by Thomas Hopp
“I have been assured that our nation’s public health community is already on the highest state of alert. Local police precincts are assigning special biohazard teams to respond promptly. The Centers for Disease Control have instituted a readiness plan that prepares clinics to take in and isolate infected patients. There are no less than three major national institutions working on new vaccines to counteract the virus, including the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, and the U. S. Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.”
McKean snorted. “I hope the public is more reassured than I am, considering the buffoons who are trying to make those vaccines.”
“Now, before concluding this announcement,” said the President, “I would like to offer some very good news. Acting on information extracted from the terrorists captured in Winthrop, FBI agents today intercepted what was to have been a second truckload of terrorists at a westbound freeway rest area near Bismarck, North Dakota. None of the several dozen men on board the truck had been inoculated, and all have been taken into custody by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. We believe these men intended to become a second wave of virus carriers. All appear to be foreign nationals or American Islamic radicals. All will be imprisoned in our South Carolina interrogation facilities. In what I am sure is an extremely difficult time for all Americans, we have now had two great successes against those who would harm us. I expect more success soon.”
He signed off with, “God bless you, and God bless America.”
As a group of newscasters began a lengthy commentary, McKean turned the TV volume down.
“The terrorists still have the element of surprise,” I said.
McKean nodded. “But the President’s plan is a good one. And round three of this fight may be more important than rounds one and two, which he just described.”
“Round three?”
“Stopping any outbreaks of smallpox before they spread uncontrollably. The experience in Sumas has been a mixed result. They may have it controlled, but only by expanding their ring of containment vaccinations with the old vaccine to the surrounding towns. Let’s hope they can hold the line there. I hope the President’s public health countermeasures are sufficient, and I hope the new vaccine-making efforts aren’t awash in cronyism and political decision-making. If so, then the virus itself may have the last word.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Dr. Taleed seemed confident he had engineered an extremely lethal organism. Presumably he tested it on human victims before this plan was hatched. If his jihad virus is substantially more virulent than the Bangladesh strain, then all bets are off on controlling its spread.”
“Do you mean its spread within the individual?” I pointed to my bandaged arm. “Or between people?”
“Answer: both.”
Throbbing pain under the bandage made me imagine the viruses consuming my flesh - consuming me - like a spreading jihadi army. I looked to McKean for some sign of commiseration, but he sat calmly with his eyes unfocussed and his expression placid, as if he were pondering subjects infinitely far from our personal concerns.
I shook off a tremor. “How soon will we know if your vaccine is working?”
McKean raised one eyebrow and glanced at me. “Answer: unknown.”
“What?”
“Immunity is not something that can be measured precisely, Fin. One can measure levels of antibodies in the bloodstream or cellular responses in a test tube, but protective immunity - ” he sighed as if in awe of the concept, ” - is an essence that’s hard to measure. Only by surviving an infection can anyone truly demonstrate immunity. You and I are the crucial experiment, Fin. We are the laboratory animals. As we live or die, so go the fates of a great many people.”
He lapsed into thoughtful silence, and I sank back on my pillows. My stomach was a pit of dread. My mind was a racing engine of horrific images: viruses, pocks, Taleed’s gloating weasel face - and the jaundiced, hate-creased, sanctimonious face of Sheik Abdul-Ghazi.
Chapter 19
I dozed fitfully. After a while, Jameela went to her room for the night. McKean busied himself with reading. In a wakeful moment, I watched him highlight text in a scientific article with his yellow marker. I found myself getting irritated.
“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” I asked him.
“I am afraid my vaccine won’t work.”
“What’s the difference? You’ll be dead if it doesn’t work.”
“My own death is trivial in the big scheme of things. But my vaccine may be all that stands between a great many people and death. I’ll never forgive myself if I engineered it wrong. You saw the arbitrary process by which Janet and I constructed it. What if we made a bad call? What if a single amino acid change could have made it work better? That would be agony.”
