Note: First 30 posts here, next 13 in next post
Click here for Part 2.Post 1 - NEW YORK CITY QUARANTINED
Covid19 has struck New York City and it is reeling with the
impact.
The Governor is calling on the President to use laws to
force manufacturers to produce medical equipment so desperately needed to treat
the sick.
A few years ago I wandered through Central Park and wondered
how the city would react if a virus was let loose inside it.
How would it cope?
I then wrote Silent Lips, at thriller about
NYC struck by such a disease.
The President orders the city quarantined, and the Army sets
up a Parklab in Central Park, where doctors from inside the city frantically
try to find a cure for the spreading disease.
Other doctors fly into the city, knowing they will be unable
to leave it, but coming to help.
You can read excerpts of Silent Lips at my Amazon Author
Page at this site (click on the eBook Silent Lips picture to see the excerpts):
https://www.amazon.com/author/glennashton
Here is the chapter describing the setting up of the
Parklab.
The ParkLab, Central Park
The sweeping of Central Park started at nine at night, with the first
troops driving into the middle of the Great Lawn next to the lake in jeeps and
half tracks, and fanned out from this central point, pushing towards the
boundaries of the Park.
They formed lines three deep and moved through the trees and bushes,
their handheld lights probing every bush and behind each rock, their fixed
bayonets forcing the people they found out from the Lawn, towards the edges of
the Park.
Lights were spaced at regular intervals around the lawn and the edges of
the Park, facing outwards.
Further back, batteries of searchlights were mounted with their beams at
low angles to allow them to cover the ground.
Behind the sweep teams, other
troops unrolled the barbed wire that was to be strung along the Park's
boundaries to keep the New Yorkers out of the area.
Moveable steel barriers were erected in front of the barbed wire to keep
the crowds that were expected to arrive the next day off the barbs of the wire.
By seven an area a half-mile square had been secured, and teams of
sappers started throwing up the guard posts every hundred yards apart. Made of
metal cylinders with firing slits cut in at three heights, they had their own
independent backup generators to power their lights in case of a general power
failure. Each one had a telephone link to the central command post that was
situated to one side of the Great Lawn, as well as portable radio
communications.
Their fields of vision overlapped so that the whole perimeter of the Parklab was under surveillance.
Central
Park, home of the Army's ParkLab
A three-man complement filed into each guard post: one radio operator
and two guards with night scopes on their rifles. Each post had its own supply
of gas grenades next to the grenade launchers that poked their snub snouts out
from the metal canisters; the launchers could be swivelled up and sideways to
cover the zone allocated to the post.
Other troops patrolled between the double strands of barbed wire, in
groups of three.
There was only one entrance into the cordoned off area of the Lawn, and
it had two sturdier metal cylinders on each side of the steel gates.
A steady stream of vehicles filed into the Park through the gates,
bringing the tents and buildings that were needed by the support personnel.
One section was marked off for the ambulances which drove in just after
ten that night, their lights on dim and sirens silent. Their crews settled into
the prefabricated huts hurriedly erected alongside the parking zone.
At midnight the exodus of surplus builders and troops started and by two that morning only the permanent
staff were left in the base.
The second wave of activity started at three with the arrival of the
massive helicopters with their cargoes of laboratories. Five huge complexes
were winched down to the Great Lawn and slotted together to form a square with
one central building connected by tunnels to the four corner buildings.
The Parklab was ready.
Post 2 - CLOSING DOWN NEW YORK CITY
Shutting down New York because a virus has been released inside it, from my novel Silent
Lips (click here for more
information):
"There were seven men in the room when he
entered, all from Washington. Three of
them were in uniform, including the five star general he had spoken to
earlier. All looked concerned.
He studied General Grant. He was a tall,
straight man, with a lean, fit-looking body, and he spoke in a careful, precise
voice, glancing at all the attendees from time to time. He was not as young as
McGroarty had first assumed; there were deep lines down his cheeks and his lips
were thin, the grey eyes severe.
McGroarty liked the man's message even less
than he had expected.
So, there had been an outbreak of some kind
of disease and several people had died in the past day or so, but there were
always things happening in large cities like New York.
The way the general was putting it,
somebody somewhere in Washington had a
special group - formed soon after the terrorist attack on New York of 9-11 and
the unsuccessful scattered bio warfare attacks that had followed it - that investigated these kinds of things,
independently of the local authorities, and these people had units stationed in
every city and town, often disguised as ordinary commercial firms. One such
unit had started tracking the outbreak in New York as soon as the second case
had been admitted to hospital.
This unit believed that the disease was a
brand new one.
They weren't sure, the civilians said, but
McGroarty noticed that General Grant seemed to have bought their conclusions;
he did not look like the kind of man who bought crap easily.
The group also believed that the disease
was growing at a rapid rate; according to their calculations it was due to
start a phase of exponential growth within the next day or two, and the thing
could go out of control unless it was checked, or cured.
Or contained.
Everybody had nodded when the last option
had been mentioned; McGroarty didn't
need to have it spelled out which option the seven gentlemen around the table
thought was most feasible.
He had made his first interruption about
ten minutes ago: on whose authority had they called this meeting?
It was General Grant who answered.
The President of the United States, acting
on the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It was then he really started
worrying.
A lot of people were taking this thing very
seriously indeed. If it started to
spread like they said it would, he could understand the concern about keeping order in the city. It
would be a madhouse.
The civilians' computer model of the spread
of the disease showed different possible scenarios, all of them of varying
degrees of complexity, but all of them bad.
If they were right the city was in for a tough few days or perhaps even
weeks. The local police would have to control the situation; if they needed
help there was a special army group trained in such things that could be called
in.
They were on the way into the city now.
They had unfolded a large map and spread it
on the table. It showed a series of concentric circles, based on New York.
Some
were irregularly shaped, using natural lines provided by the geography of the
land, such as the rivers running between New Jersey and Philadelphia and around
Delaware Bay, running up the river into the Appalachian Hills, ending at
Connecticut. McGroarty leaned over the
table, hands astride the large map, his tunic unbuttoned because of the
stifling heat. The map was a large sectioned one of the coastline on the eastern
seaboard from Virginia to Maine.
They were proposing a fallback plan which
assumed that a cure was not soon found and the disease did not show signs of
abating: to divide the surrounding areas into five zones, with boundaries
between each zone.
Guards would man the boundary crossing points."
Click on the Silent
Lips picture at my Amazon author page to be able to read a few pages – and the
eBook costs only 99 cents! Tell your friends!
Post 3 - THE GOVERNOR'S REQUEST
An extract from my thriller Silent Lips about a virus in New York City - more extracts to come!
Naomi
Jacobs rolled the page into the battered Underwood her uncle had given her on her eleventh birthday and pulled
the crumpled pack of cigarettes closer,
selecting one and lighting it with a flaring
match from the untidy pile in the crystal saucer next to the typewriter.
Naomi's 11th birthday present
The smoke coiled up past her head and she screwed one
eye shut as she typed, thinking with disgust of her attempts to stop smoking.
She hated the smell of smoke in her clothing and the sour smell that lingered
in the apartment in the mornings after a late night's work, but she needed the
swift adrenaline kick of the nicotine when she was excited.
Besides, hadn't somebody found out that nicotine
helped one's concentration?
She pulled the page from the roller and held it in one
hand, noting the yellow stains on her fingers where she held the cigarettes.
What would the ancient Greeks have thought if they could have seen this world city of ours, this city state writ large in the turbulent world of this century, so much more complex than anything they could possibly have imagined?Would they have appreciated that America's sprawling millions were not really a nation in the modern sense, but rather a collection of city states; city states that gave it its richness, and its diversity and its incredible energy? Would they have understood that Americans were moulded by their cities, fashioned closer to the heart's desire by these huge cities?I believe the Athenians would have grasped this.
She stopped reading and thought about the Governor and
their meeting last night, in his penthouse overlooking the broad Hudson River.
He had stood with his back to her, looking out of the
window at the city below, a drink in one hand. Above the city, the fighter
planes had moved in graceful flight as they patrolled the outer Zones to
prevent any escape attempts.
He had spoken to her, his face turned to the window
but his words clear and calm.
"You must write it up, Naomi. Tell them about us.
Tell the world about us: how we lived, the greatest city the world has ever
seen. The only rival to Athens in all our history on this planet. Tell them
about our pride. How we survived that cowardly attack in September 2001, when
the terrorists thought they could break our spirit by striking at our tallest
buildings. How our brave men and women rushed to help our people then, and died
by the hundreds doing so. How we gave so much to the nation and to the world.
Record our last dying moments, as we die in a slow, dignified manner. How we
lived proudly and beautifully. We made the world a better place."
Strain had thickened his voice, but his measured tones
continued.
"We contributed; we were the essence of our
culture. Without us nothing. After us, the flood."
She had laughed.
"Sounds a bit like an obituary to me,
Governor."
He had turned then, and she had been shocked to see
the tears on his cheeks, the lights glinting in them as he unashamedly let them
flow. Far away, in the distance, one of the B 52's had curved up sharply, its
bomb bays open and the parcels falling in curving flight to the dark ground
below, the parachutes snapping open above them.
"Yes, it is an obituary, Naomi. But what a task.
Preserve us for them so that they will remember us in our moments of glory, of
pride, of accomplishment. The laughter. The applause. The tragedies and the farces and the
triumphs. Preserve us. Not as we are now, frightened and helpless and cowering,
waiting for our silent Gotterdammerung, but as we were."
She blew the smoke out her nostrils, thinking of the
white haired Governor and his strange request.
In terse, bitter sentences, he had outlined the full gravity of the
crisis to her and solicited her help in keeping the city calm and dignified if
things worsened, as the authorities expected them to.
He had frightened her.
She continued reading her article.
Inevitably, if you were good, you drifted to New York. It was the magnet of this boisterous nation; the top of the totem pole; the lightning conductor, attracting the high energied people amongst America's tens of millions.It was big enough to insulate itself against the bizarre. New York's surface would barely ripple when the bizarre came to it and entered it.But this, these steel helmeted troops, these young lions with their hard eyes and bronzed faces and casually held weapons - these were different.They were alien.They were trying to impose themselves on New York and the city knew this.So these young men - in their camouflaged uniforms and field green fatigues, with watchful, hard eyes - these men the city watched as carefully, not letting them slip away into its monstrous maw and accommodating them.It was wary of them.Wary, but also curious: for they were alien; here and there were flashes of similarity: the buzz saw tones of the Bronx; the softer tones of the wooded suburbs. And so the city watched them, silently at first.Waiting.Deliverers or conquerors?
Post 4 - HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, about a virus that leads to New York being quarantined:
He swung the shovel into the soft ground under the single, scraggly tree there, straightening to wipe the sweat off his face with the back of his shirtsleeve, then he stood erect and stretched painfully, hands guarding the protesting muscles in the small of his back.
