by John Ringo
“Strip?” Richard said.
“Yes,” Tom said. “In all of the cases that have come to the attention of the police, the subject has been naked.”
“That seems…” Dr. Bradford J. Depene was not as tall as his boss, by nearly a foot, but he weighed at least twice as much. He and Tom were not by any stretch of the imagination best buddies. Depene had been born with a silver spoon and had apparently used it as hard as he possibly could his whole life. Tom really wasn’t as bothered by the gross obesity as by the fact that while unquestionably brilliant, Depene had the common sense of a duckling. “That seems sort of…”
“The term you’re looking for is obscene,” Richard said. “Any idea…why? Just for the embarrassment factor? Pornographic?”
“If it’s intentional, it’s smart,” Dr. Curry said. “But can I cover that later?”
“Continue,” Bateman said.
“After the formication period things vary. There are so far twenty-four identified patients in the U.S. None of those have gone through the full series while under observation. Most have presented symptoms outside quarantine: In other words they were picked up by the cops as crazy, naked people before they were identified as being H7 infected. There have been nine of those in the U.S. so far who were in advanced neurological stage. One has died while under care and one is critical. That’s not a statistical study but it looks as if this is also a real killer neurologically.”
“Twenty percent death rate?” Bateman asked.
“Right at that is what it looks like,” Curry said, shrugging. “Data is still firming up. However, in the meantime they’re a handful. ‘Extreme homicidal psychosis with reduced mental capacity’ is the current psychobabble diagnosis. Think lobotomized and violent as hell. Very bitey. No coherent sentient response. No language per se. Just basically animal responses and aggressive animals at that. L.A. General is starting to fill up their padded rooms. One customer per or they try to kill each other.
“Currently there’s a statistical lean to male. Of the twenty-four, sixteen are male. All three of the terminal were male, two of the three critical are male. But that could be from any number of factors including where the infection started and how it spread. SARS looked male leaning for a while due to how it was spreading. Again, we’ll know more in a week. They’re still examining suspect patients and known subjects who are identified as infected or probably infected. There’s a slightly less strong lean to male among those. Stats and other indicators as well as potential treatments will start firming up over the next few days. Again, first identification as an outbreak was only yesterday. These are early days.”
“What do we do about it?” Bateman asked. “We being the bank as well as in general.”
“If it had been a normal and natural outbreak I think we could get ahead of this thing,” Curry said, shrugging. “As it is… It’s spread all over, it has delayed onset of symptoms, two delays, and it’s infective as hell. Airborne and blood pathogen with a violent vector on the latter? That’s infective as hell. There are probably people going into neurological state all over the place that are being viewed as ‘the usual sort of thing.’”
“The usual sort of thing?” Depene asked. “Naked people are normal?”
“Police have to deal with naked subjects more than most people realize,” Tom said. “Any large department will deal with someone nude and incoherent at least once a week. Often extremely violent. In New York as often as once a day. It really was only when L.A. was dealing with six in one day that anyone started looking for a central source and even then they were looking at drugs. Surprisingly it didn’t make the blogs at all. At least, not noticeably. It will soon.”
“We’d been tracking this new ‘flu’ already, mind you,” Curry said. “It took about a day for UCLA Med to put two and two together. The sort of people who are naked and crazy normally have other illnesses and this sudden outbreak ‘seasonal flu’ was considered to be symptom rather than cause. Then CDC noted that this was not a seasonal flu so the alerts starting going up given the locus and spread was not following standard models. Then one of the police who had dealt with Patient Zero, and been bitten, started to manifest neurological symptoms At that point they realized they were dealing with a neurological pathogen.
“To answer the original question: The only real chance we have is general public and government response. Strong influenza protocols along with some changes in Rules of Engagement by law enforcement will slow this, maybe even stop it. It’s less about the bug right now than it is about general immunology protocols. Your offices already have hand sanitizers. Ensure they get used and if somebody won’t, well, send ’em home or fire ’em. Ditto anyone showing any flulike symptoms. Don’t shake hands. Don’t shake hands. Ever. For any reason. Wash your hands thoroughly several times a day. Right now, usual drill is all we’ve got. Ask me again in a week if there’s a change.
