Flesh Wounds, page 30
Jesse’s mind reeled with the vapors, soaring out and above himself for a moment. What he saw alarmed him. His eyes were red. There was a rash spreading across his cheeks. His hands shook and his breathing was labored.
A moment—perhaps an eternity—later, Jesse realized he must be hallucinating. The Indian was gone. A dense jungle had replaced the walls of the lodge and towering trees stretched above him where the lodge’s dome-shaped roof should be. There came the calls of birds and nocturnal animals that had never set foot in Virginia. The smell of the jungle pervaded everything, a rich, moist odor of life and decay and smoldering creation. Jesse felt himself sink into the ground, melting. It felt as if he were dying, letting go of life oh so very, very slowly, returning a molecule at a time into the earth that had borne him.
Worms. Warmth. Waiting. Then a billion twisting strands struggling to snare a passing red globule. And then he was in. Replicating. The smells of earth and safety and comfort were replaced with a slaughterhouse stench of blood and death. This new realm didn’t want him. There were bodies which opposed him, but they were weak and he was incredibly powerful. Bursting forth again. Rushing headlong down narrow tunnels. Hunger. Incredible, all encompassing hunger. Somewhere there was a drum beating the sound of a vast, echoing heart. It sounded tired, weak, wet. A pump spewing half its load.
Changing now. Subtle. Very subtle. A new strand here. A twist in the matrix. A protein minutely modified. Something screamed and he recognized it as the cry of a monkey. The otter trembled on his lap, but it wasn’t on his lap. He was the otter. He coursed through the otter’s blood until—
Teeth.
Pain.
A new mutation.
This is evolution. This is creation. This is life older than time. There came the sound of air rushing through his lungs. Flight. He tasted freedom for the first time. He had been born again. And would be born again—
—with every breath.
When he opened his eyes the lodge and the medicine man were gone. He was alone with the cold morning air, a sky full of stars above, and the lights of White Post, Virginia spread out in the valley below. Shivering, he stood and waited on the sun, cradling the otter carefully in the crook of his arm. When the sun topped the mountains behind him, it lit the slopes below, illuminating the stagnant creek, the road, and, right where he’d left it, his jeep.
Stumbling every step, he managed to make it down to the jeep. Crawling inside, he thought he heard someone whisper something from the shadows beside the road. But there was no one there.
Still, the words plagued him as he drove home.
It has begun.
From the Washington Post:
VIRUS-LADEN MONKEY MISSING
The Virginia State Health Department has reported that a rhesus monkey infected with a contagious virus is missing. On Thursday an operation was mounted to euthanize the diseased monkeys presently held in quarantine near Dulles International Airport. Though no one saw the monkey escape during the operation, the final count shows one missing. Health Department officials were quick to announce that there is absolutely no danger to local residents or their pets; however, sources within the Health Department, asking that they remain anonymous, have indicated that both the CDC and USAMRIID have been contacted. During a similar outbreak of monkey virus which occurred in Reston in 1989, a joint operation conducted by the CDC and USAMRIID was necessary to dispose of the infected animals and sterilize the facilities. For the moment, the CDC and USAMRIID refuse to comment, acknowledging only that they have been asked for assistance in identifying and containing the spread of the disease. Though all three agencies have emphasized that there is no danger to humans, it is interesting to note that the “monkey house” in Reston remains empty to this day.
The ringing of the phone woke Jesse. Rolling over, he managed to bring the clock on his nightstand into focus. The normally green numerals were hiding behind a red filter. Everything was red. The walls, the curtains, the carpet, the hand he held out before his face. Red. What had the Indian said? All colors bleed to red.
It was nearly five o’clock. Daylight still bled around the edges of the curtains. His hand had been bleeding while he slept. The Ace bandage he’d wrapped around it was soaked through and there was blood in the bed. The otter was curled where he had left it on a folded blanket at the foot of the bed.
