by JC Ryan
Epstein put aside the first sample and took up another. Same result. This one belonged to the cartographer, Angela Brown. One by one, Epstein examined each slide. Everyone in the scientific crew of the expedition had the active virus in their blood. How was it that they weren’t sick? Was it just a matter of time? Or was it a confirmation that there was a genetic component to the course of the illness? There was one slide left, Daniel Rossler’s. He had arrived with Ben and had not yet been into the valley. If he were free of the virus, it may mean that it wasn’t as contagious unless it was creating symptoms, or perhaps it would mean that long incubation period again. Epstein put his eyes to the lenses. There it was. Daniel also had the virus. Good lord, how long would it be before everyone here was dead?
With a dread he couldn’t acknowledge and remain sane, Epstein took a sample of his own blood and prepared the slide. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to look. The relief was palpable when he found his blood to be free of the virus. His precautions had paid off. To be certain, he drew another sample and confirmed the first test. He was virus-free. But everyone else in the camp was infected, though not sick as yet. It was all the more important, then, that he take the utmost care to remain uninfected. To contract the virus might very well be his death sentence. Now that he was certain, he went to report his findings to Rebecca.
“Rebecca. I’m ready to give you my report. I’m afraid it isn’t good news.”
Rebecca looked up. The olive tint to Epstein’s complexion was more sallow than she remembered. This must be very bad news, to cause that. She waited as he drew a fortifying breath.
“Everyone whose blood I tested has virus cells in their systems, including you, JR and Daniel,” he said. “Everyone, without exception, except me.”
Rebecca paled. The immediate implications didn’t need to be explained to her—they were carriers. They could not risk infecting anyone else, and the only way to make sure to prevent it was to quarantine themselves. That meant that no one could leave this base.
~~~
Bowing to Epstein’s expertise in lab work, Rebecca had volunteered to comb the history of viral epidemics online to see what she could learn about how or why particularly virulent strains spread rapidly, anything that might stand out about the symptoms as similar or different to other epidemics and basically anything that might help understand this outbreak.
Sarah’s report of the spiraling growth rate of affected patients had scared her to death, particularly in view of her suspicion that there was a genetic or ethnic component to how it selected its victims. It was one thing, horrible though it was, to project a death rate of seventy million in four months among the world population of some seven billion. It was quite another to project it onto the perhaps three hundred million population of the Middle Eastern countries. If allowed to run to week seventeen at the current rate of growth, it would essentially wipe out all Middle Eastern peoples. The thought was staggering.
When Epstein came to give her his report, it reminded her that shared genetics meant other peoples in the region and indeed worldwide were also at risk. She suggested that they contact the CDC and have two more experts flown in, an epidemiologist and another virologist. Epstein agreed that another virologist was a good idea, but pointed out that they had made the epidemiologist pointless by sending the majority of the sick back home. Rebecca’s eyes widened, and, leaving a bewildered Epstein standing in her office, she sprinted for JR’s, where she expected to find Daniel.
“Daniel!” she cried, as soon as she saw him. “We should have kept those patients here! And we’ve got to find the South American group and have them tested. And Martha and Sinclair!”
“Becca, slow down, sweetheart,” JR admonished. “What are you talking about?”
Rebecca brought herself up short. She should start at the beginning, because JR and Daniel didn’t yet know what Ben had discovered.
“We’re all carrying it, the virus. I don’t know why we didn’t get sick, but exposure to us exposes anyone we’re in contact with.”
“How do you know that?”
“We have to assume it. If we leave here, we may contribute to the spread of the virus. We have to quarantine ourselves.”
Daniel and JR looked at each other with dismay. That meant there’d be no going home for Daniel or anyone else, not until they got this thing stopped.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Rebecca went on when she understood that they’d figured out the implications. “At the rate it spreads, it’s going to wipe out every one of its favorite target population in less than four months. We can’t stop it from spreading—we have to find a cure.”
Daniel sat down heavily. His first thoughts were of his beloved wife and baby son. When would he see them again, if ever? It didn’t bear thinking of, he simply had to find a way to go home, but without putting them at risk. Rebecca was right, they had to find a cure. Then he remembered she had mentioned Sinclair and Martha. There was no time to waste; he had to let Sarah know right away. It was after nine in the evening in Boulder, but Sarah would be up. If she and little Nick hadn’t been around Martha or Sinclair, they couldn’t risk any exposure until the older couple was tested. He nudged JR away from his computer and brought up Skype. Please, God, he prayed, let Sarah be close enough to the computer to hear the ping.
While he waited for an answer, Rebecca and JR spoke quietly in the corner and she conveyed her request for another virologist.
“But, JR,” she said. “We have to make sure that they understand. If we can’t stop it and we can’t cure it, we may not ever be able to leave here. We might have to make that valley our home and literally start repopulating the world.”
JR shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s sustainable, sweetheart. We just have to cure it, that’s all.”
Daniel had connected with Sarah, much to his relief. He brushed away her dismayed response to his frazzled appearance.
“Sarah, this is extremely important. Have you had any personal, face-to-face contact with either Martha or Sinclair?”
