Pandemic i-3

by Scott Sigler

  He looked mortified. Somewhere, out there, was a mother who had taught this young man to always be a gentleman, probably backed that up with several swats to a younger Bosh’s behind.

  Margaret couldn’t let him suffer. “It’s okay. I actually like camel-taint pus in my martinis, but it’s an acquired taste.”

  The soldiers laughed, and the tension evaporated.

  Clarence didn’t smile. He just stood there, staring.

  The stink of Tim’s kettle drew her attention. She walked up to it. It steamed a little. Inside, she saw a thick, light brown broth. It wasn’t boiling, but whitish bubbles clung to its surface.

  She looked up. “Good thing you brought that yeast with you, I see.”

  “Lucky me,” he said. “Who’d have thunk it?” He looked like the cat that ate the canary. He’d risked his life to bring the yeast with him. She’d thought he’d wanted to save it for research purposes, to make sure a second colony existed outside of Black Manitou, but this made more sense and meshed with his selfish personality — if he was going to be immune on a ship full of heavily armed soldiers, he wanted to make sure they were just as immune as he was.

  “You brewed up quite a batch,” she said. “And I see you have no compunction about giving these men something that’s completely untested?”

  Tim shook his head, a gesture that said, Don’t even try to judge me, sister.

  “Their choice,” he said. “Come on, Margo, the worst that can happen is they get a wee bit gassy.”

  He had a point. Tim had ingested the concoction over twenty-four hours earlier, and he seemed fine. Worst-case scenario, really, was that it might make people a little sick. Best-case scenario: immunity from the horrific infection.

  Klimas stepped closer. “As I said earlier, Margaret, my men and I came into direct contact with you, Tim and Agent Otto. If any microorganisms survived the bleach spray, then we were also exposed. Considering we just had to shoot at our own countrymen, we chose to take our chances with Doctor Feelygood’s camel-taint pus.”

  Margaret’s eyebrows raised. “Doctor Feelygood?”

  Tim nodded, a huge grin on his face, the grin of a nerd who knew he’d been taken in and genuinely accepted by the coolest kids in school. “That’s right,” he said. “Seems Commander Klimas is a fan of Mötley Crüe.”

  Tim dipped the ladle into the smelly broth. He poured the contents into a cup and offered the cup to her.

  “All my genetic tinkering has given this vintage quite the lovely bouquet,” he said. “Hints of chocolate and elderberry, I think.”

  The soldiers watched, waited for her reaction. All of a sudden she found herself in a bizarre variation of a fraternity hazing ritual — drink if you want to be one of us.

  Margaret took the cup, felt the broth’s warmth through the plastic. Inside, thick bubbles floated on the milky yellow surface. It smelled like wet gym shoes stuffed with wilted cabbage.

  She looked around the room. “To the SEALs,” she said, and brought the cup to her lips.

  They shouted in encouragement as she tipped her head back, letting the whole cup’s contents slide into her mouth. She sensed the warmth a moment before she experienced the taste. Her stomach heaved and she gagged, but the men were watching her — if they could do it, so could she.

  Margaret pinched her nose shut, braced herself, and started swallowing. It took three gulps to get it all down.

  She gagged again, but nothing came up. She lifted the cup high, laughing at how close she’d come to vomiting.

  Klimas was the first to smile wide and pat her on the back. He wasn’t the last. Everyone did.

  Everyone except Clarence. He just lowered his head, turned and walked deeper into the cargo hold.

  NEUTROPHILS

  Bo Pan slept. His body did not.

  Thousands of crawlers worked their way up his nervous system, following the electrochemical signals along the pathways, heading ever closer to the source of those signals: the brain.

  But the crawlers weren’t the only microorganisms moving through his body.

  Hundreds of thousands of neutrophils navigated in a different direction, moving down his arms, searching for his hands. In particular, for his fingertips.

  There they would stay until Bo Pan touched something: a tabletop, perhaps, or a door handle, maybe a mug or a glass. The neutrophils could survive on that surface for a day or two, three at the most. If fortune smiled upon them, someone else would touch that same surface long before their time expired.

