McKean 02 The Neah Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  “But there are no flowers on those vines,” McKean remarked. “They’ve all gone to seed pods. How can you be sure - ?”

  “I planted it there myself. Trust me, it’s yellow.” He looked out over the beach and pointed to several rocky reefs exposed by the low tide. “See what’s growing on those rocks?”

  “Seaweed?” I said.

  “Bladderwrack,” to be exact,” McKean declared, eyeing the rocks and their olive green covering carefully. “A member of the kelp family.”

  “That’s kakalaklokadub,” said Steel. “Crow seaweed. I’ve got some drying in the rafters.” He went in the raven door and came out a moment later with a handful of dried leaves in one hand and a piece of white blubber in the other. He put both in the bucket. Gesturing toward the whale, he said, “You know where the blubber comes from. And that’s all there is to it. Boil it till the blubber’s melted and the greens are soft, strain off the water, keep the greens and grease, and you’ve got sea spinach.” He pulled the ornate wooden spoon from under his cloak and held it up. “Give everybody about this much, or maybe two spoonfuls if they’re big.” He put the ladle in the bucket and put the lid back on.

  “Thank you,” McKean said. “I’ll analyze everything to find where the active principle comes from.”

  “You can’t figure out where anything comes from if you get yourself shot,” Steel responded. “You’d better get going.”

  Archawat and his men had dragged the Makah Pride down to the water’s edge and placed her bow in the surf. McKean and I carried the heavy tub of sea spinach between us and Tleena and Gordon Steel followed us down to the canoe. McKean called to Sean, who threw one last rock and then raced to his father, hugging him by one lanky leg. McKean stroked the boy’s hair as we waited to get aboard, and said with profound sincerity to old Steel, “Thank you for saving my son.”

  “Other way ‘round,’ Steel said with a grin. ‘You better thank him. He’s the one that saved you all.’

  McKean raised a brow. “How do you figure?”

  Steel shrugged. “I only helped you because of him. I saw you were a father grieving for a dying son. That’s exactly how I felt about Johnny. I saw what you and I shared was more important than what divided us.”

  “My condolences about your son,” McKean began, but Steel waved off the expression of sympathy.

  “I made peace with that before I cured you. I figured if John died trying to help you, then the least I could do was help you too. He was brave after all. He did what brave men do sometimes - he gave his life for what was right. I helped you in honor of his memory.” Steel choked a little on the last words.

  Sean clambered over the gunwale and into the canoe with a look on his face like a child boarding a Disneyland ride. Archawat oversaw preparations, directing his men to load paddles, water flasks, and strips of raw blubber to stanch the hunger of a trip that was to begin without breakfast. Old Steel said, “They gotta balance the canoe carefully, otherwise she’ll tip on that rough ocean. That’s one thing Quykatsayak, the medicine snake, teaches. This world is only right when things are in balance.” He held his hands up like two serpent heads, fingers on top and thumbs below. “The two serpent heads gotta be in balance, or else something goes wrong. There is a balance between you and me, Peyton McKean. The new medicine and the old. What you don’t know is, I didn’t even know how to make the cure until you told me.”

  “What?” McKean exclaimed. “I didn’t tell you anything about it.”

  “Remember, you asked Tleena in Seattle, ‘What is klochtap?’ ‘

  “I had read about it in the Spanish manuscript.”

  “She told me that. And then I knew it was klochtap that made the cure work. That was the secret to making the medicine the way my ancestors did when they saved the last of the Spaniards. So I put extra klochtap in the cooking box last night.”

  “And that’s what saved us?”

  “Two minds in balance. Working together. Yours and mine.”

  “Two heads are better than one!” I interjected. McKean and old Steel laughed.

  Archawat called, “Everybody aboard that’s getting aboard!” McKean and I lifted the container of sea spinach into the waiting hands of crew members. Archawat placed the bucket on the floor in front of his skipper position at the stern of the canoe. McKean clambered over the gunwale and joined his son on a plank seat at the bow. As he settled his gangly form onto the seat and put an arm around his son, I turned to Tleena. I wanted to kiss her goodbye, but was inhibited by her father’s presence.