He swung the shovel into the soft ground under the single, scraggly tree there, straightening to wipe the sweat off his face with the back of his shirtsleeve, then he stood erect and stretched painfully, hands guarding the protesting muscles in the small of his back.
Another
eight inches should do it.
He
glanced around but there was no one nearby; the lot was empty and dark,
protected from the night lights of the city by the darkened hulk of the
deserted apartment block looming over the empty land between the two
buildings.
He spat
on his hands and picked up the shovel again, swinging it up and over his
shoulder and into the earth. It struck something
hard, jarring his arms.
He
dropped to the side of the hole, wriggling the shovel. The blade had cut deeply
into the roots of the small tree.
He
muttered something under his breath and tugged it free, then he dug for another
twenty minutes before he was satisfied.
Standing
the shovel against the tree trunk, he bent and unrolled the sacking before
spreading it on the bottom of the hole.
He
turned, knees on the soft ground piled next to the hole, and grunted softly as
he lifted the first little body, swinging it into the hole and straightening
its limbs gently.
The
second body followed, then he spread the second sheet of sacking over the
bodies, tucking it into the sides of the inert forms, digging into the dirt to
secure it around them.
He leant
back, hands on his thighs, and looked at the little pile shrouded by the coarse
sacking.
So long,
boys.
He
scooped up a handful of dirt and let it trickle onto the bodies.
He filled
the grave, tamping down the dirt until it was level with the ground at the
bottom of the little tree and dragged some debris from the lot over it.
"Vector
Victor," he said softly, smiling, his thoughts still at the little tree
with the twisted branches.
He
saluted the black and white photograph of the scientist with untidy hair and
carelessly knotted tie, with his cigarette, and glanced around at the small
room, half-surprised by its grimy walls.
He picked
up the syringe and glanced briefly at the point before he thrust it into the
rubber masking the neck of the small bottle.
He rolled up his sleeve and fisted his left
hand, waiting for the veins to swell before slipping the point of the needle
into his arm and depressing the plunger slowly.
The liquid slid down the syringe
and into his body.
He dropped the empty
syringe onto the desk and stared at the small drop of blood welling from the
puncture mark on his arm.Post 5 - RUSSIA
For twenty days the Vertical 8
payload of Cosmos 130485 had circled the glowing sphere of the world in its 406
by 226 kilometre orbit, its exposure to the world carefully controlled at 62.8
degrees, the instruments within its recovery module ceaselessly
functioning.
Data was originated, corrected,
manipulated and despatched to earth.
Small packages were opened, shaken,
stirred and closed.
Shining vials were exposed to the
sunlight and to the invisible rays streaking through the thin space above the
earth, their exposure measured and noted before the windows letting in the rays
were closed.
Now it readied itself for re
entry.
Gradually its orbit changed as it
dropped closer and closer to the limits of the earth's pull, until it regained
its weight and dropped faster and faster to the earth.
At 95 kilometres the recovery pod
parted from the payload and went its own way, gradually nearing the earth. Its
multi coloured parachute snapped out behind it, filling instantaneously and
slowing the pod's descent.
Cosmos
130485
It struck the ground softly, rolling
a little before coming to a halt. The parachute crumpled on the dusty soil, its
identification symbols, in four languages, hidden in the folds of the light
cloth. Within minutes the recovery crew had surrounded it. The dust from their
vehicles' tracks settled slowly in the warm shafts of the afternoon sun.
Post 6 - The Infector Pool
"At present we do not
have enough hard facts."
Colonel
Ernest Marshall was leaning forward as he spoke, his clipped words had a slight
Boston accent.
"The infector pool could be a dynamic thing. It could swell whenever someone new is
infected and ebb when someone dies. Our objective in such a case would be to
achieve a negative balance by reducing its entrants." His voice was
emotionless. "We would have to let the infected ones either heal on their
own or die out. It could be a war of attrition until a cure is found."
McGroarty's
mind lingered on the speed of the disease the colonel was speculating
about: he had never heard of anything
that moved as fast as this thing did. Like a sidewinder in soft desert
sand.
"There
are a number of things we have to concentrate on."
Marshall
held up his hands and ticked them off on his fingers.
"One:
we know that infectious diseases are communicable and that an agent spreads
them. Two: the agent could spread it directly through the air - viruses love
the air - or through contact, whether primary or secondary. Droplets could
cause it. You have it and you sneeze and the person next to you gets it. Or it
might be through faeces or urine. Three: the host and the agent might meet
fortuitously or the agent might be inherent in man, like some kind of parasite.
Is it spread by an outside agent, a vector? A mosquito spreading malaria? Or
through touch? Through food?"
General
Grant, seated opposite the Commissioner, shrugged, his face expressionless.
"We
don't know the virulence of the disease
yet. It seems pretty sure to provoke a strong response from man. Nor do
we really know the resistance of the host," Marshall went on softly.
"Will
some people get it and others not? Most immunities are type specific; the fact
that some get it does not mean they will not get a variant. Will it transmute?
We don't know yet. It might well have, for all we know."
Marshall
cleared his throat and sipped some water.
Why
should a colonel who looked like a fighting man know so much about
disease? McGroarty wondered idly,
watching the man's cold blue eyes and controlled movements.
Pushing
his glass away, Marshall leaned forward across the table.
"If
it is a new disease, as this one seems to be, then we can expect to see a
continuation of what we have been seeing. A fresh agent in a new community that
has not built up immunity to it usually results in an epidemic; sometimes in a
pandemic."
Marshall
stopped and there was a pause while everybody considered his flat statements.
Post 7 - Naomi Jacobs
Back in
his office, Commissioner McGroarty had just sunk back in his armchair when the
phone rang. He listened silently, finally growling: "Send her in."
A young woman walked in, limping slightly; he noticed
that she wore a brace on her left leg.
She had a neat brown skirt with a matching silk blouse; her coat was
unbuttoned, the belt hanging from one loop only. She turned and held out her
hand, her dark eyes gleaming with an inner excitement he found curiously
attractive.
"I'm Naomi Jacobs," she said cheerfully. Her
hand was cool and wiry. He was surprised by the firmness of her handshake.
"Please sit down, Miss Jacobs," he said.
"Thank you."
She sat down carefully, bending her left leg with a
brief touch of her hand. The brace squeaked as it bent. He stared at her for a
long while and she held his gaze, a half smile on her lips. Finally, he said:
"The Governor thinks highly of you, Miss Jacobs. He says I am to cooperate
with you to the extent possible."
He sighed, thinking of the work he had to do, and she laughed. He sat
back, startled, and she composed herself.
"I'm sorry," she began. "You looked so
forlorn at the prospect of helping me."
He stared at her, really seeing her for the first
time. Her hair was short and swept back from her face, with two longish
tendrils straggling down before her ears, leaving her small ears uncovered. Her
eyebrows curved above slightly almond shaped, widely spaced brown eyes which
gleamed mischievously at him. She had a soft mouth, the lower lip a little
fuller than the upper one. A dimple creased and uncreased as she spoke. Her eye
teeth were a smidgen crooked and one overlapped the tooth next to it. A puckish
nose above the pointed chin. Her hands were never still, tugging at the sleeves
of the blouse or touching her hair in an unselfconscious manner or gently
pulling at an earlobe.
"The Governor says you will be writing about the
city; something about trying to form a bridge between the authorities and the
people. To open channels of communication, he put it." His tone conveyed his opinion of the
exercise. "I am to take you with me unless to do so would expose you to
danger, and to help you see and talk to whomever you want to in the city."
She shrugged expressively, a slight smile on her lips.
"I don't want you to think you have to nursemaid me, Commissioner. I will stay out of your hair, I promise. Just tell me those things you think might
interest and inform the zany inhabitants of this city; if you miss anything,
I'll ask questions." She settled her notepad on her knee and waited; he
caught a glint of humour in the brown eyes.
He shook his head unconsciously. This was the last
damn favour he was going to do for the Governor for a long, long time, he
thought.
Post 8 - THE WHITE HOUSE
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
President Charles E.
Stanton thought back to the calls he had received from the emergency team in
New York during the past few hours.
The
number of people who had been hospitalised with this strange new malady had
grown explosively even in the short time since the first two cases had been
isolated, and no matter what the tests used, there was no indication at all of
what the disease was. It bore no relationship to any known diseases. The team
had examined each person, and they were unanimous: they all had the same
symptoms.
The
team's recommendation was terse, and strongly worded: the city of New York had
to be quarantined.
All
indications were that the disease was spreading so fast that it could break out
of the city and travel elsewhere.
He
remembered the discussion, and the expression used by one of the experts. We
have to erect firebreaks and turn the disease back on itself, let it burn
itself out, consume itself.
You mean
wait until all the trees are burnt, he had commented wryly, and the answer had
come: Yes.
Until all
the people die, he had pressed, and again the answer: Yes, if necessary.
Their
views had been backed up by a rush team one of his top aides had put together,
and by the Cabinet Minister in charge of Homeland Security, the new post
established by President Bush after 9-11. Stanton had always believed in double
checking the opinions of experts, and this decision was no exception.
Charles E. Stanton's White House
The
aide's voice when he reported back had almost been enthusiastic; not overly so,
but certainly discernibly so. He and his team had done their homework well. New
York was the centre of the greatest concentration of population in the United
States, with the major concentration of the nation's poor. It was one of the
sixteen giant metropolitan areas with more than two million people. Unlike the
other major areas, the people of this city were principally centred in the
city; only one third lived in the suburbs.
Wealth
followed that distribution, as well: more than half of the wealthy homes were
there, away from the noise and grime of the city proper. One in three of the
homes was in the upper economic bracket, an incredible concentration of wealth.
A city
the size of Sweden.
President
Stanton stared moodily at the file on his desk, his mind on New York. There was
no other way out, he thought. It was a threat to the whole megalopolis, the
huge string of cities running along the eastern seaboard like beads on a
string. The very proximity of all those
millions of people could mean their death warrant.
It could
spread - was spreading - and there was
no isolation, no natural barriers such as a desert or wide open spaces to bar
its progress.
Instead,
if the forecasts of the emergency team were correct and the cure was not found
in a very short period - in hours rather than days - it could leapfrog all over
the cities, spreading from person to person, neighbourhood to neighbourhood,
suburb to suburb; they had needed a barrier, a man made barrier, a man made
dyke.
So he had
taken the decision to freeze all movement and ordered the blockade of the
largest, richest, urbanized area in the world, effective as of half an hour
ago.
Post 9 - OPERATION STARLING
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Major Timothy R. Hopkins
watched from the La Guardia control tower as three giant Lockheed C 5 Galaxy
Airlifters of the 436th Military Airlift Wing roared down the runway, blue
smoke puffing from their wheels as they touched down.