“But you’ll be dead in that case.”
“True. If I fail, then death will have its merits. It will release me from a vast sense of guilt.”
“Guilt - ?”
“Given time, I could create a hundred synthetic vaccines from different segments of the B7R protein. Given enough time, I’m sure I would find one that stimulates a maximal immune reaction. But time is not a luxury I can buy. I had my reasons for picking the amino acid sequence I chose - but I may have chosen wrong.”
What little comfort I had drawn from McKean’s track record with the Congo River vaccine vanished. “You’re that uncertain?”
“Answer: yes,” McKean replied. “I am that uncertain.” His gaunt, long face expressed more than a shadow of doubt. He turned away from me, laid the article on his night table, and his head on his pillow. He turned off his reading light, and soon his regular breathing told me was asleep.
A heavy feeling in my chest kept me awake for some time - a reaction to the pain of my swollen arm and fever chills creeping over my skin. I spent the night in alternating bouts of fitful sleep and insomnia.
By morning, a high fever had me solidly in its grip. I don’t recall much that transpired that day, just vague images of McKean spending a lot of time flat on his back with fever; a chessboard, depleted of men, on a small table by his bed with the white king checkmated by a black knight and bishop; Jameela in a chair beside my bed, feeding me broth with a spoon; TV news showing a white van shot up and burned out on a freeway north of Portland with six jihadis dead inside. But mostly I remember fever, sweat, heat, chills, and a sense that Sheik Abdul-Ghazi had won. He had killed McKean and me, and we just didn’t know it yet.
Kay Erwin appeared in her isolation suit to examine us. She checked my forearm, which had gone purple and was riddled with more spots than she cared to count - she made some notes on my chart and spoke to me. I recall her lips moving, but I didn’t hear what she said.
The isolation ward seemed to me like Death Row. In my imagination, the long hall outside our door led only one place: the autopsy room. I sank deeper into a downward spiral of sweat, chills, and tremors.
Late the next day, Jameela shook me gently, waking me to the Six O’clock News.
“Federal officials,” said the anchorman, “report a mixed reaction in cities across America. Most communities remain calm, but some have experienced rushes on food and other essential supplies. A few cities have experienced riots. The number of attacks by infected jihadis remains limited, but a series of incidents continues, striking terror wherever one occurs. The most disturbing report comes from San Francisco, where a crowded BART train was attacked last night. For more, we go to our affiliate there.”
A reporter in an overcoat, positioned outside a BART station began, “Commuters aboard the train were assaulted by two men shouting Allahu Akbar and waving bloodied arms. According to witnesses, they moved through the length of the train, wiping the blood on people who had no way to escape them. When the train arrived at this station, they attempted to escape. One was subdued by transit police with tasers. The other was shot dead by city police summoned to the scene, as he attempted to es
cape in a white van. Public health officials have quarantined all commuters who were aboard the train as probable smallpox exposures. Authorities estimate the men may have contaminated as many as two hundred people.”
The screen image returned to the anchorman at his desk with staff hustling in the background.
“Another incident occurred last night at the Capitol building in Olympia, Washington, where the State Legislature was meeting in an emergency session. We go there for a report.”
An Olympia affiliate reporter with matching short Afro and black microphone ball stood in front of the floodlit Capitol Building.
“Details are sketchy,” he said. “This is what we know so far. A young Caucasian man, possibly an infected jihadi, was shot in the entrance foyer of the Capitol Building as he tried run past the security checkpoint. The man died at the scene, after having possibly contaminated several Capitol guards. The rotunda entrance has been cordoned off for decontamination. A white passenger van being sought by police was found parked nearby with three other men inside, apparently already dead of the disease.”
McKean, propped up by pillows, said, “Four more pawns taken off the chessboard.”
Jameela was in a chair between the two beds. “It is like a giant chess match, isn’t it?”
