When one of the techs asked her how they were doing for food she had lied, noting “We’ve still got a couple more weeks Darren – after that I guess some of us will have to go foraging”. He’d seemed content at this answer but the reality was that they only actually had 2 or maybe 3 days of food left. Fortunately water wasn’t a problem as this was coming from the huge water storage tanks built on site. At the time she’d thought they were a massive waste of money but she wasn’t thinking that any more. Even though the water was coming from their own site they were still filtering it heavily to make sure it was as clean as possible. No one had fallen ill with the illness so she wasn’t worried about this element of their situation.
Two days later she’d just decided to call a facility meeting and set out what their situation actually was when the shortwave radio in her office burst into life. Someone was trying to call her from the Cinco Ranch bunker.
“Facility 1 to Facility 5 are you receiving over?” Most of the conversations were held in this rather formal manner. Chad was vaguely concerned about local groups who might be monitoring the airwaves as a means to locating food resources but he was much more concerned about government entities tracking both secured and unsecured conversations over shortwave radio. At this point in time he didn’t want to reveal the NCG identity or the level of resources it had at its disposal. He especially didn’t want to give away any names or information that could potentially compromise their locations.
She picked up the microphone and replied in kind. “Facility 5 receiving over”.
“Status report requested over”.
“No further progress to report. Food shortages now critical. Foraging expedition necessary within two days over”.
“Understood. Leader 1 has asked us to pass on that there are some reports coming in from the United Kingdom indicating success utilising O neg blood transfusions over.”
She sighed in frustration. Her team had already investigated this right at the beginning of their confinement. “Team already tried unsuccessfully. Please provide further details of UK procedures over”.
“Success using human test subjects. Animal test subjects result in negative results over.”
“Is it being suggested that we use human volunteers to test this hypothesis over?”
There was a pause before the next statement came over the radio “Affirmative human patients should be utilised…ideally volunteers…over”.
So the operator at the other end had been told to let her know that they wanted her to move to a sort of do or die type scenario. “Does Facility 1 understand that I have 15 people here of which only two are O negative? Can you confirm that you want me to instigate a human testing programme, which may well result in the death of those non O neg staff over?”
“Confirmed. Facility One over and out”.
With that rather terse statement the radio went quiet. Well she thought I guess we won’t need to worry too much about who gets sent out to forage – it would simply be the person unluckiest to have been ‘vaccinated’.
The first two transfusions didn’t work. Neither had the patients been ‘volunteers’. No one had wanted to be the guinea pig – she couldn’t blame them. Everyone knew it was a desperate last measure and every monkey, mouse and rabbit that they’d tried O neg transfusions on previously had died. In the end she’d made an executive decision and told Mack and Eddy to bring up the two staffers they’d locked up in the basement. She basically told them that they were going to give them temporary immunity, enough to get some food for the facility and, if they could find them in time, their families whom they could bring back to the lab. The downside she explained was that they would need to be back to base within three hours for a further transfusion, or the disease would take hold. This was of course a lie. She had no idea whether the transfusion would work nor whether there was a time period over which further transfusions would be required.
The first patient, Roger Galvestan, who’d previously worked as the administration manager returned after three hours. As requested he brought food - a large number of cans he found in one of the houses in the district where his family lived. His family however were all dead. He described how they were all gathered together in their living room huddled around a small transistor radio the battery of which had long since died. Roger was allowed back into the facility but only into a specially set up isolation tent. She’d then donned one of the chemical protection suits they had and as one of only two people immune to the disease administered the second blood transfusion herself. Despite all this he’d been dead by morning. The same afternoon one of the lab technicians fell ill. It looked like despite their precautions the disease had been able to penetrate the facility. This time the lab technician Tracey Chapman had been given a transfusion and pushed out the back door on to a sort of paved ‘smoking area’. They’d provided her with a couple of blankets and asked her to stay close to the windows so they could monitor her. Tracey did exactly as she was asked but she still died nonetheless.
Brian Macintosh approached her after she’d learnt the news from Mack the senior guard. “Tessa I think we may have run out of time. I can feel my own throat beginning to swell and Graham has started coughing. I don’t think the blood transfusion option is going to work – I don’t know what they’re doing in the UK but whatever it is we’re not replicating it here.”
“Oh God Brian I don’t know what to say, it just seems so unfair. To have survived the landings and to have survived the initial onslaught of the virus only for you and everyone else to die in front of me? Is there nothing else you can try?”