They wheeled off the runway towards the cargo dumps
set up on the edge of the tarmac, parking in a line abreast as the huge noses
lifted up on their hydraulic rods and the floor dropped to the tarmac; two
battle tanks crept from the nineteen foot wide belly of one while several
trucks loaded with stores eased down the
ramps of the other two.
He
swivelled his chair around and punched numbers into the computer terminal that
linked him to Global Command and Control System.
He now
had direct access to the computers at military bases or in underground vaults
in sites across the country, and could
communicate with any one of them through the elaborate coding system that
linked them. There was now a permanent crisis watch throughout the country and
the information poured into the system where it was sorted and processed.
Global Command and Control System allocated troops to the city and would decide
on the order and staffing of the food shuttle that fed the city.
He
punched in a five level code and sat back, waiting for the system to grant him
clearance to the information he needed.
The messages ran across the terminal.
He pressed the keyboard and the messages suddenly clattered onto the
printer.
He was
not aware of it, but he had just initiated Phase One of Operation Starling.
Stack
them and then bring them down, nobody is going out from here on, were the
orders, and the stacking had started early on and continued, the planes layered
above the triangle that stretched eight miles from La Guardia to Idlewild and
sixteen miles to Newark airport. Cargo
planes heading to these airports before continuing on their trips to foreign
countries; passenger planes streaming in from Boston, Chicago and Washington.
They came
in, stacked, and were guided down: just
in case some of the passengers had been in New York in the days before the
orders went out. Many had not, but they were the unlucky ones: trapped in the city because they happened to
be there at the wrong time. The wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong
time.
The net
had been cast and they had been caught.
The
airports were the first to be closed because they were the gateways for the
staggering traffic in bodies and cargo out of the city: more than forty percent
of the country's overseas traffic and close on sixty percent of the total
exports from America.
The
President of the United States of America had decided: he would not allow the disease
to be exported.
Post 10 - THE CHAPEL WHERE IT STARTED
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Richard Burton pushed the
file across the table to Sheila Shain and smiled at her. She was a tall
brunette with attractive features and intelligent eyes that gazed steadily at
him; when she spoke her voice was low and pleasant.
He had
heard of her work; she was rated amongst the top ten biochemists in the world,
had been for over eighteen years. Unlike many of her American peers, she had
not rushed to join one of the genetic engineering firms that had sprung up in
recent years, preferring to do pure research in London.
"I
worked at the University of Wisconsin," she answered, her eyes calm behind
the glittering half squares of her modern spectacles.
"With
Gobind Khorana?"
She
nodded.
"Brilliant
work: combining chemical synthesis and synthesis using enzymes as catalysts.
Did you work on that with Gobind?"
"Yes."
He smiled
at her.
"Good! You'll get a chance to give nature a gentle
nudge here as well. We can use your experience in the Pubunit."
He
watched her long stride as she left, his mind going back to the Chapel where it
had all started for him, the redwood chapel at Asilomer, more than a third of a
century ago.
Monday
morning, eight o'clock, on February 24, 1975.
He had
not been actively involved until after that four day conference, close to the
sea at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula in central California. It had been
very beautiful there, he remembered: the rocks on the shoreline of the Pacific,
the white dunes shining in the warm sun, the cypress and pine and redwood trees
surrounding the buildings.
Gobind Khorana
He
remembered the walks down the beach in the early morning, his footprints slowly
filling in behind him as the waves washed ashore, the salt spray spun off the
breakers as they plumed off the rocks, and were brought ashore by the wind.
He had
feared the future, there in the shadow of the redwoods; feared the unbridled
enthusiasm of his colleagues who gathered in the longhouse and the social
centre.
They had
wanted to go too fast, he had felt, watching their faces in the old chapel.
Too fast.
The dark
haired man waited at the door to Burton's small office, hesitating.
He had
come in that morning, part of the steady stream of scientists now pouring into
America to help their colleagues master this strange outbreak.
Redwood Chapel at Asimoler, Monterey
They were
hastily cleared by HomeSec, who kept records on most scientists in the world in
case of need, and the army's emergency medical teams, and sent into the city
itself, reporting to research centres deep within the blockaded city.
Many
research laboratories, both within and without the city, had been taken over
under the emergency legislation when the military had not received the degree
of cooperation they had asked for. The President was considering a recommendation
of HomeSec for the temporary nationalization of all private laboratories in the
country, if this was needed to find the cure soon.
Some of
these scientists reported for duty in the Parklab, joining Richard Burton's
Kindergarten in either the public portion of the Parklab, nicknamed by some
bright spark the Pubunit, or the segregated portion, the Segunit. As they
arrived they were met by Colonel Marshall and his team of military doctors and
shown their quarters before being taken on a tour of the Parklab.
In the
Parklab, airlocks blocked access to each building and straddled the corridors
within the buildings as well. The generators were installed next to the central
building; their humming was a constant background noise.
Each of
the five buildings was a self-contained unit linked by its corridors to its
neighbours and to the central one, but with its own backup power supply. The
outside walls were made of a dark plastic while the internal walls were clear
plastic, specially toughened to withstand shocks and even explosions.
Only the
Pubunit - the largest of all the units of the Parklab, which was closest to the
single gate that now guarded access to Central Park - was open to scientists
and researchers who could leave and continue work in other hospitals and
laboratories in the city. Richard Burton
had made this his headquarters.
Some of
those researchers who had come into New York from outside the city or country,
were based in the Segunits, and would be there for the duration, without any
access to the city. The intention was to
preserve them in case their colleagues who could move freely in the city were
exposed to the disease and died.
Burton
became aware of his presence and lifted his head.
"And
you...?"
"Johan
Schmiedli. From the University of
Zurich."
Burton
examined the man. Early sixties; balding hair at the forehead; sharp blue eyes
hidden behind thick lenses. He was wearing a shaggy sports coat, with flaps
over the pockets. Several sheets of
paper were stuffed inside the shirt pocket.
Charles Weissmann
"Haven't
we met before?"
"Yes.
In Zurich. We celebrated with Professor Charles Weissmann, when he produced
human interferon from bacteria. You had come to visit him at the time."
Burton
stared at him for a while trying to place the man. It had been so long ago ... Suddenly he had a vision of the group of men
and women surrounding the professor in front of the functional square glass and
steel buildings of the university. They had gathered in front of the pool;
several had plastic cups in their hands.
Weissmann had offered him a cup of champagne as well and he had joined
in the toast to the future. He could remember Schmiedli, standing quietly in
the circle, drinking a toast. He had been a key member of one of the supporting
teams.
He motioned
to a chair and they spent several minutes talking about the experiments that
Schmiedli would be doing. Then Burton rose and accompanied Schmiedli out to the
corridor, pausing to discuss the various methods being used in each of the
separate units.
They were
attacking the disease on multiple fronts.
Post 11 - What if there's no limit to it?
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Naomi Jacobs edged past
General Grant until she had a clearer look at the maps on the computer screen.
Colours chased each other across the screen, slowing down when the operator
broke the scrolling action for a more detailed study.
"The secondary attack rate means the number of
cases among the family members or other close contacts that occur within the
assumed
"We
have rates for it, but there is no apparent pattern." His eyes were fixed on Naomi's face, full of
curiosity. "We tried to work
backwards from our data about contacts to see if we could match infections with
timing and so get the incubation period but we've had no luck so far."
"What's
the significance of the incubation period?" she asked, and the researcher
turned from the soldiers to her, grateful for the question; he seemed more
comfortable with her than with the military people in the room.
"Well,
you see, we don't know the persistence of the disease. Even if we could cure
this outbreak, we have to ascertain how long it will last in the community.
Some diseases just seem to hang on grimly; the carriers may be ill or totally
unaware that they are carriers. It might be in the incubation stage and only
show up a week or a month later. It's like a forest fire, sometimes."
Naomi,
watching the expression in his intelligent eyes, felt suddenly disturbed.
Stanley Levine was an intent man, in his mid thirties, and his concern seemed
far deeper than she had expected. She resolved to spend some time with him to
find out more about this threat that worried him so much.
"Little
flames glowing amongst the blackened trees; along comes a wind two days later
and the whole thing flares up again. We have to find the time parameters. How
long between the first contact and the flare up? How long to incubate?"
"I
see," she answered. She pointed at the screen. "What is that map
showing?"
"We're
looking not only for the times and places but also any common factors. Ages;
foods; occupations; blood groups; prior diseases; movements through areas.
These maps," - he tapped the console - "show the superimposition of
some of those facts on the areas where the disease is the heaviest. These are
age groups; these others are dates of first identifiable cases. Most epidemics never become epidemics because
there are too many in the community who are immune. If two out of three are
immune, the disease gradually dies out. We don't know if that will be the case
with this disease. We don't even know who is in the community, really."
He shut
the desk drawer irritably, making the computer screen shimmer. "What if people - everybody, every
single one - belong to the community susceptible to the disease? What if there's no limit to it? No
boundary?"
Post 12 - WE HAVE TO FEED THE CITY
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
General Holcroft walked
briskly into the briefing room, stopping in front of the huge map which had the
five zones in different colours and the locations of the different bases
throughout the country that were being used in the blockade.
He faced
the assembled crews of the huge B-52's and described their role in feeding New
York, now that the land traffic that could enter could not exit while the
blockade lasted.
"This
operation will not be a picnic," he went on.
"Please do not underestimate either the
importance of your missions or the amount of work you will have to do. We have
to feed that city. Your planes will not be going in but over the city and so
you gentlemen will not have the pleasure of spending your next vacation in New
York."
Soft
cheers and groans interrupted him and he held up his hand again.
"You
and your planes are recyclable. You will drop supplies by parachute. You will
drop them at designated spots and then return for more."
B52 Stratofortress
Wilbur
Hassler's helmet slapped gently against his thigh as he walked towards the B52,
approaching it from the front. Its thrusting nose with the windows above always
reminded him of an aggressive hawk, wings open and claws down.
It was a
huge aircraft; the sheer size never left one. Graceful at six hundred and fifty
miles an hour at fifty thousand feet, it never seemed capable of becoming
airborne when he saw it on the ground. The Stratofortress had a wingspan of 185
feet, longer than the body's 157 feet, and the four pods of joined twin engines
seemed to drag the wings down.
He swung
into his seat and put his helmet on, nodding at the others. These supply runs had one major advantage:
they were better than the flight simulators that seemed to have taken over from
the real on hands experience in recent years. His crew would now have the
chance to clock up more than two thousand flying hours this year, closer to the
average yearly flight times in the sixties and more than twice what they
usually got now.
He
glanced at the wings. The aircraft felt somehow naked now, without the familiar
cluster of bombs underneath the wings, just in front of the first engine.
