by JE Gurley
“He’ll be fine,” he said, averting his eyes from his ill son, trying to make the words sound believable.
“He looks so sad,” she replied. “He was always a rambunctious child.”
Jeb nodded silently, as he remembered the first broken bone Josh had from falling out of the lemon tree in the back yard, and his numerous cuts and bruises from trying to keep up with the bigger kids in school. He had never let his size slow him down. But now . . .
“Let him sleep. We need to talk.”
Karen looked up at him with concern, but followed him out of the bedroom. In the kitchen, he saw Karen had not started dinner, but he understood why. He could make a sandwich or order out for both of them, if anyone was still delivering take-out. While he started the coffee brewer perking, she sat at the island.
“Ben says things are worse than the authorities are letting on.”
Karen’s grip on the granite counter top tightened, her fingers turning white from the pressure. “What do you mean?”
He leaned on the island across from her. “More people are dying than they’re saying. If it gets worse, it could mean a disruption in services.”
“You mean electricity?” she asked.
“Maybe. Maybe more. I think I should run pick up a few things – just in case,” he added, when he saw her eyes widen in fright.
Karen eyed him suspiciously, but dipped her head in a quick nod. “If you think you should. I have to stay here.”
“I know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m not hungry. I don’t think I can eat.”
He had expected as much. Karen had no appetite when she was nervous and she was nearly in a panic now. He wished he could say something reassuring, tell her it was all going to be all right, but he knew it would sound like a psychiatrist’s platitude. Reynolds’ revelations had frightened him deeply. “I’ll grab something while I’m out.”
She reached a hand across the island. “Fast food? You hate fast food. Jeb, you’re really frightening me now.”
He laid his hand on top of hers and squeezed gently. “Now, Hon, I may be jumping at shadows, but Ben started me thinking. We don’t need to be grocery shopping every week. We’ve been vaccinated, but who knows what germs are out there. Better safe than sorry.”
She nodded again. “Okay. Hurry back.”
“Lickety split,” he said, smiling.
* * * *
Later, as he unloaded the cases of canned goods, toilet paper, bags of rice and fresh vegetables in the garage, Jeb eyed his purchases with some amusement. He had not been the only person with volume shopping on the mind. The store had been packed, like Macy’s on a Black Friday. His favorite sodas were out of stock, as was his brand of coffee. He took what he could get and then had grabbed extra. He had paid for it all with his credit card, a staggering two thousand dollars, and that did not include the extra propane tank, which he had arranged for delivery.
The fresh vegetables had been a last minute purchase, as had the cases of glass jars and a seven-quart pressure cooker. Karen had canned fresh picked apples and peaches when they were first married. Starting out, they were often broke, relying on canned goods and cheap meals from fast food restaurants, which was his reason for avoiding them now. A supply of freshly canned vegetables might once again come in handy. He had also purchased cases of various brands of cigarettes and liquors. The scotch was for him, but the rest might serve as trade goods or bribes if things got worse. He had watched enough end-of-the-world movies to know that vices didn’t end with civilization. Even if money became worthless paper, cigarettes and alcohol were worth their weight in gold.
By the time, the last goods were unloaded from the Explorer and neatly stacked against the wall, Jeb was exhausted. Fighting the crazed mob had given him a taste of how bad things might become. His expected one-hour trip had turned into a three-hour sortie. He wanted nothing more than to kick back to watch a little television, but he was worried about Josh. Maybe he would spell Karen and let her rest. She was on the edge.
It was dark when he entered the house, which disturbed him, because Karen always left too many lights on. She did not attempt to keep their electricity bill under control.
“Karen,” he called out. When he received no answer, he went straight to Josh’s room, thinking to find her there. To his surprise, Josh’s bed was empty, and the covers thrown off the bed. His heart began jack hammering his chest. In a panic, he raced room to room through the house, finding each one empty. In the kitchen, a hastily scribbled note on the island caught his attention. He picked it up and read.
