Absolution

by Mark Campbell

  “However, small genetic changes can accumulate over time and result in viruses that are vastly antigenically different from the original virus. When that happens, the body’s immune system cannot recognize it and a second wave of infection occurs.”

  “I still don’t understand why that means anything to me,” Teddy grumbled.

  “Because your body is different!” the doctor went on excitedly. “This strain of avian influenza drifts more than any other strain I’ve studied it at length. Its instability makes it difficult to even create a baseline vaccine—as soon as we manufacture one, the virus changes. What astounds me is the way your body is able to take the antigenic drifts in stride! Not only do you not get sick, but your body produces antibodies for every variant introduced.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, doc.” Teddy shook his head with aggravation. “I haven’t been exposed to any new strains of the flu. The only sick people I’ve been around were back at the stadium.”

  Gatsby cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses.

  “That’s not entirely true,” the doctor corrected. “You see, as soon I recognized your body’s abnormally strong immune response, I had to test a theory. We’ve injected you with several mutated forms of the virus during your stay here.” He chuckled gleefully at his own ingenuity. “One nasty concoction had every variant we discovered and I was positive that even you’d succumb to that one—but you didn’t! You developed antibodies for every single variant that you were introduced to!”

  Teddy gave him a horrified look.

  Suddenly, the reason for those spacesuits became clear.

  “You… infected me?” Teddy asked with disbelief.

  “No, we didn’t infect you,” the doctor said as he took a step back and carefully measured his words. “We exposed you. Your blood will give us the best chance yet to create a viable vaccine. In fact, if we can get your antibodies to replicate in laboratory animals, then we can even begin passive immunization therapy.”

  “You could’ve killed me!” Teddy exclaimed. He floundered weakly on the bed in an attempt to get up, but his body didn’t respond. He stared wild-eyed at the doctor. “You sadistic motherfucker!”

  Gatsby took a step back and stared down at him, visibly shaken by the rage displayed.

  “Please, be rational for a moment,” the doctor said in a somewhat smoothing voice. “While I am positive there are others out there like you, the odds of us discovering someone in this camp is highly unlikely. Your assistance will benefit countless lives.”

  “I’ve lost every life that matters to me!” Teddy snarled. “I couldn’t care less about the rest of the goddamn world—I’m not helping you!”

  Gatsby blinked and then calmly adjusted his glasses with a smile. “You don’t really have a choice in the matter anymore.” He waved a hand at one of the cameras in the ceiling.

  The room’s door opened with a loud HISSSS and three blue-suits entered. One of the blue-suits held an H&K MP5 submachine gun.

  “Take him off of the monitors and wheel him down to phlebotomy,” Gatsby ordered.

  Two of the blue-suits went to work disconnecting the electrodes from Teddy’s body and turned off the monitoring equipment while the blue-suit holding the MP5 stood at the foot of the bed with his weapon pointed towards Teddy.

  “I want out of here!” Teddy demanded as he continued glaring at the man. “No more tests! No more bullshit!”

  “You’ll get your wish as soon as I get my blood,” Gatsby assured. “I’ll send you off with that madman lieutenant and this will all be nothing more than a bad memory.”

  One of the blue-suits disconnected the IV from his arm.

  “No! No blood!”

  “Don’t be childish,” the doctor chided with another pitying smile. “You’ll be fine. I don’t need much… Then again, if I do need more, I could always have you brought to me.”

  “I don’t give you permission!” Teddy exclaimed, unable to think of anything else to say other than strings of expletives.

  The statement brought chuckles from everyone in the room.

  Teddy lay motionless, his body exhausted from struggling against his chemical restraints. He stared up at the ceiling and drew in rapid, shallow breaths.

  The two blue-suits rolled his hospital bed out of the room and into a brightly-lit hallway.

  Gatsby and the blue-suit with the MP5 followed.

  Teddy looked around, squinting in the light.

  Pipes and ductwork were suspended along the ceiling and interspersed with harsh white light fixtures.

  He noticed that many other rooms along that section of the hall with doors just like his. Each door was spray-painted with a number.

  Teddy wasn’t sure how many rooms had people locked away inside, but he knew that this meant that he wasn’t their only test subject.

  At the end of the hallway they arrived at a junction and passed a glassed-in security booth manned by an officer who had her feet kicked up on the desk and her nose in a book.

  The blue-suits rolled the bed around the corner and took him down an adjacent hall.

  Long observation windows lined both sides of the hall along with two pressurized steel doors. A red sign on the doors read: BSL-4 PPE required beyond this point!

  On the other side of the glass Teddy saw men, women, and children inside a plain dormitory-style room. Each one of the individuals had the back of their left hand tattooed with a square-shaped pattern of dots. Their beds, which consisted of little more than bare-bone cots, were lined in six rows and each had a tiny footlocker. The patients inside wore white hospital gowns and stared at him curiously as he was rolled past them.

  Gatsby followed Teddy’s gaze and motioned for the blue-suits to stop.

  They came to a stop in the middle of the hall.

  Teddy stared at the tattoos on the back of the people’s hands. “What’s on their hands?”

  “What do you mean?” the doctor asked.

