by JC Ryan
When an aide came to inform him that a line had been opened to Israel, Harper was as ready as he ever would be.
“David, this is Nigel Harper. I have some important news.”
David Yedidyah listened closely as Harper detailed the facts as he knew them. Israel faced a double threat. Until it was established that there was no one within the borders that already had the virus, he must assume that his entire population was at risk. There was almost no chance that no one had it.
Despite their differences, many Arabs still lived in Israel. Relatives from Syria and Jordan especially regularly crossed the borders. The fact that Israel had not been able to stop suicide bombers from entering made it almost certain that infected people had come in, either by chance or by design. Yedidyah had decided to close the borders before Harper even came to the question of a Muslim backlash. No country knew better the lengths to which fanatics would go to express their hatred.
When Harper fell silent, Yedidyah thanked him for the early warning. “Is there anything we can do to help you, my friend?” he asked.
“Pray,” said Harper.
While Harper called each of America’s closest allies, beginning with Great Britain, Yedidyah wasted no time in acting. He closed the borders, allowing anyone who wished to leave to do so, but refusing all inbound transportation without explanation. Airlines were in chaos as their planes were forced to find other destinations. Suspicion grew, but Israel refused to explain her actions.
A news blackout was imposed as military teams went house to house collecting blood samples, but there was no containing the outcry on the internet. Soon every conspiracy blogger on the planet was speculating about an epidemic in Israel. Ironically, they failed to relate it to the one that was overtaking the Middle East, despite some radical leaders ranting about a designer disease.
Within two hours of his call to Yedidyah, Harper was addressing the UN Security Council. Reaction of the members ranged from shock and grief to outrage. Harper took it in stride. The important thing, he insisted, was not to lay blame but to find the cure. When the meeting was dismissed, all fifteen members raced to inform their governments, and an announcement was made in the General Assembly.
In Boulder, Sarah had called a meeting of the Board. They would not learn of the crisis before their respective compatriots in the UN, but her responsibility was to inform them personally. To her gratification, even those that she might have thought would be troublemakers expressed concern first for the expedition members in Antarctica. Sarah assured them that as yet, no one had come down with symptoms since the last worker group had been sent home. However, they were under self-imposed quarantine. No one would be allowed in or out until an answer was found, except for a volunteer virologist that had still not been located. It was a sobered group that broke up their meeting just in time for the President’s press conference.
Most stayed in the Foundation Boardroom to take in that speech. Sarah left the head of the table to take a seat more conducive to viewing the large screen hanging behind her seat there. The familiar tones of the Emergency Broadcast System announced the beginning of the press conference. “We interrupt this program to bring you an important message. Please stay tuned.”
The screen switched from NBC’s noon programming to the image of the President, standing behind a podium and backed by the blue of the Presidential pressroom wall, the seal of the United States centered behind his head.
“My fellow Americans, I am here today to tell you of a grave threat to humanity and to our national security. Please listen closely as you will be asked to respond individually to this crisis, in order to avert it.”
Sarah imagined the ripples of shock and dismay across America, akin to the wave of emotion that had swept the country on the morning of September eleventh, 2001. This time, though, it wasn’t a foreign terrorist that threatened a few thousand, but a medical condition set loose on the modern world by the Rossler Foundation’s expedition. She had to hold herself tightly in control as the President went on.
“It has come to our attention that a deadly virus has been infecting hundreds of people in several Middle Eastern countries. Scientists have determined that everyone who comes into contact with this virus is infected, without fail. However, certain characteristics mark those who actually become ill. At this time, we must ascertain who might be carrying this virus and isolate them to avoid spreading it any further. I have been in contact with world leaders this morning to gain their agreement that our response will be universal. As of this moment, I am declaring a state of emergency for all of the United States and our territories or protectorates.
“These are your individual instructions. If you have no symptoms resembling flu and have had no contact with anyone who has flu symptoms, we urge you to stay at home as much as possible, or to protect yourselves with anti-microbial face masks and frequent hand washing if you must go out. Otherwise, if you have had even casual contact with anyone you observed to be coughing, sniffling or complaining of flu symptoms, you are required to go to your local hospital to be tested for the virus even if you do not have symptoms.
“If you yourself have any of the common symptoms of flu, that is, sore throat, cough, body aches, respiratory distress or a high fever that will not respond to medication, you are instructed to call your local emergency number and report yourself as sick. Medical personnel will come to you with the appropriate protective gear. Do not leave your house, on pain of arrest. All residents with flu symptoms are under quarantine, effective immediately. If you are watching this broadcast from somewhere other than your home, proceed to your home without delay or detour. If you require something you do not have at home, such as groceries or medications, they will be brought to you.”
“I want to assure all residents that these measures are merely precautionary except for certain individuals whose special circumstances make them vulnerable to becoming ill from the virus. We are trying to avoid a mutation that will release it to the general population. At this time, only individuals of Middle Eastern descent are known to develop symptoms. If you are of Middle Eastern descent, you are particularly vulnerable. Please take all precautions to avoid contact with any person exhibiting flu symptoms, no matter their ethnic heritage, and if you are currently experiencing symptoms, do not delay in calling your local emergency response number.
