The Valley of Shadows - eARC

by John Ringo

  Smith paused, and glanced around the room, reading his audience. There was a surfeit of skepticism, anxiousness and a bit of hostility. What he didn’t feel was a receptive vibe that might make it worth it to introduce a discussion of zombielike symptoms.

  “It also appears to have a very high mortality rate, like avian flu.” On the fly, he elected omit the Z-word and resumed. “It may be a two part disease where extreme symptoms occur later. Finally, the timing on the simultaneous emergence of a previously unknown pathogen with a high mortality rate in several places is strongly suggestive of an artificial event. In my opinion, and that of our intelligence staff, the likelihood that this disease arose purely due to natural causes is precisely zero.”

  There was a brief pause as the audience looked at him and one another.

  Bateman spoke up.

  “Tom, are you saying this is a man-made disease?”

  Smith looked his boss in the eye, and then scanned the room.

  “Rich, I’ve exercised our options for the services of a few epidemiologists and virologists, and the first is due in the office soon.” The tall security chief replied, his voice confident. “I’ll be speaking to him shortly. I expect to be able to answer your question more definitively then. However, at this time, with the information and analysis we have right now, what I’m saying is that this very strongly appears to be an artificial event. A bio-attack by a previously unknown pathogen which has been spread worldwide.”

  He took another deep breath because he could already sense that he wasn’t reaching this audience, and that made him angry.

  “But that doesn’t matter. As we have seen before, there are three predictors for success for organizations that weather or even thrive during a crisis. One—have a plan. Two—access to intelligence. Three—move first. We’ve already expended capital to complete the first two. What we’re discussing now is whether or not we want to invest in the final step.”

  “It’s a pretty expensive final step that you’re proposing, Tom,” Depine said. “As you say, we don’t have complete information yet, and the government isn’t saying anything. There’s barely any mention online or in the news.”

  “Look Brad—here’s the bottom line,” Tom replied. “Ensuring that we’re the first mover is Plan Zeus. Access to assets will rely upon exercising the options early in the news cycle. We can get them now, if we work fast and spend the weekend closing deals. I can’t guarantee that we can get them next week. If we wait till we have one hundred percent confirmation, we won’t get these assets at all and we’ll need another plan.”

  Bateman cut the exchange short, shooting a quelling look at fat accountant and his tall head of security.

  “Thanks, Tom.”

  Surveying the room in turn, Bateman addressed the entire group.

  “We’ve both a quorum of the Operating Committee and most of the executive board in the room or on the call. Can I get sense of how many in either group feel that they have enough information to exercise Plan Zeus options now?”

  Tom looked around as well. There were a few hands up, but nothing like a majority, despite a few affirmative comments on the phone speaker.

  “Thank you,” Bateman said. He turned to his right and addressed the Chief Risk Officer, a Swiss national and former armor officer known for his calculating nature and casual association with morals.

  “Otto, I’d like your global team, including Tom, to warm up alternate trading floors in all regions and stress test all the data pipes within the next day. Overtime for contractors is authorized.”

  He looked at the VTC camera and continued.

  “Right—two things: internal and external,” Bateman said. “Internally, everyone prep their teams to work the weekend. Monday, I’m directing that we establish readiness to move fifty percent of our trading operations to the alternate sites on one hour notice. That means bringing luggage to work and it means we’ll need to have thousands of hotel beds for an indefinite period. On Monday, we’ll also brief the possibility of social distancing rules for all staff. Purell stations on every floor of our towers and refresh all employees in your divisions on the ‘work-from-home’ protocols. Externally, I want Global Markets to recheck their existing workup on industries potentially affected by a pandemic so we’ll be ready to adjust our market position at start of business Monday. I also want the heavy industrials, metals and cereals teams reading what Markets and the business intel team put out on an ongoing basis.”

  He looked directly at Tom.

  “Tom, excellent brief. Tell your team that they did good work. Please keep all us updated and call me personally if there are critical developments. We can reconvene if there is new solid data, so everyone keep your phones with you and your admins aware of your location. Meeting adjourned.”

  * * *

  Dr. Dave Curry was normally unflappable when it came to disease. He particularly enjoyed competing with his equally bloody-minded fellow virologists. There was a rotating award held by the scientist who could think up the most unlikely and fatal disease with the most ridiculous imaginary symptoms while still remaining epidemiologically possible. His personal favorite was the hunchbacked duck plague that would compel sufferers to crouch-walk everywhere while honking and quacking before dying of stroke. After showing that it lay within the realm of medical possibility, Curry had been the proud holder of the award, a gray plush neuron doll.

  No one even tried to joke about a straight-up zombie plague. It was just too cliché to be competitive.

  The chartered G6 that picked him up from Mexico City had in-flight Internet, so he was able to stay hooked into the exploding dialogue among the global community of scientists. They had woken up this Friday to the ultimate cliché.

  Zombie plague it was.

