The Scourge (Book 2): Adrift

by Abrahams, Tom

  The Scourge was a way to reset the planet, to build new federations free of population stress. Yes, it would provide challenges in the short term. In the years and decades to come, though, it would prove a beneficial cleansing.

  Gwendolyn had fought this assessment in the first few weeks back home in Atlanta. She believed it immoral not to do what they could to stop the suffering. But as Colonel Whittenburg effectively argued, the suffering would be less if they did nothing. Without the Scourge killing two-thirds of the population, mankind might be extinct in three generations or less.

  Rather than fight the company line, Gwendolyn joined up. If this was how it was going to go, she might as well push her way to the front. No point in getting trampled at the rear. It appeared the well-respected Treadgold was weighing his options.

  “I’m suggesting,” he said after the prolonged silence, “we stop telling the world we’re working on a fix when that’s not the case.”

  The Dutch woman laughed sardonically. “You’re saying we should tell the world that we’re letting people die? That the sacrifice of the whole is to benefit the few?”

  The acting NATO deputy secretary piled on. His gruff voice was gravelly, an indication he was a smoker, or had been. He spoke in short, chopped sentences, the upper half of his face expressionless as he talked. “Not good. Can’t do it. Revealing the truth leads to greater unrest,” he said. “We’ve already got skirmishes everywhere. North and South Korea are ’bout ready to go nuclear. Iran and Iraq are rattling sabers. Sub-Saharan Africa is as bloody for ethnic purging as it is from the Scourge. We can’t inflame the few places that aren’t already on fire. Hell, there are rumors about Texas.”

  “What rumors?” asked the epidemiologist in Houston.

  “Nothing big,” said the acting deputy secretary, an American who’d spent a lifetime in the military. Gwendolyn thought from his slight twang he might be a Texan. Even in his quadrant of the screen he carried the swagger of a Texan.

  “What?” the epidemiologist pressed.

  “The place is devolving fast. The governor’s refusal to deploy his National Guard troops isn’t good. Lots of resistance. Independent-minded folks are taking up arms. There are militias and talk of declaring independence.”

  “That’s hogwash,” said the epidemiologist. “I’m not seeing any of that.”

  The acting secretary said, “Would you though?”

  Whittenburg opened his mouth to stop the digression. Before he could, the woman representing the World Health Organization jumped on the opening when the acting NATO deputy secretary took a breath.

  Gwendolyn recognized her from a briefing in Kiev over six months earlier. Her braided hair, decorated with rows of plastic beads, hung to her shoulders. Her dark skin was flawless and her mind was as sharp as her jawline. Gwendolyn remembered her name was Zuri, which was Swahili for beautiful. It fit.

  “Let’s get back on track,” she said. “I agree with the acting secretary general. We need not pick at an already raw populous. It could make things worse. Instead of focusing on what we’re not doing, I think it best we examine the critical efforts we are undertaking.”

  Whittenburg scanned the room. “So where are we?”

  Gwendolyn repeated what she’d said to begin the meeting. “We’re at an impasse.”

  She checked Treadgold and waited a beat to see if he’d interrupt. He didn’t. His hands were on the table in front of him, fingers laced together.

  “We’ve long known the plague and more specifically the Scourge, is endemic to certain parts of the world,” she continued. “The western United States, for example, is especially susceptible. New Mexico reported—”

  “With due respect, Gwendolyn,” said Dr. Charles Morel, “you’re rehashing old data. All of us know this information already.”

  Gwendolyn smiled humorlessly. Morel was becoming more combative and less collegial the closer to the front of the line she got. Rather than engage him, she acknowledged his concern and moved past it.

  “Indulge me, Charles. As I always do, I’ll get to the point quickly. This way you’ll have context in case you’ve forgotten some of the finer details.”

  There were snickers. Morel’s face reddened.

  Gwendolyn continued. “Let’s look at the sylvatic cycle,” she said. “This is the cycle that—”

  “We know this,” interrupted the Texas epidemiologist. “The sylvatic cycle measures the transmission cycle of a pathogen in the wild.”

