Tlateloco
As the team began to straggle into the lab dining room, fixing cups of coffee and sandwiches while they waited for Mason Williams to get off the phone with the head of the CDC, their eyes seemed dazed by the enormity of the news of the plague’s spread to Mexico City.
The team members were discussing this in low tones as Suzanne sat next to Lauren on one of the benches.
“How you doin’, girl?” she asked.
Lauren shrugged, glancing at her to try to make sense of the strange look she’d given her just a while ago. “Okay, all things considered . . . I guess. I keep seeing their faces in my mind—that is, their faces as they were the last time I saw them before they headed down here to the dig.” She hesitated. “Of course, now that the plague has spread it means that many thousands or even millions of others are going to suffer the same fate as my friends did.”
Suzanne nodded. “Yeah, that’s for sure with a bug this deadly.” She grunted and then asked, “Do you remember your history?”
“About?”
“The Black Plague back in the fourteenth century.”
“I remember studying it vaguely but not any of the details.”
Suzanne took a deep breath, staring off into space as she began to speak. “The Black Death as it was called started in China in 1333, and by 1347 had reached Constantinople, Alexandria, Cyprus, Sicily, and Italy. By 1348 it spread to France and Germany and then to England. In the next year it progressed to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and within two years even to Russia.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lauren asked.
Suzanne’s eyes focused and she turned to stare at Lauren. “By the time the Black Death burned itself out, it had killed an estimated one-third of the population of the entire world, and this was in a time when travel was much slower and less widespread and this plague was spread primarily by fleas and not person to person.”
She paused, sighed, and continued, “Can you imagine in today’s world of rapid transit the havoc a plague that is spread person to person will wreak on the world?”
Lauren was horrified. “It’s almost unimaginable.”
Suzanne nodded. “You’re right, it is. This could be the virtual end of civilization as we know it if a cure or at least a vaccine isn’t found quickly.”
She turned to look at Lauren again. “It’s got to be tough on a civilian to face this amount of death in all its ugly glory.”
Lauren was thrown for a moment at the abrupt change of subject, and so she said the first thing that came to mind, “You say civilian like you’re not one.”
Suzanne snorted. “Well, I am now, but for a long time I wasn’t.”
“Oh?”
Suzanne turned to look at her. “Remember when I told you about my father and brother having been in the military?”
Lauren nodded. “Sure.”
“Well, all that time I kinda considered myself in the army with them . . . you know how it is with family. One for all and all for one.”
“I can understand that.”
Suzanne looked down at the wedding ring on her finger. “This was my father’s. My mom gave it to him when they married, and she took it off his dead body before his burial and then went home and killed herself.”
“Jesus! Suzanne, I don’t know what to say.”
Suzanne smirked. “Nothing much to say,” Suzanne muttered, patting Lauren’s hand on her arm. “But you can see why I take tracking down bugs like this one so seriously. Bugs that can be used as germ warfare in the wrong hands must be controlled by a country that will only use them in self-defense, and the cures that we develop for them will help protect our country and our servicemen and servicewomen in the event of war.”
“But this plague wasn’t caused by a country using it as germ warfare,” Lauren protested.
“Not this time,” Suzanne said, her eyes burning with fervor.
Their conversation was brought to a halt when Mason stepped through the door. His hair was disheveled, and his face looked like he’d seen a ghost. It was plain that something had scared him half to death.
Lionel pointed to the coffeepot and Mason nodded. After he’d taken a drink from the cup Lionel handed him, he addressed the team.
“The situation is much worse than we thought. The plague of what is almost certainly respiratory anthrax has already made an appearance in over twenty countries, and there are more than fifteen thousand dead at the last count a few hours ago.”
“Holy mother of God,” Sam Jakes exclaimed. “The damned bug couldn’t have escaped from here more than one or two days ago at the most.”
“Nevertheless, it’s spreading like wildfire, and I use the term advisedly,” he said, referring to the nickname for his team of experts. “It seems a few, and I emphasize a few, people have managed to survive contagion but only after massive doses of antibiotics and intensive hospital care with tracheotomies and assisted ventilation until they could get over the worst of their pneumonia symptoms.”
He shook his head. “Clearly this is not something that is going to be available to a large population of those that have contracted the disease.”
“Is there any particular antibiotic regimen that seems to be effective?” Shirley Cole asked.
Mason shrugged. “Who knows? The ones who survived had just about every antibiotic known to man poured haphazardly into their veins, so no one can tell which antibiotic was effective or what particular combination might have worked.”
“Did the Battleship say what his plans for us are?” Jakes asked. “Are we supposed to fly to Mexico City and then home to help with the plague or what?”
“He said he’s working through channels to try to get the Mexican government to allow a private CDC jet to land in Mexico City and then get a helicopter down here to shuttle us back so we can bring all our samples back to the United States for more detailed study.”