  One of the nice things about his consulting contract with BotA was that they respected his ability enough not to screw around with commercial travel. As a result, instead of fighting the traffic at Kennedy, the G6 greased the runway at the northern New Jersey Fixed Base of Operations, or FBO, where billionaires made their entry and exits from Manhattan.

  The black Mercedes that collected him from the FBO also had Internet.

  The information stream kept worsening.

  Twenty-five minutes later the car pulled through the chicanes and antivehicle barriers into the BotA lot under the Wall Street tower. He still hadn’t found any good news to share.

  Whisked upstairs in a private elevator car, he was asked to leave his electronics behind and was offered a wall locker for his mobile phone and notebook PC. Finished, he found some very intent people waiting in a conference room equipped with anechoic tiles on the walls and a peculiarly thick door. Smith, and a few others he recognized from a previous investigation on a biotech startup, rose from their chairs.

  Tom Smith shook Curry’s hand.

  “Dr. Curry, thank you for coming so rapidly.”

  “Well, you do ask the most interesting questions,” drawled Curry. “This one is a doozy.” He looked around.

  “Nice room.”

  “This get together, all subsequent meetings and any data that we generate is being held very closely at this time,” Tom said, smiling faintly. “So, I’m taking advantage of one of our ‘deal’ rooms. Harder to snoop and fewer distractions. You’re the first of our experts to make it here, so let me introduce you to the team.”

  After the usual impossible to memorize exchange of names around the room, Tom led off. Though they had already spoken a few times, Smith started at the beginning, mostly for the benefit of his staff in the room who were hearing information for the first time.

  “Dr. Curry, you know that we’re monitoring the emergence of a potentially new pathogen that appears to have manifested on three continents within a single day. We’re seeing conflicting reports in some places. What can you tell us?”

  “Right off, let me apologize for mah accent.” Curry had anticipated the easy questions. “Grew up in the South, and it’s never rubbed off. B
ut, to your statement, this disease isn’t on three continents. Between Wednesday morning, when some of the international labs upgraded their level of concern for what appeared to be a nasty, but still manageable seasonal flu, and this moment, I have read credible reports that there are cases with congruent symptoms on every continent save Antarctica.”

  Murmurs spread around the room.

  “We have been aware of the unusual symptom pattern for about a week,” Curry continued. “Nationally, UCLA had led the way in gathering preliminary information, largely due to their information hooks into Asia and Oceania. However, the amount of educated guesswork is still pretty high. The disease appears to have at least two stages, the first of which includes traditional, and in some cases lethal flu symptoms, and a second set, which are erratic and very confusing but so far, not directly lethal to the actual infected persons.”

  Everyone was taking notes and several members of the audience were quietly exchanging asides.

  “Next, and please note that the following figures involve a lot of speculation and extrapolation from scarce data, but it seems that about five percent of the cases result in death during the early stages of the disease.” The virologist held up one finger. “As you no doubt recognize, that’s a high mortality rate, but I need to emphasize that this is based on a relatively small case count, which can badly skew analysis. My immediate circle of professional contacts, as well as nearly every other specialist in the field, are working to refine the numbers.”

  Smith hushed the buzzing in the room.

  “Dr. Curry, can you explain you statement regarding ‘erratic and confusing but not lethal’ symptoms? Do you mean that the patients are uncooperative?”

  “That would be an understatement,” Curry replied. “Where we can document symptoms, now that there are a few videos available, the second stage features a completely dissociative, violent sociopathy, rendering patients untreatable and unmanageable unless they are completely immobilized. This occurs in at least half the suspected cases.”

  Tom looked over at Paul and raised his eyebrows.

  “…severe anhedonia, aggression and instantaneous aphasia,” Paul said aloud.

  “Well yes, exactly,” Curry said, appearing startled at Paul’s ready grasp of the lingo. “But remember, the law of small numbers applies. A few cases can appear to dramatically change the curve. These statistics are very, very preliminary.”

  Tom grimaced.

  “What can you tell us about communicability?” he asked.

  “The disease appears to be highly communicable,” replied the academic. “We don’t know with certainty, but there are several cases where all forms of transmission appear to be ruled out except for airborne spread. We are confident that the disease is droplet borne and transmissible via bites.”

  This time Paul spoke over the chatter around the table.

  “Doctor, when you say ‘transmissible via bites’ are you referring to family pets and the like?”

  “No. I mean transmissible via bites from people.” Curry looked over the top of his glasses at the intel specialist. “As in, if a symptomatic victim bites a nurse, then that nurse may develop symptoms within hours, which as far as we can tell is much faster than other vectors. In known bite cases, the second set of symptoms took anywhere from hours to days to manifest, but it skipped the flu component entirely.”

  A voice from down the table said it for everyone.

  “Like zombie bites? Are we talking about fucking zombies?”

  Curry winced, then nudged his glasses upwards so that he could rub the bridge of his nose.

  “Yes. Ah mean just like ‘fucking zombies.’”

