Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

  “In in order for me to tell you what this thing is, it’s actually easier for me to tell you what it’s not. It’s not a bacteria. All the antibiotics in the world won’t touch this critter. It’s not a fungus. It’s not a disease. And, there’s even some speculation on whether or not FALCON is truly alive, at least as we understand it. So, let’s move on to what it is.” He switched to the next screen. “FALCON stands for . . . First strike weaponized, Atmospheric enabled, Low survivability, Command level, Organic, Nanotechnology. And believe it or not, that’s pretty much exactly what it is. Let me briefly dissect that.”

  Oakley took a sip from the cup next to the laptop before continuing. “First strike weaponized—simply put, this is not a natural phenomena, it’s a weapon. Like most biological weapons, its roots reach back into the natural world, but this particular one has been tinkered and tampered with on levels that would make Einstein cringe. Atmospheric enabled—this does not only mean that it’s able to be dropped on an enemy via an airplane or something similar. It also means that it’s transmissible through non-direct contact. In other words, one of the ways it’s contagious is through airborne vectors. Low survivability—this means it’s fatal to about ninety-eight percent of the people it’s able to infect. There is a caveat here that we’ll get into later, though. Command level—this is a national security marker that probably less than 200 people globally would qualify for. We’re talking the president, vice president, the heads of our various intelligence agencies, top military brass . . . those kinds of people. In other words, not us. Well, I guess we’ve all been promoted. And that brings us to the last two; the two that really define what we’re up against. I’m going to be jumping back and forth between them to better explain. Organic nanotechnology.” Oakley flipped slowly through several screens, finally stopping at a picture of an obviously dead, human female strapped to a medical procedure table. The picture was black and white, but even so we could recognize the grayish cast to the skin.

  “You’re looking at ‘Betty’ . . . which is what the researchers apparently called the first successful clinical trial of FALCON. Who says that evil scientists don’t have a sense of humor. She was the first, or the Alpha test subject, and somebody propagated that word further into Alpha-bet. That, of course, morphed into Betty.” He turned and looked at the audience. “When you think of nanotechnology, what comes to mind?”

  Mr. Lee raised his hand. “Tiny little robots.”

  “Yes, that is exactly correct. Keep that thought in mind.” The view screen moved to another microscopic image. “Nanotechnology, to most people, is the science of using microscopic machines to accomplish a desired task. The potential applications are mind-blowing, but so are the technological hurdles that are in the way. Again, I’m going to try and keep this on a very basic level. To be a successful ‘little machine’ you have to be small enough, you have to be powered somehow, and you have to be able to work both individually as well as with other little machines. There’s also something else that most scientists consider the holy grail of nano-design—self replication. In other words, how can we get the little machines to make more identical little machines? Fortunately, nature has already answered these questions.”

  The image on the screen showed a snakelike tube with a twisting, curled end. “What you’re looking at, for all intents and purposes, is nanotechnology. It’s not made out of metal, it doesn’t have a little battery pack, but it’s small, active towards its specific purpose, and it can replicate itself. This is a virus. This particular one has been in the news for several decades. You’ve heard of it, it’s Ebola.” He flipped through several more images. “Here we have the influenza virus, and this next one is hepatitis. Whatever the case, they all share some similar traits. Each of them contain some DNA or RNA, a layer of protein to protect that genetic material, and some of them have a covering of lipids. Viruses are basically tiny, self replicating, organic machines.”

  “So FALCON is a virus?” Crowbar Mike asked.

  “No, but I need everybody to understand a little microbiology before I move on.” He clicked at the screen, and the original FALCON image appeared again. “FALCON, like I said, is not a bacteria, or fungus, or even a virus. It’s a weaponized prion.”

  “A what?” Lynn asked.

  “Bear with me people . . . give me a chance to explain and we’ll get to your questions after. FALCON is a prion. Prions are still somewhat of a medical mystery, because they don’t follow a lot of the rules that we’ve come to understand about how things are supposed to work biologically. They do not contain any genetic material. No DNA or RNA. They are a protein, and we believe they replicate by basically folding themselves and causing other nearby proteins to follow suit. Now again, I don’t want to get too detailed or bury you in nonessential techno-crap. What you need to understand is that this particular little nasty has been altered on a nano level by people whose names probably never appeared in any journals of medicine. Even with the technology that I’ve been exposed to, the scope of this thing boggles my mind.” He took another sip from this cup and then turned to face Lynn. “Believe it or not, you’ve all heard about prion infections. The most commonly heard are Bovine spongiform encephalopathy—BSE—also known as mad cow disease. There’s also CWD—chronic wasting disease—which you hear about in the deer and elk populations.”

  I traded looks with Michelle. Anybody who works in the natural resources management knows about CWD.

