“Can I tell you something, John?”
“Sure.” John grinned. It definitely sounded like the doc had an inside track on a new idea and John couldn’t be happier. He had hated the thought of leaving Oxford before a breakthrough happened. He knew it would happen. It was only a matter of time. And it sure would be awesome if he could be around for it.
The doc looked at him appraisingly for a moment and then glanced over his shoulder but no one was anywhere near them. He leaned over and whispered in John’s ear. “I think I’ve found the key to the problem.”
John felt a thrill run through him like an electric shock. Had the answer been in the bucket filtration system all along? John tried to imagine a more perfect response to all the naysayers and jealous coworkers if it turned out that Dr. Heaton’s buckets really had been the answer.
“That’s awesome, sir. What is it?”
“Well, first, let me ask you. What do you think the commune does differently in treating their water?”
The commune? John’s heart began to race. Had the doc found his new idea from visits to the commune?
“Beyond boiling and filtering it? I don’t know.”
“Well, that was a trick question,” Heaton said, chuckling. “Because the answer has nothing to do with how they treat their water, different or otherwise.”
“What do you mean?”
“It has to do with their way of life.”
“Living outdoors?”
“More like the adjustments they’ve made to adapt to the new world order after the bomb dropped.”
John was silent for a moment. “You mean them using herbs when they get sick.”
“And one herb in particular.”
“The Dandy tea?”
Heaton stopped and looked at him, his brows drawn into a frown. “How did you know?”
“Just a guess. It’s the one thing they all drink. So you think it’s the tea?”
“I think it might be a chemical that’s in the tea.” Dr. Heaton began to walk again with John at his side.
“But Geordie says some of their people have gotten sick. Some even died.”
“I believe the way it’s prepared—as a brewed drink—is not as strong as it needs to be effective.”
“Is it a cure, do you think?”
“I think it’s everything.”
“Does this mean you’re going to tell the whole country to go boil dandelion leaves?”
“No, if what I think is correct, I should be able to find the curative ingredient so that it can be administered in concentrated form.”
“Geordie’s grandma says that’s what got us into this situation in the first place.”
“I have immense respect for Mrs. Bancroft. But I also believe science can enhance what nature has given us.”
“So you’ll create a chemical compound from the herb to be used as a final stage purification? Instead of chlorine?”
“Nay, lad. Didn’t I say? The herb doesn’t kill the virus in the water. It fights it in the body.”
“Wow.” John grinned at him. “It figures the Brits would find a way where tea is the answer to everything.”
Heaton laughed. “Too right, me boy!” They hurried up the stone walkway and through the archway toward the laboratory. Heaton was so excited about getting back to work on his new theory that he practically jogged down the halls. When they arrived at the lab, he fumbled with his keys to unlock the lab door and swung it open.
At first, John thought they’d opened the wrong door. He couldn’t immediately process what he was seeing.
The lab tables were all tipped over, chairs and stools broken or on their sides. Papers were littered everywhere. Beakers, pipettes and test tubes were cracked and scattered across the floor like a carpet of broken glass. The buckets were disemboweled and flung across the room, all the cabinet doors and drawers were open, their contents thrown on the floor. John stepped through the door behind Dr. Heaton who stood with his briefcase in his hand.
He stood over a pile of mangled dandelions ground into the linoleum.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
If someone had told John five years ago that there would come a time when he missed being in school he would flat not have believed them. The two-week school holiday after Christmas, while great in theory, was eventually way more than he needed or wanted. So he was thrilled when Gilly finally agreed to walk out to Geordie’s commune with him—even though it looked like more snow coming. What was not so thrilling was the break-in yesterday at the doc’s lab—and the fact that the doc asked him to keep it quiet.
Why didn’t he want to tell people? John could understand not telling Gilly. She worried about everything there was to worry about. She even outworried his mom and that was saying something. But he also made John promise not to mention it to Dr. Lynch or any of the other researchers in the lab. Since John was pretty sure the sabotage was the work of one of those other doctors, keeping it quiet didn’t make sense either.
All of the doc’s notes had been taken and while most of the test tubes were smashed, the larger equipment, the mixers and analyzers hadn’t been touched.
Almost as if someone expected to need them in future and wanted them in working order.
Although John didn’t understand why the doc wanted him to keep it all quiet, what he did know as well as he knew anything was that he should have said something the week before when his notebook had been messed with. If he’d said something then, would it have changed anything? The doc could hardly lock the lab any tighter than he had. Maybe they could have asked for a guard to be posted?
No, even John knew there was little chance of that happening no matter who the doc knew in high places. There wasn’t likely to be stronger security even after a break-in. After Dr. Heaton reported the incident to the university security staff, he just went about sweeping up the mess. When John asked him later if anything sensitive might have been taken, Finlay just tapped his head grimly and said: “Not unless they can get in here.”