“You said he’s working through channels . . .” Joel said. “What does that mean?”
“It seems all international travel and most intrana-tional travel has been suspended pending getting control of this plague,” Mason answered.
He took a deep breath. “He says it’s taking all the pressure he can apply to keep the Mexican authorities from fuel-bombing this site right now with us in it.”
“What?” Jakes almost screamed.
Mason smirked. “Yeah, the geniuses in Mexico City think if the original source of the infection is eliminated the plague will magically disappear.”
“Don’t they realize the genie is out of the bottle?” Suzanne asked.
Mason spread his hands and sat down at the table. “You’ve got to realize what it’s like out there in the world. People are dying by the thousands and soon to be hundreds of thousands and nothing they’re doing is even slowing the infection rate,” he said. “Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them call in witch doctors next.”
Shirley Cole sat up straight, and as always she seemed the calmest one in the room. “Okay, boss. So we may be stuck here for the duration. What do you want us to do?”
“We do what we do best,” he answered. “We continue to run samples against all known antibiotics with different dosages and combinations until we can find something that works on this beast.”
Lauren cleared her throat, her face flushing red. “Can I ask a question?”
Mason smiled. “Sure, Lauren.”
“I don’t know a lot about medicine and plagues,” she said, looking around at the team. “But it seems to me that I remember from freshman biology that vaccines used to be made from the blood of persons who had acquired antibodies to a certain illness or something like that.”
Mason’s brows knit and he looked puzzled. “Yeah, so?”
“Well,” she continued, “we have all seen the Indio boy running around the jungle as healthy as can be in spite of being exposed to the anthrax at the campsite. Might his blood not have the antibodies you need to make a vaccine or something else that might help treat the anthrax?”
“Jesus!” Jakes exclaimed, leaning over to kiss Lauren on the cheek. “Out of the mouths of babes . . .”
“She’s right,” Shirley Cole said, standing up in her excitement. “He’s got to be immune to the bug, either through previous mild infection or through some genetic abnormality that helps to fight off further infection.”
Suzanne also stood up, a thoughtful expression on her face. “And whatever it is that is protecting him might be able to be harnessed to help protect others.”
“Damn, Lauren,” Mason said, excitement on his face. “You’ve managed to look through the forest and see the one tree that might just be the answer we’ve been looking for.”
Lauren smiled. “So I guess the next step is to try to find this boy and convince him to help us?”
“Yeah, but the problem is does anyone here speak Indio?” Joel asked, looking around the room.
Lauren held up her hand, hesitantly. “There is no Indio language, Joel. Other than Spanish, the only other language that might be spoken this far south is Nahuatl, a form of the ancient Aztecan language. However, I used to work at an outreach program in the Hispanic part of Austin. I speak pretty tolerable Spanish, and I think the boy would have to understand at least some Spanish to be up here this far north, so I can probably make myself understood . . . if we can get close enough to talk to him.”
Mason jumped up. “Then let’s do it! Everyone spread out through the jungle and look for the boy, and don’t forget to take some of Shirley’s sweet treats with you. A couple of cookies or one of her muffins might let you get close enough to him to get him to follow you back to the lab.”
Jakes shook his head. “I don’t know, Mason. Those damned Racals might just scare the poor little bastard off.”
Mason shook his head. “No need to wear the Racal suits,” he said. “Since we know now we’re dealing with a respiratory bug, just wear the micropore masks and latex gloves and our scrubs that are contamination-proof and that should be enough protection.” He hesitated, “Of course, we’ll still use all decontamination protocols before reentering the lab.”
“What about Dr. Matos?” Shirley Cole asked. “He’s hanging on by a thread and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to leave him all alone in the lab in case he takes a turn for the worse.”
Mason sighed. “You’re right, Shirley, as always. You’d better stay here and look after him.”
She nodded. “And while I’m watching him, I’ll try to cook up a good meal for the boy when you bring him back. A full stomach may make him more agreeable to letting us stick lots of needles into his arms.”
“Needles?” Lauren asked.
“We’re gonna need lots of his blood to run antibody titers and for DNA testing,” Jakes said, “And we may even need to take some tissue samples before we’re done with him.”
Lauren cast a worried glance at Mason.
“Don’t worry, Lauren,” he said, patting her on the arm. “We’ll do our best to make the tests as painless as possible, but remember, thousands and maybe millions of people’s lives are at stake here.”
“Yeah,” she answered ruefully, “but I’m the one that’s going to have to try to explain to a jungle boy who probably speaks no English why you’re going to poke him with needles and take his blood.”
Suzanne put her arm around Lauren’s shoulders. “I’m sure you can do it, Lauren. Just tell him his gods need a blood sacrifice and it will assure him of a place in his heaven,” she said, smiling.
Lauren laughed. “Yeah, right!”