Pestilence: The Infection Begins

by Craig A. McDonough

  “Yes, sir. Yes indeed, sir.”

  “Good, now if you’ll excuse me,” Thorncroft glanced into the bedroom, “I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

  “Yes Sir, I under—” Thorncroft ended the conversation before Calgleef finished.

  Thorncroft muttered under his breath about his American partners not being able to follow up on instructions; maybe it was just Calgleef overreacting. This thought reinvigorated him, and he quickly toweled himself down and headed into the bedroom. He’d lost interest in a tub soak; besides, the water had gone cold. “Get me another drink, will you?” he said to his young companion, who stood up as Thorncroft entered. “And after you’ve done that, you can get those clothes off. I’ve got a lot of tension to work off, you know?” Thorncroft winked at his young courtesan as he squeezed his crotch.

  Thorncroft would spend the rest of the night working off his “tension,” but for his former representative in the United States, the tension was just about to begin.

  Dr. Moya sat down on the edge of the squeaky bed in the out-of-the-way Kansas City hotel. It was late afternoon now of the day the vaccination program began, though it seemed like days had passed. He took a drink from the bottle of lukewarm water he’d bought from the lobby—there was no refrigerator in the rooms of this hotel. During his travel from Des Moines to Kansas City, he’d had no contact until he’d arrived and then called Calgleef for an update. But he’d heard nothing from the director of the CDC since then, and that was nearly an hour ago.

  “Surely there must be some more developments by now.” He picked up the remote for the TV. Maybe there would be some news about it. He was just in time to see the “live exclusive” news footage taken from a helicopter.

  The TV news commentary said: “This just in from the unfolding drama at the Riverside Hospital in Des Moines, where an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has…”

  Moya spat a mouthful of water over the floor when he saw the video of three people being rescued from the roof of the hospital.

  “That’s the Delaney woman!” he stood up and got closer to the old TV set.

  If she told her story, and to a news service of all things, there would be hell to pay.

  While she might not be believed (who but conspiracy theorists on the Internet believed that pharmaceutical companies would actually be spreading the disease in their vaccines rather than treating it?), the old adage of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” would apply.

  He had to call Calgleef. Spot fires were breaking out everywhere and they had to be brought under control.

  While he never wished any harm on Delaney, he didn’t think she would manage to escape.

  Passing on the combination the storeroom was his good deed and it was there he thought Delaney would remain. How she managed to do so wasn’t his real concern, however, the attitude of the authorities in general and the US government in particular toward the contract was.

  He turned the sound down on the large-screen TV while he called Calgleef. While he pushed the numbers, he watched the rescue of Delaney and her colleagues as it was replayed once more.

  Moya became agitated as the phone rang and rang. It was unusual for Calgleef to take this long to answer. The voice mail kicked in asking him to leave a message after the tone. He didn’t. This was strange too. Calgleef, as the director of the CDC, would have to be available 24/7 and especially during a crisis.

  “I don’t like how this is shaping up.” He would have to be reachable at all times—would he not? Moya reasoned. He ended the call and began to pace as he entertained the possibilities. Had Calgleef been arrested? Did he have a change of heart? Even worse, did he turn on him and perhaps Thorncroft? He didn’t care about that rich bastard in England, he was safe—but he may not be. He strolled to the window of this second-floor room. His view of the street was marred by tall trees, the entrance to the parking lot wasn’t. From his position he was just in time to see police squad cars followed by a white van enter. From his elevated point, he was able to see the occupants of the van wore white protective cleanup suits. He didn’t need a second guess as to why they were here or who they had come for. Packing his bags was easy—he hadn’t had unpacked yet—and he headed out the door and to the rear stairs that would take him out the back.

