“What if the loser is having sex?” Dean asked.
“Yep. So when I come knocking on that bathroom door of yours, Dean, the fantasy must stop for diaper duty.”
Dean grumbled some. “You’re on.” He stood up too. “Come on, Robbie. Ellen has a scale back here in the examining room.” Dean walked to the door behind Joe’s desk, not paying any attention to the fact that Joe had tossed his pencil in the air in meeting time defeat. “In here.” He opened the door.
Robbie followed Dean in. “Dean, you’re gonna lose.”
Joe leaned further back in his chair. He stared at Henry when Robbie, Dean, and Frank disappeared into the other room. “Why do I even bother, Henry? You and I will have our meeting as soon as I get rid of these three.” He jolted forward when he heard Dean whined loudly, then Frank laugh after. “Dean lost.”
Dean stomped from the back examining room. “Shut up, Frank.”
“Day and night. Ha!” Frank plopped in his chair next to Dean.
Sulking, Dean leaned. “How did you that? How did you guess his weight so exactly.”
“Easy.” Frank told him. “I weighed him in here about two hours ago. I saw him and I said, ‘man Robbie are you skinny,’ so we weighed him.”
“You what!” Dean sat up. “What the hell was all that dramatic feeling him and picking him up?”
Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. You bought it though, didn’t you?”
“You cheated Frank,” Dean pointed. “All bets are off.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dean. They are not. You did not make it contingent on whether I had weighed him already or not. Too bad . . . “He saw Dean’s mouth open. “Shut up . . . you lose.” He stopped Dean again. “Baby.”
Like a tattle tale, Dean turned to Joe. “Joe!”
“Dean. Enough.” Joe picked up his notes. “Now we’ll start, get you three out of here and then Henry and I can have a real meeting. First.” He cleared his throat shutting up Dean or Frank before anymore can be said. “Dean, I need you to meet with Jason and me at the clinic tomorrow morning for that little experiment you agreed to participate in.” He held up his hand. “Before you say anything, Frank is doing it after my meeting with Henry.” He shifted to the next item. “Virus update, Dean. What do you have on it?”
“We’re getting close. We think that we can, without a doubt, cure the original strain of the virus.”
Joe nodded but hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “So you beat it?”
“No, not at all. The original strain we beat . . .” Dean saw he was losing them. “All right. We have witnessed three forms of the virus. There is the one we brought back from the future trip, the one which infected Robbie’s men, and then the host virus. The original virus.”
“Which you’ve seen when?” Joe asked. “When did you see the host virus?”
“When we gave Robbie the antiserum.”
Joe’s eyes widened. “So it wasn’t an antiserum? It was actually the virus. Was this a set up?”
“No.” Dean shook his head. “It was definitely an antiserum. The only thing, it just didn’t work on those already infected. George, for some reason wanted it to work on Robbie but it wouldn’t have. See, an antiserum, a good one, is done by injecting a small amount of the original strain or host virus into the person to build up immunities. When we injected Robbie with the antiserum it had a negative effect. Instead of curing him, it actually gave him the host virus. The host virus therefore took over the virus in Robbie’s blood. And by a shot in the dark, one of our agents, combined with other little things, kicked its ass.”
Joe looked pleased. “So we’re out of the woods here?” He smiled. “When they release the virus on us, we’ll beat it with the combination and that agent of yours.”
“No.” Dean hated to tell him. “Unless they inject each and every one with the host virus, it will mutate and we won’t get it.”
“But you’ll be able to cure those who have the host virus?” Joe asked. “To infect us they have to drop it on us, right?”
“Right,” Dean said. “But those who catch it, say second wave, we will not be able to cure. So in an essence, we’re still at a loss unless we get the host virus. Then what we would do is inject those second or third wave people with it and repeat the process that happened to Robbie. Which brings us to another problem.”
Hating to hear, Joe tortured himself. “What problem is that?”