*****
“Hey, Earth to John!” Geordie yelled, giving John a poke in the ribs. Gilly, John and he were sitting on the top slat of the fence that corralled the commune’s herd of goats. “I hope you’re thinking of a new way to milk a goat. The old way’s practically got my fingers worn to a nub.”
“Ha ha,” John said. It was a cold January day but the sun was shining and creating mesmerizing diamond effects on the fallen snow.
“So you’re not vegan?” Gilly asked Geordie. She hadn’t complained once about the long walk to the commune and John was grateful since the walk back always seemed twice as long and he didn’t have much hope she wouldn’t comment on it to him—over and over again before they were home.
“Oh, hell no. We have pigs and sheep. We’d do beef if it wasn’t so much work. But we trade out services and milk and stuff for that.”
“And not free love either,” John said nudging Geordie.
“Crikey no,” Geordie said. “Nor drugs. Although I’m pretty sure some of the older kids smoke weed.”
“But what’s the point?” Gilly asked. “I mean I can see why John’s family has to do it in Ireland because they don’t have their infrastructure any more, but here? We’ve got cars and electricity and pretty much everything we had before.”
“The elders in the commune—our parents and aunts and uncles—believe that living like this is better for us because it’s more natural. They think this plague is the direct result of some of the scientific messing about that’s been done with our medicines and our food.”
“So you’re one of those who’s never been vaccinated?”
“No, we’ve most of us been vaccinated. I don’t know about the ones born this year but we’re not crackpots. We just want a more honest way of life.”
“The way I live isn’t honest?”
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings.”
“But that’s what you think?”
Geordie looked at John who shrugged.
Mollified, Gilly looked at the paddock of goats.
“Do you go to school?”
“It’s not my thing.”
“How is it you two are friends then?”
“Oh, you mean because eggheads should only hang out with eggheads?” John said, arching an eyebrow. “Thanks a lot, Gilly.”
“I was just teasing.”
“Besides, we got a couple kids here who are keen for school and so they go.” Geordie shrugged. “We’re not anti education. We’re just pro personal learning styles.”
“That is actually pretty cool,” Gilly said.
John beamed with pride in her and it struck him that this was a new feeling. Was it possible he had a girlfriend?
*****
Two weeks.
It had been two full weeks since he, Finlay, had figured out the key to the damnable disease. Two weeks since the flash of brilliance had struck him. How many times had he thought about exactly where he was standing when the notion hit him? The media would want to know. The Nobel prize judges would ask. How deliciously agonizing it was to say nothing to Sandra and Daniel about what he’d found. They looked at him as if he were just ordinary or worse. And yet, he’d done it. He’d found the thing nobody else could find. Nobody in the whole world.
Except he hadn’t.
How was it possible that it wasn’t the tea? It had to be! And how many times in the last two weeks had he uttered those words? First mildly but confidently and finally in frustration and desperation.
It had to be the tea.
Only it wasn’t.
He looked at his hands as he sat at his lab bench in front of one of the heavy duty lab mixers. It wouldn’t do to throw the damn thing across the room—as if he could lift it. Even the bastards who’d trashed his lab had been respectful of the size and cost of the thing. How could it not be the dandelion tea? What possible sense did it make? He’d had no trouble extracting key compounds from the dandelions and making super strength concentrated tea. He’d done the tests a hundred times. But the tea had zero effect on the virus.
It wasn’t the buckets they used at the commune.
It wasn’t anything in the tea they drank.
His mobile phone buzzed and he saw it was Daniel again. This time a text: Answer your damn phone, Finlay, or I’m coming down there. Heaton sighed. Not now. Not now of all times. When was the last time he’d spoken to Daniel? Wasn’t it right after he’d gotten the idea about the dandelions? Just putting it into words made him cringe. Thank God he hadn’t said anything. It truly sounded as idiotic as it turned out it was.
He picked up the phone and punched in his brother’s private number.
“Finally,” Daniel growled. “What the hell, Finlay? I do have to answer to people, you know.”
“I know, Dan. So sorry, old chap. Beastly busy and all that.”
“Last time we talked you were hinting at a breakthrough. That was two weeks ago. Well?”
“Well, as it turns out, not as breaking as I’d hoped.”
“So nothing?”
“Well, not nothing. Every setback in research pushes you a little further ahead of where—”
“Yes, yes, Finlay. Spare me the encouraging mumbo-jumbo. Bottom line, no joy, is that right?”
“I fear so.”
“No worries, old stick. These things take time. Pecker up, forge ahead and all that.”
“You’re being bloody decent, Dan, I have to say.”
“Not at all. So is it the buckets?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The buckets. Are you still working on an improved bucket filtration system?”
“I…” Had he told Dan about the buckets? “Yes. That’s right.”
“Well, carry on then. And keep me informed. No rush but the higher ups need status reports. You understand.”
“Sure, Dan. I understand,” Finlay said before disconnecting and staring at the phone.
I understand. How jolly that meanwhile people were not dying by the hundreds. Children were not going to bed sick and then not waking up in the morning. No rush, Finlay. These things take time.
