The Doomsday Infection (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

DAY TWO

SATURDAY JULY 2
ND

06:45 AM

The American United Boeing 777 flight 416 out of Miami bound for London glided through the sky silhouetted against the rising sun. Luke sat in business class on his way to the British capital to cover yet another Royal scandal. He blasted down the air-phone to his boss back at the studio. “It’s the scoop of the century and you won’t run it?”

“Only half of my staff turned in today,” said his boss. “I’ve never known anything like it. The ones that have turned up are dropping like flies.”

“I’m telling you, they’ve got the virus,”

“The authorities aren’t saying anything.”

“I told you what happened.”

“I did some checking,” said his boss. “It’s a bridge malfunction apparently.”

“Sure it is,” Luke said sarcastically. “Then why are troops guarding it?”

“To stop folk swimming across. There’s a dangerous alligator in there.”

“Uhuh. Have you dispatched anyone to the island yet?”

“Look, Homeland S
ecurity’s on it. We can’t use it.”

“You
ain’t gonna broadcast a worldwide sensation?” Luke felt himself getting angry as his boss stonewalled him, trying to cover his sorry ass. “Show some balls. It’s a worldwide scoop.”

“You want me to go up against the might of Homeland Security? You seriously want me to risk my job on YOUR hunch? Remember last time?”

“OK, so I called it wrong last time -”

“But that was a
doozy. I nearly lost my job the last time I played one of your hunches. It’s not going to happen, Luke. Not without more evidence.”

“By the time you wait for the evidence everyone else will have the story.”

“That’s it. Enjoy London, Luke.”

“Boss, do me a favor,” Luke calmed himself, knowing he’d lost this round, and changed tack. “Go home. The only way to survive this virus is to isolate yourself from other people.”

His boss noticed the change in Luke’s tone and took him seriously. “And does this new virus have a name?”

He sighed deeply, knowing what his boss’s reaction would be. “It
ain’t a new virus; it’s an old one, a very old one . . . the Bubonic Plague.”

07:30 AM

Sophie drove up the I-
95 interstate in her rented jeep, as hers was still upon the island. She was on her way to visit the Seminole Native-Americans at their reservation, for their monthly consultations. These were the purists, who still lived on the land, shunning their more famous cousins with their casinos, gift shops and alligator wrestling. They despised them for selling out, and dressing like fools, acting as if they were cast members at Disney World. They preferred the quiet and solitude of the old ways, and Sophie enjoyed meeting with them and hearing of their folklore and traditions. She’d been particularly surprised to find that they had taken in and welcomed the freed slaves, who had made their way down south to Spanish Florida and allied themselves to the Seminole, who called them, ‘Maroons’.

She turned onto Interstate 75, known locally as Alligator Alley. She cruised along for some miles enjoying the wind in her hair, as it was another scorching day. She thought about the events of the day before. She steeled herself for the telephone call that she had to make and voice dialed her car-phone, “The Surgeon General,” she said with a confident voice, a confidence that she did not feel. She could be about to make the biggest mistake of her life, or if correct she would prevent a major outbreak. She had no
choice; she had to warn Quinn Martell.

__________

The Surgeon General glanced at the caller ID and beamed. “Doctor Garcia, how lovely to hear from you. Is this a social call?”

“I wish. No, we have a problem, here in Miami.”

“Tell me?” He asked, wondering how she knew.

“There has been an outbreak centered at the Good Samaritan hospital.”

“I have been hearing snippets. How do you know?”

“I was there.”

“My God . . . are you feeling OK?” he asked genuinely concerned.

“I appear to be immune, but at least fifty people have died of a virulent strain of the Bubonic Plague. Yet there is nothing on the news, no warnings or anything. My question to you is, why not?”

“Sophie, you always were my favorite pupil, no preamble – straight to the point.” He smiled at the memory. “Well, up until you called, I’ve had no official notice. Homeland Security is in charge and playing it close to their chests. The rumor is that they think it’s a chemical attack.”

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “It has all the symptoms of the Bubonic Plague - the Black Death, but this time it is also pneumonic – it’s airborne.”

“OK, let me see what I can find out. Thank you for the heads up. I’ll call you back.”

__________

Quinn Martell hung up and pursed his lips. He knew that Sophie would not phone without cause. She had been one of the brightest students he had ever had the privilege to teach and she was now one of the foremost experts in the field of contagious diseases, with a fondness for the historic plagues of Europe. In fact, she had always insisted that the plague would return one day, a notion for which he had gently chided her. He prayed to god that he would not be wrong. He’d do some digging. He had some old pals in the Homeland Security, he would try to winkle out information, then call the President, the sooner he acted the better.

Fifteen minutes later he made a scrambled telephone call to the President. “With reference to the viral outbreak in Florida, we believe we know what it is.”

“Hit me with it.”

“The Black Death.”

“The Black Death?” He chuckled. “You mean the Bubonic Plague? You’re kidding me, right? I mean, that was eradicated years ago.”

“Or, so we thought. This is a new strain. In fact, according to the World Health Organization this is long overdue.”

The President sucked in oxygen through a hand-held mask attached to a bedside cylinder. He shuddered, taking in the news.

