Containment (20 page)

Kraig switched on one of the local channels on the television set he
'd brought into his office. A helicopter hovered over the zone, showing a group of two dozen men plus a few women shaking their fists at the camera.

Kraig said,
"You have to order the news choppers out of there."

"
Why?"

Sounds of the reef came ov
er the speakers. "They'll encourage violence. People will do things for the camera, to make their point."

"
They've already made their point," grumbled the director. "We've lost control."

"
We should have given them all the information we had right from the beginning."

The white mustache drooped.
"I did what I was told to do. I handled the situation in the way that the politicians wanted."

Yeah, and now they
'll fry you because of it. It'll become all your fault. Think pols will take the blame for anything bad that ever happens?
"We need troops, Chet. Soldiers at every street corner."

The director stared at him with glazed eyes.
"But that will simply incite a riot. I mean, won't it? Wouldn't it be better if we got their trust? Tell them everything?"

"
Too late," said Kraig grimly.

"
If we're honest—"

"
It's too late for that. We blew our chance to go that route. You bought a little time with the deception, a little time of peace and quiet, but not enough time for us to solve the problem. So now we're going to pay for that time, because we failed to take advantage of it, and there's not going to be any more peace and quiet. There won't ever be any more peace and quiet in the containment zone again. People won't believe a thing we say now. You can't quell any of the rumors, you can't head off any of the panic. People won't buy it. They don't trust their government any more."
You rolled the dice, Chet. And you lost.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania / 8:30 p.m.

"Have you seen the news?"

Gordon squinted at his LCD.
"Who hasn't?" said Gordon into the telephone. His monitor was filled with reports and videos from the containment zone, about what was happening in the zone, and what the Micro-Investigation Unit, the CDC, NIH, mayor's office, White House, and everyone else thought about it.

Pradeep had called a few minutes ago, but neither man had said more than a few words. Finally Pradeep asked,
"Are you okay?"

"
Sure." Gordon lifted a cold bottle of Budweiser and drained it. He placed the empty in the stack, along with five of its fellows.

The LCD continued to blur in and out for Gordon.

"...the toll has jumped considerably since the last report, and now stands at 39 fatalities..."

"
Gordon."

Gordon wiped his face.

"Gordon, are you intoxicated?"

"
No, but I damn sure wish I was." Gordon snickered.

"
Perhaps I should call back later."

"
What do you want?" said Gordon abruptly. "Now's as good a time as any."

"
I hate to see you like this."

Gordon smiled without humor.
"I don't see why. I killed the company, didn't I?"

"
Under the circumstances...." Pradeep seemed to struggle for control. "Under the circumstances, frankly, I don't care one little bit about the company."

Gordon tried to focus on the monitor. There were tears in the eyes, matching the shaky voice.

"You want me to reassure you?" asked Gordon savagely. "Is that what you want? You want me to talk down your fears that we had anything to do with...." Gordon waved his arm at the news.

"
I think I should leave you alone."

"
Wait—" Gordon wasn't in time. Pradeep hung up.

Gordon got up and went to the refrigerator. He came back with another bottle. Popping the top, he took a big swig and sat back in the recliner.

"It's getting pretty bad," said a tired National Guardsman, pulling off his hazard suit.

Someone off camera held a microphone up to his face.
"Did you witness any violence in the containment zone? Looting?"

Yeah, thought Gordon. That
's what we really want to hear about. The good stuff.

Another reporter asked,
"Did you see any signs of guns? Are they massing for a breakout?"

"
It's not so you can see anything," said the soldier. "Not so much open violence but a lack of cooperation. They run from you now, as if they're afraid...afraid of everything."

The phone rang again. Pradeep
's name and number appeared on the little screen.

He answered.
"You back again?"

"
Yes, obviously," said Pradeep. "I am back again. Still looking for reassurance."

Gordon shook his head sadly.
"Yeah, well...I wish I could give it."

Reporter to Guardsman:
"We hear they gather at the gates and demonstrate, throwing Molotov cocktails—"

Guardsman to reporter:
"Don't know about that, but some of them chuck a rock or two now and again."

Reporter:
"Have you had to use your weapon?"

Guardsman:
"We try not to...."

Pradeep said,
"I have run over everything we have done in the last few months, run it over and over in my mind."