  “Good luck, Fin,” she said.

  “I’ll see you,” I said. Then I climbed aboard and went forward to take the remaining seat at the bow. Makahs on the shore pushed us into the surf while Archawat called commands directing the crew to paddle in unison and keep the bow into the breakers. A cresting wave surged into us and the bow rode up high and then plowed into the next trough. I held the seat plank tightly to keep from being vaulted out of the boat. The frigid spray reminded me of the preceding night’s nearly fatal encounter with the sea. Archawat called briskly from the stern, directing his crew to ply their paddles first on one side and then the other to keep the Makah Pride moving through the surf. Several more wave crests splashed over the bow, dowsing me and threatening to swamp the canoe. But, by dint of the paddlers’ strength and the skill of their skipper with his steering paddle, the canoe moved out beyond the break line. On smoother seas, several men pulled in their paddles and used wooden bailing scoops to empty water puddled in bottom of the canoe. Then the paddlers resumed their stroke in time to a chant. Archawat shouted “ah-hoo” and they shouted “wah-hoo” in response while simultaneously taking a stroke. Keeping tightly synchronized by this means, they drove us rapidly forward like a team of highly disciplined, bare-chested Marines chanting with their drill sergeant. In seconds, we moved out of the turbulent water of the cove and onto the open ocean, which was smooth except for a series of low rollers. As we left Spirit Cove behind, Tleena and Gordon intercepted a group of four men who arrived on the beach carrying rifles. Among them, big Eugene stood with his shotgun slung across his elbow, watching us move away and realizing his murderous plan had come to nothing.

  Tleena watched us too. I raised a hand and waved at her unobtrusively. When she waved back, I forgot the chill of salt water on my neck and smiled. “Yes!” I said under my breath.

  “What did you say?” McKean asked.

  “Tleena…likes me. At least, I think so.”

  He clucked his tongue. “It’s beyond me how romance could creep into your head at a time like this, Fin.”

  I shrugged, and waved again at Tleena.

  A loud call from Archawat caused the crew to shift all paddles to the left side and pull hard, moving us in an arcing turn around the north headland at the mouth of the cove. We went with such speed that it seemed like a motor was hidden somewhere within the canoe. Soon, the headland hid Tleena from my view.

  Chapter 24

  Two hours’ paddling northbound through the turbulent channel between Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island and then eastward along the Straight of Juan de Fuca with a following wind brought us to Neah Bay. Passing small, tree-covered Wa’adah Island, we turned into the harbor and quickly reached the Coast Guard pier. A cutter was tied there with its interior lights and rotating radar reassuring us that at least some modern technology was still functional. We disembarked at a floating dock and climbed a ramp to the pier, where we were greeted by the base commander and two of his men. Although between them they were one Caucasian, one Hispanic and one African American, these men had obviously benefitted from sea spinach and were in fine health. Informed by sympathetic Makahs of our escape from Spirit Cove, they had a rescue helicopter waiting on the base’s helipad with its turbine engine idling.

  “You’re already cleared for take off,” the commander said as we strapped ourselves into leather flight seats. He pointed at our helmeted pilot and copilot, who were busy in the cockpit, and said, “Thes
e boys are good airmen. I think we can trust them to get you home. Have a safe trip.” Andy and Billy put the bucket aboard and within minutes we were flying through clearing skies over the crags of the Olympic Mountains. McKean threw an arm around Sean to keep him warm while the boy excitedly watched the mountains moving below us. “So far, so good,” McKean shouted to me over the whine of the turbine and thump of the rotors. “I’ve got plans in my head for the first experiments as soon as we get back to Seattle.”

  “Peyton,” I called back. “The little matter of your not having a job?”

  “A minor inconvenience,” McKean replied with a grin. “If ImCo doesn’t give me my labs back, I’ll go to Virogen with this.” He patted the bucket.

