by JE Gurley
The former Planning Center housed a small but functioning Biohazard 4 lab with its own air source, maintaining an inside air pressure slightly lower than outside to help prevent leaks. They kept their time inside the highest-level lab to a minimum because of the elaborate and lengthy decontamination procedures. Working with highly diluted samples of the H5N1 virus allowed them inoculate more tissue samples wearing only masks and gloves.
The Avian H5N1 virus, of the Orthomyxoviridae family, known ironically enough as Genotype Z even before the zombie outbreak, had killed over 250 million people in the US alone. Not since the H1N1 Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 had so many people died from a single virus, if the eight or more genetic subtypes they had discovered could be considered a single virus. Erin had cursed Doctor Ron Fouchier of the Netherlands many times for developing a more deadly strain of the virus for experimental purposes. He had been among the first to predict a possible worldwide outbreak of H5N1. Her team had identified Fouchier’s strain among the several rampant in the population, but anyone with the proper facilities and a blatant disregard for the possible dangers could have emulated his work, even terrorists.
So far, their efforts at finding a vaccine had produced nothing. They still relied on the Blue Juice. Now – She preferred not to dwell on the alternative.
As usual, Erin was so engrossed in her work that she failed to hear the visitor the first time he called to her. Finally, she glanced up at him.
“I’m busy!” she snapped irritably. She was right in the middle of re-examining her findings and he had made her loose her place. She vaguely recalled the man’s face but not his name. “What do you want?”
“The gate guard shot at someone. Mace said to come.” He shrugged. “You do what you want.” He eyed the pile of Petri stacked dishes inside the ventilation hood nervously. “Makes no difference to me.”
People shooting? She glanced over at the other members of her research team. Better safe than sorry, she thought. “Very well. We’ll be along shortly.”
The man raced off, eager to be away from the bugs that had wiped out America. She didn’t bother attempting to explain that the cultures were merely non-infectious skin cells. It probably would not have mattered to him. Like most of the others, he considered their work as too dangerous to allow, but needed the Blue Juice they produced. Of the forty-plus members of their little village under glass, seventeen, including her, had no natural immunity to the mutated avian flu virus and relied on the temporary vaccine the military had developed. They had managed to reproduce the military’s results from the stolen batch they had brought with them from San Diego, using donated blood instead of the vile forced donor blood banks from which most of the group came. She reminded herself daily that they had rescued only part of one barrack and that there were still fourteen barracks buildings at San Diego.
“Wise decision,” Elliot Samuels announced from his desk. Not trained in medicine but competent with a computer, Elliot acted as secretary, keeping notes and correlating data. Of the six researchers, he was the only one who carried a pistol. He had been instrumental in their escape. “We’re sitting all alone out here.”
Erin wiped at her emerald green eyes with her fingers and picked up her glasses lying beside the microscope. She smiled at Elliot as she adjusted them on her nose, trying to keep any sign of her distressing news from her face. Since leaving the San Diego Naval Base, her opinion of Elliot had made a complete 180 degree turn. He was still quiet and slightly standoffish around the others, but their relationship had passed beyond her distrust of him and the wistful glances and secret longings stage. She wouldn’t classify their relationship as love – more a mutual need, an attraction between two personalities more alike than either cared to admit – but it was as close to love as she had ever come. Both were loners driven by their need for a vaccine and forced into situations of authority by their dogged determination and expertise in their respective fields, virology for her and liaison between FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control for him.
“We have you for protection, Elliot.”
“Yes, but I’m basically a pacifist.”
Considering how many zombies he had killed, saving her life on more than one occasion, she appreciated his show of modesty.
“Seriously,” he continued, “zombies are one thing; armed men are another. Get everyone back to the dome while I check things out.”
She nodded. Elliot was in his take-charge mode, one that had kept them together during their escape both from Atlanta and from Colorado. As she hesitated, Elliot looked at her.
“Is anything wrong?”
She shook her head and smiled. “Nothing that won’t wait.”
She found Susan McNeil poring over the latest results from their tissue cultures. As usual, Susan’s blonde hair was neatly in place and her makeup was impeccable, but by her stance and hunched shoulders, Erin suspected the results were bad.
“We have to go,” Erin said.
Susan waved her hand toward Erin. “In a minute.”
Erin grabbed her by the shoulder. “No, now, Susan.”
They rounded up Seth Brisbane, Kevin Houseman and Dale Cuthbert in the break room downing cups of coffee to stay awake. All three were former technicians now doing the work of researchers because of the shortage of trained virologists and immunologists. Cuthbert noticed the stern expression on Erin’s face and immediately paled.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Visitors,” she replied succinctly. She had forgiven him for surreptitiously dosing them with the temporary Blue Juice vaccine, supplied by the military – After all, it had probably saved their lives – but she still did not fully trust him.