He put his head in his hands and lowered it to his workbench feeling the wash of defeat and despair wash over him like a tsunami of pummeling pain.
*****
Ethan White sat in the pub and watched his hands resting on the side of a glass of lager. He’d started coming here more and more in the last few months. At first it had been a balm. The noise of the place, even just a background murmur of voices, was soothing in a way. Nobody here knew him. It was too far from the college. Most of the others in the department went to the Portingon Inn. Close by. One pint. Usually just a half. Then home to the wife and kiddies. Ethan’s heart pinched painfully at the thought.
Even after all this time? I guess the pain really is forever when you screw up your life to the extent I did. God isn’t content with just ruining your marriage and murdering your wife and child. He has to make sure you suffer every breath of every minute for the rest of your life.
He brought the beer to his lips and drained it, setting the glass back on the wooden table with a satisfying thud.
So the bastard thinks he’s found something.
The rumor was it wasn’t just magic buckets this time, although Heaton was doing everything he could to make them all think he was still working on a better water filtration system. How’s that for collegial sharing? Even with Heaton’s own wife dead of the plague and the bastard still can’t bring himself to collaborate for the greater good.
The memory of Cynthia slid into Ethan’s mind like an invasive worm. Quiet, unobtrusive. But ready to suck all the pleasure out of life. He watched his fingers tighten around the empty glass.
What pleasure? A fucking beer alone in a pub? While Heaton prances about pretending to be near a cure.
Ethan fingered the hilt on his knife. He wore it in a leather sheath on his belt. Little Ben had made it for him as some sort of scout project. Ethan withdrew his hand and saw he was perspiring. What would the people in this pub think if they knew he worked with the killer plague virus every single day? Like all the other scientists in the lab, Ethan had the virus in a test tube on a shelf in his office. How else to find an answer to it? There were countless tests to be run. How else to prove that the millionth approach didn’t work? Yet again?
But also how best to prove once and for all and to everyone that Heaton had precisely bollocks for the cure? Ethan looked across the pub and watched the fire in the hearth.
It’s the stuff of every sappy Disney movie ever made, he thought with wonder. The distraught doctor comes up with a cure just in time to save the life of his beloved daughter who was stricken with the disease…
The tension in his hands eased around the glass and he felt an easing in his shoulders for the first time in months.
Wonder how frisky the bastard would feel then?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Something had happened. John didn’t know what but it wasn’t good.
After weeks of good moods and enthusiasm, now the doc came home lackluster and dragging his feet. Worse, now he brought the buckets home too. One night when the doc had gone up to bed just before dinnertime—something he’d started doing—John picked up a bucket left on the kitchen counter and saw that the doc had put a new mesh filter in it.
Like that was going to work! The doc had told John a thousand times how small the virus was. There was no way a mesh was going to catch it. Was this just a process that might lead to another way of thinking?
Or was it as desperate as it looked?
John had been so sure it was the dandelion tea. He couldn’t believe all of the doc’s tests came back negative. He’d been so sure! He’d tried on several occasions to engage the doc in questions about the failed dandelions.
“If it’s not the tea then why is the commune healthier than th
e rest of the country? Why aren’t they getting sick the same way?” But the doc was done talking about dandelion tea and the commune, too.
It was so frustrating. But as bad as it was for John it was worse for Gilly.
“It’s just you and me again tonight,” she said to him as she put two plates down on the table. “Dad’s gone to bed. Says he doesn’t feel well.”
“He’ll snap out of it. It’s just…a terrible disappointment.”
“He didn’t act like this when Mum died. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“It’s just that he was so sure he had it.” John should know. He was still reeling from the disappointment himself.
“What if he doesn’t snap out of it?”
“He will.”
“You don’t know that. What if he doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, Gilly. Should you call your uncle in London?”
Her eyes widened and she glanced upward in the direction of her father’s bedroom.
“Not yet,” she said. “He’d kill me if I did. But if he gets much worse, I will.”
She’d made beans on toast with slivers of pork roast. It was a favorite of John’s—and of the doc’s too. John felt guilty for enjoying it so much. He had three helpings.
The new date for his crossing to Ireland was in two days, the day after the first day back to school. There didn’t seem to be much reason to wait and while John was excited about seeing his mother and Mike again, a bigger part of him was sorry not to be continuing on with school. He looked at Gilly as she cleared the table. This was probably a super bad time to be leaving her, he thought. The doc’s a basket case and with me gone she has nobody but him.
Should he stay? How about if he went over just long enough to tell his mom he was fine and then came right back? Was that crazy? In the last few weeks he’d thought about every possible scenario and most of them came down to the fact that leaving didn’t feel right. Not just yet. On the other hand, if he had any hope of ever getting back to Ireland, Dr. Heaton and his medical transport were probably it. Even the doc said things were heating up and the transport might not be an option in another couple of weeks.
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 43