  The back door of the hotel was a large double-paned glass door, he arrived at the same time a black-and-white of the Kansas City PD did. He quickly backtracked; he couldn’t go to the front lobby, he could hear the voices of authorities there. With no choices he headed back up the stairs where he coolly waited until he heard the heavy footsteps coming up. Thankfully for him, there were no elevators in the hotel. When he judged them to be about halfway, he made a dash for the fire escape. Positive they would have a photograph of him, he knew he couldn’t just fake his way past. Once out on the landing of the escape he looked down to the rear of the parking lot. With no cops in sight, he continued, not that he could go any other way now as his potential captors arrived on the second floor. The parking lot itself offered no protection of cover, and the hedge line that signaled the end was over seventy yards away, or for him, a European, about fifty-eight meters. Heaving his bag under one arm, he made a dash for it. He might get shot in the back, but it would be preferable to a quarantine with Baltic flu carriers, which he was certain was what awaited him if arrested.

  This wasn’t going to be easy; he knew little of getting around in America and even less about Kansas City. Just like Richard Kimble, he was a fugitive—only not as innocent.

  This is what happens when you team up with the devil, he thought.

  But just who was the devil he referred to? Thorncroft, Calgleef, corruption and greed, the pharmaceutical industry, the vaccine itself, money or all of the above?

  Fourteen

  While the first two hazmat-suited CDC guards trained their automatic pistols on the six people who alighted from the helicopter, another four, also in hazmat suits, handcuffed them, and placed surgical masks over their faces and what looked like travel eye masks on their eyes. The cops and National Guard, with guns at the ready, put a perimeter around the area.

  “Let go of me. You, you… you killed her, you killed her!” Delaney continued with her protest. Her emotion had completed a full circle from one of horror to elation of their escape and rescue to revulsion and back to fear again. As a doctor she would recognize these actions she displayed as a precursor to shock or a nervous breakdown—if she was able to observe it.

  “Grace, take it easy. There’s nothing we can do for her now, you’re only going to harm yourself, please…” Tilford did his best to calm her down.

  “Do you know who I am?” Steve demanded. “We just captured this story and put it out on the air. She’s the one who did the shooting. We filmed it. We can show you, you—”

  Mike raised his head from the hard concrete and shook it. “You don’t get it, do you, Steve?”

  “What do you mean? They’re arresting us all in connection with the shootings.”

  “You stupid fuck. What’s the news that’s been going out all day about the hospital? An outbreak of Legionnaires’. Now, you tell me when you’ve seen people in biological suits do the arresting?”

  “He’s right. This is not about the shooting. We’re being taken to quarantine—well, maybe.” Delaney focused on the conversation and away from Sanders execution.

  “But why us? We rescued you. We weren’t in the hospital—”

  “You were in contact with these people and they were in the hospital,” a CDC officer answered in a mechanical-sounding voice through a small external speaker in his hazmat suit.

  Delaney was struck with the reality that anyone having contact with staff or patients at the hospital would be rounded up—if any were still alive.

  Delaney heard the popping sound of the rubber hazmat suit as a CDC officer came up behind. He took her by the arm and lifted, but she didn’t struggle, though she wanted to. She was led a few steps to the waiting CD
C van. She and Tilford were placed in one van while the other three were placed in the second vehicle.

  Blindfolded, she was spared the sight of Nurse Beth Sanders’s limp body being rolled into a black body bag by rubber-gloved and masked National Guard soldiers. She knew Beth’s body would have to be taken away, but would the soldiers or the cops know the reason for the masks, the gloves and the hazmat suits. Would they know it was for protection against the deadliest outbreak of influenza since the 1918 pandemic, which had killed approximately fifty million worldwide, and not against Legionnaires’ disease?

  Delaney leaned forward from inside the van after she’d been seated, a chain was snaked through her cuffs and Tilford’s. She started shouting to the gathered personnel outside the van; a last attempt at a warning. “It’s not Legionnaires’, it’s not, it’s—”

  The side door of the van slid shut. Her warning went unheard.

