Well, that was disturbing as hell,” Claudia said as we entered her bedroom. She closed the door behind me. “I swear, Alenka Bogdan is acting weirder than my dad.”
“Did you see the other people from last night?” I asked. “The ones with the tall guy?”
“Yeah, they looked terrible,” she said with a half grin. “Serves them right.”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her down with me as I sat on the bed. I could feel her looking at me, questioning, but I had my eyes closed and my forehead creased in concentration.
“I think that’s important, somehow,” I said. “But I don’t know how. Not exactly.”
“What, the fact that they got sick?”
I nodded. “Right after touching that carcass.”
“Huh.…Earl did say a lot of the employees got sick at the farm.”
“And Wells keeps talking about chimeras spreading disease. He said it again just now, in that interview. And he said it when he announced his candidacy, even though he knows it’s not true.”
“But we didn’t get sick.”
“That’s true. I hope Rex is okay.”
“So, what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “There’s a few things that I can’t help thinking are related, but I don’t know how.”
“What else?”
“Okay, so Wells keeps talking about chimeras and disease, right? Saying that chimeras make it possible for pathogens to jump species, and that they’re responsible for the flu pandemic.”
“Yeah, but lots of the haters say that. It’s one of their favorite bullshit talking points.”
“And those jerks from last night seem to have gotten sick after having come into contact with that chicken carcass. And like you just said, Earl said people at the farm were getting sick, too.”
We were quiet for a moment after that, both of us thinking. Then I said, “Last night, Melanie said all the chimeras working the chicken facility had bird splices.”
Claudia furrowed her brow. “Yeah? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know for sure, but Wells is constantly going on about chimeras being the source of the flu pandemic—the bird flu pandemic—and even the scientists who have disproven that acknowledge the logic behind the theory that chimeras could act as a bridge between species. Now Wells has a bunch of chimeras with bird splices working with chickens who are obviously sick, with something that may or may not have infected those yahoos from H4H.”
Claudia screwed up her face. “So, what, do you think he’s trying to get the bird flu to jump species from the chickens to the bird chimeras to everyone else?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I mean, why would he want that? That’s stupid.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense. I mean, his followers would be hit as hard as everyone else.”
“Well, not all of them.”
“What?”
“The yahoos from last night. They didn’t all look sick. Just the ones without Wellplants.”
“Right…” she said. “But still, why would anybody do something like that? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. You’re right, it doesn’t. Maybe he just wants to make his lies seem more plausible.” The flu pandemic had killed my father. The idea that someone would risk a new one was incomprehensible. Then again, so was using a horrific tragedy that had killed hundreds of millions as the basis for twisted lies manufactured to promote hatred and fear. Howard Wells was way past that at this point.
Claudia looked dubious, and she was right to be. But there was too much for this all to be nothing. “So what should we do?” she asked.
“I guess we’ll see what results CLAD’s testing comes up with. But in the meantime, I need to call Rex.”
Claudia had a phone in her room, because of course she did. She grabbed it off her desk and handed it to me, then waited for me to make the call while I waited for her to give me a little privacy without having to ask for it.
After a few awkward seconds, it dawned on her. “Oh,” she said. “Right. How about I get us some more coffee?”
“That’d be great,” I said, handing her my mug. “Thanks.”
I punched in Rex’s phone number as she slipped out the door and closed it behind her.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey. It’s me. How are you feeling?”
“Feeling? Um…fine, I guess,” he said. “Why? How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. Did you watch the Wells interview on Day One?”
He let out a sad laugh. “Yeah. And I’m wondering if Alenka Bogdan is angling for a position on the Wells campaign staff.”
“Seriously, right? But in the video of the crowd, did you see those H4Hers from last night?”
“Yeah, I did. They didn’t look too good, did they?”
“Not all of them,” I said. I recounted the conversation I had just had with Claudia.
“Whoa,” he said when I was done. “That’s…troubling. What do you propose we do about it?”
“We need to talk to Ogden. To find out if they tested that carcass and see if they discovered anything.”
“Okay.” He paused. “I don’t think we should tell them our suspicions. Not yet.”
“No, me neither. But we need to get word to Chimerica.”