Bioterror

by Tim Curran

  You would have crawled through shit for a bump in pay and prestige, she later chastised herself.

  And it was in this way that she had become CEO of Congdon BioTech, climbing over the warm bodies of friends and trusted associates in her ascent. Sooner or later, she would have been forced out. But fate interceded. One day she got a phone call from a man she would come to know as Mr. Brown.

  “We’ve been watching your every move with breathless excitement,” he told her.

  “And who is we?”

  “We are your friends. You must never forget that. We’ve been very impressed with your activities. Rarely do we find someone with such innate predatory skills. You, my dear, are immoral, unethical, and wholly unscrupulous,” said Mr. Brown. “You are a rare beast. One with looks, brains, and very sharp teeth. You are exactly what we look for in an executive.”

  “Okay, that’s enough. I’m hanging up now.”

  Mr. Brown tittered. “Oh really, Elizabeth, enough pretense. Your skin is hardly that thin. You’ve been called everything from a Judas to a thief to a whore to a fanged cunt by those you’ve used and abused. You would drink my urine if it would better your position and we both know it.”

  That made her grit her teeth, but she dispensed with that because she sensed…opportunity. “What do you want?”

  “I want you. We want you. If you hang up on me, I won’t call back. But if you stay on the line and do exactly as I say, within one year you’ll be CEO of Congdon.” He was silent for a few moments. “I don’t jest, my dear. We’ve been grooming you for the position. You’re a marvelously oily, unprincipled little minx. The sort of cunning alley cat we can use. Do as I say and you will rise effortlessly to the top. Refuse me, and you’ll be facing charges of extortion, illegal wiretapping, money laundering, and industrial espionage. You will spend a minimum of thirty years in prison and everything that you’ve worked for will be taken from you and your personal assets will become property of the federal government.”

  Mr. Brown had her and she knew it. Even without seeing the evidence of her guilt or the file that they had no doubt compiled on her, she knew she was busted. There was something omnipotent in his voice that you didn’t dare argue or barter with.

  “What do I have to do?”

  He told her in some detail. She didn’t pretend to be offended by the devious, cold-blooded details of it or his assessment of her humanity (or lack of the same). She was more than capable of doing what he suggested. In fact, she would have no doubt followed much of the same path he laid out.

  “Are you with us then?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Yes. Though I can’t help thinking I just sold my soul.”

  He tittered again. “Really, Elizabeth. You can’t sell something you never had.”

  Now here she was these many years later, worrying, wondering from her throne of power if she was indeed a player or just another pawn in motion. If BioGenesis and the coup was just part of something much more insidious and terrible, then what was the big picture? Where was it all heading and what would it mean for her and CBT? And, more importantly, the country itself?

  CHICAGO: KENILWORTH

  7:31 P.M.

  After he got off the phone with Gabe, Harry felt a sickness within him spread until it filled his belly. Gabe had pretty much gone through the same steps that Shawna and he had, save with a bit more subtlety and the added advantage of contacts with Metro Police and the FBI. But in the end it all came down to the same thing: Shawna Geddes had been erased and she would be physically removed when the opportunity presented itself. She had two choices, the way Harry saw it. She could let them get her or she could go underground like some 1960s radical.

  Neither of which was remotely palatable.

  As for himself, the future was not much brighter. There was a warrant on him for fleeing and eluding. No mention of assault. What it came down to was that they were waiting for him. When he showed at his apartment or work or any other place he frequented, they would arrest him. And through him, they would get to Shawna.

  Staying here put Gabe in incredible danger. It was only a matter of time before they put two and two together and realized he was hiding out at his employer’s house.

  It was time to run.

  Shawna was sitting in the den on a recliner, legs pulled up, arms encircling them.

  “Well?” she said.

  He shook his head. “You’re gone. I’m wanted.” He paused, sat down beside her. “It’s only a matter of time before they erase me, too. It’s inevitable.”

  Shawna lit a cigarette, her haunted eyes staring out at him from clouds of blue-white smoke that rose lazily into the air. “I guess I’m all done. There’s no way out of this. I should simply let them find me and get it over with. How fast and how far can I hope to run?”

  And it was in her eyes as she spoke: her life. It danced there uneasily for a moment or two—music and laughter, desperation and misery, dating rich men in hopes of an easy, fat future and every time watching it all crash down around her and she would pick up the pieces, start again, fight and scramble and scavenge, looking for a fat vein to leech onto that would give her the sort of life she thought she deserved but was never hers in the first place. He saw that and then he saw the absence of the same: an ugliness, a dark despair, a waiting silence winding out into shadow.

  “No,” he said to her, rising to her pain like a fish coming up at night to feed. “No, you silly twit. That’s exactly what you don’t do. You don’t give in and you don’t give up.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. We hide out, we wait for our time because it’s coming. And when it comes, we pounce. We spill this story and when we do, when our names are linked, they won’t dare lay a hand on us.”

  “And until then?”

  “We go underground and we watch from the shadows,” he told her. “Get your things. We’re getting the hell out of here soon as it’s dark.”

