Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

“Agreed,” Drake said. “Somebody alert that British dude – Lieutenant Weasley or whatever.”

  “Wesley,” Fick corrected.

  “Whatever. He’s accomplished every mission we’ve given him. Get him briefed and tasked.”

  Finally, Drake pinned Fick with his unsteady but still unamused eye. “And just to be clear, Master Gunnery Sergeant: you are not personally going on the scavenging mission. We clear on that?” Basically, Drake did not want Fick pulling that shit again where he got himself to Beaver Island by leaping on the bomber as it was taxiing, too late to stop him.

  “Whatever,” Fick muttered, sounding like a child who has been told he’s too small to ride the roller coaster.

  “We clear on that, Gunny?”

  Fick snapped a smart salute. “Aye aye, skipper.”

  Drake just grunted skeptically in response: “Uh huh.”

  * * *

  After leaving the briefing, Handon and Sarah stepped out onto the platform that overlooked the flight deck. Below them, the recovery effort was winding down and cleaning up. Most of the bodies, debris, and wounded had been cleared off. But it still looked a little like what it had recently been: a disaster area.

  “I saw all this on the way in,” Sarah said. “Just didn’t have time to ask. What the hell happened?”

  “You’d hardly believe it,” Handon said.

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you in danger?”

  Handon shrugged. “Not like you were.”

  Now, the professionalism they had carefully maintained in the briefing room evaporated, and they embraced, squeezing each other tightly, and not letting go. Once again, the thought of losing what they had miraculously found, so soon after finding it…

  None of those down on the flight deck really looked up at this public display of affection. But one who did, due to her habit of scanning all angles and planes constantly, was Ali. She and Henno had come up top to lend a hand with the recovery. Having done all they could for now, they were walking back toward the stern, about to head below and return to their own work.

  They kept walking. But as Ali craned her neck up at her commander and the Canadian woman… instead of seeing those two, suddenly what she saw was – Captain Ainsley. Ainsley, who had sacrificed himself for their mission, and without a second’s hesitation. Ali never had any doubt, and had no doubt now, that Handon would do the same. He would spend his life in a heartbeat, if the job required it.

  But what she suddenly doubted now, and doubted terribly, was: would Handon be willing to sacrifice her?

  What would happen if and when Handon was forced to choose between Sarah and the mission? Would he still be able to make that choice, do what was necessary? Would he be strong enough?

  And even that wasn’t what she was really seeing up on that platform. What she was really seeing was: her and Homer. That other dangerous relationship within the team.

  It was all getting too goddamned complex… And too damned risky…

  Weight Gain 4000

  JFK - Biosciences Lab

  Professor Nigel Close did not give the impression of being in the most state-of-the-art lab he had ever enjoyed. He walked in, looked around, and seemed to struggle to keep his nose from twitching. It was transparent to Park that what Close was thinking was: Why aren’t we back at Oxford right now – like I told them we should be?

  Park almost smiled at this.

  Because something else was transparent to him: that he and Close had been keeping very different company lately. Close had been amongst academics – and Park had been with the operators. And as a result, he perhaps knew now the value and necessity of making do – of adapting and overcoming. And he knew that if you could not adapt and overcome, then you were totally hosed. Because conditions were always going to change on you.

  These days, probably for the worse.

  Basically, Park was not the same man he had been. And he was pretty pleased with the new one he was slowly becoming. He rubbed the inside of his arm, and touched the bandages on his side, wrapped tightly around his waist. Even those didn’t hurt – strangely, they almost felt good.

  Like badges he had earned. Trials he had endured.

  And, for once, he had played the lead in his own drama. And doing so had been transformative. Though he didn’t necessarily have any desire to do it again anytime soon.

  He offered Close a stool, took the one next to it, and went straight into addressing the man’s concerns. The sooner Close stopped being upset about them, the sooner they could focus on what they had to accomplish there.

  “The reason we’re here in the south Atlantic,” Park said, “rather than in a proper research lab, is that I need a very early virus sample to finish my vaccine.”

  This seemed to bring the older man around. He nodded seriously as he spoke in response. “Yes, your vaccine – a dsRNA interference technique. Based on alleles from early in the outbreak – but far from the point of disease emergence. That, plus the abnormally high mutation rate, means we need a sample from the source.”

  “Exactly.”

  Close squinted. “Do you also have a very recent sample – for comparison with the very early one? We actually brought a whole menagerie with us – cultures of every sample we have, a wide variety of temporal and geographical points in the pandemic. Bottom of the ocean now, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s all right,” Park said. “Ultimately, all I really need is a current sample from anywhere – that is, an ultimate point of mutation; along with an initial or very early one, to show me the starting point. Between the two, I’ll know enough about which genes have stayed the same, and so which ones to target the vaccine on. Now the early sample we can only get—”

  “—in or near Hargeisa.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And the current sample?”

  Park checked his watch. “Should be on its way up any time.”

