Night Zero

by Rob Horner

  One rule held throughout all the changes and mutations. The more you got, the faster it worked.

  Chapter 8

  “An accident in a Puron plant? Is that the best they could come up with?”

  “Well, sir, it’s not a well-known substance, is it? Ever since the EPA declared Freon to be one of the major contributors to ozone depletion, the country’s been struggling to come up with alternative substances. It’s got enough science and background societal recognition that the media will eat it up and dish out the leftovers.” The young aide giving the report struggled not to fidget in front of Dr. Greg Lowman, Chief Medical Officer. The former naval admiral had a well-known dislike for civilians whom he felt shouldn’t have a place in any organization that purports to dictate to the country what is and is not in its best interest. Civilians with political ties or aspirations drew exceptional scrutiny. He’d thrown people out of his office for not adhering to the “standard of standing still” when speaking, which he saw as a weakness and a penchant for lying. “An honest man will stand still, look you in the eye, and tell you how badly he fucked up. A politician will weasel and wiggle and try to find a way to say that something is wrong while placing no blame and accepting no responsibility.”

  Dr. Lowman searched through the documents scattered across his desk, finding more lines covered with printer black-out than actual text on many of them. “All I can see from these pieces of useless redaction is that it was a facility studying vaccination methods, Mr. Fields.”

  Another of Dr. Lowman’s quirks was calling everyone by a title or by their binary gender honorific, something out of favor with many of the politically correct minds on the staff.

  Dennis Fields held still, unsure if there was a question hidden in the statement.

  “What were they studying?” Dr. Lowman asked at last.

  “Sir, the overall goal at the south Atlanta facility was developing methods of delivering vaccination without the need for individual administration.”

  “Uh huh. So, does that also mean without individual consent?”

  The question would be damning out of the mouth of a politician or a civilian doctor. It was delivered in a smooth monotone that implied no judgment or condemnation. One of the CMOs common complaints was the increasing number of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. His office and the office of the Director for Public Health Service and Implementation Science spent millions of dollars every year creating and publicizing Public Service Announcements to combat the growing trend.

  “It does, sir.”

  “Who authorized it?”

  Dennis swallowed nervously, acutely aware he was about to step from the safety of his own battle lines and into the minefield of the demilitarized zone. “Your predecessor, sir, about three years ago.”

  Dr. Lowman hung his head, but it wasn’t a gesture of defeat. Dennis could see the red rising from the admiral’s neck, flushing up into his cheeks. “Do you have any idea how many of Doctor Johnson’s pet projects I’ve had sneak up and bite me in the ass, Mr. Fields?”

  Fields, who did know, kept quiet.

  “Every month, it seems, something else crops up that was conveniently left out of the change of duty report, something that should have been brought to my attention the minute I took this job.”

  He slammed his hands on his desk, scattering reports on everything from the facility in question to transcribed phone calls from harried hospital secretaries wanting to know if the CDC had any advice on the outbreak of abdominal complaints in and around Atlanta, Georgia over the past twenty-four hours. Turning, Dr. Lowman put his back to Dennis, staring up at the wall which held framed pictures of the current chain of command, from President down to the current mayor of Washington DC. “Sometimes I feel like the President, watching where I step so I don’t offend some wallflower with an itch in their panties, head on a swivel so I don’t get plastered with the shit people sling on a daily basis. And all the while, there are trip lines set by the jackasses who came before me, secret projects, authorized-unauthorized tests just waiting to jump up and stab me in the back. And no one knows anything until after something gets fucked up.”

  He whirled around, staring at Dennis. “So here you are, ready to tell me everything about a project I should have known about before we had to mount a media cover-up.”

  Dennis managed to hold his straight-backed stance. For all his bluster, Dr. Lowman wasn’t exaggerating about the perils of his job, and Dennis felt a measure of sympathy for the man. “I don’t know everything, sir. But it’ll get us started. Dr. Riggs will have the rest.”