“As I said before, the symptoms are as deadly as the virus. We still stand a lot of risk losing lives to the symptoms. But I guarantee we save a lot more lives than we lost in that future I went into.”
Robbie raised his hand in question, “What if they don’t drop it on us, what then? What if they send a few infected people in here. Those people wouldn’t have the original strain would they? If that was the case, no one would be cured.”
Dean shook his head in disagreement. “I’m going to say no on a couple points, Robbie. One, George would have to send at least twenty people in here with it. It’s not airborne. They’d come down with it while in containment. How many people would they physically come in contact with? Ellen? She’s not a carrier. You? You no longer are a carrier. And as far as Joe and Jason go or Dan, how much physical contact will they have with these survivors? Not much. George knows this. He knows it won’t get out of hand that way.”
Frank decided to go further on Robbie’s question. “What about if he injected these people with the original strain?”
“Then we’d have a bunch of the host in which we could use to infect others in order to cure them. But . . . it won’t happen. When you directly inject someone with the host sample of the virus, they almost immediately become ill, therefore doing away with any incubation period. If George say . . air drops it in, we will immediately have everyone infected, which won’t be so bad because we can beat it. Ellen and I are gonna start producing our agent for the masses. However, like I said before, we don’t know how he’s gonna do it, if he does it. And then there’s our worst case scenario. Everyone comes down with it all at once and they don’t have the original strain, which is nearly impossible. Because the only way everyone is going to come down with it at the same time, is if they are all exposed to the same source, a source with the original strain.”
Joe understood. “But if that happens, the masses would fall ill after the source with the original strain and by that point, you would know who had the original strain and you would be able to use their blood?”
Dean nodded. “Yes as part of our cure. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Joe. I know all of this sounds good, like we have beaten this but there’s something I can’t beat. That is the symptoms. Only the person infected can do that. Example, Robbie . . .” Dean pointed to him. “Look at the toll the virus took on him.”
Robbie ran his hand down his own chest. “I’m still the best looking man in Beginnings.”
Frank rolled his eyes. “And the skinniest man now too.”
Dean reached down to his pile of folders. “There is something I’d like to say.” He grabbed one and set it on Joe’s desk. “This goes no further than this room. It can’t. The only reason I’m letting Ellen know this is because she helped figure it out. But for security, Andrea, Jason, Johnny, no one is to know we’ve beaten the original strain. As far as Ellen and I mass producing agent 17, we’re doing that in the cryo-lab after hours. We have to. As much as I trust Andrea and Johnny and Jason, I can’t take a chance, even minor, that it gets to John Matoose. If John Matoose leaks to George that we’ve beaten the original strain, he may change the virus or just as easy hit us with a second wave. We don’t want that. We need him to hit us with the original strain or have someone among us with it so we can use their blood.”
Though Joe understood, he still saw problems, security leaks or not. “But he still could hit us with the second strain whether he knows about the cure or not and then we’re screwed.”
“Not entirely.” Dean opened the folder. “As long as George is
clueless, then we still have our, ‘fingers crossed’ ace in the hole host.” He saw their lost looks. “In the future we brought back samples. In the future there were three forms of the virus. The ones who came down with it first. The ones that come down with it second and . . . the original host. We confirmed that sample with the antiserum. The original host was in the Beginnings future.”
Amongst the ruffling chairs, Joe spoke up. “You know which people infect us? You know the carriers?”
“Carrier,” Dean spoke. “This person did not start the plague. They were the only one with the host virus. This person came down with it in the middle.”
This confused Joe even more. “How can be, Dean? How can one person come down with the original strain in the middle of a plague? That would be nearly impossible . . . unless.” Joe let out a breath and sat back. “They were injected with it.”
Dean raised his eyebrows. “That’s what we think. That’s the only way it could have happened. So, we let George think we have no cure. His person injects this person. When they get sick, we have our host to cure the others in Beginnings.”
“Who?” Joe asked. “Who is it?”