It took him a moment to figure out where the day had gone. He should have gone to the hospital, but instead he’d spent the entire morning in his basement running tests on the water sample from Wilder Creek. The water contained a high concentration of a benzene-derivative which he knew had to have come from Alcor Chemicals. He’d written his report and faxed it in to McLaughlin, his superior at Alcor. The pollutant, and more importantly the high concentration, was appalling, but it was not what was working at killing the otter or himself. When the report was filed, he’d taken the time to look at a sample of his own blood. What he’d seen there was as terrifying as it was confusing. That was his second chance to go to the hospital, but he’d been too exhausted.
The phone was a cordless model and he took it with him to the bathroom. “Hello?”
“Sanders?”
“Yeah.” The face in the mirror said he was lying. The face in the mirror could not be his.
“Steve McLaughlin. I just finished reading the report you faxed me on Wilder Creek. I need you to come in so we can discuss it.”
“It’s late.” The rash had merged to form bruises. His entire face was black and blue and seemed to hang as if it had been detached from the underlying bone. He was wearing an expressionless rubber mask and it was coming loose. His eyes were the color of rubies.
“I don’t care how late it is. I want you in my office in thirty minutes.”
“Hold on.” He turned and vomited into the stool. Blood. Blood and tiny black specks like coffee grounds. “Sanders?”
He wiped his mouth. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. McLaughlin?”
“The problem is the whole damn report, Sanders.” His nose was bleeding. He stuffed tissue paper into his nostrils, but the wads quickly soaked through.
“Sanders? Are you listening?”
“Go ahead.”
“Page eighteen, Sanders. Where was the analysis done?”
“Analysis?” This wasn’t making any sense.
“I checked downstairs. It didn’t come from our lab.”
“I ran the tests myself. Too sick to come in.”
“We’ve got technicians for running those tests, Sanders. You’re supposed to be a field agent.”
“Yes, sir, but I wanted to verify the results myself.” He used a towel to wipe away the blood that was pouring over his lips and chin. It wouldn’t stop. “I’ve been sick,” he confessed, spraying blood on the white phone. “I ran the tests at home. My equipment’s mostly surplus government stuff and most of it’s outdated, but it all works and I’m confident of the results.”
“This type of thing is supposed to run through our lab, Sanders.”
“I didn’t want to wait on Alcor’s two week lab queue, Mr. McLaughlin. I didn’t think Wilder Creek could wait either.”
“I can’t forward these kinds of recommendations without some sort of second source verification. As it stands now, I don’t even have our own lab’s verification of the data!”
Jesse knew where this was leading. His data was about to get swept under a carpet. Write off Wilder Creek. There wasn’t an entry for it in the fiscal budget books. It was time for him to bluff. “I sent duplicate samples to a friend with the EPA. I should have their results within a day or two.”
“You did what!?”
“I sent a water sample to the EPA at Research Triangle in North Carolina—”
“I know where it is, Sanders! Who the hell gave you... Shit. Look, Sanders. You haven’t been here very long. Perhaps you don’t understand our procedures. You certainly don’t understand all the issues.”
“You mean the politics.”
“Look, the EPA will see only one solution to this. They’ll shut us down. Alcor employs—”
“More than eight hundred men and women in this area alone,” Jesse interrupted. “I’ve seen the TV commercials.”
“Don’t get smart with me.”
“Don’t sit there and try to tell me that a creek contaminated with benzene is to be ignored.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with. We’re talking one pissant little stream.”
“Wilder Creek empties into the Shenandoah.”
McLaughlin nearly screamed. “You sanctimonious little shit. Now I know why Exxon fired you. My office, Sanders. I want you here in thirty minutes. Is that clear?” The line went dead.
Jesse stood there for a moment, numb, the bloody towel pressed to his face, his vision pink bordered with red. He was sick again, vomiting a noxious concoction of blood and mucus into the sink. The smell of the stuff was overpowering. Worse than roadkill, worse than decay, worse than anything he’d smelled in his life. In the sink’s mess, he thought he could see what he had seen under the microscope when he had looked at his blood. A million thread-like strands. Worms. Squirming through a battlefield of ravaged cells.
