Blood of the White Bear

by Marcia Calhoun Forecki

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Two New Mexico National Guard Humvees pulled up behind a black Grand Cherokee parked with its hood up on Vasser Drive, not far from the university hospital. One Humvee drove in front of the SUV and one stayed behind it. A soldier approached the driver’s window, another walked toward the passenger side. One soldier stood in front of the SUV and another behind it. All aimed their drawn weapons at the occupants of the Grand Cherokee, whom they could not see through the darkly tinted windows.

  “Roll down the window or we’ll shoot it out,” the soldier at the driver’s side ordered.

  The window lowered with an electrical hum. “We’re waiting for a tow,” the driver said. He was middle aged and jowly, but his eyes were bright and intense. His hair was thick on top and cut very short. In fact, his eyebrow hair was longer and thicker than what was growing above his forehead. The driver squinted in the sunlight, but did not reach for the sunglasses in his shirt pocket. He was not a stranger to the desert.

  “What’s wrong? This looks like a brand new vehicle,” said the soldier on the passenger side.

  “Sand in the gas line, maybe. I’m no mechanic.”

  “Turn the key. Let’s hear if it will start.”

  The driver knew he was caught. The soldier wanted to prove the car was not disabled.

  “These streets are off limits to the public.”

  “I have a sick person I was bringing her to the hospital,” the driver said.

  “You know the protocol. Call 911 if you have a sick person and don’t leave your house. It’s all over the television, Internet, signs, everywhere.”

  “We don’t live here, actually. We have been staying in a hotel. We were here on business and got caught up in the quarantine.”

  “Your vehicle has been in the desert recently. Were you trying to leave the state?”

  “No, of course not!”

  The driver was trying to sound nervous, but he wasn’t much of an actor. The soldier sensed he was not afraid in the least, not of the quarantine, not of the pandemic, and certainly not of the young officers giving him orders. “Let’s see some ID, and get a quick look at your sick friend,” he said.

  The driver reached across to the glove box for his identification. The young woman beside him began to cough and retch. She opened the passenger door and vomited into the street.

  “Jesus, lady!” The soldier on the passenger side stepped back just in time. The others lowered their weapons.

  “She’s my daughter,” the driver explained, “and she’s pregnant with my first grandkid. When she got sick, I lost my head. I didn’t want her waiting in a hotel for an ambulance. People are saying it takes hours to get help. I’m sorry. We’re this close to the hospital. Please, just let me get a tow truck to take us the rest of the way.”

  The soldier by the driver nodded to the others, and they slowly returned to their vehicles. “I’ll call the hospital and get someone here to collect her right away. You, too. You do know this bug is 100% lethal. It’s a crime not to follow protocol, and under martial law, we could have fired on you when we first approached the car.”

  One of the other soldiers called from his Humvee, “Max, we’ve got looters. Come on.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll stay until she gets picked up.”

  The others drove down Vassser Drive to Lomas Boulevard. As soon as they were out of sight, the driver started the vehicle and spun around in the middle of the street, hitting the soldier and leaving him in the street. The female passenger, having recovered her strength, crawled halfway out the window and kicked the support of the hood which fell with a crash. The Grand Cherokee took off in the opposite direction on Vasser Drive.

  “Where did you learn to vomit like that?” the driver laughed.

  “I was bulimic in college.”

  “Nice.”

  “What about Dr. Bisette?” she asked.

  “The other vehicle will take over. Watching her isn’t that much of a challenge. She’s either in the hospital or out in the desert with that archeologist. Probably stealing artifacts for herself for when this whole thing is over.”

  “You knew her father, didn’t you,” the female passenger asked.

  “I did, indeed,” the driver answered. He floored the SUV and sped out of the city.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The virus in the pots that Eva Yellow Horn uncovered was definitely a hantavirus. Rachel compared it to the virus strain from the most recent outbreak of Sin Nombre. The CDC saves samples of infectious material, just like the one Rachel was using. They even have samples from the 1918 influenza virus, the last worldwide pandemic. Rachel proved, through her studies of the blood samples from all the other victims starting with Krystal Carson, they were all infected with the mutated virus.

  Even though the pots were old, the dirt in them, or some of it, was relatively new. If the pots had been stored in the cave where Rachel and Osborne retrieved them, it was likely rodents nested in them, used them as toilets, or crawled around in them. That was the most likely source of infection. Eva put her colored sand into the pots without scrubbing them out; there would have been no reason to, for her purposes. Disinfecting ancient pots would have damaged their glaze.

  However, Sin Nombre was not one hundred percent lethal. So, what was different? Rachel had to consider the possibility that the first victims, those infected directly from Eva’s pots, were not a large enough sample to be statistically valid: Daniel Martinez, Molly Crane, A. Marco, and Rick Foote. Rachel would never forget those four names, but four patients were just too few to state with any certainty that the virus was one hundred percent lethal. Rachel proved through her studies of the blood samples of all the other victims that starting with Krystal Carson, they were all infected by the mutated virus.

