Virus: The Day of Resurrection (50 page)

Yoshizumi realized that somewhere along the way he had clenched his fists tightly. “That’s an incredible discovery, Doctor,” he said in a thick voice. “But does that mutant virus kill
normal
bacteria?”

“Even in a simple inorganic reproduction cycle, it’s very easy to stimulate prophages and make bacteriophages pop out from them. Just hit them with a little
ultraviolet light
, and they’ll start eating up the cells one after another,” Dr. de la Tour said nodding. “It’s just—if these things could suppress the growth of Linskey nucleic acid in the human body—or the division of their host cells in the human body—even a little, it would be so wonderful. What’s becoming clear is that if this mutated virus infects normal WA5PS cells that have the Linskey nucleic acid compound factors incorporated into their chromosomes, the cells will make
only the mutated virus
when the time comes to self-destruct. They won’t make Linskey nucleic acids.”

“If that’s true,” said Yoshizumi, “does that mean that this mutant virus—if it can exist at sufficient density within the human body—could suppress the Linskey nucleic acids to some extent?”

“I don’t know. It does appear that the antigens formed in the human body due to the mutated virus do, to a degree, suppress the replication of the nucleic acids themselves. WA5PS is too dangerous to handle, so we still haven’t done even one animal experiment in Antarctica. Indeed, if WA5PS gets any colder than minus twenty-five degrees, inorganic reproduction also comes to a halt. But even at low temperatures, it still won’t die.”

“So … what you’re telling me,” said Yoshizumi, “is that you want to perform a live body experiment
over there
, eh?”

“I’m sorry. But I just couldn’t come out and say ‘Let me use people as guinea pigs.’ The nature of the mutant virus itself is not well understood, after all.”

“I’ll do it gladly,” said a sudden voice from the entrance of the cabin. At some point during all this, Carter had come by and had been standing outside. “Edward Jenner and even Hideo Noguchi experimented on their own bodies and on those of flesh and blood relatives. And since I’m gonna die anyway, I’ll do anything you ask.”

“If that’s the case,” said the doctor, his voice trembling like a leaf, “I’ll inject you with it when it’s time for you to depart. I’ll talk to the captain, and if at all possible, get him to have you carry a shortwave radio strong enough to communicate with Antarctica.”

“I’ve got one among my gear,” said Yoshizumi. “I’ll keep reporting until I’m dead.”

Nereid
at last passed by the Bermuda Islands and drew near to the state of Virginia. They passed to the north of Cape Hatteras and found themselves in Chesapeake Bay in no time. The previous night there had been another farewell party inside the ship. At that party, Colonel McCloud had gotten drunker than anyone else.

It was during the still-dark predawn that the officer on watch came to report that he had felt an unusual shudder running through the whole structure of
Nereid
as it rested still on the seafloor. Apparently, there had been an earthquake in some far-off place. This news resulted in plans for departure being moved up by about an hour.

Taking care to go slowly because of the bay’s shallow interior, the ship gradually made its way toward the mouth of the Potomac. After several minutes had passed in which it was hard for the crew to tell whether the ship was moving or not, there was a faint shock in the bottom of the vessel, and it came to a stop.

“All hands,” Colonel McCloud said, turning to face everyone, speaking in a voice that sounded like something was caught in his throat. “We have arrived in Washington.”

The two men who had received Dr. de la Tour’s injections were already wearing rubber diving suits and were standing with aqualungs strapped to their backs. When they heard the captain’s words, they exchanged silent handshakes with all who were present with them.

“Farewell,” said the captain, squeezing their hands firmly with his own hard, bony hands. It looked as though he wanted to say something more, but although his wrinkled Adam’s apple moved up and down, he turned his face away in the end.

“Live for as long as you can,” Dr. de la Tour said. His face was pale and his voice weak. “It may be difficult, but please keep responding till the very end. Your fever, pulse, how you’re feeling …”

The two of them waved their hands and got into the escape tube. Behind them, the final door between themselves and the world of the survivors clanked shut. There was the hiss of a valve being opened.

“Here we go,” said Major Carter, not yet wearing his mouthpiece, his eyes smiling ironically behind his diving goggles. “With this, it’s sayonara to Antarctica and the world of the living. How’s it feel?”

“Like we should get moving,” Yoshizumi said loudly. “That last tremor has me worr—”

His last words were cut off suddenly by an torrent of water that came pouring in from overhead.

The two men swam out of the ship through the escape hatch and out into the open water. They opened the lid of a storage container near the bridge of the ship and pulled out a rubber raft that was loaded with items stuffed in waterproof bags. With one pull on a string connected to the lever of the compressed air tank, the raft inflated halfway and began to rise to the surface. When it neared the surface, the pressure-activated switch of a second air tank opened automatically, and the raft shot toward the surface like an arrow.

When the raft surfaced, the two men tore away the masks occluding their view, threw away their aqualungs, and began rowing as soon as they had shimmied up into the raft.