  Greg dropped his hand, eyes scanning the desktop and floor for a particular paper. “Riggs. I saw that name on one of the reports.” He reached down for a loose sheet with CDC, Internal, Confidential stamped on the top in black letters. “He led the medical team that oversaw the initial operations of the facility.”

  “He did, sir. But he was promoted out of Atlanta last year. His new office is here, in DC. I’ve taken the liberty of calling him in.”

  Lowman looked up. A smile drew his mouth into a tight line, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “Good man. Have him sent in as soon as he arrives.” Lowman touched another sheet, one with columns and numbers whose headings Dennis couldn’t read. “If he doesn’t have what I need, he can go down to Atlanta without a hazmat suit to get it,” he added grimly.

  Unlike the media, Dennis was well-aware of the mortality rate of those who’d either been in the facility at the time of the explosion, or who were exposed to the airborne contaminants in the immediately vicinity while trying to manage the destruction.

  “What were they studying?’

  Dennis opened the folder in his hands, stepping forward and offering it to Dr. Lowman. He didn’t need to look at the papers inside, many of which were unredacted versions of the reports on the doctor’s desk. “Dr. Riggs will know the specifics, of course, but the general idea was as reported, to develop a way to vaccinate a large body of people simultaneously. The academic question became, of course, how would you do that? We’ll use the flu vaccine as an example. You can’t just fill a vat with FluMist and use a crop duster to spray it over a large area. The vaccine itself is only stable under certain conditions, and only viable outside those conditions for a limited time. In order to modify it in such a way as to inoculate a city, for instance, you might very well increase its virility to the point that it became infectious—”

  “Thus, creating the very epidemic you were trying to prevent, I get it,” Dr. Lowman interrupted.

  “Exactly. The concept of viro-bacterial pairing was embraced as a way to get around the current limitations of vaccines.”

  “I’m not familiar with that term.”

  “It’s this report…here,” Dennis said, sliding papers aside until the indicated form was revealed. “Authored by Dr. Riggs prior to his reassignment to DC, and co-authored by Drs. Henley, Matthis, and Yen, they developed a way to splice a virus like influenza with a bacterium like gonorrhea or Staphylococcus aureus, which can survive on some surfaces for months. Dr. Riggs will be able to provide more specifics on how they removed or inactivated the infectious portions of the bacteria, and on which specific bacteria were being used.”

  “Let me get this straight. In our America, we were experimenting with contagious bacteria and viruses to try to produce a vaccine that could be administered without warning or consent?”

  “Hypothetically, yes.”

  “And it worked?”

  “The report doesn’t say, sir. It merely shows that the pairing was successful. Where the project stands today, how far they’d gotten in finding a useful pairing, I can’t say.”

  “But you and I can speculate, can’t we, Mr. Fields?”

  “Sir?”

  “The project is a failure. That’s where it stands. A destroyed facility and forty-nine dead doctors, lab personnel, maintenance staff, office personnel, and security guards. Not to mention another dozen first responders.”<
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  “Just because the facility was working on this project doesn’t mean there weren’t other—”

  “Do you know of any other projects being conducted there?”

  “Well, no sir, but—:

  “Then we assume this project is the culprit. To the initial sixty-one casualties, let’s add the fourteen hundred deaths in the greater Atlanta area, all occurring within twelve hours of the explosion and all featuring similar symptoms to include acute abdominal pain, vomiting, hematemesis, diarrhea, DIC-like anti-coagulation properties, internal bleeding, and dehydration.

  “Sir, you can’t assume—”

  “Now, to that we can also add in the other eight thousand similar complaints in hospitals around Georgia and into Tennessee and Alabama, not to mention the reports of airplanes forced to make emergency landings, airports being turned into quarantine zones—”

  “With all due respect, Dr. Lowman, we cannot assume that these reports are related.”

  Dr. Greg Lowman went on as if Dennis hadn’t spoken. “All the airports in question landed planes from the Atlanta airport, and all within an hour or two of the explosion. You tell me how we can’t relate the events.”