  Eva Yellow Horn was exposed to more of the original virus, over a longer period of time, than anyone. Rachel had a whole series of questions she intended to ask the old woman when she could finally sit down with her, beginning with when did she start using the pots on a regular basis? Had she made any sand paintings on her own, before the one at Daniel Martinez’s school? Was anyone else present? Had anyone else ever handled the pots? Were the pots ever out of her possession?

  Rachel stood up from her desk. Every muscle in her neck and back ached. She asked the hospital maintenance crew to put a treadmill on the roof for her. She took thinking breaks up there. It was not as effective for clearing her mind as time spent on the water, but since she was effectively quarantined, it was the best she could do.

  The sky over Albuquerque was dark and clear. The low, square buildings looked like blocks scattered across the city, as if the children of giants failed to pick up their toys. The air was clean, washed by the afternoon chubasco. The stars were brighter than Rachel had ever seen them. She focused on Ursa Major, the Great Bear. Humans looked at these stars for thousands of years, watching the little pulses of light coming from the stars that made up the Bear, and Rachel felt drawn together with people from all over the world, through all of time.

  Rachel began her walk on the treadmill. It was not electric, so the rhythm she maintained came from her own effort. The slap of her bare feet blocked out all distractions from the fans of the chiller on the roof. Rachel lost herself by the second mile. By the fourth mile, Rachel’s breathing was easy and even. She let her eyes relax to a soft focus. It seemed the stars were moving and starting to revolve around an invisible center point. By the sixth mile, Rachel’s mind felt clear and rested and ready to return to work. She walked to the edge of the roof and looked down to the street below. She saw National Guard vehicles parked perpendicularly across the street, blocking all traffic. The hospital was unapproachable except by ambulances and vehicles bringing lab specimens and other supplies from the airport. No local city traffic was allowed. Rachel unfastened her pony tail and let the mountain air blow through her hair. Aft
er a shower and a protein shake, she was ready to work through another night.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Rachel prepared a fresh slide from the dirt samples she isolated from Eva’s pots. She had seen the virus dozens of times already. She stared at it and talked to it, trying to coax it to give up its secret. The virus was encased in a lipid envelope. There were two membrane glycoproteins, which penetrated the envelope: G1 and G2. The mutation appeared on one of these glycoproteins. The virus in Eva’s pots all had a glycosylated ectodomain and a 135-residue cytoplastmic tail, which is important because it helps the virus evade attack by the body’s defenses. A mutation occurred on G2. It was the only structural difference Rachel found between the virus in the pots that came directly from rodents and the virus in the victims who were infected by human contact.

  Rachel compared samples of the two viruses over and over. She took samples from each of the three pots, from the dirt she collected from the floor of the cave, and from what she scraped off the walls. She looked at hundreds of samples from patients infected with SN2. She could state with absolute certainty where the mutation was, but that knowledge alone did not tell her what she needed to know, which is how the host, the human victim, could fight off the virus. No treatment and no vaccine would come without an answer to that question. Finding the answer in a lab would be difficult, tedious work. It could take weeks or months. All of that could be circumvented if she could just examine Eva Yellow Horn or some other survivor.

  Rachel looked into her microscope. She let her eyes fall into a soft focus, as she did when looking up at the stars earlier, and when she did, she noticed that the virus resembled a being with a big round head, and crazy tufts of hair sticking out. The structures inside the virus were set up in an inverted pyramid, which looked to Rachel like two eyes and a round mouth. The shape was so familiar. Rachel looked away and then looked back at the slide. Suddenly, she knew what she was seeing. It was the same image of a kachina, and the virus looked like a child’s drawing.

  Suddenly, Rachel understood the white bear kachinas she saw in Connecticut. They were drawing her—no, pushing her—to come here. She needed to be in this place at this time. The answer to the virus could be found; that was the kachina’s message. Rachel knew she was on the right track. She knew that Eva Yellow Horn’s blood contained the information to defeat the virus. There could be a cure, a vaccine, and lives could be saved. The kachina could not tell Rachel which tests to run or how to make the antiviral; that was Rachel’s job, for which she had been training all of her life.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “I don’t want to go on television.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone wants to be on television.”

  “I don’t. I’m tired, and my hair is a mess. I have split ends up to my scalp. Most important, of course, is that I don’t have any answers.”

  Rachel did not look as frazzled as she felt. It had been ten weeks since Daniel Martinez died, and Rachel had begun to feel that she was powerless without Eva Yellow Horn’s blood. Every antigen they tried against the virus was useless, and there was not one single survivor.

  Every crackpot, mystic, and preacher in the country claimed to know the reason that SN2 attacked America. The country was closed down. There was not a school, restaurant, or store open west of the Mississippi River. All food was sold during strictly monitored hours in tents. The National Guard patrolled the lines of people and checked identification cards to make sure they were eligible to shop on that day and at that time.