Dean pushed him the folder. “Jenny Matoose. I think she finds out about John and he hits her with it. Which means he’s gonna have the original strain on him. If we can possibly divert him from hitting her with it, then we can find it on him. Keeping Ellen on Jenny is good. The closer Ellen is to the situation, the more we can monitor what Jenny finds out,. They talk. I didn’t think it was possible, but this wedding thing is making them act like friends. With Ellen right there, we’re one step ahead than we were in the future. We watch and see what happens with Jenny. She can be the key, if the future holds true, to beating this thing if they don’t hit us with the original strain.”
Joe brought the folder closer, peering down to it as he spoke. “So behind the scenes, you guys have the original strain beat. To everyone outside this room, you are working on a cure, which you still will,” Joe instructed. “And we watch Jenny, because obviously she finds something out that causes her death. But she won’t die in this history, will she Dean?”
“Nope. Not as long as she has the original strain she won’t.” He looked at the pleased faces. “Unless the symptoms kill her. We still have those to consider.” He hunched at the moans that emanated because he had to add that damper to his hopeful answer. “Sorry.”
“All right. That’s done,” Joe continued.
Dean stood up. “Can I go, Joe. I have so much to do.”
“Yeah sure go ahead,” Joe told him.
“Thanks.” Gathering his folders from the floor, Dean smiled at everyone but Frank, then hurriedly left before he could be pulled into anymore discussions.
“Dean?” Joe called out but it was too late. “Eh.” He pushed the folder aside. “He forgot this. I’ll give it to him later. O.K., Frank, your turn. Tell Robbie why he is here.”
Frank turned to Robbie. “Starting tomorrow, you fly reconnaissance morning and evenings.”
Robbie was shocked about that. “What about Johnny.”
Frank looked at his father first. “Johnny won’t be flying them anymore. He chose not to.” He tossed his hands up. “You all right with that? Besides, you aren’t strong enough yet to really work.”
“I am too,” Robbie spoke defensively, “but no problem. I’ll fly them. But not tonight. Tonight I was going to hang out with Ellen.” He saw his father shake his head no. “Dad, come on I need that time. Or are you in this big thing to get Frank back together with Ellen. I’m not a threat, honestly, I just like to hang with her.”
Henry huffed. “You just hung out with her in quarantine for seven days.”
“And we bathed together,” Robbie grinned. “Did I tell you that Henry.”
“Robert,” Joe scolded.
“Joe your son.”
“Is awesome.” Robbie smiled. “Thanks Henry.”
But paper thin.” Frank added.
“Please, I can kick still kick your ass,” Robbie taunted.
“Still. Never.” Frank scoffed, “Even on your best days you couldn’t take me. Right now, all I have to do is blow on you and you’ll fall over.”
“Frank.” Robbie laughed at him. “You’re getting old, Bro. I can take you even now.”
“Could not.”
“Could too.”
“Prove it.”
“Let’s go.” Robbie stood up.
“You’re on.” Frank stood also. He saw Joe staring up from the desk at them. “Dad, do you mind?”
“No, go on have fun.”
Frank smiled. “Thanks. Let’s go Robbie. Let me kick your ass.” He motioned his hand to the door.
“Don’t have a heart attack on me, Frank. You know how you old guys get.” He opened the door.
“Don’t break, Robbie, You know how you skinny guys get” Frank followed him out.
“Frank,” Joe called to him waving his hand for him to step in.
“Yeah Dad?” Frank poked his head through the door.
“He’s still sick. Take it easy on him.”
“Not a problem,” Frank agreed. “I’ll let him beat on me for a while. Coming home with a black eye should breed a little sympathy from Ellen.” He backed up and shut the door.
<><><><>
It was a tedious task to George, standing there acting so impressed while bored to the point he nearly fell over twice when he started to doze standing up. But it was his project and he had to watch those mice experiments. It reminded him of the days when Dean used to bore everyone with once a week medical updates. How glad George was back in those early Beginnings days when Dean finally got the hint and only shared his knowledge when anyone asked. George often wondered did anyone ever ask? He for one never did. But perhaps, maybe if he did, he may have some bases of knowledge when listening to his own scientist. But he didn’t. The reason his scientists didn’t grasp the concept of why they had to hand in reports in layman’s terms was beyond George.
