Pandemia

by Nick Lancaster

  Pandemia

  Part One

  Genesis

  By Nick Lancaster

  Revision Two

  Copyright © 2013 Nick Lancaster, All rights reserved.

  Pandemia – Genesis, Revision Two

  First published January 2013.

  Copyright © 2013 Nick Lancaster, All rights reserved.

  To learn more about the Pandemia series and other works by Nick Lancaster, please visit nickjlancaster.com

  DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Julie, Jack and Jamie,

  the reasons I survive.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  The arcing electricity lit up the cold, dark desert floor. Bright blue flashes and snapping, crackling sparks shot outwards forming a glowing sphere that hovered a few inches above the sand.

  This part of Western China was largely uninhabited except for a few wolves. The wolves cowered and retreated before turning to growl and snarl at the brilliant ball of light. The sphere pulsed and throbbed as if in response.

  Suddenly the ball seemed to contract slightly and then it exploded into a million particles of fading light. Nothing remained except for the taste of ozone in the frigid night air.

  Chapter Two

  “Where did she come from?” Inquired Doctor Qiang Cheng.

  Cheng was referring to the young woman who lay on the hospital bed before him. In her right arm an intravenous line was supplying much needed saline. The female patient was pretty, Cheng thought.

  Meilen Song, the nurse who was checking the saline flow looked up. “She was found in her apartment in the Chaoyangmen district. Her employer was concerned when she didn’t arrive for work. An employee was sent to her apartment but when he couldn’t get a reply he called the police. The police called for an ambulance when they found her inside.”

  Doctor Cheng read the patient chart. “Doctor Li Tian? Hmm, where does she practice?”

  “No Doctor Cheng, she’s not a medical Doctor. She’s a geologist. Her employer said she’d recently returned from a trip to the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. She’d called her supervisor, Ms Mai Gao to say she was returning early as she felt unwell. That was last week.”

  “Qinghai-Tibetan plateau? That’s quite some distance. I wonder why she would go there?” Cheng studied the chart further. The patient was dehydrated but otherwise appeared well. She was currently sedated and he understood from talking to the nurse that when she was brought to the hospital she was distressed and speaking in very strange broken Chinese. That was several hours ago and it was now quite late in the evening.

  “Please let me know when she wakes up.” Cheng hung the chart on the bed and left the room.

  Beijing Harmony Hospital was considered a modern health care facility. It had been constructed for the Olympics and received significant funding even today. Doctor Cheng had worked there for six years and while he enjoyed his work it had become a little routine. Still, he was near retirement and he intended for the hospital to be his last employer.

  He headed to his office and decided that he would take the chance to nap on the sofa there. He did not usually work a night shift and while the ward was quiet this was a good time to catch up on his sleep. He lay down on the comfortable old furniture and closed his eyes.

  The sofa had served him well, so well in fact that he’d had it packed up and shipped from his previous office. The furniture was overstuffed and covered in deep brown leather. There were probably hundreds of sofas like this one, but none welcomed him with the instant feeling of familiarity he experienced from the cushioned padding that had tailored and contoured to his body over the years.

  Several hours later Cheng awoke shivering. His body ached as he tried to get up and he was sweating heavily. He knew he was sick with fever. “What the hell?” He groaned through his clenched teeth as he forced himself to stand through the deep pain that wrenched every muscle in his body.

  He hobbled to his desk, every step, every movement causing an explosion of pain down his back and in his shoulders. He fell into the chair and slowly reached for his phone before calling the nurses station. “This is Doctor Cheng, send someone please!”

  “Shi Doctor Cheng!” Came the immediate reply.

  A few moments later a young nurse was in his office. She rushed over to his desk when she saw the condition of Cheng. Soon more nurses were present and Cheng was moved to a gurney and wheeled down a corridor.

  Cheng watched the overhead lights zipping past his eyes as he was whisked to a treatment room. He was fascinated by the lights, almost hypnotized as they flew past. He noticed cracks in some ceiling tiles and some brown water damage in another, tiny details he’d never noticed in the years he’d walked along this corridor.

  Cheng didn’t remember much of the next couple of days. He was prodded and poked, he was rehydrated and his temperature taken and retaken. He didn’t recall the different nurses who came to take his pulse, his temperature and his blood pressure. He didn’t notice the card that appeared beside his bed from his coworkers or the small vase of flowers that were delivered from his children, both of whom worked in Hong Kong.

  Eventually the fever broke and Cheng opened his eyes. His senses slowly adjusted and he smelled the crisp, clean hospital sheets, so sterile and yet somehow so comforting to him as woke up.

  Cheng turned his head slowly to one side. “What happened to me?” He asked the nurse who was sitting in a chair next to his bed reading a copy of Duzhe magazine.