  Soon, the white Olympic crags fell behind and we chopped our way across the Puget Sound Basin. Over the towns of Paulsbo and Winslow, black columns of smoke rose from multiple buildings, suggesting the turmoil from Port Angeles was now visiting those streets. As we crossed the blue-green waters of Puget Sound, Seattle’s skyline looked intact, although a telltale trace of smoke in the Sodo district suggested all was not well. McKean questioned the pilot by shouting and learned that the first wave of cases had appeared on the city streets. The chopper set down on the circular helipad of Seattle’s Coast Guard pier and we stepped onto the asphalt and fetched out Sean and our precious bucket.

  As we walked away, the chopper lifted off and headed back in the direction we had come.

  Lugging the bucket between us, it took ten minutes to walk from the Coast Guard terminal to ImCo with Sean tagging along beside us. The waterfront, normally bustling with tourists and businesspeople, was nearly deserted. A police siren echoed among the skyscrapers. A wild-eyed derelict man wandered along the waterfront sidewalk gesturing and shouting, but we escaped his notice. We reached ImCo without incident, but as we rounded the corner of the building and went for the front entrance, we found ourselves mingling with several dozen people gathered around a VACCINE NOW banner.

  “This crowd has thinned since we saw it last,” McKean said.

  “Scared off by news of disease in the city,” I suggested.

  A man shouted, “It’s the guy who discovered the virus!” The crowd converged on us and surrounded us just short of the door. A woman demanded to know when she would get a shot of vaccine and McKean replied undiplomatically, “Hopefully, never.”

  This brought hoots from the crowd, who misunderstood McKean’s meaning. Suddenly a hefty young man made a grab for the bucket. “What’s in here?” he roared, starting a threeway tug-of-war for it with McKean and me. Fear of its contents spilling onto the street galvanized me into action. I doubled a fist and swung hard at the man’s face, catching him solidly on the jaw and knocking him down and out cold. Straddling him, I shouted in a rage, “Anyone else?” The crowd backed off a few steps. I rejoined McKean and we quickly lugged our cargo through ImCo’s main entrance. Sean scurried in behind us.

  The crowd pressed after us, but suddenly parted like a school of fish fleeing a predator in its midst. In fact, that impression was not far off the mark. A naked man appeared from nowhere, voicing the all-too-familiar Frankenstein growl. He lurched after first one and then another of the protestors. His eyes, surrounded by purplish flesh, were wide with combined fear and rage. His skin was a welter of bleeding scratches and his mouth was contorted in a snarl.

  “Lock the doors!” McKean called to the guard as we hurried to the elevator. “Don’t let anyone in.”

  The guard rushed to set the top and bottom latches as a horrific scene played outside the glass doors. Bellowing, the madman seized an elderly woman too slow to get out of his way. She put up a hand to fend him off but he sank his teeth in just above the wrist. The woman shrieked and dropped to the ground. The maniac went down with her, biting and clawing her savagely. The crowd was dumbstruck until a man stepped forward and smashed the stick of his protest sign over the madman’s head. The maniac leaped up with a snarl and went for the man but another man brought his stick down across his neck from behind. Stunned, the maniac turned and ran away, howling like a hurt puppy.

  We rode the elevator to the sixth floor, bypassing Peyton McKean’s third-floor labs in order to go straight to the man responsible for McKean’s exile. The elevator doors opened onto the penthouse executive office suite. We crossed the landing of polished green serpentine tiles under a dark cherry-wood wall emblazoned with IMMUNE CORPORATION in ostentatious polished-brass letters two feet tall. We entered the carpeted executive suite where Sally Ann Noonan, the receptionist with blond-rooted black hair and triple pierced ears, sat behind a high cherry-wood bureau desk. She wore a stricken look. When McKean asked to speak with Stuart Holloman, she burst into tears.

  “Oh, my God,” she blubbered with tears streaking her mascara. “You don’t know, do you? It was horrible. Yesterday he came out of his office with half his clothes off, bleeding and roaring like a lion. I called 9-1-1 but before they got here, he bit me!” She raised her right hand to show us a white bandage where the fleshy side above the little finger had been bitten. Farther up her arm were bruise marks around her Celtic armband tattoo.

  “They maced him and handcuffed him and then they took him to Seattle Public Health Hospital. That’s where he is now. He’s tied to a bed in the emergency ward. They took me there too, but Kay Erwin let me go with just five stitches. She said I wouldn’t catch the disease. Is that true, Dr. McKean?”