  “I—”

  “Exactly. And what about the attacks, Mr. Fields? Do you have a way to explain those?”

  “Attacks, sir?”

  “Yes. They are sporadic in nature and feature a wide range of attackers, everything from children to old men, which is why no one has tied them together yet. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  “What kind of attacks?”

  “Patients biting doctors, children trying to bite a parent’s hand, men jumping on each other in the street. Always biting. Every report features biting. Why is that?”

  His voice grew quieter as he turned inward, a man trying to solve a puzzle without all the pieces.

  Dennis gave Dr. Lowman a few moments to think before asking, “What do you want me to do?”

  “I know you don’t agree that it’s all connected, but it’s the way we have to act, Mr. Fields.”

  “I…all right.”

  “For now, help me get a better understanding of what we’re facing. Maps. I need maps that show the spread of the abdominal complaints. Collate the outbreaks in physical violence as well in an overlay. Help me put all of the pieces together.”

  Dennis turned to leave the office.

  “I need to know what we’re up against so I can inform the president.”

  Chapter 9

  When Tina called for help, Jessica came running from the nurses’ station. Brandon came from where he was chatting with Kenja, the CNA who had the luck to be assigned sitter duty on Mr. Randy.

  “What do you need?” Brandon asked.

  The patient groaned, struggling again to rise from the stretcher, arms clenched over his stomach.

  Tina looked around, saw Jessica standing in the doorway. “Jess, get two migs of Ativan to push, pull up twenty of Bentyl IM, and bring a liter of saline.”

  “One-liter saline, twenty milligrams of Bentyl IM, and two milligrams of Ativan IV,” Jessica repeated.

  “That’s it,” Tina confirmed. Then, “Brandon, get some chucks and let’s try to confine this mess to the bed.”

  “On it,” the tall CNA replied, slipping a small jar of menthol rub out of his scrub pocket. “I’ve got some Vicks on the counter if anyone needs it.” Using a pinky, he dabbed a small bit of the strong-smelling grease under his nose, then pulled on a pair of gloves.

  Tina returned to the head of the bed. “Mr. Wallace? Austin? Can you hear me, Austin?”

  The patient’s only response was to groan again, though the sound was weaker. Maybe the cramp or spasm was loosening.

  “My name’s Tina, Mr. Wallace. Do you know where you are?”

  The stretcher jerked as Lisa slipped on the puddled feces. She let go a surprised shriek followed immediately by a storm of curse words as she caught herself on one of the slanted bars of the siderail.

  “Somewhere there’s a sailor covering his ears,” Josh quipped, followed immediately by, “You okay, Lisa?”

  The nurse nodded. “Yeah, just slipped.” She righted herself and walked to the counter, quickly removing her dirty gloves.

  Austin Wallace relaxed back into the bed; the muscles in his arms went slack as they slid off his abdomen.

  Tina watched the monitors, noting the patient’s pulse had skyrocketed to almost one-seventy during the period when he’d been in pain and was now dropping back down, though it remained elevated, hovering between one-thirty and one-forty.

  “Mr. Wallace?” she called again, before reaching out to thumb one of his eyelids up. The pupils pointed up and were steady. “He’s passed out again,” she said to the room.

  “I’ve got you a positive Hemoccult,” Josh said, showing the small wooden spatula he’d used to collect a sample off the bed, as well as the green card with the dark smudges on the back.

  Lisa stood by the sink, scrubbing her hands.

  “Let me change my gloves and we’ll get that cath,” Josh said.

  “Kenja, can you bring me some more chucks, please?” Brandon called.

  It didn’t break the skin. It didn’t. It just hurts because it was a metal bar that I grabbed, right?

  Lisa’s hands shook as she peeled the thin, blue nitrile glove off her right hand, noting the ragged tear that moved laterally through the material at the base of her fingers. She couldn’t immediately tell if she was bleeding, because so much of what came out of the patient’s rectum was blood as well as stool. It had run all over the bed, dripping off the sides and onto the floor. Along the way it coursed over the lower parts of the side rail, right where her hand ended up when she stopped her fall, pinched between the thin metal struts and the wide horizontal bar.