  “Doctor Cheng, you’re awake! I’m so happy. I will call Doctor Chee.” The nurse walked over to the phone next to Cheng’s bed, then dialed and spoke. “Doctor Chee, he is awake!”

  Within a few minutes Doctor Chee was there. Chee was a young man, but Cheng respected him.

  “Doctor Cheng. I’m so happy to see you awake. How do you feel?” Chee asked, smiling broadly.

  “I feel like I slept for a week. Hand me some water please. What happened to me?”

  Chee poured the senior doctor a small cup of water and handed it to him. “You had a fever Doctor Cheng. One of the nurses found you in your office two nights ago. You were burning up. We tried multiple remedies with no effect, in the end all we could do was keep you hydrated. The fever has broken!”

  “Yes, the fever has broken. I am awake, but why? What caused this fever? What of the girl I saw, the one from Chaoyangmen? The geologist?”

  “She’s awake also, but I don’t think you caught this fever from her Doctor. She’s being transferred to a psychiatric ward, she’s had some type of breakdown it seems. She’s unable to communicate in any meaningful way. She speaks but makes no sense, yet we know she is an intelligent young woman.”

  “Speaks but makes no sense? The woman was dehydrated. I assume this was caused by something? A fever perhaps? Did you check, did you test her blood or ask her?”

  “We did try to speak with her Doctor Cheng, but her answers make no sense. We’ve drawn blood and we ran a viral antigen test of course. We found antigens, but they’re of a kind we do not recognize.”

  “Did you test my blood?” Cheng was nervous to hear the answer

  “Of course, the results will be here today I expect. I’ll call the lab.” Chee went to the phone and dialed. Cheng couldn’t hear the conv
ersation.

  Chee hung up and turned to Cheng. “Doctor Cheng, there is something. Your blood test, it shows the same antigens as our female patient. But, Doctor Cheng, we have no reason, you have no reason to believe this is anything more than a new flu strain or some other rather harmless virus.”

  Cheng considered this for a moment. “Harmless? Harmless! Doctor Chee, you told me this woman, this patient has suffered a breakdown? What caused this breakdown?” Cheng was angry, perhaps it was his many years in medicine, but it seemed so logical to him that a part of the puzzle was missing.

  “Doctor Cheng, please, calm down. You are fine. Your fever has gone and your faculties are clearly intact. Whatever has affected this woman is not related to this virus. Please, calm down.”

  “Doctor Chee if you tell me to calm down one more time…” He stopped himself. “What of the nurse that examined her with me, nurse Song? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know that nurse, I’ll check at the nurses’ station.”

  “Please do Doctor Chee, then I will calm down.”

  Chee picked up the phone again and dialed the nurses’ station. Once more Cheng could not hear the conversation as Chee almost whispered into the phone.

  “Nurse Song has not reported to work, but I’m sure this is no cause for alarm Doctor Cheng. We’ll send someone to her residence of course, but no cause for alarm.”

  The ambulance that was sent to nurse Song’s residence sped through the streets of Beijing, its siren wailing to warn the variety of vehicles in its path that it was coming. It took just a few minutes to reach its destination, a trip that would normally take much longer in the confusion of the city road system.

  Two paramedics ran from the vehicle toward the apartment building. Finding no answer on the entry intercom system the driver quickly forced his way inside. Song’s apartment was on the 15th floor and the elevator ride seemed to take much longer than it should have.

  At her apartment now, the driver hammered his fist against the brightly painted blue door. “Miss Song? Miss Song? This is Chang He from Harmony hospital, I’m a paramedic. Miss Song, we’re concerned for your health, can you please come to the door?”

  There was no response from the apartment. Chang hammered the door again. “Miss Song? Please, I’ll have to come in if you don’t answer the door. Please Miss Song, I don’t want to break your door!”

  He counted to thirty and then backed up against the wall behind him before throwing himself shoulder first into the door. It immediately opened with little resistance, causing Chang to fall through and onto the floor inside.

  Chang stood and was immediately aware of the rancid smell of human waste. As his eyes adjusted to the low light inside the apartment he saw a woman lying on a sofa, she was covered in filth, her eyes were wide open and staring directly at him.

  The woman pushed herself up and suddenly ran toward Chang, her fingers scratching at his face. She was screaming at him, he couldn’t understand what she was saying though, random words, half sentences, none of it made sense. Chang’s partner pulled Song off him and restrained her.

  “Miss Song! Please! We are here to help you, we were sent by the hospital.” he could see the words had no effect on the woman, her wide eyes stared with hatred as she spat at him and then continued to scream.