  LOUISVILLE, KY:

  UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, 7:42 P.M.

  When Rachel Lofquist came back to the ward after her lunch break, it was filled with mulling bodies: men in black nylon jackets, granite-faced, eyes like cold mud. She guessed there were thirty or forty of them. Amongst them were her nurses, Dr. Conlay and Dr. Rich, a few security guards.

  “What exactly is going on here?” she asked.

  Dr. Conlay opened his mouth to speak and one of the men stepped in front of him. “We’re here for the individuals from the Shawnee Park location,” he told her in the typical dull monotone favored by cops and federal agents. “They will be taken to an alternate location for treatment.”

  Rachel felt her blood rise. “First off there is protocol. You do not come barging in on my ward—”

  “We have the authority, ma’am.”

  He and two other men standing at her side flashed laminated IDs at her: the Department of Homeland Security and the Center for Disease Control. That stopped her. She was about to read him out and let him know goddamn well that here in the quarantine ward, she was the nurse practitioner and she was lord and commander of all who passed through her realm…but the CDC? Homeland Security? What the hell did they want with those skinhead turd monkeys?

  “Somebody should call Dr. Towers,” she said then, referring to the chief of staff.

  But the CDC man handed her a court order signed by not only Towers, but Henley, the chief administrator, and the governor of Kentucky of all things. The documentation was there and even Rachel knew she couldn’t stand up against it. Lord and commander had now been quite thoroughly emasculated. She was reduced to a wallflower like the others, just looking for a yellow sunny patch to melt into.

  “Can you just tell me what this is about?” she finally asked.

  “It’s about moving these contaminated individuals to an alternate medical facility, ma’am.”

  Rachel swallowed. “No shit. I got that part. And where might that be?”

  “I am not authorized to divulge that. Sorry.”
>
  Which was about all she was going to get and she knew it. The men went to work immediately. They wore plastic gloves and face shields. They moved into the rooms and when Rachel went in there to supervise she was ushered with the rest of the staff into the waiting room. A thick-necked goon with the noticeable bulge of a firearm beneath his coat stood in the door so they could not leave.

  “This won’t take long,” he promised her.

  One of her nurses—Jenny Johnson—took out her cell and the goon shook his head. “No cell phones, please. If you do not comply I will be forced to take it from you.”

  “You can’t do that!” Jenny said. “I’m an American citizen! I have rights!”

  Rachel almost laughed. Wasn’t that the last pathetic gasp of all Americans who suddenly realized that those they put into power with a simple mindless pull of a voting machine lever had now pissed all over those aforementioned rights they were deputized to protect? Poor Jenny. She was good-hearted, simple-minded, had about as much working gray matter as a Hostess cupcake. Life was a romantic comedy to her, some vacuous Oprah-approved shitboiler of mediocrity starring Julia Roberts. The government will never violate my civil rights and there’s a silver lining behind every cloud, an angel sitting on every shoulder and a chicken in every pot. Hopelessly naïve, she just couldn’t accept any of it, her brain a stew of mush jumping from one weak Hollywood-inspired pop culture reference to the next.

  “I have complete authorization under the Homeland Security Act,” the goon informed her. “If you resist, you can be detained for an indefinite period of time and prosecuted.”

  Jenny made a sobbing sound. Today just wasn’t puppy dogs and butterflies and Rom-coms, that was for sure.

  Rachel sat there by Dr. Rich, astonished, shocked, dismayed…too many emotions to properly categorize. It was like some scene out of a movie only no one had given her a script. So this was Homeland Security in action, eh? Nice. Like Berlin in 1938.

  “They just came charging in and took over the place,” Rich said. “I don’t know what the hell this is about and they won’t say.”

  “Why the skinheads?”

  That was the question, of course. Nobody knew for sure what the nature of their condition was. Their white cell counts were through the roof and they were comatose. There was no indication of anything else.

  “They must have some sort of infectious disease,” Jenny said.

  “Do you think?” someone else said.

  As they bickered and the goon at the door looked noncommittal in all aspects, Dr. Rich whispered, “We just got the first series of scans back on them.”

  “And?” Rachel said.

  Rich wiped a few lone beads of sweat from his brow. “They all have what appears to be some sort of parasite in them. I can’t—”

  “What the hell are they doing?” Dr. Conlay said, standing up and pointing beyond the goon at the door. “Those men and women are alive!”

  But that didn’t seem to matter. The CDC/DHS team was sliding them into rubberized body bags and zipping them shut. One after the other, the bags were carried down the corridor, some wheeled on gurneys.

  Now everyone in the waiting room was on their feet and the goon looked seriously outnumbered. His hand crept to the gun under his coat with a subtle easy motion and removed it. “Please, everyone, remained seated. Those individuals are infected and must be removed,” he explained. “We’ll detain you no longer than necessary.”

  “Infected with what?” Jenny wanted to know.

