by JC Ryan
The preacher who quoted it followed it up with the opinion that ‘the fourth part of the earth’ referred to the Middle East, and that any attempt to interfere with the natural course of the disease was in direct opposition to the will of God. Naturally, he then railed against all measures intended to halt the spread of the disease and urged his flock to defy the quarantine order. That meant that leaders on both sides of the issue were doing their best to make sure the crisis became even worse.
There were already rumbles in the UN that the Antarctica site should be nuked to eradicate the source of the virus. Only Harper’s friendship with Daniel Rossler and his steady, logical refutation of the emotional desire for revenge among the more vocal of those elements was standing against that eventuality. The fact that the virus was now out and spreading rapidly through the Middle East made it foolish to nuke just the small area of Antarctica from which it was only supposed to have come. Why not nuke all of the Middle East, if wiping it out that way was the objective, he argued, but was quick to say that the very idea was ludicrous.
In fact, he would argue next, the handful of scientists there at ground zero seemed to be light years ahead of everyone else in figuring it out. Harper paused in his mental recitation of his reasoning to consider the idea of shipping all of the researchers to Antarctica and telling them they had to stay until they figured it out. Smiling at his own whimsy, he shook his head. No, there would be no nuking of his people in Antarctica while he was President. But what the devil was keeping SecDef? He should have been here by now.
It seemed longer than it actually was before SecDef arrived in response to Harper’s call. As soon as Harper had explained the situation, he gave orders to send reinforcements to the embattled Guard unit in Alabama.
“Mr. President, I think it’s time we brought our regular troops home from the Middle East. We’re doing no good there, and we can use them here.”
Harper thought he would never hear such a suggestion from his war-mongering subordinate, but he fully agreed. The remaining personnel in the Middle East would be sitting ducks when it erupted over there, and as SecDef had observed, they were needed at home. He exercised his privilege of executive order to make it so.
By the time most Americans rose later in the morning, hundreds of young soldiers were sighing with relief that they were going home. No matter what was going on at home, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as what was going on where they were deployed. They had no idea that soon dozens, then hundreds of supposedly Christian leaders of the most conservative denominations, especially in the South, would begin urging their congregations to take matters into their own hands to help eradicate the Muslim presence in the Land of the Free.
Since he was up, Harper decided to call Antarctica and see what progress they were making for himself. Then he would have his Press Secretary set up a televised press conference to inform his constituents that everything possible was being done.
“Good morning, Mr. President. A bit early for you, isn’t it?” Daniel asked. He was bleary-eyed with fatigue and ready to go to bed for some much-needed rest, but this call was important. At any moment, Daniel was prepared for a call from Harper telling him that the nukes were on their way. He didn’t dare miss the call, because his last act would be to call Sarah and say goodbye. Thankfully, this wasn’t it.
“Good morning, Daniel. It’s getting a bit hairy out here. Wondering if your folks have made any progress.”
“As a matter of fact, our new virologist did tell us at dinner that she has a possible lead. She said they’ve got some work to do before it will be confirmed, though.”
“That’s still good news, my friend,” said Harper. “Any idea what she’s looking at?”
“I didn’t follow it all, but she’s identified an anomaly on a certain gene between the sample of her blood and the sample of Ben Epstein’s. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll get Rebecca to come and give you the straight skinny.”
“Ben Epstein, that’s the Jew that all the rabble-rousers are saying engineered the virus?”
“Yes, sir, but that’s patently absurd. He didn’t arrive until after the first fifteen cases were dead.”
“You know that, and I know that, but the man is going to be a target for whatever’s left of the Middle East if he ever gets out of there. Those guys won’t let a good story be confused by the facts.”
“That’s unfortunate, Mr. President. He’s working tirelessly to find the answer. You know he is at risk, too. No matter how much they hate each other, Jews and Arabs are all genetically Semitic. He’d probably die just like the rest of them if he contracted it. Speaking of which, how’s Israel doing?”
“So far, so good. We warned them as soon as we knew, and they closed their borders. I’ve heard there were some pretty harsh quarantine conditions, but Yedidyah accomplished his objective. As far as I know, there are no cases there.”
“Mixed blessing,” observed Daniel, who knew exactly what the enemies of Israel would say about it.
“True,” responded Harper, who also knew. “But there’s also a news blackout, so hopefully it won’t get out. If it does, they may find nuclear weapons pointed at them.”
“Speaking of which,” Daniel said.
“Just rumbles so far, Daniel. You know I’d give you a heads-up. Not that it would do you any good, but at least you’d have time to…”
“Just so,” Daniel said, before Harper could spell it out. “Thank you. We couldn’t ask for more.”
“It wouldn’t be my choice, Daniel, you know that.”
“Yes, sir, but if it will prevent Armageddon, we both know what you’ll have to do.”
“I’m glad you understand. Push your scientists to work as fast as they can, Daniel. I don’t know how long I can hold off, and I don’t want to ever have to face Sarah if…”
“I know. We’re doing our best.”
Depressed by the turn his call had taken, Harper took a few minutes to have breakfast with his wife before getting in touch with his Press Secretary. “I’ve just spoken to Daniel Rossler, dear. What a fine man he is.”