  Chang opened the medical pack his partner had carried and removed a small syringe that he quickly filled with Fentanyl. While his partner held the woman, Chang swiftly found a vein and injected her. Within a few minutes Song had stopped fighting, her eyes rolled back and her body went limp. They carefully laid her down on the sofa.

  “What the hell is wrong with her?” Chang’s partner asked.

  “I don’t know Wen, I don’t know. I’ve never seen this. I’ve seen crazy people, but she wasn’t crazy she was mad, like an animal. Did you hear what she was saying? Could you understand her?”

  “I couldn’t understand her with all the screaming. Sometimes it sounded like she was trying to call for help, then I thought she said something about a bird and then she was screaming about a car. She must be high on something. Maybe she was stealing opioids from work? We should get her to the hospital, they’ll want to see her. You stay here and I’ll get the stretcher from the ambulance.”

  Later that day Doctor Chee examined Meilen Song. Chee was confused and concerned. He now had two patients who had interacted with Li Tian. Tian and Doctor Cheng had blood results that showed increased antigens, but symptomatically were quite different. Chee was waiting for the blood test for Meilen Song, but he suspected that it too would show these antigens.

  Chee was feeling unwell. He thought he had the start of a fever and had self-medicated ibuprofen. He feared he too was now infected with whatever this virus was. He didn’t know whether he should call the Ministry of Health. If he was wrong and he wasted their time it would effectively end his medical career, but if he were right and he didn’t call them, this could be much more serious.

  He heard shouting behind him and turned around. Running down the corridor toward him were several men in camouflage clothing carrying QBZ-95 assault rifles, each man wore a gas mask. Chee was stunned at the sight and frozen to the spot.

  The soldiers reached him and one of them examined Chee’s identification badge. “Dr Chee, by order of the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China, this building is under quarantine. You are to come with me.”

  Chee was taken to a small room furnished with a chair and a table. The room was in the basement of the hospital, an area usually reserved for the morgue and coroner, biological waste disposal, all the things a hospital did that they didn’t want the public to see. Chee’s hands were restrained with plastic zip ties, each hand fastened to an arm of the chair.

  “How long have you known about this virus Dr Chee?” The question was asked by a faceless man in another room. Chee presumed the man could see him.

  “Virus? I didn’t know it even was a virus, I suspected it might be a viral infection today, but I had no proof, just a suspicion.” Chee turned his head as he spoke, scanning the room for some sign of a window or a camera, but there was nothing.

  “Your delay in reporting this incident to the Ministry is very serious Dr Chee. Many lives have been put at risk because of your inaction. If it were not for the loyalty of one of your nursing staff we would not have known about this. Why did you not alert the Ministry?” The voice wasn’t angry but there was a definite implied authority in it, this person knew he controlled everything in the room, owned everything.

  “I was going to report it! I was going to call and report it. I was waiting for the blood work on nurse Song. I didn’t want to waste the time of the Ministry!”

  “Waste time? Time has been wasted! Perhaps too much time. Who knows how many others have been exposed to the virus because of you? You are a disgrace to your profession and a disgrace to the People’s Republic of China.”

  The door to the room opened and a man entered in a biohazard suit. Not a single piece of his skin was exposed, even the air he was breathing came from a self-contained oxygen cylinder. The man was carrying a pistol.

  “What is this? What are you doing?” Chee screamed at the faceless questioner. There was no response.

  The man in the suit walked behind him and Chee strained his head to look, to see what the man was doing. He heard a sound that he immediately recognized as the slide on the pistol being pulled back and released.

  “Wait! I can help you! I can help you treat the infected, I can work on a cure, help with studying the virus!”

  The voice spoke again. “Dr Chee, you do not understand, you are indeed going to help us. Until now we had not been able to study the virus in the incubation period, we have only seen patients who had already been through the fever. Your fever is just starting”

  Chee felt relieved, they needed to study him, even if he was a lab rat he would be alive.

  “Kill him. Then have his body transported to the laboratory.” The voice c
ommanded.

  “No!” Chee screamed, but his executioner had already begun squeezing the trigger on the type 54 pistol. The 90 grain 7.62mm bullet entered Chee’s back at a velocity of just under 1,400 feet per second. It efficiently twisted and tumbled its way through his spinal column, sending splinters of bone and cartilage into his heart, before it exited his chest cavity, impacted the wall and dropped to the floor. Chee was dead.

  Chee’s body was transported to a government facility for examination. Dr Wang, the lead researcher for the Ministry would conduct the autopsy.

  Wang was excited. Today he would get his first opportunity to examine a body where the virus was in the incubation stage, before the patient would have entered the slow spiral of cellular destruction that would ultimately lead to their death. He didn’t question why his patient had a very apparent gunshot wound, although his autopsy notes included a reference to the significant damage exhibited to the thoracic spine.