  “So now you know on a base level what’s causing this epidemic . . . let’s move ahead and I’ll show you how.” He flipped through several more slides of microscopic views before stopping at the image of a child practically eaten up with open sores. “You’re looking at a picture of a young man from the Philippines. The wounds that you see were caused by an infection of smallpox. The WHO, or World Health Organization, has practically eradicated smallpox through an intensive vaccination process. We’ve all been vaccinated against a variety of different pathogens. Diphtheria, polio, measles, hepatitis . . . from birth they stick us with needles, and because of that, hundreds of millions of lives have been saved. Diseases that used to run rampant are now held in check. Emergency bio-response teams are continually watching for isolated outbreaks, and then they quarantine and treat the affected. Is everybody with me?”

  I saw all several heads nod around the room.

  “OK, because now it’s time to give you a little lesson on immune response. Keep in mind this is going to be very basic. The way the immune system works is beautifully simple, and at the same time, incredibly complex. Let’s create an imaginary viral pathogen. We’ll call it FLU 7. If you become infected with FLU 7, you develop a fever and chest congestion, and just for kicks we’ll add in some oozing sores. Obviously, it’s nothing you want to be spreading around at work. So, to prevent you from becoming infected in the first place, you go to your doctor and he gives you a shot—a vaccination—against FLU 7. Usually, vaccinations are made with a modified or neutralized pathogen. In other words, the shot he gives you actually has the FLU 7 virus in it, but it’s been rendered non-infectious. Here’s where our amazing immune system kicks in. Our body recognizes that FLU 7 is not a natural part of our biology, so it begins to activate an immune response that either learns how to kill the FLU 7 virus, or surrounds it and prevents it from infecting other tissue. There’s a lot of other things that go on in that process, but one of the important things is that our body remembers the specific pattern that made up FLU 7, and anytime in the future that we’re exposed again, it already has the cure, or at least the battle plan on hand to fight it. Still with me?”

  We were. This was basic health 101.

  “One of the most infectious diseases of all time is measles. Highly transmissible, airborne, and incredibly contagious. Measles has also been practically eliminated in developed nations due to an aggressive vaccination schedule. Outbreaks in third world countries are even becoming rare. It’s estimated that ninety-eight percent of the world’s population ha
s been vaccinated against measles. That means that ninety-eight percent of the world’s population has an immune system circulating through their body that specifically remembers the measles pathogen in its memory cells.” Oakley stepped to the side of the screen and cycled through about a dozen images that showed humans in various stages of measles infection. “Now, here’s where some of the impossible magic takes place with FALCON. When it enters a body, it’s been bioengineered to trigger a response from the memory cells associated with measles. Only it doesn’t trigger an aggressive reaction; it somehow uses the immune system’s response to trigger a self-replication process while it seeks a favorable location to take up residence. In FALCON’s case, that’s brain tissue and the salivary gland. Once there, a whole myriad of biochemical changes begin to take place, producing as an end result what you’ve been calling ghouls. So let me a restate this even simpler. FALCON can only infect somebody whose body has memory cells associated with measles. Unfortunately, that’s just about everybody on the planet thanks to vaccinations. Once inside your body, this little engineered gem uses the immune response to actually begin replication, and then it sets up shop in your brain and saliva. Got it? Good, because now it’s a little bit more complicated. This was designed as a weapon. The ultimate weapon is, of course, one that will kill your enemy but not you. I don’t know what the larger picture was, but as you surmised already, it was designed to be the most infectious towards those with the O blood type. I could tell you how it accomplished that, but the honest truth is that it doesn’t really matter. What you need to understand is that people with blood type O are highly susceptible to infection from FALCON, and as a matter of fact, they’re the only ones that can acquire this pathogen through airborne transmission. Basically, they’re hypersensitive to FALCON. With that said, you need to understand that nobody is immune. No matter what your blood type.”

  Most of the people in the room began to fidget with the news of their vulnerability.

  “However,” Oakley continued, “there are some bright spots on the horizon. FALCON’s prionic load, like I said, is concentrated in brain tissue and saliva. Your unbroken skin is an effective barrier. Biologically speaking, most prions are exceedingly difficult to render innocuous, meaning they’re very tough to sterilize without destruction of the tissue, or in some cases the material they’re on. FALCON, on the other hand, is relatively fragile. It’s not very susceptible to alcohol based cleaners though—in other words, hand sanitizer isn’t very effective against it. Chlorine based chemicals such as bleach solutions are effective, at least somewhat, but the real weakness of FALCON is its susceptibility to UV light. Casual contact with an infected person’s blood should not cause you to become infected unless it gains direct access to your body through an open wound. Even then you would have to be exposed to a substantial amount. How much, I really can’t say. Remember, FALCON doesn’t really like to reside in blood, and the data we found indicates that it ‘pools’ or ‘concentrates’ in other areas, which brings us to my next point. In the unlikely event that brain tissue enters your body, you’re almost guaranteed to become infected. Almost as dangerous are the levels of infected material in the saliva, and that brings us to the most likely route of transmission for people without blood type O—salivary vectors. Now, I’m about to let you in on one of FALCON’s dirtiest little secrets, but before I do, I need to give you a refresher on bloodborne pathogens. Back in the real world of yesterday, you’ve all probably sat through those boring, yet required ‘safety training’ lectures at whatever job you did. More than likely they also included precautions against bloodborne pathogens. Normally, they focused on the top three that you’re most likely to encounter in everyday life. HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. If you were to accidentally get stuck with an infected needle, your chances of contracting HIV are only about zero point three percent. For hepatitis C, it’s about one point eight percent. On the other hand, hepatitis B has anywhere from about a seven to thirty percent chance of infecting you from a single needle stick. Now let’s take a look at the infection rate for the FALCON prion, again, using a needle stick as the means of transmission. From infected brain tissue, it’s about eighty-two percent. For saliva exposure the chances are about fifty-fifty that you’ll become infected. Here’s where one of the glitches come in to play. Obviously, if you get bit by one of these ghouls, you’re going to receive a whole lot more infectious material than from a single needle stick, and your odds of becoming infected run close to one hundred percent. But what if, hypothetically, we were able to take the amount of infectious material on a single needle and reduce it by a factor of ten. Let’s call that a blue needle. Your odds that used to be around fifty percent of becoming infected are now reduced to only five percent from a blue needle stick. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I did, and a quick look around the room didn’t reveal any confused faces.