“Yes, we’ve always thought so. What brought on that observation just now?”
“We spoke of a potential for their site to be destroyed, and them along with it, to prevent global nuclear war. He understands. He told me so without so much as a quiver in his voice. Esther, how can I even consider it?”
“Nigel, when I married you, I knew you would always put the good of the nation before yourself, and the good of the world before the nation if it came to a choice. You’ve never let me down. You’ll do what you must, but only when all other options have been exhausted. And you’ll be able to say, ‘I did my best.’”
If only his best were good enough, Harper reflected. Good enough to save his friend while also saving the world. How would history view him? He was a President who had successfully negotiated the return of the great treasure of the Tenth Cycle Library knowledge to the US and had led the world-wide effort to destroy the evil Orion Society, but was also the President who was helpless to stem the tide of viral death that threatened to destroy the Middle East, and with it, the world. Would there even be a future from which to look back on this history? Harper gave his wife a wan smile, knowing she would support him to the jaws of hell if she must. He only hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but barring a miracle, it would.
~~~
Harper’s report to Daniel that President Yedidyah of Israel had managed to contain all news coming out of Israel was already out of date. Israel had imposed a news blackout with armed Shin Bet operatives standing in the wings to impose swift punishment of any reporter who defied the order. No news of any kind regarding the H10N7 virus was to be reported, neither bad nor good. Firewalls had gone up in all server farms of internet service providers, and the government considered the blackout complete. Mossad and Shin Bet both knew, however, that the blackout was permeable. Numerous peer-to-peer solutions for circumventing internet censorship by repressive reg
imes meant that they had to employ constant surveillance for keywords such as the name of the virus, including several cruel nicknames like ‘the Arab solution’.
Just as they had known, word eventually leaked out. In the tenth week of the virus outbreak, an Israeli citizen, unaware of the havoc he was about to cause, got word to his son at an American university that he was well, and that the country had been informed that there were no cases of the virus there. The son, young and hotheaded, blogged the information and his opinion that the virus was a plague that God had inflicted on the Middle Eastern nations whose political objectives included wiping out the Jewish state. Within forty-eight hours, the blog had been tweeted and re-tweeted on Twitter, discussed extensively on Facebook, flooded with angry comments from people with Middle Eastern connections and finally shut down by the platform provider because of excessive traffic.
But, the damage was done. The assertion that Israel was free of the virus was another arrow in the quiver for radical elements. Ayatollah Kazemi urged his constituents to demand a nuclear response to the notion that Israel was complicit in the development of the virus. Within seven days of the leak, even the most moderate of the Middle Eastern nations had agreed to join an assemblage of affected countries. As an ally of Iran and supplier with a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, North Korea was invited to join the assemblage as well. Chillingly, the hastily-formed group was called In'a'al Mayteen Ehlak, which means Death to the Infidels. North Korea, Iran and Pakistan among the participants all had nuclear weapons.
As week eleven dawned, nearly three hundred thousand new cases were reported, over ninety percent of them residing somewhere in the Middle East. This constituted a total of more than four hundred and forty thousand cumulatively. In terms of previous pandemics, it didn’t yet rival the Black Death of medieval times, or even the Spanish flu, which had taken an estimated fifty million lives between 1918 and 1921. However, the more rapid spread of the disease meant that it would surpass the seventy-five million of the Black Death within another five weeks if not checked. Across the Middle East, support for the radicals was snowballing, and the voices of those crying out for revenge were becoming louder by the day.
Even as he deplored what was being said and done, Harper could understand the reasons. The medical situation had become so desperate that mobs were now burning hospitals, their spokespersons saying that if they couldn’t save anyone, they might as well not exist. Even among Western nations, the drain on medical facilities was beginning to reach crisis proportions.
In the Middle East, with no choice but to treat ill family members at home, the sick treating the sicker, and everyone in a household condemned to eventually contract the illness and die, despair set in. An intolerable stench hung over the most highly populated cities, entire families sometimes being found dead and decomposing in their homes because no one was well enough to perform the death rites. Indeed, had there been someone well enough, there was no one to dig the graves. Among the poorest neighborhoods, corpses were turning up in the streets; with no one to collect them, conditions began to resemble those of medieval Europe during the black plague.
Throughout the early days of the crisis, governments had only haphazardly imposed quarantines, especially after that became the demand of the imperialist Western states. What might have saved many lives was instead denounced as a Western ruse to once again crush the Middle East under the heel of imperialist nations and kill them all. Listeners in every Middle Eastern country were pledging their lives and resources to the Ayatollah Kazemi, the Twelfth Imam, for only he could save them now.
The only thing that saved Israel from nuclear attack that week was the caution from moderates that any nuclear strike would invite retaliation from the West, which would surely wipe them out even more rapidly than the virus was doing. Before taking such a step, why not consult with doctors and scientists to determine if the West was just giving lip service to their search for a cure?