  And when that happened, the neutrophil would stick, it would burrow, and it would go to work on its new host.

  THE EVER-PLEASANT DR. CHENG

  One of the Coronado’s mission modules was a small teleconference center. Paulius referred to it as the “SPA,” an acronym for “SEAL Planning Area.”

  Margaret sat at the room’s conference table, Tim to her right, Clarence across from her. A flat-panel monitor hung on one end of the module, the image split down the middle: on the left, Murray Longworth in Washington; on the right, Dr. Frank Cheng in the research lab on Black Manitou Island.

  Murray looked like he hadn’t slept in days. But then again, he always looked that way. His tailored suit hung looser than she remembered it, as if he’d lost even more weight in the three days since Margaret had last seen him.

  Three days? Had all this happened in just three days?

  Murray’s body looked like it might fail him at any moment, but his eyes burned with undiminished intensity. He was close to winning, and he knew it.

  As for Cheng’s fat face, Margaret could barely stand to look at it. While she had hidden away in her home, Cheng had been climbing the ladders of both the CDC and the Department of Special Threats. In the CDC, he was the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. That made him the top dog there for dealing with the alien infection. If Tim’s yeast worked, if it provided immunity, Cheng would be a shoo-in to become the CDC’s next overall director.

  As for the Department of Special Threats, the organizational chart wasn’t as neatly defined. Murray put people into roles as needed. There was no doubt, however, that Cheng was the DST’s number one scientist. Frank Cheng answered to Murray Longworth, to the president of the United States, and to no one else.

  All Cheng’s power and status could have been hers. All she’d had to do was take it, but she’d chosen the coward’s way out.

  Or maybe… maybe Cheng had tricked her somehow. Had he? And had someone helped him?

  Margaret looked across the table, at Clarence. Clarence, who had allowed her to stay home all that time. Had he worked with Cheng to keep her out of the picture?

  She chased away that random, illogical thought, wrote it off to exhaustion. She rubbed her eyes as she listened to Cheng speak.

  “We are making progress,” he said, his fat face split by an arrogant smile of self-satisfaction. “I’ve perfected the genome of the YBR yeast strain.”

  Tim held up a finger. “Excuse me? The what strain?”

  Cheng’s smile faded. “The YBR2874W strain, Doctor Feely. Properly named — Y for yeast, B for chromosome two, R for right arm, 2874 for strain number and W for coding strand.”

  Tim slapped his hands on the table in an exaggerated bit of outrage. “Oh no you don’t, Chubby. Naming goes to the discoverer or creator, and I be both. We already have a proper name, you blowhard, and that proper name is Saccharomyces feely. But you can call it the Feely Strain, if you like. Note the repeated emphasis on the word Feely, as in, you feel what I’m cookin’?”

  The teleconference screens let people in different parts of the world make actual eye contact, let Cheng look Feely right in the eyes.

  “Naming nomenclature is an established practice, Doctor Feely,” Cheng said. “Many researchers are involved in this project. We wouldn’t want to disassociate them from any credit by putting only your name on it.”

  And with that, it was instantly clear that Cheng’s decision was
about disassociating someone. He intended to take the credit for Tim’s brilliance, for Margaret’s discovery of the new cellulase, for everything, even though he’d been safe on Black Manitou Island while Margaret and Tim had been shot at, nearly blown up and almost drowned. Cheng couldn’t grab all the glory if the strain was named after Tim.

  Tim leaned back in his chair. He smiled, laced his fingers behind his head, and looked at Murray’s monitor.

  “Director Longworth, perhaps you should arbitrate this disagreement,” he said. “As our impartial third-party observer, who is right? Cheng… or me.”

  Murray stiffened. Tim seemed so confident, almost as if he had something on Murray, or as if the two had worked out a backroom deal.

  The director waved a hand in annoyance. “Fine. Cheng, you wouldn’t have had anything to work on in the first place if it weren’t for Feely’s work. The yeast already has a name, so use it and let’s move on.”

