by Louise Voss
Her jaw dropped at the evidence.
‘I had active surveillance here, here, and all over this region, up till last night,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘The internet went down at about eleven p.m., and hasn’t come up again since. No ethernet, certainly no wi-fi. Nothing. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this data hasn’t got any more positive overnight … Anyway, see you later. I need to get on. Let’s hope that your antibodies live up to their hype, eh?’
Kate couldn’t even raise a smile as William left the room. She had never felt such a panicky, desperate anticipation.
Junko came in and sat down opposite her, looking tired, but serene and still immaculate.
‘How are you?’ Junko asked.
‘Worried.’
‘You look it. Me too. We have so little time. I have been in the lab all night, examining the blood samples from Officer Buckley.’ She shook her head to indicate the apparent futility of her night at the microscope.
‘I’m so worried about my son,’ Kate said. ‘He’s in Dallas – it’s not going to be long before the virus spreads from coast to coast … I can’t believe I was gullible enough to allow him into the country. I believed them when they told me it was contained on the reservation.’ Junko was quiet, and Kate imagined she was thinking about her family in Japan. She envied Junko the knowledge they were so far away – but how long would even they be safe?
‘The cause of death … the seizure – you haven’t seen that before with Watoto?’ Junko asked eventually.
‘No. Normally, the victim dies after they start to bleed. They don’t bleed to death, but their organs fail. So this deviation in the virus is very strange.’ Kate spoke quietly, as if to herself. ‘Very strange. We need to take a closer look, see how this virus compares to the known Watoto strain.’
Junko sipped her coffee. ‘I’m already running comparisons – that’s one of the things I did last night. We’ve already sequenced the DNA, and Watoto and Watoto-X2 appear to be exactly the same. There is nothing I can see that would indicate why this new strain is more fatal. And why it kills through a seizure rather than bleeding.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t matter,’ Kate said. ‘The vaccine – if we manage to develop one – will work on both.’
‘Yes. In theory. Unless there is something else …’
She trailed off, deep in thought. Kate waited for her to emerge from her trance, but before she did, Kolosine burst into the room and headed straight over to them.
‘Maddox, upstairs, now.’
Kate pushed herself to her feet, explaining to Junko, ‘He needs another sample of my blood to create a phage display. I’ll catch you later, Junko, I’m going to stay in the lab after I’ve had the test.’
Twenty minutes later, blood taken, Kate peered into the electron microscope, examining the familiar form of the Watoto virus. It was like looking at her own face in a mirror, she knew it so well. Except the virus didn’t change, didn’t get older, didn’t frown or get tired. Today, it felt as if her nemesis was stronger than her. It was winning.
Junko was right. The new strain appeared identical to the common strain that Kate had caught in Africa, the one that had killed her parents. So why was it even more deadly and why did it act so fast? If Kate had caught this strain of Watoto all those years ago, she wouldn’t be sitting here now.
Staring at the virus’s worm-like shape, she had a niggling feeling that the answer was right in front of her if she could only see it. She had told Junko that perhaps the new qualities of the virus didn’t matter, that essentially they still had to create a vaccine for the same organism. All the same, if they could crack the puzzle of why the two strains appeared to be identical yet killed their victims in different ways, they would be able to solve the whole thing. Then again, if Kolosine’s tests were successful maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about it. There was no reason why her antibodies wouldn’t work against this new strain as well as the old.
He was at the other side of the lab, pacing back and forth beside the machine that, he hoped, would give him the answer. Kate’s blood sample, which had been left on a chip for an hour so that the antisera could incubate, was now being subjected to a barrage of tests inside the machine. If all went well, the peptide – the correct lock they needed to create a vaccine, as she had explained to McCarthy – would light up and they would be able to take the relevant antibody and use it to create more
antibodies – enough to vaccinate everybody.
The air in the lab crackled with tension. Kolosine wouldn’t allow anyone else near him or his precious machine. Inside his suit, she could see beads of sweat rolling off his forehead. She exchanged a worried look with Chip, who was seated at one of the computers.
‘How are you getting on over there?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’ve never tested so many samples in such a short space of time. I’m pretty much seeing double – but nothing useful is showing up. Nothing. Every time I manage to think of a new hypothesis, it comes to nothing. I feel like banging my head against the wall.’
‘Know the feeling,’ said Kate glumly.
21
Paul rapped twice on Rosie’s front door and waited, looking around at the neighbourhood, his eyes shielded from the sun by a pair of sunglasses he’d picked up at a drugstore on the way over. It was a neat, pretty block mostly comprised of white clapboard houses with apple trees in their front yards and swings on their porches. It was one in the afternoon, the precise time she’d told him to come over, as she needed to get to her shift at the diner, but his knocking went unanswered.
Paul checked his watch. He became aware that he was being scrutinised by a snowy-haired man in the front yard of the house next door, which was considerably larger than Rosie’s, though identical in every other way. The man was tinkering with a sprinkler system that sat at the centre of his immaculate lawn.
‘Afternoon,’ Paul called, raising his hand and wondering at the same time if Rosie had changed her mind and was hiding inside, waiting for him to go away.