"Whitebelly
Four here," he said into the radio, flipping the switches in preparation
for takeoff. Behind him in the dim red
light of the navigation bay the navigator had inserted the data transfer
cartridges into the transfer units and was reading out the details of their
mission from the light green screen, his fingers darting over the integrated
keyboard.
The
bomber thundered down the runway and swept into the air, heading for New
York. Low clouds lay upon the land.
Within
minutes they were over the top half of the island, looking down on the bridges
linking it to the mainland. From this height the island looked like the huge
irregularly shaped deck of an aircraft carrier. Down below, a huge jet of water
plumed from the fountain on the island in the river.
"Prepare
to drop," he said into his intercom.
Post 13 - NO CHOICE
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
The persistent shrilling of
the radiophone dragged Richard Burton back to the little room.
"What's
wrong?"
"The
nurses are scared, doctor Burton. They're staying away by the dozens."
"They
can't!" he exploded, anger darkening his face. "Where is it happening?"
"All
over."
He
dropped his hands to the table. "That's all we need. No bloody nurses. No
bloody hospitals."
He strode
down the corridor to the office where McGroarty was organizing the stepped up
guards for the Parklab.
"Commissioner?
My nurses are starting to stay at home because they're frightened. What can I
do?"
"I
told you to keep them in the hospitals. This time I hope you'll listen to me.
They are going for them, out there in the streets. The word is that they are
the cause."
McGroarty
licked a cigar and thrust it into his mouth, tilting it at a belligerent angle,
but did not light it. Smokers ran a greater risk of dying from the Bug; the
earliest analyses had shown that.
Suddenly, overnight, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers had quit smoking,
cold turkey; but he kept on. If it was going to get him it was going to get him
with a cigar in his mouth, blowing smoke in its face.
"The
street thinks they give it to anybody who comes close to them. They are called
the Angels. In some places its called the White Death because of the uniforms
the nurses wear. Somebody out there in
the streets put two and two together and figured out that there were getting it
here in the hospital. Two and two make four, so they're going for the nurses.
Three so far."
He walked
across to the window and pulled the blind down, staring at the city.
"My
men have spotted signs painted on the streets, with stencils; on street
corners. Kill them. The Angel Killers, they call themselves." He shook his head and swung around, his angry
eyes catching Burton's. "They're after your nurses, doctor. All of them.
You had better keep them off the streets if you want to keep them alive. I
can't guarantee their safety. Keep them indoors."
Burton
shook his head.
"I
can't do that, Commissioner. You know I can't keep them here. There's no
room. We're full up with patients. There
aren't any beds. And, anyway, they wouldn't stay. They have families and
friends out there. They wouldn't stay here."
"You
don't have any choice, Burton."
The
Commissioner's head had dropped and his smouldering eyes stared at the doctor
from under his dark brows.
"It's
going to be a war out there: those bastards against your people, with only my
men and the army between them. I've spoken to General Grant and we are going to
have sweeps done on a random and targeted basis, to track those Angel Killers
down. My men know the ground, and Grant has the firepower we will need. We're
going to put the word out in the streets that we have declared war on those bastards.
I must warn you: when we start, it might get very bloody. You will kill your people if you send them
out there. I am going to call them up."
"Call
them up?"
"Draft
them into the army. That way they have to stay where you tell them to. I want a
list from you of all your medical personnel, doctor."
"All
personnel? We're only having trouble with the nurses."
"Now!"
The Commissioner cut in brusquely. "I'm going to draft every damn person.
No exceptions! The paperwork's ready; I expected this. You can tell all your
personnel that they're working for the United States Army."
The two
men stared at each other for several seconds, then Burton turned and left the
room, his face set.
He passed
through the airlock into the next section of the Pubunit, and walked over to
where Jean Francois Vasseur was working at a lab bench. He watched the French
scientist move a tray with eggs in it to one side and pull the clear vials of
the colourless interferon closer. Beside him a technician was shaking salt into
a goldfish bowl to separate out interferon; they were making some themselves,
now.
Vasseur
looked up at him and smiled his welcome.
"How
is the interferon treatment working?" Burton asked, and Vasseur motioned
for him to follow, leading the way to an isolated unit.
"You
see the after effects clearly in this patient," he said, moving to the
window and pointing to a middle-aged woman lying in a clear plastic cylinder
inside the theatre.
The
cylinders were sealed, with rubber tubes ending in gloves so that the
researchers could treat the occupants without handling their bodies. This
limited the contact between the patients and the now scarce resource inside the
city: the doctors and researchers.
Into the container
"See
the sores on her lips? They're typical reactions to interferon. The other
reactions we find are fever and loss of appetite, but the more serious ones are
alterations of the liver enzymes."
"No
unusual reactions? It was a possibility, as you know. The disease might have
produced a new result when we used interferon."
"None
that we could see; only the expected reactions. The results haven't been good,
either. There has been no improvement of
a lasting nature from using interferon."
Post 14 - ZERO AREA
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
She shrugged, the
frustration of their search showing clearly in the deep grooves running from
her nose to her mouth. When she spoke, her voice was flat with disappointment
and fatigue.
"We
keep on trying and trying, I guess. What else can we do? We're striking out into
uncharted territory with the scale and types of things we're doing here."
She
shrugged again, trying to hide her uncertainty.
"I wish it
was a well blazed trail so that we knew just what the hell we were doing."
He
dropped into the chair.
"I've
been trying a different tack," he explained.
"I've
asked Schmiedli to continue trying to restore the mutant gene to its wild or
original type. I thought he might try to come up with a second mutant gene,
which would cancel the effect of the first mutant."
He
squinted at the laser beam, sighing. "So far we've had no luck in finding
anything remotely like a suppressor mutant."
Burton
turned to leave just as Alex Webb came through the door, holding out some
papers for him.
"Here's
the list you asked for, Richard. You remember, we were working backwards from
the earliest subjects and we are still searching the Zero Area."
"Zero
Area?"
"Oh,
its the codename given by the boys to the ten blocks in Harlem where the thing seemed to have
started. They're doing a third house to house search in the area."
Burton
took the file and walked to the door.
"Oh,
Richard," the lieutenant called, before Burton stepped out the door,
"one of the earlier subjects was a biological scientist in a lab downtown,
but we don't seem to have traced him to this area. Name of John Raymond."
The
police in the nearby precinct had received a call, he explained, and had
recorded it: a tortured voice that begged for help and gave an address. The
patrol car had not found anybody there; John Raymond's body had been found in
the grass nearby. There were marks on the ground that showed he had crawled
there. There were always dead bodies there, in that part of town, the
lieutenant explained, matter of factly. Another one was no big deal.
"God
knows what he would be doing in the area, anyway," he went on.
"There's nothing in it except some rotting buildings and a trash heap and
that damn Russian monument."
Burton
stopped, his face thoughtful.
"Russian
monument?"
"Yes.
You remember, that orb with the moon rocks that they gave to the city. It's
marked on the map."
"Thank
you." Burton said. "And John Raymond was found near it?"
Alex Webb
nodded.
Post 15 - DISINFESTATION
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Burton
spent several minutes updating his old friend and mentor about the steps being
taken in the Parklab and other research laboratories, both within and without
the city. No luck so far; they were increasing the types of experiments to a
level unheard of prior to the disaster, at the President's express orders.
The only thing they knew for sure now was that it was
associated with a defective gene.
But despite all the frantic efforts of the
researchers, they did not know how the defective gene entered the body, or what
caused the defect.
In fact, he mused, they knew very little about the Bug
except that it was killing more and more people, and apparently faster and
faster.
As Sheila Shain had remarked a few days ago: "If
we've had a qualitative change in the amino acids, caused by this disease, how
do we kill it?" she had asked rhetorically. "We have to kill the
viruses and the bacteria too, as well as the amino acids. But the acids have a
high melting point, more than two hundred degrees centigrade. To kill them with
heat we would have to douse the world with fire."
Central Park cremation pyres
Burton reflected on this once more. How could they
disinfect the city? Disinfestation
usually meant the destruction of small animals such as rodents, present on the
person or clothing of the people or in their physical environment.
How did one disinfestate a whole city? Destroy the
carriers... But the carriers were people in New York. So it must be
impossible...
Hospitals were overflowing with the dead and dying,
and military units were now making periodic sweeps of homes, block by block, to
locate the dead and take them away for disposal. There were no longer any
burials. Bodies were cremated.
The temporary cremating ovens in the grounds of
Central Park had been tripled in size in the past twenty-four hours, to cope
with the people who died in the Parklab.
In various places throughout the city, several huge
centres had been established to burn the bodies of the dead; daily convoys of
military trucks trundled through the city's neighbourhoods, guarded by troops,
ferrying bodies to the new crematoria.
Some bodies were being burnt even before
identification, if there were any delays. They were simply photographed and
there were queues of people lined up before police precincts to check the books
in search of missing friends or relatives.
Post 16 - PANDORA'S BOX
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Adam
Huntingdon closed his eyes, and leant back in the chair, letting his thoughts
drift freely. It was overcast outside
and the cellar was almost completely dark.
He had lit the candle on one of the shelves and its flickering light
formed a small pool in the dark room.
His frail shoulders were stooped as he slouched in the chair, and his
restless hands pulled at the rug he had spread across his knees.
Beside him the chess pieces waited mutely for his
attention.
The problems facing Richard Burton in the beleaguered
city had preoccupied him for the past days, ever since the first call.
There was nothing he could do, sitting in a cellar
beneath the sea on the Californian seashore, to isolate the causes of the
disease, but he could help Burton by acting as a sounding board. They had
worked together many years ago, after their first meeting in 1957 at the
Asilomer conference in California. Both were geneticists, both were superb
researchers, but he had retired five years ago while the younger man had
continued his work.
He had come to a conclusion, and now he dialled the
number in the Parklab and waited for the young man to answer.
"Burton."
"Richard, I have an idea," he said without
preamble. "Your methods will have to be dramatically different from the
normal ones you would use."
"Why? And
how?" Burton's voice was clipped but not surprised.
"You do not have the luxury of time," the
soft voice went on. "I have mulled over the progress of the disease since
you first reported to me. It's moving
very fast. Time is against you. You will have to abandon isolated treatments
and go for as many and as varied as you can."
Burton gave a short laugh. "We seem to be on the
same track. I've started that already.
But..." his voice trailed off.
"What's the problem?"
"The military here is rather insistent,"
Burton replied, his voice soft over the line, and Adam felt a pang of sympathy
and sorrow for him.
"Colonel Marshall insists on us trying any
possible treatments on the sick. Even the tentative cures. He says he has the
authority to order whatever he thinks fit, and wants us to skip normal testing
procedures. If we even have a hint that something might work, we must try
it. It's a bit like experimenting on
humans..."
"And?"
Again the short laugh.
"I'm a bit reluctant."
He seemed to be measuring his words.
"I've never done that before."