“Josh worse. Stopped breathing. Couldn’t reach Ben. Taking Josh to Oro Valley. Come soon.”
Jeb read the note two times, the words dancing on the page as his hands shook. Stopped breathing? My God! He threw the note on the floor and looked out front. He hadn’t even noticed earlier, but the Hyundai was gone. Reynolds’ words popped into his mind about sealing hospitals. He rushed to the garage and cranked the Explorer. At the end of the drive, he pounded on the steering wheel, impatiently waiting for the gate to slide open. Then he wheeled recklessly onto Oracle, bouncing off the median curb. The medical center parking lot was full, with autos parked haphazardly along the side of the road. He spun into the emergency entrance and leaped out. A guard attempted to stop him, but Jeb brushed by him and confronted a harried-looking nurse just inside the door wearing a sterile mask.
“My wife and child just came in a short while ago, Karen and Josh Stone. He’s about six. He was unconscious.”
The nurse looked up at him from her clipboard. Her eyes above the mask looked weary and overwhelmed. “I’ve got a hundred and fifty patients waiting to see a physician. I don’t know who they are.”
Frustrated, he brushed her aside and began calling his wife’s name.
“Karen!”
A few heads turned his direction, but most were too engrossed with their own problems to pay much attention to one more frantic sick person. Many of them wore masks over their nose and mouth. A few distraught mothers held coughing children. The sight only quickened his fear.
“Karen!” he repeated.
He spotted two guards approaching and ducked through the double doors into the treatment area, ignoring the nurse’s warning. “You can’t go in there.” He looked around, but saw no sign of either Josh or Karen. What he did see sent cold chills racing through him. Sheets covered at least two dozen dead bodies on gurneys pushed up against the walls of the corridor of the makeshift morgue. As he stood there in shock, he felt hands tighten on his arm. He glanced at the two guards flanking him. Each wore disposable masks over their mouth and nose.
“My wife and son,” he said numbly.
One of the guards looked at him with obvious sympathy and said, “Anyone coming here in the last few hours has been sent directly to the FEMA camp in Marana. We’re way past capacity.” He looked around and leaned closer. “There’s talk of transferring most of the worst cases to Marana soon.”
Jeb’s initial resolve to storm through the hospital searching for his family dissolved. He knew he wouldn’t find them here. He stared at the corpses, nodded meekly, and allowed the guards to escort him back outside. Trying to decide what to do, he sat in his truck for a few minutes. As he sat there, two canvas-covered, five-ton army trucks pulled up. A captain jumped down from the cab of one and spoke briefly to the guards. The guard who had confided to Jeb, glanced in his direction, and shook his head slowly. Taking it as a warning, Jeb pulled out of the drive slowly and headed towards Marana. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
2
The white sterile masks concealed most facial expressions, but the haunted looks in the four pairs of eyes above the masks were grim reminders of the task before them. Dr. Erin Costner, Chief Virologist for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, didn’t want to admit it, but she was just as bewildered as her team, who was gathered around her.
; “Damn,” she exclaimed, as she gazed at the scanning electron microscope monitor, blinking away tears. “This is the third mutation we’ve seen this week.” Her eyes burned from the hours of staring at the screen and she longed to rub them, but she resisted the urge. The latex gloves she wore should be sterile, but she could take no chances, not with the deadly H5N1 virus they were observing.
“Perhaps the microscope at Cal Tech would yield a more detailed pict . . .” Dale Cuthbert began, but she cut him off sharply.
“At nearly a million dollars, I believe this SEM will suffice. Lack of clarity is not the problem. The damn virus keeps mutating.”
A second colleague, Lyle Medford, coughed through his mask. Erin tensed, but then relaxed when she realized he was simply clearing his throat before speaking. So far, none of them had succumbed to the Avian flu that was now pandemic throughout the world. With officers from Homeland Security replacing the normal CDC security guards, they were virtually prisoners in their own offices. She wasn’t certain if the stone-faced men in suits were there to protect them or to keep them inside.