After an hour the mice experiment was over so George excused himself from the lab and hoped to make an exit to hide out for an hour, and catch his afternoon nap. He had his own plan to get ready. He had men to get out. It was only five more days until the Robbie-plan-two was going into effect. Robbie was better. He wasn’t sick anymore and he was strong. George knew when he finished with him,. Robbie would be much stronger.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Oh my God! Frank!” Ellen leaped up from her chair in her office and ran from her desk when she saw Frank holding the side of his face and stumbling through the door. “Oh my God!” The closer she got she saw how dirty he was and the blood that formed at the edge of his nostril. “What happened to you?”
“El,” he spoke weakly, wobbling.
“Here.” She grabbed his arm and helped him in. “We should get you to the clinic.”
“No. I just need you.”
“Frank.” She said his name with such concern, helping him to sit down in the chair. “What happened to you?” She walked to in front of him pulling down the hand that covered his face. She gasped at the bruise and small cut on his eye brow. “How did this happen? Did a bunch of men attack you? What?”
Frank moaned in pain.
“I’ve never seen you like this.” She ran her hand down his face. “Let me go get you some ice, sweetie.” She ran her hand gently down his face again and darted from the room.
Frank turned his head to the door. He grinned widely, clenched his fist and pulled it close to him with a silent ‘yes’.
“Here.” Ellen ran back in.
Frank’s happy demeanor switched back.
“Now tell me what happened.” Ellen began to wash off his face. “How did you get beat up?”
“Robbie.”
Ellen’s hand lowered. “Robbie? But he’s never been able to beat you, and now he’s sick.”
“I know El. Why do you think I look like this? I couldn’t . . .” He gave a fake flinch of pain whe
n she touched him. “I couldn’t . . . hit him. He’s not strong. He got mad at me and hit me and kept hitting me.” Frank’s head dropped. “What was I supposed to do? Beat him up? I couldn’t do that.”
“You did the right thing.” Ellen handed him the ice to hold on him. “Wait until I bitch him out.”
“Please do.” His head dropped again. “I feel so bad.”
“Ah Frank.” Ellen hunched down closer to him. “It’s all right.”
“El.” He raised his eyes. “Could you just . . . hold me?”
Ellen’s expression dropped and she stood straight up. “Frank, you’re an asshole.”
“What?” His head sprang up. “What did I do?”
“You had me. You had me up until you said ‘hold me’ When do you ever say that?” She grabbed the wet towel and tossed it at him. “What is wrong with you? I should have known. When do you whine? Now, what really happened? Tell me the truth.”
“Robbie and I were fooling around, having fun.”
She gasped outward. “I knew it.” As she tried to step back, Frank reached for her, pulled her to him and she landed on his lap. “Frank.”
“This will make me feel better, El.” He swung her legs over his.
“Frank.” She struggled to get from his lap.
“Shh.” Frank watched his own hand as it moved to her leg and slowly up it. He grinned then shifted his views to Ellen who stared. He softened his voice. “You’re not trying to get away.” Frank swallowed “Why?”
“I like . . .” She watched his hand creep to her thigh. “I like . . .” It slid around to the side and her eyes moved to meet Frank’s. “I like this.”
“Good.” His other hand moved up her back and his fingers gripped behind her neck. “I like this too.” Moving his body up and Ellen into him, Frank brought his hand from her leg to Ellen’s face and softly spread his fingers across her cheek. “I like this a lot.” Tilting his head sideways, he brushed the tip of his nose against hers as he playfully moved his parted lips in for a tease kiss. He pulled back, snickered, closed his eyes, and brought his face closer to Ellen’s.
The Big Ten: The First Ten Books of the Beginnings Series Page 276