For his part, Cuthbert had accepted Erin’s silent condemnation of his actions and had since worked hard to produce a universal vaccine, hoping to win back his esteem. He picked up his coffee mug, no more disposable cups, walked calmly to the sink and rinsed it out, replacing it on the pegboard above the sink before following the others. By the time they reached the main corridor, Charles Bemis and Ang Lee, the team immunologists, were waiting. Lee’s countenance betrayed his impatience at the interruption.
“I was right in the middle of an important scan,” Lee protested.
His wrinkled lab smock and disheveled black hair lent credence to Erin’s belief that Lee had not slept during the last two days. Everyone had been working exceptionally long hours for weeks, eating and sleeping in the lab. Erin could feel the fatigue in her bones and muscles. She knew she was driving them too hard, but so much was at stake, perhaps the fate of mankind. It was hard to sleep with that kind of pressure.
“Unwelcome visitors,” she said. Her remark quickly quieted Lee’s protest.
“Zombie or human?” he asked.
“Human, I think.”
“I need more blood samples for a wider spectrum of possible results.”
“If they are willing to cooperate, Chang,” she reminded him. She would take no more blood from anyone against their will. She had seen enough violence perpetrated by one human being on another to last her a lifetime.
Elliot met them at the door.
“It’s a car,” he said. “They drove to the front parking lot. Ridell and Stone are greeting them.”
Erin detected a hint of admiration for Mace Ridell in Elliot’s voice. Like Elliot, Ridell was direct, sure of himself, and slow to give his trust, all qualities that made both of the men seem cold and distant to those who did not know them. However, she had seen a side of Elliot that few ever saw, the tender side of a man with a good soul.
The air in the main room of the habitat was rife with excitement. The residents, now that they knew it was not zombies, were curious about the visitors. Erin could not help but notice how a few left a noticeable gap between themselves and her team. She should have reminded everyone to remove their white lab smocks before leaving the lab, the usual procedure, but in the excitement, she had forgotten. Separating their function as scientists from fellow r
esidents helped reduce tensions. She understood their plight. Too many of the survivors related scientists to their present predicament. Many rightly associated lab smocks with their captivity as human blood banks. Elliot had referred to the tension in the dome as ‘atmospherics’. She understood that as politi-speak for no one trusted them.
The three visitors, two men and a befuddled looking boy, entered amid all the suspicious murmurings and opinionated whispers that accompanied any such meeting. Erin did not miss the obvious fact that all the men escorting the visitors were well armed and that the visitors were not. That, she surmised, was Ridell’s doing, though she knew Elliot would have heartily approved. Erin frowned when she saw the way Janis Heath flirted with one of the newcomers, a man in a bloody dark green coverall. A baseball cap covered his shoulder-length red hair. Beneath the bill of the cap, he darted his eyes about as if trying to memorize all the faces present, a mannerism that puzzled her. His eyes indicated no hint of fear or curiosity, but were calculating and cold. His barracuda smile looked pasted to his face, as if it took an effort to maintain.
Erin remembered Janis Heath’s name only because Janis had once tested her female wiles on Elliot, as she had with most of the male members of the group. Elliot, to his credit, had a discerning eye when it came to bullshit and had sent her packing. Ridell’s attention never wavered from the three visitors, but Stone frantically scanned the crowd in search of his wife. She made a quick appraisal of Stone with her medical eye. She had no complaints of his tireless efforts to keep the small group intact and functional in spite of the, in her opinion, useless action committee, or in his abilities as a clinical psychologist. No one in the group was without some mental problem with which he or she dealt in their own way. No, her beef with Jeb Stone was in his invisible but obvious mantle of guilt he wore about him like a crown of thorns.
His wife, a once beautiful woman from all indications, had been one of the people rescued from San Diego, the reason for the difficult journey Stone, Ridell, his girlfriend Renda Kilmer, and the Air Force sergeant, Vince Holcomb, had undertaken. The death of her son, her captivity, and her subsequent realization that everyone and everything she had known and loved, but for her husband, was gone had unhinged her mind and Stone, in spite of his experience and love, had been unable to reach her. Even now, she stood in the crowd, apart even from her husband, as if a wall surrounded her. Stone looked exhausted, both mentally and physically. She felt sorry for his plight, but she wanted to slap him hard across the face and yell, “Get over it! You did your best. Your wife is gone,” but of course she wouldn’t. It was not her place.
Erin tried very hard not to embroil herself in any of the petty politics of her fellow refuges. She had realized at an early age that her people skills were severely limited. She had devoted herself with single-minded purpose to her studies, but even before the advent of plague, she had found herself in the frightening position of being in charge of other people. She was getting better at interpersonal relationships. Elliot helped.
Erin was as stunned as the rest of the crowd when Stone’s wife rushed at the red haired man, called him a bastard and slapped him. He laughed and shrugged off the incident, but Erin caught a brief flash of dark anger coloring his eyes. Eli Collier, the tentative head of the action committee, cleared his throat and raised his hands in the air above the crowd trying to bring them to silence. Erin secretly thought of Collier as Eli Wallach because his intense eyes, heavy black-framed glasses, and cotton-white hair reduced to tufts on each side of his head reminded her of the actor in his later years. Unlike Wallach, Collier had no presence.