Listeners in the US and Europe breathed a sigh of relief as the vote was taken and common sense prevailed for another week. No nuclear action for at least one week, was the decision. North Korea, always overconfident in their ability to strike a killing blow to their bitter enemy, the US, was the only dissident. They would bear watching, lest they decided to act alone.
~~~
As soon as he had received the morning brief from his staff, Harper sent for the head of the CDC. Knowing he was expected to resign after the crisis was over, he nevertheless was doing everything in his power to make up for his blunder in not calling the virus to the President’s attention before a civilian did. He was prepared to explain what progress they were making, even though he had to admit it was all on the backs of the two virologists in Antarctica, thanks to an innocent question by a civilian doctor. That fact alone made his organization look like a bunch of Keystone Kops, running around with much sound and fury and little effect. However, they did have access to a larger pool of unaffected blood samples, and the analysis was beginning to show some progress.
Without asking whether Harper would want the detailed scientific explanation, he launched into a loosely-organized report of a gene known as CCR5, its usual action in the body, its dual nature, the anomaly in Ben Epstein’s blood that had led to research about a genetic mutation of it now designated Mu36. By the time he reached that point, Harper had heard enough to know that someone would have to draw him a picture before he’d understand it. He cut the other man short.
“It’s lucky for you that I’m talking to Dr. Rebecca Mendenhall on a daily basis, otherwise you’d have to bring me up to speed on all that. As it is, I’ve got the basics.”
The director stood in shock for a moment, wondering why he’d been summoned then. Foolishly, he asked the question.
“I’m just trying to understand,” said Harper, “why with all the latest equipment, dozens of the finest minds in medical research, and an almost unlimited budget, it’s a couple of virologists and a civilian doctor stuck in Antarctica that are making the biggest discoveries.”
Since he didn’t have an answer for the question, which he suspected was rhetorical anyway, the director didn’t try to explain.
“What do you want me to say, Mr. President?”
“Just tell me if we’re making progress.”
“Oh, yes, sir! Absolutely. We’re working on a gene therapy that should stop the deaths, if not the infections.”
“How long?”
“It’s hard to say. It’s our sole focus, and we know what we need to do. Our only problem is a delivery method that can be applied in the massive numbers we’ll need. Then the manufacturing…I’d say less than a year, sir.”
Harper exploded. “Have you even looked at the predictions? Do you know at what rate this thing is spreading? What planet have you been living on? We have less than two months before the entire population of the Middle East is wiped out. We probably have less than two weeks before they start taking the rest of us out with nuclear retaliation! Good lord, if it mutates the entire world population could be gone in six months. Get me the cure in a week, or we’re all dead.”
A shaken CDC Director arrived in his office half an hour later. He called in his first assistant director and formally handed over the reins, then went home and resigned by handgun. Harper didn’t have time to mourn him.
Chapter 24 - It’s important and urgent
Hannah and Ben had been hard at work, analyzing every sample they had. First, they double-checked Ben’s first findings. Every remaining healthy member of the expedition had viral cells and antibodies in their blood. Every sample that Rebecca had preserved from those who had become ill had viral cells but no antibodies, a fact that gave Hannah a clue about how the disease could have so overwhelmed the patients as to cause death within three weeks.
Despite all precautions, Hannah’s blood was also now showing both viral cells and antibodies, as was Ben’s. The latter fact created some confusion, which they hoped to clear up as they sequenced the DNA
in each sample. None of the other people of Middle Eastern origin had developed antibodies.
Because they had only two machines and the sequencing took up to eight hours per sample, it was slow going. Preliminary results showed that Hannah’s suspicions were probably correct. Ben’s heterozygous CCR5 genes were the only ones to be found that had characteristics of both Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern strains. All of the victims’ CCR5 genes were homozygous copies of the Mu36 variation. Everyone else’s were identical to Hannah’s, all of which was found to be the norm in both her small sample of Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern individuals and a larger sample hastily tested through the CDC’s home laboratory.
Ben was the anomaly. Why did he have one copy of the normal gene, and one of the abnormal? Was that why he had been able to develop antibodies for the infection? Would it be important in the discovery of the cure? The first question was the most urgent for Hannah. The answers would tell them how to direct the CDC in their testing.
“Ben, what do you make of this?” Hannah asked him, when all of the samples had been sequenced and the results charted.
“I don’t know. Maybe my parents would,” he remarked. “The only thing I can think of is that my grandparents escaped the Holocaust and migrated to Israel, then to the US when they couldn’t adjust to the desert climate. Maybe there was intermarriage somewhere back in my lineage that let me inherit that normal allele. Lucky for me. Otherwise I’d be dead by now.”
Lucky indeed, no matter how it had come about. Hannah asked him to check with his parents as soon as the time difference lined up so that his parents would be available to Skype. Meanwhile, she tuned the Tenth Cycle microscope to an even greater magnification and began to painstakingly map the Mu36 allele for how its sequence differed from the normal gene. There were several approaches that the cure could take, one of which wasn’t a cure at all but an attenuation of the virus so that victims could recover. Hannah preferred a more proactive approach, one that would prevent people from getting the virus in the first place. Now that it was out in the world, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle, but perhaps a vaccination could be devised.