The man nodded coolly and turned back to his sprinkler.
Paul was about to knock again when the door opened and Rosie beckoned him inside. Her hair was damp and a towel was draped haphazardly over the back of a nearby chair.
‘I’m sorry. I just got out the shower.’
Paul stamped on an involuntary image of Rosie naked. Since meeting Kate, he’d never entertained even a fleeting fantasy about any other woman. It’s fine, he reassured himself. A natural chemical reaction. One that you are not going to act on.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I was busy making friends with your neighbour. Friendly guy.’
Rosie motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen at the back of the house. A jug of lemonade sweated on the worktop and she poured him a glass. She was wearing a red-and-black-check flannel shirt and shorts and her feet were bare. She had, Paul noticed, a small tattoo of a flower on her ankle.
‘Lived here long?’ he enquired, looking around at the scruffy but homely kitchen.
‘This house, ten years. This neighbourhood, my whole life. I like it here. It’s safe. A good place to raise a daughter. Not too much crime, and the local kids are polite and pretty well-behaved.’
Right on cue, Paul heard Lucy exclaim ‘Holy fucking shit!’ from the living room.
‘Most of ’em, anyway.’ Rosie grinned. ‘Guess we’d better see what she’s cussing about, huh?’
Paul set down his glass and followed her into the living room. He had wanted to ask her about Lucy’s dad, but reminded himself that it wasn’t his place. He was only here because Rosie had promised to help him find out what had happened to Mangold.
Lucy was in a big, tatty armchair, wearing a pink T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, her long bare legs curled beneath her, gesticulating at the TV.
‘This is so messed up,’ she said, thumbing her phone and exchanging messages with her friends as she simultaneously hopped between news channels: Fox, CNN, CBS. ‘Afte
rnoon, Mr Craig.’
Paul smiled. ‘Hi, Lucy.’
‘What’s messed up?’ asked Rosie.
Lucy shot her mother a look, as if it were the dumbest question she’d ever heard. ‘This,’ she replied. ‘This freaking virus. It’s getting, like, really really scary.’
On CBS News, a map of Los Angeles County filled the screen. The map was coloured according to the number of Indian flu cases reported in each area; the darker the hue, the higher the number. Los Angeles was spattered with patches the colour of blood. The outskirts of the city, along with a number of surrounding communities, were coloured orange, indicating that the virus was taking a vicious hold: Santa Monica, Pasadena, Huntingdon Beach …
The shot on screen returned to a pair of presenters seated at a desk. One of them was saying that there had also been isolated cases reported in Portland, Seattle and Las Vegas, all of them people who had visited LA in the last week.
‘The Department of Health have acted swiftly and those people have been quarantined, along with their families,’ said the presenter.
‘That won’t stop it for long,’ Paul muttered. He turned to Lucy. ‘Have they said how many people are dead?’
Lucy stopped texting and looked up at him solemnly. ‘Five thousand.’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Rosie.
‘It is. I swear. And they said they think that, like, up to a hundred thousand people have already got it.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Rosie breathed, clutching the back of the armchair her daughter was in.
Paul went cold. The numbers had exploded since yesterday – but this was what happened when epidemics of highly virulent diseases broke out. And tomorrow it would be ten thousand. It would multiply fast from now on. ‘What’s the fatality rate? Have they said?’
Lucy looked up at him with damp eyes. ‘Ninety-nine per cent.’
She tilted her face towards Rosie, who was staring with horror at the TV screen, now showing a helicopter view of Los Angeles.
Across the bottom of the screen ran a ticker-tape with the words: BREAKING NEWS: LOS ANGELES COUNTY QUARANTINED. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL ACT TO PREVENT DEATH TOLL RISING.
The camera zoomed in on soldiers constructing a roadblock on the outskirts of the city. In an agitated voice the news anchor informed viewers that the National Guard had been called in to ‘police’ Los Angeles, that the city’s hospitals had ceased accepting new patients, that following the closure of the airports earlier in the week, all roads in and out of the city were closed. People were only being let out of the county after being screened at the border for the Indian flu, and already the queue of cars and trucks was a mile long as panicked drivers waited to be given the all-clear. The broadcast cut to footage of a burning building, a reporter’s voice informing viewers that a clinic had been set on fire in South LA as desperate victims of the virus had learned that stocks of antiviral medicines were stored there. A mini-riot had broken out. There were reports that a doctor had been shot.
Lucy shuddered. ‘Mom, Jamie and Martina are in LA at the moment. I’m really scared.’
Rosie’s voice was quiet. ‘Maybe they managed to get out in time.’
‘They’re not answering their phones.’
‘Who are Jamie and Martina?’ Paul asked gently.
Lucy was too upset to speak, so Rosie answered for her: ‘School friends of Lucy’s. They had summer jobs in Jamie’s aunt’s restaurant in Santa Monica.’
They all looked at the TV again. A public health official was talking about how people in the city should stay home, keep doors and windows shut; how there was an emergency health line in operation plus another number for concerned friends and relatives. The official looked grey. He said that the President would give a live TV address later, that health professionals were doing everything they could to keep the situation under control and were working around the clock to find a vaccine.