  Whittenburg rose from his seat, leaning on his hands, which were pressed to the table. He spoke firmly, spacing the words for effect. “No…more…interruptions. I have given Dr. Sharp the floor. She has it until I take it back. If any of you interrupt her again, I will cut your feed or boot you from the room. Better to stay silent and me think you a fool than to open your mouth and leave no doubt.”

  Gwendolyn suppressed a smile. The maxim was often ascribed to Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. It didn’t matter to her who’d said it first. She liked hearing it come from the mouth of the colonel.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Back to the sylvatic cycle. Let’s look at dengue fever. There is ample evidence and well-founded research on a spike in the sylvatic cycle prior to outbreaks in Senegal in 1999. I know this is over thirty years ago. But that research is critical in understanding where we are with the Scourge. For eight years before the reemergence of the disease in southeastern Senegal, there was an upward slope of nine different strains. Granted, this is a virus, not a bacteria like Yersinia pestis or plague. But there are markers here to which we should pay attention.”

  Gwendolyn reached for a sweating stainless pitcher of water at arm’s length and poured herself a glass. After a sip, she forged ahead.

  “The other difference is transmission. Dengue is directly from parasites into humans, specifically the mosquito. The Scourge, on the other hand, is a rodent pathogen accidentally passed on to humans when an infected rat flea bites the rodent. This can happen through an isolated sylvatic cycle or one that combines with an urban cycle.”

  Gwendolyn studied the room. She had their attention. “The Scourge begins as a bubonic plague, which becomes pneumonic. Unlike past pandemics, in which the bubonic plague sometimes becomes pneumonic, it’s happening in virtually one hundred percent of infections.”

  “One hundred percent?” asked Whittenburg. “That’s new information.”

  Gwendolyn motioned to John Treadgold. “We can thank Dr. Treadgold for that. Even though we suspected it, he’s the one who’s done the work. Of that one hundred percent, his team has further identified that eighty-one percent of those infected also become virulent.”

  Whittenburg steepled his fingers and brought them to his chin.

  “Dr. Morel and the team in Kiev learned, even before I arrived last July, of the viral component to the disease,” Gwendolyn said. “That’s what made it so much harder to fight. They work together to kill their host. I was brought on because my doctoral thesis was in this area. Is that right, Dr. Morel?”

  Morel sat up straight and cleared his throat. He checked with Whittenburg for approval and then began. “What was unusual about the disease at that point was the way the virus strengthened the bacteria’s efficacy,” he explained, using his hands to punctuate. “There are four mechanisms by which this relationship can happen—receptor concentrations, epithelial, displacement and immune suppression. In the case of the Scourge, they were connecting using all four of those methods. It was a single bacterium and a single virus. Highly unusual. It helped explain the high mortality rate and how the bacterium was able to adapt so quickly to its environment. At least that’s what we thought.”

  He lowered his hands onto the table and offered a “go ahead” nod to Gwendolyn. Sinking back into his chair, he exhaled audibly.

  “What you thought?” Whittenburg prompted.

  Gwendolyn raised a finger, her elbow on the table. “Until recently we were convinced of the single virus, single bacteria model. That has chang
ed since we’ve been back here in the US.”

  There was an audible reaction to this. Unintelligible mumbling or thoughts whispered aloud rose in volume until Whittenburg raised his hands to silence the eight others.

  Whittenburg was part of the Army’s chemical corps. That branch of the service was responsible for understanding, delivering and defending against chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons. He was more versed on the science of the Scourge than almost any other person in the military. Still, he wasn’t a PhD. Some things needed explaining and this was one of them. Gwendolyn knew that.

  The colonel pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay, break it down for me. What is the significance of this new information?”