  She got the glove off and into the sink, noting the brownish discoloration in the water as the stool that made it through the tear was washed off her skin. The cold water carried a small sting as it struck her hand. There was a line of redness at the base of all four fingers which matched up with the tear in the gloves, and one spot at the base of her middle finger which might be more than mere irritation. That’s where it hurt the most.

  Lisa placed her hand with the sore spot directly under the running water, watching the skin blanch under the cold pressure. She pulled the hand away, noting the color returning. And there was a spot, a very small spot, in the middle that got a little redder than the surrounding tissue. Fearful now—because who knows what was wrong with the guy and even if there was nothing wrong or nothing contagious it was still someone’s poop touching an open sore—she squeezed the spot with her left hand. A small drop of blood oozed out.

  It doesn’t mean anything got in there, Lisa. Just take it easy. You can always ask Tina or Dr. Patel for a ‘script for Bactrim or Clindamycin. They won’t mind. You can just make up something. And besides, it didn’t really bleed until you squeezed it so it might be that you made it bleed, just put too much pressure on stretched and stressed tissue, rather than anything getting in there because you grabbed the rail.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to smile. “Got some of his stool in my glove when I slipped,” she said. “Wanted to get it off me.”

  “Oh, that’s just wrong,” Brandon said.

  Lisa risked a glance over her shoulder. No one was looking at her.

  That’s good. It means they don’t suspect anything.

  Turning off the water, she dried her hands. She grabbed a fresh pair of gloves and the catheter kit, ready to assist Josh in getting the rest of the samples for the lab.

  Right after we get him upstairs, I’ll ask for the antibiotic, she thought.

  Kenja Brown jumped when Brandon called, bumping her knee against the underside of the small student desk the emergency department kept for times like these, when one unfortunate CNA had to play door guard on a psych patient, or someone like Mr. Sprugg, who was so far into his dementia that he never knew what decade it was or
even who he was. Her Samsung smartphone slid onto the floor but, protected by its rubbery case, it didn’t make much noise above a dull thunk.

  Thank God Darnell insisted on that thing.

  She’d already dropped her new phone more in the month she’d had it than all her previous phones combined. Did having the case make her less careful? Was it some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?

  She peeked into room 16 and satisfied herself that Randy Sprugg, who might be a Korean War veteran today, remembering the war like it was still happening around him, was sound asleep. It was amazing the life he’d had, and even more amazing how he’d slip into periods from his past. There was the soldier part, which seemed to be the farthest back he ever went. He might wake up the racist, white Southern boy who remembered a road trip to Chicago during 1966, where he and a bunch of his friends joined in an anti-protest protest that involved about 700 white guys throwing bricks, bottles, and rocks at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he prepared to lead a rally to a realtor’s officer to demand they treat prospective black homeowners the same way they treated whites. Randy recalled the event in such detail that it was impossible to think he wasn’t there. Or maybe he’d be the sweet old guy who said she had such pretty skin and wondered when his wife would be along so they could go home.

  Whoever he might be in a few hours, for now he was out, and it should be safe long enough for her to run into the other trauma room and raid the shelves for a bag of the thick and absorbent pads they called chucks.

  Randy Sprugg needed to pee.

  More than that, he needed to water the grounds of Madison Square Gardens or put out a lake of napalm B like what they dropped on those slant-eyed bastards during Outpost Harry back in ‘53.

  For just a moment, his surroundings faded, and he was back on the ground, feet burning from days of wearing the same pair of wet socks, back aching from the sixty-pound pack and shoulder numb from the pounding shock of firing his M1 carbine. His hearing filled with the sounds of conflict, mortar rounds exploding, machine guns ratcheting and the smell of burning green, vast expanses of jungle foliage alive with fire, filled his nostrils.