  This time it took Smith longer to quell the hubbub.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tom Smith did enjoy the panorama. One of his perks was a corner office view from the fortieth floor. In clear weather it afforded him a view from Governor’s Island to the Verranazo Bridge and across to North Jersey. The air was clear enough that green mountains were visible in the distant Hudson Valley.

  The new, creepy sensation crawling up Smith’s spine had him mortally convinced that any view of the city was best taken from a great distance.

  Orbital distance sounded about right.

  The meeting with their tame virologist had broken up in order to allow Curry to try to weasel some more information out of the Centers for Disease Control, the Army’s Medical Research Unit for Infectious Disease and the other the usual suspects.

  Smith looked down at the data accumulating on the disease, which still lacked a name. The numbers of suspected cases was growing. He was still a little shaken from Curry’s preliminary report on the spread of the disease.

  He tried to remind himself that initial reports during a crisis are rarely as bad or as good as they are first reported.

  There is an exception to every rule. His gut was telling him that this might be the one.

  Throughout Friday, he had updated Bateman on the new estimates for the spread of the disease, but the CEO was unwilling to make any profound moves prior to an official announcement from the government.

  At which time the bank would be in “reaction mode” and not out in front of the market.

  Tom looked over at the flat screen on his notebook PC where he had paused the Thursday night video from Osaka. In the HD security cam image, the emergency room staff was lying across a gurney to restrain a naked man, who had his teeth buried in the arm of one of the paramedics, judging by the uniform.

  Blood spatter was visible on the pale floor.

  Everything that he did, all the information that his organization generated, from daily intelligence and security briefs for the management group to the annual risk assessment that was included in the firm’s stock filings for the SEC, was covered by an iron-clad nondisclosure agreement. Legions of hungry attorneys had battled over that NDA across the years, resulting in a strong, refined and in legal terms, lethal document.

  Getting caught sharing “inside” or nonpublic information wouldn’t merely be a Career Limiting Decision, or as the street liked to joke, a CLD. It could rapidly lead to a lawsuit that pitched him against the bank, or worse.

  Usually, worse.

  Tom well understood his obligation to the bank. Like any of the former military who were sprinkled around the financial services industry, he still held strongly to the concepts of loyalty and personal honor. He “got it”—that in return for a hefty check he had sold his best efforts and his pledged his personal word. He’d stand by that. If he were inclined to make an exception, well, he knew the penalties for violating the employment NDA with BotA, and he would accept the consequences.

  After all, he valued the team that he had built, and currently led, and wasn’t about to walk away from them, even if things went for a ball of chalk.

  But damnit…there was family to consider.

  He numbered among his “chosen” family a few very close friends, mostly from his service days with the international special operations community, including a few Ami friends from the ’Stans. In addition to this group, there was the regular sort of family too.

  His brother Steve, a former Aussie paratrooper, had “married into America.” Now he was a pleasantly domesticated, naturalized U.S. citizen teaching high school history, of all things. Stacey, his brilliant American wife, had tutored Tom as he “upped his game” in the banking world, coaching him on the mysteries of the bespoke suit and the designer ties from houses like Zegna and Armani. With their daughters, they lived in Richmond.

  A highly communicable, airborne pandemic would sweep through the heavily populated cities like a flame through tinder. The I-95 corridor where the Smiths lived would go up like a powder train.

  He and his brother, and others in their circle, didn’t live for the end of the world despite the negative connotations about preppers in what passed for Western pop culture. All things considered, Tom Smith rather enjoyed living with the “rule of law.” It made available much of what made lif
e worth living.

  The occasional kite surfing trip out to Sandy Hook, driving up to wine country, the alternative club scene in the City and the women he met there, all of it was made possible by a very complex system whose rules were understood and largely backed by an overwhelming proportion of the population.

  No rules? No system.

  But the system worked. Always had.

  Still, that hadn’t kept the Smith brothers and their friends from playing a slow motion game of “what if?” over the years, often fueled by beer. All right, and some really decent bourbon, the quintessential American whiskey.

  Even sober, buying a little insurance for emergencies had made sense. To that end, a small circle of like-minded friends had invested in a generous but remotely situated parcel of land in the Appalachian Mountains, balancing the need for distance with a decent growing season and accessibility from their metro lifestyles, given enough warning time.

  Tom couldn’t live there year-round, but he paid into the share system every quarter. His background was intrinsically useful and his money was welcome, but his global network of information was an order of magnitude more important. The families took turns staffing the property to keep it up, letting the capital improvements accumulate without the perils of renting the property to outsiders. In a few more years there was even a chance that the property, which now included a walnut orchard, some hay fields and an increasingly productive truck garden, might begin to meaningfully contribute to the mortgage.

  The real intent had been to have a fallback location to ride out periods of civil unrest, if such became likely. An economic collapse would do for that. However, it was also a great place for large-scale weekend BBQs and unregulated fireworks. Nice shooting range too.