Pestilence: The Infection Begins

by Craig A. McDonough

  Calgleef looked at the clock on his desk, it was late in London, but Thorncroft would have to be informed.

  “Mr. Thorncroft, sorry to disturb you, sir, but—”

  “That’s perfectly all right, Dr. Calgleef,” Thorncroft told him, his voice unusually cheerful. Calgleef had no idea the reason for his cheer. “What news do you have for me?”

  “Sir, the five people rescued by the news helicopter have been taken into quarantine, well five actually—”

  “FIVE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN FIVE?” Thorncroft’s disposition changed abruptly.

  “One was shot as she tried to escape, Mr. Thorncroft…”

  “Shot? What in the hell… argh! I don’t have time for all the questions that would naturally follow such an incident, Calgleef, but I will assume you are taking measures to insure all is aboveboard with that?”

  “Yes, sir, the body has been taken to a secret lab, set up by the NSA, where an autopsy can be performed.” He thought that would appease Thorncroft some but was greeted by silence.

  “And what of the hospital itself?”

  “The NSA have direct access to the CCTV and motion detectors throughout the hospital, and the last report I received indicated there had been no movement inside for nearly an hour, Mr. Thorncroft.”

  “Mm, that’s too bad.”

  Calgleef was a little surprised when he heard the Englishman response and wondered if he wasn’t as callous as the rumors said. “Yes, sir, it is a tragic loss of life.”

  “You’ve still failed to grasp it all, haven’t you, Calgleef?”

  Calgleef was himself stunned into silence before he finally stuttered, “Err, sir…I’m not—”

  “I own one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, as you know.” Thorncroft began to spell it out. “Vaccines are one of our major earners, don’t you know? Healthy people don’t take medications unless there is a fear of catching something, and the vaccine is an offer to protect them from the particular disease… a carrot-and-stick approach if you like. The more people who have their shots yearly, the more money we make. And in order to get them to take their shots they have to be afraid of the specific malady which the vaccine promises to protect them against. Do you see?”

  “Err, sort of Mr. Thorncroft.” The picture was becoming clearer for Calgleef, but he hadn’t quite put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Oh you do, do you? Well let me tell you, I don’t give a shit how many died in that hospital or who got shot, but I do care about this contract—we have a patent filed for this vaccine—do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, I do, I do.” Calgleef also understood he was premature in thinking Thorncroft was able to feel any sympathy.

  “We control the vaccines as a pharmaceutical company, but we also control the diseases. You need to have the power to unleash both at the right time in order to capture the entire market.”

  A chill ran the length of Calgleef’s body, and both his hands began to shake. He understood it all now. Thorncroft, and his company, had harnessed the Baltic flu, placed it into the vaccines and released it on an unsuspecting United States. With privatization and the ability of drug manufacturers to charge what they like’ the profit potential was huge. And it would grow every year as the effects of the flu were felt on the young and the very old. A big carrot and an even bigger stick, Calgleef reflected.

  “You still with me, Calgleef?”

  “Yes, sir, yes.”

  “And you plan to stay with me, right?” Thorncroft now directly questioned Calgleef’s loyalty.

  Calgleef coughed after taking a good belt from his whiskey. “Yes, sir, of course, Mr. Thorncroft.”

  Calgleef poured himself another stiffer drink. He had been willing all along to promote and protect Thorn Bio-Tech’s investment and was even prepared to hide certain truths in order for this to proceed. Calgleef wasn’t all that fast, or perhaps he just didn’t care that much, but that had changed. He now understood he was promoting the growth of the very pestilence he was charged with keeping out. He understood it all now, well, almost. What he failed to piece together when Thorncroft said “we control the vaccines and the diseases” was that the disease itself was also manufactured by Thorn Bio-Tech with assistance from several intelligence communities around the world.

  “Now what do I do?” he asked himself.