“Finally, we are working to set up a call center. A toll-free number will be published later today so that if you have any questions, you will be able to get immediate answers. In addition, the CDC will be publishing the latest outbreak list as well as full information about the virus as it becomes known.
“My fellow Americans, in times of crisis throughout our history, our citizens have risen to the occasion. It is vitally important that you do so once again, whether you are a citizen, a resident alien, or a guest, invited or uninvited. Help us keep you safe. If you are so inclined, pray for our neighbors who are fighting for their lives, and pray for our nation and the world to come through this crisis unscathed.”
As soon as the President ceased speaking, pandemonium broke out in the press room, but Harper was turning to leave. There were no other questions that would be prudent to answer, even if he could. He could only hope for a few more hours of peace before the world-wide announcement of a pandemic affecting only Middle Eastern peoples caused a backlash of those peoples. And then, God help us all.
~~~
As the Friday that marked the beginning of Week 8 of the outbreak by Rebecca’s count dawned, what had been a quiet rumble in the countries most affected by the spreading illness became a roar. The latest statistics were over five thousand dead, nearly eleven thousand infected, with most of the latter beginning to show symptoms. In addition, it had slowly become apparent to the general public that this virus killed all of its victims.
Hospitals were flooded with panicked people who had sore throats and other symptoms, whether from the virus that officials were calling the H10N7 Influenza A or some other str
ain. What was defeating the researchers searching frantically for a cure or at least a medicine that would effectively kill enough of the virus for immune systems to do the rest, was that there had never been an H10 before.
JR found it difficult to follow Epstein’s explanation, especially the part about mutation, so he asked Rebecca to break it down for him.
“Why H and N?” he asked. “And what do the numbers mean?”
Rebecca tried to find a way to make it clear. “These virus designations derived from the protein spikes on the virus cell’s surface that helped it invade healthy cells, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase,” she said. “That’s where the H and the N come from.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“So, before this, we knew of nine hemagglutinin proteins, and sixteen neuraminidase. So viruses could be named anything from H1N1, to designate what kind of protein spikes they had, to H9N16, right?”
“I guess.”
“Look, each virus cell has one type of H protein and one type of N protein. So, that makes one-hundred and forty-four potential strains of flu.”
“Okay, I get it. But they’re calling this one H10N7. I thought there were only nine hema-whatisis proteins.”
“That’s what everyone thought until now. The hemagglutinin protein in this strain doesn’t match any of those nine. It’s a new kind. Or more likely, a very old kind that hasn’t been seen in thousands of years.”
“It was the reason everyone was so concerned about mutation. Now there could be one-hundred and sixty strains; sixteen more strains than before, each using the new H10 hemagglutinin protein and one of the sixteen neuraminidase proteins. With this development, if H10N7 didn’t kill everyone, one of the other fifteen might finish the job,” JR observed.
JR made this leap of logic at once, and Rebecca confirmed his conclusions. Then she gave him a mini-course on influenza pandemics.
“Historically, Influenza A pandemics resulted from a cross-over of a strain that hadn’t previously infected humans or had disappeared for some reason; and therefore no one had immunities to it. That’s what some researchers think happened with the Spanish flu, why it killed more young people than old, when it’s usually the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“They think that the very old had some immunities to it from childhood, but then it disappeared for thirty years or more. That was the H1N1, by the way, which we saw recur just a few years ago. We think that the flu vaccines we’ve developed since then prevented the same kind of pandemic. In any case, the young people had never been exposed to anything similar, so they died in droves, like the victims of our virus are doing now.”
“So, this one disappeared and no one has immunities? Why aren’t we sick, then?”
“That’s the big question. In this case, it’s the new hemagglutinin protein that’s the problem. Or so the scientists think.”
The other question was where it had come from, Rebecca knew. As she explained to JR, all strains of Influenza A had previously been proven to exist in wild birds around the world, but if this one existed in a wild bird, it hadn’t been found yet. Scientists were fascinated, but frightened. At the rate this was growing, they wouldn’t have time to find the answers before the entire population had been infected. Now that they knew everyone got it but only Middle Easterners developed symptoms and died from it, they suspected a genetic component—but how would they locate it in time?
~~~
Leaders in the affected countries called in their science advisors and demanded answers. The only answers that the scientists had were that this was something new, something no one had seen before, and that it attacked a single ethnic group exclusively. The logical conclusion was that it had been engineered to do so. The leaders consulted each other and determined that they needed to locate patient zero and find out where he had been when he contracted this virus. That search took almost a week, but at the end of the week, they all knew. The first five cases had all come home from an archaeological dig that an American team had opened. The team was from the Rossler Foundation, which had sole access to information from the now famous 10th Cycle Library. Therefore, they concluded, the Rossler Foundation had used their exclusive knowledge to engineer a disease designed to wipe out Middle Easterners, or, more likely, Muslims.
