Independence Day Plague (16 page)

Mitchell spoke easily as he assembled the drinks. “Tell me honestly, you’re curious right now. You’re wondering if I am who I say I am, then how did I escape. If I’m not a member of BL-4, then how do I know about it?” He turned, drinks in both hands. “Or are you thinking that you can outrun me? Ask yourself if you can outrun me shooting you.” He smiled easily, “Don’t you want to know how I wound up on your doorstep, knowing what I know?”

Forester slowly leaned back into the chair, face creased in a determined frown. “So, does the ghost from the past have a name?”

Mitchell nodded, “James Mitchell.”

Forester’s eyes widened in recognition. “That’s not possible.”

Mitchell walked over and set the glasses down on the little ornate wooden table set between them. “We’ll discuss that in a minute.” He picked one glass up and looked through the clear fluid. “Did you know gin was invented in Holland as a cure for stomach disease and gallstones? It didn’t really work of course.” He handed Forester one of the glasses and then slumped back into his seat. Once comfortable, he pulled the gun out again and held it easy on his lap.

“
It turned out that old Ray was right. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

Forester eyed his drink, his composure reasserting itself. “You hold a gun on me and yet you make me a drink? What do you want?”

“
Answers. I want some simple answers and there’s no reason we can’t be sociable about it.” Mitchell swirled his glass then took a long swallow.

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You can’t be from Bio-Lab 4. No one survived the bacterial leak.”

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A leak? Oh, that’s a nice euphemism.” Mitchell leaned forward stony faced. “Almost no one survived. Shows how stupid you are about our work too, you idiotic pencil pusher. Marburg is a virus. We took a highly infectious, very deadly organism and revved it up to kill in days instead of weeks. We made it into a superbug but it is still a virus just the same. Actually, five other people survived the disease until your people came in and shot them. Did it feel good, Forester? Did you like killing people who were obviously smarter and more capable than you? You know, I thought that you’d be some kind of expert like us; at least a medical doctor. Imagine my surprise when I looked into your records and discovered that you were just another grunt. Oh yeah, a successful Army career man, started as a corpsman, moving up through Procurement and the medical corps but still… just a grunt. Guess they didn’t want real doctors to know what we were doing.”

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You know nothing about me.” Forester snarled, leaning forward. “You come in here with your gun and your fake bravado and expect information from me. You’ll get fucking nothing. “

Mitchell felt his jaw clenching. His hand itched to swing the gun up and fire. He took several deep breaths. Once calmer, he slumped back against the brown leather chair. When he spoke again, his voice was even and calm again. “Relax, Forester. You’re not going to make it back to the office today. We can go on with the name calling all afternoon but that’s not what I’m here for. Let’s have a long chat.” He waved his glass vaguely around the room. “Catch up on old times. That is, unless you want me to wait until your wife, Marisa isn’t it, comes home at seven? Do you really want me here then?”

Forester picked up the drink, looked at it and then put it down again. “You know a lot about me. How?”

“
The how is surprisingly easy in this day and age. I found a few friends with some unusual computer connections. Nothing is private these days.”

Forester waited but Mitchell did not continue. After a few minutes he asked, “What do you want from me?”

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I want to know why. What was so damn important that we all had to die? It’s not like we were going to tell any of your dirty little secrets. We kept them for years. We wanted to retire into our new lives. Everyone expected to take those secrets to our graves.”

Forester eased back into his seat and sipped his drink. “What do you offer me?”

Mitchell saw the hardness in his eyes and jaws. The gray eyes, once frightened took on a cool, soulless stare. “First, I give you the mystery of me. Surely, you must wonder how I’ve come to be here today. You’re wondering if I’ve contaminated anyone. Yet I’m a walking, talking vaccine of the Marburg you released; a survivor with no visible scaring. That makes me unique. Even a person with your limited background should be curious about that.”

“
You’re lying. Even if you had the disease, you’d show scarring and severe weakness even after three months. You've never been sick.”