Quinn continued on video-link and paced his office. “The WHO knew that it was never a matter of IF a virus would cause a worldwide pandemic, it was more a ma
tter of WHEN.” Quinn gazed out of his office window watching the world go by. Folks were on their way to work without a care, going about their daily business, not realizing the horror about to be unleashed upon mainland America. He continued. “It’s arrogant of man to think we can continue breeding at this rate without paying the consequences.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world’s population has increased by a billion since 1999, by four billion since 1960.”

“You’re kidding?”

“It’s more than doubled in our lifetime.”

“And what is the optimum level?”

“Around the four billion mark.”

“And what’s the figure now?”

“Over seven billion.”

“And our resources are already in short supply.”

“Exactly, this is nature’s way of reversing that trend, culling the herd.” The President sucked in more oxygen, as Quinn continued. “Last time, the Black Death wiped out over two hundred million people and that was at walking speed, now we’ve got airplanes trains, automobiles. The way the population is crammed together on this over-populated planet this virus will encircle the globe in days.”

“My God . . .”

“Of all known species to have ever lived on this planet of ours, ninety-nine point five percent have been wiped out – survival of the fittest, et cetera.” He took a deep breath and continued. “Another way of looking at it is if you took the history of the globe as a twenty-four hour clock, man appears at one minute to midnight, our future is far from assured.”

“But we’re talking about an ancient disease?”

“Precisely. Do you know how many doses of antidote for the Black Death we have here in the United States?”

“Surprise
me.”

“None.”

“None?”

“That’s how much we have dismissed this virus. We did not think it necessary.”

“My...god.”

“And on top of that, this is a new strain.”

The President hefted himself up in his bed. “And this Intel is sound?”

“Rock solid.”

He flopped back onto his pillows. “How in hell are we going to implement the counter-measures? Any sort of panic and we’ll have riots on our hands. Can you imagine what would happen to the stock market? We need to handle this with finesse, while at the same time try to quarantine southern Florida.” He assimilated the information, then asked. “What’s the projected death toll percentage?”

“Almost one hundred percent.”

“My god . . . the Miami area has two and a half million people alone.”

“Even if we act now we’ve still conservatively estimated the death toll to be five million.”

08:30 AM

Luke sat back in his business class seat and thought back to the day before. Christ, was it only yesterday that a helicopter blade sliced his good buddy in half? So much had happened since then. He cursed his boss’s reluctance in backing him on his story and contemplated running the story on an anonymous website, but thought against it. He did not want the authorities on his back – again. Someone sneezed behind him and he felt a chill go down his spine. It made him realize how many people were sneezing at the airport. Could that have been a coincidence, or had the virus spread already? What would happen if infected people got onto an airplane? What would happen if an infected carrier had gotten on
this
airplane?

Was there someone else on the airplane who had visited the island hospital? What was the incubation period? How many people
had visited the island in the previous three days? How many had they interacted with? Alternatively, had it started elsewhere and that person infected the hospital. It was an easy target after all, with the patients’ immune systems already in a weakened state.

Sophie had told him a sneeze, or something as innocuous as touching a door-handle could pass on the disease. He looked around and could not see a likely suspect, but then what does a person in the early stag
es of the virus look like?

A fat man sit
ting across from him did not look well; he sweated profusely, and rubbed a handkerchief across his face. He sneezed loudly, and then engaged the button that slowly reclined his chair into the lying position. Luke could see massive sweat stains under the man’s arms, yet the air conditioning worked fine, keeping business class at a comfortable temperature. Luke jolted forward as he saw the fat man scratching under his armpit. He recalled Sophie telling him a major sign of the Black Death were the buboes under the arm. Oh, maaan. The realization hit him like a punch to the face. The Bubonic Plague was on board the airplane.

He watched as the man jack-knifed and had a convulsion that ended in an almighty sneeze. Luke imagined that he could see the microscopic droplets propel from his mouth spreading to the aisle
, covering the unsuspecting flight attendant, who in turn sauntered down the airplane spreading the virulent disease to the other passengers. The confined space was the worst place for a contagion, he thought. This was not the environment for a carrier to be on board, as the re-cycled air pumped throughout the craft, fatally infecting all three hundred and fifty passengers and crew. Should he tell them? Would they believe him? Even if they did believe him, what could they do about it?

09:00 AM

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense and named after its five sides, a fact that had driven conspiracy theorists nuts for years. It’s a pentagram after all, they said, and
the number five had significance amongst occultists. It had five sides, five floors above ground, five circular corridors, how could it not be sinister, they speculated. The fact that the five-sided inner forecourt covered five acres was the final proof. The forecourt was known as Ground Zero, years before President Bush had coined the phrase, in the aftermath of the World Trade Center Twin Towers attack of 9/11. The terrorist attack upon the Pentagon being exactly sixty years to the day that building work on the pentagon began.

Ground Zero, t
he term coined during the height of the Cold War with Russia, because in the event of a nuclear attack the first warheads would target that very spot.

Across the Potomac River from the White House the Pentagon is the world’s largest office block, containing over thirty thousand military and civilian staff, seventeen miles of corridors and twenty fast food franchises including
McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell to name a few.