  “And what does dengue fever have to do with any of it?” added the Dutch woman. “I’m not following this ridic—”

  Whittenburg punched a button on a small remote and the feed from The Hague went black. The colonel waved a hand at the display closest to him. “I told her not to interrupt. She can read the transcription or watch the recorded feed to catch up. Go ahead, Dr. Sharp.”

  Gwen suppressed the urge to stand and cheer. “Thank you, Colonel. Here’s the significance: there are multiple viruses attaching to the bacteria.”

  “An antigenic shift?” asked the Texan epidemiologist.

  In that moment, Gwendolyn understood why Morel wanted the Texan on the team. Her face flushed.

  “Yes,” she said. “An antigenic shift. It’s why you’re now a part of the team.”

  She and Morel exchanged glances. He looked at her as if to ask for an apology right then and there. It wasn’t happening. Instead of offering a mea culpa, she explained for the lesser initiated.

  “An antigenic shift is when two or more different viral strains merge and create a new virus. The new strain is radically different. It’s most commonly seen in the influenza virus. Different strains of influenza A, for example, combine to create a new superbug.”

  The Texan raised his hand in his quadrant. “May I add something, please?”

  Whittenburg glanced at Gwendolyn for approval. She gave it. “Go ahead,” he told the Texan.

  “If these superbugs don’t have an easy way to move from host to host, they don’t do much damage,” said the man in Houston. “On the other hand, if they do spread easily, they cause widespread disease. These superbugs are especially difficult because humans won’t have antibodies to fight them. Attach them to a plague like the Scourge and there’s no stopping it.”

  “That’s where dengue enters the equation,” Gwendolyn picked up. “I told you about the rise and fall of its historic infection rates. This plague came along at the same time there was a sharp increase in dengue along the West African coast.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Whittenburg.

  “Several things,” said Gwendolyn. “First, there is…was…a heavy international presence there. A lot of energy companies have plays in that part of the world. That means there’s a lot of travel. Whatever diseases people contract travel with them when they head back to London or Beijing or Houston. The people who had dengue were especially susceptible to the Scourge.”

  Whittenburg waved his hands in front of his face as if to shoo away mosquitoes. “You’re meandering, Dr. Sharp. You’re all over the place. Allow me to condense this. May I?”

  Gwendolyn pursed her lips and nodded.

  The colonel stood and started pacing back and forth, counting off the various points on his fingers as he spoke. “We’ve stopped trying to end the plague. That’s a given. Now you’re saying we couldn’t stop it if we wanted to. That it’s morphing in ways we just now understand. It’s acting like the flu, but it’s worse and multiple viruses are combining with an already lethal bacteria. It’s all made worse by the cyclical rise in dengue fever. And that’s what accelerated its spread to through the western hemisphere.”

  Gwendolyn nodded. “So far, so good.”

  Colonel Whittenburg appeared to think about this. He pinched the bridge of his nose again. He eased back into his chair and then moved forward. He opened his mouth to speak several times. Finally he did. “What I’m hearing then is good news. Correct?”

  Gwendolyn exchanged glances with Morel, ignoring the horrified look on the Texan’s face on the displays.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Now we just have to figure out how to synthesize the versions of the Scourge we can use for specific purposes.”

  “Very good,” said Whittenburg. “This meeting could have lasted half as long. Now get back to work.”

  CHAPTER 4

  MARCH 4, 2033

  SCOURGE +154 DAYS

  ROCKLEDGE, FLORIDA

  “Trick” McQuarry lay prone in the bed of his F-350 and shouldered his rifle. Both eyes open, he focused his right through the scope and repositioned his aim to find the target.

  He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, maintaining a slow heart rate and a steady hand. His finger eased toward the trigger.

  The Mossberg Patriot was a good bolt-action rifle. It had a twenty-two-inch-long barrel, carried five plus one and unloaded Winchester .308s at twenty-six hundred feet per second. It was a nice pickup from the house in which McQuarry and his crew were squatting.

  In the scope’s crosshairs he zeroed in on the target in front of a storage unit. The man, wearing a bright orange trucker’s hat, checked over one shoulder and then the other before he bent at the waist and fussed with a lock.

