by Mira Grant
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand the problem. What’s wrong with your lab animals being healthy?”
Alexander Kellis pulled away from his husband, expression anguished as he turned to face him. “I can’t tell which ones have caught the cure and which haven’t. It’s undetectable in a living subject. After the break-in, we’re probably infected, too. And I don’t know what it will do in a human host. We weren’t ready.” He started to cry, looking very young and very old at the same time. “I may have just killed us all.”
“Oh, honey, no.” John gathered him close, making soothing noises… but his eyes were on the animals behind the glass. The perfectly healthy, perfectly normal animals. Suddenly, it seemed like he couldn’t look away.
Dr. Alexander Kellis has thus far refused to comment on the potential risks posed by his untested “cure for the common cold,” released three days ago by a group calling itself “The Mayday Army”…
June 18, 2014: Atlanta, Georgia
The best description for the atmosphere at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, was “tense.” Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and had been waiting since reports first came in describing the so-called Mayday Army’s release of an experimental pathogen into the atmosphere. The tension only intensified when Dr. Alexander Kellis responded to requests for more information on the pathogen by supplying his research, which detailed, at length, the infectious nature of his hybridized creation.
One of the administrative assistants had probably put it best when she looked at the projected infection maps in horror and said, “If he’d been working with rabies or something, he would have just killed us all.”
If he was being completely honest with himself, Dr. William Matras wasn’t entirely sure that Alexander Kellis hadn’t just killed them all, entirely without intending to, entirely with the best of intentions. The proteins composing the capsid shell on Alpha-RC007 were ingeniously engineered, something that had been a good thing—increased stability, increased predictability in behavior—right up until the moment when the idiots in the Mayday Army broke the seals keeping the world and the virus apart. Now those same proteins made Alpha-RC007 extremely virulent, extremely contagious, and, worst of all, extremely difficult to detect in a living host. The lab animals they’d requested from Dr. Kellis’s lab in Reston were known to be infected, but showed almost no signs of illness; four out of five blood tests would come up negative for the presence of Alpha-RC007, only to have the fifth show a thriving infection. Alpha-RC007 hid. It could be spurred to reveal itself by introducing another infection into the host… and that was when Alpha-RC007 became truly terrifying.
Alpha-RC007 was engineered to cure the common cold, something it accomplished by setting itself up as a competing, and superior, infection. Once it was in the body, it simply never went away. The specific structure of its capsid shell somehow tricked the human immune system into believing that Alpha-RC007 was another form of helper cell—and, in a way, it was. Alpha-RC007 wanted to help. Watching it attack and envelop other viruses that entered the body was a chilling demonstration of perfect biological efficiency. Alpha-RC007 saw; Alpha-RC007 killed. Alpha-RC007 tolerated no other infections in the body.
What was going to happen the first time Alpha-RC007 decided the human immune system counted as an infection? No one knew, and the virus had thus far resisted any and all attempts to remove it from a living host. Unless a treatment could be found before Kellis’s creation decided to become hostile, Dr. Matras was very afraid that the entire world was going to learn just how vicious Alpha-RC007 could be.
He sat at his desk, watching the infection models as they spread out across North America and the world, and wondered how long they really had before they found out whether or not the Mayday Army had managed to destroy mankind—with the help of Dr. Alexander Kellis, of course.
“Cheer up, Will!” called one of his colleagues, passing by on the way to the break room. “A pandemic disease that makes you healthy isn’t exactly the worst thing we’ve ever had to deal with.”
“And what’s it going to do to us in a year, Chris?” Dr. Matras shot back.
Dr. Chris Sinclair grinned. “Raise the dead, of course,” he said. “Don’t you ever go to the movies?” Then he walked away, leaving Dr. Matras alone to brood.
The Centers for Disease Control have issued a statement asking that people remain calm in the wake of the release of an unidentified pathogen from the Virginia-based lab of Dr. Alexander Kellis. “We do not, as yet, have any indication that this disease is harmful to humans,” said Dr. Chris Sinclair. A seven-year veteran of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, Dr. Sinclair graduated from Princeton…
July 2, 2014: Denver, Colorado
Janice Barton knocked twice on the door to Dr. Wells’s office before opening it and stepping inside, expression drawn. “Do you think you can see three more patients today?” she asked, without preamble.
“What?” Dr. Wells looked up from his paperwork, fingers clenching involuntarily on his pen. “I’ve already seen nine patients since four! I’ve barely finished filing the insurance information for Mrs. Bridge. How am I supposed to see three more before we close?”
“Because if you’ll agree to see three more, I can probably convince the other nineteen to come back tomorrow,” Janice replied. For the first time, Dr. Wells realized how harried his normally composed administrative assistant looked. Her nails were chipped. Somehow, that seemed like the biggest danger sign of all. A man-made virus was on the loose, Marburg Amberlee was doing… something… and Janice had allowed her manicure to fray.
“I’ll see the three most in need of attention, and then I have to close for the night,” he said, putting down his pen as he stood. “If I don’t get some sleep, I won’t be of any use to anyone.”