Adam thought carefully, then he said emphatically:
"I was going to suggest that to you, Richard. I don't see how you can avoid it. The
colonel, Marshall, is right: there are too many in danger for you not to use a
few to try to save the rest. I know you will resist it, but I really cannot see
how else you can do what has to be done."
Burton interrupted. "Adam, I know you appreciate
what you are saying. I have to choose, that's part of the problem."
"Would you rather the military made the
choices?" the older man's voice was remorseless.
"No."
The waves made a rushing sound as they swept over the
glass roof of Adam's cellar.
"I will do it, Adam. I'm afraid it might develop
a momentum of its own, though. We might not be able to control it once we start
experimenting. You understand my concern?"
Huntingdon paused while he sipped the wine. The bottle was almost empty now.
"Yes."
There was another brief silence, and then Adam broke
it.
"You have been thrust into that position,
Richard, and the hard decisions will be yours to make. It's a little bit
different from your normal activities but so is the crisis. Some of your
patients will die because of your attempts. Perhaps many will," he said
softly. "You have to weigh their numbers against the larger number of
stricken victims."
His blue veined hands pulled at the rug across his
knees.
"Your group is probably their only hope. You must
do it."
"Thanks." Burton's voice was relieved. "I'll call you later."
The old man poured another glass of wine and sipped
it, his eyes closed.
Burton would need his help more now, once the stepped
up experiments started. Once Pandora's Box was prised open, he thought. Open
the box's lid, lift it even slightly to peer inside, and the contents spread
out, sliding over the edges.
You could never put them back in again.
Like this modern plague, in this city.
Post 17 - THE PRIEST AND THE NEW EDEN
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
The unseasonal mildness of
the Washington air seemed to trail behind the priest as he mounted the pulpit,
chilling the air a little. He stood there, the Bible open before him, then he
hesitated, hand on the book.
"Tonight
we will not read from the Scriptures. Instead, I wish to share with you the
words of a young woman, by name of Naomi Jacobs, with whom I'm sure you are all
familiar. In that stricken city she
labours, a little light, in her corner. And tonight she touched me, as I am sure she will touch
you."
He
adjusted his cassock and peered through the half moon spectacles at the press
clipping in his hand, then he began to read it softly. Below the pulpit, not a
soul moved in the dense crowd.
Had this inquisitiveness, this gift of curiosity, led the Creator to a new phase? Was this all a new apple? A new temptation? Did He sit somewhere looking down at his creatures and say to Himself: You have grown in knowledge, but not in understanding or in wisdom.
Behold! Another gift I give you.
Another Eden beckons!
The
priest lowered his voice and stared across his glasses, little shards of light
bouncing off the pillars from the gold rims.
Another choice for you to make. Choose wisely and you shall live in My world forever; choose unwisely and you shall forfeit it all.
He
paused, nodding.
"She
is a little light, come to lighten the darkness that surrounds her fellow New
Yorkers, to cast away some of the shadows that surround them today, but I know she
speaks also to the rest of us, who from a distance watch that great city
suffer, unable to help them except by raising our voices to the Lord for their
deliverance. As they walk through that valley of darkness, we hear her voice
call out to them to fear not. We see in a corner the small, flickering light
she holds aloft to guide them through the valley, and we feel deep within us the
love that goes out from her to them."
He bowed his head. "Let us pray.”
Post 18 - GOOD BLOOD AND BAD BLOOD
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Stanley
Levine handed a document to Naomi Jacobs, emptying the filled ashtray into the
wastebasket, and she placed it in the centre of the desk.
At her request, he was bringing her up to speed on
developments in genetic engineering and the methods they were using in the city
to find a cure. He had sketched out a
set of topics which he could cover with her whenever she and he had the time.
"Eco R1 is simplicity itself in action. It cuts
diagonally through the spiral DNA and leaves what we call sticky ends which we
can use to join DNA to. It really was a breakthrough by Herbert Boyer's group
of San Francisco. It checks the nucleotide sequence of the invading DNA and
cuts it off at certain points. Of course," his blunt hand chopped the air,
"its own DNA has its own immunity to Eco R1 otherwise it would cut itself
to pieces."
He tapped the diagram in the document.
"For the first time we could take two kinds of
DNA and cut them by adding Eco R1 to each one; then we could stir them together
and use a little bit of the glue the
DNA ligase to help the sticky ends join
together. And voila! We have a new, home grown DNA hybrid!"
His tone changed and the bitterness was there again,
mixed with resignation.
"We use our chemical cutters the restriction enzymes to
chop up the DNA of an organism and then recombine them with others. We insert
the combination into a host cell of the E Coli and then we feed the E Coli
cells with nutrients so that they can grow into colonies."
Herbert Boyer - Eco R1 sticky ends
Suddenly he thought of Richard Burton's comments about
his time at Asimolar again, when he used to walk along the warm Californian
beach and worry about the enthusiasm of the geneticists gathered there.
He glanced up. Naomi was staring at him. She lifted a
half amused, half quizzical eyebrow, then, when he said nothing, she smiled.
"How do you control what results you get? How do
you know what you will get doing this?"
He shook his head, matter of factly.
"There is no way to do so. We used shotguns instead
of rifles. Shotguns can make a bigger mess than a rifle can. We used E Coli and
put little pieces of DNA into the ecoli so that they could be duplicated. We
have built our libraries and stocked the shelves with biological masterpieces
of unknown properties, playing God, creating with gay abandon, and on the seventh day, when we should have
rested, perhaps we created this."
He stared at her, his eyes bright with his anger at
himself and his colleagues.
"Oh, how we loved creating!" he burst out
passionately. "We will second guess God!
Or so we think." He muttered, almost under his breath: "...new
kinds of viruses, with biological activity of unpredictable nature, may
eventually be created..."
"What did you say?" she asked.
"Nothing. Nothing of consequence. I was thinking
of something I read once, long ago..."
He talked then about blood, human blood, and the way
that sickle cell disease affected it.
The Bug had remarkable similarities with sickle cell;
nobody could explain why, but they were pursuing the commonalities with several
teams. One of his colleagues, Clay, led one team; others in other labs
throughout the city were duplicating his experiments, and carrying out their
own.
He could imagine his cell's membranes pushed and
stretched and contorted by the crystals forming inside them; the cells sticking
together, clogging his veins...
"This is the only difference between the good blood
and the bad blood in this city," he explained. "A single amino acid substitution in the
B chain."
He drew on the board, the chalk shrieking in protest
as he slashed the letters. A large B to indicate the beta chain, then the
figure, to indicate the position in the chain; the word GLU was followed by an
arrow pointing at the next word, VAL, to show the change in the amino
acid. Then he wrote GAG, another arrow,
and GUG, to show the nucleotide change.Post 19 - A ROBUST CLOD
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
As he read, the thought
crossed his mind that he could be spelling out his own death warrant: if he was
right in his initial impressions that it was spread by contact, then here,
handling the notebooks, he was in contact with the possessions of one of the first
victims, one of the first links in the chain of invisible death.
Burton pulled the notebook with the huge
number seven towards him and opened it to the last four pages to re read the
entries that had puzzled him before. Raymond had written the same peptide chain
over and over again, in neat rows, quite unlike the other sprawling impatient
entries in his journals.
Each
chain showed the same first eight links of the haemoglobin, and each chain had
a carefully drawn line beneath the sixth base.
Why had
he done it? What was the
significance?
He
flipped a few pages further on to another entry. The opened page of the diary
had several short sentences written with varying degrees of spacing between
them. Some were short sentences, others phrases only. Burton had scanned them
swiftly.
Mainlining
with ecoli.
Direct
attack.
Proximity
to rbc.
Work in
marrow to convert ss rbc to new ones.
If rbc
meant red blood cell, he mused, then ss could be sickle cell.
Burton
flipped through the third book, rereading passages he had already read in his
first plunge into the notebooks.
One
caught his eye again: unlike the usual comments, which were either tersely
factual or else showed Raymond's impatience, this one was more humorous.
Burton
had encircled the two entries: they seemed to contain two thoughts to him.
The first
was a query:
Sometimes
v. invades the bloodstream.
He had
assumed that the V stood for a virus; it was a fact that sometimes viruses did
invade the bloodstream.
Had young
Raymond searched for that means of access to the blood?
Burton
dropped his pencil point to the second entry; a collection of phrases:
Strain
137/A/92 not OK. Probably too
fastidious. Need a cruder one. A robust
clod. A peasant.
What did
that mean? Burton wondered. Was it a reference to ecoli that Raymond might have
been using in some experiments?
Perhaps
he found the K12 strain too weak?
But that
was the whole point of K12 to prevent
it living if it should escape from the laboratory.
Ecoli K12
And if he
had been using new strains of ecoli for recombinant DNA, there was no guarantee
that the hybrid bacteria so produced might not have more characteristics than
expected.
Who knew
what could be created in the process.
An
unidentified gene could possibly be created and passed on to the host, much
like an anonymous passenger in a freight train that was being shunted in a
marshalling yard. You might end up with the freight train and the passenger
without realizing what you had.
Could
this have happened in some of Raymond's experiments?
Was this
the origination of the Bug?
Did he
cause it, somehow?
The ecoli
is ideal for this, Burton thought. It's a boundary crosser it hops about transferring genetic material
inter species and intra species.
Not a shy
little thing, this ecoli. No hanging of the head; no shamefaced aw shucks
shuffle of the feet hangdog look. This is not a yokel - it's a tough, streetwise city kid, living in
garbage, smart assed and tough.
A
real mixer.Post 20 - A CELEBRATION?
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Both men had lost weight;
exhaustion had cut deep grooves into each face and etched permanent blue
patches below their eyes. They worked well together, each man recognizing the
other's strength and commitment.
"My
people are working on the diaries," Grant said at last.
"We've
got fourteen teams, three inside the city. They're breaking all the entries
down and trying to put them into matrices, so that we can see if we can
duplicate whatever he did."
He
smiled.
"When
you're desperate ..." He shrugged. "Not much progress as yet."
Burton
nodded his thanks.
The
soldier suddenly grinned.
"We
found John Raymond's private laboratory," he went on. "During that
house to house search you asked for. It's a small one in a tenement building
close to the spot where he died. I have
a personnel carrier outside ready to take you there. You will have to go
through a sniper zone to get there, so you'll be safe inside it."
***
An old
faded picture of Gregor Mendel hung on the wall, the wire twisted behind the
wooden frame to support it. Burton took it down and absentmindedly wiped the
dust off with a finger. Next to it, pinned to the wall, was a photograph of a
double helix, torn from Scientific American. In the bottom right hand corner
was a picture of James Watson, taken in the early fifties: shaggy hair piled up
on the right side of the head and bursting outwards from the other side of the
parting; a half smile on the thin face.
Suddenly the resemblance between the biologist
who had sat in this room and James Watson struck Burton.