“As to the nastier symptoms: This is New York. Telling the difference between a crazy homeless guy and one of the infected is going to be a bit dicey at first. But if somebody is clean-cut, basically clean and running around screaming, biting and naked, they’re probably in advanced neurological stage. Be warned: It definitely has a blood pathogen component. And the onset is direct to neurological and fast. The police officer who was bitten started beginning symptoms of neurological stage in six hours. So for our security personnel, Mr. Smith, at the first sign of incoherence on the part of an employee or visitor, especially if they start gittin nekkid, you need to taser first, then ask questions from hazmat. Do not allow yourself to get bitten.”
“Roger,” Tom said, making a note. “Mr. Bateman?”
“Confirmed,” Bateman said. “We’ll promulgate that.”
“If I may, sir,” Tom said. “Best to promulgate that anyone acting incoherent for the purposes of humor will be fired if found to be noninfected. There are people who are going to push this.”
“Also agreed,” Bateman said. “This is nothing to joke about.”
“And, sorry, gentlemen, that has to go for any rank,” Dr. Curry said, looking at the assembled executives. “If one of you has any habit of bipolar reactions or schizophrenia, if you go off your meds, just figure you’re going to get tasered. And if it’s just a freak-out, say ‘Thank you Mister Security guard for tasering me’ when they determine you’re not infected. On that: Right now there’s no way to tell short of a blood test. They’re rolling out nasal antibody tests sometime this week. But that’s for the flu. We’re not sure if they work for the neurological since we’ve never seen a dual expression rhinovirus. Also everybody and their brother is looking for a vaccine. Any hint on that, I’ll pass through Mr. Smith. Questions?”
“No antivirals that it’s not resistant to?” Bateman asked. The CEO was clearly unhappy that there were essentially no useful measures to take. “There are ways to get antivirals which…aren’t available in the U.S.”
“None,” Dr. Curry said, grinning mirthlessly. “Whoever did this armored it up. There aren’t even any that are near approval in Europe. Which tells me there is a vaccine. You’re not going to create something that you’re not going to survive. The combination of ‘intelligent enough to create a world-killer flu,’ ‘crazy enough to do it’ and ‘suicidal’ is too small a pool. Similar personality types, mind you, but not overlapping. Whoever did this intends to survive it. Which means there’s a vaccine. Not a cure, mind you. So you’d better hope there’s a vaccine before you or your family catch it. Next.”
“Cover the ‘making it so they strip is smart,’” Tom said.
“I’m going to have to say a word everybody is avoiding,” Curry said with a snort. “Starts with a z. Anybody want to say it before me? Mr. Bateman?”
“Zombie?” Bateman said. “As long as it doesn’t leave the confines of this room.”
“One thing that always bugged me about biological zombies,” Curry said, musingly, “at least the ones that were something like realistic. Say I am Legend. They
’ve got to crap. Every species eliminates waste. If you can’t figure out how to use a door handle, how are you going to take off your pants to take a crap? And modern clothing is going to plug it up. Eventually the subject dies of impaction and necrosis.”
“So you really think that was built in?” Depene asked.
“The words that are on every message about this are ‘lethal and sophisticated,’” Curry said. “It’s why people are saying it has to be a nation-state. But I don’t buy it. If it had been a nation-state there would have been an unusual round of vaccinations somewhere. Trust me, WHO looks for those as much as it looks for plagues. There haven’t been. Not even, say, the Iranian Supreme Council. And what you can do with bugs these days with stuff off of eBay is insane. At least if you know what you’re doing. And not even that. A reporter built Spanish Flu in his damned kitchen! Then there’s people all over hoping to be the next biological Wozniak playing around in their houses with…stuff. Usually not pathogens but there’s an entire industry of tinkerers with biology! Okay, I’m one of them but I know what I’m doing! This isn’t inventing a new computer or the model T. This is the basic building blocks of life and you don’t go playing with them like they’re Legos. Or you eventually get something like, well… This,” he concluded with a sigh.