  “Good,” Oakley continued, “because remember, this relates to a vicious little surprise that was engineered into FALCON. In our example where we reduced the infectious material on the blue needles, we brought our chances of fatal contamination down to about five percent. Like I’ve mentioned already, FALCON is fragile, and it only has a window of about seven hours post exposure to get a foothold in your body. If it fails, it’s flushed harmlessly out of your system through the normal process. But what if, instead of a single blue needle stick, we jabbed you with five different blue needles at the same time. For simple math, your chances of now becoming infected with the FALCON pathogen sometime in the next seven or so hours are about twenty-five percent. Five blue needles times five percent each equals twenty-five percent, right?”

  It was easy enough to follow, and we nodded our heads again.

  Oakley thumbed the remote and switched to a new image. It was a color picture of a human male crouched in a corner. Spewing in a mass over his chin, neck, and chest was a frothy accumulation of thick drool. When I saw the image, my mind immediately filled in with the scent of rotten fruit.

  “Can everybody see this?” Oakley asked.

  When we replied to the affirmative, he moved in front of the projector, blocking our view of the screen momentarily as he switched slides. “Let’s look closer. Actually, let me clarify that. This is a closer view, but it’s also about an hour later.”

  I squinted at the picture. Aside from a slightly zoomed view, the only difference that I could spot was a minor darkening of the drool.

  “And now take another look,” Oakley said, “only this one is even closer and a few hours further down the road.”

  A close-up of the ghoul’s face showed on the screen. The pinkish-white froth of drool was now almost uniformly brown. Oakley pointed at the screen. “Can you see it?”

  Several people were shifting their necks back and forth, trying to bring the image into clarity and comprehension.

  “One final time, only this one,” Oakley said, “is a macro shot.”

  The next picture that flipped onto the screen brought a hollow pit to my stomach. Judging from the gasps that echoed around the room, others were able to connect the dots as well. The image, like Oakley had hinted, was an extreme close-up of the drool, and the brown layer was now easily discernible as a thick covering of mosquitoes.

  The lieutenant spoke in his neutral, friendly tone as he inclined his head towards the movie screen. “One of the ways that FALCON can spread is by a mosquito vector. Think of the piercing mouthpart of a mosquito as a tiny blue needle. The data indicates that each bite from an infected mosquito carries a prionic load that correlates to an approximate zero point four chance of infection. In other words, just slightly higher than the percentage of contracting HIV from a needle stick. However,” Oakley emphasized the word strongly, “remember what I told you about the effects being cumulative over short period of time. If you’re somehow swarmed and bitten by dozens of recently infected mosquitoes, the odds are that you’ll succumb to the pathogen, and the drool that some of the ghouls secrete is hig
hly attractive to mosquitoes.”

  My mind raced back to the tree stand in the swamp during the Pickle Barrel hunt. Using Oakley’s math, I probably would have become infected in less than two minutes.

  “FALCON,” Oakley continued, “was designed as a first strike bioweapon. The idea was to infect a host, or group of hosts, and then basically sit back and monitor the progression until the infection ran its course. Yes, you heard that correctly. Originally, FALCON was designed to be a self-limiting pathogen.”

  “Originally?” Callie asked.

  Oakley nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yes, originally.” He paced through another half dozen images of drooling, mosquito covered ghouls before stopping at the shadowy image of a humanoid form inside a thick-barred cage. Judging from bits of reflection around the outside of the image, the metal lattice of the cage was further enclosed by some type of glass wall. “Approximately seven years ago, something went very wrong in the FALCON project. They began to experience what they termed an ‘unforeseeable shift in hybridization and control loss of test subjects.’ What you’re looking at here, I believe, is the first feral. There were deaths involved—apparently a substantial number of them in a very short time—including most of the development team.” The lieutenant flicked through several more images of the cage, finally stopping at one that was similar to the first, but at an angle slightly to the right. In this image, the combination of perspective and light revealed a set of sickly yellow eyes staring out of the darkness of the cage.