Devouring everything in their path.
From the Washington Post:
DISEASED MONKEY STOLEN
A representative from a local animal rights activist group calling themselves Humans for a Unified Tomorrow (HUNT) has come forth and admitted to stealing the rhesus monkey previously presumed to have escaped from a quarantine facility. The monkey carries what USAMRIID and CDC officials have now positively identified as a Reston-like strain of the Ebola virus, harmless to humans. Knowing only that the monkeys at the quarantine facility were ill, HUNT stole one hoping to prove maltreatment on the part of the monkey’s owners. When asked to relinquish the monkey to Health Department officials, HUNT was unable to comply, saying the monkey had since died and been disposed of. Criminal charges against the animal rights activists are pending further investigation. Health Department and CDC officials are presently attempting to locate the monkey’s corpse.
It seemed to take forever before the phone was answered. “Chris? It’s Jesse Sanders.”
“Uh? What time is it?”
“Sorry, I know it’s late. I need your help. Pretend I’m a college freshman again and tell me about viruses.”
The voice at the other end of the phone line sounded tired, as if he’d already put in more than his normal day explaining these things. “What have you gotten yourself into this time, Jess?”
“Nothing. I just need some background information for a report I’m putting together.”
“You still doing field work for Alcor?”
“Yeah.”
“Biotoxins?”
“Be serious, Chris, you know Nixon outlawed that kind of research years ago.”
“Doesn’t mean we’re not doing it somewhere though.”
Jesse had little time for patience. “Can you help me or not?”
“Sure, but I could give you the name of a friend who—”
“That’s okay, Chris. You’ll do just fine.”
“You gonna tape this or what?”
“Right,” Jesse lied. “I’ve got the recorder going now.” All he was holding was the otter which had died a few minutes ago, venting blood from every orifice. Its body felt spongy and bloated, as if it had even bled out beneath its skin.
A long sigh from the other end. The sound of a pillow being slapped up against a headboard. “No, it’s alright, dear. Go to sleep... Jess, where do you want me to start?”
“With the basics.”
“Let’s see. Virus. Virus. You mean like the flu or like HIV?”
“Both.”
“Damn, buddy, you’re asking a lot for three a.m., you know?”
“Sorry, Chris. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Your job’s probably on the line or something. Let’s see... okay. A virus is nothing more than a small capsule of membranes and proteins with one or more strands of DNA or RNA, smaller than a bacteria. Bacteria can even have viruses in them. Most life forms, in fact, carry viruses with them their entire life. In most cases, both virus and host have evolved to live quite comfortably with each other. You know about DNA and RNA, they contain the program for replication, same as in you and me. But that’s all a virus lives for, making more virus. Stick one somewhere by itself, on the counter, in a Petri dish, pin it on your friggin’ refrigerator with a magnet, and it’ll just sit there. Nothing. The damn thing isn’t really even alive. Call it stasis, call it hibernation, call it a nap. The damn thing just sits there waiting.
“Stick a virus in blood or mucus and it comes to life. It’s still waiting, but now it’s waiting for something to come by. The surface of a virus has a stickiness about it and when the right cell wanders by—a cell whose stickiness matches the stickiness of the virus—then the virus clings to the cell. The cell thinks it’s found a meal and it enfolds the virus. Once inside, the virus really switches on and it begins to replicate itself using the cell’s own materials and machinery to do it. A virus will build copies of itself until eventually the cell is full and it explodes. Or sometimes the virus will bud through the cell wall, spinning off new virus particles to spread the infection—that’s the way AIDS works.
“Viruses don’t want to kill their host. It’s not in their best interest, but sometimes they don’t have any choice. Viruses are sharks and they love to eat. Some of them have too big of an appetite and they devour their host.”