  * * *

  “This is some bullshit,” Sergeant Lovell muttered into his chin mic, as he and another Marine, Lance Corporal Burris, both of them decked out in full-body MOPP suits, wrestled the flailing runner to the ground. The bulky MOPP suits were designed to provide comprehensive protection from both chemical and biological agents, which happily included infectious pathogens.

  “Just get it done,” Fick said, overseeing this operation through the porthole glass at the end of the short companionway. “Get the damned thing trussed up, get it in the bag, and get the bag in the box.”

  His two guys had been provided with flexicuffs and duct tape, as well as a protective polyvinyl-chloride body bag. Finally, they had a plastic Tuff-Box of roughly the right shape and size for an animated, but restrained, dead body.

  Fick watched as Lovell held the Romeo on the ground, pinning its arms with both his own, while Burris tried to get the flexicuffs on it from behind. Finally, cursing, he gave up on those and tossed them away, going instead for the duct tape.

  “Damn, dudes!” he said. “This guy’s seriously strong for a skinny motherfucker.” He started wrapping the writhing, hissing dead man up like a maypole, starting at the ankles. As the tape came ripping off the roll, and Burris wound around and up, Lovell struggled to keep his hold on the thing – and continued to gripe over the radio.

  “I heard the Brits brought their own virus samples, and we don’t even need this shit.”

  Fick pressed his transmit button. “Stick a dick in your ear, and fuck what you heard. Over.”

  Lovell gave him a sullen look from his position down on the deck, beneath the increasingly slimy dead guy. The animated corpse was relatively fresh and unrotted, but all the tussling was starting to squeeze stuff out of him.

  Fick squelched again. “You screw this up, Sergeant, and I swear I will come in there and personally fuck-start your face.”

  Sergeant Lovell, his face already beet-red from exertion, looked if anything less happy. Also slightly confused.

  “It’s like a jump start
. But with a fuck. Over.”

  By this point, Burris had the runner more than halfway trussed up. But there was now a fair bit of disgusting, black, viscous fluid on the deck around them, and his feet shot out from under him. He sprawled out on top of both the runner and the other Marine. Lovell, with his head now stuck in Burris’s crotch, continued to bear-hug the wriggling dead guy for dear life.

  Fick checked his watch. He did have other shit to do.

  Then again, this was pretty damned entertaining to watch.

  * * *

  “Okay,” Professor Close said, sounding resigned and maybe borderline happy now. “Assuming the Keystone Kops who run this ship get you the early samples, and you work out the etiology of the pathogen… let’s talk about what equipment you’re going to need to finish your design, undertake testing, and start prototype production of the vaccine.”

  Park watched the older man for a second. There was a light behind his eyes now. Park finally realized what it was. Scientists were puzzle-solvers at heart. And this man seemed to sense that they were on the verge of solving what was perhaps the most important scientific puzzle in human history.

  That they might be on the verge of saving the species.

  Moreover, Close seemed to sense that this younger scientist had very nearly succeeded, where he and all his colleagues had known only failure, for two straight years. And that kind of success was the source of all scientific respect.

  Park drew and exhaled a breath. “Okay. I’m going to need a lab with a full suite of drug-discovery facilities. Protein-purification system, electrophysiology suite, environmental test chambers… GC-MS, ICP-MS, mass spectrometer – ideally a Q-Star. A genome analyzer, ideally Illumina.”

  Close nodded. “No issues with any of that.”

  “Some type of high-end bioinformatics computing cluster.”

  “Easily done.”

  Park cocked his head. “I’m also really going to need a Biacore 4000, or equivalent, for antibody analysis.”

  Close looked vexed, but also as if he understood. “For screening and ranking of antibodies and antibody fragments. Yes/no binding and selectivity. That type of thing.”

  “Exactly,” Park said. “Ideally, screening direct from crude supernatants or lysates. Because, basically—”

  Close finished for him “—we don’t have a vaccine we dare give anyone until we fully understand the antibody-binding properties of the drug.”

  “Exactly.”

  Close paused again. “That might be a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Biacore is a damned rare and expensive piece of kit. And generally the only people who have one are biotechs doing serious drug design. Or research universities with specialist labs.”

  Park didn’t look panicked – yet. “Surely there’s got to be one somewhere in the UK?”

  Close nodded. His rectangular, steel-framed glasses reflected the overhead fluorescent lights and partially obscured his pale-blue eyes. “As a matter of fact, we brought one with us. It was on the damned plane.” He just let that hang there.

  Park exhaled. “There have got to be others. With your university and research infrastructure…”

  The professor’s face was inscrutable. “There were exactly three in Britain that I know of.”

  “Great. So that means there are two others.”

  “Yes and no. One, at Edinburgh, suffered a short across its electronics from a bad power surge. Dodgy electric grid. We couldn’t figure out how to repair it, and we had another, so we just put it aside to scavenge for parts.”

  “And the third?”

  “At an academic biomedical science facility. That one’s totally intact. As far as I know.”

  “Great. Which university?”

  “Kent.”

  “University of Kent… that’s in the southeast of England…”

  “Yes – bang in the center of Canterbury.”

  “Fuck.” Park had heard the stories about Canterbury. They all had by now.