It was a fine morning in early June. White clouds floated in a spectacularly blue sky, and ripples in the river were lapping gently at the sides of the rubber boat. The hushed, silent city of Washington, DC, was covered in dazzling greens. The row of cherry trees that lined the shore of the Potomac were already grown thick with summer leaves. For a moment, the pair stopped rowing. They looked all around at a world that was almost too brilliant—too colorful—to eyes that had been so long imprisoned in a world of ice. They filled their lungs with great breaths of crisply refreshing warm air—with air that was filled with fearsome death. Here and there, rusted boats and battered, half-sunken barges were floating on the surface. The grass was wild and overgrown in Potomac Park, and in the parking lot beside the train’s iron bridge, cars that had lost their color from being exposed to wind and rain were peeking out from amid the tall grasses. On the left shore, in the Arlington area, they could see the Pentagon. Even the building that had once controlled the most powerful army in the world was now just an empty shell.

After passing under the Rochambeau Memorial Bridge, they could see the lovely white dome of the George Mason Memorial. Once they had rowed the boat into the tidal basin, that symbol of Washington—the obelisk of the Washington memorial—rose up in front of them, the solitary point of its sharp outline jutting up toward the blue sky, all the more lonely with no one there anymore to look up at it.

Washington was a city of chalk swathed in green. Amid bright light reminiscent of summer, for just a brief moment, it seemed as if it had merely nodded off to sleep. However, they soon began to feel the terrible silence that seemed to absorb all sound, telling them that the capital of the former United States was now under occupation by the army of the dead.

Beside the beautiful waterside where the Washington Monument threw its sharp shadow, several bleached skeletons clothed in rags could be seen peeking out from among the overgrown summer grasses. They landed the boat at the water’s edge near North Potomac Park, and when they looked down the road that ran straight north, they saw several cars and buses sitting abandoned on the white pavement of the street. Between them, lying half buried in mud and dust, were heaps of white bones lined up all the way to the intersection of K Street and Connecticut Avenue at the north end of the street. The two men brought the boat ashore at the water’s edge and silently opened the waterproof bags.

Inside the bags were food supplies, clothing, and shortwave radio communication devices. The radios were for live use, and once both men had attached portable wireless devices to their shoulders, Carter communicated briefly with
Nereid
, which was submerged in the mouth of the Potomac.

“This is Carter. We’ve landed safely and will head directly for the White House.”

In the bottom of the bag there were a couple of other things jostling around. Yoshizumi pulled them out; there were two automatic pistols.

“Are we supposed to figure out whether these are for self-defense or to commit suicide with?” muttered Carter in a low voice. For a moment, he held the thirty-two caliber pistol in his hand as though measuring its weight, but at last he said, “Let’s go.”

Although they were in a hurry, the area was filled with obstacles that slowed the two men’s pace. Green trees slowed them. The sweating sun and the cool breeze slowed them. It had been four—no, five years since they had last set foot in a temperate zone. The pair were headed straight north along the park’s central street. The beautiful tree-shaded paths that stretched from east to west in that area were now overgrown with both trees and grass. To the distant right, like a huge white skull, they could see the Capitol building.

In the midst of the intersection at Constitution Avenue, a bus and a tractor-trailer had collided and overturned. They appeared to have burned; the paint was blackened, and rust clung to their twisted hulks. From the broken windshield of the bus lying on its side, the forehead of a badly damaged skull looked like a broken eggshell. Shards of glass that had buried themselves in the punctured bone were peeking out, glinting brightly in the strong sunlight. The sound of the two men’s wet rubber soles as they squished along the dusty street was irritatingly loud. When one of them cleared his throat once, it seemed as if the sound were being absorbed by the streets, soaked up by the entire capital city.

With each step, the deathly atmosphere gripped the two of them more tightly. At the roadside, in empty, open windows, in sitting positions on the front steps of buildings, everywhere they looked, there were bleached bones—countless skeletons staring at them from empty eye sockets where rainwater had collected, clenching their teeth in anguish, looking as though they were crying out at them in voiceless remonstrance from jawbones that hung open, exposing the rows of their teeth.

What have you come here for? This is our capital city. In the four years since living things stopped walking this street, not a single thing with warm blood, with moist breath has walked this street. Are you trying to break the law of our nation?

Had there been a flood? Mud had collected in a small gutter by the sidewalk, and weeds were flourishing there. Something moved there and their eyes locked onto it instantly, but it was just a ruined scrap of paper being blown about in the wind. Among the weeds, small flowers were blooming, and flies were buzzing around, as were some kind of small winged insect that neither man knew the name of. When they had come as far as the front of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Carter came to a sudden stop.

Lying facedown in a pool of mud that had accumulated around a large branch of a tree that had fallen down in the road was the small skeleton of a child almost exactly one meter in height. At the end of one slender leg bone was one small, faded shoe. Though it was so covered in mud that it looked like a black clump of dirt, Carter could make out the horizontal stripes on the cloth of a jumper skirt the white bones were wearing, perhaps having not decayed because it was made of synthetic fibers. A bare handful of golden hair was wrapped around the tree branch.

“Beth!” Carter cried out, his voice sounding like it had been wrung from his throat. “Bethie …”

Carter knelt before the little bones as though he were possessed.

“Carter!” Yoshizumi went pale in the face and grabbed Carter by the arm. “We have to hurry; there’s no time to waste!”

In the very instant that Carter was kneeling down, Yoshizumi felt
something
race swiftly, suddenly through his blood. Had it been a slight shudder in the earth beneath his feet or some kind of flash of intuition? Either way, at that instant sharp bird cries pierced the beautiful blue sky. He had no time to wonder what species might have survived or how; flocks of nameless birds took flight all at once from every tree and every grove with a roar of wings that was like a storm breaking out amid the dead stillness of the capital.