  As they were led away, another van rolled up to the heliport. It resembled an EMT van except it had no markings. The two occupants who got out were dressed in white full-length cleanup protection suits rather than hazmat suits. With thick green gloves, they pulled the gurney from the back and hoisted the body bag onto it. No precautions were taken; they weren’t interested.

  “Where are you taking her?” One of the hazmat-suit wearers stepped forward. It was conversational interest between colleagues, nothing more.

  “Where we’ve been told to take her,” the driver of the unmarked EMT van, who wasn’t interested, said then he jumped into the van and drove off.

  “Something tells me they aren’t CDC or FDA. Call it a hunch.”

  “What did you say? It’s impossible to hear in these suits at the best of times but worse when you mumble,” a fellow officer called.

  “Just talking to myself, buddy, just talking to myself…”

  The two CDC men in their space-suits who had stayed behind to clean up the mess—and any traces of their activity—watched the van as it disappeared down the street. They knew all this effort wasn’t for Legionnaires’, and that you don’t declare a “limited state emergency” for it either—whatever the hell that was. And you certainly don’t gun an unarmed woman down with what was, for all intents and purposes, a firing squad. The first CDC officer had wondered at the time about the initial orders he’d received, which included the term “firearms are permitted” in this case. But for the cops and the Guard to open fire without question, he speculated as to what their orders might have been and—more to the point—who gave them.

  “Hey, who’s gonna clean this blood up over here?”

  The two turned and saw a police officer standing by the pool of now rusty-brown liquid; one lace from the officer’s shoe dangled in the pool. “We’ll get right on that. Best you move away, sir.”

  A warehouse on the outskirts of Des Moines was the destination of the CDC vans that contained Delaney, Tilford, Steve Donalds, Mike Weaver and Richard Perry. The escort of police and National Guard had departed a ways back, as it would only have drawn more attention. A single unmarked car led the way. An industrial area, there was nothing untoward about two vans and a car driving into a warehouse. Delaney felt the cold straight away and the stale air as they were led from the van; this wasn’t a building that was used often. She felt a hand on the side of her face, as her “night mask” was pulled off her head. The inside of the warehouse was dark, she saw and was grateful for. It still took some time for her eyes to adjust. In the center of the concrete floor were several prefab mobile homes joined together end on end.

  Their new home.

  She looked over at Tilford to see if he realized the gravity of the situation. The worried look and single raise of his eyebrows told her he did.

  “Now listen here, you can’t be—” Steve began protesting once more but stopped the instant he saw guards in black fatigues and respirators over their faces. He quickly understood the severity of their condition. Like the CDC officers who accompanied them, every inch of their bodies was protected from outside contact.

  “Now do you see what we’re up against?” Delaney whispered from the corner of her mouth.

  Steve did, judging by his reaction. It was a plague, a new pestilence unleashed upon the world, and he had gone and rescued the very people that could be carrying it. “Why did we pick you up? Why, damn it, why?” he howled at Delaney.

  “Because, you self-centered asshole, you wanted the big story, you wanted to win a fucking prize and be famous big shot. You prick!” Mike couldn’t tolerate Steve’s self-serving and answered for Delaney.

  He looked over to Delaney and Tilford. Whether they had the disease or not, they looked in good shape physically and mentally, and he’d already seen that she could do what had to be done, and Tilford showed a practical head as well. He could count on them and probably Richard, but he was younger and not the action type, more the arty type. Probably smokes dope too, I bet. And he discounted the reporter without consideration. He knew if they were to get out of here alive, it would be because of their own doing, not from any rescue attempt. None would be forthcoming. In his time in the military, he’d heard about places like this, but dared not repeat it—to anyone. This was essentially a hidden base, usually under joint control of CIA/NSA but shared with other government departments that conducted shadowy operations away from the eyes of the public, and from the government itself in many cases.

  “We’re already dead,” Mike whispered to Tilford, who was closer. He wanted to tell Delaney, but she was too far away, and the goon squad in black looked ready to draw their pistols at a drop.