“Ten to one what we’re going to find is this is some kid, under thirty, probably with a bachelor’s degree, didn’t complete his masters, and angry at the world. I could figure out how to do this pathogen. The people at, well, my level admit we’ve all figured out how to do a ‘zombie virus’ given current tech. But nobody has been stupid enough to actually do it. Until now.”
“How?” Depene said. “I mean in general. That sounds like…science fiction?”
“Tell that to your smartphone,” Curry grumped. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we live in a science fiction world. Okay. One: Rabies doesn’t just make the brain swell. That’s a side effect of what it’s doing to the brain. That foam doesn’t come from nowhere. Rabies works by effecting production of certain neurotransmitters. Two: There are other, lesser known, pathogens which have targeted effect on other portions of the brain. Three: There’s a lot about the brain we don’t understand, but we do know how to mess it up. We know the basic centers and neurotransmitters for about everything simple: Love, anger, hunger, memory, pattern recognition… Four, open the door: From AIDs research we know how to stick genes in eukaryotic cells and even target the type of cells. We know how to get cells to sequence certain proteins, also known as neurotransmitters. Put all that together with the pathogens we already know, like toxoplasmosis, modifying them to mess up the brain is easy. You can even make them only target certain individuals or groups genetically. Well, I could. But I didn’t do it. I’ve got an alibi.”
“How long have people like…yourself…?” Bateman asked, frowning.
“People who are actual researchers,” Curry said with another of those mirthless grins. “Or who work as consultants to afford all the conferences and papers? And who understand them? About two years ago it was generally recognized that you could do a zombie virus. Which is one of those ‘Only adults in the room and we’ve had too much scotch’ discussions. Not for open conference. We’d estimated the general ‘monkey in the basement’ would be able to do it in about five. So they’re three years ahead of our most optimistic schedule. Which is why those same sort of people-on closed boards and who know about this-are arguing for it being a major effort. something big, expensive and noticeable. This kind of breakthrough generally is at the beginning. Maybe an experiment at one of the universities or research centers that was in development and got swiped. One of the reasons bandied around in those drunken discussions to come up with one is that you were guaranteed to make headlines and headlines mean funding. I’m one of the minority arguing for mad scientist. Or mad, angry, former grad student. Bright, mind you. Brilliant even. Skipped right past three or four steps. That takes real mad-scientist genius.”
“Quite mad,” Bateman said. “Doctor, what are your plans?”
“I’m thinking island in the Carribean,” Dr. Curry said. “But Mr. Smith has made me a very generous offer of semi-permanent consultant until this is over one way or the other. I’ve been around enough research and on WHO teams to have stared this sort of death, in general, in the eye before. Not looking forward to losing my mind, mind you. It’s my only real asset. If you’re asking if I’ll hang in there with one of the richest and best prepared banks in the world…We’ll talk. Depends on the fringe benefits.”
“Such as?” Bateman asked.
“I understand you have a retreat point,” Curry said, shrugging. “I don’t, really. Assuming we get to that point, I and one other are guaranteed a slot on the planes or whatever.”
“Do we have a retreat point?” Depene asked. “And why aren’t we going there now?”
“Because we’re not anywhere near that point, Brad,” Bateman said with a sigh. “It’s not about a downtick in the stock market. We evacuate only when that point has been reached.”
“And when is ‘that point’?” Depene asked.
“I’ll let Mr. Smith cover that,” Bateman said. “Tom?”