“We’ll hold a meeting at four o’clock after we’ve had an opportunity to converse with our guests,” Collier announced. Most ignored him. “Until then, I suggest everyone return to their assigned tasks.”
She doubted anyone would comply, since it was almost time for lunch, but she herded her team back to the lab where someone would deliver their food courtesy of the fearful residents of the Crystal Palace, as she had heard some call the Biosphere2 habitat. She had toyed with the idea of moving their quarters to the lab since they were spending almost all their time there anyway, but the others in her team had vetoed the idea. For her, the more distance between her staff and the others in the dome the better.
Before resuming work, Erin called all her team together in the break room. Her recent discovery could spell dire consequences for the people of their small commune, and she wasn’t sure how they would take the news. She looked out over the tired faces and knew that she could not keep this information from them. Their tireless efforts and loyalty demanded no less than her complete trust. She stared at them until Lee began to fidget in his chair, eager to get back to his experiment. She smiled at Elliot’s quick nod of encouragement. Of those seated in the room, only he had no reason to be concerned.
“I just completed the quality control checks of the latest batch of the anti-viral.” She paused, not wanting to continue but knowing that she must. “It is degrading.”
Chang Lee sat up straight, concern showing in his dark brown eyes. “What do you mean ‘degrading’?”
“Two out of my one hundred samples were completely ineffective against the virus.”
“Son of a bitch!” Bemis swore. “That’s a crapshoot.”
Erin agreed. The next time they needed a booster shot, they would have to take their chances. Even a two percent failure rate could mean disaster, considering the consequences. “We can closely monitor the procedure, double check each dose.” Even as she said it, she knew she was simply grasping at straws. So did the others.
“Is it progressive?” Cuthbert asked. That was the first question that she had asked herself.
“It’s too soon to be certain.”
“We can make more,” Bemis suggested. “Get more donors.”
Erin shook her head. “It’s not the procedure or the batch we brought from San Diego. Like the H5N1 virus itself, the neuraminidase proteins coating it are genetically shifting. It could stop.”
“Or accelerate,” Susan added. She glanced at Elliot, naturally immune from the virus and smiled. “Maybe I should have stayed on that beach at San Diego.”
Ang Lee posed the question that all of them were thinking, “Do we continue working toward a vaccine or concentrate on rectifying our Blue Juice problem? If our samples are degrading, it’s likely everyone’s is.”
Save ourselves or save the world? Erin wasn’t sure she was ready to make that decision. “I’ll leave it up to you. Your lives are on the line here. In my opinion, if a solution to the H5N1 virus is found, it will be found here. You people are the best in the country.” A few smiled at her attempt at humor. “If we die before we find it….” She let her voice trail off. They all understood what she was implying.
“To hell with everyone else. I don’t want to die.”
Several of those present turned to stare at Keith Houseman’s outburst.
“We have a safe refuge here and people who have suffered enough. As you said, we’re close to a vaccine, but if we die... then all is lost.” He faced the others, trying to convince them. “Yes, more people will likely die of the virus, but it becomes a matter of whose life is more important – a farmer in Minnesota, or one of us who may find the solution.” He glared at Erin. “Sometimes tough decisions have to be made.”
“Like the government and the military abandoning the people to save themselves,” she reminded him.
He said nothing more. Erin knew that at least a few of the others agreed with him.
“We needn’t decide now. Think about it. I think it best we keep this information among ourselves for a day or two. The others would only panic.”
“Perhaps the strangers’ blood might offer new insights into the mutability of the virus,” Bemis suggested.
Erin nodded curtly. “I can ask them.”
“If we provide them with food and shelter, we should demand….”
“We are in no position to demand anyt
hing,” Erin said, cutting off Bemis. “We are here at the sufferance of the others. We provide Blue Juice, which they need, and research into a cure, of which they are frightened. How long do you think they will tolerate us if they discover the Blue Juice we are producing is becoming ineffective?”
She made eye contact with each of them and allowed her words sink in. Of the seven, only Elliot betrayed no surprise. He smiled encouragement. She imagined that his first thought on learning of the problem was how it might affect their somewhat shaky status at Biosphere 2.
By ones and twos, they left the break room, each silent in their own thoughts, perhaps as frightened as her. Only Elliot remained.
“What’s your opinion?” she asked him.
“We’ll have to tell them sooner or later. If one of them turns, the secret’s out and we will be held responsible.”
Her thoughts had been along the same lines. “Do we stop work on the vaccine and concentrate on the Blue Juice?”
“I have no horse in this race, remember?” he said, reminding her of his natural immunity. “As a former FEMA regional director, I say concentrate on the vaccine, but as one of you,” (She felt her heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s at that.) “I say we need to save as many as possible. The Blue Juice is all we have. What’s more, it’s all the military has. If they know what we know, how long do you think it will be before they concentrate all their efforts on finding and reacquiring us? They know that as former CDC researchers you’re their best bet.”