  “What do you think I mean?” Teddy pointed at the back of his left hand. “What do those dots mean?”

  “Ah,” Gatsby said, finally understanding. “Those are scannable datamatrix codes—rather harmless. They’re used for inventory and data retention should the imbedded RFID chips become damage during our testing.”

  “Inventory…” Teddy’s stomach churned. “You’re a fucking Nazi.”

  Gatsby appeared genuinely surprised by the outburst. “You don’t understand… It is imperative that we are able to readily identity and track these individuals at all costs.”

  “Why?” Teddy asked.

  “Because they are what we’re up against, Mister Sanders,” the doctor said as he approached the glass and waved a hand towards the people inside. “They are the biggest danger we face.”

  Teddy stared at their hapless faces. “A bunch of innocent people?” He stared at the people behind the glass. They looked frightened, tired, and uneasy, but nothing sinister. “They don’t even look sick.”

  “No, they don’t and they never will,” the doctor said. “At face value, they appear completely healthy, but the reality is that they’re all very sick and very dangerous.”

  Teddy turned his attention towards the doctor.

  “The quarantine centers are laughable. The people who take the blood samples and make a quarantine determination are inexperienced doctors, unqualified technicians, or even soldiers in many cases. Once they see the presence of antibodies and no manifestation of symptoms, they mark the person as healthy—they’re so eager to ship out healthy bodies to the camps,” the doctor explained.

  “You’re talking in circles,” Teddy said with annoyance. “I thought you said that antibodies were a good thing.”

  “The presence of antibodies in the blood is one thing, but the presence of the H7N9 pathogen is another,” Gatsby said with a smug smile. “I double-check the camp’s results and quarantine the patients who have abnormalities. I am the only reason our camp is going strong—I only allow trains to come in
from quarantine centers who take the time to draw blood such as yours did in Tucson.”

  “Quarantine them for what?” Teddy asked, annoyed. The pompous asshole of a doctor was starting to get on his nerves and it took most of his fast draining self-control to stop himself from punching the good doctor in the nose.

  “I suspect that they’re all asymptomatic carriers of the virus,” Gatsby explained. “They shed virus and can transmit the disease, but not at the same rate as symptomatic individuals, which creates an invisible reservoir for the virus. Inside them, the virus continues to drift and change into new mutations. Just one asymptomatic carrier is enough to take down an entire camp as we have seen time and time again since this pandemic started.”

  Teddy was taken aback.

  He could’ve easily been stuck in that room if that doctor prick decided that he didn’t like something in his blood.

  “Who are you to second guess other doctors?” Teddy asked scornfully.

  The doctor looked down at him with a smile.

  “I’ve been in the field of infectious disease for over twenty years,” Gatsby explained.

  “That doesn’t mean shit to me. You just want some people to experiment on,” Teddy said. “They’re not infectious. You’re a goddamn liar.”

  “A liar—no. It’s just that sometimes the truth isn’t pleasant to hear,” the doctor said calmly. “Asymptomatic carriers are the reason most of the quarantine centers are failing. You can’t isolate purely based on symptoms with the existence of these carriers. Many quarantine centers forgo blood tests and rely on rapid field tests based off of the original H7N9 pathogen, but those are becoming antiquated by the emergence of new strains.”

  “Your fear tactics aren’t going to work on me,” Teddy snarled. “I think you’re full of shit.”

  The doctor turned and stared at him. “I’m not trying to frighten you… I’m trying to illustrate just how badly we need someone like you. I thought that if you knew what we were up against, then maybe you’d be more willing to work with us rather than view us as some sort of adversary.”

  “Go to hell,” Teddy sneered angrily. “I couldn’t care less if your whole miserable system fell apart.”

  Gatsby sighed and motioned for the blue-suits to resume.

  They continued down the hall once again.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” the doctor said as he followed behind. “I need your blood—not your understanding. I just find that a compliant patient makes for an easier procedure.”

  Teddy kept quiet—he didn’t feel like arguing with the man. He stared at the faces behind the glass as the blue-suits rolled him down the hall.

  Seated on one of the cots, he spotted a man.

  The man, no, a boy rather, sat alone with his face cupped in his hands. His purple hair was starting to revert to its original shade of brown at the roots and his skin was a dull, pasty shade of white. Just like the others, his left hand bore a tattooed datamatrix code.

  Teddy’s heart stopped when recognition struck him.

  “Ein!” he exclaimed loudly, briefly breaking through his mental haze.

  Ein lowered his hands and looked towards the voice with tired eyes. His expression lit-up as soon as he saw Teddy.

  Then, the bed was pushed past the window and there was a concrete wall between them.

  “No! Stop!” Teddy pleaded as he tried to force his numb body to sit up. “Get him out of there!”

  “Who?” the doctor asked.

  “The kid with the purple hair!” Teddy shouted. “He’s not sick! Get him out of that room!”

  Teddy managed to lift his head and shoulders up off of the bed about five inches, but was quickly pinned down again as one of the blue-suits pressed a hand against his chest.

  “Stay down!” the blue-suit ordered, his voice was barely decipherable through his respirator.