“With the fate of civilization in the balance,” McKean replied.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling for a time, prostrated in a pool of sweat. It occurred to me that I would soon face the most ancient question asked by mankind. “What do you think happens after you die?” I mumbled.
“Don’t talk like that, Fin,” said Jameela.
McKean said, “I’ll give the agnostic’s reply. Answer: I don’t know.”
“Thanks for the comforting thought,” I muttered. “Suppose the Sheik’s right? Suppose Allah is guiding him, not us?”
“Fin,” said McKean. “The fever has got you talking nonsense. The Sheik is all too human, and therefore subject to error. I’m confident his guiding principles are wrong. If there is a God who’s the focus of good in the universe, then he must be on our side.”
I shook my head. “But suppose God is as wrathful as the Qur’an says. Suppose the Sheik has his ear. We might burn in hell for lack of faith in the right incarnation of God.”
“I can’t help you with that concern,” McKean said.
“You should rest,” said Jameela.
She wiped my brow with a moist cloth. I closed my eyes, and soon sank under the full weight of the fever.
Consciousness gave out completely. Time ceased to move. My only sensations were of heat and agonizing pain in every part of my body. My bones were tunnels of volcanic heat. Every muscle burned like a stream of fire. My skin crawled with clammy sweat and wave after wave of body-racking chills.
In the middle of this blind, dull agony, I sensed, more than saw, Nurse Hawkins bind my right forearm to a rigid armrest and place a needle catheter into a vein. Through this intravenous line - I was told later - I was fed fluids to keep me from sweating myself to death.
Beyond that, I have little memory of conscious thoughts or even my physical existence in a human body. Instead, I recall distorted echoes of voices half-heard, sounds indecipherable, as if there were disembodied spirits talking and moving around me. At times, the sounds were more dreamt than heard. And some of those dreams were nightmares.
In one fevered vision I lay on a stone ledge in a Mohammedan hellscape lit by the glow of molten rock. Sulfurous flames lapped at every inch of my skin with scorching, agonizing heat. I looked up to see Jameela descending toward me as if bourn by a whirlwind. She was naked. Her long dark hair spiraled about her face and shoulders. Buffeted by the maelstrom, she tumbled helplessly in pirouettes over my head. She shrieked so shrilly and pitiably that rage overcame my immobility. I forced myself to rise and threw my disintegrating arms around her, trying to protect her, but beyond any hope of protecting. I felt myself melting into one-ness with her, uniting in eternal hellfire…
That I was comatose, that my agonies lasted more than two days, I was unaware. That medical personnel attended me in their isolation suits, I have no memory. That Jameela was near, leaning over me, soothing me, I only vaguely recall. Once, the haze lifted enough for me to sense her sitting beside me, holding my right hand in hers, and weeping softly.
All else was agony, sweat and heat.
Chapter 20
I opened my eyes. Soft morning light came through the window of our room. I drew in a deep breath of cool hospital air. My fever had dissipated with the night. My heart, not longer palpitating, beat slowly and steadily.
Jameela was gone and Peyton McKean was asleep. The ward was silent. The TV was off. The wall clock read 6:48. I lifted the bandage on my forearm. The pocks were changing from angry white points of pain to small dark scabs. The swelling and redness had subsided around the gash, which was almost healed. Someone had removed the stitches. I lifted the neck of my gown and glanced at my chest. The skin was clear. The rash hadn’t spread.
“Hallelujah!” I exclaimed.
McKean sat up and eyed me groggily. “What?” he asked.
“Your vaccine worked!”
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “It did work, didn’t it?” He stretched and yawned.
I took a small hand mirror from my nightstand and inspected my face. I watched my own expression of relief grow as I verified that my face had been spared any more pockmarks other than the three on the right side of my chin, now scabbed over.
Jameela appeared at the door, wearing her silk pajamas and robe. Her hair was tousled and she looked sleepy-faced. “Don’t worry, Fin,” she smiled. “You’re still handsome.”