  Close leaned back tiredly. “I haven’t looked at a map recently. But I’d guess Canterbury is at least fifty miles inside the infected zone. More, now, probably. It’s overrun.”

  “Fuck.” Park’s newfound coolness under fire threatened to desert him. “Nothing at Oxford? Cambridge? Imperial in London?”

  Close shook his head. “None that I know of. I can send a message back, and get people calling around. But you can’t just Google for things anymore. It’s a pain in the arse.”

  Park sighed. “I miss Google.”

  “I miss the Internet. It was designed for academic research. You never know what you have ’til it’s gone.”

  “I don’t miss Facebook.” The two turned to see Sarah Cameron standing in the open hatch. Having fulfilled her duties to Drake and Fick, she was back on station.

  “Good point,” Close said. “A bright side to everything, I suppose.”

  “Yes. Even the apocalypse.”

  Park stood up. “We’ve got a little problem.”

  Sarah nodded. “Okay. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. Right?”

  “Yes,” Park said, his expression resolute. “You’re right.”

  * * *

  “Go for Drake.”

  Drake was working now while lying on a cot they’d set up for him in a corner of the Bridge. He had a laptop on his lap, and a little table to his side with his cell phone, a hard-line phone, a tablet, some loose papers, and a huge orange bottle of prescription painkillers – with the lid off.

  He was still ignoring doctor’s orders. But he’d at least agreed to semi-recline on the cot – after he began to have trouble sitting up, and kept feeling like he might pass out. He’d also agreed to an IV to get some more fluids in him – later. Right now he needed his arms free.

  “Commander, this is Sarah Cameron, down in the lab with Doctors Park and Close.”

  “And?” Drake’s longstanding brusquerie was growing more extreme.

  “We’ve got an issue with Park’s vaccine – one that I think is going to have to get resolved at higher levels. Between you and the military in Britain, I think.”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s a type of high-end specialist lab equipment Park needs. Got a pen?”

  “Go.”

  “It’s called a Biacore 4000. Bravo India Alpha Charlie Oscar Romeo Echo, Four Treble-Zero.”

  “Got it. We need to get it shipped here from the UK?”

  “Negative. We need the Brits to send out a mission to recover it – from what we’re pretty sure is inside their outbreak zone. The only one going is at the University of Kent.”

  Drake jotted that down as well. “I’ll ring up CentCom. But I doubt they’re going to be thrilled. We absolutely have to have this?”

  “Wait one.”

  There was a beat of silence, then Park came on the line.

  “Yes, we have to have it. It’s essential. We can’t start giving out a live vaccine, in tens of millions of doses, without the type of interaction testing this device does. Believe it or not, we could actually create more problems than we solve.”

  When Drake didn’t immediately respond, Park added, “At least those fifty million people in Britain are healthy now. An insufficiently tested live zombie virus could change all that.”

  “Put Cameron back on.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. What you need to get this in motion is someone who can get the right person on the horn at CentCom. And believe it or not, that’s probably not me right now.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Handon. He’s the ranking officer here from… whatever fucked-up military structure it is they’ve got there. He’ll know who to call, and because he’s USOC, they’ll take the call.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Get in a room with Handon, Park, and Close. The four of you get all the mission-critical details and parameters down, everything you know that might help them find this thing. And then get it sent over. You
hit any roadblocks, ring me back up.”

  “All received.”

  Drake hung up.

  * * *

  “Well?” Park asked. He and the gray-haired scientist were looking up at Sarah in expectation. She was pretty clearly the go-to person on the team now.

  “Pack up your notes,” she said. “We’re going upstairs.”

  Park hesitated. “There’s something else.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I actually do know where there’s another one of these machines. I don’t think it’s much use where it is. But maybe just in case the one in Kent is damaged or impossible to get to.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “Germany. In Dusseldorf, at the biotech where I had my first private-sector job. I can all but guarantee they’ll still have theirs.”

  Back Into the Fire

  Germany - Dusseldorf

  Eli’s gaze drifted from the view out the window to the girl across the table. He was still chewing on his mouthful of sandwich, but she just sat and looked at him, those big eyes showing the signs of concern only he could recognize. Even in these eight short months, the two had grown so close they could read each other’s body language.

  “It’s just for three months, you know,” she said, looking back down at her own half-eaten lunch. “And it’s a huge opportunity for me.”

  He nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s just that I’m on leave during that time, and, well I kinda hoped…” He looked back out the window. The view from the Rhine Tower restaurant, hundreds of meters above the streets of Dusseldorf, had always amazed him. But today it held none of its usual charm, and the notion of watching the huge world below him go by, totally unaware he was watching it, held no allure.

  “I’ll be back with plenty of time. You’ll still have half of your leave to go,” she said. “Maybe we could even go away somewhere. You know, a holiday, or something?”

  He nodded again.

  “Sounds good. And we’re cool. You know you need to do it,” he said, not really meaning every word. “Anyway. You put up with enough waiting around for me.”

  She reached over and touched his wrist, smiling again.

  “Just three months…” she had said as he turned back to look out the window.