“We can try a BSE image,” Medford suggested. His curly brown hair, usually neatly combed, now sprouting wildly at odd angles and his rumpled lab coat were only the more visible indications of his fatigue. His voice was equally as weary, its soft New England crispness now raspy. “The SEI doesn’t reveal enough detail.”
Erin nodded. Medford had worked longer hours than most of them during their confinement and she was grateful. “Yes, a back-scattered electron image might reveal features that a secondary electron image doesn’t. It’s worth a try. Please initiate the process as soon as possible.” She hated to pile more work on his already heavy load, but Medford could do the job much quicker than one of the technicians, and time was of the essence. No less than the fate of the world rested on their shoulders.
At 0.1 microns, or one ten-millionth of a meter, the H5N1 Avian Flu virus was a difficult bug to scan properly. Each new mutation slightly rearranged its topography, changing its neuraminidase protein covering, making an anti-viral inhibitor, the most effective method of preventing the virus from releasing from its host cell, impossible. It was like trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle, when one piece morphs its shape, just as you think they match. One mutation looked like a WWII sea mine, spherical with spiky protrusions. A mine indeed, she thought, and I fear our ship is about to collide with it headlong.
The President wanted results. FEMA wanted results. Even the head of Homeland Security had dropped by to see how much progress they had made. So far, she had nothing to show them, but a series of spectacular failures. They weren’t even certain which virus strain was the culprit. Each produced much the same flu symptoms, but the mortality rate was rapidly increasing, now up to nearly fifty-five percent. She was beginning to wonder if the current flu vaccine might be a causative factor. That was a view the Surgeon General did not hold and did not wish investigated. Few knew, as she did, that the Surgeon General owned a great deal of Bio Con stock, the vaccine’s developer.
“Susan,” she said, turning to Susan McNeil, a young epidemiologist Erin had brought to the CDC from John Hopkins. “Can you please produce a graph of the spread of the virus over the past two weeks, paying particular attention to the population areas most recently vaccinated?”
Susan’s look of puzzlement didn’t surprise Erin. Erin knew she was clutching at straws, but she was rapidly running out of options.
“Certainly, if you wish,” Susan responded.
As Susan opened the decontamination chamber door, a sudden gust of air rustled Erin’s short brown hair. Pressure inside the sterile electron microscope room always remained lower than that outside the room, preventing contaminated air from rushing out. Susan endured the decontamination cycle, dropping her mask, gloves and one-piece coverall into the disposal as she exited. As Susan tossed her head to untangle her long blonde locks confined by the cloth skullcap she wore inside the chamber, Erin watched her through the double-paned observation window. Susan was beautiful and she knew it, often using her good looks to charm men and a few women, but Erin knew she had won her credentials by hard work and not favoritism.
Seeing Susan outside the chamber, Erin suddenly felt the effects of the long hours of confinement in her muscles. The slight tremble in her right leg had been steadily getting worse. “Let’s take a break,” Erin said to the others, stretching out her leg and massaging it.
She repeated Susan’s decontamination procedure, stripping off the uncomfortable coveralls and stretching her weary arms. Outside the chamber, she leaned against a wall, removed her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose where her glasses had rubbed. Her head throbbed from concentration, but she had gotten used to that. Her headache had lasted two days so far, and she did not expect it to lessen, despite the aspirin she had been eating as if they were M&M candies. She walked the short distance to her corner office with her normally confident stride reduced to an unsteady gait caused by her exhaustion. She glanced out over the city wondering how many people had died since morning began.
They were no closer to an answer than they had been a week ago. So far, they had discovered five distinct Avian Flu viruses, each with several mutations. The current vaccine was proving ineffective and no antigen they tried had worked against more than one virus. She was not one to admit defeat, but she was tired – and clammy.
“Perhaps a shower will help,” she said to herself.