“They’re all in need of attention. I can’t choose. But thank you,” said Janice, and withdrew.
She was gone by the time he emerged from his office, retreating to wherever it was she went when she was tired of dealing with the madhouse of the waiting room. On the days when it was a madhouse, anyway. This was definitely one of those days. The gathered patients set up a clamor as soon as he appeared, all of them waving for his attention, some of them even shouting. Dr. Wells stopped, looking at the crowd, and wondered if the other doctors involved in the Marburg Amberlee tests were having the same experience.
He was deeply afraid that they were.
The trouble wasn’t the patients themselves; they looked as hale and healthy as ever, which explained how they were able to yell so loudly for his attention. Their cancers were gone, or under control, constantly besieged by their defensive Marburg Amberlee infections. It was the people they had brought to the office with them that presented the truly alarming problem. Husbands and wives, parents and children, they sat next to their previously ill relatives with glazed eyes, taking shallow, painful-sounding breaths. Some of them were bleeding from the nose or tear ducts—just a trickle, nothing life-threatening, but that little trickle was enough to terrify Dr. Wells, making his bowels feel loose and his stomach crawl.
They were manifesting the early signs of a Marburg Amberlee infection, during the brief phase where the body’s immune system attempted to treat the helper virus as an invasion. That was the one stage of infection that could be truly harmful; when Marburg Amberlee was hit, it hit back, and it was more interested in defeating the opposition than it was in preserving the host. These people were infected, all of them.
And that simply wasn’t possible. Marburg Amberlee wasn’t transmissible through casual contact—or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be, and if the trials had been wrong about that, what else could they have been wrong about? Pointing almost at random, he said, “You, you, and you. I can see you before we close. Everyone else, I’m very sorry, but you’re going to have to come back tomorrow. See Janice before you leave, she’ll set you up with an appointment.”
Groans and shouts of protest spread through
the room. “My baby’s sick!” shouted one woman. A year before, she’d been dying of lung cancer. She’d called him a miracle worker. Now she was glaring at him like he was the devil incarnate. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to see you tomorrow,” said Dr. Wells firmly, and waved for the chosen three to step through the door between the reception area and the examination rooms. He retreated with relief, the feeling of dread growing stronger.
He honestly had no idea what he was going to do.
Rumors of an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in and around the Colorado Cancer Research Center are currently unsubstantiated. The center’s head doctor, Daniel Wells, is unavailable for comment at this time.
July 4, 2014: Allentown, Pennsylvania
The streets of Allentown were decked in patriotic red, white, and blue, symbolizing freedom from oppression—symbolizing independence. That word had never seemed so relevant. Brandon Majors walked along, smiling at every red streamer and blue rosette, wishing he could jump up on a bench and tell everyone in earshot how he was responsible for their true independence. How he, working in the best interests of mankind, had granted them independence from illness, freedom from the flu, and the liberty to use their sick days sitting on the beach, sipping soft drinks and enjoying their liberty from The Man! They’d probably give him a medal, or at least carry him around the city on their shoulders.
Sadly, their triumphant march would probably be interrupted by the local police. The Man had his dogs looking for the brave members of the Mayday Army, calling them “ecoterrorists” and making dire statements about how they’d endangered the public health. Endangered it how? By setting the people free from the tyranny of Big Pharma? If that was endangerment, then maybe it was time for everything to be endangered. Even The Man would have to admit that, once he saw how much better the world was thanks to Brandon and his brave compatriots.
Brandon walked toward home, lost in thoughts of glories to come once the Mayday Army could come out of the shadows and announce themselves to the world as saviors of the common man. What was the statute of limitations on ecoterrorism, anyway? Would it be reduced—at least in their case—once people started realizing what a gift they had been given? Maybe—
He turned the corner, and saw the police cars surrounding the house. Brandon stopped dead, watching wide-eyed as men in uniform carried a kicking, weeping Hazel down the front porch steps and toward a black-and-white police van. The back doors opened as they approached, and three more officers reached out to pull Hazel inside. He could hear her sobbing, protesting, demanding to know what they thought she’d done wrong.
There was nothing he could do.
He repeated that to himself over and over again as he took two steps backward, turned, and began to run. The Man had found them out. Somehow, impossibly, The Man had found them out, and now Hazel was going to be a martyr to the cause. There was nothing he could do. The pigs already had her. They were already taking her away, and this wasn’t some big Hollywood blockbuster action movie; he couldn’t charge in there and somehow rescue her right out from under their noses. Her parents had money. They would find a way to buy her freedom. In the meantime, there was nothing, nothing, nothing he could do. Hazel wouldn’t want him to give himself up for her. He was absolutely certain of that. One of them had to get away. One of them had to escape The Man.
Brandon was still repeating that to himself when the sirens started behind him and the bullhorn-distorted voice blared forth, saying, “Mr. Majors, please stop running, or we will be forced to shoot.” The owner of the voice didn’t sound like she’d particularly mind.