“I don’t think so Tessa. Graham is talking about transfusing O neg blood plasma as opposed to blood and we’ll give that a go in the next 45 minutes or so. We’ll probably give to everyone excluding you and Eddy but O neg blood plasma transfusions are normally a no no for anyone who isn’t themselves O negative. I think we’re all pretty much resigned to this being a last hurrah I’m afraid.” He leaned over and gave her a hug before saying. “Best of luck to you - catch you up there in a few years hey?”
With a wry smile he raised one hand to indicate goodbye and turned to go back into the main lab where the others were gathering. She waved Mack after Brian. “You better go Mack. Looks like a last ditch attempt.”
“Alright Tessa, I’m on my way. At least we all got a couple more weeks than everyone else huh? Give my best to Chad and the boys if you see them. Sayonara amigo”. He clasped Eddy’s arm before releasing his colleague’s grip and following Brian into the lab.
Eddy had tears streaming down his face. She went over and hugged him more because she needed it than because she wanted to comfort him. “C’mon Eddy” she said through her own tears “let’s give them some space to deal with this on their own. There’s nothing we can do now. We’ll check on them in the morning.” Her expectation as they turned to retreat up the stairs to the office area was that all they would find in the morning would be lifeless bodies.
“Ok Tess. Jesus. We should be glad that we’ve survived but instead I want to scream and scream. It going to be a pretty messed up world out there – how many people are going to make it through this do you think?”
“I don’t know Eddy. Not many. According to Brian 7% of the North American population are O negative but not all of them will survive after all if you’re an O neg child and both your parents are dead how likely is it you’ll survive? Apparently in China and other countries in the Far East less than 1% of the population are O neg so they’re going to be pretty screwed. O neg rates are about 4% in places like Africa, India and the Middle East but even if you survive you’all still going to have to deal with the traditional diseases. Unfortunately given how fast our own health system broke down I’d imagine quite a lot of O negative people have or are going to die from preventable diseases like cholera and dysentery. Despite how it might seem right now you and I Eddy are the lucky ones – but I think we’re going to be in a very small group indeed”.
&nbs
p; About 6.30 the following morning she heard running on the stairs and she twisted round in her sleeping bag to see if as expected it was Eddy coming to tell her everyone was dead. Instead she saw it wasn’t Eddy it was in fact Brian.
“Tessa Tessa it worked its only God damn worked. O neg blood plasma seems to do the trick. Everyone is alive downstairs. Even those who were pretty far along when we injected them. Those brilliant Brits must have injected O neg blood plasma – they’ve actually found a way of curing or at the very least keeping those with the disease alive”.
“Brian that’s fantastic. Jesus we need to see if we can get this news out to others. I wonder how we could go about doing that…” She was overjoyed that Brian and the team had been saved but as she was babbling on about getting the news out to others she realised that in fact all this good news probably wouldn’t do a great deal of good. The virus had already taken hold worldwide and unless you were sitting pretty in a bunker or possibly in the middle of nowhere - and had a freezer facility stocked with O neg blood plasma - you were screwed.
“Tessa I can read your face and yes I know it’s too late for most people but at least this will give those who made it into the bunkers something to use on all the non O negs who made it in there.”
She nodded. “You’re right Brian you’re right. If only we could have come across this sooner damn damn and double damn”.
Eddy had by this time awoken and on hearing the good news had jumped out of his sleeping bag in excitement. He passed her his hand. “C’mon Tessa time you let Mr McGovern and the others know the good news”.
She accepted Eddy’s hand and walked with him down to her office. However she didn’t immediately talk to ‘Facility 1’. She did something she knew Chad wouldn’t have wanted her to. She broadcast on an unsecured frequency wide setting. She wanted everyone to know that O neg blood plasma transfusions seemed to reverse or possibly even cure the disease. Even if she didn’t love everyone in North America or in fact the rest of the world she still didn’t want everyone to die needlessly. She got Brian to record the message explaining what he and the team had done and then put it on a loop for a couple of hours. When she and Brian came back to her office after having a celebratory breakfast of dry crackers there was someone calling her on the radio - from a frequency she didn’t recognise.
“User 7456 on frequency 657 MHz I say again come in over.”
She wasn’t sure of the call references utilised but she responded as if she were ‘user 7456’. “This is user 7456 can I help over?”
“User 7456 this is US Army Headquarters Virginia. Where are you calling from over?”
Though she had made the transmission about the plasma transfusions she wasn’t sure she wanted to get too pally with whatever remained of the US Army. And she was damn sure Chad wouldn’t either. “Virginia I hope you’all understand that I would prefer not to reveal that information over the airwaves. I can however confirm that a team of scientists I’ve been working with have trialled O neg blood plasma transfusions with positive results”.