I put the mirror back in its place. Jameela came near.
“You suffered so.” She lifted my good hand and kissed my fingers. We looked into each other’s faces like comrades reuniting after far-flung, desperate adventures.
Dr. Zimmer came squeaking into the room in his moon suit. He took my pulse. “Sixty-five,” he said. “Normal.” He cut away the bandage and examined my arm, nodding positively. “How are you feeling, Fin?”
“Fine,” I replied. “Although that might be an overstatement.”
“Good,” he said. “You should be getting a clean bill of health soon, along with Jameela and Dr. McKean. Everyone is coming along great.”
“Except for this damnable lethargy,” McKean muttered.
“That’s understandable,” said Zimmer. “You’ve been through four days of fever.”
“Four days!” I exclaimed. “Has it really been that long?”
“Yes,” said Zimmer, his eyes no longer wary. “You’ve been seriously ill, Fin, more so than Peyton, but things are looking up now.”
McKean raised an index finger. “It seems our little experiment had the expected outcome. Jameela was fully protected by Taleed’s vaccine. I myself represented an individual with partial immunity to smallpox, thanks to my vaccination years ago with the old vaccine. You, on the other hand, were the most susceptible of the three of us. Your disease was the most profound. I half expected you to die, Fin. I am sure a man of lesser constitution would have.”
“I - I’m flattered, I guess.”
“On the other hand,” Zimmer interjected, “we’ve measured the antibodies in each of your bloodstreams. You, Fin, are now producing more protective antibodies than anyone.”
McKean nodded. “Such are the vagaries the immune response. It’s precisely because you had such a serious infection that you now are the most immune. The body reacts strongly to strong attacks.”
Zimmer scribbled a note on my chart and then left us.
Drained of strength by my long fever, I lapsed into fitful sleep through the morning. Eventually I awoke fully at the sound of Jameela’s voice.
“Fin!” she whispered urgently. I opened my eyes and found her leaning close. I sat up and blinked at her groggily.
“I must say goodbye,” she said in a stricken tone. “They are taking me away.”
>
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood shakily, facing Jameela and Nurse Hawkins, who hovered just over her shoulder in his overstuffed pressure suit, observing me curiously with his mild dark eyes.
A man’s cheerful voice came through the intercom out in the hall, “Good morning, Fin.” Outside the glass wall I spotted buzz-cut Vince Nagumo in his blue suit. He said, “I’m here to escort Ms. Noori to our offices for some questions and…a little time in our custody.”
“Custody!” I growled, still trying to regain full consciousness. I followed Jameela and Hawkins out to the window wall. “I won’t let you take her.”
“Won’t?” Nagumo chuckled. “You don’t look like you’re in any shape to - “
“That’s enough!” I shouted. To my less-than wakeful brain, Nagumo and his over-friendly smile suddenly seemed as evil as the Sheik. Without a fully conscious thought, I pushed Hawkins away from Jameela. He didn’t budge much. On the counter of the nursing station, I spotted the scissors Zimmer had used to cut away the dressing from my arm. I snatched them up and pointed them menacingly at Hawkins.
“If you try to take her,” I growled, “I’ll cut your suit open.”
Hawkins took a step toward me, his eyes no longer mild. He stared at me hard, suddenly much more like a football lineman than a nurse.
I held my ground and waved the scissors at him. “You want a case of smallpox?”
That put a little fear into Hawkins’ eyes. He stepped back and raised a hand to parry any move I made with the scissors.
Jameela intervened by stepping between us. “Fin, no. I will go with them. I only wanted to say goodbye.”
I lowered the scissors.
“Besides,” McKean called from his bed, “it wouldn’t do to get arrested for assaulting a man with a blunt instrument.”
I looked at the scissors. They were the kind with bulbous ends to avoid flesh cuts while snipping gauze. I put them back on the counter.