Degeneration

D
egeneration

Mark D. Campbell

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or governmental agencies or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Editor:
Aubrey B. Goldie

Cover Design and Art: Michelle Olsen

(http://www.ravynsphotography.com/)

Published in print by Lulu Publishing.

© 2012 Mark D. Campbell. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-300-56007-4

1

             
A
man stood inside a biological protection suit. The suits were bulky and were often given the moniker ‘white-suit’. An attached oxygen hose ran from a valve in the back of the white-suit into the ceiling, but the microbiological suits were capable of utilizing small detachable oxygen canisters.

The man was carrying a tray of sealed glass test-tubes labeled ‘PT-12’ out of the refrigerator. He did not feel like pulling a double-shift, but an urgent message came from Atlanta at the last minute.

Sighing, he sat the tray on the sterilized silver table that stood in the middle of the immaculate lab. He did not understand the rush to test samples that had been in cold storage for years, but, then again, he did not get paid to question his orders.       

His partner, another veteran researcher inside a white-suit, walked towards the laboratory sallyport doors holding a silver clipboard. He reached behind his back and detached the oxygen hose from his suit and the hose immediately retracted up into the ceiling.  

“Calling it a night, Blanding?” the white-suit standing near the test-tubes asked.  

“Yeah, Ray, I have to be back at four,” Dr. Blanding said. He pressed a button next to the exit and the first set of pressurized doors slid open. “If I’m lucky, I can get about five hours of sleep before I turn around and come right back.”  

“At least you are going home. I have to stay and finish testing samples,” Dr. Raymond said.    

“Oh, which batch?”  

“Something called PT-12. Apparently the specimen sample we sent Atlanta for their yearly audit did not fare well against the antiviral they have in storage. They suspect that it went through a genetic change at some point, and they want us to check our findings against theirs. They put a rush on the order, too.”      

“Really? Sounds rather drastic,” Dr. Blanding said, confused. “Which one is PT-12 again?”  

“Some flu offshoot, I believe. I have not worked with it in ages. It has been sitting in storage ever since the first Bush was in office, just taking up fridge space. It is going to keep me busy all night.”           

“I feel for you,” Dr. Blanding said, laughing. He stepped into the sallyport and froze. He looked down at the metal clipboard in his hand and cursed. “Hey, Ray, do you mind taking this for me and throwing it on my desk when you go in the back? I almost walked out with the daily reports. Not one of my finer senile moments.” He took one step towards Dr. Raymond, holding out the clipboard, standing in the middle of the inner sallyport door’s track.   

Dr. Raymond chuckled and walked towards Dr. Blanding with his oxygen hose still tethered to his white-suit. As he walked, the oxygen hose brushed across the table and sent the tray of PT-12 glass test-tubes shattering against the floor.  

An alarm sounded.  

The sallyport door quickly slid shut with a hydraulic hiss, disregarding Dr. Blanding who was caught standing in the center of its path.   

Dr. Blanding’s bloodcurdling screams drowned out the wail of the alarm.   

Two floors above, on the security floor, the soldier read the words flashing on the computer screen in horror:  

‘CONTAINMENT BREACH – SUB LEVEL 3’

2

             
I
t would be a long nighttime train ride between Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richard's legs felt it already. He shifted around in his cramped Amtrak seat anxiously and frowned. He knew that he should try to get some sleep, but all he could think about was his brother. He wrung his hands together in his lap and eagerly stared out the window. His brother sat just one-hundred and fifty miles away in a maximum security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

Unfortunately, Amtrak did not provide a direct route to Butner, so other travel arrangements would have to be made once he reached Raleigh. In Richard’s case, it usually meant renting an overpriced compact car from the rental lot next to the train station and making the hour drive to Butner. It was a stressful ordeal, but well worth it since visiting day only came twice a month. He always respected and admired Andy. After all, after the incident in the kitchen, Andy was the only family he had left. It was imperative that he visited him, even if only briefly. 

