Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

  Without further ado, Xuemin ordered the other monks to begin to break down the brick doorway with their tools. Whatever ancient mortar had been used was still very strong and it took the better part of an hour to clear a hole large enough to admit a man. The monks worked in silence, their labored breathing the only sound.

  At last, Xuemin ordered them to stop. Everyone stood around the entrance and stared into the black hole. No one wanted to be the first to enter.

  “Give me a torch,” Logan said finally. “I’ll go.” He held the torch inside the opening, but it was impossible to see anything. He took a deep breath and stepped through the ancient doorway.

  His first impression was of a relatively small space. But almost at once, he felt a coldness seep into his body. He shivered, peering about. The air he was breathing had not been exposed in thousands of years. It was much colder than the larger chamber had been and had a stale, dank quality. What, he wondered, had the first monks of this place wanted to wall off so thoroughly?

  He felt a hand touch his arm and nearly leaped out of his skin. Leeanne had moved in beside him.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Jesus, Leeanne, I thought that was the hand of the Buddha himself!”

  She stood slightly behind him, trying to see in the dim light. The others remained outside, staring through the opening.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “I know. This air has been super-cooled from being in contact only with the stone walls for so many centuries.”

  “No. I mean, yes, it’s cold, but it’s also . . . creepy. I get a strange feeling, Logan. Almost like we’re unwanted . . . and not alone.”

  “Take it easy. Let’s not get carried away. It’s just a creepy place that’s bound to make you feel that way.”

  He held the torch up above his head and did a slow survey of the space. It was no more than half a dozen feet wide and perhaps twelve long. Someone had clearly decided to wall off this one particular part of the main cavern. But the most surprising thing was that there appeared to be nothing at all inside.

  “There’s nothing here!” Leeanne said, following Logan’s torchlight as it illuminated the tiny room.

  “Xuemin,” Logan called. “Come in here.”

  The monk stepped carefully over the rough stones by the doorway and in a moment stood beside them.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Logan asked.

  The old man said nothing, but stared fixedly at the cavern wall in front of them. The stones were large and irregular, with spaces between them large enough for a man to insert a hand . . . if he was foolish enough to want to do so.

  “In the wall,” Xuemin muttered.

  “What?” asked Logan, not hearing him clearly.

  “It’s in the wall.”

  “What’s in the wall?” asked Leeanne, leaning forward.

  But Xuemin moved ahead until he was close to the wall. He reached out one thin arm and stuck it into the biggest of the spaces between the stones.

  Suddenly he screamed and tried to pull his hand back. The cry in the confined space was electrifying. Leeanne stumbled back and fell down, while Logan actually dropped the torch. He groped for it on the floor and then held it up again.

  “What is it? What happened?” he asked.

  Xuemin’s hand was still in the hole. The old monk struggled feebly to extract it as though something held it tight. Logan grabbed his arm and pulled with him. Suddenly, Xuemin’s hand came free. He held his wrist tightly with his other hand, grimacing in pain. The fingers were bright red and beginning to blister, almost as though they’d been burned.

  “What the hell?” Logan stared at the fingers uncomprehending.

  “Let me see that.” Leeanne took the man’s hand in her own. She gingerly touched the redness and felt Xuemin shudder slightly.

  “Is it a burn?” Logan asked. “What the hell could cause a burn down here?”

  “A kind of burn,” said Leeanne. “I’ve seen this sort of injury before. It’s what happens when you touch dry ice. A cold burn. Like putting your hand on a steel pole in subzero temperatures. It sticks fast. His hand was stuck on something extremely cold.”

  Logan turned and called, “Alan! Come hold the torch.”

  Alan entered the small chamber, Duncan trailing timidly after him, and took the light from Logan, who then took a pick from one of the other monks and began to jab away at the hole where Xuemin had stuck his hand. Large chunks of stone fell quickly away, enlarging the space.

  “I see something,” said Leeanne.

  Logan jammed the pick into a crack and pulled. A large stone, almost two feet round, came out and fell to the ground. As Alan brought the torch in closer, they all stared at an unusual-looking object.

  It was roughly oval in shape, something less than eighteen inches from end to end. It was black, its surface rough and irregular, almost like a piece of conglomerate stone.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Leeanne.

  “It looks like an oversized football,” said Alan, somewhat incredulously. “Made out of stone. Like—a sculpture of a football. Here, let me see if I can pull it out.”

  But Leeanne grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Remember what happened to Xuemin. Don’t touch it. See if you can pry it out with the pick.”

  Together, Logan and Alan used the tools to force the object out of its ancient hiding place and lower it to the ground. As they did so, it gave off a whisper of smoke.

  Leeanne knelt beside it and placed her hands about two inches from the surface. “I can feel the cold coming from it,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. She brought her head down close to the object and peered at it intently.

  “Give me your pick,” she said to Alan.

  She took the instrument and rubbed a section of the stone. Part of the black, conglomerate surface fell away.

  “Bring the light closer,” she directed. “What do you make of that?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like it has some sort of markings on it.”

