by Peter Clines
Sam took another sip. The coffee was already getting cold in the chilly air. ‘At the moment the estimate is that seventeen percent of Americans are infected. Possibly another fifteen percent have already died from it or from attacks by the infected. So the current projected estimate is ninety-two-point-two million dead.
‘We’re still on the uphill side of this, though. Estimates put combined deaths in China at close to nine hundred million in the past six months. India is almost at seven hundred million. Russian deaths number at least three hundred million, but they stopped sharing information right about the time I was recruited.’ He shrugged. ‘It looked like Irwin Baugh was taking big steps toward finding a cure before he died, but most of his work was incomplete. Brilliant mind but a sloppy scientist.’
‘Yes, said Bradbury, ‘that was a tragedy.’ He moved his head up and down in a slow pattern. It was like he wanted to acknowledge the facts, but didn’t want to dismiss them with a quick nod. ‘Do you like movies?’
Sam blinked. ‘What?’
‘Movies. Films. DVDs. I love Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of the greatest movies ever made.’ He gestured at the golden statue on his desk. ‘Limited edition, but it was worth it. Did you know the ‘throw me the idol’ guy in that scene is Alfred Molina? Same guy who played Doctor Octopus in the Spider-Man films. What kind of movies do you like?’
‘Ummm... comedies, I guess. Mysteries. I’ve been kind of busy. Haven’t seen anything new in a year or so.’
‘Not a horror fan, then?’
Sam shrugged again. ‘When I was a kid, I guess. I grew out of it.’ He tilted his head toward the window. ‘Besides, there’s enough horror out there right now, isn’t there?’
Bradbury pointed a proud finger at the younger man. ‘Good answer,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I was never a big fan of horror films. Nowadays I try to make sure everyone working here avoids them, too. The last thing you want to do is to have some movie clouding your judgment about what’s happening.’
‘Fair point,’ said Sam. He was relieved to see the segue actually lead somewhere. He’d had babbling bosses before.
‘Believe me, Romero’s rules of zombies don’t apply to H1B6 and the Baugh-ridden. We’re not going to find out there’s infected monkeys or alien worms behind this. We need to keep level heads and make sure everyone stays focused on the important thing—how to stop this.’
‘I agree.’
A wide grin appeared in the director’s beard. ‘Excellent.’ He rapped his knuckles twice on the desk. ‘Now, forgive me for being melodramatic, but I have to ask this. Are you sure you want to know what we’re doing here?’
‘You’re researching the H1B6 virus.’
‘Well, yes, but the... I know this sounds very cloak and dagger, but we need to sign some forms before we go any further and I tell you anything else.’ Bradbury slid open a drawer and lifted out a ream of paperwork. ‘It should only take a few minutes. I just need nine initials and five signatures.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Sam said. He set his coffee down on his side of the desk. The director raised a bushy eyebrow and he picked it back up again. ‘I don’t understand. You requested for me to get transferred here, but you can’t tell me why until I agree to work here?’
‘Well,’ said the director, ‘until you sign the forms. After that you can still decide not to work with us, but there will be some penalties.’
‘What kind of penalties?’
His grin faded a bit. ‘You’ve heard that old joke, ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘Well, in this case, Sergeant Hogan will be the one to kill you.’ He gestured to the woman at the door.
Sam looked over his shoulder. Hogan dipped her head in acknowledgement. His eyes dropped to the pistol on her thigh.
‘This is insane,’ he said. ‘You’re going to shoot me?’
Bradbury looked offended. ‘Well, not just out of the blue for no reason,’ he said. ‘You must understand, the work we do here is beyond top secret.’
‘Top secret medical research?’
‘Well, we’re getting access to a lot of classified data. Material the CDC doesn’t have and isn’t going to get.’
Sam’s brow furrowed. ‘Why not?’
Bradbury made a gesture that was half shrug, half waving off the question. ‘That’ll be clear as we go over the data. And that’s really all I can say until you sign the forms. Or we can have you back in Sacramento by tomorrow night.’
Sam looked at the stack of paperwork. He could feel Hogan’s eyes staring at his neck. Was she picking out a target? A bullet to the base of the skull would sever the spinal column. A quick, almost painless death according to most sources.
Bradbury picked up his gold idol and passed it from hand to hand. It had some heft to it, the way it moved. He stared absently out the window.
‘Tell me this,’ said Sam. ‘Are you closer to a cure than the CDC is? No hype, no politics. Do you think you’ll get it first?’
The older man nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that. We’ll have a cure long before they do.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘You’ll have to sign the paperwork. But we will have the cure first.’
The two doctors looked at each other. Then Sam pulled the stack of papers across the desk and picked up a pen. The forms and contracts were flagged and highlighted everywhere his mark was needed. Bradbury was right. It only took a few minutes, and then he dropped the pen on top of the ream.
‘Excellent,’ said Bradbury. He gathered up the papers and slid them back into the drawer. ‘Welcome to the FMF. Great to have you with us.’
Sam clenched his fingers. ‘So when can I see your work?’
‘Soon enough.’
‘How are you so far ahead of the CDC?