Tall and lanky, Richard reached his hands up and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair. His hair was tousled and his cheap dress shirt was wrinkled, but he was not in the business of trying to impress anybody anymore. He lost all desire in the opposite sex not long after the medication stole his libido like a thief in the night. The prison doctors said that the medication’s side effects would be temporary, but, as usual, the doctors lied. The doctors always seemed to lie to him, to secretly work against him.

He grimaced; one of his headaches was coming and that meant that the whispering was trying to surface. He was diagnosed when he was young, not long after that faithful day in the kitchen. The prison doctors tried to help him, so they said, but his condition had only gotten considerably worse since he was released one year ago. It was the sort of condition that nobody should ever have to get used to, but somehow he managed. He did not have many pleasant days, but, somehow, he willed himself to feel better on visiting days.

Richard turned his head and distantly stared out the window.

Even on bad days, those long stretches between the two authorized visiting days, thoughts of his brother eventually rose above the whispers in his head. The whispers never truly went away, though. The medication was the only thing capable of temporarily silencing the whispers, and, even then, sometimes the whispering fought back.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

He had to see his brother, and he couldn’t let the sickness get in his way again. If worse came to worse… he’d double-dose.

He placed his hand on the pill bottle in his pocket to assure himself and smiled.

As he fidgeted in his seat, he bumped against the man sitting next to him.                          

Terry was getting annoyed and unable to immerse himself in his novel. The gangly man sitting next to him kept fidgeting around and bumping him with his knee. He kept undershooting the man dirty glances, but the man did not seem to notice. He seemed pretty preoccupied, but so what? Terry had his own problems. He sighed and went back to his novel as he tried to forget about his newly-coined ex-wife.             

Behind Richard and Terry sat the heavyset Howell Wright, a recently dismissed engineer from Atlanta with an agenda. Unlike most people, Howell preferred the trains. On the trains, even after 9/11, baggage security was lacking. He looked past his protruding belly at the duffle between his feet and smiled.  

There were others on that midnight train, of course, asleep in their seats, but very few of them would survive past the accident that would later occur later that morning.   

3

             
N
obody said a word aboard the helicopter. It was a cramped stealth number with two black iron benches accommodating a gunmetal cabin interior. Six soldiers wearing biological hazmat suits sat in silence as they flew over the Maryland countryside towards their final destination. They knew whatever awaited them would not be pretty; the 161st Bioterrorism Response Regiment did not get called out often. It was eerily silent inside the helicopter, and it was dark; the moonlight struggled to shine through the helicopter’s narrow windows and reflected off of the soldier’s M16s and their mirrored facemasks. 

There was no small talk, only raspy breaths through six respirators and the constant whirl of the helicopter blades.      

“Any guess where we’re going?” Lloyd Godson, a scrawny New England career solider of eight years, was the first to break the sil
ence since they left Ft. Bragg.

The others looked up,
broken out of their meditation.

Silence was his answer.  

Lloyd turned his head and looked out the window slit
, fidgeting
. Below, the trees were thinning; moonlit green fields stretched out for miles. Army vehicles raced across the fields like ants while w
hite-suits erected tents. Lloyd chewed on his lower lip and stared
.                

The interior lights brightened and the door separating the cockpit from the cabin slid open. The men’s attention immediately focused on the intruding figure holding the red folder, Sgt. Gregory James.  

Sgt. James looked over the men carefully, clutching the red file tightly. He knew they would have difficulty performing the mission, but he knew
that orders had
to be followed
and he trusted his men to carry out their mission with the precision and tact that the 161
st
expected.

“Alright men,” Sgt. James
finally said. “Our target is a sublevel BSL-4 laboratory deep inside the Fort Detrick complex. At 0107 hours, a biological compound named ‘PT-12’ contaminated the laboratory. The lab’s emergency system activated, but someth
ing obstructed one of the sally
port doors and containment procedures failed.