  And Rachel thought: Yes, that was a good one: infected with WHAT? What sort of infection would bring these greasy shadow warriors out of their reptilian nests? Probably something more than the common cold. And what did that say? Were they talking PLAGUE here? Some new bug? Bioterrorism? Fucking Ebola?

  She was probably the only one not demanding answers.

  She was watching the skinheads being removed, the CDC/DHS teams moving very quickly, very efficiently, without a word. And no doubt so they could accomplish this little atrocity before the media arrived and this horror show was on every cable news network in the land (sandwiched conveniently between corporate propaganda for Geico and the latest superhero tripe from Hollywood as the dumbing down of the country rolled on and on).

  “This is outrageous!” Rachel finally cried out. “Those people will suffocate in those damn things! DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING, YOU FUCKING APE?”

  “Ma’am, I—”

  But he never quite finished that for from the ward came the sound of first one scream and then another.

  Things were starting to happen.

  WASHINGTON D.C:

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  8:35 P.M.

  Charles VanderMissen was fingering the burn scars on his neck and thinking about his family. Whenever he was nervous, upset, or stressed (something commonplace in his position, particularly of late), his fingers sought the old scar tissue. Some people stroked their chins, others fooled with their hair, still others drummed their fingers. VanderMissen went after the scars. Rubbed them, traced them with his fingertips, kneaded them. Their intricate convolutions pleased his sense of touch. Soothed him somehow.

  For he was a very nervous man.

  He’d been in the frying pan many times. Been in the shit so deep he’d had to tread it just to keep breathing. But never, never, had he known anything like this. He thought of other problems the country had waded through. Some of these shitstorms had names familiar to all—Watergate, Blackwater, Iran-Contra—but still more had no names at all save ambiguous operational titles and case numbers—assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, military coups, conspiracies ranging from the complex to the childishly simple. Many of which, in his position or former positions, he’d been involved in or knew about.

  But always under the table.

  Always black bag jobs.

  Whether it was political subversion or a black budget genetics program, it was always handled under the table. Safer that way. Politically, morally. The American public and its media watchdogs were very carefully controlled. Their consumption of the truth was strictly monitored. Entire fictional scenarios were developed to divert attention from sensitive issues. They were knitted together from truth and lie, loaded with red herrings in order to direct prying eyes in other, less compromising directions. The puppet masters were the military/industrial/intelligence complexes of the United States and a host of other nations. The media and the public’s hunger for conspiracy in all forms led to the creation of countless imaginary subversions. These elaborate lies were spoon-fed to the curious, the nosy. Very often, the people involved actually thought they were reporting the truth, thought they were caught in some vortex of governmental intrigue. But it was all engineered. And only those at the very top knew what was real and what was not. Sometimes unfortunate situations were exploited for the press: Navy ships were bombed; Presidents had sex with pages in the Oval Office; terrorists kidnapped civilians. And, although there was a basis of truth to most of these, they were blown completely out of proportion by a media starving for news. These were the best kind, because, once begun, they gained momentum, fed by half-truths, public imagination, and ruthless competition between the networks that necessitated elaboration of facts to hold viewers, to capture markets and percentiles.

  And at the top, as always, the surface-feeders, the apex predators, the puppet master executives like VanderMissen himself and their fanatical need for perception management.

  VanderMissen knew a lot.

  He could have told you that very often volatile political situations were orchestrated in certain directions. The Vietnam War, for instance, on the surface appeared to have been waged to halt the spread of communism and had, as its foundation the so-called Domino Theory in which if one Southeastern Asian country fell, the others wouldn’t be far behind. But that was bullshit. Posturing. Double-talk. The real reason America (and other NATO countries) were involved in Vietnam was to test and deploy new weapons systems and
combat strategies in real world scenarios. A preparation for the Soviet Bloc/NATO war which never came to be. The Gulf War had very little to do with the military incursion of Iraq into Kuwait. The bottom line was oil. Oil reserves had to protected and the Middle East as a whole had to be shown the overwhelming devastation that NATO (and particularly America) could rain down on them. Two important goals were reached simultaneously. The Iraq War came down to the same thing: America selling its soul for crude oil.

  And behind it all, once again as always, the military/industrial/intelligence complex and its web of deceit, half-truths, and out and out lies.

  The mega-corporations, the multinationals, each with staggering financial resources, controlled the politicians who controlled the military and intelligence agencies. Behind it all, was money. Or usually. If, say, a certain African country had a wealth of titanium, nickel, or uranium ores, but said country, due to an unstable political environment, refused to do business with an excessively powerful multinational, then action was taken. With billions of dollars in the balance, nothing was seen as too excessive. The CIA, for example, bowing to pressure from certain politicians (themselves owned by said corporation), would hire a mercenary army usually through a second or third party to invade and usurp the countries’ leaders and military. The mercs themselves never know whom it was they really worked for. And they were not supposed to. If, by some crazy coincidence they did find out, then maybe the planes or helicopters extricating them from the warzone would mysteriously explode in transit.

  Because cleanup and damage control is a major factor in any clandestine operation.

  That’s why very few involved ever knew who it was they really worked for.