  The endgame as he understood it now was to confine this new pestilence to a small area, not to let it get out of hand before manufacture of the vaccine could begin in the US. But he couldn’t quarantine everybody, which was what he had been doing. That could prevent the pathogen from being communicated altogether.

  Then it came to him like a light bulb going off. The vaccines! There would still be some vials in the Riverside hospital that hadn’t been picked up by the disposal squads. He could use that against…

  “That bitch Delaney and the crew who escaped with her!” he yelled out with excitement. “Fucking brilliant, Andrew, fucking brilliant!”

  He didn’t have to worry about his secretary hearing his elation, as he had sent her home earlier, more as protection against her overhearing than anything else.

  “Yes, yes.” He took a swig from his glass, then slammed it down on his desk, picked up the bottle and poured another four fingers of bourbon; and this time, he gave the ice a miss. He could get rid of an awkward situation that he didn’t relish in the first place. He had been ordered, not in as many words but he read between the lines, to dispose of the group rescued from the rooftop along with the TV news team. But he wasn’t a soldier or a politician, and ordering the execution of people didn’t sit well with him even if it was to protect his “billions.” He started to make a plan of how best to go about it. Making an offer of clemency to the five remaining members of the group in exchange for silence would be the ideal solution, then inform they they’d have to be vaccinated—the real vaccination—for precautionary measures. At least he could tell them that. The Baltic flu didn’t leave many survivors, and it wouldn’t be as hard as having them shot and dumped somewhere. Besides, He could convince himself that he gave them the vaccine to prevent the flu from taking hold and when they started to show symptoms he could simply say “you were just too far gone”. He could take a CDC executive jet and be in Des Moines in a couple of hours. With the emergency taking place and the key role he, as director of the CDC, played, he’d be ushered straight through at the airport, he was certain of that.

  “Yeah I can live with that.” He raised his glass in a toast. He had this covered.

  Fifteen

  The trailer homes inside the dark and mysterious warehouse were divided into smaller sections, no bigger than a bedroom in a 5th wheel trailer-or a prison cell. All five of the prisoners were placed into a separate room where they sat in lone chairs. A container of water a single plastic cup on an old table completed the furnishings. The locks on the doors didn’t look very secure, but with the amount guards outside armed with semi—automatic pistols, it didn’t much matter. Each was kept in this confinement and incommunicado for several hours, and as Delaney started to think their time might be up, she heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps in the tiny hallway outside her door. When a man in a yellow hazmat suit opened her door and stepped through, it took her a moment before she recognized it was Calgleef. The first recognizable face she’d seen for a few hours, she didn’t know if she should hug him for coming to save her (if that indeed was what he was doing) or kick him in the family jewels for allowing her to get into such a situation.

  She should have chosen the latter.

  “Miss Delaney, how good to see you again.” Calgleef’s voice sounded hollow from inside the suit but the sarcasm was unmistakable.

  “Calgleef, what, where…”

  “It’s okay. I have to wear this for precautions, but I’m sure you’re aware of that,” he said calmly enough. He held both hands up, palms out, to emphasize there was no danger.

  “As you can well imagine, I’ve been extre
mely busy since this crisis began.”

  That’s the second time he’s assured me of my knowledge. He’s greasing the wheels for something. Delaney grew more suspicious of his presence.

  “What’s happened at the hospital, Calgleef? What’s the situation?” She stood up and stared at him through the plexiglass visor that protected his face.

  “It’s all under control, Miss Delaney, the Legionnaires’—”

  “Legionnaires’ my ass!” She jumped up and confronted him. The visor of Calgleef’s hazmat suit the only thing preventing their noses from touching. “You know what’s inside that hospital, and it’s not fucking Legionnaires’!”

  “I don’t know anything of the sort, Delaney.” He discarded the formalities; the gloves were off. “And it would be a wise if you acted the same way.”

  “Or what? Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes, Miss Delaney, I am. Now sit down!”

  Delaney noted the hostility in his voice. Calgleef was contemptuous of most people but would never speak to anyone like that unless he was in an extremely well-placed position.