“No, they’re coming to dinner on Friday so I can welcome them home. Why?”
“Ask them to go into voluntary quarantine until they can be tested for this virus. Honey, sit down.”
“I am sitting,” she observed.
“Good, because there’s no good way to say this. We all have it. Everyone here is carrying the virus that killed all those people.”
Sarah froze, before a wail tore from her throat. “NO!!! Daniel, no, no, no. Please don’t die!”
“Honey, calm down. We’re not sick. No one quite understands why, yet, but some of us are carrying it even though we haven’t become sick. Everyone who has become sick is Middle Eastern. I don’t think any of us here are going to die, but we can’t risk exposing anyone else until a cure is found. You’re going to have to be strong, my love. I can’t come home yet.”
Sarah’s wails had softened as he spoke. Her Daniel wouldn’t die, she caught that part. But, what was the part about him not coming home? Still softly weeping, she asked him.
“For how long, Daniel? I need you. You promised to be home for Christmas. Nick’s first Christmas! When can you come home?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. It could be awhile. But we’ve got Skype, and we can talk every day. Bring Nick to the screen so I can talk to him tomorrow, okay? Be strong, we’ll figure it out.”
It was all very well to say ‘at least we have Skype’, she thought. But Skype couldn’t put his arms around her, hold her when she was worried and frightened, like right now. Skype wouldn’t provide a brother or sister for Nick. They’d talked about having another when Nick was between eighteen months and two years. This wasn’t an acceptable turn of events. As she pulled herself together, Sarah tried to smile for Daniel.
“Yes, we will. We have to, Daniel.” She didn’t want to let him go when they’d exhausted the thoughts they had on what to do next and then said all the ‘I love yous’ and ‘I miss yous’, the se
cret endearments that meant so much to each other. At last, though, Daniel said he had vital tasks to complete there, and Sarah knew she needed to call Sinclair and Martha. A last tearful goodbye was their final communication of the day.
It was past ten, but Sarah had to let Sinclair know not to come into the office until he and Martha had been tested and given a clean bill of health. As an afterthought, she emailed Rebecca to send a picture of the virus, so doctors would know what they were looking for. Then she called the O’Reilly residence.
“Sinclair, it’s Sarah.”
“Sarah, what’s wrong?” It crossed her mind to wonder why he would immediately assume something was wrong, and then realized she’d probably caught them in bed, or getting ready to be.
“Sinclair, I’m sorry to call so late, but it’s important you know this right away.”
“Don’t worry about that. What is it?”
“I’ve just talked to Daniel. Sinclair, everyone in Antarctica has that virus we talked about this morning. The ones who are left there aren’t sick,” yet, she mentally added. “But they’ve discovered it doesn’t take much to spread it, just a few seconds’ contact. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but you and Martha need to be tested for it. They think it comes from Paradise Valley.”
Complete silence from the other end of the phone made her begin to wonder if there had been a better way to communicate the news. “Sinclair, say something. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” came the gravelly answer. Sinclair cleared his throat. “Yes, I understand. Well, Martha’s feeling fine, and so am I, but if you can have it and not have symptoms, I guess you’re right, we should be tested. Where should I go?”
“I’ll have a picture of the virus by email in the morning, I’m sure. I’ll send it to the lab in our provider network. Call them in the morning and tell them you’re coming in, and that someone in protective clothing needs to meet you outside with masks. They’ll handle it from there.”
“All right. Sarah, why did I insist on going down there? I’ll never forgive myself if Martha…”
“Let’s not borrow trouble, Sinclair. I’m sorry to give you bad news right at bedtime, but I thought it was important that you not expose anyone else if you have it.”
“Ah now, there’ll be the divil to pay if we’re spreadin’ it, lass,” said Sinclair, a form of whistling in the dark by affecting an Irish brogue. “All those people on the planes, and in Hawaii.”
“It may not make any difference at all in the end, Sinclair. Just hope for the best and get tested in the morning. And call me with the results, please.”
Chapter 18 – That’s the real McCoy
In Turkey, a brother of one of the recently evacuated men sat beside his bedside, watching his brother die. There was nothing the doctors could do, and no hope. With his last breath, the dying man asked for his death to be avenged. It started there.
It had been six weeks since five people home on rotation from the Rossler Foundation archaeological expedition had begun to feel symptoms of an illness that eventually killed them. Now over one thousand people across the Middle East were in the same shape as Hamid’s brother; dying, with no hope of a cure. Where had this evil arisen? In a remote location, chosen by a group of Americans who had specified that all their workers be of Middle Eastern descent. How could this be other than a deliberate blow against Islam?
Hamid was not a highly intelligent man, and he knew it. However, he could find no flaw in his argument that his brother and many others had been deliberately killed because they were Muslim. Everyone knew that Americans hated Muslims. Their every action demonstrated it. Nevertheless, Hamid was a humble furniture maker, and did not know what to make of his thoughts. Rather than put them aside after his brother’s death, he visited a scholar, who assured him that his concerns would not go unnoticed.