  Tim rocked slowly in his chair, smiling wide at Cheng.

  Cheng’s fat cheeks quivered with anger. “Very well. We’ve initiated an intensive incubation program to increase the yeast cultures that were delivered yesterday. We’ve also, as I mentioned earlier, altered the genome to create additional strains — some of which, I might add, show far more potential to be our magic bullet.”

  Margaret wasn’t surprised. Cheng was a climber and a glory grabber, no doubt, but he was no fool and he had a small army of scientists at his disposal. Creating multiple strains was the logical approach. The more weapons they developed, the better chance of having one or two that would devastate the enemy.

  “Developing variant strains is mandatory, Doctor Cheng,” Margaret said. “But that doesn’t address mass production. How are we going to make enough of this stuff to dose over seven billion people?”

  Cheng’s easy, arrogant smile returned. Margaret knew he’d come up with an original idea, one he’d be entitled to claim as his own.

  “Breweries,” he said.

  Margaret’s eyebrows raised… not just an original idea, a brilliant original idea.

  Clarence looked from Cheng to Murray to Margaret — he didn’t understand what Cheng was talking about.

  Tim leaned back in his chair, surprised. He looked almost disappointed that Cheng had thought of it and not him.

  “That’s great,” he said. “How many breweries are involved?”

  Now it was Murray’s turn to smile. “Most of the breweries in America, Canada and Mexico are onboard. President Blackmon’s been on the phone nonstop with beverage company executives. Believe me, she’s quite convincing.”

  Tim shook his head slowly. “Well, spank my ass and call me Sally,” he said. “Cheng, I always thought you were a smelly, stupid douchebag with the integrity of a five-dollar whore, but you know what? You’re not stupid at all.”

  Cheng started to give a nod of thanks, then stopped, unsure if he’d just been insulted.

  Clarence looked at Tim, then to the screen, then at Margaret again, anywhere for an answer. “Sorry, can someone tell me what’s happening? Breweries?”

  Tim slapped the table again. “Beer, man. People have been using yeast to make beer for, shit, well since before we started recording history. We don’t need to build production facilities for” — he turned to look at Cheng — “for Saccharomyces feely” — Tim turned back to Clarence — “because all over the world there are places already equipped to brew yeast cultures around the clock. Those places are called breweries.”

  Cheng’s face was reddening. Tim had refused to let the man have his moment of triumph; Cheng couldn’t help but chime in.

  “And the distribution infrastructure is already in place as well,” he said. “Most of the breweries have either their own bottling facilities or direct contracts with them, fleets of trucks, dedicated distribution centers — they can brew it, bottle it, and ship it.”

  No wonder Murray thought he was going to win.

  “Sounds good in theory,” Margaret said. “But will it work for the entire planet?”

  Murray waved a hand in annoyance. “Do you mind if we focus on the USA first, Margaret? This is a massive effort, yes — one of the biggest projects in our nation’s history. Fifty of the largest breweries already have starter cultures. Each of those fifty is delivering subcultures to at least ten more. In two days, we’ll have fifteen hundred American breweries producing inoculant. We can make everyone who drinks it immune.”

  “Temporarily immune,” Margaret said. All eyes turned to her.

  “Let’s not forget that one dose doesn’t last forever. Tim’s inoculant is good for…” She turned to Tim. “For how long?”

  His eyes glanced upward in thought. He pursed his lips, tilted his head left, then right.

  “Oh, about a week,” he said. “Then it’s going to fully process through the body.”

  Margaret nodded. “A week. So you’re not just talking three hundred and twenty million batches for the good ol’ USA, Murray, it’s three hundred and twenty million batches a week. If the disease gets to the mainland, the inoculant can slow the disease’s spread — but it can’t stop it altogether.”

  Cheng huffed. “Unless the disease breaks out in the next three weeks, we’ll have enough repeat doses for everyone in North America.”

  Margaret shook her head in amazement; Cheng was really starting to piss her off.

