad’s except his handgun and ammo went into a plastic bag. We slipped out the back, and I tossed the bag into a pick-up truck bed chosen at random. Follow that, Jenkins.

  We got into our own pickup truck. I pulled out the sun screens, pushing them behind the seats. “Damn, son, you’re makin’ me miss bingo, and I’m supposed to meet a nice young lady here. What –” He broke off as Spooky appeared at the passenger door, climbing in silently, my dad moving over on the bench seat to the middle. I drove casually out of the parking lot, just another patron of the VFW leaving early.

  “All clear, Spooky?”

  “Two more infected, Chairman DJ. And out for a while.”

  “Excellent. Dad…this is a long story, but we have a few hours on the road.” I told him everything, start to finish, sparing no detail. It took some time.

  David J. Markis was nothing if not a quick study, whip-smart in a way that I wasn’t, I’d be the first to admit. He ate it up. His first words were, “All right. Give it to me.”

  “What? So soon? Don’t need to think about it?”

  “You must have brought some. Your Montagnard buddy here ‘infected’ the surveillance, you said. I presume that’s to complicate their logistics. With the virtue effect, they won’t be useful to the opposition for a while, unless they can brainwash them. But that means you got a needle around here somewhere, or one of you can just bite me. So do it. We might have a crash on the way. They might come after us before we get to this bunker of yours. I don’t wanna miss out on immortality because I was timid.”

  I shrugged, not really surprised. “No one would ever call you timid, Dad. Okay, Spooky, you heard the man. Shoot him up.”

  Spooky silently took out the syringe.

  A moment later dad rolled down his sleeve, then sat back. “Now what?”

  “Now we wait. There’s some protein shakes in that box on the floor – hey Spooky, pass me one, will you?” I guzzled a can. “You might as well drink one now. And I’ll tell you how we’re going to make a better world.”

  -22-

  Infection Day Minus Seven.

  “Mister Nightingale? Mister Nguyen?” The gate agent was perky, professional. “You’re traveling together? How nice to see. Here’s your passports and your cabin assignment. One of our Premier Suites. This packet has everything you need to know, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask one of the staff or crew. Welcome aboard Royal Princes Cruise Lines’ ‘Royal Neptune,’ and have a wonderful cruise.”

  Larry and Spooky took back their passports and put on their best smiles, but declined the standard picture-taking as they boarded. Port Canaveral, Florida was perpetually sunny, the air fresh and sweet rolling in off the Atlantic.

  Larry adjusted his sunglasses. “I guess Vinny spoofed their computers all right. That was the hardest part of this whole gig, sweating in line, waiting to get matched against some kind of watch list.”

  “Yes. My nephew is very competent, if undisciplined. He say it is easier to hack into cruise line computers and make software ignore us than hack into government computers and take us off the lists.”

  They proceeded through ornate and luxurious spaces toward the rear of the ship, where their cabin sat facing aft. One of the first-class suites, it was second only to a few exclusive and unadvertised luxury living spaces above them, cleverly designed to be difficult to find unless you knew where to go, and hard to see into from the surrounding balconies and observation decks.

  Opening the door with his keycard, Larry found their luggage already in place inside. “Compliments of Royal Princes! We livin’ large now,” he cried as he picked up a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket on the table. He put it down to lift one of his suitcases onto one of the luggage caddies, unlocking it with a combination.

  His eyes roved over several plastic bottles that had been carefully opened, filled with Eden Plague solution, and repacked just like new. To any inspection they would appear to be just bottles of popular soft drink. They had even added some food dye to complete the illusion. Many people brought their own particular favorite drinks or foods on a cruise; it would arouse no suspicion, and the bottles could be carried around openly.

  Spooky reached over and pulled a clean new laptop out of the suitcase, packed next to the bottles; it was a powerful model with tremendous graphics capability. It booted up quickly and soon a flash drive on his key fob dumped stolen plans of their ship into the computer’s memory.

  No firearms this time; it was too risky, though he had a ceramic and carbon-fiber knife that was virtually invisible to the luggage scanners. Nguyen strapped it onto his forearm, deliberately avoiding thoughts of using it in any deadly capacity. It was a tool, or in extremis, a threat. He took out another laptop, booted it up and hard-linked it to the first machine so there was nothing to intercept over a wireless connection. He immediately started reviewing their intended actions, taking himself on yet another virtual rehearsal.
/>   “I’m hungry,” complained Larry.

  “You always hungry, Larry. But you right, I’m hungry too. Nothing is open yet during boarding. Here is food.” He opened one of his smaller cases, turning it around to show its load of high-calorie, high-protein snacks.

  Larry looked at the selection with distaste. “I’m so sick of nuts and protein shakes I could puke. I’m gonna go through the buffet like a buzz saw through balsa wood.” He unenthusiastically picked up a plastic bag full of trail mix and began eating, washing it down with champagne.

  Spooky grabbed a big bag of wasabi chips and munched while staring at his computer screen. “I gonna do all the hard work this op, I think.”

  “It’s not like I can blend in with the service staff below-decks, Spooky. How many three-hundred-pound – well, two-sixty now – African-Americans do you think they got cleaning rooms or waiting tables? Ze-ro, that’s how many. I’m just here to be a jailer, and enjoy the par-tay.”

  “Remember you got fiancée now, Larry.”

  “You see a ring on this finger?” He laughed. “All right, all right. We both know I ain’t cheatin’ on Shawna, even for the good cause of spreadin’ the stuff around. You know back in the day, you would never have even brought that up.”

  “Back in the day we had no Eden Plague. No use complaining now. I have no such inhibition. I have no commitment to stop me from ‘spreading the stuff around.’ ”

  “Damn, Sam, you gonna rub my face all up in that, huh? Buddy’s only half a word aroun’ here.”

  “So solly, Larry-san. Here, I got girlie disk for you. Asian hotties.”

  “Great. Just freakin’ great.”

  ***

  In one of the enormous buffet cafeterias Larry sat methodically shoveling food into his maw while staring out over the moving ocean. The Bahamas receded in the distance; tomorrow morning they would arrive in Cancun, Mexico. Normally he would be ecstatic to go on a cruise like this – meet women, play some poker in the ship’s casino, eat and drink his fill. This time his mind was taken up with more important things.