In the same way, word trickled from the relatives of the sick, before they themselves became ill, to the larger community and eventually to Muezzins and leaders in mosques and coffee houses alike. From there, first one journalist, and then six more and finally many latched on to this perfect conspiracy and wrote stories in their newspapers and blogs that white infidels had finally done it; that a jihad had been mounted against Islam via a deadly disease that was rapidly consuming the Middle East.
Sarah saw these articles, gleaned from around the world and translated by Mary’s team, and bode her time. Daniel was considering how to address the dangers, and she could now see his point about not rushing to take accountability. What she saw in the articles frightened her. Not reasoned essays about how the epidemic might have been accidentally unleashed, but leaps of emotion to the conclusion that it was deliberate. Nothing could have been further from the truth, she was certain. None of the Rosslerites would have even thought of such a thing, much less have put it in motion. However, the time was coming, and coming rapidly, when their response to an out-and-out accusation would be required.
Week six passed and with it over twelve hundred virus victims. Another thirty-six hundred some-odd were now ill, and it had spread from the Middle East to the UK and the US, with isolated instances in other countries. Sarah would have liked to point out to the radical journalists whose stories were growing more and more vicious that not all of the victims were Muslim. Still, the overwhelming majority were of Middle Eastern descent, and in many Americans’ eyes, it was basically the same thing. Now those Americans who always seemed to take up a cause without thought or understanding were also clamoring for an answer to the ethnic cleansing that they insisted was taking place. A scapegoat would be named soon, and unless Sarah missed her guess, that would be the Rossler Foundation.
Mary reported that they did indeed have a campaign ready to refute any accusations, so Sarah waited for Daniel’s decision.
Daniel called Summers, JR and Rebecca to meet with him concerning who else should be notified of their discoveries so far. Rebecca had already made her report to the CDC and was awaiting an answer on getting another virologist on board. The fact that it could be a one-way trip complicated matters. Who would volunteer to go to Antarctica when there was every likelihood they wouldn’t be able to go home, either because they were quarantined or because the virus could kill them? She wouldn’t want to have to make that choice herself.
The big question in Daniel’s mind was containment of the political repercussions. He and JR both knew quite well that some elements in the Middle East would view this as a deliberate attack. Those same elements had demonstrated for decades that they had no compunction about killing innocent victims to call attention to their grievances. Hell, they even gladly committed suicide to do it, assured of their reward in the afterlife for being a martyr in the cause. Neither had fully explained his thinking to anyone else, but it was time to make some decisions.
There was no question that the resources of the world should be brought to bear on the crisis. On the other hand, would retaliation come to those at home in the US? Would it be out of the question to find themselves confronted by armed soldiers? How could they warn the world, get help with finding the cure and at the same time, protect themselves and their loved ones from the consequences of a radical response?
Daniel asked JR to explain the political climate in Afghanistan, since he’d been there most recently. Even he was sobered by JR’s take on it. Afterward, he suggested what he’d been thinking, which was that they needed to inform the President. When he shared Sarah’s synopsis of the media storm, everyone was in agreement. It was too big now to expect to find a cure themselves, and besides, they had no right to choose for the world. If it took the resources of the entire world to contain the crisis, so be it.
They didn’t have time for pride or the desire to fix what they all felt they had broken. In a series of meetings that they opened to the rest of the scientific staff at Purgatory Canyon and set up as a video conference with Sarah and her inner circle, they gathered their facts and the conclusions they could draw from them.
Their first conclusion was that it had somehow originated in the valley. They weren’t certain of where, but Summers reported that the first five were the workers he’d assigned to the 9th Cycle hospital site when the stele was translated. They wanted to give Epstein all the support he needed to discover the vector, so a mission to the site, the first since Daniel had arrived, was planned.
The second conclusion was that they had made a fatal mistake, literally, in sending the frankly ill people home. The first five had been asymptomatic when they left, so that couldn’t be laid at their door. But the forty that went home in the second week of their symptoms were likely to be directly responsible for one hundred and twenty more deaths, and those for countless more.
Sarah’s team was tasked with gathering as much information as possible about the life cycle of the illness, while the Antarctica group went in search of the vector. They would meet again in eight hours to take up anything else they found out.
~~~
The hospital site was the target of the first investigation, carried out by Summers, who was assisted by Daniel, JR, and Rebecca. Knowing the danger, Rebecca insisted Ben stay in camp. In spite of the urgency of locating the vector, Summers insisted that the excavation plan be honored, and the others agreed. It was unlikely they’d have to dig too far for the clues, in fact. The Middle Eastern diggers had encountered the vector somewhere in the previously excavated portion of the site, or nearby. The fact that the group at hand didn’t know what they were looking for made it more difficult, but not impossible.
Summers’ original excavation plan had laid out a grid of one meter by one meter, but the diggers had started at a corner that Summers designated A, and were fanning out from that corner to expose one four-inch layer at a time in the first and then adjacent squares of the grid. At the center of the grid was a spire that Summers had assumed was near the center of the hospital building, or perhaps the campus. He had paced off a good-sized area around the spire and set up his grid assuming that they would find buildings within that area, and possibly interior rooms if the weight of thousands of years of dirt and ash hadn’t collapsed the buildings.