"
Same here," said Gordon. "It's getting awfully flat." He snickered again.

"
Gordon, let's not lose focus."

On the screen the mayor was making a speech.
"We urge everyone to remain calm in this crisis...."

Sure, thought Gordon. That ought to work. Give them another pep talk.

"Nothing alive could have escaped our labs," said Pradeep. "We killed everything with bleach and sterilizing heat.
Everything.
Even containers that should have contained only organic chemicals. Nothing could have survived."

"
Nothing," said Gordon, nodding. He listened to the mayor promise open access in the zone to the latest medical reports. She gave a hotline number and website address for the "latest, up-to-the-minute update."

"
I am at a loss," said Pradeep. "If we are to blame, I cannot fathom how."

Gordon sat up.
"You know what, Pradeep? Feeling bad about it isn't going to help."

"
Then what are we to do?"

"
You keep thinking. Go back over everything, your notebooks, other people's notebooks, anything and everything." Gordon set his bottle down, still unfinished. "If you come up with anything, call Micro." He gave him Cecily's telephone number.

"
What are you going to do?"

Gordon burped.
"I'm going to join the parade."

Bethesda, Maryland / 11:50 p.m.

Roderick Halkin stared at the technician with an intensity that drove the masked woman back a few steps. She put her hands in front of her white lab coat, as if to ward off a look full of malevolent spirits.

"
Thank you for your report," said Roderick, in a perfunctory voice. He nodded once.

The technician left Roderick
's office in a hurry.

With a finger Roderick traced the underside of his left jaw.

There was no unknown viral nuclei acid in the infectious, filtered brainstem samples from the victims. There was no known viral nucleic acid either. Nothing. No DNA, no RNA, no genetic material of any kind. The filtered samples contained water and various organic molecules, but no trace of any organism. Viruses and tiny bacteria were not present.

Glancing around his spacious office, Roderick
's gaze drifted to various objects. The Stradivarius replica. The shelves of orchestra disks. His diploma, from Johns Hopkins.

He recognized his behavior. It didn
't happen often, and in the past he had chided himself severely every time it did happen. His mind was grasping for something, anything, to think about—something that made sense.

This data made no sense. An orderly, rational, scientific mind rebelled. He
'd prepared himself for this result, but he had also allowed the convictions of another person—Kraig Drennan, who was certain the pathogen had to be a virus—to influence his own.

A small but definite emotion grew within the heart and soul of Roderick Halkin
—an unfamiliar twinge of fear.

Calling up some files on his computer screen, he studied the medical summaries. Incubation times, rates of infection and spread, fatality percentages.

"Mozart," whispered Roderick, calling up the music system. "Requiem."

20 April
, Tuesday

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania / 12:50 a.m.

The lights in Cecily Sunday's room were still on. She and the rest of the Micro team—and everybody else who went in and out of the zone—were sequestered in well equipped though not luxurious quarters, a mini-mall posted with an old "for lease" sign which had not been removed. The quarters had been hastily prepared by government workers; floor-to-ceiling plastic partitions separated the rooms.

Cecily sat on the floor in Sukhasana
—easy pose. She didn't look up when someone knocked.

"
Come in."

Lisa Murdoch slid a jury-rigged door along its railing. She stepped inside, slid the door shut, and silently stood watching her supervisor.

"What's on your mind, Lisa?"

Cecily hadn
't opened her eyes. "How'd you know it was me?"

"
I recognized your knock. You have a distinctive knock. The first time you hit the door it's soft, then you knock harder, and the last one is the hardest."

Lisa realized that Cecily was right. Her usual pattern was to get more and more aggressive in everything that she did.

Sitting down on the floor, Lisa said, "Does yoga keep you calm? Is that how you stay so calm?"

"
No."

"
Then how?"

"
Haven't you figured that out by now?" Cecily opened her eyes. "I live for times like this. Bad times."

Lisa searched for a smile, a laugh, a brightening of the eyes. She found only a tired stare.

"I don't believe you," said Lisa. "You don't act that way. And the yoga. It's a serene kind of exercise, isn't it?"

"
It brings balance." Cecily closed her eyes and smiled.

Unnerved by Cecily
's smile, Lisa fell silent for a moment. Her supervisor returned to a meditative state.