Gregor Mendel
He stood in front of the table in the second
room. The remains of lunch lay scattered on it: a brown paper bag with the last
third of a carrot cake slice still resting on top; a plastic glass and a wine
carafe.
Burton
picked up the carafe and sniffed at it. Paul Masson Rare Premium Californian
Chablis, proclaimed the label. Under the heading the fine cursive print read:
This is a dry white wine with zest and personality.
He
replaced the bottle and looked down into the waste paper basket. A silver lid for
the carafe with the words The California Carafe on it and a crumpled note. He
smoothed the paper out; it was empty. He straightened up and stared at the
battered wooden table.
Had it
been a celebration?
What had
John Raymond been celebrating?
The report
prepared by the special combined CIA and FBI team following up on the earlier
victims said he was a teetotaller.
There
were so many natural obstacles the death agent the New Yorkers had taken to
calling the Bug had to cross to be effective, he mused, crumpling the note and
tossing it back in the wastebasket. It could not enter the body that easily.
Just what did that mean to the researchers in the Parklab and elsewhere? That
it was not accidental? That it was
deliberate?
Were they
back to the Russians?
Or
could it be someone inside the city itself?
James Watson and Francis Crick with the first
DNA model
He stared
at the bright light on the table, squinting until it narrowed into a thin
pinpoint. If it was in the city, then
where and who?
He pulled
from his briefcase the large scale map of the city and looked again at the
initial survey results of the spread of the disease. The map tracked the
victims. They had assumed there might be a carrier or carriers and wanted to
find his or their location.
But what
if the location of the victims was a clue to the location of the maker of the
bug, assuming it was made by someone and not a naturally occurring mutant? John
Raymond's small laboratory was right in the centre of the initial area, in Zero
Area.
Did it
start here?
He leant
back in the chair, teetering its legs. John Raymond had been here where it
started.
Had
he carried it to the other areas? Post 21 - GET THE LEECHES
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
He switched on the electron
microscope.
"I'm
going to a fifty thousand magnification," he said. The picture changed
suddenly on the screen.
"I
always get a kick thinking that at this power I would be about fifty miles
tall," he said quietly. "Makes me feel like a giant. Some
machine."
"There,
that's the one," Shain said, pointing at the photograph on the four foot
square screen. "Those are the results I was talking about."
The
computer had taken the photographs of all the experiments made in the laboratory:
each time it had paused above a cell, with a bacterium inside it, the machine
had peeped and taken a photograph, which had been allotted a code and stored inside
the memory banks for later retrieval.
The
samples of blood that had been taken from the patients inside the canisters was
pumped from the room to another for analysis and experimentation with heat,
oxygen, and pressure. The tubes ran from the canisters along the walls into the
next room; the blood flowed in a steady stream, pushed along by the small
pumps.
He bent
forward and threw the switch, to cut off the microphone: the moans of the
patients inside the canisters disturbed his concentration.
"What
happened?"
"The
Bug seems to have upset the delicate equilibrium. The stuff grows so many red
blood cells in some patients that something goes wrong and the brain is starved
of oxygen. Their blood is too thick."
"Have
you tried thinning it?"
"It
doesn't seem to work." She shrugged. "We've tried just about
everything except leeches. I almost had some delivered, just for kicks."
"Do
it."
She
stared.
"What?"
"I
said get the leeches. Who knows if they'll work or not? If it does, you'll be a
hero. If it doesn't ..."
He moved
away, grinning.
"Then
you'll be a dodo, like the rest of us."
Post 22 - EX AFRICA SEMPER
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
He thought of the vicious
female mosquito: long legged death.
Breeds in
pools of water warmed by the African sun; little pools that collected after
rainstorms.
Plenty of
them.
From the
pools to man, their favourite food.
They
really loved man: he was one of their delicacies. They fed on his blood; engorged
themselves.
Those
areas of Africa below three thousand feet
there she and her sisters lived with man, in his houses and kraals,
close to her food.
Above
three thousand feet they lived outside, in the fresh air, and fed on the
livestock.
They
moved by preference in the early light of the day and at sunset, in the softer
light of the sun, landing quietly on a man's arm or neck or shoulder; they
shunned the bright light of midday.
She would
sink her proboscis into the flesh and suck up the blood; with her saliva would
go the sporozoites, into the bloodstream, coursing through the body to their
resting places in the liver and the spleen and the bone marrow. Ten days
later little red rings were born and
spilled out of their breeding places into the bloodstream of their host. They
penetrated the red blood cells and from each captive cell more and more spilled
out and captured still more cells.
As they
developed and ruptured they triggered the terrible cycle of fever and sweating
and cold in their host that so typified malaria.
Hot to
cold; cold to hot.
A two day
cycle.
The host
became anaemic; the red blood cells stuck together forming little clots, little red clumps of
death. Often the host's kidneys or liver could not survive these red clumps and
they, too, collapsed, killing the host.
Edward Clay had examined the proboscis of the
mosquito under the electron microscope, and he knew what it looked like; how
beautifully shaped it was for its purpose: like a syringe, with an outer shell
protecting the thin inner needle, it easily punctured human skin, the first
line of defence of man, sliding below the tough outer scales into the body, the
sharp point with its hollow tubes probing for blood; the thin hairs surrounding
the inner tube pumping out its anti coagulant to stop the thickening of the
blood, breaking down the cells and making it easier for them to be sucked into
the passageway in the tube and vacuumed into the mosquito's body. If the host's
natural reflexes were not stopped, the thin tangles of fibrin like skeins of
wool would clutch at the blood cells, binding them into a gelatinous mass that
could not be sucked up.
"Ex
Africa semper..." he muttered. "Always something new."
His eyes
were shut and his heavy voice drained by exhaustion.
He almost
seemed to have forgotten the presence of the reporter and the researcher.
"For
us Africa gave us life. And this."
Post 23 - A PIECE MISSING IN THAT PUZZLE
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
"General, this
report" - he had closed the document and now laid a hand on the cover -
"says that the disease seemed to start in the area where the new Russian
Ambassador recently unveiled the moon rocks. It also says that the statue or
whatever the damn thing is was taken away and examined but no conclusive
evidence of contamination was found. Any news since the report on those
tests?"
"No,
sir. We found no sign of any exit point. The orb is tightly sealed. Of course,
that doesn't mean it did not come from the orb. The material from which it is
made is selfsealing, and any exit could well have been closed after the germs
escaped."
"Escaped
or were deliberately let out?"
"Yes,
sir."
"The
report also says we traced the manufacturing site to one of Russia's biological
and bacteriological manufacturing units. Is there any doubt about that?"
"No,
sir. USNS Observation Island was on station near the Kamchatkin Peninsula and
she tracked the payload's re-entry."
The
President nodded. The report had a photograph of the sleek ship with the
markings T AGM 23 on her prow and her two big radar domes amidships, with the
large box shaped housing of her shipboard radar array on the flat stern. She
had been stationed off the Peninsula because the giant radar based on Shemya
Island could not see the last 400,000 feet of the Russian missile touchdowns.
USNS Observation Island
"Our
satellite surveillance confirmed the numbers and codes of the payload as the
same as one that had been observed and recorded at the research station at
Novosibirs," Holcroft continued.
"It's
about two thousand miles east of Moscow, a pretty remote spot in Siberia, sir.
They had a nasty accident there a long while back, sir. A few thousand
residents were killed by a strange disease. The authorities closed the area
down and denied the outbreak but they shipped some of the dead back to their
relatives in sealed coffins. We managed to get a few photographs of the corpses
in some of the coffins and it's pretty clear they were killed by one of their
latest biological weapons. The bodies were covered in brown patches."
"Tell
me, general, do you think they would try this way to attack us?"
Holcroft
pondered a moment before answering carefully: "Mr President, I've thought
about that ever since the disease started. As you know, sir, the whole region
has been far more stable for the last few years, compared to the period when
Gorbachev was pushed out by Yeltsin and his other buddies. But I can’t think
what they would gain from attacking us. I think there’s a piece missing in that
puzzle, sir. That dog don’t hunt for me. They have benefited from peace and the
end of the cold war."
He sat
back in his chair, his eyes thoughtful.
"So,
I think there are probably others behind it. If the toxin came from the
monument, I wonder if it is the Russians who put it in it? Perhaps someone else
got to it? We just don’t know right now. We are going over the movements of all
Russian personnel in our country for the past few years to see if they had
contact with any enemies of ours. Still a lot of work to do in this area,
though: there’s so much data we have it takes a long time to scrutinize it all.
So far we have not isolated any such meetings."
The
President nodded.
General
Holcroft drew a deep breath.
"I
believe it is a distinct probability that there are groups out there who might
try to destroy us if they believed they could do so with impunity."
He held
the President's gaze for a long while; then Stanton sighed and pushed his chair
back from the desk, preparing to end the discussion.
Post 24 - A GREEN CAT
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Naomi Jacobs laughed as she
recalled the energetic, jerky movements of Stanley Levine's thin arms. She
turned back to her typewriter.
So what they, the investigators, are probing so carefully is a simple ladder,a sugar and phosphate ladder.The two sides are made of a bit of sugar and a bit of phosphate - like the familiar, old knitting patterns as if nature had decided to knit a ladder - knit one, pearl one; pearl one, knit one; knit one, pearl one. The steps of the ladder are bases, four types of bases, joined in the middle by hydrogen.The spiral staircase of Life. And they must ascend this,each tortuous step after the other,to find out if there is a key at the top of the ladder, and,if there is,if it is the right key to unlock the cure to our affliction.
She leant
back in the chair, her back stiff, thinking of the Governor's sombre
words.
Don't
panic them.
Think of
the consequences: ten million people without hope. Cry fire in this crowded
theatre and we will crush each other as we scramble for safety.
They will
crush us, he said, pointing out the window at the thin line of troops marching
down the street, and she understood him. Loud and clear, oh master!
So there is hope.How soon,we do not know.But hope there is.The sharpest minds in the world are focused on us, working with us and for us.
She lit
another cigarette and sat back, her mind going back to the Parklab, and to
Stanley Levine. The intense man who struggled to give her a crash course in
genetics so that she could understand what was being done in this sad city by
all those men and women who had come there and who spoke in the strange tongue
of this new science. She remembered his
words.
"Those
are the bases." He laughed suddenly, his face softening at a memory.
"I used to memorize it easily by thinking of a green cat, and then the
order of the bases was easy."
"A
green cat?" she exclaimed.
"Yes.
GCAT. G for green and CAT for cat. So a
green cat. That's the order of the bondings between the bases. GC together as the first two and AT together as the last
two. GC. AT."
She
looked at him, a half smile on her face. There was something endearing about
him when he became so enthusiastic. She thought: last night I saw a cat in a
tree smiling mysteriously down at me. A green cat in a tree like the Cheshire
cat.