“User 7456 can you confirm your location over?”
She sighed. “Negative Virginia. All I can say is that we are a pharmaceutical laboratory and that we went into lockdown shortly after the initial signs of a pandemic. I am happy to let your people talk to my Chief Scientist briefly about the transfusion procedures if that would help but all questions must be kept to a medical nature. I’m sorry Virginia but the world’s changed and I don’t yet know whether you’all on the same side”.
There was a pause from the other radio operator before he came back on. “Understood 7456 am putting our Chief Medical Officer Ernest Fellows on the line. Please do the same with regards to your Chief Scientist. Even if we aren’t on the same side our thanks for letting us know about the plasma transfusions over”.
An older voice then came over the radio and she waved Brian in to her chair. Before she let him transmit though she told him to avoid using names and simply talk medical procedures. He nodded in agreement with her. He knew as she knew that revealing too much additional information might cause problems for them. As he sat down she flicked a switch that broadcast the conversation on all frequencies. She knew Chad’s people would be able to hear what she was doing but felt like now wasn’t the time for politics, now was the time to save as many as could be saved.
_____________________________________________
It wasn’t long after Brian had finished speaking with his counterpart in Virginia when the call came through from Cinco Ranch.
“Facility 1 to Facility 5 come in over”.
She initially indicated to Brian that he and Eddy should leave the room but then changed her mind and mimed for them to stay but to be quiet. “Facility 5 to Facility 1 receiving over”.
“Facility 5 could you switch to your secure channel over?”
“Switching to secure now over”.
After she said these words she heard the timbre of the operator’s voice change and knew Chad had come on the line.
“Facility 5 we couldn’t help noticing that you’all just made two all channel broadcasts despite being previously instructed not to do this over?”
“Chad I’m sorry I just had to. I couldn’t keep this to ourselves. Whether anyone who heard has the same politics as ourselves or not I just had to put it out there. So many have already died. I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t”.
“Facility 5. I know this is a supposed to be a secure line but it is still a radio transmission. It’s still crackable so please no first names ok? And yes you did the right thing. Whether or not I would have done it is immaterial. You did it and I agree with you that you should have done it. It is just heart breaking however that such information took so long to obtain. We’re monitoring things here worldwide and I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, it looks like billions have died. China has been wiped out, firstly by the metallic creatures and then by the disease. There are some reports they did manage to form some sort of O neg units who had some success against the structure that landed in the inner Mongolia desert. Something about O negative miners but we lost touch with them a few days ago. We haven’t been able to raise anyone in East Asia since. Most of the people we’re still in touch with in South America, the Middle East and Europe are O neg military units – but they are largely leaderless. I’ve told the guys here to begin transmitting a recording of your Doctor’s report but unless people have been living in a bunker I’m not sure how many non O negs will have survived all this over.”
“God Facility 1. I knew things were bad but this sounds apocalyptic. Do you’all have any sort of plan of action over?”
“Our plan of action at the moment Facility 5 is to survive. We’ll test out the blood plasma solution over in facility two and if it works we’ll initiate it here at facility one. After that who knows. For the meantime I’m suggesting you’all shift yourselves to facility two. Do you have any transport? Over”.
She looked over at Eddy who said “I’m sure we can find some transport Tessa. Though I have no idea where facility two is”.
“Don’t worry I do. It’s up on the Mississippi Louisiana border. A big old nuclear missile base. Sounds delightful don’t you think?” Eddy and Brian shook their heads as Tessa sent a final transmission back to Chad.
“We’ll do as you say facility 1. Let them know we’re coming. I doubt we’ll have any problem finding transport, after all everyone else is dead over.”
Chad didn’t quite let it end there “Not everyone facility 5. The Eastern seaboard still has plenty of assets undercover and they won’t be happy with what I’m about to do over.”
She felt her pulse quicken. “What do you mean to do over?”
“I’m declaring the New Confederacy an independent nation. That was the point of our little group pre crisis wasn’t it? This isn’t exactly how I wanted it to happen but I’m afraid neither I nor the other folk here in Dixie want to be controlled by Washington. We want to
control our own destiny moving forwards and so that’s we’re going to do over.”
She winced slightly but then shrugged her shoulders before replying. “Not exactly the best timing facility 1 but hell I guess no time would have been – if you’all going to declare independence now’s about as good as any. I guess we’all going to have to get used to living in a Brave New World. God bless the New Confederacy hope to see you in facility 2 soon. Over and out.”
O-Negative: Extinction Page 32