  “What, what are you saying?”

  “There will be a false report that we all contracted Legionnaires’ and died in the emergency room or something to that effect.”

  “We have to get out somehow, I—”

  “But how?”

  Tilford’s voice was just a pitch too high and alerted one of the guards.

  “You two stop talking and move on inside, now!”

  Mike nodded and took a step forward as instructed but added a parting whisper: “Be ready, just be ready.”

  Tilford looked at the chopper pilot, now with his cap and sunglasses removed. He was in his late thirties, maybe early forties, Tilford suspected, with closely cropped brown hair that had so much dandruff you could be excused for thinking he just went wild with the salt shaker. A firm-jawed face with his Sam Elliot mustache and a stocky muscular build, he wasn’t the type you’d want to be on the wrong side of, Tilford reasoned.

  “Just keep the chatter down and head inside the building in front of you,” another guard ordered. Like cattle they walked single file into their holding pen.

  As the days of their liberty looked to have come to an end, a struggle to remain free had just begun two hours away in Kansas City.

  Moya jumped over the head-high chain-link fence at the end of the parking lot. He was long past the fit young man of a decade or so back, and it was quite an effort. He felt a twinge in his hamstring as he jumped down onto the concrete sidewalk, but he couldn’t stop to be concerned with it now.

  If I could just get to, to… where the hell do I go? He was a stranger in a strange place. Airports, train stations and bus depots would be out of the question. That they were looking for him told him not only was he no longer in the loop, but also that the situation was of an urgent nature, and all these places would be under surveillance.

  He was reluctant to do so but knew a taxi would be the only way to get out of the area fast. With just over a thousand US dollars in cash, he could get out of the city center, then hitch a ride with an interstate truck driver perhaps. But he’d need more money, and he was sure his travelers’ checks had been canceled, or as soon as they were cashed the authorities would appear in minutes. Almost on cue a taxicab came around the corner; obviously having just dropped a fare off at the hotel entrance. Moya waved for the drivers’ attention.

  “Where to?” the cabbie said as Moya climbed into the backseat.


  “Where’s the nearest small town from here?”

  The cabbie spun in his seat and looked at his passenger. He’d had some strange destination requests in his time but not this strange.

  “Small town? Are you—”

  The wail of police sirens cut him short. Black-and-whites of the Kansas City PD swarmed around the yellow taxicab blocking the front, rear and sides. Doors flew open, and officers with guns drawn took cover behind the squad cars.

  “Driver, keep your hands on the wheel—on the wheel!” came a command over a handheld bullhorn. “Passenger, exit from the right-hand side and raise your hands!”

  The arrival of the police happened so fast Moya had no time to assess the situation, he complied without protest. With more than a dozen guns trained on him, he didn’t have any other options. As soon as he stepped from the cab, Moya was told to lie face down on the ground. As he did he heard a vehicle pull up behind him. He heard a door slide open, then felt his arms being pinned behind and cuffs placed on—tight. A dark bag was thrown over his head, after which he was lifted and practically dumped into the back of what he assumed to be a van.

  His days as a fugitive were short-lived.

  At the rear of the police cars, a lone man in a dark suit with a skinny black tie and sunglasses stood next to a black SUV, a cell phone to his ear. When the call he made was answered, he said three words, then got back in his vehicle and drove off. “We got him!”

  After receiving the call from Kansas City, Calgleef afforded himself a smile and a drink. A bourbon on the rocks was his poison. Things were on the mend—he hoped. He didn’t know where the NSA stood on this matter, and they weren’t likely to inform him. Whatever. As long as Thorn Bio—Tech could proceed unhindered for another few months when the locally manufactured vaccine would be in place. He had already ordered the recall of the vaccines rushed into the country; it would give the appearance of direct action taking place. The news stations could inform the public that the CDC was on top of the situation with the damaged-in-flight vaccines as well as the cleanup of the Legionnaires’ outbreak in Des Moines.