‘We have access to the work Baugh was doing.’
Sam blinked. ‘But it was destroyed in his lab when he was killed. And there wasn’t even that much of it, from what I understand.’
Bradbury opened his mouth, paused, and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I misspoke. Baugh’s work paralleled ours. When we saw his initial results, we knew he was on the same track as us.’
‘Ahhh,’ said Sam.
‘Needless to say, we’re confident we can have our serum in production within six to eight weeks, especially if we have your insights.’
‘Six to eight weeks?’ Sam’s jaw dropped. ‘The CDC wasn’t expecting any positive results for almost six months.’
The director nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk again. They marched across the blotter and tapped against the idol’s granite base. ‘Before I go any further, we need to talk about something unpleasant.’
He fell silent again. Sam could see the older man was choosing the right words to use. It was the kind of look he’d seen during his residency just before doctors went in to speak with cancer patients.
Bradbury reached up to scratch the whiskers on his cheek. ‘You’re familiar with the concept of triage?’
‘Of course.’
‘Humor me again,’ he said. ‘What’s your definition of the word? Not the textbook, classroom phrase you rattled off to your professors. What does triage mean to you?’
Sam took in a breath and rolled the concept around in his mind. ‘It’s conservation of resources, I guess, when it comes down to it. In a crisis you can’t try to save everyone you would in a normal situation. You can’t afford it in time, effort, or actual supplies. Saving one difficult case could mean letting three or four easier ones die. So sometimes...’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you have to let the one die so you can save three or four.’
The older man nodded. ‘Fantastic. It’s a term the FMF has talked about a lot, and you summed it up perfectly. Are they still teaching medical ethics these days?’
Sam nodded.
‘They were, but they moved it off the required list when I was still a sophomore.’
‘Damned shame. Everyone who’s going to practice should be made to think about these things.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk again. ‘So, Sam Clemens, no relation to the writer, why does a bright, logical doctor like yourself think I asked you that question? Why has the FMF had so many discussions about that word?’
Sam leaned back in the chair. He flexed his left hand and cracked his knuckles with his thumb. The older man’s eyebrows went up again.
‘I’m guessing it’s going to take a while to process large quantities of the serum,’ he said. ‘Best case scenario, it’d take months to prepare a few million doses, and we’d need almost a billion. It’s something the CDC has acknowledged as well. Even if the knowledge gets disseminated to the World Health Organization, there are just too many afflicted people. Decisions are going to have to be made about who gets those first doses.’ He flexed his right hand and it popped. ‘Who do we let die and who do we save?’
Bradbury’s head bobbed up and down. His beard was long enough that it flapped back and forth. ‘Again, a fantastic answer. There’s just one flaw in your reasoning.’
Sam ran his statements back in his mind. ‘There is?’
The director nodded.
‘Do you have different estimates for how long it will take to produce the serum?’
‘We do, yes, but that isn’t what I meant. I’m not talking about moving forward.’
Sam went over his conclusions again. ‘I’m sorry I don’t understand.’
Another fingertip drum solo echoed in the room. ‘When I asked you about triage, it wasn’t about moving forward. I’m talking about how we got here.’
The younger man shifted in his chair. ‘I... I still don’t understand.
‘I think you do, Sam. As I said, you’re a very bright, logical young doctor. One who’s written several papers on the global effects a pandemic can have.’
Bradbury stood up and moved to the window. He had a view of a military graveyard and part of the 405 freeway. ‘Look at how the world was a year ago,’ said the director. ‘Energy crisis. Food crisis. Medical crisis. The world was... well, it was pretty messed up. And it all tied back to population.’
Sam blinked. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Think about it,’ said Bradbury. ‘Eliminate a third of the world’s population and how many problems does it deal with? Resources are no longer a concern. Smaller population density means fewer infectious diseases. A great boom for the economy. Heck, this even took care of global warming issues. India and China are two of the biggest atmospheric polluters on the planet. Carbon emissions reduced by fifty-eight percent, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.
Sam ran his hands through his hair. It was a bad habit for a doctor but he’d never been able to beat it. ‘You’re telling me...’ He had to stop as the madness of what Bradbury was saying boiled through his mind again. ‘You’re saying you’ve had a treatment all this time, but you held off distributing it for political reasons? For some kind of... global triage?’
‘Not quite,’ said the director. ‘I’m kind of surprised you don’t see where I’m going with this, Sam. It’s something you advocated yourself in your papers.’
Sam tried to think of anything radical or controversial he’d ever hinted at in his work. One phrase drifted forward in his mind. ‘When I said a major pandemic wouldn’t necessarily be destructive,’ he explained, ‘I was talking about one that has already run its course. I wasn’t suggesting someone should actually hold back treatment or a vaccine and allow the virus to—’
He stopped. Another thought, a corollary, had crossed his mind. He looked at the older man, saw his patient stare and his quiet sense of superiority.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You didn’t.’
Bradbury nodded. ‘Fortunately, there were a few people just outside the government, some key policy people, who weren’t scared of doing what needed to be done. The Freedom Medical Foundation was founded nine years ago to help fight world hunger and epidemics. That’s true. Most people just don’t know the path we were following.’