“There is a specific condition under which the Federal Reserve ‘temporarily’ terminates operations,” Tom said. “For the duration of a global emergency. But upon either suspension of trade ‘for the duration of the emergency’ or upon vote of the board to suspend business activities for same, we then and only then activate the Executive and Special Personnel Evacuation Exercise. Which is generally called E-S-P. Meaning ‘when’ is ultimately up to Mr. Bateman and/or the Board and/or the Fed, which means I’ll be reading my crystal ball. If, in my opinion, the security situation, including biological security situation, has degraded past operability I will request Mr. Bateman to so inform the Board. But that is only if the Fed doesn’t act first. So… You may know before I do, Dr. Depene. As to Dr. Curry’s request, I’d suggest that that be discussed in a separate meeting as well as any hostile environment business plans.”
“Agreed,” Bateman said. “Dr. Curry, your contract is at the least extended for the duration of the emergency. Usual bonuses. And we’ll be with you by Monday on inclusion in the evacuation plan.”
“I can wait that long,” Curry said. “I need to get back into the information stream.”
“We all do,” Bateman said, blowing out a heavy breath. “And I need to get a statement prepared for investors…”
CHAPTER 3
“Is the boat going to be able to hold all of this?” Faith asked. “And how are we getting it there? Pushing?”
When you’ve basically bought a Costco out of toilet paper and feminine hygiene products, these were reasonable questions, if poorly timed.
“We can strap some to the roof of the Nissan,” Stacey said, looking around the pile of toilet paper on the pallet. She certainly couldn’t see over it. They’d gotten some very odd looks but no serious questions. “Stocking up for hurricane season” was the simplest answer. And it wasn’t like anyone in Williamsburg knew who they were. She grimaced in annoyance when her phone rang. But it was Tom’s burn phone number.
“Tom?” Stacey said. “Hang on a second. We’re walking across a parking lot.”
“Roger,” Tom asked. “What’s your status?”
“Nominal so far,” Stacey said, keying open the doors. “Inside for the chat, girls.”
“Public places are to be avoided,” Tom pointed out.
“Toilet paper is a right not a privilege,” Stacey said getting in the car and putting the phone on speaker. “Okay, we’re all in. Go.”
“Everybody there?” Tom asked over the speakerphone.
“Steve’s negotiating the boat,” Stacey said. “Go.”
Tom covered the highlights, such as they were, of Dr. Curry’s analysis.
“Naked zombies?” Faith said. “Gross!”
“Makes sense to me,” Stacey said. “If they kept their clothes on and are still
‘alive’ they’d have difficulty with waste passage.”
“That means they couldn’t shit, Faith,” Sophia said.
“I know what it means!” Faith said. “Yuck again!”
“Short time, here,” Tom said seriously. “End of the world stuff.”
“Sorry, Uncle Tom,” Sophia said, just as seriously. “We’re just having a hard time…”
“Go, Tom,” Stacey said.
“Increasing incoherency to an essentially animal state. In that state hyperaggression. May be just the cases so far identified but aggression seems to be increased. Very bitey from the reports from the West Coast-which also spreads because of the blood pathogen effect. At least one cop who dealt with a case is infected. Six confirmed cases on the East Coast, four in Asia. Confirmed. CDC has decided to go public at noon. News media is already asking questions.
“They’re looking at a vaccine. Go.”
“Any pre-symptoms notable other than ‘flulike’?” Sophia asked.
“Nothing particular,” Tom said. “Not until second stage. May not be blood pathogen until then. General flu prevention procedures, which is what the ‘powers-that-be’ are going to be calling for. Swine flu again but this is already spread, probably world-wide, and spreading fast. Stand by… Pasteur confirms cases in England and France… Six now in Hong Kong alone…I need to cut this short. I’ve got another meeting.”
“We’re using the Aurelius Corporation plan,” Stacey said. “Can you…do something about it? We’d prefer to avoid actually stealing the yacht.”
“How much?” Tom asked.
“One forty,” Stacey said with a wince.
“Done,” Tom said. “I’ll authorize the transfer as soon as we’re off the phone. What’s the cover name?”
“Jason Ranseld. R-A-N-S-E-L-D.”
“I’ll take care of it. Just get offshore.”
“How is your jump plan?” Stacey asked.
“If they come up with a vaccine, nominal,” Tom said. “If they don’t, you don’t want me infecting you. Out here.”