  “Restrain him,” the doctor said. “If he refuses to be a compliant patient then we will treat him accordingly.”

  The blue-suits stopped pushing and secured Teddy’s wrists and ankles to the bed with ambulatory restraints.

  The man holding the MP5 pointed his weapon at him.

  “Get him out of that room!” Teddy yelled again as he struggled weakly against the restraints. “He’s not sick!”

  The blue-suits finished restraining him and stepped back as they wheezed through their respirators, exhausted.

  Teddy stopped resisting—he had no more strength and his demands had fallen on deaf ears.

  They continued onward once again.

  Teddy’s head lolled from side-to-side as he stared up at the ceiling. He knew that resisting, at least for the time being would be quite useless. At least I know where he is, he thought. I’ll get you out of there, kid—somehow.

  They wheeled him down another corridor, through a set of double-doors, and into a partitioned room overlooked by a glassed-in nursing station.

  The blue-suits rolled Teddy into one of the open partitions and walked away.

  The armed blue-suit stayed behind and stood next to the doctor with his weapon pointed towards Teddy.

  Gatsby motioned at the nursing station. “I need fifteen milliliters.”

  Two male nurses wearing scrubs emerged out of the station and carefully inserted a needle into the port that was still taped to Teddy’s forearm.

  “Make a fist,” one of the nurses ordered.

  Teddy ignored the nurse and glared at the doctor.

  The nurse jabbed until he found a vein, but Teddy didn’t flinch.

  “You’re a goddamn vampire,” Teddy told the doctor with disgust.

  The doctor raised his brows and adjusted his glasses. “Give him the propofol infusion,” he told the nurses. “I don’t need his impertinent attitude.”

  One the nurses nodded and retrieved a waiting syringe out of the station.

  “You’ll get more than my attitude if I ever get the chance,” Teddy warned.

  “I find that doubtful,” Gatsby said with little interest. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, your survival is dependent on your usefulness to me.” He paused and flashed a thin smile. “That lieutenant is irrelevant—my work holds more value than his fiefdom.”

  After they finished drawling two vials of blood, they injected Teddy with the propofol.

  Teddy fell silent as a wave of lightheadedness struck him and his ears started to ring.

  Gatsby watched.

  Several seconds passed and Teddy’s symptoms worsened.

  His vision became blurry.

  He closed his eyes, briefly.

  They didn’t open again.

  CHAPTER 15

  DECEMBER 18th

  7:11 PM

  When Teddy awoke he found himself in yet another unfamiliar room.

  The room had simple, bare white walls and two rows of plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor. A simple clock hung on the wall and the second hand ticked away dutifully.

  Teddy was thankful for the clock because it finally gave him some semblance of time: eleven past seven. Morning or evening, he didn’t know, but at least he had some sort of reference point.

  The room reminded him of a waiting room.

  Judging by the clock on the wall, he had been waiting for over three hours.

  Teddy had no idea who or what he was waiting for, but he had a pretty reasonable estimation that it would be the one person he dreaded seeing the most.

  We’ll talk again, the lieutenant had told him.

  Sometime while he was out, he had been moved out of his hospital bed and placed in a wheelchair. The ambulatory restraints were gone, but the freedom didn’t matter since he was still recovering from the medication they had injected into his system.

  Even as the propofol cocktail wore off, Teddy’s legs felt like jelly and he felt dog-tired.

  Underneath the clock there was a single door.

  Teddy’s weary gaze shifted from the clock towards the door. If he was confident that his body wouldn’t let
him down, he would’ve already attempted to get out of the chair and make a run for it.

  The temptation to run was probably the reason they had an armed officer standing next to him with his hand resting on the butt of a holstered pistol.

  The officer, a skinny young kid who looked like he had just stepped out of high school, had not said a word to him.

  Teddy sluggishly turned his head and looked over at the officer. “Do they give you hazard pay to hold sick folks at gunpoint or is this just for fun?”

  The officer swallowed hard and purposefully kept his eyes fixated on the door ahead. His grip tightened around the pistol as his hand started trembling.

  Teddy gave a tsk and turned his attention back towards the door. “Pathetic—just like the rest of them.”

  “Shut up or I’ll have you swinging,” the officer said in a muted voice.

  “Oh… I wasn’t aware that they had built a wheelchair ramp for the gallows,” Teddy said.

  The officer looked down at him, scowled, and reached a hand up to slap him.

  “Careful…” Teddy warned. “Don’t you know who wants to see me and how important I am? If you lay a hand on me, Hock won’t be too pleased… You might be the one swinging.”

  The officer froze at the very mention of the name. He flushed, lowered his hand, and went back to staring at the door with a wide-eyed, vacant expression.

  Several more minutes passed in silence.

  Eventually, a rough voice came through the officer’s radio: bring him out.

  Teddy felt an odd mixture of relief, fear and apprehension. While he was happy to get away from the doctor, he knew that nothing good was waiting for him outside the room.

  Roger was dead and Ein was still locked away inside.

  The officer pushed the wheelchair through the door and out into a narrow hallway. Old, faded signage showing directions to the boiler room, watershed, and the central supply storage room were bolted to the wall.