‘You made this? H1B6 is an engineered virus?’
The director nodded again. ‘The FMF recruited some of us from the science and medical fields. People who understood the path the world was heading down and the steps that needed to be—’
‘You made it?’ Sam repeated. The death tolls swam in his mind. He shot a look over his shoulder at Hogan. She stared back.
‘—the steps that needed to be taken,’ continued Bradbury. He gave Sam an eyebrow that was all-too-much like one an interrupted college professor would use. ‘Not everyone was going to survive, so the goal was to make sure the right people survived. Just like weeding a garden.
‘At first the people behind the FMF had thought about using an existing super contagion,’ continued Bradbury. ‘Marburg. Ebola. Hemorrhagic fever. We convinced them those were too dangerous, though. Population densities have already hit the point that a disease of that magnitude would wipe out whole continents.
‘No, we needed something a bit more controllable. Also something no one would question too much. If Marburg shows up in Beijing, people start to wonder why. How’d it get there? Where’d it come from? But something no one’s seen before, that’s probably just a freak of nature. A bit of bad luck for Asia. People are much more accepting of it.’
He picked up the idol again and walked back to the window. It made a faint slap as it moved from hand to hand. ‘So, we custom-made something. Not a disease that would wipe them out. A disease that would make them wipe themselves out. They die, they kill other people, or they get killed, just like you said.’
Sam tried to calm down. His heart was racing. The air felt very thin. He had a death grip on the coffee mug. ‘How did you do it? Did you infect food or medical supplies?’
Bradbury shook his head. ‘Nothing so sinister. A few people in the U.S. Passport office found a carrier for us who made regular business trips to China. She was dosed with an accelerated form of the virus just before boarding her plane. It incubated during the flight. Twelve hours after she got to China she was infectious. Average estimates say she passed it to more than three hundred people within forty-eight hours, and it spread from there. Again, population density.’
‘You’re insane. Seriously, bugfuck insane.’
‘No call for harsh language, Sam. It was the logical course of action.’
He grabbed the hair on the back of his head in a fist and tried to blink away the white spots in his vision. ‘Why did you let it keep going, then? If you’re so keen on this triage idea, why let it run wild in North America?’
Bradbury sighed and looked at the idol in his hands. A bit of his superiority slipped away. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s kind of where you come in, Sam.
‘It wasn’t supposed to reach here,’ he said. ‘Some members of the FMF wanted to deploy in Mexico, but it was agreed Asia was the better target. And safer for American interests.’
Sam felt his pulse go up again. ‘You must’ve had a cure standing by. A vaccine. You didn’t engineer this thing without a failsafe.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Bradbury. ‘We designed a synthetic enzyme that would neutralize the virus. It wouldn’t reverse the brain damage, but it would prevent further spread. It could even be delivered in an aerosol form. The plan was just to dust cities with it if the virus ever reached American soil.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
Bradbury started tossing the small statue again. ‘We did,’ he said. ‘There was just... a mistake was made.’
‘A mistake?’
The director shrugged. ‘A simple math error. The dosage was supposed to be one part per thousand. It was released as one part per million.’
‘Jesus.’ Sam closed his eyes. ‘How the hell did that happen?’
‘Like I said. Just a math error.’
‘What happened?’
Sam wanted to get up. He felt a strong need to pace, but he wasn’t sure how Sergeant Hogan would react to it. ‘So why didn’t you just hit them again with the correct dosage?’
Bradbury sighed. ‘We didn’t have any of the enzyme left. The people in charge of distribution got nervous and burned through all of our supplies in the first wave.’
‘All of it?’
‘Every last drop.’ He walked back to his desk. ‘We immediately began to synthesize more, of course. But over the past few months our research team made an unfortunate discovery. The diluted exposure helped the virus build up a resistance to the enzyme.’
‘How much of a resistance?’
The older man set the idol down again, a bit harder this time. It made a loud clack when it hit the granite disk. ‘The enzyme is only effective on four percent of the Baugh-ridden.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Bradbury pursed his lips for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’
Sam closed his eyes and tried to calm the whirlwind in his mind. ‘I thought you were close to a cure? You acted like you had a cure.’
The director nodded. ‘Very close, as I said. Our research team was working on a new version of the trigger enzyme to neutralize the virus. They were almost there.’ He pulled a flash drive from his coat pocket and tossed it to Sam. ‘That’s a copy of all their work. They hit a snag so we need you to finish it up for them.’
‘What kind of a snag? Can I talk to them about it?’
‘You can try,’ Bradbury said. ‘They were throwing themselves against the glass downstairs in the tank.’
Sam felt a chill that wasn’t the air conditioning. ‘And what if I don’t want anything to do with this?’
Another smile appeared in the older man’s beard. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re going to refuse to find the cure for H1B6? The greatest pandemic since the Black Plague?’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, you’ll be given full credit for your work. You’ll be well paid, you’ll save hundreds of millions of lives, and you’ll be a legend of medicine for centuries to come. Or...’ Bradbury looked past him to Hogan.