Finally Lisa asked,
"What do you think will happen to those people in the zone?"

"
I don't know."

"
You don't know what to think? Or you don't want to tell me?"

"
You really want to know what I think?"

Cautiously, Lisa said yes.

"I think they'll all die, unless Roderick Halkin is even smarter than he thinks he is."

* * *

In a condominium a few miles from the Micro team's quarters, a sleeping Gordon Norschalk's head rested on the table. Surrounding him were the fruits of his labor.

The beer bottles were gone, thrown away. Replacing them were piles of polyester stuffed with foam, a heap of soft rubber, and wads of packing materials
—air-filled bubble sheets and plastic peanuts.

The computer
screen contained a dialog box with the word "Sent" inscribed in it. The message it had been asked to deliver had gone out.

Bethesda, Maryland / 1:30 a.m.

"There has to be genes," said Kraig. "DNA, RNA, something."

On Kraig
's screen was a serious, thin-faced, sleep-deprived man.

"
Negative," Roderick Halkin said firmly.

"
Then—wait a minute. Protein. A prion, maybe?"

"
There are certainly proteins in the infectious samples," said Roderick. "But they don't cause the disease."

"
Because," said Kraig slowly, "you treated a sample with protease, and it still causes the disease in mice. Right?"

Roderick nodded.
"An obvious experiment. Yes, you are correct."

"
Then what we're dealing with is a nanothingy." Kraig frowned. "All this time we thought it couldn't be nanotech. Christ, it figures! Just when you think you've got it narrowed down.... Anyway, there's
some
good news in this. At least it'll probably be easy to deal with, once we dissect it and figure out how it works."

Kraig noticed Roderick giving him a look.
"Don't tell me," said Kraig, frowning, "that you think I'm jumping to conclusions."

Roderick pursed his lips. Quietly he said,
"I think you're jumping to conclusions."

A fist came crashing down on Kraig
's desk. "That can't be!"

"
Yes it can. Mind you, I'm not saying it is. I'm simply suggesting that it's possible."

"
Okay." Kraig glared at Roderick's image on his screen. "Then what the hell is it? What else could it be?"

"
I have a theory." Roderick put his fingers together.

"
Which you're going to tell me," said Kraig, with a fierce look, "or I'll kill you."

Rode
rick looked up. He gave a quick nod. "Have you observed the incubation data?"

"
Don't change the subject. Yes, I have."

"
Then you know how deadly this situation appears to be."

Kraig called up the text and figures in an inset on his computer monitor. The time after acquiring the disease-causing agent until the beginning of the symptoms
—which lasted only a short while, followed by death a few minutes later—was quite variable: days to a couple weeks. But this statement was based mostly on experiments with mice, suitably adjusted for the bigger size and slower metabolism of humans. Mice also showed a lot of variability to the pathogen, but eventually 99 percent succumbed to it. Only a few mice were still living after having been exposed to infectious samples. Perhaps humans would show higher survival rates along with the longer incubation time—maybe fortune would smile on
Homo sapiens
. But Kraig wasn't counting on it.

"
We have a week," said Kraig. "Maybe."

Roderick assented with a nod.

"Tell me your theory." Kraig wasn't asking. "I don't care how speculative it is."

"
What do you know about the origin of life?"

Kraig blinked.
"You mean, the one that happened some three and a half billion years ago on earth? That origin?"

"
Yes."

Leaning back, Kraig thought about it. He shot a glance at Roderick.
"A new form of life, is that what you're suggesting?"

Roderick gave him a friendly, humorless sort of smile and inclined his head.

"How does it replicate without genes?" Kraig shook his head. "It can't replicate without genes. That's not possible."

"
On the contrary. It replicates."

Kraig stared, open-mouthed.

"I tested it and made sure. Suppose you inject a mouse with a subinfectious sample—not enough to cause the disease. Let it stay in the animal for a while, then sacrifice the mouse and take a section from its brainstem. Inject that in another mouse. After a slightly longer incubation time than normal, the second mouse dies of the disease. Conclusion: the tiny number of agents had begun to replicate in the first mouse, and had attained sufficient number to cause the disease in the second animal."

"
What is this new form of life? How did it get started?"

"
As for the first question, I plead ignorance. For the second, I have an idea. It got started, innocently enough, in a human cell culture in the labs of Vision Cell Bioceuticals."

