27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter twenty-seven
Trevor found himself in a tent bursting with scientific equipment, most of which he couldn’t even name.
He recognized microscopes and laptop computers.
That was about it. The rest of it might have been taken off the starship Enterprise.
It didn’t help that he was observing the world through a slightly fogged face mask inside the hazmat suit.
It was hard to hear anything over the amplified sound of his own breathing, and the only thing he could smell was the slightly musky scent of his own sweat. These suits heated up fast.
“What’s the mortality rate, doctor? Can you tell me?”
Doctor Shore moved around the tent, tending to several different pieces of equipment at once while he spoke.
“Not without a bigger sample size, and with any luck, we’ll never have to find out.
Only two of the villagers survived and they lived on the outskirts of the community so they had less contact.
If you asked me to guess, I’d say somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five percent. Perhaps even higher.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” de Camp said. “What kind of a virus has that high of a mortality rate?”
“Plenty,” Shore told him. “Diseases like Ebola have nearly a one hundred percent fatality rate, for instance. Thankfully, any viral contagion with such a high mortality rate kills itself off, otherwise mankind never would have survived this long. Go back a hundred years, two hundred, this virus would have killed this village and burned out right here. Unfortunately, modern travel conveniences have made viral loads like this far more dangerous. After all, they didn’t have high-speed rail two hundred years ago. ”
“What else can you tell me about it?” Trevor asked. He looked around for a place to sit and found a stool. Sitting inside the space suit was only marginally more comfortable than standing. What makes you think it’s man-made?”
“Several genetic markers within the virus have the distinct hallmarks of a lab-grown specimen,” Dr. Shore said. He worked the controls on a machine that hummed to life, whirling test tube vials around at high speed. “Once I finish this round of tests, I’ll know for sure.”
Another CDC worker entered the tent. Trevor didn’t know it was a woman until he heard her voice. She held up a ruggedized laptop. “I have the findings on the livestock you wanted, Doctor Shore.”
“Let me guess, unaffected?”
“Just like you thought,” the newcomer said. “They show absolutely no signs of having encountered the disease.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Trevor said.
The newcomer turned. She had to perform a full body turn in her hazmat suit.
“Doctor, Kyle, this is Langencamp from the State Department, if you can believe that. Mr. Langencamp, this is Doctor Kyle. And in answer to your question, yes, it’s a bad thing. It’s more proof that I’m right and the WHO is wrong.”
De Camp said, “Can you elaborate on that for me, Doctors?”
“He’s very polite,” Dr. Shore said as an aside to Dr. Kyle.
“Very polite,” she agreed.
“Are you single?” Dr. Shore asked. “Dr. Kyle here is single, and quite attractive underneath all that protective gear, I might add.”
Dr. Kyle suddenly found something at one of the machines intensely interesting.
“I…uh…” Trevor stammered. “My work keeps me pretty busy.”
Dr. Shore chuckled then turned serious. “When you get a cold, or the flu, your dog doesn’t get sick. Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Trevor admitted. “Why not?”
“The animal came into contact with the virus, but it was unaffected because that particular virus has no effect on the genus. But there would still be viral markers in the animal’s blood stream, evidence the animal had been in contact with the virus.
To put it another way, your doctor could tell you had the flu by testing your dog’s blood for the antibodies. ”
“Okay, but my dog doesn’t get sick, because the virus doesn’t affect him in the same way.”
“Right. Now take this virus—”
“No thanks,” Trevor quipped.
“We’re calling it LB426, currently,” Dr. Shore continued. “It skipped over all the animals, in a farming community, no less. No effect on the cows. No effect on the dogs. No effect on the cats. We even had a few pigeons we managed to test. Nothing.”
“Which means?”
“Imagine for a moment you were bioengineering a virus,” Dr. Shore said.
“You want it to kill as many humans as possible, in as short a time as possible, but you don’t want to kill yourself.
You want to survive. You have a problem.
A virus that is ninety percent fatal to humans is going to kill off all the livestock as well.
Making a deadly virus is easy. Making a deadly virus that doesn’t wipe out all the human race, as well as our food supply, takes far more time and care. ”
Trevor was nodding along as he spoke. The pieces were falling into place. It didn’t take a virologist to understand what Dr. Shore had laid out. Trevor said, “So whoever created this thing, made it to target humans specifically and not affect animal life?”
“Correct.”
Trevor made a noise at the back of his throat while he thought through the implications.
It was looking more and more like Sam’s suspicions were correct.
Good news for Trevor and Sam. Bad news for the people of this village, and the world at large if this thing spread beyond the borders of this sleepy farming community.
He tried to scratch an itch and ended up whacking the faceplate of his suit.
Dr. Kyle giggled. “Take’s a while to get used to the suits.”
Trevor said, “Why make a virus that burns out so quickly? If your intention is to kill as many humans as possible, why not make the virus move slower, infect more people?”
“Another great question,” Dr. Shore said. “A virus with a high mortality rate that moves slowly would cause a worldwide epidemic. It would reduce humans to rates that are too low to repopulate, effectively wiping out the human race.”
“Sounds like the goal of every Global Warming alarmist I’ve ever met,” Trevor said. “If human beings are the problem, then wiping humans off the planet is the solution. Maybe it was made by some kind of climate change kook?”
“I think you can safely eliminate them from your list of suspects,” said Dr. Shore.
“Imagine instead, you are creating a virus to sell as a weapon. You don’t want something that’s going to cause a worldwide epidemic.
You want something that can be used to target a certain area, say New York, or Washington D.C. for instance.”
Dr. Kyle said, “LB426 is air born. A few droplets of this in Times Square, could wipe out the five boroughs in days without endangering middle America.”
“Perfect for use as a bioweapon,” Dr. Shore added.
“You both sound pretty convinced,” Trevor said.
The two researchers exchanged a glance. Dr. Shore nodded. “We’ve been pretty certain of our theory since we landed, but there are political powers at play. Nobody in upper management wants to start a panic. Not yet.”