Brandon stopped. Without turning, he raised his hands in the air and shouted, “I am an American citizen! I am being unfairly detained!” His voice quaked on the last word, somewhat ruining the brave revolutionary image he was trying to project.
Heavy footsteps on the street behind him announced the approach of the cop seconds before Brandon’s hands were grabbed and wrenched behind his back. “You call this unfair detention? You should feel lucky we’re arresting you at all, and not just publishing your name and address in the paper, you idiot,” hissed the officer, her voice harsh and close to his ear. “You think this country loves terrorists?”
“We were doing it for you!” he wailed.
“Tell it to the judge,” she said, and turned him forcefully around before leading him away.
The ringleaders of the so-called Mayday Army were arrested today following a tip from one of their former followers. His name has not been released at this time. Brandon Majors, 25, and Hazel Allen, 23, are residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Drug paraphernalia was recovered at the scene…
July 4, 2014: Berkeley, California
The Berkeley Marina was packed with parents, children, college students on summer break, dog walkers, senior citizens, and members of every other social group in the Bay Area. A Great Dane ran by, towing his bikini-clad owner on a pair of roller skates. A group of teens walked in the opposite direction, dressed in such bright colors that they resembled a flock of exotic birds. They were chattering in the rapid-fire patois specific to their generation, that transitory form of language developed by every group of teens since language began. Stacy Mason paused in watching her husband chase her son around the dock to watch the group go past, their laughter bright as bells in the summer afternoon.
She’d been one of those girls, once, all sunshine and serenity, absolutely confident that the world would give her whatever she asked it for. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they realized that, sometimes, what you asked for wasn’t really what you wanted?
“Where are you right now?” Michael stepped up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist and planting a kiss against the side of her neck. “It’s a beautiful summer day here in sunny Berkeley, California, and the laser show will be starting soon. You might want to come back.”
“Just watching the crowd.” Stacy twisted around to face her husband, smiling up at him with amusement. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching something? Namely, our son?”
“I have been discarded in favor of a more desirable babysitter,” said Michael gravely. His tone was solemn, but his eyes were amused.
“Oh? And who would that be?”
Behind her, Phillip shouted jubilantly, “Oggie!”
“Ahhhh. I see.” Stacy turned to see Phillip chasing Maize in an unsteady circle while Marigold sat nearby, calmly watching the action. Mr. Connors was holding Marigold’s leash; Maize’s leash was being allowed to drag on the ground behind him while the Golden Retriever fled gleefully from his playmate. “Hello, Mr. Connors! Where’s Marla?”
“Hello, Stacy!” Mr. Connors turned to wave, one eye still on the fast-moving pair. “She went down the dock to get us some lemonades. Hope you don’t mind my absconding with your boy.”
“Not at all. It’ll do both of us some good if our respective charges can run off a little of their excess energy.” Stacy leaned up against Michael, watching as Maize and Phillip chased each other, one laughing, the other with tail wagging madly. “Maybe they can wear each other out.”
Michael snorted. “That’ll be the day. I think that boy is powered by plutonium.”
“And whose fault would that be, hmm? I just had to go and marry a scientist. I could have held out for a rock star, but no, I wanted the glamour and romance of being a professor’s wife.”
This time, Michael laughed out loud. “Believe me, I count my blessings every day when I remember that you could have held out for a rock star.”
Stacy smiled at him warmly before looking around at the crowd, the sky, the water. Phillip was laughing, his sound blending with the cries of seagulls and the barking of overexcited dogs to form just one more part of the great noise that was the voice of humanity. She had never heard anything so beautiful in her life.
“I think we should all be counting our blessings every day,” she said finally. “Life doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Life can always get better.” Michael kissed her one more time, his lips lingering lightly against her cheek. “Just you wait and see. This time next year, we won’t be able to imagine looking back on this summer without thinking ‘Oh, you had no idea; just you wait and see.’”
“I hope you’re right,” said Stacy, and kissed him back.
The annual Fourth of July laser show at the Berkeley Marina was a huge success this year, drawing record crowds. The laser show, which replaced the traditional firework displays as of 2012, has become a showpiece of the year’s calendar, and this year was no different. With designs programmed by the UC Berkeley Computer Science Department…
July 7, 2014: Manhattan, New York
In the month since his report on the so-called Kellis cure had first appeared, Robert Stalnaker had received a level of attention and adulation—and yes, vitriol and hatred—that he had previously only dreamed of. His inbox was packed every morning with people both applauding and condemning his decision to reveal Dr. Alexander Kellis’s scientific violation of the American public. Was he the one who told the Mayday Army to break into Kellis’s lab, doing thousands of dollars of damage and unleashing millions of dollars of research into the open air? No, he was not. He was simply a concerned member of the American free press, doing his job and reporting the news.
The fact that he had essentially fabricated the story had stopped bothering him after the third interview request he received. By the Monday following the Fourth of July, he would have been honestly shocked if someone had asked him about the truth behind his lies. As far as he was concerned, he’d been telling the truth. Maybe it wasn’t the truth that Dr. Kellis had intended, but it was the one he’d created. All Stalnaker did was report it to the world.