Omega Pathogen: Despair

by J. G. Hicks Jr

  They left their mother’s side and aimed their rifles at George. Chris flipped George onto his abdomen and bound his wrists with a combat tourniquet from his vest, and resumed aiming his M4 at George's face.

  Jim quickly examined Arzu looking for bleeding. He found blood, but it wasn’t from any wound he could find on her.

  “The kids,” Arzu moaned.

  Royce and Kathy then joined them; they had checked the rest of the house.

  Jim looked up at them and Kathy shook her head.

  “Berk. Kayra,” Jim said and tears formed in his eyes.

  “They were sleeping in the camper. They’re okay,” Arzu said as she tried to sit up.

  “Kathy?” Jim asked. His sister nodded and went to the camper.

  Arzu fell back to the floor as she tried again to sit up. “Shoulder,” Arzu said.

  “It’s dislocated,” Jim said. He helped her to a seated position and leaned her against a wall. Jim dug through a small medical pack on the side of his vest and removed a pre-filled syringe of morphine. He injected it into Arzu’s upper thigh through her pants.

  George moaned. Jim spun his head around at the sound of George’s voice. “Get that fucker outside,” Jim said and looked to Chris then Jeremy.

  “I’m the one that could save all the world!” George said.

  Chris and Jeremy yanked George off the floor and dragged him outside.

  “Royce, help me lay her on the kitchen table,” Jim said. They picked up Arzu and placed her on her back on the table. Jim got a tablecloth and looped it under the armpit of her injured shoulder, and stood at her head. “Sit on her thighs and hold her left forearm, Royce,” Jim said.

  When Royce was set, Jim warned Arzu and yanked the tablecloth. A pop from her shoulder and Arzu yelled and then sighed.

  “Better?” Jim asked.

  Arzu nodded.

  Jim cut off some of the tablecloth and used it as sling and to wrap her arm against her body.

  Royce approached Jim and whispered in his ear, “Everyone in the house is dead.”

  Jim stopped moving. The fear and anxiety he’d felt all the way to the Yates’ compound had faded. Hate took its place. He looked around for his rifle but couldn’t see it. He remembered the pistol strapped to his thigh. Jim kissed Arzu on her forehead. His lips remained there for a few seconds. “Be back in a second, sweetheart,” Jim said and stood. His kind tone in his words masked his rage.

  Outside, George had been dropped on the ground and was in a kneeling position with his hands still bound behind him. He bled from the two bullet wounds Arzu had inflicted and the head wound that Jim had. One bullet had gone straight through his right side and the second had entered downward when he leapt on Arzu and the round shattered his left knee.

  “I told you. I told you. I told you all. I am chosen. I did what needed to be done. I did what had to be done,” George rambled and then grew silent.

  A faint metallic click broke the silence. The sound of a safety lever on an M4 rifle. Then another click.

  Jim walked out the door with his pistol in hand. As he got outside the sound of two nearly simultaneous gunshots echoed in the cold air. Chris and Jeremy stood near George’s body. Both rifle barrels smoked.

  George lay on his knees on the ground, his hands tied behind his back, his face down in the mud. Blood spread from the exit wounds in his face and mixed with the rain-soaked dirt.

  “We did what needed to be done,” Chris said.

  “We did what had to be done,” Jeremy said.

  Jim looked from George’s body to Chris and Jeremy. He holstered his pistol, walked to his oldest boys and embraced them. He could feel them shaking as they tried to hold back sobs. “I’m sorry about your mother,” Jim said. He wanted to say more. Wished he could think of something else to add. Some words that would help. Something better.

  What else could he say? Nothing could help it or make it any better.

  Jim carried Arzu to their camper. The morphine had started to kick in. Despite her ordeal she slept, or more like passed out; the drug left her no choice.

  Chelsea remained with Arzu, Berk and Kayra in the camper. The two children seemed to have stayed asleep during George’s psychotic rampage.

  Jim, Chris, Jeremy, Royce, and Kathy went about collecting all the bodies. The children’s room was the most difficult for everyone. Several times their emotions took over and each had walked out several times before they returned to help. Each of the remains were wrapped in linen and put on the flatbed delivery truck. Then they started cleaning up all of the blood.

  By morning they had buried all of the dead in the cemetery that had been started on the Yates’ property. It had grown too quickly. All but George Simmons were buried there. He was stacked in the dump truck to be taken to the pit with the corpses of the infected.

  Epilogue

  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 1974 – Russian Federation 1991

  Colonel Azarov tried to put the mountain between the helicopter he piloted and the blast wave that would come in seconds from the underground research facility. He had been unsuccessful. The tail boom of the helicopter hadn’t quite it made behind the natural barrier and was blown away by the force and heat of the small-yield nuclear device detonated at the complex.