  “Answer: yes,” McKean replied. “Stuart Holloman probably doesn’t have the virus at all. However, he has proven the vaccine causes the side-effect I feared most. It mimics the disease by damaging exactly the same parts of the brain as the virus. No, Sally, you have nothing to fear from a man who wasn’t even infected. However, just for good measure, why don’t you try a spoonful of sea spinach? We’ve got plenty here.”

  McKean dosed Sally Ann with the protective elixir, and then we took the elevator to the third floor, assured now that Holloman’s stricture against McKean no longer applied. He called his coworkers to his office and, sitting in his desk chair, dosed them with sea spinach and gave rapid-fire instructions for the isolation of its active ingredient. Sean and I stood outside watching in silent admiration, until Sean turned and pointed down the hall.

  “What’s wrong with that man?” he asked. I turned and saw David Curman standing in his office doorway. He stared in our direction angrily, as if the return of Peyton McKean suited him poorly. I glared back at him, remembering his role as the agent of so much trouble. Then something disturbing caught my attention. His eyes were reddened and surrounded by puffy purplish flesh.

  I bent and whispered to Sean, “Why don’t you play with those atomic models?”

  The boy scampered in among the scientists standing in his father’s office and knelt to open the favored drawer. I turned to confront David Curman - but he was gone.

  The group in the office broke up. Robert and Janet went into the lab carrying the bucket between them, and Beryl followed. They were discussing the duties McKean had assigned them and planning the details of the isolation of the key ingredient. “Get a sample on the liquid chromatograph as quickly as possible,” McKean called after them. “But not before you eat a couple more spoonfuls yourselves. I don’t want anyone getting sick at this juncture.”

  I stepped inside the office, intending to express my concerns about Curman. But McKean’s desktop computer made a tone and he pressed a key. Kay Erwin’s face came on the screen. “Thank God you’re there!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been?”

  “To the ends of the earth,” he replied. “How about an update on the epidemic?”

  “Of course,” said Erwin. Her face looked haggard and her voice sounded as if she were in the depths of despair. “It’s all one great big horrible catastrophe. Both ImCo and Virogen have delivered their first vaccine batches ahead of schedule. Nearly three-hundred thousand doses are being distributed throughout Washington State as we speak. But…” Her voice broke and she burst into tear
s. “Oh Peyton. You were so right! We’ve just gotten the virology report on Stuart Holloman. There’s no virus in him at all. Plenty of G1 antibodies, though.”

  “Just as I warned,” McKean muttered. “Vaccination causes a condition identical to the viral infection.”

  “It does,” Erwin agreed. “I just got off a call to the CDC. I demanded an immediate halt to the vaccination plan, and they’re considering it. But there’s been no decision yet. Oh, Peyton. If they inject three-hundred thousand people - “

  “They’ll have three-hundred thousand maniacs on their hands.”

  “Even worse,” Erwin said, “if they don’t immunize, the virus will spread. It’s got a solid foothold on this side of the sound.”

  “Flown here by crows,” McKean murmured.

  “By this time next week, we’ll have a lot more than three-hundred thousand maniacs. I can’t bear it. The isolation ward is full and we’ve begun putting new arrivals on other wards. It’s the same thing that happened in Port Angeles.”

  “What’s the news from there?”

  “The staff began coming down with the infection. As of yesterday afternoon, we haven’t heard from them at all. They’ve been overwhelmed.”

  “That’s horrible,” McKean murmured. “We saw the town in chaos.”

  “We’re only a day or two from that in Seattle, Peyton. I’m at my wits’ end.”

  “I’m not,” McKean reassured her.

  “Why? How?”

  “My coworkers made sufficient progress with the first batch of sea spinach to put them on the verge of identifying the active molecule. And I have just given them a fresh supply. None of us will be sleeping tonight. I expect tremendous progress by morning. A much better day may dawn tomorrow. Wish us luck.”

  “I do wish you luck,” Erwin said, with her expression brightening. “I wish us all luck. If there is anything I can do to help…”