  They all knelt down in the cramped space and stared at the object.

  “It looks like writing,” said Duncan. “Almost a sort of cuneiform script.”

  “No. Not exactly,” said Alan. “It’s different, but I’d say it’s definitely some kind of writing, or maybe symbols.” He turned to Xuemin. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asked.

  The old monk peered in at the object and seemed to stiffen slightly. He shook his head and withdrew wordlessly.

  Logan stood up. “We need to get it out of here, up to Xuemin’s room where we can examine it more closely. Here . . .” He stripped his jacket off and wrapped it around the object, then lifted it up.

  “I can still feel the cold right through my heavy coat,” he said. “But I can carry it all right.”

  Then they exited the chamber, feeling relieved to be escaping the awful place. But what they’d found was, if anything, an even bigger mystery than they’d started with.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The White House

  “THERE’S GOOD NEWS and bad news, Mr. President,” said Gordon Page, sinking onto the sofa in the president’s private den. Sitting next to him was Walter Whitton, the Secretary of Defense.

  “Start with the good. I could use some,” said Klein.

  “We’ve established contact with Dr. Wokowski’s CDC group in Beijing.”

  “Wonderful! That is good news. What does he say?”

  “That’s the bad news. Half their people are dead from the disease. Beijing is practically a ghost town. The government and most of the populace have decamped to the countryside, along with virtually all of the police and the army, which is why the doctor was finally able to contact us. No one is bothering with them anymore.”

  Klein looked stricken. “Isn’t there some way we can get them out of there? I feel I owe them that much. Can’t we send in the Navy to extract them?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir,” said the �
�Secretary of Defense. “We’d run the risk of infecting any rescuers.”

  “Dr. Wokowski says his entire team is probably already infected anyway,” said Gordon. “They’ve decided to stay on and try to continue to research the disease as long as they stay healthy.”

  “Damn it all, I want those people to get the Medal of Freedom. Have they found out anything yet?”

  “Well . . . it’s spreading as though it’s contagious as hell, not that that’s anything we didn’t already know. But they can’t determine what the mechanism of contagion is. Some people seem to be resistant. They have a pretty good understanding of the symptoms and progression of the disease. They’re proceeding now with brain autopsies.”

  “Brain?”

  “One of Dr. Wokowski’s people apparently has an idea that the sickness may be similar to Mad Cow Disease. Something about misshapen proteins—prions—being the infectious agent. Frankly, it sounds off-the-wall to me. There’s not a lot known about prions.

  “Anyway, they’ve completed the first brain autopsy and have found the same strange genetic debris we encountered in our ancient bodies. I filled them in on what Dr. Kessler and her group are doing, searching for the ice body as a definitive test of the sequence. Wokowski’s researcher was very excited at the news. It’s the first time we’ve found a direct connection between the epidemic and the anomalous debris. If it holds, it’s an important discovery. If we can connect the sickness directly to the DNA anomalies . . .”

  “Yes—what?”

  “Well . . . it gives one pause. If this strange sequence appears to have some kind of built-in self-destruct gene as part of the system . . . I mean, you can see very little selective advantage for that, sir. So the obvious question is where did it come from? One possibility—pretty far out—is that it may have been planted in such a way as to be somehow self-repairing, so it doesn’t mutate, but the moment someone starts mucking around with it, it turns on, perhaps creating prions or at least something that causes cells to begin to produce this material which is airborne and really toxic.”

  Klein stared at him. “Planted by what?”

  His question was met by silence.

  “So we’re back to little green men,” said the president flatly.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Terrific. Littlefield’s going to love that.”

  Gordon looked stricken. “He’s not here—?”

  Klein simply leaned forward and pressed a button. ­Littlefield came striding through the door, his brisk business and religious fervor under full sail. He was once again dressed in an expensive suit and had shaken off the fears and doubts that had beset him when he was alone in the Chinese backcountry. Trailing along behind him was Harvey Weinstein, the Secretary of Transportation.

  “Mr. President,” said Littlefield, pointedly ignoring Page. “I understand you were unable to reach me while I was out of the country. I’m most sorry about that, but I had business abroad—in China actually.”

  The president and Gordon looked stunned.

  “You’ve been in China?” they asked, almost in unison.

  Littlefield looked down modestly as he took a chair. “Yes. A whirlwind visit to my oil fields in western Xinjiang Province. The epidemic is just beginning to reach the western regions. I needed to inform my people, offer bonuses to those willing to stay and put security and isolation measures into effect to protect them.”

  “How bad is it over there?” asked the president with real curiosity.

  Littlefield put his hands together as though considering deeply before making his comments. “I was as far east as the city of Hohhot and met with General Zhou Zeli. His effort to take over the country is moribund. The government is gone, completely disbanded.”

  “You met with the general?” Page asked in disbelief. “Hohhot is less than two hundred miles from the capital. You must have seen signs of the unrest and sickness.”

  “Yes, the sick are everywhere. A horrible sight to see. One needed a strong stomach to deal with it. I myself was at considerable personal risk. My helicopter crashed and everyone aboard was killed. I had to walk out by myself. It took three days, and I was very nearly killed several times.”