  The result was an uncontrolled spin. The centrifugal force caused Colonel Azarov and the passengers, doctors Kosktov and Levenon, to black out as they made the death spiral to the earth. The canister containing the samples of the previously unknown rabies virus and the case with the research notes were not strapped in like the human occupants of the aircraft, and were flung away prior to the explosive impact with the side of the mountain.

  To the pleasant surprise of the reaction team that arrived at the complex not long after the snowstorm had dissipated, they were able to locate and recover the virus samples and the files. The doctors had followed protocol and packed the precious cargo in lead-lined containers. After cleansing the location of intelligence and evidence, the team transported the prize to their superiors.

  If the colonel and the doctors had survived the helicopter crash, they would have died with all of those involved in the recovery operation. Each died of various complications related to their exposure to radiation. The men had been promised that their families would want for nothing after their deaths.

  The State had said the recovery operators' loved ones’ needs would be taken care of because of their heroic actions. But the truth was that any of the family members that could possibly know any information were taken care of in other ways by the State. The KGB insured that they could never speak of the last mission their husbands, sons, fathers, or brothers had taken part in.

  The samples and the documentation were assigned to a new team and research continued. As the understanding of DNA and RNA grew over the years, new techniques were used to study and alter the virus. The best group of scientists in the fields of virology and biological warfare the Soviet Union had were assigned to study, improve, and weaponize the virus. They had a near perfect weapon already but as science progressed, they knew they could make improvements.

  The virus mutated rapidly; unlike the rabies virus the scientists were familiar with, this form had a double tail. They had found out from samples taken from victims infected earlier on that the virus had mutated and grown even more tails. The highest number of tail growths from mutation they had encountered was seven from a subject that was one of the earliest to be exposed.

  The scientists had studied images of their subjects' brains, and discovered changes in areas that controlled fear, hunger, and other basilar instincts. The brains of those infected longest showed small web-like patterns spread throughout their brains. As long as the brain remained undamaged from trauma, the growth seemed to be continuous.

  Work on the virus slowed as the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics neared. The funds committed to the research and those conducting it had been falling. The fall of the Berlin Wall had come in 1990. By 19
91 many of the State’s scientists, who had already seen salaries steadily decline over the previous years, soon found themselves without jobs. Included in this massive unemployment were some scientists specializing in biological warfare. One particular doctor had found work in the emerging private sector, but nothing that he thought was worthy of his skills and nothing that paid as well as his position had with the State.

  A man had contacted him that had sought him out because of his knowledge of the Siberian Cannibalistic Aggressive Rabies virus. At first, the doctor feared for his life and denied any knowledge of any such virus. But the doctor decided to listen to the stranger when the man mentioned an interested buyer. The doctor had questioned how the buyer had learned of the virus, but received no answer. The doctor didn’t care.

  Security procedures after the Soviet States had dissolved; they had grown weak and lax. The doctor learned he could still access the virus and its latest research. His research. He would deliver samples and copies of the files and even videos that catalogued the effects of the virus on test subjects.

  The price the doctor had been offered would have ensured that he and his family would no longer want for anything. The doctor kept his part of the bargain. He brought the virus and research material when he met with the buyer’s agent again in Chechnya. The agent did not keep to his part of the agreement. He couldn’t let the doctor speak of his client’s acquisition of the virus. The doctor was killed and his body was never found.

  The virus had been obtained by an organization headed by a man bent on destroying everything that did not meet with his twisted interpretation of a religion. The group spent many more years working on delivery systems for the virus. The Soviets had been lacking in that regard. The way they had planned to deliver the virus was to infect a subject or tens of them, and then release them on a battlefield or city to spread the disease.

  Despite numerous attacks around the world using explosives, airliners, and other methods to cause terror, the group’s leader withheld the use of the virus. He waited, but he did plan for it. He handpicked two hundred and fifty men and women that received special training and instructions. People he had assembled – some against their will – were able to develop a better delivery system. The delivery of the virus could be done on a larger scale and, he hoped, unnoticed until it was too late. For reasons only he would know and die with, his special divine soldiers were finally ordered to go to predetermined locations around the globe and release the virus.

  The man that had been revered as a holy man by millions had released hell upon the earth. He watched everything unfold on television and gleefully rejoiced in his accomplishment. Twelve hours later four satellite-guided bunker-buster bombs destroyed the cave he had lived in and entombed his body forever. The punishment for his crime was swift, but most that knew of it would argue it was not harsh enough.