  McQuarry held his aim, waiting for the man to rise. His finger was on the trigger. The round was already in the chamber.

  The man lifted his head, unwittingly bringing himself squarely into the center of the target. McQuarry applied pressure. The rifle kicked against his shoulder as the round exploded toward its target. The crack pierced his ears at the moment the bullet drilled into the man at the storage unit.

  McQuarry checked the scope. The man was on the ground. The hat was next to him.

  Without getting up, McQuarry slapped the metal truck bed three times. That was the signal.

  “Go, go, go!” he shouted.

  The pickup’s driver, a simple but obedient disciple named Neil, put the Ford into gear and slammed on the accelerator. The truck did a one-eighty and sped toward the dead man.

  A few seconds later, Neil managed a three-point turn and slow-rolled the truck’s bed toward the storage unit. McQuarry hopped from the bed, retrieving his rifle and stepped over the body. He grabbed the bottom of the storage unit’s rolling door and threw it upward.

  Neil stepped from the driver’s side of the truck. A third man, Dickie, hopped from the passenger’s side. He tugged on his garnet-colored tank top, lowering it over the soft, pale flesh that hung over the waistline of his denim shorts.

  “Dayum,” said Neil. “You put him down.”

  Standing at the threshold to the storage unit, McQuarry pivoted to look at his sidekick. Neil was standing next to the body, his hands on his wide hips, shaking his head.

  “C’mon,” said McQuarry. “You act like you never seen a dead body before. We ain’t got all day. Let’s get what we can and bolt.”

  He motioned for them with the rifle in his hand, jabbing the business end toward the unit. The men followed him inside.

  The unit was stacked with valuables made even more precious in the dystopian world in which McQuarry and his crew thrived. They’d been watching the old man for days.

  He lived a few houses down from their newly commandeered place and made daily trips to the unit. Neil was the first to notice it and he’d told McQuarry. They’d set up surveillance and struck when the moment was right. This was that moment.

  The unit was ten feet by fifteen feet, a little smaller than a standard one-car garage. It was stacked with goodies. It was smaller than some of the other units they’d hit, but it had more to offer. And with convenience and big-box stores long since emptied by looters, this was as good as it was going to get.

  First,
they went for the large drop-in cooler in the back corner. The white box, dingy with age, was plugged into a wall-mounted one-hundred-ten-volt outlet. The power wasn’t working, but the cooler had never been disconnected.

  McQuarry pulled up the lid and leaned it against the corrugated metal wall behind it. He leaned over and looked inside.

  “Bingo. Dickie, start loading these into the truck. Seven minutes and we’re outta here.”

  They’d studied the patrol patterns and figured, at best, a patrol car passed every two hours. They were at the end of that window given the timing of the dead man’s trip to his storage unit.

  Dickie squeezed between a pair of plastic storage shelves and reached into the cooler. His shirt rolled up his back and his belly dropped out. He grunted, but with his hands carrying four six-packs of Funky Buddha beer, there was nothing he could do about it. He sidestepped back toward the truck.

  McQuarry scanned the shelves. They were dark gray vented plastic and stood a little more than six feet tall. McQuarry was a big man. Broad shoulders and a barrel chest sat sturdily atop his hefty frame. He was strong, but the muscles were underneath a layer of fried seafood and cold beer.

  His eyes swept across the top shelf. There was nothing useful there other than boxes of trash bags and a warehouse-sized package of paper towels. He pulled them down with his free hand and they hit the concrete floor.

  Neil picked them up without McQuarry telling him to do it. He was in charge of storage and cleaning supplies.

  “Grab all the canned food you can find,” McQuarry ordered. “I doubt we’re gonna be coming back here.”

  Dickie, whose job it was to load the food and drink, leaned on one of the shelves and tugged on the front of his shirt. His cheeks were flushed red. Beads of sweat populated his top lip like a translucent mustache. He spoke like someone who was on mile twenty of a marathon.