Within a day, the Ayatollah that currently dominated the most conservative factions of Iranian politics had made a public announcement on National Iranian Radio and Television, the official media arm of the government. Westerners had developed a ‘genetic bullet’, a disease that was killing thousands now on a daily basis. Other radicals took up the cry and soon even moderate Muslims were beginning to wonder.
News from internet sources that claimed Muslims were being rounded up and interned in the US evolved into claims that they were being deliberately infected with the virus. Communications back to Muslim groups in the US urged them to hide and not comply with the quarantine order. Outbreaks in other countries were being reported, though the numbers were fewer than one hundred in most places, as opposed to the thousands in the Middle East.
Somehow, news leaked from Israel that they had no cases, fueling the claims that Zionists were behind the disease along with the Americans. When someone let it slip that the virologist who was in Antarctica with the expedition was one Ben Epstein, a Jew, the outcry began to infect even the most resistant Muslim leaders. Iran was the first to call for a concerted response, followed quickly by Pakistan. It was now a race to find a cure before someone rattled a nuclear saber.
Harper watched these developments via hourly updates from his advisers. It was what he’d been led to expect, but it was happening far more quickly than he’d hoped. To Harper’s dismay, the technological network he’d envisioned wasn’t up to snuff, adding to the general panic of the citizens. They hadn’t anticipated the volume of calls to the helplines, so not enough had been set up, which resulted in people having to wait in the queue for up to three hours. Many were impatient for answers, and instead of waiting, called 911, overwhelming that system.
Naturally, the usual auto accidents, fire, people having heart attacks and babies, all the normal emergency calls were still going on as well, but because the system was overwhelmed, some of those calls went to voice mail. As a result, there were preventable deaths and an outcry about the inadequacy of the system. No one could have predicted the chaos that would ensue just from the information being out there. Harper despaired that there would be a complete breakdown of civil order if the disease actually got a foothold in the US.
The added complication that several organized groups were actively resisting his quarantine orders was something he didn’t need, but he couldn’t dwell on it. He was expected at a UN Security Council Meeting where he would no doubt be grilled about the US bioweapons program. The program that he’d only just been told about. He was livid.
The report from the CIA that no one had told him before because he had no need to know almost gave him a stroke. Such programs were highly illegal; that the US continued to carry out research was unacceptable, and that was the mildest word he could think of. When he’d reprimanded everyone responsible for the deception, the observation of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that everybody did it, only no one could prove it, infuriated him to the point of nearly striking the man.
Now he would be forced to admit to the wrongdoing and allow the UN to send inspection teams to all the National Laboratories. That it was a terrible breach of security didn’t matter. The only way to avert immediate censure and possible siding with the Middle Eastern countries on the part of Russia, China and several smaller countries was to come clean. That all of those countries undoubtedly had bioweapons that could wreak havoc if unleashed in the US notwithstanding.
The British Prime minister had even given him an unwelcome history lesson when he recalled that a South African cardiologist, one Wouter Basson, had been thought to be working with the Israelis on a bioweapon to target blacks, during t
he apartheid years. It couldn’t be proved in court, but there was plenty of circumstantial evidence, and it was widely believed among people who remembered that better evidence had been suppressed by several governments, including the US.
Harper was prepared to swear categorically that the H10N7 strain of influenza had not been developed by the US, nor by any entity within the US, nor by Israel as far as he was aware. However, he had no doubt that he was in for a figurative beating at the hands of the Security Council members. His only defense was to call on all US allies to make their scientists available for questioning as well, and to either repudiate the accusation of making the virus, or admit it if they had. It wouldn’t be enough to completely dispel suspicion, especially with the entire Arab world up in arms, but it was all he had.
Before the meeting was scheduled to begin, the first of the suicide bombers breached the gates of the US embassy in Turkey and killed fifteen people.
~~~
More than a week had passed since Ben Epstein’s arrival on site, and he was still virus-free. It was a matter of great relief to Rebecca, as well as to the man himself. It was Ben who had first discovered the extra hemagglutinin protein on the surface of the virus, and had reported it to the CDC, which disseminated the information to everyone worldwide who was working on the problem. However, something nagged at him. No one, Middle Easterner or not, had immunity to this virus. It should have been making everyone sick. The hemagglutinin protein didn’t explain the selection of only one ethnic group for illness. There had to be something else.
In the valley, excavation was proceeding rapidly. As the library team unearthed more and more tablets, it became clear that the 9th Cycle civilization represented by this site was not as advanced as the 10th. Summers compared their level to that of ancient Egypt, around 3500 years before the birth of Christ. Therefore, they were losing hope that a medical breakthrough would be made with the translation of these tablets. Nevertheless, photos of each and every tablet were transmitted regularly to Boulder, where Sinclair and his team were working frantically to translate them. In the other department of the Foundation, Research, Nicholas and his team were combing the already-translated records and the index for 10th Cycle mention of anything resembling this flu.