  He is obviously in league with Moya.

  “This is how it’s going to work out—or not, depending on if you wish to play ball.”

  Calgleef then laid his cards on the table. “If you and the doctor you escaped with sign this form, which stipulates you will not utter a word in public and especially not to anyone from the media, you will all be allowed to leave once we have conducted tests and are satisfied you haven’t contracted Legionnaires’ disease—”

  “But there—”

  The CDC director held up his rubber-gloved index finger, silencing her protest.

  “If you don’t, I can’t be responsible for the actions of your captors. You see, they’re not under my control and take their orders from above.”

  The words “from above” had the desired effect. Grace Delaney had been with the CDC long enough to know of the close relationship they had with the departments of military concerned with nuclear, biological and chemical warfare as well as the NSA, CIA, FBI and a more than a dozen other “alphabet” agencies. She was aware that secrets, formulas and the most effective ways to distribute these pathogens were shared among these agencies and departments—under the guise of preparing for such an attack. But, as her research over the last few days pointed out, the United States was the only country with access to such devastating material, and for any terrorist group to use such material in an attack they’d have to get it from the US first. She’d heard the rumors some years back that the US government had patented the Ebola virus, but every time she planned on looking into the matter she was sent off to oversee a CDC program of one type or another. She understood Calgleef’s superior tone. If he didn’t get what he wanted, then the black-shirts outside would carry out their orders. Which Delaney was sure meant a bullet to the back of the head or a lethal injection.

  “You might be stronger than the others, and I would assume you to be, but would you be capable of standing by and watching them suffer?” Calgleef handed her a clipboard and a pen.

  “You’re a bastard, do you know that?” she said to him as she snatched the clipboard from his gloved hand.

  “Yes, I do know that,” he said as he stared at her blankly.

  “Thank you. There will be some formalities to go through, as I said, but you and your companions will be free to go once they all agree to these few demands.”

  He stepped back and pounded on the door a couple of times with his fist, all the while keeping an alert eye on Delaney.

  “One question, Calgleef… what happened to Nurse Sanders?”

  A black-shirt guard, his head covered by a respirator mask, opened the door for Calgleef, who answered Delaney before he exited. “Her body was placed inside a contamination proof bag, then into a coffin. She’ll be flown back to her home state for her parents to bury her.” Delaney didn’t like his tone but accepted his explanation.

  She was getting a second chance, as were the others. Far from a perfect ending, this was the best they could hope for. Signing the form and agreeing to Calgleef’s conditions was hard but not as hard as knowing that if she didn’t, the others would be killed—perhaps in front of her.

  Calgleef had certainly intimated as much.

  As the locks snapped into place on the door to her ‘cell’, she reflected on the events over the last few hours—which was the first thing that hit her. All these events had so far taken place in less than a day. But an outbreak of a virulent pathogen didn’t need much time to take hold, especially when various individuals and agencies were safeguarding its distribution.

  She would go along with Calgleef’s demands, not just for the sake of the others, but because there was always the chance that she could find some way to prevent or at least warn people of the severity of this disease.

  She couldn’t do that if she were dead.

  Yes, she would go along.

  Calgleef walked out of the prefab trailer and into the bare warehouse.

  “What’s the plan now?” A black-shirt guard who appeared to be in authority came forward.

  “We’ll have to get the vaccinations from the Riverside hospital to use on them. They won’t be much trouble after that. Let me organize one of my security teams’ onsite to pick them up. In the meantime we need to sedate them. I don’t want them knowing they were injected, okay?”

  “You got it, boss.” The black shirts’ disdain for Calgleef was evident in his tone, but the CDC Director wasn’t going to pull him up over it—he’d just as likely get shot for it. He continued on outside the warehouse, stripped off the hazmat suit, dumped it in a small storeroom by the entrance, took his secure cell phone out and made a call.

  “Yes, this is Director Calgleef, let me have the CDC officer in charge there.”