“
Yes, I was but it didn't happen three months ago.” Mitchell chuckled. “I know you. You’ve been on this project for many years as our liaison with the Pentagon. You want to know how much I know. How did I escape? Who I’ve had contact with. After all, human trials aren’t much good if you don’t interview the survivors.”

The gray-flecked man stared at him. “Are you contagious?” He pushed the drink away from him on the small table. “Is that why you made me a drink?”

Mitchell smiled, “If I was contagious, you would be fighting outbreaks in an Army base in South Dakota, restaurants from,” he shrugged, “Nebraska to Maryland. No, you won’t get Marburg from me. I’ve been back in the world for months now, Colonel. You'd have dead people all over the country if I was contagious.”

Forester nodded. He picked up the glass and took a small sip. “Have you come to turn yourself in? You can't get work or even food since we've erased your records, nothing legal anyway.” Forester’s voice softened a little as he leaned forward. “We could still use a man of your expertise.”

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And I know I could trust you implicitly with my life” His voice rang sour with sarcasm. He shook his head, “No. I just want answers and then I’ll disappear out of your life forever.”

Forester sat ramrod straight against the chair’s back. “Tell me how you survived.”

“
My story actually occurred two years ago. As you know, our job was to not only create more powerful permutations of the diseases that we knew China, Korea and some of the other countries were brewing, but to also create vaccines for them. After all, you can’t create a vaccine without having the disease first. The military wanted the fear factor, right? Stronger forces made through science. Hit us with anthrax and your people will get a bug so terrible that the bubonic plague looks like a common cold.”

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Fear of a weapon can be more powerful a tool than the weapon itself.” Forester replied. “We knew beyond a shadow of doubt that China and a few others had biowarfare research. We knew they had accidents, terrible leaks that killed hundreds. America needed to keep up with the research.”

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Yes, that’s how most of us excused our work. Where most countries worked with Ebola, we created a better, more infectious version of its close cousin, the Marburg virus. It's still a hemorrhagic fever but Ebola vaccines don't stop Marburg. They’re too different. Therefore, as procedure dictated, we developed vaccines to Marburg and then created super-Marburg as a retaliatory weapon.

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We didn’t have a lot of luck testing the vaccines on animals at first. It turns out that Marburg works differently on rats and dogs than in humans. Something we didn’t fully appreciate until months later. However, one day a freak accident occurred. One of the stressed cultures shattered on the counter top. Did you know that vaccines are commonly developed from stressed and dead viral material?”

Forester nodded.

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Wasn’t sure. Stupidly I tried to catch it but a glass shard cut through my gloves and into my palm.” Switching the gun to his left hand, Mitchell held up his right where a jagged scar crossed his palm. “See, it left a scar about three inches wide. Not very deep but it bled like a son of a bitch, and, of course, left me infected with the stressed strain.” Mitchell took a long drink before continuing.

“
According to protocol, they immediately isolated me. Three days came and went. I ran a fever, felt like I had the flu, but nothing else. I should have developed swelling and the rash that always signals Marburg within just a few days but nothing happened. After two weeks, I felt fine but my white blood cells showed clear signs of activity. By three weeks, I was still alive and they start testing the stressed cultures all over again. Rats died. Monkeys died but I continued to live on unaffected. We discovered that the vaccine worked in humans and only the large primates essentially because I acted as the first human guinea pig.”

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Nothing was mentioned in the reports about any accident.” Forester took another sip from the drink, disbelief clear on his face.