“Tell me about AIDS. Is it true that it came from monkeys?”
“Ah, that’s what this is about. I saw on the news that you guys had a monkey scare going on there.”
“Should we be scared?”
A long pause. Then, “I’m not sure, Jess. There’s some scary shit coming out of Africa; HIV and AIDS are the least of it. You’ve got some good folks out that way though. The CDC’s a bunch of idiots, but those Army guys know what they’re doing. If they’re saying things are okay, then they probably are.”
“Do you know anything about this Ebola virus?”
“Only that you don’t want it. It makes AIDS look like a Sunday picnic. It’s believed that HIV and Ebola came from the same region around Lake Victoria. I’ve got a friend at Berkeley could tell you more. Want his number?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“You sure you’re okay, Jess? You sound like you’re having trouble breathing.”
He was. There was blood in his lungs. He could taste and smell it with every exhalation. “Chris, if I told you I had seen an infected blood sample and that the viral organism looked like a clump of worms, would that mean anything to you?”
“Worms? Like maybe someone had dumped a bowl of noodles out on the floor? Like maybe a lot of twisted threads?”
“Yeah.”
“My God, Jess, that’s a filovirus. Marburg. Ebola. Where the hell did you see—”
“Tell me about mutations.”
“Not until you tell me where the bloody hell you saw a blood sample contaminated with a fucking filovirus!”
“The monkeys, Chris,” Jesse lied. “It’s just these damn monkeys the papers have been talking about. Calm down, would ya?”
“You’re scaring me, man. How the hell did you get involved with—”
“Mutations, Chris. Tell me about mutations.”
“You really need to talk to my friend at Berkeley. These guys got a language all their own. They don’t talk about the disease spreading; they talk about chain of transmission and amplification. They call ’em level 4 hot agents, and when it kills you, they say you crash and bleed out. They live in their own little world, Jess, seeking their own glory hunting these bastards down in the rain forest. You really want to know about mutations in that world, you should talk to an expert.”
“Just tell me what you know.”
“Shit, Jesse, what’s there to tell? Viruses mutate all the damn time. Just look at the flu. You want a better example, look at HIV. It’s believed that Ugandan monkeys carried a lot of unusual viruses. As the monkeys were caught, caged, and imported to support all the research done in the seventies, all these different viruses were brought together in kind of a big stew pot. They mutated or evolved—use whatever term you prefer—real friggin’ fast. One of the end results was HIV. HIV jumped from monkeys to man, undergoing another series of rapid mutations so that it could establish itself. By the time we knew what was happening, it was so widespread that now you can bet that it’s here to stay, just like the flu.
“But HIV was just a probe,” Chris speculated, “Mother Nature’s test case if you will. It’s highly lethal, but not very infectious. Ebola’s a whole new ball game and whatever mutation follows it will be a mother. The viruses are fighting back. We’re destroying their ecosystems, the tropical rain forests. They’ve got to mutate fast and get out of the jungle, or perish.”
“You make it sound intelligent.”
“Viruses are one of the oldest lifeforms on the planet, Jess. Four billion years they’ve been here. They’ll be here when we’re gone. You want my opinion, Mother Nature has had enough.”
Jesse thought of Prince William Sound, of the mess at Wilder Creek, of McLaughlin’s callous attitude regarding the environment. They were but a small part of what was going on across the globe.
“Mother Nature is royally pissed,” Chris continued, “and this is her way of telling us. She’s getting ready to wipe the slate, starting at the top of the food chain. The really nasty viruses like Ebola didn’t originate with the monkeys. Ebola burns out primate hosts too damn fast to be native to any of them. Somewhere deep in the rain forest is its natural host. Epidemiologists have been hunting for more than twenty years now and they’re not even close. They can’t find them, man. They can’t find them ‘cause Mother Nature doesn’t want them found. She’s getting ready, probing us, biding her time, building the perfect assassin. When it comes it’ll be airborne.