He
stopped waving his hands.
"How
can I explain it? It's" - his hands gestured helplessly - "it's as significant as the atom's
discovery. Like tapping the power of the atom, only less explosively. It's akin
to that, because we delve into the very processes of life itself, to tap the
power, the life force, there. It is momentous."
DNA double helix
His hands
reached for a pad.
"The
cell is the basic building block of living things. Inside it there's a
nucleus."
He
rapidly sketched an oblong shape with irregular wavy sides. Inside it was an
oval with a round blob in its middle.
"This
is the cell. This is its nucleus."
He sketched
another rim around the nucleus.
"This
is the nuclear membrane. This stuff here between the nucleus and the cell's
sides is the cytoplasm. The blob is the nucleus; inside it we find the
chromosomes and inside them the DNA. It's a library. A storehouse of
information. Life's memory."
He stared
at the diagram.
"Why
do the cells grow? Why do they stop growing? What tells them? We don't
know. There are a lot of mysteries in
this miniature world."
He stood
up.
"Come,
I'll show you the DNA."
They
walked down the corridor past the laboratories
in the Segunit.
She had
access to the Pubunit but not to the Segunits. Even if all scientists died in
the Pubunits, those in the Segunits could continue. A safeguard, Colonel
Marshall had mentioned proudly.
Levine
stopped at a bank of computers and tapped in a code to retrieve a file.
The
computer model of the DNA molecule was breathtakingly beautiful: the cross
section showed the delicate tracery and the colours for identification purposes
were striking blues and greens in the heart; pinks and reds
on the outside. As she watched the model revolved for a side view, the pinks
and reds predominating.
Like a
snowflake, she thought; a magnified snowflake.
"The
numbers in this microscopic world we delve into are astronomical," he went
on musingly.
"We
have sixty trillion cells in our bodies and an equal number of DNA. There may
be six million genes in a single human cell, one for every kind of process in
the body. Of course" - a hand waved
dismissively - "only about a hundred thousand may be active. A mouse " - again the dismissive gesture - "has a hundred thousand genes while a
bacterium has two thousand."
He
punched the keyboard of the computer and the picture changed. He hunched his
thin shoulders in the green smock and stared at her, thinking; then he suddenly
changed the subject. She was used to his
mannerisms by now: his mind hopped from thought to thought like some energetic
sparrow beak darting for a crumb here and a crumb there.
"Every
twenty minutes a DNA replicates and a new cell is born. Three hundred and sixty
thousand times the DNA turns as it untwists so that it can separate and then
the right chemicals pair with the split strands to form base pairs identical to
the original DNA strand. It needs more than three million bases to make a copy
of a DNA strand. They are joined by the hydrogen. The precision and speed is
incredible."
He
grinned.
"My
grandmother used to tease me that I should do something socially useful. Be a
poet, she used to say. I think of the DNA and I know that in a strange way I am
seeing physical poetry more wonderful than mere words."
He
touched her on the shoulder, guiding her out of the room.
"I
prefer these words to any Shelley or Frost. I understand their mute messages and
their beauty."Post 25 - A SILK COCOON
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
He strode up and down the
room, his hands waving restlessly.
"We
need a killer which will lie in wait, in ambush in the body, waiting for the
virus. For this we need a vaccine, and for the vaccine we need the real thing
first. That's why we study the virus. It's nature's smallest hypodermic
syringe," he said. "It is built a bit like a golf ball, with the
nucleic acid thread tightly coiled inside the protein outer layer. It worms its
way into the host cell and the enzyme strips off the protein package and that
lets the thread of nucleic acid loose. It then merges with the host - in this case the ecoli cell - and you cannot see it in this phase. We call
it the eclipse phase. It injects its thread into the cell."
Viruses attacking a bacterium
She
stared entranced at the cells and the viruses, thinking of the virus in her
gut, crouching on the bacteria like a small single purpose beast of prey; a
receptacle emptying itself into the host, legs gripping the host tenaciously.
"This
little parasite then takes over the cell, forcing it to make new nucleic acid
according to its own instructions. It takes over the factory, if you like, and
orders the production line to change a bit and produce a new product - itself."
He
laughed loudly behind her.
"They
make the old cuckoo look like an amateur when it sticks its own eggs inside
another bird's nest. They go straight to the heart of the matter, these little
buggers. I admire their no-nonsense approach, I really do. Get in there and
take over. No wastage with these little syringes! It secretes an enzyme to
break up its host's DNA and then also uses that old DNA."
He peered
over her shoulder at the screen.
"The
viruses are so small that we cannot use ordinary microscopes to see them; the
wave lengths of visible light flow around them."
The ecoli
cell was visible with dark blobs of DNA inside it and the little deflated
balloons of viruses sticking to its rough edges; emptied of their poisons.
"So
we plated them with vaporised metal -
put them in little metal armour suits - and we could see them
then."
She
peered into the electron microscope, fiddling with the knobs to focus it. She
could see it now, a box shaped head with little spidery legs underneath.
He
switched to another slide.
"Here's
a virus attacking a bacterium cell."
The one
cell looked like a dirigible, or a silk cocoon. The attacking virus were much
smaller, little pinheads with tails going inside the cell. Next to the cell was
another - a trail of viruses spilled from its broken hulk; one end had
disintegrated entirely.
She felt
a bit sick, thinking of the viral spiders clinging to the coli cells deep
inside her gut.
Post 26 - A MISSION OF MERCY
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
"Some of you have
probably heard of the troubles that our neighbours have in that shit hole they
call New York," he began in his gravelly voice, and they nodded.
"It
seems they cannot solve their problems so they're coming to the Canadians
again," he went on. "They need planes to spray disinfectant onto the
city. And pilots to fly the planes.
Seems there not too many men around who can handle that kind of a job,
so they want us to send as many volunteers down."
There was
a sudden buzz of speculation, and he raised his voice, cutting into it.
"There
will be double pay for any man who goes."
He waited
for the hum to drop.
"And
a job for every man who wants to come back to me."
He
paused, his eyes flinty.
"Before
you all think it’s going to be a picnic, you had better hear this."
The
silence came fast.
"Once
you go there you can't get out again until it's all over. If you try to fly out
you will be shot down. They're not bluffing," he said into the silence.
"They will pay for my planes and a certain sum for any pilot who goes
down, but there will be no payment to any pilot's family if he's chopped in an
escape attempt. Now," he cleared his throat, "who's going with
me?"
Slowly,
one by one, all the men raised their hands.
The Chief
sniffed disdainfully.
"Alright,
heroes, let's get down to the details."
Seven hours later the fleet of cropsprayers rose into
the air, led by the Chief, and set out southwards, their tanks full. At the
border they were met by an armed USAF escort and the two groups altered course,
heading directly for La Guardia and their voluntary exile. The escort waited
until the last plane had landed before they flew off again.
"Major,
there're eight small planes coming in over the border. They're not responding
to our warnings, sir."
Major
Hopkins grabbed the mike and growled into it.
"Where
are they headed?"
"Straight
for La Guardia, sir."
"Scramble
some jets and take a look at them. Keep them on course, and keep in contact
with me."
"Yes,
sir."
They
waited a few minutes and the radio crackled.
"Major,
we have a visual, sir."
There was
a new voice, now, younger and calmer.
"I
have a visual on the eight bandits. Each
has a single pilot. No passengers. I'm circling in closer now, at slow
speed."
There was
a brief silence.
"The
son of a bitch's making the sign of the cross to me!"
A short
silence and then the stunned pilot's voice rasped: "It's a priest! A goddamn priest! I can see his collar!"
"You
sure?" he rapped out and the young voice was emphatic.
"Yes
sir! They're all priests!"
"Listen
to me! Don't shoot! Guide them down to me. Don't let them get away but don't
shoot."
They
waited and the pilot replied: "Got them. They're all coming in straight as
an arrow, sir. We're tagging along, just in case."
They came
in slowly across the bay, in a tight V formation, eight single-engined single
prop planes, sweeping slowly across the airfield and then curving out across
the bay before making their approach, in the same tight V formation, none
breaking formation as they touched down and sped down the runway, gradually
slowing and wheeling until they taxied up to the terminal, between the rows of
troops.
They
braked to a halt and gunned their engines in unison three times before
switching off.
The
leader swept his cockpit canopy open and swung down to the ground, a broad grin
on his face, his cassock snapping in the stiff breeze that chased across the
tarmac.
"Gentlemen!
We have come!" he shouted as he strode to the group.
"My
brothers and I have come to join you in this magnificent struggle!"
He beamed
at them and thrust his hand out.
"I am Father Leo Hamman."
He swept
his hand at the rest of the pilots who had joined them.
"We
are the Flying Padres, on a mission of mercy."Post 27 - SPEED THEM UP
Extract from my novel Silent Lips, which deals
with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being quarantined (available as
an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Wearily, he pushed himself
up and went in search of the conference room, arriving after the meeting's
beginning. Colonel Marshall was talking.
The
meticulous preparation that had gone into the Parklab had surprised Levine when
he had become more familiar with it.
At first
he had thought it was a hurriedly prepared complex, designed and built for this
emergency, but this was not so. It was clearly planned well in advance. Some of
its features were very advanced, more so than many private facilities.
Why was
the Army so prepared? What had they anticipated?
Worse
still was the nagging thought that they had others like this, hidden throughout
the country, and to be used for what
purely defensive actions or did offensive actions also play a role in
their planning?
He knew
that HomeSec had been preparing for years for all sorts of eventualities, but
if this was their creature, it was far more complex and advanced than he had
heard of before.
The
sophistication of the personnel the Army had brought into the Parklab was
impressive. They were more than up to date in knowledge of biological
engineering; in many ways they were ahead of the men from the private sector.
While
Marshall briefed them on developments in labs across the country, and on
further measures to be taken within the city, he watched the colonel carefully.
The man
was wound like a spring; he was permanently watchful and never seemed to laugh.
Marshall
rapped the wall of the Pubunit with his knuckles.
"This
is the safest we have."
"I hope
it's better than your Fort Dietrick in Maryland, colonel," Levine
interjected, almost despite himself. "Didn't you have hundreds of
accidents there? And a few deaths too?"
Marshall
shot him an angry glance and then disregarded him, turning back to the
visitors.
"These
doors shut automatically if there is any leakage from the sealed area into the
working area. Sensors in the wall there trigger them."
Marshall
moved to a lever next to the door.
"They
can also be shut manually."
He
pressed the lever and the door slid shut with a hissing sound.
"The
window is an inch thick and cannot be broken. The door also cannot be opened
from inside if the sensors have reacted to leakage. If you are caught this side
you will have to wait until the all clear and then someone will open the door
from the outside once disinfection has been completed."
The visitors
left and they entered the briefing room to join the other researchers. Levine
took a seat between Schmiedli and Shain.