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Of course not. We decided to keep it secret. We were very good with secrets by then. You see, the government put together about 150 families in the middle of a vast nothingness. Most of us lived there for fifteen years or more. I personally lived there for twenty-three years. We knew we were the ultimate top secret, like the Manhattan project in World War II, so we rarely went to the local towns. Hardly went anywhere at all. We became an incredibly close-knit group; safe and happy away from a world we perceived as spiraling into insanity. We watched the news at night; saw the terrorist attacks, people going nuts in schoolyards with guns, the suicide cults, the rising drug use, the vid-heads, the shut-ins, the corporate burnouts shooting up offices. None of us wanted to be a part of that. We felt safe at the isolated base. More important, our families were safe right in a community that we knew about and could trust. If we said anything, the Pentagon types would disband the base. You’d be surprised at the numbers of little accidents that went unreported. If I had died, well, that would have been different. But I didn’t, and simultaneously I jumped our research ahead by months.”

Forester nodded again. Mitchell picked up his drink again and held it high. “You know my story. Here’s to that long lost community, may they rest in peace.” He took a long pull from the gin and after a moment, Forester too took a deep drink from his glass. “And the cleanup crews?”

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You mean the HAZMAT men that shot and burned everything in sight? They didn't expect anyone well enough to fight back. Evasion was easy. The men looked for survivors but no one actually took a body count.” Mitchell snorted, “I took a man out and stole his suit. Luckily, I slipped away from them at the Minot Air Force Base decontamination facility, before the transport crashed in the Utah desert. No one actually did a body count there either. It’s harder, I suppose, when the body parts are strewn across a five-mile area. The military assumed the whole platoon was gone. Your handiwork, I suppose.”

Mitchell checked his watched and lean forward. “Now you know.” He took the gun out of the jacket pocket, aiming steadily and ready to fire. “Fun’s over. Now you answer my question. Why?”

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Why should I tell you anything?”

Mitchell smiled tightly. “How you feeling, Ashton? Any tingling in the legs? How’s the breathing?” Mitchell pulled out a labeled vial and tossed it into Forester’s lap. He jumped as it hit his thigh but then he picked the ten-cc container up and read the label, “B-T 142”.

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It's another product that we worked on. Botulinum toxin from the Clostridium bacteria is ounce for ounce the deadliness poison known to man. It used to kill a lot of people with food poisoning before the canning process was perfected. It usually takes about three days for an overall effect, but in concentrated form, it kills within minutes. Before your men got there, I took a few vials out of the stocks and altered the records. Had someone checked the records against the last reports, they would have known several important vials were missing.” Mitchell grinned, “I guess alcohol can kill.” He removed a second vial, labeled in blue and held it up. “The antidote. Is it worth the price of a little information?”

Forester’s eyes went wide with panic. His hand moved to his chest. “Give me that.”

Mitchell leaned forward, gun leveled at Forester’s chest. He growled, “Give me answers you bastard, or I’ll sit and watch you die in agony.”

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We needed a test case. A way of testing the effectiveness of the Marburg you developed.”

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Why? We gave you reports, probability studies.”

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It wasn’t good enough. General Talbot wanted a field test.

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Who’s General Talbot?”

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Three-star general in charge of the medical division of the Army.” Forester smiled grimly, “Our boss.”

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You gave his name up pretty easily.”

Forester shrugged, “It doesn't matter. You can't get to him. Even if you do, the vials are still safe. Talbot will see to that.”

“
Go on.”

“
The original four labs were created through a top secret government program, against about five different international treaties. All the countries swore they didn't develop chemical and biological weaponry, but you can't put the fire of knowledge back in the bottle. We all had the knowledge and resources. America had to keep up with its enemies. Eventually the presidency changed hands and the labs became a personal embarrassment to the government. The president at that time ordered them to be shut down before word leaked out. General Talbot and a few others didn’t agree. He was second in command of the Medical Corps at that time and had done a lot of work at the Institute.”

Mitchell nodded.

Forester continued, “Acting as a front for a small group of leaders, Talbot arranged to divert funds and personnel. Because of my work in Procurement, he brought me in to work as an intermediary. I fixed funding at the highest levels while the brains like you were recruited to stay for the rest of your life. We rotated the others, the military medical technicians and the security detail at least every two years. Talbot insisted on that. Once their tour of the Bio-Lab ended, we reassigned them so that they could be disposed of.”