‘What advice would you give to anyone watching this in the city of Los Angeles now?’ asked the presenter.
The grey health official stared at the desk in front of him and said, ‘Pray.’
Rosie walked over to the TV and switched it off.
‘Have there been any cases reported in Sagebrush?’ she asked her daughter.
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say.’
Rosie knelt beside her daughter and they hugged. Paul turned away, allowing them a moment of privacy. He felt sick. And he desperately wanted to talk to Kate.
‘Let’s go,’ Rosie said. She turned to Lucy. ‘I’ll see you at the diner later. Wear your face mask, OK?’
‘OK, Mom.’
Paul followed Rosie outside into the sunshine that bathed this peaceful neighbourhood, arcs of water from next door’s sprinkler glinting in the light. Kate was out there. Safe for now, he was sure, in her secluded lab. But for how long?
How long did they have?
They set off in Rosie’s car, a Nissan that had seen better days, driving in silence for the first few minutes. Paul watched the quiet suburban streets roll by. ‘Who are we going to see?’ he asked eventually.
Rosie kept her eyes on the road. ‘His name’s Jon Watton. He worked at Medi-Lab with my father. He was one of the sales managers there. We’ve kind of kept in touch over
the years. He watched out for me. He’s a good guy.’
She paused, then added: ‘I never thought it would be possible for a virus to be ninety-nine per cent fatal.’
‘Oh, it’s possible. Rabies was one hundred per cent before a vaccine was developed. Ebola is around ninety – and there’s no vaccine for that one. Luckily, it’s not airborne so it’s reasonably easy to contain.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My girlfriend is a virologist.’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘Yes. Well, partner. Maybe I’m too old to say girlfriend. Didn’t I mention her last night?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry …’
She didn’t look at him, but her grip on the wheel appeared to tighten. ‘Hey, Paul, look – why would it bother me if you have a girlfriend? Just seems odd you didn’t mention her, that’s all.’
‘I’m sure I did.’ But the truth was, he knew he hadn’t. He remembered a point in the conversation where it could have come up, but he had deliberately swerved around the subject. Guilt stabbed at him again. He forced himself to keep his tone even. ‘She’s in California at the moment, working on finding a vaccine for Indian flu.’
Rosie braked harshly at a red light, making him jerk forward in his seat. ‘Let’s hope she finds one, huh?’
22
After looking at William’s depressing statistics Kate returned to the lab, where the scene was equally grim. She and Chip waited, exchanging nervous looks, while Kolosine paced back and forth. The waves of tension coming off the head scientist could have been used to power a small town. Kate tried to focus on studying more samples of Watoto-X2, but the stress was contagious and it was impossible to concentrate.
Eventually, after thirty minutes of alternately pacing and staring into his machine, hoping to see the luminescence that never came, Kolosine stormed out of the lab.
‘Looks like it didn’t work,’ Chip said evenly as the door slammed shut.
Kate sighed. So it wasn’t going to be that easy. She had tried to warn Kolosine that her blood hadn’t yielded an antivirus in all the years she and Isaac had been working on the project. Just because he had new technology, there was no reason to expect a different result. She only hoped Kolosine had some other ideas up his sleeve.
Kate stood beneath the shower, closing her eyes as the hot jets of water cleansed her body of any nasty microbes that might have clung to her. Drying herself afterwards, she felt a rush of blood to the head and had to take a seat on the wooden bench. Since coming to the lab she hadn’t spoken to Paul once, and the pressure was beginning to get to her. She felt guilty that he wasn’t there with her, and furious that Harley had br
ought him out to the US and then not allowed them to stay together. If they’d known what was going to happen, Jack could have remained at home in Oxfordshire with Paul for the summer.
She went down to the communal area and found the rest of the team gathered around the TV watching news reports. There was no sign of Kolosine. A collective gasp went up when they heard that LA was now under quarantine. Kate listened intently for news of other locations where outbreaks had been reported. No mention of Dallas. But an air passenger could easily have carried it there already, which would mean Jack was in danger too. She needed to get Jack out of the country before they closed all the airports.
Later, she decided, she would demand to go into Kolosine’s office and use the telephone to speak to Paul, emergency or no emergency. A landline seemed to be the only option – even after borrowing Junko’s charger and powering up her BlackBerry, she still hadn’t got a signal.
On her way back to her room, she bumped into McCarthy and followed him outside into the open air. They wandered down towards the woods.
‘Want a smoke?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, that was a one-off. But ask me again later, when Kolosine has his next screaming fit. I don’t suppose you have a phone I can use?’
‘I got no signal either.’ He pointed at his phone screen. ‘It’s a fifteen-mile drive to the nearest place in range, so you’re not gonna get there on foot. The internet’s down – guess the folks at the internet service provider HQ are all sick, or worse …’
A Cat 4 lab with no means of communication with the outside world – it was unsettling beyond belief, especially knowing the people who had planted the bomb at the hotel were out there somewhere. ‘Yeah, I know. William is freaking out – he can’t collect any more data. And if we don’t have data, we’ve got to rely on the TV for our facts, which isn’t exactly scientific … But all that aside, I have to get to a phone.’