"
That retinal physiologist?"

"
And the combinatorial organic chemist. Both of their research materials, I propose, combined to provide the necessary conditions."

"
But it should have been killed, destroyed, when the technicians discarded the cultures."

"
Normally it would have. But, according to my theory, it was not."

"
But then the lab techs at Vision Cell must have been negligent to allow something to grow like that in their cultures and escape."

"
I disagree. It could have happened, as I indicated earlier, innocently—no fault attached to any party."

"
But the ultraviolet lights, the chlorine, the autoclave...." Kraig's eyes opened wide.

"
You begin to understand," observed Roderick.

Kraig mumbled something.

Roderick gave him a puzzled glance. "Pardon? Did you say something?"

"
Yes," said Kraig, barely above a whisper. "I asked you how many people you think are infected in the zone."

"
That's speculative at the moment, of course," said Roderick in a confident tone, "but I'm willing to hazard a guess. All of them."

Medburg, Pennsylvania / 10:00 a.m.

Gary had hidden the two guns in the bottom drawer of his dresser, underneath a pile of old t-shirts that he never wore. Several times during the morning he had opened the drawer and looked at the lump they made in the stack of clothing.

Jimmy and Abe had told him and some other kids to get used to having them around.
"Get a feel for 'em. But don't use 'em—not yet."

"
What are you doing?" asked his little brother.

"
Nothing." Gary whirled around. "And don't get any ideas. Don't go near this dresser, you understand?"

Slamming the drawer shut, Gary sat down on his bed. Great, he thought. I just gave my little brother an open invitation to root around in my dresser. He won
't be able to resist. I'll have to move the guns later.

He glanced at his brother, who was lying on his bed and turning the pages of a computer game magazine.

If Mom catches me with those guns, thought Gary, it's all over. She'll have a coronary.

"
Gary, Alicia!"

Gary leaped up, nearly banging his head against the wall. His mother
's voice, coming from downstairs.

"
Kids, come quick!"

Gary started for the door.
"After you," he said to his brother, and impatiently waited until the boy had darted passed. After one quick glance at the dresser, Gary followed.

All four siblings stomped down the stairs. Gary was the last to arrive in the kitchen.

"WKH has the best news!" cried his mother. She turned up the radio.

"
...scheduled by last name, as follows. Letters A-D, please report to the parking lot of the Adams Street Mall between the hours of 12 and 3 this afternoon...."

The list went on.

"What are they talking about?" asked Alicia.

Her mother hushed her. She was clearly waiting for
'W.'

Gary frowned. They
'll probably repeat this a hundred times, but he knew his mother would insist on listening for the first one.

Finally T-Z arrived. Loretta wrote down the time and location on a pad of paper.

"It's great, kids. They developed a test."

Alicia looked at Gary, then back to her mother.
"A test?"

"
A test, a test!" Loretta lowered the radio's volume. "A test to find the disease!" She beamed a smile to all four children.

"
So," said Gary, "they found a cure."

Loretta
's smile faltered. "Well of course...no, they didn't say. But a cure will follow. First they have to know who has it and who doesn't."

Gary and Alicia eyed one another again.

"We don't have it," said Loretta confidently. "None of us are sick."

Alicia said,
"But didn't they say that people don't get sick until...."

"
None of us have it!" shouted Loretta. "Just you wait and see." She tore off the sheet containing the information and gripped it fiercely.

"
Are they going to stick us with needles?" asked Yvonne.

"
Now don't you worry, sweetheart. Mommy will be there. Nobody's going to hurt you."

Gary edged closer to the radio and listened.

"...all those testing negative for the disease MRD, as it's called now, will be escorted out of the containment zone. The latest word we've received from the Micro-Investigation Unit and the CDC is that the zone will remain under quarantine for the time being, but this is subject to change depending on the results of the tests. Rumors are circulating that the zone will be opened shortly, perhaps in a day or two, and affected individuals will be isolated in clinical settings. This is standard procedure for past epidemics. The results of the tests should be determined by late tonight or early tomorrow morning...."

Bethesda, Maryland / 10:20 a.m.

Sitting in his office, Kraig's head bowed low, chin to chest. He felt like he had a migraine. Chet's inanity wasn't helping. The man was beyond belief.