  They all stared at him with open mouths, dumfounded. He took their silence as his due, appropriate respect for his experiences.

  “There’s an undercurrent of fear spreading across Asia, gentlemen,” he went on. “The pressure of the sick pushing out of the east is sending waves of scared, displaced people fleeing before them. Those first waves are beginning to move into the western regions. The diseased will be close behind.”

  “I’m afraid it’s even worse than that,” said Weinstein. “The sickness is now definitely in India, Malaysia, and parts of Thailand. There are rumors North Korea’s had an outbreak. Even Japan has reported its first cases. There’s nothing to stop it from going worldwide very quickly. As I informed you earlier, we’ve shut down air traffic with those nations.”

  Klein turned to Gordon. “Any chance of a vaccine coming out of the work by Dr. Wokowski’s group?”

  “No, sir. It’s far too soon and, frankly, if we had one in hand today, it would be too late to affect a disease already so widespread.”

  “We’ve got to isolate this thing! I’m going to order the Navy to enforce a complete blockade of China’s coastal cities. No one in or out. ”

  “It’s already out of China,” Weinstein reminded the president.

  “Then we’ll extend the blockade to India, Malaysia, and southeast Asia as well.”

  The Secretary of Defense made a snorting sound. “That’s an enormous area to cover, sir. The Navy will be stretched to the limit. It’ll be impossible to guarantee that individual ships don’t slip through the net. And as far as I can see, all it would take for the disease to break out would be a single ship—hell, a single person!”

  “And what about Japan?” asked Weinstein.

  Klein sighed. The Japanese leadership could be awfully prickly. “We’ll try diplomacy first. But if it doesn’t work, I’m going to close them down, too.”

  “And North Korea?” asked Gordon. “They’ve got nuclear weapons, don’t forget, and a leader as crazy as a loon.”

  “Them, too. I’ll let them know in no uncertain terms that this is too big to pussyfoot around. If they want to rattle their bombs, we’ll send them back to the Dark Ages. Who knows, maybe nuclear weapons would cleanse us of this damn thing.” He stared out the window, his face drawn. “How could this happen, Gordon? I thought we had good international controls in place to deal with epidemics?”

  “This is unlike anything we’ve encountered before,” said Gordon. “It’s almost as if this disease has been . . . designed . . . to do us in.”

  “Oh, please,” said Littlefield. “Spare us your little green or blue or orange men theories. Whatever’s caused this, you can be sure it’s part of God’s plan. There’s a reason this trial has been given to us.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Gordon, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s hope it’s to get rid of idiots like you.”

  “Gordon, please!” said the president. He put one hand on ­Littlefield’s stiffened shoulder. “I apologize for my science advisor, Paul. We’re all a little frayed right now.”

  “May I make a suggestion, Mr. President?” asked the ­Secretary of Defense.

  Klein simply nodded.

  “Call the leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and India and offer to send U.S. troops to the border region. They’re going to need help controlling things once large numbers of the sick attempt to get out of China. Ask for overflight permission as well, so we can patrol all western borders. I hope it doesn’t come to this, sir, but we’ve got to begin thinking about the possibility that selective bombing may be needed to control the migration.”

  Klein just stared at him. The thought of an American president bombing hundreds of thousands—millions—of dying, desperate people sickened him.

  Gordon shifted in his chai
r. “The Secretary makes a valid point, Mr. President. We need to begin to take steps. However, in the end, military action may be superfluous. With cases already reported in so many countries . . . well . . . it’s probably already too late to stop it. Personally, I think our only hope of preventing a worldwide pandemic now will be through the discovery of some extraordinary medical intervention. Barring that, I think it’s only a matter of time before . . .” his voice trailed off.

  “Before what?” asked the president.

  “Do you recall a few years ago we had a national debate over what to do in the event of a possible doomsday scenario, about what would happen if humanity faced something beyond our control and all we could do was sit back and watch events unfold?”

  “I remember,” said the president. “The main example cited was a meteor approaching Earth that was too large to deflect.”

  “The NASA chief at the time, Bill Caulfield, wanted a one-time budget expense—which he got—to prepare a rocket that would carry an unusual payload. Basically, he wanted to condense as much of human knowledge as possible onto discs that would be lifted off Earth and sent into deep space. It would be a record of our existence, that we were once here as a species. That the odds against such information ever being found by another intelligence were astronomical didn’t faze Caulfield. He considered it an issue of faith and hope, something that would lift the spirits of humanity even as we ‘passed from this foil’ is how I think he put it.”

  “You’re saying the time may be here to launch that record into space?”

  “It may not be far off, Mr. President.”

  “Utter nonsense!” said Littlefield. “Really, Mr. President, this has gone too far. The good Lord has not forsaken us, nor will He. He didn’t go to the trouble of creating mankind simply to watch us be wiped out by the lowest of all living things, by some virus.”

  “It’s not a virus—” Gordon began, but stopped as the president raised his hand.