  “This disease could give a fuck about borders,” she said. “If you don’t get regular doses to the entire world, you’re looking at a disaster of epic proportions. This is about logistics as well as production. Across the planet, one person in seven is starving not because the world doesn’t produce enough food, but because we can’t get food to all the people. And you really think that you can get a regular supply of this to everyone?”

  Cheng’s face turned red with anger. “Yes, that is exactly what I think. This event will bind the human race together.”

  Margaret saw the expression on his face, understood it — he was annoyed because she doubted his ability to save the planet. He wanted to see his face in the history books.

  Careful what you wish for, Cheng…

  “We can’t even bind Americans together, let alone the world,” she said. “And what are your plans for the people who refuse to take it, like the idiots who refuse to vaccinate their own children? What do you do when the companies that are so helpful now decide that they’ve done their part and they have to go back to business as usual?”

  Cheng’s face furrowed into a tight-lipped scowl. “Doctor Montoya, this is the answer to the problem. We will find a way.”

  Margaret wanted to grab his fat cheeks with both hands, twist his head, make him whine like the little weakling he was. She wanted to slap him.

  “We have a chance at a permanent solution,” she said. “What about the hydra organism? There were ten people in that human artificial chromosome clinical trial — have you tracked down the other nine?”

  Cheng leaned back. The scowl faded. He looked smug, like he’d defeated her argument merely by letting her say it out loud. He waited.

  Murray answered her question.

  “The president doesn’t like the hydra solution,” he said. “She doesn’t like the idea of introducing one unknown disease to fight another. And as you pointed out, it’s possible that the hydras are an airborne contagion — if we use them, they could spread uncontrollably and we have no idea what they might do. President Blackmon told us to focus on the yeast. If Cheng’s… excuse me, if Feely’s inoculant works, there’s no need to expose the population to an unknown organism.”

  Her face felt hot. Now Murray was against her as well?

  “Blackmon doesn’t like it,” she said.

  Margaret knew what was happening. Cheng was sabotaging her work, whispering in the president’s ear. Margaret felt an intense anger welling up inside of her.

  She stared at Cheng. “So the president doesn’t like it, eh, Cheng? And who gave her the idea that the hydras were so godaw
ful dangerous, huh?”

  Cheng’s eyes sparkled with delight.

  “You did, Doctor Montoya,” he said. “Your reports labeled the hydras an incalculable risk.”

  She blinked. Her reports had said that.

  “But… but that was before,” she said. “Surely you’re not so incompetent you can’t see what we’re up against. We still don’t even know if Tim’s yeast works. And if it does, what if the disease evolves to beat it? We have to at least pursue the hydras as an alternate solution.”

  Cheng shrugged. “We have some people seeing if they can track down other patients of the HAC study, but to be blunt, I don’t put much credence in your theory, Doctor Montoya. I hardly think infecting people with your contagious space worms is a viable solution.”

  She reached her fist high and brought it down hard, pounded it on the table like a gavel.

  “That’s the fucking point,” she said. “The hydras are contagious. If it is airborne, and I think it is, it will spread from person to person without your fucking bottles and goddamn distribution routes.”

  Cheng leaned in, sure of himself. He had all the power and he knew it, relished it.

  “We’ll look into it, Doctor Montoya. I appreciate what you’ve done so far, believe me, but there’s little you can do while you are isolated on that ship. My team is on the front lines. We’ll manage it from here.”

  She stood so suddenly her chair shot from under her. “The front fucking lines? I’d like to come up there and see you face-to-face, you miserable, fat fuck. I’d like to cut off your motherfucking balls and fucking feed them to you. Would you like that, you stupid cunt?”

  A hand on her shoulder: Clarence, reaching across the table, looking at her in shock and concern.

  “Margaret, take it easy.”

  She blinked. Her words played back in her head. Her face flushed red. Everyone was staring at her. She slowly sat back down.

  Clarence turned to face Murray’s screen.

  “Director Longworth, Doctor Montoya is under considerable stress.”