The stringent smell of antiseptics no longer disguised the increasing odor of unwashed, perspiring bodies in the confined space of the labs. A small bath with shower adjoined her office, one of the perquisites of her position. She dropped her dirty slacks and shirt to the floor and kicked them into a corner, along with the bra and panties she had worn for forty-eight hours straight. She rubbed her breasts where the bra had chaffed the skin. At thirty-five, her 35-B breasts had not begun to droop, a fact of which she was proud. Stepping into the shower, she let the hot water gently massage her aching muscles and remove the accumulated sweat and grime of two days. However, it did nothing to ease the heavy weight of responsibility that pressed down upon her like the uncountable gravestones of the dead she could not save.
The CDC was the shining beacon the country now looked to for answers. Saving lives through prevention was their creed and they were failing. She was failing. Miserably. For several long minutes, she leaned against the wall of the shower, letting the cold tile support her tired body. The moment, she stepped out of the shower and dressed, she would have to resume her role as buttress for the others. Her colleagues, a collection of dedicated but fragile egos, depended on her for guidance and encouragement. She could not fail them as well.
The water chilled, reminding her that it was time to get back to reality. Cleaner, even if not revitalized, she briskly rubbed her short, reddish-brown hair with a towel, swiped it over her body for a quick dry and donned a fresh change of clothes and lab coat from the rack behind her door. Glancing in her mirror, she wished she could apply makeup to cover the worry lines and dark circles under her bloodshot green eyes, but she could not afford the time. More slides were waiting for her review.
A loud, “My God!” erupted from down the corridor. She recognized Susan’s high-pitched voice and peeked out the door. Susan held out a graph she had just pulled from the printer. Her hands shook nervously as she motioned for Erin to join her in her cubicle, one of several dotting the floor of the main office. The office was empty except for Susan, Erin and Ang Lee, a technician, who was too engrossed in his own work to pay attention to them. Everyone else, except Lyle Medford was still inside the clean room setting up the backscatter image. His private office was two doors down from Erin’s office. Erin hurried to Susan’s cubicle and sat on the edge of her desk, glancing briefly with envy at the photos of sandy beaches and palm trees pinned to Susan’s cubicle wall.
“The rise in mortality corresponds to the most heavily vaccinated cities, almost as if they were the same g
raph,” Susan said.
Erin was dismayed, but not surprised. She had advised the CDC director that they had rushed the last vaccine too quickly, but he had been under political pressure to comply with the President’s order to vaccinate everyone against the deadly disease sweeping toward America like a tsunami. She simply nodded her head and sighed.
Susan continued. “But this means, the vaccine is . . . I mean it looks as if the vaccine is accelerating the mortality rate.”
“It’s just as I thought,” Erin replied.
Susan stared at her dumfounded. “What are we doing, Erin? I mean, we’re making it worse.”
So no one else would overhear the conversation, Erin spoke quietly, “I think it’s out of our hands, or soon will be. FEMA is chomping at the bit to take over, and declare a state of emergency. So are the President and Congress, those still in Washington that is. All we can hope for is that . . .”
Gunshots from down the hall interrupted her before she could reveal her hope to Susan. She stood on her tiptoes and looked over the cubicle wall just as one of the few remaining uniformed security guards raced down the hall chased by a naked man. Erin watched, horrified as the guard turned, and fired three shots into the man’s chest from a dozen paces distance. To her astonishment, the wounds barely bled. The man did not even slow down. At just that moment, Medford stuck his head out of the office to see what the commotion was. The naked man saw Medford, veered toward him like a wild animal and bit deeply into Medford’s right cheek, coming away with a chunk of bloody flesh. Medford’s shrill scream of pain reverberated down the corridor. The guard fired once more. This time, the bullet struck the naked man in the forehead. He fell to the floor, no longer moving, with the piece of Medford’s cheek flesh still clutched tightly in his jaws. Everyone froze, including Erin, ignoring Medford’s moans as they stared dumbfounded at the dead man, uncomprehending. The guard gazed at Erin, his face pale and his hands trembling.