"We
have tried all the conventional ways," Marshall began. "Now we will
try everything we can think of. And I mean everything. Mix up the treatments.
Speed them up. Push conventional methods to their extremes. Try everything. I
know that will not sit well with many of you, but we do not have the time."
Marshall
raised his grey face and stared steadily at the team.
Post 28 - COLONEL FLINT
Extract from my novel Silent
Lips, which deals with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being
quarantined (available as an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
Levine picked up the bottle
and tilted it for another drink, mutely offering one to the Frenchman, who
shook his head wearily, pointing to his own almost finished bottle on the
table.
Levine
grinned lopsidedly and drank half in one long swallow, and then leant back on
the bed.
"I don't understand it; the speed of the
mutation. It's usually so slow," Vasseur said tiredly. "What is it in
nature - one mutation in a gene in a
million?"
"Like
good old Queen Victoria's daddy," Levine said.
"What
about her father?"
"Don't
you remember?"
He
laughed tipsily.
"The
good old Duke of Kent had a mutated gene. In his testicle. Way back in 1818. A
normal allele of the haemophilia gene, changed into the haemophilia
allele."
He waved
the half empty glass in a circle. "Gammy balls, that's what done them
in."
"I
remember now." Vasseur nodded slowly; the drink and the heat of the
laboratory was affecting him, as well. The walls seemed to be doing a slow
motion slide past him. "Which one?"
"Which
what?"
"Which
of Edward's balls was it? The left or
the right?"
"I
don't know."
He sat
down clumsily.
"It
doesn't matter, anyway."
"Course
it does. Matter, that is."
Stanley
Levine reached forward carefully and leaned his hands on the table, smiling
across at his colleague. His hair was matted; little rivulets of sweat ran down
his cheeks.
"In
the interests of science, we have to know. Does the Royal family come from a
mutated left ball or right ball of Vicky's daddy? For the sake of scientific
precision, we gotta know."
He thrust
his hand into his shirtfront and crooned in a high falsetto.
"Dear
Diary, I am the queen but daddy's left ball was wonky."
He
paused, blinking.
"It
must have been the right ball."
"Why?"
"Not
a leftist among them," he said solemnly, his face collapsing into a roar
of laughter.
He hugged
the table, his sleeves in the spilled whisky.
"Right
ball, right thinkers." He dropped his head to his arms and howled his
delight.
"Like
the colonel," he continued, his face suddenly solemn.
"Who?"
"Colonel
Ernest E. Marshall," he said carefully, stressing the first word. "He
must have had gammy balls in his family."
"Why?"
Vasseur asked. "I do not understand."
"Rock
balls. Great grandfather had rock balls," Levine explained. "That's
why he's like flint. Colonel Flint. Our very dangerous leader."
He
twirled, the liquor slopping from his glass.
Vasseur stood up and took the glass, leading the man to his bed.Post 29 - A FLAT BLACK BLOB
Extract from my novel Silent
Lips, which deals with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being
quarantined (available as an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
"I
just don't get it," Sheila said huskily. "We had that period of wild
growth in the city, and then it stabilized, but then we had the relapse and it
took off again. Hell, we checked everything."
She
ticked the items off on one hand.
"The change in diet, because the food was shipped
in from
"What
about temperatures?" Burton asked curiously. "Did you run a check on
that?"
"Yes.
They're the same. The only thing we really know is that the virus is heat
sensitive. Raise the temperature a
bit and they die in the cultures we
have."
She
swiped at the hair dangling over her face with the back of a gloved hand.
"That's
about the only thing we know for sure about the Bug. Heat kills it."
He walked
to the window and stared at the researcher inside the sealed Segunit. The man
was bent over a patient strapped to the table.
A flat
black blob moved on the patient's arm.
"What
is that?" He spoke into the two-way mike set in the clear plastic window,
and pointed at it; it had moved again, up the arm.
"A
leech. We're using them to thin the blood of some of the patients," the
man answered in a soft Southern accent. He tapped the leech on the forefront
with his scalpel, making it turn and move down the arm.
"Look
in the bucket. The ones who have been fed are taking are taking a little nap
there."
Burton
glanced at the bucket beneath the table. A thick matt of leeches moved slowly;
their fat sluggish bodies covered the bottom of the bucket and came halfway to
the top.
He felt
sick.
"Where
did you get them?"
"We
flew them in," the researcher grinned, scooping the bloated leech off the
patient's arm and dropping it into the bucket. He swabbed the red wound where
the suckers had penetrated the skin with an anticoagulant.
"Stanley
got the idea from Sheila," he gestured towards her unit.
"We
get a new load, every day. The little buggers up and die on us like flies. Can't take the rich blood of you Yankees, I
guess."
Post 30 - A YANOVSKY FEINT
Extract from my novel Silent
Lips, which deals with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being
quarantined (available as an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
The phone rang.
It was
Adam.
"How's
the weather in good old California?"
Burton asked, his pleasure at the man's call crinkling his face into a
smile.
"The
sea's stormy, and the wind is brisk," came Adam Huntington's clear reply.
The old man's voice was strong; his chestiness seemed to have passed.
"I've
had an idea, Richard. Can you turn to page forty-seven of the second book? Read
that with page twenty four."
Burton
groped for the diary among the piles of paper on his desk and opened it at the
two pages.
The last
entry read: Injected TT.
"Got
it."
"I
think TT stands for test tube. A living test tube. I think he was using a
living subject for these injections."
Burton
studied the two pages.
"What
type of subject do you think he used?"
"I
don't know. Are there any signs there?"
"I'll
check again. There were animal droppings in that little lab of his."
"Richard,
did you see any signs of any marrow transplants in the labs? Or of any rabbits
in there?"
He
explained his re arrangement of the words in the diary.
"No,"
Burton replied. "Adam, why didn't Raymond tell anyone about his research?
Why did he keep it secret?"
"Who
knows?" Adam answered. "If he solved it, think of the rewards. The
labs he could command, the research funds he could get. He could end up with
the sole rights, through his patents, and this could mean a fortune."
There was
a silence, broken by the rhythmic movement of the waves across the roof, then
Huntingdon broke it.
"Do
you remember the page in the diary with the Eureka heading, and the little
stick figure of a man getting out of a bath and running down the
street?"
"Yes.
The one with the few entries on the page. Something about a feint of some
kind."
Richard
Burton flipped through the diary to the page. Under the stick man was an
abbreviation that they had not been able to decipher - the letters "ysky" followed by the
words "feint with one?"
"Do
you think the abbreviationis a reference
to Yanovsky?" Adam asked.
"Let
me see it again."
He
cradled the phone on his shoulder and peered closely at the page.
Ysky
- Yanovsky; it could be.
But what
would a Yanovsky feint mean?
Burton
knew of Charles Yanovsky's experiments at Stanford, with inserting a phage
lambda DNA into a bacterium; it had prevented the gene manufacturing its
protein because of the intrusion of the phage, which prevented synthesis.
Charles Yanofsky
"I
don't get it," he said at last into the phone. "What does feint
mean?"
"What
if he meant a feint, like a boxer uses? He might have been thinking of using
something like Yanovsky's insertion of the phage to short circuit the sixth
point and then substitute it with something else that could carry out its
functions?"
"I
see what you mean, Adam. A two fisted attack. Add a little, subtract a
little."
"Yes.
The key might be to use them both at once."
"There's
no indication this is what he used. It's not mentioned again in the
diary."
"I
know. I hesitated to bring it up because it is only mentioned once, but I
thought there might be some significance in the fact that he used the word
Eureka. Perhaps the other references, if they're there, are not as clear. I'll
go through the diaries again to check."
"I'll
get a team on it straight away."
Burton
hung up and thought of Shain's parting words. That's about the only thing we know for sure about the bug. Heat kills it. He leant back in his seat, his eyes closed.
Heat kills it.
All that
effort and that was the only definite thing they knew: heat kills it. He let his mind wander to explore the
concept.
Heat.Post 32 - CONNECTOR TYPHOID MARY
Extract from my novel Silent
Lips, which deals with a deadly virus that leads to New York City being
quarantined (available as an eBook for ONLY 99 cents):
As they rode they discussed
her latest article.
She had
written one each day; it was now the most read column of all the newspapers
still functioning in the city. Her editor had moved it to page one. Papers throughout the country were printing
them.
An
advance copy was faxed to President Stanton early each morning; rumour had it that
he read it even before his shooting practice, an unheard of change in his
normal daily routine.
Webb came
to an intersection guarded by flashing lights
on top of three armoured personnel carriers, and slowed down, carefully
threading his way through them as troopers waved them past.
Down a side road they could see a fire engine and just
beyond it a
A crudely
painted sign on the sides of the wagon proclaimed WE FIGHT FIRES NOT PEOPLE.
They moved past the intersection and she was
silent for a long while. Random scenes of violence now seemed a constant backdrop
to the city's daily life, and the smoke from burning buildings hung constantly
over the city.
Finally,
she turned to him.
"Why
is the quarantine area so large?"
"I
checked that with the rocket scientists back in the Parklab, when we were first
invited to blockade the city. They said it's because we don't know the
incubation period of the Bug. There is a
direct corollary between that and its spread. The longer the incubation period
the more people move."
He
swerved sharply to avoid some of the debris on the road. They rode in silence
for a while. He glanced at her serious face and touched her arm.
"Of
course, there could be only one carrier. Like Typhoid Mary." He smiled at
her, trying to reassure her. Sometimes she looked rather vulnerable. He could see the marks of strain on her face.
She, too, had lost weight.
"Who?"
"Typhoid
Mary. One of the doctors told me about her," he explained, slowing down to
let a halftrack cross the street. It left grey scrape marks on the tarmac.
"She gave typhoid to more than one thousand people, about the turn of the
century. She worked in the food industry, as a cook."
"For
how long?"
"About
ten years. She was really Maria Anna Caduff, and she ended up in an institution
for about 23 years until she died. Perhaps there are only a few carriers here,
and they move around a lot. Or they come into contact with a lot of people
every day."
She
nodded.
"Malcolm
Gladwell's Connectors."
He swung
into the park, driving slowly between the steel bars sunk into cement in the
ground to force traffic to slow down, and then halting in front of the steel
gates to show their identification cards.
The
guards waved them through.
He parked
in front of the entrance to the Pubunit. They walked down the corridor and
entered Burton's office, who waved them into seats.
"Your
little scientist was a very strange creature," Webb began, swinging his
foot and watching it scuff the side of the chair.
"Seems
he had a friend who died a couple of years ago."
"So?"
Burton asked quietly.
"I
dug up the info from some of his old workmates. They knew him slightly and also
knew the friend."
He seemed
to be containing his excitement as he watched the older man.
"You
have some more, I presume?" the researcher said dryly, a half smile on his
face as he switched his gaze from the policeman to the reporter.
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