  In every city, black markets sprang up. They sold food, bottled water, guns, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals of every description, mostly from Mexico. The Coast Guard closed the ports of southern California, Texas, and the Gulf Coast, as far as Alabama. Travel was prohibited over state lines, but it was nearly impossible to enforce. Vigilante groups and militia were screaming they were the only legitimate authorities, because they were the only ones untainted by whoever was killing Americans. Each group had its own version of the culprit: radical Muslims, Christians, the CIA, communists, fascists, and every imaginable group in between.

  States in the east were not yet affected. There, people organized relief efforts and held prayer meetings. The same underground network that moved black market goods westward also carried volunteers with messages of hope and natural cures of every description. Those who were stopped along the way set up camps. In Ohio and Michigan, camps sprung up of people trying to get west for every purpose imaginable. Communication networks were quickly set up, and messages of hope, calls for repentance, and sales of every item imaginable went out from these camps. The Internet was the invisible thread that held the country together. All the while, the virus moved east. Cases were reported in recent days in Iowa and Arkansas. Some of the campers wondered if Ohio was too far west, and they were already starting to pull back into the Appalachians.

  * * *

  Rachel was talking to the Surgeon General by video phone.

  “I don’t know what I can say that would be hopeful,” Rachel said.

  “The people need facts. The country is suffering, and the only thing we have to give them right now is the truth.”

  “You know everything I know,” Rachel said.

  “I represent the government, Dr. Bisette. Perhaps, you are not aware that there is a dangerous and growing belief that this pandemic was created intentionally. Anyone in a position of authority is suspect by one group or another.”

  “I did not know that. I’ve been pretty cut off the last few weeks, living here in the hospital.”

  “I understand. We’ve given this a lot of thought. I’ve had meetings with the head of the CDC, and I’m assured that you are leading the research on this virus. Your work in virology is not unknown, Dr. Bisette. You have the credentials and the independence, shall I say, to get through the fear-mongering that is going on everywhere with the facts.”

  “You are aware, sir, that the facts as we know them right now do not offer much in the way of hope. We have not had a single survivor of this virus. This disease is the most deadly in history. The bubonic plague only killed thirty percent of its victims.”

  “Then, say that we are working night and day to solve this. Tell people how to keep themselves from getting sick and how they know if their sniffles are just a cold or SN2.”

  “The CDC and HHS have been broadcasting that on television and the Internet for weeks.”

  “We need a face.”

  Rachel sat back in her seat. She felt as if someone punched her in the chest and knocked all the wind out of her. “I’m to be the ‘face’ of the virus?”

  “No, the face of hope, the face of truth,” said the Surgeon General. He was getting impatient, trying to convince Rachel to do an interview with a panel of reporters to be broadcast on every network and C-SPAN. He could order her to do it but preferred to have her agree. He was in the audience months before when she announced the research breakthrough on ROMeze. He knew she could deliver exactly the message of guarded hope the public was yearning for. Dr. Bisette was to be the face of SN2: youthful, healthy, hopeful, and trustworthy.

  “When?”

  “Tonight, during prime time.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll be in your lab. We’ll set up the feed so you can see the panel.”

  “Do I get to see the questions ahead of time?” Rachel asked.

  “Of course. Good idea. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I will walk away if this is an ambush, sir.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, my dear. This is a national emergency. We are all soldiers on the front line of this terrible disease.”

  “I guess that’s why they call you the Surgeon General.”

  The voice on the other end exploded in laughter. “Keep your sense of humor, doctor. It may be the very thing that saves us all.”

  There was something about the Surgeon G
eneral’s tone that reminded Rachel of Walcz back at Socoro. No time to think about that now. She had to wait for the interview questions. She hoped they came soon, so she had time to prepare answers, maybe even write some notes. In the meantime, Rachel decided to give Osborne a call. Maybe, he had a stroke of luck in finding Eva Yellow Horn.

  * * *

  Rachel showered and conditioned her hair. She cashed in a rain check for a massage that one of the physical therapists had given her a few weeks ago. The massage worked wonders on Rachel’s neck and shoulders, and her mind seemed to slow down to a pace where she could finish a thought. This had been a very good idea, Rachel thought. She hoped that when she returned to her office, the questions for the interview would be waiting, and with her renewed clarity she would start to make notes.

  Rachel checked her email, as she walked through the halls back to her desk. Nothing came from the Surgeon General’s office or from any of the networks. Who was the moderator? Rachel could not remember, but she recognized the name when the Surgeon General mentioned it. That did not matter, as long as she had the questions. Rachel decided to turn on CNN and see what was going on. All the news media were covering the pandemic exclusively. Anything else that happened was scrolled across the bottom of the television. One network had a countdown clock with casualty numbers. She thought it was in very poor taste and decided to mention that in her interview. Dwelling on the fatalities was not helpful. How ridiculous does that sound? Rachel thought. What else can people think about except the fact that if you get this disease you die. Guaranteed.

  There was a voicemail from Osborne. “Hey, doc. I have left messages everywhere I can think of and with every native I ever met. People assure me they can convince Eva to contact us. Stay close to your phone. I’ve done all I can do. I’m heading back to Albuquerque, tonight. If you can get those Delta Force men parked outside the hospital to let me in, I’ll bring you dinner.”