  He waited while the officer came to the phone. “Yes, sir, Mr. Calgleef.”

  “I want you to take a team inside the hospital and search for the remaining vials of the vaccine. When you’ve got them call me… oh, and as you should know, there has been no sign of any movement detected in several hours, but wear your suits with full oxygen and go armed—just to be safe, okay?”

  Once Calgleef was sure his orders were understood and would be followed to the letter, he made one more call. He grabbed the satellite phone he kept in a leather pouch attached to his belt under his gray jacket. As he pushed the numbers, he allowed a small grin of satisfaction.

  “It’s all in place. I think I might have it under control,” he told his NSA contact who had asked to be kept in the loop.

  “The survivors taken from the rooftop will be given the vaccine, and based upon the rate of decline in those injected at the hospital, they should present little problem after twenty-four hours. Our friend Dr. Moya is due to join them shortly, and he will receive the same treatment. I’m organizing the vaccines to be picked up from the hospital by one of my security teams. They have no knowledge of the full extent of our involvement.” But does anyone? Calgleef paused to ask himself. “The body of the nurse shot earlier has been disposed of—in a furnace—and the TV station has been informed its crew has been taken in for routine observation. All in all, I think we can say ‘panic averted,’ would you not agree?”

  “You’ve done well, Dr. Calgleef, tied a lot of the loose ends yourself. You’ve surprised me. There’s a few more to be tied yet, but we’ll handle that. Do inform me when you take delivery of the remaining vials, okay?”

  “But of course.”

  As soon as he ended the conversation, Calgleef took a white unmarked refrigerated van, which he would drive to the hospital. No more second- or third-party involvement, he would take the vaccinations himself back to the warehouse and oversee the injections, then their destruction. He thought of calling Thorncroft but decided against it. Better to call when all was complete and the news to give would then be all good. It would put him in a better position with Thorncroft. In such a nefarious scheme as this, that couldn’t
be a bad thing.

  He let another smile creep over his face as he drove away. A few more steps and it would all be in place, and with just enough people infected to keep the pathogen spreading and keep the panic levels high. And, most importantly of all, the demand for the vaccine would become a top priority for millions of people throughout the United States.

  He became so comfortable with developments he began to whistle as he drove. The situation with the hospital was coming to an end, and all those who had fled were incommunicado or dead or soon would be. The events at the hospital would be news for a day or so until another overpaid and underperforming ‘sports star’ got injured or busted for drug use or something similar. He had left nothing in place that could go wrong—he was sure of that.

  “So how are we doing this?” a CDC security agent asked his OIC.

  “We’re just walking in the front door, or did you want to kick it down or even use breaches?” The CDC officer in charge of the retrieval team sent for the vaccines shook his head inside the suit at his subordinate. It was midevening in Des Moines, and though floodlights lit the area of the hospital, he was sure his disgust hadn’t been noticed. “There have been no reports of any movement in there for some time. We’re keeping our suits on and going in armed as a precaution, okay? We head straight to the outpatients area, find the vaccines, grab ‘em and leave. That simple. You got it?” The officer laid down the law to his team.

  “Yes, sir, fine by me.”

  “Good. Let’s get it over and done with!” The officer wasn’t keen on walking into a hospital where no life signs had been detected for more than an hour. A CDC field officer for many years, he knew it wasn’t Legionnaires’ disease. That doesn’t kill hundreds in less than twenty-four hours—no way. He hadn’t been told the full picture, but with government departments like the CDC you never are. They’re so busy with their plots and counter plots, top secret this and top secret that, as well as compartmentalized clearances, he doubted there would be one man in the whole department who knew everything that went on. With the current outbreak of Ebola in Africa still going today, and with four cases diagnosed in the US and two contracted within the US in 2014 and 2015, the officer in charge suspected this is what they were up against. It was being kept quiet to prevent a panic. He wasn’t comfortable, but he would get the job done and get out, then he might go see his brother in California; he had some time owed.